Day: June 29, 2018

The Hive Project (HVN), which used blockchain tech to provide quick liquidity via invoice financing, has announced a partnership with Gosocket, the social business network connecting 12 countries throughout Latin America.

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In a true blockchain use-case success story, the deal will soon open the doors for more than 1 million Gosocket active users to access fast liquidity, with over 500 million invoices ready for funding on the HVN-Anticipos Terminal.

From Latin America to Europe

The business agreement paves the way for Hive Project to be one of the very first blockchain startups to be welcomed into traditional economic framework, demonstrating business use-case in global finance. Under the new deal, its native HVN token will be integrated into Gosocket’s Anticipos advance payment solution. Home to more than a million active users, Gosocket has processed over $7 billion worth of advance payments and verified more than 500 billion electronic invoices.

Hive Project partner and CFO Ugur Yildirim reflected on the significant milestone reached less than a year after its token sales, saying that the merging of technologies between the two companies would be a catalyst for business growth in Latin America, while presenting the chance to use Gosocket’s technology in Europe:

“Apart from making a great business case in the global finance industry, this agreement will also create strong organic demand for our utility token (HVN) because all users will need it to access the invoices traded on the HVN-Anticipos Terminal.”

Gosocket CEO Mario Fernández underlined its experience of providing electronic invoicing solutions for 15 years via open supplier and buyer exchange networks, and commercial operations in a dozen LatAm countries:

“… Gosocket has been developing some disruptive concepts including proactive financial services for SMEs, and our partnership with Hive Project brings what we believe will be probably the next step in the digitalization of financial services… the usage of cryptocurrencies.”

A new era for blockchain in global finance

HVN was CoinAgenda Global’s best token sale of 2017, recognized for its breakthrough innovation of unique fingerprinting to every issued invoice. Invoicing automation takes blockchain tech a step closer to commercialization and participation in a EUR 3 trillion global invoice financing market.

Soon, the HVN-Anticipos Terminal will innovate the way smaller businesses finance working capital in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil, courtesy of the Gosocket network, bringing more intrinsic value to the HVN token.

To learn more, visit the Hive Project website or see the details on their team. More details can be found on the Hive Project Media Kit. Interact with the community and join the discussions on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.

By moving to open-source more of the CryptoKitties codebase, the ethereum-based startup is making its project more of a true decentralized app.

A Bitcoin whale was spotted sending BTC 48,500 worth USD 300 million for an astonishingly low transaction fee of just 0.00000675 Bitcoin (USD 0.04) on 27 June 2018.

This is an excellent example of how at times when Bitcoin network load is low it can be cheaper to send money with Bitcoin than any other financial service. Banks would probably charge millions of dollars to send a USD 300 million transaction since they generally take a certain percentage of the total amount sent through bank wires. Western Union would cost tens of millions of dollars if it would even entertain the idea such a large transaction.

Bitcoin transaction fees are paid per byte of data, so the amount of Bitcoin being sent doesn’t have an influence on the transaction fee. Therefore, someone buying a USD 5 cup of coffee would pay the same transaction fee as someone sending USD 300 million. The higher the fee, the quicker a Bitcoin transaction is likely to confirm, however, so it is standard practice to attach a high fee when sending a lot of money to ensure the transaction confirms quickly. Technically, confirmations aren’t even needed to receive a Bitcoin transaction, like when using a blockchain.info wallet, but waiting for confirmations is a good way to protect against double spends.

At this time on 28 June 2018, it costs roughly USD 3 to send a Bitcoin transaction and have it confirm in the next block, although for less than USD 1 a Bitcoin transaction would still confirm in about an hour. This illustrates how higher fees lead to quicker transaction confirmations, which is due to Bitcoin miners favoring transactions that include higher fees. It is surprising that this Bitcoin whale sent USD 300 million without attaching a transaction fee that would ensure quick confirmation. However, when transactions completely clear out of the mempool, which happens periodically throughout the day under normal conditions, even the lowest fee transactions get confirmed.

Bitcoin transactions aren’t always this cheap. During the rally that saw Bitcoin prices hit USD 20,000, transaction fees exceeded USD 50, practically crippling Bitcoin’s usefulness as an everyday currency. Fortunately, transaction fees only remained that high for a short amount of time and normalized soon after.

However, it is possible Bitcoin transaction fees could spike like that again in the future when the next big rally occurs, leading to research on how to properly scale the Bitcoin network for mainstream adoption. Right now, Bitcoin can only handle fewer than ten transactions per second, but the second layer Lightning Network could potentially handle as many transactions as Visa once all the bugs are smoothed out.

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Virtual reality platform High Fidelity believes that by using blockchain technology they can reach an audience of a billion people and have just raised $35 million in fresh revenue to do so.

$35 Million Raised to Create New Virtual World

The series D fundraising round was led by a $2o million investment by Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy EOS Ecosystem Fund and also included existing investors such as Breyer Capital, IDG Capital Partners and Vulcan Capital.

Philip Rosedale, the CEO of High Fidelity, and creator of the highly popular virtual world Second Life is creating a blockchain infrastructure to support a billion VR users and has already created a native cryptocurrency and digital-asset registry.

“The High Fidelity platform is currently in beta, so it has been partly launched. The headsets that will really take us into the big consumer market are not available just yet. A lot of our early focus is on location-based facilities,” Rosedale told the New York Times.

High Fidelity’s goal is to usher in the Metaverse or the universe of virtual reality worlds. Rosedale launched Second Life in 2003, which gave birth to a digital currency called Linden dollars that produced more than $4 billion globally in virtual transactions. For his new virtual world, he wants to use blockchain to create a token called High Fidelity Coin, a stable coin paired to the US dollar,  which will be needed to use the VR platform.

“If bitcoin had been around in 2005, I would have been delighted to use it for Second Life,” Rosedale said before continuing on about High Fidelity Coin “It is not something that people would want to buy as an investment,”

Transactions in the Virtual World Will be Registered on EOS

Within the virtual world, users will access digital tokens controlled by a tablet-like device to purchase goods licensed by real-world merchants. Rosedale gives the scenario of a person wanting to look cool in VR buying a pair of Rayban sunglasses. The purchase and virtual sunglasses would then be recorded by the merchant on the EOS blockchain platform.

Sam Englebardt, head of strategic partnerships at Galaxy Digital will join High Fidelity’s board as part of the company’s investment requirements, said in a statement about VR technology.

“It’s a global phenomenon that fundamentally requires a trustless consensus mechanism for currency, property and identity.”

The Series D round brings High Fidelity’s total funding to $70 million which the company will use to expand their research and development as well to hire staff for their new offices in Seattle.

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A new patent filing reveals Chinese e-commerce giant has been exploring the use of blockchain technology to speed up international payments.

To approach the fourth industrial revolution, South Korea has to drop that ICO ban

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has told Cointelegraph that a fiat-cryptocurrency exchange is about to launch in Uganda. Binance Uganda’s exchange website is already online and registration is ongoing; it appears the Ugandan Shilling (UGX) will be the primary fiat used on the exchange. This would be Binance’s first fiat-crypto exchange, and comes less than a month after Binance acquired an EUR bank account in Malta. Zhao says Binance will be launching fiat-crypto exchanges in two to three more locations in the short term.

Binance Uganda has been “progressing really fast” according to Zhao, due to the very positive government attitude towards cryptocurrency. Indeed, the President of Uganda, Yoweria Kugata Museveni, made highly encouraging statements about blockchain technology at the inaugural Africa Blockchain Conference which was held in Uganda in May 2018.

Zhao says, “Uganda is a really interesting situation, only 11% of the population has bank accounts. It’s both a challenge and an opportunity. So it may be easier to adopt cryptocurrency as a form of currency instead of trying to push for bank adoption”.

Cryptocurrency’s decentralized nature has made it an excellent option for people considered unbankable due to their low credit scores and criminal history, or in the case of Uganda, unbankable due to a lack of banking infrastructure. In general, cryptocurrency has been flourishing in countries like Nigeria and Venezuela where the local fiat currencies are weak.

According to Zhao, opening more channels for fiat to enter the cryptocurrency market will help increase cryptocurrency prices, and this is precisely what Binance is doing in Uganda and other locations during the next year. He is unfazed by the cryptocurrency market decline during 2018 saying this is normal, and Binance is working on technology to handle 100 to 1,000 more volume than it can handle presently in expectation of the next cryptocurrency bull market.

Binance is the top cryptocurrency exchange in the world as of this writing on 28 June 2018 with volume near USD 1 billion per day, and the launching of fiat functionality will help cement this top rank.

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The cryptocurrency markets remain in a state of flux, for the time being. Although it seems there may be some short-term positive momentum later today, the actual price trend remains rather negative. If the Cardano price is any indication, the coming weekend may not result in anything overly positive.

Cardano Price Continues to Dwindle

For those waiting for all cryptocurrency markets to recover, it appears the wait is far from over at this stage. All markets remain troubled by bearish pressure, and there is no indication of any major changes in this regard moving forward. For the Cardano price, this past week has not been great. Its value dropped from $0.145 all the way to $0.117 and there may be further declines looming on the horizon.

Over the past 24 hours, the Cardano price has lost another 6.38% in value. Compared to Bitcoin’s current losses, that is quite a setback. Unfortunately, no altcoin will thrive when the Bitcoin price is in the red, although there may be some temporary exceptions in this regard. For Cardano, things are not looking all that good, and the dreadful trend throughout 2018 will continue.

It is also interesting to note how the Cardano price drop is also related to ongoing declines in the ADA/BTC ratio. Although it is understandable Bitcoin drags all altcoins with it along the way, the ADA/BTC ratio faces a 3.06% setback. As such, the Cardano market cap is inching closer to the $3bn mark and may very well drop below this threshold in the days to come.

Even though the overall cryptocurrency trading volume is on the rise once again, the Cardano volume isn’t looking all that impressive. With just $52.042m in 24-hour trading, the demand to buy or sell Cardano seemingly isn’t there as of right now. It is certainly possible the trading volume can pick up again in the coming weeks. That is, assuming the cryptocurrency industry becomes more appealing to the masses in that period.

Looking over the cryptocurrency exchanges ranked by ADA trading volume, it seems Binance is still on top. Three of its trading pairs can be found in the top six, separated by Upbit’s KRW pair, Huobi’s USDT market, and Bittrex’s BTC offering. It makes for an interesting collection of exchanges and trading pairs. Whether or not this will spark a Cardano price increase in the coming days, is a different matter altogether.

As is always the case, the cryptocurrency prices remain subject to change at any given moment. Although the overall trend throughout 2018 has been very negative, the situation will have to turn around sooner rather than later. As such, there may be some positive Cardano price momentum over the weekend, as it is usually a very different time for cryptocurrency trading in general.