Day: July 5, 2018

LONDON, NY, July 5, 2018 – Supporting significant freelance growth in the digital freelance space in emerging markets, Hirefreehands is expanding its network and outreach with blockchain technology to support growth, quality and cost-effectiveness. With more than 10,000 active users from 10 countries, Hirefreehands aims to bring and maintain quality within the digital freelancing space while achieving scale that will enable every individual and organization across the globe to participate in the wealth of expanding freelance opportunities.

Breakthrough technology for the freelance marketplace, blockchain employs a decentralized platform to enable an emphasis on quality interactions, efficiency, unbiased and decentralized dispute resolution, and enhanced communication. Decentralizing quality control creates greater opportunity for companies and individuals engaged in freelance efforts across the globe. Hirefreehands uses “proof of skill” to allow freelancers to manage recruitment through a blockchain system as well as “proof of process” to support quality control, project management and dispute resolution.

“The global freelance market is exploding as more individuals seek to share their skills online and more companies take advantage of this skilled labor, representing a significant challenge and opportunity. Our innovative platform is designed to make freelancing scalable across the globe while still supporting the highest quality in work, communication and fund transfer,” said Sunkanmi Ola, Hirefreehands co-founder and CEO. “Our aim is to deliver affordable world-class quality.”

Hirefreehands uses a Price Regulation Algorithm to automatically determine fair prices for jobs, eliminating the need for negotiation and protecting both clients and freelancers from unfair prices. The decentralized platform uses a jury system for both skill verification and dispute resolution. Further, the KYC system uses blockchain for identity recognition. The expected growth in global GDP from online freelance platforms is $2.75 trillion by the year 2025, according to a McKinsey Global Institute Report.

“All of this enhanced technology serves to simplify the process of finding a freelancer or performing freelance work,” Ola added. “This is our vision for the workforce of the future.”

The public sale will launch 30 July at 12 p.m. UTC and run through the month of August.

About Hirefreehands

Hirefreehands is on a mission to improve online freelancing by ensuring clients get value for every dollar spent and freelancers receive pay on a fair basis, employing blockchain technology to decentralize the process. Connecting world-class freelancers with jobs, Hirefreehands delivers on quality, price and ease of use. For more information, please visit https://hirefreehands.io

# # #

Press Contact
Jime Akpusugh
E: [email protected]
P: +234 809 392 2008

Website: https://hirefreehands.io

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/hirefreehands

Telegram: https://t.me/Hirefreehandsofficial

Whitepaper: https://blockchain.hirefreehands.io/Hirefreehands-Whitepaper.pdf

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.

A single Syscoin, worth about USD 0.25, was inadvertently sold for BTC 96 (USD 6.3 million) on Binance on 3 July 2018. This unusual trading activity prompted a temporary suspension of the entire exchange. When trading resumed, new policies were announced by Binance, including a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) that will compensate customers in the event of extreme losses of cryptocurrency in the future.

Apparently, a number of application programming interface (API) users on Binance were conducting irregular trades, suggesting the API system had been compromised. API is used to program trading bots and, in general, to interact with Binance using a server. Binance revoked all API keys and asked users to make new keys. It suggests users take good care of their API keys by not trusting the keys with third parties, and by using the IP whitelist so no other computers can use their API key.

Irregular trades were rolled back, including that accidental BTC 96 trade. Since this appears to have been a hacking situation via the API, it is probable that the Bitcoins were withdrawn and Binance had to bear the loss. Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and can likely handle a relatively small loss like this, but it is setting up the SAFU fund to cover future losses. Now, 10% of trading fees will be set aside to fund the SAFU, and this will be stored in a cold wallet.

Additionally, Binance will be giving the API users that encountered problems zero-fee trading until 14 July 2018. All other users will be given a 70% rebate on trading fees during the same period, paid with BNB, Binance’s native cryptocurrency.

The Binance team stated: “Binance has achieved explosive growth in the first year. With this growth, we also experience many problems. We must reflect upon these problems, learn from them, and improve ourselves. We know in the course of making history, we will be tested again and again. We believe every test makes us stronger. And only if we fight together, can we move the industry forward.”

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The post 25-Cent Crypto Sold for $6M in Bitcoin on Binance, Prompting Suspension, Policy Changes appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

A combination of irregular trades from API users on Binance and a set of Syscoin chained unconfirmed transactions led to media speculation that Binance had been hacked for $45 million. Binance has not been hacked, the irregular trades have been rolled back, and the Syscoin blockchain has not been compromised.

Syscoin Was Not Hacked

In a blog post, the Syscoin team confirmed that Syscoin was not hacked, the chain was not attacked and is fully operational. They identified several issues that led to the speculation that it had been hacked. The main issue appeared to be chained unconfirmed transactions.

Syscoin allows for up to 25 chained unconfirmed transactions to exist, which is the same as Bitcoin. On July 4, the top address of 46 million Syscoin, which is presumably an exchange, was sending withdrawals. The blog post said that a chained transaction of 46 million Syscoins could quickly add up to a large amount and explains why it appeared that 1.2 billion coins had been created.

Considering that 1.2 billion coins are higher than the existing supply of 888 million, blockchain experts argued that this implied a fault in the chain. However, it was a case of the coins being counted multiple times. The blocks actually contained only the normal 34.65 newly generated coins.

The Syscoin team also highlighted three interrelated issues involving new blocks, not including transactions regularly, masternodes expiring, and the mining difficulty dropping. This was due to a superblock being created which caused some minor nodes to stop because they hadn’t upgraded. Mining pools that had upgraded had high default fees which meant some transactions were not being confirmed.

When a miner that had a lower rate mined a block, it would process the transactions that had lower fees set all at once. This led to larger than normal blocks being produced. The team has asked miners to change their fee policies to the default settings to spread transactions out across blocks.

Irregular Trades on Binance

The main issue which coincides with the Syscoin mining issue were irregular trades on Binance from API users. APIs are trading bots that make automated trades. Previous API issues have resulted from users giving out their passwords on fake exchange websites allowing hackers to log in and change their API settings. In this case, APIs were used to sell Syscoin at higher prices, up to 96 BTC.

Binance said, in a statement: “At 2018/07/03 20:18:00 (UTC), irregular trades were detected from a number of API users, triggering our internal risk management system. As such, Binance made a timely decision to suspend trading, withdrawals and other account functions.”

"To protect the future interests of all users, Binance will create a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU)."

Well played @cz_binance, well played. #FundsAreSafu https://t.co/n6JQs5mjAB

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) July 4, 2018

Binance said it has removed all existing API keys and requested all API users to recreate their API keys. It said it had rolled back the irregular trades, but that users who were negatively affected by trading the rising price will receive zero-fee trading for nine days. Other Binance users will receive a 70% rebate on trading fees, issued in the exchange’s native token BNB.

To close the issue, Binance set up a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) which will allocate 10% of all trading fees into a fund. This will be used in ‘extreme cases.’ Charlie Lee highlighted the choice of acronym.

Featured Image From Shutterstock

The post Syscoin and Binance Confusion Causes Wild Speculation appeared first on NewsBTC.

Block.one, the company behind the EOS blockchain, has just hired a former Jefferies Group LLC executive to lead its $1 billion venture capital arm.

A new U.S. bill calls into question a cornerstone of blockchain technology — its immutability. What is the purpose behind it and does blockchain really need to be protected?

Here at NewsBTC we love hearing the musings of dusty old conservatives trying to debase something they know absolutely nothing about. Today we thought we’d share with you one such baseless attack on the protocol that the bankers just love to hate.

John Crudele: “Bitcoin is Really Worth Nothing”

Throughout its relatively short existence, there have been many verbal attacks made against Bitcoin. There was JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s outburst calling the most successful digital currency of all time a “fraud” with little to no explanation as to why he felt this way.

Then there was Warren Buffet’s similarly scant-on-reasoning yet wonderfully creative insult: “Probably rat poison squared” levied at BTC. Amusingly, Dimon was later accused of market manipulation over his comments and as for Buffet, he’s the first to admit he hasn’t the foggiest idea about technological innovation.

When high profile financial types resort to such slanderous comments, you’ve got to wonder the motives behind them. If Bitcoin really wasn’t anything to be concerned about, would they be publicly voicing condemnation in such a way?

The latest of these factually scant critiques doesn’t come from a bastion of high finance, however. Instead, they’re the musings of New York Post “journalist” John Crudele. In a spectacularly poorly reasoned article titled “Why Bitcoin May Soon Be Worth Nothing,” Crudele addresses the 70% losses that have occurred thus far in 2018. Naturally, in doing so he neglects to comment on the almost 2,000% gains of 2017.

He goes on to state that Bitcoin is “really worth nothing, since it’s backed by nothing or no one.” Like so many other Bitcoin naysayers, Crudele fails to grasp that Bitcoin is backed by something – infallible code.

Code, unlike people (bankers included), doesn’t have a motive. It doesn’t have an agenda. It certainly can’t gamble with your future for its own benefit. Code is neutral and consistent. When it’s successfully proved itself over the course of nearly a decade, it’s far more reliable than if it were backed by any single, or group of human beings.

Unfortunately, this is all Crudele offers in the way of reasoning for his click-baitesque headline. He quickly resorts to throwing out tired old insults:

“Ponzi scheme. Confidence game. Fraud.”

What? No tulips, money launderers, or drug runners, John? I guess you didn’t finish up reading the script.

All told, Crudele’s analysis is, well, crude. Realistically, could we expect anything else from the guy? It would seem Crudele’s the name, crude reasoning’s the game.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

The post The New York Post Really Doesn’t Have a Clue About Bitcoin appeared first on NewsBTC.

Exchanges are an integral cog in the cryptocurrency machine. Unfortunately, these platforms often cause issues or run into trouble for a variety of reasons. The Binance exchange has been involved in a recent Syscoin issue which forced the company to delete all existing API keys. It’s another troubled day in the cryptocurrency industry.

Binance API Keys Reset

This entire ordeal kicked off on Tuesday afternoon. It was clear something was going on with Syscoin, a well-respected altcoin which can be traded across many cryptocurrency exchanges. Although it remains to be seen what caused the Syscoin issue in the first place, the developments have affected the Binance exchange in a rather unpleasant way.

When the issue occurred, a Syscoin network block was mined which contained over 1 billion coins. Although it is not uncommon for blocks to include large rewards, one billion SYS was rather unusual when taking into account that the coin’s maximum supply is 888 million. Mining more coins than physically and mathematically possible makes no sense, and it caused plenty of concerns for all users.

We are investigating a possible issue on the Syscoin blockchain, nothing is confirmed but we have asked for exchanges to halt trading while we investigate.

— Syscoin (@syscoin) July 3, 2018

The Syscoin team quickly acknowledged that some issue had affected their blockchain, and an official investigation is still taking place as of right now. Jameson Lopp has already commented that this issue may be similar to the one which affected Bitcoin eight years ago. As such, it is evident the developers have a lot of work ahead of them in trying to figure out where these ‘new coins’ are coming from and how this bug was made possible in the first place.

This incident has another worrisome side effect as far as the Binance exchange is concerned. Since the current Syscoin supply is inaccurate, any exchange listing SYS should be aware of any further developments. The problem was only compounded when one SYS was traded for 96 Bitcoin on Binance Tuesday night, which makes even less sense. It is evident someone is deliberately targeting this altcoin, although it remains unclear what their motive is.

Due to this irregular trading, the Binance exchange was forced to take a rather unpopular decision. The company is worried that it occurred as a result of the exchange’s API, rather than the platform itself. As such, Binance decided to reset all of the existing API keys in circulation. This seems to have been a smart business decision to avoid any further compromises of Binance account information related to trading activity.

It still remains to be seen what is going on exactly with Syscoin. These issues need to be clarified as soon as possible, and one can only hope this was a bug rather than an actual blockchain-breaking issue. Additionally, any information regarding the trading of one SYS for 96 Bitcoin will hopefully come to light in the coming days as well. These two developments are rather worrisome and clearly hint at an attack against the Syscoin project.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

A new patent application from IBM suggests that the tech giant is eyeing blockchain as a way to chart programmer contributions for projects.

Malta has officially passed three bills into law to legalize cryptocurrency businesses in the country, claiming to make it the world’s first nation to provide legal certainty to the cryptocurrency field, according to Bitcoinist.

The bills passed their fourth and final reading on 4 July and as Bitcoin News reported recently, the bills are aimed at further regulation of cryptocurrencies. The three bills fall into three categories as follows:

-ICOs will now need to publish a white paper with fully transparent financial history details of the issuer for each new project needing funding through the Virtual Financial Assets Act.

-An industry-specific body will be sent up in order to support the deployment of the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Act which will promote the development of visions, skills, and other qualities relating to technology innovation.

– The Innovative Technology Arrangements and Services Act will facilitate blockchain-based enterprises being recognized as such under the law, and as such will be the basis for the previous two bills to operate.

New exchanges now know exactly what government requirements are before setting up a cryptocurrency business or exchange in Malta. Silvio Schembri, Malta’s Junior Minister for Financial Services, commented that companies can now operate in a fully regulated environment, which should attract more investment to the country’s already burgeoning cryptocurrency space.

Poland’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Bitpay announced this year that it was suspending its activities there. Due to lack of cooperation from Polish banks, the exchange announced that its BitBay operations were moving to Malta. Another coup for the country was the announcement that Binance had successfully opened a bank account there and would be operating from September 2018.

Malta has become increasingly appealing to Bitcoin companies conducting business there due to the island’s positive spin on blockchain technology and its open-minded approach to regulation, linked to a strong economy. It also boasts the largest cryptocurrency trading volume in the world, according to Morgan Stanley. With this new legal-certainty status for cryptocurrencies, the country’s claim as another European “crypto haven” to rival Switzerland may be well founded.

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The post Malta Passes New Laws to Claim World’s First Nation with Crypto Certainty appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Numerous connections have been drawn between cryptocurrency and money laundering. It is a worrisome trend, yet one that seemingly will not end anytime soon. A new report by CipherTrace shows that money laundering activity involving cryptocurrency will only continue to increase.

Criminals Still Favor Cryptocurrency Proceeds

On paper, there is no real benefit to relying on cryptocurrencies for laundering money obtained by illegal means. Most cryptocurrencies have public blockchains and lack the privacy and anonymity required to mask such activity. Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum are especially ill-equipped to offer such functionality at this stage, although the introduction of additional privacy features may change that moving forward.

Other cryptocurrencies, however, might lend themselves toward this type of activity. More specifically, the likes of Monero, Dash, and Zcash focus on anonymity and privacy first and foremost. As such, they are currencies which are gaining traction among cybercriminals. Monero is making a name for itself thanks to cryptojacking, among other reasons.

A new report by CipherTrace shows that money laundering through cryptocurrencies is a growing business. Compared to 2017, the figures for 2018 are already over three times as high. At this rate, a total of $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency will be linked to money laundering efforts by the time 2018 draws to a close. That’s not a positive trend for the industry by any means, but there is little one can do about it as of right now.

These figures are the direct result of multiple incidents affecting the cryptocurrency industry directly and indirectly. First of all, there is the growing number of cryptocurrency hacks to contend with. Mainly exchanges are being targeted in this regard, and the proceeds are often converted to other cryptocurrencies or directly to fiat currency. This heavily contributes to the growing money laundering issue affecting this industry.

The bigger question is how criminals successfully launder their money and avoid detection. It seems mixing services are becoming a lot more popular in this regard. While a viable service model, they also require criminals to trust the person operating the mixing service. After all, there is a good chance the mixer will never forward the “cleaned” money once it has been received.

Instant conversion services between various cryptocurrencies are also popular. ShapeShift.io, for example, can be quite convenient for criminals looking to launder smaller amounts of cryptocurrencies at a time. However, their role in the process remains minimal, as the real facilitators are the actual cryptocurrency exchanges. A lot of trading platforms perform insufficient KYC and AML checks. That situation will need to change sooner rather than later.

This promoted article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.