Day: May 23, 2018

Green and Nature Association (GANA) Technologies, provides AI and blockchain technology based solutions to the cannabis industry. GANA is all set to start the public sale after a 100% successful private sale of 10K ETH. GANA’s vision is to become the biggest data holder in the cannabis industry. Accordingly, consult new and existing cannabis businesses and provide more healthier and efficient service to cannabis users.

May 23, 2018

Following the end of a successful private token sale, Green and Nature Association (GANA) Technology is delighted to announce the official start of the public sale of GANA token on May 21.  This blockchain start-up promises to be a gamechanger in the cannabis sector by providing blockchain and AI technologies solutions to individuals and research institutes through an ecosystem that collects and shares key industry data. A total supply of 2,400,000,000 GANA tokens will be up for sale during the first public sale to be conducted by GANA Technologies.  

Over the last few years, the field of AI has progressed in leaps and bounds in almost all industries. However, when it comes to decision making, there has always been a constant debate over the ethical responsibilities of AI. In case of the medical industry including that of Cannabis, a thorough management of such AI’s must be undertaken.

The GANA ecosystem looks to solve the inadequacies of the current cannabis industry by collecting data from the users, retailers, researchers, and other data sources and providing target-based content provision. Utilizing the groundbreaking blockchain technology, GANA ensures transparent data management for providing valuable information to both the consumers and companies. By offering quality authentication system and business intelligence platform, they want to provide an artificial intelligence based personal assistance service to cannabis users. The ultimate goal for GANA is to become the largest data holder in the global cannabis industry.

Some of the key benefits of the new concept created by GANA Technologies are

• Product quality authentication system: A blockchain based authentication system that tracks seed-to-sale process using QR code.
• Artificial intelligence based image recognition: GANA is currently working on developing a function of mobile application that can scan a bud and calculate the possibilities of containing substances using artificial intelligence based image recognition technology.
• Collecting consumer data: GANA aims on collecting consumer data to carry out consumer analytics just like Amazon, Facebook and YouTube. By analyzing data generated by the users, they are looking to provide more optimized recommendations.
• Personal assistant service: This feature will be particularly useful for the new cannabis users that do not know which type to consume in a given situation and purpose.
• Business intelligence platform: Cannabis companies often have customer data that can be used for understanding them better and creating better services or products, but lack the knowledge to deal with those data. GANA aspires to become their consultants by sharing the data and artificial intelligence based analysis tools to provide insights for their business.
• Payment system: Users can use GANA payment to purchase products, services and digital contents using GANA tokens.

“GANA Technologies provides blockchain and AI technologies solutions which are required by individuals and research institutes through establishing an ecosystem that collects and shares cannabis industry data with lagged technology,” says Gapseong Noh, the CEO and Founder of GANA Technologies.

The upcoming public sale of GANA tokens will take place over four different rounds.    
Mentioned below are some key points related to this taken sale.

• Total token amount: 2,400,000,000 GANA
• Token rate: 1 ETH= 20,000 GANA
• Bonus rate: 1ETH = 20,000 + 0 ~ 2,000 GANA (+ 0 ~ 10% bonus) 
• Hard cap = 60,000 ETH
• Coin allocation: GANA sale 50%, reserve pool 15%, team 15%, advisors and partners 10%, and company 10%.    

To find out more about Green and Nature Association (GANA) Technologies, please visit https://ganacoin.io/ico

About GANA Technologies: GANA Technologies provides optimized blockchain and AI technologies based solutions to individuals and research institutes by establishing an ecosystem which collects and shares data from the cannabis industry. The data learned by their AI model is based on data collected by the users themselves. This makes the users themselves part of the indirect developers of such models since GANA provides full authorities to the type and range of their data for learning. GANA aims on providing transparent management of development process to establish trust with users.  

Contact:  Ellie

Website: https://ganacoin.io/ico

Email: [email protected]

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.

SINGAPORE, MAY 23, 2018 – ENDO Protocol, the increasingly renowned decentralized certified data verification solution, has today announced the platform’s technical readiness to fully integrate internationally recognized Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policy services, as well as entire information databases of universities and archives worldwide. Interoperability of the ENDO Protocol and such services and institutions promises to change the certified data verification industry.   

Today, businesses, government and educational institutions, as well as individuals are being increasingly challenged by certified data verification issues. These include matters not only related to hacking and data loss risks, but also due to the fact that data is not protected against information substitution, deletion and modification without encryption and decentralized storage.

Moreover, increasing problems are connected to the matter that verification processes differ in scope and type of data, as each agency, state government or institution have their own mechanisms for verifying information, different deadlines, and different methods for filing and filling documents (which also leads to unnecessary costs, including the certification of translations). Even if data is confirmed and easily verified, the information itself is transmitted throughout completely different channels and is collected from different sources, which is time- and, frequently, money-consuming. When data is not standardized, its further usage becomes more complicated.

ENDO Protocol solves certified information tracking and encrypted data storage issues and aims to create a single secure environment for various kinds of important data. All personal, corporate and publicly available information about education, identity, medical records and the like can be controlled through the ENDO Platform, at the same time guaranteeing the privacy of personal data, by providing protected access to stored information to third parties of one’s choice.

The Alpha version of the first ENDO-based application has already been launched and successfully operates with some of Europe’s largest coaching, shipping companies, and universities. Basic functions that are available to clients include the creation and publication of documents in trial networks, cancellation procedures, distributed document confirmation, upload and allocation, as well as an open Application Programming Interface (API) and the industry-standard protocol for authorization OAuth to ensure an easy and secure way to publish and interact with secured data, and its integration with institutions.

ENDO Protocol is a one-of-a-kind, certified data verification solution. It is also a decentralized, open-source platform that solves certified information tracking and encrypted data storage issues. ENDO Protocol ensures a secure environment for personal, corporate and publicly available information about education, identity, medical records and the like, and can be controlled through the ENDO Platform, at the same time guaranteeing the privacy of personal data, providing protected access to stored information to third parties.

For more information about interoperability and integration of your service with the ENDO Protocol, please contact Vladislav Utushkin (Advisor) via [email protected].

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.

Tom Lee explains why he believes Bitcoin will reach $25,000, even though the leading cryptocurrency is down 41 percent this year

Bitcoin’s two-week sell off continued today, seeing the coin fall to below $8,000 — $7,500 at the time of writing — and hitting levels not seen since mid-April.

Regulatory Moves Impact Bitcoin’s Price

And it’s not just Bitcoin, many other top cryptocurrencies were also in the red today despite bullish calls that coin prices would soar following major blockchain events in New York City that have been taking place over the past week.

Some in the cryptosphere have pointed to recent regulatory news as the key driver of the sell-off. This Monday, financial authorities in the U.S. and Canada announced a cooperative crackdown on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other cryptocurrency investment schemes, led by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA).

More than 40 state and provincial watchdogs are participating in ‘Operation Cryptosweep,’ which has triggered at least 70 investigations so far.

“This [Operation Cryptosweep] cleaned out a lot of the bad projects,” said CNBC’s Brian Kelly. “That has people a little concerned, and is a short-term hit to sentiment.”

Moving forward though, Kelly points out that these regulatory steps are all part of the maturation that the market needs in order to attract institutional investors. “The projects that they shut down they appear to be junk, they had a real reason to shut them down,” he said.

This week’s crackdown from the NASAA comes amid growing attention from U.S regulators. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought several fraud cases against operators of ICOs and also launched a website to help investors recognize ‘red flags’ when looking for cryptocurrency investment opportunities.

Tom Lee Predicts Rebound

Despite these recent price woes, Fundstrat’s Tom Lee still believes Bitcoin will reach $25,000. In an email to CNBC, Lee attributed today’s drop to ‘typical crypto volatility.’ He also identified three key factors that have him believing the coin will more than triple its current value moving forward.

The first is related to the cost of producing and replicating the cryptocurrency. When Bitcoin was trading at around $8,000 yesterday, Lee appeared on CNBC’s ‘Futures Now,’ where he expressed the belief that the digital currency was actually ‘trading at cost’ because the price of production was actually around that number. With this, it is likely Lee is referring to recent data from Morgan Stanley that puts the Bitcoin mining profitability at just over $8,000. This means that if miners want to turn a profit, the coin in theory has to stay above this number.

Lee’s second factor relates to the catalyst that institutional investors will bring to the cryptocurrency space. “I think institutional investors have gained a lot of interest, and they haven’t really come into crypto yet because there is still some regulatory uncertainty,” he said.

Lee’s third factor relates to data compiled by Fundstrat, which show a historical trend that has him encouraging investors to hold onto the coin. “Historically, 10 days comprise all the performance in any single year of bitcoin’s price,” he said. “If you just took out those 10 days, bitcoin’s down 25 percent a year.”

Lee continued: “So as miserable as it feels holding bitcoin at $8,000, the move from $8,000 to $25,000 will happen in a handful of days.”

Featured image from Shutterstock.

The post Regulatory Uncertainty Pushes Bitcoin Below $8,000, Tom Lee Predicts a $25,000 Return appeared first on NewsBTC.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Venture capitalist and investor Tim Draper said that blockchain could create the perfect government bureaucracy

Despite slumping bitcoin prices in 2018, the cryptocurrency space has continued to see a huge development in a market lacking top-level expertise, according to an interview in the Wall Street Journal.

Ripple chief cryptographer David Schwartz pointed out that one developer on his team had recently received two USD 1 million signing bonus offers, one from a crypto startup and the other from a blockchain tech company headhunting for blockchain expertise, according to Business Insider.

According to Finder.au, 4,500 job openings with the terms “blockchain”, “bitcoin” or “cryptocurrency” in the title have been posted on LinkedIn this year, an increase up to May of this year of 151%  over 2017. This compared to 2016 when only 645 openings were posted.

The eye-watering signing bonuses for crypto and blockchain developers with just a few years of experience is unusual in any tech company, despite bonus schemes being the norm with top tech companies, according to recent TeamBlind figures. Its survey revealed that 67% of tech companies questioned received a bonus but only 11% received an amount over USD 100,000.

One of the reasons for the spike in bonuses was due to a surge in demand in December 2017, prompting exchanges to scale up their operations in order to meet customer demand, particularly as the funds were readily available to do so.

Cryptopia, a relatively small New Zealand exchange, started in 2017 with two staff members and finished with about 100, with plans to hire many more. Coinbase aims to double its headcount in 2018 with top talent, while Kraken plans to quintuple it from 200 to 1,000.

Juha Mikkola, co-founder of Wyncode Academy, a coding school, told Business Insider he knows of developers being paid double the going rate for their blockchain experience, claiming, “It’s not just tech companies that need this talent, it’s real-estate, non-profits, and banks.”

There is a shortage of talent and it’s more of a headache than Bitcoin’s volatility, according to Miha Grcar, the head of business development for Bitstamp: “Globally, the pool of talent – people with experience in blockchain and distributed-ledger technology – is somewhat limited… This is a big challenge.”

Ripple’s David Schwartz had the last word: “The hiring packages have gotten insane.”

Follow BitcoinNews.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bitcoinnewscom

Telegram Alerts from BitcoinNews.com at https://t.me/bconews

The post Developers Rake in Million-Dollar Sweeteners Despite Slump appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

According to an article published earlier today, two of Bloomberg’s top crypto reporters are the latest to be targeted by scammers. Olga Kharif and Lily Katz have reportedly had their Twitter accounts spoofed and fraudsters have used their identities to illicit payments in crypto from naive followers.

Latest of Many High Profile Twitter Scams Involving Cryptocurrency

The premise of the scam is very simple. Fraudsters create a Twitter account that looks just like that of a respected member of the cryptocurrency or wider technology space and tells the followers of that person’s legitimate Twitter account that they’re giving away free crypto coins. All the naive Twitter user wanting to benefit from this supposed philanthropy needs do is send a small amount of digital currency to the personality to begin with.

The article published earlier today explains the timeline over which the scams have been running, along with the pair’s efforts to appeal to Twitter to get the fake accounts shutdown.

Despite this being one of the most blatant scams around, it’s proving to be rather successful. This is in part because of how money-hungry many newbies in the crypto community are and also because it’s so easy to set up these spam accounts. Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates commented for the Bloomberg article:

“Setting up a bot is easy-peasy… The sign-up probably takes longer than the programming.”

According to the Bloomberg article, the addresses associated with the fraudulent accounts have received around 10 Ether transactions over the last few weeks. These have been in the 0.5 to 1 ETH range. Whilst no one’s going to retire on such a scam, it’s clear that it is proving profitable.

Many other high profile technology and cryptocurrency personalities have been targeted by the scam. The two Bloomberg reporters follow the likes of Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin and Tesla’s Elon Musk in having their online identities replicated. Vitalik has taken to trying to discourage the scammers himself by adding a disclaimer to his name that he isn’t giving away any free money. This is evidenced below in his latest Tweet.

Reminder: the correct resolution to the "can an omnipotent god make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" paradox is: yes, he can, but as soon as the rock is created he will no longer be omnipotent, he'll be 'omnipotent except for that darn rock'

Now you know.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) May 22, 2018

Meanwhile, the community are appealing to Twitter to take a more proactive role in fighting back against such scammers targeting the cryptocurrency community. Despite Twitter reportedly working on fixes and Jack Dorsey claiming that his company is ‘trying to fight scams,’ many contest that Twitter could be working harder to this end. Kay added:

“My impression is that Twitter could do much more… The problem is that cleaning up the platform is detrimental to its business model.”

Luke McNamara of cyber security firm FireEye Inc. also opined as to why so many scammers had been drawn to cryptocurrency:

“This is a space where individuals are responsible for their own security… That’s why we’ve seen so many bad actors gravitating into this space.”

Featured image from Shutterstock.

The post Bloomberg Reporters: “We’re Not Running Any Crypto Scams” appeared first on NewsBTC.

Even though Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are innovative, they all share a major weakness. People who cannot access the internet for whatever reason cannot use these protocols to their full capacity. The txTenna application will change all that, as it will not require an internet connection to send Bitcoin.

The Concept of txTenna

While it sounds interesting on paper, it remains to be seen if txTenna will become a success. This upcoming Android application is the result of a collaboration between Samourai Wallet and goTenna. Both companies acknowledge that Bitcoin payments need to be made more accessible irrespective of one’s access to the internet. Doing so is much easier said than done, however.

How Does it Work?

To most people, it sounds impossible to conduct Bitcoin transactions without an active internet connection. Even when using third-party tools, having some form of connectivity is still required at some point. txTenna will remove that barrier, which could potentially expose millions of users to cryptocurrency in the years to come – assuming this application works as advertised.

The txTenna application will allow users to sync their mobile device with a goTenna device. It was to be expected that some external hardware would be needed, as this would be unfeasible otherwise. The additional hardware comes in pairs and is sold for $179. Using the companion Android app, users can then transact offline and send BTC accordingly.

One major limitation is that one’s signal needs to be within one mile of another active device. Through this mesh network, transactions can be bounced and broadcast accordingly. In order for this to work, it will need to be adopted by the masses in short order. goTenna has sold 100,000 devices so far, but that is still a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Will it Succeed?

The big question is whether or not the txTenna idea can gain any major traction. Bitcoin is a very niche market these days, and attracting people outside of this ecosystem to facilitate BTC transactions using somewhat pricey hardware which serves no other purpose might not necessarily work. Even so, it is a remarkable venture.

Coinbase announced Wednesday it was rebranding its GDAX platform as Coinbase Pro. Additionally, the company has acquired Paradex, a relay platform.

American Express announced a blockchain-based loyalty rewards program using Hyperledger’s technology.