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Topics - Pegasus

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31
Kraken / Kraken Offers Shares at $4 Billion Valuation
« on: May 21, 2019, 02:58:17 PM »

Kraken, one of the biggest crypto exchange with 60% euro market share, is hoping to raise at least $10 million (0.255% equity) at a valuation of $4 billion with $6.7 million already raised at the time of writing from 285 investors.

The exchange says they have 780 employees and $155 million in revenue for 2018 with 56% operating margins.

They’re thus valuing themselves at 25x revenue and circa 50x profits presumably on the premise of future growth beyond their current 4 million customers and $85 billion in trading volumes for all of 2018.

Over the Counter (OTC) trading and Futures might be one growth area for the exchange which claims to dominate the euro crypto market.

The exchange says they have seven established bank and payments partners and says “client on-boarding infrastructure & AML/KYC policies capture significant upside from institutional adoption.”

Making this one of the first offering of its kind through a fund raising platform, Bnk to the Future.

The platform allows accredited investors (rich people) to invest, but also sophisticated investors.

For the latter, you complete a questionnaire which can easily be passed by anyone who has some understanding of investing, allowing you then to, in this case, invest a minimum of $1,000.

You can do so by funding the account through bitcoin, eth, and fiat, with non voting shares then received.

There does not appear to be any geographic restriction on who can invest, with all this opening on Monday and may well close later today at the rate it’s going.

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32

There appear to be numerous conflicting pieces of information regarding the Cobinhood cryptocurrency exchange. While it is evident for everyone to see the company is struggling, tales of its exit scam are vastly overstated. Moreover, there is plenty of DXN token drama, which also affects this trading platform at an unfortunate time. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it seems the company will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.

The Cobinhood Story Escalates

Anyone who has kept a close eye on what is happening to Cobinhood may have noticed the company is struggling. Ever since one of the founders left the company – some claim he was fired from the position – there have been a lot of questions as to how things would progress for the trading platform as a whole. It is not uncommon for companies to see their founder depart or get fired after a while, and most firms will not suffer any real problems because of it.

In the case of Cobinhood, however, this may have been the start of a wave of problems. More specifically, it seems the co-founder was forced to leave the company due to “emotional instability and liable personal behavior”. Those are some serious allegations, although Chen never officially stated the claims are incorrect. Since that time, there have also been claims as to how the exchange will be dealing with financial problems sooner or later. A bit odd, considering how the company raised millions of dollars through its own Initial Coin Offering.

That was later on confirmed by the company. Users were taken aback by the message of how the company would potentially run out of funds in the next two years. Customer holdings were never affected in the process, but it is evident this message does not bode well for this cryptocurrency trading platform. Even so, at the time, the company stated business would resume as normal, at least for the time being.

Last week, however, a new announcement was made. Cobinhood would officially begin to downsize and reduce its active staffers to just 30. That in itself would not hinder the company’s day-to-day operations, nor would it reflect upon users in any way. Another clear warning sign something was amiss, although the service continued to operate as normal without too many problems. Users are still able to withdraw and deposit funds without hindrance, and that situation should not necessarily change in the coming weeks and months.

The DEXON Token Listing

Cobinhood is not just a regular trading platform. They also provide ICO services to companies and projects. While Initial Coin Offerings are seemingly no longer as popular as they once were, the DEXON team partnered with Cobinhood to raise the necessary funds. That round of investment was completed successfully recently, as roughly $3m worth of funds were collected in rather quick succession.

Over the past two to three days, DXN also got listed on Cobinhood for trading. More specifically, the team behind DEXON could sell their own tokens, whereas the rest of the investors were unable to effectively do so. This has created a massive DXN price decline in rather quick succession, which only fuels the speculation as to whether or not Cobinhood is doing something nefarious. So far, that has clearly not been the case, albeit the massive DXN sell-off is reflecting badly upon the platform which facilitated the token sale.

DXN and COB Prices Collapse

To put this in perspective, the DXN trading chart seemingly confirms a lot of tokens are being dumped by the team themselves. With the price falling from $0.15 to $0.02022 in very quick succession, a lot of buy orders were wiped on the exchange without too many problems. This is not uncommon behavior when a new ICO token makes its way to an exchange. In fact, back in 2017, this was an almost daily occurrence, yet it seemed things have calmed down a bit ever since.

Ever since that massive dip, the DXN price has begun to rebound quite sharply on Cobinhood. So much even that there is plenty of buy support to keep the price near the $0.12 mark at this time. As normal users cannot sell their tokens as of yet, it seems the rebound may offer a glimpse of hope. It is unclear if the DEXON team has any additional tokens to sell at this time. If that were to be the case, things could get rather hairy in the future.

All of these circumstances have also caused the Cobinhood token – known as COB –  to go through a massive price decline. More specifically, the value per COB is down by over 60% across the board, in the past 36 hours. This in itself allowed even more people to believe Cobinhood had effectively pulled an exit scam and how they are now selling off their own tokens. However, the price of COB – both in ETH and BTC value – is rebounding as well after a rough day. There is still plenty of volatility, but the price has begun climbing higher again. Very odd developments, to say the very least.

The Bankruptcy Claims are Real

On the internet, there will always be some clams which are not factually correct. Some people state how Cobinhood has filed for bankruptcy, which is not the case. It is true its parent company  Cobbingham Digital Finance Co, Ltd has indeed filed for bankruptcy this week, although this will not cause Cobinhood to stop functioning. It is possible this bankruptcy rumor is the main reason why the price of COB collapsed, as can be seen above. Other factors may be at play as well since there is still a lot of uncertainty at this time.

The bankruptcy claim of Cobbingham Digital Finance is not nefast for Cobinhood for a very specific reason. Cobbingham is a subsidiary of Blocktopia Inc, which will ensure Cobinhood can continue to operate for the foreseeable future. Until the official paperwork is submitted, there will be plenty of speculation as to how things will progress from here on out. For exchange users, it would appear there is nothing to be concerned about just yet, but those who can withdraw funds from the platform might be better off doing so as quickly as possible.

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33

The world leading cryptocurrency gambling platform 1xBit welcomes a new partner providing a variety of unique games with catchy mechanics, impressive gameplay, and rich graphics. True Flip is a crypto gambling provider having been a pioneer in the industry since 2016.

The company is well-known in the market for its provably fair RNG based on blockchain and an extraordinary storytelling approach in creating games. Now available on 1xBit are all prominent projects of True Flip own production: Mining Factory and Tony’s Reel video slots, an instant-scratch game Pirate Bay, the world has known Magic Dice game and others. All of these natively support crypto payments, providing interest for a wider range of players.

"We are happy to offer games at such a prominent playground as 1xBit, and, of course, we welcome the local crypto fans to whom these games were dedicated! The further expansion of our partner network will open the World of True Flip to more passionate players."

– CMO Konstantin Katsev.

Having started a partnership with the industry leader, True Flip continues its expansion strategy into the world gambling market, winning more and more fans worldwide. Soon to come even more games that will hopefully be available on 1xBit as well as on other platforms: the company’s launch schedule assumes a new game every other month.

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34
On May 17, Matic Network cryptocurrency token has surged by more than 75 %. One of the main reasons could be a recently announced integration of Matic’s Plasma and PoS sidechain network with the Decentraland ecosystem and the fact that the token is funded by Coinbase Ventures.


It seems that this week began pretty great for Binance coins that were (and still are) killing it on the 24h leaderboard. Celer Network rose 39,9% to $0,02 while Fetch AI had also considerable growth of 37,84% to $0,28. However, the trophy goes to MATIC Network that surged more than 75% within 24 hours.

Matic Network is a startup that provides an off/side-chain scaling tool for existing networks like Ethereum to ensure a better user experience in the context of dApps. The project was launched through Binance Launchpad less than a month ago. Almost 98% of the token’s trading volume is from Binance in the trading pair of MATIC/BTC, MATIC/USDT and MATIC/BNB.

About 62.28% of the trading volume if from MATIC/BTC trading pair, 33.28% is from MATIC/USDT trading pair and about 4.06% is from MATIC/BNB trading pair.

Matic price rose as much as 76% to $0.32 on the day. Shortly before 16:00 ET, the cryptocurrency traded at $0.31 with a circulating market cap of $66.8 million.

Matic’s daily trading volume of over $250 million exceeded the daily volume of larger projects like Cardano, Monero, and IOTA.

More Than 610% Gain In a Month

Since the start of May, the coin has gained over 610%. The key feature of MATIC Network is definitely scalability; meaning fast, low-cost and secure transactions on Matic sidechains with finality achieved on mainchain and Ethereum as the first compatible Layer 1 basechain.

Also, there is high throughput – achieved up to 10,000 TPS on a single sidechain on internal testnet; Multiple chains to be added for horizontal scaling.

User experience shows smooth UX and developer abstraction from mainchain to Matic chain including native mobile apps and SDK with WalletConnect support and security is guaranteed by Matic chain operators being themselves stakers in the PoS system.

Matic sidechains are also public in nature (vs. individual DApp chains), permissionless and capable of supporting multiple protocols.

Listing on Coinbase Coming Soon?

Earlier today, Matic announced that it had joined Binance Info’s transparency initiative, which will be used for investors to be regularly updated about the progress and state of the project.

https://twitter.com/maticnetwork/status/1130467768879517697

Crypto community is now gaining hopes that Matic will get listed on Coinbase, especially after the team announced last month that it had secured funding from Coinbase Ventures.

https://twitter.com/maticnetwork/status/1123219239840755712

The advantages of two companies working together are, among others, enabling world commerce Matic will be integrating USDC on its sidechains, possibility for Coinbase wallet users to leverage Matic network to transfer and trade assets instantly and easy accessibility from Coinbase Wallet for DApps that are deployed on Matic.

The official announcement by the Platform stated that it would help users move their assets from Ethereum to Matic. Coinbase wallet will help dApp of Matic interact with Matic Network easily and in a secure way.

Now, the wallet users will be able to use Matic Network solutions to confer promptly and send resources with Matic-based DAic being directly available from the Coinbase Wallet.

Just for a reminder, MATIC was the fourth token sale on Binance Launchpad, and the first under new lottery rules. The token sale was conducted through a single session where participants purchased MATIC tokens using Binance Coin (BNB). In this session, all 1.9 billion MATIC tokens were sold to Launchpad participants who won in the lottery. There was 16.666 winning participans with 58.38 % of winning tickets.

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35

Crypto trading on WhatsApp and other instant messengers are fast gaining traction in the market. This is because the laymen find it easier to chat with a bot, rather than engaging in complex sessions on online crypto platforms. However, though WhatsApp trading brings simplicity, it also raises a lot of questions, which could be quite daunting to answer.

Here are three main questions on Crypto trading on WhatsApp, which might trouble most people.

Lack of Privacy

Yes, WhatsApp claims end-to-end encryption. Yes, WhatsApp claims no one can see your messages. But how much of that is true?

A few months ago, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, found himself amid one of the greatest controversies of modern times, the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Concerns were raised all over the world, with the US Congress drilling Zuckerberg for giving no privacy to the users. This triggered a worldwide debate on Facebook’s legitimacy on user privacy.

WhatsApp is now owned by Facebook, which is enough to raise eyebrows now and then.

Lack of Security

Smartphones are more vulnerable to hacks than any other devices. Trading cryptocurrencies via a smartphone through WhatsApp is not the best of things to do. Earlier this year, just after the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S10, a hacker posted a video showing how he hacked the so-called highly secured device in just thirteen minutes.

Also, WhatsApp itself isn’t as secure as it doesn’t use any sophisticated security features like Two-factor Authentication, which come standard with crypto wallets. At best, it uses fingerprints or Face Unlock to block unwanted access, but both of these are highly insecure in crypto terms.

Misuse of Digital Assets

Normally, every crypto trading platform digs deep in terms of scrutiny and keeps a close watch to eliminate any misuse of funds for anti-social activities like terrorism or money laundering. The amount of information required to trade on crypto exchanges and wallets is too much to give out for such people.

WhatsApp trading is quite apt for such people. Just enter your name, set a password, and get going. Sure, the risk of being caught remains, but at a reduced level. A research paper published by the European Central Bank recently stated that though cryptocurrencies are not a threat to financial stability, they can be used for money laundering and terror funding.

This, coupled with the minimal info system on WhatsApp and other instant messengers, is quite risky. For instance, users of the privacy-focused instant messenger Telegram have been accused of piracy of movies and television series shows, by accepting crypto tokens from buyers.

These are just a few threats which WhatsApp or any instant messengers seriously need to work on. However, many such threats, both technical and social, are present to be tackled. So it is safe to say that though WhatsApp crypto trading sounds easy, cool and fun, this might not be the moment.

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36

Are you a malicious hacker looking for a path to redemption? It turns out that you can get paid for using your sweet skills to save the world–so-called ”white-hat” hackers have managed to rank up $32,150 in profits by identifying and fixing security flaws in popular crypto networks and services in the last seven weeks alone.

Hard Fork reported yesterday that at least 15 blockchain-related companies (including Coinbase, TRON, Brave, Augur,Omise, and EOS) distributed financial rewards to these white-hat hackers working through HackerOne, a bug bounty platform, between March 28th and May 16th.

Omise reportedly paid out rewards for the most fixes (6) over this period. Augur and Brave came in second place with three bounties paid each.

Source: TheNextWeb

Many of the rewards are for pithy amounts–the majority of Omise’s payments, for example, were for around $100 each. But some of the rewards can be quite large–both the Aeternity Network and Block.One (the company behind the EOS network) distributed a reward of $10,000 to a hacker for a single bug.

TRON paid out a $3100 award to the hacker who found that the network was vulnerable to being bombarded with malicious smart contracts, a flaw that could have completed dammed transactions on its blockchain.

For a Hacker Trying to Make a Profit, It’s Good to Be Bad

Off of the platform, white-hat hackers can be a little less ethical. In some situations, the bounty paid on each bug found is determined by the hacker who finds it; sometimes, hackers who find bugs will hold the findings hostage in exchange for a ransom; if the company doesn’t pay up, the hacker may reveal the bug to the world.

And of course, other hackers are not interested in helping with fixing problems in crypto networks at all. Earlier this month, 7000 BTC (worth $55 million at press time) was stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Binance after hackers discovered and exploited a vulnerability in its infrastructure.

Binance runs its own bug bounty program that awards white-hat hackers with up to $100,000 for a single vulnerability.

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37

The Raven Protocol team recently announced that they would be joining the Binance Chain. This partnership could be interesting as Raven protocol is geared towards exploiting AI’s full potential.

https://twitter.com/raven_protocol/status/1130297996103626755

A majority of the population is still unaware of the far-reaching battle facing a small section of the AI community to make AI a simple and accessible affair for everybody. This is because we know that AI is here, and it will be part of our lives. Regular AI companies or firms that want to incorporate AI into their systems are trying to develop new ways to improve AI life in order to explore their thoughts fully. Raven aims to enhance the economic exploitation of AI’s potential by such individuals and companies. Raven is the first truly distributed and  protocol for deep learning.

By facilitation of dynamic assignment of nodes to the network’s participating devices, Raven approaches the issue of Deep Neural archive (DNN) architecture. Thus, any additional host node dependency is eliminated, and the computational power required is significantly reduced internally.

Binance Chain is a software system blockchain in which Binance is only a contributor to the project. Many other participants in the project are in the community.  Binance Chain has called on developers to help its initiative to build the financial chain

Binance Chain concentrates mainly on the transfer and trading of blockchain assets and offers new opportunities to flow blockchain assets into the future. The Binance Chain concentrates on performance, usability, and liquidity.

This first set of businesses that either migrate to the Binance Chain or launch their tokens are, in a way, making history.

This move by Binance Chain is aimed to boost the issuance of new cryptocurrencies. Binance Chain has therefore developed into a strong platform for helping new projects, ICOs and tokens to get started.

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38

Ethereum has been on a rip recently. Just over the past seven days ETH prices have surged 20 percent from just over $200 this time last Tuesday to $250 today. The fabled golden cross could signal greater upwards movement as the uptrend has now been confirmed.

Ethereum Remains Bullish

Many had expected crypto markets to tumble following a negative announcement from the US SEC yesterday regarding the VanEck ETF proposal. The most likely outcome actually materialized, which was a further delay by the lethargic regulators who continue to drag their feet with anything crypto related.

During Asian trading today ETH has fallen below $250 after touching an intraday high of $254 a few hours ago. It is currently in a bullish pennant as noted by several traders on twitter. One has also observed the golden cross with the 50 day exponential moving average crossing above the slower 200 day EMA;

 #ETH Golden Cross Confirmed. Could take up to a few days for effect to show in price. pic.twitter.com/eK3dksfAn7

— Formerly ScienceGuy9489 (@Etherdamus) May 21, 2019

This is a bullish trend reversal signal which would signal further gains in the longer term. In terms of Bitcoin the charts there show continued support at the downtrend line which has just been broken.

Finding support…
Aren't we good to go from here? $ETH $ETHBTC pic.twitter.com/PzRfNUHbiu

— CryptoHamster (@CryptoHamsterIO) May 21, 2019

Ethereum is also currently having record trading volumes according to Coinmarketcap. During its 2019 peak last Thursday ETH volume was just below $20 billion, the highest it has ever been. The price hit resistance at $275 before pulling back to around $240 where it has been for the past few days.

Volume at the moment is around $10 billion which is four times what it was in early February. Using different metrics from Coinbase, Coindesk reported that ETH volumes were the highest they have been since December 2017 when it surged from $450 to over $800. Including the exchanges new ETH pairs in addition to the most popular two – ETH/BTC and ETH/USD – activity was worth over $1 billion during the seven day period.

In terms of market capitalization Ethereum has powered away from XRP, which once held second place albeit very briefly. A $10 billion gap now exists between ETH on $26 billion and the Ripple token at $16 billion. BitMEX data has indicated that there could be a pullback for Ethereum but all other signals are bullish.

From a technical standpoint, big things are in store for the network as the Serenity phased upgrade to ETH 2.0 approaches. This will silence its critics which are largely from rival dApp networks. Major improvements to scalability and a switch to proof of stake will be the torch that lights up the Ether flames again.

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39

By CCN: Teenage bitcoin millionaire Erik Finman has once again thrown himself into the spotlight by claiming that the flagship cryptocurrency ‘will die’ unless the sticky issues it is facing are resolved.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Finman indicated that the sticky issues plaguing Bitcoin are four. This includes its complexity with regards to use, high transaction fees, slow processing speeds and in-fighting among #DevelopmentTeam s.

It’s facing four big problems. One, its high transaction fees. Two, it takes a long time you know to kind of send anything. And then three, the people that are trying to solve those problems… it’s fragmented, it’s cultish, it’s really kind of a lot of group in-fighting. And I think the fourth one is it’s really hard to get into bitcoin. It’s really not easy.

WHAT BITCOIN NEEDS TO DO

Even before the interview, Finman has been highlighting Bitcoin’s problems on social media.

If Bitcoin wants to not die it needs more than speculation:

1. Solve Speeds
2. Solve Transaction Fees
3. For the ppl working on the above to stop being cultish
4. Have an EASY on ramp for new users —this is the biggest problem

I’m getting so irritated I might just fix it!

— ERIK FIN (@erikfinman) May 16, 2019

According to The Guardian, Finman first purchased bitcoin when he was 12. This was after being gifted $1,000 by his grandmother. Over the years Finman, who is now 20, has been trading cryptocurrencies managing to grow his holdings to 458 bitcoins. At the current prices, this hoard is worth about $3.6 million.



During the same interview with Yahoo Finance, Finman stated that bitcoin’s future as the leading cryptocurrency was not guaranteed. According to Finman, bitcoin is ‘facing a lot of stiff competition and I think it really has to respond to that’.

‘BITCOIN IS DEAD’ BUT STILL HODLING

Finman also revisited his controversial statement in December 2018 during which he said that in the ‘long-term’ bitcoin ‘is dead’. The crypto whizz kid defended the statement explaining that despite the prediction he still expects the cryptocurrency to ‘have more ups, it would have maybe one or two, three more bull runs’.

Teenage Crypto Millionaire Erik Finman Says Bitcoin is Pretty Much Dead, Offers Hope for Bitcoin Cash https://t.co/VU1T8sItIH

— CCN.com (@CCNMarkets) December 17, 2018

Last week in an interview with MarketWatch, Finman had raised the same concerns regarding Bitcoin. He even went a step further and said Litecoin was likewise afflicted. Without mincing words, Finman had said that the altcoin had ‘been dead for a while’. This was evidenced by the fact that it had declined by over 95 percent since its record high.

Despite the pessimistic view, Finman is bullish on blockchain technology as a whole. So much so that he repeated another headline-grabbing statement he had made in January last year. Then he had said that one could become a millionaire by investing in blockhain and bitcoin.

FINMAN: INVEST IN BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTO AND BECOME A BILLIONAIRE IN 10 YEARS

This time around, he added that anyone who failed to become a billionaire by investing in blockchain and cryptocurrencies in 10 years would only have themselves to blame.

‘If you’re not a billionaire’ in 10 years ‘it’s your own fault,’ says 20-year-old bitcoin tycoon https://t.co/WKTbnK5HPH $BTC $btcusd #ethereum $XMR $XRP $ZEC $LTC pic.twitter.com/Etd34pr6ff

— Mo Hossain (@MoHossain) May 16, 2019

Among the cryptocurrencies that Finman sees as having the best chances of success include Ethereum and ZCash. In the MarketWatch interview, Finman also praised Bitcoin Cash’s technology though he felt it had been poorly marketed.

But even though Finman thinks Bitcoin doesn’t have bright prospects if its shortcomings remain unresolved, he has committed to being a hodler for the foreseeable future. He expects the cryptocurrency to have ‘one more big rally at least’. Only then will he be ready to dispose of his bitcoin hoard.

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40

Physically delivered crypto futures trading contracts on CoinFlex are now available to traders outside of the US through Trading Technologies International Inc, a global trading infrastructure and data solution provider based in Singapore. The announcement of the connection between the two platforms came on May 20th.

Trading Technologies users who are eligible to access CoinFlex through the platform will also be granted access to CoinFlex’ stablecoin-to-stablecoin futures contract, which pins Tether Dollars (USDT) against Circle’s USD Coin (USDC.)

Trading Technologies’ Five-Continent User Base Could Be a Great Boon for CoinFlex, depending on Who’s Eligible

Although Trading Technologies’ infrastructure spans across five continents, the announcement did not clarify exactly which of its users would be “eligible” to access CoinFlex.; Trading Technologies did not respond to request for commentary before press time.

However, CoinFlex CEO Mark Lamb did say that in addition to retail traders, “access to CoinFLEX through TT will also be available to commercial hedgers, including mining firms, OTC trading desks and global proprietary trading firms, many of whom are already using TT’s toolset.”

CoinFlex was launched in February of this year and offers futures contracts with up to 20x leverage for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Circle Coin pinned against Tether Dollars. Its investors include Polychain Capital and Digital Currency Group (DCG.)

At the time of Polychain’s decision to invest, CEO Olaf Carson-Wee said that “as a physically-settled futures exchange, CoinFLEX will be well positioned to capture significant order flow from speculators, institutional traders and Proof of Work miners seeking to hedge against crypto price volatility and hash rate volatility.”

Coinflex and Trading Technologies International Incorporated are owned by a single consortium that includes Dragonfly Capital Partners, Global Advisors, Alameda Research, Amber AI, Grapefruit Trading, Coinfloor, crypto trader Mike Komaransky, and several other entities.

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41

TD Ameritrade is one of the best online brokers in the US that had recently announced its plans to include cryptocurrency trading on their platforms. The broker has made significant progress in that sphere. It has begun offering Bitcoin Futures contract on its platforms. It also announced an investment in ErisX – a regulated Exchange of cryptocurrency trading.

Bitcoin Futures contract trading has already begun at the official TA Ameritrade platform. Nevertheless, currently, the futures contract is only open to high-volume traders. The minimum deposit amount for trading Bitcoin futures contracts is $25000. The traders would also require two advisory notes from CFTC and NFA to acknowledge the risks associated with Bitcoins.

The apparent risk associated with trading Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies has often motivated the firms to restrict the trading to institutions. These institutions are better equipped to manage and analyze large fluctuations in the market through its liquidity and expertise.

Nevertheless, the ErisX platform is expected to be open to all retail traders as well. The firm plans to offer both spot exchanges and futures contract based on cryptocurrencies. ErisX is a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearing organization that will offer digital asset futures and spot contracts. The blog post on TD Ameritrade noted about the investment in ErisX,

“This strategic investment is yet another way to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to innovation—and bring our clients a best-in-class investing and trading experience.”

The futures and spot markets initiated by traditional platforms are the building stones for the Bitcoin’s case as an asset. The volume on these regulated Exchanges if sufficient enough will motivate the regulators to approve other cryptocurrency based financial products like ETFs and payments in the future.

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42

By CCN: Didn’t the “60 Minutes” segment on bitcoin teach the mainstream media anything? New York Post columnist John Crudele is railing against cryptocurrencies. More specifically, he’s rehashing an outdated argument in an article entitled: “Bitcoin Will Soon Be Worth Zero.” His reason for sounding the alarm is simple:

“Last Thursday night bitcoin crashed by about $1,000, to around $7,000.”

Someone should break the news that $1,000 swings are typical for the emerging cryptocurrency. Not only that, but the bitcoin price has since recovered to nearly $8,000 since he published his article on Monday.

Another thorough, thoughtful analysis https://t.co/ob6xyiRx9N

— Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) May 21, 2019

While fear mongering isn’t good for any asset class, it’s particularly dangerous for a nascent category such as cryptocurrencies. If Crudele wants to publish an article about bitcoin, he should provide a more balanced view and get his facts straight. Not everybody is bullish on BTC, but they provide a basis for their analysis, technical or otherwise. The Post columnist simply states:

“Bitcoin will soon be worth zero. But until then criminals will still be able to use it and other digital currency to move money around the world without being caught.”

It’s true that the industry continues to battle fraud such as money laundering and exchange hacks. But regulators are cracking down and the industry infrastructure is stronger than ever. Why else would Fidelity launch a bitcoin custody business and the NYSE-backed Bakkt create a regulated bitcoin futures exchange?

CENTRAL BANKERS DON’T LIKE BITCOIN. REALLY?

The other reason that he believes bitcoin is doomed is that European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said so. It’s true that Draghi doesn’t like bitcoin, but what central banker does? The mere existence of cryptocurrencies stands to threaten everything that monetary policymakers control – the flow of money in the economy.

Meet the man who spent millions worth of bitcoin on pizza

In the early days of cryptocurrency, one man decided to trade his bitcoin for pizza. It was a historic event, but not such a great investment. "60 Minutes" reports, Sunday https://cbsn.ws/2JqHEHA

Posted by 60 Minutes on Friday, May 17, 2019

HE PICKED THE WRONG YEAR TO BE BEARISH

The timing of Crudele’s bitcoin hit piece is curious considering just last weekend 60 Minutes dedicated part of its show to educating viewers about cryptocurrencies. Perhaps he is trying to ride the coattails of their popularity since doing the show, but he’s going about it all wrong. Bitcoin is in the middle of a resilient bull run with both technical and fundamental signals fueling the gains. Once it surpasses the psychologically important $10,000, a new wave of FOMO, or fear-of-missing-out, is likely to hit.

Crudele has been bashing BTC since the crypto winter when the price tanked from nearly “$20,000 to $4,000 last year.” Someone might want to tell him that it actually fell further and was trading in the $3,000 range in early 2019. But that is the beauty of bitcoin – the harder it falls the bigger the rebound.

He might also like to know that the bitcoin price has climbed higher by more than 100% year-to-date. If the BTC price were headed to zero, it probably would have happened by now.

The bitcoin price is up more than 100% year-to-date. | Source: CoinMarketCap

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43
NEO Forum / Examining NEO 3.0 and the Advantages It Offers
« on: May 21, 2019, 01:46:57 PM »

The present cryptocurrency landscape may seem very crowded to outside observers, with analysts claiming that there are more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies and related projects in existence. However, the well-known industry leaders remain largely unaltered in their position in the market, with the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, EOS, Bitcoin Cash, etc. consistently featuring among the top 10 cryptocurrencies according to market cap.

The cryptocurrency market is still a thriving one, with trade volumes far exceeding that of a stock or CFD trading. However, not all cryptocurrencies are primarily used for money making or trading purposes. NEO, which is a project founded in 2014, is an open source, community-driven platform for building decentralized applications. Originally called “Antshares”, NEO has been breaking milestones and has won numerous accolades in less than five years. The company is co-founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang.

As of May 17, 2019, NEO is trading at $13.43, with a market cap of $714,471,244. Its total circulating supply is 65,000,000 NEO at present.

On April 29th, 2019, it was confirmed by the NEO team that they will launch a new version of their blockchain network, called NEO 3.0. The new chain was further explained by the co-founder and core developer of NEO, Erik Zhang, who described it as coming from a new genesis block. He further explained that the upgrade was necessary as the architectural improvements being implemented are not compatible with the current performance and stability of the existing NEO blockchain.

With the future in place for migrating decentralized apps along with data and transactions to the new 3.0 blockchain, NEO 3.0 looks to be the next giant step towards improving the entire NEO ecosystem, ushering in a new age of decentralized app development.

NEO 3.0 – Overview of Improvements

The NEO 3.0 blockchain is expected to be a robust blockchain implementation, enhancing the degree of stability and security, in addition to other improvements, especially the optimization of the existing smart contract system. All of this is targeted towards building a feature-packed infrastructure which can effectively deal with a diverse range of business application scenarios.

Thus, a multitude of new features has been introduced to address the inefficiencies of the previous NEO blockchain, which are explained in brief, below:
  • New Pricing Model – The new pricing model aims to remove the obstacles currently faced during DApp usage and development. Neo and Gas are the native tokens on the platform, both of which are used extensively, with users being able to pay Gas which is being used for transaction fees as well as for smart contract execution. The steep cost associated with deploying and running smart contracts on the current blockchain discourages many users who are reluctant to take part in any development or usage using smart contracts. NEO aims to address these issues which plague the growth of DApp development on the NEO blockchain. The deployment and execution costs of smart contracts are significantly reduced, which results in the expansion of the application scenario of GAS. With this implementation, a credible project won’t be required to apply for grants from the NEO foundation with contract deployment costs.
  • P2P Protocol and NEOVM – NEO 3.0 comes with a redesigned P2P protocol which enables compression options and adds support for the UDP communication protocol. This is aimed at significantly improving the TPS as well as the stability of the network. On the other hand, NEO has introduced a lightweight virtual machine for executing smart contracts called NEOVM. It is characterized by a fast start-up process, multiple high-level programming language support, and lower resource consumption. This virtual machine will be decoupled from the blockchain and will help in the easier implementation of native contracts among other benefits.
  • Simple Architecture – The previous NEO blockchain offers just two methods for asset creation on the blockchain, with developers using either ‘Register Transaction’ or smart contracts. Global assets which are created by using Register Transaction are not integrated with smart contracts, which makes managing them a difficult task indeed.
  • Thus NEO 3.0 has discontinued support for global assets with all assets being created in smart contracts.
  • NeoFS – NEO 3.0 introduces NeoFS, which is a fully integrated, distributed, decentralized object storage platform, intended to be used by DApps for data storage and also as a Content Delivery Network. Rich Features include:
    • scalable data placement method
    • minimum data movement in case of node failure
    • fine control over object location
  • NeoID – NeoID is newly introduced decentralized identity protocol by NEO, empowering users and organizations to have a better degree of control over their identities. It also delivers a higher degree of security and trust when it comes to the smart economy. It consists of three main components, namely, the Trust Model, Privacy Model, and Game Model.
  • Internet Resource Access – NEO 3.0 introduces a built-in oracle implementation, allowing smart contracts to easily access internet resources during execution. This feature will enable users to develop both advanced and scenarios-specific on the blockchain, allowing DApps to rely more on external data.
  • dBFT 2.0 – dBFT 2.0 stands for Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance, which is a consensus mechanism designed for blockchain networks. A vote selects a set of consensus nodes, which in turn generate and validate blocks together. It provides a single block finality, disallowing any forks or reversal of transactions on the blockchain. It also contains an added recovery mechanism for instances such as network failures or node failures.

How NEO 3.0 Aims to Solve Problems in The NEO Blockchain

With the release of NEO 3.0, NEO is ready to take a massive step forward towards their aim of supporting enterprise level commercial applications via the blockchain. The above features are aimed at solving some of the lingering problems plaguing the previous blockchain. These are mentioned in brief below.
  • Improvements for Financial Applications – The previous NEO blockchain could be forked and transactions could be reversed, which is not a good feature to have when it comes to developing financial transactions. With the addition of the new Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanism, transactions are now irreversible, which makes it more suited for building secure financial applications.
  • Solving Inconsistency Issues Between Nodes – With the implementation of NEO’s new built-in oracle, the previous inconsistencies faced between nodes while accessing internet resources are thus largely resolved.
  • New Virtual Machine – The NeoVM, which is a lightweight virtual machine to execute smart contracts has immense benefits to offer to the blockchain. This includes the easier implementation of native contracts on the blockchain, usage in applications outside the blockchain, easy integration into any IDE and easier debugging among others.
  • Removing the Requirement of Global Assets – With the introduction of a much simpler architecture, NEO 3.0 does not require global assets anymore. By removing global assets, users can now unify all transaction types, which is vastly different from the previous NEO blockchain which had nine different types of transactions.
  • Faster Transaction Verifications – NEO 3.0 has made improvements to their validation model, which results in faster transaction verification speeds, allowing validation to be performed concurrently.
  • Creating Private Distributed Storage Systems – With NeoFS, it is now possible to create private distributed storage systems for small to medium-sized enterprises, which require servers or data centers for storing large amounts of unstructured data.
  • Solving Scalability Issues – With the introduction of NeoFS, storage can now be done on data nodes instead of the blockchain ledger. This has the potential to not only decrease the cost of smart contract deployment. Additionally, the introduction of NeoFS can store old block data instead of full nodes, which in turn increases the scalability of the NEO.
  • Divisibility of NEO – It was impossible to buy or sell a fraction of NEO on the previous blockchain. NEO 3.0 enables the transactions of fractions of cryptocurrencies including both NEO and GAS.
  • Zero-Knowledge Data Validation – With the inclusion of the NeoFS system, a new “zero-knowledge data validation method” has been introduced, based on ‘homophormic’ hashing. This, in turn, minimizes data transfers, which helps in maintaining network scalability. Computational costs on storage nodes and validation nodes are minimized significantly, ensuring a large number of parallel interactions.
  • Dealing with complex application scenarios – With the removal of global assets in the NEO 3.0 blockchain, related transactions which deal with intricate application situations will be removed and replaced with the services promised in smart contracts. This makes it possible to reduce the type of transactions from several to only one.
  • Performance of the base layer – The new architectural changes made to NEO 3.0 substantially increase the performance of its base layer by many folds. These features, however, can lead to incompatibility with the older NEO 2.x blockchain and plans are thus delayed until all NEO 2.x compatible features are developed.
The Migration Plan

The ultimate plan of migration to NEO 3.0 applies to all DApps as well as users. Although the full details of the migration are still under development to create a comprehensive plan, NEO has indicated some primary principles which will be applied to this migration, no matter what.
  • The migration is slated to be simulated in the TestNet to ensure a smooth transition.
  • All data and transaction records on the old NEO 2.x blockchain are permanently retained
  • The NEO Foundation will reimburse any costs incurred during migration, including for contract redeployment as well as testing.
  • Comprehensive technical support will be provided by the NGD team for DApp migration. The NGD team is dedicated to the research and development of the NEO ecosystem, with offices in Shanghai and Seattle.
  • Users on exchanges will not be affected.
  • To activate the new NEO 3.0 tokens, token holders are required to swap the old tokens.
  • An early adopter incentive plan is introduced to encourage users and DApps to migrate. The full details of this plan will be released eventually.
Advantages of Native Contracts on NEO 3.0

Native contracts are a feature of the new NeoContract component in the NEO 3.0 blockchain, developed and merged into the master brand. It carries over features from the previous contracts, such as Gas distribution, consensus node elections and voting,

Native contracts offer a host of new features, which are mentioned in brief below.
  • New Feature for GAS – Unlike in the previous NEO blockchain where three separate steps were required to claim generated GAS, native contracts allow GAS to be collected automatically by the token holder, every time he or she sends or receives a transfer in NEO.
  • Adding Economic Models – With NEO 3.0, developers can easily add economic models to their DApp projects, combined with NEO and GAS.
  • Exchange generated GAS – Previously Gas generated through NEO deposits by users on an exchange was very difficult to claim and involved complicated steps. NEO 3.0 makes this process simple.
  • NEO and GAS – In NEO 3.0, both NEO and GAS become smart contracts, with their system functionality also carried over. As a result, users can easily integrate different contracts. Also, NEO and GAS contracts are compatible with the NEP-5 standard, allowing native assets to be directly managed by any wallet or client.

Closing Thoughts

The release of NEO 3.0 has been touted as the cornerstone of the efforts of the #DevelopmentTeam  which has tirelessly worked towards building a robust blockchain network with an optimized smart contract system. The NEO team also recognizes the increased role of governance in today’s blockchain world. With plans to collaborate with experts from varied industries such as academia and finance, various governance mechanisms are expected to emerge in the coming months.

NEO at present has 176 trading markets across exchanges around the world and is ranked 20th according to CoinMarketCap. With the NEO token being traded on big exchanges such as Binance, Bitmart, DigiAFinex, CoinMEx, LBank and OKEx, the NEO team is well on the way to exploring various governance mechanisms such as futarchy, liquid democracy and tightly interfaced economic models.

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44

There’s a party happening right now and everyone’s invited. The music’s playing, the fridge is loaded and the bathtub’s full of ice. All the ingredients for the sickest soiree are in place. There’s just one problem: the guests have yet to arrive. Welcome to the world of security tokens, where you can tokenize anything you like, but making it tradable is another matter entirely.

STOs Are on the Rise But Liquidity Is Non-Existent

HYGH is a peer-to-peer advertising network and content management system seeking to make outdoor displays affordable to businesses of all kinds. It’s currently raising funds via a token sale, and has elected for an STO over an ICO. Explaining the rationale, CEO Vincent Mueller said: “We see clear benefits to aligning incentives between the project and its backers, and we believe a compliant STO is the best way to achieve this. We’ve set a small check size of $500, in exchange for which investors will receive a 9% share of revenue.” A security token offering was chosen, he added, on account of it being the most ethical means of raising money, helping investors become long-term advocates for the company, rather than short-term token flippers, as was the case with the ICOs of yore.

But how long-term are we talking about when it comes to trading security tokens? In the U.S., there’s generally a one-year lock-up before securitized assets become tradable, but that’s not to say that STO investors can exit after 12 months. Offloading any asset requires a counterparty willing to acquire it, and right now accredited investors with the means and will to purchase security tokens on the secondary market are thin on the ground – as are trading platforms themselves, for that matter.

First Comes Infrastructure, Then Liquidity

The Winklevoss twins might have caught flak for Gemini’s “Crypto needs rules” campaign, but when it comes to securities trading, they’re absolutely right. While the legal status of utility tokens can be debated ad infinitum, securities will always be securities, and thus any project pondering an STO must ensure they are au fait with all pertinent regulations before proceeding. Furthermore, any exchange wishing to list these assets requires a license from their securities regulator, which doesn’t dole such permits out to just anyone.

At Token Summit New York last week, Josh Stein, CEO of security token exchange Harbor, had a lot to say about the state of the nascent industry. “The issue is getting a critical mass of investments and investors,” he told event organizer William Mougayar. “You can have the best tech in the world, but you still need buyers and sellers willing to transact … It’s like a fission reaction, you gotta reach critical mass.” Solving that chicken and egg problem is a task that call for a multilateral approach involving STO projects, issuance platforms, custody providers, secondary exchanges, regulators, and all the other intermediaries who govern the complex security token landscape.

Josh Stein

From ICO to STO – With an IEO Pitstop in Between

If 2017’s ICO boom was an illegal rave – wild and untamed, hella fun, but ultimately unsustainable – then the incoming STO wave is more of a swanky after-party. There’s still fun to be had and networking to be done, but there are bouncers on the door and it’s an invite-only affair. Despite these restrictions, security tokens still have the power to democratize investment and unlock innovative new financial products, just like conventional crypto assets.


“The short-term innovation is minimizing the investor amount,” opined Harbor’s Josh Stein. “From $500K to $10K. So the short-term effect is to add liquidity and lower check sizes.” As for the long-term, he speculated: “When you have real estate bonds, you can leverage them … get increased credit on them using Darma or multi collateral Dai. The innovation today is the liquidity, which quickly leads into smaller units, more investors participating.”

In the here and now, the prognosis on the STO ecosystem is bullish, with a number of big money deals between major industry players being inked. In the past week alone, we’ve seen:
  • Rhodium Capital Advisors, lift the lid on a $100M tokenized real estate fund using Harbor’s security token protocol and platform.
  • CF Capital Group, a resource mining advisory firm, unveil a $250M STO using a multi-jurisdictional protocol from Koreconx
  • Polymath team up with Cardano and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson to create security token blockchain Polymesh
There are other ways to issue securities, even within the cryptocurrency landscape, than through an STO, it should be noted. Kraken exchange, for example, has begun offering dividends to investors, with check sizes as small as $1,000 significantly lowering the barriers to entry.

Josh Stein predicts a future that will include securities which live only onchain – native digital securities. For now, most of the assets being tokenized are traditional securities such as real estate and bonds. Just as it would have been impossible, a decade ago, to visualize many of Bitcoin’s present day use cases, it is safe to assume that there will be applications for security tokens we have yet to conceive. In the meantime, for anyone wishing to get their hands on a tokenized security via the secondary market, it will be necessary to wait a while longer. “A year from now you’ll start to see the beginning of trading,” ventured Harbor’s CEO.

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45

Poloniex, the United States-based digital currency exchange, was in the news recently for disabling the trading services of nine crypto-assets. Following the delisting, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, a leading payment platform which acquired Poloniex, criticized the lack of legal clarity with respect to cryptocurrencies in the US.

Gus Coldebella, the Chief Legal Officer of Circle, had previously tweeted that every legal team trying to protect US crypto firms were struggling to make “sound decisions” in light of the latest SEC guidance. He also clarified that geo-fencing assets in the country was their way of responding to the country’s uncertain regulatory scenario.

Frances Coppola, a senior contributor at Forbes, took a jibe at the official and responded,

“Oh look, chief legal officer of a crypto exchange wants new laws so crypto assets aren’t subject to the same restrictions as securities. Because of course the reasons why people need protection from fraudulent securities offerings don’t ever apply to crypto assets, do they?”

The Chief Legal Officer of the firm had previously emphasized the need for a change in the United States’ crypto policies and a proper framework that would provide crypto-businesses and users with legal clarity and certainty. He had revealed that Circle was “actively advocating” an approach to determine the nature of digital assets, within the boundaries of existing regulations.

Terming the laws as being inadequate to address the issues around crypto-assets, Coldebella stated that the SEC guidance wasn’t easy to interpret as digital assets did not qualify within the established categories. He further added that the guidance was tough to apply and rely on, and stated,

“Without congressional action, the SEC is forced to rely on 85-year-old laws and 73-year-old court cases to develop guidance about which digital assets might be considered securities.”

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