Tag Archives: cryptocurrency

BlockchainRevolution

The 5 must read Bitcoin Books

In this daily blog post we listed a HolyTransaction the 5 Must Read Bitcoin Books.
The crypto world is very intricated and internet is full of articles, whitepapers and ebooks about Bitcoin, so it could be difficult to figure out which authors or books are more interesting to read.
As we don’t want you to waste your time we listed 5 must read Bitcoin books. 

Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

Some months ago we wrote about Don Tapscott and his idea on how the blockchain could disrupt services as AirBnb. 
This is just one example of Tapscott’s suggestions about the Blockchain and how this ledger is a great innovation that can change the worlds as we know it.
Don and his son Alex are the authors of the new book “Blockchain Revolution”, in which they commented on the lots of Blockchain applications, starting from the music industry. This is one of the few books that explains the blockchain technology.

The Bitcoin Bible by Benjamin Guttman

This is a very easy-to-understand book with interviews and articles written by the most insightful experts of the Bitcoin community.
In its more than 200 pages Guttman explains everything you need to know about Bitcoin with pratical examples, charts and curiosities.
The first part of the book is related to the Bitcoin basis: what it is, how a transaction works, how we can obtain Bitcoin, etc.
The second chapter is about social aspects and opinions so you can find articles about how this cryptocurrency can help countries in crisis or in development.
The third one is about mining, and if you go on reading this book you can also find everything you need to know about exchanges, legal aspects, bitcoin venture capitalists and more.

The Bitcoin Big Bang: How Alternative Currencies Are About to Change the World by Brian Kelly

Written by one of the CNBC authors, in this book Brian Kelly explains the origins of this digital currency, the evolution of the payment system, how the Bitcoin network can facilitate instant trasfer of values and the Bitcoin mining, so how to invest in it.

Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos

It is impossible to write a top list of the Bitcoin books without quoting the one by Andres Antonopoulos, one of the most important people in this community.
Antonopoulos founded several bitcoin-related businesses and launched lots of open-source projects. He also writes articles on bitcoin and is a permanent host on the program “Let’s Talk Bitcoin”. To know more about Andreas M. Antonopoulos’s read his profile page.

5) Bitcoin revolution: La moneta digitale alla conquista del mondo by Davide Capoti, Emanuele Colacchi, Matteo Maggioni

This is an Italian book only, so in this case we are talking with our Italian readers.
Bitcoin revolution is a simple guide on the Bitcoin world and it explains how mining works and how to invest in this cryptocurrency.
This is not a book for just technical experts of this field, but it aims at speaking with a wide range of people to let them understand how important Bitcoin can be for our daily life.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio

Bitcoin officially recognized in Japan

 

japan accept bitcoin officially
 
Japan is going to officially recognize bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Previously in March, the Japan Times announced that the Japanease Cabined approved some bills that would help banks to expand their business related to fintech.
The cabinet also recnognized the importance of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, so it aims at recognizing them as method of payment, so the government is going to bring digital currencies under the overview of the Financial Services Agency (FSA), who also control the Yen.
This system will also provide a registration of exhchanges to avoid money laudering and to protect the bitcoin users, specially after the Mt. Gox debacle back in 2014, when the company was handling 70% of all bitcoin transactions.
This way, Japan has just given virtual currencies legitimacy, and we hope this news will allow lots of other countries to do the same in the near future.

The open-minded Japan

To be honest, this news is not so shocking, as in February the Japanese regulators stated the decision to propose bitcoin among the methods of payments, so to define the digital cryptocurrencies as conventional currency.

Multicurrencies Wallet

Bitcoin is the most important and popular cryptocurrency at the moment, together with Ethereum.
So you may need an online walletwhere you can store your bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Here you can store several digital currencies as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Blackcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin and more.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
bank of england6142011

Bank of England will create its own cryptocurrency

The Bank of England announced its decision to create its own digital currency.

The cryptocurrency will be called RSCoin and it will use the blockchain, the decentralized ledger where bitcoin transactions are written and executed.

More Centralized Control

RSCoin has been developed by researchers at the University College of London.

Of course, this new cryptocurrency will provide a more centralized control compared to bitcoin.“RSCoin introduces a degree of centralization into the two typically decentralized components of a blockchainbased ledger: the generation of the monetary supply and the constitution of the transaction ledger. In its simplest form, the RSCoin system assumes two structural entities: the central bank, a centralized entity that ultimately has complete control over the generation of the monetary supply, and a distributed set of mintettes that are responsible for the maintenance of the transaction ledger”, it is said in the RSCoin abstract.

How could this be positive?

Even if RSCoin is centralized and the opposite thing of Bitcoin, we could say that it is positive as it means that worldwide Central Banks are starting to give importance to cryptocurrencies.

However, RSCoin has its own benefits: for example no double spending, non-repudiable sealing, timed personal audits, universal audits and exposed inactivity.

Read the complete documentation

Univerisity College of London researches George Danezis and Sarah Meiklejohn published an abstract about RSCoin.

The full whitepaper is intitled “Centrally Banked Cryptocurrencies”.

The abstract begins from the bitcoin history, to explain everyone the impact of the digital currencies not only in the finance world:

Recently, major financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Nasdaq have announced plans to develop blockchain technologies. The potential impacts of cryptocurrencies have now been acknowledged even by government institutions: the European Central Bank anticipates their “impact on monetary policy and price stability”.

People’s Bank of China and its own cryptocurrency

In January 2016, the People’s Bank of China commented about its plans to launch its own digital currency and create a new financial infrastructure for the country.

The project started in 2014, when researches began to study cryptocurrencies related to business operations.

People’s Bank of China commented:

“The issuance of digital currency can reduce the significant costs of issuing and circulating traditional currencies, improve the convenience and transparency of economic transactions, reduce money laundering, tax evasion and other criminal acts, enhance the central bank’s control of over the money supply and currency circulation, better support economic and social development and aid in extending financial services to under-served populations”.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
ScreenShot2016 02 15at15.13.24

European Union wants to monitor virtual currencies

On February 2nd the European Commission announced the decision to propose a new regulation for digital currency exchanges and wallet service providers.
In charge of this will be the European Council that has a mandate to do so by next June.
The objective of the new rules will be “to help identify the users who trade in virtual currencies” and also put an end to “the anonymity associated with such exchanges“,
These were the words of Valdis Dombrovskis during yesterday’s press conference:
By June at the latest we will propose measures to have better control of payment forms such as virtual currencies and anonymous pre-paid cards.
Dombrovskis continued by saying that the Commission wants to control and maybe prohibit transactions from high-risk countries that enter the EU: “In June the Commission will come up with an EU blacklist of such countries“, he said.
Dombrovskis previously commented: “We must cut off terrorists’ access to funds, enable authorities to better track financial flows to prevent devastating attacks such as those in Paris last year, and ensure that money laundering and terrorist financing is sanctioned in all Member States. We want to improve the oversight of the many financial means used by terrorists, from cash and cultural artefacts to virtual currencies and anonymous pre-paid cards, while avoiding unnecessary obstacles to the functioning of payments and financial markets for ordinary, law-abiding citizens”.
So this initiative clearly aims at fighting the potential use of virtual currencies by terrorists or criminals, although there isn’t so much evidence of such use.

In fact, a few days ago Europol concluded that there is no connection between Bitcoin and terrorism: “Despite third party reporting suggesting the use of anonymous currencies like Bitcoin by terrorists to finance their activities, this has not been confirmed by law enforcement”, said Europol.“Virtual currencies and their underlying technologies can provide faster and cheaper financial services, and can become a powerful tool for deepening financial inclusion in the developing world,” said IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who presented IMF paper at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, during the panel Transformation of Finance.

A conclusion of the report is that virtual currencies fall short of the legal concept of currency or money. While acknowledging that there is no generally accepted legal definition of currency or money, the authors note that both are associated with the power of the state to issue currency and regulate the monetary system.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio

HolyTransaction’s Bitcoin Monthly Roundup of January 2016

Welcome to HolyTransaction’s first monthly recap for the new year of 2016. This past month of January has been marked by all time highs for the year thus far; during that time, the bitcoin price rose from a high of $430.89 on January 1st to a low of $368.49 on January 31st, according to Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp.



Since the news broke about Cryptsy’s disappearence, the exchange has officially put forward their side of the story. Paul Vernon claims that the exchange was hacked years ago, and admits to running a fractional reserve since that date. He even offered a 100 BTC reward for whoever could find the hacker. Community speculation and the piling legal documents against Cryptsy’s founder spell more bad news for the American exchange.



Months ago, Hearn was promoting Bitcoin XT, a hardfork that would have increased the Bitcoin blockchain block size in a brute force manner. The plan wasn’t able to garner community support, and Hearn eventually signed a deal to work with R3. Hearn also cited concerns about “Chinese miners” and the Great Firewall of China and what their involvement in Bitcoin meant for the longevity of the project. He left the Bitcoin community with a strong blog post on Medium, saying: “But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly.” Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media took this as an opportunity to hail the death of Bitcoin; but alas, the death of Bitcoin was (again) greatly exaggerated.



Shaun Bridges, one of the government agents arrested and charged in the aftermath of the Silk Road case, which the agents were instrumental in, has been re-arrested. Bridges was found with packs of packed clothes, money, passports, and other evidence that he was planning to leave the country instead of reporting for his time in jail. There is evidence that Bridges still has Bitcoin stashed elsewhere, and the plot continues to thicken.



In a response to community outcry for better communication from those entrusted with the “original” version of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Core team launched their social media presence this past month. They are also using popular communications platform Slack to better interface with the community. Interested users can signup at slack.bitcoincore.org to chat about the future of Bitcoin.



Former JP Morgan Chase banker Blythe Masters’ blockchain company, Digital Asset Holdings, has successfully raised $52 million for their project. The company previously bought out such bitcoin startups as Hyperledger and had been raising money through 2015 to bring the blockchain to the mainstream. The company also landed a deal with ASX Ltd., which is Australia’s main exchange operator. The blockchain is going down under, in a good way.


Thank you for reading our newsletter with the previous month’s best Bitcoin articles!

We tweet more cryptocurrency news and insights daily @HolyTransaction

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
Altcoins part 2 HolyTransaction infographic

Infographic: Comparing Altcoins – Part 2

Comparing altcoins: contrasting five more cryptocurrencies infographic HolyTransaction

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

jorge
Altcoins Infographic HolyTransaction

Infographic: Comparing Altcoins

Comparing Altcoins: what features make each altcoin different Infographic HolyTransaction

 

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

jorge
ethermoon

HolyTransaction adds Ethereum


HolyTransaction is excited to announce support for a new cryptocurrency, as well as a renewed focus on our international customers. The last cryptocurrency that we added was Gridcoin, and now we have added Ethereum’s crypto fuel – Ether.

Ethereum is one of the most interesting decentralized projects that have been released in Bitcoin’s wake and we support its goals. Smart contracts can’t come soon enough!

Now, with HolyTransaction, you have:

– Send and receive Ether

– Ethereum server side wallet creation and transaction signing

– Set OTP for additional protection

About Ethereum
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that users can use to run smart contracts. Smart contracts are applications that run exactly as programmed (with a Turing complete language) without the possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or 3rd party meddling. The Ethereum platform uses Ether as its “crypto-fuel.”

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Satoshi
bitcoinist australia fe 640x480

Australia investigating banks for anti-competitive behavior when closing Bitcoin company accounts

Australian authorities are looking into the bank account closures of several Bitcoin companies over the last few years. Specifically, the investigation is looking at anti-competitive behavior. Over the last year, bank actions have increasingly embraced blockchain technology instead of shunning it in the form of bank account closures. Though this type of account closure, for simply being associated with Bitcoin, is a common occurence in the United States, China, and some European countries as well, the Australian authorities are the first to look into at scale – a harrowing victory for those using blockchain technology. The Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman, Rod Sims, told the Australian Financial Review:”We are asking the banks why they acted as they did and what contact there was between them.“If ground reports from major Bitcoin companies such as BTC-e and OKCoin, that lost their accounts at the National Australia Bank, are to be believed, the contact was sparse and uninformative. Sims confirmed that the investigation had been ongoing for some time. Australian Senator Matthew Canavan also commented on the investigation:

We have strong laws against one business obstructing another business competing against it. These laws are even tougher for those companies that have the privileged position of a significant market share. Our banks wield great influence in the market and they have a great responsibility under our laws to not misuse that position. I am not sure if that has happened in this instance but there is no doubt that digital currencies do pose a threat to business of banks.

Australian Senate that Might Actually Understand Bitcoin and its Promise

The investigation started as a result of Senatorial interest after the Australian government committed to a deeper understanding of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. One of the conclusions of said research, which has been shared by other governments in the world, was that existing financial laws should be more than enough to prosecute those using Bitcoin for illegal activities. Australia has also had brushes with Bitcoin advocacy groups when a Goods and Services tax was enforced on Bitcoin. Recently, the European Union has also joined the United Kingdom in not enforcing a Value Added Tax on Bitcoin.

A Labor Party Senator, Sam Dastyari, was not surprised to hear about the ACCC investigation. He had previously chaired the Senate investigation into digital currencies. At this time, banks such as the National Australia Bank and other similarly sized institutions around the world are delving into blockchain technology. If anything, this is a clear indication that the swift actions of last year, where both domestic and international Bitcoin companies lost their accounts at Australian banks, were anti-competitive in spirit. Even without the emerging facts regarding bank’s research, investment, and involvement with blockchain projects, the majority of domestic companies brought down by Australian bank action were providing services that were in essence competing with banks.Australia has a large immigrant population from South East Asia that sends remittances back home. Some of the largest Bitcoin remittance companies are based in South East Asia in countries like the Phillipines or India. In Indonesia, Bitcoin is buyable at any of ten thousand plus IndoMaret stores. Australia now seems aptly prepared to benefit from the coming Bitcoin technology boom (bubble as called by some). Once the investigation is over, and banks are 100% clear on what not to do to Bitcoin companies, expect to see more Bitcoin companies return to Australia.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Satoshi
Decentralization Infographic

Infographic: Why Is Decentralized Currency Better?

Why is-decentralized currency better infographic HolyTransaction

 

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

jorge