Day: May 16, 2018

Blockstack announced app.co, a decentralized app store aimed at bringing together all dapps for users’ convenience.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance announced the release of a common technical specification at Consensus 2018 on Wednesday.

Thailand is looking to enforce its own version of regulation regarding cryptocurrencies. That is much easier said than done, as this new form of money doesn’t adhere to existing guidelines. As was to be expected, the new regulations on cryptocurrencies and ICOs are rather strong. In fact, anyone violating these laws faces major fines and even jail sentences.

Thailand Means Business

Although the cryptocurrency regulation in Thailand may sound severe, it is not all that bad when people stick to the basic rules. Bitcoin and altcoins will not be banned, and trading will not be prohibited under any circumstances. That in itself is a pretty positive development, considering that China has taken a completely different approach in this regard. An all-out ban on cryptocurrency trading in Thailand was considered one of the many possibilities until this Monday.

The new rules state that both cryptocurrencies and digital tokens – such as those issued through ICOs – are considered digital assets. That brings a lot more legitimacy to this industry as a whole and serves as an important first step toward making ICO tokens, Bitcoin, and altcoins a lot more appealing to the general public. Whether or not this regulation will actually do so remains to be seen, but it is a positive approach nonetheless.

As one would expect, the Thai SEC will oversee these matters for the foreseeable future. Additionally, it will ensure that all users’ identities are verified in a proper, secure, and legal manner. This seemingly puts an end to anonymous cryptocurrency trading in Thailand, although that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Those users who prefer anonymity and privacy will have to look for new solutions moving forward, though.

The main purpose of classifying these currencies as digital assets is to curb money laundering, tax avoidance, and crime. Most people are well aware that ICO tokens and cryptocurrencies have a poor reputation globally, and that situation will not improve until all loopholes are eliminated. The Bank of Thailand had attempted to do so by simply banning all cryptocurrency transactions, although it seems that decision was since reversed.

Under the new royal decree, severe punishment will be enforced against anyone who attempts to engage in illicit behavior. Unregistered token brokers will need to register with the government or face a jail sentence of up to two years. Additionally, the government will impose fines of at least two times the value of the tokens in question, up to a maximum of 500,000 baht. Fraudulent filings will lead to a five-year jail term.

Surprisingly, the government is also cracking down on so-called account sharing. Anyone letting others use their accounts for transactions can be jailed for up to one year and face a major fine. There will also be a 15% digital gains tax on all transactions, which is the least favorable decision of them all. Even so, this is in line with a lot of other countries. This is an interesting development in Thailand, and one that seemingly benefits cryptocurrency as a whole.

Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, has conducted an internal audit amid suspicions of fraud from national authorities. The audit results allegedly disprove the claims that the exchange has falsely reported the amount of funds it holds.

South Korea’s Upbit Exchange Claims Internal Audit Disproves Suspicions of Fraud

South Korea’s cryptocurrency market came under pressure last week following news of a police raid at the offices of Upbit on suspicions of fraud. The joint action between the Korean Financial Intelligence Unit (KIU), Financial Services Commission, and Seoul Police gave orders to 10 officers to take control of the exchange and its assets.

The suspicions of fraud led a large number of Upbit customers withdrawing their digital assets as a preventive measure, which may have contributed to the loss of $50 billion in the cryptocurrency market overnight. Ironically, the Chief Executive Officer of Upbit has been active against illegal fraud by offering rewards to customers who would identify multilevel scams funding through ICOs.

According to local media, suspicions against Upbit include coinless transactions, allegations of money laundering, leakage of money through US trading sites, and suspicion of insider trading during the listing process. No charges have been filed at the moment of writing.

Lee Seok-woo, president of Upbit’s parent company Dunamu Inc., claims the internal audit dismisses the suspicion of “book-trading”, according to local news agency Money Today.

“In early March, when Upbit was suspected of only book transactions without coins…I have been notified that the amount of coins is 100% identical to the number of coins” in the wallets.”

According to the exchange, there is a separate wallet for keeping and storing virtual currencies apart from the deposit and withdrawal wallets, and virtual currencies without depository wallets are kept there. This storage wallet can only be withdrawn together with Bittrex (its US affiliate) and a trusted third party.

An accounting firm official in South Korea commented the allegations.

“The accountant did not sign a notarial because he confirmed the record. Even if there is no clear evidence that you did not trade on a book without a virtual currency, it could be used as a reference.”

Upbit calls this whole situation a misunderstanding as it has “never bought or sold cryptocurrencies that it did not own since it opened last October”. The operator claims that in any way it has facilitated of digital assets without having such currencies, aka book-trading, and the suspicions are unfounded. Most transactions are made through US-affiliate Bittrex and that is what may be causing confusion among authorities.

The post Audit Results: South Korea’s Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange Upbit Cleared appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin hit a 3.5-week low of $8,100 earlier today and now risks a bear revival, the price chart analysis indicates.

St. Louis Federal Reserve President, James Bullard, was recently interviewed at this year’s Consensus conference in New York City. That a top US economic policy maker was in attendance is victory enough; however, he was asked his opinions on cryptocurrency going forward by CNBC Global Markets Reporter Seema Mody. He explained he found the phenomenon “interesting,” and how more cryptos being issued all time necessitates keeping an “eye” on them. Mr. Bullard also compared the use case for cryptocurrencies with that of the dollar, and whether the former posed a threat to the latter.  

Also read: Bitpay Enables Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) for Tax Payments

Federal Reserve President Attends Crypto Conference

Federal Reserve President, James Bullard, gave a presentation at this year’s giant Consensus conference in New York City. Reread that sentence. A sitting Fed policy maker thought it important enough to attend a crypto soiree. That’s news enough. But more importantly, President Bullard gave a presentation on the government’s current thinking about cryptocurrency.

In his talk, he acknowledged crypto is facilitating trade that might otherwise not occur. He couldn’t help himself by mentioning illegal activity (and we all know fiat currencies are never used in illegal activity), but he did describe decentralized money’s lean toward frictionless transactions (especially with regard to costs/fees) as being an advancement.

The Fed policy maker reserved the bulk of his comments, both in the presentation and during a post-game interview with CNBC, to talk about the problems in crypto as he sees them. One issue is simply the number of currencies being offered. The 12th St. Louis Fed President feels this over complicates matters, especially with regard to exchange rates and volatility.

Asked if cryptocurrencies pose a threat to the dollar, Mr. Bullard, 56, answered he didn’t think so. Global Markets Reporter Seema Mody, who is covering Consensus for CNBC this year, quickly followed up with a “but it could be?” The Fed President was noncommittal, choosing instead to shrug and give the pat answer about no one really knowing what the future holds. He emphasized how since its creation the US dollar has vanquished nearly all currency competition due to its being backed by the world’s strongest economy. It’s abundantly clear, Mr. Bullard suggested, people want the dollar and not crypto … at least at the moment.

Fed Coin on the Horizon?

Ms. Mody pressed Mr. Bullard about his presence at the conference, asking if this was a hint of things to come with regard to a future coin birthed by the Fed, a Fed Coin? Interestingly he didn’t dismiss the idea outwardly, and instead said they’d for sure look at the possibility, as the Fed does with many different types of financial innovations. He also assured there wasn’t any plan being hatched at the moment, no imminent Fed Coin coming. Mr. Bullard also wondered aloud what the gains would be by creating such a coin. He smiled subtly, assuring he’s keeping an “open mind.”

His comments seem to be less strident than statements issued by the St. Louis Fed on the very subject not even one month ago. “The St. Louis Federal Reserve has published an essay critically evaluating the notion of cryptocurrencies that are issued by central banks,” we detailed. “The article is highly dismissive in presenting what it describes as ‘the non-case for central bank cryptocurrencies,’ concluding that ‘a central bank will not issue cryptocurrencies in the sense of a truly decentralized and permissionless asset that allows users to remain anonymous.’”

A rather curious fact about the St. Louis Fed, one of twelve jurisdictions in the Federal Reserve system (the 8th district serves Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas), is how it has recently become very chatty about crypto. As these pages reported back at the beginning of this year, “Aleksander Berentsen and Fabian Schär of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis have recently published an article that emphasizes many of the benefits of cryptocurrencies. The article states that ‘cryptoassets are well suited to become an important asset class,’ in addition to offering praise regarding a number of the major applications associated with cryptocurrencies.”

Do you think a Fed president attending a crypto conference is meaningful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, Twitter.

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Blockshipping, a company looking to revolutionize the container shipping industry, has a highly anticipated TGE that begins on May 14th. The Copenhagen-based project looks to fix many of the issues currently plaguing the industry.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

TGE/ Token Details

Users in the meantime can register to complete the KYC requirement, saving time for them when the TGE goes live.

Blockshipping’s token model consists of two separate tokens. CPT, Container Platform Token, will be used as an internal utility token, and CCC, Container Crypto Coin, as an external Revenue Share Token.

The Revenue Sharing Model will see initial sharing start at 20% of gross revenue from transaction fees. As revenue increases, this percentage will decrease but overall revenue for token holders will still increase.  

Token prices are locked in at $0.62 USD, to mitigate the volatility of prices in cryptocurrency. Contributions can be made with Bitcoin, Ethereum as well as bank transfers in both USD and EUR. BTC and ETH conversion rates are taken using the average price at the time of the transaction from Bitfinex, GDAX, and Bitstamp.

Minimum buy is set to $100 USD or around 161 CCC tokens.

Blockshipping to fix numerous issues in container shipping

Container shipping is a vital key to the sea-borne trade, responsible for 60% of the exchanges that happens globally.  There are many areas that sorely need addressing, such as overcapacity, low freight rates, security threats, and increasingly strict environmental regulations.

GSCP: first of its kind platform and registry

Blockshipping will fix this with the creation of the Global Shared Container Platform (GSCP), the first real-time registry of the approximately 27 million shipping containers, as well as a collaborative platform for all companies that handle container shipping.

This will allow all parties involved to more efficiently perform many tasks related to handling containers, which if widely adopted, could see industry-wide savings to the tune of $5.7 billion, as well as a significantly reduced global CO2 emissions, thanks to the smarter handling of shipping containers.  

Blockshipping’s CEO, Peter Ludvigsen has confirmed the onboarding of GSCP’s first customer, a carrier in the 10-20 global ranking, who has also joined their customer advisory board. Ludvigsen is also pleased with the reception of the concept, receiving nothing but positive feedback from key players in the industry:

“Traditionally, the shipping industry has a reputation for being rather conservative, but what I have experienced since the announcement of our GSCP project is anything but the traditional pushback on new business ideas. It has been like one unbroken series of positive dialogues with key players of all areas in the container shipping industry.”

“I am extremely proud to say that a few days ago Blockshipping obtained confirmation from a global container carrier that they will join our GSCP platform as our first customer. This is a carrier in the 10-20 global ranking who has also confirmed that they will join our Customer advisory board.”

Read up on the Blockshipping team here. To learn more about the token sale, revenue share model, and more, read their whitepaper. Chat with the Blockshipping team community members on Telegram. Users can also follow Blockshipping on social media, via Facebook and Twitter.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has released a client specification that will allow software developers to know the specs required for development, helping interoperability

Rootstock (RSK), the first Bitcoin smart contract sidechain, has announced that 10% of all Bitcoin miners are now securing the RSK blockchain. This makes RSK extremely secure since that is a tremendous amount of hashing power.

Smart contracts are a major advancement in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology world. They allow users to enter into conditional agreements and lock up a certain amount of cryptocurrency until conditions are met. This provides the building blocks for the development of decentralized applications that are directly integrated with the blockchain.

Ethereum has consistently been the second most popular cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin and currently has a market cap of over USD 70 billion. The reason for its popularity is that it has smart contract technology integrated into its protocol, used by many blockchain-based applications.

It is not possible to directly add smart contracts to the Bitcoin blockchain without controversial protocol changes. RSK founders found a solution in creating a sidechain which supports smart contracts and is directly linked to the Bitcoin blockchain.

RSK has its own native cryptocurrency called Smart Bitcoins, but they are directly pegged to real Bitcoins. When a user deposits Bitcoin for an RSK smart contract it remains on the Bitcoin blockchain and is locked up for the duration of the contract, and an equivalent amount of Smart Bitcoins on the RSK sidechain are put into the smart contract. This is done so that RSK smart contracts truly are Bitcoin-based, rather than using their own independent cryptocurrency which would compete with Bitcoin.

Currently, the RSK sidechain can handle 100 transactions per second, with block confirmation times of 10 seconds, but it soon hopes to release a version of RSK called Lumino that has Lightning Network technology and can handle 20,000 transactions per second.

The RSK sidechain can be merged-mined with Bitcoin, meaning that machines mining Bitcoin don’t have to use any additional power or resources to participate in securing and maintaining the RSK network. Miners are rewarded with transaction fees from the RSK network, so it is logical and profitable that every single Bitcoin miner would merge-mine RSK to get extra money. Due to this, the developers of RSK expect much more hashing power to join its network in the long term.

RSK is fully operational and can be used to build decentralized apps that use Bitcoin and directly interact with the Bitcoin blockchain. This gives Bitcoin capabilities similar to Ethereum and will help make Bitcoin use more widespread.

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