Day: August 13, 2018

Blockchain-based fintech startup Crypterium challenges classic banks by introducing a new feature that allows its users to transfer any amount of cryptocurrency using not the complicated wallet addresses, but simply the recipient phone number. Those transfers happen simultaneously, and the company claims it can process up to a million transactions per second, solving blockchain’s scalability issue.

Does it mean the first truly user-friendly crypto solution has arrived, and we’re witnessing the Netscape moment for the whole industry? Marc O’Brien, who has held the position of CEO of Visa UK for six years, to then become a key advisor to Revolut, Britain’s first digital bank unicorn, bets on the house that it did.

Going Mainstream

Almost all blockchain applications are not user-friendly. Tech-savvy people have created them for other tech-savvy people, and those solutions are still very confusing for both businesses and consumers who are not as computer literate.

Former Visa UK CEO Marc O’Brien has set a goal of bringing the crypto industry mainstream and making it more user-friendly. “We’re on our way to the 21st century’s “Netscape moment”, the day when a California startup’s eye-popping market debut illuminated the World Wide Web for millions of people, otherwise only vaguely familiar with its potential and promise,” – he explains, mentioning that his own startup, Crypterium, “makes buying, selling and spending of cryptocurrency in everyday life as easy as possible, and that’s what will bring the next billions of people to using crypto.”

Problems unsolved

There are two key problems all crypto holders are facing today while trying to transfer coins and tokens to each other. First of all, you can get confused with the wallet address. This is how they look like – 0xc5b133a52145990313915612bd732f059330287f – so getting confused is really easy. And once you do, you never get your money back.

There are also special hacker apps, such as CryptoShuffler, that change the address of the wallet while it is being copied. So in the “Send to the wallet” field, you enter the thief’s wallet number.

The second problem is that any transaction takes a while. If we are talking about Ethereum, it could be minutes, if it is Bitcoin – a transaction may take hours. When the blockchain networks are overloaded, transactions may take days.

The solution is on its way

Crypterium is aiming to solve both problems. There is no need to copy the recipient’s wallet address. You just need to know his or her phone number. Send crypto to your mom, your friend, your ex-girlfriend in France. They will get money even if they don’t have any crypto wallets. Once the transaction is processed, they’ll get an SMS with a link to get their crypto with some very clear instructions on what they can do with it. For example, they can use their newly acquired Bitcoin to top up their mobile phones.

What is even more great, the transaction of any cryptocurrency takes seconds. This has become possible because all transfers are done off-chain. When the user wants to spend the coins externally, the money is withdrawn from the sender’s wallet inside Crypterium. While not spent, all the transactions are written in the system, make the transfer the fastest of all.

“We have analyzed the most popular crypto wallets in the market, and none of them offer anything like it, though it sounds so exciting,” O’Brien says.

Time will tell if crypto transactions will become more popular than the payments with Visa and Mastercard, but this solution is for sure one big step towards global crypto popularization.

The post Former Visa CEO’s Startup Runs the Fastest Crypto Transactions in the World appeared first on NewsBTC.

Blockchain-based social network Minds is moving its platform to the ethereum mainnet, the startup announced Monday. 

Bitmain is about to launch a USD 18 billion initial public offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong stock exchange and is becoming quite innovative and creative with the devices offered to mine cryptocurrency. Bitmain has released two different models of mining Wi-Fi routers, a router that can mine X11 cryptocurrencies like Dash and a router that can mine blake2b cryptocurrencies like Siacoin.

Once the Wi-Fi routers are connected to the internet, they automatically begin to mine on Bitmain’s Antpool, one of the biggest cryptocurrency mining pools in the world. The blake2b mining router mines Siacoin at 11.54 GH/s while consuming 22.6 W of energy, and the X11 mining router mines Dash, formerly DarkCoin, at 300 MH/s while consuming 24.37 W of energy. The router can be tinkered with to mine other blake2b coins but if users choose to do that then efficiency and performance are no longer guaranteed, likewise for the X11 router.

A Wi-Fi router mining cryptocurrency at all times is an interesting prospect. In places like college dorms and apartments where electricity is included in the rent these routers theoretically might be able to pay for the internet service, especially since they are being sold at the incredibly low rate of less than BTC 0.01 (USD 63 at time of writing) for each mining router.

The cryptocurrency mining router is not the first time a common piece of household technology has been turned into a cryptocurrency mining rig. Canaan, the second largest manufacturer of crypto mining equipment, has created a TV that mines cryptocurrency. A French company, Qarnot, has produced a cryptocurrency mining rig which acts as a heater. This might not really be anything new though, since all cryptocurrency mining equipment generates a lot of heat.

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Bitcoin’s corrective rally could gather steam above the key descending trendline hurdle of $6,480.

FOMO Moments

Crypto land is healing slowly, Stellar doing well, Tezos getting hammered

The weekend bottom seems to have been found and markets are holding just above it at the moment. There has been no clear indication of a recovery as total capitalization has inched up only marginally over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin has held the $6,400 support level and has made 2% on the day to climb to $6,480. Volume has jumped from $4 to $6.6 billion which is a bullish signal for BTC. The same cannot be said for Ethereum which is still languishing around the $320 level, its lowest this year, and showing no positive signs at all.

The altcoins are predominantly in the green at the moment, clawing back a little from those massive dumps over the weekend. Once again it is Stellar that is showing the most gains when markets start to bounce back. According to Coinmarketcap XLM is up 7% on the day to $0.238, and it has weathered this storm much better than its brethren. Stellar has regained all losses over the week to trade slightly higher than its level this time last Monday. It has made 30% on the month and is up 5% against BTC on the day to 3740 satoshis.

Other altcoins in the top ten are only showing very small gains on the day. Looking further down the list Iota and Nem have made a couple of percent back but the rest are still flat. Tezos has been battered once again dropping another 9% today to trade at $1.44. OmiseGO is also in pain as is Decred and Zilliqa with further losses on the day.

In the top one hundred Peercoin is making the biggest move with a 34% pump at the moment. Dentacoin and Aelf have also recovered double digits at the moment. Alongside Tezos is Maidsafecoin which is also down 9%, Wanchain is also having a rough time right now, down 7%.

Total crypto market capitalization has gained 1.8% on the day to $219 billion. On the week however it has collapsed 14% to a yearly low of $207 billion on Saturday. Trade volume is up from $12 to $17 billion as traders load up on bargain basement prices. Bitcoin’s market dominance continues to climb and is now at 51.2%, its highest level since December.

More on Stellar can be found here: https://www.stellar.org/

FOMO Moments is a section that takes a daily look at the top 25 altcoins during the current trading session and analyses the best performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals.

The post Stellar (XLM) Gains as Crypto Markets Lift From Bottom appeared first on NewsBTC.

The Turkish lira has fallen by 50 percent since September 2017, from $0.3 USD to $0.15 USD. While Bitcoin has fallen more than the lira in the past 12 months, investors of Bitcoin still are capable to withdraw and cash out their investments in crypto.

Strict Capital Controls

Currently, the price of the Turkish lira against the US dollar is hovering at around $0.15. But, similar to the Venezuelan bolivar, the value of the lira is difficult to justify given that as of now, it is not possible for merchants, businesses, and individuals to exchange their holdings in lira to other foreign currencies.

The value of an asset and currency is subjective and as a currency, the value of the lira is largely affected by its capability of operating as a medium of exchange. If the lira cannot be exchanged to other foreign currencies, not only is it hard to justify the value of lira at the current price range, but it is difficult to give a valuation to the lira.

On Friday last week, US President Donald Trump announced the imposition of tariffs against the Turkish economy, demanding the government of Turkey to free an American priest held “hostage” in the region.

Almost immediately after the statement of President Trump was released, the price of the lira plummeted by 20 percent.

Kerry Craig, an analyst at JPMorgan, said in a note obtained by CNBC:

“The decline in the lira is multifaceted, caused not only by a weak external position in terms of current account deficit and inadequate currency reserves, but also the challenging political environment which exacerbates the vulnerabilities in the lira. A mid-meeting rate hike and tightening of monetary policy may help to avert the lira’s decline, to some extent.”

The real issue with the national currency of Turkey is that local financial authorities have disallowed merchants, businesses, and individuals from sending the lira outside of the country or purchasing foreign currencies with it.

Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly asked the citizens of Turkey to hold onto the lira amidst one of the most intense devaluations of the national currency in recent years.

As a consequence of the downfall of the lira, some merchants including 48-year-old jeweler Cahit Bas lost more than 50 percent of their savings in the past year. Bas claimed, in an interview with Bloomberg, that his savings, which were worth $340,000 in mid-2016, have fallen to $155,000.

Turkish lira vs US dollar chart, provided by Investing.com

“I’ve lost about 1 million liras. I think we’re heading for a crisis even worse than the previous one,” Bas said.

Is Crypto and Bitcoin better?

Against the US dollar, the Bitcoin price has performed worse than that of the lira since 2017, as it recorded a drop of over 70 percent within a period of eight months.

But, investors in the public cryptocurrency exchange market have full authority over their funds and are free to sell their holdings of Bitcoin to other foreign currencies like the US dollar, Japanese yen, and the South korean won.

As of current, the Turkish lira has virtually no liquidity and no value as a medium of exchange, because of the extreme measures implemented by its government to essentially disable the usage of lira outside of Turkey.

In the short-term, the inability of the citizens and residents of Turkey to use, exchange, and trade lira could allow the currency to decelerate the rate of its devaluation. But, the recent situation of the lira has shown that as former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, there is a market for consensus currencies and decentralized financial networks that are not under absolute control by a centralized group of authorities.

Featured Image From Shutterstock, Price Chart From Investing.com

The post Does 50% Decline in the Turkish Lira Prove Bitcoin is Better Than Fiat? appeared first on NewsBTC.

China’s Communist Party is moving to make blockchain literacy the norm with the publication of a guide book for officials and members.

Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining rigs, is aiming for a USD 18 billion initial public offering (IPO) when it launches on the Hong Kong stock exchange in Q4 2018 or Q1 2019. This would be by far the largest cryptocurrency IPO in history.

In general, there aren’t many cryptocurrency or Bitcoin-related stocks and those that do exist have very small capitalization. Bitmain will be the first major Bitcoin- and cryptocurrency-related stock, with a projected opening market cap of USD 40-50 billion, which is actually nearly half of the total Bitcoin market cap at USD 108 billion as of this writing on 12 August 2018. This will be on a similar scale of the some of the biggest IPOs in history, such as Facebook which had a market cap near USD 90 billion during the launch of its stock.

Bitmain just successfully completed a USD 1 billion pre-IPO funding round in rapid fashion, pumping its valuation up to USD 15 billion. This is on the heels of its Series A and Series B funding rounds which pulled in USD 50 million and USD 400 million respectively. These rounds have seen Bitmain’s valuation progressively and rapidly grow in less than a year.

The reason Bitmain has such a high valuation is it is pulling in tremendous profits, after cornering the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining markets. Bitmain sells the most equipment for mining, the mining pools Bitmain operates control nearly half of Bitcoin’s total hash rate, and Bitmain has a tremendous stash of Bitcoin’s from its massive in-house mining operation. In total, since 2016 Bitmain has profited USD 2.3 billion, but it is expecting USD 2 billion in profit during 2018 alone.

Bitmain’s best chips released to the public so far are 16 nm, but it has an arsenal of 12 nm, 10 nm, and 7 nm chips for mining it is ready to release to the public. These more powerful chips will increase the efficiency and power of their cryptocurrency mining rigs, reinvigorating sales and dominance over the mining manufacturing market. It can plan this release to be in a slow succession, so it can keep its dominance and profits long term. Its 7 nm chips are approaching the quantum tunneling limit, and it will be difficult to make transistors smaller after that point due to the fundamental nature of physics, so 7 nm Bitmain miners could be the most powerful Bitcoin mining rigs possible.

Bitmain stock will provide a way for investors to invest in the infrastructure of cryptocurrency, an indirect way to invest in Bitcoin.

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Here’s how the SEC decisions correlated with market prices, from the DAO to the latest ETFs

Key Points

• Bitcoin price found support near the $5,970-6,000 area and recovered nicely against the US Dollar.
• There is a major contracting triangle forming with resistance near $6,480 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
• The pair must break the $6,480 and $6,570 resistance levels to gain upside momentum in the near term.

Bitcoin price is showing positive signs above $6,280 against the US Dollar. BTC/USD could soon break the $6,480 and $6,570 resistances to rebound further.

Bitcoin Price Analysis

This past week, we saw heavy declines below $6,550 in bitcoin price against the US Dollar. The BTC/USD pair even broke the $6,000 support, but buyers appeared and protected more declines. A low was formed at $5,794 and the price started an upward correction. The price moved above the $6,200 resistance and traded with bullish moves during the past few hours. It even broke the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $7,166 high to $5,974 low.

However, the upside move is facing sellers near the $6,500 level. The 38.2% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $7,166 high to $5,974 low is also acting as a hurdle. More importantly, there is a major contracting triangle forming with resistance near $6,480 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. Should the price break the triangle resistance and $6,500, it could trade further higher. The next resistance is the $6,570 level, which is the 50% Fib retracement level. Above this, the price may even trade above the $6,650 level in the near term. On the other hand, if the price fails to move past $6,480 and drops below $6,280, there could be a bearish reaction.

Looking at the chart, the current price action is positive, but bitcoin must stay above $6,280 to move past $6,480 and $6,570 in the near term.

Looking at the technical indicators:

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

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI is currently well above the 50 level.

Major Support Level – $6,280

Major Resistance Level – $6,570

The post Bitcoin Price Watch: BTC/USD Could Rebound Above $6,500 appeared first on NewsBTC.