Day: August 8, 2018

Yale University has published a study recommending investment portfolios be made up of at least 6% Bitcoin.

The research paper, published by economics professor Aleh Tsyvinski and entitled ‘Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrencies’, acknowledges that not everybody may be a huge believer in Bitcoin. For those less crypto-enthusiastic, he recommends holding just 4%. Even the biggest Bitcoin skeptics would benefit from 1% in holdings merely for diversification purposes.

Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum are marked in the paper as distinctly different from alternative investment opportunities such as stocks and precious metals as they have no exposure to macroeconomic factors, nor to most common stock market pressures. Tsyvinski employs the Sharpe Ratio to argue that despite high rates of volatility among the cryptocurrencies studied, they offer higher rates of returns than these traditional investment tools.

Returns from cryptocurrency investments are also described as independent of that of currencies and commodities in that they are specific to factors of the cryptocurrency market. The study reads: ”Specifically, we determine that there is a strong time-series momentum effect and that proxies for investor attention strongly forecast cryptocurrency returns.”

The paper comes to finish with an index of exposures to cryptocurrencies including 345 US-based industries and 137 in China.

What do his academic colleagues say?

Tsyvinski’s colleague at Arizona State University, Professor Dragan Boscovic, shares a similar sentiment when it comes to cryptocurrency investing. In June this year, Boscovic spoke out on the increasingly popular decision for institutional investors to enter the market.

The more this happens, the more Boscovic believes this will encourage consumers and merchants to take up cryptocurrency payment methods.

Not everybody in the space shares similar positive sentiments regarding crypto investments, however. Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller expressed his dismay at Bitcoin’s popularity in May, lambasting it as a failed experiment spawned from ”faddish human behavior”, noting that it resembles some of the biggest failed currency experiments seen in history.

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This week, researchers uncovered empirical data confirming what most in the crypto Twittersphere already know – the space if flooded with scam bots: 15,000 of them to be exact, according to Duo Security.

Also read: Queensland, Australia Invests Portion of its $6.1Mil Ignite Ideas Fund in Crypto Startup

Researchers Find 15K Twitter Crypto Scam Giveaway Bots

Don’t @ Me: Hunting Twitter Bots at Scale by Duo Security’s Jordan Wright and Olabode Anise is 46 pages of intense fine-tooth combing of data related to the phenomenon of Twitter bots. “Social networks allow people to connect with one another, share ideas, and have healthy conversations. Recently, automated Twitter accounts, or ‘bots,’ have been making headlines for their effectiveness at spreading spam and malware, as well as influencing this online discussion,” the authors began.

Over three months on their way to present findings at Black Hat USA 2018, researchers detail how they “identified botnets, including a spam-spreading botnet case study,” Mr. Wright and Mr. Anise explain, though they “specifically looked for automated accounts, not necessarily malicious automated accounts.”

Their key findings, published open source, were achieved as they “gathered a dataset of 88 million public Twitter profiles consisting of standard account information represented in the Twitter API, such as screen name, tweet count, followers/following counts, avatar and description. As API limits allow, this dataset was enriched with both the tweets posted by accounts, as well as with targeted social network information (follower/following) information. Practical data science techniques can be applied to create a classifier that is effective at finding automated Twitter accounts, also known as ‘bots.’”

Duo Security is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and just this month announced being acquired by Cisco. Cisco is interested in the firm because of its zero-trust authentication solution in order to buttress Cisco’s own network and cloud security offerings. The deal is worth well over $2 billion, and is expected to finalize in late October of the present year.

Case Study of At Least 15,000 Bots Spreading a Cryptocurrency Scam

“By monitoring the botnet over time,” the researchers continued, “we discover ways the bots evolve to evade detection. Our cryptobot scam case study demonstrates that, after finding initial bots using the tools and techniques described in this paper, a thread can be followed that can result in the discovery and unraveling of an entire botnet. For this botnet, we use targeted social network analysis to reveal a unique three-tiered hierarchical structure.” 

Furthermore, the paper “provides an in-depth description of the entire process for finding Twitter bots, from gathering the data to performing the analysis.” Many of Duo Labs employees “use Twitter as a way to connect to the infosec industry. We were familiar with automated Twitter accounts, and had read previous academic papers covering both techniques on building a dataset of Twitter accounts as well as using various techniques to identify automated accounts from a previously shared dataset.”

For its part, “Twitter announced that they are taking more proactive action against both automated spam and malicious content by identifying and challenging ‘more than 9.9 million potentially spammy or automated accounts per week.’ In a follow-up blog post, Twitter also described their plans to remove accounts that had been previously locked due to suspicious activity from follower counts,” the researchers noted.

The team doesn’t consider the problem solved, however. “We’re excited to see these efforts by Twitter and are hopeful that these increased investments will be effective in combating spam and malicious content,” they laud. Still their case study “demonstrates that organized botnets are still active and can be discovered with relatively straightforward analysis. By open-sourcing the tools and techniques developed during this research, [they] hope to enable researchers to continue building on [their] work, creating new techniques to identify and flag malicious bots, and helping to keep Twitter and other social networks a place for healthy online discussion and community.”

Have such bots lessened your time on Twitter? Let us know in the comments section below. 

Images via Pixabay, Duo Security.

Be sure to check out the podcast, Blockchain 2025; latest episode here.

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“Bettergram… isn’t it named Telegram?” Was the first thought that popped into my mind as I saw a tweet bringing attention to a newfangled messaging application. But don’t get me wrong, Bettergram is so much more than just a medium of communication aimed at crypto enthusiasts, or at least in my eyes it is.

Telegram — A Crypto Investor’s Favorite Mode Of Contact

Telegram, the worldwide messaging application, has been right up crypto’s alley for years now, with the sleek mobile and desktop applications quickly reaching adoption throughout the crypto industry. Chances are, the communities surrounding your favorite projects and cryptocurrencies have their own Telegram channels, which are active all-day and every-day with thousands, if not tens of thousands of users discussing their favorite crypto topics.

Those behind this simple, but sweet platform have recently taken notice of the crypto-focused community that uses their platform on a day-to-day basis, launching an ICO behind closed doors. As reported by NewsBTC, Telegram has raised upwards of $1.8 billion dollars in private funding rounds, and now plans to launch its own digital payments system. While this is not an explicit bid to catch the attention of the crypto crowd, it sure stirred up a lot of discussion in this flowering industry.

While Telegram may have captured the thoughts of many in the cryptosphere, Bettergram might bring features to the table which Telegram cannot.

Bettergram Meet Crypto, Crypto Meet Bettergram

For those who are unaware, Bettergram is a recently-launched application that intends to offer consumers with a different Telegram experience. It is important to note that Bettergram does not run in full independence, as this new platform is essentially an improved interface based on Telegram’s original Messenger platform. As Bettergram’s website states:

“We’ve built an improved version of Telegram Messenger with super helpful features our users absolutely love.”

This statement may lead some to ask, what features does this new application offer that makes it so great?

Firstly, the platform allows its users to pin up to 50 chats, while Telegram only offers support for a measly five. Secondly, Bettergram has implemented the novel idea of introducing multiple tabs to sort through the array of different types of Telegram channels. These are as follows:  favorites, groups, personal messages (PMs/DMs), and announcement channels. These four tabs allow users to easily scroll through their conversations to find exactly what they are looking for.

Last but not least, Bettergram has built-in a cryptocurrency price tracker for the top ten crypto assets. While this tracker is by no means as fully-fledged as a site like LiveCoinWatch or CoinMarketCap, it allows a great overview of the market for a user on the go.

NewsBTC briefly sat down with the founder of this innovative platform to discuss his vision and aspirations for this project.

NewsBTC: Why did you create Bettergram?

Crypto Max: So basically I built it because I was super frustrated at missing dms. Communication and networking with new people in crypto essentially goes at a snail’s pace on Telegram because every single person is in 800 groups and channels. Since the channels are more active than DMs, your important private messages (and potentially huge business deals/connections) often get lost.

NewsBTC: What sets Bettergram apart from Telegram? Do you even want to compete with Telegram?

Crypto Max: Telegram is awesome. They let developers like me build out niched applications on their giant network. Bettergram is better for power users of Telegram because of the features it offers. If you’re in 1000 groups, you have to scroll through to find who messaged you on Telegram. With Bettergram, you just have to click the DM Tab.

NewsBTC: What is your vision for the application? 

Crypto Max: If enough people are using Bettergram, communication flow in this industry improves since you can read your DMs with 1 click. We hope to constantly reiterate and build the best messaging app we can, with the introduction of content integration like RSS feeds and Youtube video feeds.

Taking a look at Max’s reasoning behind the creation of Bettergram, it quickly becomes apparent that he built this platform due to personal qualms he has had with the original Telegram application.

Bettergram, like its name implies, is quickly proving itself to be an improved take on Telegram’s Messenger application, or for crypto “power users” at least. Let’s just hope that the team behind this piece of software doesn’t decide to launch its own ICO that is only open to bigwig investors.

Featured Image from Shutterstock

The post Bettergram — A Crypto-Focused Telegram Alternative appeared first on NewsBTC.

Thailand’s new licensing scheme for digital asset companies has seen a flurry of applications from ICO and crypto exchanges.

Key Highlights

• ETH price declined heavily and broke the $375 and $360 support levels against the US Dollar.
• There is a short-term declining channel formed with resistance near the $362 level on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair could correct higher in the short term towards the $370, $375 and $380 levels.

Ethereum price remained in a bearish zone against the US Dollar and bitcoin. ETH/USD is currently correcting higher and it may perhaps test the $380 hurdle.

Ethereum Price Recovery

There were further slides in ETH price below the $375 support level against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair even broke the $360 support and spiked below the $350 level. A low was formed near the $347 level and the price is currently correcting higher. It moved above the $355 level, but there are many resistances waiting on the upside to prevent gains.

The first hurdle is the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $411 high to $347 low near $362. It coincides with a short-term declining channel with current barrier near the $362 level on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. A break above the channel resistance and $365 could open the doors for more recoveries. The next major resistance is near the $370-375 zone. It represents the 38.2% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $411 high to $347 low. Above this last, the price may perhaps test the $380 resistance level, which is a major hurdle for more gains.

Looking at the chart, ETH price is slowly recovering above $350, but it is likely to struggle above the $370 level. On the downside, the recent low of $347 is a decent support. Below this, ETH could accelerate declines towards the $320 level in the near term.

Hourly MACD – The MACD is slowly moving in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI is correcting higher from the oversold area towards the 45-50 zone.

Major Support Level – $347

Major Resistance Level – $375

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH/USD Could Correct To $375-380 appeared first on NewsBTC.

The South Korean Blockchain Enterprise Promotion Association (BEPA) is demanding for the government to speed up blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption and regulation efforts.

Time for urgency

A report from a local news outlet, Korea Joongang Daily, has said that the association filed this demand to curb the government’s focus on “negative short-term side effects” and instead urges it to observe the global blockchain race and adopt a means to reap the economic benefits sooner than later.

Yoo Joon-sand, president of BEPA told a press briefing: “Countries around the world are applying blockchain technology to all aspects of society including health care, retail and logistics.”

He adds, “But instead of welcoming the people’s fervor for the technology, the government is focused on controlling it to address negative short-term side effects. This is essentially kicking away the economic opportunities that lie in front of us.”

The blockchain push

The association, formed on 17 July, is comprised of ex-politicians and academics with significant members such as former Prime Minister Lee Soo-sung and Professor Kim Hyoung-joong, head of Korea University’s Cryptocurrency Center at the Graduate School of Information Technology.

Furthermore, with their combined technological and governmental experience, members of the association wish to also push the regulation of blockchain technologies so that they can be applied to “diverse industries”, which is expected to be a catalyst for job creation and reduce financial burdens for small business owners.

According to the report, the members of the association believe that should the nation be ready with a full-body of regulations, then South Korea can witness explosive job creation and “pave the way for Korea to lead the world in the fourth industrial revolution“.

South Korea has already made vows with the United States to collaborate on a multitude challenges and facets of this coming era, with blockchain being one of the technologies in focus.

Embracing the future

This is not the first time that the government in South Korea has been pushed by politicians and prominent organizations to ramp-up the effort to regulate the space. For two weeks in early July, the South Korean National Assembly saw a maelstrom of political parties submit draft bills to create clarifications on initial coin offerings (ICOs), cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

In late July, the head of the virtual currency response team for the country’s Financial Services Commission made calls for adequate legal frameworks to be implemented; this would be in order to protect cryptocurrency investors and domestic blockchain enterprises.

Recent changes to tax rules for “new-growth technologies” included tax cuts for companies engaging in blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The new rules were announced in mid-July, however, there is a chance that these benefits will not be extended to cryptocurrency exchanges.

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Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

• Bitcoin price is still heading lower as it trades below a descending trend line on the 1-hour chart.
• Price looks prime for a pullback as it hovers above the $6,100 area, and bears might be waiting at the trend line.
• Applying the Fibonacci retracement tool also shows where sellers might jump in.

Bitcoin price is trending steadily lower below a descending trend line and might be ready to make a correction soon.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to indicate that the path of least resistance is to the downside. In other words, the selloff is more likely to resume than to reverse.

However, RSI is starting to climb out of the oversold region to signal that buyers are taking over while sellers take a break. Stochastic is also heading north, so bitcoin price could follow suit. This might be enough to spur a small pullback to the levels marked by the Fibonacci retracement tool.

The 50% level is closest to the descending trend line around $6,650 while the 61.8% Fib lines up with the 100 SMA dynamic inflection point and longer-term area of interest at $6,800. The 38.2% Fib is at $6,526 and might also hold as resistance in a shallow correction.

A break past the trend line could also hit an upside barrier at the swing high of $7,156.30 near the 200 SMA dynamic inflection point.

BTCUSD Chart from TradingView

Bitcoin price is still having a rough time as risk-off vibes in the financial markets stemming from resurfacing trade war troubles hit riskier assets like cryptocurrencies hard. The industry is already in selloff mode for the week, so the pickup in risk aversion escalated the FUD sentiment weighing on bitcoin and its peers.

Many also blame the SEC announcement to delay their decision on bitcoin ETF applications to September as another factor keeping uncertainty in play for cryptocurrencies.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price Watch: Can More Bears Join In? appeared first on NewsBTC.

Key Points

• Bitcoin cash price fell significantly and broke the $600 support against the US Dollar.
• There is a new contracting triangle forming with resistance near $608 on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair is likely to resume its downside move once the current correction is complete near $600-610.

Bitcoin cash price settled below $600 against the US Dollar. BCH/USD is currently correcting higher, but it could face sellers near the $600-610 zone.

Bitcoin Cash Price Resistance

There was no stopping sellers as bitcoin cash price declined below the $620 and $600 supports against the US Dollar. The BCH/USD pair even broke the $580 support and traded to a new weekly low at $565. Later, the price started an upside correction and traded above the $580 level. However, it seems like the current upside move could face a lot of selling interest near the $600 and $610 level.

An initial resistance is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $712 high to $565 low. More importantly, there is a new contracting triangle forming with resistance near $608 on the hourly chart of the BCH/USD pair. The pair seems to be forming a bearish pennant with resistance near the $610 zone. If the price breaks down, it could resume its downside move below the $570 level. The next major support below the recent low of $565 is at $550. On the other hand, if the price surpasses the $610 level, it may well test the $621 level. It represents the 38.2% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $712 high to $565 low.

Looking at the chart, BCH price is slowly recovering, but it won’t be easy for buyers to push the price above $610 in the near term.

Looking at the technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD for BCH/USD is slightly placed in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BCH/USD is moving higher towards the 44 level.

Major Support Level – $570

Major Resistance Level – $610

The post Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis: BCH/USD Remains Sell on Rallies appeared first on NewsBTC.

In the third week after opening its network security up to community involvement, Tezos’ beta launch has been surprisingly smooth.

According to ICORating research for the second quarter of 2018, the share of retail versus institutional investors in the ICO market has decreased

An Australian crypto enthusiast has set plans in motion to open his own crypto bank. Fred Schebesta has decided on a radical scheme in order to circumnavigate restrictive regulations by Australian banks towards anything cryptocurrency-related by opening his own bank and doing what he needs to get a share in an established bank.

The West Australian enthusiast has purchased a personal shareholding in an existing bank, West Australia’s Goldfields Money, in order to obtain an authorized deposit-taking institution (ADI) license to get his plans on the road.

Tiny by banking standards, Goldfield’s Money has a USD 35 million market cap but it does have the much-needed ADI, in fact, the only one in Western Australia to have it. Schebesta explains his reasoning:

“You don’t have your money. The bank has your money. Have you ever gone to the bank and asked for all your money? If everyone did a bank run on CommBank [Commonwealth Bank of Australia] right now, they wouldn’t be able to service it. That’s why I’m so big on crypto. I think eventually people will go, “Oh my god, this is so messed up”, and they’ll move to where they can hold their value. Not all of their money, but some of it.”

The current legal situation that the crypto banker-to-be is clearly attempting to come to terms with is as follows:

“New entrants to the banking industry will be able to apply for a Restricted ADI license, which will have a lower barrier to entry than a full ADI license, to assist their transition into the industry over a two-year period…  Restricted ADIs will be subject to an aggregate deposit limit of $2 million and must disclose to all its customers that they are operating on a restricted license.”

Schebesta clearly feels that his crypto bank idea is worth all the paperwork regardless of Bitcoin’s current fluctuation fortunes in the crypto market. He explains:

“At its core, you’ve got to remember, just because the price of Bitcoin has gone down and people feel angry, that doesn’t reduce the interest… We’re living in the future. That’s what I’m all about. I think I’m a time traveler. I travel forward five years into the future, work it out then come back and try to take active steps to make it happen.”

His enthusiasm is reflective of Australia’s current drive towards crypto adoption, with recent deals in the pipeline including a new contract which will allow IBM to explore blockchain technologies and integrate some of the results into the Australian political structure over the next five years.

The passionate crypto-enthusiast hopes to have his bank ready for business within 18 months. If Australia is ever governed by blockchain, Schebesta’s crypto bank will certainly be well placed for business.

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August 9, Singapore: Crowd Genie Financial Services Pte. Ltd., a company providing innovative lending products and services, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has undertaken a strategic initiative aimed at design and delivery of a modern lending and asset exchange platform that is powered by the blockchain technology. The platform will elevate the lending/borrowing experience to a totally new level in terms of security, easiness of use and extensibility. The platform’s concept combines cutting-edge technologies with outstanding flexibility and completeness of the business process. The solution is going to initially support the businesses in Singapore and will gradually expand to newer geographies.

The platform’s security and scalability, being the top driving features, will be assured by a global cloud environment in compliance with the geographies of operations. The solution has been crafted with the microservices architectural concept and will run inside an orchestrated containerized environment greatly enhancing the responsiveness of the IT operations. Blockchain’s inherent trust less nature interwoven within the Crowd Genie’s platform provides real immutability and traceability allowing for a much smoother customer journey and a significantly simplified operational model.

The blockchain technology will underpin the platform’s KYC process (Know Your Customer) that is the foundation of achieving the viability of financial transactions’ participants, the wallets operations and ultimately the lending and investment processes. For an accurate alignment with the financial domain use cases, a combination of both public and permissioned blockchain solutions is being used i.e. Ethereum and Quorum respectively. The public Ethereum will be utilized for locking and unlocking of CGC (Crowd Genie Coins) tokens by the relevant smart contract to support the tokens transfer. The permissioned Quorum will be used to support all the transactions within the internal Crowd Genie’s platform ecosystem using so-called Private CGC (PCGC) tokens, corresponding to the CGC. Only the platform itself and designated authorities will be able to access the permissioned blockchain. A multi-factor authentication (MFA) will apply to most of the users’ actions carried out within the blockchain network.

Crowd Genie has partnered with a technological provider– MC² Innovations, an agile and goal-oriented Polish enterprise-level IT services provider. The team has already undertaken an exhaustive 2-month exercise to identify the MVP scope, technology stack, and milestones as part of the analysis phase. A joint platform’s delivery project, kicked off early August this year, is divided into two major stages. The 1st stage is planned to be delivered by the end of 2018 and is going to cover a crowdfunded model of the lending hub for borrowers, lenders, brokers and ancillary stakeholders. The 2nd stage will enhance the platform’s functionality, including an advanced asset exchange and secured loan products. The initiative is currently in its detailed design stage to be followed by an iterative development and implementation phase starting within the following days.

About Crowd Genie: Crowd Genie Financial Services Pte. Ltd. “CG”, registered in Singapore (UEN # 201600134C), provides services that involve maintaining a list of Issuers which are looking to raise funds by the issuance of Notes, allowing potential Investors to subscribe for Notes issued by the Issuers and such other services as CG may introduce from time to time.  

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.