Day: February 23, 2018

Beijing-based start-up Bitmain now dominates the Bitcoin mining industry. Last year it is estimated the company made as much money as chipmaker Nvidia did, according to estimates from researchers at Wall Street analyst Bernstein.

Based on conservative estimates, the analysts calculate that Bitmain made $3 to $4 billion in operating profit last year. Bernstein’s U.S. semiconductor team estimates Nvidia’s profit was $3 billion during the same period. What’s particularly striking is that Bitmain achieved this in a mere four years, while it took Nvidia 24 years, the Bernstein analysts said in a report published Wednesday, February 21st.

Mining

Crypto mining as an industry has gained significant traction as of late thanks to the frenzy seen in crypto markets. The technology behind these chips is also undergoing changes, with a focus on reducing the electrical energy consumption for every coin that is mined. On the sidelines, huge tracts of land are also being bought by different businesses across the globe to host data centers that support the crypto mining activity.

Just a few years ago, Bitcoin-enthusiasts could use normal graphic processing units (GPUs) to process the computations needed to mine the cryptocurrency. But Bitmain helped turn Bitcoin mining into a specialized process: In 2013 it began selling application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC — GPUs that can mine Bitcoin up to 50 times faster than traditional cards.

Today, the company sells Antminer Bitcoin mining rigs that can cost several hundred to a few thousand dollars each. The company also operates mining pools, where participants collaborate on mining in attempts to cut costs. As a result, Bernstein estimates Bitmain has 70 to 80% of market share in Bitcoin miners and ASICs.

Bitmain

Bitmain has taken strategic steps to stay ahead of the game. The company launched a mining pool subsidiary last April in Israel and is opening mining farms in Canada and Switzerland, and regional headquarters in Singapore, according to the Bernstein report. Bitmain is also expanding its business to other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Monero.

The analysts estimate that most of Bitmain’s revenue was generated by selling miners powered by the company’s chips: “The rest was largely generated by mining itself and, to a much lesser extent, by collecting management fees from the mining pools it operates and renting out the mining power of its mining farms through cloud services.” Bernstein also indicated that Bitmain shrewdly adjusts the prices of its miners according to current Bitcoin prices.

The post Mining Boom: Bitmain’s Profit Over $3 Billion According to Researchers appeared first on NewsBTC.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Japan’s National Police Agency said today that they received reports on 669 cases of suspected money laundering linked to cryptocurrencies from exchange operators between April and December of last year; This is just a tiny fraction of the total, as 347,000 money laundering cases were reported by traditional banks in the same time frame.

The data came after cryptocurrency exchange operators were ordered to report transactions suspected of involving money laundering following a revision last April to a law that intends to prevent the transfer of criminal proceeds. 

Of the 669 cases, it is likely that many involved “questionable transactions repeated frequently in a short span of time,” Nikkei reports. And it’s worth considering that these crackdowns are not necessarily a bad thing: Punishment that comes as a result of these charges could result in removing bad actors in the crypto-space.

Currently, in Japan, 16 cryptocurrency exchange operators are registered based on the revised law on payment services. Ensuring security measures has been a challenge in the industry. Just last month, Coincheck — which was waiting for government approval of its registration — failed to protect its users from the theft of around $540 million worth of NEM digital currency.

The Numbers

The proportion of suspected money laundering cases involving cryptocurrency in Japan — 669 — is a fraction of the fiat total for 2017. The large majority of cases came from banks and other financial institutions, totaling 346,595 cases, followed by credit card companies at 15,448 cases, and credit unions at 13,259 cases.

The figures are promising in the battle against international governments who claims that money laundering is a key sector to be targeted by increased regulations.

This news comes as Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso is speaking on the inspections taking place within the exchanges, as the government continues to look for weaknesses in the system and attempt to determine the viability of blockchain technology going forward. According to Aso, inspections are mainly used to determine the internal management structure of organizations and are taking place “impartially,” as Japanese officials are trying to not impede the growth of the sector.

There have also been self-regulation talks within the crypto-space: It was reported just over a week ago that Japan’s two cryptocurrency industry groups are working together to form a self-regulating body. The Japan Blockchain Association and the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association are expected to merge as early as April, with the intention of implementing further safeguards to protect traders and investors.

The post Japan: Do Criminals Prefer Cryptocurrencies or Fiat for Money Laundering? 669 Cases vs 347,000 appeared first on NewsBTC.

Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Finаnce deny any interest in Petro trading, despite earlier Venezuelan media claims #NEWS

Despite rumours to the contrary, the UK government have announced that they will not be following the likes of Venezuela in launching their own digital currency for now. Whilst the Bank of England are indeed studying the implications of centrally-issued electronic currency, a government minister has stated that there are no plans in the immediate future to launch their own.

Government Respond to Opposition Query

According to the Independent, the issue was raised by a Labour MP in early February. Barry Sheerman asked “whether the Government will introduce a fiat digital currency.”

John Glen, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, has since responded in the negative:

“The Bank of England does not currently plan to issue a central bank-issued digital currency… However, the Bank is undertaking research to better understand the implications of a central bank issuing a digital currency.”

As mentioned, the Bank of England is studying the area closely. It has produced its own digital currencies page. It states that they are “carrying out ongoing research” into electronic currencies and their underlying technology. On the website, they are careful to differentiate between what they strangely refer to as “private digital currencies” such as Bitcoin (the entirely permission-less, border-less cryptocurrency that has no central issuing authority and can be accessed and used by any member of the public across the globe) and “central bank-issued digital currencies”. The latter would likely require all transactions be authorised by the bank themselves and thus entirely miss the point (and therefore the revolutionary and transformative power) of truly decentralised cryptocurrencies.

The page goes on to say that the Bank of England perceives no immediate threat from digital currencies. They state:

“We have assessed private digital currencies and concluded that while they are interesting, they do not currently pose a material risk to monetary or financial stability in the UK. We continue to monitor developments in this area.”

Whilst the recent announcement from Glen clearly states that a centrally-issued electronic currency would not be launched in the UK anytime soon, the research by the central bank, along with the lack of an explicit ruling out of the possibility in the future leaves the door open for a  U-turn at a later date.

As part of the bank’s research, the institution will no doubt be carefully following the development of Venezuela’s El Petro. The South American nation recently launched their own digital currency that is backed by their oil reserves. It will provide financial institutions around the globe a useful case study for developing their own policies towards electronically-issued currency and whether or not they too will launch their own.

Meanwhile, it appears that other nations are following Venezuela’s lead. Both Turkey and Iran have been considering the possibility of creating their own national digital currencies. Meanwhile, Russia is also taking steps in a similar direction. It’s thought that the CryptoRuble will help the nation avoid various international sanctions levied against it.

The post UK: Bank of England Researching Digital Currency, No Plans To Launch appeared first on NewsBTC.

On February 16, 2018, the first ever Digital Currency Blockchain Forum was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, during which, CAC, the high-profile Credit Asia Chain, was officially launched with a star-studded team and advisory committee spanning from blockchain experts, to consumer finance veterans, and government officials.

What is CAC?

“CAC (Credit Asia Chain) is a social credit platform based on blockchain technology. The system is designed to solve long-lasting issues of information asymmetry, high industry barriers and high regulatory costs in the credit markets of developing countries through establishing a blockchain-based credit system.”

 — Erlan Mermanov, CEO, CAC

With blockchain receiving significant public exposure during the last year, the next logical step in the ascendant of the blockchain industry is the in-depth integration of blockchain technology and actual economic activities. This will require the integration of multiple industry, technical and governmental entities to be co-involved. CAC emerges exactly in response to such a grand goal. Instead of unrealistically treating blockchain currency as the “Replacement of Fiat Currency”, CAC has a specific service scope and clearer roadmap. Powered by the cutting-edge blockchain technology and government support, it aims to escalate the financial industry and boost the social economy in developing countries based on an affordable, efficient, fair and just social credit platform.

CAC’s Ambition of Financial Industry Escalation in Developing Countries

Kazakhstan, a typical developing country in Central Asia, encounters many challenges despite its booming economy. The sluggish financial industry in Kazakhstan has seriously hampered its development, therefore it is urgently demanded that the financial sector be innovated.

Despite that Kazakhstan has a relatively compete financial infrastructure, it lacks an advanced and extensive social credit information system. Given that credit information is not negotiable between financial institutions, the issue of information asymmetry becomes increasingly evident. Barriers between industries further aggravates the segmentation of credit data, seriously affecting the efficiency and risk control capabilities of the banking business.

 For example, a typical farmer family in Kazakhstan often holds no credit history, not to mention any relevant knowledge in the area. Even if the family begins to leave credit footprints in the financial and commercial sectors, the records will look fractured and divided, institutions do now know how to gather and organize this into structured data for analysis. When a family applies for loans, the banks and credit agencies simply cannot fully grasp their credit status nor accurately assess their repayment ability and risk, making it difficult to provide suitable financial service to the family.

 It is not just common in Kazakhstan, but also a social and economic issue that generally applies to most developing countries worldwide. CAC is born to fundamentally solve this bottleneck and comprehensively upgrade the financial industries in developing countries, so as to put them on the track of steady and fast socio-economic development.

CAC’s Core Strength, In-depth Integration of Leading Blockchain Technology and the Financial Industry

The CAC adopts a decentralized structure design in which the blockchain functions as a hub of financial data sharing. The system provides various access control strategies, where the institutional and individual data are stored locally with access to the upper chain data. CAC employs a sharing-incentive mechanism to encourage the exchange of credit data. The shared data are priced and score-accumulated, and the transactions are billed and audited.

Such design enables CAC to be easily integrated into the existing financial systems, saving the time of transferring data to the cloud and ensuring data security and confidentiality. The fact that users, data providers and the platform itself all benefit from the CAC ecosystem has significantly stimulated more organizations and individuals to embrace the CAC with open arms. CAC acts as an intermediary to co-ordinate and structure the flow of data throughout the financial system

 Users are rewarded for providing data to CAC, then more organizations and individuals are willing to transfer their own data to the CAC platform. With these rich information resources, CAC can provide banks, merchants and credit agencies with one-stop credit service that stretches beyond industries, regions and even borders. Enterprises across the spectrum can obtain fair, untampered, genuine and reliable credit data from CAC at reasonable costs. In light of this, the credit barriers that once prevail in society will be shattered.

 On the CAC platform, the clear credit records of default in combination with the reward for compliance to the rules that CAC sets out ensures a very low ratio of bad debt and a balance of incentives in all stakeholders. CAC also employs advanced technologies in big data analysis and artificial intelligence to improve data utilization. Therefore, the financial institutions run more efficiently without unnecessary risks and costs.

 CAC’s Strong Backing, Powerful Team and Political Support

CAC’s deluxe lineup: Erlan, CEO of CAC, one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan, the leading figure in Central Asian IT industry, whose business cover various fields and countries with close cooperation with local governments; CAC’s executives are all from large commercial banks, the Eurasian OECD, leading accounting firms and other first-class business and political institutions; CAC’s technical team are from extensive academic and commercial background, with years of experience in the blockchain, artificial intelligence, financial big data and other relevant fields.

Most importantly, CAC has gained strong support from various governments: Secretary-General of Kazakhstani official digital currency platform, Director of the Kazakhstani Prime Minister’s Office, members of the Kazakhstani National Assembly, Finance Director of the Russian State University of Finance and Economics, Executives of the largest bank in Turkey, Insurance Department Director of the largest bank in India … Influential political and business figures worldwide highly appreciate CAC’s vision and even become CAC’s official consultants, paving the way for CAC’s development in developing countries.

 Dozens of well-known professional investment institutions from around the world have also shown strong interest in participating in the future of CAC and have devoted rich resources into the platform. Composed of top elites from business, technology, government and investment sectors, CAC is “born with a silver spoon”. It is described as the rising star in the blockchain market and has been the focus of attention in the international financial and blockchain markets ever since its launch. 

CAC’s Roadmap of Ambition and Diligence

 CAC’s operations will commence in the first half of 2018 and will begin by cooperating with multinational financial institutions in the second half of the year. It aims to be integrated into the banking industries in various countries in 2019, and start to promote a leap in consumer finance in these developing countries.

In the mid-term future, CAC aims to build a unified mega-financial data platform across countries and function as the core hub of financial data and social credit system for the developing countries worldwide. In the coming years, CAC has planned out to eventually achieve this goal through uniting efforts by governments, industry elites and CAC teams. It will comprehensively reform the financial industries of all developing countries, push the developing countries on the track of rapid economic growth and uplift the credit industry of these developing countries and increase the speed of money cycle within their economic. CAC has devoted itself to building the financial system of the future.

The post CAC, a Dark Horse in Asia’s Booming Blockchain Market appeared first on NewsBTC.

Ubisoft, the company behind Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance, is exploring applications of blockchain for video games.

GDAX, the trading arm of cryptocurrency brokerage Coinbase, announced today that they will implement full SegWit support for Bitcoin transactions in the coming days. The protocol upgrade aims to make transactions quicker and cheaper for users of BTC.

GDAX Joins Coinbase and Bitfinex

GDAX are the latest of the cryptocurrency industry’s major players to offer support for SegWit. They follow their parent-company Coinbase and Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex in rolling out the upgrade. GDAX made the announcement earlier today via their blog:

“We are excited to announce that GDAX now supports Segregated Witness (SegWit) transactions on the Bitcoin network. Over the coming days, full support for SegWit transactions will be rolling out to 100% of our customers. SegWit is a critical step forward in the development of Bitcoin and we are thrilled to support it on GDAX.”

The post went on to explain how the SegWit (or Segregated Witness) upgrade works. Put simply, the transaction data is split using SegWit. This makes it possible to only store necessary transaction data on the blockchain. With transactions requiring less information be included on-chain, more of them can fit into each block. This, in turn, reduces the need for users to increase their transaction fees. Previously, when the blockchain was full, users would be required to use a large fee if they wanted the network to validate their transaction before others also waiting. This forced users to continually increase their fees until they reached the point where some declared the network as “broken“.

Later in GDAX’s post, they state that the address format that they will use will be compatible with all existing BTC addresses. All withdrawals from GDAX will, therefore, be sent using SegWit.

The company are careful to point out that the new format will no longer be the same as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) addresses, however. This means that if BCH is sent to GDAX’s BTC address, the funds will be lost forever. To reduce the likelihood of this occurring, an additional warning will be displayed when making deposits to the exchange. It will read:

“Only send Bitcoin (BTC) to this address.

Sending any other digital asset including Bitcoin Cash (BCH) or Tether will result in permanent loss of funds.”

GDAX go on to state their commitment to providing customers with the latest Bitcoin upgrades. They claim to be currently working on additional scalability improvements to help further reduce fees and increase the network’s capacity. These include “transaction batching and UTXO management.”

Finally, GDAX are appealing to anyone interested in working on scalability protocols such as the Lightning Network to contact them. They are currently hiring staff in New York, London, and San Francisco.

Since the announcement earlier this week that both Coinbase and Bitfinex have also implemented SegWit transactions, transaction fees on the Bitcoin network have fallen to historic lows.

We've reached a major milestone! $BTC tx fees are now at an ALL TIME LOW. We are now seeing transactions below 1 sat / byte for the first time ever. You can send #bitcoin for ~0.1 cents ( ~100 satoshis ) per transaction. #bitcoinisscaling #segwit pic.twitter.com/DZy7h5yYJK

— Armin van Bitcoin (@ArminVanBitcoin) February 22, 2018

Evidently, SegWit is helping to ease congestion on the Bitcoin network and this in turn is restoring the original cryptocurrency’s usability. As additional companies and wallet providers begin to integrate the upgrade, and more scaling techniques become available, the utility of the Bitcoin network is only set to grow.

The post GDAX Announce Full SegWit Support, Network Fees Continue to Fall appeared first on NewsBTC.

Two New York state senators held a roundtable Friday on the controversial BitLicense regulation, and said legislation to reform it may come soon.

Crypto holder attacked in Moscow for protecting 100 BTC holdings #NEWS