Day: March 9, 2018

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

It has been a while since we last saw any interesting developments involving the Mt. Gox exchange. New research shows an unknown London-based firm was involved in laundering the stolen 650,000 BTC from this now-defunct exchange. That is a pretty intriguing discovery, although it remains to be seen how the situation will evolve.

The Mt. Gox Plot Continues to Thicken

It is evident Mt. Gox will always remain an integral part of Bitcoin. Both in terms of history and the future, this now-defunct Japanese exchange has created many shockwaves felt throughout the ecosystem. Several years after it disappeared with customers’ money, BBC Radio 4 has uncovered how the 650,000 stolen Bitcoins were laundered exactly.

More specifically, it seems the London-based firm Always Efficient LLP has been involved in this matter. Although no one knows for sure who has been operating this platform or how they moved the money, this firm is an important cog in the machine. Considering that this heist represented over US$5 billion worth of Bitcoin, it is only normal that people would want to gain more insight into how things went down exactly.

According to local sources, one Russian national has been charged by the FBI for his involvement in running the Always Efficient LLP firm. From the information we’ve been able to gather, it seems Always Efficient LLP was incorporated back in 2014, which is very close to the time Mt. Gox suddenly disappeared and a lot of funds were stolen.

The names of Alexander Buyanov and Andrii Shvets have been cited as “individuals with significant control”. Since this was only noted in 2016, it is unclear if either of these gentlemen had previous ties to the company or simply took over from other individuals. Both females associated with this company were terminated back in September of 2017, which is pretty interesting. Both women are linked to firms in the Seychelles, which makes this London-based company all the more intriguing.

As of July 9, 2017, Alexander Buyanov was no longer a person with significant control. That would indicate his stint as a person of interest only lasted one year, as Sangaro Solutions LTD and Legacy Properties LTD took control of the company on that same date. As of right now, the company has no registrable person with significant control. Alexander Buyanov is the only Russian individual ever associated with this company; thus, it seems safe to assume he was the one arrested by the FBI.

Lastly, it seems Always Efficient LLP used to own the BTC-E exchange. The BTC-E exchange has been under a lot of scrutiny for quite some time now. It seems the puzzle pieces are finally falling into place as we speak, although it is unclear what role Alexander Vinnik plays in all of this.

“Keeping the dogs at bay” is Rep. Tom Emmer’s goal. The Congressional Blockchain Caucus member worries overzealous regulation could stifle innovation.

It has been a busy few days for the US’s biggest exchange, Coinbase. They have been fighting fresh lawsuits and allegations, battling circulating rumors, and even launched an Index fund as they continue to maintain a frontier of cryptocurrency trading #ANALYSIS

During the last couple of years, the bitcoin casino market has rapidly grown, as numerous companies and players noticed that there are significant benefits associated to gambling via bitcoin, when compared to traditional currencies.

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Because of the growing number of crypto-based casinos, finding the right one has become quite the treasure hunt, as player expectations tend to vary, and most casinos do not offer the same experience.

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When it comes down to their reviews, Bitcoin.Casino has strict editorial guidelines, meant to assure that relevant and correct information is provided at all times. With this in mind, Bitcoin.Casino checks multiple aspects prior to publishing a review. Some of these include: user-friendliness, whether the design is functional for players, how easy it is to sign-up for an account, any unique features, shuffling support, house edge, mobile apps, customer support responsiveness, and more.

Apart from the features that have been outlined so far, players will be able to enjoy free casino games, such as slots and blackjack, by being offered 1,000 free casino chips, hence no need to wager any money.

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Not many are aware of this, but Bitcoin.Casino has set the record for the highest price paid for a .casino domain until now. This happened back in February 2017, when the domain was purchased for $28,000.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, those who are curious in reading the reviews, can head to Bitcoin.Casino.

Crypto investment fund Multicoin Capital has announced that investors including Marc Andreessen are taking part in its $250 million flagship fund.

Cryptocurrency mining is of great interest to a lot of individuals and companies as of right now. Some people will even go as far as to use work computers for this purpose. It seems two members of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology are under investigation for mining cryptocurrencies with the bureau’s computing hardware.

Bureau of Meteorology Staff in the hot Seat

It is evident the concept of cryptocurrency mining can be rather lucrative under perfect circumstances. Access to powerful computers is one requirement, as is the need for cheap or free electricity. In the case of two staff members of the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, both of these things were readily available. Unfortunately for them, those computers were not designed to be used for cryptocurrency mining.

Federal police officials executed a search warrant at the Bureau’s headquarters in Melbourne last week. Two IT employees were of great interest to the officers, as they are suspected of having used the bureau’s computers to mine cryptocurrency. One of the employees questioned has been forced to go on leave, although no charges have been filed against either individual at this point. It creates a rather interesting precedent which companies will need to keep a very close eye on.

Mining cryptocurrencies using the Bureau of Meteorology’s computers is not illegal per se. However, it is a misappropriation of governmental resources, which can lead to severe punishment in the form of fines and potentially even a jail sentence. Getting involved in such risky business just isn’t worth it, as it is impossible to hide all of the evidence. Cryptocurrency mining is a very hardware-intensive process, and the increasing use of resources will eventually raise questions.

It wouldn’t be the first time a scientist or IT employee at a government facility has used powerful computers to mine cryptocurrencies. Several scientists at the Russian nuclear warhead center used some of the computing power there to mine various cryptocurrencies, although most of the details were kept under tight wraps. The allure of cryptocurrency often gets the best of people, especially those in a prime position to abuse existing resources for personal gain.

For the time being, the investigation in Australia is still underway. As no official charges have been filed, it will be pretty interesting to see what the police can turn up in this regard. One possibility is that the bureau’s computers were infected by malware designed to mine cryptocurrency. Whether or not that malware was planted by the IT employees or an external source is a different matter altogether. There may be a lot more to this story than meets the eye at first.

The allure of cryptocurrencies is not waning by any means. Even though all currency prices have declined quite a bit from late 2017, general interest in this new form of money is not slowing down whatsoever. Unfortunately, this also means people will get a lot more creative when it comes to obtaining cryptocurrencies through various shortcuts.

Tiago Máximo, a Portuguese shoemaker, is the owner of a small boot shop in Barcelona, Spain. His traditional handcraft method, inspired by his family ancestors in rural Portugal, contrasts with his sophisticated payment method options that include Bitcoin.

Merchants Accepting Bitcoin Still Facing Issues

Urban Shepherds, a brand of traditional Portuguese work boots, has its only physical store in Barcelona. While founder Tiago Máximo is hopeful about growing the business brick-and-mortar style, he is also invested in selling online.

With cryptocurrencies on the rise, the more Máximo learned about it the more he agreed to it: “The concept and philosophy behind it all are amazing and it makes sense. And I think there is a need in the market for that. More than that, it is a demand”, he told Tech Crunch. “I’m an entrepreneur. Anything that makes us thrive and go further and better, why not?”

Despite accepting Bitcoin online, most of the company’s sales come from the physical store. Máximo, however, says he would like to be one of the crypto pioneers and is attempting to have a percentage of his sales in bitcoins.

Bitcoin, however, is currently falling short and Máximo points to two key issues: “The fluctuation of the price of cryptocurrency and the time it actually takes to arrive in my bank account are the two main issues for now.”

The bitcoin acceptance rate among businesses in 2017 kept dropping as the bitcoin price continued to push higher. Bruce Fenton, founder of Atlantic Financial and board member at the Bitcoin Foundation, said in an interview that “there are some micro transaction uses cases – a cup of coffee is the big analogy everybody uses – that are being sort of priced out just because bitcoin is going up so much.”

Overstock.com Inc. introduced Bitcoin as a payment method in 2014, and while sales in Bitcoin have tripled since then, board member Jonathan Jonhson says the company brings as much as US$ 5 million per year from Bitcoin. Things are put into perspective when compared to its total revenue of US$ 1.8 billion.

Many fear that Bitcoin will go mainstream as an asset rather than a transaction method. In a move to bring merchants and consumers to the same table, Coinbase released in February a tool that eases the payments process.

Coinbase Commerce can be directly integrated into a merchant’s checkout flow or added as a payment option on an e-commerce platform.

The post Portuguese Traditional Shoemaker Accepts Bitcoin, Merchant Adoption Rises appeared first on NewsBTC.

Fabio Zoffi, the CEO and Chairman of ORS Group had a few things to say about his journey to the blockchain shores.

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My journey towards the blockchain shores is revealing itself like a musical composition of what I have been reasoning and partially acting upon in the last few years — the true nature of capitalism and money, how to turn technologies into successful businesses, the advancement of scientific knowledge such as robotics and A.I., and the consequences for society.

I am a passionate tech entrepreneur, because being an entrepreneur is the best way I have found to be really free and to be an artist at the same time (I am completely untalented in the fine arts); as dreaming of a venture first in my mind and then transforming it into reality is an amazing piece of creative work. Talented painters would probably disagree with me, but if only they knew how Picasso-messy startup phases are…

When I first met Pierluigi, my friend, the founder and products mastermind of ORS, and I discovered the amazing algorithms and software he and other brilliant minds had created over many years, I could not believe my eyes: here is, in the Piedmont region of Italy ( better known for excellent wines, truffles and home of the Nutella inventor) a company “not even Silicon Valley has!” I am aware how many friends I am making right now with this bold claim.

I found over 1,000 unique algorithms (A.I., statistics, mathematics, econometrics, machine learning, etc.) and hundreds of software solutions embedding such algorithms for optimizing (i.e., increase efficiency) and even automatically steering very complex processes and value chains for global customers worldwide. Wow, I mean, it was crystal clear to me that data is the new oil, but here in the idyllic, truffles infused city of Alba I had found an incredible “refinery”, able to turn Big Data into cash (indeed, that was the new claim I then created for the company).

What differentiates ORS and makes our story unique? Let me give you just one example: For a global manufacturing and retail company with over $10B in sales, our A.I.-based software is deciding in real time the yearly distribution of 20M items to almost 300k customers from a network of 200 distribution centers and warehouses. And in taking such decisions (“whom should receive what, when and how?”), the algos optimize the whole supply chain and even send commands to SAP for execution. The significant results are a 50% reduction in inventories and $200M in savings every year.

When I discovered the impressive number of algorithms and software modules available at ORS, I felt like a kid in Legoland: here I would have the possibility of playing with, combining and mixing together pieces of technologies for innovating many business models. The dream of almost any entrepreneur was suddenly my reality!

In 2017 the fruits were ripe. A soon to be professor in engineering had just joined ORS and he had a few students working with him on a blockchain scientific paper. I finally had someone with whom I could pose a few technical questions to (how does it really work? What kind of coding and possibilities, etc.) and we started a very fascinating conversation. On the way back home, suddenly I was struck blind by lightning and I understood how powerful the combination of A.I. with blockchain and with smart contracts could be for helping businesses achieve what I am calling efficiency singularity, i.e. the theoretical maximum efficiency / productivity achievable. Why that? Simply put: any value chain is basically composed of three major flows: (i) the flow of goods/services; (ii) the flow of information; (iii) the flow of payments.

ORS, thanks to its algorithms, is already able to “extract” very high efficiency — conditioned upon data availability — from the processes related to the movement of goods/services within a value chain (from a very small Asian sub-supplier to the end consumers), by synchronizing the activities of all the participants, even independent ones. But the flows of information, documents and payments are still very slow, cumbersome and somehow stuck in the “Middle Ages.” The Columbus’ egg was to understand that blockchain can be used for collaboratively collecting and sharing information (even using crypto rewards to incentivize the sharing) and that Ethereum smart contracts are very useful for executing instant payments without financial intermediaries.

What a beauty ! Three technologies (A.I., blockchain, smart contracts) to be “stitched ” together (I know, I know, the Italian tailor maestro is still here) for creating and improving almost any business model. This is how the concept of the Hypersmart Contract was born and that is how I reached the marvelous blockchain shores.

The ORS Group is a software company of more than 100 IT developers and scientists. It boasts over 20 years of experience in delivering sophisticated A.I.-based optimization software solutions to a large international client base (www.ors.ai). Their new product, the Hypersmart Contracts provide access to more than 1,000 proprietary algorithms and hundreds of software solutions to the Crypto Community and to established businesses (www.orsgroup.io).

At ORS, we envision a global network of entrepreneurs and independent companies empowered by our ABC technology building blocks: Algorithms, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency.

They have successfully collected €10M during their private sale which sold out in a matter of days. They are aiming to collect an additional €15M during their Crowdsale which launches on 28 April 2018.

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Even though ICOs have never been more popular than they are right now, people still need to be aware of the risks associated with this industry. There are quite a few signs which should immediately raise concerns over any ICO project on the market today. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of individuals ignore these warning signs in the hopes of making quick money.

5. Phony Team Information

As we have seen with various initial coin offerings in the past, there are often questions regarding the legitimacy of some projects’ team members. We have seen a fair few companies list major cryptocurrency names – such as Vitalik Buterin – as advisers, even though such people have no ties to these projects whatsoever. Moreover, some projects seemingly use fake names and photos to make their offerings seem more legitimate. It doesn’t take much effort to sniff out the genuine projects in this regard, even though novice investors can be fooled quite easily.

4. The Buzzword Syndrome

Although it is quite impressive to use terms such as “decentralization”, “blockchain“, and “consensus”, it is evident that showing a true understanding of these terms is a different matter altogether. Quite a few projects tend to throw these fancy terms around, yet their business models have nothing to do with any of those concepts. Additionally, not every idea needs a blockchain, but time will tell how this plays out for most of the ICOs on the market today.

3. A Useless Token?

One of the main questions every ICO investor should ask is whether or not there is a need for a given token in the first place. A lot of projects build on top of the Ethereum infrastructure. As such, most of the actions performed on “new” platforms can be completed with Ether, rather than with the native token issued during an ICO. There are very few projects which really need their own token, but it would be impossible to host an ICO without having a token to offer.

2. The Token Supply

The word “supply” in the cryptocurrency world has a few different meanings. There are the circulating supply, the total supply, and the maximum supply. For a lot of ICOs, the numbers associated with these three terms are vastly different. If only 10% of the maximum token supply is sold to investors, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about the future of a particular project. Some projects also seemingly have the option to establish large reserves or create more tokens on demand, which is not necessarily a good thing.

1. No Working Code/MVP/Demo

Before anyone should be asking for money, the least they need is some working code to demonstrate their ideas. Organizing an ICO is about so much more than just writing a whitepaper and putting together a website with a fancy business template. Unfortunately, there are a few ICO projects out there which do not have any working code at the time of their crowdsale. It is unacceptable to ask for people’s money without demonstrating the basic ability to put your ideas into code, even if it is unpolished and only partially finished.

Without any indication that an ICO team is able to deliver on their promise, there is no reason anyone should invest in a given project whatsoever. It is only a matter of time until more people start to realize how much of a problem the lack of working code can be. An alpha version of the project people are trying to bring to market should be the default standard at all times. Unfortunately, that is not the case as of right now.