Day: March 21, 2018

At the Token 2049 conference in Hong Kong, Asia’s vibrant market for cryptocurrencies and ICOs took the spotlight.

Singapore-based Crowd Genie, the blockchain startup that runs a peer-to-peer lending platform, successfully conducted its initial coin offering (ICO). The company raised $5.55 million, slightly more than the targeted $5 million, which is great news for both the developers and investors. The latter had the opportunity to buy CGCoins from February 1 to March 1.

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Genie is negotiating with several token purchasers, some of which have agreed to underwrite $3 million to their ICO, with another allocation of up to $7 million to come soon. Besides, there are four other negotiations that might bring another $10 million.

On March 13, Crown Genie announced in a tweet that its coin would soon be listed on HitBTC, one of the leading crypto exchanges out there.

https://twitter.com/Genie_ICO/status/973387523161337856

Currently, HitBitcoin is one of the top 10 crypto exchanges by trading volume, according to Coinmarketcap data. Its total daily trading volume goes beyond $232 million. This should encourage CGCoin investors, as they will be able to trade the tokens in exchange for other cryptocurrencies. The team will probably partner with other crypto services to get its token listed there.

How to Buy or Sell CGC When It Goes Live on HitBTC?

If you missed the Crowd Genie ICO, don’t worry – you can buy the CGC tokens once they get listed on HitBTC. Buying and holding the token or adding it to your crypto portfolio might be a great decision as the project is at its nascent stage and is expected to grow at a fast pace once it launches its lending platform.

Here is a short step by step guide that will show you how to buy the coin:

• Step 1 – Register HitBTC

First of all, you should create an account with the crypto exchange, which is not a big deal given that the registration procedure is quite standard. All you have to do is to fill in the blanks with your email address and choose a strong password. You’ll get the further instructions via email.

Step 2 – Make a deposit

If you want to buy CGCoin on HitBTC, you should deposit crypto funds in the first place. Thus, you should already have a crypto wallet with Bitcoin or Ethereum to move the funds to your account. If you don’t hold BTC or ETH, you can easily buy those with fiat money via one of the popular exchanges, such as Coinbase, Kraken, CEX.IO, or Bitfinex.
To deposit money on HitBTC, click “Deposit” in the upper right side of the page, and then click another “Deposit” in line with the cryptocurrency you hold on the other exchange. You will see a wallet address and a QR code. Use one of those codes as the withdrawal address on the exchange where you hold your BTC or ETH.

Step 3 – Buying CGC tokens

Once you have the crypto funds, you can buy CGC by clicking on “Exchange” on the upper left side of HitBTC’s homepage. You’ll see a live chart and a list of the available markets and tokens. Choose the base cryptocurrency (HitBTC might list CGCoin against BTC, ETH or USDT, but we don’t know precisely which of them) and use the search tool to find the CGCoin. Now set a Buy market order by indicating the amount you want to purchase and clicking on the green button.

That’s it! Now you can move your CGC tokens to any ERC20-compatible wallet.

If you want to sell your CGC tokens, you should register HitBTC, deposit your coins from the wallet, and set a Sell market order.

Crowd Genie’s Lending Platform

As mentioned above, Crowd Genie provides a peer-to-peer lending platform that connects borrowers with lenders. The system applies the blockchain technology, which ensures security, transparency, and fast processing of lending transactions. Genie’s platform is focused on small and medium-sized enterprises, but its customer profiles might diversify in the future.

“For example, someone has a loan from a bank, but he doesn’t have the ability to extend his loan, and he needs to pay his vendor in the next 45 days. That means he only needs a loan for three months and will not need us after that. That’s the kind of person we look for,” said Genie’s co-founder Akshay Mehra.

It’s worth mentioning that Genie’s product is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), a rarity for Singapore-based P2P lending startups.

In order to make sure both lenders and borrowers enjoy safe conditions, Genie is planning to create a digital passport for every customer and asset. This will help the company comply with the KYC, AML, and FATCA requirements.  

Genie wants to expand its lending exchange platform beyond Singapore, making it an Asia-wide lending ecosystem.

Crowd Genie’s Roadmap

Crowd Genie is making the very first steps into the lending industry, and its roadmap shows that it has a long but steady path to an unstoppable expansion. Here are the key targets until mid-2019:

• March 2018 – the ICO ended on the first day of the month, and now the CGC tokens should get listed on several crypto exchanges.
• May 2018 – part of the raised funds will be lent out to established businesses.
• July 2018 – Genie will store the profiles as Digital Passports on the blockchain. The first buyback program will start.
• September 2018 – this is an essential task for the startup. It should launch the lending platform and the mobile app.
• October 2018 – Genie will open new offices in Australia and India. Also, it will file with the MAS for approval of its Blockchain Asset Exchange. The second buyback program will be carried out.
• January 2019 – the next year will start with the third buyback program.
• February 2019 – Genie plans to launch the Blockchain Asset Exchange.
• April 2019 – the startup will open new offices in New Zealand.

As you can see, the best is still to come, so you can make CGC part of your crypto portfolio. Genie will grow at an incredible pace, and its lending platform and the Blockchain Asset Exchange are expected to become mainstream products.

The global economic organization has called for agreement on new frameworks for the taxation of emerging technologies such as cryptocurrency.

CryptoKitties, the ‘world’s most successful blockchain game’, announced it has raised $12 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Union Square Ventures (USV).

CryptoKitties Raises $12M From Horowitz, Union Square

A blockchain-based game where users collect and breed digital cats was able to raise $12 million from a number of angel investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Union Square Ventures (USV), Fred Ehrsam (Coinbase co-founder), Naval Ravikant (AngelList founder), and Mark Pincus (Zynga founder).

A huge success on the Ethereum network, the blockchain-based virtual game is breaking away from its parent company, Canada-based Axiom Zen, and being spun off as a separate venture.

The company’s vision, best described as “the future is meow”, is an unlimited world of play, built by everyone who chooses to be a part of it.

Where ownership is real, and the things you create and discover, you can keep forever. Where games can be entire economies, unlocking mutual incentives for players and builders to extend the gaming experience.

A wide number of ‘fat cats’ are onboarding the spin-off. CryptoKitties is also taking the money and support from angel investors and seed funds such: as Bill Tai (kitesurfing VC and Board Member of BitFury); William Mougayar (Founder of Token Summit); Avichal Garg (Expert at Y Combinator); CAA Ventures; Digital Currency Group; Version One; Rising Tide Fund; YesVC (a new fund started by Caterina Fake; co-founder of Flickr); Jyri Engstrom;  and Hex Capital.

The game allows users to fully own unique CryptoKitties, built on ERC-721 tokens, which cannot be replicated, taken away, or destroyed. Each one carries unique number and a 256-bit distinct genome with DNA that can be passed to offspring.

It is one of the first blockchain-based games in the world, in an attempt to deploy the technology for recreational and leisurely purposes. The growing popularity of the game was able to congest the Ethereum network in December 2017, as it reached an all-time high in transactions.

As of December 2017, Etherscan, an ethereum analytics platform, reported a sixfold increase in pending transactions on Ethereum since CryptoKitties was released the week before. 

Axiom Zen will continually release a new CryptoKitty every 15 minutes until November 2018. The rest of supply is determined by breeding of crypto-kitties. Based on their limited genomes, there is a limit of 4 billion total cats that can be bred. Users are able to put them up for sale for a price set in ETH. The priciest CryptoKitty ever sold was valued at 246.9255 ETH.

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Data analytics platform Biotron has developed a compelling go-to-market strategy that rewards users before they even start sharing their data through its mobile application and other tools. The business will use location intelligence to provide brands with insights into their customer base and analytics of their retail chain. In return, users get shares of the revenue before they join the platform. Once they opt-in to Biotron’s mobile application and start providing their data, they will be able to cash out in BTRN tokens or cash.

“Similar to many other companies we had to solve a chicken and egg problem. Without users, we can’t create intelligence reports for our clients to generate revenue. And without revenue, it’s hard to attract users. We’ve decided to license third-party datasets to power our products and we’ll start attributing revenue to the contributing advertising ID. Once the user installs our mobile application, there will already be revenue waiting for them. In turn, we’ll be able to collect data through these apps,” says Pavol Magic, Biotron’s CEO.

Licensed and collected data, such as places of interest and movement data, will be used to create user profiles, audiences, and attributed visits. Collectively, this information will be used to create intelligence reports for brands. They can include information on the customer base, performance of the retail chain, or best possible new locations. Audiences can be further used to precisely target a client’s online advertising campaigns.

Revenue from the sales of these intelligence reports will be attributed to users who contributed their data even if they don’t have the application installed. They will also be able to control what data is collected and how it is used, ensuring the level of transparency and privacy the user desires. Biotron will also use standard industry practices like pseudonymization to keep users’ information safe.

The mobile application allows users to provide ground truth data (such as their social demography), which will improve the algorithms that create user profiles and audiences, resulting in an unparalleled quality of the reports. These users will, in turn, be rewarded by higher earnings. Apart from the revenue share, Biotron will also use undistributed tokens for user acquisition and motivating users to share more data.

After location intelligence Biotron is set to tackle other use cases as well. The first one being healthcare analytics in cooperation with Diagnose.me, a leading online health platform. Solving traffic congestion will be the next challenge to follow soon after that.

This unique solution is a win-win-win scenario. Users get control over what data is collected and how it is used and in turn, they get rewarded by shares from the revenue. Clients get location intelligence reports of unparalleled quality for lower costs. Biotron fulfills its vision of enabling innovation through the availability of data and bringing transparency to a somewhat tarnished industry.

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A look inside Thailand’s battle to regulate crypto and ICO #ANALYSIS

Every time Tether “prints” additional USDT tokens, the Bitcoin community is in uproar. Many people perceive this company to be one of the biggest BTC price manipulators to date. Their most recent batch of 300 million USDT has not gone by unnoticed. This doesn’t mean the company is doing anything wrong or illegal, though.

Tether Press in Full Effect

Over the past few months, there have been a lot of controversies surrounding Tether. The company provides users with a digital token representing a value of $1. Although there are no ties to the Federal Reserve, the company is allowed to issue this token right now. However, Bitcoin users all over the world are somewhat concerned over this particular scheme. In most people’s opinion, Tether adds a lot more USDT to the list whenever the BTC price is dropping.

With a new issuance of another 300 million USDT, a lot of questions are raised. It is the first time in over a month Tether issued more USDT tokens through OMNI. That in itself is rather interesting to keep an eye on as well. It is a pure coincidence the Bitcoin price took a nasty tumble in the same month. Even so, the speculation remains as to how this company affects the cryptocurrency market as a whole. Until proven guilty, they are doing nothing wrong or illegal.

It is also worth noting how Tether has issued nearly $1bn worth of USDT since January. This seems to indicate the demand for their token is skyrocketing. As to who buys those tokens, is a different matter altogether. It seems all UST-related markets across the many different exchanges are doing pretty well these days. With over $2.52 billion worth of USDT in circulation right now, things will get very interesting. This does not include the tokens issued on the Ethereum network, which account for nearly $60 million as well.

What Comes Next for Bitcoin?

As one would expect, people will likely see a massive Bitcoin price surge in the next 24 hours. This morning, the value surpassed $9,000 for the first time in nearly a week. This doesn’t appear to be fueled by the USDT printing process, though. Instead, it seems business is resuming as usual without any specific outside factors influencing this process as of right now.

Whether or not we will see more price gains, remains to be seen. For now, it remains a mystery why Tether is issuing so many USDT in one batch. A total of $300 million worth in one go is pretty steep, even for this company. As long as they have $300 million in extra assets to cover this process, there is nothing to be concerned about. The big question is whether or not that is effectively the case. Until Tether undergoes a proper audit, we will never know for sure.

Rest assured things will get interesting for all cryptocurrencies moving forward. The USDT token can be traded against top altcoins as well. Which of these markets will see some major momentum in the coming hours and days, remains to be determined. Anything can happen in the world of cryptocurrency these days. For now, we have to wait and see how things play out exactly.

The post Tether Issues Another $300m as Bitcoin Price Reverses Course appeared first on NewsBTC.

Introducing ivyKoin, a newcomer to the cryptocurrency world that hopes to rival Ripple in the interbank payments space. The coin is specifically aimed at bridging the divide between banks, cryptocurrency, and customers —facilitating secure and transparent business payments on a global scale.

ivyKoin will look to develop a blockchain based-cryptocurrency that will allow senders to voluntarily de-anonymize transactions. The rationale behind this feature is to make the coin palatable to banks and financial institutions bound by KYC (Know Your Customer), KYT (Know Your Transactions), and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) requirements, compliance issues that thus far have seen most turn a cold shoulder to cryptocurrencies.

According to the company’s website, it is intended that the ivyKoin Network will function through the use of a dual network architecture, where senders of tokens operate on a public network (ivyKoin Public Network), and parties that provide the financial settlement to fiat currency participate on a private network (ivyKoin Private Network). KYC/KYT/AML data supporting transactions will be captured in cryptographic containers that are generated from the ivyKoin Public Network interaction with the ivyKoin Network smart contracts and support the activities of the ivyKoin Private Network participants in facilitating transaction settlement. This data will be stored and accessible to the financial institution and governing regulators of the fiat balance recipients.

To read ivyKoin’s white paper, please follow this link.

The platform has planned architectural improvements compared to Ripple — its closest peer and a leading global Altcoin, following are some examples:

1. Technology is designed to break KYC, KYT, and AML barriers between cryptocurrency and the traditional financial system (Ripple has no KYC, KYT, and AML included in core design).
2. It has up to 74+ KYC and 120+ KYT data points and customer files per transaction (Ripple’s KYC/KYT data is not associated with cryptocurrency).
3. It has a decentralized system of transaction validation (Ripple has a centralized system of transaction validation).
4. The public coin economics are driven by the utility of the coin, which is on a public ledger (Ripple’s coin economics are not transparent; large, privately held reserves).

IvyKoin roadmap:

First Half of 2018: Token Generation Event (Q1 2018), IVYA available publicly, Test Network Live with Smart Contracts, KYC/KYT Transaction containers, ivyKoin public interface live, Establish partnerships with Financial Institutions, Discussions with US Regulators

Second Half of 2018: Public network live, ivySend live with legacy interbank systems, ivyKoin direct IVYA sales and market operations live, ivyReceive live with IVYB interbank funds transfer, Accelerate Financial institution partnerships

2019: All fiat/crypto conversions live, Enterprise authorization to containers, First financial intermediaries

For updates, see ivyKoin’s website, join ivyKoin on Telegram, or follow ivyKoin on Twitter.

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Bitcoin’s three-day winning streak is encouraging for the bulls, but a quick move above $10,500 is needed to neutralize the so-called “death cross.”

It has been a pretty interesting few days for all cryptocurrency markets. With most currencies noting small to medium gains, a trend reversal appears to be on our hands.  As of right now, some coins are nothing some big gains as of right now, including Cardano. With the Cardano price shooting up by nearly 19% in the past 24 hours, things are looking good once again.

Cardano Price is Moving Up Nicely

It has become evident there are a few currencies out there which will rise in value quicker than the rest. This is especially true where lower-cap currencies are concerned, but it also applies to higher-ranked altcoins as of right now. The Cardano price is looking pretty solid right now, thanks to another solid 18.96% gain over the past 24 hours. It is evident there is a genuine demand for this particular altcoin as of right now, and the value may continue to rise for quite some to come.

With this recent increase, we are now looking at a Cardano price of $0.22. That in itself is a pretty solid value, although it is still a long way removed from the all-time high of late last year. Then again, all other cryptocurrencies are suffering from a similar fate and it will take several months until things improve once again. These small gains need to be taken in stride before the market turns sour again, as the overall volatility is not over by any means.

It is also worth noting Cardano continues to gain on Bitcoin, even though the world’s leading cryptocurrency is still rising in value as well. With this 10.81% increase over Bitcoin, Cardano is certainly showing an appetite for future rice gains, albeit we have to wait and see how this situation unfolds over the next few hours and days.

With $251.83m in 24-hour trading volume, the demand for Cardano appears to be more than genuine. This trading volume is relatively low for this currency, although it is more than acceptable given the overall market trend.With this current trading volume, it is safe to say there is a genuine demand for Cardano right now, although it remains to be seen how all of this plays out in the long run.

As of right now, the biggest exchange for Cardano is Upbit. Their volume is nearly six times as high as that of Binance, and over ten times as high as the volume of Bittrex. It is evident the South Koreans are mainly driving the demand for Cardano right now, but that doesn’t have to be a big thing per se. The bigger question is whether or not we will see other exchanges increase their trading volume for ADA in the coming hours.

As of right now, we have to wait and see how things will unfold for the Cardano price. Right now, there seems to be sufficient momentum in place to effectively push the Cardano price a bit higher, although one has to keep in mind things can turn around at any given moment. There will be some profit taking along the way in the next few hours, but that won’t necessarily impact the Cardano price in a negative way.

With the rapid advancement of internet-based technologies, cybersecurity is a constant cloud looming on the horizon. As the technology evolves, so too, do the cybercriminals. Their constant efforts to steal valuable data and disrupt business through DDoS attacks are increasingly sophisticated.

Holding companies hostage and monetizing data through ransomware techniques is sadly par for the course. In fact, it’s estimated that cybersecurity alone costs the global economy some $450 billion a year. With IT professionals scrambling to stay one step ahead of the hackers, how can blockchain be used to aid cybersecurity?

No Single Point of Failure

The decentralized nature of the blockchain means that there is no single point of failure, nor one central database waiting to be hacked. Information is stored over several databases, and each block is linked to the next in the chain, making no “hackable” entrance. This provides infinitely greater security than our current, centralized structures.

Removing Human Error

The weakest link in our current system is simple logins that are vulnerable to being cracked. Blockchain can remove human error in cybersecurity, as businesses can authenticate devices without the need for a password system. Each device is provided with a specific SSL certificate, rather than a password. Human intervention becoming a potential hacker vector is consequently avoided.

Bitcoin advocate, adjunct professor at NYU Law School and practicing attorney, Andrew Hinkes, explains, “Using a public blockchain with proof of work consensus can remove the foibles of human mistake or manipulation.”

Detecting Tampering in Real Time

The blockchain can uncover and reject suspicious behavior in the system in real time. Say, for example, that a hacker tried to interfere with the information in a block. The entire system would be alerted and examine all data blocks to locate the one that stood out from the rest. It would then be recognized as false and excluded from the system.

Improving IoT Security

With the rise in IoT devices, come inherent security risks. We’ve already seen problems occur when trying to disable compromised devices that become part of botnets. According to Kevin Curran, IEEE senior member and professor of cybersecurity at Ulster University, the blockchain can put an end to that:

“The blockchain, with its solid cryptographic foundation offering a decentralized solution can aid against data tampering, thus offering greater assurances for the legitimacy of the data.” This would mean that potentially billions of IoT devices could connect and communicate in a secure ecosystem.

Traceability

All transactions on the blockchain are highly traceable, using a timestamp and digital signature. Companies can easily go back to the root of each and every transaction to a given date and locate the corresponding party. Since all transactions are cryptographically associated to a user, the perpetrator can be easily found.

Says Hinkes, “Blockchains create an audit trail of all activity by its participants, which simplifies access control and monitoring.” This offers companies a level of security and transparency on every iteration.

The Takeaway

Currently, the impending threat of DDoS attacks comes from our existing Domain Name System. Blockchain technology would disrupt this completely by decentralizing the DNS and distributing the content to a greater number of nodes. This would make it virtually impossible for cybercriminals to hack and create a secure environment to host the world’s data.

President Trump’s ban on Venezuela’s cryptocurrency Petro could hugely impact its future plans to launch yet another ICO #FOLLOW_UP