What Are Cryptocurrency Debit Cards, Explained

1. What are cryptocurrency debit cards?

They are plastic cards, similar to your everyday bank card, but you can deposit cryptocurrencies on them.

Cryptocurrency debit cards are a relatively recent development in the Blockchain world. They were invented to solve the problem of using digital coins for day-to-day expenses. Obviously, you can’t just go to your nearest grocery store and pay for your shopping list with Bitcoins, not yet at least.

This is very inconvenient because it introduces an additional difficulty of searching for a place to exchange your cryptocurrencies to fiat money before you can actually start spending them. There have been several proposed ways to make cryptocurrency spending a more direct process and plastic cards are one of them.

2. What are the solutions for cryptocurrency spending?

The primary two are point-of-sale terminals and plastic cards.

Point-of-sale terminals are one of the proposed solutions. This is a piece of hardware installed at a shop, which interacts with a mobile wallet app on your phone and withdraws your cryptocurrency to make a purchase. However, they require a merchant to actively take interest in accepting digital currency payments and pay some money upfront for installing a terminal. As such, this approach is not easy to scale.

Plastic cards are a different, arguably better, solution. They take advantage of the existing Visa/MasterCard infrastructure – bank card terminals are already an available payment option in millions of shops around the world. Such cards don’t require the merchant to do anything. In fact, the cashier might not even know that you’re paying with a cryptocurrency because it’s seamlessly converted into the respective fiat currency by the card provider.

3. What types of cards are there?

Prepaid cards and debit cards, mainly.

The first option is a bit outdated by today’s standards. You pay a provider a certain amount of Bitcoins or some other cryptocurrency, and they send you a prepaid Visa/MasterCard with the equivalent amount of fiat money. After that, it works like any old debit card you can get at the nearest bank.

A more recent development is a debit card with an automated exchange system in the background. They allow you to deposit your cryptocurrency directly, via a web app. When the time of purchase comes, the card provider handles the process of converting your digital coins into the necessary fiat currency on the spot. From the merchant’s point of view, these are the same as prepaid or regular bank cards. However, they spare the user the need to exchange money – you simply deposit your Bitcoins or Ether and you’re good to go.

4. Where can I get one?

The providers of cryptocurrency debit cards are online companies with different backgrounds.

A simple online search will net you several key providers of cryptocurrency debit cards. By going to their websites, you will be able to order yourself one. This technology is on the verge of the digital and real world and is heavily regulated by governments worldwide.

Because of that, they almost always require you to undergo some sort of identity verification, submitting some sort of ID proof. Other than that, in addition to a small upfront payment, they are really easy to get.

5. If they’re so good, why aren’t they immensely popular?

It has more to do with the technology of cryptocurrency itself – confirmation times and transaction fees, in particular.

It’s true that the technology of cryptocurrency debit cards has been here for a while. You might be thinking: “if they make digital currencies so easy to spend and can be easily bought, why aren’t they much more popular?”

One of the primary, if not the main barriers to higher adoption is cryptocurrencies themselves. Bitcoin transactions have a 10 minute confirmation period on average. The fees are also significant, unlike in the old times, and are only getting higher. These two factors combined make Bitcoin payments barely suitable for small, everyday purchases – plastic card or not.

Some other currencies, such as Ethereum, have faster confirmation times and lower fees, but they’ve started getting popular quite recently. In fact, some of the cards were released before Ethereum entered the market.

6. Are there cards that support altcoins?

Yes, recently some cards have started appearing on the market and they allow you to deposit currencies other than Bitcoin.

TenX, for example, is a young project with an already working card that can be topped up with Ethereum and Dash, in addition to Bitcoin. Both these coins have much faster confirmation times and much lower transaction fees than BTC does.

In fact, TenX’s own technology COMIT (Cryptographically-secure Off-chain Multi-asset Instant Transaction) makes the system capable of accepting deposits in any cryptocurrency tokens that conform to a small number of requirements, such as having double-spend protection and multisig wallets.

With technologies like this, paying for a Big Mac at any McDonald’s using a cryptocurrency of your choice may actually be easier than you think:

Come to our daily live Webinars for more information.

Thomas Prendergast
Markethive Inc.

 

What Are Cryptocurrency Debit Cards, Explained

Be a Bitcoin Mining Millionaire

Bitcoin Mining Millions

How Bitcoin Mining Works

Where do bitcoins come from? With paper money, a government decides when to print and distribute money. Bitcoin doesn't have a central government.

With Bitcoin, miners use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins in exchange. This provides a smart way to issue the currency and also creates an incentive for more people to mine.

 

Bitcoin is Secure

Bitcoin miners help keep the Bitcoin network secure by approving transactions. Mining is an important and integral part of Bitcoin that ensures fairness while keeping the Bitcoin network stable, safe and secure.

Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions or blockchain. This ledger of past transactions is called the block chain as it is a chain of blocks. The block chain serves to confirm transactions to the rest of the network as having taken place.

Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to distinguish legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

What is Proof of Work?

What is Mining Difficulty?

What is Bitcoin Cloud Mining?

What is the Blockchain?

Bitcoin mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and difficult so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady. Individual blocks must contain a proof of work to be considered valid. This proof of work is verified by other Bitcoin nodes each time they receive a block. Bitcoin uses the hashcash proof-of-work function.

The primary purpose of mining is to allow Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus. Mining is also the mechanism used to introduce Bitcoins into the system: Miners are paid any transaction fees as well as a "subsidy" of newly created coins.

This both serves the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security for the system.

Bitcoin mining is so called because it resembles the mining of other commodities: it requires exertion and it slowly makes new currency available at a rate that resembles the rate at which commodities like gold are mined from the ground.

What is Proof of Work?

A proof of work is a piece of data which was difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce so as to satisfy certain requirements. It must be trivial to check whether data satisfies said requirements.

Producing a proof of work can be a random process with low probability, so that a lot of trial and error is required on average before a valid proof of work is generated. Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work.

What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?

The Computationally-Difficult Problem

Bitcoin mining a block is difficult because the SHA-256 hash of a block's header must be lower than or equal to the target in order for the block to be accepted by the network.

This problem can be simplified for explanation purposes: The hash of a block must start with a certain number of zeros. The probability of calculating a hash that starts with many zeros is very low, therefore many attempts must be made. In order to generate a new hash each round, a nonce is incremented. See Proof of work for more information.

The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric

The Bitcoin mining network difficulty is the measure of how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. It is recalculated every 2016 blocks to a value such that the previous 2016 blocks would have been generated in exactly two weeks had everyone been mining at this difficulty. This will yield, on average, one block every ten minutes.

As more miners join, the rate of block creation will go up. As the rate of block generation goes up, the difficulty rises to compensate which will push the rate of block creation back down. Any blocks released by malicious miners that do not meet the required difficulty target will simply be rejected by everyone on the network and thus will be worthless.

The Block Reward

When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply.

Additionally, the miner is awarded the fees paid by users sending transactions. The fee is an incentive for the miner to include the transaction in their block. In the future, as the number of new bitcoins miners are allowed to create in each block dwindles, the fees will make up a much more important percentage of mining income.

Originating content @

Find out more about this amazing revolution in our many live webinars. See our calendar and attend. Knowledge is power.

Published  by

Thomas Prendergast

CEO and Founder
Markethive Inc.

 

Be a Bitcoin Mining Millionaire

Last Stage of Bitcoin Bubble Yet to Occur, Says Economic Professor

    

The professor explained that every bubble has the same attributes

According to Panos Mourdoukoutas, Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York who is also contributing to several professional journals and magazines, such as Forbes and The New York Times, when the bitcoin bubble will burst, there will be a final stage, which he calls “mania”. The professor explained that every bubble has the same attributes, which is often confused with healthy bull markets. The pattern starts with investor hype over a popular topic. This theme can be an exotic product or an emerging industry, which promises a major change to the world while making the investors rich during the process, Mourdoukoutas wrote. Comparing the 12-month performance of Bitcoin Investment Trust Shares (GBTC) and SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), we will see a major difference. While GLD increased its value by 3.93 percent in one year, bitcoin surged by 390 percent in the same period of time.

According to the professor, accommodative central banks often finance the bubbles to grow bigger. In addition, market experts can also help prices double or triple by posting their predictions on social media creating buzz for the bubble. This phase of the bubble is called mania. Mourdoukoutas explained that, at this point, the theme reaches a cascade where no investor wants to be left behind. The burst of the bubble can be expected when the early investors have already cashed out, and there are no new investors joining the club, the professor said.

Mourdoukoutas stated that the current run up of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has mostly the same as a bubble. He described BTC as an exotic asset, which has great and unique advantages. One of the most important is the attribute of bitcoin, which makes it a better hedge against global uncertainties than conventional hedges, such as gold. In addition, the cryptocurrency is a convenient form of payment, which can be used globally, however, has a limited supply of 21 million, the professor explained. According to the economics professor, there is investor hype surrounding bitcoin. Many investors had become familiar with the cryptocurrency, who can use investment trusts, such as GBTC, to participate in the market holding a good position. In addition, there is an “ultra-low interest rate environment” associated with bitcoin, the professor states.

However, Mourdoukoutas explained that only one thing is missing from bitcoin’s transformation from bubble to mania: “a broad participation beyond the ‘pioneers’ and the ‘early adopters,’ to ‘early majority'”. That’s the point where the demand for bitcoin “reaches a cascade” and the mania starts. At this phase, according to the professor, the key majority of the investors rush to invest in the cryptocurrency for the “promise it holds, rather than the fundamentals it displays.” If investment promises are not met with the end of bubbles and manias, money will be lost faster than it was made, according to Mourdoukoutas.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Last Stage of Bitcoin Bubble Yet to Occur, Says Economic Professor

How 2x9BitMax Works

How 2x9BitMax Works 

The 2x9BitMax global peer-to-peer donation network

is a way for you to help others like yourself, and in exchange they will help you. We are a community of people looking for financial backing in the projects that will fulfill us and bring more joy to the world. If you want to experience the success of turning your dreams into reality, then pay attention. We have a system that works for everyone. It's a 2x9BitMax.

Become an active member of our community

Start by signing up and getting your acccount set up. You'll need a bitcoin wallet in order to participate. You can get a free wallet at https://blockchain.info. Once you have your wallet input it into the form on the "Bitcoin Wallet" page. Next, you need to upgrade your account by providing a small donation to the person who referred you, or someone else they referred. Follow these simple steps:

1. 
   

   Click the upgrade button

   
   


2. 
   

   Get the wallet address and the amount forthe donation.

   
   


3. 
   

   Go to your wallet website and send the amount of bitcoin to the wallet address from step 2.

   
   


4. 
   

   Get the transaction hash id from the site you sent the bitcoins.

   
   


5. 
   

   Copy and paste the transaction hash id into the payment verification form on the upgrade page from step 2.

   
   


6. 
   

   Enter the amount paid, and click submit.

   
   

That's it! You just made your first donation!

Your bitcoin donations are verified and confirmed automatically within minutes.

Now you can get referrals of your own and start receiving funds from them just like you just funded your upline. If we all work together we'll all succeed to the highest levels. Find your link on the "My Link" page. Share the banners with your referral link wherever you advertise. Tell your friends! This is an incredible opportunity.

The donation sharing network

When you join, you will get a sponsor. It may be the person who referred you, or it will be someone in their downline – someone else they referred or someone one of their referrals referred. So, you'll make your first donation to your sponsor. That allows you to get referrals and receive donations.

The first 2 people who you sponsor will donate the 1st Grade amount to you.

The 2 people they each sponsor (4 total) will each donate the 2nd Grade amount to you.

The next level down – level 3 – (8 total) will each donate the 3rd Grade amount to you.

Getting the hang of it? This goes on for 8 levels growing each time in total by a factor of 2.

Now, the people you sponsor on your 1st level will donate the 2nd Grade amount to your sponsor.

Then they will donate the 3rd Grade amount to your sponsor's sponsor (3 levels up).

And on up the lineit goes to 9 levels.

 Donation Rules:

1. 
   

   You must maintain an active membership to receive donations.

   
   


2. 
   

   You must have made the grade donation within the specified period in order to receive that grade donation from others.

   
   


3. 
   

   If you do not have the required grade active then donations at that grade which are due to you will pass up to your sponsor or someone else in your upline who is eligible.

   
   

Spillover

You will be able to have a maximum of 2 active referrals on your 1st level. Those are called your front line, or direct referrals. You may refer many more people who sign up with your referral link. If you have no active referrals on your front line, then no members you refer will spillover because no one in your downline is eligible yet. So, you may see that you have many more than 2 referrals on your front line if none are active. 

Once the members in your front line make their first donations then they can have referrals placed under them. And once you have 2 active members on your front line the next ones who make a donation will spillover before doing so. They will be assigned to someone in your downline as their sponsor. The reset of your referrals will spillover when they register for an account.

Feel free to call me for any questions and/or guidance…

559-474-4614

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

 

How 2x9BitMax Works

Markets Analyst Pits

Bitcoin and Ethereum With

Peak Amazon’s 6000% Growth

 

    

Since Internet stocks, including Amazon.com Inc.

in the dot-com era, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies could be the most lucrative trading opportunities. Everyone knows that trading cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, comes at a high risk for many reasons, such as volatility. However, it is a real opportunity for both traders and investors right now.However, investors should be careful when investing in bitcoin in the longer term. Since the birth of the cryptocurrency, bitcoin owners experienced great price drops, with some of them reaching 75 percent of previous peak values. Recently in June, bitcoin, along with the other cryptocurrencies, experienced a huge price fall of nearly 40 percent before bottoming out.

Looking behind all cryptocurrencies, both investors and traders should see the bigger picture since virtual currencies are the start of something grand. The reason for this is the blockchain technology behind all of the digital currencies. Since the super useful attribute of blockchain, which enables value transfer without middlemen, many companies, and financial institutes are planning to implement the new tech. According to Gordon Scott, contributor at Investopedia, who is also the Managing Director of the CMT program for the Market Technicians Association, the recent price surge of bitcoin’s price “is an indication that many more people are starting to believe these promises could actually be fulfilled.”

If bitcoin seems to be too fast for many, investors should look back to the dot-com crash in 2000, where many of the Internet stocks crashed, many were lowered in value but managed to recover, while some of the stocks rocketed to orbit and stayed there, such as Amazon and eBay.According to Scott, there is a worthwhile comparison between the prices of Amazon and bitcoin. Amazon, between the period of 1997 and 1999 increased its value by 6,000 percent. On the other hand, bitcoin’s price rose by 4,000 percent from 2009 to 2010 and further increased by 2800 percent from 2016 to 2017. Ethereum also experienced big price surges: the value of the cryptocurrency increased by 2,800 percent from 2016 to 2017.

At first, most of the people knew that Amazon had a great idea, however, no one could quantify the share value of the company accurately. Investors had to guess the value of the firm, which resulted in overestimating the possibilities for a time. The peak price from 1999 looks really cheap by comparison today. Surprisingly, bitcoin’s performance in the cryptocurrency’s first two years only achieved approximately two-thirds of Amazon’s price increase. The past two years in both bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s life came with the most dramatic price surges, however, it was not enough to reach Amazon’s meteoric rise.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Markets Analyst Pits Bitcoin and Ethereum With Peak Amazon's 6000% Growth

South Korean Firm Pays $1 Million in Bitcoin Ransom to Regain Data

    

A South Korean web hosting company is paying over USD $1 million

in bitcoin to extortionists to put an end to a ransomware crisis affecting nearly 3,500 customers. In what is seen as the biggest publicly-known payout to date, South Korean web hosting firm Nayana is paying out a total of 397.6 BTC (approx. $1.05 million at press time) to the attacker in order to recover the data of websites belonging to over 3,400 customers, most of whom are small business customers.

The ransomware, titled Erebus, infected a total of 153 Linux servers along with customers’ websites. According to Trend Micro, the ransomware strain is capable of infecting up to 433 file types including office documents, databases, archives and multimedia files. Closer analysis by researchers revealed the ransomware to be specifically coded toward targeting and encrypting web servers and their data. In a notice posted on June 12, Nayana revealed details of the original ransom note which demanded an unprecedented 550 bitcoins ($1.6 million at the time). “My boss tell me, your buy many machine, give you good price, 550 BTC. If you do not have enough money, you need make a loan,” wrote the extortionist in his original communication.

The demand and the ensuing threat read:

“You company have 40+ employees, every employees’s annual salary $30,000 all employees 30,000*40 = $1,200,000 all server 550BTC = $1,620,000   If you can’t pay that, you should go bankrupt. But you need to face your childs, wife, customers and employees. Also your will lost your reputation, business. You will get many more lawsuits.”  On June 14, Nayana posted an update, revealing CEO Hwang Chil-hong’s negotiations with the hackers. The executive revealed he was facing financial ruin and negotiated the ransom sum down to 397.6 BTC, to be paid in three installments. So far, two payments have been paid already.

Trend Micro researchers point to Nayana’s use of outdated systems – a 2008 Linux kernel, Apache and PHP versions from 2006 as factors behind the ransomware exploit. “It’s worth noting that this ransomware is limited in terms of coverage, and is, in fact, heavily concentrated in South Korea,” researchers wrote. Nayana’s most recent update from June 20 (Tuesday) reveals that a currently-running decryption program will take about 2-5 days to recover customer files, while some servers are expected to take over 10 days. The third payment is expected to be made today, Wednesday, upon receiving an additional decryption key.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

South Korean Firm Pays $1 Million in Bitcoin Ransom to Regain Data

The Fundamentals for a Successful Inbound-Marketing Strategy

    

An entrepreneur’s responsibilities reach far and wide. 

You wear a number of hats on a day-to-day basis, none more important than marketing. To succeed, you must learn the strategies and practices that work best in 2014. A deep understanding of inbound marketing best practices is vital to the growth and success of your business. No matter how busy you are, you simply can't ignore the importance of marketing your brand effectively. Take a look at the eight most important things every entrepreneur needs to know about inbound marketing.

The traditional marketing playbook is broken. 

Almost everyone – 91 percent, to be precise – has unsubscribed from email lists. Two-out-of-three people (68 percent) who record TV content do so to skip advertisements (Motorola, December 2012) and, according to DoubleClick, the average click-through rate on display ads is only 0.2 percent. According to Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot and author of the book Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online, the way modern consumers shop and make purchases has changed dramatically, and as such, businesses must adapt in order to survive.

In an interview, Halligan said, “The Internet has fundamentally changed how we live our lives, and as consumers, we now have more options than ever to tune out marketing that is annoying. Most entrepreneurs I know understand that based on their own experience, but when it comes to marketing their business, they default to the traditional marketing playbook because it's easy or because it's what everyone has always done for years. That's a huge mistake."

According to Halligan, you can no longer rent your way to consumer attention, you need to earn it. Instead of dreaming up new ways to interrupt your way into your prospects’ lives, invest in ways to engage them meaningfully with an inbound experience. “Dharmesh (Shah) and I wrote the inbound marketing book to give entrepreneurs actionable advice to attract, engage and delight their prospects, customers and leads,” Halligan explained. "Inbound marketing focuses on the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet, and entrepreneurs have more remarkable ideas than anyone I know."

Your content must be remarkable enough to break through the clutter. 

Think about how many channels you have on your television, and how many websites and social media channels compete for your attention each day. The same is true for your customers. It’s not enough to just produce content. Your content must educate, inspire or entertain your audience. Don’t talk about your brand non-stop or try to sell people too early or often in your content. Instead, try to spark interesting dialogue and discussion with your content. Doing so will pay off with attention and engagement.

Think of your website as a hub, not a megaphone.

Far too many businesses think about their websites as broadcast channels for addressing a large group of people. Your website functions best when its content and design are built with a human touch. Instead of writing copy to impress your competitors, create copy and experiences an individual customer will love. Don’t scream through a megaphone at your customers. Design the entire end-to-end experience with individual humans in mind. Conversation trumps a broadcast message every time. Design your web experience accordingly.

Inbound includes content and code.

 Many entrepreneurs mistake massive volumes of content for an inbound strategy, forgetting that shipping code is indispensable as well. Specifically, free tools are powerful in converting web traffic into highly engaged leads. For example, InsightSquared created Sales Funnel, a free tool that allows Salesforce users to quickly and efficiently diagnose their sales funnel. Leads that try Sales Funnel convert at a rate almost twenty times higher than leads that don’t. Free tools can transform your entire customer experience. Invest developer resources into your marketing efforts for the biggest impact possible.

Master the call to action. 

Think about how hard you work to get traffic to your site. Now think of what happens if a visitor comes to your site and doesn’t know where to go or what to do next once they visit. You’ve just wasted all of your hard efforts! Your call to action is a sign post showing your visitors where they should go next. If someone came to your blog first, you want to make it easy and seamless for them to subscribe to read similar articles. If a visitor comes from a co-marketing initiative with a partner, ensure the copy on the site is built specifically to appeal to someone who knows both your brands. Tailor the next step accordingly. It’s not enough to optimize your site for search. You have to optimize your site for action.

Get visual. 

The average attention span is just eight seconds, so even if you want to write a 10,000-word essay on your new product launch, chances are slim that your audience will get through it. Creating remarkable visual content is a great way to cut through content clutter and stand out from the pack. If you don’t have an army of designers at your disposal, use Canva or Visage to create simple and beautiful visuals, hire a young freelancer to pitch in or just put your iPhone to good use taking pictures of your space, your customers, your team and your product. When it comes to content, a photo (or video) really is worth 1,000 words.

Inbound delivers higher ROI for your business. 

In a 2013 survey, American inbound marketers spending more than $25,000 per year saved an average of 13 percent in overall cost per lead ($36 versus $41 with outbound). It’s far more expensive to continue pouring money into paid channels that don’t deliver returns than it is to invest in blogging and social media. Inbound marketing is good for your bottom line and your brand.

Hire wisely.

If you’re hiring an in-house marketer or an agency to help with your marketing efforts, you need a skill set that matches your strategy. Invest in people who are digitally savvy, highly analytical, have significant reach on the web and have experience creating remarkable content. Today’s marketing world requires companies to continually optimize. The team behind you must be well equipped, comfortable with the technology and have the tenacity to update your strategy and approach on a daily basis to meet your growth goals. Successful inbound marketing is a science that requires a specific expertise and plenty of experience. Even if marketing isn’t your cup of tea, it’s important that you know and understand the basics. If you keep these tips in mind, you can rest assured that your business is practicing the latest and greatest inbound marketing techniques, and maximizing its growth potential.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Inbound Marketing.

The Fundamentals for a Successful Inbound-Marketing Strategy

Blockchain Comes to East London With Colu Local Currency Launch

Blockchain Comes to East London With Colu Local Currency Launch

    

A new cryptocurrency is coming to east London.

Launched by Israel-based blockchain startup Colu, the 'Local Pound, East London' currency is now available for area consumers and small businesses who want to boost the local economy. The digital currency is tied one-to-one to the national currency, the British pound, and can be bought with cards and bank accounts. According to Colu co-founder and vice president, Mark Smargon, Colu's currencies are an attempt to combat the threat of retail chains in cities and neighborhoods, while the accompanying app is meant to help businesses manage their transactions and help locals discover merchants in their area. In this context, the startup's local digital currencies are trying to remove technical barriers for local businesses when it comes to paperless transactions.

Smargon told CoinDesk:

"The local businesses are not really interacting with blockchain knowingly. The idea of selling blockchain to consumers and small businesses is not something we are doing."

The company has launched services in Liverpool and Tel Aviv, where it also has its operations. The Liverpool currency, which went live in late 2016, has around 16,000 users and merchants on the network.

Future ambitions

Going forward, Colu plans to build out more features as the communities around the local currencies grow. "We started on a very small scale, on a neighborhood scale, and right now we're working on a city scale," said Smargon. "We merged all of our communities in Tel Aviv into one big Tel Aviv coin." One possible feature in the pipeline is allowing Colu local currencies to be interchangeable with more widely known cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and ether. Though, Smargon said this could be some way off. "Right now, we're not focusing on opening new economies but building the retention," he said, adding that its various currencies have about 50,000 users and carried out $1m worth of transactions. The company is now in the process of applying for an e-money license in the UK to bolster its digital currency development.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Blockchain Comes to East London With Colu Local Currency Launch

Vitalik Buterin Confirms Ethereum’s Proof of Stake 75 Percent Complete

  

At the Taipei Ethereum Meetup,

Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders and lead developers of Ethereum, revealed that the development of a proof of stake protocol for the Ethereum network is 75 percent complete. Prior to the announcement of Buterin, in a recent interview, Ethereum Foundation member and Ethereum co-founder Hudson Jameson released the foundation’s official roadmap for Ethereum development in 2017. The roadmap included the foundation’s plans of releasing the next version of Ethereum called Metropolis in three to six months and following that update with a switch of consensus protocol from proof of work to proof of stake.

Vitalik Buterin reaffirmed the Ethereum development roadmap laid out by Jameson and emphasized that Ethereum will most likely switch to a proof of stake protocol by the end of 2017. At the Taipei Ethereum Meetup, a community of over 500 members that focuses on the discussion of Ethereum and blockchain innovation,

Buterin stated:

“We are working on a daemon that actually interacts with a Casper [smart] contract and sends transactions to it. That is the first part. The second stage is that we will write clients that are aware of Casper contracts.”

In regard to the development of Casper, Buterin stated that it is over three quarters completed.

What is Casper & Proof of Stake

Since 2015, Ethereum developers actively have dug into the development of Casper and a proof of stake (PoS) protocol. PoS and proof of work (PoW) are consensus protocols that allow stakeholders or miners to come to an agreement on various issues and verify transactions on the blockchain. For instance, if the Bitcoin network is to agree upon a hard fork, miners have to signal their hash power to approve the fork. Also, in a proof of work protocol, miners have to allocate their hash power to verify and confirm transactions.

PoS is different in the way that it considers stakeholders as the majority and it does not utilize the hash power of miners to verify or confirm transactions. In a PoS protocol, miners do not exist. The largest stakeholders in the network are forced to play by the rules and verify transactions. Ultimately, the economic issue of switching to Casper or a PoS protocol comes down to the incentives for stakeholders. How stakeholders are incentivized or benefited for verifying and confirming Ethereum transactions.

The Ethereum Foundation and Buterin’s perception of a PoS system is that everyone within the protocol is technically a miner and therefore unless they choose to lose their stake of Ether by playing against the rules, every user will verify and confirm transactions in a fair manner. Essentially, the foundation and its developers believe this is the ultimate decentralized governance system that increases participation of stakeholders of the network.

In an interview on January 18, Buterin stated that once completed, Casper will be tested across all seven clients of Ethereum in a testnet. If the testnet experiment of Casper is successful, developers intend to move it to production and release its final code by this year. Currently, various blockchains including NXT, BitShares, and Peercoin operate on the PoS protocol. Some utilize a hybrid system between PoW and PoS to optimize their networks’ efficiency.

However, despite the success of the aforementioned blockchain networks, leading blockchain company and mining firm BitFury noted in its whitepaper that a PoS protocol is vulnerable to a wide range of attacks such as long-range attack, bribe attack, Coin Age accumulation attack and precomputing attack that could result as long-term issues for the network.

“Currently, there are several digital currencies implementing some form of proof of stake consensus including Peercoin, Nxt, Novacoin, BlackCoin, and BitShares. However, pure proof of stake approaches pose substantial security threats that cannot be recreated in proof of work systems (including Bitcoin). These problems are inherent to proof of stake algorithms, as proof of stake consensus is not anchored in the physical world (cf. with hashing equipment in proof of work),” BitFury’s white paper.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Vitalik Buterin Confirms Ethereum's Proof of Stake 75 Percent Complete

Blockchain Startup Everledger
Partners with Singapore Diamond Exchange and Kynetix

   

Everledger, the London-based startup that uses the blockchain

to securely store data and provide provenance for high-value physical assets such as diamonds and artwork, has entered into a partnership with the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX) and physical commodity markets expert Kynetix. The Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX) is the world’s first commodity exchange in physically settled diamonds. The exchange is also the first fully electronic self-regulated marketplace for traders and accredited investors powered by real-time transaction data. The exchange revealed the new partnership through a press release on June 15.

Kynetix is a leading physical commodity digitization expert that has developed a platform called Sentinel that allows commodity exchanges and trading companies to meet the challenges associated with compliance, automation, risk and revenue generation. Sentinel’s sophisticated post-trade software powers quick processing time for large-scale physical deliveries. The three companies have successfully concluded the first part of its proof-of-concept for a blockchain-based authentication and record-keeping service for trading diamonds on a global commodity exchange.

Everledger’s blockchain technology will be used to verify the ownership and authenticity of the diamonds, which will be queried through Kynetix’s Sentinel market infrastructure platform. This will enable owners of diamonds with certificates of ownership from third party verification laboratories to ascertain the history and confirm ownership of their asset.

The head of Business Development at Kynetix, Guillaume Kendall said: “In line with our mission to build total trust in physical commodities, we believe this innovative integration of our Sentinel platform with blockchain is yet another step towards reducing the risks associated with trading and financing commodities globally.“ Once a trade happens on SDiX, the changes in the ownership of the diamond will be automatically recorded on the blockchain, which ensures proof of ownership is securely recorded due to the blockchain’s immutable nature. This record is then made easily available to all relevant market participants.

Everledger founder and CEO Leanne Kemp said: “It was a pure technical delight to integrate with Kynetix, a powerful combination of technology and purpose entwined. We are pleased to provide the market-leading blockchain infrastructure that is key to SDiX’s verification, and data archiving services and look forward to working industriously with the market on creating purposeful tooling to enable safe and fast trading in physical diamonds.”

The service was able to verify the details of a consigned diamond basket on SDiX consisting of Gemological Institute of America (GIA) certified stones using the data points that are used by Everledger in its provenance process. The solution was able to output a “view receipt” of the digital certificate for each stone in the basket, housed on the blockchain, proving its efficiency.

The CEO of the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange Linus Koh, said: “This exciting collaboration builds on SDiX’s record of delivering advanced technologies to enable a trusted, fair and transparent marketplace for trading diamonds as an investable asset class. This new concept draws on blockchain’s distributed ledger capability to demonstrate how we can further instill confidence and convenience for the benefit of diamond investors and financiers.” This new system is expected to be applicable as a solution to a wide range of diamond market challenges such as enhancing provenance data, increasing the security and efficiency of the supply chain, as well as helping to develop new risk management tools.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Blockchain Startup Everledger Partners with Singapore Diamond Exchange and Kynetix

Top Most Hyped Up Cryptocurrencies Right Now

    

                             It is apparent there is a lot of excitement in the world

of alternative cryptocurrencies. Plenty of coins are seeing significant value increases, although not all of them will have a place in the mainstream world. Below are some of the altcoins gaining a lot of value as their mainstream potential continues to grow.

Augur

Every cryptocurrency enthusiast will have heard of the Augur project. By creating a decentralized prediction market where users can wager on any event taking place at any given time, Augur sees a lot of merit in using the wisdom of the crowd. The platform will be powered with REP tokens, which have seen a fair value increase these past few days. About a week ago, the value per REP was US$5.35, which has now increased to US$10.16. Keeping in mind how there are only 11 million tokens, this value could go up even further in the coming months. Then again, investing in Augur should not be done for short-term gains by any means.

Factom

Even though the Factom project is quite intriguing, a lot of people tend to overlook the platform’s native token. Factom stores records on the blockchain and anchors them to the Bitcoin ledger. It appears people are finally realizing the potential Factom holds, as its native token’s value has increased from US$2.63 to US$4.41 in just seven days. Impressive momentum for a somewhat undervalued project.

Dash

The rise of Dash‘s value cannot be ignored by anyone in the world of cryptocurrency. Even a DDoS attack against a few hundred masternodes could not disrupt this price increase by any means. Even though Dash’s value is retracing a bit after a steep rise, things are still looking quite positive. Over the course of one month, Dash’s value has gone from just over US$21 all the way to US$90. It even surpassed US$100 yesterday, but the price momentum could not be sustained for long.

Monero

Some people will gladly tell you a Monero price increase had to happen sooner or later. Anonymity-centric cryptocurrencies always tend to do well, and several darknet markets have shown interest in Monero as well. Things are looking very good for Monero these past few days, with a value increase from US$12.45 per XMR all the way to US$22 in a week’s time. It is interesting to see Dash and Monero experience growth around the same time.

Ethereum

People who are not glued to the exchange charts right now may have missed out on Ethereum‘s meteoric rise these past few days. Right now, one ETH is worth US$40.98, up from US$18.75 a week ago. Interestingly enough, Ethereum Classic saw its value increase as well, from US$1.33 to US$2.02. Although some people argue these coins are still one and the same ecosystem, there are some major differences between them. In the end, both coins’ market cap is increasing at the same time. Most intriguing indeed.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Top Most Hyped Up Cryptocurrencies Right Now

Top Alternative Cryptocurrencies

on the Rise

In the world of alternative cryptocurrencies,

it is very important to keep a diversified portfolio. Not every coin going up in value has a legitimate use case, and there are quite a few pump-and-dump schemes to be wary of. However, some altcoins are getting a lot of positive attention due to the developers putting in a lot of hard work. Below are some coins which have recently achieved major technological breakthroughs, and are now seeing their value rise as a result.

BlackCoin

Although a lot of people have seemingly forgotten about BlackCoin, the cryptocurrency is still around. One of the main areas of focus for this project has always been to find ways to improve the proof-of-stake protocol. In a recent update, the BlackCoin developers have unveiled their Blackcoin Lore launch, which is a solution paving the way for smart contract potential.

Moreover, this new milestone will also make BlackCoin the first proof-of-stake digital currency to implement key components from Bitcoin Core 0.12. More importantly, this update paves the way for smart contracts on the BlackCoin blockchain moving forward. It will be interesting to see when this dream will be realized, but it is definitely something to look forward to. Additionally,the update allows BlackCoin to benefit from projects such as Blockstack and Joinmarket.

 Maidsafe

A lot of people were caught by surprise when the value of Maidsafecoin suddenly started to explode a few days ago. It seems the most recent development update has something to do with the price momentum, even though none of the updates are “major.” All of this goes to show the Maidsafe concept is inching closer toward finalization, which is good news for anyone looking into using a decentralized internet.

Stratis

It has to be said, the Stratis value has been a bit of a rollercoaster these past few weeks. With the value surging non-stop for nearly a week, it almost started to look like a pump. However, the value corrected quickly and is now seemingly stable around the US$9 mark. A new wallet update was released not too long ago, and it looks like developers are making good progress on the Breeze Wallet too. Moreover, it has been confirmed one can effectively mine PoS blocks inside the Breeze Wallet, which is a major development.

Siacoin

Siacoin has been of great interest to cryptocurrency users and speculators over the past few weeks. The world of decentralized file storage solutions is getting a lot more interesting, to say the least. A lot of users are experimenting with these solutions as a way to earn Siacoin for sharing excess hard disk space with people looking for storage solutions. Sia is one of the projects getting very close to providing actual decentralized file storage solutions to the masses. It is only natural the price of this native token goes up as well.

Ethereum

Although a lot of people would rather not think of Ethereum as an alternative cryptocurrency, it still fits into this category. That being said, the recent value increase of Ether has been nothing short of amazing. The value per ETH surpassed US$365 and seems to maintain that value with relative ease. However, there is still a question of how much of this price point is due to speculation, rather than “actual” value. For a cryptocurrency ecosystem with no supply cap, some people feel Ether is incredibly overvalued. Then again, the token is necessary for people looking to buy into most cryptocurrency ICOs.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Top Alternative Cryptocurrencies on the Rise

ZCash, Ether, and Monero Miners Can Now Use Nvidia Pascal GPUs

   

The impressive rally in digital currencies

in the past three months has given the cryptocurrency mining industry a boost. Demand for mining equipment is higher than ever as individuals and companies are looking to profit from the increased value of many cryptocurrencies through mining.

As BTCManager reported on June 9, the shares of the semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have skyrocketed due to a surge in demand for its graphics cards, which cryptocurrency miners are increasingly using to  bring more digital currency into existence. AMD, however, is not the only publicly-traded technology firm that has benefited from the boom in cryptocurrency mining.

Nvidia Pascal GPUs More Efficient Than AMD’s

California-based Nvidia produces graphics processing units (GPUs) that are primarily using in the gaming space. Recently, however, cryptocurrency miners have increasingly started to purchase Nvidia’s GPUs to boost their mining productivity. More specifically, Nvidia’s Pascal-based GPUs.

Nvidia’s Pascal GPUs, such as the GTX 1060 and the GTX 1070, have demonstrated to be more efficient than their counterparts produced by AMD. According to research conducted by RBC Capital Markets Analyst Mitch Steeves, who compared the cryptocurrency mining performance of Nvidia’s GTX 1070 with AMD’s RX 580 GPU for the digital currency ether, Nvidia’s GPU required 33 percent less power consumption and is, therefore, a much more efficient graphics card for mining than the popular RX 580. “If we switch to building a full Data Center environment, electrical costs become increasingly more important (Bitcoin environment), and the older NVIDIA GPUs outperform AMD over the course of a year,” Steeves stated.

Nvidia’s Pascal-Based Mining Hardware

To profit from the crypto mining boom, Nvidia has launched mining hardware built using eight Pascal GP106-100 GPUs, which are being referred to as “mining cards.” The mining hardware is targeted at ether, zcash, and monero miners and aims to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the mining process. The mining equipment uses an Intel Celeron Mobile processor, a 64GB mSATA SSD, 4GB of DDR3 DRAM, and up to 1600W PSU. The power supply unit (PSU) is not included and is listed as optional to allow users to choose what they need for the specific currency they want to mine. Each cryptocurrency has different power requirements when it comes to mining.

For example, to mine Ethereum’s ether, it is recommended to use 1000W PSU, which delivers roughly 200MH/s (+/- 5 percent. To mine zcash, 1050W PSU is recommended, which delivers roughly 2500 Sol/s, while monero mining required around 700W, which delivers roughly 4400 H/s +/- five percent. To run Nvidia’s mining machine, seven six pin 12V power connectors are needed plus eight additional six pin connectors to run the “mining cards.” Furthermore, the system is setup for passive cooling on the GPUs while the enclosure makes use of five inflow and four outflow higher power system fans to keep the system cooled and functional.

Should the impressive rally in cryptocurrencies continue throughout the year, bitcoin mining equipment producers will see their business flourish as more and more individuals are jumping onto the cryptocurrency mining bandwagon in the hope to make a nice profit.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

ZCash, Ether, and Monero Miners Can Now Use Nvidia Pascal GPUs

Former US Defense Official Urges Govt to Incentivize Blockchain Investments

 

    

Former Department of Defense official Eric Rosenbach

urged the United States Foreign Relations Committee to incentivize blockchain investments as part of a wider strategy to combat cyberspace threats. Rosenbach, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security during the Obama administration, made this remark during a speech titled “Living in a Glass House: The United States Must Better Defend Against Cyber and Information Attacks.”

Rosenbach’s thesis is that cyber warfare is asymmetric in that “a small nation with an offensive cyber capability can have an outsized effect on a large power” such as the United States. He believes that the high rate of internet access within the United States, along with the open nature of American democracy, renders the nation vulnerable to a cyber attack from a hostile actor such as North Korea. He believes such an attack “is likely to happen within the next year if current trends continue.” He argues the United States must guard itself against cyber attacks by pursuing an aggressive,

tech-based approach.

In sum, the strength of the tech sector and the internet has driven American economic growth and strengthened our democracy for the past two decades. The corollary of this success, though, is that the US is increasingly vulnerable to cyber and information attacks. In order to maintain the “center of gravity” for the United States, we must bolster America’s cybersecurity posture and rethink our strategy for countering foreign information operations.

Specifically, he advised the US government to “incentivize investment in cloud-based security, blockchain-enabled transactions, and quantum computing.” Such technological investments should help secure American against cyber threats.

How Will Governments and Blockchains Coexist?

Many cryptocurrency advocates will bristle at some of Rosenbach’s other security suggestions, including withholding information about cybersecurity vulnerabilities from the public domain. However, as governments begin to realize the possibilities presented by blockchain technology, it is inevitable that they will try to find ways to use it for their own purposes. To this end, the Department of Homeland Security recently awarded grants to blockchain researchers, and just this week the State Department established the Blockchain@State working group.

The first blockchain was designed as a tool for revolutionary decentralization. Governments, by necessity, will look to co-opt the technology and integrate it into centralized frameworks. Only time will tell what role the government will play in blockchain technology’s future, as well as how blockchain technology will affect the nation-state.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Former US Defense Official Urges Govt to Incentivize Blockchain Investments

Bitcoin-Ethereum Flippening Fervor “Makes No Sense,” Claims Vinny Lingham

Bitcoin-Ethereum Flippening Fervor “Makes No Sense,” Claims Vinny Lingham

    

Both bitcoin and ether prices fell today,

putting off what many traders consider inevitable—the “Flippening.” The Flippening, of course, refers to the potential future date when Bitcoin could lose its status as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Many coins have tried to usurp Bitcoin through technical innovations, corporate partnerships, and marketing strategies, but Bitcoin has continued to reign supreme.

Only recently has the Flippening become a real possibility. As the ether price has surged to a high of more than $400, Ethereum has become the first cryptocurrency to get within striking distance of Bitcoin’s market cap. Many crypto-pundits have begun to ponder what will happen if the Flippening does occur. Will it be the beginning of the end for Bitcoin? Will the Ethereum platform finally take the blockchain mainstream?

The Flippening “Makes No Sense”

Others, such as Gyft co-founder and Civic CEO Vinny Lingham, believe those questions are meaningless and irrational.

As he stated on Twitter:

Bitcoin is better money, deflationary & scarce. Ether is not really money, inflationary & abundant. The flippening makes no sense[.]

What Lingham’s tweet alludes to is that, strictly speaking, Bitcoin and Ethereum are not competitors. Bitcoin is designed to function as a currency (which is why Bitcoin nodes validate addresses), while ether is meant to serve as fuel for Ethereum’s decentralized smart contracts platform; this is why the developers of Ethereum refer to ether as a “token” and advise it is not intended to be used as a currency. However, that warning has not stopped people from treating ether like a currency.

Lingham notes bitcoin derives its value from its scarce and deflationary nature. Ether, in contrast, is inflationary. Ether issuance is capped at 18 million per year (the move to Casper should decrease that number further), so the rate of inflation will decrease every year, but the token will remain inflationary to some degree. Ether’s inflationary nature has proved unpopular with some Bitcoin proponents, many of whom were first attracted to cryptocurrency because of Bitcoin’s “digital gold” nickname. Flippening numbers on Thursday.Additionally, as Lingham points out, there are already far more ether in circulation than bitcoins (~92.5 million ETH to ~16.4 million BTC).

What is Money?

Lingham’s tweet triggered a litany of replies (more than 130 at the time of writing). Lightning co-founder Elizabeth Stark ascribed the Flippening to short-term ether speculation. She stated that “Users and real use cases are what will matter,” not short-term market cap rankings.

Before long, the thread had devolved into arguments about the fundamental nature of money. BitPoint CEO Aaron Foster, for instance, argued that Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin’s market cap and that to deny that ether is money is “stupid,” even though Ethereum nodes do not validate addresses. “What is money?,” he asked. Olivier Janssens rejected the assertion that Ethereum cannot serve as a store of value.  Others compared ether to the U.S dollar (both favorably and unfavorably) and pushed back against Lingham’s assertion that deflation is a positive attribute for a currency to have. In any case, the Flippening frenzy should serve has a reminder that no matter how technologically-advanced humanity becomes, it will likely never reach consensus on one of the society’s most fundamental questions: “What is money?”

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept

Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Bitcoin-Ethereum Flippening Fervor “Makes No Sense,” Claims Vinny Lingham

Coinsilium Invests in Blockchain-Based Professional Network Indorse

   

Singaporean blockchain startups are continuing to attract more investors

to this emerging sector. On June 9, early-stage startup accelerator Coinsilium announced a SGD$100,000 ($72,500) investment in Singaporean blockchain-based Linkedin-like professional network Indorse.

According to the official press release, the deal was secured with the issuance of a convertible loan which granted Coinsilium an undisclosed number of the native tokens of the Indorse blockchain network. Essentially, the deal was settled in a way similar to how Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are conducted within the cryptocurrency market except in a private manner. In a publicly disclosed ICO, a certain number of native tokens of a blockchain network are up for sale within a limited timeframe. For instance, most recently, the Bancor Network deployed on top of the Ethereum network raised $150 million within a three-hour timeframe by issuing its unique native tokens to investors.

Instead of conducting a public ICO like most Ethereum-based blockchain projects and companies have done in the past few months, Indorse opted to carry out a private ICO-like deal with an early-stage accelerator to facilitate its growth and scale proportionally in the Singaporean market. Eddy Travia, the CEO of Coinsilium, revealed that Indorse will serve professionals as a monetizable platform. Users on the Indorse blockchain-based professional network will be able to earn reward tokens by sharing their skills and activities.

More to that, 21 Inc, which raised $116 million from an all-star team of early-stage investors, switched its main service or product from 21 Inc computer-based applications to a bitcoin-accepting inbox that allows users to receive an email response from other users in the network by paying a reward at a price set by the email respondent. The company released this service due to the lack of incentive provided by existing platforms such as Linkedin when responding to messages and invitations. Indorse can also include 21 Inc’s bitcoin-based inbox product by utilizing its native tokens and its blockchain network. If its blockchain focuses on flexibility rather than security like the Ethereum network, it will be able to introduce a wide range of applications and features for professionals.

“Indorse will also allow users to profit from sharing their skills and activities on the platform via reward tokens. This is a new and game-changing model in a multi-billion-dollar social media industry, and we are confident that Indorse has the requisite skills and talent to propel Indorse to become one of the world’s most popular decentralized social platforms,” said Travia. David Moskowitz, Co-Founder, and CEO of Indorse explained that the long-term vision of Indorse is to position itself at the forefront of tokenization and decentralization. It aims to target the Singaporean market in the beginning and gradually expand

globally:

“Indorse has the aim to revolutionize professional social networking using new models of tokenization and decentralization and we believe that Coinsilium’s expertise and deep knowledge in this space will be a strategic advantage to reach our goals."

On March 6, CB Insights released a report entitled “Global Ledger: Mapping Bitcoin & Blockchain Startups Around The World” which revealed that Singaporean blockchain market stands behind US and UK as the third largest blockchain industry in the world. If Singaporean blockchain and bitcoin startups such as Indorse continue to raise the interest of early-stage investors in both Asia and internationally, Singapore will continue to lead the Asian market as the continent’s blockchain hub.

Coinsilium Invests in Blockchain-Based Professional Network Indorse

Litecoin’s Charlie Lee Quits Coinbase, Receives $12,000 Donation

    

A $12,000 donation has accompanied Litecoin creator Charlie Lee leaving Coinbase

to work on his creation full-time. After Lee announced he was stepping down from Coinbase duties to dedicate himself to Litecoin development, his Litecoin Foundation received a donation of 438 LTC – around $12,000 at Tuesday’s rates. The donor, known by his handle JoeyBTC, made himself known following a Twitter request. Litecoin proceeded to come down from circling $35 per coin as Bitcoin itself slumped, with Lee’s optimistic announcement having little effect on investor opinion.

The move is the first major event for the Litecoin community since SegWit activation caused a giant price rise in May. While a long time ago in terms of 2017’s cryptocurrency price action, Litecoin just six weeks ago was the star of altcoin markets, regularly outperforming other top 10 assets and bucking downward trends. Responses to Lee on Twitter were therefore keen to forecast a new surge upwards in a market currently dominated by Ethereum (ETH). Last week, Trezor became the first Litecoin hardware wallet to support SegWit.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Litecoin's Charlie Lee Quits Coinbase, Receives $12,000 Donation

World’s First Blockchain Insurance Marketplace To Launch Ambitious ICO

  

The world’s first Blockchain-based insurance marketplace,

InsureX, is set to launch an ICO in July 2017 in a bid to raise at least 2200 ETH. The first in a large number of token sales set to launch in the next few weeks, London-headquartered InsureX intends to use the funds to create a trading platform specifically for insurance products.

“Blockchain technology presents an exciting opportunity to disrupt the insurance industry,” CEO Ingemar Svensson said in a press release Thursday. Citing Allianz insurance data, he continued: “Preliminary estimates are that gross written premiums generated by insurers contribute 3.5 trillion or 5.7 percent of the global GDP – that is a massive opportunity.”

In addition to finding products themselves, InsureX will offer a secure exchange of confidential documents and other data on the platform, which operates in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) format. The insurance industry is already slated for change, thanks to Blockchain solutions with products such as IBM Blockchain built on a hyperledger seeking to streamline common processes.

“Currently, insurance is traded and processed in traditional ways, often manually and with layers of intermediaries,” Svensson continues. “As part of the typical insurance deal, a large amount of documents and data have to be exchanged, which in a manual system introduces cost, delays and errors to the process.” The ICO will go live on July 11, with IXT tokens initially sold at an ambitious rate of 1.125 IXT per ETH, increasing to 1.757 per ETH as the sale continues through until July 31.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

World's First Blockchain Insurance Marketplace To Launch Ambitious ICO

An Introduction to Cryptoeconomics

   

The Concept of Cryptoeconomics

In this guide, you will be introduced to the concept of cryptoeconomics and how it has given birth to an entirely new digital multi-billion dollar industry.

What is Cryptoeconomics?

Cryptoeconomics is a concept as well as a new term and, hence, has no official definition yet. According to Ethereum developer Vlad Zamfir, cryptoeconomics is “a formal discipline that studies protocols that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in a decentralized digital economy. Cryptoeconomics is a practical science that focuses on the design and characterization of these protocols.” The Ethereum Wiki defines cryptoeconomics as “the combinations of cryptography, computer networks and game theory which provide secure systems exhibiting some set of economic dis/incentives.”

While the founder of TheControl, Nick Tomaino, explains cryptoeconomics as “the study of economic interaction in adversarial environments. In decentralized P2P systems that do not give control to any third party, one must assume that there will be bad actors looking to disrupt the system. Cryptoeconomic approaches combine cryptography and economics to create robust decentralized P2P networks that thrive over time despite adversaries attempting to disrupt the network.” In simple terms, cryptoeconomics is a new field of study that analyses economic interactions in the decentralized digital economy that was pioneered by bitcoin. It is the foundation on which cryptocurrencies and digital assets are built on.

How Cryptoeconomics Changed Peer-to-Peer Networks

The Bitcoin network was not the first decentralized peer-to-peer network. Before Bitcoin, we had peer-to-peer file sharing platforms such as Morpheus, and Kazaa, where users from across the world would share files with other members of the decentralized peer-to-peer network. However, what these file sharing platforms were missing was an economic incentive. Without economic incentives, there was little reason for users to keep seeding files that take space on their computers so that other users can download them. Aside from the legal aspect of sharing copyrighted material, a lack of economic incentive is what contributed to the demise of the above-mentioned platforms.  

Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, however, managed to create an economic incentive to uphold Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network. He introduced Bitcoin mining rewards for those who used their computing power to secure the blockchain and to process bitcoin transactions. This was the birth of cryptoeconomics. Before bitcoin was created, it was believed that it was impossible to achieve consensus among nodes to develop a decentralized digital currency system due to the Byzantine General’s Problem. However, due to the implementation of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism that allows Bitcoin network participants to receive new bitcoins for enabling the network to function, this previously “unsolvable” challenge was resolved. Today, the Bitcoin network has become an internationally thriving peer-to-peer payment system that has a market value of over $45 billion dollars and a single bitcoin is worth more than a troy ounce of gold.

The Evolution of Cryptoeconomics

Bitcoin was the first technology to implement a rewards system to a cryptographically secured peer-to-peer network. Due to the network’s open-source nature, many other cryptocurrencies followed that were built on top of the technology that Satoshi Nakamoto has created. Many new “altcoins” were merely bitcoin clones while some had new features that improved on their pioneering predecessor. Litecoin, for example, provides faster transaction times than bitcoin while DASH and Monero provide complete transaction anonymity. These cryptocurrencies, however, all use a proof-of-work mechanism similar to that of their predecessor, bitcoin. A new blockchain that has introduced new concepts into the world of cryptoeconomics is the Ethereum Project. Ethereum was developed by Vitalk Buterin and officially released on July 30, 2015. Ethereum differs bitcoin in three key ways, which are also helping to reshape the dynamics of cryptoeconomics.

Proof-of-Stake vs. Proof-of-Work

The bitcoin network uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism, which means that participants who want to earn rewards through bitcoin mining need to use their computational power to maintain the network by validating and processing transactions. For this work, they receive financial rewards in the form of new bitcoins. However, the proof-of-work mechanism is very inefficient. Not only is it expensive to maintain bitcoin mining hardware, it also requires a substantial amount of energy to keep the bitcoin network running. According to Vice Motherboard, the bitcoin network is projected to consume as much energy as the entire country of Denmark by 2020.

Ethereum, however, is addressing this cryptoeconomic inefficiency by moving towards a proof-of-stake consensus. A proof-of-stake consensus mechanism enables users that hold the cryptocurrency ether, to receive rewards for validating transactions without the need for electricity-intensive mining hardware to be used. Ethereum still runs on proof-of-work but it is expected to switch to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism within the next two years.

Monetary Policy

Bitcoin has a hard coded monetary policy built into its network, which allows for 21 million bitcoins to be created in total and, thereby, limits the supply of bitcoins. Furthermore, the rate at which bitcoin are created halves every four years. Bitcoin miners (those who enable the network by validating and processing transactions) are rewarded with the newly created coins. Ethereum’s monetary policy does not involve a finite number of ether that can ever be created, which could be seen as a negative. However, as Ethereum moves towards proof-of-stake, the holders of ether will be the ones to receive new ether for validating transactions. This is considered a more inclusive way of distributing coins than Bitcoin’s proof-of-work approach, which favour large well-funded centralized mining operations.

Different Script Language

Ethereum also uses a different scripting language than bitcoin, which allows for decentralized applications and smart contracts to be developed on top of its blockchain. This makes Ethereum and much wider applicable blockchain than Bitcoin's and adds entirely new layers to the field of cryptoeconomics.

The Future of Cryptoeconomics

It is hard to predict the future of such a new field of social science. However, the developments in cryptoeconomics in the past decade or so are suggesting that cryptoeconomics has the potential to play a major role in society. Through the use of trustless peer-to-peer payment networks and self-executing smart contracts, intermediaries can be alleviated while payment speed and security can be increased. As technology becomes an increasingly important part of our day-to-day lives it would only make sense for economics to become part of that too.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

An Introduction to Cryptoeconomics

Bitcoin Break $3,000 Do Not Miss This

The price of bitcoin topped $3,000 for the first time in history today, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).

If you want to double your bitcoin every 40-50 days then we have a platform for you that you do not want to miss. [Ckick Here] or copy and paste in your browser http://hivepush.com/ekjxanbwtw/1096

After spending much of the last week seeking direction in the $2,700 to $2,900-range, the average price of bitcoin across major international exchanges edged up over this threshold finally at roughly 17:00 UTC.

The new record comes at a time when alternative digital assets are seeing robust inflows, with ethereum's ether token setting a new all-time high of more than $300 today as well.

Indeed, analysts spoke to the ongoing broadening of the cryptocurrency market as a tide that is benefitting bitcoin.

"The inflows into 'alts' are greater than those into bitcoin. In other words, bitcoin is growing at a very nice pace, but non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies are growing even faster," cryptocurrency hedge fund manager Tim Enneking told CoinDesk.

Jehan Chu, managing partner at cryptocurrency fund Jen Advisors, agreed, noting that bitcoin is likely benefitting from new investor interest and the surging interest of "cryptos like ether".

Still, Arthur Hayes, founder of Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange BitMEX, stated that bitcoin is still the "most talked-about cryptocurrency", even as returns become more substantial in other areas of the market.

Hayes told CoinDesk:

"As investors marvel at bitcoin's historical returns and the returns of altcoins, their natural first purchase is bitcoin. Bitcoin has under performed other coins this year, it is now playing catchup."

Investor Sean Walsh largely agreed, pointing to bitcoin's growing price as a sign of its place in the market as the first stop on a road to other assets.

"Bitcoin still seems like the dominant gateway to [alternative digital assets]. So, many first purchase bitcoin in order to then trade their bitcoin for altcoins," he noted.

The development coincides with signs that the cryptocurrency market is maturing to support new inflows and increasing interest.

As noted by CoinDesk research analyst Alex Sunnarborg today, the cryptocurrency exchange market has never been more globally diverse or buoyed by such an array of possible inflows.

Such tailwinds have combined in recent weeks to bring new investor attention to bitcoin, with expectations for bitcoin's growth becoming more and more exuberant. Danish investment firm Saxo Bank went so far as to publish a forecasting report in which it placed the possible value of bitcoin at $100,000 in the next 10 years.

Chris Corey 

CMO Markethive Inc

Charts on mobile device via Shutterstock

Bitcoin Break $3,000 Do Not Miss This