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Topics - Leonardo

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1


I'm a believer of the above famous prediction. But the current market doesn't sound that good. A half of October has gone and no sign of bull-run. Yes there're still some small waves and you can gain some small profit. Market has been quiet for quite a long time. What's your thoughts on current makret situation? Do you think bitcoin will reach $16k within this month?

2
Sad news for Libra enthusiast,

Quote
US lawmakers have asked Facebook to "immediately cease implementation plans" of its Libra cryptocurrency. Before it proceeds any further, the House Financial Services Committee, led by Democrat Maxine Waters, wants to examine risks around cyber security, global financial markets and national security concerns, it said in a letter to Facebook.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/03/us-lawmakers-order-halt-facebook-libra-cryptocurrency/?guccounter=1

Personally, I don't like Facebook's Libra project. Its orientation is against cryptocurrency's will. Though US lawmakers' action is originated from their own benefit somehow, I think Zuckerberg at least has to prove his honesty, seriousness and reliability first.

3

Tech giant Microsoft has released a suite of tools allowing clients to build ethereum-based apps on its cloud computing platform Azure.

The new Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum will help developers create and deploy ethereum-based apps on Azure Blockchain Service or the ethereum blockchain, Chris Pietschmann, Microsoft MVP (most valuable professional) and founder of BuildAzure.com announced in a blog post on Monday.

The ethereum development kit comes as an extension to Microsoft’s source-code editor Visual Studio Code, allowing developers to create and deploy ethereum smart contracts and utilize open-source blockchain tools such as Solidity and Truffle.

On its GitHub page about the kit, Microsoft explains: “Azure Blockchain service is a managed Ethereum service that you can deploy and interact with Solidity contracts as well as integrate into other Azure based services such as Azure Flow, Logic Apps or storage services like SQL Server or Cosmos DB.”

The extension is supported on both Windows 10 and macOS, Pietschmann said, adding that it can also run within a Virtual Machine in Azure.

He further noted:

“Sure, there have been Solidity and other Blockchain technology extensions for Visual Studio Code published by others in the community, however now there is also an official set of tools published by Microsoft.”

Last month, Microsoft launched a token-building kit in association with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, aimed to help businesses design and create the suitable cryptocurrency tokens for their particular needs. It’s also rolled out “proof-of-authority” ethereum consensus on Azure, which replaces the proof-of-work mining process that is commonly used by public blockchains.

Further, the company said last week that it will promote JPMorgan Chase’s Quorum blockchain to its business customers through Azure platform.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-releases-ethereum-app-development-kit-for-azure-cloud

4

Cryptocurrency exchange and mining startup Bcause LLC is a few weeks away from launching its spot market.

The Chicago-based company has tentatively set May 23 as the go-live date for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, and litecoin, co-founder and chief marketing officer Thomas Flake told CoinDesk. In anticipation of the launch, it has obtained money transmitter licenses in eight states, with 20 more applications pending, Flake said.

Among the first states where Bcause will be available are Illinois, Virginia, Washington and Texas. Bcause has also applied for New York’s BitLicense, but the team doesn’t expect to launch in the state any time soon as the process can take up to two years, Flake said.

Bcause also registered as a money services business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). And earlier this year, the firm announced that it would be using Nasdaq’s matching engine, clearing and market surveillance tech when it launches trading.

Ultimately, Bcause aims to be a one-stop shop for crypto mining and trading, including derivative contracts, and it’s applied to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to become a registered designated contracts market and a designated clearing organization. This is going to take some time, too, so the futures market will be launched later.

The company is served by a “bank in Illinois,” Flake said, declining to name it.

Bcause also took advantage of the Prairie State’s “substantial history in the derivatives market and a good pool of talent,” he said; in December it quietly hired George Sladoje, a former executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Stock Exchange, and later a COO of a Nasdaq subsidiary, OMX Commodities Clearing Company. Sladoje is now Bcause’s chief financial officer.

More certainty for miners
Currently, Bcause operates a data center in Virginia Beach, Virginia where it hosts miners for clients. It believes combining this service with spot and eventually derivatives trading will give customers more confidence: they will be able to sell the crypto they mined on Bcause’s facility easily on the spot market or secure futures contracts to sell them later at a comfortable price.

Flake explained:

“You get rid of some of the uncertainty, which makes investors much happier. If you go from saying, ‘I don’t know what the price of bitcoin will be in nine months,’ to saying, ‘I’ll be able to liquidate it because I have options at $6,500 in December next year,’ suddenly, a lot of uncertainty is off the table.”

This model will help make the mining business more attractive for financial institutions, Flake said.

Bcause is not mining crypto for itself at this initial stage; it’s only hosting customers’ miners. However, it’s investigating possible proprietary mining in the future, Flake said.

Right now, the data center in Virginia has miners with a joint capacity of 50 megawatts, mostly Antminer S9 machines manufactured by Bitmain. The demand for mining power is low now, Flake admitted, especially compared with a year ago:

“In the first quarter of 2018, we had to turn away $250,000 of contracts — we just didn’t have capacity. In the last quarter of 2018, that demand dried out completely. But in the last six weeks, we started seeing one or two inquiries a week.”

When the bitcoin price eventually rebounds to $7,000, demand for miners “will take off again,” Flake said.

In January 2018, Bcause struck a deal with the city of Virginia Beach, which granted $500,000 to the company for building the mining facility in town and creating new jobs there.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/one-stop-shop-for-crypto-mining-and-trading-to-launch-spot-market-may-23

5
In March, NewsBTC sat down with Max Kordek, the founder of Lisk, to pick his brain about his project, the broader crypto and blockchain industry, and the future of Bitcoin.

The Latest On Lisk
NewsBTC: Thanks for sitting down with us. For those who don’t know Lisk, can you give us a 30 second to a one-minute explanation of your project in general?

Max Kordek: Lisk is a blockchain application platform with its own crypto asset, LSK. We aim to enable devs and entrepreneurs to create their own blockchain, which is fully independent and customizable to a large degree. The second step will be interoperability, so that these independent blockchains become sidechains, which then interact with the mainchain and each other, becoming an independent part of the bigger internal ecosystem of Lisk. Our tools are based on JavaScript which taps into a fast evolving programming language, rich developer base, and open source culture. We’ve also recently diversified a section of our code to TypeScript, which will support larger application building.

NewsBTC: Cool. So why did Lisk decide to go with DPoS instead of PoW? Were there centralization risks?

Max: My journey in blockchain first began with the purchase of a Litecoin miner in 2012. Back then, I was living in this very small student apartment in Germany, which was only about 20 square meters. The small space made the miner run super hot, and after two months I had enough. Through this experience, I’ve started to develop a dislike against the kind of inefficiency and this waste of electricity that Proof of Work systems create. I then began to look into alternatives to mining. I stumbled across NXT, then Peercoin, the first viable Proof of Stake coin in existence, which I fell in love with. It was amazing to have a server, which cost $10 to $20 a month to maintain and run the network from. I got really active in that community. Eventually, Peercoin fell apart, mainly because they failed to establish an organization to actually push the technology forward.

After Peercoin, I found Crypti, which provided that central business pushing the protocol forward. It was also the first organization where I discovered the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). However, Crypti also had its own issues with a very small team and even lower levels of funding. I decided to create something new with my partner Oliver Beddows. From the get-go, we knew it shouldn’t have anything to do with PoW. That’s how Lisk and Lightcurve came about. There are many benefits of our form of DPoS, but one of the main ones is that it is beneficial to what we specifically are building. If you want to create a blockchain platform where people can just spin up their own chains, DPoS is much easier to kickstart and safer to maintain than normal PoS. If you rely only on pure PoS, it may not be very secure, so it’s better to have delegates you can trust.


Delegates on the Lisk network know the codebase and the network through and through. Many of them build open source solutions and products, spot bugs on our Testnet, or migrate to critical releases in an extremely timely manner! It depends on what use case you want to implement, but having a secure network is what most of our stakeholders can agree on. As to centralization risks, there is a degree of fluidity to our network with some individuals entering and falling out of the delegated 101. We’ve also recently opened up the Lisk Improvement Proposals where both Lightcurve and community authors can submit their own proposals for how to make our consensus algorithm even better.

NewsBTC: With DPoS, EOS enlists 21 delegates and Ark, 51 delegates. So how did you come with the 101 delegate number?

Max: Dan Larimer runs EOS. Before EOS he ran Steemit and Bitshares, which utilized 101 delegates. We took the same number, which both he and Charles Hoskinson used back in the day, because it is a good balance between centralization and decentralization. 21 delegates are too few. Sure, the network is high-performance, but 21 entities controlling the network could be dangerous. 500 or 1,000, on the other hand, is too much, as such a number of delegates would cause too many inefficiencies in the network. So to put it simply, for us 101 delegates sits right in the sweet spot of the number of nodes necessary to move our blockchain forward, while the odd number gets rid of the ties by ensuring there’s always a majority on the network.

NewsBTC: What’s your vision for Lisk Academy? Do you guys want to spark adoption through education?

Max: Even after the bull market of 2017, only a few people on the street know what Bitcoin is, let alone the underlying technology of blockchain. We need to educate those who have the power to interact with blockchain, whether its building or investing. Right now, it’s not even about Lisk, but just blockchain as a technology. The next step is accessibility, meaning that we should ramp down the complexity of the blockchain ecosystem to aid the user experience. Once you educate people and they have access to the ecosystem, then you onboard them onto projects like Lisk and our SDK.

This is why we don’t attend as many conferences as Token2049 anymore. It sounds a bit bad, but we don’t want to constantly be in this kind of a crypto bubble. We need people from outside of the industry to enter. But they won’t enter without education. We just need to have a go-to place for people to learn about blockchain and Lisk. We also provide educational marketing content and documentation for developers wanting to take the next step and experiment with our technology.

Kordek’s Thoughts On The Crypto Industry
NewsBTC: So do you think that education is the one thing holding back crypto adoption right now?

Max: I think many things are holding it back currently. One is definitely education. If we just don’t know or understand what it is, we won’t adopt it. Right now we need builders, who harness this technology to come up with viable use cases. And they, of course, need to know how this technology works. My mother doesn’t need to know about blockchain. But my developer colleagues who actually have the power to build need to know the ins and outs of not only blockchain technology, but also blockchain building and everything else needed to get them coding.  Another problem is use cases. People still ask, ‘what can we really achieve with this technology?’ People have no clue yet. Building on Ethereum is tough right now, but it’s the best experience in the industry by far. It isn’t optimal, so we need much better tooling and use case inspiration for developers. That, in my opinion, is why adoption has been pretty much slow.

NewsBTC: What is your end vision for this ecosystem? Do you see a world where everything is based on these technologies?

Max: I don’t think that everything will be based on blockchain. Yesterday I was on a panel discussion covering a very interesting topic — Web 3.0. It was said that blockchain is one technological level above texting (Web 3.0 v.s. 2.0). The Internet as a whole still has Web 1.0 applications, including simple internet pages and so on. Those don’t go away. And why should they? We have Web 2.0 pages, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. They will not disappear because of blockchain. So not everything will be run on blockchain, but there are quite a few processes that can be optimized with this technology. I’m a strong advocate for sure, but I just don’t see it as the golden technology that will disrupt absolutely everything. Right now, we don’t even have one use case that has reached 100,000 daily active users. Facebook, on the other hand, has one billion active users. So in the end, I see a world where blockchain really helps people in very specific industries and solutions.


NewsBTC: So you’re saying that I guess there have been there’s been very little adoption right now, but what’s one application for one use case that you think has a lot of potential?

Max: Right now, we’re still heavy in the R&D regarding which use case will be most suitable for our technology. One industry we want to start off with is definitely gaming. That’s an obvious use case right there, given opportunities for tokenization and so forth. Governmental work like notarization or traveling documentation is a pain right now that could easily be improved by blockchain. These processes can be optimized with a digital identity system that automatically checks you and is stored on the blockchain for secure and cross-border access. There are many use cases out there. In the end, we are creating technology that is customizable and scalable enough to allow many of these to be explored.

NewsBTC: How has this bear market been compared to ones seen previously?

Max: The previous ones were much worse. Bitcoin went from like $1,000 to $150, and people were saying that you should pack your bags and say your goodbyes. At that time, there was no development happening. There weren’t these global conference chains with thousands of attendees. It was really dark on Reddit. And now, we’re potentially just coming out of another crypto winter, but there are 20 to 30 meetups happening in Hong Kong this week, even more across the world. If you go on our GitHub, subscribe to Crypto Twitter, or check out big crypto publications, you can see there’s a wide range of activity going on amongst the projects that survived this crash.

There’s so much that is happening. There’s seriously much more development than any other point in blockchain’s history. So for me, the ones before were much worse economics-wise, activity-wise, and sentiment-wise. The thing is, we are patient because we see a big future ahead of this technology. This is just part of normal market cycles. The companies are getting more serious, and the first iterations of products are beginning to pop up. For example, we’re about to release our Alpha SDK, the first version of our blockchain-building toolkit that will allow developers to create proof-of-concept applications aligned with our codebase.

NewsBTC: Do you think that the crypto market is oversaturated at the moment?

Max: Well, I made my own altcoin, so it’s very hard to comment on that one. What I think is that the market overall regulates itself, especially when it feels oversaturated. You see crypto assets that are dropping lower and lower on CMC, as they have no activity, no trading volume, and that’s totally fine by me. That’s a sign that it’s oversaturated. And I assume that is why projects are dying as the market stabilizes and matures. There’s still potential for thousands and thousands more crypto assets and projects around them. I just want to see projects with an actual use case and a true focus on development. In our case, Lisk will be used for registering a sidechain. In Ethereum’s case, it can be used for smart contract execution. But why do all these other apps need a token? Status, for example, a messenger project, doesn’t really need a token. I have not looked into it in-depth, but that raises a question mark. So yeah, I think it’s saturated, but it’s regulating itself in time and legitimate technology with a good business backing stays afloat.

NewsBTC: How has the Lisk team been doing in this market cycle?

Max: Lisk is always progressing at a sustainable pace. The technology is going forward as I mentioned before with the upcoming release of our Alpha SDK. Things on the business side are playing support to the constant development – we were lucky enough to have a professionalized financial team to help us diversify our holdings. This gave us a healthy balance of fiat and crypto, which resulted in extra stability throughout this bear market. We’re also continuing to grow our business and fostering a global developer community. Our community members actually started physical developer spaces across the globe, including the Netherlands, Japan, and China. There’s a lot of activity happening on GitHub and real life!

The Future Of Bitcoin
NewsBTC: How do you expect for the crypto market to play out over 2019?

Max: I really have no idea. It could go up or down. But right now, it seems to be stabilizing very slowly. Eventually, though, there could be another, let’s call it, wick lower. I assume personally that it will continue to go up towards the end of next year. In 1.5 years is the Bitcoin halving, so the market could go up because of that. But I don’t care really. It’s not only about the money.

NewsBTC: What do you see Bitcoin as? Is it an SoV, MoE, or anything else?

Max: I think of it mainly as a store of value with complete independence of any other market. That means you can just fill up your portfolio with 1% to 2% with it, and it can act as a secure investment next to gold. I also tend to see it as a means of exchange, I bought some stuff online with BTC recently. Yesterday, I went to the Lotus Bar in Hong Kong, which accepts Bitcoin. It’s a nice thing, but I’m not going to go there every time just to use BTC. So in end, it’s more of a store of value. It’s important to add that I also see it as a stepping stone for blockchain technology overall. It may not be the most scalable, but it’s inspiring. It may not be a world currency, but it should become a means of exchange in one way or another.


NewsBTC: What do you think of the whole JP Morgan Coin or FBCoin? Do you like what they bring to the table?

Max: I know many many people who hate Mark Zuckerberg in the industry, but it’s important to remember Facebook is a tech company at the end of the day. When your company grows as large as Facebook did, it’s hard to stay true to your original ethos. Many things can go wrong. And maybe Facebook had many things go wrong this year, but it isn’t the fault of Mark Zuckerberg alone. I still think Zuckerberg has the best things in mind. I see FBCoin as an interesting concept. I’m not too sure how scalable it will be, as WhatsApp or Facebook itself has billions of users. But why not? I think it will be pretty cool, no matter if it’s decentralized, centralized, etc. As long as it uses blockchain technology, that is exactly what we want and need. JP Morgan Coin, on the other hand, is something I hate. First, they say Bitcoin is a scam, then they were revealed to have participated in the Bitcoin market, and then they suddenly come up with their own coin. At the end of the day, JP Morgan isn’t a technology company, so they shouldn’t do that. This project is just for their monetary gain. They should stick with the old economy and do their crap there. They don’t really belong here.

NewsBTC: It’s my final question. Can crypto succeed without institutional involvement, like investments from those on Wall Street?

Max: Yeah definitely. I think people are more powerful than institutions. With blockchain and Bitcoin, we’re going towards true peer-to-peer transactions and exchanges. On a global scale, this will be much more powerful than any institution in the world. Still, financial institutions are great leverage, as they can give people the power to make this whole movement. We can utilize those institutions, but we don’t need them in the end.

Source: https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/05/07/lisk-founder-crypto-winter-best-bitcoins-history/

6

Being an enigmatic space to begin with, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency have had their share of scandals, drama, hacks, crimes and various other acts you would only think could happen in a movie. There have also been a fair share of mysteries that still have no answer today. Ranging from mysterious darknet marketplaces, to unknown transactions and hacks, let’s go over some of these unsolved facts relating to Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, the answers to which one can only speculate on.

Read until the end to find out what you can learn from the mysterious $1 Billion Bitcoin and Litecoin whales, and how their actions can possibly predict the future of cryptocurrency markets.

#9 Who Is Satoshi?
Let’s get the obvious mystery out of the way. To date, there is still no clear consensus as to who Satoshi Nakamoto – the founder of Bitcoin – really is. While Craig Wright claims to be Satoshi himself, there is a fair share of skeptics who don’t believe that statement. As a result, the real hunt for Satoshi is still ongoing.

Here’s a twist, Bitcoin’s biggest mystery may just be solved in the next 7 days if the website gotsatoshi.com‘s reveal proves to be legitimate. Apparently, Satoshi Nakamoto himself owns the twitter profile @gotsatoshi and plans to unmask himself on May 14th.

Personally, I don’t believe Satoshi Nakamoto is the one behind the twitter profile. When the reveal does happen, I can bet there will still be no concrete proof as to who Satoshi Nakamoto really is. I guess we will have to wait to find out…

#8 Agora Darknet Marketplace
Agora was a darknet marketplace that operated between 2013 and 2015. At the time, it was the largest darkweb market available. Agora proved to be one of the most secure operations after surviving operation Onymous, which took down a number of darknet markets.

One day, Agora’s administrators announced that they will be shutting down the marketplace and instructed all its users to withdraw their funds. In their announcement, the admins cited security vulnerabilities in the Tor network which would require a massive amount of changes to their infrastructure:

“We have a solution in the works which will require big changes into our software stack which we believe will mitigate such problems, but unfortunately it will take time to implement. Additionally, we have recently been discovering suspicious activity around our servers which led us to believe that some of the attacks described in the research could be going on and we decided to move servers once again, however this is only a temporary solution.”

After the marketplace shut down, there have been no news about Agora resurfacing. As such, the identity of the admins and the location of the marketplace will forever remain a mystery.

It seems that another marketplace followed Agora’s footsteps of shutting down gracefully before the police could catch the owners. After FBI’s operation dubbed SaboTor where they arrested over 60 people and seized over 50 darkweb accounts, Dream Market – the #1 darknet market at the time – announced that it will be shutting down its doors and instructed its users to withdraw all funds.

Maybe its just a coincidence that the two markets decided to shut down themselves before being seized by police, or maybe Agora and Dream are somewhat related. We can only speculate as to whether there is some sort of overlap between the administrators of the two markets.

#7 Block Hash #528249
The mysterious block number 528249 sent the cryptocurrency community in a frenzy when they saw that the block hash was: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a

At first sight, it looks just like a string of random letters and numbers with a bunch of zeroes in front of it. But those familiar with the E8 theory will notice the number trailing the first 18 digits – 21e8. Simply put 21e8 symbolizes the “theory of everything.” It’s a physics theory that attempts to explain the interaction of all forces in the universe via a single model.

Moreover, the probability of finding such a block is so low, that even if you have 1 Exahash of mining power (roughly 2% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate) it would take you over 2500 years to find such a block. Some believe that Satoshi Nakamoto himself created this block, others believe it’s just a coincidence. Either way, the probability of such a block occurring was so low that some even believe that a Quantum computer is responsible for generating this hash.

#6 QuadrigaCX Mystery
QuadrigaCX was Canada’s largest Bitcoin exchange. It was shut down after it’s CEO – Gerald Cotten – died on his honeymoon in India in January of 2019. The exchange claimed that he was the only person with access to over $190 million in cryptocurrency that ultimately belonged to Quadriga’s customers.

Immediately following the announcement, skeptics began questioning the validity of Cotten’s death and Quadriga’s claims of losing access to a huge portion of customer funds. Since then, Coindesk was able to obtain Cotten’s death certificate from India, but when it comes to the supposed cold wallets that had over $190 million of cryptocurrency, five of the six wallets had their balances drained more than 7 months prior to Cotten’s death.

QuadrigaCX is currently working with Canadian government to repay its customers. The investigation into the missing funds is still ongoing and so far there has been no clear answer as to where the lost funds are residing at. There is even a reward for $100,000 that was offered by the Kraken exchange for anybody that can find the missing coins. So far nobody found the answer. The exact addresses of the cold wallets to which Gerald had access to might forever remain a mystery.

#5 Coindash Hack
Coindash – since then rebranded to Blox.io – is a blockchain startup focusing on creating a portfolio management platform that allows users to track their cryptocurrency investments. They hosted an ICO back in July of 2017 and raised over $7m for their project before a hacker gained access to their website and altered the Ethereum address used to collect the funds. As a response, Coindash issued an emergency message reading:

“This is an emergency message delivered to you in order to stop you from sending your money to an unauthorized ETH address. It seems like our Token Sale page was tampered and the sending address was changed. Please stop from sending your funds to any of the addresses until we say otherwise.”

Fast forward 2 months and Ethereum’s price began to soar. For some reason, the hacker decided to return 30,000 ETH in total valued at over $17m at the time. Essentially, the hacker stole $7m worth of Ethereum only to return more than double the amount.

It’s unclear as to why the hacker felt remorse and decided to return the ETH but we can only speculate that he got spooked by the lengthy prison sentence if he got caught or felt like someone was already hot on his trail. To date, we still don’t know who the identity of the mysterious hacker.

#4 The $1 Billion Bitcoin Whale
In September of 2018, a Bitcoin address containing roughly 300,000 BTC worth over $1b became active and transferred thousands of Bitcoins to different addresses. The wallet was last active in 2014 and speculators have tied its balance to illicit activity. Some speculate that the Bitcoins originated from the Silk Road, others believe the wallet contains some of the missing MtGox funds. However, the identity of the owner of the $1b wallet is still a mystery.

One of the most common speculations was that a Bitcoin price dump was incoming, since whales moving large sums of coins to unknown addresses usually means they are trying to sell them on an exchange. Lo and behold, We did see a huge drop in Bitcoin’s price all the way for $7,000 in September to a low of $3,274 only three months later.

#3 Unsolved Monero Puzzle
About 8 months ago in August of 2018, Monerart unveiled an image that supposedly contained a hidden private key that unlocks an undisclosed amount of XMR. To date, the puzzle still hasn’t been solved though many have tried. This mystery may not remain unsolved for long, but the fact that nobody has been able to crack it in the past 8 months suggests that finding the answer may prove harder than you think.

#2 Mysterious Bitcoin Buyer
Last month in April 2019, Bitcoin’s price jumped over 20% in a single day. This wasn’t an ordinary price jump, because it was orchestrated by a mysterious whale who bought over $100 million in BTC in a strategic way.

The buy orders were separated in 7,000 BTC increments and were placed on three different exchanges: Coinbase, Kraken and Bitstamp. The reason the buyer decided to spread out his buy orders on various exchanges is because it would increase the effect of other exchanges playing catch up. This would push the price higher than if he would have bought on a single exchange, as arbitrage bots would have ultimately pushed the price lower.

During that time there were no major news regarding Bitcoin which could be blamed for the price rise, it was in fact quite a random time to purchase such a large amount of BTC. It’s a mystery as to why this particular traded decided to buy such a large amount of cryptocurrency in such a short amount of time.

#1 The $1 Billion Litecoin Whale
In November of 2018, Litecoin experienced one of its most mysterious transactions to date. An anonymous whale transferred over 35 million LTC in a single day, worth over $1 billion at the time. The total amount of coins moved accounted for over 60% of Litecoin’s supply.

The real mystery is that nobody knows where the Litecoins came from. Traders couldn’t pinpoint an exchange with a large enough LTC trade volume to allow someone to accumulate so much coins.

The good news is, the whale moved the coins to 40 separate address each having an identical amount of Litecoins. Rather than trying to dump the coins on an exchange the balance was most likely transferred to another entity, that means someone was betting on Litecoin’s price to go up.

Fast forward to today and that someone was right, as Litecoin’s price more than tripled since December of last year. It seems that we should take notice of any further coin movements by large whales as they may be foreshadowing of what’s to come.

If the coins simply move to different addresses and we can track it, then most likely the coins have exchanged hands and someone is bullish on the market. On the other hand, if coins are being moved to exchange wallets then the end game is most likely to sell those coins for fiat, which would ultimately cause a price drop. At the very least, we can conclude that movement of large coin balances may suggest some sort of price movement in the near future, as someone is either trying to get out or enter a position.

Source: https://nulltx.com/9-unsolved-cryptocurrency-mysteries/

7

GunBroker.com, a twenty-year-old company that sells between $600 and $900 million worth of firearms each year, has a problem. Its customers have only two reliable payment options, and they’re the same two payment options that were available to people who wanted to go see The Beatles play in 1965: cheques and money orders.

“The reason they are money order or cheque is that, in some respects, the financial industry, for political reasons and consumer liability reasons, has really moved away from providing services to the firearms industry,” said Bitrail founder Cameron Chell, who is also an architect of KodakCoin. “If someone wants to use a marketplace like eBay to legally and lawfully sell a firearm or two a year in accordance with all government regulations, etc., they won’t be allowed. And they are not going to get a merchant account from Visa and Mastercard. The PayPals, Venmos and Stripes of the world don’t serve that industry.” This leaves the industry with cheque or money order as their most reliable means of payment.

Source: GunBroker.com

And, other than accepting cash, there might not be a worse way to accept funds for a regulated industry. “GunBroker desires to put a system in place that helps them be leaders in financial compliance, as much of the financial industry has turned their back on the industry, and that inadvertently made it more dangerous.” This has made the entire ecosystem weaker and more dangerous.

GunBroker’s objective was to provide an electronic payment method system so that their merchants, whether buying or selling, can easily transfer those funds electronically and in a compliant manner.  “As a very successful business, GunBroker is not going to risk a scenario where they’re offsides of regulations,” said the ICOx Innovations chairman.

And, so, BitRail is a payment rail based on the blockchain. “Not only does the firearm acquisition or sale meet federal and state regulatory requirements for the firearms industry, but it also now meets all the financial regulatory requirements.” Along with the firearms regulations – whether background checks or otherwise – every transaction, buyer or seller, goes through KYC, AML, OFAC, and more.

These things were put in place to ensure that you can follow the money. “Making sure the money comes from valid sources ensures national security,” says Mr. Chell. “All of this now is an entirely new layer that is very conveniently added into the gun purchase and is done without legislation. It is done with the benefit of the consumer in mind. The consumer now has a way to lawfully transact electronically with better information and securer, faster transactions. Transaction costs are about half of what they would normally be and less time consuming than doing cheques or money orders.”


BitRail claims it is integrated into the banking system. “You can populate your FreedomCoins with a credit card, wire transfers, money orders, and cheques. Once the money is in your wallet you can move it electronically via the blockchain.” BitRail never envisaged this being done in a non-compliant manner.

“Because of immutability and provenance in the blockchain, it lends itself to ensuring that there are accurate records that can’t be manipulated and are not anonymous,” said Mr. Chell. “Nothing in this industry can be done at scale if it doesn’t work within the regulatory framework. We knew we’d get a very passionate group of consumers that didn’t want to or couldn’t be imposed upon a feeling of control or loss of freedom.

Mr. Chell says BitRail is working within existing regulations to provide a safer solution than the status quo.

“We are very passionate about being able to provide a stronger and safer payment solution for everyone involved within today’s existing environment.” 

Source

8
Diamond Standard aims to bring standardization and fungibility to diamonds by leveraging the blockchain technology and making them easily tradable like gold.


Many experts in the crypto industry perceive digital currencies to be a store of value just like the gold commodities. Leveraging this viewpoint, a company called Diamond Standard has unveiled a new blockchain-based token backed by real physical diamonds.

When it comes to commodities as a store of value, Diamonds have an advantage over Gold. This is because they are easily portable as well as easy to grade. However, when it comes to standardizing diamonds in the form of exchange, industry players find it often difficult. This is because unlike platinum or gold, each diamond is different with a different price tag.

Diamond Standard aims to solve this industry problem using the blockchain technology combined with a hardware solution. The company sells diamonds in the form of coin-sized discs and credit-card shaped bars. Each Diamond Standard Coin is priced at $10,000 while the Diamond Standard Bar is priced at $100,000.

Cormac Kinney, founder and CEO of Diamond Standard Co, explains how they arrived at this solution. Kinney said:

“We created a diamond commodity by grouping sets of diamonds in a fair and transparent way. The sets are fungible, and the diamonds are independently certified, and the key is that they are sourced through a regulated exchange, with market-driven price discovery.”

Leveraging the Blockchain Technology
Kinney said that standardizing diamond prices can “only became possible with the blockchain, providing a permanent public record for each commodity’s diamond geological contents and provenance, and to enable remote auditing and transactions.”

Just like gold, Kinney wants investors to use diamonds to hedge against other assets. Furthermore, the company notes that the blockchain technology will help diamond owners to remotely audit their possessions in a completely transparent and tamper-proof manner.

The Diamond Standard Coin or the Diamond Standard Bar is basically fungible diamond sets sealed in resin and comprises of military grade wireless encryption chip. This helps to easily verify the commodity sold to a buyer or a custodian. Furthermore, the integrated wireless chip carries the blockchain token called Bitcarbon.

Kinney says that this blockchain token can be easily authenticated as well as remotely audited. “Every aspect of the Diamond Standard commodity is public and can be verified by anyone—in person or on the blockchain,” says Kinney.

The Diamond Standard Exchange is currently seeking regulatory approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Once approved, users can trade the Diamond Standard Coin and Diamond Standard Bar on the exchange platform. Users can hold the commodity themselves or choose a custodian. Custodians hold the commodity in smart cabinets and audit them regularly.

This allows the owner to transact the commodities remotely using the Bitcarbon token. The owner can authenticate the commodity or sell it anywhere in the world just using a smartphone.

Kinney also foresees to bring other traditional investment products to the platform like a diamonds-only exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Source

9

A senior official from Singapore’s de facto central bank said it cannot find potential in payment network Ripple in comments during a conference panel on May 2.

Speaking at MIT’s 2019 Business of Blockchain event, Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), discussed the city state’s pro-blockchain stance and its progress implementing the technology at a national level.

Mohanty was commenting on the back of a cross-border payment trial that MAS conducted with Canada’s central bank earlier this week.

Formed by linking up the two states’ distributed ledger technology (DLT) networks, Project Ubin and Project Jasper, the funds transfer marked the first-ever such payment between two central banks.

At the same time, Ripple has sought to gain banking sector interest in its products, which utilize the XRP token to provide borderless payments.

One such implementation — MoneyTap — has seen considerable interest from Japanese banks, following Ripple’s long-term partnership with SBI Group.

For Singapore, however, it is hard to see tangible benefits, according to Mohanty.

“One thing which has been very compelling for us is the whole efficiency gain coming to cross-border payments,” he said about the DLT trial. He added:

“We don’t see much in the Ripple bank digital currency, but definitely still a lot of hope that we can remove a lot of inefficiency […] when it comes to cross-border payments.”

As of early 2018, Ripple had been in talks with MAS about potential use cases for its technology.

Source

10

Facebook has reportedly been in talks with various payment processors, e-commerce merchants, and other financial firms to get them to support a cryptocurrency-based payments system it’s currently developing.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the social media giant has reached out to companies like Visa and MasterCard about the project, which is reportedly known as ‘Project Libra’ in the company. It will reportedly include a blockchain-based cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the US dollar, a stablecoin.

Some of the use cases being considered for Facebook’s stablecoin include allowing its WhatsApp messaging service users to send money to one another, and rewarding users with a fraction of a coin for looking at ads.

The social media giant is also looking to recruit e-commerce firms and apps to accept its cryptocurrency and integrate it as a payment system, in a way similar to how websites and apps currently use Facebook to let users log-in.

The firm has been acquiring blockchain startups for months now, and it’s well-known it has a team working with blockchain technology. While Facebook hasn’t officially confirmed it is launching a cryptocurrency, previous reports suggested it already contacted crypto exchanges about listing it.

To support its stablecoin-based payments network, Facebook is said to be looking for up to $1 billion in investments as collateral. Analysts have estimated Facebook could bring in as much as $19 billion until 2021 thanks to the launch of a cryptocurrency.

Recently, the social media giant announced a major shift to focus on privacy, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed payments and private commerce are going to be an important part of Facebook’s future.

Some believe that if e-commerce takes off on Facebook’s various platforms, it could see brands spend more on advertisements with it, and consequently increase revenue. New revenue streams may also be created if users adopt its payments features.

Henry Liu, a former Facebook employee and a managing partner at a blockchain investment firm, was quoted as saying:

Payments and commerce are Facebook’s only way out from its freemium, advertisement business model.

Notably Gavin Baker, a former Fidelity Investments portfolio manager, has in the past stated he believes Facebook’s stablecoin will likely be a “serious threat” to companies like Visa and MasterCard. This, as the social media giant doesn’t need to monetize transactions by charging a processing fee.

Source

11

Blockchain infrastructure firm SETL Development Ltd., which filed for insolvency in March, is back as a trimmed-down new entity formed by its management team.

The new company, SETL Ltd., said Friday that it has now acquired the operating assets, staff and intellectual property (IP) rights of the old entity. Further, the company has reached an agreement with “all major clients” to continue the firm’s previous support and development activities.

SETL Development Ltd, which went into administration in March, is now being wound down.

At the time, the the firm said it had filed for insolvency because its finances were not adequate to meet the regulatory requirements for both SETL and its ID2S central securities depository (CSD) initiative. It added it was seeking to place ID2S with “a larger financial services firm.”

Sir David Walker, chairman of SETL Ltd., said today that the two objectives of appointing its administrator, Quantuma LLP, “to help shape the future structure to enable the firm to balance its strategic infrastructure holdings and continue its software development activities” have been met within the expected timeline.

The new entity said it has also restructured its balance sheet and simplified its business model, and will now offer blockchain-based solutions across different areas to deliver “robust” financial performance for its shareholders.

Executives from the first iteration of the company now occupy positions in SETL Ltd. including Philippe Morel as CEO (formerly also CEO), and Peter Randall (who founded the original firm in 2015) as president. Sir Walker was also chairman of the old SETL.

The firm’s also appointed Philip Bond, professor at Manchester University, to its board. Bond previously headed SETL’s cryptography and cyber security committee and will direct the same activities at SETL Ltd. going forward.

SETL notably received a license from France’s securities regulator to operate its ID2S CSD last October.

Source

12

Around 40 companies in the United States have tried to influence policymaking efforts in the country by lobbying for Bitcoin and blockchain-related causes in the first quarter of 2019, revealed political new portal Roll Call.

The entities were a part of the larger fintech lobbying group of 80 companies which spent $42 million in Q1 2019 to influence policymaking. The companies include prominent names in the industry like Coinbase, Square, MasterCard, and Ripple.

Though the biggest contributor was the US Chamber of Commerce with $16.4 million in spending, its focus remained in the fintech in general. MasterCard spent a total of $720,000 for pushing its causes which included digital currency-related issues as well.

The United States largest and wallet platform Coinbase shelled out $50,000 to influence policies in areas like Banking Secrecy Act. However, Coin Center, a cryptocurrency advocacy group, remained the largest direct crypto-related spender by spending $140,000 in both in-house lobbying and outside lobbying.

Major issues should be sorted out
The report outlined that the major concerns of the crypto-related companies lied in shaping the tax laws for the new industry along with the need for clear regulatory guidelines.

Tax laws related to crypto assets are murky in the US and the process of filing income from crypto-related activities is a complex one.

Though the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) issued guidance for crypto tax laws, many issues remained unanswered. For instance, it is not clear how to handle tax documents when a blockchain split into two resulting in the creating of two parallel digital currencies. “The IRS has given no guidance how they’d treat that, so people are guessing,” Jerry Brito, executive director at Coin Center, told the publication.

The lobby groups are also trying to bring clear laws for the involvement of the Securities and Exchage Commission (SEC) in initial coni offerings (ICOs). Last year, two lawmakers moved a bipartisan bill to exclude crypto from the existing securities law.

“That’s probably been our biggest focus,” Kristin Smith, director at Blockchain Association, told Roll Call. “And it will continue to be our biggest focus for the next couple of months.”

Source

13
Suggestion Box / Mods, please be more tolerated with bounties!
« on: April 02, 2019, 09:38:00 AM »
I've been searching a quality bounty on our forum for a long time and found this one lately: https://www.altcoinstalks.com/index.php?topic=104004. But unfortunately, it was moved to "Quarantine & Test Area" and as a result, no Altcoinstalks' member was able to join. It's a great regret since HIGH token was listed on p2pb2b.

The problem here is: why we missed such a good bounty? Ok, partly because of bounty manager's fault for not complying with forums rules and mods moved it to "Quarantine & Test Area" section. But why, why don't send them a PM/DM and ask them to make it appeal.

Mods, please be more tolerated with bounties. The forum needs good bounties to reward its member's contribution, right?

14

Bond yields are falling, and savings accounts can barely keep up with inflation, but there are other ways to put your money to work. As crypto-finance continues to evolve, blockchain companies are providing new products with lucrative profits–and interest.

TrustToken, the issuer of the TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin, has partnered with a crypto-backed lending firm to borrow users’ crypto– at extremely favorable rates. Through a partnership with Cred. eligible users will be able to lend out their unused assets for up to 8% annual interest.

In order to participate, users in eligible jurisdictions can transfer TrueUSD tokens to a CredEarn wallet, and commit the funds to be held for a period of six months. Interest will be paid out quarterly in TrueUSD and users will have the option to renew terms for an additional three months. The product is available in 29 U.S. states.

Putting Your Crypto To Work
Cred is a digital finance company which offers loans collateralized by the borrowers’ crypto holdings. In a press release, TrustToken said they had chosen Cred as an optimal partner due to the lender’s track record and large customer base, as well as experience in amassing $300 million in lending capital.

One of TrueUSD’s core aims is to help close the gap between traditional and digital finance. “Over the last year, we’ve been focused on building the bridge between traditional finance and the digital asset ecosystem, with TrueUSD as the first proof of concept,” said TrustToken’s head of Product and Business Development, Tory Riess. “As we move into our second year of operation, our goal is to provide more valuable opportunities to utilize these assets.“

Borrowed funds will be used to originate loans to “a variety of customer segments,” said David Steinrueck, TrustToken’s Marketing and Communications Manager, in an email to Crypto Briefing. These customers include crypto miners, digital asset funds and other blockchain companies. All Cred loans are collateralized, Steinrueck emphasizes, and the company does not lend to short-sellers.

Cred is also focused is also on the safety of its customers assets. The lender has partnered with leading digital asset storage companies Uphold, Bittrex Enterprise, and Ledger. In addition, Cred is also partnered with crypto custody provider BitGo, which insures the company’s asset holdings up to $100 million.

Interest-bearing custody is one of many recent advents to the cryptocurrency space that might be easy to miss in the constant bombardment of crypto news. However, these advances suggest a growing trend towards digitization and decentralization in finance and technological systems at large.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/credearn-eight-percent-interest/

15

Luxury brand conglomerate LVMH, owner of the iconic Louis Vuitton label, is preparing to launch a blockchain for proving the authenticity of high-priced goods, CoinDesk has learned.

Code-named AURA, the cryptographic provenance platform is expected to go live in May or June with Louis Vuitton and another LVMH brand, Parfums Christian Dior. It will then be extended to LVMH ‘s other 60-plus luxury brands, and eventually those of its competitors. 

LVMH has enlisted a full-time blockchain team who have been in stealth mode for over a year, working closely with ethereum design studio ConsenSys and Microsoft Azure, according to two people familiar with the project.

AURA has been built using a permissioned version of the ethereum blockchain called Quorum, which is focused on data privacy and was developed by JPMorgan.

Neither LVMH nor its partners ConsenSys and Microsoft would comment ahead of the project’s official launch. But a source involved in the build told CoinDesk:

“To begin with AURA will provide proof of authenticity of luxury items and trace their origins from raw materials to point of sale and beyond to used-goods markets. The next phase of the platform will explore protection of creative intellectual property, exclusive offers and events for each brands’ customers, as well as anti-ad fraud.”

White label
Stepping back, LVMH controls over 60 luxury brands including many well-known names like Dior, Dom Pérignon and Hublot. The group reported revenues of $53 billion in 2018.

But it’s not the first to propose an authenticity-tracking blockchain; there have been other luxury provenance platforms and mini consortia, such as Arianee or Vechain.

According to the source involved in the project, LVMH questioned why it would allow third parties to position themselves between its brands and their partners – especially since blockchain is supposed to be a technology for eliminating intermediaries.

The source added:

“This should be done in the form of an industry consortium rather than a third party actor coming into the marketplace.”

As such, LVMH intends to offer the service in a white-label form to other brands including the group’s competitors. So rather than creating an app of some kind, AURA will run behind the brands using it.

“So if you are a customer of a luxury brand, you are not going to see AURA; you are going to see the Louis Vuitton app or the app of another luxury brand,” the source explained. 

Equal footing
This all sounds great – in theory. But it can be tricky getting your competitors onto a blockchain platform, particularly if you happen to be as big and influential as LVMH.

To avoid the sort of problems experienced by the blockchain venture between IBM and Maersk, LVHM will donate all intellectual property (IP) to a separate entity and that entity, in turn, will be owned by the participating brands, said the source, who added,

“So Gucci, for example, could decide to join the platform and be a shareholder – in which case their claim to the IP would be as great as Louis Vuitton’s claim to the IP. That is the main difference between this project and the IBM Maersk project. which hopefully makes it much more comparable to Komgo, the trade finance consortium.”

In addition, Quorum’s data privacy tools should ensure that no information will be leaked between brands or their customers.

Further facilitating cooperation among firms, the project is very much in line with luxury-goods industry standards, the source said, and particularly with the recent anti-counterfeiting efforts of the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

Beyond CryptoKitties
It’s not surprising LVMH chose an enterprise variety of ethereum since it’s the blockchain which gave birth to the ERC-721 non-fungible token (NFT) standard. This allows for digital representations which are not only immutable but provide a hallmark of a one-and-only, unique item. 

While the most famous example of NFTs is the whimsical game CryptoKitties, this kind of token has serious business potential.

For example, it could conceivably identify an individual handbag and trace the whole journey of its lifecycle from an alligator farm to the store where it was sold for the first time, and then the multiple chains of owners that have owned and sold it.

Another fundamental reason LVMH chose ethereum is that the group sees today’s permissioned version as merely an intermediate step to a grander vision, once the technology matures, said the source, adding,

“They [LVMH]  see down the line permissioned and public networks as needing to be interoperable if they are to put the power back to customers. It’s also a way for a global network of distributors and resellers to connect to a network without restriction.”

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/louis-vuitton-owner-lvmh-is-launching-a-blockchain-to-track-luxury-goods

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