Day: June 2, 2018

There is never a lack of controversy in the world of cryptocurrency. According to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Bitcoin will not remain the “gold standard” of cryptocurrencies for much longer. Instead, he is convinced that altcoins will carve out their own paths and no longer rely on Bitcoin’s price momentum.

Brad Garlinghouse has Some Contrarian Views

Anyone who has paid attention to the cryptocurrency industry for more than three weeks will have noticed an interesting trend. Regardless of how successful or promising some altcoins may be, they will not thrive unless the Bitcoin price is going up. It is a very annoying trend which has hindered the growth of altcoins for some time now, unfortunately. It will be quite difficult to reverse this trend, assuming that’s possible.

Surprisingly, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is convinced things will change in favor of the altcoins fairly soon. Although he doesn’t deny the correlation between the price of XRP and the value of Bitcoin, he believes there may be a shift on the horizon. As one would expect, his statement has faced some opposition, even though most people would welcome such a change.

While the cryptocurrency scene is still in its infancy after nine years, the time has come for altcoins to emerge and carve out their own paths. Whether or not any of them will be able to do so in the near future is a different matter altogether. With speculation remaining one of the bigger problems affecting market growth, there will not be any exciting developments in favor of the altcoins anytime soon.

According to Garlinghouse, the decoupling of altcoin markets from Bitcoin will take place through “investor rationale”. In his view, it’s only a matter of time until investors see the value in individual cryptocurrencies and their respective technologies. At the same time, Garlinghouse believes certain altcoins will continue to ride the coattails of Bitcoin. Indeed, there have been a fair few cryptocurrencies coming to market which serve no real purpose and have no active use cases. Nor will they have any, by the look of things, even though such currencies remain extremely appealing to cryptocurrency speculators.

While the comments from Garlinghouse are pretty interesting, it remains to be seen if any of his predictions will come true. After all, Bitcoin has dominated the cryptocurrency industry for quite some time now, despite the Bitcoin Dominance Index dropping below 40% this year. An interesting situation is unfolding in the cryptocurrency industry, but nothing has been set in stone just yet.

Day trading cryptocurrency isn’t for everyone. For that reason, as well as to reach a new group of investors, many exchanges are launching their own crypto index funds. Managing multiple cryptocurrencies is time-consuming, with so many options available and so much research necessary.

Index funds are based on the overall performance of a group of assets, rather than one often volatile individual cryptocurrency. While it’s true that the crypto market as a whole remains volatile, index funds help spread this risk and remove some of the need to manage trading. While most have been restricted to US accredited investors with a large amount of capital available, new crypto indexes are coming. Here’s a look at what’s out there, who can invest, and what hurdles crypto index funds face moving forward.

Notable Cryptocurrency Index Funds

• Coinbase Index Fund LP (CBI) – Coinbase is already a global leader as an exchange, and thus it’s no surprise they were one of the first to offer an index fund. The Coinbase Index Fund is a collection of the top assets available on GDAX. Assets are weighted based on market cap and include a 2% management fee and a 0% performance fee. Redemptions can be made quarterly with a 30-day notice period.
  • Who’s eligible: For now, US accredited investors with a $250,000 minimum investment

• HOLD 10 – This index is run by Bitwise and is composed of the top 10 cryptocurrencies weighted by 5-year diluted market cap. Assets are rebalanced on a monthly basis.
  • Who’s eligible: US accredited investors with a $25,000 minimum investment

• Crypto20 – A tokenized index fund which automatically tracks the top 20 crypto assets using smart contracts. Investors are free to sell or exchange their tokens at any time. This fund automatically trades, which allows it to keep fees much lower than managed funds. There are no exit, broker or advice fees.
  • Who’s eligible: Everyone but US citizens, according to an SEC disclaimer in fine print at the bottom of its website.

• The Cryptocurrencies Index (CCi30) – This index tracks the top 30 cryptocurrencies ranked by market capitalization, reweighting assets on a quarterly basis. The CCi30 uses an exponentially weighted moving average of market cap and is available through the Cryptos Fund, boasting a 0.99% management fee.
  • Who’s eligible: Worldwide investors and qualified US investors

• Blockchain Index (BLX) – Available through Iconomi, BLX adjusts its asset list based on fundamental analysis. Weighting is based on the market cap of each asset. Management fees are 3%, and there is a 0.5% exit fee. There are no entry fees for this index, which is tokenized and available to both US and non-US investors.
  • Who’s eligible: All investors

• Crush Crypto Core (CCC) – The CCC is designed for those who are looking to invest in undervalued, high-quality assets as a core holding. The list is composed mostly of assets that are deemed to have large real-world adoption. There is a 2.5% management fee, a 0.5% exit fee, and a 0% entry fee. This index is also tokenized and available to all investors.
  • Who’s eligible: All investors

The Challenges Ahead

While index funds are a useful tool, regulatory approval presents the biggest barrier to expansion and access. Other options like crypto ETFs have struggled to get regulatory approval from the SEC. Among US citizens, requiring that investors be accredited presents a huge hurdle for the majority of investors.

One of the SEC’s main concerns about such funds is price manipulation. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is still orders of magnitude less than the estimated market cap of the S&P 500. This means that it is still relatively easy—at least compared to traditional stocks—for large investors to manipulate price movements, especially with smaller market cap cryptocurrencies.

Another big concern is a lack of security. While the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency makes it theoretically highly secure, the SEC is still wary about potentially unforeseen issues with the technology behind it. This may be more a lack of understanding than anything else.

The last notable issue with current cryptocurrency index funds relates to prospective investors. Management fees for crypto indexes tend to be in the 2-3% range, in contrast to traditional stock market fees which are often less than a percent.

As index funds for cryptocurrencies gain more regulatory approval and official recognition, they are sure to inspire more confidence and trust from both investors and the general public. This will also make these funds available to smaller investors on bigger platforms, opening the crypto markets to more and more people worldwide.

The late 2017 was rightly termed as the Forks season, witnessing a range of junk copies of the mainstream currencies as well as successful forks like Bitcoin Gold (BTG). The BTG fork minimizes the impact of big miners like Bitmain, on the network and in general, is called “the backup copy of Bitcoin”. And one thing about the forks, is that people who have been holding tokens on main chain, can also get equal number of tokens on the forked blockchain as well. So, those holding Bitcoin before the BTG fork can claim an equal number of the new tokens. And, if you have not received your free BTG – this article is for you!

Though Bitcoin Gold carries the popular word “Bitcoin”, it works using a completely different algorithm called Equihash. This algorithm is also used to mine another mainstream coin i.e. Zcash.

Getting Bitcoin Gold

Like most hard forks of popular coins, the developers of Bitcoin Gold also announced that the Bitcoin community members would receive BTG tokens, equal to their BTC holdings as of October 25, 2017. While that’s public knowledge, many Bitcoin holders still don’t know how to split the BTG from their Bitcoin wallet.

Extracting Bitcoin Gold from the eligible Bitcoin holdings is a simple process. It can be done using btgonline.info — an online service that allows people to extract BTG and then exchange it for Bitcoin or just hold it. To do that, they will have to include their Bitcoin wallet’s passphrase or private key and let the tool do its job*.

Choosing a Bitcoin Gold Wallet

Users are free to decide which wallet they would like to use, based on their requirements. However, it is worth keeping in mind that this cryptocurrency has no problems with support and software, so supporters of any platforms can choose the appropriate application. The wallets are available as a usual desktop, and mobile, online or even hardware solutions.

Getting a BTG – Step by Step

1. The process starts with the authorization in the wallet. Go to the middle tab “SEND/RECEIVE BITCOIN GOLD”
2. From the drop-down list on the left page corner, select your wallet type where your bitcoins were stored, for example: Blockchain.info.

3. In the next field, enter the passphrase that was given to you when opening a crypto-currency wallet. If, in paragraph 2, you chose, for example, “WIF Private key”, then instead of the passphrase you will be asked to enter the Private key;
4. Click the orange “Next” button. Done, you are already in your Bitcoin Gold wallet and you can see your balance, which already should be same as the number of coins received from the hard fork.

Exchanging BTG Made Easier

Transacting with btgonline.io is a straightforward procedure. Sending BTG is now convenient and simple, all transactions also are immediately visible on the BTG network.

Just type the transfer amount, then paste the recipient address in the field “Bitcoin Gold Address” and send your transaction. That’s all!

Exchanging BTG to BTC

At first, go to the third tab “Exchange BTG to BTC”. Log in by selecting the wallet type and entering a passphrase or Private key. By the button “Next” we pass to the next tab, where you will see the balance of your wallet.  Click “Send to BTC”. After that, actions are the same as sending BTG in the previous section: You specify the address to which you want to get bitcoin and select the type of commission. When you click on the “Send” button, our BTG will be converted to BTC and sent to the specified account.

The btgonline.io service is the only way to get and store BTG coins in the browser, and the easiest way to change them to bitcoin. If you still have not received BTG, then it’s the most convenient online service that allows you to do this in a minute.

To learn more about the service, visit https://btgonline.io/

*Users are urged to transfer the existing bitcoin balance to another wallet before entering the existing wallet’s passphrase or private key on ANY online tool.

The post How to Get Bitcoin Gold Online? BTG Has an Online Wallet! appeared first on NewsBTC.

After software developer Felix Weiss from Luxembourg attracted worldwide attention two years ago, by traveling the world with Bitcoin at his disposal, Hard Fork asks the question: Has this feat become easier in 2018?

When Weiss left on his world trip in January 2015 Bitcoin had crashed to around $200 per BTC, but started to slowly climb back en-route which he said had helped him to complete his 18-month journey. He said that the easiest country had been the US, particularly San Francisco, where Bitcoin acceptance was widespread around the city.

He struggled in Cuba having to revert to cash. In Asia, he said his cash usage again was high and found a higher degree of Bitcoin acceptance in South America.

Hard Fork’s Neer Varshney researched how this picture might pan out in today’s crypto space by contacting airlines: the first port of call for any travelers. He found that there are multiple airlines accepting cryptocurrency payments including CheapAir.com, who started accepting cryptocurrency payments as far back as 2013. The company now accepts Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash payments.

Other companies offering cryptocurrency booking services included Expedia, BTCtrip.com, Destinia.com, Japan’s Peach Aviation, California’s Surf Air, and Latvia’s airBaltic, and A Bit Sky.

Finding a placed to stay has become even easier as most of these companies also allow you to pay in crypto for accommodation too, although it depends on exactly which part of the world the traveler chooses.

Eating is not quite such a simple affair with limited restaurants and cafes around the globe accepting Bitcoin and other currencies. Although, CoinMap can help travelers find a Bitcoin-accepting venue for the next meal. La Sirene in Manhattan now accepts Bitcoin. Some companies now offer a gift card service which can be used to purchase food coupons for Bitcoin.

Shopping has become easier with many online stores now accepting the popular cryptocurrency, and as revealed in the last week if you land in Brisbane, the International airport there will be welcoming crypto payments in all its terminal shops and cafe’s this year.

The last resort, of course, is to hunt down a Bitcoin ATM. This is good news for the traveler, as there are now over 3000 such ATMs worldwide, and if South America is the list, then Argentina must be a destination for the discerning Bitcoin traveler, with its plan to install 30,000 machines in that country alone. Europe and the US are increasingly installing machines to keep up with customer demand, most machines offering Bitcoin and often a choice of other major digital currencies.

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The post A Traveler’s Guide: How to See the World With Bitcoin in 2018 appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Mo Works Creative Agency is extremely excited to announce a new partnership evolving as a result of Consensus 2018 in New York. It’s truly fantastic to be in such a thriving industry with new partnerships and opportunities for collaboration available at every corner.

It only made sense for the two companies to partner up as Cure WorldCosplay is about to launch their global ICO on July 1st, and with Mo Works seeking their next challenge.

Cure WorldCosplay is the world’s largest cosplay platform for cosplayers and cosplay fans all around the world. With over 720,000 members from more than 180 countries around the world, Cure WorldCosplay is a multi-lingual platform with a strong emphasis on a community that is self-sustainable and developing. The existing community are avidly engaged in the cosplay-sphere and will form a strong foundation for Cure’s adoption of blockchain technology.

“We have embarked on this movement because we’ve noticed real issues with our platform. The young user group generally means they have limited or no access to credit cards, making it hard for them to truly engage with the platform. This is just one of the issues at hand which we know adoption of blockchain technology will solve” says Cure WorldCosplay CEO, Junichiro Kawai.

The partnership with Mo Works takes on an end-to-end delivery for the marketing and advisory portion of the ICO. There will be engaging designs and captivating copy in the lead up to the launch, all with the goal of nurturing both ICO contributors and cosplay fans towards supporting the project.

Cure WorldCosplay aims to raise $32m with 70 per cent of the raised funds going towards future operational use and development. If all goes well, the new platform will be released in the third quarter of 2018 supported by one of their many shows and events.

“It’s exciting to be part of a blockchain project that’s slightly off the beaten path, but with my background in design in mind, I’m excited to showcase our team’s creativity” says Mo Works’ Creative Director, Mo Hamdouna.

To keep an eye on Mo Works’ upcoming and ongoing projects, visit their ICO Marketing page or follow them on Twitter, and too find out more about Mo Works’ ICO services, please contact [email protected]

About Mo Works:

Mo Works Creative Agency specialises in ICO Marketing and token sale launches. With full-stack in house capabilities across design, development, marketing and community management, you can trust Mo Works to fuel the success of your ICO.

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.

Once a blockchain startup takes off, it follows the goal to raise money for further development. Luckily, since 2017 there is a tool for crowdinvesting in new crypto businesses named ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

What’s going on during ICO, is the following: a startup, looking for funding, issues digital tokens. Tokens are available for purchasing during ICO by every person in the market. Once you buy the token, you are the only owner of it and can sell, keep or withdraw it as you like. No governmental regulations may restrict the process.

In January — March 2018, there was raised about $6.3 bln via different ICOs. This amount already exceeds last year. It means the interest to ICO is growing, and every young business is looking forward to it.

Let’s see what ICO is like for some start-ups.

ICO #1 — Spectrecoin saves your budget making transactions anonymously

ICO date: November 18th, 2016 — January 6th, 2017

Cryptocurrency:XSPEC

Raised amount: $20K

Spectrecoin is one of 5 the most successful ICO start-ups in blockchain area nowadays. The idea of Spectrecoin is anonymous transactions among token’s exchange via Proof-of-Stake v3 consensus. The core of the business is an HD wallet based on ShadowCash protocol, what consumes a low amount of electricity and leaves no trace in the network. Today Spectrecoin’s market capitalization of it is more than $8 mln.

But who would believe if you say that a success to Spectrecoin came after an epic fail?

When CEO and Spectrecoin team inspirer — Mandica — became seriously ill, the ICO started fading out. Investors stopped believing in the idea proposed by the team. As a result, a bad reputation about Spectrecoin as a non-perspective startup spread out around the globe. Most of the supporters who already bought the tokens were upset and consider this as a sunk cost. Overall, only $20K has been raised during the ICO. Public ICO was closed on January 6th, 2017.

It seemed that was it.

But things changed when Spectrecoin started to overcome the crisis in August 2017. A new development team has brought the second wave of Spectrecoin evolution. So far, the project is ongoing, and a new price of XSPEC coin is to be around $100-150 per coin. Keep in mind an initial coin offer of $0.001 brings the investors about 103628% profit.

Michael Morton, Director General of Morton Bitcoin Management said about Spectrecoin’s ICO: ‘Anonymous transactions existed for years. Even more, there are number of existing cryptocurrency companies on the blockchain market that offer non-tracing solutions for safe transactions such as Montero, Zcash or DASH. But using startup solutions, oriented specifically on anonymous transactions like is Spectrecoin just much cheaper.’

CEO and Founder of Nexxus Partners — Bob Wood — comments that diversity, utility requirements, scalability, infrastructure support, entrepreneurial capital, seller acceptance and market solutions are the key factors in the check list while making decision whether to invest in ICO.

ICO #2 — Datum with ICO potential of $45 mln ended up with $30K

ICO date: October 27th, 2016 — November 27th, 2017

Cryptocurrency: DAT

Raised amount: $30K

A strong team lead by Roger Haenni — an experienced professional in big data startups launch, presented a new project named ‘Datum’. The idea behind Datum is to process and structure users’ data and sell it to any stakeholders under certain terms. Data is being collected from social networks, wireless peripheral devices or other sources of user behavior.

Once in October 2016 Datum team decided to try an ICO, project risks were determined as 3.7 out of 5.0, and the ICO campaign was interpreted as a high-risk one. Investors requested a big team of consultants for the project in order to keep it on track. Also, there were some comments regarding the huge spread in industries covered by Datum developers: there might be better to focus on 1-2 niches to satisfy.

Anyway, Datum ICO was rated 2.5 out of 10 in a general scoring as high-risky to invest in. As a result, instead of millions of dollars money raised, the team received about $30K, what is definitely undertaken.

What makes people think different?

Reasons to consider potential of Datum

1) Data ownership concept is not a new one. The concept stands for not only data collection by security offices, but also people’s desire to keep the data hidden.

2) The largest data volume nowadays is in medicine industry. Plenty of people use cases which need to be controlled and regulated by the owner.

3) After buying the coins, Datum token owners become a part of a large network scale.

There should be some distractive option to stop giants like Google or Facebook to share and sell user data. What if after Datum there will be none? But that’s another story.

Datum is a company that plans on changing this by allowing users of its app to extract and backup their user data from various other apps and services and then share or even sell this data. Most importantly, the sharing is done anonymously by default, which will appease many people who worry about their personal information falling into the wrong hands.

Datum’s ICO looks fine now. But wasn’t the start-up another candidate to be kicked out of the business?

Let’s have a look who else might face the same difficulties during ICO at the moment.

ICO #3 — Paymon: disruptive technology or another ambitious failure?

ICO date: February 2nd, 2018 — June 13th, 2018 (3 stages).

Cryptocurrency: PMNC

Raised amount: ICO is ongoing

Can you imagine a new blockchain, different from Satoshi Nakamoto’s one? Can you imagine transactions in cryptocurrency without any fee? What if we say you are now able to launch a company right in the network via a business platform?

Let’s have a look what a disruptive technology allows that.

In 2016 in the city of Russia — Ekaterinburg, a group of students got the idea to adopt a revolutionary technology. They named it Hive.

Within 2 years an idea has grown in an IT-company Paymon with a core business for cryptocurrency holders and blockchain technology users. The team has expanded up to 20 members with a big pool of Big-3 advisors and supportive investors from Russia and abroad. The whole community of Paymon is developing rapidly along with presenting a new technology to the market.

The point of new blockchain technology — Hive — is to offer more opportunities for using cryptocurrency, except just investing, trading, and saving assets. Paymon team develops a crosschain with smart-contracts, where users can exchange the coins quickly and without any fees.

Hive is currently disrupting existing solutions in the crypto world. Because so far there are no such services that give you a chance to make transactions for free while using a multifunctional solution. As a result, there are a lot of misunderstandings of the concepts overall.

Why don’t you consider the following before you stop believing in Paymon?

– Paymon develops a business platform ‘Profit’ specifically for one-second safe transactions and payments. You don’t need to buy an extra solution for business, once you join a Hive with its Profit platform.

– Paymonhelps you easily launch your business, start selling goods or services, and receive payments in cryptocurrencies. No more long queues in tax office to register LLC.

– Proof concepts is organized by every user identification and rating within the network.

– New blockchain technology — Hive — disrupts an existing one by its DAG (directed acyclic graph) algorithm.

– Paymon is more than currency exchange service: Paymon messenger + Paymon Wallet. Now you can unite all existing wallets of different cryptocurrency wallets in one with PMNC coins, and then easily send BTCs or ETHs to your friend or business partner.

Summing up, Paymon is for sure an ambitious project, challenging existing solutions in the world of cryptocurrency. But who believes in it? Wouldn’t a new technology become another underrated startup?

Paymon is now at the ICO stage, distributing its PMNT tokens. From the examples above, there are a bunch of sad stories about ICO difficulty to build a trust from the world. That probably reflects the mentality of crowdinvesting overall, when people feel skeptical and cynical towards disruptive solutions.

Hopefully, Paymon might expect a different attitude and warmer welcoming at the ICO stage,since it has already overcome an era of early birds and has managed to build a strong Hive community in the market so far. Paymon consists of ambitious founders, consultants, developers and analysts. Today it’s a promising business, if some misconception won’t call it ‘scam’.

What will Paymon’s future be like after ICO? Endorsement and people’s trust — make a difference.

On the one hand, ICO market is growing rapidly during last year. From January 2018 till March 2018 there was more than $6.3bln funded over ICO stages, which is already much more than during 2017.

On the other hand, there is a number of ICO frauds growing on the market as well. For instance, from the beginning of 2018 $9 mln is being lost on a daily basis. In April, 2018, there was a huge scandal in Vietnam regarding fresh ICO, which wasn’t an ICO at all, but a scam. Investors have lost about $600 mln of their money. Among all of those dirty ICOs it’s hard to see a worthy one, but you’d better.

Summing up, it’s really important to launch not only the great business, but to care about professional ICO campaign as well in order to build a trust within community and a reputation of a successful innovative business.

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.

From killer robots to human replacements, “artificial intelligence” is a buzzword everyone must adapt to, or die. According to Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu Research, “Five years from now there will be a number of S&P 500 CEOs that will wish they’d started thinking earlier about their AI strategy.” So what does AI really do, and why should you go for it? And more importantly, how?

A lot of what we do is dumb. Take advertisement as an example. Marketers think that they only need to get their message in front of the right set of eyes. As such, invasive ads pop up from everywhere to deliver irrelevant ad messages to users who avoid anything that resembles an ad. When I face an unskippable YouTube ad, I take off my headset and switch to another tab until that ad is gone.

Clearly, this method is not working. It has generalized the concept of human beings and disregards the fact that there are so many people out there with different likes and attitudes who cannot be categorized merely based on a specific keyword. Here is where AI comes into the picture.

With AI, we have the ability to potentially craft each and every message according to targeted individuals. A variation of this technique was used by Cambridge Analytica to affect political voters, yielding good results from a marketing perspective.

AI is stupid

Despite AI’s significant gains, even beating humans in competitions, AI in its current form is nothing more than statistics. Deep Learning is a bit different, but it also eventually boils down to a large matrix of knobs, each tuned to achieve a specific result. What AI does is pattern recognition – whether it is the pattern of a human face (face detection) or patterns in spam emails (spam detection). But AI has no understanding of what it is doing, and that is the beauty behind it – how numbers themselves can be ‘intelligent’.

As AI depends so much on stats, it needs two things: a lot of data (called “training sets”), and ways to interpret that data. According to Christopher Wylie, Cambridge Analytica developed 253 different algorithms based on harvested Facebook profiles. That is because different algorithms have different outcomes and accuracy, and it is up to a human to determine which algorithm works best (that is why they also have a “test set”).

A practical example

Let’s take a spam classifier as an example, which is easily handled using the naïve Bayes algorithm. The concept is simple: take two chunks of emails (spam and non-spam) and classify each and every word. This means that, for instance, we will learn that the word “Hello” appears 100 times in spam emails and “50” times in non-spam emails. As such, if we see the word “hello” in an email, it is more likely to be spam. Of course, this is combined with thousands of other words before the naïve Bayes algorithm determines the final score, giving us an overall understanding as to whether the email in question is more likely to be spam or non-spam. It’s that simple.

Of course, there are ways to make this more accurate – for instance, by removing stop words or detecting n-grams. But the idea is that when we have enormous amounts of data, patterns begin to emerge from formulas which yield surprisingly correct results despite their simplicity.

The problem with AI

Any software automation expert can tell you that just like any piece of coding, what we automate is practically repeating, automating and optimizing what humans have done previously. AI is not creative; it is repetitive. Thus, before applying AI, you must be sure to ask the right questions.

Advancements in AI have given us access to Natural Language Processing and image recognition, easily available and black-boxed via APIs. But instead of requiring AI to think like a human, we achieve the best results when we see how AI can augment human behavior. For instance, if I want a specific audience to see my blog posts, instead of creating an AI which would traverse their social media activity and try to understand their mindset with NLP, I can simply use statistics to see which posts they are sharing most, or when they are most active on Twitter. This approach is easy to build and offers fast returns, while the former would require ages to develop. Cambridge Analytica used this concept and applied it to Facebook “likes” to form psychological profiles of its targets.

The second barrier for AI is its cornerstone: data. With the advance of GDPR, companies cannot harvest user information as loosely as they used to – they must have the user’s approval, store their data safely, and give them the right to remove their data. While this can slow down AI advancements, it definitely serves a higher data handling etiquette. After all, GDPR is about how you collect and manage data, not how much of it you have. You must be sure to get your users’ consent to collect and store their information, and make sure to store it securely and give users the right to retrieve their data and to be forgotten.

To AI or not to AI

You should now have an understanding of what AI really is and how it can be used best (at least for now). AI will likely evolve, and speculation around General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence suggests an age of explosive growth in which one AI will create more intelligent AI. But before we get there, we can use stats to make us more intelligent.

June 02, 2018–Singapore–Token-as-a-Service (TaaS), the world’s first tokenized closed-end fund dedicated to blockchain assets, has entered into a partnership with OSA DC, a tokenized AI and blockchain solution for the retail and supply chain industries with an ambition to build the largest global  consumer retail community.

As a closed-end fund, TaaS is dedicated to the development and enrichment of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The service features a smart-contract profit sharing model that awards TAAS token holders with shares of its capital fund gains, a cryptocurrency fund managed by a team of TaaS traders and investors. In addition to this capital fund profit sharing, the service contributes to and invests in promising blockchain projects, and it also serves as an advisory arm for rising stars in the industry to help them accomplish their long-term business development goals.

TaaS first took interest in OSA DC through the D10E conference series. The series brings together hundreds of decentralized and FinTech projects in venues all over the world, and TaaS has cooperated with D10E to invest in the promising start-ups it brings to its events. After OSA DC won 1st place at the D10E conference in South Korea for best start-up, TaaS approached the project for a partnership. TaaS finds value in OSA DC’s AI-driven marketplace and smart contract solutions, and given the proven success of OSA DC’s mother company, the OSA Hybrid Platform, which has delivered results to over 20 retailers and manufacturers around Europe, TaaS has faith in the future success of the product.

“OSA DC promises major developments for the retail industry with global data market place and  practical, real-time solutions to retailers, manufacturers and consumers, which is certainly worth the support of TaaS, that focuses on supporting blockchain projects that will disrupt global industries” Ruslan Gavrilyuk, co-founder and president of TaaS said regarding the partnership.

The partnership shows that TaaS assists OSA DC in its recently launched token sale, that has started on May 21st,  as well as assist in future business development. TaaS offers its expertise to best advise OSA DC in the sale and the maturation of its blockchain services. Such extensive experience and knowledge about token economics and decentralization will be invaluable to OSA DC as the start-up continues to grow.

“TaaS has a proven track record of offering quality advisory and token services to successful blockchain projects. We’re excited to begin the next chapter of OSA DC’s development with TaaS as a partner, and we’re confident that the organization’s assistance will help us to achieve a synergy with AI and blockchain that will truly disrupt the global retail industry,” Alex Isaiev, co-founder and business development lead of OSA DC stated.

The long-term partnership will bring value to the decentralized and retail industries alike, as both organizations work to enrich OSA DC’s solutions for the betterment of the international community.

Learn more about TaaS:       https://taas.fund/

                                             https://t.me/taasfund

Learn more about OSA DC: https://osadc.io/en/

                                             https://t.me/osadecentralized

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.

In six months from now, Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation will be 10 years old, but will it reach mass adoption? ponders Osato Avan-Nomayo of Bitcoinist.

With numerous blockchain products being utilized by private institutions, multinationals, and NGOs, and, with it increasingly becoming a real prospect for governments around the globe, the technology has expanded to become far more than just a new idea, but are cryptocurrencies used to their potential?

According to Zerion founder, Evgeny Yuttaev, cryptocurrencies are still more speculative than used for practical utilitarian purposes, suggesting there is a lack of use cases for digital currencies in 2108.

He suggests that most ICO’s seem to be in search of the next Bitcoin or Ethereum in search of massive profits, but what is really needed is projects which can change peoples lives, and for this to happen, decentralized applications (Dapps) need to become mainstream.

Currently, there are 1,565 decentralized apps built on the Ethereum blockchain alone, unsurprising given Ethereum’s historical place in the development of blockchain solutions. Carl Bennet of Status.im suggests that 2019 will become a new dawn for Dapps, suggesting:

“We will see more developers and designers focusing on creating simpler and more familiar user onboarding experiences for mainstream use we’ve come to expect from the applications we use and an overall lower barrier to entry into the crypto ecosystem.”

The suggestion is that Dapps will be the key to widespread crypto adoption, beyond the payments system created by Bitcoin, offering users the ability to interact with cryptocurrencies, while navigating user-friendly mobile and desktop applications, thus bringing digital currencies to the “forefront of social consciousness.”

That said, Bitcoin has made significant progress in terms of reducing payment time and transfer fees, whereas until recently processing times of up to an hour and expensive fees made it unsuitable for day to day use. Bitcoin transactions are now at their lowest in over a year and are completed in far less time

Yurtaev illustrates that even if favorable regulations lead to more widespread cryptocurrency regulation, blockchain still has the issue of scalability to solve:

“Public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum must scale if they are to find mainstream success. It isn’t enough to handle five to ten transactions per second. To even begin to compete, they are going to have to be able to process hundreds of transactions per second.”

If next year is to herald in a new awakening for cryptocurrencies, Waves CEO Alexander Ivanov suggests that there must be a synergy between the traditional and the new:

“2019 will definitely be the start of crypto’s mass adoption, though much more still needs to be done for the two worlds — traditional banking and crypto — to coexist frictionlessly”

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Leading cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance has announced plans to launch a USD 1 billion “social impact fund” to aid blockchain and cryptocurrency startups.

Positive action for the industry

As reported by Coin Desk, Binance will contribute over USD 1 billion via 10 installments of USD 100 million each, creating both funds for further investment into blockchain related funds, and direct funding of individual projects.

During an online meetup Thursday, Ella Zhang, head of the exchange’s incubator program at Binance Labs, detailed the investment plans further, noting that Binance is currently looking into 20 investment funds to contribute to. Each of these funds must already be responsible for managing a minimum of USD 100 million to be eligible.

Zhang also outlined the company’s ambition to finance the plan with their own financial reserves, with investments made in BNB token.

While Binance will receive much positive media attention and advertisement from this scheme, providing the funding from their own capital highlights their commitment to the plan as a positive action for the whole industry ecosystem.

“We believe it’s a disruptive social experiment. Binance Labs hopes to work with more aspirational projects to explore blockchain applications and together move forward the growth of the industry,” Zhang said.

The first investment is underway

The first project has already been chosen for the funding scheme, with a blockchain ride-hail initiative co-founded by Chen Weixing, CEO of app developer Funcity, being given for the opportunity.

Weixing previously founded Chinese ride-hailing app Kuaidi Dache, before announcing his new project last week at the BigData Expo in Guizhou, China.

While investing first in a high-profile blockchain project helps Binance gain exposure for their funding scheme, it will, of course, benefit the entire industry the most if the project reaches out to smaller start-ups with a viable whitepaper.

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The Bitcoin network consumes more electric energy in a year than the Czech Republic. Some say that Bitcoin’s high electricity cost is the price we pay for network security, others see it as a threat to the environment

Blockchain startup Block.one releases version 1.0 of their EOSIO protocol, plus a new $50 mln fund to support the project