Day: May 28, 2018

At press time, bitcoin has fallen by another $100, and is now trading for $7,200. The bears continue to control the market as the cryptocurrency arena has thus far lost over $150 billion from its May high.

Recently, it was announced that the U.S. Justice Department was opening an investigation into the manipulation of cryptocurrency prices and illicit activities. Peter Tchir – a cryptocurrency analyst and Forbes contributor – says he would be very surprised if it turns out that cryptocurrency prices aren’t being manipulated, and feels that bitcoin’s price swings couldn’t occur unless someone was pulling the strings.

Tchir says there are no solid or established rules in the world of cryptocurrency, and points out a few direct factors that ultimately back his theory.

“There are allegedly several very large holders of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,” he explains. “The concentration of wealth gives them the incentive to push prices higher. In the stock market, anyone holding a large proportion of the outstanding security is subject to additional rules and scrutiny, but no such protections exist for cryptocurrency. The person telling you about how great it is may be very incentivized to see the price go higher. Whether this falls under the definition of manipulation that is being investigated, assume it occurs and assume it distorts price.”

Tchir also points out that traders have either heard of or witnessed manipulation in other markets – from LIBOR to FX – and says that cryptocurrency miners have far too much power, and are motivated to see prices rise, thereby raking in higher profits.

“Miners earn bitcoins for what they do, so it is logical for them to want higher prices at any given time for the same amount of computing work,” he explains. “That is particularly true if mining activity is at all linked to price action… That would motivate the miners even more.”

A new report published on Yahoo! Finance suggests that bitcoin’s long-term trends remain positive, but that bitcoin is likely to strike the high $6,000 range before any serious recovery can take place. The final support mark probably lies at around $6,800 before BTC bottoms out and begins to exhibit momentum in its price hikes.

Interestingly, this report goes against the words of analyst Willy Woo, whom we discussed during yesterday’s price piece. His predictions – which were also published on Yahoo! – stated that bitcoin was likely to fall as low as $5,500 in the coming weeks, but now it appears such a drastic fall may have been an overstatement. Bitcoin would have to fail to sustain $6,800 and fall below $6,500 for this prediction to have a chance at becoming reality.

At press time, the technical analysis suggests this is not probable, nor will the cryptocurrency market cap fall below the $300 billion mark. Despite the consistent price drops over the past month, it appears bitcoin and its crypto-cousins are slated to remain above certain trading levels, ensuring that investors don’t lose too much in the end. However, it is difficult to predict when bitcoin and other digital assets can enter their respective recovery periods.

“Watch movies and get paid” — the blockchain project with this promising slogan appeared at the Cannes festival in May, aiming to disrupt the cinema industry, especially independent cinema. The reward system for audience and directors is a social network that even allows you to date a stranger and watch a movie with them, giving you the possibility to create your own online cinema — CinemaWell.com’s features may breathe new life into the movie industry that is now searching for new ways to make profit.

A COIN FOR EACH MOVIE 

There are more than 100,000 talented film directors around the world, but only about 100 films have a real chance to get distributed and be financially successful. This is the harsh reality of the film industry, but it may see some changes soon thanks to new technologies. CinemaWell.com 2.0, a decentralized social platform for online cinemas, gives independent filmmakers an opportunity to break into the digital world.

The reward system, based on CinemaWell.com’s currency ApplauseCash (APLC), works both ways. Film directors can set their own ticket prices for each movie or monetize them by showing ads. Directors then not only get tokens but also useful information: detailed statistics on who watches their movies so they can effectively use targeted marketing for their future films. As for the movie fanatics, every time they watch or review a film, they will also earn tokens. Moreover, movie watchers can open their own online cinema and set up premieres in their favorite genres.

ONLINE MOVIE DATE

The company was launched in 2013 as an Internet Video Co-Viewing (IVCV) platform. This idea is still part of the project, allowing an unlimited number of users to watch the same movie at the same time from one virtual theater. They can share their opinions in public or private chat rooms and even make new friends; a dating service feature even provides the opportunity to watch a movie with a stranger.

The project has already screened the premiere of the movie “The Gold” with a $2 mln budget. “The film company succeeded in this experiment. They decided to show their movie, first in their online cinema on CinemaWell.com platform, and only then this movie had to be released for offline cinemas. So, there were several thousands of people at this premiere, hundreds of whom entered cinema halls several hours before screening. They were waiting impatiently for the premiere, chatting with each other online,” says the company’s spokesperson on Bitcointalk.

FUTURE SOLUTION

Now the CinemaWell.com team takes part in various film festivals, introducing the project to the movie industry. The starting point was the Cannes Festival running May 7-16, where the first conference on blockchain in the film industry took place. Experts say the teenage audience is shifting away from traditional social media, so experimental projects have great chances to succeed. Besides, a blockchain-based project could put an end to piracy that takes $20 bln from the industry every year. Finally, decentralization can give indie cinematographers an equal chance to compete with big studios with a single platform to distribute their content.

The project had its ICO this past winter and reached its targeted soft cap in the first hour of the pre-sale. But even though the sale is over, there is still a way to get tokens: http://t.me/cinemawelcome_airdrop_bot. Right now the company is offering 10 ApplauseCash (~$30) to all who start following their Telegram channel and other social networks and 2 ApplauseCash for each referral. It’s possible to receive an additional 30 APLC (~$90) in exchange for creating a personal theater.

The post Get Paid in Crypto for Watching Movies With a New Blockchain Platform appeared first on NewsBTC.

Six companies have announced their intentions of creating crypto exchange platforms in Japan following regulatory approval.

All six companies are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and are set to move into the market which accounts for two-thirds of Bitcoin trading.

Crypto Exchanges Target Japan

The six companies are Money Forward, Drecom, Yamane Medical Corporation, Adways, Avex, and Daiwa Securities Group. They have each expressed intentions of launching crypto exchanges in Japan and are each at various stages in the process.

Money Forward provides an online accounting app for individuals looking to manage their money. Founded in 2012, the company is run by CEO Yosuke Tsuji who said, in November 2017, that he wanted to take the app global, comparing Money Forward to Sony. Money Forward is planning to make a crypto account book that can spread data across 20 local and foreign crypto exchanges and a tool that allows users to work out profit and loss data for taxes. This should help investors who struggle to know how much tax to pay or whether they should be paying any tax at all.

Drecom focuses on social gaming applications and internet marketing and has recently partnered with Bandai Namco to start a games company for HTML5 games. They have invested 247.5 million Yen ($2.1 million) with three games due for release in Spring 2018. Yamane Medical Corporation offers care homes for the elderly and their move into the blockchain space shows the application of the technology across all sectors.

Japan fleshes out crypto market rules to prevent Coincheck 2.0 https://t.co/1ak1toRWI5

— Night Owl Trading (@NOTLLCChicago) May 28, 2018

Adways provide interactive and non-intrusive ads for online videos and are based in Paris, but have offices in Tokyo. The company is set to submit changes in incorporation in a general shareholders meeting on June 27. These changes will highlight that their company is involved in blockchain technology, virtual currencies, and the virtual currency exchange business.

Avex is an entertainment company based on music, images, movies, and concerts. They were involved in creating an experience program for women and children through one of its subsidiary companies. On April 23, they partnered with Hakuhodo DY Media Partners to develop VR movie and video content.

Daiwa Securities Group is a Japanese investment bank. Currently, it is involved in a merger with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group who specialise in offering investment advice.

Japan has 16 fully licenced crypto exchanges and eight more are being reviewed by Japan’s financial watchdog, the Financial Services Agency (FSA). Japan is home to Coincheck which has removed four privacy coins, including Monero, due to an FSA ban. It was also hacked in January to the tune of 57 billion Yen ($521 million), but has since completed a $430 million refund.

Recently, a Japanese bank has formed partnerships to become the first bank to provide custody services for digital assets. Japanese bank Nomura has teamed up with hardware wallet maker Ledger and investment manager Global Advisors to provide the ability for secure storage of such assets. Also, the largest bank in Japan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFJ), is working with Akamai to scale their blockchain network to handle 10 million transactions per second. It intends to launch its own digital currency in 2019.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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The new platform Alt.Estate plans to make its protocol the “ERC-20” for tokenized real estate. It includes the smart contract technology (the team has already developed 20+ smart contracts and dApps builder), corporate structure and proven legal framework. Like Ripple, the company focuses on large institutional customers. The solution is also beneficial for middle-class investors and crypto whales. The demand for ALT tokens is forecasted to be 10 times higher than the initial token supply.

A studio in Shinjuku district of Tokyo, a 2-bedroom with ocean view in New York – those are new locations which Alex adds to his ‘real estate portfolio’. No, he’s not a tycoon, he only intends to spend $5K for small fractions of 8-10 objects. He selects the tokens on the website, pays in crypto, and it’s done. Before blockchain, it would take him 1 month, require a notary in each country and a $15K fee for each deal alone. Now in 10 minutes, a diversified global portfolio is composed. Alex intends to HODL the tokens, then trade them on the Alt.Estate platform with a markup.

Becoming an Industry Standard

Powered by the Protocol, Alt.Estate Platform is the marketplace for primary sales and secondary trading of tokenized assets. Together with the Protocol, the Platform makes trading tokenized properties easy and fast and brings closer the Alex’s use-case vision.

The blockchain technology allows to decrease transaction costs from 30% to 2%, bring down transaction time from 1 month to 1 click, and lower an entry ticket from $200,000 to $100. All data is already uploaded on IPFS to ensure the transparency of rights ALT tokens provide, to store purchase/sale agreements, property’s operating procedures, etc.

Win-win for middle class and whales

Small and middle-class investors can spend $5K for a  global real estate portfolio of small fractions in 8-10 properties. At the same time, crypto whales can protect their assets from volatile exchange rate by investing it in real estate. ‘Alt is like Tether in real estate’, noted the Circle’s Managing Director for Asia Jack Liu during the pitch in Hong Kong last week.

Alt.Estate’s CEO Vladimir Shmidt told Cointelegraph: “We have already made steps towards market decentralization by tokenizing apartments in three major markets: USA, Japan and EU. Whether you represent a big institutional investor with $10-30 million average ticket or you personally want to invest $100 to $10,000 to create a global real estate portfolio, you can do it right now on our website.”

Strong B2B demand

Alt.Estate believes the demand for its token will be primarily driven by the B2B segment – PE funds and family offices buying real estate with $10-30 million tickets for tokens. According to EY, private equity funds already invest $100+ mln in the real estate via crowdfunding platforms annually, and they are interested in becoming anchor investors.

Moreover, large real estate players, such as developers, brokers, and marketplaces get a turnkey solution for real estate tokenization without infrastructure costs. Thousands of companies will use built-in widgets on their own websites to increase sales of property to the end customers. In this case, Alt.Estate gets huge leverage in marketing: for each dollar raised, the company can spend 3-10 dollars of real estate developers’ marketing budgets instead of 30 cents for its competitors (30% standard share).

Getting industry approval and support

Alt.Estate team possesses a wide and profound experience. According to their Whitepaper, team and advisors have a combined experience of $4 billion in real estate deals. The project has been already supported by real estate and blockchain gurus, like top-notch software engineer Matthew Falk and early Etherium investor and sales executive Evan Huddleson. They have impressive advisors from the leading real estate companies, such as PWC, Knight Frank, Cushman with more than 2000 offices in 150 countries.

Ready to revolutionize from Day 1

Alt.Estate does not need any change in state regulation, contrary to many competitors, its business plan can work within the current legal system. Thanks to the blockchain technology spreading, the company aims to become one of the major beneficiaries.

Alt.Estate’s token sale is scheduled for May, 30. The company has a cap of $15 mln.

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Two Chinese entrepreneurs are teaming up to launch a blockchain-based ride hailing application. Weixing Chen and Yang Jun hope to create a platform that will offer various life-style type services. These will be include (but not be limited to) ride hailing and deliveries.

Could Blockchain Revolutionise Ride Hailing in China?

Weixing Chen addressed the new venture at the China International Big Data Industry Expo 2018. He was interviewed for local business publication China Money Network. He stated:

“Ride hailing is the first time blockchain will be tested on a social application on mass scale.”

His new partner, Yang Jun, also spoke about the implications and benefits of blockchain technology more generally at the same event:

“I’ve been asking myself what’s the value of the blockchain. My definition is to see whether and where people can actually use it. With the use of blockchain, we can build a set of economic systems different from the previous ones…We can direct traffic from the Internet and add on different services to meet users’ needs.”

The China International Big Data Industry Expo 2018 opened yesterday. It’s being held in southwest China in the city of Guizhou. It purports to be the world’s first conference entirely on the subject of ‘big data.’

Unfortunately, neither of the two currently associated with the blockchain-based ride hail scheme disclosed any form of timeline for the project. Nor did they offer any more concrete details for now.

That said the pair certainly have the necessary credentials to take the proposal to the big time. Chen is the founder of Kuaidi Dache, an existing car service application. The company successfully merged with DiDi Dache, another ride sharing platform, back in 2016. This merger created the largest ride hailing application in China. The outcome was DiDi Chuxing, a company that is now valued at nearly US$60 billion. In addition, Chen is the founder of Funcity Inc., as well as being an active investor in blockchain startups.

Meanwhile, Yang is the co-founder of a Chinese firm called Meituan. Meituan provide on demand services and merged with Dianping, a peer review website, in 2016. This created Meituan Dianping, a company currently valued at US$30 billion. Yang is also the founder of Skyline Invest – themselves an active participant in the emerging Chinese blockchain industry.

The move by the two Chinese entrepreneurs isn’t the first time blockchain technology has been associated with the ride hailing/sharing industry. Back in 2016, we reported about the development of La’Zooz and their efforts to decentralise the existing business model of services like Uber and Lyft. In addition, in 2017, Chasyr announced that they’d be accepting cryptocurrency payments to help distribute value more fairly between drivers, riders, and the company themselves.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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In the world of cryptocurrency, trading Bitcoin and altcoins has become incredibly popular. A lot of people rely on third-party solutions and applications for this purpose. In the case of the Taylor platform, it seems that trust was a bit misplaced. The platform has suffered a massive hack, and all of the company’s wallets have been cleaned out.

The Taylor Situation is Incredibly Worrisome

Whenever a cryptocurrency company or service provider gains any sort of popularity, it becomes a target for hackers and other criminals. This has been the case for many exchanges and trading service providers, and it seems the number of attacks will not be slowing down. In the case of the Taylor platform, things have gotten out of hand pretty quickly.

For those not familiar with Taylor, the platform is a smart trading assistant which revolves around cryptocurrency. It quickly gained traction among novice cryptocurrency enthusiasts, mainly because it makes the trading of various currencies relatively easy. Unfortunately, it seems the company has faced a massive setback due to lackluster security precautions.

The Taylor platform has been hacked and all of the funds associated with the application have been stolen in the process. This means the company lost over 2,578 Ether, but also all of the TAY tokens from the team and bounty pools. That is not a positive development by any means, as it goes to show that third-party platforms and service providers will need to beef up their security pretty quickly.

Surprisingly, some funds were left untouched. As of right now, the founder’s and advisors’ pools remain unaffected because these tokens were locked in a vesting contract. Everything else was seemingly accessible to the hackers, although exact details remain unclear for the time being. In the company’s blog post, they seem to hint at who the responsible party may be.

More specifically, the company thinks it is the same group responsible for the CypheriumChain hack. During that incident, over 17,000 ETH were stolen, and the money has yet to be recovered. To counter the possibility of the stolen tokens being dumped on the market, the Taylor team has asked the IDEX team to delist TAY for the time being. EtherDelta is still trading the token, although a delisting seems imminent.

It remains a bit unclear how the Taylor team is prepared to deal with this situation. The hack has certainly put a strain on things, although it remains unclear if the company can recover the stolen funds, Even so, it seems the company wants to make its trading solution succeed in the long run, though it remains unclear whether they can successfully do so. Either way, this is yet another hack which casts a negative light on the cryptocurrency industry.

Bitcoin is no doubt the largest cryptocurrency of all times and can also be referred to as the progenitor of the whole cryptocurrency revolution. As more people adopt the cryptocurrency, the digital currency has exhibited cracks in its ecosystem, mainly due to the scalability issues. While the rapid growth of the community is one of the contributing factors, the major issues are said to lie with the Bitcoin Core development team and their inability to rapidly introduce scaling solutions. The conflicting views of the developers and mining community have further exacerbated the situation.

As the Bitcoin Core community struggle to score the necessary consensus to improve the protocol, various teams have decided to take the matter into their own hands to preserve the “legacy” of Bitcoin by creating improved hard forks of Bitcoin blockchain. Advancing in this sphere is Lightning Bitcoin, a Bitcoin hard fork by the Lightning Team. The Lightning Bitcoin, LBTC, in short, is forked at Block 499,999 of the Bitcoin blockchain and adopts a more efficient Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism instead of the native Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism.

With the implementation of  DPOS, the platform includes the best of two strong cryptocurrency networks  — Bitcoin and EOS. The use of DPOS, not only increases the security but with 2MB block size, it also increases the speed of transactions and optimizes smart contract support. The DPOS consensus mechanism has already been successfully implemented with BitShares and EOS platforms which has further increased the confidence in LBTC’s capabilities.

While the POS consensus mechanism has been hailed by many for its various obvious advantages, including the low processing power requirements and cost-efficient minting solution, it has also shown a fair share of vulnerabilities including the susceptibility to attacks and the possibility of node desynchronization with malicious intent. The Delegated Proof of Stake mechanism implemented by LBTC overcomes most of these vulnerabilities, but still being a synchronous network module exhibited potential loopholes.

To overcome the issue, the LBTC developers have introduced DPoS consensus mechanism which can not only provide the benefits of a DPoS blockchain but also presents a Byzantine Fault Tolerant protocol which can eliminate the possibility of node dissynchronization due to UTXO. By doing so, LBTC is on its way to position itself as the best cryptocurrency blockchain for not just transactions, but also dApps development.

More information about Lightning Bitcoin is available at – http://lbtc.io

The post Lightning Bitcoin Implements DPoS, Set to Become the Best Blockchain Protocol appeared first on NewsBTC.

A hospital in the Scottish Borders, a council in Scotland next to the City of Edinburgh, is pioneering an addiction treatment for ‘cryptocurrency junkies.’

Castle Craig Hospital has introduced a course of residential treatment for people suffering from the underlying issues of trading addiction in order to be able to quit the cryptocurrency market altogether if they want to.

Cryptocurrency Trading Addicts Offered Treatment in Scotland

The trading of virtual currencies can induce behavioral addiction the same way online gambling does, according to experts that helped create the first course to treat the problem using techniques found in gambling addiction programmes.

Cryptocurrency traders can become obsessive to the point of following minute-by-minute fluctuations in prices. Chris Burn, a gambling therapist at Castle Craig Hospital, finds many similarities between gambling and the cryptocurrency trading world.

“The high risk, fluctuating cryptocurrency market appeals to the problem gambler. It provides excitement and an escape from reality. Bitcoin, for example, has been heavily traded and huge gains and losses were made. It’s a classic bubble situation.”

The gambling therapist may have inadvertently confused the terms ‘classic bubble’ with ‘volatility.’ The definition of a ‘speculative bubble’ refers to the trading of an asset at a price or price range that strongly exceeds the asset’s intrinsic value. Volatility is measured by the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, which seems to be what Burn’s was referring to.

Therapist Tony Marini, a former gambling and cocaine addict, will lead some of the treatments at the rehabilitation center to help introduce a life structure for addicts.

“Having been through it myself, my experience of addiction gives me insight and empathy towards others who have the same problem. I see cryptocurrency trading as a way for people to escape from themselves, into another world, because they don’t like the world they’re in. The first stage of treatment is to join other addicts in group therapy and share their life stories. This helps them identify with each other and realize that they’re not alone.”

It is unknown how many people in the world trade cryptocurrencies and how many of them day trade to the extent of being regarded as addicts. High-risk trading usually gives a kick and rush, especially for people with an innate psychological tendency toward compulsion and addiction. The nucleus accumbens is the pleasure center of the human brain and also responds to the thrill of trading.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Competition in the world of blockchain assets is heating up pretty quickly. This is a positive trend, although the longevity of some of these projects remains in question, for rather obvious reasons. Steem Monsters is trying to make an impact by introducing a new collectible trading card game on a blockchain.

The Purpose of Steem Monsters

Similar to how CryptoKitties operates, Steem Monsters will revolve around blockchain-based assets which can be traded, bought, and sold. The big difference is that this project revolves around the Steem blockchain, and the cards themselves are part of a major trading card game. In this regard, it seems to combine Spells of Genesis with CryptoKitties, with a few twists.

How Does it Work?

The current plan of action is to let users purchase cards through the Steem blockchain directly. Every card pack has a mix of ‘summoners’ and monsters, which can be used to participate in future tournaments in which players can win both prizes and glory. It is also possible to trade cards with other players to improve one’s overall deck build and quality.

To make this trading card game more immersive, individual cards can gain XP and learn new abilities. Cards will level up as they gain XP and become more powerful. Even so, diversifying one’s card deck will remain one of the main objectives of Steem Monsters. It will also become possible to combine cards of the same type to help them level up.

If things go according to plan, all of this will happen in July of 2018. It sounds like a rather engaging card game overall, although it remains to be seen how everything will pan out. With starter packs currently priced at $5, there may be a lot of initial interest in this project.

What Comes Next?

While all of the basic aspects of Steem Monsters sound appealing, there is still plenty of work to be done. The fighting system is currently in development, and a lot of other features have yet to be implemented. Tiers of prize pools will be set up along the way as well. It seems the team is looking to run a Kickstarter campaign which will help fund the project even further.

A treatment center for people who have developed a cryptocurrency habit has been opened at a hospital on the Scottish borders, according to Sky News.

The West Linton facility at Castle Craig Hospital in Peebleshire, on Scotland’s most southern border with England, is planning to extend its regular operations from running treatment for drug and alcohol addiction to treating investors who have developed an addiction to trading in cryptocurrency.

Experts say the trading of digital currencies or assets such as Bitcoin can become a behavioral addiction, with users glued to coin prices, buying and selling currencies obsessively. The issues that confront gambling addicts are similar. Chris Burn, a gambling therapist at Castle Craig Hospital, explained:

“The high risk, fluctuating cryptocurrency market appeals to the problem gambler… It provides excitement and an escape from reality. Bitcoin, for example, has been heavily traded and huge gains and losses were made. It’s a classic bubble situation.”

Former gambling and cocaine addict, Tony Marini, is now a therapist at the center and will run the additional program. He argues that cryptocurrency trading at its extreme can become an adherent’s way to “escape from themselves into another world”:

“The first stage of treatment is to join other addicts in group therapy and share their life stories. This helps them identify with each other and realize that they’re not alone… Having been through it myself, my experience of addiction gives me insight and empathy towards others who have the same problem.”

Castle Craig Hospital has now launched a cryptocurrency addiction FAQ page on its website answering questions for those that might be concerned about addiction to digital currencies. It explains:

“People who obsessively watch the prices of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin can become addicted to the process. The price of these new digital currencies can fluctuate wildly and those who have invested in them can get hooked on watching these minute-by-minute changes as they are reported via the internet.”

The unit’s web page suggests that those who continually talk of the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and monitor news and prices constantly are in danger of their life being engulfed by their crypto habit, resulting in them spending their life savings, salaries and even stealing.

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