Day: February 12, 2018

Independent content providers have a difficult path to earning a living from their work but some new Blockchain based reward networks are changing this.

Content creators to get their due

Anyone who has spent years and countless hours developing independent content across multiple platforms knows how hard it is to actually generate any revenue from the work.

While Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram rely on user-generated content the revenue that streams in from ads goes directly to the platform, only rarely dripping into the pockets of those who put the time and energy into drawing the traffic.

Author and founder of Good Audience, Sherman Lee, believes decentralization and Blockchain ledger technology are a perfect combination to bridge this gap in creation and reimbursement.

As she recently wrote in Forbes  ‘Every single piece of unique content could be recorded on the Blockchain along with impressions, likes, and comments. Content creators would have transparency into the impact they are making for brands or social networks and be properly rewarded for it.’

Virtual rewards networks already exist and some of them are funneling revenue back to the original content creators.

Blockchain-based rewards taking off

Steemit allows content creators to be rewarded in STEEM tokens based on votes from users. These tokens can then be exchanged for fiat currency. The platform that started in March of 2016 has paid out $30 million to 50,000 users as of November 2017.

The downside to Steemit is that users are only rewarded for content on that platform. All of the hard work a creator may have put into building their Twitter or Instagram feeds cannot be rewarded through this.

Gifto, a Hong Kong-based rewards protocol, has solved this by allowing users to award virtual gifts across all platforms. These gifts can then be exchanged for GTO tokens which in turn can be exchanged for fiat currency. These gifts can be awarded on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any social network platform.

CEO of Asia Innovation Group creator of both Gifto and Uplive, a live streaming network in Asia, has been looking at gamification for a long time. He believes that virtual gifts are a way to keep users engaged and creators continuing to put out high quality and sometimes groundbreaking content. According to Asia Innovation Group Uplive generated over $100 million in revenue for content generators in 2017. Gifto will replace Uplive for 2018 and is projected to go over 300 Million in virtual gifts.

There are other Blockchain based rewards networks out there such as the Basic Attention Token (BAT) which allow users of the browser to reward websites directly for their content using the BAT token. Irrespective of which one gains the greatest adoption the ultimate winner will be the independent content creators who have been traditionally left out of the revenue loop.

The post Blockchain Based Rewards Benefit Independent Content Creators appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Highlights

• Ripple price is struggling to move above the $1.0250 level against the US dollar.
• There was a break below a key bullish trend line with support at $0.9830 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from SimpleFx).
• The pair could decline further towards the $0.9200 and $0.9000 support levels in the near term.

Ripple price is slowly following a declining path against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD may correct a few points lower with support near $0.9200 and $0.9000.

Ripple Price Trend

Recently, we saw a steady uptrend in Ripple price above the $0.8500 level against the US Dollar. The price moved above the $0.9000 and $0.9500 resistance levels. It also traded above the $1.0000 level and $1.0200. However, it could not gain momentum above the $1.0250 level and later started a downside move. It moved below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $0.8398 low to $1.0268 high.

More importantly, there was a break below a key bullish trend line with support at $0.9830 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. It seems like the pair may decline further as long as it is below $1.0000. The next major support on the downside is around the 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $0.8398 low to $1.0268 high at $0.9333. Moreover, the 100 hourly simple moving average is positioned near $0.9200. Therefore, the $0.9200 level is likely to act as a decent support.

Below $0.9200, the $0.9000 level could provide support. On the upside, the price has to settle above $1.0000 and break the $1.0250 resistance to gain upside momentum in the near term.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for XRP/USD is mostly flat with a few bearish signs.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD has just moved below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $0.9200

Major Resistance Level – $1.0250

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Ripple Price Technical Analysis – Is this Bearish Break in XRP/USD? appeared first on NewsBTC.

In Berkeley, California, a rising homeless population has created a very silicon valley response; creating a cryptocurrency fundraiser using Blockchain technology.

Berkeley will use Blockchain technology to create affordable housing

The City of Berkeley is preparing to launch an ICO – an initial digital coin offering – which has become a popular tool for tech startups to raise funding. The city plans to use that money to increase community services and top priority on that list is housing and outreach to the areas homeless.

Berkeley which has historically been a liberal, progressive city and a university town famous for its role in the civil rights movement of the sixties, is also an early tech adapter.

“We have more than 1,000 homeless people, and we see funding drying up … we have to do something.”

Said Ben Bartlett who is spearheading the campaign.

Bartlett is working with Neighborly, the University of California at Berkeley’s Blockchain lab, and financial tech startup to create the ICO. To date, details are being kept under wraps but the general idea is that investors would buy tokens which are linked to municipal bonds. These tokens could then be spent in local stores and with service providers or dedicated directly to a community improvement project

Crytpobonds designed to be less volatile than Cryptocurrency

ICO’s have been widely popular in the Bay area (and around the world) garnering celebrity endorsements from the likes of Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and personality Paris Hilton. According to Coinshcedule ICO’s have raised $3.7 billion in funding in recent years.

In doing so though they have also raised concerns over bogus and fraudulent offerings. The SEC has formed a new ‘Cyber Unit’ which filed its first suit against an ICO scammer in December.

Berkeley’s ICO will be much less volatile than tokens like Bitcoin though as it is to be pinned to the value of municipal bonds. Bonds which cannot fluctuate in price the way cryptocurrency can on the open market.

Neighborly, the Berkeley startup that allows residents to invest directly in projects that benefit the Bay area, sees the ICO as a debut of technology they have been creating to make Cryptobonds possible.

The new Republican tax overhaul which lowered corporate taxes last year also decreased the value of cities tax credits leaving less money for homeless services. As the Berkeley area’s homeless has increased to over a 1,000 people in the last five years, Bartlett sees the ICO as a way to make affordable housing available;

“The status quo is just not going to work anymore. It just won’t, so bring it on. Bring on the innovation, because we need it.”

The post Berkeley to Launch ICO for the Homeless appeared first on NewsBTC.

The first two panels in Wednesday’s CFTC Technology Advisory Committee meeting will discuss blockchain and crypto-related matters, respectively.

In today’s world, a multitude of processes and transactions are being handled by machines – easing our lives in a wide array of scenarios from smartphones to autonomous vehicles. As technology continues to advance, we have begun to witness situations were machines develop the need to communicate, as well as transact, with each other in order to effectively fulfill the functions they were created for.

One of Russia’s government ministries has proposed a law that would introduce a capital threshold for initial coin offering (ICO) organizers.

Accountants, lawyers, bankers, bookkeepers, and VC firms: these are just some of the intermediaries and support staff that are needed to allow private startup companies to take on private investment in their early stages (Pre IPO). This incurs a lot of overhead and lead time, and can completely price out some types of investor from getting in on the ground floor of the next Uber or Palantir technologies. Even platforms like Kickstarter fail to give anything close to the amount of legal protection to the investor that legit private investment should offer.

This results in a situation where nascent companies have limited access to cash and investors have limited access to promising investments. The only people profiting from this setup are the middlemen who tick the bureaucratic boxes for high fees.

A new blockchain startup, OnPlace, is building a platform to use the transparency, security, and detail of decentralized blockchains to eliminate the need for manual input and allow more people to privately invest in more companies.

Protocols for investment

OnPlace uses their PATS token to power their system and grants complete and legally binding shares of a company to investors. The token “will allow the community of investors to make decisions in a decentralized manner in regards to the further distribution and motion of tokenized assets. The use of the protocol will mean that each decision in connection to transactions over tokens will be recorded in a network with its own blockchain and will not be subject to change,” according to their whitepaper.

The importance of a fluid market

The lack of a marketplace where startups can access private funding easily is of great detriment to the industry. By virtue of power-law dynamics, only a small percentage become successful, making a diversified portfolio important for investors. As the OnPlace team said: “The reasons for these are simple – the same economic laws operate in a world of crypto-currency venture investments just as in the sphere of traditional classic startups: 90% of all beginnings are going to be closed because of a number of reasons such as; lack of
financing, absence of necessary experience and skills in the team, while sometimes just the irrelevance of the product or service in the market.”

But if there is access to fewer companies, there will be less opportunity to diversify. So the OnPlace market could change investing completely – imagine being able to buy private shares as easily as buying Fortune 500 stocks? This is only possible with automation and digitization of shares.

Roadmapped Out

The team elaborated on the life cycle of an investment project, wherein their token is “a protocol created by the OnPlace team, which allows investors (the holders of issued tokens) to monitor and control operations over tokenized assets. After completing the project selection stage OnPlace legislates legal preparations
and develops an agreement, within the limits of which property rights over a part of private company shares (an underlying asset of a token) are transferred to future holders of the created tokens.”

On February 10 the pre-sale came to its end, during the 10 days of which OnPlace successfully raised its soft cap! OnPlace made a short pause in order to send all the bonuses to participants and make an update on the crowdsale page. Now, since all early investors have gotten their bonuses, OnPlace has decided to expand its community and resume the pre-sale in order to reach the hard cap of 15,000 ETH (as it was stated at the start of the campaign).

The contributions were made in all major cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH. Besides the amount collected in various cryptocurrencies during the pre-sale, the OnPlace project also successfully funded the campaign through the crowdfunding platform https://www.crowdfunder.com/Onplace/invest .

“Resuming the pre-sale is a step forward towards speeding up the development phase, attracting additional leading experts to our project, and in this way allowing our idea to come to life faster. We are currently working on some updates for the roadmap that we plan on providing for the community ASAP. Listing OPL on exchanges is also in progress. We expect to have this ready during Q2.

We invite everyone to visit our updated pre-sale page at https://crowdsale.onplace.io  and to join our Telegram community at https://t.me/on_place_chat ,“ says the OnPlace team.

The post Who Needs a Lawyer or Accountant When You Have Blockchain Technology? This Project Is Making Private Investment Easy and Transparent appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price appears to be breaking out of its descending channel pattern to show that bullish momentum is picking up.
• Price has yet to clear several upside hurdles to confirm that the longer-term rally is resuming.
• Technical indicators are showing that the uptrend would likely persist.

Bitcoin price appears to be getting back on its feet and might be poised to text the next upside hurdles soon.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is safely above the longer-term 200 SMA on the daily time frame, confirming that the path of least resistance is to the upside. The 200 SMA is holding as dynamic support as well.

A candle appears to be closing above the descending channel resistance, and this is an early signal of a reversal from the short-term selloff. From here, bitcoin price could set its sights on the $11,000-12,000 area of interest next. This lines up with a former horizontal support and a broken rising trend line.

After that, sustained bullish momentum could take bitcoin price to the next barrier around $13,000 to $14,000 which would be back above the trend line.

Stochastic is on the move up to indicate that buyers have the upper hand. RSI has more room to climb, so bitcoin price could follow suit. The gap between the moving averages is widening to reflect stronger bullish pressure as well.

Market Factors

Bitcoin price is also able to benefit from the improvement in investor sentiment these days. Note that the cryptocurrency has been trailing higher-yielders and risky assets like stocks and commodities, which tend to rally when traders are in the mood for more risk.

Apart from that, easing concerns about strict regulation in the cryptocurrency industry are in play. Following the Senate hearing encouraging regulators to give way to development even with increased oversight, other nations could follow suit and this might be evident in the upcoming global summits.

At the same time, crackdown efforts in South Korea appear to have taken the back seat as traders are now being more hopeful that governments and regulators could be more welcoming of bitcoin developments.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 02/13/2018 – Next Hurdles to Clear appeared first on NewsBTC.

FOMO Moments

The markets are nudging slowly higher during this morning’s Asian trading session. Confidence has gradually returned and we have had a few days without the usual mainstream media FUD storm. As the region builds up to the Chinese New Year holiday weekend things are expected to cool off a little. Bitcoin has held its ground over $8,500 and is currently up 3% on the day. Looking at the rest of the altcoins a new contender has surged into the top 25 – U.Cash

Flying up the chart this unknown altcoin is up 74% on the day and a whopping 2100% in the past two days. It is currently trading at $0.18 from less than $0.008 just a few days ago in what appears to be an epic pump. This influx of investment has propelled its market capacity to over $1.5 billion and into 21^st place in the market cap charts according to CMC.

With a claim to be ‘unbanking the world’ U.Cash calls itself a global peer to peer financial service platform designed for everyone. It will facilitate transferring seamlessly between digital currencies and fiat cash through the platform’s retail converter network. The project, which began as ‘SecuraCoin’, is now based on three types of converters, ‘retail’, ‘mobile’, and ‘online’ which serve as various transaction exchanges between commercial and private parties.

The team is highly active on Twitter but they tend to be blowing their own trumpet largely with very little news on strategic partnerships. However instead of an ICO, U.Cash had an IBO, an initial bounty offering. Instead of crowdsourcing funds as most blockchain startups have, they crowdsourced expertise, resources and skills for the project itself and distributed 8.6 billion tokens out of a total supply of 21 billion. Tokens can also be earnt by simply signing up, linking social media accounts and generally pumping the project on various platforms.

Going by previous altcoin analytics the chart pattern has all the hallmarks of a pump and dump, only time will tell if U.Cash really has the mettle to make it. The only other altcoin enjoying double digit positive momentum this morning is Ethereum Classic.

More on U.Cash can be found here: https://u.cash/

FOMO Moments is a new section that takes a daily look at the top 25 altcoins during the Asian trading session and analyses the best performing one, looking for trends and fundamentals. 

The post Asian Altcoin Trading Roundup: the top crypto is U.Cash appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price is still consolidating in a range above the $1,150 support level against the US Dollar.
• There was a break below a short-term contracting triangle with support at $1,245 on the hourly chart of BCH/USD (data feed from SimpleFX).
• The pair may decline toward the $1,150 support, which holds the key in the near term.

Bitcoin cash price is trading in a range and failed to move above $1,350 against the US Dollar. BCH/USD could decline in the short term, but remains supported above $1,150.

Bitcoin Cash Price Support

There were mostly range moves in bitcoin cash price above $1,150 during the past few sessions against the US Dollar. The price failed to move above the $1,350 level and made a minor downside move. It settled below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the leg up from the $934 low to $1,371 high. It seems like the price is slightly struggling below the $1,250 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

It is slowly moving lower and traded below the $1,240 level. Moreover, there was a break below a short-term contracting triangle with support at $1,245 on the hourly chart of BCH/USD. The pair may decline further towards the lower end of the range near $1,150. The mentioned $1,150 support is a very important buy zone since it prevented declines on many occasions. It is also close to the 50% Fib retracement level of the leg up from the $934 low to $1,371 high.

Therefore, if the price corrects further the $1,170 and $1,150 levels are likely to act supports. On the upside, the price has to move above the $1,250 level to retest the $1,350 resistance area.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is slightly in the bearish zone, but with a flat structure.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BCH/USD has just moved below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $1,150

Major Resistance Level – $1,350

Charts courtesy – SimpleFX

The post Bitcoin Cash Price Technical Analysis – BCH/USD’s Short-term Downside appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin (BTC) has risen ~50% over the past week following a ~60% drop throughout early January and February. The leading cryptocurrency now has a market cap of ~US$150 billion, with over US$3.5 billion traded over the past 24 hours.

Whenever a nation decides to investigate or regulate cryptocurrencies the mainstream media jumps on the FUD wagon and reports it as a clampdown. A couple of countries in Southeast Asia have literally cracked down such as communist China and Vietnam but most others still allow citizens to trade freely. This week the central bank in Thailand asked financial institutions in the country not to get involved in crypto.

It was reported in local media that banks in the Kingdom are prohibited from investing or trading in cryptocurrency, offering cryptocurrency exchanges, and creating platforms for cryptocurrency trading. This came from the central bank’s governor in a circular on Monday.

No Thai clampdown

Contrary to reports in the mainstream media Thailand has not cracked down on crypto but has taken a stance similar to South Korea and intends to regulate it to prevent use for criminal activities. The Bank of Thailand (BoT) does not want other banks or financial institutions getting involved until a regulatory framework has been put in place.

In line with action taken in the US and UK it has also restricted the use of credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies for fear of escalating debts during market corrections. Thailand only has one crypto exchange, BX Thailand, and they reassured customers by stating;

“They [BoT] actually are banning banks and money institutions from investing in cryptocurrency but we are an exchange and are not affected.”

Along with Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Thailand remains open to crypto trading and has many companies actively pursuing crypto solutions and projects with leading blockchain firms such as Power Ledger and OmiseGO.

Eyeing ICOs

Further guidance came from the Securities and Exchange Commission which stated that it will examine all ICOs and reprimand companies that are not in compliance with the new framework currently in development. SEC secretary-general Rapee Sucharitakul told local media;

“We have told companies planning to issue ICOs they should not try to evade regulations [by issuing digital tokens considered as securities tokens] as they will be in violation of the Securities and Exchange Act. No matter what [business] space a company is involved in, if its [ICO offering] is associated with [raising funds by issuing] securities and the company does not comply, then it is illegal.” 

He went on to state that they had no power to block cryptocurrency transactions but intended to educate and protect investors from fraudulent ICOs. Those that comply with the government’s guidelines are still permitted within the country and several will be launched in the coming months.

The post No Crypto Ban in Thailand, but Banks Restricted appeared first on NewsBTC.

In the rapidly-evolving world of cryptocurrency, the SEC and CFTC are belatedly ramping up their efforts in fulfillment of their appointed duties.

Lawsuits filed in the US last week against BitConnect promoters and executives were released to the public. The identities behind the alleged ponzi scheme including director Glenn Arcaro were unraveled, and several plaintiffs have claimed that the founders of OneCoin, another large-scale ponzi scheme, were involved in BitConnect.

Several lawsuits filed earlier this month suggested that Glen Arcaro practically ran the ponzi scheme as the director of US promotions, overseeing several promoters including Craig Grant and Travon James. The lawsuits accused BitConnect of running a ponzi scheme by using cryptocurrency as a cover. It promised investors a fixed income for their investment, which was never shared with the investors.

The entire organization was structured to benefit early investors by scamming users that joined the organization in the later stage. As the BitConnect ponzi scheme imploded, the value of the BitConnect coin (BCC) plunged to nearly zero, and people’s life savings and investments were lost overnight.

“BitConnect uses cryptocurrency as a cover for running its Ponzi scheme. For example: a. It provides daily interest on an investment that has no income other than new investor money; b. It artificially increases the value of its cryptocurrency by having new investors in the Ponzi scheme purchase BCC before investing; c. It hides the identity of the owners of this scam by using an offshore company created through a company called Companies Made Simple,” the lawsuit read.

David Mehmet, one of the plaintiffs against BitConnect, claimed that three executives and founders of Onecoin, a ponzi scheme that was cracked down by the Indian, Italian, German, and Bulgarian authorities earlier this year, have been associated with BitConnect. Mehmet claimed that Nigel Allen, the founder of OneCoin, XECoin, Crypto888, and Octacoin, along with two OneCoin founders Ruja Ignatova and Sebastian Greenwood have overseen the Bitconnect ponzi scheme, as top executives.

In January of this year, the Prosecutor’s Office of Bulgaria revealed that the government has raided the offices of OneCoin and seized its servers. Although OneCoin’s headquarters are based in Dubai, the Bulgarian government noted that the organization functions through “hundreds of affiliated companies on 4 continents […] [which] are being investigated in England, Ireland, Italy, the United States, Canada, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and many other countries.”

At the time, prior to her arrest, Ignatova claimed that OneCoin is not a ponzi scheme and that it is an education platform for cryptocurrency investors. Mehmet suggested that as Ignatova did with OneCoin, BitConnect has started to claim that it has operated as an educational platform for cryptocurrency investors, not a lending site.

OneCoin still remains functional in many countries apart from the selected few that have cracked down on the ponzi scheme. BitConnect could continue to operate if authorities fail to unravel all of the identities behind the ponzi scheme.

At one point, BitConnect was valued at over a billion dollars. As such, investors have lost over a billion dollars in this ponzi scheme, which was quite obvious from the beginning given its fixed return rate. The failure to punish its operators could lead to BitConnect-like ponzi schemes reappearing in the market once again.