Day: February 8, 2018

Contributors to the ongoing Bitmora crowdfunding campaign will be pleased at the recent announcement from its developers that its modern cryptocurrency exchange platform will be officially launched soon, in the second quarter of the year.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

While already experiencing a genuine support for its crowdfund, the founders will see this target as a significant pointer of progress, looking back at over a year of development on what promises to be a modern cryptocurrency exchange that will surpass the capabilities and features of those in the current market.

Bitmora is coming soon, staying for the long haul

Keen to distance itself from other exchanges in a growing crowd of crypto exchange platforms, Bitmora insists that its mission is not only to be the trading platform of choice but also to advocate for cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technologies, carrying a global message that speaks loudly about the advantages of decentralized finance to an audience of traders and investors.

Bitmora CEO Colton Brister believes that education plays a central role for the mainstream awareness and adoption of blockchain, emphasizing that while blockchain has now become a familiar term, deeper understanding of the opportunities it creates is still lacking. To this end, Bitmora plans to develop a full-feature educational section on its platform, featuring certified blockchain developers that will deliver lectures and hold interactive courses for users.

While helping ensure that proper blockchain education is delivered to the masses, Bitmora will also focus on retail crypto traders, helping them professionalize their skills by way of providing detailed lessons on trading disciplines such as portfolio management, risk management and technical analysis.

Designed for a burgeoning demand, Bitmora’s infrastructure will already be ready to handle over 1 million transactions per second, a capacity that will continuously grow at and after its launch. Recognizing the most common demands of modern traders, transactions will feature instantaneous execution with zero tolerance for lag.

Redressing the unbalanced power of centralized exchanges

Apart from the functionality of its platform, Bitmora users will benefit from a new experience of live phone support and guaranteed support ticket response times – lacking in most major exchanges. CEO Colton Brister acknowledged the growing frustration of crypto traders kept in the dark and wondering about the fate of their funds when exchanges fail to attend to them:

“The fact that you can operate as a Money Services Business with the authority to lock up your customers’ funds and then deny them the right to a simple phone call is unacceptable. We want our customers to call us if they have an issue with their account. Our dedicated support team will be there to assist them every step of the way to resolution.”

A different take on crypto-related crowdfunding

Bitmora’s crowdfunding campaign stands apart from the mass of other blockchain startups choosing the token sale model. Instead of selling tokens or coins, participants are contributing funds in return for a share of revenue proportional to the funds sent and volume of exchange. All contributors will also gain exclusive access to the beta platform upon launching, essentially becoming the very first traders to exchange on Bitmora.

Once the desktop and mobile apps are ready, the company plans to make the beta program an official part of Bitmora, with contributors able to test all their new features.

Members of Bitmora are already able to access a voting portal to make their voices heard with regards to future development directions.

To learn more about Bitmora, visit their website and read the technical whitepaper. For updates on social media, check out their Twitter account, Facebook page and BitcoinTalk thread.

Earn when you travel. Blockchain for travelers is here. #SPONSORED

First, there was the Internet, and now it’s the blockchain. Wherever you look, the path forward leads to an increasingly decentralized world in which intermediaries become redundant and individuals gain more control over their money and personal data.

The traditional concept of business has changed drastically, and that can be shown by the fact that companies no longer need to own anything to provide for services. Airbnb is the world’s biggest hospitality company, but it doesn’t own the properties it lets, and Uber operates as a worldwide transportation company, but it doesn’t own any cars.

The era of the “one size fits all” is over. It’s now time to acknowledge individuality and cater to each person’s needs.

Making education work for everyone

Universities are failing most students and can sometimes perpetuate inequalities by adopting admission criteria that favors the elites. Even those who can get into University are often not given an adequate experience. As most degrees have a fixed four-year structure, students waste too much time trying to earn a degree that most of the times don’t match the real necessities of the job market. By the end of the degree, students are buried in debt.

On-Demand Education Marketplace or ODEM, is offering an education service that runs on the blockchain. This solution is more accessible and affordable for all and it can be customized to fit students’ needs by providing live in-classroom experiences that also benefit from the support of online capabilities.

The aim is to create a world where the rigid four-year degree and the great burden of student-debt becomes a thing of the past, and instead, a new model is created where learning at a higher education level turns into a more affordable lifelong process. The flexibility of this new system would lead to a learning process that is adaptable to one’s professional and personal interests or ambitions, cultivating a culture of continuous intellectual and practical enrichment.

The platform runs on blockchain technology and, by cutting the middleman, it fosters direct interaction between students and professors, and it provides students more choice of housing, transportation and other services that they might need while studying. The system is based on Ethereum and will employ its smart contracts. Transactions will be made with the native ODEM Token (ODEMT) to facilitate international payments.

Crowdsale coming soon

Tokens can be bought through the company’s crowdsale that is going live on Feb. 17 and will continue until March 19, or until all tokens have been sold.

A Know Your Customer (KYC) process is being implemented on the company’s website to verify the identity of investors who pre-register. Besides KYC, Anti-money laundering measures will also be employed as a way of ensuring that all contributors can participate in the ICO legally.

ODEM is partnering with its sister company Excelorators, which has over five years of experience as a leading provider of education services, managing a network of over 200 professors.

The company is acting on a growing market, as demand for customizable education rises in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. The company predicts that the Chinese education consumer might be the first to adopt this system, but it is hoping to quickly expand to the global. Major publications such as Forbes magazine, The Washington Post, and The Economist predict that the global education market is vulnerable of being disrupted by technological innovation and it could be worth between $4.6 tln and $6 tln. ODEM is looking to take a portion of that market.

The post How Blockchain is Changing Global Education appeared first on NewsBTC.

The top 10 cryptos are trading more or less sideways today, with the exception of bitcoin cash, which has spiked in the last 24 hours.

More Bitcoin panic on media after curious reactions to ongoing tax notices from government. #NEWS

The Europe Union’s top securities watchdog has said cryptocurrency will be one of the agency’s top priorities in 2018.

Blockchain technology will make a big impact all over the world. A lot more research is needed before this technology can go mainstream. As such, it seems the European Union will increase its annual research budget in in the next few years. More specifically, the funding cap will go from 83 million EUR to 340 million EUR by 2020. This fourfold increase is excellent news for blockchain research in general.

The European Union is quite impressed with the potential of blockchain. More specifically, they see a lot of potential use cases for this technology as we speak. Especially when it comes to administration and businesses, there are plenty of options to explore. Distributed ledgers can provide a high degree of trust, security, and traceability. This applies not just to systems exchanging data, but also financial infrastructure in general. All of this warrants more research into what the future will hold for blockchain technology.

European Union Excited About Blockchain

With the EU Blockchain Observatory being created, interesting things will happen. This new effort will focus on technical expertise and regulatory capacity first and foremost. Creating industry-wide standards will not be easy whatsoever. A lot of efforts are underway in Europe in relation to blockchain technology as we speak. With this new European Union-backed venture, things will move along even faster.

Whether or not public authorities will ever embrace this technology, remains unknown. Before such a decision can be made, more research is needed first and foremost. With information stored across a network in a distributed fashion, big things are bound to happen. At the same time, all companies need to keep the potential risk in mind as well. Without a proper legal framework, this technology will not make a big impact anytime soon.

With the European Union increasing its funding, the future looks rather bright. A fourfold increase in funding is rather spectacular, though. With a total cap of 340 million EUR to be spent, the European Union has some high expectations, by the look of things. Further details regarding the exact research into blockchain technology remain unknown for now. All things considered, this can only be considered to be a positive trend for distributed elders in general. Especially with an open-minded regulatory approach, this technology can start making a bigger impact very soon.

The post European Union Vastly Increases Blockhain Research Funding appeared first on NewsBTC.

The massive billboard featuring a Japanese celebrity dripping in gold above the Shibuya crossing for DMM Bitcoin exchange sparked a debate about advertising responsibility.

Billboards with lots of bling selling Bitcoin

As the popularity of investing in Bitcoin has taken off in Japan exchanges are spending more and more to attract potential players across all media platforms.

The level of television advertising for such exchanges as DMM, Coincheck, and Bitflyer have risen significantly in the last year. In December and January, Bitflyer and Coincheck ran 819 adds in a single prefecture. A frequency on par with major international corporations such as Toyota and McDonalds.

On the web the advertising campaigns are everywhere. Bitcoin exchanges have paid adds running on Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook, or they did until last week. Surprising the world Facebook joined in the general push-back against Cryptocurrency exchange advertisers in Japan by banning such adds last week.

“This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network, and Instagram,”

the company’s statement read.

It’s unclear how long the Facebook ban will last or if it will remain permanently in place.

Exchanges spending too much on adds ignoring security

The general pushback isn’t only about potential fraudulent advertisement or deceptive practices but about exchanges prioritizing their own funds.

One of the largest spenders on ads across the board has been Coincheck which lost around $500 million worth of XEM coins in a hack last week that security experts say should have never happened. The customer tokens were stored in a so-called hot wallet connected to the internet making it vulnerable to hackers. The exchange explained that it was planning on moving the coins offline to more secure storage but lacked manpower at the time.

“The thing that makes me the most angry is that they spent money on commercials that should have been spent on their systems,”

said CEO Yoshitaka Kitao of SBI Holdings.

In an international climate of governments studying increased cryptocurrency regulation and Japan facing the most diverse and active trading in Asia the trend of blanket advertising may bring about even more unwanted scrutiny.

Since April of last year, Japanese exchanges were to be registered with the government’s Financial Services Agency. However, those that were in business prior to that ruling were allowed to continue doing business throughout that approval process as was the case with Coincheck.

The post Crypto Exchanges Questioned for Over Advertising in Japan appeared first on NewsBTC.

Following the Coincheck hack, Japan’s Financial Services Agency is widening its on-site inspections to other cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.