Monthly Archives: June 2017

Given the recent popularity of cryptocurrency ICOs, it was to be expected some things would be unclear to a lot of people. One of the most recurring questions is why all of these ICOs try to prevent US citizens from participating. There are many different reasons as to why this is the case, even though the countermeasures can be bypassed quite easily.

Anyone who has recently participated in a cryptocurrency ICO or pre-ICO may have noticed how these offerings are, in theory not available to residents in the US. Some projects even go as far as trying to dissuade residents from Singapore to participate as well. It is evident these two regions do not take kindly to cryptocurrency ICOs, mainly due to regulatory reasons.

To put this into perspective, the United States is quite strict when it comes to investment regulations. Only accredited investors can partake in private placements of securities. While some people would urge all cryptocurrency ICOs are tokens and not securities, regulators will have a very different opinion regarding this matter. A lot of the ICOs we have seen can be labeled as traditional sales of equity.

As is to be expected, the team organizing a cryptocurrency ICO cannot guarantee only accredited US investors will partake. They can take the necessary steps to prevent most US citizens from investing, although these measures can be bypassed. Right now, the ICOs tend to ask if you are a US citizen, but there is no verification of whether or not one speaks the truth. Some projects use geolocation to block US citizens, but those can be bypassed with a proxy or VPN. It is impossible to prevent US citizens from participating, but these measures have to be taken regardless.

Some of the bigger cryptocurrency ICOs will ensure they hire lawyers who can create a more workable environment for interested parties. If they would not take these steps, their entire token sale would be liable to criminal charges in the US. That is, assuming the SEC would ever decide to investigate a particular crowdsale for those specific reasons. It is highly unlikely that will happen, even though the SEC is looking to regulate ICOs moving forward.

Once the SEC will effectively intervene in cryptocurrency ICOs which is only a matter of time things will get very interesting, to say the least. A lot of previous ICOs didnt take the necessary steps to deny US citizens from investing. All of those projects and their teams are at the mercy of the SEC for the time being. Violating US securities laws is not something anyone wants to deal with. Additionally, these laws can also be enforced upon non-US companies, which makes it even more important to take countermeasures.

It is evident this unregulated space will be of keen interest to financial watchdogs all over the world in the coming years. The bigger question is how many companies will get burnt for not doing their due diligence. It is bad enough to know most of these projects may ultimately fail. Worrying about future criminal charges will certainly have a big impact on all of these crowdsales moving forward.

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Why Can't US Citizens Participate in Cryptocurrency ICOs? - The Merkle

Published on June 29th, 2017 | by Derek Markham

June 29th, 2017 by Derek Markham

Solar electricity production + blockchain = a currency based on sunshine

Just as cryptocurrency has become a disruptive technology, so has renewable energy, and although those two distinct sectors havent really come into their own just yet, an innovative solar incentive program is incorporating both solar electricity production and the blockchain, with the intent of boosting and supporting one with the other.

Instead of a digitally mined product, this cryptocurrencys proof of work happens in the physical world, and those who have photovoltaic arrays can earn SolarCoin just for generating solar electricity. Its essentially a global solar rewards program, and is designed to help incentivize more solar electricity production, while also serving as a lower-carbon cryptocurrency than Bitcoin and similar alternative currencies.

We initially covered SolarCoin in 2014, right after it launched, and since then, the project has rewarded more than 10,000 solar installations for their electricity generation (totaling somewhere north of 200 megawatts). [As a side note, its actually somewhat surprising to me that the number is only 10,000 solar generators, considering that the currency is granted essentially for free to any solar producer that gets verified.]

This 90-second intro video explains SolarCoin in a nutshell:

SolarCoin is like airmiles for global solar electricity producers. Joseph Zitoli, The SolarCoin Foundation

This longer (5 minute) video explains where SolarCoin gets its value from:

As of January of 2017, more than 34 million SolarCoins have been put into circulation, with that figure growing by about 5,000 per week, and some 240,000 SolarCoins have gone to solar producers in 23 countries. In addition, two solar-focused crowdfunding platforms, Lumo and TheSunExchange, are now incorporating SolarCoin, the Belgian energy monitor company Smappee includes SolarCoin in its features, and in March 2017, the French collaborative energy supplier ekWateur became the first energy company to accept SolarCoin as a means of payment.

SolarChange, the SolarCoin Foundation platform that integratesthe SolarCoin Blockchain and incorporates a host of other monitoring and energy management features, was recently chosen to participate in the four month MassChallenge Israel accelerator program, which could help ramp up the solar currencys adoption.

The Goal for SolarChange in the MassChallenge program is to dramatically scale its AI-Blockchain interface solutions and Prosumer incentive capabilities from a Startup company to SME and expose its technology to utilities and the solar industry.

As far as cryptocurrecies go, SolarCoin (SLR) has a lot of growing to do, as it is shooting for an eventual $30 price but is currently hovering just over $0.20. Aside from getting a lot more solar generators onboard, there are also issues with scaling up its adoption as an alternative currency for both buyers and sellers of goods. The Swiss currency marketplace Lykke Exchange has added SolarCoin to its offerings, with Lykke CEO Richard Olsen (who ended up joining the SolarCoin Foundation advisory board) putting it succinctly, Our users can now convert sunshine directly into francs, euros or bitcoins.

Bringing the SolarCoin currency into the Lykke Exchange is a logical extension of our long-term plan. We are always looking for ways to expand market access and increase participation. Challenging conventional wisdom is what we do best, and we will be able to do it that much better with the passionate, forward-thinking SolarCoin community on our exchange. Olsen

A recent article in PV Tech by Florent Andrillon sums up the challenges facing SolarCoin, as well as a key selling point for the currency:

SolarCoins success will depend on the capacity to generate a large and robust ecosystem, and leverage social added value to differentiate from other cryptocurrencies.

In contrast to most other cryptocurrencies, its not just the financial value of the SolarCoin currency thats at the core of its strength. Sure, SolarCoin could be a legitimate investment option for those looking for a future return, but far more value may come from its incentivizing of solar energy production, which the project hopes to underwrite for some 40 years, to the tune of about 97,500 TWh of solar electricity.

And it is gaining acceptance, as IRENA and Solar Power Europe have endorsed the currency, but there are still many challenges to overcome:

Stakeholder engagement with power producers, investors, companies and individuals to convince, educate and reconcile on economic and financial and technical challenges is critical. Convincing power producers to share generation data is also a key challenge. At last, driving consensus among companies to promote SolarCoins depends on its liquidity and consumer attractiveness compared to other cryptocurrencies. Andrillon

Learn more at SolarCoin and SolarChange.

Hat tip: Karl Graves. Images: SolarCoin

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Tags: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, SolarCoin

Derek Markham lives in southwestern New Mexico and digs bicycles, simple living, organic gardening, sustainable lifestyle design, slacklining, bouldering, and permaculture. He loves good food, with fresh roasted chiles at the top of his list of favorites. Catch up with Derek on Twitter, RebelMouse, Google+, or at his natural parenting site, Natural Papa!

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SolarCoin Is A Cryptocurrency Earned By Generating Solar Electricity - CleanTechnica

A look at three cryptocurrencies that show tons of promise.

June 2017 has been a wild month for cryptocurrency. First, Bancor set the industry record for the largest-ever ICO at just over $150 million. A week later, Status.im (SNT) raised $275 million in under 3 hours during its ICO, contributing to an Ethereum flash crash.

And those are just two examples among many. Amid all the hullabaloo, it might feel hard to figure out which cryptocurrencies are worth investing in. So I sat down with Lucas Hendren, CTO of SimplyVital Health, to discuss the most promising cryptocurrencies to watch in July.

CoinJoker

Without a doubt, the name thats hot on every crypto-enthusiasts lips this month is Tezos, a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth. With its ICO occurring July 1 (yep, thats tomorrow), the buzz of speculation is inescapable. Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing recently heralded its ICO as the Netscape of the blockchainin other words, the ICO that inflates the blockchain bubble by capturing the attention of the broader public. Naysayers point out that, while the ethos of Tezos is sound, it wont be able to hit critical mass in the face of a stronger and more established competitor. Proponents cite its robust security, capability to scale, and emphasis on true decentralization as natural next steps in the evolution of the ideas laid out (and arguably, confirmed) by Ethereum.

Tezos could theoretically have all the abilities of Ethereumbut in addition, its switching straight to proof-of-stake, said Hendren. The idea behind proof-of-stake is that its much less energy and time intensive, which would lead to faster transactions at a lower cost.

By launching the system with a proof-of-stake model from the onset, Tezos could sidestep some of the growing pains that have faced Ethereum. Furthermore, the governance system Tezos has built into its system gives it the capability to grow over time.

Tezos allows for a much easier way to upgrade and manage the system and insure that it has constant upgrades, said Hendren. If youve been following Bitcoin and Ethereum, a big problem theyve been having is how they go about upgrading. With Tezos, if you join part of that system, therell be a periodic vote to determine if theyre going to upgrade the system, and if so, what theyre going to upgrade it tothis is a massive simplification of itbut if a certain quorum is met and a vote passes, the entire system upgrades.

As to the Tezos vs Ethereum argument, Hendren expressed confidence in both, citing Tezoss upgrade-ability as a cause for genuine excitement.

Long-term it very well might be a competitor with Ethereum, but at the moment the space is so large and empty that theres room for both of them to grow, said Hendren. The main reason to be excited about it is that theyve potentially solved the problem of upgrading that many of the other blockchain networks have had.

Golem purports to be the new way the Internet will work, and when you start to look under the hood, you realize how and why they can make such a bold claim. (And if youve kept up with the latest season of Silicon Valley, itll sound eerily familiar).

The whole idea behind GNT is it allows you to sell your processing power, said Hendren. That basically means that you as an individualif you have, say, any laptop that you arent usingyou can sell your laptop as a server and make money from it. So you end up with this massive distributed computing network; it basically turns into the worlds largest supercomputer in a decentralized format. I think that is a very powerful idea that has a lot of potential.

GNT has already ICOed, but will entering its Alpha in very short time (very likely this month)and that Alpha is aiming to make high-intensity computing tasks like animation and CGI rendering much easier and cheaper.

Their Alpha will allow you to do CGI rendering and other animation rendering on their Golem network, potentially at a much cheaper cost than normal, said Hendren. And thats going to be released very soonmaking it something to watch right now. Theres a very high chance that GNT could gain a lot of value.

On the flipside of the computing equation, MaidSafe offers users the chance to sell their computers storage on the network.

MaidSafe allows you to safely secure your assets on a distributed network and distributed applications, said Hendren. So its similar to Golem but its more set up for data storage than it is for processing, and that is also a very useful, powerful idea.

The idea here is that theres tons of storage going to waste right now, and MaidSafe lets users sell this storage the same way one might rent out their apartment on Airbnb.

If you have a laptop, you can sell your storage space on this network, said Hendren. This is a simplified version, but: I have a laptop in my room Im not using at the momentI could load my computer up to this network and store data for other people for money.

For hopeful investors, Hendren explained that the next month will be the best time to get in early before MaidSafe enters its Alpha.

One big reason to watch it is that theyre releasing their Alpha on August 12, said Hendren. Whenever I advise tokens I usually advise you to go read the white paper and do your own researchbut if you want to get in early for this one, you have til August 12 to get in.

By letting users store encrypted data in a distributed format, MaidSafe effectively offers user privacy and autonomy in a way no current cloud storage solution does.

Hendren also advised newcomers to these markets to adopt two strategies when it comes to investing.

The main thing right now for everyone in there: in my opinion, you should try to avoid technical analyses, said Hendren. If you buy into something, you should plan on either holding for a long time or selling it at a certain point youve already planned out.

Why? Hendren references last weeks flash-crash as one example.

The reason for that is because this market is so young and immature, which is also some of the reason you can get great returns, said Hendren. There a few fish that have a massive amount of these currencies just waiting to sell that can basically move the market singlehandedly in any direction they want to. Any single event could have a massive influence on these things. My advice is not to be emotional, to buy in, sell out, buy in, and sell out again. Otherwise there are large sharks out there that will destroy you.

Disclosure: Damiani and Hendren have invested in GNT and MAID, and intend to participate in the Tezos ICO. Neither are professional financial analysts or advisors.

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The 3 Cryptocurrencies to Watch This Month - HuffPost

Keep the megadeals and uncertainty coming, it's great for us in the news business. Not so much for some investors that may have not seen the recent tech sell-off coming or who haven't been following this missive where all I seem to do is harp on M&A and activism. But, we'll get to that later.

Despite a serious sell-off, TheStreet was focused on two hot names in tech: Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) that have seen a recent boost given the cyberattacks that have ravaged multinational companies and put a spot light on cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.

TheStreet's Annie Palmer writes that the two are in a heated battle to design chips optimized to mine Bitcoin. According to many on Wall Street, there is going to be one clear winner in this battle.

Outside of tech, the oil markets held steady on Thursday, a rare occurrence for the commodity that has been on a roller coaster ride for as long as I can remember. Crude oil prices held onto gains to close higher for a sixth session in a row. West Texas Intermediate had surged 1.1% a day earlier, even after an increase in domestic stockpiles.

I told you we would get to activism and M&A ... Let's talk about the second merger to rock everyone's world in the past two weeks (after Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFM) , which I can't help but go on and on about: the merger of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA) and Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) .

Thursday got off with a bang as the two companies announced a revised deal that includes about half of Rite Aid stores as opposed to the roughly two-thirds of them that were included in the original deal. Whether you think the new deal will be enough to pass antitrust officials is one thing, but the fact that Fred's Inc. (FRED) may be in trouble, much to the displeasure of activist David Einhorn, or the fact that CVS Health (CVS) may have to do something to help keep itself relevant seem to be two safe assumptions.

This is an excerpt from "In Case You Missed It," a daily newsletter brought to you by TheStreet. Sign up here.

Photo of the day:Happy birthday to the iPhone

Ten years ago, people were lining up to buy the very first generation of Apple's (AAPL) new product, the iPhone. Initially priced at $599 for an 8GB model, the device was more expensive than most other phones on the market, but the novel touchscreen, capacity for music and inclusion of the Safari web browser made the hefty fee worth it for many. Now, a decade later, the price has actually climbed even higher for a first-generation iPhone because of its collectible value--as long as it's new and unopened. Currently, the product that was first released to the public on June 29, 2007, is selling for $4,000 on eBay unopened and in its original packaging.

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Nvidia, AMD Battle for Cryptocurrency Supremacy; Oil Markets Steady -- ICYMI Thursday - TheStreet.com

Rumors are swirling that Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) may soon launch dedicated graphics cards for cryptocurrency mining, which could unlock access to a market that's estimated to be worth at least half a billion dollars.

It could also spur an even greater rise in the chipmaker's stock, on top of the 37.8% its gained year to date, making it the best performing stock in the S&P 500so far this year. Shares of Nvidia fell more than 3% to $146.68 on Thursday, however, asinvestors continued a recent rotation out of tech stocks, dragging the FAANG stocks and other mega-cap tech names down further.

Shares of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD) have gotten a boost recently thanks to a resurgence in mining of an alternative cryptocurrency called Ethereum. Mining is the process of verifying cryptocurrency transactions, at which point the transactions are added to the public ledger, called the blockchain. New cryptocurrency is created every time a transaction is verified, and those mining it make money whenever they do so.

Nvidia has yet to confirm that it will sell dedicated cryptocurrency cards, but product listings for chips using Nvidia-based and AMD-based GPUs recently appeared on Asus' website as part of a "Mining Series." Asus serves as a distribution partner for both chipmakers. Additionally, Christopher Rolland, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group, said he recently met with supply chain companies in Asia who confirmed that Nvidia plans to release two new graphics cards targeted for the cryptocurrency mining market.

If either company chooses to release a cryptocurrency-specific chip, Nvidia would be the clear winner, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves.

"Nvidia will win in the long term," Steves said. "They've historically been the best breed product for gaming and data center chips, so Nvidia will come out ahead. They have a product edge in general."

Read the rest here:
This Is Why Nvidia Is Poised to Trample Advanced Micro Devices in the Cryptocurrency Mining Market - TheStreet.com

One of the world's largest technology hardware makers has announcednew graphics cards (GPUs) aimed at the cryptocurrency mining market.

Taiwan-based manufacturer Asus revaeledtheMining RX 470 and Mining P106,which were designed to handle the energy and heat intensive process of mining. Though not expressly pitched as such, the release is undoubtedly aimed at capturing some of the interest in mining ethereum. Bitcoin mining, by comparison, has evolved to a stage in which application-specific integratedcircuits, or ASICs, are required to compete.

Cryptocurrency mining is a process by which new transaction blocks are added to the distributed network. When this happens, new blockchain tokensare introduced to the system and awarded to the miner as compensation in this case, a profit is achieved when the cost of electricity and the operation itself is lower than the revenue generated by selling those tokens.

According to today's Asus announcement, the new cards are "engineered especially for coin mining, positioning the products as capable of providing "maximum mega hash rates at minimum cost".

Interest in cryptocurrency mining has led to reported shortages of GPUsin the global market. One hobbyist miner recently told CoinDesk that local tech stores have run low on the cards, adding that online marketplaces like Newegg, Amazon and eBay, among others, are also largely out of stock.

It's a situation that echoes the earlier "GPU rush" from 2014, when mining activity around alternative cryptocurrencies like dogecoin and litecoin led to similar price increases and a decline in available inventory.

Shortages aside, ethereum network data suggests that more hash rate is coming into ply as time goes on.

According to etherchain.org, the mining difficulty which rises as more hashing power is brought online nearlytripled from 27th April to 27th June.

TheRX 470 will be available worldwide, according to Asus, while the Mining P106 card will be available in China and Eastern Europe only,beginning in July.

Image via Shutterstock

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Originally posted here:
Asus Announces New Graphics Cards Focused on Cryptocurrency Mining - CoinDesk