Day: January 30, 2018

The CoinShares Group has announced two new flagship crypto investment funds — the CoinShares ‘Active’ Fund (a multi-coin, alpha-generating, active strategy); and the CoinShares ‘Large Cap’ Fund (a passive, large-cap, basket fund).  As the group behind the first bitcoin and ether exchange traded notes (Issued by XBT Provider AB) and the world’s first regulated bitcoin strategy (GABI), CoinShares is fast becoming a leading light in crypto-finance — with over $1 billion in crypto-assets across a suite of exchange traded and private investment products. Its product line-up comprises offerings which all represent ‘first of their kind’ products: For example, Bitcoin Tracker One and Ether Tracker One were the first exchange traded bitcoin and ether products, globally; and CoinShares Fund 1 was the first fund denominated in cryptocurrency (ETH).

One of the most serious problems of crypto economy and ICOs as its dominant feature is a large number of fraudulent and simply inconsistent projects with no future. This phenomenon translates into two types of unfavorable investors trends: the number of ICOs held far exceeds the number of worthy ideas and competent teams; small percentage of projects ready to present a finished product after finishing the fund-raising successfully.

Let’s draw an analogy with the film industry. A producer is a key figure in the movie production, but he or she draws income only from the movies with a successful opening at box-offices. The producer’s success depends directly on the success of the movie, which provides the strongest motivation. Imagine if producers were receiving a fixed salary – would they be able to show the same zest for the creation of a good film then? Hardly so. Yet in the ICO market, the situation is very similar to the hypothetic scenario where producers are paid a fixed amount of money. As such, untrustworthy project authors lack motivation for developing the project and presenting the finished product to their investors after a successful completion of the token sale and raising the money.

RocketICO offers a solution well-known to the real sector of the economy and widely used there, namely a round fund-raising model. This model is meant to link receiving funds for projects at the RocketICO platform to these projects’ achievements in their product development.

The advantages and efficiency of the round model are self-evident. It is the capitalization of the venture investment market, where rounds model is common practice and exceeds the ICO market capitalization substantially. In addition, there is a much lower number of unreliable and fraudulent projects in the venture market. Of course, the round system is not a magic pill, but it is a necessary step on the way to the formation and development of the industry.

How the Round Model Works

A big number of fraudulent and simply weak projects pose a problem not only to investors. When the market is full of unreliable proposals, it becomes very difficult to emphasize the uniqueness of your project and demonstrate the consistency of your ideas. This leads to the increased marketing costs. The reason the RocketICO platform was created is exactly to fulfill interesting projects in such challenging conditions.

The RocketICO platform serves as a means of the ongoing communication between investors and start-ups. It is the requirement of providing a continuous report to the community that many projects lack as a motivation factor – a factor which for investors would prove the trustworthiness of the project authors.

In order to turn the idea into a full-fledged business with a ready-to-distribute product, a project is required to pass five rounds on the RocketICO platform. The platform allows a project to begin collecting funds starting any round, depending on the current stage of the project development, and this is an additional nice feature of RocketICO.

The first round is an Idea. This is a starting point for the projects at the stage of the developing idea. At this round, the authors are asked to submit a whitepaper, and after doing so, they can start receiving applications from potential investors. This process allows the authors to evaluate the appeal and consistency of the idea even before the team begins to develop a prototype – all thanks to the feedback received from investors and experts.

The second round is a Pre–Seed. It required the authors to submit a product prototype and release 10% of the total token number. A team can receive up to $150,000 for the prototype development.

The third round is a Seed. After a successful completion of the prototype, a team can start working on creating a somehow viable version of the product. This round the team can receive a maximum of $500,000 to fund the first version of their product, raised from selling another batch of tokens.

The fourth round – Round A. During this round, the team develops a final fully operational version of the product and gets to work with their first clients. A budget the team can receive at this stage amounts up to $3 million.

The fifth round – Round B. The fifth and final round on the platform is applied to the projects that have already released a final operational version of the product, successfully accessed local markets and formed their community while continuing to show ambitions for further development. At this stage, a team can receive in exchange for a final batch of tokens up to $5 million which should be spent on the product’s further development, scalability, and global market access.

Projects founders receive funds only after they have accomplished the goals of the current investment round. Such approach makes it possible to screen out unreliable and weak projects right away.

Investors also get a convenient filter tool – each investor can change the settings in such a way so that they receive notifications only for those projects which are at the development stage they are looking for.

The Round Model Contributes to the Market Growth

RocketICO platform aims at getting rid of fraud and weak ICO projects in the market, as well as simplifying the interaction process between projects and regulators. Additionally, a robust smart contracts constructor secures utmost transparency of all transactions and conditions on the platform.

The biggest advantage of the project is that it meets the interests of all targeting groups: the authors will have the fundraising process simplified and speeded up, investors will get access to the most promising and interesting ICOs, and experts will get a unique platform for monetizing their knowledge by providing consulting service.

Independent experts at the RocketICO platform possess experience, knowledge, and resources for conducting a comprehensive audit of projects. They are equipped to help potential investors to choose a truly promising project, and projects themselves – reach investors and show them the credibility of their ideas.

Another advantage of the round model is that it is of a greater attraction to large investors, whose presence is crucial for the growth of the market and its capitalization. Major investment groups and hedge funds with large capital will particularly prefer investing in ICOs with the round system.

RocketICO will become a bridge – something that crypto economy lacks at the moment – between the large investors’ capital and worthy ICO projects in the field of the blockchain.

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The darknet has been quiet of late, which is the way it’s meant to be. No news means no mega busts, honeypots, or mass market shutdowns. Even when it’s out of the spotlight though, the deep web is quietly making news, whether trialling the latest privacy coins or the newest coin mixers that promise to restore a little of the privacy that’s being stripped away from bitcoin users on a daily basis.

Also read: U.S. Agency ICE Conducts Investigations That Exploit Blockchain Activity

The Battle for Privacy Heats Up

Privacy is all relative, but of late there’s been relatively little privacy to be enjoyed by bitcoin users. Blockchain monitoring software is becoming more sophisticated and more common, with U.S. law enforcement agencies using it to profile and hunt down deep web users. Chip Mixer is a relatively new bitcoin tumbler that’s designed to restore some of that privacy. Available on both the clearnet and darknet, the service uses a variety of techniques to obfuscate blockchain movements.

Unlike other mixers, Chip Mixer adds in its own chips which are then shuffled around in a manner akin to gambling at an online casino, before the initial deposit is withdrawn into a new address. Services such as Chip Mixer are useful not only to darknet vendors and customers, but to bitcoin users in general seeking to regain some privacy. In a week in which a prominent bitcoiner got the community talking simply by transferring their 40k BTC to a new address, it’s evident that there are instances where transaction obfuscation is desirable.

The Age of Blockchain Monitoring Has Arrived

“Criminals think that they are safe online because they’re anonymous, but they are in for a rude awakening,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday, launching a crackdown on Fentanyl distribution. “We have already infiltrated their networks, and we are determined to bring them to justice.”

The sort of tools used by three-letter agencies such as ICE are presented as a means of combatting the trafficking of harmful narcotics, but this is invariably the thin end of the wedge. Companies such as Bitfury gleefully boast of creating tools that are “for use by law enforcement organizations and financial institutions.” Their latest, Crystal, “tracks the relationships of an entity with identified bad actors (such as dark market traders)”. These sorts of companies would have no qualms about their software being used to profile users based on nothing more than their country of origin, libertarian beliefs, or cypherpunk ideology.

Dream Marketplace Adds Monero

There is an alternative means of regaining anonymity when transacting online which doesn’t call for passing through time-consuming tumblers: use a privacy coin. Dream, one of the longest standing DNMs, has always been a bitcoin-only marketplace, with bitcoin cash finally added a month ago. Now, much to the relief of r/Darknetmarkets, monero has made its way to Dream. To date, law enforcement – together with other busybodies intent on surveilling deep web users – have failed to deanonymize monero. Given the level of rhetoric surrounding new blockchain forensic tools, 2018 is shaping up to be an interesting year for privacy advocates and those who would seek to deny them that right.

Do you think tumblers such as Chip Mixer can be trusted to anonymize transactions? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Chip Mixer.

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The post Deep Web Roundup: Dream Adds Monero and Bitcoin Tumbler “Chip Mixer” Launches appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Lydian becomes first ICO to accepts ByteCoin as payment method during its Public Crowdsale.

Bytecoin (BCN) is the first cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote technology, launched in July 2012, and is currently estimated to be valued at $1.2 billion on Coinmarketcap.com at the time of its release.

BCN has partnered with Lydian to allow users to participate in the company’s public ICO that begins today. This is the first time the crypto community can use ByteCoin to purchase tokens on an ICO. “We are very excited about partnering with Lydian and letting our community participate in their ICO using ByteCoin,” said Jenny Goldberg from ByteCoin.

Lydian, which has launched its public ICO today, is developing its own Whisper Network Protocol, the fastest blockless directed acyclic ledger that accomplishes scalability, security, and true decentralization as it achieves consensus at record speeds.  Lydian, is a subsidiary of the DaVinci Marketing Cloud, a company that works with Fortune 500 brands all across the globe. The team behind Lydian has created over $1 billion in shareholder value and this is their most ambitious product yet. Lydian will be building two decentralized applications using their own Whisper Network Protocol. MonaChain will combat ad-fraud, while MonaBrowse will combat the rise of ad-blockers.

“This is a unique opportunity for the whole crypto community to participate on our journey using Bytecoin in completing a successful ICO. We are very excited about this partnership and look forward to having the ByteCoin community become LydianCoin participants”, said Kamal Kaur, Chairwoman & CEO of DaVinci Marketing Cloud.

About DaVinci Marketing Cloud

DaVinci11 is the world’s first high-frequency, machine-learning, marketing OS, built to enhance the advertising and SaaS industries. It collates customer experiences so marketers can target a customer throughout the entire purchase journey and across all consumer touch-points, regardless of delivery channel. Its proprietary AI technology, Mona Lisa, builds a consumer persona by aggregating data across many channels. The platform’s fluid and constant in-stream of data is sorted into a semantic graph to form connection clusters, using the correlation variables. All through a single click, it empowers agencies and marketers to allow connected software to optimize a manually driven $230 billion global advertising market. The company’s headquarters are in Miami, but it has offices in Sydney, Auckland, Madrid, Singapore, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Christchurch, Taipei, and India.

Media Contact
Company Name: LydianCoin Pte. Ltd
Contact Person: Sydney Ifergan
Email: [email protected]
Website:  https://lydian.io

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Ransomware distributors and other cybercriminals expecting an easy payday are having their illicitly obtained “earnings” stolen by likeminded individuals, who are hijacking the ransom payments before they are received and redirecting them into their own cryptocurrency wallets. At first glance, this may not seem like a huge problem — attackers getting a taste of their own medicine in becoming victims of cyber-theft themselves. But these attacks are also preventing ransomware victims from unlocking their encrypted files, because, as far as those distributing the malware are concerned, they never received their ransom payment.

Ransomware is a huge problem for internet users across the globe. It’s a form of malicious software —malware — which encrypts documents on a computer or across a network. Victims can often only regain access to their encrypted files and/or networks by paying a ransom to the criminals behind the ransomware. 

Uncovered by researchers at Proofpoint, this scheme is believed to be the first of its kind. So how are these attacks actually happening? Cybercriminals are using a Tor proxy browser (Tor is a web browser designed for anonymous web surfing) to carry out middle-man attacks, stealing the cryptocurrency payments the victims of ransomware are attempting to send to their attackers.

The attacks take advantage of the way ransomware distributors have victims use Tor to buy the cryptocurrency they need to make the ransom payment. While many ransomware notes provide instructions on how to download and run the Tor browser, others provide links to a Tor proxy, regular websites that translate Tor traffic into normal web traffic (so the process of paying is as straightforward as possible for the victim).

What’s been happening is one of the Tor gateways being used is altering cryptocurrency wallet addresses in the proxy, and redirecting the payment into other accounts, rather than those of the ransomware attacker. Proofpoint researchers uncovered that the proxy can redirect payments made by victims of several forms of ransomware, including LockeR, GlobeImposter, and Sigma.

As noted above, the victims, like the state of Alabama, are the ultimate losers in this scenario. Not only are they paying thousands of dollars in ransom demands, they’re not even getting their files back. These middle-man attacks mean the ransomware distributors don’t get the funds they demand from the victims and therefore don’t help said victims unlock their encrypted files.

The post Ransomware Creators Having Funds Stolen; Victims Locked Out appeared first on NewsBTC.

Facebook bans cryptocurrency and ICO ads, as they are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”. #NEWS

There’s been a lot of discussion and controversy surrounding Tether (USDT) a digital asset that claims to be backed by the U.S. dollar. Now according to reports, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has subpoenaed the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and the company Tether for unknown reasons.

Also Read: Analyst: IOTA Sharply Overvalued Due to “Overwhelming Evidence of Serious Flaws”

The CFTC Sends Bitfinex and Tether a Subpoena

A lot of skeptics believe that the digital currency Tether USDT is not backed by the U.S. dollar and may have pumped the entire cryptocurrency economy during 2017’s phenomenal year. Just recently news.Bitcoin.com reported on Tether severing ties with its auditor, so cryptocurrency enthusiasts are still left in the dark regarding USDT’s so-called backing. Tether has still not proven that it holds $2.3 billion USD in reserves. Now according to the financial publication Bloomberg the CFTC had sent subpoenas to both Tether and Bitfinex on December 6, “a person familiar with the matter” explains.

Bitfinex and Tether Say Legal Requests Are Routine While the CFTC Declines to Comment

Tether and Bitfinex did respond to a question regarding the summons in an emailed statement sent to the news outlet.  

“We routinely receive legal process from law enforcement agents and regulators conducting investigations,” explained Bitfinex and Tether representatives.

It is our policy not to comment on any such requests.

Furthermore Erica Richardson, a CFTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the subject concerning the digital currency businesses. Very little public information exists on why the CFTC has sent Bitfinex and Tether the notice.

However, the news follows a lot of speculation about both of these companies from various media sources and well-documented reports. This past week Professor Nouriel Roubini otherwise known as ‘Dr. Doom’ said, “regulators are asleep at the wheel while $2 billion of fake money was created via this scam.” With Bitfinex and Tether being subpoenaed by the CFTC, it seems regulators may be very aware of Tether and exchanges like Bitfinex who are ‘tethered’ to the digital dollar business.

What do you think about Bitfinex and Tether being subpoenaed by the CFTC? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Bitfinex, the CFTC, and Tether logos.

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Bitcoin investors are feeling the pinch again this week after regulatory suspicion in the US sends prices tumbling 11%. #NEWS

New Blockchain-based platform for information security aims to deliver better protection and reward the most rapid and effective new threat detection methods.

Modern information security companies are unable to detect all the emerging threats accurately and fast enough and provide users and enterprises with full protection. Meanwhile, blockchain startup PolySwarm is going to change the game rules and offer consumers complex and multidimensional crowdsourced protection.

According to Gartner analysts, the spending on information security (IS) is growing 7% over the year to reach $86.4 billion in 2017 and $93 billion in 2018. Meanwhile, the growing market is experiencing the lack of qualified specialists. Forbes says, that in 2019 there will be an unfulfilled demand for about 2 million IS specialists. In this situation, companies all around the world need a complete solution to fight cybercrime, and the problem is that there’s no such one on the market.

Cybercriminals are using more and more sophisticated tools to attack corporations and individuals, and antivirus companies cannot provide the complete protection. The major market players offer some combinations of traditional signature detection methods and heuristic analysis. If the threat is known, they can uncover it with code signatures. Otherwise, threats could find themselves by behavior. So, if a security system observes some unusual traffic or activities within the network, it can inform a security officer or launch some emergency protocol. Nevertheless, the threat stays unknown, every vendor has to find his own method of defense. With limited access to R&D resources and the duplicative efforts incurred, the time that it takes them to react to new threats has risen by 33%.

Large antivirus companies are putting efforts on building threat intelligence networks – to collect information from their clients’ networks and unite the efforts with other specialists. Some call it “cloud detection”, but in fact, you can’t use 2 or 3 protection engines simultaneously, because there’s no interoperability between such solutions like McAfee, Symantec, CheckPoint Software and others. And everyone has to choose the most appropriate one, giving up the idea to get a complex protection.

Distributed threat intelligence

Improvements in security against fraud and cybercrime make up 56 % of the reasons business leaders of the reason why business leaders are currently using or considering adopting blockchain in their organizations, according to an IBM study  

Considering that, shouldn’t surprise us that a security startup is leveraging the blockchain and Ethereum smart contracts to create the first decentralized marketplace for threat detection. This could potentially disrupt the $8.5 billion a year industry that is considered by many as fundamentally flawed.

PolySwarm allows IT experts around the world to monetize their security expertise by creating and maintaining specialized threat detection software. Unlike other bug bounties, threat detection is automated, there is no human in the loop, which allows for faster analysis and scale. Speed and accuracy in malware detection of analysis (executed by engines) is the criteria to get reward experts

The marketplace and its end users benefit from the aggregated protection coverage provided by the thousands of specialized micro engines scanning the files within the platform.  Enterprises get access to specialized security expertise and a lower cost per artifact analyzed than if done internally. In essence, PolySwarm expects enterprises to outsource them part or all of their new threat detection efforts, as currently, 70% of new threats go undetected by signature-based antivirus.

The customer is not locked anymore to the algorithms of a particular vendor. Today you can use a special detection mechanism from British researcher, and tomorrow – some threat intelligence, say, from the Philippines. The multi-definitional model will offer the most effective mechanisms for every particular case

With expertise in information security

The PolySwarm team is well experienced in Information Security and blockchain. Its CEO Steve Bassi earlier has founded a Narf Industries company, which served U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a number of Fortune 500 companies. Now PolySwarm is going to disrupt the information security market, helping experts and threat researchers to monetize their skills and knowledge. The experts from all over the world will have a chance to work together like a real swarm, using a platform with an open source code (check it at Github).

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