Day: July 10, 2018

A paper published by the Bank of Finland explains why cryptocurrencies will never become a form of money.

A Singapore-based fintech startup has launched a massive blockchain centre to help small and medium-sized businesses in a number of industries. The six-story construction is located at Serangoon North.

New Singapore Blockchain Centre to Provide Various Services to Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

The new blockchain centre will be known as The Blockchain Technology Creatanium Centre (BTCC). It has been created by PLMP Fintech. The BTCC is hoping to provide various blockchain-based services for small and medium-sized businesses wanting to get started using the technological breakthrough.

PLMP Fintech’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, Peter Lim, told local news publication Channel Asia Singapore about what he hopes the BTCC will achieve:

“Having a successful business is all about building efficiencies and getting a suitable product or service as quickly as possible to the end user… Blockchain gives us that ability to scale and at much lower costs.”

Lim went on to state that blockchain can give traceability, accountability, and additional trust to various business operations. This, he believes, will reduce inefficiencies and create opportunities for companies to save money. These savings can then be passed onto customers.

He also told the publication that he believes that Singapore’s small and medium-sized enterprises will find blockchain to be a “crucial mechanism” for realising their aspirations of competing on the global level.

Channel Asia Singapore cite that these smaller and medium-sized companies currently contribute around half of the Singapore economy’s GDP and are responsible for employing around two-thirds of the entire workforce.

Lim continued:

“With the BTCC, we aim to educate Singapore businesses and provide them with a wider ecosystem that supports their activities on the blockchain… As a Singaporean entrepreneur, I want to see my fellow business owners succeed.”

Later in 2018, there are plans to include a blockchain research and development centre at the BTCC. It’s expected that this addition will occupy an entire floor of the six-story structure.

In addition, there are also hopes to launch an over-the-counter (OTC) exchange in the building, as well as a tech support centre and cryptocurrency mining farm.

PLMP Fintech are also hoping to launch their own cryptocurrency wallet within the next twelve months, as well as a point of sale system for digital currencies. This latter addition is expected to be launched at some point during Q1 of 2019.

Not only that, but PLMP Fintech are hoping to provide courses in blockchain education at the new facility. These are thought to include topics such as security, regulations, and compliance.

Similar centres to the one in Singapore are also being planned for Thailand and Indonesia.

With the launch of the BTCC, it looks like 2018 is going to be an exciting year for the blockchain industry in Signapore. Along with the new facility dedicated to all things blockchain, the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre is due to play host to the Crypto EXPO Asia Forum in October.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Australia is still an integral part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Especially considering that it has a somewhat accommodating regulatory ecosystem, the country should not be overlooked. This is why Huobi has decided to expand its presence to Australia, as it now supports AUD trading of ten cryptocurrencies.

Huobi Continues to Expand

There have been a few interesting developments in the world of cryptocurrency lately. Various exchanges and trading platforms have begun expanding their global presences. Trying to bring more cryptocurrencies to the masses paves the way for faster global adoption. Even so, there is still a lot of work to be done before the whole world sees the potential of cryptocurrencies.

For Huobi, one of the bigger exchanges in the world, expanding to Australia is an interesting decision. Although Australia has a vibrant cryptocurrency community, it is not necessarily the place most people would associate with Bitcoin activity. Thanks to initiatives such as Living Room of Satoshi, Australians can spend cryptocurrencies on many different services and products, including bills and mobile top-ups.

Late last week, Huobi Australia officially opened its doors to the public. That was a very interesting development, as it is one of the first companies to be offering their services in Australia. Most of the exchanges active in that part of the world are domestic companies, which is only to be expected. Entering this market as a “foreigner” will not be easy, although Huobi Australia offers a solid selection of currencies to be traded.

Bringing more competition to the Australian cryptocurrency ecosystem is never a bad thing. Competition brings out the best in companies and gives consumers more options to score the best price on a given currency. In the case of Huobi Australia, the platform will focus on 10 different currencies initially. All of these coins and tokens will be traded against the Australian dollar. More pairs will be added over time, although no official timeline has been proposed yet.

Among the supported currencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum Classic. All of those choices make a lot of sense, because they are all top cryptocurrencies ranked by market cap. The other offerings on the platform are perhaps a bit controversial. Adding the likes of POWR, ELF, CTXC, DTA, and IOST is not necessarily an approach which most consumers would expect at this stage.

It will be interesting to see if Huobi Australia can gain any major traction in the coming months. Australia has a lenient cryptocurrency regulatory ecosystem which allows for growth and innovation. With foreign companies showing an interest in this country, the cryptocurrency industry will continue to grow and mature.

Check out the answers to some common questions about crypto exchanges that beginner traders often ask online

Austrian startup aims to help digital entertainment producers and creatives receive royalties for their work, and improve creative collaboration and content distribution #SPONSORED

The CEO and co-founder of Zap.org, Nick Spanos, has claimed that Bitcoin will recover despite its current bearish movements, but governments won’t have an easy ride.

Spanos is a pioneer in the Bitcoin and blockchain technology space. In 2013, Spanos founded Bitcoin Center NYC – the world’s first-ever cryptocurrency trading floor, which initially opened directly across from the NYSE in 2013.

Spanos, who is considered by many to be a go-to expert in cryptocurrency markets, appears to have no doubts that a recovery is around the corner. He explained:

“We’ve seen cryptocurrency crash in the past. It’s gone down for months, but we see it go back up again once people get back in, and when it does, it goes up very fast and very high because there are only so many. It’s digital scarcity.”

The Bitcoin Center founder suggests that blockchain has a great future due to the lack of third-party brokerage which has created through both mathematics and cryptography. This combination creates an environment where banks can lose a high degree of significance and potency in financial markets.

On the well-trodden subject of regulation, which governments around the world are at various stages of attempting to tackle to either hinder or support, depending on local financial environments, Sanos has firm views. He claims, “You can’t really regulate mathematics, no matter how hard governments try.”

He believes that governments are understandably trying to perpetuate systems which may have done their course, comparing crypto regulation to that of video rental companies attempting to survive in the face of far more efficient, and cheaper, technologies. It’s small countries, he maintains, that will be the winners in the final analysis.

Spanos argues:

“It is already happening; all the big things are happening in small countries because they have nothing to lose. When people understand how that will change their industry, then everyone jumps up and that’s when we see the peak again.”

Spanos is internationally respected as an ambassador of Bitcoin, and was formally invited to struggling Venezuela by president Maduro when the Petro became the country’s state cryptocurrency, although the socialist-based doctrine behind the Petro was not a concept he could support.

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London School of Economics is set to offer online course on cryptocurrency investing, starting in August 2018

Twenty individuals have been arrested in connection with a huge cryptojacking scam in the Shandong province of China. Those involved are thought to have successfully hijacked 3.89 million personal computers since 2015.

Massive Chinese Cryptojacking Scam Uncovered

It’s estimated that the cryptojacking scam netted those involved more than 15 million yuan ($2.26 million). It was discovered back in January by technicians at Tencent, the largest gaming and social media company in China. According to a post from the Shandong government’s website, the malware used was hidden in software downloads that enable online gamers to add cheats to various titles.

Once installed, the malware used the computer systems of unsuspecting gamers to mine various cryptocurrencies. Those targeted include DigiByte, Decred, and Siacoin. It’s thought that these currencies were chosen because they can still be mined successfully without the kinds of application-specific chips needed to mine Bitcoin. Additionally, the systems of committed online gamers are often equipped with high-end graphics cards capable of mining cryptocurrency efficiently.

Many of those arrested were employees at Dalian Shenping Network Technology. One suspect whose surname is Yang is also believed to have cloned a popular video streaming service owned by Baidu. He then sold fake subscriptions to the fraudulent service which netted him another 200,000 yuan ($30,163).

In addition, Yang also created downloadable plugins that were spread through chat groups. These programs were also used to turn the computers of unsuspecting users into cryptocurrency miners for those involved.

A report in the South China Morning post alleges that the owner of Dilian Shengping was also in on the scam. Along with other employees from the company some 3.89 million computers were hijacked using the cryptojacking software. It’s believed that using the method, those involved were able to mine 26 million units of DigiByte, Decred, and Siacoin.

Cryptojacking has a detrimental impact on the machines of victims. It forces them to work much harder than they would normally and this places undue wear on components. In addition, extra power is required to run computers in this manner. This can lead to increased electricity bills for those affected.

Leonard Weese of the Bitcoin Association Hong Kong spoke to the publication about the cyber crime that has been gaining traction in recent years:

“If it’s done cleverly, then the software will only mine with excess capacity and you won’t notice from the outside.”

We’ve previously reported on other incidents of cryptojacking here at NewsBTC. However, none uncovered so far seem to have been anywhere near as successful as this example. That said, many such attacks are yet to be discovered. The issue is becoming so prevalent that digital security company Avast decided to hold a live demonstration showing just how destructive it could be at RSA 2018 in April of this year.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Providing a personalized cryptocurrency or financial experience has proven to be very difficult. It seems QuantBot may make a big impact in this regard, as it is designed to put a completely different spin on the connections between cryptocurrency and traditional finance. It could prove to be a nifty tool if it delivers on its promises.

QuantBot Seemingly Has Potential

One has to commend developers for offering new tools to people who want to learn more about finance or cryptocurrency. Both industries have a certain appeal, although getting into the nitty-gritty of either industry can be very problematic. Most people tend to overlook the connections between finance and cryptocurrency, mainly because they aren’t easy to spot or recognize.

QuantBot claims it can solve this problem using a rather interesting solution. It is designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence and an advanced cryptocurrency discovery platform. By making use of natural language processing and machine learning, symbiotic and sympathetic relationships between various occurrences can be uncovered.

Most people already suspect that developments affecting the cryptocurrency industry usually originate in traditional finance. There may be a lot more to this connection than one would expect, and QuantBot is seemingly capable of pointing that out. When the financial industry faces a setback, cryptocurrencies usually become more popular.

Discovering these rather obvious relationships between cryptocurrency and finance can yield new insights. Although it is evident that both of these industries are closely entwined, finding any real evidence in this regard can be a major challenge. QuantBot will give traders, investors, and speculators access to what it dubs “information arbitrage”.

The bot itself is operated by entering specific keywords, hashtags, URLs, and such and seeing what information pops up. If one cryptocurrency rises, uncovering the symbiotic relationship between that coin and other tokens can become apparent, and one can easily monitor how those other markets evolve over the same period.

QuantBot is already available to the masses, although users will need to obtain access through Slack. This is also the most interesting aspect of QuantBot, as it is integrated with Slack directly, rather than requiring users to install untrusted third-party software or rely on a centralized framework. From a research perspective, this tool could save people a lot of work, even though it may not replace traditional information sources. A complementary tool will always be useful, though.

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin has made the surprise revelation that he is an Ethereum miner, saying he believes that the crypto global network is “extraordinary”

One of China’s most prominent cryptocurrency investors and Bitcoin advocates, Li Xiaolai, has resigned from the Hangzhou Xiong’An Blockchain Innovation Fund, giving up his position as managing partner of the USD 1 billion Chinese startup.

A brief timeline of disputes and allegations

The resignation comes after venture capitalist Chen Weixing publicly began making hostile comments toward Li. Branding the investor as a “fraud” and a “tumor” of the industry, he went on to accuse Li of owing BTC 30,000 to a group of investors, dating back to 2013. According to Chen, this was not repaid as Li had “gambled” the funding away.

Li had later responded in detail to these accusations: “Once again, it’s not true. The fund was a private equity ‘equivalent to 20 million yuan (USD 3 million)’. And I never promised to guarantee the fund’s value using Bitcoin. My quote was ‘We hope (this fund) can outrun the Bitcoin market’. As for the ‘due in September’ part, the fund was set up in a ‘4+1’ model, so it ought to due in September this year. Chen is just muddying the water.”

Audio leak

The dust had barely settled on the matter before a recording of a private meeting that took place in January 2018 was leaked onto social media on 3 July. As reported by local media outlet Baidu, Li took aim at NEO, Tron, Ripple and Binance, going so far as to call the exchange a “scam”.

Chen was quick to follow up the scandal and further questioned the Xiong’An Blockchain Fund, challenging the government’s significant financial backing.

In April 2018, the Blockchain Industrial Park was launched in one of China’s biggest tech hubs, Hangzhou, home to some of the largest tech firms in the country such as Alibaba; USD 400 billion of funding was provided from the government of the city of Hangzhou.

The resignation

On Monday, 9 June, Li announced the resignation on his Weibo account, believing that his decision would maintain the integrity and reputation of the government-backed investment fund.

He wrote: “The series of defamations from Chen Weixing against myself has brought material and negative impacts on the reputation of Xiong’An Blockchain Fund… To let the Hangzhou government continue its push for blockchain development, I will resign from my role as a managing partner.”

However, Li will not be going down without a fight. Last Friday, he announced via his WeChat channel that a defamation lawsuit had been filed against Chen, to which Chen responded, calling for other “victims” to use this opportunity to take on Li in court.

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At press time, the father of crypto has fallen back down to $6,300, about $400 less than where it has stood for the past few days. Bitcoin recently reached $6,700 – a milestone according to most analysts, who suggested that the currency had broken longstanding resistance and that $7,000 was likely inevitable.

Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be the case anymore, as the bears are once again showing their influence over bitcoin’s price maneuvers. One source, however, suggests that the move is part of a correction, and that the coin isn’t likely to drop any further. It also states that the currency’s support level lies at $6,340, which is around what it’s presently trading for.

Granted the bulls can step in and take control again, bitcoin could jump to $6,800, followed by $6,850 and $7,100 respectively. Buyers recently had higher levels of influence over the market, but are losing their hold to the selling crowd…

And many critics remain adamant that bitcoin’s alleged anonymity leaves the door open to criminal ventures, and makes it the target currency for malicious activity. One such critic is 75-year-old Nobel prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, who recently stated:

“You cannot have a means of payment that is based on secrecy when you’re trying to create a transparent banking system. If you open a hole like bitcoin, then all the nefarious activity will go through that hole, and no government can allow that.”

Stiglitz goes even further, saying that the only reason bitcoin even exists is because people are seeking ways to abuse our present financial system, and that once regulators step into the fray, the currency could virtually disappear overnight.

“My feeling is when you regulate it so you couldn’t engage in money laundering and all these other [crimes], there will be no demand for bitcoin,” he explained. “By regulating the abuses, you are going to regulate it out of existence. It exists because of the abuses. Once [bitcoin]becomes significant, authorities will use the hammer.”

Many advocates of bitcoin disagree, such as the Winklevoss Twins, who simply attribute the criticism to a “lack of imagination.” Stiglitz, however, insists that bitcoin provides a consistent framework for monetary treachery.

“There is a global framework for both corruption and tax evasion and tax avoidance,” he stated at a conference last December. “I believe very strongly that countries like the United States could and should move to a digital currency, so that you would have the ability to trace this kind of corruption. There are important issues of privacy and cyber-security, but it would certainly have big advantages.”

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