Month: April 2018

Over the past few weeks, the mainstream media has tried to justify the extreme volatility of the cryptocurrency market, and specifically the price movements of bitcoin, by connecting them to news.

This week, several media outlets reported that the price of bitcoin had fallen from $9,000 to $8,000 due to the ban imposed by Twitter on cryptocurrency-related advertisements. In a report, CNBC stated that the price of bitcoin had declined by 40 percent after Twitter released its strict policy on regulating cryptocurrency and ICO advertisements.

In reality, when the report was released, the price of bitcoin had declined by 12 percent, and the movement did not coincide with Twitter’s ban on cryptocurrency ads. The social media giant happened to have banned ICO ads when the most dominant digital currency in the cryptocurrency market was starting to lose momentum.

There exist a wide range of factors that could have contributed to the price movements of bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies. Several analysts have attributed the recent decline in the price of bitcoin to the futures market operated by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) and CME Group. PhilCrypto, a respected cryptocurrency researcher, stated that the decline in the price of bitcoin from $8,000 to $7,000 coincided with the Cboe bitcoin futures market demonstrating record volumes.

It is entirely possible that institutional investors and retail traders are manipulating the market in order to cash out their short contracts or futures contracts, and that explains the sudden surge in the price of bitcoin from $8,000 to $20,000, and the abrupt drop in bitcoin’s value from $20,000 to $6,000.

But according to Bill Barhydt, the CEO of cryptocurrency remittance company Abra, there exists a lack of demand from institutional investors and retail traders from the West, in contrast to places like Japan and South Korea. Contrary to the anticipation of the cryptocurrency community, the debut of the Cboe and CME bitcoin futures markets were poor, and the U.S. bitcoin futures market struggled to demonstrate rapidly increasing interest in the cryptocurrency market among institutional investors.

Aaron Brown, former Managing Director and Head of Financial Market Research at AQR Capital Management, emphasized that while bitcoin price movements have been smooth throughout the launch of the US bitcoin futures market, little interest was shown toward cryptocurrency investment vehicles.

“There was little interest in the derivative contracts, which account for only a few thousand Bitcoin, out of a circulating supply of 17 million. Institutions mostly stayed on the sidelines. No new vehicles for retail investment emerged. Bitcoin prices did not stabilize: They continued to move at around 100 percent annualized volatility, as they have for most of the currency’s history,” Brown wrote.

In addition to the slow growth rate of the US bitcoin futures market, the decline in the adoption of bitcoin by retailers and strict regulations imposed on both businesses and investors could have contributed to bitcoin’s price drop.

Hence, it is illogical to conclude that the decline has been caused by news such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter banning blockchain and ICO advertisements, and it is far-fetched to justify each price movement as based on a particular market event.

Crypto hardware wallet Ledger Nano is Nevadans’ favorite over 2017 Xmas. #NEWS

Even with the exponential growth that the internet has seen over the past couple of decades, the mechanisms for web monetization that exist today remain quite archaic and susceptible to manipulation. Also, the sentiment of the average person towards web advertisements is quite poor, and in the past year or so, the use of ad blockers has become quite commonplace.

The Oyster Protocol, or Oyster Pearl, is an all-new platform that employs a unique approach to getting content publishers and consumers to work with one another, thereby enabling both parties to benefit monetarily. To be more specific, Oyster Pearl enables everyday internet users to store and retrieve their files via a system that is decentralized, anonymous and secure.

Oyster Pearl has been devised specifically to remedy the stalemate that exists between advertisers and ad-blockers. This is achieved by empowering a website to generate revenue by adopting a single line of code that is specific to the platform.

In addition to this, the service makes use of a decentralized online storage system that has been conceived through the use of the Ethereum blockchain along with IOTA’s Tangle protocol. The result is Oyster Pearl, a unique product that allows users to employ its native currency to generate value for themselves as well as content distributors.

Overview

• Oyster Pearl provides internet users with a decentralized and private method of data storage.
• Network participants are reimbursed in the form of native Pearl tokens.
• Independent users can join the platform quite easily and can also monetize their content directly by uploading their data straight onto the decentralized ledger.
• Website owners and content publishers receive incentives for providing ad-free content and contributing to the data storage network.
• The interface is quite simple and straightforward.

Key Features

To kick things off, we can see that Oyster Pearl provides users with solutions to two key problems that currently plague the internet as a whole. 

1. It provides users with a stable decentralized data storage medium.
2. It helps eliminate the need for web ads.

Key features on offer

Since a large number of online advertisements carry with them malware and other unwanted entities, Oyster Pearl helps mitigate issues related to virus infections and other performance problems which might otherwise affect computer devices.

Similarly, from the perspective of online revenue generation, the Oyster Protocol establishes a financial stream through the use of a unique code-script algorithm. The platform allows users to contribute a small portion of their CPU and GPU power to enable data storage on a decentralized and anonymous ledger. This allows for mutual monetary compensation for all of the involved parties.

One of the standout features of this system is that all of the information that is uploaded through the aforementioned Oyster script is processed via IOTA’s Tangle mechanism. This not only helps eliminate redundancy issues, but also reduces the problem of data mitigation.

How Oyster Pearl Works

As is clear by now, Oyster Pearl makes use of IOTA’s Tangle protocol to maintain its internal transactions in a smooth and streamlined fashion. Tangle is essentially a Directed Acyclic Graph, which means that it serves as a blockless distributed ledger system.

Primary revenue code-script employed by Oyster Pearl

Every transaction processed on this platform has to undergo a PoW (Proof of Work) mechanism before it can be confirmed and added to the blockchain. Each transaction comes with an intrinsic payload capacity which is used to obtain vital storage information from within the system.

It is also important to understand that each transaction has to go via a defined mesh-net of nodes that are based within a peer-to-peer network. Each node has the capacity to retain a redundant copy of the transactions, thus allowing for reduced data copies within the system mainframe.

Meshed framework deployed by the platform

Lastly, the Tangle protocol also helps heavily mitigate the risk of data loss without relying on a centralized hosting provider. This is because Tangle-based nodes are designed to automatically get rid of old data once they reach their physical storage limits.

About the Project

Oyster Protocol has demonstrated tremendous potential in the past couple of months, and thus it can be useful for readers to learn more about the people associated with this project.

Bill Cordes is the CFO of this venture. Bill has been in the finance and digital sector for over a decade now, and has previously worked at:

• Infogix Inc. — Director of Corporate Development and M&A
• NextGen — Venture Partner and Collaborator
• Cordes Consulting— Founder

Alex Firmani is the CTO of this project. He too has been in the digital domain for nearly two decades and has worked at high-profile companies such as Amazon.

Lastly, Taylor French is the Head of Communications and Design for Oyster Pearl. On his LinkedIn profile, Taylor describes himself as a “seasoned UX/UI design professional with extensive experience in design and communications”.

Token Performance Data

All internal transactions that take place on the platform are facilitated through the use of a native currency which is abbreviated as PRL.

 PRL token lifetime performance chart (courtesy of CoinMarketCap)

Released into the market late last year, PRL tokens were initially valued at US$0.032. However, the currency made a huge push earlier this year and scaled up to an impressive US$4.30 per coin.

The recent performance of PRL has not been as amazing, but considering the bear run that the markets seem to have been going through for the past few months, the token has remained quite stable in value (US$1.00 per coin as of March 31, 2018).

Final Thoughts

With the online advertising market slowly diminishing in size due to the use of ad blockers, Oyster Protocol is offering content providers and distributors with a novel system that has the potential to reinvigorate this market sector.

Judging by the steady performance of the PRL token since its inception, it would not be surprising to see more and more people adopt this platform in the coming months.

If you would like to invest in Oyster Pearl, PRL trading pairs are currently being exchanged on platforms such as KuCoin, Cryptopia, IDEX, and CoinExchange.

A lot of cryptocurrency enthusiasts do not like regulation. This is a hot topic of conversation right now, especially in lieu of the recent G20 meeting. While no immediate measures were represented, it seems the governing body will introduce taxation guidelines in July.

The G20 Remains on top of Cryptocurrency

It is safe to say the recent Bitcoin price dip is partially caused by G20 meeting concerns. Many investors were concerned this governing body will impose regulation at some point. So far, it seems nothing major will happen in the near future. However, the most recent meeting also seems to kick off future taxation guidelines. More specifically, such measures will go into effect in July of 2018, by the look of things.

With the effective regulation of cryptocurrency been postponed until that date, there’s still a lot of speculation taking place. The G20 officials are seemingly mainly interested in cryptocurrency taxation as of right now. It is very difficult to tax such currencies which are not controlled by a company or government. So far, it seems there is no unified taxation guideline either.

That situation may come to change in July of 2018. Introducing such guidelines will certainly shake things up quite a bit. For now, we have to wait and see how the G20 decides to tackle this problem moving forward. With their earlier meeting being rather positive toward cryptocurrencies, it remains to be seen if that positive tone can be maintained.

The Positive Attitude Remains in Place

The most recent G20 meeting was pretty positive for Bitcoin and altcoins. With no desire to ban cryptocurrency trading or introduce licensing requirements a la BitLicense, the positive tone is certainly present. Introducing taxation guidelines may turn out to be a positive development overall. After all, taxation means cryptocurrencies become legal tender in the eyes of most people.

This positive attitude came at an interesting time. A few weeks prior, the Bank of England governor warned about a major regulatory crackdown Regulation cryptocurrencies to address illicit activities is a positive message viral. However, it seems the majority of the G20 doesn’t necessarily agree with a harsh course of action as of right now.

How all of this will play out, remains to be seen. It appears South Korea wants to take the lead on cryptocurrency taxation. That in itself is a remarkable development, although a positive one as well. Given the country’s position in the world of cryptocurrency, it is evident their decision-making carries significant weight. The future continues to look bright for cryptocurrencies, especially if the G20 maintains the current approach.

Image From Shutterstock

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Bitcoin Press Release: UK based Smart Startup Company, founded by social and technology entrepreneur Simon Krystman promises to make it simple for ordinary businesses to benefit from the transparency and security provided by the blockchain, by launching SMRT (Smart Startup Token) contracts. The aim is to create a frictionless trade platform for startups and SMEs.

1st of April, 2018, United Kingdom –  SMRT describes itself as a “vending machine for legal documents” that are then secured in the blockchain. The need to create contracts can be extremely onerous for start-ups, in terms of both money and time. Blockchain offers the opportunity to make enforcement cheaper and easier. However, few small businesses have the resources or understanding of blockchain technology to utilise it. The SMRT templates will cover the contractual areas that startups and small businesses encounter, such as shareholder and intellectual property agreements. They will also cover finance and trading agreements in the way the Ethereum blockchain was originally designed for.

Simon Krystman CEO of SMRT explained:

“Established trading marketplaces could benefit enormously from our smart contracts, as buyers and sellers will have automatically enforced agreements to transfer money for goods and services. They also open the way for many new decentralised marketplaces, where the smart contracts are the enforcements of trade. Small businesses would be able to buy bundles of our smart contract templates to facilitate their sell/buy trades.”

The Pre Token Sale for participators is now open and ends on the 21st April 2018. Pre Token Sale participants will receive a 50% Bonus for any SMRT contributions.

The Team

The SMRT team are highly skilled and experienced in running successful businesses. They have a wide variety of talent, connections and expertise in blockchain, AI, entrepreneurship, funding, intellectual property, government and regulation, giving SMRT a very solid base. Some team members are working in an advisory capacity, while holding down high-profile jobs in industry, government and academia. Others are working full time to build the infrastructure of a world leading company. Upon completion of the Token Sale, the team will be expanding to bring onboard more in-house software developers, lawyers and finance specialists, building an internal infrastructure and one to manage partners.

Syed Kamall, Member of the European Parliament is the Regulatory Advisor to the SMRT Project, advised;

“The technology offers some very exciting opportunities but as legislators internationally, we must also make sure that consumers have trust in it. Blockchain and smart contracts will be a game changer for startups.”

Simon Krystman CEO of SMRT concluded;

“The core of our company is the marriage of legal agreements with blockchain software code, supported by data science and AI. Our key partners represent this core and employ leading practitioners in their respective domains.”

50% Bonus for Pre Token Sale Contributors

Visit https://smartstartuptoken.tech to find out more and join the Pre Token Sale now.

To learn more visit the Website : https://smartstartuptoken.tech
Meet the Team: https://smartstartuptoken.tech/
Read the WhitePaper – https://smartstartuptoken.tech/smrt-whitepaper-v1.pdf
Connect on Twitter – https://twitter.com/SmrtToken

Media Contact
Contact Name: Mike
Contact Email: [email protected]

Smart Startup is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

About Bitcoin PR Buzz -Bitcoin PR Buzz has been proudly serving the PR and marketing needs of Bitcoin and digital currency tech start-ups for over 5 years. Get your own professional Bitcoin Press Release. Click here for more information about Bitcoin PR

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It seems today will be another abysmal day for most cryptocurrency markets. As the total market cap keeps dwindling, all individual currencies are feeling the pressure. The way things look right now, the Tron price is seemingly poised to head quite a lot lower in the near future. Its market cap is also heading below $2bn if this trend keeps up for much longer.

The Tron Price Faces Massive Corrections

This past month has been anything but great for all cryptocurrencies. The Tron price illustrates this point perfectly, as it has lost nearly 40% in value over the past 30 days. These past 24 hours alone, the Tron price dipped by 17.84%, which effectively puts its value at $0.03. This is not the trend most speculators have been waiting for, to say the very least.

Even though Tron now as a test net, most holders seemingly don’t care in the slightest. Ever since that release, the project’s market cap has dropped by nearly $900m, which further goes to show the negative pressure in the cryptocurrency world continues to build up. With the Tron price now looking poised to dip below $0.03 and the market cap heading below $2bn, things are not looking too great for Tron.

It is also interesting to see how Bitcoin and Ethereum are dragging Tron down right now. Even though now is a precarious time for altcoins to make their mark against these two currencies, the Tron price is losing ground due to ongoing struggles in both markets. With a 12.84% dip against Bitcoin and a 12.48% decline against Ethereum, the Tron price has no stable support level to speak of right now.

While Tron maintains a trading volume of $219.65m in the past 24 hours, it’s evident people want to exit this altcoin market first and foremost. What is driving that decision all of a sudden, is a different matter altogether. Until Bitcoin and/or Ethereum recovers spectacularly, we will see a lot more negative pressure across all markets. Tron will be no exception in this regard.

As of right now, Binance is the biggest trading platform for Tron with its BTC pair. Upbit and Huobi are duking it out for second and third place, with Bittrex not too far behind. All of these developments are pretty interesting, although it is evident there is no influx of fresh capital for Tron right now. Its first fiat market comes in 14th place thanks to Ethfinex’s TRX/USD trading pair.

For the time being, it seems the Tron price will continue to decline for some time to come. This is painfully evident right now, as it seems highly unlikely the cryptocurrency markets will recover from this ongoing onslaught anytime soon. Eventually, the market will turn around, but for now, we still need to get rid of some overvalued currencies first and foremost.

The creator of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency has floated a possible change to the network’s long-opaque ether issuance policy.

After this month’s G20 meeting, South Korea is working on crypto tax regulations to be ready by June #NEWS

Calculating tax exposure is always a data-heavy business process. With regular assets, this process is simple. In cryptocurrency, it’s anything but.

A partnership with blockchain company Coinfirm was announced by Polish bank PKO Polski on 29 March.

PKO has embraced Coinfirm’s Trudatum tool in order to provide its customers with a secure means to access documents containing information regarding regulations, transactions, fees and commissions. This would eliminate the need for paper documentation and represent a major boost to the bank’s financial budget, reducing costs to servicing its nine million customers.

Banks in Poland are becoming increasingly interested in adopting the new technology in order to deliver a more efficient, secure and cost-efficient system for customers as current methods are proving to be susceptible to problems such as removal of data and modification.

President of Polish fintech company MC2 Solutions, Anna Strezynska, indicates that the Polish Bank Association is currently looking at different ways of alleviating these issues within Polish banking systems and consequently investigating alternative solutions including blockchain technology.

PKO vice president Adam Marcinak indicated that the Trudatum system had been tested by the bank since last year to great success. Following the tests, the bank has decided to opt for further cooperation with the platform. He sees the future as very positive and believes that PKO will “be able to carry out a pioneering operation of implementing blockchain technology into the Polish banking sector”.

New technology and the banking system 

Worldwide, barely a day goes by without the announcement of another major bank either testing or trialling the new technology. Combining shared databases and cryptography, blockchain technology allows multiple parties to have simultaneous access to a constantly updated digital ledger that cannot be altered. Some financial institutions see the potential of these attributes as irresistible.

A fast, low-cost, cross-border wiring service using blockchain is being considered this year between Japanese BTMU and Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, Australia’s Westpac and other international banks in order to improve existing systems.

The Bank of England indicated last week that is also testing blockchain possibilities to enhance its Real Time Gross Settlement Service (RTGS) through using distributed ledger technology.

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Multinational technology conglomerate Cisco has filed for a patent incorporating blockchain technology with a group chat format.

Cisco notes in the publicly available patent filing that its innovation would make confidential group messaging easier and more secure than formats currently available. The application from Cisco describes the benefits of blockchain technology in this area, recounting it as enabling users to form groups of multiple individuals both quickly and easily, allowing them to share files with each other while keeping track of both membership and those involved in the conversation.

Details of the patent filing suggest that the proposal can provide solutions to several problems commonly associated with group chat messaging. The application outlines a new process for “how group membership is established, communicated, updated” while creating a network secure from tampering.

Group chat via the blockchain

Cisco offers that the unique selling point of a blockchain-based group chat technology is the decentralized system. The patent proposes using cryptographic keys to be shared among group participants, establishing a peer-to-peer network only accessible to those authorized to join. The initiators of the chat would create the genesis block automatically via their device, with participants generating their own blocks as they join.

Here, the blockchain would be explicitly enrolled to record group chat members, although Cisco did propose a secondary way it could be utilized.

The blockchain could otherwise be used to enable secure file sharing or instant messaging, ordering the list of data blocks to represent a tamper-resistant chronological account of group membership updates. The patent filing states the benefits of this as ”enabling end-to-end encryption of instant messaging, content sharing, and streamed media”.

In a patent filing released October 2017, Cisco looked to copyright the use of blockchain in tracking Internet of Things devices. The technology, in this case, was described to be used to identify different connected devices, monitor their activity and evaluate how trustworthy the device is when connected to a network.

Cisco’s blockchain group chat patent application was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office in December 2017. The application was made public on 29 March 2018.

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When Bitcoin appeared, not many people were ready to recognize the true value a decentralized solution to cash could bring. It took years until the technology was met with recognizable levels of adoption and its creator(s) vanished shortly after Bitcoin began receiving significant mentions from major media, but that’s another story.

Bitcoin’s roots

The vision Bitcoin created and the road it paved for cryptocurrency is something that’s still surrounded by a lot of nuances to many.  It’s true that the initial supporters of Bitcoin, even prior to its widespread success in global markets, were libertarian in nature. This was, in part, due to Bitcoin posing as an alternative to government-issued money.

Of course, Bitcoin has come a very long way since its early days and the overall cryptocurrency economy has grown tremendously. What’s important to highlight, though, is the fact that cryptocurrency’s success in markets is firmly based on a handful of principles. And it is these principles introduced by Bitcoin that make cryptocurrency a viable alternative to government-issued cash.

The principles that make Bitcoin “trustless”

The term “trustless” is often thrown around when it comes to cryptocurrency. Understandably, it might not easy to grasp why or how this is even a feature. It is, however, crucial to understand why trustlessness is important for cryptocurrency. This might be the most important aspect of what crypto has to offer, and it is the result of a plethora of features based on Bitcoin’s principles.

Unlike government-backed money, Bitcoin not dependent on trust for central authorities. Its users do not have to trust any government or central bank for its integrity.

Decentralization

Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning that there is no central issuing authority. There also are no clearing houses that transactions must go through. New units of Bitcoin are minted into circulation through a deflationary process called mining. Other than an incentive structure that rewards miners with transaction fees and newly-generated coins, miners also contribute to verifying transactions by including them in blocks.

Moreover, participants in the network running full node software are broadcasting transactions compliant to the network rules, this way contributing to the ecosystem. Bitcoin’s system works in a peer-to-peer manner, with users also being contributors if they so choose.

Open source: “in code we trust”

The code of Bitcoin is always published. Its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, released the Bitcoin very first client with the entirety of the codebase being made public. This allows for anyone to review the code, compile it and verify its functions without having to trust the issuer. Insofar, no one has been able to crack Bitcoin’s code to exploit its system and the code is continuously reviewed by the community before releases are made official. Crypto enthusiasts have been known to play on the phrase “in God we trust”, inscribed on US dollars, jokingly stating that they put their trust in [computer] code.

Cryptography or “backed by math”

Cryptocurrency might not be backed by a tangible store of value such as gold. However, Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies are backed by cryptography: a codebase that has been through countless tests and found to be unbreakable, a large network of contributors and the largest computing network in the world making up its mining network. All those values are set in stone by mathematical properties other than physical attributes. It is thanks to math that cryptocurrencies have many of the characteristics of cash and that is why many people attribute value to it.

The post Beyond Speculation: Where Bitcoin Derives Value From appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.