Day: February 5, 2018

UNICEF asks gamers to use their computers to mine Ethereum in their free time as humanitarian aid donations for Syrian children #NEWS

Over the last 12 months, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Bitcoin has become the new black. It’s escaped the underground and is, at last, a household name.

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Now, for nothing more than a long number, you can book flights to the other side of the world, buy a new laptop, and play online games like poker.

If Bitcoin is the new black, then the technology behind Bitcoin, Blockchain is the new rock and roll and there’s nothing folks won’t try to do with it.

From smart contracts to tracking African conflict diamonds, Blockchain is currently number one in pretty much every feasibility study on the face of the planet. Some of these are a little left field, but there’s one model where the crypto tech makes a lot of sense and that is as a payment system.

Bitcoin’s not perfect, but it has endured since its conception in 2008 and if nothing it has proven to be incredibly resilient.  The code has defied pundits, governments and regulations alike. Everything has limits however and attempting to use Bitcoin as a scalable payment system is a quick way to find them.

Two Schools of Thought

Before I go any further, I need to point out that there are many camps in the Bitcoin world. Many of them have different agendas, but if you want to split them down the middle, just bring up Bitcoin as a payment system.

One lot believe that Bitcoin should be treated more as a saving or investment like gold, while the other camp is all about making the payments system work.  

The Problem with Power

The problem with Bitcoin as a payment system is lag and power. The blockchain is so complex that transactions take ages to happen and the sheer amount of power required is growing exponentially.  Bitcoin transactions already take up to 10 minutes to occur, can you imagine how much that would rise if the entire planet started using it instead of say Visa?

One of the things Bitcoin got right from the start was its ceiling. It is by far the most mainstream cryptocurrency and its price is rising because of its illiquidity. As the value rises, those who are holding coins are clinging on in hope of bigger gains and as mining becomes harder and harder there’s a temptation for Miners to HODL – “Holding On for Dear Life.”

That said, it technically would work, but leading financial bodies have claimed it’s only feasible for transactions of over $1,200.  

Is it Over?

Not by a long shot.

It may have its issues, but Bitcoin has arguably proved itself to be relatively future proof and has earned a decent amount of public trust. Because of its near household name, Bitcoin is perfectly placed to take on the money giants. If only someone could work out the technical issues.

Enter the Lightning Network.

The Lightning Network is an add-on network for Bitcoin and Litecoin. It’s a complex system to explain but essentially think of it as a dedicated translator. It works by interpreting what’s happening in a blockchain transaction, quickly determining the eventual outcome and then sending each user a technical IOU.  

Another way to look at it, is like an accurate crystal ball. Because the Lightning Network has all the relevant data and understands the process, if Tim decides to send Lucy $10 via Bitcoin, it can very quickly work out exactly what’s going to happen and verify the transaction in advance. Then later, when the transaction actually occurs the Lightning Network simply ratifies its results and the transaction is added to the blockchain.

The Lighting Network is still in beta, but the results look promising and it’s a good work-around to tackle the problem of time and energy. There’s some resistance to it, however, especially from the Bitcoin camp. This is probably due to the way folks are treating Bitcoin as mentioned above, but also because it leaves miners with less to do and therefore with less money to make.

Litecoin however, is looking like the most likely candidate to adopt this system. This will, of course, give Bitcoin owners a chance to see how well it works before adopting it themselves.

There are a number of other systems and concepts dedicated to solving Bitcoin’s issue of power and time, but the mention of Litecoin suggests another route for Crypto to break into the payments market.  

The Miner Strike

Bitcoin will always be the first digital/virtual currency, but it will not be the last.  Its design is nothing short of genius, but it has started to show signs of its age.  A new generation of possible successors has emerged with all the bells and whistles that its predecessor never had.

The two main players in this field are both next-generation coins which take inspiration from blockchain but are not tied to its limitations.

• Raiblocks

Raiblocks uses a system called block-lattice, which essentially means a network of Blockchains rather than just one.  Raiblocks price has been rising steadily over the last few months as more and more people realise its potential.

• IOTA

IOTA is an acronym for the Internet of Things Application and it’s well named. IOTA utilises a miner-less system called the Tangle which allows for exceptional speed and fee-less transactions. The speed at which IOTA can move numbers around in addition to its fee-less transactions has earned IOTA some big fans. From German tech giants BOSCH to Microsoft, the IOTA team has shared the spotlight with some really big players.

The truth is if virtual currency ever becomes a truly scalable payment system its roots are likely to belong to one of these two currencies rather than Bitcoin, but we all know that the future is very difficult to predict especially when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group banned credit card purchases of crypto today, worried customers will build debt with crypto market still falling #NEWS

Singapore Airlines is looking to bring Blockchain to the fore in overhauling its airmiles capabilities this year. #NEWS

Texas’ securities agency has issued another emergency cease-and-desist order, this time against crypto lending scheme DavorCoin.

In the past, prediction markets have generally been centralized, and the optimal way of aggregating trades has been through the use of a physical ledger. However, it should be understood that centralized prediction markets come loaded with innate risks and limitations. For example, they not only restrict global participation, but also require traders to place their trust in a third-party operator.

This is where Augur (REP) comes in. It is designed to be a trustless, decentralized prediction market platform that allows casual and experienced traders to speculate on a wide array of future events. The functional model is quite simple — correct forecasts are rewarded with money, while incorrect predictions lose money.

However, what really sets Augur apart is that it allows for customer participation at extremely low/nominal cost. The only major expense incurred is a small compensation fee paid to the market creators, as well as to users who report on the outcomes of the events.

Overview of Augur

• Completely open-source
• Future compatibility with BTC as a sidechain
• All markets are created and controlled by users (unlike most gambling platforms).
• Potential to eliminate biased prediction data from the internet
• Total supply of 22,000,000 REP.

Key Features

Augur does not make use of centralized servers, and hence is not prone to any risks involving third-party hackers or server malfunctions. Additionally, the platform allows for the placement of wagers on literally any question imaginable. For example, a bet can be placed on whether James Harden will win the 2018 NBA MVP award, or whether Donald Trump will be re-elected to the oval office in 2020.

It should also be mentioned that all of Augur’s transaction fees are determined by its users. Thus, the overall processing costs incurred when using this platform are vastly lower than those of other trading/betting platforms.

While in the past we’ve seen certain individuals manipulate centralized markets (since one person is in charge of the outcome), Augur employs a proprietary consensus system that makes use of thousands of participants reporting on the outcome of a single event. What’s more, this platform makes use of its own native currency — REP — thereby severely reducing the risk of fraud.

Lastly, let’s talk about internal transactions. All of the funds are stored and transferred via smart contracts. This eliminates issues related to counterparty risk and allows for the instant transfer of money. Withdrawals and deposits are streamlined and can be done with the simple click of a button.

How Augur works

Here’s a simplified working model of the Augur prediction platform, courtesy of the Augur whitepaper:

From a technical perspective, Augur markets make use of a four-stage progression mechanism that includes:

• Market creation
• Trading
• Real-time reporting
• Payouts and settlement

Users have the ability to create a market that is based upon a factual “real world event”. As soon as the market is created, trading is initiated and all users can access and freely make use of the market. After the event has concluded, the Augur Oracle determines the outcome of the event. Traders can subsequently close out their respective positions and receive a remuneration based on the same.

The Augur oracle is an intuitive prediction module that allows key data sets to easily migrate from the real world to the blockchain without relying on a trusted intermediary. In fact, the Augur platform is designed to serve as the world’s first decentralized oracle.

The Augur Reporting Flowchart (courtesy of the Augur whitepaper)

Augur makes use of a native token called REP. This currency will be essential for both the market creator as well as the reporters associated with a particular wager.

Market outcome is based upon a consensus derived from individual reporter participation. Thus, if a reporter’s report of a particular outcome does not concur with the consensus that has been reached by other participants, the Augur AI automatically redistributes the REP tokens of that reporter with the rest of the reporters whose reports were correct.

The History of Augur

Augur is a US-based company that has been active in the crypto domain since 2015. In the past couple of years, Augur has dramatically increased in popularity due to its intuitive betting platform that enables seamless forecasting and trading. The first iteration of the Augur platform was released in June 2015 on the Ethereum testnet, and the first beta module was made available in 2016. The final release, according to the official company whitepaper, is due out in the first quarter of 2018.

Augur Beta Snapshot

In terms of its user interface, Augur.net has a pretty basic design. Upon clicking on the Augur Beta tab, users are presented with an app environment that is quite simple yet intuitive.

Token Performance

The market performance of REP is quite noteworthy, as in 2017 alone the price of a single coin rose by over 2,000%. However, this is in no way an indicator of its future performance, as there still exists an extreme level of volatility within the crypto domain.

 REP token two-year performance chart (courtesy of CoinMarketCap)

We can see that the value of 1 REP in January 2016 was a meager US$2.08, but by December of 2017, its value had risen to a staggering US$93.80.

The Final Verdict

With the incorporation of blockchain into various online trading platforms, Augur has the potential to act as the ideal medium for promoting user participation within the prediction market sector.

Additionally, with the meteoric rise that REP has seen in the past year, it would come as no surprise if REP established a strong position on the top 50 cryptos list of 2018.

If you’d like to start investing in Augur, REP trading pairs are currently being offered on Binance.

The world of cryptocurrency is no longer about just Bitcoin. A fair few alternative cryptocurrencies have staked their claim as well. Litecoin has always been of great interest to cryptocurrency enthusiasts. As such, it is good to see their native payment processing service launch in the near future. LitePay, as this service is called, will boost global adoption of LTC as a whole. If everything goes according to plan, LitePay will go live later this week.

Bringing Litecoin to consumers and retailers alike will be a challenge. Even Bitcoin has not seen much success in this regard so far. Some retailers even removed the Bitcoin option altogether due to mounting fees. With Litecoin, transaction fees are a lot lower. Both consumers and retailers can also expect quicker payments. This is why LitePay may be one of the biggest developments in Litecoin’s history. A native payment processor will certainly introduce some interesting challenges.  

This new payment solution offers a few interesting tools. More specifically,  it allows businesses to accept LTC payments which can be converted to fiat immediately. In this regard, the service is nearly identical to BitPay for Bitcoin. Moreover, there will be a Litecoin-exclusive debit card which can be used anywhere in the world. Given Visa’s and Mastercard’s recent issues with cryptocurrency debit cards, this will be interesting to keep an eye on. It remains unclear which bank will issue this new Litecoin debit card.

Whether or not there is any interest in LitePay, remains to be seen. Merchants are wary when it comes to cryptocurrencies due to its volatility. With this new solution, that volatility is taken out of the equation altogether. However, if the companies don’t see an added benefit, Litecoin acceptance won’t increase that much. Allowing LTC holders to native spend their funds will be a big step forward. Instant payment settlement certainly is an appealing option.

Until LitePay launches, there is little point in speculation. We do know the service is scheduled to go live within the next week. No specific date has been announced at the time of writing. The Visa card will be available from that date as well, although it is unclear when they will effectively be shipped to users. This new service charges a flat fee of 1% for all transactions. It certainly makes for an appealing alternative to dealing with Bitcoin.

The post Litecoin Adoption Expected to Surge to New Heights With Merchant Adoption appeared first on NewsBTC.

Decentralized sports financing platform SportyCo is the new sponsor of Espanyol, one of the mainstays of La Liga, Spain’s (and probably the world’s) top football league.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Football is, without dispute, the worlds sport no. 1 and La Liga is one of the two most exciting national leagues in the sport. RCD Espanyol from Barcelona is one of the more recognizable competitors in the league and have just announced that SportyCo is the new sponsor of RCD Espanyol.

RCD Espanyol will wear the SportyCo logo on their jerseys and shorts, and will thus promote our project among their supporters – both at their stadium during the games as well as to the several hundreds of millions strong community of football fans following La Liga matches on their TVs all over the world.

This sponsorship builds on SportyCo’s extensive connections in the Spanish football ecosystem, following the introduction of Roberto Carlos, former Real Madrid superstar and UEFA Champions League and FIFA World Cup winner, as Partnership Manager of SportyCo.

This news follows in the footsteps of SportyCo’s successful rebranding. The team, formerly known as SportyFi, decided that due to the imminent launch of the platform and a plethora of exciting news in the weeks before that it’s time to kick off with a brand-new and more recognizable name – SportyCo.

SportyCo believes that every promising athlete deserves the opportunity to pursue a professional career and every small investor should be able to back an athlete he believes in. Therefore, they’re setting up a crowd financing and investment ecosystem for up-and-coming athletes, changing financing in the sports industry by deploying a blockchain-based crowdfunding platform, serving athletes, clubs and other sports organizations, and enabling small investors to participate in sports, a fast growing $1.3 trillion worth industry.

Read more on SportyFi on their website and join the discussion on the SportyCo Telegram channel.

Just because you haven’t gotten a subpoena from The Man in the month since your decentralized cheese token went live, it doesn’t mean you won’t.

Amid fears of Bitcoin bubbles and big money cybercrimes, China vows to put an end to all cryptocurrency trading – foreign and domestic.

Bad News For China

In order to avoid what it saw as a potential financial crisis China outlawed all domestic crypto-trading exchanges in September of 2017. This essentially put an end to the Yuan- Bitcoin exchange once one of the biggest drivers in the market.

Despite the ban, individual investors have continued to trade on foreign exchanges using virtual private networks.

Now new, tighter regulatory practices announced will target just such traders as well as banks and financial institutes that had been funding Chinese based initial coin offerings trading on foreign exchanges.

“I think the new move literally means it would be even harder to circumvent the ban in China…people promoting related business programmes may be arrested,” David Zhao a private investor said.

Good News for Singapore and Hong Kong

Last years initial ban on domestic exchanges saw operators like Houbi and OKCoin move operations to Hong Kong where they morphed into crypto-crypto exchanges whose services were still available in the PROC.

This new ban could spur serious investors to move large amounts of capital to Hong Kong, Singapore and even Japan where cryptocurrency is being embraced as the future.

“It’s positive news for Japan and Singapore because demand for participating in trading is not diminishing and traders have got to go somewhere,” said Ace Yang, executive director of Cathay Capital, a private equity firm based in Beijing.

Closing The Mines

The regulations put in place last year were meant to put an end to Bitcoin mining as well as exchanges. From the onset, China has been competing to be number one in mining Bitcoin and is the largest producer of mining hardware in the world.

Pan Goshang, Vice Governor of the Chinese Central Bank and China’s head internet finance regulator has vowed to put an end to Bitcoin mining in the country. Asking local government agencies to ‘guide’ operations in making an orderly exit from the business.

Measures to end mining including strict regulation of electricity have caused once highly profitable mining pools to raise fees hundreds of percent.

“Pseudo-financial innovations that have no relationship with the real economy should not be supported,” Pan said last month.

What this means to China’s vast markets selling mining hardware to customers who travel from all over the world to buy rigs is still uncertain.

The post China To End All Cryptocurrency Trading For the Fourth Time appeared first on NewsBTC.

VIBE is an ERC20 token and serves as the underlying currency of the VIBEHub technology. This platform uses “holoportation” to essentially project holograms of artists, instructors, and other figures into a virtual reality space. This allows one to conduct concerts and teach lessons in VR, removing the need for students or fans to actually leave their houses.

Why VIBE?

VIBE is looking to disrupt the concert business with the introduction of virtual concerts. These concerts have no touring or booking costs, and have unlimited potential when it comes to their audience.

Don’t get me wrong, a concert in VR isn’t the same as a live concert, but if I’m feeling too lazy to leave my house and really want to see an artist perform, having the option of experiencing the performance in VR is better than nothing at all.

In addition, taking music lessons or even boxing lessons in VR seems like both a fun and convenient way to engage in those activities. Another benefit of conducting lessons in VR is that the instructor can be scaled as big as a mountain or as small as an ant to achieve specific tasks. Also, the instruction room can be as big as is required in order to handle as many students as needed.

By moving an instructor or artist to a virtual environment, a whole lot of new possibilities open up. This is the true value of VIBE – the utilization of a new technology to disrupt an existing market.

How Does it Work?

The way VIBEHub is able to transform real-life people into holograms is something called “holoportation“, a technology originally developed by Microsoft.

Check out this video that showcases how one would look in a virtual world after being transformed to a hologram:

VIBEHub utilizes this exact technology to project figures into a virtual environment. According to their whitepaper:

Our current focus will include the use of special multi sensor stereographic cameras to achieve what we like to call “HoloPresence”. This technology has been demonstrated by the Microsoft research team in the “HoloPortation” project.

VIBEHub builds on the above technology to create hubs within its virtual world. These hubs can range from concerts, lessons, to simple social settings where people can watch movies together or simply hang out. In order to access certain hubs, the user will have to submit a payment using the VIBE token.

What really makes VIBE shine is how it is able not only to project real-life human beings into holograms, but to also place these holograms in their own custom environments, a.k.a. hubs.

VIBE’s Future

Currently, VIBE is an ERC20 token which doesn’t scale so well with a high amount of TPS (transactions per second). As a result, VIBEHub is currently working on an off-chain solution for the VIBE token which will allow the creation of instant and free micro-transactions similar to IOTA, eliminating any potential scaling issues.

While we are on the subject of scaling, currently the VR/AR technology’s market cap sits at around US$20 billion. However, analysts have predicted that the market will grow to over US$160 billion by 2020. As such, since VIBEHub is taking a share of the VR market, the future for the technology is definitely bright. As the whitepaper puts it:

The capturing of photorealistic holograms is what many experts believe is going to make VR/AR technology mainstream. The futuristic aspect of holograms and the combination of it with augmented reality is going to change the way the internet is used today. Our team is excited and focused to showcase this technology to the masses and ensure everyone in the world will see the future of our reality on the VIBEHub platform.

Where to get and how to store VIBE

If you missed the ICO, you can currently buy the VIBE token on Binance, HitBTC, or EtherDelta.

Since it is an ERC20 token, you can use MyEtherWallet or any other Ethereum wallet that supports ERC20 tokens to hold VIBE.

Final Thoughts

VIBE is definitely a solid project with a solid team. They have plenty of videos on their YouTube channel showing off their proof of concept. Check out this video of the world’s first volumetric concert produced by VIBEHub:

The main obstacle I see for the project is gaining enough users. Currently, VR headsets are too expensive for the everyday user to enjoy. As a result, the VR community is extremely small compared to other gaming and entertainment communities.

As VR and AR evolve and more gadgets come out that are accessible to more users, VIBE will definitely see its user base grow. However, when that time does come around, will there be competitors for VIBEHub?

The good news is VIBEHub has zero competitors at this time, which gives them a good head start on their platform. If the team continues to deliver and improve the technology, the VIBE token will definitely grow in price. Overall, VIBE is a solid project and if you decide to invest in it, you should be looking to hold your position for a few months at least.

Disclaimer: This is not trading or investment advice. The Merkle and its employees may or may not have investments in VIBE.

Major cryptocurrency prices are down on the day, as the total value of the market itself also passed a notable negative milestone.

Agrello is making smart contracts legally binding. This will be done by getting the interested counterparties to fill simple forms which will be converted into smart contracts by the AI bot developed by Agrello. This smart contract will be brought under the legal ambit by a legal document, generated by an AI bot, and will be signed digitally by the counterparties.

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They have already conducted their ICO and their token, DLT is listed on various exchanges such as Binance, HitBTC, YoBit, EtherDelta, Mercatox, Right BTC, etc for trading.

This technical analysis is based on the charts sourced from Binance on date 25th of January.

The chart plots the Elliott wave against the price movements. Elliott wave traders believe in crowd psychology. It entails that market prices are influenced by crowd investor psychology. Therefore, there exists a natural repeating cycle of optimism and pessimism.

Therefore, the Elliott wave is a wave of alternating upward and downward trending line as can be seen by the Yellow line in the chart above. In the chart (1) represents the upward peak of the first wave, which is upward trending. (2) represents the downward peak of the second wave. Similarly (3) represents the peak of the upward trend as it picks up momentum in a reversal of the downward trend.

While the first appreciating wave has ended, the second corrective wave has also ended rather prematurely. This brings us to the third Elliot wave which is appreciative. The third Elliott wave is important as it is generally the longest wave in cryptocurrencies.

The chart shows that the value of the token will test the range of $2.615-$2.623 in the mid-term. This is a value rise of over 150% in a market where other altcoin cryptocurrencies are falling.

Another point to note in the above chart is the drop in volume in the part corresponding to the second (downward) trending Elliott wave. It is clearly visible that the volume of trading was much higher in the upward trend than the downward trend. This indicates that the fall in prices did not cause a large number of investors dumping their holdings. The belief in the token by a vast majority of investors indicate that the general belief about the token in the market is positive.  

Another observation on the chart of the same period is regarding the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD). The MACD is categorized as an indicator. It is comprised of two exponential moving averages that help measure momentum in a cryptocurrency.

The MACD compares short-term momentum and long-term momentum in a cryptocurrency market to signal the current direction of momentum rather than the direction of the price.

In the above chart, the blue line is the long-term (26 days) exponential moving average (EMA) while the pink line is the short-term (12 days) EMA. MACD is the difference between the 26 day EMA and the 12 day EMA. In the above chart, the blue line is the MACD line which is the difference between the 26 day EMA and the 12 day EMA, while the pink line is the 9 day EMA of the MACD line (Signal line).  Any difference greater than zero indicates a bullish scenario and must be used to buy into the trend.

From the Agrello chart, the MACD line is bullish well above the zero levels and is trending upwards after trending sideways. This is a positive trend as it indicates rising momentum at current price levels.

Based on the above two trends, it is pretty clear that the DLT token has completed its consolidation phase very quickly and has started showing signs of moving upwards.

Since cryptocurrencies are niche trading products, it has also been seen price movements are driven strongly by alpha components. We suggest keeping a keen eye on the movement in prices of BTC, LTC, ETH, and BCH for correlative price fluctuations.

In sum, the DLT token is backed by technical analysis of the charts, as well as being backed by a game-changing product that will simplify the process of creating smart contracts to the point that any two people from the general public can draw up smart contracts without even knowing how to write a single line of code. Both these points, coinciding with the resurgence of the cryptocurrencies post the corrective phase that occurred in December 2017 marks the arrival of good things for cryptocurrencies in general and the DLT token in particular, just around the corner.

Disclaimer: The author of this article is neither an investor in Agrello nor is an interested party. The author is a crypto-enthusiast who recommends investing only after complete due diligence.