Day: May 2, 2018

If you’re a gamer, you know the feeling of spending countless hours trying to boost your player’s level, rank, weapon arsenal, and fashion attire. With video games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and World of Warcraft, players are able to either earn in-game points or purchase downloadable content (DLC) through their video game console’s online store (Microsoft or Sony) to enhance their gaming experience.

But in the gaming world, all players are not created equal. In multi-player gaming, some gamers have better in-game experiences than others on their team or opposite them, because of the DLC available. You would think DLC could be readily transferable to other players, but due to intellectual property laws and other restrictions, game developers have restricted them to a single purchase, preventing any further transfer, sale, or exchange of that content with another player.

One platform, Hoard, utilizes a blockchain to mitigate this shortcoming, providing users with true ownership of the virtual content they purchase online.

Why Open The Gaming World To Freely Transferable DLC?

1. Enhancing and Enriching the Gaming Experience

These days, it is becoming the norm that individuals no longer distinguish between virtual and physical content. “But, it’s important to remember that both have significant value to those in the space,” says Martin Amor, CEO/Founder of Hoard, and Co-Founder of the massive multiplayer online game Anarchy Online.

Amor shared with me that when he first created Anarchy Online, the network was enormous—every player could own their own virtual content. “You had players who owned their own virtual apartment, furniture, clothing lines, and other property,” says the co-founder. “This was twenty years ago, and they loved this. We then came to realize how much value these virtual items brought to players.”

2. With New Gaming Consoles Comes Loss of DLC

Here’s a feeling we all know too well—we spend countless hours playing Call of Duty or Madden trying to boost our ranks, teams, weapons, skills, etc., and at what cost? Time and money.

But what happens when we stop playing those games? What happens when we upgrade our consoles to the latest XBOX, Playstation, or Wii? These games sit idle, as does the content we’ve purchased along with them, because that content just can’t be transferred. The publishers and developers have restricted this, because one, they can; and two, they haven’t been able to exploit its potential in secondary and tertiary markets.

The hundreds of thousands of dollars people spend purchasing such content, only to use it for a limited period of time, is a waste of time and money. But if a player goes out of town for two weeks and Johnny next door wants to rent or purchase some or all of their DLC so that he can boost his class on Call of Duty, shouldn’t he be able to do it? Who does it harm? It keeps the content and the gaming experience alive.

Keeping Players, Developers, and Publishers On The Same ‘Team’

1. Gamers Gonna Game, Game, Game

At the end of the day, gamers are allowed to buy, sell, and trade their DLC, having true ownership over their virtual content, which incentivizes people to keep the game alive, even across new generations of consoles.

2. Providing Value to Game Developers

Intellectual property laws are in place for two reasons—protection and nutrition. Think of it as a battery that allows for an inventor or innovator’s product to continue running and running, for as long as the inventor or innovator wants it to. At the same time, it also protects that content from those who wish to exploit it in a negative way, making false claims as to the ownership and source of the content.

But Amor believes that platforms like Hoard allow all parties to benefit by adapting intellectual property laws to the digital space and making them a bit more realistic.

“If you buy something with your hard-earned money, that entitles you to do with it what you want, especially in an online world,” says Amor. “If I went to a bicycle shop and bought a bike, and the owner goes, ‘You can use it for the next 2 months, but then you have to give it back’, that [seems neither] real nor fair.” Amor believes that virtualization of content should be recognized as having real potential value.

By opening the space up to the blockchain, game developers and creators are able to monetize their work in these secondary and tertiary markets that they just don’t have access to right now. “Today, when they sell DLC, that’s where they earn their money,” says Amor. “Their financial loss is attributed to that alone—once the content is purchased, they prohibit users from doing anything with their DLC other than using it for themselves—they cannot transfer, sell, or ‘rent’ it out to other users, so it just sits there.”

But with blockchain technology, every time there is a transaction, users are able to receive a percentage or fixed amount of the sale, determined by terms governed by the smart contract. They have now just opened themselves to profits not just from the first sale, but from countless others.

3. Removing the Fraud

Currently, there are a lot of grey and black markets where such trades occur, and unfortunately, the space is no stranger to fraud and theft. Hoard aims to remove that fraud, and exploit these markets, by providing value to gamers, developers, and publishers.

“You have to trust each other,” says Amor. “Through platforms like PayPal and other third parties, you pay an amount and hope the other party meets their end of the bargain, but this doesn’t happen.”

We need transparency, security, and, most of all, continued entertainment.

Alexis Ohanian is bullish on Bitcoin for this year, but feels Ethereum will far outpace it in terms of gains in 2018.

He believes that Bitcoin will return to its all-time high of around $20,000 and Ether will be worth a staggering $15,000. That’s quite an increase considering its current price is around $650 at the time of writing.

Application Development Will Drive Ethereum’s Price Increase

The main difference between the two leading cryptocurrencies for Ohanian is that people are using the Ethereum network to create decentralised applications. He believes Bitcoin will retain its assumed role as a store of value, but Ethereum will really take off when it starts to be used to develop ‘Web 3.0.’

The co-founder of Reddit spoke to Fortune’s Term Sheet in an interview. When asked for a Bitcoin price prediction, he responded:

“To the moon. [laughs] I still hold a little bit of Bitcoin, and I think it has such mindshare that it will continue to be a store of value. I’m most bullish about Ethereum simply because people are actually building on it.”

Ohanian went on to discuss how blockchain technology development was evolving. He commented on the fact that there was a shift from those earliest adopters who possessed strictly engineering backgrounds to those with experience actually bringing companies and products to market. This is crucial for the technology to realise its revolutionary potential. The web developer-turned-investor commented:

“This stuff doesn’t actually change the world unless everyone is using it.”

Also during the interview, Ohanian touched upon the criteria he looks at when choosing companies to back with his venture firm Initialized Capital, along with his opinion of those seeking to regulate cryptocurrency. For him, scams in the space are:

“… frustrating because it undermines what is a really innovative technology. These people should be punished full-stop.”

Ohanian left his position at Reddit earlier this year to focus on investing in tech startups with a particular emphasis on blockchain projects. During his conversation with Term Sheet, he admitted that he still kept an eye on Reddit to help him identify trends. This, he claims, is what helped drive Initialized Capital to invest in Coinbase.

The Reddit co-founder isn’t the only one who’s bullish on Ethereum this year, but he’s probably the commentator to attach the largest price tag to a prediction yet. Late last month, we reported on the deVere Group’s CEO stating that he felt each native token on the smart contract platform would be worth $2,500 before the end of the year. The reasoning Nigel Green, founder and CEO of the deVere Group, gave for such a call largely echoed that of Alexis Ohanian – application development.

Image from Shutterstock.

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Coinbase’s chief legal and risk officer “applauds” the Attorney General’s inquiry into cryptocurrency exchanges’ practices.

Centralized platforms have revolutionized the way in which employers and business owners source their workforces. However, the organizations which own these systems are able to retain ownership of massive amounts of individual data and information, leading to market monopolization as well as a lack of innovation.

Dock.io is an all-new blockchain-based technology which aims to solve the issue of data hoarding via the implementation of a protocol that encourages data exchange and transfer between different digital platforms.

The dock.io protocol is a special purpose decentralized data exchange protocol which is meant to incentivize the exchange of work experience, reviews, and professional connections.

Through the use of the Ethereum mainchain, data encryption, and an incentivized token model, the dock.io protocol has been devised to help users take control of their data and exchange it between two or more DApps. Additionally, the dock.io native currency helps facilitate information exchange by providing lucrative rewards to all of the involved parties.

Lastly, when using dock.io, deployed applications will receive tokens for data exchange. Network participants are given full control over their data through the use of a hosted third-party service.

Overview of the project

• The platform has the unique ability to connect a user’s online profiles and reputation status onto one shareable source using blockchain technology.
• Dock.io helps save time by aggregating individual data sources onto one platform.
• It allows users to update their information from any website onto the dock.io network. Data from all synced apps is automatically transferred and maintained by the platform as well.
• It provides users with instant access to previously stored information so that manual forms can be filled out in a matter of seconds.
• Users are given complete control and ownership of their data. They can choose which apps are allowed to access their information and what data is shared on the internet with third-party actors.
• Dock.io is a decentralized protocol that has been built securely using blockchain technology.

Key Features

Firstly, dock.io uses the IPLD2 specification developed for IPFS to exchange content-addressable data. Additionally, users have the ability to form an ad-hoc ‘pub-sub’ network between themselves, wherein all of the content is encrypted with the receiver’s on-chain stored public key.

Visual representation of how data is shared within the dock.io network

When deploying this service in a business setting, there is no need for a direct exchange of packet data between a user and any third-party application. This is because the encrypted data packages are replicated in part by the nodes contained within the system. Also, thanks to the IPFS module, it is possible to discover and resolve the integrity of native data packets without the originator of the package needing to be online. Originators of the data are only required to be on the internet if the data they’re pushing is fresh and has never been published to the network before.

Lastly, dock.io uses a voting protocol that is dependent on IPFS. This is because all of the data stored within IPFS includes pertinent information such as:

• Proposal details
• Answer choices
• Start and end time
• Author and vote identifiers

Lastly, the whitepaper mentions that MetaMask can verify whether someone is qualified to cast a vote. Based upon the number of DOCK tokens held by an individual, a smart contract calculates the number of votes that can be attributed to a particular person.

How it works

The platform utilizes an open-source standard for anchoring data to blockchains called Chainpoint. Chainpoint was developed for the purpose of anchoring data to a single chain as well as making it possible to prove that an update done within the native system has been executed at the same time at which a specific block was generated.

 Verification protocol used by dock.io

Other key points of emphasis include:

• Users are able to participate in selective data-sharing with third-party applications within the user-application contract.
• The executor is the only actor within the network that is aware of the latest data updates.
• Once the application decrypts its update with its own key, it may use it freely.
• After data has been shared with an external application, the user loses control over whether that information should or should not be shared with other DApps.

About the team

Nick Macario is the founder of this project. According to his LinkedIn profile, Nick previously established another big-name digital startup called branded.me. He is also the receiver of numerous awards and has had his articles on digital topics published on various trusted media outlets.

Elina Cadouri is the co-founder of dock.io. She, too, has been in the tech domain for over a decade and previously founded a successful freelance venture, Outsource.com. Lastly, Stenli Duka is the CTO of this project. Stenli describes himself as a “seasoned full-stack engineer” whose passion lies within niche areas such as:

• Machine learning
• Natural language processing
• Complex algorithmic coding

Token Details

As is evident by now, all transactions taking place within the dock.io ecosystem are processed through the use of a native currency called DOCK.

DOCK token lifetime performance data (courtesy of CoinMarketCap)

Introduced into the market a week back, the currency initially traded at a rate of $0.08 per coin. Over the course of the past week, the value of DOCK has remained relatively stable, and as of May 2, the value of a single token stands at $0.119.

Final Thoughts

With dock.io looking to streamline the way in which data is managed and shared with external third-party actors, it would not be surprising to see this technology pick up a lot of steam in the coming few months.

While the platform looks very inviting, users should do a bit of self-research before they start putting large sums of money into this project.

If you would like to start investing in dock.io, currency trading pairs are currently available on platforms such as Kucoin, IDEX, and Gate.io.

The chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have commented on cryptocurrencies at this week’s Milken Institute Global Conference.

Christopher Giancarlo, chair of the CFTC, likened Bitcoin to the baby boomer generation’s rejection of past societal norms through their experimentation with ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll.’ Meanwhile Michael Piwowar, commissioner of the SEC, stated explicitly that Bitcoin should not be considered a security, but that most initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been illegally organised and operated according to existing regulations.

Is Bitcoin This Generation’s Rock and Roll?

Giancarlo spoke about Bitcoin during a presentation titled, ‘Financial Regulation: New Era, New Regulators’ on Monday. Rather than dismissing it outright as many associated with traditional finance have, the chair of the CFTC called for ‘respect’ for ‘this generation’s interest’ in Bitcoin. He continued, citing the financial crisis of 2008 as spurring interest in the financial innovation:

“There is something going on here that is generational. Just as the baby boomer generation lost faith in the leaders that came before them and tried to seek a cultural change in those days through sex, drugs and rock and roll, I think there is a generation that also has lost faith in us that led them through the financial crisis and they see technology as a way of disintermediating institutions for which they don’t have a great deal of respect.”

According to a report from Reuters, he surmised the current fascination with cryptocurrencies as being a struggle to fit dated principles of law to ‘new and different applications.’

During the same presentation, Piwowar turned the attendees’ attention to the craze of ICOs.

He stated that he believed every ICO he had personally looked at should be deemed a security. Piwowar then went on to classify securities under three general categories: registered public offerings, exempt offerings, and finally, illegal securities. In his own words:

“If you are not falling into the first two buckets, we’ve said we’re coming after you. Bitcoin itself is not a security but these customised tokens for these initial coin offerings, most of them are. There is some legitimate stuff going that is on and then there is literally the fraud ones.”

For those who are unaware of what the Milken Institute Global Conference is, you can think of it as a global think tank that discusses practical ways to widen access to capital and promote prosperity. They hold various conferences every year with some rather eclectic speakers and panellists.

The institute’s flag ship event, this week’s global conference, featured the likes of primate expert Jane Goodall and five-time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady, along with more typical speakers from the world of global finance. The comments on cryptocurrencies were just a very small part of the entire event’s program.

Image from Shutterstock.

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The latest price analysis: while regulators can’t decide how to define cryptocurrencies, the market is reassuring its positions

Wall Street and the City are seeing a steady drumbeat of departures for blockchain and cryptocurrency ventures.

Nasdaq, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley have hinted at plans to launch and operate cryptocurrency exchanges in 2018. SBI Group, one of Japan’s largest financial companies, has finalized its plan to launch a cryptocurrency exchange in the summer.

The Number One Exchange

According to Business Insider Japan, SBI Holdings president and SBI Group CEO Kitao Yoshitaka has said that he is certain SBI Group will be able to evolve its cryptocurrency exchange into Japan’s leading digital currency trading platform and dominate the market.

A rough translation of Yoshitaka’s statement read:

When we do it, it will be number one in the blink of an eye so quickly, so even if a tremendous number of customers come, we can build a system that can bear it. We have to pursue safety thoroughly.

Yoshitaka and researchers at SBI Group are aware that the demand for cryptocurrencies and volumes of most exchanges have substantially decreased since December 2017, when market interest peaked. Hence, Yoshitaka’s confidence in gaining dominance over the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange market does not necessarily stem from the capital and resources SBI Holdings has, because local banks and financial institutions have acknowledged the profitability of cryptocurrency exchanges and the ability of cryptocurrency trading platforms to generate more profits than banks.

Prior to its hack, Coincheck, formerly Japan’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, generated around $150 million in quarterly profit, surpassing that of Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank. Japan-based technology reporter Yuji Nakamura said:

Before it was hacked, Coincheck made almost as much money as TSE, which operates Japan’s stock and futures markets. My guess is Coincheck could have fetched [a] $6-8 billion valuation.

As of now, SBI Holdings is valued at $6 billion, so if Nakamura is correct, Coincheck’s valuation could have equaled or surpassed that of SBI Holdings.

In the end, banks and financial institutions are entering the cryptocurrency market not because they believe it is an immature and easy market to dominate. Banks are entering the cryptocurrency market because cryptocurrency exchanges have become more profitable than banks.

Building Trust

SBI Holdings stated that in the beginning, the financial institution will focus on rebuilding trust with Japan’s investors. After the February correction that sent the bitcoin price to $6,000, investors lost trust and confidence in the market, and consequently, the volume of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange market halved.

It is likely that SBI Holdings will first begin to target large-scale institutional investors and retail traders, rather than individual investors, to increase the volume and liquidity of the market. Gradually, the exchange will start to target the general public and improve the conditions of the market.

It will also be important to prevent hacking attacks and security breaches, as the failure to do so may lead to a loss in profitability that may not be recoverable.

Monex Chief Executive Officer Oki Matsumoto, the new owner of Coincheck, said:

Given that we expect tougher regulatory and internal measures going forward, naturally the profitability will change. However, as our entire group works toward creating a crypto exchange built on trust, it may be possible to grow our customer base even more, which would drive synergy and boost profitability.

When Korea leaders, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, met at the border between the two nations on 27 April, the historical event was recorded for posterity on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to a CoinDesk Korea report, Ryu Gi-hyeok, a 27-year-old South Korean game developer, captured the momentous occasion when the two leaders declared before 80 million people and the world, that there would be peace on the Korean Peninsular.

Ryu coded two Ether (ETH) transactions with the Panmunjom Declaration in both Korean and English, recording both versions on Ethereum’s blockchain. Ryu explained:

“I just thought it took too long for the South and the North to give way to each other… After finding out what I could contribute to this historic achievement as a developer, I found the Panmunjom Declaration on the Blue House homepage and recorded it on Ethereum.”

Ryu has said that now he was also planning on launching a website service that would “keep all historic records permanent and immutable” on a blockchain. The nature of Ethereum’s blockchain means that both texts will remain permanently accessible to anyone, without the possibility of them ever being altered or deleted.

“The Panmunjom Declaration, written in Ethereum block 551,7596, will not go away unless Ethereum is gone,” he added. “I wanted to keep the world record of North and South Korea in the world of crypto.”

A move towards peace

The following statement, now on the Ethereum blockchain, marks the significance of the event, 65 years after the country split in two after the Korean war in 1953, creating a cold war and an uneasy peace between north and south:

“During this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice, South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the war and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.”

image source”  https://pixabay.com/en/yin-yang-yin-yang-about-qi-gong-2332166/ – Alexus Fotos

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London Block Exchange (LBX) — the UK’s only multi-cryptocurrency exchange — has added Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) to its coin offerings, the platform said in a press release.

Today’s move makes LBX the only exchange offering GBP pairing with both these cryptocurrencies, in addition to being the only exchange underpinned by on-shore banking. The new additions bring LBX’s total coins listed to six, in addition to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP), according to Business Insider.

At the end of March the platform added Ripple’s XRP. This move to add Ripple, and now BCH and ETC, are representative of the platform’s promise to roll out ‘multiple new coins’ on a regular basis. 

“Since launching, we’ve proven incredibly popular among U.K. crypto-enthusiasts, given our low cost trading and excellent app. We’re now strengthening the fact we offer more coins than most popular exchanges and are listening to the community in deciding which coins we will list,” Benjamin Dives, CEO of the exchange, said in the press release.

Bitcoin Cash registered almost 8% gains Wednesday, outpacing most other major cryptocurrencies, after LBX said it would support trading of the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. 

Bitcoin Cash Fork

Both newly listed coins have history with ‘forks,’ where a new version of the coin is paired off from the original and offered as a sort of software upgrade. Bitcoin Cash forked from the original Bitcoin in August 2017, and Ethereum Classic is a pre-fork version of the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency.

As for Bitcoin Cash, a new fork that will bring Bitcoin ABC to the market is set for May 15. ABC, an acronym for Adjustable Blocksize Cap, will increase the size of one block on the blockchain to 32MB, a fourfold increase from the original 8MB — and far larger than Bitcoin’s 1MB block size.

The fork will also remove the Segwit protocol, aka segregated witness, the process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block.

Since its inception in August 2017, Bitcoin Cash has been accused by some of misleading investors by piggy-backing off the Bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original Bitcoin’s transactions up until the split, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name. 

LBX opened in November 2017 to offer over-the-counter (OTC) trades and is currently on-boarding retail customers to its app, which is backed by ‘world-class,’ London-based customer service, and follows strict know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols.

According to its website, LBX is the first multi-cryptocurrency exchange dedicated to the U.K. market. Based in Canary Wharf, the platform provides a credible, safe, and easy exchange for both new consumers and institutional investors.

Image from Shutterstock.

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The WSJ reports through an unnamed source that Telegram raised so much money in its first two ICO rounds that it won’t be holding another, public one