Tag Archives: Ethereum

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Cryptocurrencies 2016: Bitcoin Alternative charts

Today we want to talk about Cryptocurrencies 2016, as the just ended year has been very exciting for several digital currencies and not only for Bitcoin.

A lot of major open-source currencies, in fact, showed a good growth during 2016 and we hope to see significant expansion in 2017.

Below you’ll read charts of the excited cryptocurrencies 2016, during a period between December 27, 2015 to December 26, 2016.

Source: Coindesk.com

Bitcoin

Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $6,161,215,794
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $14,590,356,108
Price (Beginning of Year): $411.99
Price (End of Year): $908.17
Price (Annual High): $909.94

For sure Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrencies 2016, if we talk about value.

It is the oldest blockchain-based asset as today (January 3rd) it celebrates its 8th anniversary: the genesis block was generated on January 3rd 2009.

While I’m writing of this article, Bitcoin price is still growing, surpassing the value of $1,000 for 1 BTC.

Bitcoin price and trading volume were supported by several global circumstances, including the Chinese yuan devaluation, the UK’s Brexit, and the election of a Donald Trump.

 

 

Ethereum

Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $80,339,474
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $638,041,577
Price (Beginning of Year): $2.83
Price (End of Year): $7.31
Price (Annual High): $19.59

2016 saw Ether, or  the digital currencies that powers the Ethereum blockchain – become the best-performing currencies, with a more than 2,000% increase over the first six months of 2016.

The major reason for its instability was the DAO hack, the subsequent failure of the decentralized project, and the creation of ethereum classic. These factors led to a fall of nearly 50% of this altcoin value.

 

Anyway, Ethereum is the favorite network for possible FinTech permissioned distributed ledgers, enterprise software and Internet of Things applications, so 2017 could will probably show a capitalization increase for ether.

Litecoin

Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $149,142,004
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $212,469,870
Price (Beginning of Year): $3.41
Price (End of Year): $4.34
Price (Annual High): $5.55

One of the oldest bitcoin alternative, litecoin showed a stable valuation during 2016, closing $2 above its starting price for the year.

Dash

Market Capitalization (Beginning of Year): $16,081.586
Market Capitalization (End of Year): $70,675,107
Price (Beginning of Year): $2.64
Price (End of Year): $9.67
Price (Annual High): $14.42

In 2015, darkcoin decided to end its association with shadow businesses and the DarkNet by changing its name to Dash.

 

This re-branding seemed to work and Dash ended 2016 with pricing nearly three times, and a market capitalization close to four times.

Cryptocurrencies 2016 and their future

As we enter 2017, the future for cryptocurrencies seems bright, as the digital currency market will continue to progress and prove its worth as one of the top-performing commodities available today.

We at HolyTransaction are very happy to work with this top-rated cryptocurrencies, as our wallet can store Litecoin, Dash, Ethereum and Bitcoin within a unique login.

Needless to say, we are proud to have chosen the best and the most profitable cryptocurrencies for our multicurrency wallet you can open here for free.

 

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

Amelia Tomasicchio
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Real Estate Blockchain: houses on the ledger

The real estate blockchain is one of the most imporant use case for the distributed ledger as it is a secure and efficient data management system that enable buyers to rely on a live network.

The California-based Blockchain startup called Propy aims at simplifying real estate sales for investors and brokers by using the ledger.

At the moment Propy is available in Dubai, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Moscow, so users can buy and rent houses creating a connection with the real estate broker on a blockchain platform.

Ethereum network

Propy exploits the Ethereum network, the blockchain network based on smart contract development.

Using Ethereum Propy can replicate the traditional process of real estate transactions by using a safer ledger.

The development team of Propy spent lots of time and effort in designing a smart contract project to be applied on this business.

Real estate Blockchain: how to use smart contract

Propy’s Andrey Zamovsky explained that the world lacks of “proper and robust electronic property registry”.

Some countries that have a digitalized registry to delete data manipulation issues, so Zamovsky said that a blockchain-based platform can be a very useful tool to eliminate corruption. Also, the lack of sophisticated and secure ledger makes the verification process more difficult for brokers.

To avoid this potential issues on data mismanagement, government agencies often take a few weeks to verify ownership transfers, but this is inefficient and expensive method for customers.

Zamovsky explained:

“A lot of developing countries still don’t have any kind of electronic property registry or have very inefficient ones – vulnerable to corruption, physical damage, hack attacks and fraud. The Blockchain database is replicated on thousands of servers worldwide, so it will be close to impossible to lose registry data.”

To read more about real estate blockchain, click here.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio

Why the Ethereum DAO collapse is good for the cryptocurrency

The news of the Ethereum DAO hacker attack is riding high and of course it brings lots of damages for the ethereum investors who stored about $150m of the cryptocurrency.

However, it is always a good behavior to understand and see the other side of the coin, we would say.
In fact, any negative event can allow to have a better environment and more secure technologies.
A similar thing happened with the Mt Gox disaster, when we learned that an exchange must be built with more care and attention.
As Matthew Spoke, co-founder and CEO of blockchain startup Nuco, explained on Coindesk.
“the DAO attack will likely be reversed, as per Vitalik’s proposal; owners of TDT will be able to retrieve their ETH after the proposed hard fork; The DAO will be emptied of its investments; and future distributed autonomous organizations will learn from the lessons”.

Ethereum DAO: what happened?

On June 17th, an unknown hacker (or a group of hackers) stole $60m in Ethereum coins from the DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that used the Ethereum Blockchain to leverage smart contracts and to provide a platform where people can vote and fund projects.
Previously last week the DAO experienced another issue but it was fixed soon by the open-source community and the Etheruem DAO structure and problem-solving techniques.

Universal Wallet

If you want to have a safe and secure wallet to store your Ethereum, you should visit HolyTransaction. 
Here you can store your Ethereum, but also several other digital currencies including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and more.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio
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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

identity platform blockchain
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.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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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

<img src="/images/ethereumwallet.jpg" alt="Ethereum Micropayments" height="264" width="350" />
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.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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Nasdaq Blockchain to build a Solar Energy Market

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Today, during an event organized by Nasdaq, the well-known stock exchange announced its new service that allows solar power providers to sell certificates using its Linq blockchain.
This special solar panels are linked to the Internet connection through a technology created by Filament, a Nevada blockchain startup that built a system able to connect traditional devices to the internet.
Thanks to the Nasdaq private blockchain called Linq, it is possible to create certificates that can be purchased by anyone who wants to finance the solar energy.
Even if there were a couple of bugs, the resultant certificate appeared on the screen during the live video demonstration.
During an interview conducted by Coindesk, Alexander Zinder, director of the global software development at Nasdaq, cleared up how this new technology works.
“The solar panel is actually hard-wired into the IoT device through a converter which enables us to measure the wattage they’re putting out and producing into the grid.”
This innovative project was born thanks to a partnership between Nasdaq and IDEO’s CoLab.
“We think it’s a very compelling use case, but there’s a lot of opportunity, but it’s extremely early in our exploration”, continued Zinder.

Blockchain and energy: Usizo

This is not the first time we hear about a project related to energy and the blockchain.
A few months ago, in fact, we talked about Usizo, a crowdfunding company who is trying to improve energy payments between users and schools in the African country.
Usizo works thanks to a smart meter that accept digital currencies and through a crowdfunding platform where people can donate their bitcoin.
Donators can see the electricity needed by a school and can know how much he will contribute based on the BTC he donates.

Ethereum used for Car Charging

Also, a German power company, RWE, started a partnership with the Ethereum-based startup Slock.it, to develop proofs-of-concepts using the Ethereum blockchain.
RWE Carsten Stöcker commented:
 
“We would like to solve the problems and really push electric vehicle deployment forward by looking into establishing a seamless and affordable electrical charging infrastructure.”

How to pay energy with Ethereum

An American resident used the Ethereum blockchain to sell energy to his neighbors.
The two men did the transaction through the LO3, a startup that aims at changing the energy industry.
Lawrence Orsini, founder at LO3, explained that his startup wants to show how people can use the blockchain on a daily basis to facilitate their peer-to-peer exchange.

MULTICURRENCY WALLET

To store your Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies (such as Litecoin, Dogecoin Peercoin, Blackcoin and more) you need an online wallet.
Here you can open your for free on our HolyTransaction plaftorm.
Click on the link above to read all the info you need.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio
lo3energy

Ethereum Used for Paid Energy

An American resident used the Ethereum blockchain to sell energy to his neighbors.
The two men did the transaction through the LO3, a startup that aims at changing the energy industry. 
Lawrence Orsini, founder at LO3, explained that his startup wants to show how people can use the blockchain daily to facilitate their peer-to-peer exchange.
During an intereview with Coindesk, Orsini commented:
“All the projects that we’re working on are squarely focused on the emerging distributed economy, peer to peer concepts. They’re all squarely focused on distributing and decentralizing assets into communities, into people’s hands, the new economy of the future.”
Thanks to LO3 and ConsenSys, the American resident Eric Frumin had the chance to sell renewable energy directly to Bob Sauchelli, the former program manager at EnergyStar
The energy created by Frumin’s solar panel is tracked on the blockchain. 
Sauchelli commented:
“With this arrangement, I’m going to pay him the whole premium, it won’t cost me anymore. I’m going to pay him what I’d pay the power company, but he’s going to get the whole premium, not just the wholesale rate”.

Bitcoin for Electricity

It’s not the first time we hear about electricity sold for cryptocurrencies and tracked through the blockchain.
In fact, during the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge it was presented a new startup called Usizo, a crowdfunding company who is trying to improve energy payments between users and schools in the African country.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio
Immagine

Bitcoin can win the competition with Fiat currency

Some days ago the researchers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a new whitepaper in which they explained that bitcoin and digital currencies can win the competition with Fiat currency, or the government money.
On April 3rd, in fact, Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylviania and Daniel Sanches of the Bank of Philadelphia published an interesting paper that answers the question: “can competition among privately issued fiat currencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum work?”.

Bitcoin vs Fiat 

In this whitepaper Villaverde and Sanches try to explain how private and digital forms of money can interact (and could win the competition) with government-issued money.
To comment about this topic, the authors talked about the rise of the Internet, thanks to it, in fact, digital currencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum can stand out in the competition with Fiat.
This is a comment of the whitepaper’s authors:
“Our model highlights how the issuing of a private currency is logically separated from banking. Both tasks were historically linked for logistical reasons: banks had a central location in the network of payments that made it easy for them to introduce currency in circulation”.

Downloadable whitepaper

Multicurrencies Wallet

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

Amelia Tomasicchio

HolyTransaction Bitcoin Roundup March 2016

Welcome to HolyTransaction’s third monthly recap for the new year of 2016. This past month of March has been marked by continued interest in blockchain from everywhere; during that time, the bitcoin price rose from a high of $435.23 on March 1st to a low of $414.66 on March 31st, according to Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp.

It’s time to Blockchain-ize things like sneakers with Chronicled

A new blockchain startup, Chronicled, is planning to blockchain-ize the growing multi billion dollar industry that is sneakers. The company has raised $3.4 million on Crunchbase for its mission. The phenomenon of thousand dollar shoes for the male market has somewhat been predicted by similar economic pressures in shoes for females. Chronicled will use the blockchain to bring accountability and cleaner profits to this and other similarly affected industries.

Even Disney wants a piece of the blockchain action

The most recent surprise blockchain job opening is from Disney. While the corporate giant has many diversified products, this is a prime example of blockchain technology’s ability to help any company save in the middle and back office. Disney also probably has an interest in forever securing their rights via multiple blockchains.

VISA is planning its own blockchain for internal use. They are hiring an engineer/developer to help them and are also working with Chain.com. VISA believes that this area will have a critical impact on the future of the industry and wants to get ahead of the curve. Other companies from around the world that are creating blockchain labs and teams include Hitachi, Phillips, and even Walt Disney.

Ethereum’s newest version, Homestead, has officially launched. The price of ether was very volatile around the release of this software as new users rushed in. Homestead replaces Frontier, and allows users to begin using the smart contract technology. Already, companies are being built around the Ethereum blockchain.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio

Smart Contracts through Rootstock, Ethereum and Bitcoin thanks to RSK Labs

smart contracts bitcoin ethereum blockchain
Some days ago Rootstock received $1m in seed funding for its own blockchain startup called RSK Labs who provides smart contracts through the bitcoin distributed ledger and compatible with the Ethereum platform.
The funding came from the bitcoin mining company Bitmain Technology and from the bitcoin companies Coinsilium and Digital Currency Group (DCG).
During a recent interview, Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, CEO at RSK Labs, commented they aim at building a blockchain platform for bitcoin miners and for developers.
Zaldivar said to CoinDesk:
“Our idea is to leverage everything that has been built by the community so far. Not only on the network effect of bitcoin, because the miners will have an additional revenue stream by merge-mining Rootstock, but by providing Ethereum developers a place to build their applications.”
Probably RSK Labs will launch its platform within the end of 2016. 


Smart contracts with the Blockchain

Even if the RSK Labs is very good news, the most important thing we can learn from this event is the interesting development of contracts managed through the blockchain. 
Smart contracts were originally proposed 20 years ago by the famous cryptographer Nick Szabo
A decentralized blockchain with smart contract applications can allow a global financial inclusion, new democratic political systems and the improve of the Internet of things. 
In fact, smart contracts are technology protocols that verify and ease the stipulation of a contract. 
This way smart contracts can provide a better security compared to a traditional contract and allow a significant reduction in transaction fees. Also, smart contracts can provide a service with less risks and without central counterparties. 
To know more about smart contracts and RSK, read this article.

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

Amelia Tomasicchio