Day: February 1, 2018

Social media and mainstream news is being flooded with unfounded warnings that Bitcoin will be banned in India, following the finance minister’s regulatory comments this morning #NEWS

Fishbank  — the crypto collectibles fighting game had launched Alpha on Ethereum network this weekend. With more than 200 000 early adopters joined the game it is the next rocket to the moon for sure.

One of the first participants of early Fishbank tests — Stefano Oppo, an Italian national team rower, professional Olympic athlete. He acquired a couple of legendary crypto shark tokens to become champions in the decentralized food chain this spring. Every fight brings additional value to his crypto sharks as they become more powerful and may compete with even bigger fishes.

Every crypto fish in Fishbank is an ERC-721 token stored on the Ethereum blockchain. That is a digital asset owned by the player that can be managed like a regular cryptocurrency — transferred or sold to any other player. It cannot be destroyed, removed or replaced by game creator.

The core idea of the Fishbank game is using cryptographically unique token to attack each other. Winner gets the part of opponent’s weight. The more weight the fish has, the more powerful it is, the bigger price it may get on the market.

Anyone can play Fishbank today on Rinkeby testnet using free Ether. After the Stable release of the game will be launched on mainnet the only way to get crypto fish token is try to catch a one in Aquarium or buy from other players for real Ether. The change to get a Legendary fish from Aquarium is aprox. 1:5000, every Aquarium ticket costs 0.03 ETH in the Alpha. Doing a simple math makes a Legendary token estimation to be caught in Aquarium around 150 ETH.

There is a chance to preorder certain fish token for Stable release before the game actually starts. Common fish tokens starting from 0.02 ETH, Epics from 0.47 ETH and legendary may be acquired for 2 ETH.

Early release of the Fishbank game has relatively limited functionality demonstrating just the core gameplay and fighting mechanics as well as some bugs on the board but considering the speed of improvements and support of the vast community, it becomes quite obvious that after all the functionality announced in Whitepaper will be implemented this title will go insane!

The era of blockchain games has arrived. Started from trading crypto collectibles, it has finally got to massively multiplayer action. With some crypto pets made thousands of dollars in profit for early participants it is even hard to predict what an impact can the full-featured game make on the market.

More Info

Website: https://fishbank.io
Telegram Group: https://t.me/fishbank_en
Telegram News: https://t.me/fishbank
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chatrobotic
Facebook: https://fb.me/fishbank.io
Discord: https://discord.gg/p8QsbZD
QQ: 599754294 or https://jq.qq.com/?_wv=1027&k=5Zi2pTr

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So it’s time to put forward the next of our bitcoin price watch analyses – this time for a Thursday morning European session. This week has not been a good one. Neither was last week, but this one hurts that little bit more given that price has now fallen and held below the $10,000 mark – a level that people have been watching closely as a key psychological threshold.

This suggests that – at least near term – we might see some further weakness in the markets as price pushes forward into the session today.

As we always say, however, there’s really nothing we can do outside of push forward with an intraday approach and hope that if things do continue to weaken, we are able to hedge with a downside entry in the direction of the decline.

So, with this all said, let’s get some levels in place that we can use for the session going forward. As ever, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started. It’s a one-minute candlestick chart and it’s got our primary range overlaid in black.

As the chart shows, then, the range that we are looking at for the session today comes in as defined by support to the downside at 9512 and resistance to the upside at 9660.

This is a pretty tight range, so we’ll be looking at sticking with a breakout trade for the time being as opposed to bringing both a breakout and an intrarange strategy into play.

In line with this, then, we’ll try and get in long on a close above resistance, targeting 9800 to the upside with a stop at 9620.

Looking short, a close below support will signal a short entry towards 9400. A stop on this one at 9550 works well.

Let’s see how things play out and we’ll revisit a little bit later today.

Happy trading!

The post Bitcoin Price Watch; Hedging The Dip appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said cryptocurrency is often used for money laundering and other illegal activities. The statement was made when he spoke about the need to inject more transparency into the trading process.

No Anonymity for Cryptocurrency users

According to Bloomberg he told a committee of lawmakers when speaking to the UK Parliament on Tuesday;

“A lot of the underlying use for these currencies has been illicit activity, particularly money laundering, potentially closing a chain which at somewhere along it had some illicit activity. One doesn’t have anonymity for bank account transactions, why would you for cryptocurrency transactions?”

Carney who chairs the Global Financial Stability Board said he wasn’t talking about people who are speculating in the crypto marketplace but talked about the concern of international regulators and that he expects the issue of buyer anonymity to be on the agenda at the upcoming G20 Meetings. Carney went on to add;

“At the G-20 level, we face some decisions in the future about to what extent should cryptocurrencies in general – and bitcoin is included in that – should they be integrated into the formal financial system. How easy should it be to convert bitcoin into sterling or dollars.”

Bank of England plans future cryptocurrency

Carney made no mention during this speech about the Bank of England’s plans already in motion to create its own digital currency. These plans laid out in a staff working paper published in 2017 predicted that a digital currency may increase the gross domestic product of the Union.

According to the authors, the Bank of England will be capable of increasing the country’s GDP permanently by about 3 percent. In order to make such a significant change in the economy, the central bank would have to issue enough digital currency units to equal 30 percent of the current GDP against government bonds.

The paper titled “The macroeconomics of central bank issued digital currencies” is authored by John Barrdear and Michael Kumhof. It was presented by Ben Broadbent deputy governor of the Bank of England to the Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

The post Bank of England Governor Carney Calls for Transparency in Crypto Trading appeared first on NewsBTC.

China-based cloud content delivery network Xunlei has been hit by two class action suits over alleged illegal ICO activity.

As we had expected a few weeks ago, the rebrand from Raiblocks to Nano has effectively taken place. While some people may not be too happy with the new names, it sounds a lot more professional.As a result, we also see the Nano price surge in value. Thanks to a solid 8.84% gain in USD value, the nano price now sits at just over $18. It is possible this value will drop again, though, as Bitcoin is crashing hard.

Nano Price is on the Move Again

Rebranding from Raiblocks to Nano is an interesting decision, although one that draws a mixed response from the community. People had gotten used to the Raiblocks name first and foremost. While Nano sounds a lot more professional, it also doesn’t explain too much about the project. It’s a name which can easily be overlooked by people who are not active in the world of blockchain or cryptocurrency. Nano is a term widely used to indicate different types of products, and it’s possible this new name will not work out all that well for the former Raiblocks.

So far, it seems the name change is working in Nano’s favor. While all of the other cryptocurrency markets are losing value once again, the Nano price is effectively going up. Thanks to a solid 8.84% increase in USD value and a 14.51% gain in BTC ratio, things are looking pretty solid for XRB right now. It is also good to see the Nano rebrand not affect the XRB abbreviation across the exchanges, although that may still come to change in the future.

This sudden surge in Nano price takes a lot of people by surprise, for obvious reasons. More specifically, it is the only currency to note any substantial gains as of right now.With the Bitcoin price taking a massive beating as of right now, it is only normal the USD value of all other cryptocurrencies will be affected. In the case of the Nano price, the opposite effect is happening, although it seems unlikely this trend will continue for much longer. All markets will follow Bitcoin eventually, and Nano will be no exception whatsoever.

With $55.15m in 24-hour trading volume, it is impossible to speak of any massive demand for Nano right now. It is possible the rebrand has thrown a few people off their game, but that situation should sort itself out sooner rather than later. This current volume is still respectable enough to warrant the current Nano price increase, but without more volume, the price will easily dip to $16 or lower again before the day is over.

Surprisingly, KuCoin is the leading trading platform for Nano as of right now. This is somewhat unusual, even though KuCoin is one of the last non-KYC exchanges still standing. BitGrail is in second place, but this has a lot to do with the company recent decision to force users to close their accounts. As such, they also need to sell all of their assets for Bitcoin, including Nano. KuCoin is in the top three again with their ETH pair as well. No new money is entering the Nano ecosystem as of right now, which is always a bit of a problem.

It is unclear what comes next for the Nano price. Although this current momentum is significant, there are weak fundamentals in terms of trading volume. Moreover, the ongoing Bitcoin price onslaught will eventually affect the Nano price as well, unless the altcoin can keep improving its XRB/BTC ratio in the coming hours. It’s an interesting market to keep an eye on, but no one should expect any major miracles to occur either.

Square’s Cash App will let its users from almost every state buy and sell Bitcoin #NEWS

This Blockchain platform aims to transform the beauty industry with smart contracts and low commissions. #SPONSORED

The operator of Japan’s most popular chat app with approximately 168 million monthly users has announced its plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. Line Corporation has already begun the registration process as a crypto exchange with the country’s financial regulator.

Also read: Japan’s DMM Bitcoin Exchange Opens for Business With 7 Cryptocurrencies

Line Starting Crypto Business

The operator of Japan’s most popular messaging app, Line Corporation, officially announced its plans on Wednesday to launch a cryptocurrency exchange.

The company has established a subsidiary called Line Financial Corporation “as a follow-up to Line Pay” in order to “further reinforce its position in the financial business domain,” its announcement details, adding that:

Going forward, Line will use this new company as a base as it proceeds with preparations to provide a variety of financial services, including a place to exchange and transact virtual currencies, loans, and insurance – all from the Line app

Line Pay is the mobile money transfer and payment service linked to the Line chat app. Launched in 2014, it has signed deals with over 30 banks across Japan to allow instant transactions using its platform, as news.Bitcoin.com previously reported. In Wednesday’s announcement, the company claims that Line Pay’s registered users have reached 40 million and its global transaction volume last year exceeded 450 million yen (~US$4.14 million). However, the company has not confirmed whether its new cryptocurrency exchange will be integrated into Line Pay.

Application to Operate a Crypto Exchange

Since the Japanese Payment Services Act went into effect in April of last year, all companies seeking to operate cryptocurrency exchanges must register with the country’s Financial Services Agency (FSA). So far, 16 crypto exchanges have been approved.

Line revealed on Wednesday:

The application process for registration as a virtual currency exchanger has already been started with the Financial Services Agency, and it is currently under review.

The company’s announcement came amid the FSA’s investigations of all cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan following the recent hack of one of the country’s largest crypto exchanges, Coincheck. The FSA typically takes two months to approve a registration, except for Coincheck’s application which it has been reviewing for over four months.

Regarding the Coincheck hack, president and CEO of Line Corporation Takeshi Uezawa commented that “security is Line’s priority,” NHK reported.

Line’s crypto exchange announcement came as its counterpart in South Korea rose to become the country’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume in just a few months. Upbit is an exchange backed by Kakao Corp which operates South Korea’s most popular chat app, Kakao Talk. While Upbit has over 120 coins listed due to its partnership with the US-based Bittrex, Line has not revealed how many cryptocurrencies will be supported on its platform.

Do you think Line’s crypto exchange will do well? Will you use it? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Nikkei, and Line Corporation.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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Chinese mobile app company Cheetah Mobile has released an Android-based digital wallet for ethereum and bitcoin.

It seems that governments are falling over themselves to crack down on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Each day politicians from different nations berate the blockchain based digital assets and issue dire warnings over their perceived dangers. Mainstream media picks this up and a FUD party ensues, usually fueling a self-perpetuating selloff.

The Indian government is the latest to adopt this mentality by stating that they do not consider cryptocurrencies as legal. According to local media Finance Minister Arun Jaitley raised concerns during his annual budget speech.

Curbing illegal activities

During the meeting he addressed the issue of the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies within the country and stated:

“The government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coin, and will take all measures to curb the use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or any part of payment systems,” 

In the same breath he went on to say that the government will explore the use of blockchain, especially in creating a distributed ledger system based on the technology.

The Ministry of Finance has previously warned about virtual currencies in December when it stated;

“Virtual Currencies (VCs) don’t have any intrinsic value and are not backed by any kind of assets. The price of Bitcoin and other VCs, therefore, is entirely a matter of mere speculation resulting in spurt and volatility in their prices. VCs are not backed by Government fiat. These are also not legal tender. Hence, VCs are not currencies,”

Despite the cautions and today’s statement on the need to prevent digital currencies being used for illegal activities no exchange closures or clampdowns have occurred in India.

Panic ensues

The wave of fear has already hit social networks with panicked FUD spreading netizens harking on about a complete ban on crypto trading. This has not happened and is not happening, it is another classic case of the media misquoting and misunderstanding the situation.

Those that are legally trading crypto and declaring their taxes do not come under scrutiny and will be able to continue, for now. The government does not recognize crypto as legal tender so buying a coffee with Bitcoin will not be possible but trading still is. Curbing the use of cryptocurrencies for illegal activities is NOT the same as banning Bitcoin in India.

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