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2019-01-25T00:42:00.000+05:00

UK Regulator: Utility Tokens Are Not Subject to Securities Laws

2019-01-24T21:55:00.001+05:00

UK Regulator: Utility Tokens Are Not Subject to Securities Laws

Britain’s financial regulator is seeking to clarify which cryptocurrency activities need to be officially authorized. The regulator is specifically cautioning that it may ban the sale of crypto derivatives such as CFDs later this year. It’s also clarified that cryptocurrencies and utility tokens are not securities.

Also Read: Blockchain.com Launches New Educational Resource With BCH Report

FCA Consults on Cryptoassets Guidance

On Jan. 23, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) made public its guidlines on crypto assets. Once finalized, the document will set out the scope of activities it regulates in the field. The guidance is meant to help firms understand whether their activities fall under FCA regulation and comes in response to the industry’s request for greater clarity.

Christopher Woolard, executive director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, commented: “This is a small but growing market and we want both industry and consumers to be clear what is regulated, and what isn’t. This is vital if consumers are to know what protections they’ll benefit from and in ensuring we have a market functioning as it should.”

Banning the Sale of Crypto Derivatives

The regulator notes that while crypto assets “have the potential to bring benefits to markets, firms and consumers, there remains considerable risks to markets and consumers.” So later this year the FCA will consult the public on banning the sale of derivatives linked to certain types of crypto assets to retail investors. The U.K. government is also planning to consult on whether to expand the regulatory perimeter to include further crypto asset activities.

Leveraged derivatives based on cryptocurrencies, like Contracts for Differences (CFDs) and futures carry a high risk of loss due to volatility and the impact of fees such as financing costs and spreads, the document explains. They can also be difficult to value due to a lack of transparency in the price formation of the underlying assets, claims the FCA.

Differentiating Utility Tokens From Securities

Another topic discussed in the guidance paper, of specific importance to projects pursuing Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), is how the regulator determines which instruments fall under its jurisdiction. The current FCA position on this subject, as expressed in the document, is that unlike security tokens, cryptocurrencies and utility tokens do not constitute regulated securities.

The regulator defines security tokens as those that have similar characteristics to traditional instruments like shares, debentures or units in a collective investment scheme. The FCA clarifies: “Security tokens are the type of crypto asset which falls within the regulatory perimeter.”

In contrast, utility tokens are defined as those that provide consumers with access to a current or prospective service or product and often grant rights similar to pre-payment vouchers. “As utility tokens do not typically exhibit features that would make them the same as securities, they won’t be captured in the regulatory regime, unless they meet the definition of e-money,” the document clarifies. This means that ICOs that issue just utility tokens and not security tokens will require no further regulation.

The FCA is asking for comments on the consultation paper by April 5, 2019, meaning that all of its definitions may be subject to change by that time.

Are these clarifications going to help or hinder the British crypto industry? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, FCA.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

Why a Global Recession Would Be Good for Bitcoin

2019-01-24T19:52:00.001+05:00

Why a Global Recession Would Be

Good for Bitcoin

Macro trends suggest that a global economic crisis could be looming. Worries about a global recession have been fed by the newly published GDP report showing that China grew at its slowest rate last year since 1990. If a global recession were to happen in the future, many believe that cryptocurrencies, bitcoin primarily, would benefit.

Also Read: Davos 2019: Leaders Share Mixed Cryptocurrency Predictions

IMF Sees Serious Slowdown

There are a number of indicators pointing to a potential economic downturn. In its World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned a no-deal Brexit could be a severe shock to the British economy. An escalation of Trump’s trade war with China is also another threat.

The IMF has shared its financial market sentiment stating: “Escalating trade tensions, together with concerns about Italian fiscal policy, worries regarding several emerging markets, and, toward the end of the year, about a U.S. government shutdown, contributed to equity price declines during the second half of 2018. A range of catalyzing events in key systemic economies could spark a broader deterioration in investor sentiment and a sudden, sharp repricing of assets amid elevated debt burdens.”

Statistics released on Jan. 21 show China’s GDP growth slowed to 6.6 percent year on year in 2018, the slowest pace since 1990.

Cryptocurrencies Will Be Pushed Higher as an Alternative to the Dollar

If we continue to see a significant decline in economic activity what could this mean for cryptocurrencies? Ciaran Hynes, managing partner at Cosimo Ventures, opined: “Depending on when a recession hits and what its causes are, cryptocurrencies could experience several effects. If a recession were to happen in traditional markets in the near future, and the causes are related to excessive contraction of the dollar money supply, which was a big part of the 2008 crisis, then you probably get a rush to scarce cash and decline in relative market value of all assets that are liquid, such as gold.”

Hynes explained that all unstable cryptocurrencies could fall hard and there could be a surge to the higher quality dollar-pegged stablecoins. Many crypto holders will not want to cross over into fiat, and we may even see a market premium for these stablecoins. “Weaker dollar-pegged stable coins — ones that are algorithmic only, or don’t have a transparent 100% reserve of actual dollars behind them — may be tested or even shorted until they collapse,” added Hynes.

If the next recession happens later or is caused by other factors, such as loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar itself, then we may see very different outcomes from those postulated above. Hynes predicted:

Cryptocurrencies would likely be welcomed and pushed higher as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. As a result, all dollar-pegged stablecoins might then be sold off heavily and tested on their ability to store value.

Exodus Into Real World Assets Such as Gold

If a global recession were to impact the value of government-issued currencies and their purchasing power, we would likely see an exodus into real world assets such as gold, shared Kai C. Chng, CEO of Digix, an asset tokenization company.

Chng said: “Precious metals have been a historic safe haven in times of economic uncertainty and are largely resilient to the fluctuations of international monetary markets. Should a global recession impact the purchasing power of traditional currencies, for those who already understand the benefits presented by cryptocurrency, we would expect to see increased interest in owning bitcoin, while those who are currently ill-acquainted with the cryptocurrency market are likely to show new interest in entering the space.“

According to Bitmex Research, bitcoin has traded like a safe heaven asset from 2011 to 2013. After that point it seemed to take on attributes of a “risk on” asset, for instance a very strong performance in 2017 alongside large cap Chinese tech stocks. Bitmex Research states that a flight to safety and liquidity now would prove negative for bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices. If bitcoin was able to shift again and rally as a safe heaven asset in a deleveraging environment, however, that would be very positive news for bitcoin. The research group noted though that it has yet to see any evidence of that yet.

Crypto Is a Hedge Against Macroeconomic Insanity

Will cryptocurrencies become a hedge against economic meltdown? Robert Viglione, co-founder of Horizen, said: “As much as I want to believe that cryptocurrencies are the ideal disaster asset, we really don’t have enough data to draw that conclusion.” He added:

It makes some sense in that bitcoin returns have zero covariance with any other asset class thus far, but we only have about 10 years of data. My hunch is that as crypto markets mature, they’re going to start picking up some general market correlation. For now, however, crypto is at least a decent hedge on all of the macroeconomic insanity.

Ned Myers, head of product at Alphapoint, a provider of distributed ledger technology, explained that when we think of the state of digital assets in the context of a potential recession, there are two considerations that come to mind:

First, where the intrinsic value of fiat currencies may logically be linked to the credit quality of the underlying sovereignty, de-centralized currencies may not have that same correlation.
Second, to the extent that security tokens clearly delineate the payment rules of a security and improve the transparency of holdings through distributed ledgers, accelerated adoption of blockchain technology could improve transparency of securities holdings – a problem that was part of the storyline in 2008.

Many crypto advocates will be hoping that the next recession helps push cryptocurrency into the mainstream. During economic turmoil, investors will always flock towards safe haven assets that are largely resilient to fluctuations of international monetary markets. So far bitcoin has shown many characteristics of the ultimate safe haven — gold.

How do you think a recession would effect bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

Europol Arrests Suspect Behind the Theft of $11.3 Million in IOTA (MIOTA)

2019-01-24T19:24:00.000+05:00

Europol Arrests Suspect Behind the Theft of $11.3 Million in IOTA (MIOTA)

A collaborative effort between the UK’s South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU), the Hessen State Police in Germany, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and Europol, has successfully identified and arrested a male suspect in connection with a case of fraud, theft and money laundering that resulted in the theft of around €10 million (Approximately $11.3 Million) in IOTA (MIOTA). The 36 year-old man was arrested following the execution of a search warrant targeting an address in the city of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

The operation netted a number of computers and electronic devices that are linked to the crime of defrauding over 85 victims worldwide since January 2018.

According to a Europol official report, the investigations begun in early 2018 when the Hessen State Police were notified by citizens of funds being stolen from their cryptocurrency wallets. Initial investigations then led to a website where the cyber crime was being carried out: Iotaseed.io. The website tricked users into creating seeds for their wallets while at the same time, it kept records of these 81 digit codes. The man behind the website would then access the victim’s wallets and transfer the coins to other wallets created with fake IDs.

By mid 2018, German authorities had been able to track the fraudulent activities to a suspect living in the United Kingdom. The case was then forwarded to the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) at Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). Once at Europol, J-CAT was able to coordinate the authorities of the different EU member States affected by the crime.

A short video report of the operation is available below.

Reaction of the IOTA Community

The IOTA community took to twitter to express their delight and satisfaction when news broke that a suspect in the case had been apprehended. One of the tweets can be found below.

What are your thoughts on Europol arresting a suspect linked to the theft of millions of IOTA from unsuspecting investors worldwide? Were you affected by the theft? Please let us know in the comment section below.

[Image courtesy of Europol]

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC Desk to Launch in US

2019-01-23T20:03:00.000+05:00

The Daily: Huobi Downsizes, New OTC

Desk to Launch in US

In Wednesday’s edition of The Daily we cover a number of developments that show how cryptocurrency exchanges around the world are evolving to attract institutional investors while also adding new services to stay competitive in this bearish market.

Also Read: Bitpay Reports Processing Over $1 Billion Transactions in 2018

Huobi Sheds Staff and Plans Stablecoin

Huobi is the latest cryptocurrency company to reduce its staff to cope with the current challenging market environment. The exchange is reportedly downsizing loss-making units such as venture funding and news aggregation. Huobi has already closed its subsidiary in Shenzhen that once employed about 30 people in research and development and the Huobi Info news app is now operated by just a few people. According to a report from China, the company still has 1,300 employees around the world after scrapping about 100 positions over the past few weeks.

Despite these changes, the company is looking forward to adding new services in 2019 including potentially launching its own stablecoin. “2018 brought us huge challenges but I’m personally optimistic about the crypto market. I do think we’ll see things get better this year,” Chris Lee, CFO of Huobi Group, said on Jan. 20 at an event in Singapore. He identified a number of priorities the company will be concentrating on in 2019, including upgrades to its trading systems, further development of regional exchanges, and stablecoins. “This year will be huge for stablecoins and we will be a part of that. Likely Huobi Group will launch its own stablecoin in 2019 in the first half of the year,” Lee added.

New OTC Desk to Launch in US

Nukkleus Capital, a boutique brokerage firm based in the U.S., is reportedly set to launch a new OTC crypto trading desk. The venture is aiming to attract clients from the buy side of the financial services industry including hedge funds, asset managers, family offices and high net worth individuals. The company will also provide in-house custodial services and plans to launch an exchange in the first quarter of 2019.

“We are trying to bridge the gap between the institutional world and the retail crypto world,” Joe Tuccio, head of asset management at Nukkleus Capital, told Finance Magnates. “If we can help build a streamlined product that replicates other financial markets offerings, I feel this market will flourish and mature. The recent commitments of major institutions like Bakkt, ICE, Fidelity and Erisx demonstrate that a formidable foundation of this new asset class is being soundly laid which will bring confidence to traditional capital market participants to deepen digital asset liquidity across products.”

AAX to Use London Stock Exchange Technology

Hong Kong-based Atom Group has announced that its upcoming AAX digital asset exchange will use institutional-grade tech from London Stock Exchange Group Technology. AAX is set to launch in H1 2019 and will be built on LSEG Technology’s Millennium Exchange matching engine, which also provides technology services to London Stock Exchange and other traditional venues such as HKEX and SGX.

AAX will enable users to trade spot and futures markets for cryptocurrencies, and it plans to eventually add a range of tokenized assets including securities tokens, asset-backed tokens and stablecoins. Atom will also launch AAX Pro, a trading platform catering for institutional clients with low latency connectivity and co-location services.

“We are delighted to have been selected by ATOM to provide a best-in-class technology solution to help power its new exchange. It underlines Millennium Exchange’s reputation for performance, scalability, flexibility and reliability and we look forward to working with the AAX team ahead of the launch in H1 2019,” said Ann Neidenbach, CIO at LSEG Technology.

Coinbase Expands Services for High Volume Customers

Coinbase has announced that it will now support inbound and outbound Swift transfers from non-U.S. bank accounts, meaning that its Pro and Prime customers in Asia and Europe can use wire transfers to fund their accounts. A select group of Coinbase Prime customers from around the world will also now have access to the company’s U.S. and European OTC trading desks and Coinbase Custody, its New York-regulated cold storage solution.

“In the past 12 months, hundreds of crypto-first hedge funds have launched around the world, and many hundreds more traditional institutions such as proprietary trading firms, family offices and endowments have begun actively trading digital assets,” explained Coinbase’s Elliott Suthers. “Coinbase’s suite of products — Coinbase Pro, Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Custody — serves these customers, along with other participants in the market, like asset issuers, exchanges and miners.”

Okex Adds Thai Baht and British Pound OTC Trading

Okex, the Malta-based exchange, has announced the launch of two new fiat currencies on its over-the-counter trading platform: Thai baht (THB) and British pound (GBP). Users in Thailand and the United Kingdom need to complete KYC verification to be eligible to trade on the fiat-to-crypto platform. The THB and GBP OTC trading markets currently support BTC, USDT, ETH, and LTC

“Thailand and the UK own the fastest growing crypto communities in the world. We see great potential in these two markets and want to support the needs there. Because of the increasing trading volume and number of traders in these two countries, we decided to launch the new THB and GBP trading services on our OTC trading platform. Wherever the market potential locates, we will expand to there. In 2019, you can expect more currencies will be supported on OKEx,” said Andy Cheung, the company’s head of operations.

What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

The Daily: Bitmain Reflects on 2018, Memo Releases Mobile App

2019-01-21T19:39:00.002+05:00

The Daily: Bitmain Reflects on 2018, Memo Releases Mobile App

In today’s edition of The Daily, we cover a reflection on the passing year by the cryptocurrency mining technology giant Bitmain, a mobile app released by social network Memo and new turnover figures from a Bitcoin ATM network in Australia.

Also Read: South Africa Wants to Mandate Registration of Crypto Services

Bitmain Reflects on 2018

Bitmain, the Beijing-headquartered bitcoin mining technology giant, has been the topic of many discussions recently relating to its IPO application process, downsizing and more. A lengthy new blog post the company published today touches on these subjects and highlights some of the milestones the company has achieved in 2018. These achievements include the development of a 7nm ASIC chip for SHA-256 mining, launching hardware for powering artificial intelligence applications, investing in Circle and funding open-source projects.

The Bitmain team explains that the consolidating actions they took recently were done to make the company leaner, more focused and to streamline the business in preparation for the challenges of the future. “Our wide portfolio and varied lines of work have expanded to a point where we have the problem of choice and this year was the time to choose. We started to optimize the business and streamline our flows to focus back on the core missions and activities that best rally behind our vision. We as a company will be lean and more focused towards our goals and we look forward to a 2019 where we can see what our collective efforts can achieve in this manner.”

The company also made this comment about the contentious BSV fork: “It goes without saying that the BCH and BSV split was a significant topic within the global cryptocurrency space last year. It was exciting to see different passions clash for the future and betterment of cryptocurrencies without the purported ‘hash war’ being fought. Having ourselves been through a similar (but much longer!) conflict over the future of Bitcoin just about 18 months back, we understand the BSV community’s decision to split and freely pursue its own dream. Adoption will come through the power, flexibility, and sophistication of the ecosystem and we look forward to what 2019 has in store for cryptocurrencies.”

Memo Releases Mobile App

BCH-based social media network Memo.cash has released a mobile app on Sunday. The first app is designed for Android devices but the developers promise that an iOS version is coming soon too. Reactions to the announcement on the platform itself are positive and so are the few reviews already on the Google Play store.

If you are not yet familiar with it, Memo.cash is a decentralized app powered by Bitcoin Cash blockchain technology. It gives users the ability to create a profile and post messages, images, and videos using hashtags as well as to give tips instead of just likes. With Twitter being infected with scammers and bots, supporters hope that the growing platform will be able to provide an alternative and releasing a mobile app is a step forward in the long road that it will take.

Australian ATM Network Sees ‘Insane’ Turnover

According to a newspaper report from down under, a local Bitcoin ATM network with only about 30 machines are now handling volumes of $2 million a month. This is despite the fact that the company failed to raise a targeted $30 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) due to the market cool-down.

“We raised just shy of $2 million, so just over 5 percent of our initial goal – the rollout didn’t work out as we hoped,” Sam Karagiozis, the founder of Auscoin, told Daily Mail Australia. “But we currently have 31 Auscoin ATMs in Australia… and our turnover is $500,000 a week, which is just insane considering how much the price of Bitcoin has dropped. It just shows there really is a market for it and cryptocurrency is seen as a way of the future for many.”

What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

8 Crypto Debit Cards You Can Use Around the World Right Now

2019-01-20T08:10:00.000+05:00

8 Crypto Debit Cards You Can UseAround

the World Right Now

Cryptocurrencies are gradually becoming a viable payment option across a range of markets and jurisdictions. If there is a tool that significantly expands the usability of digital coins in a world still dominated by traditional payment systems, it’s the crypto debit card. A growing number of reliable platforms offer the fintech product to bitcoin enthusiasts.

Also read: Crypto Cards Are Legal in Russia, According to the Finance Ministry

Established Crypto Card Providers in the U.S.

Bitpay, which processed over $1 billion in payments during a bearish 2018, offers users in all U.S. states a convenient way to spend their cryptocurrencies online and in store. Its prepaid Visa card is tied to a cryptocurrency wallet that supports instant conversion from bitcoin core (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) to U.S. dollars and local fiat currencies outside the country.

Bitpay’s crypto card is available to U.S. residents only. To apply, it is necessary to provide a home address, a valid government-issued ID and social security number. There’s a fee of $9.95 that covers the cost of issuing and a dormancy fee of $5 a month following a 90-day period of inactivity. A currency conversion fee of 3 percent is applied each time the card is used outside the U.S. Withdrawing cash at an ATM costs $2 in the United States and $3 abroad.

Shift, another card available in the U.S., allows users to connect to their Coinbase accounts. The Visa card has no maintenance fee but a 3 percent commission is charged on international transactions. ATM withdrawals cost $2.50 in the United States and $3.50 in other jurisdictions. The card itself is $20. Shift supports BTC only and offers fee-free conversion from bitcoin core to U.S. dollars.

Major Crypto Debit Cards Available in Europe

Wirex is the first choice for many Europeans. The U.K.-based startup offers both virtual and physical Visa debit cards, and the plastic version comes with chip and PIN. They are currently available to residents of the European Economic Area (EEA), where Iban support was introduced for all EUR accounts. However, the company plans to offer its services in North American and Asian markets as well.

Users can load the card with bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH), ripple (XRP), litecoin (LTC), and waves, the latter having been added recently. Card holders can spend three leading fiat currencies – euros, U.S. dollars and British pounds. Wirex users pay a $1.50 card management fee each month. ATM withdrawals within Europe cost $2.50, and $3.50 elsewhere. In-store purchases are rewarded with 0.5 percent crypto cashback in BTC.

Revolut, another British company, offers up to 1 percent cashback in cryptocurrency for payments made with its Revolut Metal card. For less than $16 a month, the digital bank’s premium service provides clients with access to five major coins – BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP, and LTC – and the ability to pay in over 150 fiat currencies. The contactless card, which can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted, comes with fee-free ATM withdrawals up to €600 per month (~$680).

Cryptopay issues another card in both virtual and physical form. The latter has a chip and costs $15. The contactless card is currently issued only in Russia, where it has a 1 percent loading fee and a monthly service fee of 65 Russian rubles, less than a dollar. Cryptopay is planning to bring its cards to Singapore. The payment provider supports BTC, ETH, LTC, and XRP. A fee of $2.50 is applied to withdrawals from teller machines and each exchange transaction is charged a 3 percent commission.

Some Newcomers in the Market

A number of payment providers and fintech startups have launched new cryptocurrency debits cards in the past few months. These platforms are trying to attract the attention of crypto users around the world and prove themselves as alternatives to the well-established products on the market.

Fuzex is cryptocurrency payment card project that last summer chose bitcoin cash (BCH) as its base cryptocurrency. It also supports ETH and the platform’s own token, FXT. Fuzex cards are currently issued to residents of Europe and the APAC region. The physical card is NFC payment enabled. It comes with an EMV chip and a barcode display.

Crypto.com, a Hong Kong-headquartered company formerly known as Monaco, announced in October it’s starting to ship its MCO Visa cards to customers in Singapore. The prepaid cards are linked to a mobile wallet that allows holders to buy, sell, store, send, and track digital coins such as BTC, ETH, Binance’s BNB token, the platform’s own MCO tokens as well as major fiat currencies.

Oximetry offers a debit card linked to a cryptocurrency wallet which became available to Russian citizens since last year. In November, the Switzerland-based startup told news.Bitcoin.com its platform supports BTC and ETH which can be used for online and offline payments via instant conversion to fiat. The company is partnering with the cryptocurrency exchange Cex.io. The card can be ordered from its iOS app.

Are you using a crypto debit card? Tell us what you like about it in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support these products/services. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies or any of their affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

onecoin will be the biggest crypto currency in 2018, is it true?

2019-01-19T21:26:00.000+05:00

One coin will be the biggest cryptocurrency in 2018, is it true?

NO, the answer is No

But I believe that at the end of 2019/2020 it will become the global Reserve cryptocurrency!!

About OneCoin

one coin is cryptographically secure, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that allows for instant and cost-saving payments. its global accessibility and the finite number of 120billion ONEs make the coin of the biggest reserve currencies worldwide. To ensure its global usage, ONE coin continues to expand its ecosystem of products and services, utilizing the coin fro both user and merchants.
the coin cannot be affected by inflation and impossible to counterfeit. the company has enforced anti-money laundering policies in line with the developing regulatory framework and the long-term plans of the company for being a key player on the global financial market.

ONE is a centralized cryptocurrency, providing higher liquildiry and less volatility. Computational power has been streamlined and fully optimized, alowing the blockchain to handle higher transaction volume than its decentralized counterparts as well as giving a definite advantage for a quick and efficient mining process.
check out the safety standards and strategy of ONE and come on board

Transparent

ONE coin is transparent and secure, maintaining a continuously updating digital ledger of all transactions.

Instant transactions

In line with its vision, ONE coin offers cross-border payments and remittances at a low cost thus increasing financial inclusion and transparency.

The Daily: Sapphire Develops GPU for Grin, TSMC Sees Drop in Mining Revenue

2019-01-19T20:06:00.000+05:00

The Daily: Sapphire Develops GPU for Grin,

TSMC Sees Drop in Mining Revenue

In The Daily this Saturday, Sapphire has designed a new graphics card suitable for mining the recently launched Mimblewimble cryptocurrency Grin. In other news related to the minting of digital coins, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has reported a significant decrease in its revenues from the mining segment, and some Ethereum miners have switched to Constantinople before the rescheduled hard fork.

Also read: Shapeshift Shares Compliance Requests, Grin Woos Bitcoin Maximalists

Sapphire to Offer Video Card Designed to Mine Grin

Hardware manufacturer Sapphire Technology has developed an exclusive version of its Radeon RX 570 video card. The new graphics processing unit (GPU) has 16 GB of GDDR5 memory instead of the standard 4 or 8 GB.

According to the Chinese tech news outlet Mydrivers, the card is not oriented toward gaming applications but cryptocurrency mining. Representatives of the company’s Hong Kong office explained the product has been designed to mine the new cryptocurrency Grin.

The privacy-centric crypto, which was launched this month, is based on the Mimblewimble protocol and uses the Cuckoo Cycle hashing algorithm that needs between 5.5 and 11 GB of memory. Sapphire believes the card’s 16 GB will significantly improve its performance in comparison to other mining chips.

The new GPU is based on Sapphire’s popular model RX 570 Nitro+ from which it took the two-slot cooling system with two fans, the Russian website 3dnews reported. The exact launch date for the video card is yet to be confirmed.

TSMC Reports ‘Big Drop’ in Mining Segment Revenue

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has recently published its Q4 2018 financial results, along with an earnings call transcript. The chip-producing giant has reported a significant drop in the revenue from the cryptocurrency mining sector last year.

The report does not quote the mining-specific data separately – rather, the company has released the information as part of its high-performance computing (HPC) segment. However, TSMC’s chief executive and vice chairman C.C. Wei said that while HPC, excluding mining, has grown slightly, “cryptocurrency is a big drop from 2018 to 2019.” According to the earnings call transcript, he added:

If we put the cryptocurrency together in the HPC, it’s a big drop. It’s almost a double-digit.

TSMC is a leading supplier of ASIC chips to Bitmain. The Chinese crypto mining giant has found itself under growing pressure during the bearish 2018. The Beijing-headquartered company recently suspended operations at a new mining facility it was building in Texas and closed down its research and development center in Israel.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has reported a total business revenue of $9.4 billion in the last quarter of 2018, which represents a 2 percent increase on year-over-year basis. According to the company’s management, the Q1 2019 revenue is expected in the range of $7.3 – $7.4 billion.

ETH Miners Switch to Constantinople Before the Postponed Fork

A chain split has occurred on the Ethereum network following the rescheduling of the Constantinople hard fork. The upgrade was expected to be implemented at block 7,080,000 on Jan. 16, but hours before the event, on Jan. 15, developers issued an alert informing the community they were postponing the fork.

Apparently, not all Ethereum miners received the warning as some started mining the Constantinople chain and not the one with the majority consensus. The decision to call off the upgrade came after Ethereum core developers and the Ethereum security community were notified of potential vulnerabilities.

According to a blog post, the Constantinople-related issues have been identified by Chainsecurity. “We are investigating any potential vulnerabilities and will follow with updates in this blog post and across social media channels,” the developers said. They also asked node operators, crypto exchanges, miners, and wallet providers “to update to a new version of Geth or Parity before block 7,080,000.”

In a post on Medium, Chainsecurity detailed: “The upcoming Constantinople upgrade for the Ethereum network introduces cheaper gas cost for certain SSTORE operations. As an unwanted side effect, this enables reentrancy attacks when using address.transfer … or address.send … in Solidity smart contracts. Previously these functions were considered reentrancy-safe, which they aren’t any longer.”

The Constantinople hard fork has since been scheduled for block number 7,280,000 and is expected on or around Feb. 27, according to a tweet by developer Péter Szilágyi. “Will be a single fork on mainnet and a post-Constantinople-fixup fork on the testnets to get them back in line feature wise with the main network,” he explained.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

Openbazaar’s New Social Media Platform Aims to Foster Privacy

2019-01-18T20:11:00.000+05:00

Openbazaar’s New Social Media

Platform Aims to Foster Privacy

On Thursday, during the first day of the North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC), Openbazaar founder and CEO Brian Hoffman announced a new service called Haven Privacy. The product is a multi-faceted application for Openbazaar’s mobile and full node clients allowing users to chat, shop, and send cryptocurrencies in a private fashion.

Openbazaar Plans to Launch Privacy-Centric Social Media App

Decentralized ecommerce marketplace Openbazaar has announced a new feature called Haven Privacy, an application that will be implemented into the company’s flagship software. The project was first announced at the TNABC event in Miami on Thursday as Openbazaar’s (OB1) founder Brian Hoffman unveiled the new service to the crowd. The Openbazaar team calls Haven Privacy a “super-app” because it offers users the ability to chat with other members in an encrypted manner, shop, and send digital assets privately. The new features will soon be available for Openbazaar’s mobile apps (iOS and Android) alongside the platform’s full node implementation.

“Unlike mainstream apps, privacy is at the core of everything Haven offers and when you use Haven, your data truly belongs to you — It’s encrypted and stored directly on your mobile device,” explains the Haven Privacy website.

OB1’s message adds:

We believe that privacy and private money is a fundamental human right — Take back your privacy.

OB1 Developers Worked on Haven Privacy for Two Years

Right now, Openbazaar users have to wait for the company to release Haven Privacy but they can sign up for launch information by registering for the newsletter dedicated to the new service. OB1’s first employee Mike Wolf explained to his Twitter followers that the new application is a “game changer” and the project took more than two years to build. There is a full Openbazaar node built into the Haven Privacyplatform, Wolf also remarked after the announcement. Openbazaar’s Washington Sanchez also detailed how excited he was to unveil the new decentralized social network Haven Privacy. “Private beta invites rolling out Monday; open beta to follow shortly after,” Sanchez told his Twitter followers.

Openbazaar’s announcement follows the year-long debacle of increased deplatforming, censorship, and impersonation scams on the giant social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Many popular social media users have been banned and censored for expressing controversial opinions on these platforms. In response to these threats, there has been a slew of social media attempts like Memo and Honest Cash, which has been spearheaded by Bitcoin Cash (BCH) developers. Openbazzar’s application, however, is much more similar to the Hivr social media platform, which also offers registered users a place to post content, tip (BCH or BTC) and chat with one another using a native instant messaging system. Although Hivr’s userbase is very thin, Openbazaar should be able to leverage its existing users in order to help the social platform gain traction.
https://youtu.be/ADA9VRcREBQ

What do you think about the latest Openbazaar development, Haven Privacy? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Images via Openbazaar, Shutterstock, Pixabay, Haven Privacy, and Twitter.

Have you seen our widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. They’re pretty cool, and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, and forum threads. There’s also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.

Chip Making Giant TSMC Reports Significant Drop in Crypto Mining Revenue

2019-01-18T19:42:00.001+05:00

Chip producing large Taiwan Semiconductor producing (TSMC) reportable a sizeable call its crypto mining-related revenue in 2018. The news was discovered within the company’s this autumn 2018 money results, printedJanuary. 17, beside Associate in Nursing earnings decision transcript.

TSMC has not disclosed specific information for its crypto mining business — together with it instead inside its superior computing (HPC) phase. within the earnings decision transcript, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei dynasty discovered that whereas HPC, excluding crypto, had fully grown slightly:

“[C]ryptocurrency may be a huge drop from 2018 to 2019. thus if we tend to place the cryptocurrency alongwithin the HPC, it is a huge drop. It's virtually a double-digit.”

Pressed to provide additional actual information, Wei dynasty solely noted that cryptocurrency had contributed loads to the manufacturer’s chip sales last year, nonetheless emphasised the firm “cannot specify an excessive amount of of the phase, notably it belongs to 1 of the large customers.”

As reportable, TSMC is thought as a serious provider of Application-Specific microcircuit (ASIC) chips to Chinese crypto mining behemoth Bitmain, that has been underneath increasing pressure throughout the persistent cryptocurrency market slump.

While a Bernstein analysis had attributed two to three % of TSMC’s total revenue to cryptocurrency-related sales in Gregorian calendar month last year, Wei dynasty looked ahead to 2019 with significantly additionalcircumspection:

“Okay. This year, we do not forecast — we tend to become conservative in prediction this volatile business. that the cryptocurrency mining this year is far, a lot of but last year. And to what proportion, i do not suppose it's — I will unleash it straight away.”

For this autumn 2018 on a consolidated basis across its business, TSMC denote a revenue of $9.4 billion in this autumn 2018 — a ten.7 % increase from the previous quarter and a two % rise year-over-year, in keeping withthe report. Lora Ho, chief treasurer and senior vp of finance, declared that Q1 2019 revenue is forecast to be $7.3-$7.4 billion — representing a twenty two % ordered decline.

As reportable simply in the week, the pessimistic market continues to impact mining business participants. Major United States-based crypto mining and blockchain firm Giga Watt has simply declared it's closing access and power to its facilities and stopping daily operations, once having filed for bankruptcy in Gregorian calendar monthlast year.

Bitmain continues to wind back its transnational operations, this month reportedly suspending its mining within the U.S. state of Texas, once having closed its development center in Israel and peeling off native workers at the top of last year.

American Companies Can Now Settle Payroll Taxes In Cryptocurrency via Bitwage

2019-01-17T21:06:00.000+05:00

American Companies Can Now SettlePayroll

Taxes In Cryptocurrency via Bitwage

International cryptocurrency payroll service provider Bitwage has announced that it has partnered with Texas-based Simply Efficient HR. The move will allow companies to pay W2 employee and payroll taxes in all 50 U.S. states, plus Puerto Rico, using BTC and ETH.

Bitwage and Simply Efficient Join Forces

With Bitwage’s solution now out of beta, American employees are able to choose any percentage of their wage to be in USD or cryptocurrency. To participate, a company needs to sign up to Bitwage, reach out to support for Payroll & HR services to receive personalized account management from the Simply Efficient HR team, and then add the account on Bitwage. Simply Efficient HR invoices companies through Bitwage for USD needed to fund payroll taxes and employee payrolls and the company accepts invoice and fund payrolls in BTC or ETH.

CEO of Bitwage Jonathan Chester commented: “As the leader in cryptocurrency payroll solutions, we are excited to continue to push the adoption of real use-cases within the industry. Together with Simplexity, we hope to close the financial loop within the cryptocurrency industry and continue to make bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies a part of everyday life.”

Bridging the Gap to the Traditional Financial System

The partnership has been live in beta mode since November, with its first customer the peer-to-peer exchange Paxful. “Bitwage bridges the gap between bitcoin and the traditional finance system,” Hayel Abbassi, Paxful Controller, said. “As a company that earns 100% of revenue in bitcoin, we are always looking for service providers who will accept digital currency. Paxful has a significantly sized team in the states and we need to pay them as employees on payroll, not as contractors. Bitwage has recently formed a partnership with a traditional payroll company who integrates into their platform to provide these services. Paxful simply sends bitcoin to an address, and our employees receive net checks with the proper federal and state taxes withheld.”

According to the announcement, U.S. Bitwage clients are also able to pay for benefits such as health insurance, as well as HR compliance services. Companies around the world are able to use their crypto holdings to pay local vendors in the U.S., E.U., U.K., Brazil, Philippines, India, Mexico, Argentina and other regions.

Would you be interested in settling payroll taxes with cryptocurrency? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The Daily: Crypto’s Latest VR World, New Blockchain Analytics Tools

2019-01-17T20:33:00.000+05:00

The Daily: Crypto’s Latest VR World, New Blockchain Analytics Tools

As the maxim goes, bear markets are good for building out cryptocurrency infrastructure – or “buidling” as the meme of the meme goes. Thursday’s installment of The Daily is rich in examples of the sort of development work being undertaken across the industry. From dapp trackers to virtual worlds, there’s a little bit of everything in today’s news roundup.

Blockchain VR World Beachhead Enters the Fray

The blockchain-based virtual reality realm is getting crowded. Decentraland, which resides in the virtual metropolis of Genesis City, has got itself a competitor in the form of Beachhead City. BH2020VR, as it’s also known, aims to blur the line between gaming and roaming a virtual world of commerce and adventure. Income can be earned in-game through protecting the city or supplying defense weapons and other resources.

Just as video games like Grand Theft Auto have a main storyline complemented by side missions and mini-games, Beachhead has a primary narrative running through it, but participants are at liberty to interact with the world in a multitude of ways. This includes participating in the cryptoconomy within BH2020VR, purchasing real estate, and upgrading virtual turf by incorporating theaters, shops, and cars including user-generated content. Virtual assets will be tradable within Beachhead as non-fungible tokens, with a tokenized rewards system making BH2020VR feel like the crypto world’s equivalent to The Sims.

Dappradar Adds Crosschain Metrics

Virtual worlds such as Decentraland and the forthcoming
Beachhead are the sort of decentralized applications (dapps) that can be monitored at Dappradar.com. The popular Ethereum dapp tracker has just had an upgrade, allowing it to track onchain activity on the Tron and EOS protocols too. The site now boasts of having stats on 1,700 dapps including decentralized exchanges, crypto collectible marketplaces, and gambling dapps.

According to Dappradar’s statistics, the top Tron and EOS dapps are seeing significantly more usage than their Ethereum counterparts in terms of the number of reported daily users. Predictably, betting dapps seem to be faring the best across all blockchains featured on Dappradar.

Cryptohound Follows the Money Trail

ORS Cryptohound, a blockchain analytics firm, has been sniffing around in the Ethereum network in a bid to identify the source of six “highly unusual transactions” that were spotted in December, comprising approximately 5 percent of the ETH supply. “We discovered that over 5.5m ETH were sent to 39 wallets after 313 transactions,” they explain. “All six wallets have the same portfolio which consists of more than 92% share of OMG tokens” plus 150,000 ETH each. Cryptohound’s investigative report then goes on to speculate over the identity of the entity behind the $500 million move.

Demonstrating a practical application for blockchain forensics, a number of leading cryptocurrency exchanges have vowed to freeze funds stolen from Cryptopia. The hackers who infiltrated the New Zealand-based exchange earlier this week, before making off with several million dollars’ worth of ETH and tokens, have attempted to send their ill-gotten gains to Binance and Kucoin, prompting both platforms to freeze the accounts of the suspects.

Bisq DEX Launches DAO on Testnet as Developers Seek to Decentralize Governance

2019-01-11T21:19:00.002+05:00

Bisq DEX Launches DAO on Testnet as Developers Seek to Decentralize Governance

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Bisq has upgraded its open source software. The revamped platform includes a new user interface in addition to marking the launch of the Bisq Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) on testnet.

Bisq Launches Decentralized Autonomous Organization on Testnet

The latest version of Bisq’s software, v0.9, has seen the decentralized exchange launch its DAO on testnet.

The upgrade will allow Bisq users to experiment with the DAO. The software is designed so as to facilitate rewarding developers who contribute to the project in the form of the platform’s native token (BSQ) without centralized administration.

BSQ tokens are layered on top of the BTC blockchain as colored coins. Since launching in 2014, Bisq has received more than 25 BTC in donations which were used to back the creation of 2.5 million BSQ tokens. The first batch of tokens is planned to be distributed among the project’s 144 earliest developers and contributors.

When the DAO launches on mainnet, the platform’s users will be able to vote on prospective contributions and upgrades to the protocol, receive compensation for development, and pay for trading fees in the form of BSQ rather than BTC.

Developers Hope DAO Will Solve Problems of Centralized Governance

Bisq’s current developers have described the DAO as a means through which to decentralize the operation of the exchange. Currently, Bisq’s website asserts that the platform’s “technology is fully decentralized, but its governance is not.”

The documentation highlights a number of shortcomings with the current governance model in which “the project founders” carry out “most maintenance, operation, and administration duties,” in addition to making “virtually all major decisions.”

This model, the website asserts, “does not scale; project founder have become bottlenecks incapable of addressing all user needs,” and introduces “censorship risk” as a result of operational responsibilities being “centralized in a small group of people.”

According to Bisq’s website, the model of token distribution employed by the DAO establishes the Bisq DAO as a “meritocracy” in which “those who have contributed the most value to the project in the past are those who have the most say over its future.”

Do you prefer to trade using decentralized or centralized exchanges? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The Differences Between Forex and Crypto Trading

2019-01-11T20:09:00.000+05:00

The Differences Between Forex and Crypto Trading

Many would argue that comparing cryptocurrency trading with forex is like comparing apples and oranges, but that’s not entirely accurate. On closer inspection, there is a number of similarities between the two. For example, the underlying market dynamics of supply and demand will usually govern the prices of the respective assets. Here traders share their thoughts on the mechanics of each.

Crypto vs Forex

It takes a certain type of savvy trader to navigate unpredictable market conditions and emerge in profit. Let’s start with the pros and cons to be found from trading both crypto and forex.

Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, notes that crypto and forex both represent a digital store of value and can be purchased and sold with ease. They both have high volatility which creates an opportunity for quick profits going long or short.

“The pro of trading crypto and forex is that these are global markets dominated by large financial players who have algorithmic trading capabilities. Most individual players cannot compete or match the trading and speed of hedge funds and large banks which swim in these markets,” said Mashinsky.

He explained that the biggest difference between forex and BTC markets is that unlike forex, bitcoin started and scaled via global retail trade and not via institutional players. This makes the BTC markets behave in a very different pattern than traditional forex markets.

Kyle Cox, senior investment analyst at Invictus Capital, stresses that bitcoin has an ultimately finite supply of 21 million coins, with protocols that control new issuance meaning there is little room for manipulation. “Therefore, trading in bitcoin would be purely focused on demand, which in turn would be based on adoption and in turn the quality of the project,” Cox explains. “Higher adoption of bitcoin essentially increases the size of the network, which means more users, higher utility and an increasing price. The lack of outside or centralised influence is unique, and a benefit of the genesis crypto asset.”

Fair Amount of Skill and Luck Is Involved

Fiat currencies, on the other hand, have potentially unlimited supply, as each currency’s supply is determined by the monetary policy of the specific issuing country.

“Each country’s central bank (typically) regulates the supply of that currency available through various policy mechanisms linked to its repurchase or interest rate, which can, essentially, be defined as the opportunity cost of holding cash in that economy. These policy decisions are conducted with an acute awareness of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions and imperatives, and thus result in fluctuations in both supply and demand,” said Cox.

Currency traders looking to profit will, essentially, look to buy currencies that show signs of macroeconomic improvement through the selling of currencies that show the opposite. “There is a fair amount of skill, and it must be said, luck involved in this process, as any honest trader would attest to,” Cox noted.

BTC Involves Little Cost

Another factor to consider is the nature of the bitcoin blockchain means that BTC is traded on a peer to peer basis, which in its raw form involves little cost.

Cox pointed out that this is due to the fact there are no intermediaries in the classic sense, as is the case in the foreign exchange market where brokers and aggregators facilitate transactions between participants, which can often add a layer of fees.

“Where intermediaries come into bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, is through cryptocurrency exchanges,” explained Cox. “These exchanges act as central repositories of assets, facilitating transactions and levying fees on this basis. So yes, this aspect can be seen as somewhat of a similarity [to forex] however with different mechanics. In truth, it is difficult to make a generalized comparison of actual fees as they vary widely depending on exchanges, currency pairs, volume and many other factors.”

Forex Markets Have Deep Levels of Liquidity

Another crucial fact to note is that forex markets have deep and entrenched liquidity as a result of a long history of activity.

Cox explained: ”The phenomenon of globalization and technology have boosted activity in the trading of foreign currencies, as a result of ballooning cross-border transactions and wide availability of trading means and infrastructure. [Forex] is by far one the largest marketplaces on the planet, with daily trading volume in the trillions of U.S. dollars. Most of this volume is attributed to established, developed country currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, which serves as the reserve currency for the world.”

There are some similarities here with bitcoin, which can be considered as the dominant reserve cryptocurrency, and which most trading volume can be attributed to. That is where the similarity ends however. “Bitcoin’s daily trading volume, which currently ranges in the mid-single digit billions of U.S. dollars, pales in comparison to that of the forex market,” said Cox.

A drop in the ocean, some might say. Bitcoin’s volatility is also considered to be far higher relative to that of the most dominant currency pairs in terms of volume. Cox explained that trading in emerging market currency pairs, which can show elevated periods of volatility, would be a far better comparison to trading in bitcoin.

Only a Small Percentage of Traders Extract Profit

Crypto traders faced a tough year in 2018. After riding the highs of 2017, the low points in the current bear market have been tough to navigate through.

Cox said: “Trading, particularly that of a short-term nature, is a difficult practice that only a small percentage of players have ever managed to extract profits from, regardless of the asset in question.”

He added:

Of course, we often hear the success stories in the media, however, the many losses that have been incurred by participants seeking to time the market have been swept under the carpet.

Black Wednesday: George Soros Bet Against Britain

One high profile success case involved billionaire currency trader George Soros who made history when he bet against the pound sterling in 1992 and made $1 billion in one day. There are a number of lessons which can be found by analyzing the underlying causes of this crisis and how they led to such problems.

Cox pointed out that Soros is one of the few exceptions who has had multiple successes trading against central banks over many decades. Also known as the man who broke the Bank of England, Mr Soros stands out as having been involved in several lucrative currency trades that span decades. He is credited with playing a pivotal in the British pound crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which basically pegged the pound to the Deutsche mark.

Cox commented: “[George Soros’] strategy was simple yet brilliant. Britain at the time was suffering from high inflation and exchange rate versus the U.S. dollar was under pressure due trade with the U.S. Soros quickly realised that the Bank of England would not be able to maintain its peg, sold the pound short through a systematic series of trades. Following this strategy, he profited as the pound decreased in value and some estimate that he made $1 billion in the process. Undoubtedly a simple, and profitable, application of a sound knowledge of macroeconomic forces.”

In conclusion, while there are, in certain areas, extreme differences between the bitcoin and forex markets, there are also similarities and the potential for more convergence as digital assets cement themselves in the global financial system.

As Soros himself observed:

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

What are your thoughts on trading crypto versus forex? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Daily: Bitpay Adds Multi-Crypto Settlements, Shapeshift Downsizes

2019-01-09T20:33:00.000+05:00

The Daily: Bitpay Adds Multi-Crypto Settlements, Shapeshift Downsizes

In Wednesday’s edition of The Daily we cover a new feature that will allow Bitpay merchants to automatically diversify their settlements, a downsizing at Shapeshift that will see its team cut by a third, a show of commitment to the crypto industry by the government of Malta, and a new offering of BCH margin trading.

Bitpay Adds Multi-Coin Settlements

Popular cryptocurrency payment processor Bitpay has introduced support for multi-coin settlements. The service added support for three stablecoins during 2018 (GUSD, USDC, and PAX), in addition to bitcoin cash BCH and BTC. The new feature means that merchants can now receive their Bitpay settlements in up to five of these cryptocurrencies all at once, in addition to their supported local fiat currency.

“We’re excited to provide additional options and to give our merchants more flexibility with their settlements,” the Bitpay team stated. “We hope to continue adding valuable options for our merchants and their customers.”

Shapeshift Is Downsizing by a Third

Erik Voorhees, the founder and CEO of Shapeshift, has announced that his company is the latest venture to feel the “bitter frost” of crypto winter. The exchange platform is laying off 37 employees, reducing the size of its team by a third.

“Crypto, like the moon we strive toward, is a harsh mistress,” wrote Voorhees. “We ride high and fast during the ascents, growing at rates unseen almost anywhere else in the business world. And when the markets turn, the crypto recession is similarly dramatic and severe.”

Besides the general economic boom and bust cycle, the main reason identified for downsizing seems to be recognition that the company has lost focus. What started as just a simple tool for instant conversions grew too fast, with Shapeshift adding new services and acquiring other companies at a rate it was unable to manage. This caused the diversion of both time and financial resources, hurting its main business.

Another reason for the situation is that the changing regulatory environment forced the company to face “immense legal bills” just to handle possible government-related risks. It also caused the platform to impose identification on users by switching to a membership-based business model, which drove away many of its API partners who left for non-KYC competitors.

Malta Remains Committed to Crypto

\Thanks to a welcoming stance and a clear regulatory framework, Malta has been able to position itself as a leading global cryptocurrency trading hub, with a multitude of digital asset exchanges choosing to be legally based there. The current crypto market downturn is not going to change that as far as the political leadership of the country is concerned.

After getting taunted by the by the local opposition for its work on becoming known as “Bitcoin Island,” the government has made it clear that it is proud of these efforts. The Parliamentary Secretariat for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation said that numerous measures had been taken to secure this sector and give more peace of mind and protection to crypto investors, according to a local news report. The secretariat also remarked that a campaign by the Cyber Security Steering Committee was recently launched to educate the public on possible fraud.

The government’s answer also made it clear that the crypto industry is seen as a necessary part of the economy of the future in Malta along side artificial intelligence, esports, video gaming and space exploration.

Okex Launches Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Margin Trading

Okex, the Malta-based exchange which supports fiat currencies such as the Vietnamese dong and Chinese yuan, has announced it has launched bitcoin cash (BCH) margin trading on the platform effective immediately.

According to the company, users can now enjoy trading BCH against USDT or BTC on margin with the option of 3x leverage, which is three times the user’s total balance at maximum. OK Piggy Bank, a tool for earning daily interest with users’ spare tokens launched earlier by the company, has also now pledged support for BCH.

What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bitpay.

Major Mining Pools Have a ‘High Die-Off Rate’ Study Reveals

2019-01-08T20:32:00.000+05:00

Major Mining Pools Have a ‘High Die-Off Rate’ Study Reveals

On Monday, Coinmetrics.io published a study looking at hashrate history of the most competitive BTC mining pools. The research from the open source cryptocurrency analytics site reveals interesting insights into how the mining ecosystem has evolved over time.

‘Major Mining Pools Are Fallible’

Cryptocurrency mining is a very competitive industry that has grown significantly in recent years. The processing power of all the SHA-256 algorithm-based coins is more powerful than the world’s supercomputers combined, and individuals and businesses have sunk billions into the mining industry. On Jan. 7 Coinmetrics.io released some interesting research concerning the mining pools processing thousands of BTC blocks over the years. The research team at Coinmetrics explained that the analysis was in response to an Ark Invest issue published last year which lightly touched upon the mining industry and hashrate distribution.

The authors state that the data used in the Coinmetrics report stems from well-known sources like BTC.com and Bitcoinity, but the team also parsed the coinbase outputs from the last 450,000 BTC blocks. These days, most mining pools use the coinbase parameter to identify themselves when a block is mined on the blockchain. Coinmetrics explains the habit is completely voluntary and in the early days, miners did not identify themselves in this manner. Due to this factor, Coinmetrics skipped the first 100,000 blocks when parsing the chain. After sifting through the particulars, the researchers were able to identify 37 individual mining pools or large solo miners. The statistics suggest that these bitcoin miners mined at least 0.1% of the blocks in the period.

“The striking conclusion from the all-time chart is just how fallible major mining pools are: several influential pools which once controlled significant fractions of Bitcoin’s hashrate – BTC Guild, Ghash, BTCC – are now totally defunct,” the report emphasizes.

Coinmetrics continues by stating:

The Rise of Unknown Miners in 2018 and a Shrinking Reward Distribution

One notable aspect from the report is that there’s been a significant rise of “unknown miners” or operators choosing not to identify themselves in 2018. There could be a variety of reasons why there’s been a spike of unknown miners, such as for privacy and political reasons. The Coinmetrics research also details that operations like F2pool have seen a significant drop in hashrate and Antpool’s slice of the pie has “moderately declined.” BTCC and BW.com have closed operations and Bitfury’s hashrate has dropped as well. Both F2pool and Antpool have dominated with roughly 83,000 blocks combined, but to this day BTC Guild still holds the most captured BTC by pool. This factor is due to the block rewards shrinking, as pools could amass a lot of coins if they had a sizable amount of hashrate back in the day.

Most veteran bitcoiners will remember the old mining pool giants of the past mentioned in the Coinmetrics report. Back then there were plenty of BTC Guild memes and proponents begging individual miners to stop mining with the pool when it gathered 48 percent of the network’s hashrate five years ago. The same thing happened a year later with Ghash when the community was up in arms after the pool gathered more than 51% of the network multiple times in June 2014. Researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer from the publication Hacking, Distributed explained the situation in great detail at the time and stated:

One factor not mentioned in the Coinmetrics report is the hashrate variations that have stemmed from Bitcoin forks. A lot has changed in the last two years and since August 2017 there’s been some variance of miners switching between the BTC and BCH hashrate as well.

Because many mining pools like Antpool, Viabtc, F2pool, and BTC.com mine both chains, there was a notable divergence between the two chains’ mining profitability up until December 2017. Spectators also noted a slight deviation of pools switching hash during the BCH hashwars that started on Nov. 15 last year. The Coinmetrics analysis concludes by saying that there are a lot more stories in the data they scraped and they have “only begun to scratch the surface.”

What do you think about the recently published Coinmetrics report on mining pools? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Coinmetrics.io, Coin Dance, and Shutterstock.

Have you seen our widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. They’re pretty cool, and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, and forum threads. There’s also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.

The Daily: Binance Adds Stablecoin Pairs, Tzero Patents Integration Platform

2019-01-08T19:58:00.000+05:00

The Daily: Binance Adds Stablecoin Pairs, Tzero Patents Integration Platform

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is opening trading for three stablecoin pairs. Also in Tuesday’s Daily, Overstock’s Tzero has patented a solution to integrate traditional and cryptocurrency trading systems, Morgan Creek founder Jason Williams offers his Lamborghini for bitcoin, and in Brazil, crypto investors are looking to buy vaults to safely store their digital assets.

Binance Launches Trading for Three Stablecoin Pairs

Binance, currently the largest crypto exchange by daily trading volume, has announced it’s adding new trading pairs that will allow users to trade stablecoins against one other. Starting from Tuesday, Jan. 8, the following pairs will be available to traders: PAX/TUSD, USDC/TUSD and USDC/PAX.

In November, the digital asset trading platform rebranded its USDT market as a combined stablecoin market, introducing the symbol USDⓈ. The exchange explained this was done to support more trading pairs with different stablecoins offered as a base pair. Later Binance added to the new market pairs with the stablecoins paxos standard (PAX) and USD coin (USDC).

Last year saw the arrival of several stablecoins that are now competing with the dollar-pegged tether (USDT). These include the two tokens that were approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services in September, gemini dollar (GUSD), and paxos standard (PAX), also backed one-to-one with U.S. fiat currency.

Tzero to Integrate Traditional Trading Systems and Crypto Exchanges

Security token trading platform Tzero, a subsidiary of Overstock, has secured a patent for a platform that allows integration between traditional trading systems and digital asset exchanges. Tzero’s Crypto Integration Platform is designed to serve as an interface between the two types of systems.

According to the filing, the platform can host initial public offerings (IPOs) and offerings of securities registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It is also intended to be used to trade these securities in secondary market transactions.

The “digital transactional items” mentioned in the patent represent tokens, securities, digital assets, digital shares, and cash equivalents. When receiving an order, the platform is expected to verify the availability and determine the best market price of the digital asset before a transaction is made.

Online retail giant Overstock is a crypto-friendly company. Recently it announced it will cover part of its tax obligations to the U.S. state of Ohio using bitcoin. Ohio’s new payment portal, which was launched a couple of months ago, allows businesses to pay their taxes with bitcoin core (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) via Bitpay.

Morgan Creek Founder Wants Crypto for His Lambo

Jason Williams, co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, recently tweeted that he is about “to do something that has never been done in crypto.” According to the post, Williams’s Lamborghini is up for sale and the owner wants to buy cryptocurrency with the money he gets for the car. “Offers in BTC accepted,” the entrepreneur noted as well.

Williams has received a lot of comments and even offers for the Lambo. According to Monero’s lead developer Riccardo Spagni, the sale is a good move. “Huracans are awful investments. Unless it’s a Performante, then there’s a limited audience in the future. But seriously, better to get rid of it,” Spagni wrote. “Too many cars. Not enough BTC honestly,” Jason Williams said in response.

Brazilians on the Lookout for Vaults to Store Bitcoin

Safe storage should be a priority for any investor in possession of large amounts of digital cash. According to the local press, many Brazilians don’t feel that hard wallets and secure passwords provide enough protection. Local companies manufacturing and building physical vaults have registered a growing demand for their services from cryptocurrency owners, which has actually revived the industry.

The Folha de São Paulo news outlet recently reported that some of the safes are part of quite sophisticated security systems. They are often installed behind reinforced armored doors and come with advanced features for biometric authorization such as palm scanners that can identify up to 5 million points on the hand of a person who’s trying to open the vault.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section.

Hong Kong Entrepreneur Accused of Cheating Investors in Crypto Mining Investment Scheme

2019-01-07T19:55:00.000+05:00

A Hong Kong-based entrepreneur has been accused of duping numerous investors in a cryptocurrency mining hardware investment scheme. A local English-language newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported the news Jan. 6.

The Democratic Party — currently the second-largest political party in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong — has reportedly received over 20 complaints since October 2018 in regard to the scheme, allegedly spearheaded by a 24-year old businessman named Wong Ching-kit.

Four of those affected, who are reported to have suffered losses of between HK$20,000 and HK$1 million ($2,500 - $127,600) each — a combined loss of about HK$3 million ($383,000) — have now demanded a full refund on their investments, according to SCMP.

A police spokesman is further cited by SCMP as reporting that 9 individuals, aged 29-41, had previously lodged complaints with the authorities claiming they had been cheated of a combined HK$940,000 ($120,000) in investments in Wong’s cryptocurrency business.

Wong is accused of having misled investors into purchasing mining hardware for a crypto token dubbed “Filecoin,” allegedly promising his clients profits on their investments within three months.

Filecoin, however, was reportedly not yet tradeable, and investors allege that Wong’s promises to refund their investments have not been honored.

Ramon Yuen Hoi-man, deputy spokesman for the Democratic Party’s financial policy panel, is reportedly helping the affected investors and told SCMP and local police he had subsequently received a “threatening” phone call — which, however, reportedly did not explicitly mention Wong. Yuen is now urging the government to ratchet up its measures to regulate the crypto sector.

Wong has not yet been charged but will reportedly face an “all-round” police probe into his activities, which include possible money laundering, according to an unnamed police source cited by SCMP. He has reportedly defended himself on social media, posting:

“I sell mining machines only but am treated as if I have killed people. When they make money, there is no thank you. When they lose money, they call it a scam.”

According to SCMP, Wong is also believed to be the figure behind a stunt in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po this December, in which stacks of banknotes worth about HK$6,000 were allegedly thrown from a high-rise. Having been arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct in public in connection with the incident, Wong was subsequently released on bail.

As reported this September, the CEO of now-defunct United States crypto mining hardware firm GAW Miners was sentenced to 21 months in prison for defrauding investors through sales of a scamcoin dubbed PayCoin (XPY).

Ledger Unveils Bluetooth-Enabled Hardware Wallet

2019-01-07T19:42:00.000+05:00

Ledger Unveils Bluetooth-Enabled Hardware Wallet

Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has unveiled its newest cryptocurrency wallet. The Ledger Nano X is Bluetooth-enabled and can hold up to 100 different cryptocurrencies at a time. A mobile app is also being launched for both iOS and Android to pair the device to smartphones.

Ledger undraped its new cryptocurrency hardware notecase on Sunday at the annual client physical science Show (CES) in city. the corporate then wrote on its web site on Monday

The Ledger Nano X is Bluetooth enabled. Connect it to your smartphone with Ledger Live Mobile app and safely interact anyplace. All Bluetooth communications area unit encrypted end-to-end to guard against any security threat.

The new billfold has been redesigned and might be pre-ordered beginning on weekday. it's priced at $119 and is predicted to start out shipping in March. the corporate will launch a mobile app, the Ledger Live Mobile, for each iOS and mechanical man platforms.

The Nano X joins Ledger’s 2 existing shopper hardware wallets: the Nano S and therefore the Ledger Blue. the previous presently retails for $59 and therefore the latter $269.99. the corporate claims in its Monday’s announcement that over one.5 million Ledger Nano S devices are sold worldwide. The Nano X is merely obtainable in one color at the moment whereas the Nano S comes in six colours.

About Ledger Nano X
According to Ledger, up to a hundred cryptocurrency apps may be put in on the Nano X at a similar time. The device conjointly supports over one,100 assets with additional to be accessorial every month. compared, the Nano S will at the same time run up to eighteen cryptocurrency applications with support for under forty assets in total.

Unlike its precursor which attracts power through a USB cable, the Nano X contains a 100mAh intrinsic battery to power it for wireless use. many security enhancements square measure listed on Ledger’s web site for the newestmodel, and therefore the company explained that personal keys hold on on the new device square measureisolated within its EAL5+ certified secure storage chip.

With dimensions of 72mm x eighteen.6mm x 11.75mm, the Nano X is shorter however slightly wider than the Nano S that measures 98mm x 18mm x 9mm. However, at 34g, it's over doubly as significant because the Nano S that weighs sixteen.2g, Ledger’s web site details.

Navigation on the new model is additionally improved thanks to its larger, spherical buttons on the face of the device compared to 2 tiny buttons settled at the highest of the Nano S. Ledger additional represented that the new device has “Bigger screen for associate degree improved expertise.”

In addition to the notecase itself, the Nano X can go with a USB cable, a obtaining started leaflet and a recovery sheet.

Markets Update: Crypto Analysts Remain Uncertain After 2019’s First Week of Trading

2019-01-06T22:32:00.001+05:00

Markets Update: Crypto Analysts Remain Uncertain After 2019’s First Week of Trading

Since our last markets update, cryptocurrency markets consolidated within a tight range and have been less volatile over the last few days. The market capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency economy has gained about $5.7 billion and a few of the top coins have seen some price jumps this week.

Crypto Markets Consolidate, But Some Coins See Gains

As the first week of 2019 comes to an end, digital currency prices this Sunday are far less volatile than the last two months of 2018. At the time of publication the entire cryptocurrency market valuation of all 2000+ digital coins is roughly $131.7 billion. Since the holidays and the first annual “Proof-of-Keys” day has passed global trade volume has steadily increased. There’s about $15.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency global trade volume today across popular exchanges and ripple, litecoin, and stellar are this weekend’s top performers. Currently, the digital asset bitcoin core (BTC) is trading for $3,869 and market prices are up 0.03% over the last 24 hours. BTC captures around $4.9 billion of the world’s crypto-trades and has a market valuation of around $67.5 billion.

The second highest valued market capitalization this Sunday is held by ethereum (ETH) which is down 2.6% today. However, over the last seven days, ETH has gained 10.3% and one ETH is trading for $153. Ripple (XRP) is up a hair today with 0.36% gained over the last 24 hours but the week shows a loss of around 2.8%. One XRP is swapping for $0.35 and holds about $424 million of the world’s digital asset trade volume. The token eos (EOS) is still holding the fifth largest capitalization, but litecoin (LTC) is not too far behind. One EOS is trading for $2.76 and markets have risen 3.8% this week. EOS markets are up today 0.79% and markets are also capturing $761 million in trades. As mentioned above LTC has spiked considerably jumping 7.8% today and 19% over the last seven days. LTC has managed to commandeer the sixth largest market valuation this week.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Market Action

Bitcoin cash (BCH) markets had it much better last week and prices have consolidated into a pretty tight range. At the moment one BCH is trading for $160 per coin and markets are down 1.4% over the last 24 hours and down 1.2% for the week. The top cryptocurrency exchanges swapping the most bitcoin cash today includes Lbank, Hitbtc, Binance, Huobi, and Coinbase. Currency pair statistics show tether (USDT) captures 48.3% of the global trades with BCH. This is followed by BTC (18.5%), ETH (16.9%), USD (8.9%), EUR (3%), JPY (2%), and KRW (1.3%). The EUR has spiked a great deal which is traditionally a sign of bullish movements ahead. BCH holds the eighth largest trade volume today below zcash (ZEC) and just above tron (TRX) markets.

BCH/USD Technical Indicators

Looking at the daily and 4 hour charts on Bitstamp shows some tight Bollinger Bands and signs of deep consolidation. At the moment on the 4 hour chart, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is meandering in the middle between oversold and overbought regions at -47.8. Stochastic and the MACd show similar readings and it seems as though traders are uncertain of which direction the next wave will take them.

The two Simple Moving Averages (SMA) are still showing a decent gap between the short term 100 SMA and the long-term 200 SMA. The 100 SMA is well above the 200 SMA indicating the path toward the least resistance is still the upside. Order books on some of the most popular exchanges show BCH bulls need to surpass the $170 range in order to gain some better momentum. On the backside, there is plenty of foundational support between the current vantage point and the $140 region.

The Verdict: While Some Analysts See Positive Signs, Others Are Not so Optimistic

It is safe to say that most traders are waiting on the sidelines for some more confirmations of a bearish-to-bullish trend change, or another big drop in crypto prices. Some people believe they have noticed a positive trend change among crypto asset prices and the validation of some bullish divergence over the last few weeks. Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at Etoro gave his thoughts on the current cryptocurrency market trends on Jan. 3. “Gains across most of the popular crypto assets have been rather mild lately,” Greenspan emphasized. “While it’s good to see bitcoin holding steady, we’re actually starting to see a side of the market that is more typical during a bull run.”

However, digital currency market analyst Willy Woo explained on Jan. 5 that the bears still may be holding the reigns. “The initial volume spike false signaled a faster detox and an earlier end to the bear market, but in fact, it was a volatility side effect — That move from $6k to $3k created immense trade volume, but it was in no way a signal that accumulation volume had begun,” Woo told his Twitter followers.

The analyst continued by stating:

That volume has since subsided. Leaving the NVT chart on the high side of its oscillation around the main move downwards — The key thing here, in my interpretation, is it’s on the high side of its band, so I think an up move is limited, bears will win the longer term trade.

Where do you see the price of BCH, BTC and other coins heading from here? Let us know in the comments below.

Disclaimer: Price articles and markets updates are intended for informational purposes only and should not to be considered as trading advice. Neither Bitcoin.com nor the author is responsible for any losses or gains, as the ultimate decision to conduct a trade is made by the reader. Always remember that only those in possession of the private keys are in control of the “money.”

Images via Shutterstock, Trading View, Coinlib.io, Bitstamp, and Satoshi Pulse.

Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

Report: Most Major Crypto Assets Show Close Price Correlation

2019-01-06T20:22:00.000+05:00

Report: Most Major Crypto Assets Show Close Price Correlation

The 2018 bear trend brought an increase in correlation across the leading cryptocurrency markets, with recent research indicating that 10 of the top 15 crypto assets by market cap show a price correlation of more than 64%. Additionally, five cryptocurrency pairs show a correlation larger than 80% for 2018 – ADA and XLM, BTC and LTC, XMR and BTC, ETH and LTC, and XMR and LTC.

Research Finds Significant Correlation Between Leading Crypto Assets

The new analysis has found the prices of bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin core (BTC),

Ethereum (ETH), ripple (XRP), Eos (EOS), stellar (XLM),

Litecoin (LTC), Cardano (ADA), iota (MIOTA), and Monero (XMR) to be positively correlated, with all of the said crypto assets found to have an average price correlation of between 64.7% and 74.1% when compared with one another.

Five pairings were found to have a correlation higher than 80% – ADA and XLM with 83.6%, BTC and LTC with 83.5%, XMR and BTC with 82.9%, ETH and LTC with 82.7%, and XMR and LTC with 80.6%.

Tron (TRX) comprised the sole cryptocurrency examined to produce an average correlation of less than 50%, with an average correlation of 49.6% when compared with other leading markets.

The research also noted that Proof of Work cryptocurrencies are generally less correlated with crypto assets utilizing alternative consensus mechanisms.

Price Correlation Doubles Year-Over-Year

Compared with the previous year, 2018 saw the correlation between many leading cryptocurrencies more than double.

BTC’s average price correlation increased by 150% from 29.3% in 2017 to 73% in 2018, while ETH’s correlation increased 154% from 29.2% to 74.1%. XRP saw the greatest spike in price correlation, which increased by 220% year-over-year, while XMR saw the lowest percentage increase in correlation among examined cryptocurrencies – rising 105% from 34.6% to 71%. XLM correlation increased 114% from 30.4% to 64.9%, and LTC correlation increased 132% from 30.9% to 71.8%.

2018 also saw in increase in the volume correlation between leading cryptocurrencies year-over-year, with BTC up from 34.1% in 2017 to 53.2% in 2018, ETH up from 31% to 48.9%, XRP up from 31.1% to 45.2%, and XMR up from 20.3% to 22.8%. XLM volume correlation increased more doubled from 12.5% in 2017 to 28.4% in 2018, as did LTC volume correlation, which increased from 15.8% to 37.3%.

Do you expect 2019 to bring a further increase in correlation between the top cryptocurrency markets? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

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Fake News Site Promotes Bitcoin With Image of Ex-New Zealand PM

2019-01-06T19:43:00.000+05:00

Fake News Site Promotes Bitcoin

With Image of Ex-New Zealand

PM

An alleged fake news website released a crypto-related article employing the image of former New Zealand prime minister John Key, local media outlet Stuff reported Jan. 5.

The ad reportedly promoted Bitcoin (BTC) and a company called “Crypto Revolt,” which is allegedly cloned scam site. The article further explains that the advertisement imitates a Stuff business news page and “purports to interview John Key on his enthusiasm for Bitcoin.”

Moreover, in place of the Stuff logo, there is an “NZ Times” logo, and all the links reportedly lead to Crypto Revolt’s website. The source that encountered the ad suggested that the web address was suspicious and that the company itself could have been hacked.

As Cointelegraph reported in December 2017, Key had then denied rumors circulating that he invested in Bitcoin. The claim that Keys was a Bitcoin investor reportedly originally came from another fake news website, the link to which propagated through social media.

New Zealand’s police also warned of online scams in September after a cryptocurrency investor lost $213,000 due to fraud. In November, New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA) also added three cryptocurrency-related websites to its blacklist of online scams, and another three were added to the list in December.

Five More Exchanges Join Japan’s Self-Regulatory Crypto Exchange Association

2019-01-05T20:43:00.001+05:00

Five additional cryptocurrency exchanges have joined the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), consistent with an officer announcement on January four from the JVCEA.

The JVCEA could be a self-regulatory body shaped in Gregorian calendar month by sixteen registered crypto exchanges that aims to form industry-wide capitalist safety standards. In October, Japan’s monetary regulator formally granted self-regulatory standing to the JVCEA to supervise the crypto sector.

The body, created partially as a response to the Jan 2018 $534 million hack of crypto exchange Coincheck, had discharged a group of restrictive pointers in June, together with a ban on commerce|trading} and prohibition against the trading of privacy-oriented coins.

The 5 new sort II members of JVCEA ar Coincheck, Everyone’s Bitcoin, Lastroots INC., LVC Corporation and Coinage Corporation. the kind II classification means the business is within the method of applying for virtual currency dealer registration, Cointelegraph Japan notes.

LVC could be a sister outfit of LINE, whose own native crypto exchange BITBOX launched its LINK token in time period.

Cointelegraph Japan reports that the JVCEA is presently solely recruiting sort II members, however it'll shortly add a sort II classification for firms that handle virtual currency-related services like pocketbook dealers.

Over the summer, the exchange proclaimed that it had been considering each a margin commercialism limit and most restrictions for exchanges to put on a number of their clients’ commercialism.

In time period 2018, native media according the Coincheck had been approved for a crypto exchange in operationlicense by the country’s monetary regulator, however Coincheck’s new operator Monex didn't make sure the announcement.

The Daily: Derivative Market Hits $12B in Volume, Reports of Layoffs, Another Fork

2019-01-05T20:06:00.001+05:00

The Daily: Derivative Market Hits $12B in Volume, Reports of Layoffs, Another Fork

Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has announced reaching $12 billion in cumulative trading volume on its derivative market in December. The news comes amid reports of job cuts at its Shenzhen office. Also in The Daily this Saturday, major trading platforms have confirmed support for the upcoming Constantinople hard fork in the Ethereum network.

Huobi DM Ends Month With $12 Billion in Trading Volume

Huobi, the fourth largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has revealed that its derivatives platform, Huobi DM, registered over $12 billion of trade deals within the first month of its launch. Commenting on the financial results, Huobi Global CEO Livio Weng said the rapid growth “illustrates the strong desire” from institutional investors and professional traders to invest in cryptocurrencies. The executive added:

The time has come for tools to manage the risk and volatility of cryptocurrency – particularly during bear markets, like the one we find ourselves in now.

Huobi Derivative Market was launched in beta in November. Last month the parent company, Singapore-based Huobi, announced its integration with Huobi Global, the group’s main digital assets trading platform. Also in December, Huobi DM’s daily volume exceeded $1 billion. On Dec. 25, the combined trading volume of both platforms reached $2 billion.

Huobi DM’s contract trading service allows users to take long and short positions on bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and eos (EOS). It also provides clients with options for arbitrage, speculation and hedging in cryptocurrency trading.

Reports of Layoffs at the Shenzhen Office

The positive news about Huobi’s trading volumes coincided with Chinese media reports that the company is closing its Shenzhen branch, laying off all of its 14 employees. According to Odaily, the local subsidiary of the global exchange, which was focused on exploring innovations, was registered in October 2016 and at some point had over 20 full-time employees.

The online edition quotes multiple sources from the company who shared information about the upcoming closure of the Shenzhen office. Huobi’s director of public relations Shi Wei confirmed the plans for job cuts, stating they will affect only the worst-performing employees. She did not specify, however, the exact number of layoffs.

According to another source quoted by the business outlet Caijing, Huobi is closing its branch in Shenzhen because its activities are overlapping with those of other offices. The source also revealed some of the employees will join other Huobi branches, 8btc reported.

Major Exchanges to Support Constantinople Fork

Leading cryptocurrency trading platforms have announced their

plans to support the upcoming Constantinople hard fork of the Ethereum network. The fork, which is expected to occur in mid-January, will reduce the block reward from 3 to 2 ETH, which in turn should decrease the circulating supply of ethereum in the future.

Ethereum core developers have also recently discussed and agreed to implement a new ASIC-resistant proof-of-work algorithm aimed at increasing the efficiency of mining with GPUs. The price of the coin with the second-largest market capitalization has increased in the past seven days, from around $135 to almost $157 at the time of writing.

In an announcement published on its website, Binance confirmed support for the Constantinople fork, asking traders to leave sufficient time for deposits to be processed in full prior to block height 7,080,000. Okex informed its customers that it will take a snapshot of all its accounts at the same block height, which is expected to occur between Jan. 14-18. Huobi Global stated it will help users to resolve any technical issues and all three exchanges promised to handle any airdrops during the hard fork.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits? Tell us in the comments section.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Smartmockups.

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The Daily: Sapphire Develops GPU for Grin, TSMC Sees Drop in Mining Revenue

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Hong Kong Entrepreneur Accused of Cheating Investors in Crypto Mining Investment Scheme

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Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Market Action

BCH/USD Technical Indicators