BitTorrent’s new token, BTT, flew off the shelves today proving the token sale space is still alive. However, technical difficulties slightly interrupted the process.

The sale
According to an article published today from The Block, interested investors bought up the entire $7.2 million BitTorrent (BTT) public token sale in under 20 minutes. The launch took place on the Binance Launchpad platform.

Changpeng Zhao(CZ) tweeted " Both sessions concluded. Took about 18 minutes, due to a system issue, would have taken 18 seconds otherwise.  Demand was astronomical."
BitTorrent built its BTT token on Tron’s blockchain, making the asset a TRON TRC-10 token. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing platform and will utilize BTT in its ecosystem, as detailed in a recent Crypto Insider article.

“Though BitTorrent functions quite well as-is, the addition of BitTorrent Token aims to optimize the process,” Crypto Insider explained.

According to BitTorrent’s website,
"BitTorrent (BTT) allows content creators to connect with their audience, earn and spend digital currency without a middleman. By connecting the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network to the TRON blockchain, we offer a new experience to over 100M+ users.”
According to The Block, based on information from the Binance Launchpad,

The public sale offered ~6 percent of the the total token supply at a rate of 1BTT to .00012 USD, with a $20,000 individual cap and 100,000 BTT minimum. The sale was provisioned across two funding pairs, with 40% of the sale allocated to Binance’s BNB token, and the remaining 60% allocated for Tron’s TRX.
”BitTorrent’s fire sale did, however, see a few difficulties which slightly slowed the process. Nonetheless, Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ Binance” on Twitter) recently sent out several tweets to explain that the situation was a result of “user agreement confirmation” clicking difficulties.
Tron founder and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun also tweeted about the possibility to airdrop customers BTT in response to the recent launch disruption. According to his tweet, CZ seemed to be on board with the idea stating further details are to be announced.
BTT demand rivalled with what the public saw many times in 2017 and 2018. Near the tail of the last bull market, CrowdFundInsider reported on SelfKey’s public initial coin offering (ICO) which sold out in 11 minutes, reaching a cap of almost $6 million.

Oddly enough, bitcoin took a slight fall the same day as BitTorrent’s exuberant token sale. Over the last 24 hours, crypto’s largest asset fell from $3,59 to $3,477 at the time of this writing, as presented by CoinMarketCap data. Over the past several days, bitcoin has lacked volatility, and today’s drop has marked an exception.

full story at:  https://cryptoinsider.com/bittorrent-token-sale-a-raging-success-amidst-minor-malfunctions/

 London, U.K.-based regulated crypto exchange IronX has raised a little over $26 million at the end of its token sale. The exact amount raised is $26,319,447.92.

IronX is a collaboration between worldwide multi-asset broker IronFX and Cardano (ADA coin) creator EmurgoHK. The exchange provides a full range of both fiat and crypto wallet funding options. Moreover, it offers direct access to trade forex, commodities, equities and other tradable assets via the easy-to-use ecosystem with IronFX Group.

The recently launched beta version at IronX.com is open for registration. All users who register and get KYC approval will automatically earn 10 IRX.

IronX CEO Dimitris Hatzis said in a press release CoinReport received from DM Communications, IronX’s PR company, “The IronX token sale indicates a strong public interest, and we are extremely excited that it has received attention from all over the world.”

He added, “Given the conditions of the ICO market, we couldn’t be happier about the public response to the IRX token. As impressive as has the sale has been, we still have much work ahead, and look forward to working with new contributors.”

The impressive token sale result accompanies the announcement of “End of Sale” 3% bonus to all new deposits under $49,999.

An ERC-20 utility token, IRX backs the usage of the exchange. The fees paid with IRX will offer further discounts on the exchange. Substantial contributors will also have voting rights concerning any new coin listings on the exchange.

The public sale and beta launch accompany their successful security audit from Hacken and Hosho. The exchange was regulated following the acquisition of a full regulatory license from the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit in September last year, becoming one of the first European digital currency exchanges to seek and receive this level of approval.
 
original article here-https://coinreport.net/ironx-26-million-token-sale/

Athough VanEck, CBOE and Solid X recently pulled their collaborative Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) application and Bakkt delayed the launches of its crypto futures vehicle, Wall Street is still clamoring for digital assets.
While the purported influx if Institutional interest has skirted past the retail investors' radar, industry upstarts are taking notice and responding in kind.
2019 has just begun but the crypto industry is moving forward, full steam ahead. In recent weeks as Bitcoin has continued to trade in a tight, seemingly unbreakable range, organizations in this ecosystem have continued to strut along unveling offerings and positive developments. A number of venture groups have hinted at the creation of new funds, upstarts have sought ambitious business deals and institutions have purportedly begun to double-down on their Bitcoin efforts.
OTC platforms give high volume traders the ability to purchase cryptocurrencies at market prices, with close to zero fees and slippage and with little security and custody risk.
After investing $3 Million in a San Fransisco based OTC platform, Koi Trading. Binance launched its own OTC Desk Jan 23rd, in an announcement on the company blog, Changpeng Zhao "CZ" gave its clients a preliminary look at the in-house crypto-to-crypto OTC desk.
Firm representatives claimed that the desk, which supports the 80+ digital assets listed on Binance would be available for accounts that have completed Level 2 KYC verification and that are looking to trade over 20 Bitcoin worth of value at a time.
Other than the inability to process fiat transactions of any kind, this new offering provides an array of cryptocurrencies unavailable on other platforms.
Binance's OTC desk will allow for Wall Street Investors or High Net-Worth individuals to invest in smaller cap cryptocurrencies previously inaccessible, potentially sparking a newfound wave of interest in Altcoins.
What does this mean for Crypto?
It underscore's a wave of interest in Bitcoin from institutions of Wall Street and abroad. The underlying influx of interest from bigwigs, both in and out of the cryptocurrency space isn't just speculation, its Fact.
Genesis Trading, the OTC arm of the Digital Currency Group conglomerate, recently revealed that its OTC desk saw "tremendous growth" over last year. It was revealed that Genesis' volumes increased by 50% year-over-year.
Circle, a Boston headquartered fintech upstart focused on bolstering the crypto economy, revealed that it facilitated 10,000 OTC transactions in 2018.
Which amounted to a jaw-dropping $24 Billion dollars.
The Block revealed that OTC provides have seen bullish fiat inflows in recent weeks.
Cumberland, the cryptocurrency subsidiary of Chicago investment group DRW, revealed that the net imbalance between buyers and sellers surged by 60% during the second week of January.
Michael Moro of Genesis corroborated that OTC desks have begun to see an influx of buying pressure. Moro remarked that while December saw large holders liquidate their holdings rapidly, buy side interest has begun to pick up at the start of 2019.
With this and other OTC ventures from Binance's peers, Coinbase and BitGo, it has become apparent that Wall Street hasn't given up on crypto at all, there is literally an OTC buying frenzy happening off the books.

A unique startup company has emerged in the Bahama's known as PO8.
Working in close contact with the Bahamian government, they are merging artifact preservation, virtual reality and gaming.
The primary link to cryptocurrencies is the exploration and discovery of The Bahama's estimated $100 Billion dollars worth of undiscovered underwater artifacts and allowing investors to buy ownership of these artifacts via nonfungible tokens.
Upon recovery, these artifacts will remain safely within "The Wave" which is PO8's 50,000 sq ft museum that is set to start construction on later this year.
The implementation of nonfungible tokens means the artifacts can remain safe with proper authorities while also allowing investor's to retain ownership. The NonFungibleToken or NFT for short, also affords investors a significantly greater degree of liquidity. Rather than physically transacting with another party, ownership of physical assets can be transferred via a trusted exchange.
With an army of ROV's or Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles, PO8 plans to begin intensive mapping and mineral scanning of the seafloor surrounding the bahama's. Upon collection, this intellectual property will be leased to the gaming and film industries, allowing for sustainable capitalization of the islands native resources.
The most interesting part is the branch of PO8's organization called Skully's, a reward based digital collectibles game. Using geo-location, Skullys allows players to raise a digital flag at their location. Players can then challenge others for land, the winner of which will earn daily crypto rewards for their efforts.
The founder Matt Arnett stated "We will put The Bahama's on the world crypto stage. The Bahamas has now set its eyes on making Grand Bahama the crypto capitol of the America's. The Bahamas understands now is the time to welcome and innovate with blockchain technology"
The group's impressive team also includes Claudio Bonifacio, a world-renowned shipwreck expert and Dave Gallo, an oceanographer previously involved in the mapping of the Titanic, Air France Flight 447, and Ernest Shackleton's ship HMS Endurance.

Grayscale investments announced today it will offer a fund to let professional investors get exposure to Stellar and its digital currency Lumens. It's their latest , others they've created are the Bitcoin Investment Fund, XRP, Ethereum and Zen.
Managing Director Michael Sonnenshein stated that the Stellar Fund came in response to investor demand. He also said he is bullish on Stellar's real world use case of acting as a bridge currency in transnational money corridors.
"I think the theory is a sound one. An American bank may be keeping large amounts of currencies in foreign banks, and to be able to bring those balances of foreign currencies onto a balance sheet as working capital is valuable" he said "Financial institutions won't be required to hold balances all over the place. This will improve efficiency and shore up balance sheets for other uses."
Grayscale's decision to create a dedicated fund for Stellar is likely to give the currency a boost given that the firm has a roster of well heeled clients including hedge funds and family offices.
Stellar, also backed by Stripe,is also pushing to make Lumen's currency part of banking operations.

I wrote a whole thing on this that dissapeared when I hit post so I'll try again lol. I wanted to share an experience I had with starting a home based business 3 years ago, it was called The Hideaway Ramona. A tiny house bed and breakfast. I have a 6 acre property where I live so I arranged a deal with 5 tiny house owners to park their unit here, I would do all the work associated with renting them out nightly on Airbnb and we would split the money 50/50. Passive income for them, a side job for me. 3 of the houses came to me unfinished, so I remodeled them to completion on nights and weekends for the owners. Which was kind of enjoyable besides being a lot of work. So when they were finished, we listed them and travelers and tiny house enthusiasts came. We started making between $6-800 per week, all I had to do was change the sheets, clean the unit, dump the composting toilet and get it ready for the next group. I'd invested a few thousand dollars into running electricity and water for the hookups, and furnishing the houses with all the necessary stuff. TV's, kitchen appliances, couches etc. Everything went according to plan, we started gathering momentum and had great reviews. Things were looking good, I started building my own tiny house. Had plans of replacing the units with my own houses now that I knew it would work.
Well...it was short lived. 7 months into it one of my neighbors filed a complaint with the county. The county worker came onto my property when we weren't home and took all the pictures he needed to shut us down. The county wanted us to pay for a major use permit. $14k to start the permit process, non-refundable of course, and could cost as much as $300k by the time it was finished. So we had to close up shop. There was no way we could afford that, the thing wasn't bringing in that kind of money.
All that work for nothing, depression set in. It was a real kick in the *****. Felt like an idiot, literally lost quite a bit of money. Didn't even consider trying to start anything for about a year.
Then the idea for business number 3 came up, create a Farm Table Rental business for weddings and events. My wife and I went over the idea for a while and then we went for it. I spent a couple months building the tables, benches, wedding arches, portable bars and other stuff in my wood shop, she spent about that much time building an awesome website and marketing to people in the wedding industry.  We launched and it really has taken off, we are getting a constant flow of visitors to our site and regular bookings for weddings. It's worked out perfectly. All the expenses of building have been paid back from the weddings we've done  Nobody can close us down and its fun to do.
Failure is part of trying new things. Don't be afraid of it, if you fall down then learn what you can from it and push forward again.  In this day and age anyone can start a business, make a website and if you can solve a problem or provide a great service that people want, then the sky is the limit. Do you have an experience with persistence paying off? What happened and how did you get thru it?

60% of the total bitcoin can be traced to whale accounts, most of these wallets have been dormant for between 6 months to the last 2.5 years. They've begun stirring, there were 3.8 million inactive bitcoin accounts in mid-September and only 2.8 million inactive by end of December, almost a 30% drop in dormant accounts leading some to speculate that there might be some serious volatility on the horizon or that at least something big is happening. The big boys can move the entire market with a single transaction, moving around large amounts of BTC thereby leading investors to panic sell or gain buying interest.A recent report from Bloomberg, which cited statistics from analytics provider/aggregator Flipside Crypto, revealed that whales have begun to act up, potentially indicating that chaos is set to ensue in the coming months.
 Flipside’s head of data science, Eric Stone, claimed that there’s “definitely [been] a big shift,” explaining that these statistics could indicate that drastic price swings may be inbound.
A lot of experts believe that we haven't seen the bottom yet in Bitcoin and that it might drop below 3k before the next bull run takes off. We shall see.