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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – From Online #Gambling to #Pot, #Crypto Commerce Takes Off This Year #Bitcoin #Ether $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:44 AM on Friday, November 8th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

From Online Gambling to Pot, Crypto Commerce Takes Off This Year

  • Bitcoin still accounted for about 90% of commerce transactions
  • Nearly $6 million in transactions done daily: Chainalysis

By Olga Kharif

After being given up for dead, cryptocurrency-based commerce — albeit still tiny — has started growing again.

The amount of digital money sent to 16 merchant service providers such as BitPay rose 65% between January and July, according to data researcher Chainalysis. The price of Bitcoin, which accounted for 89% of all such transactions, had more than doubled over the seven months, to about $10,000. Typically, steep run-ups in the cryptocurrency’s price push people to spend less, and instead to hold or to speculate.

The resurgence is in contrast to last year, when Chainalysis found that Bitcoin-based commerce was in decline. This time around, the researcher looked not just at Bitcoin but also at Tether, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, which are used to fund everything from online gambling to purchases at pot shops.

“It suggests there’s more overall trust in crypto,” Kim Grauer, senior economist at New York-based Chainalysis, said in a phone interview.

In one of the biggest efforts for mainstream use, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. plans to begin testing its consumer app for digital assets with Starbucks Inc. in the first half of 2020. Processor BitPay and others are adding support for new coins, also boosting commerce. The company, which says it processes more than $1 billion annually, anticipates continued growth as new cryptocurrencies are added to the mix including Bitcoin Cash Ether and XRP, spokesperson Jan Jahosky said in an email.

The overall amount of crypto used in commerce remains tiny: It was $5.5 million on average per day in July, up from only about $3 million in January. Starbucks alone books about $70 million in sales daily.

Inconvenience has been a major barrier. Transaction confirmation on the Bitcoin network can take an hour — making it hard for someone to just walk in a store, buy a cup of coffee and leave. Many businesses still don’t accept the coins. And many consumers are still leery to spend them anyway, due to most cryptocurrencies’ wild volatility.

Increased use of Tether — a so-called stablecoin because its price doesn’t typically fluctuate much — gave crypto commerce a boost, with the token’s use in commerce increasing five-fold between January and July, according to the researcher. In those seven months, Tether accounted for 9% of all commerce, Chainalysis said.

“There’s still a lot of growth in Bitcoin,” Grauer said. “But if you look at Tether, especially in the second half of the year, Tether took off.”

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/crypto-commerce-jumps-65-as-tether-s-use-takes-off-this-year

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #China reverses decision to ban #crypto mining in 2020 $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:47 AM on Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

China reverses decision to ban crypto mining in 2020

  • The plan to include cryptocurrency mining in China into a list of industries that would be banned in the country has reportedly been scrapped.
  • Earlier this year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in China revealed it was considering putting crypto mining on a list of banned industrial activities, which would have effectively phased out the industry from the country.

By: Priyeshu Garg

The plan to include cryptocurrency mining in China into a list of industries that would be banned in the country has reportedly been scrapped. Earlier this year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in China revealed it was considering putting crypto mining on a list of banned industrial activities, which would have effectively phased out the industry from the country.

Crypto mining industry now safe in China

The future of the crypto mining industry in China has been uncertain for the past six months, as the country’s State Council has been considering implementing guidelines that would have forced the entire industry out.

Back in April, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) published a draft proposal of its Industry Restructuring Catalog, in which it recommended that crypto mining be put on a list of industries to be restricted in the country.

While just a draft, the proposal garnered a lot of negative reactions in China, with many industry leaders arguing that it could be detrimental to China’s dominance in the field. The country is not only home to some of the largest mining hardware manufacturers, including Bitmain, Canaan, and Ebang, but also has some of the largest mining operations in the world.

However, the country seems to have scrapped its plans to blacklist crypto mining, as NDRC has published an updated version of its guidelines that come into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.

According to local media reports, NDRC, which works under China’s State Council, has removed cryptocurrency mining from the list of industries that should be removed from the country. The catalog contains detailed descriptions of what constitutes “virtual currency mining.”

Half of Bitcoin’s hashpower will remain in China

Officials from NDRC held a press conference on Wednesday, Nov. 6, where they explained their decision behind updating the draft they published back in April. The commission said they received over 2,500 suggestions on how to deal with various issues raised by the draft catalog, adding that most of them were “taken into consideration.”

While there were no comments on NDRC’s decision to scrap plans for phasing out crypto mining, the commission was most likely responding to overwhelming pressure from the industry.

It’s important to note that even if the commission hadn’t changed its draft proposal, crypto mining wouldn’t have been immediately banned from the country. The proposal only included guidelines for local governments advising them on how to gradually phase out the burgeoning industry from the country, not legislation outlawing it.

When the news about the potential “ban” broke earlier this year, many argued that it could ultimately be beneficial to the industry, especially Bitcoin mining. The problem with Bitcoin mining centralization has been a looming one and dethroning China as the place responsible for more than half of Bitcoin’s hashpower could have brought much-needed decentralization to the space.

But, the latest NDRC guidelines show that Bitcoin mining will continue to be centralized in China—at least for now.

Source: https://cryptoslate.com/china-reverses-decision-to-ban-crypto-mining-in-2020/

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Key Investment Themes In #Crypto Networks $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:45 PM on Monday, November 4th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Key Investment Themes In Crypto Networks

By: Matt Spoke

I’ve been an entrepreneur in this wild cryptocurrency industry for over 5 years. My focus has been on leading a team of core developers to build an open decentralized protocol that solves real problems for real users. I’m not alone in this endeavour. There are at least a few dozen of my peers leading projects with broadly similar goals.

To the outside world, we’re all crypto geeks building alternatives to Bitcoin. That said, there are nuances in the designs and goals of various projects that form the basis of some early investments theses that leading funds have adopted to guide their selection criteria when looking at digital assets.

Without getting into all the specifics, for the purposes of this article, I want to focus only on the specific digital asset classes that are native to their own networks or blockchains, rather than tokens built into “dApps” or other similar models.

The reason this is important is because there are an increasing number of funds, both institutional and not, that are looking at digital assets as the next asset class to include in their diversified portfolios that include everything from public equities, to real estate, to gold, to bonds and other instruments. Who knows, maybe the next time you check your pension, your favourite digital asset could be in it.

As such, it’s helpful to have a standard way to think about the differences and similarities among digital assets, such that they can be categorized for investment decisions.

To the outside looking in, this industry can be extremely opaque to understand and evaluate. How value will be created, on what time horizon and how does one form opinions on the quality of the project they’re looking at. While there is infinite nuance between projects, protocols, dApps, etc., most digital assets fall within common buckets, that have formed the informal standard crypto theses. This mental model is helpful for any observer, technologist or fund that has been researching or thinking about allocating capital or time into this industry. It also might help us understand new opportunities for value that fall outside of these established categories (more on this later).

In speaking to a prominent investor in the cryptocurrency industry recently, he summarized this very simply:

“I understand and believe in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Everything else is just playing copy-cat and trying to play the same game.”

In a broad sense, this is generally how the industry has evolved. Bitcoin became dominant, and then many built alternatives (“alt”-coins) broadly solving for a similar goal, and then Ethereum introduced a new type of protocol that was quickly followed by its own inspired alternatives – something that Chris Burniske of Placeholder Ventures refers to as “Ethereum Killers”.

The funds investing in this industry have had to build their theses around this reality. As such, you’ll often find funds with a deep conviction for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and then, to a lesser extent, a series of “hedges” into alternatives that could grow in relevance and in some cases potentially overtake the projects that first inspired them. Many of these alternatives have taken different technical approaches, but in general seek to solve the same problem and target the same ‘blockchain-converted’ developer or investor audience.

These investment themes behind Bitcoin and Ethereum are similar in that they are both digital assets, but they’re different in the problems they seek to solve.

Bitcoin established a category of digital assets that Multicoin Capital likes to refer to as “Global, State-free Money”. This theme focuses on a growing need for a global form of money that is independent of institutional trust and provides a digital alternative to gold. The need for such an asset is to address the >500m people in the world who live in countries with greater than 10% inflation, and to provide a place for people to store their wealth that is safe from seizure and “portable” across geographic boundaries.

Although it’s unclear how to measure the size of that addressable market, the thesis implies a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity in this category.

Ethereum, on the other hand, professed to be building a “world computer” or in other contexts, the basis for a “decentralized internet”. This category of digital assets known as “decentralized internet” projects is what primarily caused the run up of the ICO markets in 2017-2018. Believers in this thesis argue that the causes of many of the inequities online today stem from the overly “centralized” nature of the internet’s infrastructure, such that incentives lead towards monopolization of online services – think Facebook and Google. As such, there is a massive interest in owning a piece of the “fuel” that will power the renewed internet infrastructure of the future.

On top of this thesis are companies building utopia as they see it. These ideas range from a system of finance that is open and alternative to banking, a system of identity independent of governments, to other lofty and worthy ideas that would find their homes in the “decentralized internet” category.

Within these two broad categories, there are nuances and further sub-categories, but at the highest level, this is a helpful frame to better understand where a particular project fits, and what alternatives it should be compared against. This framing should also help to better understand why Bitcoin and Ethereum are fundamentally not competing technologies, but why EOS, Tron, and Cardano have yet to prove why they’re contenders to supplant Ethereum, their category king. As with categories in other online industries, we’ll likely see a market where 75% of the value is dominated by the category leader, and the rest spread among its competitors.

With 25-30+ launched or soon-to-be live networks looking to compete in Ethereum’s category, its quickly become saturated. At the current state of adoption in our industry, we’re nearing an oversupply of novel technical solutions and a real need for actual usage. Networks have collapsed into mirror-like narratives (build a dApp here!), use cases (build DeFi here!), and are all seemingly speaking to the same audience.

So when looking at how this market might evolve, the real breakthroughs will likely lie with projects that have a disproportionate chance of dominating these two categories or projects that define a brand new category with massive market potential. More on this next week.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattspoke/2019/10/30/key-investment-themes-in-crypto-networks/#78f4be1d3774

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #Bitcoin And #Crypto Is Heading For An Epic Social Media Showdown $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:24 AM on Thursday, October 31st, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Bitcoin And Crypto Is Heading For An Epic Social Media Showdown

By: Billy Bambrough

In one corner: Twitter’s cofounder and chief executive Jack Dorsey. In the other corner: Facebook’s cofounder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. The fight’s prize is the future of money and their respective weapons are bitcoin and libra.

Who will win?

Getty Images

While the social media monetary situation is not this clear cut, both Dorsey and Zuckerberg have emerged as champions of two similar but opposing ideas; the internet needs its own currency, one sees it as centralised, through Facebook, the other sees it as decentralised, through bitcoin.

Zuckerberg appears to have lost the first round. His libra project, a cryptocurrency by name only and governed by an independent-but-shrinking group of companies, has run afoul of governments and regulators around the world, many of which were already worried Facebook wielded too much influence before the social media giant thought to take on the central bankers.

“I believe that this is something that needs to get built,” Zuckerberg told U.S. senators last week, defending Facebook’s involvement in the controversial libra project and arguing libra could bring financial maturity to millions, if not billions, of people around the world.

Zuckerberg also warned the U.S. could fall behind other countries if lawmakers moved to block the development of libra and similar digital money projects.

Dorsey will, meanwhile, be counting his blessings, with the bitcoin price staging a somewhat miraculous recovery last week after many feared it was heading to lows not seen since March.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2019/10/30/bitcoin-and-crypto-is-heading-for-an-epic-social-media-showdown/#2f84e7b845ed

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Twitter’s $TWTR #Dorsey puts another bet on #crypto #bitcoin #ether $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:29 AM on Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Twitter’s Dorsey puts another bet on crypto

  • Bitcoin proponent Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey continues to bet on crypto by investing in CoinList, a two-year-old venture that helps startups raise money through token sales.
  • The company says it connects investors with thoroughly vetted blockchain-related companies in compliance with crypto regulations.
  • CoinList has supported more than $800M of token offerings since August 2017.
  • Dorsey participated in a recent $10M funding round, the Wall Street Journal reports. The new capital will help with its plans to offer new services including a new exchange, CoinList Trade, and a crypto wallet.

Source: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3511491-twitters-dorsey-puts-another-bet-crypto

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #Crypto Correlations Change As #Ethereum Becomes Benchmark, and #Bitcoin Analysis Today $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:17 PM on Friday, October 18th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Crypto Correlations Change As Ethereum Becomes Benchmark, and Bitcoin Analysis Today

  • An important change from Q2 is a gradual ‘flippening’ of Ethereum and Bitcoin.
  • As the #1 cryptocurrency began increasing its dominance, Ethereum became the benchmark asset for the rest of the market, with most cryptocurrencies showing higher correlation with it than Bitcoin. 

By: Andrey Shevchenko

The cryptocurrency markets are seeing a small retracement today. Bitcoin continues its low-volatility trading around the $8,400-8,500 level, while altcoins are still pulling back from their previous gains.

Notable exceptions are 0x (ZRX), Algorand (ALGO) and Chainlink (LINK), which gained 3%, 10% and 5% over yesterday respectively.

Cryptocurrency price dynamics on October 11, by Coin360

Correlations, correlations everywhere in crypto 

A report by Binance Research analyzed the relative performance of cryptos in Q3. As markets slid downwards from their yearly high in the summer, large market-cap coins did so in unison. 

“Over the third quarter of 2019, the average correlation between Bitcoin and most other large cryptoassets ​remained in line with the previous quarter,” the report notes. “​However, the average correlation among large cryptoassets increased in Q3 2019 with a significant positive increase in the correlations of BNB, ChainLink, and Bitcoin SV with other cryptoassets.

An important change from Q2 is a gradual ‘flippening’ of Ethereum and Bitcoin. As the #1 cryptocurrency began increasing its dominance, Ethereum became the benchmark asset for the rest of the market, with most cryptocurrencies showing higher correlation with it than Bitcoin. But correlation with Ethereum Classic was surprisingly among the lowest, amounting ‘only’ to 0.69.

The report also highlighted the significant correlation between XRP and Stellar, previously noted by Crypto Briefing. 

Lastly, cryptocurrencies appear to be specializing in distinct branches. Proof-of-Work assets such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash exhibited higher correlation between each other than median. The same can be said for privacy coins such as Monero, Zcash and Dash, as well as programmable blockchains including EOS, NEO and Ethereum.

But while some of these trends have a logical underpinning, the report cautions that the future is unknowable. “Yet, past empirical results are not representative of the future of this industry. Hence, it remains to be seen whether some of these findings will repeat in the fourth quarter of 2019,” analysts conclude.

Daily Bitcoin Commentary With Nathan Batchelor 

Bitcoin is under downside pressure as we head into the U.S trading session, after the BTC/USD pair reversed sharply from just above $8,800 level earlier this morning.

Around $10,000,000,000 was wiped off the total market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market in just under one-hour. Interestingly, the total market cap of the cryptocurrency market hit its highest level in two-weeks before reversing.

No apparent fundamental catalyst has been attributed to the news. The only real bearish news is that one of the largest payment systems in China, Alipay, has recently promised to ban all payments related to Bitcoin.

From a technical perspective, traders will likely continue to fade rallies until the market cap of the entire cryptocurrency starts to trade comfortably above its 200-day moving average.

Traders are currently selling advances towards the $230,000,000,000 level, as it represents the 61.8 Fibonacci retracement of the September monthly trading low to the September 24th swing-high.

As far as Bitcoin is concerned, the cryptocurrency is back under short-term selling pressure while trading below the $8,500 level, with its 200-day moving average currently located around the $8,660 level.

According to short-term technical analysis, the BTC/USD pair can expect to find support from the $8,215 and $8,100 levels if the reversal continues.

If there is a sustained loss of the $8,100 level, we should expect short-term bulls to capitulate, leaving the door-open for further decline towards the $7,715 level.

* ‘The weekly time frame is showing that a bullish falling wedge is forming. A move away from the $9,780 to $7,500 price range will trigger the pattern’. *

SENTIMENT

Intraday bullish sentiment for Bitcoin has fallen, to 51.50%, according to the latest data from TheTIE.io. Long-term sentiment for the cryptocurrency is unchanged, at 61.50%.

UPSIDE POTENTIAL

Buyers need to move price back above the $8,500 level to stabilize the BTC/USD pair today. A multi-day price close above its 200-day moving average is currently needing to encourage a technical test of the $9,000 level.

The daily RSI indicator is starting to roll over and now trades below 40, while the Choppiness indicator on the mentioned time frame is showing that the market is still lacking a strong trend.

DOWNSIDE POTENTIAL

The loss of the $8,500 level has encouraged traders to test towards the $8,300 level. A loss of the $8,300 level later today may lead to a key test of the BTC/USD pair’s weekly pivot point, at $8,100.

Extended intraday technical support for the BTC/USD pair is currently located at the $7,715 and $7,500 levels.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/crypto-correlation-trends

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #Crypto is coming for #Fortnite – whether it likes it or not $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 3:14 PM on Thursday, October 17th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Crypto is coming for Fortnite – whether it likes it or not

  • Fortnite’s Chapter 2 launched this week. Will crypto be part of its next big evolution?
  • Here’s how the game has already crossed paths with blockchain tech.

By Andrew Hayward

Epic Games’ enormously popular battle royale shooter Fortnite made headlines this week after it shut down—but only for a couple of days. Epic cannily replaced the game’s vibrant map with a black hole, which fans stared at until it revealed the game’s Chapter 2 update, adding a brand-new environment, fresh gameplay elements, and a refreshed interface.

With some 250 million total players as of this past spring, Fortnite is a cultural sensation that goes beyond core gamers—and it’s big business too. The game may be free to download and play, but in-game costumes and other paid perks have generated huge revenues for Epic—$2.4 billion in 2018 alone. Naturally, that’s got the blockchain community asking: when will Fortnite include crypto?

You can’t (yet) spend cryptocurrency in the game itself, but both Fortnite and Epic Games have already crossed paths with crypto and blockchain in a number of ways. Can in-game integration be far behind? Here’s a look at the ever-growing intersection between Fortnite and crypto.

You can bet on Fortnite matches with crypto

Fortnite is one of the fastest growing esports around, and Epic Games has facilitated its growth by pumping the competitive scene full of prize money and large-scale tournaments. According to Esports Earnings, Fortnite competitions have awarded more than $84 million to date in prizing, with July’s Fortnite World Cup responsible for about $33 million of that.

With sports inevitably comes betting—and yes, esports betting is definitely a thing. Unikrn is one of the most popular esports betting sites, allowing users to bet on the outcomes of official competitive matches, as well as matches from popular Twitch streamers.

Unikrn betting is based on the platform’s own

UnikoinGold token, which can be bet on professional Fortnite matches, wagered in your own in-game battles, and used to enter prize giveaways. The esports industry is rapidly ballooning in size and value, with esports analytics service Newzoo

estimating a $1.1 billion total value this year and nearly $1.8 billion in 2022. Betting will only grow more appealing as more and more people get hooked on esports—and crypto is already making inroads on the industry.

For a brief moment at the start of the year, you could actually buy Fortnite merchandise through an official Epic Games store using Monero (XMR). Monero developer Riccardo Spagni seemed (understandably) thrilled about the news, and suggested that it was chosen for its privacy-centric approach compared to Bitcoin.

However, there was a snag in the excitement: Epic Games didn’t actually mean to enable Monero support. After a few days, the option was disabled and company founder and CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted, “Actually, Fortnite’s brief foray into crypto was accidental. We worked with a partner to open a merchandise store, and somewhere along the way Monero payment was enabled.”

Tokenize all the Things

A multimedia collection by Decrypt. Explore how “tokenization” is redefining our relationship to ownership.

While that official crypto dalliance was sadly unintentional, you can actually purchase V-Bucks—Fortnite’s premium, in-game currency—with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, and Dogecoin, right now. However, it’s through a third-party service, Bitrefill… and it’s via a very simple workaround. Essentially, you choose which game system or platform you play on, and then you’re sent a gift card code for that store. You can use then use that code to purchase V-Bucks and load up on silly character skins, colorful weapons, and fancy dance moves (really).

Epic Games is actually excited by blockchain tech

Epic’s swift shutdown of Monero support in its merch shop might seem like a sign that the company doesn’t see a future in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, but worry not: Sweeney tweeted that they’re into it, but just not ready to roll it out to a huge, mainstream audience.

“Many of us at Epic are big fans of the decentralized computing tech underlying cryptocurrency, however a lot more work is needed on volatility and fraud-proofing before bringing it to such a broad audience that includes younger gamers,” he tweeted in January, adding that, “Epic doesn’t have any cryptocurrency partners and aren’t in any crypto partnership discussions with anyone. We do read lots of papers and talk to smart people to learn more in anticipation of an eventual intercept.”

Since then, though, Epic Games has changed its tune; in May this year, it announced a partnership with The Abyss, a blockchain gaming platform that allows game developers to tap into Epic’s Unreal Developers Network. Studios that put their games on the platform can accept Abyss Tokens for both the games themselves and in-game purchases.

The crypto industry, meanwhile, continues to chip away at the rock face. Recently, devs for the Nano cryptocurrency unveiled a beta plug-in for Unreal Engine 4⁠—the game engine that underpins Fortnite⁠—that lets users pay for in-game items in the Nano cryptocurrency as well as earning Nano for in-game tasks such as killing enemies and participating in tournaments. 

Call it baby steps, but it’s certainly something. Sweeney’s comments suggest that a crypto future for Epic Games could just be a matter of time—and surely interest from the blockchain community is huge, considering how much money flows through both Fortnite and the video game industry as a whole (an estimated $152.1 billion in 2019). Until then, we’re sure to see more unofficial crypto initiatives spring up around Fortnite’s fringe.

Source: https://decrypt.co/10524/fortnite-chapter-2-epic-games-cryptocurrency-blockchain

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Australia’s #Gold Mint Is Backing a #Crypto Token Based on #Ethereum – SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital $IDK.ca $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 10:03 AM on Friday, October 11th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

IDK: CSE

Australia’s Gold Mint Is Backing a Crypto Token Based on Ethereum

  • Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) was launched by InfiniGold on Friday, and is backed 1:1 by GoldPass certificates issued by The Perth Mint.
  • The digital certificates are 100% gold backed and guaranteed by the Government of Western Australia, which is the sole owner of the 120-year-old mint.

By: Daniel Palmer

Australia’s only bullion mint is backing a new digital token aimed to allow investors to trade the precious metal in real time.

The Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) was launched by InfiniGold on Friday, and is backed 1:1 by GoldPass certificates issued by The Perth Mint. The digital certificates are 100% gold backed and guaranteed by the Government of Western Australia, which is the sole owner of the 120-year-old mint.

“PMGT is digitised gold that allows users to conveniently acquire and have entitlement over government guaranteed physical gold stored at The Perth Mint in a trusted and cost-effective way,” InfiniGold said in an announcement.  The token – designed with the assistance of professional services firm Ernst and Young – is aimed to offer an alternative to traditional gold investment products such as ETFs, while using blockchain tech to allow real-time trading and settlement.

InfiniGold CEO Andreas Ruf said:

“With The Perth Mint as custodian of the underlying physical gold that backs PMGT, buyers will be able to access a secure and reliable token representing the strongest asset class to date – gold.”

As far as the underlying tech goes, PMGT is a compatible with the ERC-20 standard behind by many ethereum-based tokens. InfiniGold is further touting the token as an alternative to U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins such as tether and USD Coin.

Perhaps taking aim at tether – the top stablecoin by market cap that’s faced accusations that it manipulated the price of bitcoin and was not actually fully backed by USD â€“ InfiniGold said PMGT’s gold backing offers investors “superior transparency, credit quality, risk diversification and hedging against market volatility.”

Investors are able to sell their PMGT  back to The Perth Mint via its GoldPass platform, or alternatively can exchange their certificates for gold the mint’s products. “Subject to final regulatory consultation, this will make PMGT directly tradable against traditional gold products, including gold ETFs, CME gold futures, and physical XAU,” said the company.

Richard Hayes, Perth Mint CEO, said in the announcement:

“The digitisation of gold via a public ledger is a natural progression for the global commodity markets. It will promote gold as a mainstream asset, enhance its accessibility, and offer greater liquidity, transparency and auditability of the real assets backing this type of digital token.”

The launch comes as haven assets like gold, and possibly bitcoin, are becoming more attractive to investors. Fears of a U.S. recession have seen gold prices bounce in recent weeks, and other companies are launching products to capitalize on the yellow metal’s growing popularity.

Just yesterday, crypto liquidity and OTC provider B2C2 launched the first gold derivatives product that synthetically trades against bitcoin and is targeted at investors seeking safety from market uncertainty.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/australias-gold-mint-is-backing-a-crypto-token-on-ethereum

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Experts Weigh In On The Future of #Bitcoin and #Blockchain $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 4:45 PM on Tuesday, October 8th, 2019

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Experts Weigh In On The Future of Bitcoin and Blockchain

  • Both Bitcoin and blockchain have not only garnered the interest of investors, speculators, and even businesses, it has also caught the attention and piqued the curiosity of some of the world’s greatest minds and thinkers.
  • In a new report, a panel of experts from the business world and finance industry were asked to supply their views on Bitcoin and what its long-term potential may be.

By: Tony Spilotro

Bitcoin is a revolutionary new technology that has taken the world by storm, and could not only disrupt modern financial systems, but it could also go on to replace all fiat currencies and become the sole digital currency used across the globe.

With so much potential, even experts have joined in on speculating over the king of speculative assets, and have weighed in on their expectations for the first-ever crypto asset.

The Smartest Minds in Tech and Finance on Bitcoin and Blockchain

Bitcoin is a powerful, decentralized digital cash system, that could potentially change the world and redefine money as the world knows it. It also brought with it the emergence of blockchain – a distributed ledger technology with a number of use cases that could revolutionize many industries.

Both Bitcoin and blockchain have not only garnered the interest of investors, speculators, and even businesses, it has also caught the attention and piqued the curiosity of some of the world’s greatest minds and thinkers. 

In a new report, a panel of experts from the business world and finance industry were asked to supply their views on Bitcoin and what its long-term potential may be. As one would expect, the sentiment surrounding Bitcoin is mixed, with some realizing the disruptive potential it wields, while others were quick to dismiss the asset as a vehicle for criminal activities.

Sabrina T. Howell, Assistant Professor, Finance, NYU Stern School of Business & NBER believes that Bitcoin has some serious hurdles to overcome, namely the cryptocurrency’s “7 transactions per second.” Instead, Howell sees the real disruptive value provided by blockchain, and cites how the technology will soon be rolled out to better manage quality control surrounding green, leafy vegetables that are known to carry food-borne illness.

Garrick Hileman, Head of Research at Blockchain and Researcher at the London School of Economics, cited Bitcoin’s recent safe-haven asset narrative, and claims its been a factor in the asset’s “3x price appreciation this year in the wake of US-China trade disputes, challenges to central bank independence, Brexit and other European political turmoil, and the return of financial instability to Argentina and other emerging markets.”

James Grimmelman, Professor of Law, Cornell Tech claims that Bitcoin will continue to be forked again and again, because “humans have never been great at consensus, not even with the help of cryptography.”

Researchers Steven Goldfeder, Ghassan Karame, and Linda Schilling, all believe that Bitcoin will need to beat out stiff competition from other, newer altcoins that alleviate the issues related to Bitcoin as it currently stands.

All experts also commented on how regulation is paramount to Bitcoin becoming widely adopted and saw the technology as something with incredible, currently untapped potential.

Source: https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/10/08/experts-weigh-in-on-the-future-of-bitcoin-and-blockchain/

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – John McAfee’s Decentralized #Crypto Exchange Launches in Beta $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 1:54 PM on Monday, October 7th, 2019

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John McAfee’s Decentralized Crypto Exchange Launches in Beta

  • American entrepreneur and vocal crypto advocate John McAfee has launched a decentralized exchange (DEX) running on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.

By Marie Huillet

“Centralized exchanges are our weak point”

On Oct. 5, McAfee’s tweet unveiled the new platform, stating that “it takes time for enough users to join to make it real, but if you play, and be patient,” the exchange can serve as “the door that frees us from Government’s cornerstone of control: Fiat currencies. It can’t be shut down.”

In an embedded video, McAfee argues that the cryptocurrency community faces the question of whether its aspirations are limited to merely expanding the possibilities for pure speculation —  “all about money” — or are about an ideal, namely freedom.

After denouncing governments’ control over fiat currencies and the losses this presents to individual liberty, McAfee turned to the crypto space: “centralized exchanges are our weak point,” he said, pointing to China’s move to shutter domestic exchanges in September 2017.

McAfee continued:

“A distributed exchange can’t be shut down by anyone. Decentralized meaning that nobody controls it, distributed meaning that it is everywhere and therefore impossible to stop. We’ve had privacy coins, that’s the other part of this equation, because privacy coins with decentralized, distributed exchanges is the goose that lays the golden egg for us. We don’t use it though.”

McAfee DEX beta: the details

According to the details released so far, McAfee DEX reportedly will entail no Know Your Customer checks, block no jurisdictions and charge a single platform fee of 0.25% for takers. It will not charge maker fees and will also reportedly be open sourced.

Any ETH-based token (ERC-20 standard) can be added without a fee to the beta version, with more unspecified tokens to be supported in the future.

“Don’t expect miracles”

In his Oct. 5 video, McAfee pointed to the low number of traders currently using decentralized exchanges, considering that this makes them “useless.” For his DEX, McAfee urged users:

“Play with it, don’t expect miracles at first. Play with it until it becomes real.”

As Cointelegraph previously reported, non-custodial decentralized crypto exchanges enable users to trade peer-to-peer, using smart contracts to automate deal matching and asset liquidation in order to allow users’ funds to remain under their control.

As of January 2019, a survey of over 400 international crypto exchanges indicated that decentralized platforms accounted for just 19% of the global exchange ecosystem, and their trading volumes amounted to less than 1% of those on centralized exchanges.

This April, major centralized exchange Binance launched its own DEX on its native mainnet. Other major exchanges eyeing their own DEX include OKEx and Bithumb.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/john-mcafees-decentralized-crypto-exchange-launches-in-beta

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