Day: April 26, 2018

Singapore’s IP Office is shortening the grant process for fintech related patent applications, including those focusing on blockchain payment.

Cryptocurrency hedge fund Pantera CEO called Bitcoin a “screaming buy” and made a ten year $40 trillion dollar prediction.

Hedge Fund CEO Looks for Big Gains in the Remainder of the Year.

CEO of Pantera capital management LP. cryptocurrency hedge fund Dan Morehead went on Bloomberg Television again to talk about the future of Bitcoin and the state of the cryptocurrency space in general. Morehead who is always bullish on cryptocurrency forecast some big returns for 2018 including Bitcoin regaining its maximum value from 2017 in the next twelve months.

Morehead had recently made only his fourth buy prediction in his seven years of trading in cryptocurrency when Pantera issued a notice to its investors to buy when Bitcoin dipped to what he called its ultimate low at 6,500. It’s gained and held over $2,000 since then but still, Morehead told Bloomberg it is a “screaming buy” today.

The interview moved on to how the appearance of cryptocurrency is changing. Morehead said that Bitcoin had shed its “skanky” reputation and this was attracting more institutional interest which would drive prices up across the entire space. He continued saying,

 “Obviously, we’re very bullish on the space. We think we’re way below, maybe an order of magnitude — or two — below the real fundamental fair value of blockchain, the industry as a whole is $400 billion. It easily could go to $4 trillion, and $40 trillion is definitely possible.”

Morehead’s acumen at reading the volatile crypto market was proved out when he said at the height of the mid-December trading frenzy that Bitcoin could lose half of its value at the beginning of the new year. After which, Bitcoin, and almost all other cryptocurrencies slipped into a bear market that we are just coming out of now.

Pantera Capital handles an estimated one billion dollars in assets of which 10 percent is in Bitcoin. When asked about Pantera’s investment breakdown Morehead revealed that presently their biggest position is in the Korean Blockchain Icon.

Mt. Gox may be Dumping more Bitcoin on the Market

In the short term though Bitcoin may be headed for another price dip as information regarding a 16,000 coin block of Bitcoin and an equal amount of Bitcoin cash from the Mt. Gox reserve has been transferred out of cold wallet storage. Large transactions made by the trustees of the Mt. Gox estate since December of 201 have been blamed for causing the price of Bitcoin to crash. The last time Mt Gox transferred a large amount of Bitcoin from its cold wallets was on February 5, the next day Bitcoin fell to its all-time low for the year at $6,000

The post Pantera Fund CEO Calls Bitcoin “A Screaming Buy,” Highly Optimsitic appeared first on NewsBTC.

Its seems users who frequent the online encyclopedia platform Wikipedia read the ‘Bitcoin’ article hosted on the site a lot. According to statistics, the Wiki Bitcoin page was the ninth most read article on Wikipedia last year.

Also Read: Binance Exchange Founder Sued by VC Fund Sequoia Capital

Bitcoin Article on Wikipedia Was the Ninth Most Popular Last Year

Last year lots of people were inquiring about the cryptocurrency bitcoin and the word itself was one of the topmost trending words searched in 2017 according to Google Trends data. Another area where bitcoin was searched frequently was the website Wikipedia. The website hosts a free encyclopedia that is openly editable, while educational resources are also provided in 299 different languages. Wikipedia recently published its “Annual Top 50 Report” which includes a curated list of the top fifty most popular articles on Wikipedia throughout 2017.

According to Wiki’s data, the ‘Bitcoin’ article was the ninth most popular encyclopedia post last year just below the ‘United States’ articles and just above the Netflix drama series ‘13 Reasons Why.’ Bitcoin stands among other top ten editorials documenting Donald Trump, Game of Thrones, and Queen Elizabeth II. The introduction in the Wiki Bitcoin article states:   

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator. The network is peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary.

Wiki Senior Editor: ‘Bitcoin the Much-Hyped “Future of Money”’

Last year the ‘Bitcoin’ article accumulated over 15 million views and the page peaked in traffic on December 8, 2017. In the annual report Wiki Senior Editor JFG gives the article a bit of an odd introduction.

“For our dear readers who can’t make heads or tails of this novelty: Bitcoin is as good as gold, shinier than lead, bubblier than tulips, held deep in the mines, and driving people nuts,” explains the Wiki editor.  

Gold has enriched adventurers and bitcoin has held fools to ransom. You may dive in a pool of gold, but lose it all at war. Strangely, while you can still buy gold today and forget about it until your great-grandchildren cash it out, the much-hyped “future of money” has turned into the most speculative intangible asset of all time, while proving totally unsuitable as a means of payment.

Within the archives of 5,000 most popular articles from last week according to the Wiki page ‘User:west.andrew.g/popular pages,’ Bitcoin ranks at number 354. The page is aggregated from raw data which displays articles with at least 1,000 hits in a seven day period and only the most popular are published through the feed. Ethereum just makes the cut at 3710, Cryptocurrency 1273, and Blockchain slides ahead at 312. All of the data showing how popular digital currencies are on Wiki is derived from the company’s content consumption metrics which shows datasets of raw dump files and page views.

What do you think about the Bitcoin article on Wikipedia placing 9th most popular in 2017? How do you think it will fare in 2018? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Wiki Commons, and Wikipedias Top 50, and User:west.andrew.g/popular pages raw data.

Bitcoinocracy is a free and decentralized way to measure the Bitcoin community’s stance on a given proposition. Check vote.Bitcoin.com.

The post Bitcoin Was the Ninth Most Popular Wikipedia Article Last Year appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price stayed above the $1,240 support level and recovered against the US Dollar.
• There was a break above a connecting bearish trend line with resistance at $1,320 on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair is now back above $1,350 and the 100 hourly simple moving average, which is a positive sign.

Bitcoin cash price is showing positive signs above $1,350 against the US Dollar. BCH/USD may resume its uptrend as long as it is above $1,280.

Bitcoin Cash Price Support

After a major decline, bitcoin cash price found support near the $1,240 level against the US Dollar. A low was formed at $1,232 before the price started consolidating losses. Later, a fresh upside wave started and the price moved above $1,300. It also succeeded in settling above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $1,575 swing high to $1,232 low.

More importantly, there was a break above a connecting bearish trend line with resistance at $1,320 on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair. It opened the doors for more gains and the price moved above $1,350 and the 100 hourly simple moving average. At the moment, the pair is trading near the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $1,575 swing high to $1,232 low. It seems like the price is forming a base for another upside push above $1,450. The current technical structure is positive above $1,350 and the 100 hourly SMA, suggesting an upward move.

Looking at the chart, if the price moves down from the current levels, the $1,350 support may prevent declines. However, the most important support on the downside is near a bullish trend line at $1,280.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is now back in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BCH/USD is currently near the 60 level.

Major Support Level – $1,350

Major Resistance Level – $1,440

The post Bitcoin Cash Price Technical Analysis – BCH/USD Back above 100 SMA appeared first on NewsBTC.

Your smart lightbulb can’t crush hashes at the rate of a giant mining farm, so how can it stay secure? The answer might be in the nonce.

Over the years, there have been numerous incidents in which cryptocurrency enthusiasts lost access to their funds. Hacks, thefts, and throwing away a hard drive without a private key backup are all pretty common topics of conversation. In Switzerland, one enthusiast lost his shopping bag which contained his Ledger hardware wallet. That was a bad thing, as it seems highly unlikely this item will be returned to him.

Shopping With a Hardware Wallet Isn’t Always Smart

Bitcoin users need to take every single precaution when it comes to keeping their digital wealth safe from harm. Storing one’s funds in a hardware wallet rather than an exchange or web wallet is certainly a big step in the right direction. However, that hardware wallet will need to be kept safe at all times, which is a lot more difficult to achieve than some people might think.

One particular resident of Lucerne, Switzerland stores his Ledger hardware wallet in a bank vault all year long. Twice every year, he takes out the wallet to conduct some transactions. It makes a lot of sense to do so, but this time, something went seriously wrong. More specifically, he stored his Ledger Nano wallet in a shopping bag, which was somehow stolen from his car or left behind at one of the shops he visited on that day.

The end result remains the same, though, as his shopping bag is gone and the hardware wallet has disappeared along with it. No one knows where it has gone or when and if it will be returned to its rightful owner. A safe return seems highly unlikely at this point, although the person currently holding the bag may not even be aware of what the Ledger hardware wallet does exactly.

Considering that the victim’s crypto portfolio is valued at 800,000 Swiss francs – or just under $815,000 – recovering the hardware wallet is of the utmost importance. The owner even promises a 40,000 Swiss franc bounty to whoever returns the hardware wallet to him in the coming days or weeks. The police are also looking out for the shopping bag and the wallet, although they do not expect to find them anytime soon.

One silver lining to this story is that only the owner of a Ledger Nano S can access the funds stored on the device. However, if they do not control the device, the funds become completely unspendable. It is possible that this was just a random theft not related to cryptocurrency, or perhaps the owner left the bag at one of the stores he’d visited without realizing it. There was also a KeepKey hardware wallet involved, and a notebook which was stored inside the bag as well.

For the time being, we’ll have to wait and see how this story unfolds. The loss of a cryptocurrency hardware wallet is a big problem, for obvious reasons. However, there is no immediate threat of the potential thief using this wallet for his or her own purposes without knowing the PIN code or recovery seed associated with the device. It seems that information is kept safe in some location, although it won’t do the original device owner much good without the wallet itself.

AMD CEO Lisa Su has claimed that Blockchain is not the key focus of the company’s growth strategy at the moment, calling the technology “a bit of a distraction.” #NEWS

Going red or green, NEO?

It hasn’t been long since we offered the Dutch government a blockchain based solution for the border control issue, as we believe that introducing real world use cases is the way towards mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

In March 2018, Essentia attended four meetings with representatives of the Finnish MTK organization, discussing possible ways of utilizing the Essentia framework.

As a result, after a month of brainstorming and discussions, it was agreed that Essentia would become the first blockchain startup to help the Finnish organization in its key objective of reducing the unemployment rate.

The Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK) has announced its readiness to become Finland’s first organization to launch a blockchain based e-government solution.

“In blockchain, we see a number of features which could lend themselves well to the needs of entrepreneurs and citizens in the countryside as well as in the cities,” — MTK’s director of business development Marko Mäki-Hakola.

Combining with the ToitaSuomesta.fi employment service developed by CoReorient Oy, Essentia will be used by employment offices, employers and suchlike as a platform for managed employment in the local community.

There are many ways in which Essentia could be useful for MTK. Let us go through all of them.

First of all, any worker can save certificates of their performed jobs to the Essentia platform and allow their future employers and employment office to view these. This way we can ensure easier and safer cooperation. The employer can view and also add a job certificate(s) even if they are not a user of the ToitaSuomesta work mediation service. This option grants security and is actually a real time-saver both for employers and employees. Last but not least, employment offices can view the progress of the employee across all work mediation services and confirm that he/she fulfills benefits criteria.

From now on it won’t be necessary to share an individual’s entire job records between services and there will also be no need for a new database at the employment office.

MTK, whose members hail from various regional and local organizations, believe that this is only the start of real life testing for MTK’s main interest lies in other areas. One of them is managing and sharing machine-generated data from tractors, dairy, and other equipment. They are also tracking production chains, for example, forest side products from the owner to the refinery, or end-user land registries that will no longer need field sizes regularly updated; the future possibilities for blockchain technology are endless.

The Essentia framework provides the much-needed security in accessing sensitive data, as well as granting full control of the user’s private information and their digital identity in general.

We look forward to working together with the Finnish organization and moving a step closer to the idea we believe in. This is not the end, though, as we will continue searching for the best ways to utilize blockchain technology and Essentia in particular in various spheres of our day-to-day life.

Stay tuned for more information concerning the pilot implementation!

Seeking more information? Our website and the Essentia Telegram will do the trick.

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.

Thursday, 26th April 2018, Lugano Switzerland, trade.io has announced that pre-registration has now opened to digital marketeers who will refer online traffic to the company websites via this webpage: https://somethingbigiscoming.io.

With this launch, affiliates worldwide will be equipped with the tools to be compensated for any traffic referred trade.io, and most notably for any sign ups to the company’s highly anticipated flagship product: the trade.io Exchange.  Until the exchange is fully launched, affiliates can still direct traffic to the company, and compensation will be processed for any qualified referrals upon launch of the exchange*.  

The trade.io affiliate program rewards registrants with up to 50% of any funds generated by their referrals by trading on the trade.io exchange.

A full funnel has been put in place for prospective affiliates, including a library of digital marketing resources that can be used to facilitate the process of referring online traffic. This includes but is not limited to: Attractive digital banners | Email templates | Sample social media posts | Educational and promotional videos, all available after sign up.

As of writing this PR, the company is unaware of any other competitors in the crypto space who offer a plethora of professional and readily available resources to its affiliate base.

CEO of trade.io Jim Preissler commented: “We understand that trade.io shares the digital space with online marketeers with many years of experience, and who seek a mutually beneficial relationship with a company such as ours who has a) a strong online presence and b) experience with affiliates of the financial industry.  Affiliates worldwide are searching for lucrative opportunities to expand their business, and we’re now proud to be able to offer them one of the most rewarding affiliate programs in the industry.”

Incentivising affiliates to sign up, the company is also launching two promotions specifically targeted at the affiliate audience.  1) A weekly lead generation contest offering exclusive prizes to pre-registered affiliates. 2) A 400,000 Trade Token (TIO) giveaway, of which there will be 85 winners. More information can be found at https://somethingbigiscoming.io/

About trade.io

trade.io is a next generation financial institution based on blockchain technology, providing the ultimate in security and transparency. By leveraging decades of experience in the investment banking, trading & FinTech sectors, and combining them with the power and transparency of the distributed ledger, trade.io has created a truly unique product that will revolutionize asset trading and investment banking.

Find out more by visiting https://trade.io

Contact: [email protected]

About trade.io

trade.io is a next generation financial institution based on blockchain technology, providing the ultimate in security and transparency. By leveraging decades of experience in the investment banking, trading & FinTech sectors, and combining them with the power and transparency of the distributed ledger, trade.io has created a truly unique product that will revolutionize asset trading and investment banking.

Find out more by visiting https://trade.io

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.

Tallinn, Estonia – April 26, 2018

Bettium has announced today the token sale to raise funds for its analytical blockchain platform for P2P betting, designed to combine the familiar features of online betting with unprecedented new capabilities, such as a built-in AI assistant, Big Data analytical tools and algorithmic betting. The platform will serve both amateurs and betting professionals in a unified ecosystem based on the blockchain with all its associated advantages: decentralization, reliability, transparency, scalability and unprecedented performance.

“The online betting market is on the threshold of tectonic change. Blockchain will revolutionize the industry, significantly expanding the user base by ushering in new standards for functionality and reliability that will radically change the way individuals interact with each other. The Bettium platform will present a cleaner, more responsible alternative to the traditional bookmaker, fundamentally altering perceptions of sports betting and encouraging wider participation from the community as a whole: bettors, players, advertisers and industry professionals. We intend to show the positive side of the betting industry, providing tools and algorithms that will allow even amateur bettors the chance to play like the experts. Betting today stands at the intersection of sports, technology and logic – and Bettium is the key,” says Alan Hunt, Bettium CEO.

Bettium will truly level the playing field between professionals and amateurs by providing all users with equal capabilities and the same professional-grade tools, such as the platform’s built-in AI assistant (nicknamed “Merlin”), which will not only process Big Data and help users make educated decisions, but also allow to automatically execute their own betting strategies. Those who prefer to rely on the expertise of professionals will be able to subscribe to expert forecasts, mimicking their bets or even completely entrusting wagers to a fund manager for a small fee. The transparency and security of such relationships will be guaranteed by smart contracts and facilitated with a rating system allowing users to assess expert capabilities.

The project expects to capture a significant share of the online betting market, which has more than doubled over the past decade and is projected to reach US$52 billion in 2018.  Bettium will help transform the industry from of loose collection of semi-respectable and unregulated bookmakers to an established institution with functionality that ensures safety and transparency for the common bettor. Blockchain technology and smart contracts will be used for deposits, payouts, transactions and risk coverage, eliminating the pitfalls of traditional systems, such as lack of transparency, technical vulnerability, excessive fees, low bet limits and high deposit requirements. Change is inevitable in today’s market and Bettium will be at the forefront.

Bettium team has already announced the details of its public crowdsale. The pre-sale of BETT tokens is to begin on May 15, and the open phase of the crowdsale on June 1, 2018. Currently, the company is conducting a private sale. A total of 100,000,000 BETT tokens will issued with 60,000,000 offered in the tokensale. The company anticipates it will raise up to US$30 mln in the token offering (which is the hard cap), with 57 per cent of the proceeds to be used for creation of the platform and operational costs, 30 per cent to be spent on research, marketing and tournaments, and 13 per cent to support the company’s legal procedures.

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.