Monthly Archives: May 2017

Think bitcoins surge of more than 30 percent in the last week is impressive? Check out what some of its cousins are up to.

The market capitalization of digital currencies has soared over 50 percent to more than $90 billion in the past seven days asthe frenzy around cryptocurrencies reaches a fever pitch. Demand is swelling as more companies embrace the technology backing the method of exchange and some investors see it as a haven from political uncertainty across the globe.

Numerous alternative cryptocurrencies, or "altcoins," have emerged since bitcoin broke into public consciousness in 2013. Companies can sell new tokens through initial coin offerings, or ICOs. Ether, a digital currency linked to the Ethereum blockchain, has more than doubled its worth in the last week and is currently the second most valuable cryptocurrency, behind bitcoin. The value of zcash, the cryptocurrency that announced a partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Monday, has grown by nearly 200 percent.

Read more on industry perspective about the surge in bitcoin

Bitcoins slice of the pie has shrunk recently as its peers have gained share. It now dominates about 45 percent of the overall digital currency market, down from around 85 percent in February,according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. Meanwhile, Ethereums share has increased to more than 20 percent from 7 percent in February.

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Cryptocurrency Mania Goes Beyond Bitcoin - Bloomberg

Wilson said at a conference this month that consumers would eventually revolt against the data collection from platforms like Facebook and Google, opting to pay small amounts of cryptocurrencies for a more private internet experience.

"Historically, you build a community and use it to then sell their attention to advertisers, or use it to sell them stuff, that they either don't want or don't need," Livingston said. "So now with the cryptocurrency it unlocks a fundamentally new way to monetize a community."

Canada-based Kik's cryptocurrency, Kin, will be based on a different type of technology, ethereum blockchain. Canada is one of the top 10 areas most interested in ethereum over the past 12 months, Google Trends data show.

In its announcement, Kik also called out the omnipresence of giant tech companies.

"More and more ... services are controlled by a diminishing number of companies, resulting in a future of less innovation and less choice. Decentralization provides a sustainable way forward," the company said.

Only about 5.8 percent of U.S. internet users use Kik, according to a May 2016 usage study by AYTM Market Research, compared with 38.9 percent of respondents who use Facebook Messenger.

But Livingston said Kik still has millions of users. He added that the tactic could create new ways for Kik to compete with the massive scale of Facebook's free products.

"You live in this world where consumers expect everything for free," Livingston said. "So this is also a new way to build a new ecosystem, where we can use this cryptocurrency and create a rewards engine to pull in other developers to build great services for consumers."

The rest is here:
Kik launches Ethereum blockchain cryptocurrency Kin token - CNBC

Bitcoin Magazine

SALT Enables Traditional Lending Secured by Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Magazine Touted as traditional lending secured by cryptocurrency, SALT will allow members to leverage assets like bitcoin and ether for loan collateral. This new platform, which will be tethered to Ethereum ERC20 smart contracts, will enable borrowers to tap ... and more »

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SALT Enables Traditional Lending Secured by Cryptocurrency - Bitcoin Magazine

The world of cryptocurrency and blockchain has gotten very exciting over the last few months. Bitcoin and Ethereum are at all time highs with no end in sight, and lesser known cryptocurrencies like Ripple and Litecoin are also doing very well. New millionaires are being made daily from cryptocurrency and blockchain related investments.

Cryptocurrency is just one area of the broader category of blockchain. Ethereum is the most exciting of all to me because of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance were now 100s of the worlds largest corporations are onboard to utilize the Ethereum platform for its actual function. This is what takes blockchain and Ethereum to the next level.

Since the blockchain and cryptocurrency is difficult for most industry novices to understand, what better way to get information than following the top people in the industry!

The below list will surely not disappoint. The list is ordered alphabetically by first name, as I felt that everyone on this list is just so awesome it was too difficult to put an order.

Author of Mastering Bitcoin, published by OReilly Media.

Managing Partner @ #Blockchain Capital & Chairman of #Bitcoin Foundation.

Co-Founder @BlockchainAge. Co-Founder of ICOLab.

President & Co-Founder @blockchain and Chairman & Co-Founder @YouthBusinessUS.

Worlds first Investor in Bitcoin startups including Bitcoin.com , Blockchain.com , Z.cash , BitPay, Kraken, Purse.io.

CEO @FINTECHcircle @FINTECHTours, Co-Founder @TheFINTECHBook@WealthTECHBook @InsurTECH_Book & FINTECH Circle Innovate @FTCinnovate.

Billionaire blockchain investor.

Cryptography & Security expert.

Co-Founder of @ethereumproject & Founder of @ConsenSysLLC.

Co-Founder of Ethereum, Co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine.

And theres this other guy named Brian D. Evans, you may have heard of him. He talks about blockchain and crypto currencies a lot as well

Published May 25, 2017

Cherie Aime

525 SHARES

Eric Yang

293 SHARES

Kyle Brost

239 SHARES

Justas Markus

147 SHARES

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Top Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Experts to Follow in 2017 - Influencive

The latest spike in the price of bitcoin has all the hallmarks of investor mania.

Kristoffer Koch is the hapless hero in the cryptocurrency version of the classic get rich quick fable. He bought some bitcoin in 2009 for $26.60 when researching an academic paper on encryption. Bitcoin fans know what follows.

Kristoffer noticed Bitcoin was becoming something of a sensation in the media. After a few nervous attempts he remembered his password and discovered he had more than 5,000 bitcoin hidden away. The Guardian reported in October 2013 that this was worth a staggering $886,000.

This treasure trove will have continued to appreciate at quite astonishing levels since then. On January 1 this year Bitcoin passed the psychologically significant $1,000 price meaning Kristoffer would be celebrating the new year with $5m in the bank. And since then the value has more than doubled. He can sell 5,000 Bitcoin right now for $11,973,450.

Bitcoin is a classic mania

Criminals selling drugs on the darknet will see the currency delivering the same kinds of profits today as the sale of cocaine. But will it deliver the same rush, and the same addiction and will it end with cardiac arrest?

There is no doubt that bitcoin is right now exhibiting all the signs of being a bubble. Indeed, this appears to be part of the attraction. Joshua Rosenblatt, a US based lawyer and bitcoin investor, said:The returns have been unreal and theres an aspect of not wanting to miss out on a bubble.

Adam Button, a currency analyst with ForexLive.com, is clear. Bitcoin is a classic mania. There is no fundamental underpinning for it, other than its a compelling technological story. But the only people using bitcoin are nerds and criminals, and far more the second category than the first category.

The south sea bubble

Charles Haytar, the CEO of market analysis platform CryptoCompare, agrees. Lots of inexperienced investors are surging into the market, and its causing a bit of a bubble he said, before making a comparison to the South Sea Company.

Investment bubbles are indeed as old as capitalism itself. They have been a recognised menace since the Dutch Tulip Bubble ruined the foolhardy of Holland in 1637. The price of a tulip grew 20-fold and eclipsed the price of a grand manor house before suddenly collapsing and losing 99 percent of its value.

Then followed the South Sea Bubble when a single firm was granted a monopoly in trade with South America by the British state. Shares in the South Sea Company lept from 128 in January 1720 to 1050 by the following June, before suddenly collapsing and causing an economic crisis.

The value of an ounce of gold

In living memory we have also experienced the dotcom bubble. The NASAQ Composite rocketed from 500 in early 1990 to 5,000 in March 2000. And then the index crashed in October 2002, causing a recession. And then of course the 2007 collapse of the housing bubble.

The question for investors, large and small, is, where are we in the Bitcoin bubble cycle? Can money still be made? The question for the rest of us is, how important is bitcoin and how might all this affect us?

The growth of Bitcoin in the last few months is phenomenal. In March, the price of a single coin exceeded the value of an ounce of gold, according to the BBC. Since then it has nearly doubled.

Inbound institutional interest

Can this growth be sustained? There are some arguments being made that it can. Bitcoin, it is suggested, is only now coming of age. Get in while you can.

Adam White, vice-president of GDAX, believes the latest spike is because institutional investors are increasingly involved because trade is about to get a lot easier. The hike is really correlated very tightly with a lot of new inbound institutional interest.

There has been a rush of investment from Japan following the announcement by the government that the currency was now a legal payment method. Haytar notes that the Japanese have given bitcoin the green light as a currency and are looking to increase the rigour that their exchanges are subject to. Ulmart, the largest online store in Russia, will also begin accepting Bitcoin.

Our industry is up for disruption

Even the Financial Times is reporting on adopters of the Bitcoin craze. The paper reported this week that Abigail Johnson, the chief executive of Fidelity, a 71-year-old firm holding $2.2tn in managed assets, was accepting Bitcoin in its canteen. I am in a traditional financial services business, but she said the evolution of technology is setting our industry up for disruption.

Further, it seems Bitcoin may be about to solve a problem which is slowly leading to a potential crisis. 56 firms from 21 different countries have reached an agreement on how they will use the Bitcoin blockchain in future. This is apparently hugely significant.

These factors suggest that the Bitcoin journey is only at the beginning, that we are all early adopters and pioneers and like Kristoffer we can throw a disposable amount of cash and then in a few years buy a luxury home in the South of France and a yacht.

Collapsing all the way to zero

But. Abigail is elsewhere reported setting out the problems with Bitcoin. It has some technical problems ledgers can and have been hacked. It could be made illegal, rival currencies are illegal in most countries. No overall authority is in control. And its not as useful as it might seem. We need to come up with use cases for this technology, she says.

The main problem, clearly, is the price can drop. And it does. As CBS Money Watch reported: The bitcoin market crashed three times between 2011 and 2014, plunging more than 50 percent each time. In January, after passing the $1,000 line it almost immediately fell by $200.

There are other very serious reasons to be concerned. Firstly, there is nothing to prevent the value of Bitcoin collapsing all the way to zero. There is no central bank ready to pump billions buying up currency when the market turns, as the Bank of England has done on many occasions to prop up the pound.

A simple transfer of wealth

There is no regulation of the currency, no rules. Added to this, it is possible to trade the currency with almost total anonymity. Nobody knows who owns how much.

This may be fine for the time being. But the introduction of larger investors changes everything: someone could short Bitcoin and then sell enough to cause a drop in price. What if a major investor like George Soros the man who broke the Bank of England went to war with bitcoin?

The other issue is bitcoin does not and cannot create value: so value must be coming from somewhere else. In effect, every time the price of bitcoin rises the worth of all the currencies being sold falls. Your pound is worth ever so slightly less. The early investors have make their fortunes, but this is ultimately a simple transfer of wealth from everyone else.

Will bitcoin be Myspace?

Does this matter? The current spike means that the digital currencies combined are now worth a total of $79 billion. Bitcoin is worth $35 billion reaching the same market capitalisation of Ford, at $45 billion, and Tesla, at $50 billion. A drop in the ocean in terms of currency. Where will it be in a decades time?

And then there is the rise of rival currencies. The rise in price suggests there is more demand for bitcoin than there is supply the magic of Bitcoin is the level of supply is more or less known (something that historically proved not to be the case with gold). But other companies can make the same gold, and that is an unknown.

So how big is the cryptocurrency market, and will this market be saturated by other newer, better versions? Rival currency Ethereum has now reached $17 billion and Ripple has surged to $13 billion in recent weeks. Will Bitcoin be the MySpace of digital money, with its value collapsing when a Facebook finally arrives.

These blistering surges

Wolf Richter, an analyst, raises serious concerns about new versions of bitcoin, rings the alarm bell. He said: After these blistering surges of thousands of percentage points in the shortest time, no one is even trying to pretend that these are usable currencies.

And when the price does fall, who are you going to sell to? It is likely that the fact bitcoin is used as a currency to buy drugs and illegal services on the darknet has provided something of a buffer. If you fear a drop in value, you can always get onto the latest version of Silk Road and liquify your assets. But if the price collapses by half in a day, will dealers still deal?

These are all factors that suggest that Bitcoin is a very risky investment. But the most significant indicator is simply the rise in price itself. This is mania pure and simple.

The Dotcom bubble as appetizer

Haytar is very clear: I would not advise anyone to buy right now. Im worried that the lack of rationality at this point might hurt the market. Richter goes even further. He claims that the coming crash will make the dotcom bubble look like an appetizer.

So where does this leave us? I want to end with our old friend Kristoffer. He cashed out most of his bitcoin to put a deposit down on a flat. Clearly the sensible move. So, is he one of the luckiest people alive, landing almost a million dollars in free cash? Or is he the biggest loser, staring at the loss of a potential $10m jackpot?

Its a modern fable. And there is a moral. The problem with investment, as with all forms of gambling, is unless you know exactly when to jump on and when to jump off it always feels like you have lost out to someone else.

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BitMania: why cryptocurrencies are having a bubble. - Open Democracy

Minereum, a relatively new cryptocurrency platform stands apart from its counterparts, thanks to the innovative technology which is wrapped in an easy-to-use package for wider reach.

Cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technology are not limited to a closed community anymore. The endless potential of blockchain and its benefits has got many industry segments looking for ways to implement it into their operations. The increasing interest has also resulted in the creation of numerous cryptocurrency platforms that can cater to the needs of industry. But most of these solutions are very similar to each other and requires active community involvement for mining operations, which are generally processing power intensive, requiring lots of energy.

Minereum, a relatively new cryptocurrency platform stands apart from its counterparts, thanks to the innovative technology which is wrapped in an easy-to-use package for wider reach. According to the creators of Minereum, it is the first self-mining smart contract that is based on a mathematical formula which allows certain Genesis Addresses to continuously generate new tokens.

Minereum tokens (MNE) started trading recently, and in less than a month it has gained significant traction within the cryptocurrency community. Currently available for trade on Livecoin exchange platform, MNEs value is poised at $3.12 per token with a market capitalization of over $1 million. It can be traded against two major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum (MNE/BTC and MNE/ETH).

In order to initiate the creation of new MNE tokens, Minereum recently introduced 4268 Genesis Addresses. These addresses were assigned 32,000 coins each, setting the total number of tokens on the platform to 136,576,000 MNE. The self-mining contract associated with the Minereum ensures that the Genesis Addresses create 0.00032 MNE for each Ethereum block generated. This way, it will take a good 47 years before the cryptocurrency reaches its maximum cap.

As the new cryptocurrency gains traction, the platform has announced its plans to implement a new service that allows the creation of ERC20-based tokens. The upcoming Ethereum Token Creation Service will allow people to create their own create Ethereum based tokens that can be used for organizing ICOs, trading or private use. In order to create new tokens over Minereums Ethereum Token Creation Service, users will have to just enter basic details like token name, symbol, etc., and in no time, they will have the tokens ready.

Through its services, Minereum is working on reducing the barrier to entry for individuals and businesses interested in using cryptocurrencies. Over time, startups and companies stand to gain a lot from Minereum.

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Minereum, Self-Mining Smart Contract Platform Gains Traction on Cryptocurrency Market - newsBTC