3 Jun
0
Bitcoin price future: it is alive and well
How many times did you hear about the death of Bitcoin? About 45 according to a recent twitter post we found very funny.
Well, according to us, Bitcoin seems to be alive and well, and there are lots of positive signs that indicate that this cryptocurrency is not dead as everybody thought.
The Bitcoin price, in fact, is now $549 (according to Bitstamp, or one of the most used exchanges in the world).Update: Bitcoin price is reaching $700 today, on June 13rd, 2016.
This means that the price rose more than 20% in the last 7 days, reaching a 1 year high, as we can see from the Bitcoin price index of Coindesk.
Reason of the Bitcoin Price jump
We tried to understand the reason behind this jump.
Of course it is hard to find a unique answer, but we saw that probably the Bitcoin price was driven by the Chinese demand, testified by the bitcoin price on the Chinese local exchange, which reached a level of $580 when it was priced $520 on the international markets.
Another important reason could be the halving process, as you can read in this insightful analysis.
Positive news about Bitcoin
But there are other reasons to be positive about Bitcoin, as several companies such as Microsoft recently started to develp their own projects related to the blockchain.
Also, several countries such as Japan started to regulate and recognize bitcoin as an official method of payment. Furthermore, Switzerland began to accept Bitcoin for Public Services.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
2 Jun
0
The newest Richard Branson’s Blockchain Event
The well-known founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson has organized a new blockchain-related event on his private island in the Carribbean.
Among his about 40 guests there are: Beth Moses, engineer for the Virgin Galactic; Laurent Lamothe, former prime minister of Haiti; Jim Newsome, former chairman at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO at BitPesa.
This is the second year for the Branson’s Blockchain Event on his Necker Island, also thanks to the support of the mining company BitFury.
BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov explained:
“Our emphasis for this year’s gathering is to bring some of the world’s top thinkers from diverse backgrounds – civil society, [non-governmental organizations], business, technology, government – to this extremely special place known for free thinking and cutting edge innovation.”
Branson’s Blockchain Event
From 3rd to 7th June, guests will partecipate to this summit focused on three main topics: financial technology, security and global change.
Also, they will have a lot of networking time, a great opportunity to build connections.
Last year’s event generated some controversy about the lack of women, so this year the list includes several female experts who work in the blockchain field, as you can read on the guest list above.
Branson in Bitcoin
Of course this is not the first time Branson talks about Bitcoin.
A few months ago, during an interview on Bloomberg TV, he explained that this cryptocurrency is working well.
In a conversation with journalist Trish Regan about space tourism, Branson also commented positively on the future of the Bitcoin industry.
Multicurrency Wallet
Normally, if you want to store several different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have different wallets, which is difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction want to solve this problem, unifying everything in a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
1 Jun
0
Microsoft to launch an identity platform through the blockchain
The well-known tech giant Microsoft recently started a partnership with Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys to create an open-source platform to integrate both the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
In today’s blog post published by Microsoft blockchain business strategist Yorke Rhodes III, in fact, he explained that the company will create an open source framework on Azure, where developers can build their own identity applications.
“Microsoft is collaborating with partners Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys, and developers across the globe on an open source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps, and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers, and organizations. Our goal in contributing to this initiative is to start a conversation on blockchain-based identity that could improve apps, services, and more importantly, the lives of real people worldwide by enabling self-owned or self-sovereign identity”.
The possibility to connect this platform to both the Ethereum and the Bitcoin blockchain will take place thanks to Blockstack and uPort systems.
This partnership started during the ID2020 Summit held in New York a few weeks ago.
According to Rhodes, a first version of this framework will be launched within the end of the summer on the Azure platform.
Identity Problem in the Digital World
According to the post published by Rhodes, 1.5 billion people don’t have a proper identification.
And this makes it difficult for them to have a bank account or access to education and more services.
- 1.5B people are without proper identification, that’s one-fifth of the world’s population.
- One in three children under the age of five does not officially exist because their birth has not been recorded.
- Cumulatively, 230M children under the age of five have no birth certificate; this number is growing.
- 50M children are born without legal identity, the size of the UK, each year.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
31 May
0
Ethereum Micropayments: better than the Bitcoin ones?
Micropayments are one the most useful and important use-cases for bitcoin, but a similar system could arrive from Ethereum, a decentralized mining network and cryptocurrency created by Vitalik Buterin back in 2013.
Since the creation of Internet, micropayments have been impossible due to high fee costs and a lack of payment systems that could allow payments in decimals.
But with the invention of Bitcoin – so thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto – today there is a way to do micropayments, as the bitcoin has 8 decimals and payment fees are low; so it is now possibile to pay for digital contents and give a tip on the web.
In a study, the Wedbush Securities company predicted that bitcoin micropayments could be a $925bn market within the end of 2025.
Ethereum Micropayments
One of the first project to use the Ethereum network for micropayments was developed by the Heiko Hees, already CEO of BrainBot, a German startup that works in the smart contract and blockchain consulting sector.
His new project is called Raiden Network and could increase the Ethereum capacity.
Hees explains that his “Raiden network will scale up the Ethereum network from 25 transactions per second to more than 1 million transactions”.
According to him, in fact, Ethereum could be the biggest provider of micropayments because of its speed and because the transactions would cost less than with bitcoin.
A current problem for the bitcoin users is that blocks take up to 10 minutes to be processed.
Conversely, the Ethereum blockchain needs about 15 seconds for each block.
Bitcoin Lightning Network
In bitcoin there is a similar project called Lightning Network that was released in 2015 by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja – but this project is not live yet.
Thanks to off-chain transactions- the developers explained – Bitcoin could become easier to use and bring the technology’s capabilities to the next level – also it could be solve the blockchain scalability solve, they said.
However, users can move the off-chain transactions back to the blockchain anytime they want, giving them the ability to end every interaction.
Multicurrency Wallet
Normally, if you want to store several different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Peercoin, etc.) you need to have ten different wallets, which is difficult to manage.
HolyTransaction want to solve this problem, unifying everything in a single account.
So, do you want to store Bitcoin and Ethereum ? Open here your wallet for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
30 May
0
Bitcoin rise driven by Chinese domain
On September 2015 when the bitcoin price was about $230 China figured out that Bitcoin could increase its popularity specially when the freeflow of capital out of China is growing fast and when gold is stored in China but it is impossible to take it out of the Chinese country.
And, in fact, some days ago the Bitcoin domain increased exponentially in China.
It is not clear if it happened because of the fear about a devaluation after Friday’s US Dollar move, or because the Chinese $30 trillion economy found a way to take it out of China.
However, Bitcoin finally has broken its long-term resistance, and right now its price is about $530 according to BitStamp.
This is the Bitcoin highest price since summer 2014.
Why is this happening?
It seems somenthing happened in China as the Bitcoin price in CNY on the local Chinese exchange rose as much as the equivalent of $580, much higher than the current US price of about $520.
This might indicate stronger Chinese demand for the digital currency.
So, maybe China starts to be conscious about bitcoin, as we could expect in September, when the bitcoin price was 50% lower than now.
The current bitcoin price is about 25% higher in the past days, and analysts expects it will keep growing in the next few days.
China, in fact, has $30 trillion in deposits – which concerns about devaluations will make very “flighty” while the market cap of bitcoin is under $8 billion.
If Chinese depositors have finally figured out to use bitcoin to get their funds out of the country, we need to watch out BTC shorts.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
29 May
0
Why the KnCMiners Bankruptcy might be a good news
The Sweden bitcoin mining company called KnCMiner announced its bankruptcy.
KncMiners was one of the greatest mining company who raised $15m in venture funding from Accel and Creandum, among the other investors back in 2015 after only two years of life.
Why KncMiners had to face Bankruptcy
One of the possible reason of this bankruptcy could be the three class-action lawsuit KnCMiner had to face recently.
But CEO Sam Cole denied any relationship between their bankruptcy and these recent lawsuits.
Cole, in fact, argues that the main reason for KnCMiner bankruptcy is the decrease of the bitcoin transaction rewards for miners.
“Effectively our cost of coin – how much we produce the coins for – will be over the market price. The price is now [roughly] $480. With all of our overhead, after July, the cost will be over $480. All of the liabilities we’ll have after that time will be too high”, explained Cole.
Why the Bitcoin Mining Company KnCMiners Bankruptcy might be a positive news
In a centralized economic system currency is issued by central banks who control the emission and the value.
Conversely, in a decentralized economy currency is not controlled by any central authority and this is the reason why – in the Bitcoin case, for example, in his whitepaper Satoshi Nakamoto suggested an algorithm to define when and how many new bitcoin can be created.
According to this algorithm the number of new bitcoins is set to decrease with a 50% reduction every 210000 blocks, or almost 4 years.
As a result, the number of bitcoins will not exceed 21 million.
As the number of bitcoins is set to decrease the same thing happens to the miners reward.
Thanks to a process called halving, the rewards drop down, as it happened back in 2012 when it took down from 50 to 25 BTC.
Now it is set to become 12.5 BTC in July.
For this reason the miners work is not so convenient anymore, so the number of miners is decreasing. Ans this means that the Bitcoin price will grow.
Also, a Bitcoin value is roughly $500, and miners cost of a new Bitcoin is more than $480 in energy and computer tools, so under that price it’s not worth doing it.
Halving process to help Bitcoin rising
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| Image Courtesy of Coindesk.com |
As for any scarce product, like gold or oil, the cost of extraction is one of the main elements that determine its price. If it increases, then the miners stops to do their jobs.
As a result the offer is reduced and its value rises.
Read here another interesting article about halving and watch here the countdown to the next reward drop.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
28 May
2
A task force to control digital currency in Europe
Last month we talked about how the European Parliament defined the blockchain as the “perfect technology” and aimed at realizing new rules related to the distributed ledger.
During a speech given by the Lithuanian representative Antanas Guoga, in fact, he defined the blockchain that way.
His speech was held before the Internal Market for Consumer Protection Committee, that advanced a new proposal for cryptocurrencies.
Task force creation: yes or not?
A voting on the proposal was held on April 26th and the result was 542-to-51 members who want the creation of a cryptocurrency task force.
So, now the task force will turn into reality and will “monitor technology developments ahead of any concrete regulatory proposals”.
Von Weizsäcker said in a statement:
“To avoid stifling innovation, we favour precautionary monitoring rather than pre-emptive regulation. But IT innovations can spread very rapidly and become systemic. That’s why we call on the Commission to establish a taskforce to actively monitor how the technology evolves and to make timely proposals for specific regulation if, and when, the need arises.”
It is likely that the creation of this task force will be done in the next few months.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
25 May
0
The Greatest Bitcoin Companies: TOP 30
Greatest Bitcoin Companies: which are the best?
Below you can read a chart of the greatest Bitcoin Companies you need to follow to better understand the cryptocurrencies world.
These 30 Bitcoin companies can also give you ideas and a greater consciousness of the fintech sector if you are starting a blockchain startup and you want to follow their example.
This list was generated thanks to Buzzsumo, taking into this platoform several settings and metrics we though were useful to add.
The greatest part of these 30 Bitcoin- related companies are exchanges and magazines related to Bitcoin news.
Top 30 Blockchain companies:
- Blockchain.com
- BitStamp
- BitPay
- Coindesk
- Ethereum
- Bitcoin News
- Mesosphere
- Ripple
- Stock
- Consesus System
- Bitcoin Foundation
- Kraken
- Syscoin
- DAO
- Gemini
- BitFinex.com
- R3 Cev
- OkCoin
- Litecoin
- Dash
- Bitcoin Vox
- CoinScrum
- Synereo
- Tierion
- ProTip
- HolyTransaction
- Blockchain University
- AlphaPoint
- Korbit
- Vogogo
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
24 May
0
US Postal Service to create its Digital Currency
Recently the US Postal Service (USPS) published a new document about how the company could create its own digital currency.
This press release written by the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General said that the postal company have to consider to use the blockchain for its own purpouses, creating a network where devices can be connected together.
Released today, this report stated that the Postal Service should study how to develop these applications.
“The Postal Service could benefit from blockchain technology in the short term by studying the technology and possibly experimenting with blockchain-based solutions for financial services. The Postal Service already offers some financial services, including money orders and international money transfers, where blockchain could be an enabling tool, allowing the Postal Service to offer these services more efficiently.”
Australian Postal Service has already started to study Bitcoin
In March the Australia Post announced its researches about how to implement the distributed ledger for its own applications.
Postal Service chief information security officer and VP of digital solutions Randy Miskanic explained:
“As highlighted in the report, we will need to be cautious in specific implementations to account for technology barriers, security concerns and regulatory uncertainty. We will evaluate the use of blockchain for each of the use cases and further review the available opportunities while considering the impact of the technology and financial restrictions.”
Postcoin
One of the most important ideas in the report is the creation of a cryptocurrency for the Postal Service, called “Postcoin”.
That was initially suggested back in 2015 by Swiss Economics.
Postcoin would allow the Postal service to solve money transfer problems worldwide. Also, this cryptocurrency could help the connection of postal offices to transact each other:
“…the Postal Service currently offers international money transfers. However, these services are currently only cashable in a limited number of countries. The flexibility and convenience associated with the Postcoin could potentially allow the expansion of electronic money transfer services to anyone in the world.”
Multicurrency Wallet
To store your cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin and more, you need to open a wallet.
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Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
23 May
0
5 ridiculous things used as a method of payment
5 items you can sell for your shopping
Some days ago Go Compare website published an interesting article about the weirdest currencies from all over the world.
In this funny list, they quote some incredible items used as a method of payment in several countries, including China, Siberia and more.
Read below the list of the 5 ridiculous things used as a method of payment.
Rai Stones
These particular kinds of stone are huge circular stone disks you can find in the Yap island, Micronesia.
Their value is based not only on its size, but also on its history. If many people died when the stone was moved or a famous person brought it in, the Rai stone value increases thanks to the anecdots related to it.
The greatest part of these stones are too large to move, so transactions are based on oral agreements.
Mobile phone Minutes
Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana, people began to buy and sell mobile phone minutes for small transactions. This method of payment works this way: you need to trade with prepaid cards or use mobile apps that let users send minutes to other people.
This method started to be used in 2011 and one minute values 1 unit of currency.
Seashells
In coutries such as Langa Langa Lagoon and Solomon Islands, seashells are used as a method of payment.
These seashells – that are very rare because of their value – are used to create jewels that can be sold to tourists.
Each string values approximately $90.
Tea
Tea is very popular in countries such as China and Tibet, where tea bricks are used as a method of payment as well.
Created from tea leaves, tea bricks could be used to buy livestock and pay taxes too. In Siberia and Tibet tea bricks could be eaten or used to cure some disorders such as coughs and colds.
Bottle Caps
In 2005 a beer company in Cameroon started to hide prizes under bottle caps. Competitors companies started to do the same and the result was that almost every cap had a prize on it.
Prizes include free beers, trips and cars, and winning cap became a method of payments to buy goods and service thanks to them.
Multicurrency Wallet – open it for free
Among the alternative payment methods there is Bitcoin, and to store this kind of coins you need a wallet.
To read more about how it works and to open a wallet for free here.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.