Day: April 7, 2018

The age-old saying, health is wealth has never been doubted. A healthy body is the desire of every man and woman. However, with the spiraling cost of healthcare and medical insurance, access to good healthcare systems is becoming unaffordable for many people.

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The medical sector shows no sign of a slump either. A report by Quintiles IMS predicts that by 2021, annual global drug prescription will value nearly $1,500,000,000,000.

Digipharm: Affordable Healthcare Platform

Even with a huge growth, the healthcare sector is becoming clogged due to high cost and constrained resources. Compromises in the current systems are done to keep the flow going. In the end, it is the patients that are denied updated and innovative treatments.

A truly astounding feature of Blockchain is that the technology is adaptable to any kind of work or service. The Digipharm team has developed a healthcare platform using Blockchain. With it, the platform bypasses the infrastructural restrictions and replaces the age-old fee for service system in favor of value-based approach. This essentially means that instead of treating patients on a flat rate, payments of healthcare services should be tied the quality of the healthcare provided.

Using Blockchain, Digipharm combines healthcare industry expertise and decentralization, transforming how the healthcare systems work. Digipharm ensures that services rendered are quick, efficient and cheaper. It also allows monetization of patient data by allowing users to be in control of their healthcare data. The data can be contributed to health-related research and allow for patients to earn money.

Banking heavily on smart contracts, the platform will eliminate manual processing of payments and role of middlemen. This means there will be a huge reduction in the administrative cost of the healthcare sector, making services, even more, cheaper and accessible.

Teaming Up With Swisscom Blockchain

Swisscom Blockchain is a sister concern of Swisscom, the largest telecom service provider and the leading IT company in Switzerland. Swisscom Blockchain is a decentralized system advisory service that helps startups by giving them Blockchain development, infrastructure, and token generations services.

Starting in September 2017, the highly qualified company has been very selective about its clients, preferring to deal with only those who have a sound plan. The agreement between Swisscom Blockchain and Digipharm shows the seriousness and the commitment of the healthcare platform to provide innovative, cheap and world class service to its users. Sven Moller, Head of ICO services at Swisscom Blockchain stated that together the two companies could make an impact on the global scale and they are both delighted to support innovation at a local level. The company boasts a team of experts will work side by side with the Digipharm team to bring their vision to life, bring fair pricing to healthcare and benefit patients all over the world.

With the team up, Digipharm’s ability to create a solid, scalable platform that will possess the highest quality of data, services, privacy, and security is greatly enhanced.

For more information about the value-based healthcare decentralized services, visit their website: https://www.digipharm.ch

Pakistan’s State Bank (SBP) has issued a statement which confirms that financial companies are now barred from working with cryptocurrency firms in the country.

The SBP website’s statement confirmed that all banks in Pakistan “are advised to refrain from processing, using, trading, holding, transferring value, promoting and investing in virtual currencies or tokens… any transaction in this regard shall immediately be reported to the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) as a suspicious transaction”.

Pakistan’s FMU sees its goals as developing a strong reporting culture amongst financial institutions, making a contribution towards fighting money laundering and terrorist financing. It also sees itself as a recognized model of financial intelligence gathering, analysis and dissemination in Pakistan.

In the wake of this announcement, there has already been an impact on the industry in Pakistan. Urdubit, an exchange which was first launched in 2014, has shut down. Users attempting to access the platform today will be greeted with a screen message, “Urdubit is Shutting Down”, warning its users to withdraw their funds “as quickly as possible” due to a “State Bank of Pakistan prohibition on dealing with virtual currencies”.

Rodrigo Souza, co-founder of BlinkTrade, the provider of Urdubit’s open source software, suggests that governments and banks will fight Bitcoin due to a potential run on the central bank.

The news of Pakistan’s curb on cryptocurrency trading comes just a day after India’s announcement on Thursday that The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was now strictly prohibiting all banks and regulated financial entities in dealing with cryptocurrencies. On the news of India’s announcement, the price of Bitcoin plummeted to a low of 350,000 Pakistani Rupees  (USD 5,392) against its international market price of USD 6,617 according to cryptocurrency exchange Coinome.

Following yesterday’s ban the Pakistani government has indicated that those using cryptocurrencies to transfer funds outside Pakistan could be prosecuted. The SBP declared “no entity is currently licensed or authorized by SBP  to offer money remittance services and products in Pakistan using virtual currencies/coins/tokens”.

The post Pakistan Central Bank Curbs Crypto appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

The crypto markets have seen relatively little volatility in the wake of Indian central bank’s crypto ban. #NEWS

‘The South African Central Reserve Bank (SARB) has announced moves towards the overseeing of cryptocurrency and fintech developments in the country.

SARB has taken these measures in order to add for investors and eliminate risk. Although it doesn’t currently regulate cryptocurrency transactions, the bank has stated that the introduction of an investigative unit, rather than premature regulation, is one way of promoting growth and innovation.

The new unit will be a non-state self-regulatory body aimed at overseeing further developments in the industry. The new self-regulatory organization (SRO) would establish its own “rules, directives and standards”. SARB’s director of banking practice, Bridget King, claims that there is a risk that early legislation could curb progress as the technology is moving so fast. She feels that it would be better to simply supervise to prevent legislation becoming quickly outdated and unworkable. King suggested “…if laws are drafted based on existing technology… by the time legislation is enacted, the legislation will be obsolete…”.

The unit’s Project Khoka plans to examine the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a method for processing secure payments. SARB will launch a proof of concept (PoC) to replicate interbank clearing. For this purpose, the bank has announced that it plans to use Quorum, an Ethereum blockchain-based system.

“The objective of the bank is to gain a practical understanding of DLTs through the development of a PoC in collaboration with banking industry… to replicate interbank clearing and settlement on a DLT which will allow the SARB and industry to jointly assess the potential benefits and risks of DLTs”, it said.

Another issue in South Africa has been cryptocurrency tax evasion. Yesterday, the country joined many others now requiring citizens to declare their cryptocurrency earnings for the purpose of paying income tax. The South African Tax Office (SARS) made the announcement on 6 April, but made it clear that it still doesn’t consider cryptocurrencies as legal tender.

Anyone being paid for goods or services in South Africa will now have to declare these earnings as they would ordinary income. Traders profiting from cryptocurrency sales will be liable for capital gains tax. This follows the announcement made last year that SARS wished to prosecute non-declaration of earnings through cryptocurrency trading.

The post South Africa’s Central Bank to Oversee Cryptocurrency appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Until regulators come up with rules to curb pump-and-dump schemes, investors need to be extra cautious so they don’t get taken for a ride.

A crypto investment program that allegedly protected participants from bad investments by encouraging credit card fraud has been issued a cease and desist letter by Texas regulators. #NEWS

A developer who’s never been shy about claiming he created bitcoin is facing overwhelming backlash from notable crypto industry leaders.

Even though cryptocurrency is best known for its volatility, there are some interesting trends taking place as of right now. More specifically, we see the Ontology price spike by 41.21% over the past 24 hours, which is rather steep. Considering how this token has not been around for that long, it is interesting to note how speculators are driving up the value.

Ontology Price is Pushing Hard

While the concept of Ontology makes a lot of sense to investors, the project is far from finalized. It does appear the first few “test” projects built on top of this platform are live as we speak, and the investors are responding to these developments in a positive manner. One also has to keep in mind the Ontology price is mainly influenced by section need hype, but that applies to all other cryptocurrencies as well.

Over the past 24 hours, we have seen the Ontology price increased by a whopping 41.21%. Albeit it is at his first time this token notes such strong gains, this is certainly a lot higher compared to what most people would expect. Especially given the current semi-bearish pressure on all markets, one wouldn’t expect the Ontology price to rise by this much. Then again, interesting things are always happening in the world of cryptocurrency, and this current trend is a good example of that.

It is also interesting to note how the Ontology price is rising thanks to strong gains over both Bitcoin and Ethereum. ONT gained over 35% against the top two cryptocurrencies over the past 24 hours, which is not something we see every day. This current trend also pushes the Ontology market cap to almost $1bn, which is incredibly interesting, considering the project had no value prior to March 18th.

Even though Ontology has a trading volume of $125.755m, it is not exactly impressive by any means. Then again, with all cryptocurrencies struggling for decent trading volume right now, it is only normal outcomes will go through such struggles as of right now. It seems this trading volume is efficient to push the Ontology price to $3.79, although this trend can turn around pretty quickly.

Unsurprisingly, Binance is the go-to platform when trading Ontology. Any new altcoin – regardless of its actual value or technical developments-  listed on this platform tends to do quite well during the first four to eight weeks. Binance generates over 64% of all trades right now, which is pretty impressive. Huobi is also in the top three, although it seems their trading pair is far less popular as of right now.

Whether or not this Ontology price pump will continue for much longer, remains to be seen. Such volatile gains are usually followed by even more volatile corrections. Given the fact how ONT went from $0 to $3.79 in the span of three weeks, it is only normal there will be some “reckoning” at some point. When that will happen and how bad things will get for the Ontology price, remains to be determined.

A discussion on Bitcoin scalability at the Distributed Economy Convention (Deconomy) 2018 saw Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver and Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow trading words in a fiery debate that provoked multiple reactions from the crypto community.

Ver vs Mow

During the debate, Roger Ver argued that the scaling of Bitcoin was a “natural” process on the blockchain. He noted that the increase of block size should not be avoided if the number of transactions required it to expand. Ver highlighted the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, saying that Bitcoin would never achieve a role as an everyday payment currency, while Bitcoin Cash had the potential to do so.

Samson Mow retorted, saying, “We have to take into consideration the computer science aspect of it. We can’t just make things up.’’. As Mow sees it, increasing block size cannot be a final solution, as it has the potential to inflate the chain weight.

The alternative would be a secondary layer of technology cryptographically embedded into the original chain, enabling the process to continue to synchronize transactions with nodes relatively quickly. He also praised the possibility of a solution arising from Bitcoin utilizing Lightning, and the actions of Bitcoin Core.

Ver replied by stating that “Bitcoin Core is having negative merchant adoption around the world”, as opposed to the merchant adoption of Bitcoin Cash. This led him to accuse Bitcoin Core of having a “negative and incredibly damaging [effect on] Bitcoin”, declaring that he had empirical evidence to back up his claims.

He noted that it was easier for merchants to move to altcoins rather than to adopt Lightning support to the Bitcoin payment option, saying the latter would be expensive and unreliable.

The tone of the debate changed as Ver proceeded to accuse Mow’s Bitcoin Core team of having “shattered the Bitcoin ecosystem into a thousand and one different altcoins and delayed the adoption of cryptocurrencies around the world by years”.

Mow defended the notion that Bitcoin could be a valid payment option for everyone in the future, but needed time to develop, as does Lightning. He predicted that with a broader implementation of Lightning, transaction fees were bound to change, saying “like the weather, it can be hot one day, cooler the next day and windy and rainy”.

Rather than sparking a conversation within the community on the topic of debate, online reactions focused predominantly on Ver’s and Mow’s behavior with each other on stage.

Awesome debate! The contempt @SamsonMow has for @rogerkver and Bitcoin Cash is so palpable. He barely makes eye contact with Roger.
I love Rogers passionate debating skills. He's a spartan. #BitcoinCashMC #Bitcoin #CryptoKid #BCH @BTCNewsUpdates https://t.co/xF1MN5YkgY

— Krishool (@krishool) April 4, 2018

I was in the room for this and will have my own version coming out soon. watch the video….Samson comes across as a talking head….the Sean Spicer of Crypto:https://t.co/SCVP8YlyKk

— Calvin Ayre (@CalvinAyre) April 4, 2018

The two-day event, which ended on 4 April in Seoul, South Korea, invited entrepreneurs and leading industry figures to discuss the future of blockchain and related fields while hosting debates on recent industry conflicts.

Bitcoin scalability is a persistent issue of the currency, arising from an ever-increasing number of transactions on the blockchain and the problematic nature of validating them quickly enough.

The post Roger Ver And Samson Mow At Loggerheads Over Bitcoin Scaling appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Investor Tim Draper calls India’s negative crypto outlook a “huge mistake,” warns of potential to drive away engineers and coders. #NEWS

The weekend is usually a bit of an awkward period for cryptocurrency trading. This is not just because we see far less trading volume, but also because strange trends tend to materialize which don’t last all that long. As of right now,  most markets are in the green without apparent reason. Especially the Stellar price notes some strong upward momentum.

Stellar Price is Surging, for now

It is evident the current cryptocurrency price trends will most likely turn bearish in the next few hours. Given how the overall trading volume is below $10bn for the first time in a while, there appears to be no demand for any cryptocurrencies as of right now. Any movements taking place – good or bad – are achieved through low volume, which means they can turn around at any given movement.

For the Stellar price, the current uptrend looks rather brittle. While a 6.18% gain is more than respectable as of right now, it is evident the low trading volume may pose a big problem in the near future. Even so, we are now looking at a Stellar price of just above $0.20 again, which is on par with what we have seen for most of the week. Holding on to this price may prove to be rather difficult, though, as there no long-term positive momentum in any market right now.

Even though the Stellar price is up in USD value, the gain over Bitcoin is rather minimal as of right now. An increase by 1.9% in favor of XLM is nothing spectacular by any means. It only further confirms how reliant Stellar – as well as other cryptocurrencies – are on the Bitcoin price as of right now. Depending on how BTC evolves this weekend, the Stellar price may see some hiccups along the way.

Speaking of the trading volume earlier, Stellar’s volume is not impressive by any stretch of the imagination. Over the past 24 hours, we saw $32.25m worth of XLM changing hands, which is a lot lower compared to what most people would like to see at this point in time. Even so, it is sufficient to propel the Stellar price to this current level, although it may not remain there for much longer.

With such a  low trading volume, it is still interesting to see which exchange generates the most trades. As of right now, Binance is clearly in the lead, as it provides 45.25% of all XLM trading. Upbit and Bittrex complete the top three, albeit with far less volume to speak of. It is remarkable how few fiat currency pairs we see in the top ten right now, albeit it is not entirely surprising either.

How all of this will evolve in terms of the Stellar price, remains to be seen. As of right now, things do not look mightily impressive, but the weekend is only just getting started. Even so, there are still a lot of ways things can play out. Holding on to this current $0.20 XLM price may prove to be difficult, but we have seen a lot of strange things in the world of cryptocurrency as well. Weekends are always unpredictable in this regard.