Day: June 4, 2018

Blockchain platform developer Qulian Technology has closed one of the biggest blockchain-focused VC rounds ever.

The negative pressure across all cryptocurrencies is not relenting anytime soon. What first appeared to be a very brief dip is slowly turning into a reversal of the gains made last week. The IOTA price is a good example of how dire things are getting. Losing 11.16% in the past 24 hours isn’t encouraging.

IOTA Price Pressure Intensifies

Even though last week looked incredibly promising for all major cryptocurrencies, the momentum has eroded rather quickly. Volatility is the name of the game in the world of Bitcoin and altcoins. However, few people had expected things to deteriorate so quickly for the IOTA price. With a current price of $1.74, things are not looking all that great.

This development comes in the form of a massive 11.16% decrease for the IOTA price over the past 24 hours. It is pretty interesting to see how direly the momentum can get in quick succession. If this momentum keeps up, the IOTA price will lose all of the gains earned in the past week. That would result in a MIOTA value of $1.55, which is not entirely out of reach of either.

To make matters even worse, the IOTA price will seemingly continue to decline due to ongoing losses in the MITOA/BTC ratio. With another 9.47% decline in that department, and the negative Bitcoin price pressure, it seems evident the IOTA price will continue to face hardship in the hours and potentially days to come.

While IOTA maintains a relatively healthy trading volume of $167.019m in the past 24 hours, it is evident the bears are in full control of this market on every single front. With the sellers vastly outweighing the buyers, buying IOTA at current prices is on par with trying to catch a falling knife. There will be a new support level eventually, but for now, no one knows for sure where that will be.

It appears the vast majority of IOTA trading volume originates from Bitfinex and Binance. Bitfinex leads the market, whereas Binance’s BTC and USDT pairs are in second and third place at the time of writing. OKEx adds another USDT pair to the top five, whereas Coinone brings in KRW trading. An interesting mix of currencies, although it remains to be seen when the positive momentum returns.

So far, it seems this week will be off to a similar start as the week before. Last Monday wasn’t all that positive either, yet things eventually turned around on Tuesday and Wednesday. History hardly ever repeats itself in this regard, albeit cryptocurrencies are always unpredictable first and foremost. For the IOTA price, things will get pretty interesting either way.

Singapore’s leading cryptocurrency based crowdfunding platform FundYourselfNow(FYN) is taking a step further and helping the promising Blockchain Projects in raising funds, through FYN’s Funding Arm – J Capital, which recently invested $700,000 USD in Codex Protocol this year.

Founded in 2017, J Capital is an investment firm which primarily focuses on ventures, tokens and projects that are based on blockchain & digital currencies. J Capital aims to catalyse the future and bring about widespread blockchain adoption to improve the lives of millions around the globe.

Blockchain startup Codex has unveiled its provenance-based protocol which aims to tap into the US$2 trillion arts and collectibles (A&C) asset class. The company is building the Codex Protocol Title Registry, a decentralized title registry for the A&C market comprised of Codex Titles. A Codex Title will include records of the ownership and transmission history of the idem since the Codex Title was instantiated, and hashes of related documents such as photographs, past appraisals, receipts and restoration records. The open source Codex protocol will also allow third-party players in the ecosystem to build applications and utilize the title system and will be powered by the BidDex token.

Mark Lurie, Codex Protocol CEO, said: “FYN & JCapital are leaders in the blockchain space with deep expertise in traditional Art Industries. We look forward to working with them to bring blockchain to the Art industry.

Jack & Kenneth, Founders of FYN, will also be joining Codex as advisor to the projects.

Regarding FundYourselfNow(FYN) & J Capital

FundYourselfNow assists the projects in planning and executing their marketing activities including whitepaper review, token model review, content, email and social media marketing and growing the project community, on the other hand J Capital supports them with the funding side. The funding arm manages $20M worth of assets and have invested in many of the leading blockchain projects.

Since there are ample number of ideas and projects coming up in the market, J Capital is currently planning to try it hands with more upcoming Blockchain Projects and support them with the funding that they need.

To contact JCapital Email them at [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.

A new crypto exchange backed by Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings has now gone live for pre-registered users, with ordinary accounts to open in July 2018

Media reports have indicated that state-owned Russian Railway company RZD has plans to implement blockchain applications, smart contracts, and ticket sales, according to Bitcoin.com.

Several publications in recent months have suggested that RZD, self-named as “The Strongest Link in Eurasia”, may even start a cryptocurrency paid ticketing service. The company ranks itself as among the top three railways systems in the world.

In order for RZD to bring its plans to fruition, it will need to comply with Russia’s somewhat punitive current stance on cryptocurrency. If the Russian Duma’s new plans to liberate cryptocurrency from current legislation eventuate, this could offer the railway more scope to bring its planned projects closer to reality.

The Duma, parliament’s lower house, has to date supported the first reading of three draft law bills – ‘On Digital Financial Assets’, ‘On Attracting Investments Using Investment Platforms’ and ‘On Digital Rights’. The bills, which would relax current cryptocurrency regulation, are expected to be made law by the end of this month.

Independent IT expert Pavel Tarentyev such new laws could work very much in the State Railway’s favor, commenting:

“In view of the forthcoming adoption of the drafts, which entail the possibility to exchange digital financial assets with rubles and [foreign] currencies, OAO ‘RZD’ plans to introduce decentralized storage of data based on blockchain technology and implement smart contracts.”

He added that RZD also hopes to use the technology for storing important information relating to its transportation services and to reduce the costs of its logistics services.

Last month. the head of RZD’s IT department, Evgeniy Charkin, had said that such plans were seriously being considered and Oleg Belozerov, director general of the company, has indicated that the company is already digitizing many of its systems.

Online companies such as Destinia are already offering crypto ticketing around the world, offering tickets for railway systems in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Portugal, Canada, and the US.

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The post Russian Railways Push Smoother, Cheaper Crypto Ticketing appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Despite China’s 2017 ban on ICOs, a Chinese firm still appears to have openly promoted a token sale that reportedly raised $18 million.

There have been a few interesting trends involving blockchain technology. One particular aspect mainly focuses on selling resources through a distributed ledger-based marketplace. For now, it seems the main focus lies on computing resources. Other types of resources and content will be supported as more time progresses. With decentralized infrastructure being developed, new opportunities will arise.

The Decentralized  Marketplace Ecosystem

Although the overall potential of blockchain remains to be determined, there are multiple intriguing projects. One of these trends comes in the form of selling computing resources on the blockchain. This is usually done through proprietary infrastructure and involves a native token. Among the computing resources users can sell are bandwidth, CPU power, GPU power, storage, and so forth.

On the computing power front, there are numerous projects. Golem, SONM, and iExec are the three industry leaders in this regard at this time. All three projects are still in the process of developing their native ecosystems. Users will earn native currencies for renting out their computing resources to the highest bidder.

One thing to keep in mind is how these projects are intent on disrupting traditional cloud services. The likes of Google and AWS are the main targets in this regard. However, bringing stiff competition to those entrenched players will not be all that easy by any means. Since all of these projects are still in the early stage of development, it remains to be seen what the world can expect exactly.

Other Noteworthy Projects

Various other companies aim to decentralize the way the internet works. File storage and sharing is another popular business model in this regard. Storj has made a name for itself in the decentralized storage industry. Considering how most consumers have excess storage on their computer, renting it out to make some passive income seems like a smart idea.

There are plenty of other ventures to take into account as well. Ranging from decentralized content delivery networks to monetizing data, the opportunities are virtually endless in this industry. Most of these concepts have yet to be turned into working technology. One thing most of these companies have in common is how they all conducted very successful initial coin offerings. This confirms investors see a lot of merit in these ventures prior to them coming to market.

No one should expect to become rich overnight.  There is some passive income to be made in the process, but nothing to make people quit their jobs. Until all of these projects gain more traction, the overall earnings will remain relatively low. Combining multiple of these projects into one passive revenue stream can result in decent earnings over time. However, there is no need to effectively buy additional hardware to benefit from any of these projects.

Image from Shutterstock

The post Passive Revenue Opportunities in Decentralized Computing Resources Industry appeared first on NewsBTC.

A new content production and distribution platform is using blockchain to ensure project founders and content creators receive fair compensation for their work – helping talented professionals in creative industries to earn a living #SPONSORED

CEOs are posing the question whether major companies such as retail giants Amazon and Walmart, and tech multinational Microsoft adopting blockchain technology will create a “blockchain revolution”, writes Hedge Co.net.

All of these companies have announced recent blockchain projects this year. Walmart published plans to use the technology in partnership with the IBM Corporation and Microsoft recently announced its Azure Blockchain Workbench, aiming to provide developers with tools to implement the ready-to-use infrastructure for blockchain application solutions, according to TruthMedia.

Amazon with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) blockchain templates, will now implement a system similar to Microsoft’s which claims “provide a fast and easy way to create and deploy secure blockchain networks using open source frameworks”.

Walmart’s vice president of food safety and health, Frank Yiannas, says that its new blockchain system reduces food tracking time from six days to two seconds, reducing contamination and food wastage.

According to Luis Manuel Lopez, the general coordinator at Workchain Centers, blockchain initiatives by Walmart and Amazon will have a positive impact on the retail industry.

He says, “Having started in a pure and theoretical technological world, blockchain has come second place in applications that make our life more comfortable, including assembly lines, traceability of objects… we are facing the beginning of a revolution that will change our way of doing business, buying food, curing our illnesses. And this will come sooner or later because it takes time, but it will come, sure.”

Vadim Kurochkin, CEO of Soundeon, sees the moves of multinationals unsurprising as the technology is brought to the mainstream, suggesting that research and development projects will reap the benefits due to increased activity in crypto space.

“As this technology is brought to mass-market, we foresee a robust merger and acquisition activity within the sector. Hence, early crypto-investors in successful, research and development driven projects will reap the benefits.”

Juan Imaz, founder, and CEO of Profede, also sees the potential of such companies influencing others to move towards updating its systems with the new technology:

“The cryptocurrency industry is likely to see a revolution in the near future across different industries, with the addition of giants adding, evaluating and planning to use blockchain which will change how the world works.”

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The post CEOs Say Amazon and Walmart Sparked Blockchain Revolution appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

The popular image of a cryptocurrency user is usually that of a young middle-class, tech-savvy person opting out of the traditional working world to try and make a fortune at home on their computer or paying for an expensive coffee with an obscure app on a complicated smartphone.

But in the developing countries of South East Asia where people have limited access to banking services, cryptocurrency is becoming a real solution to financial problems that have plagued the working classes. Case in point, Cambodian motorcycle taxi driver Sachaknisay Sov recently discovered a better way to pay bills when he took a loan in digital tokens for about $500 through an application that allows him to convert the tokens to cash at local pawn shops.

Cryptocurrency Gives the Poor a Chance

Sachaknisay who until recently borrowed money from friends and family to make ends meet at interest rates of as much as 18%, compared to the 5% he pays through the app, said “[Digital token-based loans are] absolutely much better than the traditional ones, It has a lower interest rate.” As reported by the South China Morning Post. 

One such digital loan application based in Phnom Penh is DApact. The application is able to trace every digital token it loans through a unique code which records its entry and exit points, requiring no manual check which the company says allows them to manage the business at a third of the cost of traditional financial institutes. That saving is then passed on to borrowers which allow even poor villagers to take out loans in order to start or grow a small business.

KPMG the global auditing and consulting agency estimates that as many as seven out of ten people in South East Asia did not have a bank account in 2016. What they did have and spend more time on than their counterparts in the developed world are smartphones.  For a company like Manila based Coins that equals a huge business opportunity.

Remittance Applications Means Big Savings for Expat Workers

2.2 million Filipinos work overseas and most have been using traditional remittance services which charge high rates for cross-border payments to send money home. Coins, for example, has enabled Filipino workers in the UAE to transfer local currency into Bitcoin and send it home for less than half of what Western Union, the largest remittance service in the world, charges.

Another Fintech startup in Cambodia, Micromoney, has already been able to extend it’s loan services to 110,000 customers across the region in Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. As in most countries in the world, the utility of cryptocurrencies is still very limited on a vendor to customer basis in Asia but as Cambodian crypto entrepreneur Rithy Thul puts it,

“Digital currency is not perfect, but it is the most perfect money poor villagers have ever had.”

Image from Shutterstock

The post Cryptocurrency Apps Open Financial Doors for Working Poor in Asia appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin looks primed for a move to $8,000, but low trading volumes point to the risk of a bull trap.