Day: March 21, 2018

Overstock dot com was made famous in 2014 for being the first major company to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. The US internet retail giant has seen stock prices jump in line with Bitcoin’s price so the decision was probably the best it has made. American entrepreneur, founder and CEO Patrick Byrne has ambitions that stretch far beyond e-commerce, he wants to dismantle Wall Street with the technology that drives Bitcoin.

In an interview on Vice Byrne stated that he wants to undermine what he believes are oppressive financial institutions that control society. He has been opposed to Wall Street corruption for decades and has used his retail platform to bolster that by taking the company public out of Wall Street in 2002. This was achieved by raising money directly from the public using a ‘Dutch IPO’. Currently his time and profits are being poured into financing blockchain startups including an alternative stock exchange.

Tools of the Powerful to Oppress the Weak

This was a statement Byrne made in reference to dodgy dealings and stock manipulation that he has accused a number of Wall Street brokers of over the years. When he discovered Bitcoin, Byrne said that it reminded him about his feelings on gold and his distrust of central banking. However the most important thing about Bitcoin is not Bitcoin itself but the underlying blockchain technology that generates trust between users.

When not travelling the world evangelizing about the benefits of blockchain, Byrne is working on a new venture capitalist firm within Overstock that uses company money to invest in blockchain startups. Part of that project is the ambitious tZERO which aims to setup a platform to compete with traditional stock exchanges by integrating cryptographically secure distributed ledgers with existing market processes to reduce settlement time and costs, increase transparency, efficiency and auditability.

He strongly believes that by eliminating all of the brokerage fees and commissions to execute a trade, and replacing it with a robust and immutable system that is 80-90% cheaper, is the way forward. He also added;

“Most importantly all kinds of mischief that goes on on Wall Street can’t go on here,”

Byrne has garnered a lot of support from the crypto community which stands by the ethos that bankers and Wall Street types need to be brought to account, and there are more efficient and transparent ways for everyone to trade and benefit from the system, not just those in power. Byrne is betting big on blockchain and a growing number are following him.

The post Overstock CEO Aims to Dismantle Wall Street with a Blockchain Stock Exchange appeared first on NewsBTC.

The US Treasury Department is looking to include crypto wallets to its sanctions list in case they’re associated with a listed person. #NEWS

Huawei the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker is reported to be exploring the release of a model that can run blockchain applications according to two anonymous sources reported by Bloomberg News.

First Blockchain Enabled Phone on its Way

The Shenzen, China-based company known for making high functioning phones at a low price has confirmed that it is in talks with Sirin Labs but would not elaborate on what the meetings were about.

However, people familiar with the discussions have reported that Huawei is interested in using the Sirin Labs operating system SIRIN OS alongside the Android system Alphabet Inc. in a new blockchain ready line of phones.

Sirin Labs’ own Telegram chat group backs up the report as photos show representatives of both companies on Feb. 28 with a caption that reads;

“Amazing meeting just concluded between Sirin Labs and Huawei. Among other things discussed was the possibility of cooperating together to bring blockchain technology to the masses in a secure way.”

This would be the first blockchain enabled smartphone on the market potentially bringing a wider understanding of what blockchain technology is to the general public and therefore opening up wider reaching applications of the technology.

According to Techspot Huawei may use the blockchain to register all of its active devices on their network so that proof of ownership could be made by producing the unique keys associated with a particular device on the ledger.

Though Huawei is a giant in the phone industry Sirin Labs is also planning to release a blockchain enabled smartphone. The Finney will be priced at about a $1,000 and Sirin has already had pre-orders of 25,000 units in anticipation of a general release in the second half of this year.

The most attractive feature of the Finney may be the inclusion of a cold wallet into the smartphone. A cold wallet is used to store cryptocurrency securely offline. The digital assets stored in the wallet would also be available for conversion to Fiat currency automatically.

The Huawei phone is likely to offer similar features but at a lower price point according to the anonymous sources. Huawei has a large stake in several technology communications fields and as the third largest maker of cellular phones in the world is looking to make a run in Europe as well as penetrating Apple Inc.’s home turf in the US. Talks between the two companies are still in the preliminary stages with no agreement signed as yet according to inside sources.

The post Huawei Exploring Release of First Blockchain Enabled Phone appeared first on NewsBTC.

Accenture Global Blockchain lead David Treat says the company wants to “work across the entire digital identity landscape” – government included.

Roberto Escobar, the younger brother of notorious cocaine drug lord and cult figure Pablo Escobar, has entered the cryptocurrency market with his own ‘Diet Bitcoin’ which he promises will be the last digital currency standing.

Diet Bitcoin Will be Lighter and Faster

Roberto Escobar’s Diet Bitcoin (DDX), is a hard fork from Bitcoin currently being launched in an ICO at a 96% discount from the stated $50 value. It will sell for $2 through the former cartel member’s namesake venture investment firm Escobar Inc. TNW has confirmed the particulars with a spokesman from the company.

According to the official website, Diet Bitcoin will be a lighter, faster version of Bitcoin set to have a total supply of 1,000,0000 tokens which will be distributed through three different sales levels. The aforementioned pre – ICO of the first 300,000 DDX tokens is currently on offer at a 96% discount for $2. To be followed by a second tier pre-ICO sale of 300,000 tokens at $100 and finally capped when the final 400,000 go on offer at $1,000.

The website runs countdown a clock to the end of the first round sale, currently at 53 days. Danial Rietberg Escobar Inc’s COO has advised “Everyone should listen to these news, go to www.dietbitcoinICO.org and buy as many dietbitcoin’s as you can afford. The value will be very high as we are identical in numbers to Bitcoin, except we are 4000 times cheaper right now.”

The website also includes a roadmap that outlines the development of the Diet Bitcoin from its inception in Dec. 2017 when the price and hype of Bitcoin were at its peak through to the network protocol announcement in August 2018.

Digital Entrepreneur and Author

Also, available at the website is the option to download the project whitepaper as well as Roberto’s new book for free. Alternatively available on Amazon for $8 Roberto’s book, entitled plainly enough Roberto Escobar’s Diet Bitcoin is a meditation on the former drug trafficker’s thoughts on cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and world finances.

For example, Roberto (known as El Osito, or little bear, in the drug world) explains his theory of how Bitcoin was not created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto but by the US government. Hinting that the entire cryptocurrency market is a ploy to bankrupt investors. He wrote;

“The world is going to see that this was created by them … And when they see it, it is too late, and when CIA founds (sic) out that the world knows about this, the CIA is going to sell all of their coins, and they will destroy the value of Bitcoin.”

Roberto assures investors that as a businessman he will be standing behind DDX when all others fail. He added;

“You can stick with your worthless coins … Keep the Ethereum, Keep the TRON, keep the Ripple, keep the Bitcoin. You will see what happens. They will all go to zero, almost zero. But not my coin. Because my coin, this is going to be my new work in life.”

Diet Bitcoin is just another of many recent Bitcoin forks, very few of which have actually been a success.

The post Pablo Escobar’s Younger Brother Launches ‘Diet Bitcoin’ Fork appeared first on NewsBTC.

Sam Altman, the president at Y Combinator, one of the largest early-stage technology venture capital firms globally, has paid $10,000 to preserve his brain and potentially upload his memories to the cloud after his death.

Earlier this week, MIT Technology Review reported about a startup that is providing a mind-uploading service through a process that is 100 percent fatal. In a nutshell, Nectome’s mind uploading service is a post-mortem process that would allow future data scientists to integrate an individual’s mind into a computer.

Nectome’s cofounder, Robert McIntyre, an MIT graduate, told MIT Technology Review that the startup’s preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it service enables a human brain to be preserved for several hundred years, and potentially allow the company to upload the memory stored in the human brain to the cloud.

The firm has already received a large federal grant and the approval of the US government to continue studying its preservation methods and cloud technology. In collaboration with MIT’s leading neuroscientist Edward Boyden, who recently received an $80,000 award for preserving a pig’s brain, the Nectom team is aiming to have its service available to the public in a few years.

There still exists several technical issues the startup is attempting to solve. One of the major issues is the process of obtaining memories from a human brain with dead tissues. Since the process requires a brain that is already dead, a key solution the firm will need to come up with is the analysis of dead tissues within the brain to obtain memories and upload them to the cloud.

Until the team comes up with tested solutions to address the above mentioned problems, Nectome’s preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it service cannot be offered to the public. Currently, the company has created a waiting list composed of individuals who are willing to pay a refundable deposit of $10,000 to preserve their brains post-mortem. The company decided that the deposit would be an efficient way to test the market and also to fund the firm’s operations.

According to the MIT, 25 individuals have been listed on the waiting list of Nectome. One of the individuals is Y Combinator co-founder and president Sam Altman, a 32-year-old Silicon Valley-based technology investor.

“I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,” said Altman, expressing his optimism towards the potential of Nectome’s technology that may allow the memories of Altman to be integrated into a computing system one day.

Ken Hayworth, the Brain Preservation Foundation president and a neuroscientist, stated that while a dead brain is equivalent to a computer that is switched off, information stored within the dead brain can still be recovered

“If the brain is dead, it’s like your computer is off, but that doesn’t mean the information isn’t there,” said Ken. He added that for brain preservation enthusiasts like himself, the waiting list of Nectome doesn’t come across as controversial. But, to some people it could be demonstrated as an encouragement of committing suicide.

“If you are like me, and think that mind uploading is going to happen, it’s not that controversial. But it could look like you are enticing someone to commit suicide to preserve their brain,” Ken added, emphasizing that McIntyre is walking a very fine line.

FOMO Moments

Crypto markets have leveled off a little this morning, no further gains have been made but the good news is that they haven’t fallen again. Bitcoin has remained at the $9,000 level with no movement in either direction over the past 24 hours. Total market capitalization is marginally up by 1.5% to $352 billion. Altcoins are a mixed bag, some in the green, others losing out a little, the one leading the way at the moment is Icon.

Coinmarketcap is showing a solid 37% gain for ICX which puts it way above its brethren during this morning’s Asian trading session. From $2.75 this time yesterday Icon is up to $3.80 at the moment, a spike that started late in the afternoon in Asia and continued through the Euro and US trading sessions. Over the week ICX has had a great run up 67% from $2.27 to its current level. It has almost regained all losses over the month as it was trading at just over $4 this time last month. In terms of BTC it is trading 36% higher on the day at 41810 satoshis from 30784 this time yesterday. A week ago ICX traded at around 28500 sats so it has seen solid gains against Bitcoin also.

The news that South Korea’s leading exchange Bithumb would be listing ICX and offering an airdrop of 50,000 tokens sent the altcoin skywards around 20 hours ago. NewsBTC reported that the exchange is launching an ICON airdrop from March 21 to 25 exclusively for members who trade over a million KRW. Icon, which has been dubbed the ‘Korean Ethereum’, has also been listed on Upbit, another huge exchange in the country, this has added to its upward momentum.

Currently most ICX is traded on Binance which has over 90% of the trade volume. That volume has increased to $260 million in the past 24 hours setting Icon’s market cap at $1.4 billion and 19^th position in the charts. Only 400 million ICX are supplied with 386 million currently circulating.

EOS is also having a very good run during this morning’s Asian session, up 17% on the day. All other altcoins are pretty flat at the moment.

More on Icon can be found here: https://www.icon.foundation/

FOMO Moments is a section that takes a daily look at the top 25 altcoins during the Asian trading session and analyses the best performing one, looking for trends and fundamentals.

The post Asian Altcoin Trading Roundup: Top Cryptocurrency is Icon appeared first on NewsBTC.

The U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, will reveal a “crypto assets task force” Thursday. It will tackle the tech’s risks and benefits.

This week the U.S. Treasury Department issued guidelines on how the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) could add cryptocurrency addresses to the country’s sanction list.

Also read: New Tools Help Crypto Traders Make Smarter Decisions

Cryptocurrency Addresses to be Added to the U.S. Sanctions List

The U.S. government may soon have the ability to add cryptocurrency addresses to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List. Coincidently the oversight advice happened on the same day President Trump signed an executive order banning the Venezuelan petro (PTR). The petro is mentioned among a variety of digital assets including BTC, ETH, LTC, NEO, XMR, and XRP.

The Treasury calls a cryptocurrency wallet “a software application (or other mechanisms) that provides a means for holding, storing, and transferring digital currency.” The report also describes a virtual currency and an address:    

A [Digital Currency Address] is an alphanumeric identifier that represents a potential destination for a digital currency transfer.

OFAC May “Alert the Public” About Suspect Digital Currency Identifiers

Additionally, the agency issued guidance to those who have identified SDN owned wallets and addresses and ask them to report the news to OFAC immediately. Further, the Treasury says that the market itself, businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges should work together to keep an eye on suspect addresses that might be on the SDN list.

“The digital currency address field on the SDN List provides the unique alphanumeric identifiers (up to 256 characters) for digital currency addresses and identifies the digital currency to which the address corresponds,” explains the OFAC report.

OFAC will use sanctions in the fight against criminal and other malicious actors abusing digital currencies and emerging payment systems as a complement to existing tools, including diplomatic outreach and law enforcement authorities — To strengthen our efforts to combat the illicit use of digital currency transactions under our existing authorities, OFAC may include as identifiers on the SDN List specific digital currency addresses associated with blocked persons.

The Treasury’s OFAC guidance does not go into great detail on how they will block these wallets and addresses or enforce the sanctions. According to the report, OFAC may “alert the public” about suspect digital currency identifiers.

What do you think about the Treasury adding cryptocurrency wallets to the SDN list? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, OFAC, Pixabay

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The post U.S. Treasury Plans to Add Cryptocurrency Addresses to the SDN List appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price has formed lower highs and higher lows to create a symmetrical triangle on the 4-hour chart.
• Price is bouncing off the support and might be due for a move back to resistance around $10,000-11,000.
• A small rising trend line can be drawn to connect the latest lows, but technical indicators are giving bearish hints.

Bitcoin price is bouncing off its symmetrical triangle support and might be eyeing the resistance from here.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to indicate that the path of least resistance is to the downside. This means that the selloff is likely to resume than to reverse. Also, the 100 SMA is holding as dynamic resistance at the moment and could push bitcoin price back to the bottom of the triangle or lower.

A break below support could take bitcoin price down by the same height of the triangle, which spans $6,000 to nearly $13,000. Stochastic is indicating overbought conditions and appears to be starting its move south, so bitcoin price might follow suit.

RSI has some room to climb, so bitcoin bulls could stay in the game for a bit longer. However, this oscillator is also nearing overbought levels so the nearby areas of interest could hold as resistance, including the 200 SMA dynamic inflection point.

Market Factors

The dollar weakened on the FOMC statement even after the US central bank hiked rates. It turns out traders were disappointed over the lack of hawkish hints, particularly when it came to the dot plot of rate hike forecasts.

Fortunately, bitcoin price was able to take advantage of this, along with the pickup in risk appetite. So far, there are still no negative updates coming from the G20 Summit, putting investors at ease.

Remarks from Twitter CEO citing that bitcoin would be the world’s single currency also lifted bitcoin price. In an interview with The Times, Dorsey said:

“The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin.”

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 03/22/2018 – Potential Triangle Formation appeared first on NewsBTC.

Exchange approved by Australian Government regulator AUSTRAC – launching mid-2018

•         First in the world to offer 100 crypto and six fiat currencies
•         Backed by three international investment funds

MARCH 21, 2018

WITH more than 120,000 users registered in just three weeks, Nauticus has had a huge response in the first two days of its ICO presale. With a hard cap target of $88 million, it’ll be the largest ICO ever seen in Australia.

The Melbourne based fintech company is raising funds to launch an international standard exchange with 100 crypto and six fiat currencies (a world first!) along with a green blockchain mine to give vital server capacity and additional revenue.

The Nauticus Coin is modelled on the popular Binance Coin (BNB), and offers a similar 50 percent reduction in trading fees, which has seen the value of BNB skyrocket.

The Nauticus vision and strong team have seen the ICO attract glowing reviews, including 4.5 stars from ICO Bench, 4.45 stars from ICO Marks, 4.15 stars from Trudex, and a Gold rating on Top ICO List.

The Australian Government’s AUSTRAC last week approved Nauticus’s registration as an independent remittance dealer. This guarantees the exchange complies with all KYC, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. Nauticus is in the final stages of engaging one of the big four international auditing firms to make sure transparency in the use of ICO funds. Ambisafe has audited the security and function of the Nauticus smart contract and the code has been posted on Github. Nauticus is excited to announce it has received backing and support from large-scale international investment funds and crypto specialists Fundify, BellAcre and Whisper.

The company has been highlighted in articles on CoinTelegraph, The Merkle, Coinspeaker, Bitcoin.com, and Blockonomi among dozens of other crypto news sites.

The Nauticus community is growing in strength, with 120,000 registered users; 27,000 Facebook likes; 9000 Twitter followers, and more than 5000 highly engaged users on Telegram.

“We want to thank everyone for the overwhelming level of support they’ve shown,” said co-founder and CEO Bryan Ng. “It’s truly humbling and we won’t let you down. We’re determined to create the best crypto exchange in the world.”

To ensure this vision is realized, Nauticus has signed up more than 20 of the world’s top blockchain, IT and finance experts as advisors. They include former global managing director of Accenture’s Ecosystem of the Future David Hayat, former Vice President of Nomura Securities Kin Wong, founder of Scandinavian Capital Markets Arif Alexander Ahmad, Director of Trade.io Remigio Bongulielmi, and the founder of ABA Technology Patrick Roberts (ex-IP Australia).

“The Nauticus solution is among the most integrated that I’ve seen in the cryptoworld, regarding exchanges and payments, and utilizing all existing state-of-the-art technologies,” said advisor Dr. Theodosis Mourouzis, cryptologist with the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. “In addition, it has an ethical dimension by introducing a green blockchain mining center to help the developing world.”

Profits will be reinvested in the business to support the development of a low-cost eCommerce marketplace, along with merchant and peer-to-peer payments. These new platforms will be underpinned by the Nauticus Coin, Exchange, Mobile App, and Wallet.

The company will offer ‘one and done’ Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and create an ICO community, which will offer resources and services for new ICOs as well as a quality verification system.

For more information and to read our white paper, visit www.nauticus.io/

The Nauticus ICO presale begins on March 18 and the ICO itself runs from April 2 to May 18, 2018.

Early supporters of the Nauticus ICO will be provided a BONUS OF UP TO 35 PER CENT FREE COINS.

For all media enquiries contact [email protected]

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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.

Bitcoin (BTC) has been ranging within a downtrend recently, but has recovered 50% from lows set in early February. The market cap now stands at US$151.48 billion, with US$3.26 billion traded in the past 24 hours.