Day: March 12, 2018

In the week starting Monday, March 5, some topical services emerged to bridge cryptocurrencies and investors.

The first service is that the U.S. company Coinbase has announced that it will develop and launch its own cryptocurrency index fund with a large market capitalization. Coinbase will list this cryptocurrency index fund on its own digital currency exchange GDAX and prepare for investment trading in the index fund. Four digital currencies will be included in the index fund, and they will be weighted by market capitalization. This means that at its launch the index fund will be comprised of 62% Bitcoin, 27% Ethereum, 7% Bitcoin Cash, and 4% Litecoin. Investors can easily invest in expected-to-rise cryptocurrencies by purchasing assets in Coinbase’s cryptocurrency index fund.

Another similar service will be provided by Grayscale Investments Inc., which had previously been selling investments in Bitcoin funds to institutional investors, and which has now decided to newly establish four new cryptocurrency funds. The four cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple. Investments in these funds will be sold to qualified accredited investors who possess a certain level of investment experience and asset size. Investors can invest in one of these Grayscale Investments funds in the expectation that the value of the fund will increase without having to manage the cryptocurrency fund themselves.

Originally, it was important that the owners of some cryptocurrency could control their own assets. However, the entities such as institutional investors and hedge funds that are expected to enter cryptocurrency trading in the future will not necessarily have an appropriate cryptocurrency storage system, therefore it is important that they have such capabilities as a fund that stores the cryptocurrency for them on their behalf.

It seems that the business of providing services that enable existing investors to access cryptocurrencies more conveniently will significantly grow in the future.

On the other hand, if the owner of some cryptocurrency does not themselves control the private key associated with their cryptocurrency wallet, there is the possibility of the owner losing their cryptocurrency if an irregular incident occurs at the location where the cryptocurrency has been stored, in the same manner as if cryptocurrency had been deposited in a trading exchange. It is a big advantage of cryptocurrency that the investor can manage their cryptocurrency assets by themselves and only they can control them. However, in the current situation in which cryptocurrency is being used exclusively for investment purposes, it may be economically rational to provide a business service of storing cryptocurrency assets.

The post Services Bridging Cryptocurrencies and Investors Are Emerging appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Highlights

• Ripple price is holding a major support area near $0.7500 against the US dollar.
• There is a monster contracting triangle pattern forming with support near $0.7600 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from Kraken).
• On the upside, the pair is facing a major resistance near the $0.8000 resistance and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Ripple price is holding key supports against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD has to gain momentum above $0.8000 and $0.8200 to gain traction.

Ripple Price Range

There was no major move above $0.8400 in Ripple price during the past two sessions against the US Dollar. The price tested the $0.8300 level, failed to gain momentum and declined below $0.8200. It moved below the $0.8000 support and the 100 hourly simple moving average. A low was formed at $0.7630 before the price started consolidating losses.

At the moment, the price is just above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $0.8301 high to $0.7630 low. On the upside, there are many hurdles for buyers near the $0.8000 level and the 100 hourly SMA. The $0.8000 level is also around the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $0.8301 high to $0.7630 low. Moreover, there is a monster contracting triangle pattern forming with support near $0.7600 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. The triangle resistance at $0.8150 is a crucial barrier for buyers.

Once there is a proper close above the $0.8200 level and the 100 hourly SMA, there could be more gains. On the downside, the $0.7600 and $0.7500 support levels hold a lot of importance. XRP must stay above $0.7500 to avoid further declines.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for XRP/USD is attempting to move back in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD is rising towards the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $0.7600

Major Resistance Level – $0.8200

Charts courtesy – Trading View

The post Ripple Price Technical Analysis – XRP/USD Holding $0.75 Support appeared first on NewsBTC.

Thailand’s cabinet is set to vote on implementation of a new 10% capital gains tax on profits from cryptocurrency investment. Royal Decree will empower the SEC to regulate digital currencies.

New Tax Part of Royal Decree

The Thai Revenue Department has asked the cabinet to vote on an amendment to the new revenue code which would include a proposed 10% capital gains tax on profits from trading in cryptocurrency according to a source inside the ministry of finance.

The Bangkok Post reported this morning that the tax will be part of a Royal Decree proposed to allow the SEC to comprehensively regulate all aspects of the crypto market including ICO’s.

The new decree will classify cryptocurrency as digital assets, not currency, meaning that the SEC will be charged with regulating all aspects of virtual coins. Rapee Sucharitakul the secretary -general of the SEC said the regulations should set standards for information disclosure of cryptocurrency trading while also overseeing the launching and proceeds generated by ICO’s.

He was further quoted by the Post speaking about investor protection included in the new regulations as saying;

“The regulatory framework will cover cryptocurrencies in several areas, including investor protections and how cryptocurrencies have sometimes been used as a medium for money-laundering, tax avoidance and Ponzi schemes”

This ruling will come after what has been a twice extended period of consultation to review the regulatory framework of cryptocurrency in the Kingdom.

Regulations a Long Time Coming

Chairman of The Thai Fintech Association, a startup accelerator Korn Chatikavanij, who previously served as the country’s finance minister between the end of 2008 and mid-2011 said in an interview last week that his organization supports the new plan.

“I agree with the Finance Ministry’s [view] of letting the SEC be the only organization governing digital assets, because it already oversees securities and has a profound understanding of digital assets,”

Said Korn, according to a Friday report by the Bangkok Post.

Others in the government have cited similar laws that have now passed in the U.S. as a positive step since they help to regulate trade in cryptocurrency while tapping into a previously untaxed source to generate income for the nation.

Traders may seek to invest outside of Thailand in order to avoid paying the tax but could face punishment once they bring the funds back in, including possible liability under Thailand’s very strict money laundering act. Either way there is likely to be an exodus from exchanges in the once crypto-friendly nation.

The Royal Decree will be forwarded to the cabinet for consideration today and is expected to be accepted and put into enforcement by the end of the month.

The post Thailand Proposes New Cryptocurrency Gains Tax appeared first on NewsBTC.

Another oil backed cryptocurrency is getting set to launch it’s ICO in 2018, this time by a New York capital management group calling this new ground in commodities investment.

Commodities Backed PetroDollar Launches in 2018

Signal Capital Management announced the launch of their PetroDollar cryptocurrency (XPD) on March 12. Saying PetroDollars will allow investors to use peer to peer exchanged digital currency backed by the value of crude oil and natural gas instead of “thin air” the management group hopes to launch its ICO by late this year.

According to the group’s white paper each PetroDollar will be backed by a commodities grouping of crude oil, natural gas, and gas assets. The token issuance will be hard capped at 500 million with 450 million to be retained for future sales.

A reported 25 million has already been issued to an affiliated oil company to be sold in order to develop the oil and gas reserves that will back the PetroDollar. The group expects the ICO to raise $700 million.

Their white paper explains how investors will treat the PetroDollar as a currency in order to avoid certain tax obligations and that it is “not expected to be subject to annual tax but instead will be taxed only upon any gains (or losses) from their sale of PetroDollars,”

Further claims are that the cryptocurrency will be “tradeable worldwide outside of the traditional banking system” and that they expect it to be “in (the) Top 20 cryptocurrencies by total market value”

The PetroDollar will use Ethereum services supported by the blockchain in order to handle both crypto and fiat currency transactions according to the white paper.

PetroDollar follows El Petro

As reported by RT news this isn’t the only “globally compliant digital reserve currency” looking to launch an ICO in 2018. OilCoin was formed in 2017 by a team of experts from technology, banking and regulatory commissioners.

With a white paper that reads almost verbatim to that of PetroDollar, OilCoin also promises “favorable tax treatment and return profile for U.S. and non-U.S. investors.”

Both of these announcements come weeks after the launch of the highly criticized Venezuelan oil backed El Petro. President Nicolas Maduro unveiled the Petro in December as a way for state-owned oil companies to buy and sell using digital currency and reportedly raised $735 million from the ICO.

The launch was highly criticized inside and out of the country. The US State Department called it simply a way of circumventing economic sanctions and the Venezuelan opposition party said it was both unconstitutional and illegal.

In addition to the launch of the PetroDollar, Signal Capital is exploring the creation of a cryptocurrency bank to both service PetroDollar investors while offering traditional banking functions as well.

The post PetroDollar to be Next Oil Backed Cryptocurrency appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Highlights

• ETH price is trading in a range above the $680 support level against the US Dollar.
• There is a contracting triangle forming with current support at $684 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair is facing a crucial resistance on the upside near the $730 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Ethereum price is struggling to gain traction against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD must break the $720 resistance and settle above 100 SMA to rise further.

Ethereum Price Range

There were mostly bearish moves below $750 in ETH price against the US Dollar. The price struggled to trade higher and formed a high near $738 yesterday. It failed to hold gains above the $720 level and the 100 hourly simple moving average. As a result, there was a downside reaction below the 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $650 low to $738 high.

However, the downside move was protected by the $680 support. Moreover, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $650 low to $738 high also acted as a support. At the moment, there is a contracting triangle forming with current support at $684 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. On the upside, there is a major resistance near $717 and the 100 hourly SMA. Above $717, the triangle resistance trend line is at $735 on the same chart. Therefore, the price has to break the $717 and $735 resistance levels to gain upside momentum.

On the downside, the triangle support at $684 holds a lot of importance. A break below the $684 support could ignite a downside move back towards the last swing low of $650 or even $640.

Hourly MACD – The MACD is still in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI is moving higher, but it is still below the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $684

Major Resistance Level – $735

Charts courtesy – Trading View

The post Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Struggling Near 100 SMA appeared first on NewsBTC.

The U.S cryptocurrency exchange is easing the crypto tax procedure with a new automatic gain/loss calculator.

According to unnamed sources in the industry, cryptocurrency exchanges are charging between $50,000 to $1 million to list initial coin offerings (ICOs) on their platforms — as reported by Business Insider. As one might expect, many of those who spoke to BI were unable to name the specific exchanges they have dealt with.

Exchanges wield a lot of power in the crypto markets and access to more prominent ones can mean the difference between success and failure for new projects. In the eyes of many, these seemingly high rates reflect a large power imbalance between exchanges and crypto projects. Michael Jackson, a partner at venture capital firm Mangrove Partners said;

“Basically there are a lot of people who want their coins listed. The exchanges are where the liquidity is — it’s where the money is — so that’s where the power is just at the moment.”

ICO Potential

For startups, ICOs offer a quicker and potentially more lucrative alternative to traditional growth methods like venture investment or going public. For investors, these tokens provide exposure to red-hot sectors and provide the ability to quickly and easily trade their stake in a project — something not traditionally possible with early-stage investments.

The problem is that in order to access this liquidity, companies issuing tokens have to get listed on at least one of the many cryptocurrency exchanges. Like stock markets, these online exchanges — based across the globe — offer a venue for people to trade tokens.

Take Oliver Bussmann. Bussmann has advised a number of high-profile cryptocurrency projects — like Ripple and IOTA — and is the president of Switzerland’s Crypto Valley Association, a public-private partnership promoting the region of Zug as a hub for cryptocurrency businesses. The former CIO of UBS, who now runs his own Swiss fintech advisory firm, told BI:

“If you prepare for an ICO, you have to prepare for a listing. It’s important to get access to liquidity. That means the bigger the exchange is, the more effort and also more cost to get listed.”

When asked how much fees to list on exchanges are, he said, “At the lower end it’s $50,000, up to $1 million — I’ve heard that. It’s depending on the size of the exchange.”

Other industry sources have confirmed this price range, like Jackson: “I was doing a project, I won’t tell you specifically what one — one token on a number of exchanges — and that was the ballpark we were in.”

There are others, too: the CEO of one company planning an ICO told BI that they had been asked for $1 million by a top-tier exchange to list their coins. The company, as expected, declined to be named or to name the exchange or speak publicly about the issue, as the whole process is currently under a nondisclosure agreement.

Not All Exchanges Are Equal

Not all exchanges are equal, which is why the range of fees varies greatly. The 24-hour trading volume of Binance — which is currently the second biggest exchange in the world — sits at $1.7 billion as of today (according to CoinMarketCap.com). Bitstamp, the tenth biggest exchange globally, had a volume of $334 million — around a sixth of Binance.

This is important, as access to the “best” exchanges carries a premium: the bigger the liquidity pool, the higher the potential market value of a coin, and the higher the chance of success for a project.

“Good exchange means a high probability of good market fit, because you have access to liquidity and investors,” Bussmann said. “If you don’t get access to certain exchanges, then it’s tier two exchanges, which means access to investors is limited.”

All said, there are counter-arguments: the exchanges aren’t doing too badly themselves. Bloomberg estimated earlier this month that the top ten exchanges are making as much as $3 million a day in fees, this based on calculations from publicly available volume data and trading fees.

The post Exchanges Charge Crypto Startups Upwards of $1 Million to List ICOs appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price seems to be having trouble making its way above the broken neckline of the double top.
• This signals that bears are still very strong and could push price back down to the swing low or extension levels.
• Technical indicators are also reflecting a slowdown in bullish pressure.

Bitcoin price could have more losses in the cards as it failed to bust through an area of interest.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA to signal that the path of least resistance is to the upside. However, the gap between the moving averages is narrowing to signal fading bullish momentum and a potential downward crossover. These moving averages are also close to the area of interest around $10,000 to add to its strength as a ceiling.

Bitcoin price could fall to the next Fib extension at the swing low or the 50% extension at $8176.8. The 61.8% extension is at $7775.2 then the 76.4% extension is at $7278.2. The full extension is at $6474.9.

Stochastic is on the move down to show that sellers have the upper hand, but RSI seems to be headed north. Turning lower could still draw bears to the mix and lead to a continuation of the decline.

Market Factors

The US dollar was actually weaker against its peers but bitcoin price was unable to take advantage of this. Reports that a big player dubbed “Tokyo whale” has been selling massive amounts of the cryptocurrency are being blamed for the recent slide, but there are also rumors that he has stopped dumping bitcoin.

As it turned out, a trustee of former bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox sold more than 35,000 bitcoin worth $400 million to pay off creditors still needs to liquidate the remaining 166,000 bitcoin.

Meanwhile, the US currency has its CPI and retail sales reports to contend with and traders seem to be bracing for weaker than expected results. If so, tightening expectations could take a hit and allow BTCUSD to recover.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 03/13/2018 – Next Downside Targets appeared first on NewsBTC.

Thinking about starting your own business? This might be what you need. #EXPLAINED

One of Japan’s largest electric companies is intrigued by bitcoin’s early-stage Lightning Network, so much so they’re testing it out.

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere

Have you ever wondered how one day you searched “Best Smartphone of 2018” on Google and the next day you were bombarded with ads from smartphone companies? Or how watching a video on the ‘World’s Best Beaches’ on YouTube inevitably leads to plethora of holiday ads being shown on sites you are currently viewing?

As you might already understand, there aren’t millions of employees working at YouTube who personally follow you and suggest to you the most exciting videos or people monitoring your searches on Google to show you the most relevant advertisements. It is all done by computer coding and algorithms, or in other terms, by Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

General vs. Narrow Intelligence

Now, when many people hear about AI, they automatically imagine:

1. a) intelligent robots that could make our lives easier, by helping us automate many tedious tasks and being our personal assistants;
2. b) robots that at some point become too smart for us to control them, finally turn upon humans and start taking over the world (thoughts that are most likely inspired by “Terminator”).

These AI have what is called general intelligence. This means that, just like humans, they are proficient at many different and unique tasks – they can solve complex mathematical problems, identify animals, analyze the weather, speak, and more. The possibilities are endless.

But our current AI is far from being the intelligent machines depicted in Sci-Fi movies. The AI we have today have narrow intelligence, meaning that they are exceptionally proficient in once specific task, but can’t really do anything else.

AI in our lives

Some examples of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives include:

• Google’s search engine, which is incredibly efficient in showing the most related results to your search input;
• Email platforms that are incredibly effective at detecting spam email and automatically moving them to the “Spam” category;
• Amazon knows exactly that when you buy a new pot; then you might also be interested in a new cookbook, an apron and a set of cutlery; and so on.

As you might see, AI is already a part of our everyday lives. But how do these platforms know all of these things? How do they know your preferences or what to show you? How did AI become so effective?

AI training

Artificial Intelligence starts off quite similar to humans – not very efficient at doing anything. To make it work like we want to, AI has to be trained. It has to learn, make certain connection, recognize patterns, and start making decisions based on the information gathered.

For that, humans have to feed enormous amounts of training data to the AI, so it could start learning and making connections.

For example, if you’d want to create an AI that would be incredibly efficient in recognizing bananas on pictures, then you’d have to give the AI millions of pictures of bananas. The algorithm starts to analyze these pictures and makes certain connections. After seeing characteristics like yellow, curvy, eaten by primates, and so on, repeating the patterns over and over, it comes to a conclusion that every banana is like that. When it has to identify a banana on a random picture it immediately starts looking for a yellow curvy object.

The baseline is that, to make artificial intelligence efficient, it needs vast amounts of training data. Gigantic companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have extensive amounts of information to work with, which is exactly why these companies’ platforms are so efficient.

Problems with AI training data

But problems appear when it comes to smaller companies and organizations. While Facebook boasts over 1.4 billion daily active users, and Google processes almost 2.5 million searches every minute, smaller organizations and businesses rarely have any data to be used for training AI. This means that the only organizations capable of developing artificial intelligence in this way are large multi-billion dollar corporations, big data companies, and government-backed research facilities.

Just finding enough data to be able to train AI is a strenuous task on its own, not to even mention finding the exact right data for your AI, especially when you don’t have millions of dollars laying around or a user base of a few million.

AI and data industry is monopolistic

Another problem comes with the fact that these organizations that do have the sufficient amounts of data to train AI are not particularly keen on sharing information about their algorithms and what their intentions are behind developing their algorithms. Leaving the common user in the dark about how their personal information is used, how these complex algorithms operate and what is done with the results.

These large internet companies know more about you than you might think, and quite frankly, more than you might like. You have no way of knowing exactly what Facebook does with your personal information, or how Google utilizes the things you have searched for in their engine.

Although the amount of data created every year grows exponentially, allocation of it is hugely disproportionate – a few large organizations have access to vast quantities of data, while the majority has almost nothing to work with.

Currently, the advancements in AI technology are not limited by our ability to create smart and functional algorithms, but by the availability of useful data to train these algorithms.

Most, if not all, world-changing innovations have started off small, but with artificial intelligence finding a way to realize an idea might prove to be almost impossible, without having access to vast amounts of information.

Maybe someone comes up with a brand new way to create self-driving cars, that would eliminate the problems we currently face in this industry, but without having a way to gather billions of miles worth of driving data, making such an invention a reality is impossible.

Thought Network is changing the current unequal paradigm

Thought is an AI and blockchain company changing the current, unreasonable situation with the AI and data market by creating a transparent and decentralized platform. It creates a rich ecosystem where the community is in charge of the algorithms and the data. Users can purchase and sell information, develop algorithms and sell the access to other users, creating a place where even the smaller companies have access to data that they can use to innovate and develop the field of artificial intelligence further.

“In the current paradigm, every piece of data is routed through servers, stored in data centers, and compiled and sifted through big data analytics and AI algorithms.” explains the CEO of Thought, Professor Andrew Hacker. “Thought introduces a new paradigm – a platform that combines data analytics and artificial intelligence to change the way the world creates, processes, interprets, and disposes of the near-limitless amounts of information being created.”

Thought is backed by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology and holds a patent for their innovative way of utilizing data. Thought is embedding every bit of data with artificial intelligence, making traditionally ‘dumb’ information, that only become valuable in the context of applications, smart and able to act on their own.

Professor Hacker continues, “In the Thought paradigm there is no difference between the data and the application layer; they are one and the same. In Thought, the data is smart and takes action as soon as it is created.”

Thought’s Smart Data patent applies to creating data containers called Nuances that store the information as well as a piece of application code that makes it able to function on its own. Nuances can communicate with each other and work together to realize their goal. No longer does data have to go through an extensive process to be analyzed. Instead, it can analyze and categorize itself.

“Thought has built a foundational, information transformation network with data as the commodity. The ecosystem hosts data-hungry applications for researchers in AI and cognitive computing, in diverse industries such as healthcare, transportation, government, media, utilities, and finance. The ecosystem is fuelled by monetization of sensor-based data and analytically rich data sets”, explains Professor Hacker.

Conclusion

Right now, only the largest organizations have access to sufficient amounts of valuable data to truly develop artificial intelligence, while the smaller guys are left out of the game, leaving many potential ground-breaking ideas undeveloped.

But by making AI and data more accessible to regular people who don’t have the luxury of having billions of dollars laying around, Thought can open up the field of AI to the smaller teams who may have incredible ideas. It encourages further development and provides the means to make these ideas happen.

Thought’s Pre- ICO is live now and lasts until the 13th of March. The main ICO starts on the 14th of March. To participate in the ICO and learn more about Thought please visit https://thought.live and to keep up-to-date with the latest news join Thought’s Telegram chat at https://t.me/thoughtcommunity  

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.