Tech news and more ....

Warning Signs Your Online Accounts Aren’t as Secure as You Think

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:38:00 +0000

New Year 2024: 22 Stunning Places To Celebrate The Arrival Of New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 08:11:00 +0000

Celebrating Christmas and New Year is the most fun thing and almost the whole world comes under one sky with the same zest and emotion in their heart. Countries with different cultures and believes

Enjoy a memorable New Year’s Eve 2023-24 at these amazing places to celebrate New Year in the world and have the best time of your life.

1. Sydney, Australia

One of the best New Year destinations, Sydney offers a delightful experience to anyone who is longing for a thrilling night out on New Year’s Eve. The mesmerizing fireworks over the Sydney Harbor looks absolutely enchanting and are worth-capturing. One can also witness the massive fireworks by booking a luxurious Coast Harbor Cruises that offer an unforgettable 1-hour experience with drinks, fancy food and stunning fireworks at Sydney’s most iconic location, the Sydney Harbor. If not the cruise, you can book a fancy dinner at any of the waterfront restaurants and celebrate the New Year eve with all the pomp and show.

Where to Stay: Shangri-La Hotel Sydney, InterContinental Sydney, Four Seasons Hotel Sydney, Sydney Harbor Marriott Hotel at Circular Bay.

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/new-year-2024-sydney-1

Things to Do: Book a lavish cruise, witness fireworks over Sydney Harbor, attend various New Year events.

Nearest Airport: Kingsford Smith International Airport

Ideal For: Families

2. Las Vegas, Nevada

One of the most intriguing places to go on New Year is Las Vegas in Nevada. Just think what would be an ambience of this place on New Year when it is so enchanting even on the normal days. One of the best-known party destinations in the world, Las Vegas comes to life on New Year’s Eve with its lively casinos, nightclubs, hotel events, crazy fireworks and a lot more. Visit the Las Vegas strip where the crowd gets crazy and massive New Year celebration takes place. Gold Diggers, Lavo Casino Club, Drai’s Nightclub, Club 101, Omnia are some of the best nightclubs in Las Vegas to witness the best New Year parties in 2023.

Where to Stay: MGM Grand, Luxor Hotel & Casino, Bellagio Hotel & Casino

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/las-vegas-nevada-1

Things to Do: Stroll through the Las Vegas Strip, enjoy at alluring casinos, witness fireworks over the Las Vegas Strip

Nearest Airport: McCarran International Airport

Ideal For: Friends

3. Miami, United States

Miami is one of the well-known party destinations in the world and the mesmerizing beauty of this place adds more charm to New Year celebrations. If you are thinking about where to go for New Year, then the best answer would be Miami. The beaches in Miami are all lively and offers crazy parties to help you welcome New Year in style. Witness the spectacular free fireworks in South Beach and Bayfront Park in Miami Downtown. Enjoy a fancy dinner while indulging in New Year festivities at the Wharf Miami which is located along the Miami River. For a lavish and out of the box New Year festivities, book a yacht at the Biscayne Bay to enjoy a thrilling DJ night, top-notch hospitality, exotic variety of drinks and a lot more.

Where to Stay: InterContinental Miami, Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay, JW Marriott Marquis Miami, Clevelander South Beach Hotel and Bar

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/miami-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Enjoy a yacht party, witness stunning fireworks over Miami Downtown and South Beach for free, enjoy rooftop parties at Sugar or EAST Miami.

Nearest Airport: Fort Lauderdale International Airport

Ideal For: Families, Friends

4. Venice, Italy

Looking for the best place to spend New Year's Eve in Venice, we have got you covered. Venice with its postcard-perfect canals and stupendous architecture lures many tourists for a vacation here. Spectacular parties are held here on New Year’s Eve for the entertainment of the people. Witness the Italy-style New Year celebration which starts from a lavish dinner and nothing can beat a true Venetian style dinner retreat on a boat with picturesque views. La Fenice Opera House is another place in Venice to witness a sweet and simple New Year celebration in the form of concerts. People who fancy art and theatre would love to celebrate here. The Big Party at the St Mark’s Square, one of the best New Year parties in the world is another great spot where a lot of people gather at midnight to welcome the arrival of New Year. Singers and artists perform here and the massive fireworks also takes place at sharp 12:00 am.

Where to Stay: Four Points by Sheraton Venice Mestre, Villa Erica, Palazzo Ca’Nova, Aman Venice

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/venice-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Witness the intriguing fireworks at Piazza San Marco, enjoy a fancy Italian feast at any of the popular restaurants in Venice, Take party in the Big Party at the St Mark’s Square.

Nearest Airport: Venezia Airport

Ideal For: Couples, Friends

5. Dubai, UAE

As the clock strikes 12, many of the spots in Dubai display magnificent display of fireworks which is just so satisfying to watch. The fancy shows at the Burj Khalifa and the live water-music at the Dubai Fountain. Many people gather at the waterfront of Dubai Fountain to witness the best New Year celebration in the world to witness the astonishing display of light and sound at the Burj Khalifa and the light and water show at the Dubai Fountain. You can also book a table at any of the restaurants dotted on the waterfront area to feast on delectable feast and enjoy the breathtaking views at the same time. In order to get the uninterrupted views of Downtown fireworks, head to Burj Plaza and book a table here to relish dinner at the same time.

Where to Stay: Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Taj Dubai, Grand Hyatt Dubai, Hilton Dubai Al Habtoor City, Shangri-la Hotel Dubai

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/dubai-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Enjoy and light, sound and water show at the Dubai Fountain, marvel at the gorgeous views of the Burj Khalifa, enjoy live performances at Dubai Opera, book a lavish dinner cruise

Nearest Airport: Sharjah Airport

Ideal For: Families, Friends

6. Cape Town, South Africa

Get enchanted by the lively and vibrant ambience of the city of Cape Town by booking flights to South Africa. V&A Waterfront in Cape Town is one of the best places to ring in New Year. The live band, eateries, carnival characters and a lot more adds to the beauty of this area brimmed with madding crowd all set to ring in the arrival of New Year. From carnival-themed performances to boat cruises and stellar shows to lavish dinners, Cape Town is the best New Year destination in South Africa. Catch the best fireworks from the Table Mountain or Signal Hill if you want to avoid crowds.

Where to Stay: Cape Town Mariotte Hotel, V&A Marina – Waterfront Apartments Cape Town, The Commodore Hotel, Taj Cape Town, the Table Hotel Cape Town

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/cape-town-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Enjoy lavish dinner or a cocktail at NYE cruise, Witness fireworks from Table Mountain, stroll through the V&A Waterfront.

Nearest Airport: Cape Town International Airport

Ideal For: Families, Friends

7. New York, United States

Nothing can beat the New Year celebrations at the New York’s most iconic location which is Times Square Ball Drop. Lakhs of people gather here to witness the stupendous Waterfront Crystal Ball drop at midnight on the massive screens fitted all over the square. New York also fascinates people by its mesmerizing fireworks at the Central Park and New York Harbor. New York is definitely the best place to celebrate New Year in the world as it offers great unlimited options for the Eve’s celebrations. You can also take a luxury dinner cruise on a yacht at the Staten Island and sip in a glass of cocktail while enjoying the most picturesque views. Dance on the latest beats at any of New York’s bar or club or book a table at rooftop restaurant to witness massive fireworks.

Where to Stay: Hyatt Herald Square New York, Mandarin Oriental, The Pierre, The Chatwal, Lowell Hotel

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/new-york-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Witness fireworks at Central Park and New York Harbor, Enjoy a dinner at rooftop hotel, Marvel at the Times Square Ball Drop

Nearest Airport: LaGuardia Airport

Ideal For: Family, Friends

8. Paris, France

One of the best places in the world for New Year especially for couples is Paris where the spectacular fireworks take place at the Eiffel Tower making the whole aura very romantic and perfect to enter the near year with your partner. Count down for the arrival of New Year at the most iconic location in Paris called the Champs-Elysées where thousands of local people gather to celebrate the arrival of the New Year together. Cabaret shows are very popular in Paris and what could be a better occasion to witness them than a New Year? Head to Moulin Rouge and witness a breathtaking performance by different artists, musicians and vocalists. If clubbing is your game on New Year’s Eve, then head to Rex Club which is one of the most striking places to party all night on the New Year Day. All these things to do in Paris makes it one of the best places to celebrate New Year 2023.

Where to Stay: Hotel de Crillon, Ritz Paris, Hotel Du Jeu De Paume, La Clef Tour Eiffel Paris by The Crest Collection, Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/paris-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Capture the stunning fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, enjoy the best cabaret show in the world at Moulin Rouge, enjoy partying all night at different clubs, welcome New Year with a glass of champagne at any of the rooftop restaurants.

Nearest Airport: Roissy Charles de Gaulle

Ideal For: Couples

9. Goa, India

Known as the party destination of India, Goa is one of the best places to celebrate New Year. With stunning beach parties, clubs, casinos and varied New Year events, Goa is just the right choice if you are looking for a budget yet exciting night on New Year. If you are searching for where to celebrate New Year 2023, then Goa should be an ideal location which will host events and parties with limited seating capacity. From intimate parties for couples to the ones with madding crowds, Goa is brimmed with all things beautiful and thrilling on New Year’s Eve. The beaches in Goa come to life with bonfire and barbecue being served, crazy parties and breathtaking fireworks. Cruise party is a real thing in Goa and you can book one for yourself to witness the most spectacular Goa celebrations.

Where to Stay: Double Tree by Hilton Goa - Panaji, Casa Britona, Vivanta, Goa – Panaji, The Crown Goa, Vivanta by Taj – Fort Aguada, Goa Marriott Resort & Spa, The Leela Goa

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/goa-india-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Cruise party, Bonfire and barbecue, Witness grand celebrations at Tito’s Club and Café Mambos

Nearest Airport: Dabolim Airport

Ideal For: Friends, Couples

10. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro is world famous for its Copacabana Beach Party which makes Rio one of the best places in the world for New Year celebration. The beach receives around 20 lakhs people on the New Year’s Eve, all gathered together to witness the grand celebration and ring the arrival of New Year together. After the fireworks, it is mandatory for people to jump seven waves and make seven wishes. People also offer flowers and floating candles to Goddess Iemanjá and make wishes for the New Year. You can also book any of the beachfront restaurant’s terrace area to enjoy al fresca dining while enjoying the jaw-dropping fireworks.

Where to Stay: Hilton Barra Rio de Janeiro, LSH Lifestyle Hotel, Belmond Copacabana Palace,

Book with : https://locktrip.com/guides/rio-de-janeiro-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Enjoy the wildest New Year party in the world at Copacabana Beach, enjoy al fresco dining at the rooftop restaurants, devote your prayers and offering to the Goddess of ocean, Iemanjá.

Nearest Airport: Galeão International Airport

Ideal For: Families, Couples

11. Bangkok, Thailand

One of the best places to travel to for New Year is Bangkok where the Central World Square is the highlight of the city on the main Eve when various people gather together to celebrate the arrival of New Year. Fascinating fireworks that place here and the square is dotted with various bars and clubs that come to life as soon as the clock strikes 12. Another enchanting thing to do in Bangkok is to take a lavish dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya River where you can relish international and Thai buffet along with exotic drinks and seafood. Witness the intriguing skyline and the fireworks for a soul-satisfying new year experience. Bangkok hosts some of the best new year parties in the world like Meta Music Festival, White Party, Glitter & Glam and Beam NYE. Various rooftop dining venues like Sky Bar at Lebua, Octave Rooftop Bar – Marriott at Hotel Sukhumvit and Sirocco can also be booked to enjoy a spectacular New Year bash.

Where to Stay: Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, JW Marriott Hotel – Bangkok, Sofitel Bangkok Sukhumvit, Bangkok Marriott Marquis Queen's Park

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/bangkok-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Attend various events at Khao San Road, enjoy a countdown party at Central World Square, enjoy a dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya River

Nearest Airport: New Bangkok International Airport

Ideal For: Couples, Friends

12. Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam is a stunning destination to ring the New Year bells as you can enjoy best parties at public squares in Amsterdam like Dam Square, Nieuwmarkt and Rembrandtplein. The best part about these squares is that they are free and one can enjoy new year celebrations with gusto. Beer tents can also be spotted with live entertainment. Amsterdam is one of the best places to go for New Year’s Eve with family as there are ample of sophisticated parties that takes place here. For a little out of the box experience, head to Amstel River and run into the chilly water of the river to welcome the arrival of New Year with thousands of other people. Amsterdam Light Festival is another happening event that takes place every year from December to January with canals and roads all illuminated with fairy lights, making the whole ambience extremely enchanting.

Where to Stay: Park Inn Amsterdam, QO Amsterdam, Hilton Amsterdam, Hotel NH Collection Amsterdam Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/amsterdam-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Enjoy at the Amsterdam light festival, Experience the best New Year celebrations at the many squares in Amsterdam

Nearest Airport: Schiphol Airport

Ideal for: Families, Couples

13. Prague, Czech Republic

Prague is a stunning destination to welcome New Year in style where one can witness one of the best fireworks from spots like Wenceslas Square and Old Town Square. If you like to avoid too much crowded places, then head to Petrin Hill or Charles Bridge to witness the spectacular views. Partying while cruising is another great option to celebrate New Year in Prague. Jazz cruise, boat party, dinner cruise etc. are some of the options available. One of the best places to go on New Year in central Europe is Prague in Czech Republic.

Where to Stay: Grand Majestic Hotel Prague, Hilton Prague, H7 Palace, Grand Hotel Praha

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/prague-new-year-2024-1

Things to Do: Mesmerize at the fireworks at Old Town Square, Enjoy New Year’s Eve party at the cruise or a boat,

Nearest Airport: Václav Havel Airport Prague

Ideal for: Families, Couples

14. Madrid, Spain

A city which is world-renowned for its parties goes crazy especially on the New Year’s Eve. If you are searching for where to go for New Year celebrations then we would be definitely recommend Madrid to you. One unique tradition which you would find here in Madrid is eating 12 grapes sharp at 12:00 am marking the arrival of New Year. Feasting on a scrumptious dinner is another way of celebrating New Year in Madrid, the traditional dinner here usually consists of lamb or seafood. Royal Palace is another hotspot for New Year celebrations in Madrid. Witness a great countdown party at Puerta del Sol with a huge variety of drinks and food.

Where to Stay: Hotel Catalonia Atocha, Holiday Inn Express Madrid – Getafe, InterContinental Madrid, Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid

Book With: https://locktrip.com/guides/madrid-new-year-1

Things to Do: Follow the tradition of eating 12 grapes at 12:00 am, feast on a heaty dinner, stroll through the Royal Palace

Nearest Airport: Madrid Barajas Airport

Ideal for: Families, Friends

15. Vancouver, Canada

Another happening New Year destination is Vancouver in Canada which comes to life on the main Eve of New Year. The best way to celebrate New Year in Vancouver is by booking a cruise and party all night with great music, drinks, fireworks and a lot more. Canada Place and Vancouver Convention Center are the two main hotspots in Vancouver to celebrate New Year. Various annual events also take place here, so people can explore different places and enjoy eclectic parties on New Year’s Eve.

Where to Stay: Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Pan Pacific Vancouver, Hotel Fairmont Pacific Rim, the Sylvia Hotel

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/vancouver-new-year-1

Things to Do: Cruise party, attend events, marvel at the fireworks over Canada Place and Vancouver Convention Center

Nearest Airport: Vancouver International Airport

Ideal for: Families, Friends

16. London, England

One of the best places to go on New Year in the world is London where the celebration of New Year’s Eve takes place on a grand scale. Thames river with stunning backdrop of the New Year fireworks make for the most picturesque view. One needs to pay to watch the fireworks from the main staging area while free views can be admired from spots like Alexandra Palace, Primrose Hill and Greenwich Park. A dine-in option at London Skybar is also a great option to celebrate New Year in London where one can also indulge in a thrilling champagne party while admiring the stunning views from the top. Entering into New Year with a fascinating countdown party can be witnessed at the Big Ben, the iconic monument in London.

Where to Stay: Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London, The Waldorf Hilton, London, Sea Containers London, The Ampersand Hotel, Apex City of London Hotel

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/london-new-year-1

Things to Do: Admire fireworks from Thames River, enjoy fine dining at rooftop restaurants, take part in the countdown party at Big Ben

Nearest Airport: Heathrow Airport

Ideal for: Families, Couples

17. Vienna, Austria

Looking for best places in the world to celebrate New Year 2023? Get your tickets booked for a fancy gala dinner in Vienna to welcome the arrival in New Year in the best possible way. Also known as Silvester, New Year’s Eve in Austria is celebrated with great enthusiasm and Silvesterpfad is the major highlight of the city as it is a series of events and shows that takes place on the New Year’s Eve. If wandering through the lit markets fascinate you, then Silvesterdorf and Neujahrmarkt are two good options which become lively during the Christmas and New Year time in Vienna.

Where to Stay: Grand Hotel Wien, Park Hyatt Vienna, Palais Hansen Kempinski, Hotel Sans Souci Wien, The Ritz-Carlton, Vienna

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/vienna-new-year-1

Things to Do: Stroll through the fancy markets, enjoy a gala dinner and get New Year vibes at Stephansplatz or Rathausplatz Square.

Nearest Airport: Vienna Airport (VIE)

Ideal for: Families, Couples

18. Hawaii, USA

Hawaii is one of the best New Year destinations that offers a great party experience to all the enthusiastic souls. There are various resorts and other party destinations in Hawaii that throw grand New Year bash. One crazy thing that happens only in Hawaii is the dropping of objects like a pineapple drop which is quite famous amongst the local people here. Hawaii also offers opportunities to celebrate New Year 2023 on the scenic beaches or on a dinner cruise with exotic drink in hand and mesmerizing views. Marvel at the fascinating fireworks at Poipu Beach Park or book a fancy cocktail cruise at Lahaina Harbor. There are ample things to do in Hawaii on New Year’s Eve which makes it one of the best places in the world to celebrate New Year.

Where to Stay: Hotel LaCroix, Hampton Inn & Suites Oahu/Kapolei, Hilton Waikoloa Village, The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua, Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/hawaii-new-year-1

Things to Do: Enjoy a cocktail cruise at Lahaina Harbor, see the dropping objects, marvel at the fireworks at Poipu Beach Park

Nearest Airport: Honolulu Airport (HNL)

Ideal for: Couples

19. Lisbon, Portugal

New Year celebrations in Lisbon are taken on next level with grand parties, eye-catching fireworks and live music. If you are someone who fancies welcoming the New Year with great pomp and show, then Lisbon should be in your itinerary. Enjoy the best New Year Eve events at Terreiro do Paço with the local people there with artists performing live shows. There are different clubs at Pink Street and Bairro Alto that hosts a number of thrilling new year parties. If you are someone who likes a calmer and serene celebration on New Year’s Eve, then we would suggest you to attend Fado, a traditional singing of the Portuguese which is very soothing to the senses.

Where to Stay: Hotel Ritz, Myriad, Avenida Palace, Hotel Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Lisboa

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/lisbon-new-year-1

Things to Do: Attend a Fado night, witness new year events at Terreiro do Paço, party at the various clubs in Pink street

Nearest Airport: Lisbon Portela Airport

Ideal for: Couples, Friends

20. Tokyo, Japan

One of the best places to celebrate New Year 2023 in the world is undoubtably Tokyo in Japan. The new year celebrations at this place starts from 29th December and continues till 4th January. You get to take part in the festivities for not just one day but for a week. Isn’t it interesting? One of the best places to celebrate new year in Tokyo is Meiji Shrine which is a place brimmed with tourists as it is an important shrine in the city. Another great place to enjoy new year in Tokyo is Zoji-ji Temple where a monk rings the bell 108 times to denote the arrival of new year. Due to the religious and cultural importance, the temple is visited by many locals and tourists alike. If you like crowd and the party vibe, then partake in the countdown party that takes place at the Shibuya Crossing which is one of the best outdoor New Year parties in the world.

Where to Stay: Hotel Risveglio Akasaka, Park Hyatt Tokyo, Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel,

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/tokyo-new-year-1

Things to Do: Celebrate new year at Meiji Shrine and Zoji-ji Temple, partake in the countdown party at Shibuya Crossing

Nearest Airport: Haneda Airport

Ideal for: Families, Friends

21. Queenstown, New Zealand

If you are looking for where to celebrate New Year 2023, one of the best places to visit is Queenstown in New Zealand. The city is known to host the first New Year celebrations in the world. For a free new year party, head to lakefront where one of the best parties takes place with fireworks, live music and scenic views. With loads of positive vibes, fun and entertainment, it is a great place to enjoy New Year’s Eve. However, there is no alcohol available here. For the best New Year fireworks 2023 in Queenstown, head to Earnslaw Park where the grand new year festivity takes place. Queenstown also has a number of bars and clubs where one can enjoy drinks and music with their friends. For some extra fun and entertainment, head to Rhythm and Alps where renowned musicians from New Zealand as well from other parts of the world come.

Where to Stay: QT Queenstown, Hilton Queenstown Resort & Spa, Heritage Queenstown, The Rees Hotel, Luxury Apartments & Lakeside Residences

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/queenstown-new-year-1

Things to Do: Celebrate at the lakefront, enjoy live music at the various bars, attend Rhythm and Alps event for extra entertainment

Nearest Airport: Queenstown International Airport

Ideal for: Family, Couples, Friends

22. Berlin, Germany

The 1.8 km length between Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column becomes over-filled with roughly one million people eager to do whatever to celebrate the new year and party," to use the phrase. One of the greatest spots in Europe to ring in the new year in Berlin. Berlin's streets are the busiest on December 31 due to the level of involvement, which will make your New Year's party in 2023 even more spectacular. It goes without saying that there will be fireworks, music, dance, noise, cuisine, magic shows, alcohol, beer, and other fun things to do to make it one of the greatest venues to ring in the new year in 2023.

Where to Stay: Fjord Hotel Berlin and Hilton Berlin

Book with: https://locktrip.com/guides/berlin-new-year-1

Things to Do: Dance party at the 3 storey Berlin Tv Tower and check out Berlin's romantic locales if you're traveling there with someone special.

Nearest Airport: Berlin Tegel Airport

Ideal for: Family and Friends

Tutorial to withdraw BTC from COINKIT via Lightning Network Invoice

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:11:00 +0000

What are some of the Lightning Network’s use cases?

Twitter allows users to send and receive Bitcoin “tips” via the Lightning Network. Via a Lightning Network-compatible payments app called Strike, many of Twitter’s 360 million monthly active users can send Bitcoin payments to other Twitter accounts instantly and for free. (Twitter isn’t actually the first creator-driven social platform to incorporate the Lightning Network — Substack has allowed BTC payments since late August.)

El Salvador became the first nation to make Bitcoin legal tender — in part because of the the desire to save Salvadorans some $400 million annually in money transfer fees. The government-created wallet, Chivo, is Lightning-compatible and designed to enable seamless cross-border payments. As of October, Chivo had consistently been one of the most-downloaded apps in El Salvador.

A peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange called Paxful, which processes millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin transactions in emerging markets and claims to have 1.5 million users in Africa alone, also recently announced it will enable Lightning payments. This integration could enable fast and cheap Bitcoin payments for millions of users.

How can you get started with the Lightning Network?

If you want to make transactions using the Lightning Network, you’ll need to send some BTC (for instance from your Coinbase account) to a Lightning-compatible wallet. There are dozens to choose from. Popular options include both “custodial” and “non-custodial” wallets. Here’s the difference:

Custodial wallets: Options include Strike, Blue Wallet, and Wallet of Satoshi. These tend to be good for beginners, because they simplify the sending and receiving crypto by managing your private keys. If, for instance, you lose your password, you’ll be able to reset it.

Non-custodial wallets: Options include Muun, Breez, Phoenix, and Zap. These wallets are user-controlled and popular with more experienced traders — nobody but you has your private keys. If you lose or damage your wallet or forget your password, you could lose access to your funds. So make sure you learn how to back up or restore whichever wallet you choose.

I will use Muun wallet for this example:

1.After you downloaded, installed and created your MUUN wallet ( DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR WALLET ), you will need to create an invoice of 10 000 SATOSHI or the amount you want to withdraw:

Choose “Lighthing” and add the Amount.

After that press “COPY”.

Now you have your invoice 😊

2.Next step is to go into Coinkit direct message on Twitter

A.First command to enter is : /changecoin BTC

This will select BTC as your coin that you want to withdraw or deposit

B.Second command will be the withdraw command : /withdraw <invoice> <amount>

Replace <invoice> with your invoice that you created earlier in MUUN wallet and <amount> with the amount that you desired to withdraw.

In our case the command for withdrawal will look like this :

/withdraw <lnbc100u1pjpsazrpp58eqhvrlu09f4667x97s66adjem4udg8nwarqnfj3ypacqv88cwnqdqqcqzzgxqyz5vqrzjqwnvuc0u4txn35cafc7w94gxvq5p3cu9dd95f7hlrh0fvs46wpvhdeaec35jjhxhr5qqqqryqqqqthqqpyrzjqw8c7yfutqqy3kz8662fxutjvef7q2ujsxtt45csu0k688lkzu3ldeaec35jjhxhr5qqqqryqqqqthqqpysp58fm9eldwvj4hqjxdm6rz5agavl94vksumfd82rcqf87wk02k6z8s9qypqsqvehvj37hrfammp7erd2qs2c4fy0jpyuzxpfgqzgl6z26lpnew2kh6af3s67ra6rnewkn8khh23egf2mxg38jj2uuq7u8jtgfnzcpjqsqjchkhh> <10000>

To learn more about COINKIT please visit wiki.coinkit.de

Happy Lighthing !!!

How to Stake Hydra (HYDRA) - Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 May 2021 10:37:00 +0000

How to Get the Hydra Airdrop and Start Staking for 100% + APY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 May 2021 10:19:00 +0000

The team behind LockTrip recently launched the Hydra blockchain, along with an amazing airdrop opportunity for holders of LOC (the LockTrip token). In order to receive the full airdrop over 50 weeks, there are certain requirements. Make sure you read the instructions carefully (detailed requirement info here).

Before you begin

I strongly recommend signing up for LockTrip. LockTrip is a travel marketplace offering up to 60% savings off hotel accommodation, created by the makers of the HYDRA chain. By signing up and booking hotels there, you are supporting the Hydra Chain and LockTrip, since 3% of every booking’s value is used to buy and burn the LOC token, and every transaction uses HYDRA! You can also become an affiliate and earn a lifetime 3% commission for all of your referrals’ bookings!

Step 1 — Get some LOC

If you already have some LOC on the Ethereum blockchain (ERC20 LOC), you need to swap it before continuing. Follow these instructions to perform the swap. You can track the progress of your swap here. Once you have completed the swap, go to Step 3.

If you already have some HYDRA (HRC) LOC that you bought recently, you don’t need to perform the swap. If it’s in your own wallet, go to Step 3. If it’s on an exchange, go to Step 2.

If you don’t yet have any LOC, head to Kucoin to get some! It’s also available on Hitbtc or bitcoin.com. All LOC on exchanges is HYDRA (HRC) LOC, so can be withdrawn directly to your HYDRA wallet (Step 2).

Step 2 — Get a HYDRA Wallet

You cannot participate in the HYDRA airdrop with your LOC on an exchange. You must withdraw it to your own HYDRA wallet (send your LOC to your HYDRA receive address). There are two options for storing your LOC in a HYDRA wallet: the web wallet or the installable wallet. The main difference between the two is the installable wallet can be used to stake your HYDRA once received. The web wallet cannot be used for staking.

Step 3 — Complete KYC

The law under which LockTrip operates requires that you complete KYC in order to receive the HYDRA airdrop. Unfortunately there are some countries (including the USA) which are prohibited. You can complete KYC here. You will need to enter your HYDRA wallet address that contains your LOC from Step 1 / 2. Note that driver’s licenses are not a valid form of ID. You will need a passport or national ID card. You can check the progress of your KYC here, under “KYC Status”.

Once you have completed steps 1~3, all you have to do is wait for your HYDRA to arrive!

PLEASE NOTE: Now that the airdrop has begun, any new LOC additions and new KYC submissions will enter a four-week “cool down” period. You will begin receiving the HYDRA airdrop after the cool-down period (for those new LOC).

Step 4 — Stake Your HYDRA (Optional)

Staking is not required to receive the airdrop, however, it’s a great way to further capitalize on it. Using a raspberry pi is a great way to do this, and it’s actually much simpler than setting up AWS. In order to stake, you must install the staking wallet on your computer or on a hosted server, such as AWS. If you are staking on your own computer, it must be left on 24/7.

It’s also possible to stake on Kucoin’s pool-x staking pool. A regular payout is guaranteed, however, the APY is lower than staking yourself. In addition, if you send more than a certain % of your airdropped HYDRA to pool-x to stake, you will disqualify yourself from the remaining HYDRA airdrops. The amount of HYDRA you must keep in your wallet each week is shown in the distribution sheet‘s 5th column (“Week xx Minimum HYDRA Balance”).

Step 5 — Sign up for LockTrip

While you’re here, I strongly recommend signing up for LockTrip! LockTrip is a travel marketplace offering up to 60% savings off hotel accommodation, created by the makers of the HYDRA chain. If you refer people to LockTrip, you will receive 3% of their future booking payments, forever!. LockTrip is also the first project to utilize the HYDRA blockchain.

www.locktrips.com

www.hydrachain.org

LockTrip to enable DGB as a direct payment and become Sponsoring Partner of the DigiByte Foundation!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 May 2021 16:36:00 +0000

North Korean Hackers Successfully Phished Cyber Researchers Using a Fake Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 07:50:00 +0000

A recent phishing campaign by North Korean nation-state hackers successfully duped a number of security professionals who were involved in vulnerability research and development, according to a new report from Google’s Threat Analysis Group.

The unnamed threat group used various social engineering tactics to pose as fellow “white hat” security specialists, ensnaring the unsuspecting experts by convincing them that they were looking to collaborate on research, the TAG report shows.

The biggest part of this ruse involved the creation of a fake research blog, replete with write-ups and analysis. The hackers even lured in unsuspecting “guest” security writers to contribute, in an apparent “attempt to build additional credibility.” They also posted YouTube videos via social media in which they deconstructed “fake exploits” that they had executed—another scheme to build trust.

A number of threat researchers spoke out on Twitter Monday night, claiming they had been targeted by the campaign.

The hackers loaded their blog with malware, in an attempt to compromise researchers who visited it. Clicking on a write-up hosted on the site delivered malware and created a backdoor that would “begin beaconing” (i.e., communicating) with the hacker group’s command and control server. Zero-day vulnerabilities were likely used in this campaign, as a majority of targeted individuals were running fully patched Chrome browser and Windows 10 versions, the report notes.

Other methods of malware deployment occurred through “collaboration” on research. The report states:

“After establishing initial communications, the actors would ask the targeted researcher if they wanted to collaborate on vulnerability research together, and then provide the researcher with a Visual Studio Project. Within the Visual Studio Project would be source code for exploiting the vulnerability, as well as an additional DLL that would be executed through Visual Studio Build Events. The DLL is custom malware that would immediately begin communicating with actor-controlled C2 domains.”

A variety of tools were used to aid in the threat group’s deception —including emails, fake Twitter and Telegram accounts, LinkedIn, Keybase, and others. In their report, TAG researchers listed the URLs for a number of now-defunct social media and Linkedin accounts that they say were used in the hack.

“We hope this post will remind those in the security research community that they are targets to government-backed attackers and should remain vigilant when engaging with individuals they have not previously interacted with,” TAG researchers wrote.

https://gizmodo.com

Keep Your iPhone 12 and Its Accessories Away From Pacemakers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 07:46:00 +0000

LockTrips.com Begins 2021 With a Massive UX Platform Upgrade

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 07:44:00 +0000

LockTrip Integrates ETN as a Payment Method for its Travel Marketplace

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 10:37:00 +0000

LockTrip Partners with Electroneum, Reaching 4.1 Million Registered Users

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 14:29:00 +0000

Today we are excited to announce a major partnership with Electroneum — a leading project for empowering people in emerging countries and the builders of the freelancer platform AnyTask.com.

LockTrips.com becomes the official Travel Partner of Electroneum

As part of the partnership, ETN holders will soon be able to spend their ETN on the LockTrip travel marketplace, accessing more than 2 million hotels and properties at up to 60% discount.
LockTrip will be featured inside the Electroneum apps, instantly being exposed to a user base of more than 2.7 million app downloads (as a mid-term milestone)
We will also be featured through a special page within the Electroneum website, educating ETN holders about how they can use their coins to make their next travel booking.

The partnership will further be expanded by additional milestones as we progress.

What is Electroneum?

Electroneum is a multi-level project with several key areas in expansion. Currently their strongest product is AnyTask, which is further described below. ETN empowers communities in emerging markets to make their payments online and enter the digital financial economy without having to setup a bank account.

People can use their ETN to pay utility bills, make payments in stores or top up their mobile network credits. More than 200,000 top-ups have been made so far, showcasing the strong community behind the Electroneum project.

Despite their focus on emerging countries, roughly 50% of the traffic originates from the developed world.

AnyTask.com — A Powerful Freelancer Platform

AnyTask allows sellers to earn ETN through performing digital tasks for buyers around the globe and receive payment via the blockchain and their smartphone. ETN can be used in over 140+ countries to purchase airtime and data, as well as pay for utility bills and a growing list of other goods and services.

“Our freelancers at AnyTask.com earn their rewards in ETN and are always looking for useful platforms to spend them on. LockTrip is a perfect fit for us.“
— Jonathan Marriott, Marketing Manager at Electroneum

Buyers can access low cost skills for hundreds of different digital tasks, whilst enabling the world’s poorest people to benefit from a new revenue stream that they can work on flexibly in their spare time. More than 4 million users took advantage of AnyTask to date.

Note to LockTrip Affiliates: Outsourcing can be a cheap solution if you have difficulties with designing a post or writing content. In many cases freelancers can do the job at a low cost. Some examples (taken out from AnyTask) are shown below.

We are welcoming the Electroneum project and its team to our ecosystem and are excited to integrate ETN as a payment method into our marketplace.

The integration is scheduled for completion by November 13.

www.locktrips.com

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip phone officially revealed in commercial during the Oscars

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 08:29:00 +0000

Six Spectacular Outdoor Pools for a Snowy Swim for your 2020 winter vacantion

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 07:56:00 +0000

While tiptoeing through the cold while wearing a bathing suit might seem a little extreme for some, the delicious juxtaposition of relaxing in a heated outdoor pool while delicate snowflakes gently fall all around can make that short, but chilly journey 100% worthwhile - especially if there’s a stunning wintery landscape to enjoy. In fact, with 84% of global travelers* believing that taking time to relax during their vacation is important and 81% saying that beautiful natural scenery is a great motivation to travel in the first place, a soothing, steamy dip in a pool with spectacular views conveniently ticks a couple of boxes of what travelers are looking for in 2020. With that in mind, and considering that 44% of global travelers also want to stay in an accommodation surrounded by snow**, we have put together a list of six amazing outdoor pools surrounded by stellar, snowy landscapes, guaranteed to deliver some relaxing, once-in-a-lifetime, utterly Instagrammable travel memories.

The Cambrian, Switzerland

Magnificent, uninterrupted views of the Swiss Alps await at the panoramic outdoor pool of The Cambrian. Offering one of the best views in Switzerland, this outstanding heated swimming pool is THE place to be after a busy day hitting the slopes. Although this amazing infinity pool is considered the crown jewel of the property, the hotel’s spa offers an array of unique treatments, specially designed to soothe the mind, body and soul. For travelers who don’t plan to do any skiing, it’s still a perfect place to relax and enjoy the majesty of Mother Nature in all her wintery glory.

“I found this place on Booking and was blown away by the pictures, but in person it is somehow even more magical. They have thought through every detail in creating an atmosphere that will make you feel like you are in a dream!” - Lisa, USA

Arakur Ushuaia Resort & Spa, Argentina

The pristine infinity pools at the Arakur Ushuaia Resort & Spa in Argentina are a truly spectacular spot to enjoy dramatic, uninterrupted views of Ushuaia Bay and the Beagle Canal stretching all the way to the surrounding snow-capped mountains. Located in Cerro Alarkén Natural Reserve in Southern Patagonia, 800 feet (250 metres) above sea level, this unique accommodation is at one with the surrounding natural environment, nestled cozily within the surrounding native forest. As Ushuaia is a popular port for Antarctic cruises, guests who are preparing for a truly epic polar adventure can enjoy a variety of outdoor winter activities in the area before they depart, such as skiing, sled riding and snowshoeing. Imagine daydreaming about your impending Antarctic journey while soaking in those glacial blue waters, which are, of course, heated. #travelgoals

“Having an outdoor swim at -3 surrounded by white peaks and viewing Ushuaia from above is dreamy”. - R, United Kingdom

Frost and Fire Hotel, Iceland

Located on the banks of a river, right at the source of bubbling geothermal springs in Hveragerdi, Iceland, Frost and Fire Hotel invites travelers to escape and unwind in its amazing outdoor spa facilities, including an impressive outdoor pool that is warmed exclusively by hot springs underground. Swim a couple of laps as the snowflakes begin to fall or simply kick back and enjoy the soothing sky blue waters while admiring the surrounding idyllic Icelandic landscape. On a clear night, guests might even be treated to an impressive display of the Northern Lights.

“The hotel is situated near a geothermal area and river and has a pool and two hot tubs naturally heated by hot springs. We were able to take a dip in the river then warm up in the hot tub while watching the northern lights.” - Isabella, USA

El Lodge, Ski & Spa, Spain

Set in a charming Alpine-inspired structure, surrounded by the impressive snow-covered peaks of Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada range, the heated outdoor pool at El Lodge, Ski & Spa provides guests with a picturesque setting to unwind at that’s surrounded by nature, even when it’s snowing. Whether just finished a vigorous day on the slopes of have simply come for the crisp mountain air and a little R&R, travelers can soak up some winter rays on the spacious sundeck or just float their cares away in the Finnish hot tub.

“Never written a review before but compelled to this time. This place needs to be seen to be believed. It’s utterly amazing.” - Simon, Spain

The Green Leaf, Niseko Village, Japan

Slip into the therapeutic waters of The Green Leaf, Niseko Village’s heated outdoor pool and feel as if you’ve stepped into an immersive Zen paradise. The Green Leaf Onsen is a true oasis of serenity, surrounded by beautiful pine trees laden with snow, reflected perfectly in its crystal clear waters, which are fed entirely by natural hot springs. The spring water is believed to have healing powers and comes out of the ground at about 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) - ideal for soothing sore muscles from an active day out in the elements and sure to keep guests nice and warm, even when the snow is falling.

“Heated outdoor pool and onsen are excellent to relax your muscles after a day on the slopes.” - Iryna, South Korea

Fairmont Banff Springs, Canada

Although the Fairmont Banff Springs was originally modeled after a real-life Scottish baronial castle when it was constructed in 1888, it’s now a Canadian National Historic Site and landmark in its own right. Overlooking the mountains and dense pine forests of Banff National Park in southern Alberta, this iconic hotel’s heated outdoor pool is perfect for a warm wintery swim. No matter how cold it is outside, this elegant pool entices with a soothing soak, surrounded by snow-kissed spruce and frosty fir trees. While many travelers go to Banff for the winter sports and fresh mountain air, they’ll stay for the simmering, indulgent waters and awe-inspiring views of the Canadian Rockies from this hotel’s sensational outdoor pool.

“You feel like stepping back into a more genteel, formal, grand era. The pools are beautiful - didn't want to get out of the outdoor pool, heavenly.” - Shari, USA

Booking News

Blockchain news - Major Deployment & Migration to LockTrip.com Completed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 07:05:00 +0000

LockTrip saves you 23% in Istanbul

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:43:00 +0000

Announcing #LOC Economy 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:31:00 +0000

Exploration of the challenges that accompany our current LOC economy. We have outlined 6 main challenges and enriched your understanding through explanatory visuals.
Presentation of our solutions and a detailed analysis of how they affect the challenges outlined in section 1. Comparing the efficiency of the old vs. new economy by taking in 3 key factors and providing graphical representations.
Summary of Impact. Listing 12 bullet points that summarize the analysis of section 2.
Simulations and a dynamic simulation tool for you to play with. Presenting you a total of 5 pre-set scenarios we’ve made (1 detailed focusing on user base growth with reference to affiliates and viral effect, 1 lightweight version that would be easy to play with, and 3 highly dedicated ones to showcase key effects of the new economy).
Conclusion and a short FAQ

Major changes require strong arguments. This is why we prepared a 25-page argumentation document, which leads you through our own thinking process and demonstrates how we came up with the solutions. You will notice that we worked a lot with data to verify the effectiveness of each upgrade.

To give you the same experience, we added booking volume/price simulations to the document, so that you can confirm each argument first-hand. Here is a quick overview of the document structure:

We can’t wait to get your feedback on it! Take your time though. We know that the material we present is very information-dense and requires some serious thinking to grasp all aspects of it.

We will be hosting a survey next week as soon as we have the feeling that the concept has been well-understood and discussions matured towards a general consensus.

LOCKTRIP.COM

Why The Travel Industry Is #Blockchain 's Best Bet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 08:24:00 +0000

In 2017, blockchain projects flourished, where ICOs managed to raise billions. 2018 was a crash year for cryptos, even though the sums raised this year were twice as high as the previous one. Blockchain projects promised a lot, however 71% of them still have no working products. The argument was that blockchain is still in its infancy, and many are supposed to deliver their products in 2019. And one of the best places to watch where blockchain will rise again is in the travel industry.

Problems we face

The travel industry is uniquely suited to benefit from blockchain. There are many different players involved, and all need to collaborate seamlessly. When someone wants to travel, they need to deal with airlines, book hotels, find activities, navigate airports and maybe rent a car. They will also have to change their currency so they can shop at their destination.

The hoteliers and airlines also need to collaborate (and compete). Besides running their own website and reservation systems, most of them have found it necessary to collaborate with Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to land on more “supermarket shelves” globally. Running these systems adds to the costs on the end customers, but there are also many other hidden fees involved.

For one, we must consider the transaction fees and inefficiencies in the finance and banking industry, especially when different parties from different countries are involved. Another problem is the setup and integration costs that are involved when service providers need to synchronize their disparate, siloed databases. A standard travel-related transaction involves multiple service providers, from GDSs and bedbanks to end-service companies and eventually point-of-sale players. Third, we have the GDPR and the importance of security and privacy. Fourth, we have the problem of fraud, which costs the airlines $1 billion annually.

Finally, we have the “invisible costs.” Services like the GDS are costly, especially for smaller players. This makes the entry barrier significantly higher for them, which means many innovative startups are left in the dark. In addition, the data held by GDSs can be expensive and inaccessible for hoteliers, who could otherwise have more distribution options. Expedia and Priceline have a 93% duopoly, which according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association “hurts consumer choice and the small businesses in our industry, which represent some 60 percent of all the hotels in the U.S., who are struggling to compete as a result of the gouging commission rates charged by the [online travel agencies].”

Blockchain disrupts the duopoly

Blockchain removes the intermediaries and offers a decentralized system where different parties can interact without needing to trust each other, removing a lot of overhead. This has produced real results.

“Our project has outperformed the market with +200% during the bearish market,” says Nikola Alexandrov, founder of Locktrip.com , which offers global coverage to about 100,000 hotels. “The prices on our marketplace are on average approximately -19% cheaper than the cheapest alternative—booking.com.” He continues: “our prices are so cheap, we are not allowed to advertise them in Trivago.”

But the lower costs are just one of blockchain’s benefits—there are many more.

Fraud

Rita Hunter was sentenced to jail over 14 charges of fraud. Her fake travel company charged people for flight and accommodation services without actually booking them, leaving them out of pocket and without the holidays “they looked forward to and worked hard to pay for.” This is no limited incident.

According to Barry Gooch, chairman of the Prevention of Fraud in Travel campaign, “a significant issue for the travel industry has been the way criminals have been able to commit fraud as a director of one company that is a member of a consortium, then move to another and commit fraud again because there has been no established, legal method of sharing such information.”

Blockchain offers the ideal solution for these cases with smart contracts. As Alexandrov explains, “each booking is locked into a smart contract until the moment of check-out. This gives unparalleled security for the traveler compared to traditional bookings (where once they pay they have no guarantee that they will get the service which they paid for).”

Obstacles and solutions

However, GDS companies claim they offer more services and real-time pricing for distribution than blockchain ever could.

“There will always be a need for someone to aggregate offers and enable multi-sourced shopping. I don’t think blockchain resolves that,” Philip Likens, director of Sabre Labs, told Reuters. Representatives of Amadeus, Travelport and SITA echoed his comments.

Tony Hird, VP Enterprise Business Architecture at Travelport also pointed out another problem: “You can’t have a real-time environment if you have to wait 10 minutes for the transaction to be committed.”

The third problem is the nature of cryptocurrencies: it currently has a learning curve and requires some levels of technical understanding, which keeps it from mass adoption.

Recently, Michael Culhane, CEO of TripX LLC announced it has resolved the security, transaction speed, and compliance problems that have led large enterprises in the travel industry to hold off on the deployment of blockchain solutions. The platform, which is available on a “test” network, allows for a 10-minute registration process and the payoff of commissions being received same-day.

Without blockchain, the cost and complexity of deposits, invoicing, batch processes and reconciliation processes could stretch payment and commission settlements between 30 and 90 days. Culhane estimates that for most large enterprises, such savings could translate to a full percentage point on their EBITDA.

As for the “learning curve” problem, LockTrip is offering a model where users can pay with their credit card—the system will automatically purchase the necessary tokens on crypto exchanges. Users do not feel like they are using cryptocurrencies as everything is taken care of behind the scenes.

Predictions for 2019

The industry benefits greatly from blockchain adoption—but it also seems to be the path the customers are taking. According to predictions from Phocuswire, while Expedia and Booking.com are trying to be a one-stop shop for consumer travel purchases, consumers love to shop around. They like deals, they like to read reviews and they like to get recommendations from their friends. For these reasons, the path they take can involve hundreds of searches across a wide range of sites and apps. The trend will be moving away from centralized portals to find the best deals, and here is where blockchain can make a difference.

Forbes.com

Three Korean operators launch #5G networks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 09:32:00 +0000

Is your #Android phone watching you? Study of more than 17,000 popular apps reveals 'disturbing practice'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 10:18:00 +0000

Researchers who set out to investigate whether smartphones eavesdrop on consumers' conversations debunked one conspiracy theory and ended up finding another "disturbing practice."

Five researchers from Northeastern University in Boston, who specialize in computer science, studied more than 17,000 popular Android apps — nearly half of which were allowed access to a user's camera and microphone — over the past year.

During their study, they did not find any apps, either on Google Play, App China, Mi.com or Anzhi, that turned on microphones and secretly recorded your conversations. They did, however, discover some may be "watching" your phone activity.

"We empirically studied the behavior these apps using a combination of static and dynamic analysis techniques," the researchers explained in an online statement.

The researchers used an automated system to test the functions and uses of each app using 10 different Android phones, according to Gizmodo. The system monitored whether these apps sent out any information to third parties — and found that they did. The study did not include Apple's iOS operating system.

One of the phones tracked an app called GoPuff, a Seamless-like food delivery app, recording information and sending it to a site affiliated with software company Appsee.

"The research tested dozens of apps that use Appsee, and only one of them (GoPuff) did not disclose this fact to their users, and it appears that GoPuff were capturing zipcode information with Appsee. In this case it appears that Appsee's technology was misused by the customer and that our Terms of Service were violated," Appsee CEO Zahi Boussiba told Fox News on Thursday. “Once this issue was brought to our attention we've immediately disabled tracking capabilities for the mentioned app and purged all the relevant data from our servers."

Boussiba pointed to Appsee's Terms of Service policy, which states customers must disclose the use of any third party technology.

Google Play notes that all apps are required to "post a privacy policy that, together with any in-app disclosures, explain what user data your app collects and transmits, how it’s used, and the types of parties with whom it’s shared."

Google confirmed a part of Appsee's services may put some developers "at risk of violating Play policy,"and said they're still investigating issues recently uncovered by researchers.

"We always appreciate the research community's hard work to help improve online privacy and security practices," a Google spokesman said in a statement to Fox News on Thursday. "We're working closely with [Appsee] to help ensure developers appropriately communicate the SDK's functionality with their apps' end-users."

But that doesn't mean all apps follow the rules. Some apps are open about their ability to perform screen recordings, but they don't all inform a user when their screen is being taped nor do they explain they are sending the information to another party.

"Our study reveals several alarming privacy risks in the Android app ecosystem, including apps that over-provision their media permissions and apps that share image and video data with other parties in unexpected ways, without user knowledge or consent," the researchers said. "We also identify a previously unreported privacy risk that arises from third party libraries that record and upload screenshots and videos of the screen without informing the user. This can occur without needing any permissions from the user."

NU researchers Elleen Pan, Jingjing Ren, Martina Lindorfer, Christo Wilson and David Choffnes are planning to present their findings at the Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium (PETS) in Barcelona in July.

Foxnews.com

Start your cloud mining with Genesis mining promo code: CZL5k6

How To Take Part In #Binance #Airdrop ’s

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:59:00 +0000

What is Binance?

Binance is the fastest growing cryptocurrency exchange platform in the world. Launching on July 14th 2017, they became the third biggest exchange after just 143 days… Fast forward to February 2017 and they have surged past 7 million users, and had the third highest trading volume across all cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Read the full February report here
Binance allows users to exchange popular cryptocurrency coins, generally for Bitcoin, Ethereum or the increasingly popular Binance Coin which allows users a range of other benefits for doing so.

Binance is said to be valued at close to $2 billion, which, if true would make Binance the fastest ever startup to reach unicorn status (a private company which reaches $1 billion in valuation). Contributing factors to this include the fact the site is extremely user friendly, offers a referral program and now they’re supporting and offering coin airdrops! This article will teach you exactly what an airdrop is and how to take part in Binance airdrop’s
To sign up to Binance click here
What is an Airdrop?
An Airdrop, in cryptocurrency terms is simply when a blockchain based project distributes free coins or tokens to the community. In most cases there will be set criteria for receiving the coins/tokens via an airdrop, generally this is simply that users hold the actual token.

What Airdrops are being offered through Binance?

In the last couple of days Binance have announced that they will be supporting a couple of airdrop’s through their cryptocurrency trading platform.
The first of which was announced 26th February 2018… Binance announced they will be supporting the Ontology Airdrop which was announced by the NEO council at the beginning of February. The NEO council currently manages 10% of the ONT tokens and have announced they will be distributing 20,000,000 (20million) ONT tokens at block height 1974823, which will is estimated to occur March 1st 2018. To read more about the Ontology airdrop click here. Although Binance will be supporting the ONT airdrop they have still announced that ONT will not be automatically listed on Binance

Ontology (ONT) will go through the same strict listing review process as any other coin/token. It will not be listed on Binance by default.
The second airdrop was announced 27th February 2018 and is not only an incentive for users to hold Binance Coin (BNB), but also is encouragement that Binance may well be offering this as a regular feature going forward…
The airdrop itself will be awarded to the 500,000 Binance accounts with the greatest amounts of Binance Coin (BNB). The coin which will be received by these users is called Blockmason (BCPT) and will amount to a total of 1,500,000 BCPT tokens. Distributing a total of 3 BCPT tokens to each of the top Binance account holders. The announcement saw an initial increase of between 15-20% for Binance Coin with users looking to benefit from the distribution of the free BCPT tokens.

How to take part in Binance Airdrop’s?

It is simple to take part in the Binance airdrops’, you simply need to register on Binance by clicking here. Create an account and watch out for the official announcements. It is not too late to take part in these airdrops either, once you have created your account. Simply purchase NEO and Binance Coin (BNB), hold them on your Binance account. Remember that to receive your ONT coins you will need to wait until Binance officially support Ontology (ONT). To receive the BCPT tokens you will need to be have one of the top 5000,000 Binance Coin balances.

Start your cloud mining with Genesis mining promo code: CZL5k6

#CryptoNight algorithm and how to mine #cryptocurrency #Monero , #Bytecoin etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:45:00 +0000

Hello, World!

In this post I`d like to tell you about the CryptoNight algorithm and how to mine cryptocurrency Monero, Bytecoin etc. on this algorithm.

A little about the algorithm:

CryptoNight is a proof-of-work algorithm. It is designed to be suitable for ordinary PC CPUs, but currently no special purpose devices for mining are available. Therefore, CryptoNight can only be CPU-mined for the time being. CryptoNight was originally implemented in the CryptoNotecodebase.

CryptoNight relies on random access to the slow memory and emphasizes latency dependence. Each new block depends on all the previous blocks (unlike, for example, scrypt). The algorithm requires about 2 Mb per instance:

1. It fits in the L3 cache (per core) of modern processors.

2. A megabyte of internal memory is almost unacceptable for the modern ASICs.

3. GPUs may run hundreds of concurrent instances, but they are limited in other ways. GDDR5 memory is slower than the CPU L3 cache and remarkable for its bandwidth, not random access speed.

4. Significant expansion of the scratchpad would require an increase in iterations, which in turn implies an overall time increase. "Heavy" calls in a trustless p2p network may lead to serious vulnerabilities, because nodes are obliged to check every new block's proof-of-work. If a node spends a considerable amount of time on each hash evaluation, it can be easily DDoSed by a flood of fake objects with arbitrary work data (nonce values).

How to start mining?

1. You need a program for mining. Go to the link to the website Minergate.

2. Register on the website clicking "Sign up"

3. In the «Downloads» tab choose one of three options «GUI miners», «Console miners», «Admin edition» and download the program for mining. I recommend «GUI miners» tab for the beginners .

4. Install the program on your computer according to your operating system, run the program and enter your login and password.

5. Go to the "Miner" tab and choose the currency you want to mine. In "СPU cores" choose the number of processor cores that will work for mining.

I don’t recommend to load up all the cores, because the computer will work very slow.

You can also connect a video card to help the processor. My video card mines Ethereum, so I use only 2 cores of the CPU.

That’s all. The mining starts.

In the "Dashboard" tab on the website you will be able to see the indices of your mining.

You can withdraw your coins using the "Dashboard” tab on the website or using the program in the "Wallet" tab.

You will also receive fun rewards. Notifications can be disabled in the "Achievments" tab.

In the "Calculator" tab on the website you will be able to calculate the approximate number of coins that you mined on your hashrate.

I have a i5 3570K processor. It produces hashrate of about 60-100 H/s on 2 cores. The amount of mined coins is small, but I have only one computer. If you have several of them, then using all your computers for mining you can get a substantial hashrate and a lot of coins.

You can also earn something from an affiliate program on this website. In the "Affiliate program" tab you will get a link, which you can share with your friends, partners, acquaintances.

You can trade coins on the exchange (Poloniex or Hitbtc).

That's all I wanted to tell you about the CryptoNight algorithm and mining the coins.

In the end, a few links to sites Monero and Bytecoin.

Monero website

Bytecoin website

I wish you good luck and big profits!

Building the #Blockchain to End All Blockchains. #tezos

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:47:00 +0000

Bitcoin, the first practical implementation of blockchain technology, was the buying opportunity of all time. The price of bitcoin has risen faster than any other asset in history, including tulips at the height of the tulip bubble.

#Bitcoin, #Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies, also known as “digital assets,” have been making headlines due to the unprecedented returns early adopters are making from their investments in these digital assets.

Though the price of cryptocurrencies grabs attention, the underlying technology, a distributed digital ledger called blockchain, is even more exciting.

Fundamentally, blockchain allows for a democratic revolution in trust by enabling a decentralized peer-to-peer database, in which cryptography is used to validate transactions. Until blockchain, we’ve relied on centralized authorities such as credit card companies and banks to validate and back transactions.

However, there are significant and real transaction costs associated with relying on these centralized authorities, and of course, they take cuts of each transaction. Additionally, identity theft and manipulation of centralized authorities are real threats and common occurrences, as the recent Equifax hack has shown.

Blockchain replaces centralized authority with decentralized computing. It represents a fundamentally new way for humans to transact with one another by bypassing traditional centralized authorities currently at the heart of almost all human transactions.

But blockchain is still a young, relatively niche technology. There are quite literally billions of transactions daily, from financial trading to people buying cups of coffee.

To see widespread use, blockchain needs to overcome challenges in scalability, speed, and above all, flexibility. The first blockchain to solve these problems may become dominant. So, which blockchain is best positioned to win the race?

One Blockchain to Rule Them All

There are many different blockchains, and it is an open question as to whether one blockchain will become the dominant blockchain. If one blockchain were to become dominant, then the others may well fade away (take, for example, Facebook’s dominance over Myspace). That ultimately dominant blockchain would be valuable because it would become the foundation of how we all transact with one another in the future.

“If one blockchain were to become dominant, then the others may well fade away.”

Currently, the most popular and widely used blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, face a tremendous scaling problem—the networks, by design, consume ever-increasing amounts of power and process transactions slowly. For blockchain networks to truly scale, they need to be able to process transactions as fast as credit card transactions.

This is where #Tezos comes in.

Tezos, a blockchain that will be released as proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work—more on what this means below—has the potential to not only circumvent these scaling problems, but also to continuously implement new and cutting-edge cryptographic technology in predictable ways. The ability for Tezos to implement cutting-edge cryptography as it arises gives Tezos a chance to become the dominant blockchain.

Blockchain’s Power Consumption Problem

To verify your transaction as genuine, the currently popular blockchain networks, including both Bitcoin and Ethereum, use a proof-of-work method.

To add a new set of verified transactions (“blocks”) to the network (“blockchain”), serious computational effort (“work”) is required to solve puzzles. Once the work is complete, this can be verified using far less computational effort than it took to solve the puzzle itself. In exchange for that computational effort—or in other words, in exchange for work—the entity that executes the work has a chance to be awarded additional tokens on the network, bitcoins in the case of Bitcoin and ether in the case of Ethereum.

An entity can only get new bitcoins or ether if it correctly solves the puzzle.

Correctly solving these puzzles takes so much computational power that the “miners” do not have the computing capacity to attempt to influence the outcome of the network to generate the blocks most favorable to any one miner. Instead, they must focus on solving the puzzle as quickly as possible to increase their chance of generating the next block and thereby capturing the network’s reward. As each new block generates, it gets increasingly more difficult and energy intensive to generate the next block.

“Bitcoin mining alone uses 27 times as much energy as the entire Visa network.”

Unfortunately, in practice, this leads to scaling problems across two dimensions: energy use and speed. The Bitcoin and Ethereum networks together currently use more electricity than countries such as Jordan, Iceland, and Syria. Bitcoin mining alone uses 27 times as much energy as the entire Visa network. This ever-increasing amount of energy makes these blockchain networks increasingly difficult to scale. Further, the networks are also slow. Bitcoin currently processes less than three transactions per second, and Ethereum processes only five transactions per second.

As nodes in the network use more computing power to generate new blocks, the puzzles miners need to solve get harder. Thus, more and more computing power is consumed by the network, but as miners work harder, no new benefits are generated.

The power is being consumed to prevent individual miners from influencing the network for their own benefit and recording those transactions that would most benefit any particular miner as the next block on the chain, but the computational power consumed by the network does not generate any independent value.

Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year-old creator of Ethereum, has proposed transitioning Ethereum from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system.

In a proof-of-stake system, entities can stake a portion of their tokens in the system on one new block or another. The block with the most stake behind it is the one added to the blockchain. A reward of network tokens is given to a random sampling of nodes on the network that chose to validate the latest block the network adds to the blockchain.

All the participants on the network are encouraged to validate the genuine version of the network in order to have a chance of receiving a reward for validating the genuine block.

In theory, proof-of-stake networks wouldn’t see spiraling energy requirements as miners vie for cryptocurrency with computational resources, which could make it more scalable.

But going from one system to the other isn’t perfectly straightforward.

The Most Flexible System Wins?

For Ethereum to change from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, a centralized group of Ethereum developers need to update the network’s code. Then users on the Ethereum network will decide if they want to use the new version of Ethereum or continue to use the old version. If they split, and some use the old version and some the new, then the chain undergoes a “hard fork,” and both versions of Ethereum are available.

The Bitcoin protocol is notoriously difficult to change, but this summer, the Bitcoin network grew too crowded to process all of the demand on the network. Updating the Bitcoin protocol to support the Bitcoin network’s ability to process additional transactions led to a hard fork on August 1, 2017, and Bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Tezos has two advantages here. It not only starts out as proof-of-stake but also implements proof-of-stake methods for updating the blockchain protocol itself.

Tezos token holders can vote to upgrade the Tezos protocol to implement new developments in cryptography and blockchain technology in the Tezos blockchain. Tezos developers propose rewards for implementing improvements in the network, and if Tezos token holders vote for a proposal to improve the network, the developers receive the reward that they proposed.

Tezos thereby incentivizes developers to improve the Tezos network.

If a great new advance in blockchain technology occurs, developers and Tezos token holders will be incentivized to implement those advances in the Tezos blockchain network. If there is someday one dominant blockchain network, that network will need to continuously implement cutting-edge developments in blockchain technology.

Tezos is currently the leading contender for a blockchain network that incentivizes improving the technology underlying the network itself. Tezos’s powerful governance structure is a big part of why Tezos raised a record setting $232 million in its initial coin offering in July, 2017.

Blockchain technology is often compared to the early internet. Despite the unprecedented gains found in Bitcoin and Ethereum, it may be that neither of them has the capacity to implement advances in blockchain technology fast enough to become the dominant blockchain network.

Think of all the value that is currently captured by centralized authorities—from the banking industry to music rights holder networks to the court system. If that value can be shared among participants in the dominant blockchain, then how much might the tokens that underlie the dominant blockchain be worth?

Source: Singularityhub.com

Start your cloud mining with Genesis mining promo code: CZL5k6

#Bitcoin fell back below $4,000

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 09:05:00 +0000

Someone held up a ' #buybitcoin ' sign during #Yellen 's testimony to Congress

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 15:05:00 +0000

Inside #Ripple 's plan to make money move as fast as information

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 06:24:00 +0000

When Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, has to explain to his mother, who lives in Kansas, what his company does, he says, "Mom, it's pretty simple. We sell software to banks."

But it isn't quite that simple. Most fintech startups fall into one of two camps: those that want to compete with banks and those that want to save banks from themselves. Ripple is the rare exception that wants to do both.

The San Francisco startup, which began years ago by launching a cryptocurrency but has since turned its attention to business applications for blockchain technology, can easily prove its bona fides in the second camp. The fact that 60 banks are now in the process of commercially deploying Ripple's enterprise software—among them Santander, Royal Bank of Canada and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group—reflects the company's incumbent-friendly approach.

"We're not the disruptors, we're not the guys who come in and tear everything down," said Stefan Thomas, Ripple's chief technology officer.

And yet the company's larger vision—to build an "internet of value," a global internetworking system for money—would be tremendously disruptive to the status quo of international banking. In this system, monetary value could flow seamlessly from a bank ledger to a public blockchain to a mobile money system—all interoperable and working together to move money from one side of the globe to the other. In the more distant future, says Thomas, such a system could expand beyond money to any form of value whatsoever.

"This is not a science experiment," says CEO Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple's technology. "This is real production systems moving real value."

In other words, Ripple doesn't just want to help banks make cross-border payments. It wants to make the world's assets liquid. If Ripple has its way, it will do more than knock out Swift; it will have found a way to make money move like information.

Overcoming an identity crisis
Before it can conquer the world, though, Ripple will have to sort out its branding. It is practically the only blockchain startup selling enterprise software to major banks while funding development costs with its own cryptocurrency. That more serious attention has not been paid to Ripple even by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts—and that it hasn't garnered headlines the way bitcoin and Ethereum have—may be due in part to poor nomenclature. Another reason, undoubtedly, is the series of pivots Ripple has undergone.

"They've had something of an identity crisis about who their customer is, and what problem they are trying to solve," said John Light, who has consulted for startups working with Ripple's technology.

Ripple's initial plan was to "build a better bitcoin," Garlinghouse said. Its leaders were prescient regarding issues with bitcoin's software that have now come to the fore, such as its ability to process only seven transactions per second. Ripple wanted to be able to handle transaction volume on the scale of Visa.

They also decided that so-called "bitcoin maximalists" were wrong about being able to replace incumbent banks, much less government currencies, with digital cash. Rather than rail against the status quo, they decided to work with banks to improve it.

But Ripple's cryptocurrency, XRP, hasn't gone away, which tends to muddy the picture.

"It is confusing as hell," admitted Miguel Vias, Ripple's head of XRP markets.

Vias knows from experience. After being hired last December, he made a point of going to bitcoin meetups to spread the word about Ripple and XRP. People were surprised to hear that XRP was still around, he says.

"We got 12 banks to hold a digital asset for the first time ever," says Miguel Vias, head of XRP markets at Ripple. "I think it was a real show of faith from them."

It takes a while to sort through Ripple's offerings. There is the Ripple consensus ledger, a public blockchain network tied to XRP (confusingly also called Ripple). There is an enterprise software solution that has nothing to do with digital currency but which purportedly allows banks to send cross-border payments more quickly, transparently and cheaply. (To get the full benefit, though, the banks on either side of a transaction both have to be running the software.) And there is the Interledger Protocol, which works in tandem with the enterprise software and connects ledgers of different types—a private bank ledger and a public blockchain, say—for the purpose of settling payments between them.

Gradually, Ripple is incorporating this array of products and services—formerly a public-relations liability—into a singular vision.

"They're slowly coalescing around some of these various solutions," Light said.

'A better Swift'
When approaching banks, Ripple leads with its enterprise software—"a better Swift," according to Vias—along with the Interledger Protocol. Ripple executives talk a good game about how blockchain technology disrupts the "correspondent banking paradigm," in which banks with no direct relationship rely on intermediaries in order to send payments to each other. But Ripple's current software still depends on a global network of correspondent banks.

Rather than total disruption, what it promises are faster settlements with more transparent fees.

International banking today, said Garlinghouse, has "a speed problem, a cost problem, plus an error rate problem." As cross-border payments ping-pong among correspondent banks—as many as five for a single payment—each one takes a piece of the action in the form of fees or currency-exchange charges. The initiating bank often doesn't know ahead of time what the total cost of a payment will be.

International wire transfers between banks cost from $5 to more than $50, plus foreign-exchange charges of 0.25% to 3% and "landing fees" of as much as $20. And the error rate for wire transfers is between 3% and 5%, Thomas said.

Where Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, provides a one-way messaging service, Ripple provides a two-way protocol. This allows for greater transparency: Banks can exchange information and find out ahead of time what the fees and foreign-exchange rates will be, along with the expected date of delivery for the funds. If any of the information is wrong or missing, both banks will find out before the payment is sent, which should keep transfers from getting stuck in the pipes. Once the sending bank has initiated a transaction, Ripple uses the Interledger Protocol to settle the funds and notify everyone of its successful conclusion.

"This is not a science experiment," Garlinghouse said. "This is real production systems moving real value, and we're the only player in the industry that can say that."

In April, the Spanish bank BBVA completed a series of international money transfers between Spain and Mexico using Ripple's distributed ledger technology. The transfers took mere seconds, BBVA said, as opposed to the four days it normally takes for such international transfers to clear. After the trial, Alicia Pertusa, the bank's head of digital transformation in investment banking, called it "a clear demonstration of how payment processes can be vastly improved through the implementation of emerging technologies."

This is perhaps a more diplomatic way of saying what Garlinghouse has said before, that Ripple's technology represents a race car compared to the horse and buggy of the current system.

Naturally, Swift begs to differ. For about four decades, the nonprofit consortium has had a vise grip on international bank transfers. Swift doubts that its 11,000 members are yet ready to entrust big cross-border payments to a blockchain.

The collective recently launched a service called Global Payments Innovation to clear away some of the murk in the correspondent banking system. GPI enables banks to track a payment's status in real time, just as consumers can check on their UPS or FedEx packages.

Banks are enthusiastic about GPI, and to some it may seem like a sufficient improvement over the old system. Since February, about 100 banks have signed up for GPI, and 12 of them have already used the service to send hundreds of thousands of cross-border payments around the world, according to Swift.

'Nothing happens quickly in banking'
Another criticism of distributed ledgers is that they won't catch on in the corporate world without a set of transaction rules and other standards, a la Swift, to govern activity on the network. Ripple agrees. Last September, it formed the Global Payments Steering Group, an interbank consortium whose founding members included Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Santander and Royal Bank of Canada. Its express purpose is to establish a clear framework of rights and obligations for banks using Ripple's technology.

One member of the group, MUFG, says the expansion of the network is among Ripple's biggest challenges. Ripple's 75 customers are nothing compared to Swift's 11,000. And it is harder for some banks to join up than others. CBW Bank, a small Kansas institution that has managed to become a fintech hub, wants to use Ripple's technology but is still working through the compliance requirements.

"Nothing happens quickly in banking. There are tens of thousands of banks. There is no easy way that we can connect to every one of them," said Suresh Ramamurthi, the bank's chairman and CTO. "It takes a long time to build a global network."

But there are signs of progress. In March, Ripple announced that a consortium of 47 Japanese banks had successfully completed a pilot with its enterprise software. Twelve more banks have since joined the consortium, and they are planning to deploy a commercial version of the blockchain solution at scale in October 2017. Ripple's software is now touching 40% of customer banking accounts in Japan, Garlinghouse said.

Although Ripple is signing up as many banks as it can for its messaging software—its customers include the largest bank in Turkey and the national bank of Abu Dhabi—it is emphatically not trying to persuade them to entrust all of their payments to Ripple's own ledger. To do so would lead to a "Mexican standoff," said Thomas, because nobody wants to give up their preferred ledger.

That's where the Interledger Protocol comes in. In May, Ripple completed a test in which the company sent ether—the native coin of the Ethereum network—to the Ripple consensus ledger; the ether was received as XRP in a Ripple wallet. It was therefore "both a cross-ledger and a cross-currency transfer," Thomas said.

At the Blockchain Expo in Berlin recently, Ripple went even further, presenting a demo of a payment that had crossed seven different ledgers, and held a hackathon in which representatives from Ethereum, the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash and other projects worked to enable Interledger Protocol payments on their ledgers.

"There isn't going to be one ledger to rule them all," Garlinghouse said. "It's about how do you enable interoperability between ledgers."

A return to cryptocurrency
One of those ledgers, of course, is XRP's. Even as Ripple has signed up dozens of banks for its enterprise software, it has been working to bring XRP back into the conversation. You could say it is pivoting back to cryptocurrency just as it once pivoted away from it.

XRP is today the world's third-largest digital currency by market capitalization, and it has delighted speculators in recent weeks. For a long time, two of the biggest concerns about XRP have been the network's centralization—with Ripple itself being the primary validator of transactions—and the startup's huge hoard of XRP, basically a mountain of digital gold on which Ripple has crouched, Smaug-like, and which it has sold off piecemeal to finance development. In addition to paying its developers, Ripple doles out XRP as incentives to market makers and sells it to institutional investors.

For the past year and a half, Ripple has sold an average of 300 million XRP each month. But concerns lingered that the company could dump much more, making it a bad bet for investors.

In mid-May, Garlinghouse announced a solution. Ripple, he wrote, was going to place 55 billion of the nearly 62 billion XRP it owns into escrow by the end of the year. Technically, there will be 55 lockup agreements of 1 billion XRP each; a contract will expire on the first day of every month, providing Ripple with operating funds. Whatever hasn't been spent at the end of the month will be put into a new escrow account at the back of the queue.

By cryptographically freezing so many of the company's assets, Ripple will place a hard limit on the number of XRP that can enter the market at any given time.

"The lockup provides a level of predictability about XRP supply that is favorable for market demand," Spencer Bogart, the head of research at Blockchain Capital, an investor in the company, said in a statement published by Ripple.

The price of XRP had already been climbing before the announcement. The next day, it hit $0.42, about eight times what it had been at the start of the month. (Even after a retrenchment, XRP's market cap is still about $10 billion, behind only bitcoin's and Ether's.)

The price spike has prompted new exchanges to support XRP trading. As Ripple brings them on board, the exchanges tend to become validators on the XRP network, decentralizing a job that Ripple once performed alone.

Vias acknowledges that some of XRP's recent price increase is due to larger forces. An intense bull market has seen the total value of all cryptocurrencies rise to a level about six times what it was in January 2017.

"But I think the fact that we attacked those two fundamental structural issues allowed XRP to participate in the [broader] rally in a way that it might not have otherwise," he said.

Teleporting gold
So why should banks care? Because Ripple plans to use XRP to solve their liquidity problems.

As it stands, banks around the world must hold billions of dollars in reserve, waiting to use them for payments. When one bank needs to send money across borders, it uses the dead cash it is holding at the foreign institution to which it is sending funds—either the final recipient or the intermediary correspondent bank. The whole process involves counterparty risk and the expensive vetting procedures that go along with it. This dormant cash is all the more wasteful because, in a world of Basel III, it counts as yet another balance-sheet asset against which a bank has to hold cash to cover its liabilities.

Ripple's big idea is to use XRP—once its market cap gets high enough and it is being traded heavily enough—to provide banks with liquidity on demand. During a transaction, a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar would be converted by market makers into XRP and almost instantly swapped back into another fiat currency, like British pounds, on the other side.

XRP is perfect for this, company executives say, because the average transaction costs a mere $0.0003, or three one-hundredths of a penny, and is confirmed within two or three seconds. The Ripple ledger can process more than 1,000 transactions per second. There is even a feature that would allow two parties to set up a direct conduit and send money back and forth at much greater speeds—increasing the network's processing limit to 50,000 transactions per second, Vias said.

When preparing to send money, the bank would get a single quote for the foreign-exchange cost. Everything else, the actual sausage-making, would be abstracted away. This, according to Thomas, is the new frontier, "trying to get banks to use digital assets for settlement."

"We're not the disruptors, we're not the guys who come in and tear everything down," says Stefan Thomas, Ripple's chief technology officer.

"Ripple is definitely thinking about this the right way," said Whitman Knapp, chairman of the transaction banking advisory firm GTBInsights, regarding Ripple's plan to use cryptocurrency for cross-border payments.

While Vias admits he can't even begin to have this conversation with banks until XRP itself is more liquid, Thomas is already thinking about the end result in magical terms. Banks, he said, will have "gold that you can teleport into any vault in the world instantly."

One real step toward this payments utopia came last year, when Ripple collaborated with the technology consortium R3 on a project in which 12 banks used XRP to settle transactions with each other in real time. The payments were made in a test environment; it was all house money. But Vias calls it a success.

"We got 12 banks to hold a digital asset for the first time ever," he said. "I think it was a real show of faith from them."

Thomas says that Ripple is now seeing a lot of interest from banks in XRP. The next step is to do a real pilot involving XRP settlements, though Thomas said the company has nothing yet to announce on that front.

There are plenty of hurdles left to clear before high finance can ever do away with correspondent banking. Regulators will want to have their say about any new system.

"Digital currency brings a different set of compliance [requirements], and if you're trying to pioneer that, you're bearing the brunt of all the questions from the regulators," said Ramamurthi.

For now, Ripple is trying to play a sort of three-dimensional chess, selling banks on software even while working hard to transcend that software. This type of development goes beyond the iterative process with which Silicon Valley and Wall Street alike have become familiar. That process involves releasing an early version of an app or feature—a so-called minimum viable product—and then steadily improving it in later versions. Ripple's approach looks more like an overlapping chain of innovations.

"In the most elegant end-state of our solution, Ripple, ILP and XRP work seamlessly together," Vias said.

'Transformational leaps'
Ripple is not yet a world-beating company, which is to say that most banks, while excited about blockchain technology, haven't yet decided just whose blockchain, or chains, they are going to use. BBVA, for instance, is engaged in several pilots with the technology, including one involving syndicated loans as a member of R3. It also belongs to the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance and Hyperledger.

An MUFG representative said the Japanese megabank is still pursuing a previously disclosed project with Coinbase, a leading bitcoin startup, to use the cryptocurrency for cross-border payments.

"Our intent is not to compare or have these services 'compete' with each other," the representative said. "Because we do not believe there is a 'one and only' payment method, we are reviewing other payment systems. MUFG believes in offering options for our customers, so they can choose."

As for Ripple’s technology, MUFG has "finished the experimentation phase and [is] moving toward pilot/production testing this year."

Even Swift is adapting to the new landscape. In April, the cooperative announced that it was developing a blockchain proof of concept for the real-time reconciliation of nostro accounts used in cross-border payments. Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas and a number of other financial institutions are taking part. (To build the proof of concept, Swift is relying on Fabric, an open-source blockchain framework incubated by Hyperledger.)

To succeed, Ripple will need "to be laser-focused on what problem they're solving, because there's a lot of competition in this space, and you can't solve all of everybody's problems," Light said. "They have competition from R3, from traditional fintech companies, even from some of the bitcoin-based enterprise software companies, so they're going to need to keep their offering competitive."

Even in this chaotic space, however, there are some signs that Ripple is emerging as a frontrunner. Seventy-five banks are now Ripple customers. In March, the startup poached a Swift executive. And when Santander dropped out of R3 in November 2016—one of several banks to do so over the past several months—it took care to reaffirm its commitment to a couple of other blockchain projects. One of them was the Global Payments Steering Group.

In recent conversations, Ripple's leaders were as sanguine about the competition as they were bullish on blockchain technology as a whole.

"I don't knock bitcoin, I don't knock Ethereum, I don't knock anybody," Vias said. "Everybody is out here trying to make transformational leaps forward, and I think we're all going to be better off for it."

Americanbanker.com
Genesis mining promo code: CZL5k6

Tech news and more ....

Warning Signs Your Online Accounts Aren’t as Secure as You Think

1. Strange Login Activity in Account Security Dashboards

2. Your Email Appears in Data Breach Reports

3. Unexpected Login Alerts

How to Strengthen Your Account Security

New Year 2024: 22 Stunning Places To Celebrate The Arrival Of New Year

1. Sydney, Australia

3. Miami, United States

4. Venice, Italy

5. Dubai, UAE

6. Cape Town, South Africa

7. New York, United States

8. Paris, France

9. Goa, India

10. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

11. Bangkok, Thailand

12. Amsterdam, Netherlands

13. Prague, Czech Republic

14. Madrid, Spain

15. Vancouver, Canada

16. London, England

17. Vienna, Austria

18. Hawaii, USA

19. Lisbon, Portugal

20. Tokyo, Japan

21. Queenstown, New Zealand

22. Berlin, Germany

Tutorial to withdraw BTC from COINKIT via Lightning Network Invoice

How to Stake Hydra (HYDRA) - Tutorial

Everything you need to know about Staking HYDRA.

What is HYDRA Staking?

Stake on Exchange Pools (such as Kucoin)

Setup your own Node

Prerequisites

How to Stake HYDRA

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Conclusion

How to Get the Hydra Airdrop and Start Staking for 100% + APY

Before you begin

Step 1 — Get some LOC

Step 2 — Get a HYDRA Wallet

Step 3 — Complete KYC

Step 4 — Stake Your HYDRA (Optional)

Step 5 — Sign up for LockTrip

LockTrip to enable DGB as a direct payment and become Sponsoring Partner of the DigiByte Foundation!

LockTrip.com Partners with the DigiByte Foundation

About DigiByte

North Korean Hackers Successfully Phished Cyber Researchers Using a Fake Blog

Keep Your iPhone 12 and Its Accessories Away From Pacemakers

LockTrips.com Begins 2021 With a Massive UX Platform Upgrade

An Omnipotent Multifunctional Sign-in

Login Floating Bar

Combining Sign-Up and Login

Consolidating Sign-Up Methods

Your First Login

Browse Without Activation

Improved Search Visuals

Other Improvements

Alexander Jekov

LockTrip Integrates ETN as a Payment Method for its Travel Marketplace

LockTrip Partners with Electroneum, Reaching 4.1 Million Registered Users

Today we are excited to announce a major partnership with Electroneum — a leading project for empowering people in…

Featured Listing at ETN Everywhere

ETN Landing Page

Book your hotel with ETN and save up to 60%! | LockTrip

LockTrip is a next-generation blockchain-based online travel marketplace, where you can book secret travel deals with…

LockTrips.com Landing Page

Travel & Accommodation - Electroneum

Through our partnership with LockTrip.com, Electroneum users can now spend their ETN on millions of hotels, flights and…

electroneum.com

LockTrip Partners with Electroneum, Reaching 4.1 Million Registered Users

LockTrips.com becomes the official Travel Partner of Electroneum

What is Electroneum?