Day: March 2, 2018

A young startup named Casa has recently launched a product to make cryptocurrency storage even more secure. They hope to provide clients with the most cutting-edge wallet solution available. This will make it nearly impossible to obtain private keys from individuals with large crypto holdings by way of extortion.

Casa Provides “Premium Hodl Software”

According to CEO and Founder Jeremy Welch, Casa is a cutting-edge cryptocurrency storage solution for high net worth individuals. The digital wallet requires users make three individual requests to transfer funds before any transaction is authorised. The wallet itself uses five access keys. These must be stored in five different locations.  One of these will be on the users’ phone and Casa will keep one for emergencies. The company recommends that users store each of the other three at their home, their office, and at their bank’s safety deposit box. The important thing is that no two are left in the same location.

Since it requires three of the keys to access funds stored on the Casa wallet, and only two are actually in the user’s possession, the likelihood of an individual being coerced into turning over private keys is remote. Even if a would-be thief held the user at gunpoint, accessing their digital currency would require a trip to the bank, or office. This would represent more than a slight inconvenience for the attacker.

Just six months old, Casa has already raised $2.1 million dollars from venture capital firms such as Lerer Hippeau and Boost VS, helping Casa to launch their initial product. For now, this version only supports Bitcoin. There are, however, plans to launch provide services for additional cryptocurrencies, starting with Ether, later this year.

Casa’s commitment to providing the highest level of security for cryptocurrency users has attracted the interest of one of the space’s most respected engineers. Jameson Lopp jumped ship from a similar wallet solution at BitGo to work on Casa with Welch and the rest of the team. He spoke to Forbes about his decision to pursue security projects:

“The best thing you can be working on is a problem you have yourself.”

One of the biggest issues facing the Casa team is getting their customers to actually use the product correctly. Humans often seek shortcuts and in doing so render the additional security offered by the wallet redundant. Emin Gün Sirer, a professor at Cornell offered his opinion on Casa’s dilemma:

“A user might say, ‘Well, I’m going to place two of my extra Trezors next to each other on the mantle.’ Now you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you have extra security.”

It all sounds fantastic, right? But before rushing to Casa’s site to put in your order, it’s worth pointing out the price of the service. Whilst Welch refused to give an actual amount to Forbes, he did state that Casa would charge at least five-figures on an annual basis. Evidently, the old adage rings true on this occasion, “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”

The post Casa Wallet Provider Aims to Supply the Ultimate in Crypto Security appeared first on NewsBTC.

In late 2017 the bitcoin payment processor Bitpay revealed it would add the ability to process payments for multiple blockchains — starting first with the bitcoin cash (BCH) chain. Now on Thursday, the Atlanta-based company announced that BCH transfers can be applied to the firm’s Visa card invoice loads.

Also Read: Dutch Bank That Once Called Bitcoin ‘High Risk’ Considers Building Crypto-Wallet

Bitpay Enables Bitcoin Cash Visa Loads

The payment company Bitpay has begun its initial rollout to support bitcoin cash payments. News.Bitcoin.com reported on Bitpay announcing last December it would begin working with multiple blockchains for payment processing. The company founded in 2011 only served bitcoin core (BTC) payments for years. However, Bitpay explained that they had received multiple requests over the years to support more than one digital asset. The company detailed at the time that offering a choice to customers would enable them to choose the best “confirmation times, and miner fee levels that work for them.”

Now starting March 1, 2018, Bitpay Visa cardholders will be the first to test out the bitcoin cash integration. When accessing the cryptocurrency debit card’s user interface the screen gives an option to load a certain amount of funds to the card. After choosing an amount the user is welcomed with a screen that asks whether they want to pay in BTC or BCH. At the moment network fees for the BTC chain is roughly 1.9 percent. Meanwhile, BCH network fees according to Bitpay’s load screen are 0 percent. After choosing BCH the cardholder is greeted with an invoice that details the approximate payment terms and the user has 14 minutes to pay.

“These two blockchains have differing exchange rates, network fees, and confirmation times. You can do a side by side comparison whenever you are making a payment so you can decide which payment method works best for you,” explains Bitpay’s announcement.

You and Bitpay card users like you will be the first Bitpay platform users to get access to our bitcoin cash payment processing.

After Months of Shelving the Card, BCH Proponents Begin Using the Debit Card Again

Following the announcement, the price of bitcoin cash spiked a touch surpassing $1,300 per BCH and saw over $600Mn in trade volume during the overnight trading sessions. The value has retreated back to levels prior, and the price of BCH today is hovering around $1270. Bitcoin cash supporters across social media and forums were elated with Bitpay’s BCH card integration and can’t wait for the full implementation for all of the company’s merchant invoices. One BCH proponent said the decision had prompted him to start using the Visa card again after not using it for quite some time.  

“I just showed them support by loading my card again for the first time in 9 months, will go spend some today,” explains a BCH supporter.

What do you think about Bitpay adding bitcoin cash to its services? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Bitpay, and the Visa card UI. 

At news.Bitcoin.com all comments containing links are automatically held up for moderation in the Disqus system. That means an editor has to take a look at the comment to approve it. This is due to the many, repetitive, spam and scam links people post under our articles. We do not censor any comment content based on politics or personal opinions. So, please be patient. Your comment will be published.

The post Bitpay Launches Bitcoin Cash Debit Card Top Ups appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Core’s long-awaited version 0.16.0 was released on February 27, significantly earlier than its initially planned release date in May.

Among the wide-ranging enhancements in version 0.16.0, the most important is that the cryptocurrency wallet now supports SegWit.

In addition to nested SegWit addresses starting with 3, it also supports the new system of native SegWit addresses starting with bc1.

The backend systems of many bitcoin services already use Bitcoin Core but updating to the latest version will make it easier to use SegWit functions. Installing SegWit is slightly complicated from a technical viewpoint, making it difficult to develop independently. Being able to use Bitcoin Core would significantly reduce that burden.

SegWit’s current adoption rate is about 15%, but it can be expected to be supported by many services from now on.

Coinbase, the biggest and most important digital currency exchange, has also started supporting it. Until now only a portion of Coinbase’s users had been able to use SegWit, but it will become available to all users by the end of this week. Coinbase has more users than any other bitcoin company in the world, but it has been criticized for falling behind in its scalability measures.

Now that Coinbase has finally brought in SegWit, I hope the world’s biggest bitcoin company will not only lead the industry in customer numbers but also in terms of vision and technology.

* The following is a comment written by Fisco Analyst Tetsuyuki Oishi (Bitcoin Research Institute representative, Twitter account @bigstonebtc).

* February 27, 2018, JST

The post SegWit to Spread Further with Bitcoin Core 0.16.0 appeared first on NewsBTC.

A top computer science researcher took aim at one of ethereum’s biggest expected future upgrades Friday calling it “fundamentally vulnerable.”

Prosecutors ask for forfeiture of 500 BTC following indictment in Ohio. #NEWS

Goldman Sachs estimates that the 3D industry could be worth as much as $35 billion by 2025. Today, most of the AR/VR technology is limited to the gaming sector. However, it also has the potential for use in many other areas such as medicine, sports, and many others. However, the mass creation of 3D projects is still limited by the lack of interesting content, which is due to how time-consuming and labor-intensive the production process can be. This also usually means that the production costs are quite high.

To solve some of these problems, Cappasity has come up with a decentralized content-driven global 3D platform. With this platform, the distribution of 3D content is made easy and fast for both ordinary people and businesses. It ensures that participants will have access to tools for productive interactions.

To protect content creators, this platform comes with trustless copyright storage and is powered by the CAPP token. The token will be used for the purchase of services and content on this ecosystem. This token is fully compliant with ERC20 standards. The features of this platform are designed to be open to developers using Unreal Engine, Unity, Apple ARKit, and the Google ARCore technology.

The Cappasity platform is Already Active

Each month, it serves over a million viewers of 3D content. Various luxury brands such as Claris Virot and Jazmin Chebar already use this platform. In 2018, 30 education institutes in the US will be utilizing the Cappasity platform. The platform has collaborated with Nvidia and Intel and they already launched in China with the help of Alibaba experts.

Cappasity provides a platform for consumers to interact with developers listed on the platform and find the right talent or product to suit their requirements. It acts as a marketplace where people can buy and sell AR/VR and 3D content. Participants in the Cappasity ecosystem stand to earn CAPP tokens for their content contribution.

The Innovation Fund

The platform has also set up an innovation fund to support developers in their endeavors to create immersive AR/VR and 3D content. It will be funded by 20% of the proceeds from the ongoing 2nd phase of ICO.

The ICO and Airdrop

The Phase 2 of token distribution started on February 22, 2018. In order to take part in the token sale and gain attractive discounts, participants have to register themselves on https://ico.cappasity.com. The platform also has plans to perform a token airdrop soon. Registered participants on the ICO portal will be eligible to participate in the airdrop event. Those who have already purchased tokens during the crowdsale can expect a generous surprise during the airdrop.

Cappasity community members can also benefit from the affiliate program by getting their peers to sign up using their reference link. The owner of the referral link will receive 5% of each transaction made by the new participant.

More information about Cappasity token sale and airdrop can be obtained from its Telegram channel – https://t.me/artoken

The post Cappasity Token Sale Enters Phase 2, to Perform an Airdrop! appeared first on NewsBTC.

“The time has come to hold the crypto-asset ecosystem to the same standards as the rest of the financial system,” Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England (BOE), said today in an interview at Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London. Carney, who also heads the Financial Stability Board — an international financial regulator — joins a growing number of industry insiders calling for greater oversight of cryptocurrencies.

Carney noted that the coins have “extreme volatility,” and said it reflected a lack of any intrinsic value or external backing, saying digital currencies themselves have failed as a form of money because of this volatility. He also rejected the prospect of a central bank digital currency in the near future. Even so, he reiterated that the BOE remains open-minded about the possibility sometime in the future.

Still, the answer isn’t to isolate or outlaw digital currencies, he said. “A better path would be to regulate elements of the crypto-asset ecosystem to combat illicit activities, promote market integrity, and protect the safety and soundness of the financial system.”

“It does point the way in many respects to the future of money,” Carney said, adding that “this generation of cryptocurrency is not the answer.” 

Carney talked about how bringing crypto-assets into the regulatory tent could potentially catalyze innovations to serve the public better banking-wise. As for the crypto-industry, he asserts that regulation is necessary and will mean that the best cryptocurrencies will be drawn to properly regulated exchanges, and weaker ones will, in turn, fall to the side.

Moving forward

In the interview, Carney says that he believes the best financial institutions can see the direction payment systems are going in. He says that these banks will be making a lot less money in the future as payment systems move in the cryptocurrency direction, permitting people to instantly move money from one account to another, to another.

He uses the analogy of a pub: I pay you, you pay the pub owner, and the pub owner pays the supplier, instantaneously and cheap, through blockchain. He talked up the potential of underlying blockchain or distributed ledger technology to improve accuracy, efficiency, and security across payments, clearing, and settlement.

Carney endorsed the push by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to classify cryptocurrencies as securities, subject to laws governing how they are issued and traded. The SEC, concerned that initial coin offerings are fraught with fraud, has taken a keen interest in cryptocurrency providers. In recent weeks, the agency sent subpoenas to dozens of companies running ICOs, demanding for information related to their businesses. Across the U.S., states are making moves, too, like Texas, whose securities board has issued several emergency cease-and-desist orders this year. 

The post Bank of England Governor Carney: Cryptocurrencies “Future of Money,” Calls for Regulation appeared first on NewsBTC.

Even though the Waltonchain project is quite popular among cryptocurrency speculators, the company has suffered a major setback. A social media campaign competition was quite successful, but one of the “bounty winners” turned out to be a member of the team itself. This colossal screw-up forced the WTC team to apologize and remove that winner from the list.

WaltonChain Social Media Issues

With so many competing crypto and blockchain projects on the market today, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep one’s product on the radar in between major developments. As for the Waltonchain team, they decided to organize a bounty campaign on Twitter in which users could earn over $50 worth of WTC just by tweeting a message to their followers.

No one will be surprised to learn there was a ton of interest in this bounty. According to the Waltonchain team, this campaign proved to be incredibly successful. Unfortunately, there were some issues when it came to distributing the bounty itself. One of the randomly-picked winners – who were selected via a script running on a live stream – is a member of the Waltonchain team itself. This development caused quite a stir on Twitter earlier this week.

This issue came to light when one of the winners shared his excitement using the official Waltonchain Twitter account. Users were quick to point out that he had seemingly failed to switch accounts and was clearly aligned with the project in an official capacity. The fact that this individual won over $50 worth of WTC raised a lot of questions as to why company members are allowed to enter such competitions in the first place.

Even though this erroneous tweet was deleted rather quickly, it sparked some concerns about Waltonchain. Some people even speculated that all of the other winners may very well be shill accounts of employees of the company. Those rumors are, until further notice, completely fake and not based on factual information. It is understandable why people may be thinking along these lines, yet there is no reason to distrust this project due to one error on their part.

Unsurprisingly, the news of this failed contest quickly triggered a massive WTC selloff across various exchanges. Some people sold their assets solely because of this “rigged” social media contest. A hasty apology posted by the Waltonchain team earlier this week has not done much to alleviate people’s concerns, though. Given the vast number of scams in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world, it will be interesting to see how the Waltonchain price evolves in the next few days and weeks.

Whether this is the nail in the coffin for Waltonchain remains to be determined. Companies need to be held accountable for problems which they create themselves. This social media campaign has proven to be a big problem for the company and its community, although it is certainly possible most people will forget about this incident in a few weeks. The long-term credibility of this project may have taken an irreparable hit, though.

Following a board shake-up, the Tezos Foundation announced it would hire up to 40 new developers to work on the Tezos protocol.

Charlie Lee has always been one of the more intriguing cryptocurrency developers to follow on social media. His involvement with Litecoin has been well documented, and Lee has also been posting some interesting comments regarding other altcoins. Unsurprisingly, some of his recent comments have irritated a lot of Litecoin supporters, as they feel Lee is turning his back on the currency he created.

Charlie Lee Pays Respect to Nano

In the world of cryptocurrency, any semi-positive remark regarding any cryptocurrency project will automatically make you a shill in the eyes of others. It is diffcult to be positive about any currency that isn’t Bitcoin these days, as the social media backlash will not be fun to deal with. Thankfully, some of the more charismatic individuals in the cryptocurrency industry are making their mark in a positive manner in this regard.

Charlie Lee, the developer of the Litecoin currency, has embarked on an interesting “mission”. Earlier this week, Lee posted some encouraging comments about Nano, a cryptocurrency many people are keeping a close eye on right now. According to Lee, Nano has a pretty “neat” infrastructure and offers fast and free transactions for all users. He has also acknowledged that he owns some Nano, presumably for speculative reasons.

It did not take all that long for some Twitter users to take his remarks the wrong way. One user was quick to claim that Charlie Lee was going down the same path as John McAfee by “shilling” coins for personal gain. While that is obviously the last thing Lee would do, it just goes to show how some people perceive this industry right now. The amount of bile, jealousy, and distrust in the cryptocurrency scene is growing to cataclysmic proportions. When this powder keg explodes, it will not be a pretty sight.

For those of you that are upset that I posted something positive about a "competitor", all I can say is too bad. There's room for more than 1 coin. I call it as I see it. If you have been following me for a bit, you've seen that I also like Monero & Decred. Now, back to Litecoin! https://t.co/JQrJnELGdb

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) February 28, 2018

In his tweet, Charlie Lee commented that there is room for more than one successful cryptocurrency. Many people feel that Bitcoin is the only coin that matters and that everything else is garbage. The same applies to most altcoins’ community members, who believe their coin is better than Bitcoin in every way. It seems people don’t want any positive remarks posted on social media about currencies they don’t own. This is not a positive trend for this industry, as it will eventually destroy cryptocurrencies from within.

Whether or not this tweet will have any lasting negative impact on Lee, Litecoin, or Nano remains to be determined. It is evident that Lee wanted to be as transparent as possible in discussing a currency other than Litecoin. He certainly succeeded in that regard, yet people always take this sort of thing the wrong way. It’s a very unfortunate development, yet it is also one of the reasons why so many people tend to stay away from currencies that are not Bitcoin or Ethereum.

New weekly highs weren’t enough to keep Bitcoin above $11,000 Friday. #NEWS

ATM provider Cardtronics noted in its most recent 10-K filing that cryptocurrencies could have an impact on its business.