A YouTube Performed ICO LiveEdu Reaches $10 Million

According to an announcement, LiveEdu has reached the $10M hardcap for ICO.

There are over 5000 people from 150 countries participating in this ICO. Many of them are professionals working in the industry.

CEO, Dr. Michael J. Garbade had this to say, “You guys surprised us all. We launched our crowdsale without any private pre-sale or any aggressive bonus model for major contributors. No contributor even had 100% bonus, but still we have been able to close quickly. Thank you for believing in our project and the opportunity of disrupting the $306 billion professional development market one shot at a time. We are looking forward to hiring experienced new team members from LinkedIn, YouTube and Lynda. We look forward to setting up LiveEdu Project Screens in cities around the world, one city at a time.”

The CEO of the project Dr. Michael J. Garbade said there are working to create a new schedule for ICO. And the first priority for them are cryptocurrency tokens. He advised to be patient and wait for final results. Michael said they are monitoring all online social communities and forums to have a better result.

LiveEdu is described as a decentralized P2p project learning platform for those who want to improve their skills in future technologies. LiveEdu is building the YouTube for online education and professional development. They are taking one category from YouTube and enforce it into their own version.

LiveEdu will be making announcements in the coming days about:

• KYC
• Token Issuance
• Exchange Listings

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Blockchain Technology Could Be Used to Prove Your Age and Inrease Government Transparency 

Today, a leading experts in blockchain area said, that the digital ledger could be useful in the near future to do everything from proving your age in a bar to government transparency increasing.

Tiana Laurence, who is a startup founder, said that public services could use the digital ledger, called blockchain for increasing the trust in information.

Blockchain is used by Bitcoin to record all transactions and this mathematical data cannot be doctored.

The author of Blockchain for Dummies, Ms Laurence thinks that the technology is likely to be used by organisations who need to prove goods, services and evidence were sent from A to B. This can be helpful for preventing corruption and fraud.

Ms Laurence said after London Blockchain Week it could help over-18s to prove their age without revealing their identity,  or NHS doctors to make medical records “private but verifiable”.

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Ukraine As a Blockchain Technology Leader

Ukraine was covered by two top subjects at the World Economic Forum, which is agriculture and blockchain technology.

The Ukraine’s State Government Agency’s advisor Kostantyn Yarmolenko says the country ranks among 14 country leaders in blockchain innovation, which was presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Don Tapscott, the world’s leading experts in blockchain technology, presented the world map of the blockchain with 14 country leaders. Ukraine is among them. On January 26 Yarmolenko posted on Facebook, that countries like United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Israel, the Emirate of Dubai, Georgia, Estonia, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and China are also among the key hubs for blockchain technology.

He also informed, that in the following weeks the Ukrainian lawmakers would represent a  blockchain bill in the parliament. Ukraine was covered by two top subjects at the world economic forum, blockchain technology and agriculture industry.

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Philippines Make Steps To Regulate Cryptocurrency Trading

Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Phillippines said it is making rules for cryptocurrency transactions regulation. The purpose is to protect investors and weaken the risk of fraud.

Emilio Aquino, the SEC commissioner in charge of enforcement and investor protection said the regulation is expected to be finalized this year.

Authorities mainly from Asia, have made attempts to reinforce the trading of cryptocurrencies- a form of digital money created and maintained by its users.

China has banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and shut down local trading platforms, while South Korea is working on steps to ban virtual coin exchanges.

Aquino said the ICOs regulation will include guidelines on cybersecurity of cryptocurrency markets, eligibility of issuers including the officials and technology utilized, and financial literacy of investors.

“Unfortunately, there have been a lot of cases where ICO promoters vanish into thin air. We don’t want that to happen here,” Aquino said.

Last week hackers stole about $530 million from Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc, which is the one of biggest thefts of digital coin.

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Ethereum Rising 30 % Weekly

Mainstream media, such as Forbes, shows interest in Ethereum reporting about its upward momentum. There was expected a market correction, and it has been supposed that such corrections are a usual thing for cryptocurrencies.

Ether Rising

According to market views, Ethereum is up over $1,200 from a low of $930 last Monday. This is a 30 % weekly rise. The same cannot be said of Bitcoin, which has conversely shown very little gain from its price this time last week. Ether’s last 24 hour trade was about $4,5 billion, with South Korean Bithumb exchange being the top with 10 % of the trade.

NewsBTC editor Joseph Young says the rise is in line with an increase in transactions on the network.

Greater Demand

The demand for Ethereum will grow, because the number of ICOs and decentralized applications are growing. It is the platform of choice at the moment due to its level of support and a number of scalability improvements in the pipeline for the network.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said:

The Casper aspect of Casper, where two conflicting blocks should not be able to be finalized, seems to actually happen running and the network agrees all along what the final chain is. So that part has been totally successful. On the Sharding side, quite a lot of work has started.

 

It takes a lot of the work off the chain involving Sharding to increase transaction speeds and lessen the load on the distributed ledger. Ethereum is growing increasingly and it is seen on the price.

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Japanese Exchange To Repay Customers After Hacking

On Sunday Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck informed it will refund to customers about 46.3 billion yen, about $400 million U.S. dollars, after hackers incident.

All the 260,000 customers, who lost their NEM holdings will be repaid by company’s own funds. The digital coin NEM is the 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap.

The company detected an “unauthorised access” of the exchange on Friday. Later it suspended trading for all cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin.

The resulting 58 billion yen ($530 million) loss exceeded the value of bitcoins which disappeared from MtGox in 2014.

The major Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange lost about 850,000 bitcoins, with amount of $480 million at the time.

The MtGox incident added enthusiasm for digital currencies in Japan. In April it became the first country in the world to legalize bitcoin.

According to a view, nearly one third of global bitcoin transactions were denominated in yen.

As many as 10,000 businesses in Japan are thought to accept bitcoin and bitFlyer, the country’s main bitcoin exchange, saw its user base pass the one-million mark in November.

On Sunday major Japanese newspapers described Coincheck as “sloppy” and said the company had “expanded business by putting safety second”.

The country’s Financial Services Agency was expected to take measures against Coincheck, which claims itself as the leading cryptocurrency exchange in Asian territory.

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3 Well-Known Cryptocurrency Slangs Everyone Should Know

Along with the popularity of cryptocurrency world over, there are popular slang terms, which have become famous among crypto users. We represent the 3 prominent slang terms with their explanation.

1. HODL

HODl is a slang term used in Bitcoin community, when referring to holding the cryptocurrency rather than selling it. On a Bitcoin Forum in December 2013 a cryptocurrency user posted a typo “I AM HODLING.” In 2017 this expression was listed by Quartz as one of the essential slang terms in Bitcoin culture, and described it as a stance, “to stay invested in bitcoin and not to capitulate in the face of plunging prices.

               

2. Sats 

 Sats is short for ‘santoshis’, a term derived from the first name of bitcoin’s mysterious creator named Satoshi Nakamoto. It refers to the smallest fraction of a bitcoin that can be sent, which is 0.00000001 of bitcoin.                                                                                                                                                

3. Whale

This slang is mainly used for describing the big money players in Bitcoin area. A whale is someone who owns a big amount of digital currencies. It could also be large institutions, such as Hedge Funds and Bitcoin Investment Funds.

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Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacked: $530 Million Lost

The incident is already reported to the police and Japan’s Financial Services Agency.

A major cryptocurrency exchange in Tokyo called Coincheck has been hacked losing about $534 million ( about 58 billion yen) of virtual money, according to national broadcaster report NHK.

On Friday afternoon Coincheck posted, that it had suspended withdrawals of almost all cryptocurrencies.

The exchange has already reported the incident to the police and to Japan’s Financial Services Agency, NHK said.

Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which handled 80 % of the world’s bitcoin trades, filed for bankruptcy in 2014, after losing 850,000 bitcoins with 500 million U.S. dollars and a $28 million from its bank accounts.

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Financial Services Agency of Japan Will Not Support Cryptocurrency Futures Yet

According to a report, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has said that financial regulator isn’t going to allow cryptocurrency futures trading for this moment.

The FSA may be afraid to allow risky investments in Japanese market, after MtGox incident. In the past ETHNews  wrote about the possible market manipulation by these financial instruments.

The FSA is the government body charged with overseeing the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which would have to be amended to recognize digital assets as financial products in order for related derivatives to be traded legally on Japanese exchanges. According to the official, the agency may revisit the question at a future date.

The FSA regulates not only the traditional exchanges. The agency also approves virtual currency exchanges to operate.

Have to mention, that bitcoin futures have already begun trade in Chicago Merchantile Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange in the United States.

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Litecoin Technical View 26.01.2018

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Bitcoin To Reach $6,000 and $60,000 This Year: Philipp Nunn

 

Philipp Nunn is a cryptocurrency expert, who has predicted that the price of Bitcoin will reach $6,000 and $60,000 this year. Currently, he is the CEO of the Blackmore Group and Wealth Chain Group and has a demand as a good specialist on cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.

A $100 million crypto fund is being raised by Nunn, who first started investing in Bitcoin 2 years ago.

Despite its value soaring to $20,000 he’s not cashed in any of his investment and uses trading bots to monitor different exchanges.

Nunn told Business Cloud, that the reason he had predicted the price will rise to $60,000 is the Bitcoin isn’t yet fully adopted.

“I’d probably say that less than 1 per cent of the world has any holding in crypto at the moment. And also none of the institutional funds have done anything with it as yet. As crypto grows and becomes like a version of the dot com, which is going to start to happen more, people will invest and big money will come into it. “

As Bitcoin has a high volatility, Nunn predicted its value to drop to $6,000 this year. Also he gave a thought, that Blockchain would change the world, and called it the new ‘Internet 2.0’.

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Bitcoin Technical View 26.01.2018

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Cryptocurrency Trading Legalized By Russian Finance Ministry, But Central Bank Disagrees

Today, the local media TASS reported, that the Russian Finance Ministry (MinFin) has presented a regulation bill to establish cryptocurrency trading, ICOs and mining.

However, the Russian Federation central bank disagrees with Ministry of Finance on the issue, that cryptocurrency exchanges should be legalized. Central Bank authorities only said, that the trading rules should be accepted only for tokens to attract investors.

The cryptocurrency and tokens represent a digital financial asset which are not allowed to be used as payment in Russia, according to the bill’s conditions.

MinFin claims to protect the rights of unqualified investors by allowing trading only via authorized cryptocurrency exchange operators.

Concerning ICOs, tokens can be issued by legal entities or sole proprietors for the purpose of fundraising. ICOs must be accompanied with some legal documents disclosing the details of the contract such as issuer’s full name, location, official website and price of a token.

The document says that professional investors are not allowed to invest above 50,000 Rubles, which is the same as $900 for each ICO.

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IMF’s Lagarde – Cryptocurrency Mining Takes Big Amount of Energy

According to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, the amount of power wasted on producing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies soon will be equivalent to the energy uses of countries like Argentina.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos Lagarde said in an interview given to Bloomberg:

“The bitcoins mining, which is this accelerated and augmented use of computers to actually determine the value and incentive the functioning of the mechanism, is energy angry.  And we figure that in 2018, if it continues, that system will actually consume as much electricity as Argentina.”

Cryptocurrency miners used more than 37 gigawatt-hours a day, according to the Bloomberg’s data, which is the same as 30 1.2-gigawatt nuclear reactors running at full capacity.

Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index says cryptocurrency mining could power 4,124,115 US households, and the energy consumed can be compared to Iraq’s electricity consumption.

The website claims, that cryptocurrency network is fueled by coal-fired power plants in China, because of cheap energy. The result is an extreme carbon footprint for each transaction.

“In times of climate change and when we look at how much coal is being used in some Chinese provinces to actually mine bitcoin, it’s a big concern,” Lagarde said.

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American Rapper 50 Cent a Bitcoin Millionaire

Rapper 50 Cent has made millions from bitcoins, which he got in 2014 for his album called “Animal Ambition”. At that time the album cost only $662.

According to an initial report in TMZ, the famous rapper forgot about 700 coins, which cost about $400,000 in 2014, and left his account unused for years.

However, the recent cryptocurrency surge multiplied his profits and now the rapper’s 700 bitcoin is worth more than $7,5 million, as the “digital gold” costs $11,000.

50 Cent posted on his Instagram profile:

“Not bad for a kid from South Side, I’m so proud of me.”

Bitcoin, a virtual currency created from computer codes, was worth only a few U.S. cents when launched in 2009 by someone using the Japanese-sounding name Satoshi Nakamoto.

The well-known virtual currency bitcoin, which was created in 2009 from computer codes, worth only a few cents at that time. Unlike the U.S. dollar or euro, bitcoin has no central bank or government backing it.

During 2017, the price of bitcoin along with other cryptocurrencies surged to a record high of $20,000 in December, before dropping to $10,000 in January, because many investors started massive sell-offs.

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What Is an ICO?

An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a type of crowdfunding which is facilitated through the use of distributed ledger technology. Distributed ledger technology is commonly known as “blockchain”, but it is only a one type of distributed ledger technology.

The main amount of ICOs have been launched by companies, who specialize in distributed ledger technology services, but technically any company is able to launch an ICO.

If an issuer wants to launch an ICO, typically he issues an online “whitepaper” detailing the service or the product he wants to raise money for. This is the same as the prospectus or admission document that a company is required to produce in connection with the admission of securities to trading on a stock market.

There are no content requirements or minimum standards for whitepapers. Because of this facts, there is a common misconception that all ICOs are completely unregulated.

The “subscription monies” will normally be in the form of a type of existing cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ether.   Most fundraises will have a minimum target amount and there will normally be a contractual term of the fundraise which states if the minimum target is not raised, the “investment monies” will be returned to the investors.

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Bitcoin Cash Technical View 25/01/2018

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Arsenal Starts Cryptocurrency Partnership

Arsenal, an English Premier League football club has started a partnership with cryptocurrency gaming platform provider called CashBet.

CashBet Coin is specifically created for so-called  iGaming.

According to the contract, CashBet Coin will be the exclusive Blockchain partner of the club. And Arsenal becomes the first football team in relation with cryptocurrency.

Inside the Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, CashBet Coin will have prominent branding placements.

The chief executive and founder of CashBet Mike Reaves said:

“With our ICO for CashBet Coin, we are actively targeting a global, multi-billion-dollar marketplace of iGaming content providers, operators and players. We are delighted to do so in partnership with one of world football’s true giants in Arsenal, enabling us to build our brand and engage this audience in a meaningful way.”

The pre-sale of ICO began yesterday and will end on 20 February.

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Bitcoin Among Americans: Majority Know It, But Very Few Purchased

According to a study by Global Blockchain Business Council and SurveyMonkey, nearly 60 % of Americans knows about the most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but very few own it.

In  a survey conducted in January among 5,700 adults about the popularity of digital currencies, it became obvious that only 5 % actually own the virtual coin, also an additional 21 % had plans to purchase the coin. Among the owners, 71 % are male, 58 % are young with the age of 18 to 34.

Around 70 percent of those participated in the survey see significant upside, and expect the price to go up five years from now, while only 13% believe it will fall.

Among Americans, about 38 % of them think Bitcoin is a bubble, which will burst this year. Some of 31 % gave the same opinion about U.S. stocks and 27 % about housing prices.

As regards for investors, they have lack of trust and opportunity to return for digital currency. Those, who own Bitcoin are also trust more it, than the U.S. Government.

Regarding other major cryptocurrencies, the study noted that 46 % Americans have heard of Ethereum, 41 % of Litecoin, and 23 % of Ripple.

At the start of 2017, bitcoin has surged to $20,000 in December from $1,000. After that, the price dropped to $10,000 and has been trading around $11,000.

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Weiss Ratings Has Given C Grade To Bitcoin

The Weiss Ratings made the first attempt to rank cryptocurrencies and gave Bitcoin a C+ in it’s F grading system.

Among 74 cryptocurrencies there is no one getting A grade, but the second largest cryptocurrency called Ethereum, has got B – or “good”.

There are four criterias on which the cryptocurrencies were rated: Risk Index, Technology Index, Reward Index, Fundamentals Index.

Bitcoin did get excellent scores for security and widespread adoption, despite the C+ rank. But it is encountering major network bottlenecks, which causes delays and high transaction fees.

Ethereum’s B was based on its readily upgradable technology and better speed, despite some bottlenecks.

Ripple got C grade, as it has the most mainstream adoption by financial instiutions.

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Siacoin Technical View 24/01/2018

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Distributed Ledger Projects Started By UK Government With $26 Million Fund

Innovate UK, the United Kingdom’s technology development arm is doubling its support for blockchain-based technologies, announced on Monday.

The country’s nondepartmental public office said about investing about $26 million (£19 million) in projects, which use distributed ledgers. The agency will also offer a further $16,8 million (£12 million) for businesses trying to recruit graduates to help develop their project.

This new announcement is the latest innovation by UK, which is looking for new ideas in the blockchain technology. The agency sought pitches from groups last year to implement blockchain tools into health technologies.

Moreover, UK Innovate gave an award to a blockchain startup with amount of £248,000 for cross-border financial transactions.

The announcement says, that the projects, which are focused on distributed ledger technology may surpass the funds in areas, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc.

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Stellar Lumens Technical View 24/01/2018

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Australian Largest Bank Commonwealth Cooperates With HashCash For Blockchain Transactions

Australia’s Commonwealth, HashCash Consultants and California based Blockchain company are working to facilitate instant cross-border settlement for customers.

Commonwealth is one of the four biggest Australian Banks along with Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank.

This year it would be the fifth of the major win for HashCash’s network.

The report says that this year HashCash had added Russia’s largest Alfa-Bank, India’s YES Bank and Federal Bank, New Zealand based, LatiPay and UAE’s largest currency exchange, UAE Exchange to its Blockchain network.

The recent additions to HC NET positions HashCash alongside Ripple which is also making waves in revolutionizing the world of payments.

The main differentiator in case of HC NET is that the Blockchain platform offers complete transactional privacy to banks, at the same time multiplying validator nodes securing a transaction.

Another area where HC NET seems to score is in the flexibility it offers to a bank in choosing its own set of nodes that would validate its transactions.

Whereas, Ripple, publishes a “starter” membership list that network banks can edit for themselves, with the hope that their edits are either inconsequential or is reproduced by an overwhelming fraction of participants. However, because lists with ill behaved nodes invalidate safety guarantees, Banks are usually reluctant to edit the list in practice. A great deal of power therefore ends up concentrated in the maintainer of the starter list.

A “starter” membership list is published by Ripple, hoping that edits are inconsequential and reproduced by an overwhelming fraction of participants. Banks are usually reluctant to edit the list in practice. HashCash MD, Raj Chowdhury said:

“In HC NET, each node is enabled to chose its own quorum slice set. System-wide quorums thus arise from individual ecisions made by each node”.

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Bitcoin Recovers From Previous Losses

The leading cryptocurrency recovers again, turning back to $10,000 mark traded on Tuesday. Other major cryptocurrencies also were in the positive territory early on Wednesday.

Early on Tuesday morning bitcoin had touched $9,972, but late in the day it jumped across $11,000. According to CoinMarketCap, the major digital currency is trading near $11,000 with a market value of $186.72 billion.

The second biggest cryptocurrency Ethereum also gained 4,26 % trading at $1,000 with a market cap of $97,3 billion. Ripple, the third cryptocurrency was trading at $1,37 with a market cap of $53 billion.

The latest development in the cryptomarket is that South Korean Government announced about banning anonymous cryptocurrency trading started from January 30. A report says:

“Those who do not have their real-name accounts at the same bank with the exchanges will not be allowed to make new deposits into the exchanges’ accounts. They will be only allowed to make withdrawals”.

There was also a guideline announcement from agency for financial institutions to prevent money laundering in cryptocurrency trading.

Bitcoin has surged more than 30 % last week, dropping below $10,000 after concerns about increased regulation in South Korea and China, also some prominent banks in India suspended accounts of certain Bitcoin exchanges.

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Qtum Technical View 23/01/2018

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Blockchain Business Ventures Monitored By US Regulator

Today there was an announcement by the chief of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Jay Clayton pointed that there is a monitoring among public companies that are linked to Blockchain.

Recently, a big number of firms has announced about moving to Blockchain business ventures. This tendency has fueled the warnings from the US SEC and other regulators, including FINRA. This trend might be a basis for abuse by fraudsters.

SEC Head Jay Clayton has stated that his agency is investigating the issue. Special attention is dedicated to the subject of investor disclosures. He has stated:

“The SEC is looking closely at the disclosures of public companies that shift their business models to capitalize on the perceived promise of distributed ledger technology and whether the disclosures comply with the securities laws, particularly in the case of an offering.”

Earlier this month, the SEC has suspended trading of UBI Blockchain. During 2017 the firm has experienced a price spike, because of its cryptocurrency oriented branding. Currently, this firms stocks remains frozen.

Mr. Clayton also mentioned in his view those lawyers, who assist promoters in creating offers fro ICOs.

“I have instructed the SEC staff to be on high alert for approaches to ICOs that may be contrary to the spirit of our securities laws and the professional obligations of the U.S. securities bar.”

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Anonymous Cryptocurrency Trading Will Be Banned From 30 January In South Korea

The use of anonymous bank accounts in cryptocurrency trading will be banned from 30 January in South Korea, announced the country’s financial regulator.

The Financial Services Commission said today, that traders will only be able to make deposits in their cryptocurrency exchange wallets if their name matches with their bank accounts.

South Korea is a good area for digital currencies like bitcoin, but country’s financial authorities have made moves to prevent money laundering with using digital currencies.

Last week Bitcoin lost  billions of its market value and dropped below $10,000 as South Korea regulators banned cryptocurrencies.

The financial regulator of the country has said the government has studied the fact of closing down cryptocurrency exchanges, but the presidential office said that an outright ban on trading is only a way to tackle crime.

“The government is still discussing whether an outright ban is needed or not, internally,” a government official who declined to be named told Reuters.

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EY Report: More Than 10 % of ICO Funds Are Stolen Or Lost

According to the report, more than 10% of funds raised by initial coin offering, which is about $400 million are lost or stolen in hacker attacks.

About 372 ICOs were studied around the world and found out that the amount of the ICO offerings is equal to the twice amount of VC investment in blockchain projects around $ 3,7 billion. The U.S. is the biggest ICO origination country with over US$1 billion, followed by China and Russia, each with over US$300 million.

The report says, that hackers take benefits from the “hype, irreversibility of blockchain-based transactions and basic coding errors”. Funds are misappropriated via substituting project wallet addresses (phishing, site hacking), accessing private keys and stealing funds from wallets, or hacking stock exchanges and wallets.

Another growing risk, that investors are faced is a cryptomarket regulation. There are various levels of regulatory strictness for ICOs in different countries. The result is that those, who look to conduct illegal activity with an offering could move to jurisdictions.

For example, since last September in China ICOs have been banned by regulators.

As the report mentions, the ICO volumes have been declining since the middle of 2017. Compared with 90% of last June, only 25% of projects last November were able to reach fundraising goals.

EY warned, that token valuations are driven by “Fear of Missing Out,” without any connection to market fundamentals. The report noted that ICOs are typically supported  only by a white paper that describes the planned technology and a small piece of software that governs how to use, issue and manage the tokens.

Paul Brody, the global innovation blockchain leader at EY thinks, that there is a risk of having the market swamped with quantity over quality of investments, as ICOs continue to gain popularity and leading players emerge globally.

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Waves Technical View 23/01/2018

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Bitcoin Exchange From Japan Opened In Europe

Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange BitFlyer has started transactions in European area. It has secured the necessary Payment Institution license to run its service across the EU.

Last November the exchange was opened in US. It claims that about $250 billion in virtual currency was traded on its platform during 2017. Financial Times reports that it facilitates about 20-30 percent of all Bitcoin trades globally.

BitFlyer claims it’s the only licensed exchange between Europe and Japan, which allows cross-border Bitcoin trading.

To start, it’ll only allow trading of Bitcoin/Euro pairs and will initially target professional high-volume traders; plans to support other currencies like Ethereumand Litecoin, as well as more fiat currencies, are in the works for the coming months.

The news follows speculation over whether South Korea will close domestic cryptocurrency exchanges; currently, the authorities of the country are raiding those business offices to bring tax payment and is going to shut down those exchanges, which aren’t compatible with legislation. Moreover, China plans to block access from within its borders to foreign exchanges, after it closed domestic exchanges last year. Both moves will affect on the value of Bitcoin, so be prepared for a flood of FUD over the coming days and weeks

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Cryptocurrency Trading to Start in Moscow Exchange

In an interview given to TASS, the head of Russian State Duma’s Financial Market Committee Anatoly Aksakov pointed that the Moscow Stock Exchange may become a site for cryptocurrency trading.

State Duma is the lower chamber of the Russian parliament.

There are in the area the St. Petersburg International Commodity Exchange, the Moscow Stock Exchange, the RTS, but they actually act as a non-profit partnership. However, these exchanges are also ready to participate in the process and they have specialists doing stock exchange operations.

“ I suppose that, the Central Bank is now considering the Moscow Stock Exchange, perhaps also the St. Petersburg Commodity Exchange for this purpose. But now there is a stronger urge to work with the Moscow Stock Exchange,” Aksakov said.

Earlier, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev said that in the near future his ministry and the Central Bank will determine the list of such stock exchanges.

He noted that perhaps the authors of the relevant bill will simply determine the criteria a site should meet to conduct trading with cryptocurrencies. He added that not only exchanges can be the sites to conduct such trading.

The country’s Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev earlier said that in the near future his ministry and the Central Bank are going to determine the list of such stock exchanges

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Wall Street Prediction: Bitcoin Will Drop to $1,000 In 2018

According to CNBC the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group Peter Boockvar thinks that bitcoin has a potential for a long time, but with a significant price drop when the Bitcoin bubble bursts.

Boockvar thinks Bitcoin has a potential to drop 70 % to 90 % this year saying:

“Over the next year I wouldn’t be surprised if bitcoin is down to $1,000 to $3,000.”

Also he was asked if there is a risk that stock market would crash caused by Bitcoin’s price drop and said that “any drop would just be psychological”, as bitcoin is “not something that really is that relevant in a 19 trillion dollar economy.”

However, he adds that people in South Korea, Japan, and the US who have been taking on credit card debt in order to invest in cryptocurrency will be hit hard.

The crypto market’s boom can be attributed to easy-money policies of central banks and money printing, thinks Boockvar. These fact makes digital currencies like bitcoin, more attractive to investors, because they are both finite and safe from inflation.

BTC is trading at around $11,500 at this moment, down about 5 % percent over a 24 hour period.

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Ripple Technical View 22/01/2018

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How Far Can Bitcoin Drop Down?

Since last week, when the price of Bitcoin dropped below $ 10,000, currently it recovered and is trading nearby 11,600, according to CoinMarketCap. There is still a long way to reach the previous high of $ 20,000.

That was before a raft of news of regulatory crackdowns, among other concerns, shook the cryptocurrency markets.

Investors became a bit nervous after some important events, such as the reports of South Korean officials drafting laws to clamp down on cryptocurrency traders, the US Senate’s financial services panel preparing to probe cryptocurrencies and Warren Buffet, casting a grim outlook for Bitcoin and its competitors.

There’s also more bad news from Indian tax officials who prepare to claim their slice from crypto market.

Tax department officials in the subcontinent have sent out thousands of tax notices after data showed that cryptocurrency transactions worth more than US$3.5 billion had taken place in India in less than two years.

“We cannot turn a blind eye. It would have been disastrous to wait until the final verdict was out on its legality,” a tax official told Reuters.

India is not alone. The governments of France and Germany also are planning to regulate the cryptocurrency market.

It’s likely the value of many cryptocurrencies will continue to drop with the events of government crackdowns on Bitcoin and its rivals.

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A Blockchain Payment System Launched By Visa, Unionbank

Today there was an announcement from Visa and UnionBank that they are going to offer the first direct blockchain payment system for businesses in Philippines.

It is possible with Visa B2B Connect to complete fund transfers in real time or within 24 hours instead of 3 to 5 days using conventional channels, as the UnionBank chairman said.

Viktam Kshettry, the head of business-to-business partnership at Visa Asia Pacific said this program takes on innovative approach and eliminates friction for cross-border transactions by using distributed ledger technology to enhance the speed, security and reliability of transactions.

Visa will offer the payment platform using 23 fiat currencies and 4 partner banks including Commerce Bank in the US, Shinhan Bank in South Korea, Sberbank in Russia and United Overseas Bank in Singapore, Kshettry said.

The service will be completed and started by the end of 2018.

The Unionbank’s chief technology officer Henry Aguda said that blockchain technology, which is used to trade bitcoins is unchangeable and Visa has security protocols for many years.

Aguda told ABS-CBN News:

“Some platforms have security as a separate platform, with blockchain security is embedded, it takes advantage of cryptography. The chain itself cannot bugged, cannot be spoofed”.

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Dash Technical View 22/01/2018

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Indonesian Island Bali to Ban Bitcoin Trading

Bitcoin is under tracking on Bali, which is an island in the Indonesian archipelago. Central Bank is going to crack down the use of the cryptocurrency anywhere in the nation. The head of Indonesia’s Bank Causa Iman Karana said in his speech:

“We found out from some postings on social media that Bali appeared to have become a haven for Bitcoin transactions. The next step is we will ban them as mandated by the law. We ask them not to use it anymore. Along with the Directorate of Special Crime Investigation unit, we will enforce the rule that all transactions in Indonesia must use rupiah.”

In the past the country announced that it has a significant local acceptance of using Bitcoin, but recently made reports mentioned that the government is trying to ban the trading of digital currencies. The risk of money laundering and criminal activity has led to the increased scrutiny.

The critics against Bitcoin and other digital currencies from Chinese and South Korean governments is less strong than the lenient Australian position.

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Bitcoin Crashed As Proffesional Investors Cashed Out

Bitcoin surged to $20,000 in December. The reason of this rapid grow was that users purchased it hoping to make  quick profits. It was a time for professional investors to sell.

Georgy Verbitsky, a managing director at eToro, told Russia Today:

Many people behind bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole understand that the skyrocketing prices in the last few months are linked to a cash inflow from mass-market consumers. Even pensioners wanted to invest.”

Last month Bitcoin tested a new high at $20,000. But on Wednesday a sell-off swept the cryptocurrency market and the digital asset dropped to $10,000.

According to analyst view, the skilled investors knew that the bitcoin honeymoon couldn’t last forever. Big-time miners and investors understood that they needed to diversify, that they had to get some fiat money. For that reason the people who raised money on the ICOs had to pay wages to developers.

This week’s bitcoin collapse appeared after news came from China and South Korea that regulators are going to crack down on cryptocurrencies. However, the fall actually happened because those who bought bitcoin for $17,000 to $20,000 were disappointed about a lack of further growth and started bearish deals on the market.

“It was about pure greed. Of course, after they lost a third to a half of their investments, they pushed the ‘sell’ button. A consolidation around $12,000 and $14,000 can now be expected,” Verbitsky said, adding that prices may remain stagnant for at least six months.

He provides his view by recalling the Chinese ban on ICOs ,which happened in September. That was a bigger blow than current market’s situation, but the traders were bullish and nobody noticed the hit. At this moment bearish sentiments are prevailing, and every negative news effects on the price.

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A Political Economist Thinks The Bitcoin Tsunami Will Come From Japan

According to Doctor Jack Rasmus, the prices of cryptocurrencies have been mostly driven by extreme speculation in Asia. He has warned that a major correction is coming soon.

China and South Korea are aware of this; they know that bitcoin is a financial asset bubble, a classic bubble which is peaking out,” Rasmus, who’s a professor of Political Economy at St. Mary’s College in California, told RT Channel.

According to his view, more than 40 % of all cryptocurrency purchases come from the Japan. This means that the crash will come from Asia during the next 12-18 months.

“China has always been opposed to bitcoin and Korea is now becoming increasingly concerned. Japan is going wild and I think the crash is going to come from Japan.”

Doctor Rasmus explained, that there is no taxation and regulation on cryptocurrencies, because many speculators see an opportunity to pump and dump and make special profits. He said all those things came together to drive prices up but those forces are now going to shift.

Blockchain technology is significant, the professor thinks and describes it as a real force in development, which is going to reduce corporate costs.

Rasmus regards bitcoin as a speculative commodity, a play on top of blockchain technology.

Rasmus describes bitcoin as a speculative commodity. He said,

“It’s not a currency; it’s a commodity like gold and gold futures. In my opinion, it will never become a true currency and if it threatens to become a currency you’re going to see the central banks issue their own digital currency as a way of driving down the price and taking the bubble out of commission.”

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A Bitcoin Exchange in China to Open Its Korean Office

A Chinese cryptocurrency giant is set to launch a service in Korea this month.

Today Korean website of Beijing-based OKCoin gave an information about starting a trading service.

The local partner of the project is the NHN Entertainment. It is a Korean developer of  mobile and PC games, which is looking for partnership with an equity investment.

Since the Chinese government closed down its cryptocurrency exchanges in September, OKCoin has turned its attention to other markets, launching cryptocurrency trading platform OKEx. It is the 4^th largest crypto exchange, the digital currency website Coinhills posted.

More than 60 virtual currencies are planed to be supported by Chinese platform. The transactions will be done on Korean won, which will be the largest nuber of crypto coins in Korea. The country’s top exchange Upbit supports about 35 coins, while Bithumb, the second biggest exchange offers on 12.

According to the Chinese company, CEO Chris Lee said OKCoin has decided to start operations in Korea to use the country as a stepping stone to become a global leader, unveiling a plan to hold events to present coins.

NHN is anticipated to deal with server operations and customer management, as OKCoin has its own transaction system.

The analysts pointed out, that NHN is increasing its focus on digital tokens thanks to their high applicability.

Nexon, the nation’s leading game publisher, took over Korbit, the third-largest exchange, last September. Hanbitsoft, another game publishing and development company, acquired a 25 percent stake in local exchange Coin Zest this month.

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Blockstream Intercontinental Exchange Introduced Consolidated Data Feed For Cryptocurrencies

Global exchanges operator Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and blockchain technologies provider Blockstream have introduced a consolidated data feed for cryptocurrencies.

It is a multi-asset and multi-venue data feed capturing cryptocurrency trading volumes for major digital currencies against the US dollar and other crucial currency pairs.

The partnership of Blockstream and ICE Data Services provides order book data for bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

Blockstream will consolidate the disparate data sets with other cryptocurrency exchanges into a normalized and standardized data source with real time information, also other related order book data, for example prices, currencies or quantities.

It will help ICE Data Services’ customers to secure global market representative trading data in a real-time feed with quality information.

The new feed of ICE Data Services’ will cover data from 15 major cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide.

The ICE Data Services Consolidated Feed will offer access to more than 450 normalized real-time market data feeds.

It works under ICE’s Connectivity service, which provides secure and low latency networks, global colocation and the SFTI Direct Market Access network of more than 300 venues and 600 sources.

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Litecoin Technical View 19/01/2018

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A Guide to Bitcoin & Blockchain For You As a Beginner

You have probably been living under a rock if you still haven’t heard of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies or blockchain technology by now.

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency, also a digital gold Bitcoin has seen its value rising in epic proportions. The value of a single token has jumped to a magnificent 15,000 % during 2017.

If you had invested $10,000 in Bitcoin earlier in 2013, when it traded nearly $15, that could bring you $9,5 million for now— an enough amount to sit on a beach somewhere and not to work.

But What Exactly Is Bitcoin?

It is a type of virtual currency, the well-known by everybody called crypto. Cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange or facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers.

These currencies are unique, as they use unusual form to create digital money units known as tokens by cryptography.

Blockchain technology refers to the use of this cryptography to store and link these records.

The world’s largest and first decentralized virtual currency is Bitcoin. This means that there is no central authority backing it and allows peer-to-peer transactions without other’s assistance.

According to Cambridge University view there are between three and six million cryptocurrency users specially transacting in bitcoin for purchasing other products, services or currencies.

The most famous of those users is the Winklevoss twins, who, thanks to 2017’s extraordinary run-up, are now the world’s first Bitcoin billionaires.

You may recognize the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network movie, which featured the rise of Facebook, Inc. Common Stock and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The Future of Bitcoin

The Winklevoss brothers claim they would not even be sellers if Bitcoin reached a price of US$380,000, when they were asked about intention to sell their holdings.

It may difficult to believe, but we can’t ignore the prospects of possible developments of blockchain technology.

That’s because there are so many potential benefits to be derived from the technology, which has Goldman Sachs Group Inc. getting involved in Bitcoin recently, opening a trading desk before the close of 2017.

Blockchain technology, which is used mainly for settling payments, can also be a good measure to crack down cyber crimes.

Bottom Line

You may think, that at this very moment it is too late to purchase Bitcoin, but there are alternative cryptocurrencies out there to choose for buying, such as Ripple and Ethereum, not to mention the alternative of investing in those companies like Goldman Sachs who are finding derivative applications for the technology.

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