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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ Large Enterprises Are Betting On #Blockchain In 2019 $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:53 PM on Wednesday, August 14th, 2019

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Large Enterprises Are Betting On Blockchain In 2019

First half of this year was full of blockchain developments led by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade finance.

Biser Dimitrov Contributor

2019 is the year when the blockchain ecosystem and the crypto industry as a whole had to get sober. After a wild 2017 and a bear 2018, the blockchain space is back on an upwards trajectory with new developments. There are no more Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to distract the crypto ecosystem and the building mentality is back on. This post-ICO and post-useless-PR-partnerships age urges the blockchain community to be less focused on the current price of bitcoin and more focused on producing meaningful services and advancements. Big projects from established enterprises like Facebook Libra are taking all the media space now and this is net positive for the enterprise blockchain space as well.

The first half of this year was full of blockchain developments led by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade finance.

There is a huge benefit in joining a specialized industry-focused blockchain consortium because you sit at the same table with your main competitors but at the same time you work toward the same goal. You are not alone in figuring out the benefits, implementations and roll-out of distributed ledger technologies. There is also a financial benefit when commonly building applications as sometimes the membership fee is lower than the cost of hiring and training blockchain developers. Some of the big names in leading blockchain consortia networks that have made significant progress so far in 2019 are:

B3i, a blockchain consortium focused on the insurance industry, recently launched its first live product on R3â€™s Corda platform. Their members include big insurance and reinsurers companies like Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Tokio Marine, XL Catlin and Zurich.
Energy Web Foundation (EWF) launched their enterprise-grade public blockchain with 17 applications already on it. That network consists of 100 affiliate members like Total, Shell, GE, Siemens, Duke Energy and PG&E.
Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) was created by five of the ten largest container carriers: CMA CGM, COSCO SHIPPING Lines, Evergreen Marine, OOCL, and Yang Ming.
Two of the largest health insurance companies in the United States, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, have teamed up to tackle the massive datasets of provider demographic data from hospitals and medical partners.
Health Utility Network was formed by Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corporation, PNC Bank and IBM to drive digital transformation and blockchain enabled-solutions within the healthcare industry.
In the space of trade finance, the biggest names are project Voltron, focusing on letters of credit; Marco Polo, implemented on R3â€™s Corda; and we.trade, which runs on IBM Blockchain and consists of 12 of the biggest European banks, including CaixaBank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Santander, SociÃ©tÃ© GÃ©nÃ©rale, UBS and UniCredit. They are all moving forward with pilots and we have seen live results, like the completed transaction between the European Union and Asia on Marco Polo.
The owners of the famous Louis Vuitton label, LMVH, launched a special blockchain that will help prove the authenticity of expensive goods. It is built on Ethereum with the help of Microsoft.
Samsung launched a consortium including six major South Korean companies, focused on launching a blockchain-based mobile ID system. The company is already pretty advanced in their blockchain and crypto developments with the release of the Galaxy S10 phone with designated crypto wallet and Blockchain Keystore online app marketplace. Moreover, Samsung released a developer-friendly Blockchain SDK.
The IBM Food Trust network launched. Built on Hyperledger Fabric, the network aims to create a traceable audit log for time-sensitive foods and when an issue occurs, the network participants will be able to pinpoint exactly where the damaged items shipped and wonâ€™t have to empty all their shelves. The consortium consists of companies like the European giant Carrefour, Walmart, Nestle, Dole Food, Tyson Foods, Kroger and Unilever.
Walmart, similarly to Samsung, is involved on several different tracks with blockchain. They have joined MediLedger, a private consortium that aims to create a drug supply chain. Apart from that they are also partnering with KPMG, Merck and IBM as part of the FDAâ€™s program to evaluate the use of blockchain to protect pharmaceutical product integrity. Recently it become public that Walmart also filed a patent for issuing a digital currency on a blockchain, or stablecoin, as they are known in the industry.

The whole private consortia ecosystem is still in early development but the right mentality is there. We will see how the technology develops over time to support those formations. A popular approach might be a hybrid infrastructure, where consortium members interact with each other in a permissioned environment or a shard but eventually anchor to some public blockchain for audit and reference purposes.

From the enterprise blockchain technology perspective, this first half of 2019 was pretty interesting and the major blockchain platforms made progress in not only improving and maturing their services but releasing new products. The general sentiment has been to focus on privacy, consensus options and digital asset standardization in anticipation of the tokenization revolution.

Digital Asset is another of the big names that made great progress in 2019. While work with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is still going as planned, they have completely open-sourced their modeling language, called DAML. That move was very well accepted by the blockchain developer community as DAML is a great language to code smart contracts with.
The Hyperledger family got bigger with a new tool called Transact, which should provide advanced transaction execution and state management. The long-awaited version of Fabric 2.0 is still in the shop but once released it will provide performance improvements in many areas, such as data storage, privacy and consensus layer, over the current 1.4.2 version.
Pantheon, the open source enterprise Ethereum client from PegaSys, launched version 1.2 with extensive privacy features like on-chain smart contract node and account rules, whitelisting nodes and others.
Microsoft was very active during H1 2019 and launched a decentralized online identity platform on top of the bitcoin blockchain called ION. More than that, they continued to expand on their Azure Blockchain development kit, which is very helpful from a developer perspective.
R3 achieved a large milestone this year by releasing version 4 of their Enterprise Corda protocol. Now their well-rounded team is perfectly capable of publishing regular releases on both the open source and the enterprise versions of Corda. Another great achievement was releasing the Token SDK; now it is easier to implement and work with tokens on the Corda network. Recently also R3 announced a large expansion of their London office and growing of IT team.
Ernst & Young released their project Nightfall, which uses zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology to enable transfers of Ethereum-based tokens with complete privacy. There are a few things that E&Y are doing here that deserve acknowledgment. They are using the permissionless public Ethereum network, which is the complete opposite of the permissioned and siloed approach adopted by similar enterprises. Then they rely on privacy and implement ZKP to achieve that. It remains to be seen what they will decide to support when Ethereum 2.0 becomes a thing and the current chain might split as not nodes will migrate.

2019 has proven to be a year when blockchain technology has gotten down to business. Going further from the wild early days of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, blockchain is making large steps in nearly every industry, from insurance to pharmaceuticals to luxury goods. Backed by large enterprises, we saw the maturing of the underlying protocols and improvements in security and privacy aspects. There is still a lot to be done as the core blockchain infrastructure needs to mature enough to be prime-time ready, and like Q1 and Q2, the second half of 2019 is certain to be filled with new developments.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/biserdimitrov/2019/08/13/large-enterprises-are-betting-on-blockchain-in-2019/#5521e97a1bff

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Blockchain Investment Soars In H1 2019: A Look At Trends #Bitcoin #Cryto $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:11 PM on Tuesday, August 13th, 2019

Blockchain Investment Soars In H1 2019: A Look At Trends

Blockchain Investment Trends Research by TeqAtlas includes analysis of 2.5k active blockchain companies that were funded by 1.8k blockchain investors in 2.5k funding rounds through both â€“ conventional and alternative instruments.

by Jacob Wolinsky

While VC activity surpasses Dot-Com era in the U.S., Chinese tech companies valuations are higher than any time in recent memory, and SoftBank raised another multi-billion dollar fund, the state of the blockchain investment market shows indications of maturity and saturation. Although most blockchain companies are newbies into the market, they still present an attractive investment potential.

The Blockchain Investment Trends Research by TeqAtlas includes analysis of 2.5k active blockchain companies that were funded by 1.8k blockchain investors in 2.5k funding rounds through both â€“ conventional and alternative instruments. TeqAtlads takes a comprehensive view of the unique trends that define blockchain investment market to understand the investor expectations

Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

Investors Continue To View Blockchain A High Return Investment

In the first half of 2019, total capital investment into blockchain companies has been the opposite of what we saw in the previous year, which saw a dramatic rise in the amount of capital investment. The previous year saw a record-breaking $15.2 billion investment in TGEs (token generation events) and $5.1 billion in conventional equity funding. In contrast, approx. $2 billion in TGE capital were raised in the first half of this year. The upward trend is losing steam in the first half of 2019, after four years of positive growth.

The research still reports a positive, upward trend in terms of venture capital (VC) injected into blockchain companies. Conventional equity rounds have accumulated $1.2 billion in the first 6 months of 2019, as compared to $1.3 billion for all of 2017.

How Did Blockchain Companies Fare In Deal Activity?

Throughout the research, 2018 continued to remain the benchmark for blockchain companies. The height set during the blockchain boom is hard to replicate as the effects of the dramatic fall in value still affect the industry.

In terms of deals, the grand total of investment rounds in the blockchain industry in the first half of 2019 was 268.

For comparison, blockchain companies attracted 910 deals in 2018 and 478 deals in 2017. At the same pace, 2019 might just oust 2017 in terms of blockchain deal activity.

Surprisingly enough, if you add private equity into the equation, the total number of conventional funding rounds almost equal the growth numbers in 2018.

A breakdown of all the blockchain investment funds also reveals that TGEs were more successful in raising money than Venture Capital rounds â€“ with the former amassing 26% more on average.

There Is Increasing Interest In Alternative Funding Techniques

Research into completed deals in 2019 shows an emerging trend; investors are increasingly experimenting with alternative funding methods. In fact, a majority (56%) of all closed deals in these six months were secured through TGEs.

Venture capital deals of early-stage funding ensure that traditional investment comes in second with a 34% share. Early-stage VC rounds form the major part of conventional funding rounds in terms of the total capital invested in active Blockchain companies with a 34% share in 1H 2019. If you add in angel seed rounds, this share increases by another 7%.

Equity Funding Has Decreased as compared to 2018

If you analyze the investment pattern from 2014 to the first half of 2019, you are likely to notice that Early-stage VC rounds come out on top for most blockchain investment by stages, with blockchain investments in this stage exceeding $2 billion.

Later Stage Venture Capital Investment Is On The Rise

Later stage venture capital rounds have become increasingly popular, which means that major players, such as institutional investors, became interested in this market. The total amount raised by later-stage blockchain companies backed by venture capital was $289 million in 2018 only. To compare, the median round amount of the later-stage IT companies amounted to $11.5 million in 2018, according to Statista.

The TGE Hype Is Fading Away

TeqAtlas analyzed TGE investment data for 18 months ending in June 2019 to consider how many investors participate through TGE.

The findings state that â€“ despite minor spikes â€“ the overall trend and interest in token generation events remain on an all-time low. Blockchain investors tread carefully when it comes to investing in TGEs, with only 153 deals to show for the six months of 2019.

Blockchain regulations surrounding TGEs, coupled with the dismal investment numbers, has led us to predict that they are nowhere near becoming the principal funding method in the blockchain industry.

64% Of Startups Donâ€™t Meet Their Hard Cap

Another challenge identified in the research was that startups, due to being new and relatively inexperienced, often fail to predict their hard cap amounts accurately.

A mere 36% of startups manage to meet their hard caps during the token generation event, with the rest failing to do so. Nevertheless, 2019 has been a slightly better year for startups; the percentage of startups that didnâ€™t meet their hard cap dropped 13 points as compared to the previous year.

What Are The Biggest Deals since the Blockchain inception?

When comparing the different types of fundraising, the general trend is that TGE usually outperforms conventional VC funding by the capital raised. The biggest TGE was held by EOS.IO and led to an enormous fundraising amount of $4.2 billion. When compared to the biggest VC deal, EOS.IOâ€™s amount is approximately 220% higher.

The biggest VC-backed company by funding value is Bitmain that has raised $400 million being valued at $12 billion in a Series B round. Another blockchain company Bakkt, owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), secured $182.5 million for their project which will enable them to build the global digital assets platform and bitcoin futures product.

Which TGE Type Extracts The Greatest ROI?

The research analyzed the return on several different TGE investments, and the results showed a clear winner â€“ blockchain infrastructure developers.

Amongst investors who enjoyed the best returns, many had funded blockchain platforms, IoT Infrastructure providers and interoperability blockchain developers such as Ethereum, IOTA and Cosmos Network, respectively.

DCG Dominates The Number Of Deals

The research outlined that more than 800 venture capital firms are already capitalizing on blockchain adoption.

Still, no one comes close to the Digital Currency Group, which is comfortably placed at #1 with 131 deals to date. In fact, the second and third-placed competitors combined have 109 completed deals.

Unsurprisingly, 80% of the top 10 active blockchain investors reside in the USA.

Most Active Investors industry focus is FinTech

Considering the security and encryption prowess of the technology, it comes as no surprise that a majority of blockchain technology investment is concentrated in the financial sector. In fact, FinTech has 114 more deals completed than the second-best sector, blockchain infrastructure.

Not only does FinTech boast the highest number of completed deals (150), but investors have poured in huge amounts in such blockchain startups. This proves that investors truly believe in the potential of blockchain, especially in the field of FinTech.

Angel/Seed Rounds Are The Investors Favorite

While reviewing the biggest active blockchain investors, an interesting trend was identified; most of them fill their portfolios in the first round of funding â€“ the Angel round. While alternate funding methods might be gaining hype, conventional funding instruments prevail in the portfolios of the most active investors.

IEO â€“ The ICO Replacement?

ICOs were riddled with problems by the end of 2018, partially due to fraud that hindered investor trust in blockchain as a whole.

Now, there is a new way to offer coins and this method involves crypto exchanges in the offering process. This involves the exchange becoming a core member â€“ essentially, the exchange offers the coins to their existing consumer base rather than the company offering it to the public.

This allows exchanges to run background checks and verify developer legitimacy, substantially decreasing the risk of fraud. In the research, TeqAtlas came across all launchpads that have already conducted IEOs in the current year â€“ or are planning to.

Source: https://www.valuewalk.com/2019/08/active-blockchain-companies-analysis-h1-2019/

Tags: Bitcoin, blockchain, CSE, ether, stocks, tsx, tsx-v
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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ Goldman Sachs $GS Analysts Say that Itâ€™s Time to Buy #Bitcoin #Cryto $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:23 PM on Monday, August 12th, 2019

Goldman Sachs Analysts Say that Itâ€™s Time to Buy Bitcoin

In short â€“ the experts are quite bullish for Bitcoin to go up.
Basically, they have set up a short-term price target of $13,971 â€“ yes, specifically this one.

by Janis Rijnieks

Recently, Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu has shared the Goldman Sachs note which was sent out to investors. In the note, Goldman Sachs analysts suggest that buying this Bitcoin dip is a prime opportunity. The note itself consisted of a Bitcoin CMI futures chart and a comment from the analysts.

First of all, the fact that Goldman Sachs is sending out crypto, in this particular case, Bitcoin advice to their investors is mind-blowing. Also, the fact that they are seeing it as a bullish pattern and they are using the Elliot Wave Theory indicators on their Bitcoin chart is also a big surprise.

Experts point out that the fact that the Bitcoin CMI futures chart is used means that this note is being sent out only to institutional investors. You can see this by the little gaps in the chart which are weekends. That is the time when CMI Bitcoin Futures markets are closed.

What does the Note Say?

In short â€“ the experts are quite bullish for Bitcoin to go up. Basically, they have set up a short-term price target of $13,971 â€“ yes, specifically this one.

In detail â€“ they believe that Bitcoin will find a support level near $11,094 and $10,791. Once it does that, the analysts say that the chart has plenty of room to break out at least to $12,916, and possibly to a new 2019 ATH â€“ $13,971.

â€œReaching these levels could mean completing a v wave count from July. Bottom line, watch for a short-term top/consolidation once satisfied,â€ says the note.

But this is a short-term prediction. What about long-term? Well, according to Goldman Sachs analysts, anything below $13,000 is an indication to accumulate. They believe that we are in for a similar run-up like we saw recently this year when Bitcoin went from $7,600 to around $11,900 in a matter of a couple of weeks.

â€œIn the bigger scheme of things, this might still be the first leg of another 5-wave count similar to the trend that lasted from Dec â€˜18 through Jun â€™19,â€ reads the note.

Also, another thing which recently was highlighted â€“ Bitcoin loves 30% pullbacks. Some experts and analysts have noticed that after a healthy 30% pullback, Bitcoin always have recovered and this is even considered as a normal investment strategy. Hence, it is 100% sure that Bitcoin will have a run-up if it has fallen by approx. 30%.

So in short â€“ Goldman Sachs says that we all need to buy Bitcoin. But, as usual, only the time will show whether this advice was definitely the one that investors should have followed.

Source: https://www.coinspeaker.com/goldman-sachs-buy-bitcoin/

Tags: Bitcoin, blockchain, CSE, ether, small cap stocks, stocks, tsx, tsx-v
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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Facebook $FB #Libra: It’s not the #crypto that’s the issue, it’s the organisation behind it $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:56 AM on Wednesday, August 7th, 2019

Facebook’s Libra: It’s not the ‘crypto’ that’s the issue, it’s the organisation behind it

by Bill Maurer And Daniel Tischer, The Conversation

The founding partners of the Libra Association. Credit: Ascannio / Shutterstock.com

Libra is not a cryptocurrencyâ€”at least, not as they have been put into practice so far, where a distributed, decentralised community participates in transaction verification via a competitive process.
Libra is essentially a prepaid digital token, backed one-to-one with a basket of reserve currencies. It is “minted” when people put up state-issued currencies to buy it.

In all the hype that has surrounded its Libra currency, Facebook has been able to distract attention away from an important issue. Libra is being hyped as Facebook’s bitcoin but it’s really a proposal for a global payments system. And that system will be controlled by a small and exclusive club of private firms.

Since it was announced in June, politicians and regulators have attacked Libra, citing concerns about its being a cryptocurrency. Libra is not a cryptocurrencyâ€”at least, not as they have been put into practice so far, where a distributed, decentralised community participates in transaction verification via a competitive process.

Libra is essentially a prepaid digital token, backed one-to-one with a basket of reserve currencies. It is “minted” when people put up state-issued currencies to buy it.

What’s important here is not the technological innovation. Facebook is proposing, in Libra, a new form of organisation. We already have payment systems controlled by private companiesâ€”Visa, MasterCard, Venmo or PayPal, which provide the infrastructure or “rails” for transferring valueâ€”and Libra might turn into another such rail. But its promoters have greater ambitions for it.

Based on our research on the history and technology of payment infrastructures, we see similarities between Libra and Visa. But it’s the differences with the Visa network that raise the biggest warning flags.

Learning from Visa

Libra will be controlled and maintained by the Libra Association, a membership-based group. Libra’s developers have voiced a commitment to letting anyone become a member of the association, including users like you and me. The Libra white paper trumpets the importance of decentralisation. But it also admits that, “as of today we do not believe that there is a proven solution that can deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of people and transactions across the globe” through a truly open, decentralised system.

We believe Libra’s founders got the idea from the work of Visa’s founder, Dee Hock. Hock was heralded as a visionary in his day, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg today. He realised that the problem facing payments between banks was not technological, but organisational.

When setting up Visa, it was important for Hock that Visa would not be owned by self-interested shareholders. Instead, it was the users, banks and credit unions, who “owned” Visa as a cooperative membership organisation. Ownership here did not entail the right to sell shares, but an irrevocable right of participationâ€”to jointly decide on the rules of the game and Visa’s future.

The incentive was to create a malleable but durable payment infrastructure from which all members would benefit in the long term. To work, everyone had to give something upâ€”including their own branding on credit cards, subordinating their marks to Visa. This was a really big deal. But Hock convinced the network’s initial members that the payoff would come from the new market in payment services they would create. He was right.

For most of its existence, until it went public in 2016, Visa was an anomalous creature: a for-profit, non-stock corporation based on the principle of self-organisation, embodying both chaos and order. Hock even coined a term for it: “chaordic”.

Libra envisions a similar collaborative organisation among the founding members of its Libra Association. But it turns Hock’s principles upside down. The Libra Association is all about ownership and control by its members as a club.

Big barriers to entry

And the Libra Association is a club with very high barriers to entry. An entity has to invest at least US$10m in Libra or have more than US$1 billion in market value, among other criteria. The initial list of founding members tilts toward groups that have shown strong opposition to government interference and oversight. Tellingly, there are no regulated financial entitiesâ€”like banks and fund managersâ€”in the mix. The membership represents a self-selecting crÃ¨me de la crÃ¨me of global tech and vulture capitalism.

Association membership guarantees a share of future profits proportionate to a member’s stake in the system. Unlike Visa, members do not compete with one another for market share. Instead, they will passively collect rent from interest made on investing in the Libra reserve basket. Plus, profits are not shared with users, and no interest is paid on the balance held by individuals.

Being a club member also affords the right to voteâ€”again, a lot like Visa. But, unlike Visa, Libra gives voting right power based on investment level, not participation. This is not democratic; it is a plutocracy, where the wealthiest rule. And, as profits are linked solely to interest on the association’s reserve funds, those managing it may well become riskier and more speculative over time.

Libra’s white paper outlines an organisation that could become a decentralised, participatory system like Hock envisioned Visa would become. But Libra, if it is successful, will likely become an undemocratic behemoth. Alarm bells ring about a global currency’s de facto governance by a private, exclusive club serving the purposes of its investor-owners, not the public good.

Governments have long been suspicious of private currencies for good reasons, and Libra is no exception. We must not be distracted by its proposed technical complexity, and instead, focus on how this technology is organised, put to work, and how its rewards are distributed. The good news is that Facebook’s play for money may at last prompt politicians to regulate tech giants to curb their impact on and influence over society.

Source: https://techxplore.com/news/2019-08-facebook-libra-crypto-issue-organisation.html

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Bitcoin Suddenly Back Above $10,000 As #Crypto Markets Gain Billions $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:45 AM on Friday, August 2nd, 2019

Bitcoin Suddenly Back Above $10,000 As Crypto Markets Gain Billions

Bitcoin has surged back above $10,000 per bitcoin after a raft of positive news for the bitcoin price and cryptocurrency markets, somewhat putting to rest fears bitcoin bulls were about to wrest back control.

By:Billy Bambrough Contributor

The bitcoin price is up 10% over the last three days, with traders and investors pointing to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate cut in bitcoin’s ten-year history as one of the prime catalysts for the sudden recovery.

Bitcoin had been trading under the psychological $10,000 mark since the end of last week but the bitcoin price has now bounced back. Getty Images

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in more than a decade and signaled its readiness to provide more support as growth slows in the worldâ€™s largest economy.

The bitcoin price climbed to highs of $10,500 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange last night, while the wider bitcoin and cryptocurrency market has added around $10 billion to its overall value over the last few days.

“Given the connection that crypto influencers have been making between economic stimulus and crypto lately, we will probably see a much swifter reaction in bitcoin’s price than we usually do,” Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at brokerage eToro, wrote in a note clients.

“We can see that bitcoin did have a nice run-up the entire morning ahead of the [Fed’s decision]. At the exact time of the cut, there was a notable step down, which was quite in line with what happened in the stock market.”

Just after the Fed revealed it was to reduce the cost of borrowing, bitcoin investors learned supplies of the digital token are almost exhausted, despite new coins still due to come into the market for the next 120 years.

Bitcoin now has 85% of its supply in circulation as of August 1, leaving just 3.15 million to be mined, according to data from monitoring resource Blockchain.

The bitcoin price fell sharply at the end of last week, sparking fears the latest bitcoin bull run could be over. CoinDesk

Meanwhile, the markets were further emboldened by news Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square revealed it made $125 million in bitcoin sales through its Cash App, nearly doubling a record first quarter.

“During the quarter, bitcoin revenue benefited from increased volume as a result of the increase in the price of bitcoin, and generated $2 million of gross profit,” the company wrote in its second quarter earnings report.

Elsewhere, the chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the closely-watched bitcoin futures platform Bakkt, yesterday said the bitcoin and cryptocurrency platform will be launching soon, without fixing a firm date.

“Subject to final regulatory approvals, we plan to launch our physically settled bitcoin futures in the very near future,” ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said during a quarterly earnings call.

Follow me on Twitter.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2019/08/02/bitcoin-suddenly-back-above-10000-as-crypto-markets-gain-billions/#57591573bafa

Tags: Bitcoin, blockchain, CSE, ether, small cap stocks, stocks, tsx, tsx-v
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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #NBA is going #crypto, launching #blockchain souvenirs from the maker of #CryptoKitties $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:40 PM on Thursday, August 1st, 2019

NBA is going crypto, launching blockchain souvenirs from the maker of CryptoKitties

To put this product in context: The whole value proposition ofÂ blockchain, the decentralized peer-to-peer technology that came about with bitcoin in 2009, is as a place to record transactions on a public, immutable, tamper-proof ledger.
Bitcoin runs on its own blockchain; ether, a rival cryptocurrency, runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
NBA Top Shot will run on a blockchain.
Dapper Labs and the NBA arenâ€™t saying yet exactly which blockchain, but itâ€™s likely to be Ethereum, the home of CryptoKitties.

By: Daniel Roberts, Senior Writer

The NBA is putting its biggest dunks on a blockchain.

The league, along with the NBA Players Association, announced on Wednesday the coming launch of NBA Top Shot, a home for blockchain-based digital collectibles.

The idea is for fans to buy and trade unique digital video clips that commemorate â€œin-game moments from the NBA season, such as a Kevin Durant 3-point shot or Joel Embiid dunk,â€ the NBA says in a press release.

To put this product in context: The whole value proposition of blockchain, the decentralized peer-to-peer technology that came about with bitcoin in 2009, is as a place to record transactions on a public, immutable, tamper-proof ledger. Bitcoin runs on its own blockchain; ether, a rival cryptocurrency, runs on the Ethereum blockchain. NBA Top Shot will run on a blockchain. Dapper Labs and the NBA arenâ€™t saying yet exactly which blockchain, but itâ€™s likely to be Ethereum, the home of CryptoKitties.

Each video clip will be labeled with a number to mark it as distinct, much like when you purchase a print or signed piece of art and it is labeled with how many there are in supply.

Top Shot also promises a gamification element, where fans can compete head-to-head by building a roster and pitting their digital collections against each other, fantasy-style.

Much has been made about the uses of blockchain for sports memorabilia, since souvenirs or autographed items must be authenticated. As CoinDesk research director Nolan Bauerle put it at Yahoo Financeâ€™s crypto summit last year, blockchain-based collectibles are â€œthe extension of that anti-counterfeit quality of all of these coins. So this is really the beginning of what weâ€™re going to seeâ€”I think, anywayâ€”for sports memorabilia, for the authentication of game-worn jerseys, and cards, and all kinds of other stuff.â€

But success here is hardly guaranteedâ€”participation isnâ€™t even guaranteed.

Major League Baseball launched a blockchain collectibles game last year with game developer Lucid Sight called MLB Crypto Baseball. It has not, so far, been an obvious hit. If you search Twitter for mentions of the product, most are complaints. It is also far from easy to use, since participants have to first buy the cryptocurrency ether.

The NBAâ€™s product comes from Dapper Labs, maker of the mega-popular Ethereum game CryptoKitties. At its peak, the digital kittens in CryptoKitties were so popular they were selling for tens of thousands of dollars, and trading activity was clogging the entire Ethereum network.

Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou acknowledges the possible pitfalls. â€œWe want to give basketball fans something that theyâ€™ve never seen before, but also something that is immediately familiar and they want to actually play with… You might want that play because you love LeBron, you might love the team heâ€™s currently on, or you might need that moment to play in the Top Shot game.â€

Gharegozlou also points to the NBAâ€™s huge social media following as something that can boost awareness of the game. â€œTheyâ€™re going to be very engaged with us in helping make sure that this experience is authentic to the fan, and not just a crypto experience.â€

Although this is the NBAâ€™s first league-wide foray into blockchain, the Sacramento Kings last year launched an Ethereum mining operation to donate crypto to a local community charity. â€œWe know blockchain is going to revolutionize the world,â€ Kings CTO Ryan Montoya told Yahoo Finance last June.

Now, one year later, the league office appears to agree. Adrienne Oâ€™Keeffe, NBAâ€™s head of consumer products and gaming, says, â€œWe are always exploring new ways to engage with fans around the world. We saw this partnership with Dapper Labs as an opportunity to expand our gaming presence while also creating a new and innovative platform that will allow fans to collect and own specific in-game moments.â€

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nba-is-going-crypto-launching-blockchain-souvenirs-from-the-maker-of-crypto-kitties-185727384.html

Tags: Bitcoin, blockchain, CSE, ether, small cap stocks, stocks, tsx, tsx-v
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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Crypto Markets See Second Day of Green, #Bitcoin Above $9,700 $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:05 AM on Wednesday, July 31st, 2019

Crypto Markets See Second Day of Green, Bitcoin Above $9,700

crypto markets are seeing widespread green, with Bitcoin (BTC) breaking back above $9,700 and many large market cap altcoins seeing solid gains of between 3 and 9% on the day.

Marie Huillet

Market Update

Wednesday, July 31 â€” crypto markets are seeing widespread green, with Bitcoin (BTC) breaking back above $9,700 and many large market cap altcoins seeing solid gains of between 3 and 9% on the day.

Market visualization. Source: Coin360

Despite trading in a lower price range since dropping back to a four-figure price point in a recent corrections, BTC is today up a solid 2.4%, bringing it to $9,717 by press time.

This mild uptick nonetheless stops short of bringing the coin back into the green on its 7-day chart, where Bitcoin is still reporting a fractional 0.7% loss. On the month, losses are starker, topping 8%.

Yesterday, Peter Tchir â€” a former Executive Director at German multinational investment bank Deutsche Bank â€” argued that Bitcoin is an indicator of hidden geopolitical tensions, pointing to the coinâ€™s momentous performance this May at a time of fraught trade talks between the United States and China.

Also this week, erstwhile Bitcoin bear and CNBC host Joe Kernen predicted that the top coin could hit $55,000 â€” a 500%+ price surge â€” by the time of its next halving in May 2020.

Bitcoin 7-day price chart. Source: Coin360

Top altcoin Ether (ETH) â€” which celebrated its fourth birthday yesterday â€” has posted a 1.9% to trade around $212 by press time. In corrections earlier this week, the coin had circled perilously close to the round $200 mark, but has since recovered ground and is just slightly in the red, at 2.2%, on its 7-day chart. On the month, however, Ether is down over 18%.

Ether 7-day price chart. Source: Coin360

XRP is reporting a 2.7% gain on the day, while among the remaining top ten coins several alts are seeing stronger upward momentum: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is posting a 7.5% gain on the day, Litecoin (LTC) is up 3.6% and Binance Coin (BNB) is up 4.1%.

In the context of top twenty coins, Tezos (XTZ) is outstripping all other assets, seeing a 24% gain on the day following news of the tokenâ€™s listing on major United States crypto exchange Coinbase. At press time, XTZ is trading at $1.24

Tezos 7-day price chart. Source: Coin360

Still among the top twenty, strong gains are being reported by Chainlink (LINK) â€” up over 9% â€” as well as by NEO (NEO), IOTA (MIOTA) and Cosmos (ATOM), all of which are up by 4-5%.

Total market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies is at $261,434,827,781 at press time, according to Coin360 data.

Dominating the crypto headlines this week is the hearing devoted to examining regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies and blockchain held at the United States Senate Banking Committee. Cointelegraph reported live on the most important developments during the hearing as it unfolded.

Yesterdayâ€™s Committee hearing notably follows upon earlier hearings in mid-July that had examined the regulatory hurdles surrounding Facebookâ€™s Libra.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-markets-see-second-day-of-green-bitcoin-above-9-700

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Branson – backed #cryptocurrency firm launches a super-fast exchange to take on #Coinbase $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 3:36 PM on Tuesday, July 30th, 2019

Branson-backed cryptocurrency firm launches a super-fast exchange to take on Coinbase

Blockchainâ€™s exchange is the result of work led by a team of former trading industry executives.
The exchange can execute orders in a matter of â€œmicroseconds,â€ according to CEO Peter Smith.
The firm has raised $70 million from investors including Richard Branson, Alphabet and Lakestar.

Blockchain CEO Peter Smith. Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Blockchain, one of the worldâ€™s largest cryptocurrency wallet platforms, says itâ€™s launched a digital currency exchange aimed at delivering â€œlightning-fastâ€ trades.

The companyâ€™s exchange, called The PIT, is the result of a behind-the-scenes effort led by a team of former executives from the New York Stock Exchange, TD Ameritrade, Google and Goldman Sachs.

According to Blockchain CEO Peter Smith, the new exchangeâ€™s matching engine Mercury can execute buy or sell orders in â€œ40 to 50 microseconds,â€ an â€œorder of magnitude faster than other market playersâ€ like Coinbase and Binance.

Founded in 2011, Blockchain initially started out with whatâ€™s known as a block explorer â€” kind of like an internet browser for cryptocurrency data â€” and then built digital wallets for users to store and exchange their crypto. It derives its name from the eponymous blockchain network that records bitcoin transactions.

Having enjoyed popularity with bitcoin enthusiasts â€” Blockchain claims to account for about 25% of daily activity on the bitcoin network â€” the company is hoping its exchange platform will help lure in the uninitiated.

â€œThereâ€™s a huge audience of people who have not yet placed their first bitcoin trade,â€ Nicole Sherrod, head of trading products at Blockchain, told CNBC in an interview. Sherrod previously led the active trading product team at online stock broker TD Ameritrade before joining Blockchain.

Sherrod said the new trading platform would give investors a degree of liquidity not seen in competitor exchanges.

â€œIn volatile markets in particular, speed is of utmost importance,â€ she said. â€œI would not feel comfortable delivering a platform to retail investors that puts them in a position where they couldnâ€™t get in and out of a trade with lightning-fast speed.â€

Blockchain CEO Peter Smith says the cryptocurrency firmâ€™s new exchange can executive order in a matter of â€œmicroseconds.â€ Blockchain

Cryptocurrencies have gained a reputation for their volatile price swings. Bitcoin in late 2017 skyrocketed to a near-$20,000 record high, before plummeting the following year to as low as $3,122. The worldâ€™s best-known digital currency has been on the rise this year, however, last trading at $9,502.

Bitcoinâ€™s rise in 2019 was attributed in part to Facebookâ€™s plans to create a cryptocurrency, with analysts saying it brings some much-needed credibility to cryptocurrencies. Facebookâ€™s Libra project has been panned by regulators, however, concerned by the risks it may pose to consumers.

One big hurdle for the industry to overcome is bringing institutional investors with deep pockets on board. That may be slowly starting to happen, with financial services giant Fidelity signaling itâ€™s warming to the space. Sherrod said that Blockchainâ€™s crypto exchange is providing liquidity through â€œinstitutional-level market makers.â€

Blockchain said its exchange will be available in more than 200 countries, starting with 26 trading pairs. Users will be able to link their bank account with Blockchain and use U.S. dollars, euros and sterling to trade cryptocurrencies.

The company has raised over $70 million from investors including British billionaire Richard Branson, Alphabet venture arm GV and early Spotify backer Lakestar. It has also accrued over 40 million users, Blockchain said, who will be able to transfer crypto from their wallets to the exchange.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/bitcoin-blockchain-launches-crypto-exchange-to-take-on-coinbase.html

Tags: Bitcoin, blockchain, CSE, ether, small cap stocks, stocks, tsx, tsx-v
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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ #Blockchain is finally becoming the next-gen database of choice $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 11:49 AM on Monday, July 29th, 2019

Blockchain is finally becoming the next-gen database of choice

Image Credit: TimeStopper/Getty

In short, a blockchain is a server that canâ€™t crash and a database that canâ€™t be corrupted â€” all in one easy to deploy package.

Will Martino, Kadena @_wjmartino

When I think of why we need a blockchain, I think of one guy. There was a dev we had hired to build a few important parts of our product for us. A few years previously, in another life, he had been hosting his own servers and one of them crashed. He was telling me this with tears in his eyes: The database, a massive mess full of customer data, point-of-sale info, and inventory information had gone up in smoke. The backups were hosed, as well. And there was no way to rewind the data.

He spent almost 24 hours in an air-conditioned server room, a monitor attached to the rack and a keyboard on his knees, trying to resurrect it. He was partially successful, but the real question was whether the data was accurate. Whether the transactions all matched up, whether he would keep his job in the morning.

Everything turned out fine and, since then, it has gotten a lot easier to do his job. Cloud replaced servers while also being cheaper and more reliable. His lingering fear never went away though. Things are better, but he canâ€™t be 100% sure things will never go sideways again. He believes, though, that thereâ€™s a stronger safety net available now than weâ€™ve had before: blockchain.

Benefits like disaster recovery, security, availability, and automation are all baked into blockchain. The serverless architecture of public blockchains makes them powerful proofs of how blockchain can deliver on enterprise-grade reliability for business databases. The costs are also not much higher: Blockchainâ€™s ability to instantly replicate may even allow you to safely get away with the same (or even less) redundancy compared to a traditional database. Perhaps the biggest advantage? Smart contracts will regulate changes, so a new hire canâ€™t throw a wrench into everything â€” the blockchain will protect you from changes that could compromise data or stability.

In short, a blockchain is a server that canâ€™t crash and a database that canâ€™t be corrupted â€” all in one easy to deploy package.

To be clear, blockchain isnâ€™t perfectly suited to solve certain data problems, the same way that email isnâ€™t suited for instant messaging. Big data analytics is crazy expensive to replicate, and unless you are directly monetizing the data (like selling ads), it is not worth the cost to shoehorn blockchain into an analytical workload. Blockchains are best for core business transactional data, like your account balance. They are absolutely mission-critical when it comes to account data and ownership records, the loss of which would be an existential threat to a company. A company like Walmart can probably survive the loss of all website traffic data, but it would be very much at risk if it lost its inventory ledger.

Business continuity is a major concern for enterprise players as customers demand nothing less than always-on availability. As businesses grow though, the pains of migrating databases and updating systems can lead to massive fumbles. According to Boston Computing Networkâ€™s research, 60 percent of companies that lose their data will shut down within six months of the disaster. There exists an entire industry of SysOps, DevOps, and others who monitor code pushes and database migrations, giving humans plenty of chances to foul up a launch.

So blockchain represents a big opportunity for businesses to move quickly while keeping their operations secure.

Today, it isnâ€™t just about the speed of transactions, itâ€™s also about verifying and securing those transactions. Thatâ€™s what has always been missing in system management and is something that anyone from our beleaguered dev to the teams that run databases for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are learning.

Blockchain tech is the evolution of the database. Smart contracts enforce business rules, while databases are backed up and verified continuously. All of the infrastructure and computational needs are calculated before deployment, and embedded rules ensure compliance from day one onward.

In fact, it looks a lot like the next generation of what APIs look like. Youâ€™re encapsulating processes, tying them together with requests for data, and expecting results. Right now, the business logic is processed on central servers of some kind. Whatâ€™s innovative with blockchain is that you can take that logic, wrapped as a smart contract, and run it on your own. It still adheres to the rules set by the people who created it, and it must interact as expected.

Now, imagine databases on blockchain using these same robust rules. Robust databases that are unkillable. You donâ€™t have to worry about your main server going down. Replication is built-in. Immutable laws exist that you canâ€™t lose or change. If youâ€™re on a public blockchain, this is as robust as possible, and you donâ€™t have to pay for any servers. With a public blockchain, your data is stored cryptographically by the blockchainâ€™s miners all around the world. If youâ€™re on a private blockchain, you may run several replicated systems. Or, you can own all the nodes. You can also use blockchain on cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The key is that blockchain is built to be replicated, again and again. Traditional databases must be migrated in specific, expensive ways under certain conditions to guard against data loss.

Ultimately, this is where blockchain really proves its worth: combining the basic elements of security, robustness, replication, and business logic all in its â€œDNA.â€ Smart contracts are safe, distributed, and secure. Your entire dataset is more secure this way, too. This is why blockchain promises to be the next-generation database.

Will Martino is Founder and CEO of Kadena.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/27/blockchain-is-finally-becoming-the-next-gen-database-of-choice/

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca â€“ In First, #SEC Clears #Blockchain Gaming Startup to Sell #Ethereum Tokens $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:18 AM on Friday, July 26th, 2019

In First, SEC Clears Blockchain Gaming Startup to Sell Ethereum Tokens

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a no-action letter to Pocketful of Quarters (PoQ), a gaming startup looking to issue tokens on the ethereum blockchain.
PoQ may legally sell its Quarters tokens to consumers without registering them as securities, the SEC Division of Corporation Finance wrote in its second no-action letter to a company seeking to launch a token sale.

Nikhilesh De

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a no-action letter to Pocketful of Quarters (PoQ), a gaming startup looking to issue tokens on the ethereum blockchain.

PoQ may legally sell its Quarters tokens to consumers without registering them as securities, the SEC Division of Corporation Finance wrote in its second no-action letter to a company seeking to launch a token sale. (The first was granted in April to TurnKey Jet, a business-travel startup.)

Quarters are built according to the ERC-20 standard â€“ the first such token to receive U.S. regulatory approval.

In the July 25 letter, Jonathan Ingram, chief legal officer for the SECâ€™s FinHub wing, wrote:

â€œBased on the facts presented, the Division will not recommend enforcement action to the Commission if, in reliance on your opinion as counsel that the Quarters are not securities, PoQ offers and sells the Quarters without registration under Section 5 of the Securities Act and does not register Quarters as a class of equity securities under Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act.â€

â€œThe thing thatâ€™s notable here, this is the first ERC-20 public blockchain token [approved for a sale],â€ said Lewis Cohen of DLX Law, which worked with PoQ to secure the letter.

The token is a stablecoin, with PoQ setting the price of the Quarters as the only seller, PoQ CEO George Weiksner said. This is part of the companyâ€™s compliance requirement with the SEC. (A smart contract prevents tokens from being sent to unapproved accounts, thereby restricting secondary trading.)

PoQ also raised money through a registered securities sale using an investment token, which will remain separate from the Quarters sale.

The two-token system is meant to ensure that users conduct transactions with Quarters, rather than hold them in the hopes of securing a return, Weiksner explained.

He said he hopes Quarters will improve the gaming experience for players who are tired of spending large sums for different platforms, adding:

â€œItâ€™s a way to make games better.â€

â€œThe most important thing for teenage boys is playing video games and this might be the first financial product that they have and itâ€™ll be a crypto wallet,â€ said Michael Weiksner, the companyâ€™s principal (and Georgeâ€™s father).

PoQ is working with Apple and Google to sell Quarters tokens in the App and Google Play stores, respectively, the elder Weiksner said.

Launch conditions

The no-action letter requires a PoQ to follow a number of commitments, including ensuring that players canâ€™t sell, buy or exchange tokens with each other. Rather, only developer or â€œinfluencerâ€ accounts will be able to transact with players.

â€œPlayers can never buy or sell or exchange to anyone except for approved developers, and thatâ€™s a key component of our â€¦ [compliance] strategy,â€ Michael Weiksner said.

â€œAccounts are born as regular accounts but theyâ€™re restricted, so they canâ€™t exchange,â€ he said. â€œThe default accounts are restricted and only approved accounts can accept Quarters.â€

At present, only PoQ can approve accounts, and there are no concrete plans to grant other entities the ability to do so, he said. PoQ is still looking into whether thatâ€™s possible.

Developers and influencers will have to pass know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) processes before they can get an approved account.

According to the letter, Pocketful of Quarters has fully developed its platform and can go live before any tokens are sold.

Moreover, the Quarters tokens â€œwill be immediately usable for their intended purposeâ€ with PoQâ€™s gaming platform when the sale begins, and â€œonly developers and influences with approved accounts will be capable of exchanging Quarters for [ether] at pre-determined exchange rates by transferring their Quarters to the Quarters Smart Contract.â€

The SECâ€™s Ingram warned that â€œany different facts or conditions might require the Division to reach a different conclusion.â€

â€œFurther, this response expresses the Divisionâ€™s position on enforcement action only and does not express any legal conclusion on the question presented or on the applicability of any other laws, including the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering and related frameworks,â€ he wrote.

Reaching this point took PoQ and DLX the better part of a year, Michael Weiksner said.

Cohen told CoinDesk, â€œwe have long championed the importance of working with, rather than against, regulators, and we believe the outcome today of this â€¦ letter, the first-ever ERC-20 that can be sold without being a securities offering, I think itâ€™s an incredibly important point.â€

He concluded:

â€œIt required a lot of patience, and it shows that not every ERC-20 token is a securities offering and it is a positive event in working with regulators.â€
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/sec-clears-blockchain-gaming-startup-to-sell-quarters-tokens

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