Day: April 4, 2018

Iran’s president has spoken out against aired plans to ban Telegram’s messaging app over fears its new token may undermine the national currency.

Crypto Aware found that cryptocurrency hacks and scams in 2018 are worth about 40 percent of all incidents between 2011 and 2018.

Hacks and Scams in 2018 Worth 40 Percent of $1.7 Billion-Worth Incidents of Last Seven Years

Crypto Aware, a decentralized token investment-management community, has found that over $1.7 billion-worth of cryptocurrencies were lost to hacks and scams between 2011 and 2018. $670 million-worth of which were lost over the last three months. The most notable recent hack was against Coincheck, with a reported loss of 500 million NEM, equivalent of $530 million USD. This means that the Coincheck hack was worth close to a fourth of all cryptocurrency theft by value from 2011 to 2018. Crypto Aware founder Anna Wu told Business Insider;

“Cryptocurrency is receiving more and more validation as a means of value transfer, with top coins reaching historically high prices toward the end of last year. This attracted a lot of new, unseasoned investors who are not well versed in terms of online security and who are identified as easy targets by scammers,”

 

The new trend of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and the bullish momentum of Bitcoin allowed the cryptocurrency market to grow tenfold in a period of a year, from $27 billion in April 2017 to over $270 billion in April 2018. The market cap has gone as high as $823 billion in early 2018 and the spike in incidents is correlated with the huge growth of the market seen over the year:

“Cryptocurrency frauds, scams, and hacks tend to rise every time there is considerable upward momentum in pricing for cryptocurrency market, so be extra cautious when the market is bullish”, Wu added.

This volatile and unregulated market becomes even more vulnerable as many investors store their digital assets centrally on exchanges, which make them an easy target for hackers. Cold storage and decentralized exchanges are growing in popularity as safer methods.

ICOs High Rate of Failure

Initial coin offerings (ICOs), however, are still an easy way to scam investors. Startups have raised $5.6 billion through ICOs in 2017 and about half of them have failed already. Moreover, a recent study conducted by Satis Group claims that 81 percent of the ICOs turned out to be scams, 6 percent failed, and 5 percent had “gone dead”, which comes to a total of 92 percent failing to list on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Anna Wu recommends caution regarding initial coin offerings: “If it seems too good to be true – it is. Investment scams often try to entice gullible investors with unrealistic returns. Don’t be greedy.” There are also phishing scams, but Wu explains how not to take the bait: “Phishing scams are by far the most popular type of scams and you can easily avoid them by checking the website address against the officially published URLs character by character.”

With a total of $670 million stolen already, 2018 is on track to becoming the worst year of crypto losses in terms of assets stolen.

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Bitcoin’s corrective rally has run out of steam in the last 12 hours, but only a clear break below $7,000 would kill the odds of a move higher.

Gauging the true value of Bitcoin is not all that easy. There are many different aspects and factors one needs to take into consideration at all times. One particular statistic to keep an eye on is the value transferred over this network. Current statistics seem to indicate Bitcoin is doing just fine as a currency.

Transferring Value With Bitcoin

The concept of Bitcoin has been around for just over nine years. During the first two to three years, there was virtually no interest in this cryptocurrency. A lot of things have changed since then. More and more people are paying attention to Bitcoin, albeit for very different reasons. While still a popular investment vehicle, it is evident the digital currency also brings a lot of other value to the table.

Over the past few years, more than $6 trillion has been transferred across the Bitcoin network. That is quite a healthy amount for such a “niche market”. It is a very positive sign overall, as it shows Bitcoin has an actual use. Although this also includes miner rewards and moving funds to exchanges, the daily transaction volume is picking up quickly.

There has now been over $6 trillion USD in value sent using #bitcoin, with just under $10 billion being sent daily.

Anyone doubting bitcoin's role as a medium of exchange is clearly not looking at the data. pic.twitter.com/lr1AXJRbbv

— Josiah Hernandez (@chartingbitcoin) April 4, 2018

As is always the case, the chart above shows peaks and lows. Moving Bitcoin on the network has been subject to higher fees and transaction delays at times. Even so, the uptrend is still in place and clearly visible. As of right now, we look at a daily Bitcoin transaction volume of $10 billion. That is a more than what people ever thought possible nine years ago.

Using BTC as a Proper Currency

It has become apparent the number of Bitcoin users continues to grow. Just last year, we saw an explosion in terms of global interest. With new users exploring Bitcoin, it is a matter of time until the value sent over this network will keep increasing. This will increase even further once decentralized exchanges become more common.

Additionally, Bitcoin is the world’s only cross-border currency. It is not encumbered by trade agreements or inter-fiat exchange rates. In fact, it is the only currency governments don’t have an actual say over as of right now, despite their best efforts. There is still a long way to go until this becomes a global currency, though.

With solid technical developments in the pipeline, Bitcoin will continue to improve. Growth in this industry comes in many different forms. A growing daily value transfer volume is an important aspect. To support this increase, the underlying technology needs to hold up as well. It seems the best is yet to come in that particular regard.

The post Bitcoin Processed $6 Trillion to Date, Continues to Evolve into Global Currency appeared first on NewsBTC.

A startup has launched a marketplace for selling and buying personal data which has already attracted 4000 users. #SPONSORED

It seems as if the cryptocurrency markets are preparing for another round of bearish pressure. Thankfully, some altcoins are still putting up a good fight.The Litecoin price, for example, is still in the green. As of right now, we are looking at a Litecoin price of $129, and surpassing $130 is still quite possible.

The Litecoin Price is Still Bullish

Finding any positive note for the cryptocurrency markets throughout the past three and a half months is pretty difficult. The same goes for the Litecoin price, as it has seen its fair share of market volatility. Ever since dropping from $303, the Litecoin price has not seen too much positive momentum as of late.

Even though there was one spike to $232 in February, the overall trend has been rather negative overall. At one point, it seemed as if the Litecoin price would drop below $100, even though that has not happened as of yet. As of right now, we are looking at another small leg up, thanks to a decent 4.22% increase over the past 24 hours. It is nothing to get overly excited about whatsoever, but it’s still better than what we have seen since mid-February.

As one would expect from an altcoin going up in value, Litecoin is gaining on Bitcoin. With a 4.76% gain over BTC in the past 24 hours, the Litecoin price is appreciating nicely. Even though the Bitcoin price is showing signs of taking again, it remains to be seen how this will affect all of the altcoins in the market accordingly.

On the trading volume front, things are not looking all that bad for Litecoin as of right now. More specifically, we see $376.82m in Litecoin trades over the past few hours, which is on par with most other top currencies. However, the market still suffers from a lower overall trading volume, and it will be interesting to see if Litecoin can pick up the pace in the process

GDAX is still leading the charge in terms of Litecoin trading volume. Even so, OKEx has two trading pairs in the top three which outperform GDAX in overall volume. With just three fiat currency pairs in the entire top 10, there is still a long way to go until we can speak of an actual Litecoin price recovery.

How all of this will evolve in the coming hours and days, remains to be determined. It is evident the cryptocurrency markets are not out of the woods by any means, even though things may finally start to improve sooner rather than later. For the time being, the Litecoin price trend will mainly hinge on how Bitcoin performs. Given the current brittle stability in that department, things may not necessarily improve by much in the coming days.

The Central Bank of Russia may use its ethereum-based Masterchain software to communicate financial messaging across the Eurasian Economic Union.

Coinbase, America’s largest cryptocurrency platform, continues to cherry pick Wall Street as it acquires another top level executive from the New York Stock Exchange.

Coinbase Attracts Another Wall Street Executive

Business Insider has reported that former global head of sales for NYSE Euronext desk Christine Sandler has joined Coinbase as it’s director of institutional sales.

The executive who was until recently the head of equity electronic sales at Barclays will report to Adam White the general manager of GDAX, Coinbase’s institutional-grade exchange platform.

Coinbase has been working to attract institutional business in cryptocurrency from Wall Street firms  by offering services through its GDAX exchange since 2014. Looking to expand that base they are now launching Coinbase Custody.

The service will offer the same level of security as custody banks with additional services, such as:

• Dedicated account representatives and phone support
• Multi-user accounts with separate permissions
• Insurance (in some cases)

The Coinbase Custody service will be aimed at institutional clients with at least $10 million in deposits and will charge a $100,000 startup plus monthly fees based on assets.

Coinbase Looking to Hire New Executives

Sandler is not the first Wall Street veteran Coinbase has poached to reinforce its institutional sales team. In early March Eric Scro joined the San Francisco company as its vice president of finance. Also previously with the NYSE Scro was the head of finance and had been the exchange operator since 2009.

Coinbase released a statement at the time which read “Eric will be focused on helping serve institutional clients and deal with the increasingly complex financial and regulatory requirements of the business.”

At the height of the 2017 cryptocurrency market boom Coinbase hired Asiff Hirji away from Ameritrade to act as it’s chief operating officer (COO). Hirji told Fortune magazine at the time of his hire

“This is no longer a fringe thing just for fan boys … The Wall Street crowd and traditional old guard in the financial world are jumping in as well.”

Coinbase General Manager Dan Romero acknowledges that the company is scaling up to meet future demands from the institutional market. As reported by Business Insider Romero said Coinbase is looking to hire “a bunch of different executives at the company,” and that they are planning to double their staff from 250 to 500 in 2018.

Part of the reasons Coinbase may be focused on hiring executives from Wall Street is to deal with the strict regulatory conditions of acting as an crytpocurrency exchange in New York where the majority of the country’s institutional investors are found.

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The post Coinbase Adds Another Wall Street Exec as it Scales Up for Institutional Markets appeared first on NewsBTC.

Cryptocurrency reminds us that tax and other rules need to be fluid, as inaction or inappropriate responses can halt or slow technological advances.