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1,200 NEWSSTANDS IN AUSTRALIA NOW SELLING BITCOIN AND ETHEREUM

1,200 NEWSSTANDS IN AUSTRALIA NOW SELLING BITCOIN AND ETHEREUM

1,200 NEWSSTANDS IN AUSTRALIA NOW SELLING BITCOIN AND ETHEREUM

As of today, Australians are now able to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum from more than 1,200 newsagents around the continent.

AUSTRALIA FOR BITCOIN

Buying Bitcoin or Ethereum in Australia is now as easy as walking to the nearest newsstand.

Cryptocurrency exchange bitcoin.com.au has launched the convenient service, after installing out the infrastructure in various locations since 2016.

Though easier than ever, many individuals still aren’t accustomed to the idea of buying a digital product from a physical vendor. In an interview with 9Finance, CEO Rupert Hackett explains:

When your product is totally digital it can be hard to gain trust from consumers because there’s no tangible product being handed over. Using newsagents provides consumers with a convenient and trusted way for investors to buy cryptocurrency.

The addition of Ethereum sales to the Bitcoin-focused exchange’s might come as a bit of a surprise, but Hackett claims it was necessary, due to the steep price tag of Bitcoin potentially scaring off new investors:

Traditionally, the only people who knew about Ethereum or wanted to buy it were those who already had bought Bitcoin. But now that cryptocurrency is more well-known we found that Ethereum’s cheaper price point made it a more digestible value proposition for buyers.

Assuming users have properly set up their own mobile, desktop or cold-storage wallets, Hackett says buyers will have their cryptocurrency of choice in their digital wallets in 20 minutes or less, on average.

Purchases from these newsstands aren’t exactly cheap, however. Purchase made on March 1 are fee-free, but any purchases made after that carry a rather hefty 5 percent fee. Hackett claims the fee is worth it, however, for the convenience, explaining:

The fact that you can now buy Bitcoin and Ethereum from the same place you purchase soft drinks and stationery really speaks to how institutionalised cryptocurrency has become. For anyone who has hesitated about buying Bitcoin because it all seemed too complicated, this is the perfect setup that takes the fear factor out of investing in digital currencies.

The increased ease of purchase for Australians undoubtedly represents yet another positive step towards the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin and Ethereum as viable cryptocurrencies.

 

Author: ADAM JAMES · MARCH 1, 2018 · 6:00 PM

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Bitcoin Price Analysis — The confluence of bullish continuation

Bitcoin Price Analysis - The confluence of bullish continuation

Bitcoin Price Analysis — The confluence of bullish continuation

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to recover from this years low, set earlier this month. The market cap now stands at US$177.78 billion, with US$3.69 billion traded on exchanges in the past 24 hours.

A recent acquisition has been a hot topic of discussion this week, with Circle buying Poloniex for US$400 million. Boston-based Circle is one of three companies that hold a New York bitlicense and also has plans to release a retail trading app later this year.

Having launched in 2013, following a US$9M Series A funding round, Circle was created to increase mainstream adoption of digital currencies like Bitcoin by providing a payment platform for consumers and merchants. The company has since raised a total of US$140 million in venture capital from investors including Goldman Sachs, IDG Capital Partners, Breyer Capital, Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, Baidu, CICC Alpha, EverBright, WangXiang, and CreditEase. Goldman has since started development of a cryptocurrency trading desk of their own.

While putting their money to use, Circle cites Poloniex as an important bridge for “an open global token marketplace.” The cryptocurrency exchange was unable to keep up with the market demand in 2017, having problems with exchange uptime and answering customer support tickets. As a result, Poloniex lost much of its market share to Bittrex. Binance has also now arrived on the scene, only adding to the market competition.

In an interesting twist, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said it’s too early for his bank to need a bitcoin strategy and that he doesn’t consider the digital currency to be a store of value. Blankfein said that volatility needs to settle down and it "doesn't feel like a currency, doesn't feel like a store of value […] It works out — and it gets more established, and it trades more like a store of value, and it doesn't move up and down 20 percent, and there is liquidity to it — we'll get to it."

Goldman is far from the only incumbent to take a publically hawkish stance on the asset. In last years annual report, JPMorgan Chase had one reference to cryptocurrency, acknowledging it was a competitor to their business model due to its ability to decrease fees and friction between payments.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon famously called BTC a fraud, but later expressed regret that he made the remark. The financial giant was also one of three banks, including Bank of America and Citigroup, to begin banning credit card purchases for cryptocurrency earlier this year.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is also a staunch critic of cryptocurrencies alleging that they represent an untraceable tool for money laundering and other illegal activities, stating “we have limited our relationships [with cryptocurrencies] and I think the thing speaks for itself.”

Former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich believes that BTC is a “pyramid scheme,” adding, “it makes no sense.” Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat sees cryptocurrencies as a threat to the existing financial system that allow for tax avoidance and money laundering, which governments won’t allow. He does, however, see potential in nationalized digital currencies, but believes that “cryptocurrency is a bad moniker.”

In other news, the Dave Kleiman estate has filed a US$10 billion lawsuit against Craig Wright. Kleiman and Wright were both early BTC miners. The suit alleges that since Kleiman’s death, Wright has “perpetrated a scheme” to “seize Dave’s bitcoins.” The lawsuit is seeking between 300,000 and 1.1 million BTC, to be determined at trial.

Chain analysis of the addresses in the lawsuit by WizSec, the company responsible for making the Mt. Gox and BTCe connection, has found that the addresses are likely not owned by either Craig Wright or Dave Kleiman, but are simply addresses which at one point in time held a significant amount of BTC.

In the meantime, the Bitcoin network metrics continue to tell a complex story as scaling solutions continue to evolve. Metrics to watch include; hash rate and difficulty, transactions per day, network value to transactions (NVT) ratio, unconfirmed transactions, SegWit adoption, transaction outputs (not shown), and Lightning Network growth and usage.

Hashrate and difficulty continue to increase despite a drastic decrease in mining profitability, which will continue to so long as more hashrate is added to the network and price does not increase. Mining profitability is currently analogous to May 2017 (not shown). The leading ASIC manufacturer, Bitmain, may have made as much as US$4 billion last year according to an estimate by CNBC.

Transactions per day have continued to decline since December. The transaction highs largely mirror the bitcoin price chart itself. Individual transactions have also declined due to batching, where one transaction is sent to many addresses at once instead of each transaction being sent individually.

BTC price is also very closely related to network activity. The network value to transactions (NVT) ratio (not shown) has increased substantially as a result, now comparable to levels seen in 2015. A lower NVT suggests a cheaper value per unit of on-chain transaction volume. NVT does not account for off-chain transactions.

The combination of transaction volume and price have created a tumultuous year for the BTC fee market in 2017, as the scaling debate raged on between factions. Community consensus lead to the implementation of a soft fork with Segregated Witness (SegWit), which won out over a hard fork that merely increased block size. Transaction fees are currently negligible. Transactions can currently be sent for US$0.48 (2 sat/byte) with a less than four hour expected confirmation, according to the hardware wallet Trezor.

As transactions have declined, the number of SegWit transactions as a percentage of the total has recently seen an uptick. SegWit provides a scaling solution that effectively decreases the size of a transaction, which allows for more transactions to be squeezed into each block. Bitfinex and Coinbase have both started using the update.

SegWit also enables the Lightning Network (LN), a protocol that implements trusted, bidirectional, off-chain, hub and spoke payment channels. LN is designed to facilitate microtransactions that are confirmed in milliseconds. There are 1873 nodes with 5,153 channels currently operating on the BTC testnet. The number of nodes and channels on the mainnet has now started to catch up, with 900 nodes and 1,500 channels, but should be used with caution.

Exchange traded volume this week has been led by the USDT and USD markets, mostly on Bitfinex. The Korean Premium remains in the Korean Won (KRW) market, where BTC sells for ~5.5% more on average.

Global over the counter (OTC) volume remains down sharply from December and January. Despite this, Venezuela posted a record high in Bolivar volume over the past week.

Author Josh Olszewicz, 01 Mar 2018

 

Posted by David Ogden Entreprenuer

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Chinese Entrepreneur Warns Against Mining and ICO Bans

Chinese Entrepreneur Warns Against Mining and ICO Bans

Chinese Entrepreneur Warns Against Mining and ICO Bans

Angel investor and Founder of Chinese app Meitu, Cai Wensheng, has published criticisms of the central government’s expanding regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies via Wechat. Mr. Wensheng warns that heavy-handed regulatory policies may squander the opportunity for China to maintain a significant presence in the burgeoning global cryptocurrency sector, in addition to arguing that many of the challenges faced by cryptocurrencies are indicative of the typical “development process” experienced by emerging monetary forms.

Cai Wensheng, the founder of Meitu, has expressed criticisms of the Chinese government’s prohibitive regulatory policies regarding cryptocurrency mining and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

According to The Meitu founder, the majority of the world’s bitcoin mines are located in China, with Mr. Wensheng estimating that “80%” of the world’s bitcoins are produced by hardware housed in China. As such, Mr. Wensheng believes that a regulatory crackdown targeting bitcoin mining risks squandering the opportunity to maintain its dominance in the bitcoin markets, describing such a potential export industry.

Mr. Wensheng argues that China should use bitcoin mining surplus power for productive purposes, stating that “China’s surplus power [can be used] to produce surplus power to produce bitcoin, [which can be] sold to the South Koreans, Japanese, and Americans” — making China “a bitcoin foreign exchange earner.” However, Mr. Wensheng also warns that if bitcoin miners are “forced overseas [to] Iceland, Chinese people will need to spend a lot on foreign exchanges to buy back bitcoin.”

Challenges Faced by New Monetary Forms

The Meitu Founder argues that many of the challenges and criticisms faced by bitcoin have been experienced by other emerging monetary forms throughout history, stating that “every coin is a kind of faith.” Mr. Wenshen asserts that many of the world’s national currencies have gone through numerous periods of considerable volatility throughout history, claiming that political instability led to dramatic price fluctuations for many sovereign currencies prior to 1973.

“This is the case with the Golden Circle Certificates of the Republic of China, Mr. Wenshen stated, adding that instability is an inherent component of the requisite “development process” experienced by emerging monetary forms.

Mr. Wensheng also predicted that cryptocurrencies will reshape the securities industry.

 

Entrepreneur Warns Against Heavy-Handed ICO Regulations

Mr. Wensheng has argued that initial coin offerings do away with many of the barriers preventing ordinary investors from being able to access exposure to emerging companies, adding that venture capital and investment firms typically access tokens at the same price as their retail counterparts in the ICO markets.

Mr. Wensheng also compared the ICO markets to the dotcom bubble of the nineteen-nineties, stating that of the “hundreds of companies” that listed Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) “in 1999” very “few companies are left,” however, “One Amazon is enough” — implying that heavy-handed restrictions on ICOs may result in China failing to facilitate the growth of potential major companies that could emerge through the disruptive ICO sector.

 

Author: Samual Haig

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Tesla Billionaire Elon Musk Reveals How Much Bitcoin He Owns

 

Tesla Billionaire Elon Musk Reveals How Much Bitcoin He Owns

Billionaire Elon Musk is a huge fan of cutting-edge technology and is usually ahead of the curve when it comes to finance, but he's not a bitcoin bull. The co-founder of Tesla Inc. revealed on Twitter that he owns only a tiny fraction of one bitcoin token.

"I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago," Musk confessed. Using today's bitcoin price of about $10,000 a coin, that translates to $2,500.

The serial entrepreneur — whose net worth tops $20 billion — made the revelation in response to a question about a Twitter scam where random users posed as celebrities (like Musk) in a bid to steal people's cryptocurrencies.

Musk's indifference to bitcoin probably wasn't a shock to his fans, since he recently told his 19.8 million Twitter followers that "a friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is." (See also: Elon Musk: Education, Success Story and Net Worth.)

In November 2017, Musk denied rumors that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of bitcoin. The brouhaha erupted after a former SpaceX intern claimed in a blog post that the serial entrepreneur was "probably" Nakamoto.
 

Is Elon Musk Satoshi Nakamoto?

In a blog post on Medium, Sahil Gupta, who had interned at Musk's space company SpaceX in 2015, said "Satoshi is probably Elon."

Gupta reasoned: "Elon is a self-taught polymath. He’s repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge. It’s how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin."

The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has never been confirmed, but there has a steady stream of rampant speculation about who he really is ever since bitcoin quietly launched in 2009. (See also: Has Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Been Found?)

Meanwhile, Elon Musk isn't the only billionaire who's skeptical of bitcoin and the crypto phenomenon. Bitcoin cynics are put off by the virtual currency's erratic price movements, lack of regulation, and absence of a valuation guarantee because it's not backed by a central bank.

Billionaire Charlie Munger, the second-in-command at Berkshire Hathaway, slammed bitcoin as a "noxious poison" and called the media hype surrounding digital currencies "totally asinine."

Similarly, Munger's boss, mega-billionaire Warren Buffett, predicted that cryptocurrencies will almost certainly "come to a bad ending." (See more: Bitcoin Is 'Poison,' Says Berkshire Billionaire Charlie Munger.)

And in its latest letter to clients, the Paul Singer-led Elliott Management, which oversees $34 billion in assets, excoriated cryptocurrencies as a bubble, a scam and a fraud. “This is not just a bubble," Elliott wrote. "It is not just a fraud. It is perhaps the outer limit, the ultimate expression, of the ability of humans to seize upon ether and hope to ride it to the stars."

 

Author Samantha Chang | Updated February 23, 2018 — 6:50 PM EST

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Bitcoin Fees Are Down Big — Why It’s Happening and What It Means

 

Bitcoin Fees Are Down Big — Why It's Happening and What It Means

$26 down to $3.

The average cost of sending a bitcoin transaction is cheaper than it's been in a year and a half, showing the price isn't the cryptocurrency's only unpredictable metric these days.

But with all the debate about growing fees, this might come as a surprise. After all, it wasn't so long ago that fees were so high a group of prominent investors and miners created a whole new version of bitcoin mostly to keep fees lower.

Backing up a bit, much of the conflict centered on the fact that while called "fees," these expenses are best considered as transaction costs that are necessary to the network, as necessary as paying for someone to deliver a protocol service, be it SMS, VoIP or email, or even a pizza.

This is because bitcoin is a software that requires all of the many thousands of computers that run it to stay in sync. To do so easily, there's a limit on how much data the network can process at intervals, and users need to pay more to get their transactions in at times of congestion.

So, as bitcoin grew more popular in the last year, fees skyrocketed to over $25, according to a graph from data website Bitinfocharts.

Bitcoin users, those who truly rely on the protocol for essentials, have been affected by this, as were those who believed bitcoin could be competitive with legacy payment systems.

But, bitcoin fees have fizzled out, declining since the end of December.

So, why did fees take a nosedive? The simple answer is users are making fewer transactions right now. In December, there were roughly 400,000 transactions per day, while today bitcoin is seeing only 200,000, according to data from Blockchain.info.

"I think its really simple," BitGo engineer Mike Belshe told CoinDesk. "There is substantially less transaction demand."

The question, he added, is why has there been a decrease in transactions?

SegWit and beyond

If Twitter and Reddit are any indication, sentiment on the matter tends to be influenced by personal politics, in this case, where users stand in bitcoin's long-standing block size debate, which, at its core, was about network economics.

Popular Twitter figure "Armin van Bitcoin" cheered that the low fees mean the "scaling debates are now a thing of the past," pinning the development partly on growing adoption of Segregated Witness, a scaling feature at the center of bitcoin's long-raging fee debate.

And there is truth to the claims. SegWit reduces transaction fees and adds more space to the blockchain, but it still isn't widely adopted, so it's hard to say how much it actually helped. There hasn't been much of a recent increase in SegWit use either. For the past several months, only about 10-14 percent of transactions, according to SegWit tracking site SegWit Party.

Plus, SegWit doesn't reduce the number of transactions, it makes each one cheaper.

Another possibility, according to Belshe, is that fee prices "finally forced" some large transaction processors to implement a technology called "batching," rolling many transactions into one, to leave more space on the blockchain.

Indeed, exchanges like Coinbase have said they were working on implementing the feature in the past. And Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift announced it now batches transactions, making a point that it makes up 2 percent of all the transfers that occur on the bitcoin blockchain.

However, it's a theory that's difficult to get hard data on, unless an exchange were to formally announce that they were using this technique. "This is hard to confirm with 100 percent certainty," Belshe said.

Still, he argued that even if just one large exchange started batching transactions, it could have a huge impact on the overall transaction load.

These sorts of technical theories add to the idea that developers and those building services on top of bitcoin can make optimizations in order to free up space on the blockchain, without compromising on some of its core features.

"This is why Bitcoin Core worked so hard to get 'layer-two solutions' working, and why they focus so much on optimization of the size of transaction through various things like Schnorr and Bulletproofs," XO Media CEO John Carvalho said.

"They are doing everything to minimize the footprint of every type of transaction attached to bitcoin because they are all stored forever," he added.
 

Ditching bitcoin

Others, especially those critical of how bitcoin developers favor a smaller blockchain and limited transaction space, argue the lower fees are a consequence of people that are sick and tired of the high fees leaving bitcoin.

"Bitcoin isn't useful for anything that involves low fees so people are migrating to alternatives. this has the consequence of lowering the fees on bitcoin," said Ryan X. Charles, founder of Yours, a media startup building on bitcoin cash.

Charles notably moved his startup off of the bitcoin blockchain last year, migrating to alternatives before building on bitcoin cash.

It's possible that some users are doing the same. Payment processor Stripe stopped accepting bitcoin in January payments due to the high fees, and BitPay, a startup that offers payment services over bitcoin has differentiated into supporting multiple protocols for its merchants.

Yet, if they are pushing users elsewhere, it's not clear where they're going. Bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency created as a cheaper alternative to bitcoin, still has about 10 percent the number of transactions bitcoin currently does.

"Apparently [high fees] don't incentivize folks to switch to bcash," BitGo engineer Jameson Lopp said.

Bitcoin developer Meni Rosenfeld doesn't think so either. In fact, he disagrees with both of the above theories.

"The main reason for the drop in [bitcoin transaction] fees is not SegWit adoption, and it's not people moving to [bitcoin cash]. It's simply that the craze for buying cryptocurrencies in general has calmed down," he tweeted.

Indeed, there's been a downtick in outside interest in bitcoin. A lower price has less new investors searching for bitcoin on Google and coming in to buy and trade the cryptocurrency.

This view seems supported by the fact that the second most valuable blockchain by market cap, ethereum, has also seen a dramatic drop in fees in recent months. The same goes for litecoin, clocking in at number five, and XRP, at third place.

Charles also argued it's possible crypto's waning hype cycle has contributed to lower fees.

"I wouldn't be surprised if ethereum is also lower due to the decline in market value. There may simply be less demand for sending transactions across all blockchains. We went through a hype cycle," he told CoinDesk.

And it's always possible the low fees were caused by a mix of the factors described above.
 

Fees forever

What do lower fees mean for users? In short, it shows that under the current setup, fees might fluctuate over time.

The hope is that — eventually — fees will always be "low," with the word low having somewhat of a relative definition. After all, a low-cost airline flight may be better than an expensive bus ride.

In this way, supporters hope that bitcoin will one day offer the best of both worlds, supporting high demand and "low" fees that reflect the quality of service, while also supporting miners, computer operators who devote real-world costs to securing transactions.

"The fee market is necessary as a counterweight to market price. [Theoretically,] demand for blockspace is infinite, so there must be levers to manage it," Carvalho said.

In the meantime, fees could continue to decline, creating a new standard of "low" that might be friendlier to today's internet users. Carvalho and Rosenfeld, for instance, think the much-touted Lightning Network will help get bitcoin to that point, as it moves more transactions off of the main bitcoin blockchain.

If Lightning really takes off, then low fees may become another problem, as they might not be enough to defray mining costs when the network finally produces all 21 million bitcoin.

For this reason, developer Greg Slepak had an almost ominous-sounding view of the future, arguing that users should "take the opportunity" of today's lows fees, adding:

"It might not come again."

 

Author Alyssa Hertig Updated Feb 23, 2018 at 02:11 UTC

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Crypto Mining Craze Creates Global GPU Shortage

Crypto Mining Craze Creates Global GPU Shortage

Crypto Mining Craze Creates Global GPU Shortage

The cryptocurrency bull run of 2017 attracted multitudes of investors looking to get rich quick but it also created a mining boom that has resulted in a worldwide shortage of computer components.

 

Miners Plunder Singapore, Hong Kong For Cheap Rigs

Scores of miners from around the world come to the electronics bazaars in Asia to buy cryptocurrency rigs. Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po and Singapore’s Sim Lim Square to name just a couple are jammed with people of all ages ordering specialized rigs.

This new demand for mining rigs has revitalized these electronic markets that were dying only a few years ago when shoppers turned online for computers, cameras, and gadgets of all kinds.

“It’s 30-50 percent cheaper to buy equipment related to crypto-mining in Hong Kong than in Europe,” Russian bitcoin miner Dima Popov said. This is because Hong Kong has no sales tax and is in close proximity to Chinese components manufacturers.

Miners are demanding more powerful rigs that can include up to 500 graphics cards each which has created a worldwide shortage of the cards allowing manufacturers and retailers to gauge buyers on the price.

 

Scarce GPU Cards Selling At Double Price

The market for high-end graphics cards used to work like anything else. You went to the electronics shop, found the card you wanted and paid just about the Manufacturer’s retail price. Today due to the escalating demand from mining you’ll most likely find the shelves that once held them bare but if you do actually what your looking for expect to pay a premium.

These high-end graphics cards are the most efficient way to mine cryptocurrency and as hobbyist miners and big players alike scramble to snatch up as many as they can prices go through the roof. Last summer popular GPU’s like the AMD Radeon RX 580 sold for about $250 at retail, today the price is more likely to be over $500 and that is if you can find them.

Checking the price of the 5 most popular graphics cards from last year and comparing it with the updated version shows a general price increase of between 70 and 100%. This leaves many wannabe miners trolling online for the best deals on new or even second-hand cards. Buying older cards though means slower computing ability which reduces the profitability of a rig.

Rigs using, for example, a high-end Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 ti card costing around $1,300 (MSRP) can earn as much as $10 dollars a day at current crypto values. This means that the card may pay for itself in about 4 months.

String the math out and it’s easy to see how a fair sized rig can make a very nice profit over a year or more. Retailers reported a dip in demand for the cards during the crypto market correction but now that Bitcoin and it’s like are on the rise sellers and manufacturers are looking for demand to reach and surpass 2017.

Author JMCMAHON • FEB 21, 2018 • 05:02

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Crptocurrency Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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CFTC Warns Against Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

CFTC Warns Against Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

CFTC Warns Against Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

The rising popularity of cryptocurrencies is of great concern. Especially when it comes to pump-and-dump schemes, there’s reason to be concerned. As such, the CFTC issued an official warning against this type of market manipulation. They advise customers to avoid such schemes, especially when it comes to small and new altcoin markets. It is evident doing one’s research is always the best course of action.

In the world of cryptocurrency, pump-and-dump schemes are nothing new. In fact, they are a lot more common than some people might think. The CFTC has issued an official warning on this topic earlier this week. This is quite a surprise, even though it is evident consumers need to be aware of these manipulative efforts. Especially smaller cap coins and new alternative cryptocurrencies pose a significant risk in this regard. Moreover, it is always best to avoid any promotion on social media altogether.
 

Avoiding Cryptocurrency Pump-and-dump Schemes

This seems to stem forth from the recent BitConnect issues. That pump-and-dump scheme caused hundreds of millions in financial losses. It was mainly promoted on social media and YouTube. The CFTC doesn’t want history to repeat itself in this regard. They now want consumers to blow the whistle on any suspicious currencies first and foremost. It’s always better to submit tips than ignore pump-and-dump schemes altogether. Whether or not the general public will follow this guideline, remains to be seen.

According to the CFTC, pump-and-dump schemes in the cryptocurrency world take place on social media first and foremost. Online chat rooms, such as the ones on Telegram, are also problematic in this regard. Ignoring these buy signals will prove to be rather difficult for a lot of novice users. It is these people the marketers and scammers prey on first and foremost. A lot of people never do any research for specific coins or projects, even though they really should.

For now, the CFTC will not undertake further action against pump-and-dump schemes. They are not in a position to do so either, unfortunately. It is evident users need to conduct their due diligence first and foremost. Those who purposefully defraud other investors will face legal issues sooner or later, though. Anyone participating in market manipulation also violates the law. It is evident this new financial industry needs some boundaries first and foremost. Cracking down on pump-and-dumps is the right way to go in this regard.

 

Author JP BUNTINX • FEB 18, 2018 • 03:02

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 16th Feb – One More Hurdle to Clear

Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 16th Feb — One More Hurdle to Clear

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

  • Bitcoin price has broken past its inverse head and shoulders pattern neckline to show that an uptrend is in the cards.

  • Price is hitting another upside barrier at its descending trend line, though, and this might prompt profit-taking.

  • Technical indicators are also suggesting that the rally is overdone.

  • Bitcoin price is testing the descending trend line on its 4-hour time frame, and moving past this hurdle could mean more gains.

 

Technical Indicators Signals
 

The 100 SMA is below the longer-term 200 SMA to signal that the path of least resistance is to the downside. This suggests that the downtrend is more likely to resume than to reverse.

The 200 SMA also lines up with the descending trend line to add to its strength as resistance. This means that it would take a strong catalyst to trigger and sustain an upside break.

Stochastic is indicating overbought conditions, though, so selling pressure could still pick up. Similarly, RSI is in the overbought region and looks ready to turn lower, so bitcoin price might follow suit.

Market Factors
 

Bitcoin price has drawn a lot of support from easing regulatory concerns, stemming from the US Senate hearing and remarks from South Korean officials suggesting that they are open to introducing something like BitLicense.

Recall that Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Christopher Giancarlo and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton mentioned that they have no plans on banning bitcoin. Instead they plan on regulating the industry without quashing development.

More positive updates like these could help improve the sentiment in the industry. Apart from that, the continuation of risk-taking in higher-yielding assets like stocks and commodities has also benefitted bitcoin.

Besides, the move all the way to the $10,000 area of interest could bring more buying interest as this could signal an end of the correction. A sustained move past the next $12,000 area of interest could confirm that buying momentum is in play, attracting even more buyers.

Author SARAH JENN • FEB 16, 2018 • 05:02

 

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur
David Ogden Cryptocurrenct Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

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Prices Aside, Crypto’s Tech Stack Is Steadily Improving

Prices Aside, Crypto's Tech Stack Is Steadily Improving

Prices Aside, Crypto's Tech Stack Is Steadily Improving

Rachel Rose O'Leary and Alyssa Hertig

Feb 11, 2018 at 14:45 UTC

 

A look at the headlines of late may leave you with a familiar conclusion — with all the ups and downs in the market, it's just too early to take crypto seriously.

And it's true, despite the best efforts of even the industry's most notable developers, the world's largest cryptocurrencies remain not just volatile, but difficult (and risky) to use, at least in a way that their creators' intended.

Still, heading into 2018, enthusiasts the world over are hard at work on improvements.

As such, there's optimism advances could start to compound, creating a user experience that finally starts to transcend the issues — namely, the high fees and long wait times — users of most blockchains have become all too accustomed to.

In fact, in the year ahead, blockchain users could see exciting new features and scientific firsts that just might help push the industry closer to that vision:

 

1. Off-chain channels

What if it was possible for blockchain-based transactions to avoid using the blockchain at all?

That's the big idea behind off-blockchain payment channels, an idea that harkens back to 2015, but whose time may have finally come this year. Most associated with Bitcoin's Lightning Network, the idea is actually more general than this specific instance.

Essentially, off-blockchain payment channels would allow two people using any one cryptocurrency to send small payments back and forth, settling to the blockchain (and dealing with its high fees and slow transaction times) only when absolutely necessary.

Due to the potential impact, the idea is catching on — ethereum developers, while they often don't see eye-to-eye with their bitcoin peers, are at work on the same type of solution.

But there's more than just a rivalry at play, there's also reason to believe 2018 might be different in that actual live transactions could be sent in significant numbers.

The developers behind bitcoin's Lightning Network have declared the technology almost ready based on successful tests. Meanwhile, ethereum's developers have also unveiled successful tests for their versions of the concept, Raiden Network, with a more ambitious version, Plasma, potentially around the corner.

 

2. Real-live staking

As their popularity grows, attention is also being paid to the electricity required to sustain cryptocurrencies.

While the relevant data is difficult to pin down, proof-of-work, the consensus protocol that underlies bitcoin mining, is best defined as an energy-intensive process. As such, there are concerns about its electricity use could have large-scale environmental effects.

This is leading to new research on an idea from 2011. Called proof-of-stake, or "consensus by vote," the idea has been implemented, however, not at the scale intended by ethereum.

As such, it's long-awaited project Casper is likely to be under significant scrutiny this coming year, and early versions are beginning to see the light.

In a testnet released on New Year's Eve, one variation of Casper, was claimed to be functional. Karl Floersch, a leading developer behind the technology, told CoinDesk at the time that the code is working with "no hiccups."

Work remains to adapt this early version of Casper across the different ethereum clients, but ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has said he expects the technology will be tested alongside proof-of-work sometime in the future.

 

3. Privacy advances

Privacy has been a somewhat neglected promise in the majority of blockchains, but it's nonetheless an issue that could see improvement this year.

Most notable is the advances in zero-knowledge proofs, what Buterin has called "the single most under-hyped thing in cryptography right now," are getting cheaper and easier to deploy.

A form of cryptography that hides information without risking validity, it's already been adapted to a small degree into ethereum, which could lead to a wave of startups experimenting with private smart contracts in novel and unexpected ways.

Plus, in a white paper published earlier this month, a system for achieving zero-knowledge without compromising trust — a point of contention in some earlier iterations of the tech — was released, an update which could have exciting consequences.

And as existing tech matures, privacy-centric cryptocurrencies such as monero and zcash are also set to improve.

In preparation for an upgrade, zcash has been steadily reinforcing its security, while monero is stepping up to implement "bulletproofs," a feature that could cut fees by 80 percent.

 

4. Decentralized exchanges

No, this isn't just a new version of Coinbase or Kraken.

As the industry's largest exchanges struggle to cope with the influx of new adopters, an increasing number of projects are at work developing something called a decentralized exchange. The term denotes not just a new browser-based exchange, but rather a type of software users can use to swap one cryptocurrency with another without a central entity.

2017 saw a flood of new decentralized exchange projects, such as ShapeShift's Prism, 0x, OmiseGo, Kyber Network, and many others.

Expect those efforts to accelerate this year.

So far, hardware wallet Ledger has already integrated with decentralized exchange Radar Relay, allowing users to trustlessly exchange tokens based on ethereum.

While functionality is limited (it's only supported by a single wallet and only ethereum-based tokens can be sent), many in the industry see it as a glimpse into the future of not just cryptocurrency exchanges, but the technology itself.

 

Posted By David Ogden Entrepreneur
David ogden Cryptocurrency entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Russian nuclear scientists arrested for Bitcoin mining plot

Russian nuclear scientists arrested for Bitcoin mining plot

Russian nuclear scientists arrested for Bitcoin mining plot

Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies.

The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins, media reports say.

The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, is a restricted area.

The centre's press service said: "There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining."

The supercomputer was not supposed to be connected to the internet — to prevent intrusion — and once the scientists attempted to do so, the nuclear centre's security department was alerted. They were handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian news service Mash says.

"As far as we are aware, a criminal case has been launched against them," the press service told Interfax news agency.

Crypto-currencies like Bitcoin do not rely on centralised computer servers. People who provide computer processing power to the crypto-currency system, to enable transactions to take place, can get rewards in Bitcoins.

In the Cold War the USSR's first nuclear bomb was produced at Sarov, during Joseph Stalin's rule.

The top-secret town was not even marked on Soviet maps and special permits are still required for Russians to visit it.

Putin, power and poison: Russia’s elite FSB spy club

Sarov is surrounded by a tightly guarded no-man's-land, with barbed wire fences to keep the curious away.

There are suspicions that the radioactive polonium-210 used to kill ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 came from Sarov.

The Federal Nuclear Centre reportedly employs up to 20,000 people and its supercomputer boasts a capacity of 1 petaflop, the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Mining crypto-currencies requires great computational power and huge amounts of energy.

There have been reports of some other industrial facilities in Russia being used for crypto-mining, and one businessman reportedly bought two power stations for the activity.

 

Source BBC News 9th February

Posted by David Ogden Entrepreneur

David ogden Cryptocurrency entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member