text:
5 Common Social Engineering and Cyber Attacks ... - Binance
Cross Finance Enables Cross-Chain DeFi on Binance
Crypto Scam Site Steals 1.1 Million XRP from Ledger Owners
Bitcoin exchange — learn more about it — The Hacker News
Bitcoin hackers steal over $40M in cryptocurrency attack
Satoshi Nakaboto: 'Binance CEO says Bitcoin halving will ...
Binance, Bitfinex, Coinbase, Huobi receive about 40% of ...
cryptocurrency exchange — learn more about it — The Hacker ...
Survey Responses Are IN!
I want to thank everyone who replied to our survey! Your feedback is extremely valuable!
Here are the results and how they're helping shape our direction.
What goals would you like to see us accomplish? What's most important to you in how this Quadriga situation ends?
This was an open-ended question and the answers varied widely (and there was definitely a lot of responses which mentioned multiple goals). Here's a summary:
65% mentioned recovering losses for affected users.
45% described a desire to get better standards on Canadian exchanges.
30% included justice for victims.
25% desired education on crypto-asset protection.
20% had the creation of the new exchange.
The justice theme has been entirely overlooked by what we're doing. Discussing the idea on the Quadriga Uncovered Telegram group, it was determined that there was definite interest in a potential letter-writing initiative. One possibility would be sending letters to the RCMP to request the exhumation.
Is there any part of our initiative which confuses you?
Almost universally, there was no mention of any confusion.
The feedback we did receive:
"The website landing page could provide an executive summary of the key aspects of the initiative".
The front page was last updated March 30th. We are constantly experimenting and improving the front of the website and our presentation of ideas and welcome any insight.
"I was worried with the proposal to have a token for affected users. The intention may be ok, but tokens and ICOs have a bad reputation for being scams. I confess that I didn't read the website of the Initiative, but from communications, I didn't see the association between the Initiative and the official committee."
We should make clear we are fully separate from the bankruptcy process. There is no tie to the official committee, although we have gotten their feedback throughout. This is an opportunity for the business community to provide additional help for victims.
We are contemplating the need for having blockchain-backing, however it does provide the ability to have greater transparency in the distribution/supply, more control in the form of a multi-sig smart contract, and easier liquidity options.
What we are doing is fundamentally different from any ICO. Tokens are distributed 100% free against verified losses. Redemption happens over time for utility (products/services) or goodwill (best-effort redemption) and it's always a fixed value of $1.
"Generally i understand. Confused about progress and value offer to crypto enthusiasts."
The initial (very first) value proposition for the tokens will be the ability to offset trading fees on the partner exchange, where we expect that traders may adopt having a small stash to cover their trading expenses as they trade. From there, we have other businesses interested in accepting partial payment in tokens. Basically, tokens are spent in place of dollars to get a discount at participating businesses which wish to support affected users.
In terms of progress, we are still waiting for three things:
Partner exchange full launch.
First bankruptcy payout to complete.
Reaching 1,000 signups (as necessary for our deal).
Please feel free to reach out on Telegram and Reddit if there are any further questions!
Is it more important to you that we focus on (a) helping victims of Quadriga recover, (b) educating more people about Quadriga and other exchange fraud, or (c) preventing future exchange fraud events like Quadriga?
Of the first or only choice picked, 70% chose (a) helping victims of Quadriga recover, while 30% chose (c) preventing future exchange fraud events like Quadriga.
(a) was mentioned in 80% of cases, and top choice in 70%.
(b) was a second choice in 30% of cases and mentioned in 35%.
(c) was mentioned in 65% of responses and top choice in 30%.
The educational portion of our initiative was seen as the lowest value. We are floating the idea of replacing the Education goal with a separate Justice goal, which is composed of letter-writing and other advocacy to help speed up any potential criminal investigations.
What bothers you most about Canadian cryptocurrency exchanges?
The responses varied widely. Here's a selection:
"The lack of unbiased information on how trustworthy exchanges are."
"The lack of transparency."
"that they are unregulated"
"I only use a non-custodial exchange now (Bull Bitcoin). The inertia and apathy of the government bothers me a lot. After Quadriga there should have been an inquiry. Even my emails to MPs Marie-France Lalonde and Bill Blair got no response. It's not realistic to wait for exchanges to 'self-regulate'."
"Terrible for trading and unreliable"
"Where is the regulation and oversight?"
"It's difficult to know which one is safe and w[h]ich one is not. It's easier to go to a bigger exchange (eg. Binance, Kraken, ... ) who has a solid reputation than Canadian one (at least for now)"
"Small"
"Slow volume, difficulty to access for some, security"
"Security, trust, support, education"
There is clearly a lack of satisfaction.
Should preventing events like Quadriga focus more on regulatory reform (working with regulators) or trying to create change through setting the example on one exchange and go from there (similar to how "Tesla" has electrified vehicles)?
Overall summary:
40% of respondents desired an approach which included both aspects.
40% of respondents desired an approach of setting an example in one exchange.
20% preferred a regulatory approach.
"(c), creating an independent classification/review system that would allow users to know which exchanges are most trustworthy, and to force less trustworthy ones to shape up."
There are a few such services out there. Key issues are that these opinions can be influenced by referral bonuses, the exchange reputations change over time (as was the case in Quadriga), and there is limited information on which to base the evaluation. Many reputable third parties have recommended shady services that subsequently failed.
Pressing forward on both fronts appears to make the most sense.
Would you rather have the recovery run inside of a for-profit exchange (sort of a marketing/promotion idea to push people onto a safer exchange) or as an independent group of affected users pushing for our own interests (working with the safer exchange and other businesses potentially similar to a labour union or political advocacy)?
The end result:
The majority (55%) prefer to have the independent group advocating for affected users.
A minority (35%) prefer to have it run in a for-profit/promotional way inside the exchange.
There were 10% of responses indicating both would be acceptable, or no clear preference.
We will be working to run this independently, however working closely with our partner exchange as a joint project (and it is definitely a promotional tool for them).
If given the choice, would you prefer (a) $20 cash each year for 10 years (slower recovery with full choice), or (b) your choice of $200 worth of discounts on products/services that are donated by small businesses which you could use this year (faster recovery with less choices)?
60% indicated a preference for (b), and 40% had the preference for (a). There is clear interest in focusing on both, which will push the fastest and most flexible recovery.
Affected users have a liquidation option which allows non-victims to purchase their tokens on the exchange. How do you feel about charging non-victims a small fee (5 cents per token) that is split between funding the project and a pool for affected user payout?
50% expressed outright support for the idea. Below are more detailed responses and comments:
"indifferent, although I think any fee will end up factoring in to the exchange rate on the value of the token. If people are willing to pay $10 for a $15 coupon, then a 5% fee might mean they'll only pay $9.50"
This is undoubtedly true. In your example, 25 cents would go to the project, 25 cents to affected users, and $9.50 to the seller. As opposed to $10 going to the seller.
"I am not yet clear on the cost structure of the proposed solution. Has the cost of managing the recovery effort been accounted for?"
It hasn't been properly accounted for, and this is one possible solution.
"I think that it is more important to have broad communication, reaching out to public at large and crypto communities in other countries. Then there should be multiple ways for different communities to contribute financially to affected users. I don't like the idea of fees and tokens because it seems to distract from the larger tasks of communication, rallying, documenting and advocating."
You bring up great points. Outreach is important, as is flexibility in approach. If you have more concrete ideas we would love to consider them!
"Good idea, but it restricts the on boarding of new users"
This is a fair point. The hope is that those participating want to help.
"I would prefer to avoid this option, Unless we can show that there are many added benefits from using this platform over others, thus justifying the fees and making it more acceptable to users."
Absolutely. Hopefully there will be many added benefits.
"I think it a good idea, fees will go anyway to affected users, I totally agree"
Awesome. That's definitely the intent.
"better not tax when tokens are transferred to the blockchain - tax the transaction (something small, in order not to affect the volume/liquidity too much) like what they are doing with the flight tickets in Quebec"
Absolutely! This would be a transaction cost only.
At the moment this has not yet been agreed upon by the partner exchange.
Have you discussed the project with anyone else who lost funds in Quadriga? What kind of feedback are you hearing?
40% said they've discussed it. 40% have not. 20% didn't answer (or it was hard to understand). Some of the responses:
"only online, and there there seems to be some confusion about the projects goals, some concerns about the connection to a for-profit exchange, and a general 'one bitten twice shy' mentality."
"Yes, Matt and my spouse. The problem was foreseeable. We just all ignored the risk because we were sold on the simplicity. The first red flag I saw was that accounts could be reloaded through an entity in China, which did not make sense, but I ignored it because of my perceived impression of protection given that the operator was in Canada."
"Yes - most have given up hope of recovering funds"
" I can't follow the chats on Telegram. I gained no knowledge the times I tried to read the discussions there. In fact the discussions there seemed to be not very polite. I wasn't able to connect with any other affected user. I wish there were some more structured gathering. Maybe a webinar would be nice."
Note: This sounds like it may be talking about the separate and more popular Quadriga Uncovered Telegram group. We would be very interested for any examples of impolite discussions on our Telegram group.
"This recovery process started out fine, but has turned into a circus show as is usual with lawyers who naturally want to stretch cases out to steal more money from victims."
"Not for now, I don't know any other victim (except members of Quadriga initiative)"
"Its your fault for keeping it on an exchange, what did you think was going to happen. There will be no money left after the 'bankruptcy'.. Lightning will solve all these problems other than recovery of funds."
Many affected users have strong privacy concerns and shame regarding what happened to them, such that they are even hesitant to share basic details. What do you feel is the best way to build trust and openness among the affected user community?
Here are some of the replies:
"I really don't know. Keeping things as anonymous as possible might help, but then the project would also need accountability to show that most of the tokens weren't sent to your own account. It's a tricky problem."
Absolutely. We also need to consider the various ways the project could be defrauded.
"What you are doing now. I am just not clear on the sustainab[i]lility of this effort without appropriate financial support."
"We all lost. We got burned. No shame in getting burned. It happens."
"There must be a way for affected users to connect to each other. Communication is the foundation, and it can be done preserving privacy. Some ideas include a webinar, chat tools that preserve privacy, etc. I heard of the documentary but I don't know what will be there. I think it is important also for the public at large to know how Quadriga affected users. That is, it's important for some personal stories to be published, ideally in the mainstream press."
We have Telegram, Reddit, and Twitter. A webinar would be great! There have been a number of mainstream news articles on Quadriga, although it's not well known outside of the crypto community. We welcome any further ideas for platforms.
"I would use the angle that crypto will continue to gain traction as time goes on, and that although the affected users were victims of a terrible fraud, we have an opportunity to prevent this from happening to others. I would also use the fact that this initiative has gained a considerable following and that affected users are all in this together, whether we want it or not."
"Maybe a guarantee that nobody will be further persecuted would help."
Hopefully no affected users are persecuted. Who's being persecuted?
"I don't know what else could be done for now."
"Just let us go forward."
"Once you demonstrate positive effects (and communicating about them), and set up ways to contact you securely, the users who have privacy concerns will contact you. You should have anonymous way to communicate with you (maybe using memo.cash?)"
Feel free to use an anonymous handle for any communication with us via Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, or email.
"Simple questions, good job :). Wonder about the stages of loss/gr[ie]f. Maybe the stinging pain needs to subside before people will trust."
Notes: Percentages rounded to the nearest 5%.
Thank you very much for everyone who took the time to respond! We will continue to study your answers as we move forward!
Importance of DEXs and Private Key Management in the Wake of Binance Hack
https://preview.redd.it/73do1v1x9i131.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62c8413e3e930febf6dbf28b5d56b46d4089e702
As we were trying to come up with examples to highlight the importance of decentralization and privacy key management, our case was made stronger by the unfortunate Binance hack yesterday. The biggest crypto exchange in terms of trade volume, at almost $800 million daily, and widely considered reliable and trustworthy hitherto, saw hackers steal $40 million worth Bitcoins from its hot wallets.
Centralized exchanges such as Binance force users to give up custody in exchange for speed and liquidity. While this is the first attack on Binance, such attacks are quite common — over $2 billion has been stolen from centralized exchanges in just 2018!
There are two key solutions which we believe can completely eliminate exchange-level hacks — decentralized exchanges and private key management solutions.
Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), especially 0x-based exchanges such as ForDeX and Radar Relay are the real deal, long term.
DEXs capture the true power of blockchains and smart contracting. Centralized Exchanges are not 'crypto-native', they are a traditional market construct that has been force fitted into the blockchain paradigm. Unlike a centralized exchange like Nasdaq which will make you 'whole' in the unlikely event that they somehow misplace any of your shares, with crypto centralized exchanges, you are just letting your tokens sit in massive hacker honey pots that are ridiculously easy to hack, without any recourse in case the exchange loses your coins.
In contrast, DEXs are completely trustless, peer-to-peer and have modularization that lets developers separate the platform from the regulatory aspects such as fiat on-off ramps and KYC/AML filters. In an era of rampant hacks and assaults on privacy, DEXs provide an element of true anonymity, much like SSL (Secure Socket Layers) did in the the early days of the internet, truly kicking off e-commerce and transactions on the internet.
DEXs allow for the use of smart contracts to programmatically bring together multiple facets of decentralization that define the new era of distributed finance (DeFi), such as lending and borrowing, leveraging, automated credit assessment (Dharma, Compound, DyDx, Bloom, SALT, ETHLend, etc). DEXs along with stablecoins can also create a robust marketplace for remittances.
In a tokenized economy, DEXs will become critical in seamless value exchange between a diverse array of market participants, most of whom will not be aware that they are being served by a DEX in the background. It is no wonder that the largest centralized exchanges of today such as Coinbase, Binance et al are investing heavily in building and developing DEX technology.
Do DEXs have a problem in the short term? Absolutely, like every other crypto project out there, DEXs have their share of issues. There is the latency, but technologies like Plasma are in the works to solve these. Regulation is still getting to grips with DEXs, as seen from the recent EtherDelta incident. However, the paradigm shift does not happen easily, it is going to take a few iterations. For all we know the end-state for DEXs look as similar to today's relayers as the iPhone does to the early Ericsson mobile phones!
Investing is like a surfer holding out for the next wave, as Michael Novogratz says. Just hold on. The key is to hold on to a seat when the music stops, so that you are in the game when the markets turn, and the music begins again!
Private Key Management Solutions
Private key management is a complicated, esoteric task and not many users have the technical nous to manage the keys by themselves. Private keys require extreme care and consideration with regards to storage and security. A failure to maintain the utmost of care may result in loss or theft of cryptocurrency. Anyone who has been around the cryptocurrency space for some time has probably heard about cryptocurrency theft. The importance of prudent private key management is further exacerbated by the fact that blockchain transactions are by default irreversible. Once your funds get hacked, it is almost next to impossible to retrieve these lost funds. Crypto custody firms use a combination of cold storage and Hardware Security Module (HSM) solutions to minimize the threat of external hacks.
Centralized exchanges, at least in their current avatar, have a fatal flaw — they are essentially honeypots under constant attack from a variety of motivated, unscrupulous, hackers from around the globe, 24×7; the increasing number of exchange hacks highlights the structural deficiencies in the way crypto exchanges manage private keys for their users. A massive architectural overhaul is needed to guarantee the safety of user funds. This is also the reason why multiple players — ranging from startups to traditional Wall Street institutions (JP Morgan, BNY) to crypto-native entities (such as Coinbase), are all trying to solve the problem of safe, reliable, custody.
We believe that there are multiple strong wallets and retail-level custody solutions which can protect investors from being exposed to the above mentioned hacks. Many are compatible with DEXs such as ForDeX, giving users complete access to their funds while trading.
For the moment, we recommend that you stick to your friendly, neighborhood DEX such as ForDeX ;)for all your crypto trading needs, wherever you are.
ForDeX is the world's first stablecoin-focused relayer and is built on top of the 0x-Protocol. Within a few weeks of launch, it is now a Top-5 relayer and is a recipient of 0x Ecosystem Acceleration Grant.
If you are interested in partnering with us, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]?utm_campaign=Satoshi%26Co%20Daily%20Crypto%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter). Keep track of our progress on the following channels:Reddit, Twitter, Medium and Telegram.
submitted by atishay13 to ForDeX [link] [comments]
How this little-known crypto is giving Bitcoin a run for its money
1/8The tale of "altcoins"
Bitcoin's share of the cryptocurrency market is sliding, with a host of alternative digital coins gaining ground as developers race to create digital cash that can gain a footing in mainstream commerce and finance. Monero - referred to as a privacy coin because it allows users to conceal nearly all details of transactions. It has become increasingly used for illegal purposes. Since its launch in 2014, Monero has grown to be the 12th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization with around $1.4 billion-worth in circulation. Let's dig a little deeper and understand it more.
2/8How is Monero different from Bitcoin?
Every transaction involving Monero obscures the digital addresses of the senders and receivers, as well as the value of the transaction. That offers users near-total anonymity, allowing them to instantaneously send digital cash without leaving any clues. Bitcoin was initially seen as opaque, as the identity of the owners of digital wallets used to send and receive bitcoin is not public. But details recorded permanently on the blockchain after bitcoin is sent and received can, in fact, give up clues that can be used to pinpoint those identities.
3/8Why is it gaining attention?
When Norwegian police earlier this year gave details of the kidnapping of the wife of a wealthy businessman, they said the family had demanded a ransom in cryptocurrencies. Local press reported that the suspects wanted to be paid in Monero. The unusual request underlined a growing trend for criminals to seek alternatives to bitcoin for illicit activities.
4/8What is it mostly used for?
Monero's use on darknet marketplaces - sites used for buying illicit goods from drugs to stolen credit cars - is on the rise. Three of the biggest five darknet markets now accept Monero. Monero is also widely used for "cryptojacking," or illicit cryptocurrency mining, where hackers infect computers and steal their power to mine new coins - a highly lucrative endeavour. Monero's developers say its characteristics make it a useful tool for companies looking to maintain commercial secrecy. According to experts users in repressive countries looking to avoid censorship or surveillance can also safely move money in the form of Monero.
5/8Is law enforcement worried? What do regulators say?
Cryptocurrencies are mostly unregulated. Though countries from Britain to the United States are looking at how to deal with the phenomenon, few have set out comprehensive strategies for dealing with digital coins.And though aware of the propensity for cryptocurrencies to be used for money laundering, few financial national-level regulators have specifically addressed privacy coins.
Britain's finance ministry, which leads a task force that is looking at if and how Britain will regulate cryptocurrencies, said it was aware of the potential for Monero to be used for criminal ends.
Japan's financial watchdog, sensitive to money laundering potential of privacy coins, last year asked a Tokyo-based exchange to review its listings. The exchange later ceased trading Monero.
6/8Who's behind Monero?
Like bitcoin, Monero is governed by a virtual community of hundreds of developers that lacks any centralised authority. Cabanas is one of only two publicly-known members of its seven-person core developer team, who act as stewards for updates to its code. Mitchell Krawiec-Thayer, a San Francisco-based blockchain developer who is part of Monero Research Labs, said Monero is designed so it can be easily mined by individuals rather than powerful groups that team up to mine coins in industrial quantities. Monero has recently launched a response group, where those infected by malware can seek help, Krawiec-Thayer said.
7/8Who uses Monero for legitimate purposes?
Data on who uses Monero, and why, is scarce. Daily transactions for Monero - one proxy for how widely the cryptocurrency is used - have hovered around 8,000 this month, data from website CoinMetrics shows. The number of active digital wallet addresses for Monero has hung around 5,000. By comparison, bitcoin sees around 320,000 transactions a day, with about 785,000 active addresses.
8/8Who are its contemporaries?
Monero is not the only privacy coin. Others, such as ZCash, have grown popular with investors, often for speculative reasons but also because of interest in their privacy features. Grayscale, the world's biggest crypto asset manager with around $1.3 billion under management, allows investors like hedge funds to invest in ZCash. Amid growing acceptance of privacy coins, a number of major exchanges list Monero. For example, Malta-based Binance, one of the world's largest exchanges, allows users to trade the coin. Binance declined to comment on Monero, but said it has a comprehensive review process for evaluating coins and tokens for listing, and that it carries out periodic reviews on projects.
submitted by tradeniveshtips to u/tradeniveshtips [link] [comments]
Cicero Report - Professional Analysis of Metaverse
Cicero Report Publication: 13 November 2017
Metaverse is the first China blockchain built based on the Proof of Work ("PoW") consensus mechanism. Its founder is Eric Gu, who was also a co-founder of Neo, formerly known as Antshares.
Vision and direction
Metaverse is a decentralized platform that aims to redefine digital identities and smart assets through building a web of Smart Properties using the blockchain technology.
The universally unique and self-sovereign identities reside within the peer to peer network, which will primarily power all decentralized applications or smart contracts in the near future. The project imagines a blockchain in which people, organizations and institutions can transact with each other in an open ecosystem where digital value can be circulated freely.
To authenticate the digital asset transactions on the blockchain against real world assets, Metaverse plans to introduce intermediaries called Oracles. In essence, Metaverse aims to be the Chinese substitute for Ethereum where intermediaries will be parties whose vested interest lies in the kind of transactions taking place over the public blockchain.
Metaverse aims to allow users to build their own digital identity on Metaverse where records will last permanently on the blockchain. This is opposed to the anonymity that most other blockchain projects aim to achieve. The Metaverse team also actively dialogues with Chinese regulatory bodies to fulfil the necessary regulatory compliance.
Oracles are intermediaries built on a decentralised reputation system. They act as links between Metaverse and the real world. This will enable greater participation from companies to join the Metaverse ecosystem.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Gu
Existing / Past Appointments • Co-founder of Neo / Antshares • Co-founder of Viewfin • Chairman of Metaverse Foundation • Organizer of the annual Shanghai Bitcoin meetup since 2014 • Senior Project Manager at the Government of Ontario from 2001 – 2010
Eric Gu is a Blockchain and Digital Asset expert, a well-known opinion leader in the Chinese Blockchain ecosystem, and a lifetime member of the Bitcoin Foundation. His vision, direction and strong leadership is a chief reason why we think Metaverse will be one of the most successful blockchain projects going into the year end of 2017 and 2018. He is a man of many connections and is known to have organized the annual Shanghai Bitcoin meetup every year since 2014.
Chief Technical Officer, Chen Hao
Existing / Past Appointments • CTO of Viewfin • Developer of Metaverse's Digital Identity Protocol
Head of Global Development, Janice Shi
Zenair is a smart technology system in the online travel agency (OTA) industry, based on Metaverse blockchain and endorsed by physical travel agents. In the Metaverse public blockchain, users can make use of its digital identity system to book the best hotel and travel deals, backed by blockchain technology. Zenair aims to disrupt the existing OTA industry by creating a decentralized, high-quality resource center for OTA through real-time data, dynamic distribution channels and services provided by travel management companies. Zenair is striving to integrate OTA with Metaverse's digital identity system to create and shape a brand new model for the global OTA industry.
Zengold
Zengold creates crypto assets that are backed by physical gold and can be bought and transferred instantly anywhere in the world while having pertinent asset information securely stored onto an unalterable Metaverse blockchain.
Key Partnerships and Associations
ViewFin
Founded in 2014, ViewFin is the developer of Metaverse. As one of the most visionary fintech companies in China, ViewFin boasts a team of domestic and international specialists from various backgrounds in blockchain, finance, internet and consulting. The aim is to provide digital solutions using blockchain and smart contract technologies in areas such as finance, business, art, medical service and charity programs.
KICKICO and CyberTrust
Metaverse Foundation and the Moscow-based KICKICO platforms, in conjunction with Swiss-based CyberTrust, are partnering to create a fund to further enhance RussianChinese cooperation. This will be accomplished by funding businesses in both countries, as well as by supporting businesses to extend innovative business models from one country to another. KICKICO and Metaverse Foundation will provide support services to help facilitate this.
DraperDragon Innovation Fund
On 26 October 2017, DraperDragon Innovation Fund and the Metaverse Foundation officially announced their partnership to establish a digital asset investment fund. The DraperDragon Innovation Fund is a venture capital (VC) fund that focuses on Sino-US cross-border investments in emerging technology industries. It is a member of the global VC fund network Draper Venture Network (DVN), a global collective of VC investors established by famous American venture capitalist Tim Draper. The DVN currently consists of 17 member funds spread across more than 60 cities globally, including the Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) Fund, which including companies such as Hotmail, Skype, Baidu and Tesla in its portfolio. In the ten years since its inception, the DraperDragon Innovation Fund has provided venture capital to emerging technology companies related to China, maintaining a close relationship with them and successfully cultivating a new generation of emerging technology enterprises.
Chandler Guo
Chandler Guo, a famous angel investor into cryptocurrencies, is a big fan of Metaverse. He is one of the pioneers who invested into BTC and ETH.
Dubai Government
On 24 to 25 October 2017, Eric Gu was invited to attend the World Blockchain Summit held in Dubai. The Dubai government attached great importance to the World Blockchain Summit, where several high-ranking government officials attended the meeting and participated in the blockchain discussions actively. Metaverse team also talked about the specific issues about the development and application of blockchain with officials from Department of Economic Development and Dubai Health Authority.
Metaverse has recently announced an upcoming partnership with Aion, a multi-tier blockchain ecosystem designed to address the unsolved problems of scalability, privacy and interoperability in blockchain networks.
This partnership will focus on exploring the ability to transact native digital assets on the Metaverse protocol across other blockchains and providing access to new user bases, industry or geography based assets and the unique attributes of other blockchains. In addition, they will be investigating connecting and leveraging protocol-specific oracles across networks, exponentially increasing the quality and accessibility of trusted oracles.bases, industry or geography based assets and the unique attributes of other blockchains. In addition, they will be investigating connecting and leveraging protocol-specific oracles across networks, exponentially increasing the quality and accessibility of trusted oracles.
Exchange Listings
In November 2017, Metaverse was listed on HitBTC, CEX.com and EXX.com in addition to their existing listing on Bitfinex. The team is also in the midst of discussion with other major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bittrex and Binance to discuss the listing considerations. With these exchange listings, Metaverse is able to increase market exposure and reduce price manipulation.
The team is actively upgrading the Metaverse wallet, and has recently released an open beta for its light wallet. The light wallet makes it more convenient for users to transact and verify their balances.
Soliciting Articles
Metaverse has launched a long-running community event that will reward content creators. Rewards are given to qualified article submissions to encourage community interest and participation.
Metaverse understands the importance of partnerships and associations in spurring business growth and development, and has been actively seeking them. In the past month alone, Metaverse has secured partnerships with both DraperDragon Innovation Fund as well as a multi-tier blockchain ecosystem called Aion. Also, Eric Gu has been actively participating in conferences, summits and discussions across the globe.
Why is Metaverse Undervalued?
Technology and platform
As opposed to Neo or Qtum platforms where users are required to have developers that are familiar with the intricacies of block applications, Metaverse does not require businesses to have blockchain development capability because it specifically tailors the platform for individual business. This in effect enables Metaverse to reach out to businesses that are interested in applying blockchain application but do not have the know-how expertise.
Furthermore, with the combination of digital identity, digital assets and oracles, Metaverse is able to create a holistic ecosystem to meet the demands of businesses. In short, Metaverse is able to integrate the key functions of Neo, Chainlink and Civic and offer a one-stop solution to businesses.
Metaverse has a similar, if not bigger company size than Neo, with currently over 80 staffs employed at parent company ViewFin, a leading blockchain enterprise in China. Coincidentally, Neo has a similar setup for their project with parent company Onchain.
General Cryptocurrency Market Sentiment
Altcoin markets are suppressed in the short run, due to investors accumulating Bitcoin Cash for its fork which is scheduled to happen on the 14th of November. Once the uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash brews over, money will start flowing back into altcoins and Metaverse.
Metaverse's partnership with Moscow based KICKICO and crypto investment bank CyberTrust could create a stronghold in the ICO market in China and Russia. Over the next year, the fund partners plan to conduct about 100 ICO projects. These ICOs will likely be temporarily based overseas until the Chinese government comes out with clear regulations for ICOs in the country. Metaverse is also actively and regularly announcing partnerships, with the 2 most recent ones being Aion and the DraperDragon Fund. This bodes well for investors, as more partnerships equates to more resources for development on the project.
Metaverse is an exciting project that has immense potential to succeed. Its concept of digital identity positions itself well in the current cryptocurrency landscape of regulatory uncertainty. Eric Gu is a resourceful go getter, and there is no doubt that Metaverse will thrive under his leadership and direction. At its current valuation, Metaverse looks to be an absolute steal and could be one of the biggest winners going into the end of 2017 and 2018.
Source: https://www.ciceroreport.com/
submitted by ciceroreport to Metaverse_Blockchain [link] [comments]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sues messaging platform KIK for an U.S. $100 million ICO conducted in 2017 for a token dubbed KIN. According to the court filing, KIK violated section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, requiring securities offerings to be registered. The firm's CEO has since launched a crowdfunding campaign dubbed "Defend Crypto", to prepare for a legal battle against the SEC.
Binance DEX – the non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange of Binance will geo-block 29 countries, commencing on July 1st, 2019.
BitMEX Ventures invests into Philippine Digital Asset Exchange (PDAX) an exchange licenced by the Central Bank of the Philippines.
OKCoin launches euro trading pairs for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and announces new office in Malta.
A flash crash in Poloniex's margin lending platform for digital asset Clam (CLAM) results in a 1800 BTC (U.S. $13.5 million) loss for its lending users.
LocalBitcoins removes the option to buy or sell Bitcoin (BTC) for in-person cash trades to comply to Finland's Act on Detecting and Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.
Japanese tax authorities introduce a new system as of January that allow them under certain conditions to ask exchange operators to disclose client information.
The European Commission (EC) release an official recommendation warning Malta to strengthen its AML policies.
Indian lawmakers propose a bill dubbed "Banning Cryptocurrencies and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019". The bill proposes a potential 10-year jail term for citizens dealing with cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain start-up Komodo hacks itself to prevent U.S. $13 million worth of KMD tokens from being stolen by hackers.
Leveraging application programing interface (API) calls, hackers steal over 23,200,000 XRP (U.S. $10 million) from custodial wallet service GateHub.
Binance launches its first stablecoin backed by the British Pound, dubbed "Binance GBP (BGBP). The platform intends to issue more stablecoins, representing other fiat currencies within two months time.
Apple releases "CryptoKit", a framework for iOS developers to utilize cryptographic operations securely and efficiently.
The CEO of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank claims the institution has no plans to make a foray into the cryptocurrency space. Instead, the bank will focus on building blockchain based applications for existing services.
Justin Sun, the CEO of TRON has paid U.S. $4.57 million to have lunch with Warren Buffet.
@APompliano – Bitcoin was the first major step towards the separation of state and money.
Scam Projects
My name is Kristina Semenova, I am the Head of Investors Relation Department at Platinum, the world's number one business facilitator.
Our team knows how to start ICO/STO in 2019!
Why are we so sure? Well, our experience speaks for itself:
But what is the difference between ico and sto? What is the cornerstone of ICO marketing strategy? You will know this after finishing the UBAI courses!
Here's just a quick preview of our Short Course lesson.
Multinational accounting firm Ernst and Young found that $400 million of the $3.7 billion USD raised from ICOs (as of January 22, 2018) had been stolen. That is, up to 10% of all ICO funding is virtually being stolen from investors. Though ICO scams are the most common method of theft in the crypto world, some projects will actually operate for a period of time before disappearing with the money. Like in a Ponzi scheme, an exit scam may be planned for later, sometime after a manipulated pump; or some other time the team believes is most opportune to take the money and run. Giza: Giza marketed itself as a platform within which different cryptocurrencies could be stored securely. But after raising $2.4 million in one month, the team deleted the website and stopped replying to emails. Investors were duped by a very convincing whitepaper, and actors had been hired to appear in photographs promoting the project. No investor funds have ever been recovered. Centra: The SEC put an end to fundraising for the Centra ICO and charged the founders Robert Farkas and Sohrab Sharma with orchestrating a fraudulent ICO after they raised $32 million USD. They were promoting the ability to develop financial products backed by VISA and Mastercard, though it was later found that neither partnership was real. One of the major red flags in the Centra project was the use of celebrity endorsements for publicity, reportedly paying champion boxer Floyd Mayweather a significant sum to promote their project. Who wants to leave their Blockchain investment decisions up to Floyd Mayweather, regardless of his unbelievable skill as a boxer and regardless of his own financial success? He should still not influence where you invest your money!
Ponzi Schemes: Bitconnect: This is the most infamous Ponzi scheme in the history of cryptocurrency, and certainly the most damaging. Bitconnect was a Bitcoin-based project that rose to an all-time high of $463 per token on the back of a fictitious trading bot. The Bitconnect scam operated by paying dividends to users, proportional to the number of tokens they held and the number of referrals they made. The BCC tokens were exchanged for the users' Bitcoin, and the highly sophisticated and wildly successful trading bot would trade BTC for them and distribute profits as dividends. The value of the dividends offered was approximately 1% of the initial investment per day. In other words, that is approximately 3,780% per year in cumulative gain! The referral system was capitalized upon most heavily by many of the biggest crypto YouTube channels, including CryptoNick and Trevon James, both of whom are now under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Shortly after the Bitconnect Token reached its all-time high, they received cease and desist orders from the security regulators of Texas and North Carolina, which caused the owners of the Bitconnect exchange to shut down operations, and the price to plummet.
Davorcoin: Davorcoin was a lending platform very similar to Bitconnect. And Davorcoin was farcically promoted by the same Trevon James crypto Youtuber who promoted Bitconnect, and is currently under investigation by the FBI for promoting Ponzi schemes. The Texas State Securities Board, in likening Davor to Bitconnect, stated that "DavorCoin is telling investors they can earn lucrative profits by investing in a lending program based on a new cryptocurrency known as davorcoin. Investors allegedly purchase davorcoin and then lend it to DavorCoin". Davorcoin promptly plunged from an all-time high of $180 to very close to zero after a cease and desist order was made against them on the 2nd of February 2018. Useless Ethereum Token: Despite brazenly stating in the name of the project that the token has no use, the UET managed to raise $340,000 in its crowdsale, and saw a significant pump of over 300% on the HitBTC exchange in February of 2018. The scam was an obvious case of pump and dump, with the total trading volume for UET crashing back down to as low as $3 per day, after reaching as high as $350,000 per day during the pump.
It is currently an unfortunate consequence of the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, but there is a distinct lack of recourse for scammed investors. It is wise to become as well-acquainted with the various indicators of good and bad ICOs as you possibly can. In weighing the factors that will allow you to avoid expensive mistakes, ask yourself in whose favor are the terms of the ICO slanted, yours or the teams? To what extent are you actually likely to profit from this investment? Cryptocurrency is inherently a grey area, whether you are investing in it or not. Investing is another inherently grey area, no matter what the area or object of investing might be. Laws and regulations are not always able to keep up. Trying to define and prove what was or was not a scam is not likely to be as simple as the scammed investor would want it to be. A project can be set up in certain ways to avoid being technically classified or provable as a scam, but the unprepared investor can still be burnt or scammed just as badly. Now we look at more individual indicators that can help you form a valid impression whether or not an ICO or even a fully-fledged exchange-listed coin is a scam or a bona fide investment opportunity.
Common Signposts
Contrasting Scam & Legitimate Projects
Presale Bonus/Token Release If the ICO allots massive bonuses to team members, you may leave yourself open to getting dumped on by presale investors if you buy when the project tokens are listed on an exchange. Likewise, if the project has a short lock-up period for developers and founders, you run the risk of them selling as soon as the token is listed on a major exchange. The token release schedule for the founders of a worthwhile project should show long-term team commitment to that project. The Jibrel Network team tokens will be locked up for 5 years before release, and they had no early investor bonus in the main sale. Both of these factors instilled confidence in the JNT ICO investors, and the tokens were sold out weeks before the ICO was due to end. No Presale lock up If Presale investor tokens are not locked up at all for any period after listing, that could easily be a set up for an exit scam after the initial listing. No presale lockup for early investor tokens is a crystal clear warning, the project may be fatally rigged toward those in the inner circle, with little commitment to the long term health or success of that project.
Unsolicited Offers or Unasked for Additions to Groups Characters running scam projects will often add you to Telegram groups out of the blue or send you unsolicited emails with information about their project. Telegram is the most widely used messaging app in the cryptocurrency community and you should familiarize yourself with it to keep yourself in the loop for specific projects in which you invest as well as all kinds of other relevant crypto info. You can adjust the settings on the Telegram app to disallow anonymous additions to cryptocurrency projects if you find yourself bombarded with offers by scammers. Reputable projects at the ICO stage will spread by word of mouth, or by eloquent and meaningful articles posted on their Medium page. A project with serious potential does not need to actively seek participants for their ICO like that. They will often be able to fill their ICO hard cap in a matter of hours, or even just minutes!
Anonymous Team
Alarm bells, again, immediately, if the project has minimal online presence. The individual team members could be mere fabrications. The entire project could be a farce by utterly inexperienced characters. What if the project leaders are simply unaware of the importance of a strong social media profile? That in itself would be too strange to ignore. Top-level projects will have team members with experience in crypto and the LinkedIn accounts for those members will be easily accessible right there on the project website. You should be able to easily see and evaluate each individual's experience in their field and ascertain what they bring to the project team. Bitconnect's anonymous team should have been the only deterrent prospective investors needed to discourage them from putting money into that doomed project. Ethhorse, a current project with anonymous founders and operators should be steered clear of at all costs for the same reasons.
Community Atmosphere
The subreddits or Telegram groups of scam projects will often feature moderators that do not allow any kind of criticism in the group chat. If, in the process of your due diligence, you encounter didactic admins that only wish to silence your questioning of certain aspects of the whitepaper or mechanism of the tokenomics
, you should be concerned. Similarly if you see a coherent critical reply attacked by many different users who refuse to engage the substance of the point being made, that may be a subreddit infested with bots. Projects that have nothing to hide will allow free debate in the chat. Ideally, they hope to develop a positive community that is itself an asset to the long-term success and overall strength of the project. Good projects do not need to automatically brand all criticism as Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).
One common tactic of scammers is to produce a whitepaper that uses too many buzzwords, and deliberately obfuscates and overcomplicates the explanation of the problem and/or its solution. A good whitepaper clearly and concisely lays out the problem and answer, as well as provides compelling arguments why a Blockchain solution is preferable to the current solution. Another point of concern is a whitepaper that gives unrealistic time frames and goals. Bitconnect's almost comically optimistic profit projections are a prime example of this, as are the 1,354% yearly gains promised by Plexcoin. Respectable projects will set out development timescales in terms of quarters or years, rather than offering immediate profit projections, which are simply a red flag.
Advisors/Connections in the Cryptoworld
The most prestigious projects will already have partnerships made before the ICO stage, and the worst ones, i.e. the scams, will not mention any such partnerships. Icon (ICX) for example was spawned from a South Korean project named The Loop, a collaboration between 3 Korean universities and the DAYLIFinancial Group. They boasted an advisory panel consisting of the legendary investor Don Tapscott, Jehan Chu and crowdfunding expert Jason Best. On top of a solid team of advisors, good projects will also be visible at major Blockchain events such as the Consensus, and the World Blockchain Forum, etc. Scam projects will be unable to inspire this same level in confidence. As an investor, you should sense a certain presence and expect a certain feeling of trust that should guide you in your investments. After all, it is actually a people-to-people thing you are doing.
Key Stress points upon the Timeline to Identify Scam Projects Post Whitepaper Release The period in the immediate aftermath of the release of the whitepaper can also be decisive in establishing the validity of a project. How a team copes with the roadmap that they have laid out for themselves is key. Valuable insight into the operational efficiency and commitment to the project can be gleaned from the quality of and amount of code committed to GitHub. If you have any experience in computer programming you can see how clean and orderly the code is, which gives insight into the skill of the developers, and in turn the quality of project leaders' decision-making in hiring team members. Scam projects will have little or no code committed to GitHub, or at best it will be copied and pasted from other projects just to cover their tracks. Start of ICO Sometimes, a scam project, or other project in which you would be better off not investing, will change the terms of the ICO just before the ICO starts. The Key (TKY) ICO doubled the price of tokens on the day before the ICO was due to take place, because the price of NEO had risen so drastically. Currently, the TKY token price is still only half of its ICO price. Initial investors are faced with the prospect of a 50% loss on their investment.
Exchange Listing
Some particularly greedy scammers will create a scam project with the intent of selling tokens in the ICO for BTC and ETH, and then pumping and dumping their share of the tokens immediately after listing. The team of fraudsters behind Monero Gold used this method after the crowdfunding of their useless ERC-20 token. After listing on CoinExchange.io, the team dumped their tokens until the exchange finally ceased trading. Although it is not uncommon for ICO tokens to sold after listing (just like can happen with shares of stock after an IPO), if the price does not stabilize and massive sell walls are continually placed, a scam is likely taking place and the token is being dumped.
Fake Ethereum Twitter giveaway
You may have noticed Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin's twitter handle has been changed to Vitalik "Not giving away Eth" Buterin in recent months. This is because a group of devious scammers had created fake accounts with almost exact replicas of his profile (deviating by only one character). The fake accounts promised to deposit 1 whole ETH for every 0.1 ETH the potential sucker deposited into the wallet address provided by the scammer. These fake account "Ether giveaway" scam tweets were set up to be sent in just a matter of seconds after the real person tweeted, and usually always appear immediately after the tweet of the real public figure. Fake bot profiles then came into play, thanking the fake Vitalik, or fake Elon Musk, for holding up their end of the bargain and depositing the ETH as promised. One scammer, or group of scammers, managed to fill a wallet up with almost $20 thousand worth of ETH, which they transferred out, never to be seen or heard from again.
Effect of Scam Customers, Upon the Affected Parties
Of course, this is no fun for the targeted public figure either. They need to take steps to avoid being targeted again. This will mean changing their handle, their username, or making their accounts private. However, the injured party with whom we are most concerned is the unfortunate scammed social media user, who has no chance whatsoever of getting his or her funds back, ever. It is a harsh lesson to learn. But it is a fact of crypto reality. Nearly every one that trades crypto will at least be exposed to frauds or scams in one way or another. In this case, we think it is better to learn about scams by studying them, rather than learn from your own unfortunate and expensive experience. In the case of Mr. Buterin, these incidents were awful public relations for the Ethereum project. It had only been a few years since cryptocurrency as a whole was primarily associated with criminality and seedy transactions on the Darkweb. Any connection with unscrupulous behavior is best avoided at all costs. Negative associations could have been particularly damaging for Ethereum's brand because the vast majority of ICO fraud is committed using the ERC-20 token as the template for the scam tokens.
Any and all the scamming or fraudulent behavior in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is bound to have a negative impact on the speed at which mainstream uptake finally takes place. Cryptocurrencies, as an emerging asset class, will be painted in the worst possible light. Crypto is aiming to, and is in fact in the process of, causing great disruption in traditional centralized finance and business. Mainstream media organizations are also part of that traditional centralized economy. Press coverage will be damning. Something is happening here, but Mr. Jones doesn't know what it is.
Legal Recourse for Scams
We clearly understand, there is a possibility of being scammed. We know the scams are happening. The SEC has made some arrests and actually charged people for operating fraudulent ICOs. But it is a struggle to deal with the flood of ICOs coming from anywhere at any time. The SEC filed charges against two founders of a purported financial services startup for orchestrating a fraudulent ICO that raised more than $32million from thousands of investors. As you know from the ICOs we have covered so far, the lack of regulation allows for direct contact and dealing between the entrepreneurs, business owners and potential investors. While we believe this is a blessing according to the founding principles of Bitcoin and other alternate Cryptocurrencies, because it frees us from traditional roadblocks, middle-men, and all kinds of time-consuming procedures; it also leaves investors in a place where there is often little to no hope of ever recovering funds lost in fraudulent schemes.
Actions after a Successful ICO
Good post-ICO practice is characterized by stringent security, well thought-out legal strategy and clear communication. Many projects have paid the price in damage to their reputation for failing to adequately guard customer information, leaving themselves open to phishing attacks by fraudsters. Investors in the Enigma project had half a million dollars stolen from them; and a whopping $8.4 million was defrauded from investors in Veritaseum via phishing attacks. After a successful token distribution, the team's main focus is initially on switching the enterprise from one primarily focused on fundraising, to superficially at least, a fully-fledged, functioning business. This involves removing most of the token sale-related content from their main webpage, sending newsletters to all successful ICO participants, and sending refunds to those who may have missed the deadline or the hardcap. Then, with the stressful and complicated fundraising stage finally concluded, a portion of the funds raised can be assigned to fuel the growth of the project community. This can involve hiring community managers, forum admins, and social media managers to outsource the job of keeping investors in the loop. The founders can focus on growth strategy and product development. The cultivation of a thriving and energetic community is extremely important. The community will give you free marketing for your product and your business. Community members who believe in the project, and are engaged by professional moderators, can give you very effective promotion to other prospective investors. Communication with community members is a great way to test ideas and gauge sentiment related to various aspects of your project.
The project leads must set aside adequate funds for lawyers. The project will need to address potential future or imminent problems with regulators, at the very least. The transition from fundraising project to full-fledged business can be incredibly challenging, and even more stressful than the ICO itself. The main thing to remember is that your pre-sale and ICO investors are not just silent investors waiting for a return. They are the early adopters of your solution, of your product; they are the community and promoters of your project; and they are the individuals with a vested interest in the financial success of your venture. The ICO environment is not as heavily regulated, so quarterly and/or semi-annual reporting is not required the way it is in the traditional world. That means your own style of effective communication about the progress and key developments on your project matters even more. In the ICO world, you communicate with your press releases, social media, and Medium posts. You also communicate by the very nature of your relations with your exchange, and relationships with your cornerstone investors. Effective communication and good business relationships can play a prominent role in the success or failure of your venture (by token liquidity and valuation).
If your investors start to lose interest, and stop trading your token on the exchange, liquidity will dry up and cause increasingly volatile price swings. You need to keep certain things in mind, and follow effective practices to maintain a happy and motivated community.
Social Media & Medium
In addition to your website, your social media & Medium blog most likely formed a significant part of your ICO preparations. Your purpose pivots after the ICO from one of promotion to one of communication. Consistent, informative and material Medium blogs, also Facebook and Twitter updates, ensure that investors remain engaged and well-informed of what the company is up to. Frequent activity in this space makes investors feel much more comfortable. You can foster a kind of organic community expansion that is consistently advertising your project to potential new members.
Cornerstone Investors & Exchanges
As we mentioned, your relationship with investors in the ICO world is different from that of the traditional silent IPO minority equity partners. Consistent, Transparent & Honest communication is incredibly important here. Even if an ICO is struggling to overcome a problem or whatever issues are occurring, honest communication from the team is key to business survival. You should think of and treat your exchange like a business partner too, a very important one at that. Exchanges provide liquidity for you and your investors. That liquidity is like the blood for your business. Many top exchanges demand nothing less than absolute honesty and integrity, it is imperative to maintain strong and comfortable relationships with exchanges. Everything we have said so far, also applies to your Telegram channel and forums too. These give you another great opportunity to build a thriving community. Team members and investors can enjoy lively debates in their Telegram channels. This can be constructive discussion, or critical commentary too. But it is always valuable as a direct link between the team and the community. It is always good to know how people are feeling and what they expect from you and your project. You are able to use your Telegram channel and forums to consistently adapt your marketing and communication strategy. Keep your investors as happy and comfortable as possible, and you will be more likely to attract new investors and allocations. Other forums around the internet operate more or less in the same manner as Telegram.
After a successful funding round with the hardcap reached and time to spare, legal counsel has been secured, and the community is flourishing, the team will prepare for their first listing by paying the exchange fee and waiting for the announcement by the exchange. Unless they are willing to pay exorbitant fees for an immediate listing on Binance for example, teams will usually settle for an initial listing on a second-tier exchange. The fee charged by an exchange depends on many different factors that we will cover in more detail in the next section.
ICO Company actions after a Successful ICO
Real World Case Study
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) project, when used in conjunction with the Brave Browser, allows users to pay micro-fees in BAT to their most-used sites. The idea was conceived by Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascipt and former CEO of Mozilla Firefox. Investors absolutely pounced on it at ICO and the project raised an amazing $35million in under 30 seconds. The BAT/Brave project has delivered on time on nearly all of its targets, helped in no small part by having a working product, the Brave Browser, for over a year before the token launch. The project secured a listing on the premier exchange, Binance, in November 2017.
A project can suffer through a disappointing funding phase and, for example, fail to reach 75% of its hardcap. The team will be only partially funded. Though they may be able to initiate the project, the value proposition of the token has been compromised, potentially forever. The market has spoken. There is limited faith in the team's ability to complete or carry out their project. Failure to reach a hardcap is a serious obstacle on the project road map. This will mean massive revisions to the timescales for development and listing. Such a project may have to be content listing on decentralized exchanges for a period of time and they will lose any post-ICO hype that could have helped the project price to "moon" early on. There is less money to be allocated. Each section of the business will be underfunded compared to the original plan. There can be delays in code development, exchange listing, marketing and community development as well.
Calling the Tezos ICO a disappointment might seem strange considering they raised over $232million. But this open-source, smart contracts fintech platform became a victim of its own success post-ICO by devolving into multiple class-action lawsuits between the founders and its foundation chairman. They suffered from a distinct lack of clearly defined roles and expectations on key positions. There was infighting at the boardroom level. This all caused an as yet unresolved delay in listing and development. This is also one example why a capped ICO can be more desirable for investors than an uncapped ICO. If the team have a set amount of capital to work with, an amount that isn't absolutely ridiculous, like in the case of Tezos, perhaps the resultant greed and discord is less likely. Although it may not be so easy for speculative investors to make a profit from an uncapped ICO with such a massive initial market cap, it is a very impressive feat of fundraising nonetheless. Tezos's post ICO market cap of $232million is already 64th of all projects, and would have to perform brilliantly on listing to maintain this position.
Company actions after a Failed ICO
Failed ICOs can mean either fundraising initiatives that have failed to reach the softcap and will therefore not be economically viable, or fraudulent projects whose sole intention was to steal from investors and do an exit scam. We've already covered scams and fraud projects in detail, but what happens when an ICO just fails to raise the requisite funds? Projects that are legitimate, with honest founders and developers, refund the ETH or BTC deposited by investors as quickly as possible if the softcap is not reached. The same process that is followed by ICOs that are oversubscribed is employed by those that have failed to raise enough capital. The process of returning funds back to the sender ideally should take a period of days, but more likely will take a few weeks. The Sappy Network, advised by Dan Tapscott, failed to come anywhere near to their funding goals. They are currently in the process of sending all investor funds back to the wallets from which they came. The statement from the founders read as a textbook example of how you should react to failure with the founder stating "In the spirit of transparency and honesty, we are sharing with the community that we did not reach the soft cap, and thus we will be honoring our terms and conditions and returning the Ethers to all contributors"
A bottleneck developed in the ICO market after the explosion of crypto prices in 2017. There was a massive increase of ICO teams on all stages along the pathway from start-up to fully listed crypto asset. Certainly, a huge part of the value proposition for both the token and the project depends on securing a listing on an exchange. It is precisely the liquidity of the token as a valuable asset on a free market exchange, that determines or even defines its value. The liquidity is what makes tokens attractive to investors, but that liquidity simply does not exist without a platform for the exchange. Unfortunately for new projects, the balance of power is heavily weighted in favor of large centralized exchanges that can pick and choose which tokens to list, and the timescale within which listing will occur. Each large exchange has its own list of pros and cons as well as its own specific procedure for coin/token listing. They also have their own particular ethos regarding the type of projects they prefer to list. ERC-20 tokens will be available for trade immediately on decentralized exchanges (IDEX Forkdelta) but those platforms are generally quite low volume, and certainly not a long term solution. Projects must often pay huge fees to be listed on the larger centralized exchanges. At first those fees will be prohibitive. The usual route is to initially list on a more reasonably priced smaller exchange like Kucoin or Gate.io.
Listing Process
Major centralized exchanges have the power to list anything they want, and they also each have a unique structure that projects must adhere to if they wish to be listed. Each potential new listing will undergo a rigorous examination by the exchange operators to test the feasibility for listing the token. An exchange will likely have forms available on its website that you can fill out to give them all the necessary initial information. If a particular project and token qualify for listing, the team will invariably be put under a NDA, Non-Disclosure Agreement, to avoid any insider trading or other regulatory problem
s. In the case of larger exchanges like Binance, there is a period within which owners of a newly listed coin or token can transfer them to the exchange in preparation for trading. This is a fantastic opportunity for traders to make use of the likely pump that occurs after a new token is listed on a large exchange. It is common to see up to 100% increases on the first day of trading, and a subsequent dump of up to 50% or more can follow. This allows traders holding the coin already, to sell for a good profit, and maybe buy back in at a much lower price too, if they think that is a good idea.
There are no definitive figures available to the public regarding fees that major exchanges charge new projects to list. Binance, Bitfinex, Kraken and Bittrex have all been quoted as saying that they do not charge any fee at all but this is almost definitely untrue. Knowledgeable industry insiders estimate between $500,000 and $1,000,000 USD for listing on a top-tier exchange. (There have been more rumors of 7 figure exchange listing fees since January 2018 too). This figure will vary greatly from project to project. Various factors can affect how an exchange determines the fee for a particular project. These are some of the most important ones: Market Maker Service Required Whether or not the client project requires liquidity services directly from the exchange, or can connect proprietary ones via API, will lead to a huge reduction in listing cost.
Type of Token (ERC-20 NEP-5 or DAG) Not all tokens are created equal in the listing process. ERC-20 tokens and BTC based tokens have code architecture that will almost certainly be preferred by the exchange. NEO based tokens (NEP-5) such as Ontology will be far most costly to integrate because separate new wallets have to be built to facilitate NEO transactions. The costs involved in integrating Direct Acyclic Graph projects such as Nano into the exchange structure are even worse. Expected Daily Volume Exchanges derive their profits largely from transaction fees and withdrawal fees. The trading volume a new token is likely to bring in will have a great influence on the computation of the exchange listing fee. Exchange Listing Procedures Evaluation Different exchanges have different rules for new listings. A new project must of course abide by specific rules for that exchange before they are allowed to list there. There are procedures that must generally be followed for the most noteworthy exchanges. You can get a good idea of the hurdles to be overcome before listing can take place.
Ongoing relationship with Exchanges
Exchanges, usually Huobi or Kucoin, will sometimes make it essential for newly listed tokens to engage in "trading competitions" after listing. Competitions can last between 2 weeks, or a month or more, aiming to increase the trading volume for that token, thereby increasing trading fees collected by the exchange, and giving the project extra publicity too. The whales may have made a nice profit already and be very happy about it; but the project token can still get stuck in a long period of stagnation and a loss of post-ICO hype. Once a coin or token has been successfully registered for trading on a particular exchange, the project must focus on maintaining regulatory compliance and paying things like annual maintenance fees too. Exchanges can investigate and delist coins or tokens to see if they have fallen below a certain standard set by the exchange. The exchange is concerned about such things as: an extended period with an extremely low volume; a team member connection to an exit scam; or other such immoral/illegal behavior.
Post ICO Company Evaluation
After a presumably successful ICO, the necessary funds have been obtained, and the real business, the real team challenge is now, to bring the project to life as a bona fide disruptive Blockchain endeavor! The core advantage of the ICO method of funding business startups is the lack of regulatory hurdles to navigate with regards to fundraising and fund allocation. The funds that have been raised have, in effect, been freely given to the project leads to do with what they will in a no-strings-attached transaction. Of course, there are still strings attached in that the team are tasked with making that money grow for the investors. But there is no regulatory oversight of the process. The regulatory freedom is a double edge sword. It gives a good team freedom to work however they want; and it also allows for unscrupulous thieves to use the ICO process to defraud investors of their ETH and BTC.
Advantages of being Post ICO From Investor Perspective
You should have little to fear in terms of fraud from a project in which you have invested, if you have done your due diligence correctly. You can expect the tokens to be distributed, and the exchange listing to take place as expected. And you know your project is totally legitimate. There are different ways to think about your ICO tokens after the crowd sale has concluded. If you are a speculative investor looking for a quick flip, you can gauge the correct moment and sell anytime you like, assuming the ICO has been well-received by the markets.
From Team Perspective
The post-ICO period is, from the point of view of the team, a period where stress and responsibility for the safety of investor funds is passed, in the form of ICO tokens, from the team to the investors themselves. This responsibility for tokens is replaced with the stress of building the actual company itself, and succeeding in the business as planned. A small portion of the responsibility for the project's success is also passed on to the exchange that has listed the tokens. This is especially true if market makers have been employed by the team or the exchange to provide liquidity. After the ICO has concluded, all funds are released to the project team immediately, so they can start building their business brand, and tackling each step on the road map right away. The freedom with which startups can operate is one of the main reasons behind the explosion in Blockchain businesses in 2017. With the ICO funds safe, and money being put to work on various areas essential to the growth of the project, and the tokens already distributed to investors, the risk of fraud is greatly diminished. If KYC and Anti-money Laundering procedures have been followed correctly during the ICO phase, the risk of phishing attacks and theft will also be marginal now. At any rate, with tokens safely delivered to all participants, the responsibility has passed from the team to the investor.
The release of all funds and the freedom to allocate them with no supervision, as cited above, is certainly a tremendous advantage empowering the team to fulfil the entire breadth of their vision unimpeded. But it does have its drawbacks. If there is a mistake made in the allocation of funds, or an unforeseen problem arises, there is nowhere to turn to, and no means of generating further money via crowdfunding. The ICO is over; it is finished. The project simply has to work with what it has. Your community can sometimes turn against you when the market is going down. Times like that just add to the already intense pressure of presiding over a startup Blockchain business.
Solution: DAICO
The DAICO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization Initial Coin Offering, is a means to integrate a more specific, rigorous and regimented smart contract schedule into the ICO process. Doing so will eliminate fraudulent ICOs, exit scams, pump and dumps, and many of the other disadvantages listed above. The DAICO method, proposed by Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin, will merge the core concepts of both an ICO and a DAO to leverage the most relevant features of both, in order to solve the main problems in the ICO method. For example, to eliminate the risk of an exit scam, the release of funds will be spread out over a period of time, with the next allotment only being released when a certain set of parameters are met.
Buterin explains that the DAICO method will provide user protection in a manner not present in the current ICO model, ensuring funds are not misspent or used in any way contrary to the intention of investors. In simpler terms the DAICO will operate as follows: The DAICO will start with a smart contract by its executors that can set whether this is to be a capped or uncapped round of fundraising (amongst many other options) as well as including KYC requirements. After these settings have been configured, the DAICO is set into "contribution mode" and presented to the public. This stage will function identically to a normal ICO with ETH exchanged for project tokens. Once the funding period has elapsed, or the hardcap has been met, investors will have the ability to set the "tap" for the collected funds. This will set the amount per second, or amount per minute, that will be available to the executor to develop that specific portion of the project to which those funds have been assigned. If investors believe at any point that the team is misspending funds or otherwise wasting time, etc., the investors have significant options to take. Of course they could choose to release more funds to the team. But, they could also stop the tap altogether, and stop the entire ICO, by voting, and actually release all unused funds back to their own wallets from which the investment had first been made!
Learn more on how to market any ICO and STO, get better understanding of security token definition and learn what a scam project is!
Follow the link to read the full article:
Contact me via Facebook or LinkedIn to know more about our services:
The Way Money Used to Be
https://cryptomurmur.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/The-way-money-used-to-be-1.png
I wrote this story about the paradigm shift that cryptocurrencies may cause in the future, from the perspective of an old man reflecting on the past.
If you enjoy this story, please have a look at other material I have written at https://cryptomurmur.com/
"I remember it like it was yesterday, James," the old man wistfully pondered. "Money was so different back then. Everything was different."
"How so, Will?" the younger one asked - not so young as to be a child, but young enough to not remember the way money used to be.
"Back then," Will replied, "money was not something shared and traded freely like it is now… it was mostly owned by a few, and they were the few who controlled it. They issued it, and they manipulated its value to their advantage."
"They could print it, as much as they would convince the people they needed, and over time, the money became worth less and less, but the people would owe more and more."
"But if they mined it and mined it," James asked, "and mined it all, wouldn't they run out of money eventually? Then the money would be scarce and become worth more, right?"
"No, no, no!" Will was amused at James' naivete. "They didn't mine it like we do now. Now, our computers solve mathematical problems to mine a currency, and it becomes more and more scarce, and more and more valuable, but back then, the people in power just printed more and more money as they saw fit, creating more and more debt and less and less value."
"Out of thin air?" James was incredulous. "How could they do that? Didn't people see how they were taking advantage of them?"
"It took time for people to realise. They began to realise when the new money came to be. But it was a slow, gradual change. Cryptocurrency did not have a good reputation, at first."
James was confused. "What do you mean? How can a currency be bad? Can't it be used for good or bad?"
"Of course!" Will replied, "but the few who controlled money wanted to keep things that way, so they created fear and paranoia about the new money. They said cryptocurrency was only used by criminals, paying for committing horrible acts with impunity, behind a shield of anonymity. The old money, on the other hand, was tracked and followed everywhere it went on the Internet, thus creating the illusion of safety. In reality, though, it was controlled and manipulated."
"And people didn't mind? They just willingly gave up their privacy like that? Bizarre!" James was struggling to relate to such a different way of seeing the world.
"They didn't know there were better alternatives" Will explained. "Money was not only controlled by the few, the powerful, and the elite, but also by tanks, guns and bombs. There wasn't much the average person could do about it at the time."
"Money was centralised - controlled by a few powerful entities. Not like now. Cryptocurrency as we know it today has no central authority. It can not be attacked and destroyed at any one single point," Will continued, "It wasn't secure like it is now, either. Money could be stolen and hidden in vast quantities by those in power who could control what was seen, so nobody could possibly know if a government or other person in power was stealing money from the rest of the people."
James was astonished. "No public ledger? So, you just had to trust the people who controlled the money to be honest about the money, when it was in their best interests to be selfish? That makes no sense!"
Will laughed. "I know, it's funny when you think back how it just seemed perfectly normal and acceptable at the time! Now it seems… ridiculous!"
They chuckled as they reminisced.
"I remember…" Will continued, "You would have to go to a place called a bank - a place that might give you permission to store your own money there if you had enough money to begin with, and then charged you for storing it, charged you for withdrawing it, charged you for sending it, and profited from gambling it, all while charging you more to borrow it!"
"That's crazy." James almost sounded disgusted. "You didn't just store your own money in your own wallet? And just send it to whomever you please?"
"Nope!" Will replied. "Instead, you asked the bank to send it for you, for a fee, of course! And if you wanted to send money to family or friends across the world, well…"
"Well, what?" James prodded.
"Well… it could take days, and it cost a great deal."
James answered, "Well I suppose that's fair since that was before the internet, right? I mean, it wouldn't be so easy to move money like that back then, right?"
"Oh, no, no." Will clarified. "The internet had already been around for quite some time, in fact. But because currencies were not cryptocurrencies, because they were centrally controlled with middlemen like banks, there was not much choice but to pay for the banks to move the money as they saw fit. And if they could make more money charging fees to send money around the world, why wouldn't they?" Will chuckled.
"Wow" James found the whole scenario amusing.
"It's funny how when you look back at something in the past, it can seem so ridiculous, but at the time, it seems perfectly reasonable" Will contemplated.
"I know I'll never understand it!" they laughed together, one at memories of the strange ways things were in the past, the other not quite understanding how different things had become.
So what exactly is cryptocurrency then?
Cryptocurrency attempts to solve many of the problems of the modern money system, called fiat. In the current money system, money is printed or minted by selling debt. The money is then lent out to borrowers and spent around the world. More and more money gets printed and more and more debt gets created. Since the money is created out of debt, it is impossible to ever pay back the debt entirely as more debt is constantly created with the money that is used to continuously pay the debt.
Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is not printed or minted out of debt. It is created, most commonly, through a process that uses computer work, solving math problems that can not be cheated. It is created by anyone who chooses to participate in its creation, called a miner, much like miners of gold and other precious metals. When a miner successfully "mines" a cryptocurrency by solving a math problem with a computer, they are rewarded with a "block", and can choose to keep the reward or to trade it with others. So, it is not controlled or stored somewhere by any one person or government. This is the greatest unique attribute of cryptocurrency - that it is decentralised - not controlled or stored by any one "central" person or group of people.
Cryptocurrencies use computer code that makes it secure and prevents it from being copied, so it can not be created out of debt and can not become so plentiful as to be worthless. Whenever someone trades cryptocurrency with someone else, the transactions also use this computer code, called cryptography, to make sure the transaction is true and that it is secure.
Miners are a part of this process, making sure that every transaction is correct and is not a duplicate or an incorrect amount. Most cryptocurrencies record these trades in a chain of blocks, called the blockchain, with each block storing information about the trade. The blocks create a chain of information that is checked by miners to make sure it is true. So cryptocurrency, through the use of cryptography, is far more secure than old fashioned fiat money.
Another great advantage of cryptocurrency is that it is much cheaper to send to people anywhere. Since there is no need for any kind of bank or money transfer agent, the fees can be tiny, rewarding miners around the world for checking that each trade is correct on a public ledger; the permanent and unchangeable list of trades seen on the blockchain. The public ledger is like an open account book where everyone can see all of the trades. Anyone who wants can look and see the amounts of currency that have been traded. Cryptocurrencies can use features that makes these transactions anonymous to varying degrees, to protect the privacy of traders. Money can be sent anywhere in the world without any border issues or bank accounts, directly from one person to another using this cryptographic system. The fee to send cryptocurrency to the other side of the world would be the same as it would be to send it to your neighbour because of this system.
Often, because of a cryptocurrency's ability to send money anonymously anywhere in the world, it is portrayed as being used mostly by criminals for various crimes and terrorism. In reality, fiat money is used for almost all criminal activity in the form of cash, mostly USD. Ultimately, any currency can be used for good or evil, but it is in the interests of central fiat powers, who make a great deal of profit from debt, fees, and fiat money fabrication, to maintain a negative image for cryptocurrency.
Of all cryptocurrencies, the best known by far is Bitcoin. It is the oldest blockchain with the most miners and is seen as the most trusted and secure for this reason. But there are many other cryptocurrencies with different purposes. Ethereum, for example, is a cryptocurrency that was created with the idea of using the currency itself as a sort of platform for programming. Many cryptocurrencies are traded for goods and services on a constant basis, like Litecoin, Monero, and Ripple. There are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies for different purposes!
If you're interested in cryptocurrencies, you can learn to mine them on your own computer or you can simply buy them from exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance. There are new exchanges constantly springing up around the world, so check out exchanges in your region.
submitted by The_Xsid to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments]
A Guide To ICO investing Bitcoin Millions: Is It Too Late For You?
You've been probably reading the news about all those kids who manage to become filthy rich simply by investing in Bitcoin in 2013.
News like these usually make me feel mad because I missed the chance to buy Bitcoin when one of my friends told me that I should invest in Bitcoin back in 2014.
Now the Bitcoin seems more like a gold mine rush because everybody thinks that he would be able to make millions easily.
If you are like one of those people who want to make a quick buck on cryptocurrency, I advise you stop. You lost the game here. There's no easy money to be made on the crypto market anymore.
Here's Why Making Money On Cryptocurrency Will Become Harder In 2018
The market is oversaturated with cryptocurrency traders. There're people who are going to take your money because you simply don't know the game good enough.
Right now the whole market cap is crushing and in order to make profits, you need to be really smart.
Let's say you want to buy Cardano at its current price of $0,45 per coin. You see the graph and you notice that Cardano used to cost $0.77 a few weeks ago, and you are like maybe Cardano will go up again, and you buy Cardano.
Who sold you the coin?
Is it the exchange itself? Is it Binance who sold you the coin?
The answer is no!
You bought the coin from people who already were holding the coin. They got the coin before the coin hit the exchange. They bought it dirt cheap on ICO presale level and they sold it to you 20x or even 30x the ICO price.
If you know some good coins that are already listed on coinmarketcap.com Stop there! It is usually too late to acquire them because somebody both them a few years ago. Usually, those are the people who joined the ICO presales or the team members of the blockchain project.
Cryptocurrency market is very dynamic and people got hyped easily. So what should you do instead if you want to still benefit from the cryptocurrency market?
This what I am also doing...
Be the one who buys the coin first!
Go online and start researching cryptocurrency projects that are up to launch an ICO and start following their social media. There are few major important things that I am looking for:
Factor #1 The Main Lesson From A Coin That Cost Less Than $1 in 2015 And Reached $1,389 In Less Than 3 years!
Every cryptocurrency project needs a strong team of developers. They'll be the one who would create the project. Also, I'm trying to invest my ETH into projects that have young teams. Many of the successful crypto projects have very young teams.
For example, the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin started the project when he was in his early twenties. The cost of Etherium hit $1,389 at its peak, and back in 2015, an Ethereum cost less than $1.
Is there a chance to found the next Vitalik Buterin? Just look for a young enthusiastic team.
Factor #2 Good Marketing And Big Idea
Whenever I invest in a project I aim to go with the idea that is practical. I don't invest in projects that I don't understand. I will visit the website and the social media to see if the team has good marketing. If I like the website and the idea I would go to the Telegram channel of the project.
You can learn a lot just by visiting a Telegram chat. I would ask a few questions to see if the team is responding. I used to think that the size of the Telegram group would matter, but there are a lot of ways to invite fake bots to a Telegram chat. So I would stay away from a group that has way too many unresponsive chat visitors.
Factor #3 ICO That Is Going To Make You Money vs ICO That Is Trying To Steal Your Hard-Earned Money
I do internet marketing for 4 years now. Whenever I go to a blockchain website I notice that a big majority of the projects don't have a long-term vision.
They are all about raising money with the ICO. I am just curious what happens next? So, I usually read the whitepaper, try to find out if they have set a road map. Usually, they have that stated on the website under a "Road Map".
So, I look for projects that have a long-term vision. It is very hard to see ROI in less than two years. I think this is the reasonable cycle.
ICO Projects You Should Consider
I am not a financial advisor. However, I did a great deal of thinking and researching ICOs. I am going share a list the top 3 ICOs that I personally invested in and I intend to invest in once the ICO is out for a presale.
Rentberry
I invested in Rentberry earlier this year. They already had a solid base of customers and they're building a decentralized home rental platform. Based in the USA, the team is supercool. They raised 30M, unfortunately if you want to invest now the project ICO project is already closed.
CrowdMachine
CrowdMachine has a very good idea. Their project aims to develop a system that requires no coding, enabling anyone to create decentralized apps and smart contracts without limitation. So basically, with CrowdMachine everybody will be able to create a blockchain without knowing how to code. This ICO start early April.
Cryptopus
Cryptopus might be a long shot. However, back in 2013 Etherium was a very long shot as well. This Russian ICO develops a blockchain brokerage marketplace. I personally know the team because once I stumble upon the project, I wanted to be a part of it, and I joined as an advisor.
If you are looking for a coin that has a huge potential you might want to take a look at Cryptopus and CrowdMachine.
CrowdMachine has a BIG idea and might change the blockchain game forever. ICO is out soon so definitely worth following.
Cryptopus has a very cool young team and amazing advisors on the board. ICO is currently ON! Could Cryptopus be the next Ethereum?
We are about to see!
submitted by Coinsaivory to altcoin [link] [comments]
Thermodynamics & Silent Weapons for Secret Wars or Crypto Anarchy 101: Statists Failing & Anarchists Thriving
Crypto Anarchy 101: Statists Failing & Anarchists Thriving
The black-market, the free-market, is what kept people alive throughout the worst of oppressions. The black market has been the art of surviving amidst all types of tyrannies and slaveries. The black market, aka System D, is something that everyone in the world will need to start getting comfortable with. CryptoAnarchy is the ultimate manifestation of complete market freedom, and it is here to stay.
Libertarians are beginning to finally realize their incredible advantage within this new market environment. The unfortunate statist masses have been programmed to feel uncomfortable with the mere idea of complete market freedom. Keep in mind that as of 2009, half of the world's workers- around 1.8 billion – were employed by System D. The black market is only expected to grow even more so with the incentive structures being built out in order to advance the technological advancements of cryptography.
Humanity has never experienced a true free-market until now. For the first time in history one is beginning to take shape. The traditional business sector is beginning to realize that they are not even mentally equipped for the implications of having applied cryptography that is powered by market incentives. This is evident in their trite attempts at integrating these new technologies with traditional banking and financial systems. Their lack of creativity, and dependence on government, is a clear testament to how much they will be hurt in the coming future.
Statists Double Down after Failure: Tether and Stablecoins
Many within the crypto space have attempted to bridge the gap between legacy banking and cryptocurrencies. Amongst the various attempts at capitalizing with these new technologies, the idea of a stablecoin entered the space via Tether (USDT).
A stable coin is a cryptocurrency that is pegged on a 1 to 1 ratio to the US dollar, or any other asset- like gold- or fiat. Tether operated as a stable coin pegged to the US dollar on a 1 to 1 ratio. The biggest attribute behind stablecoins resided in their ability to provide stability in an otherwise volatile market.
For a long time many within the crypto space were curious about Tether's means of operating with USD. Earlier this year TDV was the first entity to exclusively reported to its subscribers the origin of Tether's "secret sauce;" fractional reserve banking.
The laws of fractional reserve banking allowed the Noble Bank of Puerto Rico to provide Tether with the legal means of operating as a stable coin pegged to the US dollar. The Noble Bank recently went bankrupt due to being insolvent. Noble Bank was the bank of Bitfinex and Tether. As a result, Tether and Bitfinex ended their relationship with Noble Bank.
It is important that you as a subscriber move your crypto out of Bitfinex. You should never keep your cryptoin exchanges. When you do this you don't actually control the private keys of your coins.
(If you are an active trader, please consider using Bisq. Bisq is an open source decentralized exchange that does not control your private keys while trading. It is the most Anarchist exchange in the market right now.)
After losing its partnership with Noble Bank, Bitfinex began banking with HSBC. On October 15th, Bitfinex tweeted that their fiat deposit system was re-enabled. Overall, Bitfinex is still in the midst of reorganizing itself as an exchange with proper banking liquidity. For this reason we are of the opinion that it is best to stay away from Bitfinex until they are more solvent in their banking partnerships.
Tether (USDT) on the other hand is suffering from a lack of proper banking structures. Binance paused all USDT withdrawals and KuCoin, the exchange, also paused USDT deposits and withdrawals.
Tether is currently at around 2.1bn dollar market cap. Tether holders are having a difficult time cashing out of their Tether for USD. It is expected that unless Tether gets its banking situation sorted out, we will see movement out of Tether. This situation has caused the price of Tether to hit a low of $0.90 to the USD. As of writing this, Tether is trading at around $0.97 to the dollar.
The situation for Tether is dire at the present moment. We expect to see many Tether holders drop their Tether for Bitcoin, or other more cryptographically secure cryptocurrencies. This will more than likely be one of the main strategies that will be implemented in order to cash out of Tether.
This overall situation is once again showing us how unstable things are when dealing with fiat. We hope for the market to realize that there is more security in cryptocurrencies than there is in fiat backed stablecoins. Stablecoins will always have the instability of the fiat currencies that they are pegged to. The time will eventually come when people will realize that cryptocurrencies are a better store of value than stablecoins.
In spite of all of the issues circulating Tether, statist entrepreneurs are doubling down on their desire for stablecoins. We are seeing the beginning of what we believe will be a trend in the upcoming future; that is, stable coins pegged to various countries' fiat and assets like precious metals. The new USD stablecoins recently announced to the market are GeminiUSD, TrueUSD, and Paxos Standard.
Volatility as a Sign of Life in the Market
Contrary to the statist perception on volatility, one can also view volatility in crypto as proper to a market that is fully alive. Crypto, for the first time in history, freed the market from bankster manipulation. Arguably, volatility is to be expected in an unregulated free-market where everyone in the world is for the first time welcomed to participate.
In comparison to the legacy financial system, crypto is fully alive while the former is handicapped by regulations, coercion, and disconnected from true free-market signals. That is, volatility signals of a free-market that breathes freely for the first time. Volatility is indicative of a market that is fully alive.
The desire for individuals to attach crypto to the legacy financial system, under the pretense of "less volatility," is indicative of individuals that will have a hard time operating outside the bounds of regulation and government coercion. As long as we have statists uncomfortable with Anarchy, we will have stablecoins pegged to fiat.
Various Libertarian entrepreneurs are also beginning to dabble with the idea of a stablecoin that is pegged to precious metals. The challenge of these projects will be the same regulation that oversees fiat. Remember that the difference offered to the world by cryptocurrencies resides in crypto's ability to operate freely within System D, without regulation. It is this new market, the true free-market, that for the first time is unstoppable.
Bitfinex's Effect on EOS
Bitfinex is one of the entities that holds the greatest amount of votes for EOS Block Producers (BPs). For this and other reasons, we are currently expecting a shakeup of votes for selected top BPs. It is important that you remain attentive to the happenings within EOS and move your votes accordingly.
We will soon be coming out with more details on our perceptions regarding various BPs.
There are various discussions regarding BPs pending arbitration. This is a good thing. All shakeups lead us closer to more transparency and accountability. This should not directly affect the price of EOS, aside from what will result from the expected FUD of future BP shake-ups.
The Resilience of CryptoAnarchy after Blockstream's Fake Sidechain
Amongst the various innovations within Bitcoin, sidechains have- for the past 5 years- existed as one of the holy grails of innovation. Blockstream, as a company, was put together to manifest sidechains. They sold us the concept of a sidechain as they were sourcing capital during their first rounds of investment; this was in October of 2014.
Sidechains were supposed to be delivered by Blockstream as a way to make Bitcoin innovation competitive to that of altcoin innovation. Sidechains were supposed to be "the Altcoin killer."
After all of this time, Blockstream only delivered Liquid - which is not a sidechain- and called it a "sidechain." That is, Liquid is not a sidechain when properly defined. Liquid is a multi-signature layer that allows for multiple exchanges to pool their money together to transfer funds amongst themselves. Liquid is not a true sidechain, it is more precisely a multi-signature wallet.
Calling Liquid a "sidechain" was just a marketing scheme by Blockstream in order to impress the illusion that they had delivered what they had promised. They didn't. Blockstream gave up in attempting to create a true sidechain and created a multi-signature wallet instead. Keep in mind that Liquid is a "private sidechain." Note that a proper sidechain ought to be made with open-source innovation in mind. Many of us see the actions of Blockstream as a bait and switch marketing scheme.
(For the rest of this article I will use the words "Drivechains" and "sidechains" interchangeably as synonyms. Drivechains are what sidechains originally were supposed to be- according to the original Blockstream Sidechain white paper. Blockstream's bait and switch marketing scheme led to them calling "sidechain" a multisignature wallet that is not at all what they promoted on their white paper. Paul Sztorc, in an attempt to differentiate himself from the Blockstream perversion of the word "sidechains," called his development of true sidechains "Drivechains.")
Drivechain Sidechains
Paul Sztorc, the creator of decentralized prediction markets, was very much looking forward to Blockstream's creation of sidechains. It was his hope that his decentralized prediction market would run as a Bitcoin sidechain. At about the end of 2015 Sztorc was done with BitcoinHiveMind, his decentralized predictions market (previously known as TruthCoin).
After realizing that Blockstream was not going to deliver on sidechains, as promised, Sztorc felt he needed to build it himself. The creation of his Drivechains started off as a means to an end for Sztorc; he needed true Sidechains for his decentralized predictions market- so he build it himself.
On September 24, 2018 Paul Sztorc announced the launch of the first Drivechain release. This release was accompanied with fervent followingof old-school Bitcoiners that immediately jumped into experimenting with Drivechains on the testnet known as "Testdrive."
The Drivechain protocol is an alternative to the sidechain project originally proposed by Blockstream. It is a simpler design that enables blockchain compatibility in which the system still utilizes the same 21 million bitcoin ruleset- the Nakamoto consensus.
Drivechains are intended to allow for permissionless innovation without diluting or challenging the value of the main cryptocurrency. Contrary to other means of innovation within crypto, any innovation that comes from a Drivechain sidechain actually adds value to the Bitcoin protocol- for it does not dilute the main cryptocurrency. Satoshi vaguely discussed the importance of the ideas of sidechains and multi-blockchain connectivity on June 17, 2010.
This creation, of providing varied market options, make infighting and political discourses regarding consensus upgrades now seem infantile. Drivechains will provide the market with ongoing competitive solutions for blockchain development. Investors will now be exposed to options that would otherwise have been shunned in a less free environment.
The strategic advantage of Drivechain sidechains is that they will offer investors various options in the form of alternative chains. It is important to keep in mind that Drivechains are available for blockchains with the same UTXO set. That is, Drivechains are available for both BitcoinCore (BTC) and BitcoinCash (BCH).
How Drivechains work
Namecoin was the vision of early Bitcoin adopters of creating a DNS and identity infrastructure based on Bitcoin; that is, .bit DNS. This technology piggy backed on top of Bitcoin mining. That is, if you so chose you could merged-mined Namecoin alongside BTC or BCH. Namecoin can absorb hashrate from BTC or BCH without needing its own miners.
Merge-mining with BTC or BCH is also the process of validating and safeguarding Drivechain sidechains. Unlike Namecoin, Drivechain sidechains don't require miners to run special software. For Drivechain sidechains miners implement what is known as blind-merge-mining. In blind-merge-mining the nodes of the sidechain run the software, not the miners. This operates under the assumption that the nodes running the software also hold BTC or BCH.
A payment fee is paid to miners to blind-merge-mine the sidechain, in a similar way that Namecoin merge-mining pays a fee. In this process, miners don't have to run any software- they just passively make money for blind-merge-mining blocks with sidechains.
The main difference with sidechains is that you are not mining another coin like Namecoin, but rather you are mining the same BTC or BCH in another sidechain when you do the blind-merge-mining. Miners don't get paid with the sidechain, they receive payment from the mainchain that they already trust when they blind-merge-mine. Miners are also economically benefited by always getting paid in the superior coin that they are already intentionally mining; BTC or BCH.
As BTC or BCH moves in and out from the mainchain to a sidechain, there might be claims of ownership that may cause disputes. Drivechain prevents this by emphasizing the superiority of the mainchain over sidechains. Sidechains have to report on exactly what it is doing- at all times- to the main chain. Whenever a sidechain wants to transfer money back to the mainchain it has to do it very slowly. This safeguards the network from theft. The slow movement of funds from the sidechain to the mainchain can be arbitrage by individuals who will be willing to purchase sidechain receipts for BTC or BCH coming from sidechains at a discount. People will also be able to do atomic swaps between chains in the near future. (Atomic swaps, or atomic cross chain trading, is the exchange of one cryptocurrency to another cryptocurrency, without the need of trusting a third-party).
It is the intent of Drivechains to create the interaction of miners with sidechains as seamless as possible. However, it is still important to have guarantee that money ends up in the right place. This is the reason for the slow movement of funds from sidechains to the mainchain.
The movement of a certain amount of transactions coming from a sidechain to the mainchain is batched up into one transaction with its own transaction ID. This transaction is frozen in place where miners and developers can examine it for at least a month (there are talks of even making this process longer between 3 to 6 months). During this time miners vote on whether to allow the payment to go through or not. Upon receiving enough upvotes, the batched up transactions are released unto the mainchain. The slowing down of movement of BTC or BCH from sidechains to mainchain decreases the threat of miners stealing BTC or BCH from a sidechain.
The sidechains are always watching the mainchain, so they know to credit people immediately when the mainchain sends money to it. Sidechains also know when the miners have accepted the release of batched up locked funds that are released unto the mainchain. Once the sidechain receives notification of the miners acceptance of funds in the mainchain, the sidechain destroys the funds that were frozen awaiting miner upvotes.
It is overall acknowledged that sidechains increase the value of BTC and BCH, which eventually make mining more profitable. It would be counterproductive for miners to attack and steal funds from sidechains. That is, miners acting maliciously decreases the value of their own equipment. In spite of this fact, it is good that Drivechains make it increasingly more difficult for theft to occur.
Miners, through their voting process, also get to punish bad sidechain actors. Any malicious sidechain will be cleaned out by miners. This is the opposite of the Ethereum model where anyone can code anything into the Ethereum blockchain, to the point that it could become a detriment to the Ethereum mainchain itself. That is, anyone can create a new ERC20 or ERC721 token without any vetting from the network.
Coins are moved from the mainchain to the sidechain by means of sending coins to an address that represents the sending of funds from the mainchain to the sidechain. Anyone running the given sidechain software will recognize that funds were sent to the sidechain- this will automatically credit the person with the same amount of BTC or BCH on the sidechain. Also, the sidechain is programmed to recognize the reception of funds unto the mainchain address from where it will automatically credit the user the same amount of BTC or BCH unto a sidechain wallet. People on the mainchain don't have to know anything about this particular address. As far as they know, it is just another address.
Embrace the Spontaneous Order of Market Anarchy It is important that people within BTC and BCH take on a more Hayekian approach to entrepreneurship. Many within crypto are uncomfortable with the mere notion of spontaneous order. It is important that we as Ancaps lead the way in motivating people to experiment with their entrepreneurship.
In the past few years, the desire of individuals to covet the development of crypto has become more apparent. These people need to be ignored. No one is the leader of Bitcoin or crypto development. The best innovators within crypto are those that create tools that empower other entrepreneurs to create more options.
It is this spontaneous order that we should welcome and promote at all times. Many within BTC and BCH will not accept or feel comfortable with the radical spontaneous order enabled by Drivechains. This is good reasonto brush up on your Austrian Economics in order to properly confront minds that are fearful of human freedom.
The Ancap entrepreneurs who are most comfortable with spontaneous order will be the same ones who will produce the greatest amount of value. The development of CryptoAnarchy is guided by the science of praxeology and Austrian Economics. Drivechains are testament to the augmentation of our libertarian order are necessary for CryptoAnarchy to thrive.
Drivechains and Investment Strategy
The philosophical and economic advantage of sidechain innovation is that it enables the development of BTC and BCH with an investor-centric intention. It is the market's investment that now decides the best means for scaling and development. Politics and propaganda take an almost insignificant backseat to that of market forces. The technology is now readily available for investors to test drive with their BTC or BCH on any given proposed sidechain. That is, you actually get to experience the value, or lack of value of a new innovation without jeopardizing your position as an investor.
All investment decisions are about strategy. Sidechains empower the investor's strategy by allowing the investor to survey all of the possible value propositions of his/her original investment without having to incur any actual costs. In a similar way, sidechains also provide developers with quick market feedback on the aspects of development that are most favored by the market.
Drivechains are a pivotal step in maturing the crypto space into becoming more conscientious in considering the investment strategy of those buying the coins. It is important for innovators to start taking the investor's strategy into account. Drivechains force developers to consider what is best for the investor, not just what is desired by a given team of developers.
Here we have not only a better proposition for investors, but also an incentive for developers to use Drivechains in future crypto experimentation. When experimenting with an altcoin, the measure of success is contingent on this new altcoin gathering a new pool of investors to literally buy into the project. With a sidechain you are already dealing with a more seasoned group of investors that will provide you with more accurate market feedback, being that their investment is now fortified by all other sidechain experimentations that they have already tested at no cost.
Altcoins will soon no longer be the locus of innovation within crypto. All future innovation will be offered the option to experiment within BTC or BCH via sidechains. Keep in mind that all previous innovations, already tested in the market by successful altcoins, are now easily adopted by BTC or BCH. It is also important to note that creative experimentation on sidechains do not at all jeopardize the mainnets of BTC or BCH. On the contrary, sidechains will make BTC and BCH much more valuable. When the Drivechain craze begins we will see a BTC and BCH bull run. Don't be surprised if sidechains are the main reason for the next all time highs.
Statists Failing & Anarchists Thriving
It is important that we understand that the legacy banking system is completely dead. They are barely adopting simulations of cryptocurrencies unto their banking structures to stay alive. Stablecoins are a manifestation of this bankster angst to remain current.
True market innovation is found in the embrace of Market Anarchy. CryptoAnarchy is growing exponentially with tools that are beyond the reach of state megalomaniacs. Drivechains are an example of the CryptoAnarchist tools that will result in further anti-fragility of this new crypto free-market.
Proper Austrian Economic incentive structures coupled with applied cryptography is our lethal weapon against nation states and central banks. Arguably, our Ancap philosophy is what guides applied cryptography in the market towards success. For this reason it is important that we keep revisiting the texts of Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, and Konkin throughout our crypto endeavors. Peace!
by Rafael LaVerde
TL;DR: How familiar are you with thermodynamics and silent weapons for secret wars? How familiar are you with the Brave New World Order?
submitted by 2012ronpaul2012 to conspiracy [link] [comments]
Bitcoin smashed past $15,500 levels hitting its new 2020-high and eyeing its all-time high above $20,000. The overall crypto market has added $50 billion in the last week. The fiscal and monetary ... Cross Finance wants to build a one-stop platform where users can yield-farm & swap on not just one but many blockchains on which DeFi dapps are hyperactive. Quick fact: The smallest unit of Bitcoin is known as Satoshi, which is 0.00000001 Bitcoin. But since this number is so little, you can't actually buy 1 Satoshi on any crypto exchange. On Coinbase, for example, the minimum amount you can purchase starts from 2 dollars. READ: BTC scammer steals 1,400 BTCs worth $16 million Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, confirmed today that the company lost nearly $41 million in Bitcoin in what appears to be its largest hack to date. In a statement, Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company discovered a "large scale security breach" earlier on May 7, as a result of which hackers were able to steal roughly 7000 bitcoins, which worth 40.6 ... The decentralized exchange (dex) built on Ethereum, Uniswap has accumulated a whopping $2 billion in total value locked (TVL) this week. Tuesday's data shows out of all the dece Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin BTC every fucking day. Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what's been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Rousseau used to say: Live, laugh, love! Bitcoin price We closed the day, February 20 2020, at a […] Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said hackers withdrew 7,000 Bitcoins worth about $40 million via a single transaction in a "large scale security breach," the ... Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, confirmed today that the company lost nearly $41 million in Bitcoin in what appears to be its largest hack to date. In a statement, Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company discovered a "large scale security breach" earlier on May 7, as a result of which hackers were able to steal roughly 7000 bitcoins, which worth 40.6 ... Zhao said the hackers targeted Binance's "hot wallet," which is connected to the internet and which he said holds about 2 percent of the exchange's bitcoin holdings. "All of our other ... Binance Support will never contact you over the phone. Never share sensitive data over the phone because no matter who's your provider or phone manufacturer, no phone calls are completely private. Pretexting. The attacker aims to obtain your private information through a series of lies. In pretexting, the perpetrator often impersonates someone we know or trusted authority, such as police or ...
Binance & Api Keys Tutorial
SALPAY ICO: https://steemit.com/ico/@onlyaltcoins/obzor-ico-ins-world-ins https://cm.5miles.com/ru/ - эти вот ребята устроили сегодня ... Bitcoin Price briefly went below $10,000 before going back to the $10,600- $11,000 range and one question remains; Is the correction over? New reports also reveal that OGs aren't selling BTC ... Los Angeles, CA- A lot of people are yelling about Binance- this shows you how many people are addicted to altcoin gambling and have no concept of the Bitcoin strong hand. The All-star panel made ... Robert Kiyosaki interview: Blockchain technology, AI, Crypto, Bitcoin BTC Halving 2020 Robert Kiyosaki 58,261 watching Live now BITCOIN VS WORLD DICTATORSHIP + Cypherium Review (Stack vs Register ... 💙Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/r/3bcd543c7bca4a8 Bitcoin News Today: Binance is going to acquire CoinMarketCap in a massive $400,000,00... Bitcoin + IRS, SEC Bitcoin ETF, Binance In China, Ethereum Use Case & Bitcoin Price Rise The Modern Investor. Loading... Unsubscribe from The Modern Investor? Cancel Unsubscribe. Working ... Binance Tutorial on how to get registered & set up your 2FA. In this video I also go over how to get your API Keys & set them up with the Personal bot. For more information about Arbstar 2.0 ... 🚨 APOIO: • Curso Crypto Trader - Do iniciante ao avançado: https://cryptotchaps.com/link/cryptotrader • Brave - Navegador rápido, leve e c... This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue. Watch Queue Queue
binance red fury bitcoin miners for nvidia
binance vcx bitcoin chart
binance silkroad bitcoin price graph
binance peercoin or bitcoin charts
binance bitcoin calculate merkle root
binance bitcoin documentaire animaux
binance is bitcoin worthless now broken
binance bitcoin how long does it take to generate coins for sale
binance cctv bitcoin documentary