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EOS, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens, Tron, IOTA Technical Analysis: BitFinex Lists Everipedia Tokens as Stellar adds 8%

Of all coins, Stellar Lumens performance stands out. It is one of the top performers in the market gaining eight percent in the last day. IOTA is also following suit. While IOTA prices are well balanced and trading above 90 cents-our sell trigger line, any up thrust above $1.1 and $1.3 would be morale boosting

The post EOS, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens, Tron, IOTA Technical Analysis: BitFinex Lists Everipedia Tokens as Stellar adds 8% appeared first on NewsBTC.

Of all coins, Stellar Lumens performance stands out. It is one of the top performers in the market gaining eight percent in the last day. IOTA is also following suit. While IOTA prices are well balanced and trading above 90 cents-our sell trigger line, any up thrust above $1.1 and $1.3 would be morale boosting for buyers.

Let’s have a look at these charts:

EOS Technical Analysis

Everipedia describes itself as the “next generation encyclopedia that is rebuilt for the modern age”. It’s a for-profit organization and a fork of Wikipedia with more than six million articles on its data base. What stands out is that is free from ads and free for everyone to use under the creative common. Everipedia’s IQ tokens are now available at BitFinex.

Following their distribution by BitFinex, IQx-the native token for Everipedia-is now tradable against the USD and EOS. Because of this demand, it’s up 120 percent.

In the last day or so, EOS prices have been shifting between stable to bearish and is down one percent at the time of press. Now, because prices are trading below $7, our sell trigger line, my recommendation for traders in the days to come is to sell with every pull back with targets at $4 as laid down before. In line with this, safe stops would be at $8, that’s right at July 10 highs.

Litecoin (LTC) Technical Analysis

A combination of several fundamental announcements makes Litecoin a desirable buy if not a long term buy-hold. First, news users of Abra-which already has a connection with Litecoin-will in days to come buy Bitcoin using their Master Cards or Visa cards is a big boost for cryptocurrency adoption. While they won’t be the first, it is still positive.

Secondly, 34 Bytes a point of sale designer and distributor has successfully tested and added Litecoin (LTC) to their network. Of course, in their drive-34 Byte motive-to make purchases in cryptocurrency easy, improving user experience is paramount.

Customers would now make purchases in cryptocurrencies and feel like they are making payment using their credit cards.

As before-and we shall hold this position as long as technical formation allows-we remain bearish. And why not, buyers did fail to build on their buy momentum even after those gains on July 11. Instead, sellers are driving lower towards $70 and this is despite this one percent appreciation. We suggest selling with stops at $90 and targets at $50 in line with our previous trade plans.

Stellar Lumens (XLM) Technical Analysis

By design, Stellar is meant to be that platform when Fin tech apps and blockchain start ups should strive. This is why Tempo which plans to be this global payment platform will be using XLM in the days to come. The benefits of utilizing XLM are many and we can draw similarities to those of XRP. XLM tags with it cost savings and is fast this is why Tempo say use it for their crypto-fiat trading and Stellar’s DEX to boost their liquidity.

There is this nice bullish engulfing pattern and even though volumes are low, it could possibly be a launch pad for buyers. XLM is up nine percent perhaps buoyed by Tempo news and the best approach here is to wait for gains above 22 cents now that our stops were hit yesterday. Any move above July 2 highs effectively cancels our bearish projection.

Tron (TRX) Technical Analysis

Encouragingly, there are 17 new exchanges that now allow TRX deposit and withdrawal. This is a boost for Tron in general because it will allow holders to vote for their SRs without a hitch.

Secondly, boosting adoption and especially those who don’t like keeping their coins at exchanges, there is a new Tron App specifically for Ledger. Here, users can manage their Tron from Ledger Nano S via Tronscan.

Overly, there is a recovery deep in bear territory. Whether this rejection of lower lows will continue through this week we don’t know but what’s clear is that TRX is up five percent. In my view, I won’t recommend buys until after bull pressure edge past 4 cents cancelling a bear break out pattern. If there is a breach below July 12 lows at 3 cents then traders can continue with their shorts with ideal targets at 2.5 cents.

IOTA (IOT) Technical Analysis

After three days of consolidation, IOTA is yet to make significant progress. IOTA sellers are in charge and to trigger our next bear wave then we must see prices breaching 90 cents. Before then and as spelled in our previous analysis, we remain neutral until after that break below happen. Conversely, any appreciation above $1.1 and $1.3 cancels this bear move ushering in buyers who might push prices towards May 2018 highs at $2.5.

Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are those of the author and aren’t investment advice. Trading of any form involves risk and so do your due diligence before making a trading decision.

The post EOS, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens, Tron, IOTA Technical Analysis: BitFinex Lists Everipedia Tokens as Stellar adds 8% appeared first on NewsBTC.

Bitcoin Is Still a Better Investment Than Altcoins: Crypto Expert

If you are thinking of decamping from Bitcoin to invest in the various altcoins anticipating higher returns, don’t. According to Bart Smith of the Susquehanna International Group, Bitcoin is still the best bet and will continue to dominate the market. The rise of altcoins at the end of last year occurred because investors were excited […]

If you are thinking of decamping from Bitcoin to invest in the various altcoins anticipating higher returns, don’t. According to Bart Smith of the Susquehanna International Group, Bitcoin is still the best bet and will continue to dominate the market. The rise of altcoins at the end of last year occurred because investors were excited about new developments and use cases such as smart contracts. However, the market is gradually realizing that these developments will not materialize in the short term and that cryptos’ biggest function is serving as a currency, a function that Bitcoin provides best.

Bitcoin Is Still the Undisputed King

Smith, who serves as the head of digital assets at the multinational trading firm, stated in an interview that Bitcoin’s biggest advantage is that its use cases are valid today, unlike many altcoins whose values are completely speculative. While in the US many investors trade Bitcoin against the US dollar, in other countries people trade altcoins for Bitcoins. This is a testament to the value and credibility attributed to Bitcoin around the world.

While Ripple has attracted all the attention for cross-border money transfers, Smith believes that Bitcoin has featured just as prominently, if not more so, in this industry. This use case is especially crucial for people from less developed countries who previously depended on expensive and slow money transfer methods such as Western Union and banks. Bitcoin has changed all this.

With bitcoin, I can send money. It’s fast. It’s cheap. And frankly, no one can stop me.

The entry of institutional capital will be a crucial factor in the success of Bitcoin and all the other cryptos, Smith added. With his firm dealing with institutional investment, he expressed confidence that it was only a matter of time before this happened. Currently, the Asian retail market is in the driver’s seat and determines the direction the market takes, but this might change as the European and American retail markets make forays into the industry.

It’s a humongous flow of money; it will drive the prices higher. I think there’s a lot of plumbing that needs to happen. We aren’t even really sure what regulatory agency is going to have jurisdiction over that, and so people feel like at any point in time they can jump in on the futures. So, when there’s clarity and when they feel a little better about it, they will.

Smith isn’t the first industry leader to have endorsed Bitcoin over altcoins, with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey having expressed similar sentiments in March. Dorsey, who also serves as the CEO of Square, said that he expects Bitcoin to become the most dominant form of currency in the world in a decade and that he hopes that Square will be at the forefront of the revolution. The Square app offers crypto trading services, and in the first quarter of the year, it sold over $34 million worth of Bitcoin, with its revenue from the crypto business estimated to be around $200,000. Dorsey believes that as the Bitcoin network continues to be developed, transactions will be faster and one will be able to pay for a cup of coffee with bitcoins in the near future. In Dorsey’s words:

The world ultimately will have a single currency; the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin.

AmWager Becomes the First to Accept Bitcoin Deposits for Bets on Horses – Bitcoinist

BitcoinistAmWager Becomes the First to Accept Bitcoin Deposits for Bets on HorsesBitcoinistIn the latest example of the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies in gambling, you can now use Bitcoin to bet on horses. AmWager.com, a website for watching an…


Bitcoinist

AmWager Becomes the First to Accept Bitcoin Deposits for Bets on Horses
Bitcoinist
In the latest example of the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies in gambling, you can now use Bitcoin to bet on horses. AmWager.com, a website for watching and betting on live horse racing, has started accepting deposits in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

LendChain Outshines Others in Trillion-Dollar Blue Ocean Market

Trade Secrets Revealed in The South Korean Roadshow “ASIA BLOCKCHAIN CORPS” summit was held in Seoul, South Korea Yesterday. This 200-seat available conference was occupied by 250 participants from many countries. Projects are hotly welcomed and organizer had to give office area away. As the first speaker, Oscar, founder and CEO of LendChain delivered a […]

Trade Secrets Revealed in The South Korean Roadshow

“ASIA BLOCKCHAIN CORPS” summit was held in Seoul, South Korea Yesterday. This 200-seat available conference was occupied by 250 participants from many countries. Projects are hotly welcomed and organizer had to give office area away. As the first speaker, Oscar, founder and CEO of LendChain delivered a speech “In fact, you are not a good cryptocurrency investor” and published trade secrets which never been mentioned even in whitepaper before. Korean MTN 머 니 투 데 이 TV interviewed Oscar and played his presentation.

Oscar firstly mentioned several pain points. Experienced heaven research work, he finally reveals reasons behind it:

  1. Individual investors have no better choice except cashing out to turnover.
  2. Individual investors have to put their believed cryptocurrencies into wallets or exchanges, lacking crypto based on financial products.
  3. Individual investors have to sell EOS for GXS when they expect an inflation.
  4. Under current bear market, Token Fund are not willing to sacrifice vested interest though there is not enough cash flow.
  5. To maintain daily operation, sometimes projects have to get sacrificed or accept ETH payment.
  6. Normally, ETH raised can support two years expenses. Such idle assets actually can be used for an investment with low risk.
  7. Quantitative fund and market maker require large amount specific token. There is no better choice except from secondary market
  8. Lacking fiat based profitable financial products for traditional investors.
  9. Afterwards, Oscar talked about how LendChain can solve pain points above and introduced the working mechanism of LendChain.

User suffered from point 1& 3 mentioned above can mortgage token in LendChain and borrow cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and USDT, which can solve point 2; Enterprise suffered from point 4 can mortgage token listed and circulated in LendChain and borrow BTC, ETH, which can solve point 2 & 6; Enterprise suffered from point 5 can mortgage ETH in LendChain and borrow USDT for daily expenditure, which can solve point 8 and requirement of traditional P2P investors;For enterprises suffered from point 7, LendChain will do lots background research work including team security, investment ability and past investment income. Pick quality team and strictly control their financial leverage and lending quotas.

By designing a good mechanism, LendChain perfectly solves many pain points existed. However, several issues like how LendChain can ensure assist security once default or slump occurred? Oscar replied to MTN 머 니 투 데 이.

“First, we provide hot & cold wallet, most of assets, especially for mortgaged assets, can be deposited in various cold wallets. For assets user has already, we will daily transfer to financing party. Hot purse will be used for change transaction. In the future, LendChain will use smart contracts to manage mortgaged assets, with publicly available links and opened code.

“In case of defaulted, mortgaged assets must be double worth of, which means you mortgage 20,000 can borrow 10,000. LendChain will enforce assets delivery once someone denied. What is more, additional margin will be asked once price fall 30%. If that failed, assets delivery will be forced when price falling 50%. Maintain assets security is LendChain’s first priority.

After that, Oscar talked about the horizontal comparison between LendChain and other rival products and what advantages they had. And what resource advantages does LendChain have?

There are more and more borrowing projects recently. LendChain started since last year and takes the lead currently. Following are comparison from five dimensions.

  • Mortgage loan

This is the core business of every borrowing projects and many projects are fiat based. LendChain only focuses on crypto which can occupy global market quickly and avoid policy risks. Meanwhile, we can meet different requirements by supporting various cryptocurrencies and improve crypto – crypto based financial services.

  • Credit loan

No one dare to do crypto based credit loan because this is different from fiat. However, multi-dimensional credit data of GXChain and Blockcity can provide LendChain a strong foundation. LendChain will ask users to authorize their data, combined with their behaviors on LendChain, LendChain will do risk control model and determine the credit line. Normally, mortgage is needed twice as collateral which is 50% mortgage rate. If you have good credit, you can get 60%, 70% or even 80%. This is something that others cannot do.

  • Financial products

Financial management is the core business of LendChain, which is a great potential demand in the market. If you compare to others, only ETHLend is barely is, and only supporting ETH.

  • Platform traffic

For both lending and financial services, we cannot without flow support. After all, this is a traffic business and banks either. Several others have been doing this for a long time, but only few people in this circle know. However, LendChain supported by 2 million real-name verified uses from Blockcity, Bitpie and 10,000 global users from QuarkChain, all of these can provide LendChain powerful flow support in the early development.

  • Equity transfer

This feature will be launched after platform developed stably. For example, if you lend 10,000 USDT at LendChain for a year, then this equity can be transferred on the platform, or remortgaged to meet your liquidity needs.

In terms of the resources of LendChain, we have begun to cooperate with GXChain, PreAngel, QuarkChain and Bitpie. Blockcity, which is now opening to all users, will increase its exposure in the near future. PreAngel has started to introduce many high-quality projects it has invested in to LendChain, which will make LendChain more powerful. The strategic cooperation of QuarkChain is set up by Wang Lijie, the founder of PreAngel. We plan to officially launch QKC in LendChain next week. We will also launch Bitpie APP next week. Later, we will conduct deeper cooperation to provide better experience for both users.

When talking about the progress of LendChain, Oscar published the operation data of internal test and public test: 8953 registered users, 880 certified users and a total investment of 850,000 US dollars. However, the official promotion has not started yet, LendChain have been partnered with five companies. The iOS version of the APP, which was originally expected to be launched in July, was launched on 27. LendChain also announced airdrop plans in next week, but did not reveal details, waiting for an official announcement.

“Financing progress, currently, LendChain has completed the cornerstone round and private sale round, compared with recent lending business based new projects, they raised almost $100 million in the first place. However, valuation of LendChain is very low, which is 200 K – 300 K ETH. Only qualified investors or resources providers can get. Many KOLs participated, because what LendChain needs are resources.

“We are not worried that investment institutions and private equity investors will crash the market. The first is that our valuation is low which is not cheating. Second, for each agency, we have limited investment quota in 100-500 ETH, this is poor in contrast with other projects, their quotas are mostly 800, 1000, 2000 and 5000 ETH. If they sell, they can only earn several hundred ETH. So, they had no incentive to cash out immediately, in this way, we let them hold for a long time and help us.”

“In the case of public sale, we expect to start in the middle of July, Token price is 0.2 yuan, and strict KYC is carried out to exclude users from China and the United States.”

At the later roundtable meeting, the web celebrity host in Korean cryptocurrency circle raised several very sharp questions, which caused heated discussions among all speakers.

Host: “is there a bubble in the blockchain? How do you view the irrational investment behaviors of some blockchain investors?

Oscar: “there must be a bubble, especially at the end of last year, because so many speculators were involved. But currently, the market has lost its quick money effect, and most speculators have left in the last few months. As for irrational investments, ‘investment losses come from a lack of understanding,’ as one bigwig put it. It is irrational to follow a project blindly because of some big institutional investment or bigwig. Big institutions indeed do better when it comes to investment projects, but they also invest in bad ones.I suggest you start with the basic knowledge of blockchain and take responsibility for every investment you make.”

Host: “at present, the blockchain investment market is too hot, but the future must be good money to drive out bad and value return, how do investors distinguish good money from bad?”

Oscar: “compared with article or bigwig standing out to raise a lot of money last year, the bad money has been much less, especially those air projects. Currently, you can see which projects are still work hard. And the other thing is, what this project does, whether there is a market in the future, whether it can be landed, maybe it’s too professional for ordinary investors. And you can also look at the product that he’s making, whether you’re going to use it yourself, whether anyone around you is going to use it, and that’s one important criteria. Many investors and institutions want to use it when we still in internal test period, the same as those friends who dedicate to cryptocurrencies and traditional financial management. The pain point is that real. If you just want to make some money, hold our Token, a bull market is enough. But if you want to do shareholders of this cryptocurrency bank, you need to hold it for long time. This is a tremendous market and currently, only LendChain is the most professional. As far as LendChain has so many channels and resources, it can erect trade barriers in the shortest time.”

After the meeting, LendChain reached in-depth cooperation intention with a number of south Korean media, investment institutions, Market companies, KOL and Huobi Korea. They all favored LendChain and will provide various resources and assistance.

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.

How Russian Spies Hid Behind Bitcoin in Hacking Campaign – New York Times


New York Times

How Russian Spies Hid Behind Bitcoin in Hacking Campaign
New York Times
The Russian spies used some of the Bitcoins to pay for the registration of a website, dcleaks.com, where they would later post emails that had been stolen from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. When the operatives needed a computer server to
How Bitcoin Fueled Russian HacksWall Street Journal
Bitcoin Was Russian Hackers’ Currency of Choice, US SaysBloomberg
Russian agents allegedly used Bitcoin to fund the DNC hackMIT Technology Review
WIRED –CoinDesk –CBS News
all 843 news articles »

New York Times

How Russian Spies Hid Behind Bitcoin in Hacking Campaign
New York Times
The Russian spies used some of the Bitcoins to pay for the registration of a website, dcleaks.com, where they would later post emails that had been stolen from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. When the operatives needed a computer server to ...
How Bitcoin Fueled Russian HacksWall Street Journal
Bitcoin Was Russian Hackers' Currency of Choice, US SaysBloomberg
Russian agents allegedly used Bitcoin to fund the DNC hackMIT Technology Review
WIRED -CoinDesk -CBS News
all 843 news articles »

Challenging Ethereum, DBX Public Chain Offers a New Business Application Model

As many of new public chains became available on mainnet this year and openly compete with blockchain product like Ethereum , 2018 has been known as ‘the first year of public chains’. Public chains have been drawing lots of attention in blockchain markets. DBXChain might be a main competitor to Ethereum in the near future. […]

As many of new public chains became available on mainnet this year and openly compete with blockchain product like Ethereum , 2018 has been known as ‘the first year of public chains’. Public chains have been drawing lots of attention in blockchain markets. DBXChain might be a main competitor to Ethereum in the near future.

DBXChain, released by an internationally well-known public chain research team named DBX Foundation, is a value-based ecosystem of data based upon blockchain. This new value-based ecosystem is a decentralized data community that provides a platform for users to explore and exchange data. It provides a safe data exchange process and users are able to own their data rights. This new ownership with data is based upon blockchain technology.

Original DDPoS optimizes the consensus mechanism of blockchain

DDPoS is a new consensus mechanism that is created by DBXChain for the first time in the world. It helps resolve oligarchy and security issues from DPoS consensus mechanism by EOS. As everyone knows, DPoS consensus mechanism is similar to a shareholding system and its problems are quite obvious: first, it has a low voting rate.

More than 90% shareholders never voted. It is because it takes time, energy and skills to vote, which are what most investors do not have. Additionally, there are many challenges dealing with bad nodes. If interfering nodes can’t be checked during a community election, it will put web security at risk.

Then, how does DDPoS help resolve security and oligarchy issues while keeping its capacity at the same level? DDPoS makes the whole node selection system “fluid” so that block producer becomes a role, not a node, and this role can be transferred to other candidate producers at any time.

With continuous data exchange at the bottom level of DBX public chain, the coupling level between a node and the whole ecosystem will be counted into an election system using weighted algorithm. During this process, users can vote at anytime, and DBXChain thus helps dodge potential bribery and security issues under DPoS system.

Enhance TPS and improves consensus efficiency

Blockchain is a distributed system, and a main factor that affects TPS is networks. Due to a large amount of nodes in a blockchain network are scattered around the world, the web state of each node is uncontrollable and it is hard to set a requirement to their bandwidth or to make sure everyone have access to stable network. This kind of situation is absolutely a disaster to TPS.

Compared with underlying systems of “classic blockchain” such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, DBXChain is able to support more nodes– more than ten thousand nodes, and allows users to sign up and quit at anytime. The algorithm uses a voting system among potential block producers and cryptography techniques to improve algorithm’s efficiency. Similar to PBFT Prepare/ Commit, the use of aggregated signatures reduces the size of voting signature from nodes and therefore reduces the use of bandwidth. It also requires to exchange data twice for a block among all confirmed nodes. In additional to provide a good security, it efficiently improves consensus performance of BFT.

Building a win-win ecosystem base on big data

DBXChain has massive data, also many users and clients as resources for support, which make this program special. Many projects invested by Top Venture Capitals had ecological cooperation with DBX. Thus, DBX Chain is able to merge a large amount of support and resources from these projects, which is absolutely a good starting point.

As it shows, the consensus mechanism by DDPoS has a promising future. These well-known resources in China chose DBXChain because they all needed internet that not only had high capacities, but was also highly secure and was able to prevent manipulations and bribery. All these requirements were met by DBXChain. In fact, DBXChain will support many developed businesses, which already has a large volume of data on classical internet. These data will test the capacity of DBXChain internet and its security. It is also why the new consensus mechanism of DDPoS and its public chain can outperform Ethereum and EOS in terms of democratization and security.  

DataGame benefits its participants

DataGame is a DApp for crowd-sourcing data collection , where DBX demonstrates capacities and feasibility of its public chain. Every data collector can launch a data collecting game using a certain amount of DBX coins in areas such as AI, purchases and IOTs. Owners of data can get rewards by participating in games. They can also search data needed with high accuracy and pay for a specific amount based upon data size.

DataGame has largely lowered prerequisites to participate for data owners, making more valuable and long-tail data available for sharing. Additionally, DataGame has also reduced costs to obtain data so that more users are able to achieve goals and get a brand new experience in data exchange in the blockchain world. As we can see, for DBX to build a new data infrastructure, the first step is to use DataGame.

Obviously, the third generation of big data ecosystem will be more common, but this area will eventually become the most competitive among blockchain tycoons. In the face of big rival, we are looking forward to seeing if Ethereum will still be a leader in the public chain competition.

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.

Australian Seeks $6.2M Bet on Bitcoin Surpassing Berkshire Hathaway Shares By 2023

An anonymous Australian cryptocurrency expert is trying to place a bet of AUD 8.5 million (USD 6.28 million) that Bitcoin’s price will exceed the price for a share of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock by 2023, and if won, the bettor wants AUD 1.2 billion (USD 887 million). Tom Waterhouse, the CEO of major London-based gambling bookmaker …

The post Australian Seeks $6.2M Bet on Bitcoin Surpassing Berkshire Hathaway Shares By 2023 appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

An anonymous Australian cryptocurrency expert is trying to place a bet of AUD 8.5 million (USD 6.28 million) that Bitcoin’s price will exceed the price for a share of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock by 2023, and if won, the bettor wants AUD 1.2 billion (USD 887 million).

Tom Waterhouse, the CEO of major London-based gambling bookmaker William Hill, has placed the cryptocurrency expert in contact with a large syndicate to make the bet official. This bet is particularly interesting because Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO Warren Buffett has been extremely critical towards Bitcoin.

Warren Buffett has compared trading Bitcoin to trading harvested baby brains, among other undesirable comparisons. Further, he says Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and is not really an investment.

As of this writing on 13 July 2018, each share of Berkshire Hathaway, listed as BRK.A on the New York Stock Exchange, costs USD 288,400 with a market cap of USD 471.32 billion, which suggests a total of 1.634 million shares. Currently, the price of Bitcoin is near USD 6,300 with a market cap of USD 108 billion. If Bitcoin were to exceed Berkshire Hathaway stock at this time, it would need a market cap near USD 5 trillion.

This bet is made even harder by the fact that Berkshire Hathaway stock has steadily been increasing for decades. To give an idea of how fast the stock is going up, in 2010 BRK.A was about USD 100,000. Extrapolating five years from now, BRK.A could easily be as high as USD 400,000 and, combined with Bitcoin’s increasing supply from mining, this would necessitate a Bitcoin market cap around USD 7-8 trillion to win the bet. This is roughly the total value of all the fiat banknotes and coins in the world.

 

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The post Australian Seeks $6.2M Bet on Bitcoin Surpassing Berkshire Hathaway Shares By 2023 appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Google and Samsung’s Interest Could Make Ledger Europe’s First Crypto Unicorn

Every crypto user wants assurance that their crypto assets are in no danger of being stolen, and this is what has led to Ledger’s unprecedented success. Headquartered in Paris, the startup has been developing crypto management solutions since 2014, and with some infamous crypto heists in recent times reminding people just how prone they are […]

Every crypto user wants assurance that their crypto assets are in no danger of being stolen, and this is what has led to Ledger’s unprecedented success. Headquartered in Paris, the startup has been developing crypto management solutions since 2014, and with some infamous crypto heists in recent times reminding people just how prone they are to attacks, Ledger’s hardware wallets have been selling like hotcakes. Ledger’s crypto wallets generated over $50 million in revenue in 2017, and the company is now reportedly valued at nearly $1 billion. This has attracted the interest of some of the biggest names in the tech industry including Samsung and Google.

The Crypto Unicorn

With offices in Paris, Vierzon, New York, and San Francisco, Ledger has continued to dominate the crypto hardware wallets space, serving clients in 165 countries. The startup’s president, Pascal Gauthier, revealed during an interview that in 2017, the company had sold over one million wallets which translated to $53 million, an incredible fete for a company that has only existed for four years. This is just the beginning, however, with the startup seeking to expand its reach by targeting institutional crypto investors.

The Ledger Nano S is the startup’s most successful product and is frequently featured as one of the most secure crypto wallets. While this wallet has been a success, Gauthier believes that the company’s next products will be just as successful, the first of which is the Ledger Vault. This is a software product that supports multiple users and whose target is institutions that deal in cryptos. It can be customized according to the needs of each institution, such as by requiring a certain number of physical users to sign in before a transaction is completed, or by delaying the completion of certain transactions for oversight purposes. Ledger also intends to venture into offering custodial services for its clients. In partnership with Japanese financial giant Nomura, Ledger will develop a vault system in which it will safe-keep its clients’ crypto assets. This project will take longer to complete, as it’s quite risky given the rise of crypto heists and the ambiguous regulatory framework, especially when institutional capital is involved.

Ledger’s rapid rise to become one of the most renowned crypto wallet providers has attracted the interest of many investors. In January, the startup raised $75 million at a valuation of $300 million, led by British tech-focused venture capital firm Draper Esprit. And now, Ledger is planning another round of funding, one which will differ slightly from its previous rounds. While previously it sought consumer-focused venture capital firms to help it with its Nano S product line, it’s now focused on partners whose focus goes beyond the money. The new partners will have to sign commercial contracts with the startup and commit to partnering in the development of products.

The startup is alleged to have attracted the interest of Google and Samsung, the report stated, quoting a source with knowledge on the matter. Europe’s largest industrial manufacturing company, Siemens, is also interested in the startup. The rising interest has seen the startup’s value appreciate, and according to the source, it’s closing in on the $1 billion mark, which would make it Europe’s first crypto unicorn.

Coinbase says it’s exploring adding 5 news coins to its platform, as bitcoin slips – MarketWatch

Coinbase says it’s exploring adding 5 news coins to its platform, as bitcoin slips
MarketWatch
Coinbase, the most popular digital-currency platform in the U.S., late Friday said it is exploring adding five new cryptocurrencies to its suite of offerings, which currently includes bitcoin and Ethereum’s Ether. Up for consideration is the following

and more »


Coinbase says it's exploring adding 5 news coins to its platform, as bitcoin slips
MarketWatch
Coinbase, the most popular digital-currency platform in the U.S., late Friday said it is exploring adding five new cryptocurrencies to its suite of offerings, which currently includes bitcoin and Ethereum's Ether. Up for consideration is the following ...

and more »

Ex-BTC-e Operator Alexander Vinnik to be Extradited to France

As part of an ongoing criminal case that has drawn international attention, a Greek court has agreed today to extradite Russian cybercrime suspect and ex-Bitcoin BTC-e platform operator Alexander Vinnik to France. The move comes after Greek authorities decided exactly where to send Vinnik, who is also wanted on criminal charges in the U.S., specifically

The post Ex-BTC-e Operator Alexander Vinnik to be Extradited to France appeared first on NewsBTC.

As part of an ongoing criminal case that has drawn international attention, a Greek court has agreed today to extradite Russian cybercrime suspect and ex-Bitcoin BTC-e platform operator Alexander Vinnik to France.

The move comes after Greek authorities decided exactly where to send Vinnik, who is also wanted on criminal charges in the U.S., specifically for 21 counts of money laundering, and Russia, for fraud.

Extradition to France

Vinnik, who was arrested last year in Greece on a U.S.-issued international warrant, was the operator of the online Bitcoin platform BTC-e.

According to authorities, Vinnik used his coins to skirt the law, launder money, and defraud “thousands” of victims. Moving forward, his lawyer Ilias Spyrliadi is appealing the Greek extradition decision. He has denied doing anything illegal, and remains jailed in Greece pending final decisions on the matter, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

French authorities are charging Vinnik with cybercrime, money laundering, membership in a criminal organization, and extortion. The extradition is somewhat surprising as, previous to this move, the Greek Supreme Court had approved his extradition to the U.S. to stand trial.

And there’s more. Earlier this month, Russian authorities sent a request for Vinnik’s extradition to the country to face cyberfraud. These developments have made this case into something of a tug of war between Russia, France, and the U.S., who are all vying for him to face charges in their jurisdictions.

His lawyer Spyrliadis said that a European warrant would usually take precedence over others, putting France first in line to prosecute Vinnik. Spyrliadis added that in practice it will be up to Greece’s justice minister to decide where he ends up.

Alexander Vinnik’s Arrest

Back in July 2017 Vinnik was originally arrested in Greece, when the U.S.’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a $110 million penalty against BTC-e for violating anti-money laundering (AML) laws — these charges included a $12 million penalty for himself. Since then, the U.S. and Russia have both competed over his extradition.

In May of this year, after the U.S. extradition request was stalled, Greek law enforcement foiled an assassination attempt on Vinnik while he was incarcerated. It is suspected that the attempt was linked to a person or organization that did not want him to testify in Russia.

Furthermore, Greek authorities have reportedly rejected a request for asylum by Vinnik — and unfortunately for the international community the asylum request must be dealt with before the Greek courts can give a final ruling on the extradition. He is appealing this decision too.

France has accused Vinnik of defrauding thousands of people worldwide, including about 100 French nationals, by launching cyberattacks through his Bitcoin platform. As for the numbers, they allege he used 20,643 Bitcoin to launder around $155 million.

Also of note is that he has previously been accused of involvement in the Mt. Gox hack, which lead to the losses of over $450 million worth of Bitcoin from users of the exchange in 2014.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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OKCoin Launches Fiat to Crypto Exchange in US

OKCoin has launched a fiat-to-crypto exchange in the United States called OKCoin USA Inc and is headquartered in Mountain View, California. OKCoin USA is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The registration with FinCEN dates back to November 2017, indicating OKCoin USA has been in the works for …

The post OKCoin Launches Fiat to Crypto Exchange in US appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

OKCoin has launched a fiat-to-crypto exchange in the United States called OKCoin USA Inc and is headquartered in Mountain View, California. OKCoin USA is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The registration with FinCEN dates back to November 2017, indicating OKCoin USA has been in the works for a while now. The launching of OKCoin USA comes on the heels of Huobi launching HBUS, a crypto-to-crypto exchange based in the United States.

The OKCoin USA headquarters is in the San Francisco Bay area, practically next door to Coinbase’s headquarters. OKCoin will be providing strong competition for Coinbase, which has been one of the largest US cryptocurrency exchanges for years and hasn’t had to deal with any major competitors until now. While US cryptocurrency traders have been using fiat-to-crypto exchanges overseas like Bitfinex, there weren’t any other major exchanges like that based in the US itself besides Coinbase.

Huobi and OKEx are the two biggest crypto exchanges in the world behind Binance, with daily volumes on the order of USD 500 million to USD 1 billion per day. OKEx was founded by Star Xu, the same man who founded OKCoin in 2013. The entrance of top crypto exchanges is expected to cause a big shakeup in the US crypto trading market.

This will likely be very positive for traders based in the US, since Coinbase, OKCoin USA, and HBUS will be competing with each other and will have to increase the level of their services to stay on top. Coinbase has had a reputation for maintaining somewhat of a monopoly and a nonchalant attitude towards crypto traders. Aside from that, traders will have increased daily deposit and withdrawal capabilities since they can aggregate their limits from the different exchanges now available.

One major limitation of OKCoin USA at this time is that it’s only available to residents of California, but on its website it says other states will be added soon.

 

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PoWx Seeks to Change Bitcoin Mining with “Optical PoW” – Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin MagazinePoWx Seeks to Change Bitcoin Mining with “Optical PoW”Bitcoin MagazineNonprofit organization PoWx has launched this week with the goal of boosting the idea behind proof of work (PoW) through more innovative algorithms. The company is se…


Bitcoin Magazine

PoWx Seeks to Change Bitcoin Mining with “Optical PoW”
Bitcoin Magazine
Nonprofit organization PoWx has launched this week with the goal of boosting the idea behind proof of work (PoW) through more innovative algorithms. The company is seeking to decentralize Bitcoin mining and make it more accessible to consumers through ...