Day: April 11, 2018

Over 20 European countries have jointly established a new blockchain group to share technical and regulatory expertise.

The total value of US dollar banknotes and coins in circulation today is said to be around $1.59 trillion. In comparison to the world’s leading currency, the overall cryptocurrency market makes up for a quarter of the value.

These new-age digital assets have a market capitalization of about USD 400 billion, which surpasses the valuation of tech and e-commerce giant Amazon while lagging that of Apple. However, despite its size and all the media attention, the crypto-industry is plagued by a huge liquidity problem.

Bitcoin as a Transactional Medium

It has been 9 years since the Bitcoin whitepaper was released, which gave rise to other cryptocurrencies over time. However, these digital assets continue to have very limited real-life applications.

While Visa recorded a transaction volume of 150 million transactions per day, Bitcoin blockchain processed 490,644 confirmed transactions as of 14th December 2017. There are different predictions about the crypto-market development. According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance 2017, there are between 2.9 million and 5.8 million unique active users or cryptocurrency wallets worldwide.

The Boston Federal Reserve states that over 75% of the cryptocurrency community members in the country used Bitcoin and other altcoins for payment over a 12-month period during 2016. This was further supported by a Coinbase/ARK Invest Report which stated that 46% of Coinbase customers use Bitcoin as a medium of transaction after having made payments at least once a year with the cryptocurrency. These studies show the increasing penetration of cryptos as payment instruments.

Incentivizing End Consumers to Pay Using Cryptos

Paytomat is a platform that incentivizes transactional usage of cryptocurrencies through a decentralized network of point-of-sale terminals. The blockchain based payment processing platform creates an ecosystem that provides traction for cryptocurrencies as emerging payment mediums. It will serve the merchants, consumers, and the core cryptocurrency teams of successful blockchain projects.

Paytomat has embarked on a public presale, which began on April 2, 2018 and will end on April 18. The Paytomat solution streamlines the process of accepting payment in crypto for merchants, gives an extra incentive for customers with no extra conversion fees.

Built as a decentralized autonomous organization with decentralized features, Paytomat’s unique loyalty program is based on PTM coin, which acts as an additional stimulus to incentivize merchants to accept payments in cryptocurrency. And, PTX tokens residing as an asset on top of the PTM blockchain incentivize end consumers to pay using cryptos.

Connecting Additional Merchants

Paytomat is essentially a set of software solutions which is compatible with most operating systems, both web-based and native. It is built on three layers including the Paytomat core which is a combination of the Paytomat Database, processing server which operates the database, and a set of APIs used to connect the database to Paytomat merchants and blockchain teams. Secondly, the ecosystem also includes a set of payment processing gateways which are used to interpret the business logic of their payment partners to their core, making communication uniform. Lastly, Paytomat will have an embedded all-in-one multi-currency wallet, which allows sending and accepting cryptocurrencies within the ecosystem. This also serves as the building block for the blockchain-based loyalty program which is built around the PTM loyalty coin and PTX reward token.

To supplement Paytomat’s decentralization, the development team has developed the Point-of-Sale as a Proof-of-Stake (POS as POS) protocol, which allows any POS device in their network to become a master-node on the PTM blockchain. The Paytomat POS solution is already in use by dozens of various merchants in the firm’s home country, Ukraine. The firm is working on accomplishing a milestone in Q1 2018, by connecting 150 additional merchants in other countries. So far, progress is being made and in the future, Paytomat will potentially become the MasterCard and Visa of the cryptocurrency market.

Paytomat Token Sale Details

Up to this point, Paytomat has existed exclusively on the founder’s funding which was generated from cryptocurrency trading operations. The firm firmly believes that the project will start providing sufficient funding to cover its burn rate around the third quarter of 2018. This will also provide some basic compensation for the funders from 2017 and the first half of 2018. For the purpose of its token sale, Paytomat will introduce the PTI token based on the Waves platform. PTI is the interim token which will enable Paytomat to conduct a token sale while testing the PTM blockchain. After the launch of the Paytomat blockchain, existing token holders will be able to exchange their PTI tokens for PTM coins.

A 10% bonus was provided to whitelist members who registered during the whitelist registration which closed April 2nd, followed by the presale, April 2-18, 2018. The overall soft cap for the Paytomat token sale is 4,555,000 PTI, while the hard cap is 17,555,000 PTI. The token can be bought using BTC, ETH, LTC, DASH, and WAVES. The initial price for 1PTI is 0.1 mBTC. Paytomat will run a bounty program on Telegram, Medium, Twitter, and YouTube. Token sale web site: https://tokensale.paytomat.com/.

Join Paytomat communities:

https://t.me/paytomat
https://t.me/PaytomatOfficialChannel
https://twitter.com/paytomat
https://medium.com/@paytomat
https://www.facebook.com/paytomat/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/11433285/
https://www.reddit.com/user/paytomat/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3117733

The post Paytomat: Incentivizing Transactional Usage of Cryptocurrencies appeared first on NewsBTC.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb is taking digital currencies into the ‘real world’ by promoting their use in everyday activities, such as buying goods from vending machines. This week, the exchange announced its kiosks in South Korea are accepting Bitcoin Cash.

Bithumb Exchange Brings Cryptocurrencies Into The Real World

Bithumb, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with a daily trading volume of approximately $245 million, is entering the consumer goods payments market in a bid to increase adoption in the country.

In late March 2018, the exchange has partnered with mobile payment operator Korea Pay’s Services in an attempt to reach over 8,000 merchants across the country by the end of the year. South Korea has about 200 franchise brands willing to try payments in cryptocurrency. A pilot of the partnership is expected to be launched in June. Consumer-focused offline cryptocurrency payments is a strategy that the exchange is pursuing to fuel adoption in South Korea, especially for newcomers.

To further promote mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency payments, Bithumb has partnered with three kiosk manufacturers in February – Uno Space, TROS Systems, and IYU – in order to add the new means of payment. These kiosks are being delivered to small businesses that operate food and beverage franchises. The initiative is likely to gain traction as the exchange charges a rental fee that is 10% below the industry rate, which helps businesses increase profits.

The “Touch B” brand is a product of Bithumb’s strategy of entering into the kiosk business. Under the brand, Bithumb is about to “normalize” the idea of paying for consumer goods in an offline setting in cryptocurrency. “The entry into the kiosk business is meaningful to provide substantial benefits and low-cost rents to small business owners. We will continue to work in various industries based on the blockchain technology to provide total solutions for small businesses through our partnership”, a Bithumb spokesperson told Zdnet Korea.

This food ticket vending machine in Korea is accepting Bitcoin Cash thanks to @BithumbOfficial
Learn more at https://t.co/6EeRmpwLyF pic.twitter.com/0Nm8QnTVak

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 10, 2018

The announcement that Bithumb’s vending machines are now accepting Bitcoin Cash was tweeted by Roger Ver, one of the world’s first investors in Bitcoin startups. He was recently blamed by some conspiracy theorists for hijacking the @Bitcoin twitter account as it only began tweeting about Bitcoin Cash in January.

Bithumb is launching three services for the kiosk venture. Touchpad and Touchbone are designed to provide flexibility to the small businesses to choose the appropriate service based on their requirements. The other service, Bithumb Cache, is a password settlement service with which customers can convert their funds stored at the exchange by simply typing the password at a kiosk.

Image from Shutterstock

The post Bithumb Exchange Promotes Offline Cryptocurrency Payments in South Korea appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin’s price rise and fall is compared yet again to the Dutch tulip craze, resulting in an untrue claim that BTC is the “greatest bubble in history.” #NEWS

The first leaks about Telegram Open Network’s “grams” token indicated a $600M public sale. Today, insiders say the public will get no sale at all.

Crypto Cloud Mining Contracts defined as securities by Philippines’ SEC, up to 21-years’ imprisonment for unregistered issuance. #NEWS

Today may certainly prove to be a rather interesting day for all cryptocurrency markets. Although it is still early to say whether or not the upward momentum can remain in place, things certainly look pretty interesting for some currencies. The EOS price, for example, has increased by 11.5% of over the past 24 hours, although it remains unclear when the next big dip will materialize.

The EOS Price is on the Move Again

Every time we see any cryptocurrency gain value, there is an immediate concern as to how things can turn around pretty quickly. This is especially true over the past few months, as all markets have been battered for no apparent reason. Even the EOS price took a massive tumble in the past few months, and things may still head in that direction for quite some time to come

With this new 11.52% gain in the past few hours, the EOS price is looking up once again. That in itself is pretty interesting, even though most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are in the green as well. If this trend keeps up for a few more hours – or hopefully days – we may see things improve again in a major manner. For the EOS price, finding stability near $6.5 still remains a top priority.

It is also impressive how the EOS price is gaining on both Bitcoin and Ethereum as of right now. Even though these two top currencies are putting in some solid gains of their own, it seems EOS still trumps everything as of right now  That doesn’t necessarily mean things will remain that way, though, but it is good to see regardless.

With over half a billion USD in 24-hour trading volume, the demand for EOS is certainly increasing. For now, this still doesn’t reflect upon other cryptocurrency markets as of right now, although things are improving gradually. If the EOS price is destined to keep going up, the volume will need to double in the coming hours. It seems pretty unrealistic that will happen, albeit stranger things happen in the cryptocurrency world.

South Korea is clearly showing some love for EOS as of right now. With both Bithumb and Upbit showing a lot of trading volume, there is a fair amount of fresh capital flowing into this ecosystem. Huobi is in third place, albeit its volume is a lot less impressive than people may want it to be. Even so, all of these pairs show there is positive momentum on the horizon for cryptocurrency, which can only be considered to be a good thing.

How things will play out for the EOS price, remains to be determined. As of right now, the situation looks rather promising, but there is still a lot of room left for volatility. It is not entirely impossible we will see another EOS price dip in the coming hours, although the bearish momentum seems to be fading overall. At some point in the future, we may all look back on early 2018 as an anomaly, rather than an actual trend for the rest of the year.

Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking province in eastern Canada, is home to one of the largest bitcoin farms in North America owned by Bitfarms. The cryptocurrency rush is taking over, but environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the implications of bitcoin mining as the energy consumption skyrockets.

Hydro-Québec Provides Clean Energy for Cryptocurrency Mining

The cryptocurrency boom began in 2009 and slowly spread worldwide, with most of the mining work being located in countries offering cheap electricity and little regulation, such as China, Romania, and Iceland, among others. Much as changed since then. Canada too became an interesting country to set up ‘rigs’. In 2016, Hydro-Québec announced a plan to woo data centers. Cryptocurrency miners submitted proposals in September 2017. The overwhelming demand for energy from bitcoin miners has raised questions about how well Hydro-Québec’s grid can provide for the needs.

Bitfarms, one of North America’s largest cryptocurrency mining operations, has 7,000 mining rigs (soon to become 14,000 by July) in a once-abandoned factory in an industrial park in Saint-­Hyacinthe, Quebec. This energy-intensive operation is at the very core of cryptocurrency as decentralized ledger systems rely on “proof of work” for their security. “You’re essentially solving worthless puzzles that we cannot solve mathematically. You can only brute-force your way into it.” says Christian Catalini, associate professor of technological innovation at MIT and founder of the university’s Crypto­economics Lab, told Technology Review.

“Basically, you’re placing an economic cost between a user and an attacker. If someone wants to subvert the system by faking a transaction, or revert a legitimate transaction, they would have to expend a tremendously high amount of energy and computation—to the point that no rational economic actor would do that, because the cost of doing an attack would be far greater than the benefit”, Catalini added.

David Malone, a specialist in mathematical modeling of network systems, estimates that bitcoin alone is consuming as much electricity as Ireland. Its current global bitcoin hash rate is of 25 million terahashes a second. Mining companies are now promoting their operations to potential investors as environmentally friendly and moving from coal-based countries such as China to cleaner forms of energy, such as hydropower. 

Pierre-Luc Quimper, the founder of Bitfarms, located all five of his mining operations in Quebec in order to fuel his 20,000 computers: “We use a lot of energy. It has to be clean. If we have a footprint on the environment, that’s bad.” Hydro-Québec’s hydroelectric power is the ideal solution: a clean, renewable source of energy that can be supplied in massive quantities.

Image from Shutterstock

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The government of Taiwan has moved a step closer to regulating bitcoin under existing anti-money laundering (AML) rules.

After confirming crypto regulation plans using AML laws, Taiwan will now consult various parties to iron out details. #NEWS

Bank of England examines DLT system open to regulatory oversight, which would maintain inter-participant privacy and keep data distributed. #NEWS