Day: January 28, 2018

The travel and tourism industry is a major revenue driver for the global economy. In 2016, economists estimated that the travel and tourism industry contributed about $7.6 trillion to the global economy – thereby being responsible for as much as 10.6% of the world’s GDP. In fact, the travel and tourism industry is one of the biggest employers of labor in the global economic landscape as it boasts of providing one in every 10 jobs.

Millennials and Generation Z are major pillars upholding the thriving travel and tourism industry. Millennials are driving economic growth because they are the largest demography, they are tech savvy, upwardly mobile, and they have less inhibition towards spending. Statistics from the travel industry suggests that millennials spend an average of $4,500 within 35 travel days every year.

The travel industry fails to unlock optimal value from millennials

Despite the undeniable fact that millennials are a major consumer block in the travel industry, it is disheartening to observe that the industry is still stuck in an ancient era that millennials find stifling. To begin with, overbooking of flights and hotels could turn a trip into a nightmare even before it has had a chance to begin. Services such as Uber and AirBnB appeal to millennials because they are less stifling than hotels and taxis; yet, millennials are only trading one brand of inconvenience for another brand of inconvenience.

Secondly, travelers have to jump through many hoops to verify their identity and they are inadvertently forced to share their private data with many people along the value chain. Unfortunately, millennials have pseudo-living personas on multiple social platforms and it is often a drag verifying their identity through old systems when a simple look at their Facebook or Instagram handles would suffice.

Thirdly, there’s a depressing lack of reliable travel information to help travelers make informed travel decisions. The travel information available online is a jumbled up cacophony of hype, marketing pitch, incorrect, sentimental, and slightly objective stories from different sources. Hence, travelers often need to devote a great deal of time and energy to go through tons of information in search of reliable information.

Unfortunately, travel agents are not much help either because their knowledge is often limited to the tidbit of information that they can gather on the internet. In addition, travel agents tend to charge expensive fees for the information and they mark up the prices of consumables such as flight tickets and hotel reservations.

Cool Cousin is changing the narrative for the travel industry

Cool Cousin wants to help travelers (millennials and Gen Z especially) to bypass the information overload on the Internet in order to access unbiased travel information. Launched in 2016, as a VC-backed startup, Cool Cousin is getting popular acclaim, as a tool to revolutionize how people travel.

One of the smartest ways to create a memorable traveling experience is to plan your trip with the assistance of friends/family who are living at your destination. You can count on such people to give you factually reliable information on the accommodation options, the places to visit, the best times to travel, and on how to find the rare gems in the not so touristy places tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the cities.

Cool Cousin understands that not every traveler has the luxury of having a family member or friend that they can call in their destination cities. The firm, however, leverages blockchain technology to create a network of local guides called “Cousins” in different parts of the world. The Cool Cousin app, available on Android and iOS is now available in more than 65 cities with more than 1000 locals actively working as city guides.

Cool Cousin provides travelers with the next best thing to having a trusted local friend who knows your interest and can direct you to places that suit you. When you launch the Cool Cousin app, you sign in with one of your social media accounts such as Facebook or email. The app then asks for where you want to go. The app then pulls up info on your “Cousins” showing you their age, interests, and places they’ve been. You can connect with a “Cousin” whose interests seem to match your interests – you can ask for their map to favorite places or general travel idea that helps you to get the best out of your interests.

A Win-Win proposition backed by blockchain

Cool Cousin is also riding the cryptocurrency application of Blockchain technology to create the CUZ token. The CUZ token is an open source cryptographic token that will be used for the exchange of information on travel services and local information on the Cool Cousin platform. CUZ will serve as a tool to incentivize Cousins to provide unique content that fills an information gap for travelers.

The supply of the CUZ token is limited to 300,000,000 with the bulk of it being available in an ICO and only 10% going to the founding team. The instrumentality of a coin exchange also ensures that all members of the Cool Cousin community get to participate in keeping the platform alive sustainably without sacrificing the quality of content at the altar of growth and scale.

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Benjamin Franklin said that they only sure things in life are death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin didn’t live in the cryptocurrency age. Because if he did, he’d expand that list. Death, taxes, and the volatility of cryptocurrencies. This is to be expected, however, it’s not every day that the way we’ve been handling currency for over 3,000 years gets a shake-up you know.

This volatility shouldn’t scare us away from the potential and future of blockchain. But it does cause a hurdle to overcome. It makes sense. If you had $100 in your pocket for the weekend, but only $80 when Friday night rolled around without spending a cent, you’d be pretty upset. To combat this, crypto users want better and easier ways to cash out of their cryptocurrencies. So what options do crypto users have to cash out?

The Exchange Site

The most common way to cash out of a cryptocurrency is through an exchange site like Coinbase or Poloniex. Typically, users go to the same exchange site that they used to purchase the coin to exchange out of it. This is a good way to go if you can use the same exchange site for all of your coins. Keeping it on a single platform helps with managing your crypto.

However, as more coins are created, not every coin can be traded on your exchange site of choice. This obviously makes cashing out on these more obscure or newer coins more complex. Cashing out becomes a multistep process, where the transfer must first be into a popular crypto token like Bitcoin or Ethereum before it can be fully cashed out into a fiat currency.

It’s not necessarily the difficulty of this that becomes frustrating, but the time spent doing it. This can take days before the transaction is completely finalized and the funds are in a fiat currency. It is this process that often causes people to shy away from crypto.

The Bitcoin ATM

Bitcoin ATMs are another way to cash out. They are extremely convenient (assuming one is around) and extremely expensive. Also, as the name suggests, they are only available for Bitcoin. While this can help if you are in a jam, it’s not a great long-term solution for those looking to live regular day to day lives by spending crypto.

The Crypto Debit Card

Another way to cash out blockchain and into fiat currency is through a crypto debit card. These are becoming increasingly more popular as the demand for immediate cashouts from the crypto community becomes louder and louder.

The first blockchain based debit card was TokenCard (TKN). These cryptocurrency access points, like TokenCard, embody the true definition of a currency, spendable money. Through crypto credit cards, you can swipe the card to pay for basically any item, just like your bank debit or credit card. The cryptocurrency you paid with is then immediately transferred to the local currency at a cheaper than usual rate.

Other blockchain debit cards other than TokenCard are TenX (PAY) and Monaco (MCO). Benefits for these cards are similar to traditional debit cards like cash back, premium metal cards, and a companion mobile app. Crypto debit cards also allow you to transfer funds between cryptocurrencies, send and receive money in either crypto or fiat, and manage it all through the app.

Crypto debit cards also allow you to use the card anywhere in the world. This is one of the benefits of a cryptocurrency, played out in real time. Since there is no central bank or government controlling the currency, it can be spent anywhere. The blockchain then does the work of exchanging that cryptocurrency payment into the local fiat currency necessary, all while avoiding bank fees.

Along with purchasing items with a crypto card, TokenCard is unique because it allows you to track your spending in real time through the respective app. This app, along with the debit card and the smart contract wallet, are what make up the primary features of TokenCard. When you swipe the card, the funds are removed from your wallet similar to a bank account. The charge is then immediately reflected on the app.

You can also purchase more of a token or invest in an ICO through your wallet. The wallet manages your TKN, the official token of TokenCard. This feature can also be used to send and receive money in a secure and quick way.

As the ways to cash out on cryptocurrencies grows, the more acceptance it will receive, and the less volatile it will become. Blockchain technology has the potential to change the world. It’s just time for some of the supporting technology to catch up with the internet age and the way we’re used to doing things. When that happens, we’ll see a brighter future.

The post So You’re Now in Crypto, But How Do you Get Out? appeared first on NewsBTC.

Reports are emerging that the supposedly dollar-backed cryptocurrency Tether has ended their relationship with the company responsible for auditing them. Friedman LLP had been drafted in to prove to Tether naysayers that every USDT token did indeed have a dollar sitting in an account representing it. Tether stated at the end of last summer:

“Friedman LLP has been engaged to perform historical balance sheet audit procedures for Tether Limited. However, as the amount of Tethers in circulation has increased substantially in recent months, we have also asked Friedman to analyze our bank balances and our issued and outstanding token balance on an interim basis. Friedman agreed to perform consulting services for us in an effort to provide management with useful information concerning Tether’s cash position and Tether tokens issued and outstanding as of an interim date. Friedman was able to provide consulting services for us on an expedited basis, using a procedures date of September 15, 2017. These consulting services do not constitute anaudit or attestation engagement, which would include a significantly expanded scope of procedures and take substantially more time to complete.”

The idea of Tether was to have a stable cryptocurrency that would always be worth a fixed amount. This made perfect sense for crypto traders. They could safely exchange whichever cryptocurrency they wanted into USDT if they thought the price of all cryptos would decline. They could then buy back in using the Tether at the point they thought was the bottom of a dip.

The company claim to have over $2.2 billion in their bank accounts. This supposedly backs every Tether token 1:1, giving them a value of $1. However, critics allege that Tether, who are owned by the same interests as the crypto exchange Bitfinex, have been operating a fractional reserve system of sorts. Put simply, many believe Tether to be simply printing tokens out of thin air. A full audit of their finances would show the company as either a fraudulent operation or completely legit. It seems strange for either party to terminate the contract. Naturally, Friedman requires firms to audit in order to continue existing as a company and Tether have a growing community of doubters whose minds need putting at ease. Of course, Tether themselves may have cancelled the agreement to buy them a bit more time before their entire house of cards comes tumbling down.

Some within the cryptocurrency community were savvy enough to spot that Friedman had removed all mention of Tether and Bitfinex from the list of firms they were responsible for auditing off their website last week. Precise details of why the relationship has ended are still unknown and it is unclear which party terminated the agreement.

Yup. It's gone. No audit of Bitfinex by Friedman. h/t @ButtCoin

To be honest, I wonder if it might have anything to do with their PR firm @5W_PR completely misrepresenting their September report to reporters in a PR release. pic.twitter.com/sV83lT5Wl4

— Bitfinex'ed (@Bitfinexed) January 24, 2018

Doubts withing the community have been growing after being spearheaded by an anonymous blogger called Bitfinex’d. With the supply of Tether suddenly increasing by 50-100 million at a time, it’s hardly surprising that their criticism is being taken seriously. Then there’s the fact that the company’s own literature used to state:

“There is no contractual right or legal claim against us [Tether] to redeem or exchange your Tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of Tethers by us for money.”

This has since been updated in response to the various critics of the currency and company. However, without a full audit of all the accounts, it remains very difficult to trust that the company genuinely does have a dollar banked for every USDT in existence. This weekend’s news of Friedman’s departure from the position of auditors only serves to exacerbate this issue.

The post Tether Controversy Intensifies: Relationship With Auditor Dissolves appeared first on NewsBTC.

Many companies fail when they focus all their effort and development on one single product or a service. Every single market is changing rapidly and trying to be good at only one thing is not enough for the high demanding customers. The problem comes when a good product loses its popularity or the customer base has switched to a completely new trend.

Since the markets are moving faster than we can react, the time it takes for any organization to plan and develop a new strategy often means losing too much capital and customers. In today’s highly competitive space this can mean the end of any company. This very much applies to the crypto-market as well but on a much smaller scale. Here things are happening even faster and a major issue is that companies anticipate customers who don’t really exist.

A very well-planned marketing strategy plus a solid advisory board often leads to massive gains and ICOs funded in seconds. The trading volume then follows the hype and the fear of missing out becomes unmanageable. When something like this happens but you only have an idea on paper and not a single customer, the only possible outcome is for the company is to fail in the long-term. There’s an unwritten rule that less money is better because it makes you think outside of the box and find solutions that you wouldn’t otherwise come up with if you had too much capital. Of course, we all know that this market is moved mainly by people who look for big and fast returns rather than investing in solid projects. “If they are everywhere, they must be good”.

What we’ll see happening in 2018 and the years to come is the success of the businesses that are building ecosystems, not a single product. People don’t want to just buy books from Amazon, they want to buy anything they can think of – and in the meantime why not add a streaming service that you can control from your AI assistant. This is why Otcrit is not building a product, but a platform. A place where customers will be presented with a variety of services that they usually don’t see coming from one company. They are aiming to be an all-in-one solution for traders and investors while keeping the ecosystem safe from projects that are here only for the quick ride.

Everything that is happening in the cryptocurrency market is absolutely normal for such a young space, but the team is looking at the bigger picture. Otcrit is building a platform that will last as long as this market exists and provide the community with transparent and effective business model. Very soon we will see the beginning of the second wave of successful blockchain projects – the ones that actually reach some sort of adoption and deliver a working product.

People will have to adapt to this change and become more educated if they want to continue to trade or invest in this space. The demand for objective information will be higher than ever and investors will have to spend much more time researching a company than they do now. Cryptocurrency exchanges will have a big problem keeping their customers if they don’t start focusing more on the user experience and the clients’ safety when it comes to what projects are listed on the exchange and why. If we want to see this market reaching the extent of the stock market we have to focus more on development and research and less on marketing. It is unacceptable to think that in the future you could make an investment decision based on a YouTube video from someone who is paid by the company they are reviewing.

We have a lot of inexperienced people entering this space and we have to start thinking how to educate and protect them for their own good. Only a handful of companies are focusing on this, however, which really makes the Otcrit Platform stand out. Their pre-sale starts on 15th of February and you can read more about this project at www.otcrit.org

The post “Build a platform, not a product” is the approach taken by Otcrit appeared first on NewsBTC.

Moulesford, Oxfordshire: In what is believed to be the first attack of its kind in the UK, armed robbers broke into the family home of a Bitcoin trader and forced him to transfer his cryptocurrency to them. According to local police, four robbers in balaclavas forced entry into the house, before tying up the man’s wife and threatening him at gunpoint to hand over an unknown amount of Bitcoin, which, as of today, is worth more than $11,000 per coin.

A local resident described the victim of the attack as “well-known” and added that the village community had been left dazed by the news. The police are classifying the robbery as an aggravated burglary. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the escapade. Local children were kept inside a nearby school, while police attended the scene and began their investigation. No arrests have been made at this time.

Mark Shone, chief executive of Explain The Market, had the following to say regarding the robbery:

“These are criminals who have likely caught on to the current popularity of Bitcoin. But depending on how much they have, these coins are like being in possession of a rare painting. Trying to exchange large amounts for normal money without alerting suspicion will be very difficult.”

In less than a decade, hackers have stolen $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin and rival cryptocurrency Ethereum, according to Lex Sokolin, global director of fintech strategy at Autonomous Research. And it’s worth remembering that given the cryptocurrency surge at the end of 2017, the cost in today’s money is actually much higher.

One positive thing that comes from security breaches such as this robbery, is that they often lead to opportunities for improvements in security protocols. This market for software, services, and hardware to secure blockchain activity is expected to grow to $355 billion this year — it was $259 million in 2017 — as the digital economy moves more towards cryptocurrencies and banks and the financial community restructure.

The post Armed Robbers Enter Home, Force Bitcoin Trader to Transfer Funds appeared first on NewsBTC.

The highs and lows of the equity and cryptocurrency markets over the week. #MARKET_ANALYSIS

Bitcoin users have high expectations for the Lightning Network. It is a scaling solution unlike any we have seen to date. Faster transactions and near-zero fees are of great interest. However, current testing of this technology is not going according to plan. A couple users have reported the loss of coins due to various bugs found in the code. It’s a worrisome development, but this is why such solutions are deployed on the testnet first.

Lightning Network Payment Channel Issues

There is a genuine interest in exploring what the Lightning Network has to offer for average Bitcoin users. The idea of opening direct payment channels between individual parties is certainly something to look forward to. That’s because it will become possible to complete transactions nearly instantly, and fees will be kept to a bare minimum. All of this is still very far away, though, as the Lightning Network still needs to be tested thoroughly on the Bitcoin testnet.

So far, these tests have yielded mixed results. While the concept of payment channels appears to be working fine, multiple users have reported losing their money. Several bugs have been identified when it comes to closing the payment channels again, which is a critical part of the Lightning Network. Issues like these need to be sorted out as soon as possible, and they confirm that this technology isn’t production ready in the slightest.

With a Bitcoin payment channel, two users can transfer value back and forth without any problems. Connecting hundreds, thousands, or millions of these payment channels together will result in what we have come to know as the Lightning Network. However, if one channel can’t be closed properly, there’s a good chance other users will suffer from similar issues as well. So far, these incidents seem rather isolated, but that doesn’t mean there is no underlying cause.

Happened to my node too. It didn't claim its own auto-close tx. Anyway, I manually tried to close the channel. cli said 'it's already ONCHAIND_OUR_UNILATERAL`, BUT it created another transaction (i/p from auto-close tx) and claimed the o/p of new tx.

— Samrat Gupta (@samratgupta) January 22, 2018

There have been many warnings that the Lightning Network may not necessarily be the end-all solution so many people expect it to be. In fact, we have seen multiple warnings regarding this technology in its current state. Even Lightning Labs’ CTO has cautioned the public about lingering bugs and noted that the code is not complete. That is the main reason why it shouldn’t be used on the Bitcoin mainnet as of right now.

Unfortunately, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts decided to use the technology with their actual Bitcoin balances and are now suffering the consequences. In a way, it is their own fault for using incomplete technology which isn’t even supposed to be used on the mainnet until the developers give it the green light. People who ignore warnings like these always risk losing their funds, which is exactly what happened in these two incidents. Sadly, recovering the lost money will be virtually impossible.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. It seems both users had issues claiming their own auto-close transaction for the payment channel. Manually closing the channel resulted in an error, even though it did successfully create a new transaction. So far, neither of the transactions have been claimed properly despite numerous network confirmations. We can only hope the developers find a way to address these issues, even though no one should run the LN on the mainnet as of right now.

Cryptocurrencies are rebounding following one of the largest cyber thefts in history, after the victim, Coincheck, confirmed that it will issue full refunds to the 260,000 users who lost funds. As a reminder: Japanese exchange Coincheck was hacked this past Friday (January 26th) resulting in a loss of 523 million NEM coins, worth approximately $534 million.

During a press release following the hack it was revealed by the exchange’s representatives that the funds were stored on a single-signature hot wallet, constituting a relatively low-security environment. The theft underscores security and regulatory concerns about Bitcoin and other virtual currencies even as a global boom shows little signs of fizzling.

According to Coincheck’s announcement, the refunds will be done using the exchange’s own capital — although the company is still considering the exact timing and methodology for the process. President Koichiro Wada announced that the compensation for each NEM coin will be $0.8147, which is the weighted average exchange rate during the period from when the trading was halted to the release of the latest announcement. Coincheck indicated that they are referencing the XEM/JPY exchange rate at Zaif, another Japanese exchange which has the most trading volume for XEM globally.

The cryptosphere has shown support for the exchange after its proactive actions following the hack — case in point, as of today NEM is up about 20%, trading at $ 0.9906 per coin. NEM is moving forward, too, with the development team behind the coin announcing that it is working on an automated system that will track the stolen coins and tag all addresses that receive the “tainted” money. This will permit any cryptocurrency exchange to blacklist the hackers’ accounts, preventing them from ever actually cashing out any illegally obtained tokens.

What’s also worth noting is that Coincheck has confirmed their intention to stay in business, as opposed to declaring bankruptcy, saying: ”Along with our ongoing efforts to file applications to be registered as a Cryptocurrency Exchange Service Provider with Financial Services Agency, we will continue business.” In 2014, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which once handled 80% of the world’s Bitcoin trades, filed for bankruptcy after losing around half a billion dollars worth of the coin. More recently, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit last month shut down and filed for bankruptcy after being hacked twice last year.

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For the first time in forever, this week in bitcoin was strangely subdued. No major price movements, no regulatory crackdowns and no Tether collapse. Iota got into a bit of a pickle and then blamed everyone else, as Iota is apt to do, but that’s all. Everything was uneventfully ticking over, right up until Friday, when word broke of a record-breaking hack from the Land of the Rising Sun – yes, the very same land from where the world’s previous largest hack emanated. Turns out this week wasn’t so forgettable after all.

Also read: Bitcoin Futures Report Shows Bullish Sentiment Is In the Air

Tangle Loving Blues

Iota got themselves into a bit of a tangle at the start of the week, but thankfully they had the good grace to apologize and vowed to learn from their mistakes. Ah, who are we kidding? Their overgrown manchild of a CEO lashed out at anyone and everyone for reporting the news because shooting the messenger is always easier than tidying up your own mess. First there was the story of Iota users losing $4 million from wallet hacks, followed by an analyst’s report that the altcoin was severely overvalued.

Meanwhile, South Korea was quietly getting its crypto affairs in order with a shade more dignity than team Iota. We reported on how a new system will enable the country’s exchanges to share date with banks, as officials released guidelines on how the bank-exchange relationship should operate moving forwards.

Weiss Ratings Are Great Bait

Midweek entertainment came in the form of cryptocurrency’s Weiss Ratings which, everyone agreed, were laughably bad. It’s always fun to see supposed experts from the world of finance get crypto so wrong. You’d get more accurate ratings from the average Twitter trader with a five-digit follower count. Other stories which warmed the comments section this week included Crypto Celebs, rumors of Bitfinex and Tether’s bank accounts containing billions, George Soros blathering nonsense, and another lingering scam – Onecoin – being shut down in Bulgaria.

This week’s most popular story however concerned credit card issuer Discover blocking access to cryptocurrency for its 44 million customers. This is becoming a recurring theme among credit card issuers. It seems the crypto revolution is going to have to occur without their help, but we always assumed that anyway.

Coincheck Gets REKT

And onto the final essential story of the week, in which Coincheck gets $400 million of NEM removed from its vaults after failing to implement even the most basic op-sec. Unlike the Mt Gox affair, it’s a story that’s ended happily as all of the exchange’s customers who lost their NEM will be reimbursed in Japanese yen. It says volumes about the sort of profits that crypto exchanges are making when they can lay their hands on almost half a billion dollars in fiat in 48 hours. Still, props to Coincheck for making amends and to NEM for refusing to fork away the stolen coins.

With the crypto markets starting to rise again, the stage is set for an edifying and profitable seven days ahead. All we need is for Bitfinex and Tether to cling on, crypto exchanges to multi-sig their assets and everything should turn out just fine.

What was your favorite story from this week in bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Blanka Boskov.

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The post This Week in Bitcoin: Japan Gets Goxxed and Iota Gets Into a Tangle appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Allowing more companies and retailers to accept cryptocurrency payments will not be easy. In fact, it has been rather problematic over the past few years. Payment processors such as BitPay aim to contribute in this regard by releasing convenient plugins for WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and others. These plugins have now received an update which allows users to accept Bitcoin Cash as well.

BitPay Enables Bitcoin Cash Support

It is always good to see plugins for popular e-commerce solutions gain more functionality. BitPay has plugins for popular solutions such as WooCommerce, WHMCS, and PrestaShop. All three options are quite popular among users who set up an online shop linked to a website. Until now, these plugins only allowed users to accept Bitcoin payments, but that situation has now come to change. It is an interesting development which will be beneficial to the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.

More specifically, all plugins for these e-commerce solutions now let store owners accept Bitcoin Cash payments as well. It is a rather surprising turn of events, even though no one can deny there is genuine interest in Bitcoin Cash right now. On paper, it appears to be the superior version of Bitcoin as we know it today. Bitcoin Cash boasts lower fees as well as faster and more reliable transaction times than the main Bitcoin chain.

Whether or not any users of these BitPay plugins will decide to accept Bitcoin Cash is a different matter altogether. After all, users must enable this option manually, and there is no guarantee anyone will ever do so. With so many people cooling on Bitcoin payments, it’s somewhat doubtful they will explore alternative options right now. Then again, it never hurts to give users more options when it comes to cryptocurrency payments.

It is quite interesting to see the world’s leading crypto payment processor focus its efforts on both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. In the past, it would have been unthinkable to see an entity on the level of BitPay embrace an altcoin. At the same time, Bitcoin Cash is a lot closer to improving the Bitcoin we know today compared to other alternative currencies. One could argue they are both different sides of the same medallion, although that will always remain a very touchy subject.

A few weeks ago, BitPay announced that it was more than willing to process payments across multiple blockchains. At that time, it became evident this pertained to Bitcoin Cash, although it is unclear how things will play out with other cryptocurrencies. Crypto is about a lot more than just Bitcoin, and there are a fair few coins which are more suited as currencies right now. Bitcoin has taken somewhat of a backseat in this regard, although things are always subject to change.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for cryptocurrencies in the e-commerce industry. Accepting Bitcoin itself seems an unfavorable approach right now, although things will improve once Bitcoin’s scaling technology is in place. For now, it is only normal that companies such as BitPay wish to keep all of its options open, including dealing with so-called altcoins. Support for Bitcoin Cash is a big step in the right direction when looking at the bigger picture.

The rise of the ICOs has been difficult to ignore and what once was seen as a gimmick is now threatening to reshape the venture capital industry, particularly when it comes to financing early stage companies. One of the main issues usually highlighted against ICOs and investing in tokens is that these assets are not backed by anything. The gold standard may be over and one can argue that fiat money, such as the US dollar, is only as good as the government that issued it. Another argument is that in the current information age, data is the “gold of the 21st century.” It is true that a lot of ICO projects are nothing more than an idea and do not even have a beta version that potential investors can assess. But, what if an ICO was actually backed by something – DATA.

In a digital world with a seamless connection to the Internet, the size of your digital footprint is forever growing. A report by leading software maker Oracle and MIT Technology Review called The Rise of Data Capital argues that a major reason for the success of companies such as Google, Uber, and Amazon is that they have embraced the mindset of “data as an asset.” While there is nothing wrong with collection and usage of such data, the team behind repay.me is convinced that the data belongs to the users and that users should also benefit from the monetization of their data. Like the Robin hood of data, the team at repay.me believe that consumers have the right to own, control and benefit from their data. With the advent of Blockchain technology and smart contracts, the team is looking to remove this imbalance and to involve consumers in profits from value creation with their data.

For this reason, the company developed the REME-Coin, whose value is based on the data of repay.me’s community. The community is based on the fair share principle – the more data repay.me receives from the community; the more cashback will be distributed to the community. The ICO will start in February and will give access to a coin that is valuable to advertisers and users. Like former gold standard, REME-Coins are backed by real, measurable value. Each coin gives access to a fixed number of advertisements on the repay.me marketplace and this inherent value from the beginning ensure high price stability of REME-Coins. At the same time, just like the classical supply and demand curve, the value of coins is expected to rise in line with the growing adoption of REME-coins. This is because the number of coins will not increase after the pre-sale, but the amount of data will. Therefore, as the adoption of REME-Coin increases, so will its value due to the increasing amount of data it processes.

In marketing strategy, a market participant has a first-mover advantage if it is the first entrant, gains a competitive advantage through control of resources and occupies a significant market share. Being the first ever crypto-centric online shopping platform with its own coin will allow the company not only to revamp the cashback industry but also become a leading cryptocurrency used as a means of payment for goods and services. Data may be the gold standard of the 21st century but with such ambitious plans, the REME-Coin is sure to challenge for the status as the industry standard for cashback and payments.

The post New Gold Standard in Online Marketplace appeared first on NewsBTC.

New platform simplifies creating and using smart contracts. Clients without coding skills can create tokens, smart contracts and launch ICOs without having to advance costs before their ICO is complete.  

Moscow, Russia — AlfaToken started the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) on Monday, January 22, 2018. The innovative platform is the first that allows users to create tokens and smart contracts on different blockchains without coding skills for any kind of business relations including Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). AlfaToken is based on the popular Ethereum blockchain and uses the ERC20 Token Standard Interface.

The AlfaToken team will build a web-based user interface and a set of audited smart contracts to securely create and deploy the smart contracts users have chosen. A prototype of the service was released in October of 2018.

ALFA, the platform’s native validation token will be needed as a resource to issue tokens, create, test, and deploy smart contracts. There will be 30 million Sale Tokens available during the ICO Crowdsale.  

The AlfaToken platform will consist of the following services:

• Service to issue tokens and create smart contracts for ICO on different blockchains by choice without software engineering skills;

• Service to automate the distribution of tokens to investors in case the investments are collected in different cryptocurrencies;
• Service helping to run and manage bounty programs.

“The long-term aim of AlfaToken is to provide an easy-to-use service to create smart contracts for any kind of business relations” said Denis Farnosov, CEO.

AlfaToken inception comes from recognizing that for entrepreneurs it is a struggle to develop a company and transform an idea into a profitable business. There is a great need for early stage companies to raise capital. ICO Crowdfunding is the fastest growing method for raising the necessary investment. In 2017 the overall market capitalization of crypto assets grew by over 800% to $130B.

Smart Contracts are computer protocols that can automatically implement a set of programmed commands without human interaction and without human error. They have the potential for widespread global implementation.

AlfaToken has already identified 14 different use cases for the platform including ICOs, real estate rentals, p2p lending, p2p insurance, smart things sharing, hiring, e-commerce, auctions, trade finance, supply chain management, delivery by drones, smart homes, manufacturing automation, and business process management.

One challenge is that smart contracts are a relatively new phenomenon. There are also security risks that must be addressed so that programming errors don’t lead to a malicious theft of funds. Hiring a software developer to write the code, functions and properties can be expensive and limit the adoption of the technology.

AlfaToken offers a complete solution to our clients. The AlfaToken team has decades of combined experience in economics, blockchain, financial services, technology and marketing with a global-focused approach to business.

For additional information please contact [email protected] or

View the AlfaToken whitepaper at www.AlfaToken.com  

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

The concept of in-browser mining scripts has garnered a bit of a bad reputation over the past few months. No one likes the idea of someone else using their CPU to mine cryptocurrencies without consent. It now seems this trend is expanding via YouTube. More specifically, the video platform is displaying ads which use visitors’ CPUs to generate digital currency. It is a very worrisome development that will anger a lot of users.

Is YouTube now Mining Crypto?

It is evident there is growing interest in mining cryptocurrencies with someone else’s computer and computing resources. This has been going on for quite some time now, and it seems things will not be improving anytime soon. Injecting cryptocurrency mining scripts into YouTube ads is a clever trick, but it’s also one of the more worrisome developments in recent weeks.

According to a recent Ars Technica article, multiple users have reported these annoying YouTube advertisements. It is unclear where the ads came from or who managed to get them on YouTube. Considering that this video platform continues to gain popularity all over the world, it is only normal that it will attract the attention of criminals as well. Purposefully inserting such scripts in advertisements displayed on the platform is rather troublesome, although it seems most of these ads have been removed.

Most of the advertisements in question contained hidden code related to the Monero browser mining scripts we have seen over the past few months. Changing between browsers made no major difference, which indicates that the script used was rather versatile and professional. It is uncanny how far some people are willing to go when it comes to making money, although this attempt is by far one of the more brazen that we have seen to date.

Trend Micro investigated these reports, and they noticed that the ads resulted in 300% more web miner detections. It seems the code made its way onto YouTube by exploiting Google’s DoubleClick ad platform. More specifically, the criminals successfully targeted countries in which YouTube is especially popular, including Japan, France, and Spain. All of the advertisements contained JavaScript, which is the catalyst for mining Monero using other people’s computing resources.

Surprisingly, of these ads, nine out of ten used the Coinhive mining script, whereas the remaining one utilized a private mining JavaScript. Said script was more lucrative for the attackers, as it removed the reliance on Coinhive altogether. Considering that this company charges a 30% cut of all mining profits, it is only normal that there would be an interest in coming up with ways to eliminate the middleman.

It is evident that we will see more efforts like these in the future. Now that some people have found a way to integrate cryptocurrency mining scripts into YouTube ads, it’s not unlikely that other video streaming platforms will be affected as well. We can only hope such issues are thwarted within 2 hours, as happened in this case. At the same time, some users complained that these advertisements remained online for over a week. Web-based cryptocurrency mining has quickly taken a turn for the worse, but this is not the last we will hear regarding this development.