Day: August 24, 2018

Mike Caldwell, nicknamed Casascius, produced physical coins which contain Bitcoin from 2011 to 2013, which went on to become the most highly-regarded brand of physical Bitcoin.

This was done to make physical Bitcoin transactions easier and was accomplished by putting a piece of paper inside each coin with the private key. If the private key is removed, it exposes a glowing honeycomb, making it easy to know if the private key has been exposed. In 2013, Caldwell was forced to stop making Casascius coins after security regulators told him he was in violation of money transmission regulation.

The most valuable coin ever produced. pic.twitter.com/R47q1NpwAN

— Beautyon (@Beautyon_) August 19, 2018

The most valuable coin that Casascius produced has BTC 1,000 in it and is made with a troy ounce of pure gold. Only six of these were created. At the time, each was sold for USD 5,500, with the gold comprising a third of the coin’s value. Today, these golden 1,000 Bitcoin Casascius coins are worth around USD 6.5 million and were worth as much as USD 20 million during the rally in December 2017, with the gold being a minuscule fraction of the value. These values ignore the collector value of these coins, which may be significant. This just goes to show how profitable of an investment Bitcoin has been long term; this is an increase in value of over 118,000% for these coins as of 24 August 2018.

These golden 1,000 Bitcoin Casascius coins could be the most valuable coins in the entire world. If not, they may eventually be if experts are right and Bitcoin rises to USD 100,000. In that scenario, each of these coins would be worth USD 100 million. John McAfee says Bitcoin will hit USD 1 million, which would make these coins worth USD 1 billion each.

In 2013, two out of the six coins were opened and the Bitcoins transferred out. This was during the Bitcoin rally to USD 1,000. One of these fetched USD 1 million. The remaining four owners of the golden 1,000 Bitcoin Casascius coins are holding on tight.

 

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One of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinsquare, is expanding into the European market. This is the exchange’s first international expansion under its own brand. Its previous expansions were through partnerships with other companies.

Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space

European Expansion

Ontario-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinsquare announced on Thursday, August 23, its plan to expand into the European market in the fourth quarter of this year. The company wrote:

Customers across Europe will have access to Coinsquare’s entire suite of coins – bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, litecoin, XRP, dogecoin, and dash.

According to its website, Coinsquare supports the trading of seven cryptocurrencies and four fiat currencies: the British pound, Canadian dollar, euro, and US dollar. The Australian dollar is also listed but currently unsupported.

However, the exchange explains that, currently, it can only verify users who can prove Canadian citizenship or Canadian residency, adding that acceptable documents are driver’s license, passport, national identity card, permanent resident card or health card for Quebec.

Thomas Jankowski, Coinsquare’s Chief Digital and Growth Officer, commented:

Coinsquare is a regulated, fully-compliant trading platform and we’re thrilled to offer the European market the same secure and intuitive interface that we offer to Canadians.

Founded in 2014, Coinsquare claims to be “Canada’s most secure digital currency trading platform,” with a “95% cold storage policy on all digital currency.” The exchange also claims to have over 100,000 customers.

In addition, the company has a subsidiary called Coin Capital Investment Management Inc. (Coincapital), launched on July 30. It is registered with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) as an exempt market dealer, investment fund manager, and portfolio manager. “This new division will offer a suite of investment products focused on emerging technologies including blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies,” the company detailed.

First Expansion Under Coinsquare Brand

According to Thursday’s announcement:

This is Coinsquare’s first international expansion under the Coinsquare brand, but not Coinsquare’s first step in the global cryptocurrency market.

Previously, the company expanded by partnering with businesses in Canada and the EU to “launch fully white-labelled platforms that offer a consistent brand experience, and are specifically tailored to individual markets and the needs of their clients.” These expansions leverage Coinsquare Licensing which powers cryptocurrency trading solutions using Coinsquare’s technology.

In July, Coinsquare announced its plan to enter the Japanese market through Coinsquare Licensing, pending the approval of the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA). Coinsquare “will be powering a Japanese exchange in partnership with Dlta21, a global cryptocurrency investment bank, through Coinsquare Licensing,” the company described.

What do you think of Coinsquare expanding into Europe? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Coinsquare.

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Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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In June 2018, chips with 7 nm transistors, simply called 7 nm chips, began mass production. These chips still haven’t reached the consumer market but two crypto mining companies from Japan, GMO Internet and Triple-1, have developed crypto mining rigs which use 7 nm chips. These rigs are expected to be released by the end of 2018, and will fundamentally be the next evolution of crypto mining tech.

Currently, the conventional standard in crypto mining is 16 nm chips. Triple-1’s mining rigs created with 7 nm chips consume energy at 0.5 W/GH, 50% less than a 16 nm rig. Also, each chip has 300 GH/s, 5.2X more than a standard 16 nm chip of the same size. This is due to the fundamental nature of transistors and Moore’s law, the more transistors you can pack onto a chip the more processing power it has.

The CEO of Triple-1, Takuya Yamaguchi, sums up the power and efficiency of these new 7 nm chips nicely: “Although mining capacity is more than four times that of conventional products, power consumption is expected to be halved at maximum.”

Clearly, 7 nm chips will change the mining game, making rigs more powerful than ever before while consuming far less electricity. This should help continue the exponential increase of Bitcoin’s hash rate, and will eventually make mining rigs with 16 nm chips or greater obsolete.

As of now, 7 nm chips are the smallest transistors in mass production. 5 nm chips have been produced in laboratories and are scheduled for mass production around 2020. Transistors smaller than 5 nm might be possible, but quantum tunneling is starting to become a serious issue.

Quantum tunneling is when a transistor is so small that electrons can go through the physical barriers in the transistor. This is because electrons are both a wave and a particle, and an electron’s wave is dampened at a physical barrier but it take some distance into the barrier to stop completely. If a transistor is so small and an electron’s wave function extends to the other side of the barrier, then electrons will teleport through the transistor’s physical make-up.

If a transistor is so small that quantum tunneling is occurring, then the transistor becomes useless. Transistors have to properly channel electrons 100% of the time for a computer to work. Therefore, this will put an end to Moore’s law, which says the number of transistors on a chip of the same size doubles with a set frequency over time.

This means that after 7 nm mining rigs there will probably be 5 nm mining rigs, and perhaps as low as 3-4 nm rigs since those chips have also successfully been created in labs. However, chips and mining rigs will hit the quantum tunneling limit after that and get no more efficient. Fortunately, there are still several years until the limit and rigs will continue to periodically get much stronger as chips with smaller transistors are unleashed. This will keep the mining industry healthy. Each new wave of rigs with smaller transistors will be an opportunity for crypto miners.

 

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There’s been a lot happening within the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) ecosystem over the last week as far as development and upcoming announcements concerning the future of BCH. Further, the network has been seeing a lot more activity lately with transactions stemming from stress test experiments in preparation for September 1. This week the BCH community mostly discussed the recent disagreements between the Bitcoin ABC and Nchain development teams.

Also read: Fivebucks.com: Meet the Freelancer’s Marketplace Powered by Bitcoin Cash

BCH Market Action

Bitcoin cash markets, like many other cryptocurrencies, seem to be on the mend as price values have seen some upswings in recent days. At press time the decentralized cryptocurrency is averaging $532 USD per BCH across global exchanges. BCH holds the fourth largest market capitalization at around $9.2B today. Bitcoin cash trade volumes are around $298M with the asset capturing the fifth highest trade volume on August 24. The top five exchanges swapping the most BCH today includes Binance, Coinex, Okex, Hitbtc, and Huobi. Tether (USDT) currently captures 49 percent of BCH trades followed by BTC (39%), USD (5.5%), QC (1.8%), and ETH (1.2%).

The Debate Over Upgrade Features

Besides the price, there’s been a lot going on this week and people have been heavily discussing this coming November’s BCH protocol changes. Earlier this week we mentioned the contention between the recently announced Bitcoin SV full node client and the newly published Bitcoin ABC 0.18.0 codebase. The issue at hand is that both clients want two different upgrade features to be added this November, and if they remain indifferent when the fork comes closer, BCH could face a chain split. Following the initial arguments, Bitcoin Unlimited revealed they would incorporate both client’s upgrades so miners can vote on which features they want out of all the choices.

The Bitcoin ABC Vision

Bitcoin ABC has also addressed the community with a letter called “The Bitcoin ABC Vision.” The ABC development team says they want the world to have sound money that can be used by anyone and the recent release of version 0.18.0 is the latest step towards that path. The team has detailed they believe BCH proponents should focus on zero-confirmation transactions, implementing technical measures to enable massive on-chain scaling, and improving fungibility. The team has also published a diagram that explains in a visual way some of the suggested plans and features they believe “would make a solid roadmap for Bitcoin Cash.” The recent post written by the Bitcoin ABC development team can be read in its entirety here.

Bcash Full Node Client Developers Reveal New Release Coming Soon

The bcash full node implementation created by the Purse.io and bcoin developers have revealed on August 24 that a new release will be launched soon. Purse.io unveiled the bcash full node client this past May the same time the firm added native BCH support to the company’s marketplace. “Bcash 1.1.0 will include OP_CHECKDATASIG and canonical transaction ordering — Release coming soon,” explains the development team on Friday. 

Bitcoin Cash is Open to More Merchants This Week

The BCH community was very pleased to hear that Coinbase Commerce (CC) has added bitcoin cash support for its non-custodial merchant acceptance system. Essentially CC allows for payment modules with Opencart, Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Prestashop exposing 2.7M merchants to BCH. Then the payment processing platform Coppay who has merchants located in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and now in Portugal, supports bitcoin cash settlement for all 52 Coppay merchants.

Never a Dull Day

Overall there’s been so much going on this week its been awfully hard to keep up with all the action taking place in the BCH environment. News.Bitcoin.com tested two new BCH-powered token creation projects (Colored Coins Wallet & SLP) and created our own tokens. Further, we looked into Recursive Smelting and the Bitcoin Token concepts; two more token projects using BCH that plan to launch soon. Then there was the odd announcement from the curious character Cobra who plans on launching a BCH full node client called the ‘Cobra Client.’ Nevertheless, with all the craziness happening within the crypto-space there’s one thing we can all be thankful for — There’s truly never a dull day in Bitcoin-land.

What do you think about everything happening within the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem this week? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

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Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, Satoshi Pulse, bcash, Bitcoin ABC, and Pixabay. 

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At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The post BCH Roundup: Millions of Merchants, More Tokens, and Clashing Visions appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Customs and Border Protection, one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the U.S., will start a live test of blockchain-powered shipment tracking system

After a full year of working round-the-clock, we are now happy to welcome investors to the cryptocurrency space with the help of our simplified and secure services.

As a Jubiter user, you will enjoy ease of access, freedom from sluggish bureaucracy, lower fees, exceptional customer service, and many more perks.

To ensure ease of access, we created a user-friendly interface where you can buy Bitcoin and Litecoin using just your credit card (including Visa, Visa Electron, MasterCard, and Maestro). We want you to be able to use your crypto in your daily life, which is why we’re preparing to introduce a native debit card that will allow you to make daily purchases and ATM withdrawals.

We cut back on the bureaucracy by allowing you to purchase up to 500 worth of cryptocurrencies with nothing more than email verification. We currently support USD, EUR and GBP, and we will soon add 20 more fiat currencies.

You can easily get your family and friends onboard by inviting them to benefit from the same unique services through the Jubiter referral program, and to enjoy privileges such as better commissions.  

Our top priority was to create a highly secure wallet environment, so we implemented multiple security layers, including two-factor authentication, login guard, and identity protection. We also kept 3% of all funds for daily needs, and safely tucked away the rest in cold storage.

Our most unique service is our exquisite customer support. We welcome your questions through our toll-free phone numbers, live chat, email or social media channels. Our support team is available from Monday to Saturday, 8:00 AM until midnight EST.

Jubiter is a fully licensed and regulated cryptocurrency exchange by the Estonian financial authority. It holds a financial license for providing a cryptocurrency wallet service as well as another for exchanging fiat currencies with digital assets. It holds an MSB status in FinCen and it is available across more than 161 countries, including the U.S. and the European Union.

Website: https://www.jubiter.com/

Contact: Richard Brockhume, [email protected]

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.

‘Diamonds are forever’, the famous De Beers Jewellers tagline that has stuck with us for over half a century. Although the global diamond market had developed rapidly since it’s discovery, it has recently been inhibited by environmental, conflict and ethical issues, as well as the decreasing volume of diamonds successfully mined. In a market worth $80 billion USD, a solution must be reached to resolve these ongoing issues plaguing the market.

Pure Diamond is a Japanese company that is pioneering future of diamonds, making steps to ensure the continued existence of these incredible gemstones. Pure Diamond Lab. Co. Ltd. is the first Japanese company to create lab-grown diamonds, that have the same chemical, physical and optical properties of a naturally occurring one. The innovative Singaporean based Pure Diamond Blockchain Project is founded with the aim to distribute Japanese laboratory (lab)-grown diamonds worldwide. At the core of the Pure Diamond Blockchain Project is the cryptocurrency Pure Diamond Coin (PDC).

PDC is a cryptocurrency that creates a tokenomy for holders to purchase a lab-grown diamonds on the Pure Diamond Network and can be used for settlement, with market prices decided by secondary markets. PDC’s token is ‘pegged’ or ‘linked’ with the generation of lab-grown diamonds. The importance of attributing the value of PDC to a collateral is associated with the nature of the cryptocurrency’s economy, by distributing tokens in relation to the value of ‘real assets’ PDC minimises the risk of heavy price fluctuations and presents investors with a more predictable forecast of the tokens future value. In it’s simplest form, the implication is that the value of PDC will not devaluate unless the global price of diamonds declines.

Overtime as more lab-grown diamonds are cultivated, the value of the token is expected to steadily increase. For instance, in its first year if 100 lab-grown diamonds are cultivated then one token would be valued at 100 lab-grown diamonds. In its second year 200 lab-grown diamonds are cultivated, so the valuation of the PDC token would be 200 lab-grown diamonds.

Are Pure Diamond (Lab-Grown Diamonds) Synthetic/Imitation Diamonds?

In order for PDC’s token value to remain consistently stable, the validity of the aforementioned real-asset Pure Diamond is mandatory to PDC’s success. Naturally occurring diamonds are formed when a rare set of conditions coincide, Pure Diamond’s laboratory utilises cutting edge technology to recreate those conditions in an accelerated form, cultivating diamonds from pure carbon resulting in lab-grown diamonds that share the same chemical, physical and optical properties as naturally occurring ones.

Pure Diamond can be certified by the GIA rendering it the same as natural diamonds, only better. The Producer of Pure Diamond Lab Co. Mr. Hideyuki Abe estimates that 98% of the real diamonds in circulation around the world are flawed, and under pristine lab controlled conditions, Pure Diamond is able to manufacture diamonds that are completely flawless.

Lab Grown Diamonds Resolves Conflict and Labour Issues

In developing countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), diamonds are mined during a time of conflict, and it plagues the industry with ‘blood diamonds’ as the global demand puts pressure on countries such as DRC to produce more. ‘Blood Diamonds’ are used to procure enormous wealth to fund the ongoing conflicts in the warring states. Often miners which include women and children are forced to mine under extremely dangerous circumstances in mines.

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.

Interactive map for cryptocurrency taxation launched

Blockpit develops an interactive map for cryptocurrency taxation and thereby provides a worldwide overview over tax regulations for crypto traders. The open platform already contains information for several countries and is expanding constantly due to user engagement and global corporations with tax advisors.

With every day regulations on the crypto market are getting stricter, making it challenging for traders to keep an overview over the current legal situation. One crucial topic: crypto taxation. As there is no unified approach yet, each country operates on its own when it comes to crypto tax reporting. The Austrian startup Blockpit addresses this problem with their project called CryptoTaxMap. To reduce the legal complexity crypto users worldwide face, they developed an interactive map which provides reliable and current information on the fiscal treatment of cryptocurrencies.

CryptoTaxMap.org

The interactive website displays a world map with additional, country-specific details on tax regulations. The map already includes information on the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan and many more countries and it is expanding globally. “The goal is to fill the whole map to offer a reliable platform for the whole crypto sphere,” says Blockpit CEO Florian Wimmer. The platform is accessible for free and offers the additional feature of registering for news alerts via email.

Community project

With help of the crypto community and tax advisors Blockpit gathers and verifies information from legislations and keeps the website up to date on any changes in the tax law. Everybody can join the community and issue new information which is rewarded with 50 TAX token by Blockpit. The project by now also has a list of tax accountants on board who add and verify information which is submitted by individuals. Thanks to interaction and global corporations the CryptoTaxMap stays up to date with latest adjustments or releases from governments or the European Parliament.

CryptoTaxMap Features

Search for your country and get specific information on the tax laws which apply for you.

Subscribe for updates to get news when regulations in your country are changed or added.  

Participate with your knowledge and get 50 TAX token for new info. Or become CryptoTaxMap partner when you are a tax advisor.

About Blockpit

Blockpits is a seamless, automated web-based and mobile cryptocurrency tax reporting and portfolio monitoring application. Blockpit uses APIs of numerous exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Poloniex, Kraken and many more to link them up with its services. The vision is to allow Blockpit users to automatically combine all their trades, wallets, mining rewards and other incomes such as airdrops into one dashboard. The dashboard provides a clear overview on what was realized in gains to report to tax authorities. Blockpit also allows its dashboard users to generate tax reports which can be legally approved by one of Blockpit’s partners. An open beta version has been online since January 2018. Currently, the company is doing a € 12.5 million tokensale of their TAX utility token via https://tokensale.blockpit.io.

For more information visit https://cryptotaxmap.org.

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.

Superseding everything else is mass adoption and that is what Litecoin figure heads and Foundation is pushing for. Currently price isn’t center stage, coin demand is and for obvious reasons: the later precedes value. While we might see short term recoveries edging prices towards $70, our break out levels, news of adoption break through or announcement of strategic partnerships aside from CoinBase efforts might ignite a wave of loss reversals with first targets at $110, the upper limit of our former trade range.

From the News

Whether Litecoin is undervalued or over-valued shouldn’t be a headline topic in this bear market. In fact, when analyst focus on price only, then the real user case application of blockchain losses meaning. From history, blockchain and cryptocurrencies came to existence because of the need of control and excision of manipulation.

It was along this vein that Charlie Lee emphasized on the need of coin adoption during this steep bear market while Brad Garlinghouse asked users to look more into cryptocurrency, make it mainstream instead of holding them for speculation purposes. Crypto and Litecoin enthusiast should draw examples from Dash at Venezuela and Zimbabwe. There in the face of a failing economy and value wiping hyperinflation, the coin is a reliable store of value and a medium of exchange.

Perhaps the First Annual Litecoin Summit will be a platform spurring Litecoin adoption on a global scale. The platform is already building the necessary infrastructure and by partnering with market leaders in the retail world as Wirex–who by the way have the first FCA e-money license-and a couple of other point of sale payment providers, enthusiasts can easily settle with Litecoin besides enjoying speed and security only native to blockchain.

Technical Analysis

Weekly Chart

In this time frame, week ending Aug 12 bear engulfing candlestick shall anchor our trade position and for good reasons. Notice that not only are there high volumes accompanying this high average trading range candlestick but the fact that it is a break out bar means it carries some weight damping buys.

Encouragingly though, the last two weeks candlesticks had these long lower wicks signaling buy pressure and what we need despite this week’s stable prices are higher highs thrusting above $70, our last sell trigger line and immediate support.

Should that happen next week, then chances are we might see further recoveries with first targets at $100 as laid out in our previous Litecoin (LTC) technical analysis.

Daily Chart

Like most coins under review, Litecoin bulls seems to be building momentum. Though LTC prices are technically in a deep bear trend, we might see higher highs going forward.

It’s because of this preview mostly advised by recent rejection of lower lows that we recommend risk off traders to take longs at spot prices with stops at $50 and first targets at $70.

$70 as laid out before is our immediate resistance line and a break out level. This is where sellers are expected to cap gains and probably trigger the next wave of sell pressure. Expectedly, prices might dive back towards  $30 or Q4 2017 lows.

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 Litecoin (LTC) Technical Analysis: Litecoin Mass Adoption a Priority, Not Price appeared first on NewsBTC.

Listen to the 24 August 2018 Bitcoin News Radio Show below.

On this edition of the Bitcoin News daily radio show, we discuss how a small rally is underway since the SEC is still considering five Bitcoin ETFs that were rejected. Learn about Bittrex’s partnership with Rialto to begin offering crypto securities trading. Hear about the North Korean Lazarus Group who hacked a crypto exchange with sophisticated software, and a bomb threat at a noisy crypto mining farm in Norway. Be amazed at 7 nm chips, the next evolution of crypto mining, and a Casascius physical coin made of a troy ounce of pure gold and containing 1,000 Bitcoins.

Follow the Bitcoin News Radio Show on Anchor, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Pocket Casts, and Breaker. We broadcast a new episode every day, covering the most important topics in the crypto, Bitcoin, and blockchain world!

 

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Image Courtesy: Zachary, Bitcoin News

The post Bitcoin News Radio Show, 24th August 2018 appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.

Over the past two decades, the retail industry has taken a decisive shift toward digitization, with consumers, producers and distributors all converging on e-commerce platforms like Amazon.com, eBay and others. Now, e-commerce itself is facing major disruption through blockchain technology, which seeks to bring greater transparency, cost savings and competition to online shopping.

Buying.com is the first decentralized e-commerce network that allows online stores and consumers to purchase directly from manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. By offering a direct-to-consumer platform combined with a hyper local distribution model, Buying.com enables shoppers and businesses to mutually benefit from each transaction. 

Buying.com is more than just a platform for business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions; it is designed to become the de-facto standard for e-commerce transactions on the blockchain. In doing so, it will directly address the multitude of problems currently plaguing e-commerce, such as:

• Expensive minimum order quantities to unlock discounts;
• Preventing chargebacks;
• Centralized warehousing limitations;
• Expensive and inefficient last mile delivery;
• Industry monopolization leaving retailers and entrepreneurs at a disadvantage.

Buying.com offers a decentralized solution for all e-commerce sellers, retailers and consumers, ensuring they are on a level playing field with existing e-commerce giants. Through the blockchain, consumers and businesses can come together to hit minimum order quantities with manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers to receive the lowest pricing on goods.

On the distribution side, Buying.com is bringing the Airbnb model to e-commerce by allowing users to monetize their latent space. Under this model, users can transform their garage, storefront, empty warehouse or convenience store into a hyper local distribution center. The platform’s delivery network works like Uber by allowing anyone to use their car for last mile delivery.

Buying.com has already built a successful e-commerce version of the decentralized platform on DropShipper.com, a Buying.com service already boasting hundreds of suppliers and millions of products. An MVP for Buying.com’s e-commerce mobile app will be available on Android and iOS in September ahead of the token pre-sale.

Introducing BUY Token 

Underpinning Buying.com’s decentralized e-commerce marketplace is the BUY token, which will serve numerous utility functions within the network and as a form of dividend payment to investors. The cryptocurrency has built-in incentive schemes with distributors and delivery operators to help scale the network. 

BUY will be used for:

• Staking tokens for microdistribution centers and delivery operators to participate in the network and earn revenues;
• Rewarding users when they recommend Buying.com to another product or service;
• Paying for shipping and products on the platform;
• Distributing dividend and profit-sharing payments to holders of the BUY security token.

BUY will utilize the benefits of a secure blockchain to transform the centralized state of e-commerce and bring greater cost savings and economies of scale to online shoppers, small businesses and e-commerce sellers.

Token Sale

A pre-sale discount on BUY tokens is available beginning Oct. 1, 2018. The pre-sale will run until Nov. 30, 2018. 

The public ICO will be launched Dec. 1, 2018 through Jan. 31, 2019. 

All proceeds will go toward developing the world’s first decentralized e-commerce platform backed by a proof of stake blockchain protocol. Buying.com will unveil its decentralized application in Q4 of this year, with the Prime Protocol Mainnet scheduled for launch in Q4 2019. 

For the latest news and updates, follow Buying.com on Telegram, Twitter and Facebook. You can also catch Buying.com at Blockshow in Las Vegas, and many more meetups and conferences to come!

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.

Ethereum core developers decide to release a hard fork every eight months, as opposed to the proposed six, at a meeting on YouTube

The National Group Purchasing of Healthcare Resources Platform (the “Platform”) and an associated research laboratory were recently established with the intention of fundamentally reducing the procurement cost of the healthcare products and services based on big data technology. Co-chaired by Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng, Professor of Renmin University of China, a member of standing committee of The Thirteenth National People’s Congress (NPC), the Platform was jointly established by the China Association of Social Security (CAOSS), the Social Medical Insurance Bureau of Heilongjiang Province and THEKEY. On the 19th of August the official kick-off meeting was held in Beijing, featuring officials from across both the newly established National Healthcare Security Bureau and other relevant departments within the Human Resources and Social Security, Social Insurance and other vested interest social organizations and enterprises.

The August 19, 2018 Kick-off Meeting for National Group Purchasing of Healthcare
Resources Platform

The recent box office success of the Chinese movie Dying to Survive, featuring the real-life story of Lu Yong, a Chinese leukemia patient who smuggled inexpensive but unproven cancer medicines into China from India for 1,000 Chinese cancer sufferers in 2004, has sparked a national debate about the cost of healthcare products and services for the Chinese population. Even Chinese Premier Li Keqiang cited the film in an appeal to regulators to “speed up price cuts for cancer drugs”.

China’s Basic Medical Insurance System has serves over 1.4 billion people, by far the world’s largest health insurance program. In 2017 the overall expenditure for Basic Medical Insurance for the Chinese population was $220 billion USD. The continued growth of this cost increasingly signified an urgent need to create a national group purchasing platform designed to systematically both to control costs and improve the efficiency of China’s medical insurance funds.

Giving this background, the Laboratory of the National Group Purchasing of Healthcare Resources was established with the above-mentioned groups as partners, with THEKEY serving as the exclusive technical provider. Dr. Yidong King from THEKEY gave a speech during this initial launch meeting introducing the rationale and the logic of the Platform construction.

According to Dr. King, the Platform is being designed as an exclusive E-commerce platform comprehensively supported by the healthcare data collected across all of the Chinese basic medical insurance agencies with the intention both to enhance the efficiency of medical insurance fund while also increasing the general population’s greater health. Facilitated by the two engines – “Accurate Pricing” and “Bidding / Purchasing” – the Platform has been designed to solve issues relating to healthcare resources procurement while also supporting more efficient real-time evaluation and supervision of the overall purchasing process. The Platform will provide integral and full support to the purchase of all healthcare resources, such as medical products, medical services and relevant knowledge. Available both on PC and in the form of mobile application, the Platform will simultaneously serve medical insurance agencies, designated hospitals and pharmacies, individuals and enterprises.

The Platform will gradually adopt blockchain technology in support of tracing and tracking drugs and medical consumables; facilitating highly efficient peer-to-peer money transactions and data transmission among stakeholders. Identity verification technology for individuals, enterprises such as THEKEY’s proprietary Blockchain based Dynamic Multi-Dimensional Identification (BDMI) will be applied across the near future to ensure patients’ safety, data security and medical healthcare insurance fund payment security.

Dr. Yidong King from THEKEY delivering a keynote speech

The Platform aroused heated discussion among the attendees. Dr. King stated that THEKEY is enjoying significant favorable conditions by which to successfully construct and launch the Platform, including the facts that:

1. The newly founded State Healthcare Security Bureau (SHSB) of China has realized the aggregation of the power and rights from healthcare related authorities, with its functionality covering all segments that group purchasing will involve, such as the pricing of drugs and medical consumables, policy making, etc. This forms a solid foundation and provides an unparalleled opportunity for the research and the construction of the group purchasing platform.  
2. The tremendous volume of medical insurance data accumulated by relevant authorities is essential in optimizing the Platform by supervising and managing the overall procedures of the group purchasing platform, such as planning, pricing, purchasing, delivery and the use of the healthcare resources.
3. The medical insurance payment process of all existing platforms should be seamlessly connected with this new Platform, particularly as relates to the medicine purchasing segment, to realize bulk purchase which will fundamentally cut the drug price.
4. The existing medical insurance policies should positively interact with the Platform. By regulating the hospitals and the medical treatments of physicians, the procurement behavior of the hospital will also be influenced.
5. Experience and technologies of existing purchasing platforms could be great potential help to the construction and operation of this new unified Group Purchasing Platform.
6. Supply chain finance such as that which the Platform promises would be great incentive to pharmaceutical companies by simultaneously enhancing both sales and payment collection, reducing costs and while increasing budgets for research and development as well as the production of the medical products.
7. The Group Purchasing Platform has received great approval and support from officials and experts across both national and provincial medical insurance authorities, and anticipates a number of provinces will join the pilot program in the future.

Catherine Li, CEO of THEKEY in heat discussion with officials

“The Group Purchasing Platform is very insightful, and has the potential to provide a fundamental solution to the existing problems encountered across China’s the healthcare industry. The kick-off meeting was a good start, while the further development of the Platform calls for more ideas and efforts.” Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng commented during the conference.

Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng giving a speech

Today most global public blockchain programs mainly focus on token issuance and transactions related to cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology can only realize its true social, economic and commercial value once it plays an important and irreplaceable role in addressing fundamental social issues related to national economies and the people’s livelihood. By this  National Group Purchasing Platform for Healthcare Resources and the associated Research into Social Insurance Blockchain Applications in June of 2018 in cooperation with Chinese government, THEKEY is achieving significant milestones in its implementation of blockchain across the healthcare industry. THEKEY is providing a variety of innovation in service to increasing the overall quality of China’s healthcare services by enhancing efficiencies, saving manpower and lowering costs.

About THEKEY

THEKEY is a decentralized ecosystem of Identity Verification (IDV) tools integrating national big-data and the blockchain. THEKEY’s project team is now developing its identification verification (IDV) tool with blockchain using its proprietary Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification (BDMI) platform, uniquely using Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that has been exclusively authorized by the Chinese Government. THEKEY token (TKY) is the only method by which to settle smart contracts signed between all participants across THEKEY Ecosystem. THEKEY testnet was launched in May 2018, and its mainnet is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. TKY is currently tradable across a number of exchange platforms such as HitBTC, Bit-Z, KuCoin, Lbank, Coinrail and LATOKEN.

For more information, please visit:

Website: https://www.thekey.vip

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekeyvip

Medium: https://medium.com/@thekeyvip

Telegram: https://t.me/THEKEYOFFICIAL

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/THEKEYOFFICIAL

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheKey-1439094662870680/  

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDuN2bjI7cAhoIIxJ_nTaCQ

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