Day: February 16, 2018

Bitcoin price swings. #MARKET_ANALYSIS

The Federal Communications Commission says a crypto mining rig has caused interference with T-Mobile’s LTE network in Brooklyn, New York.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has halted trading in three companies claiming acquisitions of assets tied to cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. The agency said it had questions about their business operations and the value of the companies assets.

Cherubim Interests Inc., PDX Partners Inc., and Victura Construction Group Inc. issued similar press releases stating they acquired the assets from a subsidiary of a private-equity investor. Additionally, Cherubim shared its plans to launch an initial coin offering. In announcing the trading suspensions, the SEC repeated a warning to investors about companies that may be seeking short-term stock boosts by claiming involvement with blockchain technology.

The suspension notice was dated February 15th. The agency explained: “The SEC’s trading suspension orders state that recent press releases issued by CHIT, PDXP, and VICT claimed that the companies acquired AAA-rated assets from a subsidiary of a private equity investor in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, among other things. According to the SEC order regarding CHIT, it also announced the execution of a financing commitment to launch an initial coin offering.”

“We did receive confirmation that they suspended trading this morning and that it will continue until March 2,” Patrick Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of all three companies, said in a telephone interview. “We haven’t made any false claims about anything that we have put out.” Johnson is fully cooperating, added that he was surprised by the move and will provide the SEC with any information it requires.

“Investors should give heightened scrutiny to penny stock companies that have switched their focus to the latest business trend, such as cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, or initial coin offerings,” Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles office, said in the agency’s statement. The SEC can suspend trading for 10 days and ban brokers from activity in a stock until its reporting requirements are met.

In January, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton warned companies about changing their names just to cash in on the cryptocurrency craze. For months, Clayton has been sounding the alarm about initial coin offerings, a market that he has said is probably full of fraud: “Fraudsters often try to use the lure of new and emerging technologies to convince potential victims to invest their money in scams.”

The suspensions represent the latest move by the agency to halt trading of companies that have publicly stated some kind of pivot or business focus on the technology. In just the past few weeks, a number of companies have tweaked their names or business strategies to embrace the growing hype surrounding virtual currencies — and seen their stock prices soar. Long Island Iced Tea Corp. more than tripled after it became Long Blockchain; Eastman Kodak Co. surged more than 200% last month after it said it would create a Kodakcoin that could be used to buy photos on an online database.

The post SEC Halts Trading of Three Companies with Assets Tied to Cryptocurrencies appeared first on NewsBTC.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

With the crypto domain branching out at a rapid rate, there are new alt-assets being released to the public on a day-to-day basis. Einsteinium is one such platform that has been designed to facilitate development and innovation within the scientific domain through the use of blockchain technology.

Many crypto enthusiasts might be familiar with Einsteinium as being the currency that lept into the top 50 thanks to its big value leap over the new year, sending its price from US$0.80 to US$2.00 within a week.

Einsteinium has been developed to aid various scientific, technological, and philanthropic projects and carries with it a very fitting abbreviation of EMC2. It is governed by a parent company called the Einsteinium Foundation which serves as a hub for various charity funds.  

Overview of Einsteinium

• Open source based.
• Acts as a crowdfunding platform for many scientific projects that can help humanity as a whole.
• Can be used to disseminate information and knowledge to the masses through the use of the blockchain.
• Makes use of a unique Proof of Work consensus.

Key Features

To start things off, all users will be issued a web wallet designed to not only store various digital assets, but also be used to issue invoices. Additionally, it serves as a payment module wherein customers can request payments without having to worry about geographical distance.

In addition to the web wallet, the platform will also provide users with a mobile currency holder called the EMC2 wallet. It provides users with full access to their funds and can be used remotely with a smartphone.

In terms of funding, Einsteinium makes use of a service called EMC2ME that is designed to help raise money for worthy scientific projects in an easy, hassle-free manner.

Other key offerings include:

• Weeee: this is a social media platform with a built-in messenger and data sharing protocol. It allows users to give each other gifts in the form of native token currencies which can later be redeemed for gifts as well as online services.
• Debit card: in the near future, customers will have access to a fully functional debit card that can be used to hold EMC2 tokens and facilitate daily transactions. All payments are processed in real time.
• Compatibility: Einsteinium makes use of an API that is fully compatible with programming languages such as Node.js, C#, Java, and PHP. As a result, businesses can easily adopt this currency without having to change their governance frameworks.
• 4YOUEMC2: this is a marketplace designed to make the exchange of digital goods easy and convenient for customers through the use of EMC2 tokens.

How Einsteinium works

In order to select projects worthy of funding, the Einsteinium platform makes use of specialized epochs within its proof of work consensus. In its most basic sense, we can think of an epoch as the amount of time it takes miners to build 36,000 blocks on Einsteinium’s public ledger.

Relationship between miner rewards and epoch times (courtesy of the EMC2 foundation)

This period has been found to be somewhere in the vicinity of 26 days, and once an epoch is completed, all of the proceeds are directly funneled to the associated research project. Additionally, the Einsteinium community has voting rights when it comes to ascertaining the potential of particular projects and research cases.

In all, there will be a total of 730 epochs that are available to miners to make use of. Each time the network moves towards a new epoch, the reward yield gradually diminishes and the number of coins offered by each reward decreases.

Wormhole Event value over time (courtesy of the EMC2 foundation)

At this point, it should be mentioned that the Wormhole Event is Einsteinium’s distinct contribution to the existing PoW model. To further elaborate on this phenomenon, we can see that it is randomized, but through the use of statistical data, it has been found to occur once within each epoch. It lasts for a total of 180 blocks, and during this time there are many rewards that can be mined.

About Einsteinium

According to the official company website, Einsteinium was launched all the way back in 2014. However, the project started to gain momentum in 2017 when the Einsteinium Foundation was officially launched.

Jonathan Lauziere is one of this project’s board members and also takes care of the financial side of things. He is a computer science graduate who has been in the crypto domain for over 5 years now. Malden Trifunovic is the company’s chairman. He describes himself as a serial entrepreneur, and prior to heading EMC2 was in charge of a consulting business for over a decade. According to his online bio, Malden has a master’s degree in microprocessor design, and has been a C++ developer since the age of 14.

Lastly, Daniel Johns serves as the project’s chief strategist. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Gettysburg College and has been a crypto enthusiast from the very start. In addition to his work at Einsteinium, he is also the CFO of PHL Bitcoin, the company behind the first BTC ATM launched in Philadelphia.

Token performance history

While this currency remained under the radar for the first couple of years after its release, EMC2 tokens have picked up a lot of steam within the past couple of months.

EMC2 token one-year performance chart (courtesy of CoinMarketCap)

As is clear from the chart above, the token’s price started peaking in January 2018, and rose as high as US$2.55. Since then its value has stabilized, and it currently stands at US$0.435.

Final thoughts

With Einsteinium promising to help promote scientific innovation and development, it has good monetary potential in the coming future.

If investors would like to purchase EMC2 tokens, they can do so by visiting Bittrex, Poloniex, or Cryptopia.  

A trader at Consolidated Trading LLC faces allegations of wire fraud in the amount of $2 million. Joseph Kim, 24, is accused of embezzling funds in both Litecoin and Bitcoin from his employer’s coffers. The case is something of a landmark in that it is the first criminal prosecution to involve the cryptocurrency trading industry. Kim was charged on Thursday and is scheduled to appear in court today. Bringing the case is the US Attorney for Chicago, John Lausch.

Consolidated added a digital currency department last September. According to a report in Fortune, Kim was transferred to the unit and within days had started his fraudulent activity. This was after he’d expressly agreed to stop all personal trading.

According to the prosecutor, on the weekend of his start, 980 Litecoins were transferred from Consolidated to a wallet that had no connection with the firm. It was the following week that the LTC transfer was found out. When questioned by a supervisor about the missing funds, Kim claimed he’d transferred the virtual currency to a “personal digital wallet for safety reasons.” This, according to the US, would be used only as “an intermediary holding space”. His superior queried the necessity of this, to which Kim replied that he was experiencing trouble with the exchange Bitfinex and wanted to avoid any further issues.

Kim concluded by stating that he’d since returned the Litecoin to a wallet under Consolidated control. When FBI agents searched records for evidence of this, they determined that no such transfer had occurred.

In November, the US contest that Kim stepped his game up. According to the charges, a supervisor noticed that 55 Bitcoin had been transferred to Kim. At the time of writing, a haul of over half a million dollars. Again, superiors questioned Kim. This time, he replied that the transaction of the Bitcoin had been “blocked” and he’d attempted to unblock it. It was understood by the senior employee that the funds would be returned to Consolidated’s account.

Some of the funds did indeed make it back to the wallet controlled by the firm. However, 28 remained missing on the weekend of November 25.

The US alleges that Kim had stolen the digital currency. It’s thought that he covertly transferred over 284 BTC from company wallets to a personal wallet to use in his own trades. All of these have since been accounted for. Kim is said to have later transferred them back to the Consolidated wallet in two separate transactions.

When confronted again, Kim admitted he’d been actively trading for personal gains. He said he’d used around 55 Bitcoin that belonged to Consolidated. He put them into short future positions and later converted the Litecoin into Bitcoin too. To cover his margin calls for these personal trades and some personal losses, he then “borrowed” the 284 Bitcoin from his employers. The company is reported to have managed to recover around $1.4 million worth of cryptocurrency but still remain out of pocket to the tune of $603,000.

Kim has since called himself a “degen” – slang for degenerate gambler. He is claimed to have told his superiors via email:

“It was not my intention to steal for myself… I was perversely trying to fix what I had already done. I can’t believe I did not stop.”

Chicago was one of the first states to offer bitcoin futures, and the case U.S. v. Kim, 18-cr-107, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago) should be heard today.

The post Chicago Crypto Trader Kim Embezzles $2 Million Worth Of Funds appeared first on NewsBTC.

Holding company Atari SA, which contains the former gaming company that invented Tetris, saw a more than 60 percent share price hike after announcing a crypto investment #NEWS

Regs for US on crypto are “not close” as the government is “studying” the issues, White House cybersecurity coordinator says. #NEWS

The White House cybersecurity coordinator said crypto regulation is still far from becoming a reality.

Money today isn’t worth what it was yesterday, literally. At least in the world of cryptocurrency, its value fluctuates daily. Nevertheless, cryptocurrency is redefining the concept of money and what it can do. Maker Coin (MAKR) attempts to resolve the volatile nature of crypto with the understanding that the reasons crypto isn’t perfect are its fixed supply and speculative investment. 

What is MAKR?

MAKR is a cryptocurrency depicted as a smart contract platform, dealt with on the ETC blockchain. Its purpose is to stabilize the value of a bond known as DAI through smart contracts called Collateralized Debt Positions (CDP). When the life of the smart contract has ended, the Maker Coin is gone. It can be sent and received by any ETC account, or any smart contract that is programmed to use the MAKR transfer function. It is more stable than most digital monies on the market because of how it’s valued.

Where Does MAKR’s Value Come From? Introducing the DAI

MAKR’s value is attributed to the DAI bond, which is pegged to the US dollar, meaning that 1 DAI = US$1. Additionally, it uses interest rates to stabilize its price. Anyone who has collateral assets can use them to purchase DAI on the Maker platform via CDPs. These CDPs hold the assets that are deposited by users and allow them to generate DAI to then be used to purchase or sell MAKR.

However, purchasing DAI also incurs debt. This is a good thing, as in order to better stabilize the value, the debt locks the deposited collateral inside the CDP until it’s later paid back in DAI. Once the DAI is paid back, the user is finally allowed to withdraw their collateral and begin trading again. Circle of life.

MAKR = DAI + CDP

There is a direct relationship between the generation of DAI and the amount funded into the CDP. As the need for DAI increases, so does the CDP, resulting in a larger amount of MAKR. In summary, here’s how the DAI and CDP work together, according to the whitepaper.

How Does a MAKR Transaction Work?

Step 1: Creating the CDP smart contract and depositing collateral

To trade with MAKR, a user must first send a transaction to the Maker platform, creating the CDP smart contract. The user will then execute a second transaction to fund that smart contract (for legal folks, think of this as “consideration”) with the type and amount of collateral that will be used to generate the DAI. Once funded, the CDP is considered to be “collateralized” or backed.

Step 2: Generating DAI from the collateralized CDP smart contract

The user of the CDP contract then executes a transaction to the platform to retrieve the amount of DAI they want from the CDP, simultaneously accruing the same amount in debt. Once the user has acquired the DAI, they are then “locked out” from their collateral, preventing them from withdrawing it until the debt (withdrawn DAI) is paid back.

Step 3: How to pay down the CDP debt

As previously noted, in order for a user to obtain possession/ownership of their collateral again, they must pay down the debt in addition to interest (“stability fee”), which accrues daily. Once the debt is paid in full, the MAKR is gone, removing it from the supply chain, starting the process over again each time a user wants to use MAKR.

How Is MAKR Regulated?

In a sense, you could say that MAKR is self-regulating. The goal of the coin is to over-collateralize, creating less risk of insolvency. In the event that a CDP is undercollateralized, the Automatic Recapitalization feature is triggered, which forces the dilution of MAKR by automatically creating new MAKR and selling it back to the platform, bringing it back in balance from the point of insolvency. Thus, if an individual were to engage in fraud or any other bad-faith behavior, this would automatically dilute their tokens, harming them.

What Does The Future Hold For MAKR?

This currency may be the first “smart” cryptocurrency due to its goal of stabilization and growth. The future of MAKR looks bright and we will continue to keep a watchful eye on it. For those interested in getting started with MAKR, you will need to have a digital wallet, which you can get here.