Day: June 7, 2018

A study reveals that roughly $1.1 bln in crypto has been stolen in the first half of 2018, with exchanges as the most popular target for cybercriminals

7th June, 2018 – A revolutionary new platform for small businesses and investors, Clarity, has announced a $50 million token sale ahead of its launch.

Clarity will be a one-stop shop for small business owners worldwide, giving them complete access to and control over their data.

The all-encompassing platform not only stores data, but provides analytics, benchmarking, file sharing, third-party verification and easy access to funding. It also stores business information such as insurance, finance, human resources and standard operating procedures all in one place.

Business owners will use the Clarity software and AI-driven dashboards to keep track of their business performance, as well as accessing early-stage funding or investment that was previously only available to larger businesses.

Low due diligence fees will appeal to potential investors who have the opportunity to integrate into the platform from the start and see which businesses are performing the best.

Clarity Founder Aynsley Damery said: “We believe giving small businesses total control over their data will change the way business is done globally, forever.

“Small businesses power the global economy but so many fail to reach their full potential because they don’t have clarity.

“This platform will provide them with a valuable insight into their performance and growth potential, a roadmap to design an amazing business, as well as access to finance and previously unavailable early-stage investment to really help them thrive.

“Over the next few months we’ll be travelling the globe presenting Clarity and its token sale at large blockchain and accounting events.  We expect this to be a very busy sale and would encourage investors to get in early so that they don’t miss out.”

The new platform will use Clarity tokens (CLRTY) for the purchase of its service, with the tokens going on sale next month.

The token sale will last until November 22nd, or until the tokens have sold out, with the aim of raising $50 million.

As shown below, tokens will be sold during tiered sales phases that will reward early investors, preceded by a private pre-sale selling 30 million non-refundable CLRTY tokens.

To find out more and to view the whitepaper, please visit http://clarityproject.io or feel free to get in contact with the Clarity team on any of the following social channels:

Telegram – https://t.me/theCLRTYproject

Twitter – https://twitter.com/theCLRTYproject

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/theCLRTYproject/

Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/r/theCLRTYproject/

BitcoinTalk – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4396465.new#new

Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4lqh6W40VYpTXdxkgLpq4w

For more information, please contact:

Square in the Air Communications

David Bartram

+44 (0) 20 3586 1978

[email protected]

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of NullTX. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Vladimir Putin has unequivocally shot down the possibility of any official Russian cryptocurrency. The Russian president discussed his views on cryptocurrency during his 16th annual Direct Line speech where the Russian public is allowed to ask him questions.

Putin said an official Russian cryptocurrency was not possible since cryptocurrency inherently cannot be controlled by any centralized organization. There had been speculation earlier in 2018 that Russia was going to launch its own cryptocurrency, possibly to be named the CryptoRuble, since it would be the cryptocurrency version of the Russian ruble (RUB).

The Russian government has been giving mixed messages to the public about its own national cryptocurrency since 2015. Putin’s economic advisor, Sergei Glazyev, has said the CryptoRuble would help Russia circumvent Western sanctions. The head of the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain, Arseniy Sheltsin, said the CryptoRuble would be launched sometime in 2019. With the Russian president now saying there won’t be a CryptoRuble, this would seem to override previous statements from those with less authority.

Putin further added during his Direct Line speech that people should treat cryptocurrency cautiously since it was not backed by anything, and that the Central Bank of the Russian Federation did not consider cryptocurrency a means of payment or a store of value.

Bitcoin proponents would argue the statement to be inaccurate, since Bitcoin has intrinsic value due to it being a decentralized and secure form of money that no government or organization controls. Also, Bitcoin has proven itself as an efficient, fast, and secure means of payment.

Putin, however, did say something somewhat positive regarding cryptocurrency in the speech, believing that Russia should keep an eye on cryptocurrency to see how the country could utilize it to its benefit. Specifically, he said Russia could use cryptocurrency to avoid restrictions in the field of international finance.

This could be construed as a hint of cryptocurrency considerations to circumvent Western sanctions, using existing ones such as Bitcoin. It would at least prevent a scenario of national cryptocurrency sanctions, such as what Venezuela experienced when the US completely banned the South American country’s official cryptocurrency, the Petromoneda.

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There are high expectations associated with blockchain technology. Not only do blockchains power all of today’s popular cryptocurrencies, but they will also make a splash in the financial sector. BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila is confident that distributed ledgers will make their mark within the next five years.

The Financial Sector Needs Blockchain and Transparency

Even though the financial sector has grown significantly over the past five decades, it has also seen little to no real innovation. That in itself is always a bit worrisome, although it hasn’t caused that many issues until recently. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, it has become apparent that some things will need to change sooner rather than later before consumers lose all confidence in this particular industry.

One particular technological innovation set to make an impact is blockchain technology. While it’s best known for its potential in the world of cryptocurrency, there are a lot of other potential use cases for this technology as well. As of right now, a lot of opportunities are being explored in the financial sector.

Despite the overall interest in new technologies, many believe that blockchains will not make an immediate impact. BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila, on the other hand, has a completely different opinion in this regard. He is confident that blockchain technology will transform financial services and products in the next five years, if not sooner. There is a good chance his vision will come true, depending on which products and services are developed.

There are myriad benefits to incorporating distributed ledgers in the financial sector. Multiple parties can have simultaneous access to a ledger which is constantly updated and immutable. It is important to distinguish between a distributed ledger and a glorified database, though. Whether or not banks will embrace the true decentralized nature of blockchain technology remains unclear at this time.

While Torres Vila’s optimism is to be commended, it is still up to individual banks to incorporate blockchain technology in a meaningful manner. Until consumers can access this new technology and witness its potential first-hand, there will be no immediate pressure to push banks toward newer technologies and solutions. Even so, various service providers are making their mark in the industry already, including the likes of Mercury FX and Western Union.

For the time being, it remains a bit unclear what impact blockchain technology will have in the financial sector. A lot of business models can be streamlined and made more transparent, although there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution either. A lot of interesting solutions will need to be explored moving forward, and the excitement will not quiet down anytime soon, for rather obvious reasons.

Thursday, June 07, 2018 – Another huge prize falls at BitStarz, lucky player scoops $265,000 win!

2018 has been an all-action year so far at BitStarz, as players are scooping big wins every few weeks. Keeping this unbelievable trend going, one lucky player has picked up a whopping $265,000 payout by spinning the reels of Caishen’s Fortune slot!

IGT has a game selection that doesn’t stop short when it comes to big-time fun, which is why you’ll find the developer’s best titles at BitStarz. Looking at games that carry a Far East flavor, Caishen’s Fortune is the pick of the bunch. Featuring explosive reels and an unforgettable free spins bonus round, this is one online slots game that knows exactly how to bring the ways of Ancient China to life on the reels.

Given that it delivers all thrills, all spills action, players have been lining up to play Caishen’s Fortune ever since it launched at BitStarz. It’s safe to say that this game has been worth the wait for one player in particular. Feeling the spirit of the Far East, this player was able ride a wave of red and gold all the way to a $265,000 payout. It’s no wonder that both casual players and casino veterans love BitStarz, as at over a quarter of a million dollars, this prize isn’t just big – it’s life-changing.

The award-winning, market leading Bitcoin casino

BitStarz has become the undisputed cryptocurrency casino king in recent years – leaving the competition in the dust. It’s bringing players the perfect combination of exciting games, bankroll boosting bonuses, and personable customer support. But, it’s not just the players that are rushing to praise what this Bitcoin casino is bringing to the table. Industry award panels have also been putting this online casino under the spotlight. Named Best Online Casino of 2017 at the recent AskGamblers awards, BitStarz has also secured two EGR nominations – CRM Campaign of the Year and Innovation in Casino. If that wasn’t enough – and for most casinos that would be – BitStarz Blog has recently been named one of the Top 100 Bitcoin blogs in the world.

Winning accolade after accolade, BitStarz isn’t just one of the best Bitcoin casinos in the world right now – it is THE best Bitcoin casino in the world right now!

Speaking on the most recent BitStarz win, Srdjan Kapor (BitStarz Marketing Manager) said,

“It’s happened again, another huge prize has fallen at BitStarz. We couldn’t be happier to announce the latest big win, as a lucky player has managed to grab a $265,000 payout. Everyone here at BitStarz wishes to send our collective congratulations to the player in question, who has managed to win a truly life-changing sum of money”

About BitStarz

BitStarz is a boutique online casino that’s changing the face of the online casino industry. Accepting leading cryptos such as BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, and DOGE, along with standard currencies, this online casino makes sure that every player isn’t short on ways to pay, play, and cash out. That’s not all either, as BitStarz continues to push the limits of what a Bitcoin casino is capable of, offering more than 1,300 games through classic slots, video slots, progressive slots, instant play games, and countless table classics. Backed by a gaming license issued from Antillephone N.V. – based in Curacao – BitStarz is legitimate, safe, and reliable. Blending together five-star casino action, super-fast cashout speeds, and all-around personal service, BitStarz has earned its spot as the casino to watch in 2018!

BitStarz is taking the idea of a Bitcoin casino to brand new heights, to discover more about what this leading name has to offer, please contact Srdjan Kapor at [email protected].

Press contact:

Srdjan Kapor

Marketing Manager

[email protected]

www.bitstarz.eu

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of NullTX. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

• Blockchain-powered prediction market platform Delphy v1.0 Chinese version is now Live
• Delphy announces Strategic Partnership with MyToken 
• Delphy prediction market platform gears up for 2018 FIFA World Cup

Beijing, China – June 07, 2018 – Delphy, a Ethereum based prediction markets platform, today announced strategic partnership with MyToken, the popular marketplace software with largest number of DAU in China.  This strategic alliance is perfectly timed with the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, enabling Delphy and MyToken to jointly meet the huge demand of trying to predict the outcomes of World Cup games and provide better user experience. Furthermore, Delphy partnered with popular Chinese Wallet applications, MediShares and Bitpie. These collaborations will further strengthen Delphy’s position in the Asian region.

Delphy v1.0 Chinese version went live on 1st June 2018, and has been very well received by the over 40,000 Delphy community members in China. MyToken will bring a considerable amount of traffic to Delphy’s v1.0 Chinese version, while Delphy prediction markets v1.0 will also give MyToken users a channel to enjoy the fun of predicting the outcomes of World Cup games.

Bo Wang, Founder and CEO of Delphy said: “We want to thank our amazing community for their support that has attributed to our successful launch, this positive adoption resonates in the ethos of ‘wisdom of crowd’. By drawing on the collective experience and knowledge of our users, Delphy can make predictions about some of the most important events of our time.”

Additionally, Delphy announced numerous prediction markets set-up for the much-awaited  FIFA World Cup 2018. Delphy channels the wisdom of the crowd to make data-driven predictions about future outcomes of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Users who correctly predict the outcomes of events will be rewarded.  

The Delphy Token (DPY Token) powering the platform is available on the leading global cryptocurrency exchange, OKEX, Gate.io and Cybex which and can be purchased using Bitcoin or Ethereum.

About Delphy

Delphy is a mobile prediction market platform built on the Ethereum platform. Delphy uses market incentives to allow participants to transparently communicate with each other to discuss and share the outcome of upcoming events whilst effectively predicting the future. Our decentralized platform makes it difficult to manipulate prediction results. Delphy incentivizes its platform users with rewards for correctly predicting future events. Delphy endeavours to eliminate uncertainty in forecasting and predicting outcomes.

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of NullTX. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

The Québec government has ordered Hydro-Québec to halt electric power sales to crypto miners, and announced a new framework for this category of electricity consumers

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 634 billion units on 5 June 2018, from 4.306 to 4.940 trillion units. This is the largest difficulty increase in history, and comes at a time when Bitcoin’s mining hash rate is rapidly accelerating. In the past year Bitcoin mining difficulty and hash rate has increased 728%. 

This latest difficulty adjustment represents an increase of 14.71%, the largest increase since January 2018 when the cryptocurrency markets were in a frenzy as Bitcoin hit all-time highs near USD 20,000. There were several difficulty adjustments in excess of 15% during the Bitcoin rally, but the magnitude of the 5 June 2018 increase far exceeds any other difficulty increase on record.

Mining difficulty is a measure of how many cryptographic hash calculations it takes to solve a block, and it updates every 2,016 blocks, which is almost exactly two weeks. The reason mining difficulty updates is to maintain a consistent block time of 10 minutes, which is the time it takes for the Bitcoin network to cryptographically hash the latest transactions into a block. The block time is equivalent to transaction confirmation time.

As mining hash rate on the Bitcoin network increases, the time it takes to find a block decreases, assuming difficulty is constant. For example, the block time had sharply declined to less than nine minutes before the latest difficulty adjustment. Once the automatic difficulty adjustment occurred, the block time went back to 10 minutes. Without the adjustments, block time would decrease to zero, which would be great for miners, but would cause rapid inflation of the Bitcoin supply, hurting its value relative to USD.

Hash rate has been skyrocketing, increasing from 30.83 to 35.37 exahash/s (1 exahash = 1 billion gigahash) over a two-week period between the last two difficulty updates. In the couple of days since the difficulty update, the hash rate has increased further to 37.25 exahash/s. This represents a tremendous amount of mining power joining the Bitcoin network.

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The General Data Protection Regulation was adopted in 2016, and required all companies to comply by May 25, 2018. The companies affected by this development are either located in the EU or deal with EU residents* and collect their personal information. This means that these companies do not need to be in Europe, and 92 percent of US companies already consider GDPR a top data protection priority.

The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated how important data privacy rules are, especially in today’s interconnected world. The UK-based firm collected information on millions of Americans, which it used for political campaigns. As data flows between continents, the law follows.

Compliance Crackdown

GDPR requires companies to act very responsibly with the data they collect on EU residents. Users must give their consent, be fully aware of how their data will be used, and have the ability to export and delete the data held on them. Companies must also take adequate measures to protect that data.

Companies that do not comply with GDPR can be fined $25 million or 4% of their annual revenue in the case of a breach – whichever is higher. But compliance is also costly. According to Netsparker’s survey, around 60% of companies will spend somewhere between $50,000 to $1,000,000 to become GDPR-compliant, while more than 10% will spend even more to get there.

This has led to all sorts of interesting compliance tactics. While GDPR is only for EU residents, the nature of the internet practically forces it on everyone, since any of these companies could be dealing with clients from the EU at any time. As a result, a few companies have blocked EU IPs, while others have removed their tracking. Some use a combination: now that we are not tracking you, pay for the ads you don’t see! Facebook’s tactic was one of the dirtiest; it tricked users into thinking they had messages waiting for them which they could only see if they accepted the terms.

This problem looks different when it comes to data that companies have collected on their clients over the years: they now need to go back to users and ask them for their consent (this is the reason for all those GDPR emails around May 25). The choice is simple: either get your users’ consent or stop tracking them.

GDPR: Bad for Business?

“GDPR had everybody worried and created a rush of activity up to 5/25,” said Brian Carter, CEO of The Carter Group. “Businesses were rewriting their privacy policies, sending emails to renew opt-in [to]their lists, adding WordPress plugins to notify people about cookies … and sending out email and mailed privacy policy updates. A lot of people don’t necessarily market to or do business with Europeans, but knew they might have a few on their lists… so they felt it was impossible to avoid it.”

It’s needless to say that most people won’t re-register to the newsletters to which they once subscribed in return for free services. Ads will be less personalized and less accurate. All of these factors could hurt businesses.

But the truth is, we are just accustomed to bad business practices which eventually hurt more than they heal. Honestly, how personalized have those ads really been? Based on my own experience, I click on one ad in a thousand; the other 999 are irrelevant, intrusive and irritating.

Another example: Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Facebook’s shares dropped and Cambridge Analytica went bankrupt in the aftermath of the scandal. This is what bad data hygiene can do – compare it to the Obama campaign, which did the exact same thing but was transparent about what it was doing.

So, getting GDPR-compliant pays off – not only from a fine-prevention angle, but really in terms of customer relationships. According to Kevin Simonson, CEO and co-founder of Metric Digital: “Digital advertising will still be incredibly powerful under these GDPR regulations, but ultimately it will weed out bad actors who don’t believe in transparency. It will raise the tide for all ships involved.”

Post-GDPR Businesses

GDPR is favoring new ways of doing business. “The GDPR represents a sea change in the way marketers do business online… No more scooping up data wholesale just because you can. If you collect data that doesn’t have a specific purpose, you may find yourself out of compliance,” says Jeff Edwards, a tech writer and analyst who blogs for Ipswitch. “For that reason, I think GDPR compliance and auditing capabilities will emerge as a major selling point for marketing tools this year.”

One of the challenges in the post-GDPR era is that companies have to restrain their hunger for data. But companies need that data or they will miss out big. So what’s the other trick up their sleeve? They make the data “non-personal”: By removing the identity of whom the data belongs to, they can still keep the data necessary to detect behavioral patterns and train their AI or other services. Kirill Rebrov, Co-founder and CEO of Demografy, has trained AI to predict demographics based on such data. He explains: “Our technology uses ML [machine learning]to infer demographic data from as scarce data as possible. It can be provided with just first names and partially masked last names which are not PII [personally identifiable information].”

For those who don’t want to encrypt their data, the main challenge will be to dig into and identify where they have kept personal information on their clients. This can be a daunting task, especially for companies that have been in business for a long time and have used several tools to work with data. To aid them, Amnon Drori has co-founded Octopai, which offers a machine learning-based SaaS platform that can connect to heterogeneous storages and create metadata (data about data). This metadata is then used to surface any sensitive information within one’s organization in a matter of minutes as opposed to weeks.

As for the “user consent” part, AdEx offers a solution that’s GDPR compliant from the ground up. Being a decentralized advertising platform with no middlemen, it has the unique ability to let users decide what ads they see – thus, they have full control over how they are tracked and targeted, and can stop it altogether. “In this new model, the power is flipped, where the user/consumer is in control versus the business,” says Neil Patel, advisor to Kind Ads, another decentralized advertising project which pays users in exchange for sending ads to them. “Users are empowered, and they are given options in which they can sell their data in exchange for compensation.”

Could this be the future where we finally get rid of intrusive ads and develop better protection against breaches, with more bandwidth to use and less distraction from what matters most? What is certain is that GDPR will weed out the bad actors and raise industry standards – until someone finds a way to cheat us again, in more sophisticated ways.

*The correct term is actually “data subjects”, which is broader than both “residents” and “citizens”. We have used “residents” for simplicity in this article.

Jihan Wu runs Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the world’s largest producer of custom cryptocurrency mining chips. Financially speaking not much is known about the Chinese company, though Wu has hinted at the possibility of holding an initial public offering (IPO), which would force Bitmain to reveal more.

What an IPO Would Mean for Bitmain

Given the uncertainty surrounding digital assets and the limited public information currently available about Bitmain, any estimate of the company’s value ‘inevitably involves a lot of guesswork,’ according to reports from Bloomberg.

When compared with publicly traded chipmakers (and competitors) Nvidia Corp. and MediaTek Inc., Bloomberg predicts the company has a valuation of about $8.8 billion. Wu, though he declined to share details of his net worth, has previously said that the company is worth $12 billion.

This ‘guesswork’ might be set to change if the company does decide to hold an IPO. A public offering would not only force Bitmain to open its books, but it would also allow the stock market to assign the company a value in real time.

An IPO would also help boost Bitmain’s profile as the company branches out into areas including artificial intelligence, a field that, unlike cryptocurrencies, has the full backing of Chinese financial authorities. While Wu said he has no specific plans at the moment, he’s open to a listing in Hong Kong — a favored location for crypto companies facing Beijing’s crackdown — or in an overseas market with U.S. dollar-denominated shares.

Bitmain and ASICS

Bitmain designs custom chips for cryptocurrency mining called application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. ASICs are developed to run the high-powered computers necessary for cryptocurrency mining, but are also useful for the heavy workloads associated with certain forms of AI, like machine learning, which, as noted, is a technology Bitmain are interested in pursing.

The problem for many in the cryptosphere, though, is that Bitmain controls as much as 80% of the market for crypto mining gear, according to a February report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Roger Ver, the cryptocurrency enthusiast known as Bitcoin Jesus, has called Bitmain the industry’s ‘800-pound gorilla.’

While the company gets most of its revenue from mining equipment sales, it also runs some of the biggest mining collectives, in which members combine their processing capacity and split the rewards. In fact, Bitmain’s AntPool and BTC.com collectives control more than 40% of the world’s Bitcoin mining power, according to Blockchain.info. This has lead to a mining centralization that, to many, is antithetical to cryptocurrency’s people-first philosophy.

As might be expected, this outsized role has prompted a backlash from many digital currency enthusiasts, who strongly disagree with anything that hints at a concentration of power in the crypto ecosystem. In the face of this apprehension, Wu brushes off the naysayers, claiming that Bitmain’s rivals are in close pursuit:

“Bitmain is trying very hard to maintain its advantage,” he said.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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