One of the most secure methods to store digital currencies is a hardware wallet. But most of the hardware wallets do not support usage for blind people – until now.

There are many different ways in which users can store their Bitcoin and experts strongly advise people not to store their cryptocurrencies on online exchanges, however, since they tend to be primary targets for hackers and other cybercriminals. Of all the available options, hardware wallets are the most secure option for individuals and companies to securely store their Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The Trezor and Ledger Nano S are currently the most popular and secure hardware wallets on the market and, although both are high-quality devices, they both suffer from the same shortcoming – lack of support for blind users. A Kentucky-based developer named Adam Newbold is on a mission to build a unique hardware wallet designed specifically for the blind.

The goal behind the IcyWallet is to offer a 100% free and open source hardware wallet for blind people to store their Bitcoin. Newbold also stated in the article that he is not planning to become a manufacturer of hardware wallets, but rather to offer disabled people the same opportunity to secure their digital currencies.

http://bitcoinist.com/creating-worlds-first-bitcoin-wallet-blind/

That was the opening statement of Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s inventor, at BeyondBlock in Taipei where he laid out a plan to reach Visa levels scalability within the next 3-5 years. Having two out of three is easy he says, providing examples of current solutions that have made that two out of three trade-off: Existing blockchains, like Ethereum and Bitcoin in their current state, sacrifice scalability, he says, while super big blocks, at the size of 10GB, would sacrifice decentralization, Buterin says.

One such way is through second layer solutions, like Plasma, Raiden, or the Lightning Network, however ethereum also aims to achieve the trilemma of decentralization, safety and scalability, all on-chain. “The way I generally describe sharding is… you can think of it as, in a fairly simple version, creating a blockchain where you have, lets say, a hundred different universes and each of these universes is a different account space,” Buterin says before adding: “So you can have an account in some universe or you can have a contract in some universe and you can send a transaction in some universe and if you send a transaction in some universe it only affects stuff in some universe.

Let’s imagine we keep the main blockchain and into the main blockchain we would publish a contract, and this contract would be called the validator manager contract [which] would maintain an internal Proof of Stake (PoS) system… The validator manager contract also keeps track of a set of shards… the 100 universes. A collation is basically just a group of transactions and the collation would have a collation header that would be basically a PoS signed block header, and these collation headers would be pushed into the validator manager contract, but all of the actual transactions in the shards, all of the shards states, all of the shards collations, that would go off-chain.

The only thing that goes on-chain is these collation headers and the validator manager contract would keep track of these headers and would keep track of the state roots of each shard. And this new world with its own rules which has quadratic scalability as nodes validate certain shards and act as light clients for other shards, with this new world potentially having even higher levels of scalability dependent on how sharding is implemented or incrementally improved.

http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/11/25/vitalik-buterin-lays-roadmap-ethereum-visa-levels-quadratic-sharding

The top two cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin and ether, have continued their respective rallies, setting fresh record highs today. Having traded more or less sideways since Monday, prices started to lift at 07:00 UTC, setting the new all-time high at 09:43.

according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. Bitcoin started the session today at $8,201, and is up 2.85 percent for the session.

According to CoinMarketCap, bitcoin has risen 11.97 percent over 24 hours, and 39.25 percent for the week. The sharp gains come as the combined market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies also peaks at new highs – currently standing at $267.6 billion.

Some of South Korea’s most influential financial institutions and service providers have begun to integrate bitcoin into their existing infrastructures, increasing the liquidity of the digital currency for general consumers in the country. Hyosung, the most significant ATM manufacturer in South Korea, has officially integrated bitcoin brokerage services into their domestic and internationally distributed ATMS.

The Just.Cash ATM model of Hyosung enables existing bank and commercial ATMs to operate as one-way bitcoin ATMs, allowing existing users to purchase bitcoin through the machine. Users of the service could use these ATMs to buy bitcoin and also sparked the implementation of Hyosung ATMs domestically.

In November of 2017, Hyosung announced a full bitcoin integration for its international 20,000 ATM models as well. Hyosung also supplies financial institutions with bank ATMs, which will be able to receive the bitcoin update in the upcoming months.

Hyosung’s integration of bitcoin will further increase the liquidity of bitcoin for general consumers and usability of bitcoin for beginner users, as with bitcoin ATMs, bitcoin investors are not required to comply with strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) that take weeks to even months for full verification. Earlier this week, South Korea’s second-largest commercial bank Shinhan announced its testing of a bitcoin wallet and vault service.

https://btcmanager.com/mainstream-adoption-bitcoin-south-korea-growing/

Propelled by the vision of mainstreaming crypto-currencies, the 'Coinome' platform has been launched in India. Headquartered in Mumbai, Coinome is from Hatio Innovations Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of BillDesk.

Coinome operates a crypto-currency exchange and is the first crypto platform in India to allow users to be on-boarded simply and quickly via Instant e-KYC. The platform provides a seamless on-boarding experience and the e-KYC process means that users can start transacting in crypto-currencies almost immediately on registering.

The exchange platform supports instant deposits using payment gateway and instant withdrawals, thereby allowing transactions even on weekends or business holidays. As an open order book Crypto-currency exchange, Coinome facilitates transparency and best price discovery amongst the buyers and sellers.

BillDesk is India's largest payment solutions platform handling over USD 50 billion consumer digital payments annually. BillDesk has been the leader in driving electronic payments and digital commerce in India over the last 17 years. Its expertise in secure online payments, along with its market leadership position will support Coinome in promoting crypto-currencies as viable avenues for investments, transactions and building digital assets.

"At Coinome, we are excited to bring crypto-currencies to the masses. India, with a limited number of exchanges supporting multiple crypto-currencies, offers immense opportunities. We would fundamentally like to provide Indian users with a secure and convenient means for buying or selling Bitcoins, and other crypto-currencies. In the next one year, our target is to support up to 20 popular crypto-currencies and promoting the same within Indian masses as commercially viable alternatives for building their digital assets," said CEO Coinome, Vivek Steve Francis.

"We are making the long-term bet that digital currencies are going to be powering transactions in the future and change the way consumers and organisations interact and transact with one another," said co-founder and director of BillDesk, Srinivasu MN.

https://www.coinome.com/

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/backed-by-billdesk-coinome-launches-as-a-cryptocurrency-exchange-in-india-117112300569_1.html

The digital currency markets held steady, as the biggest digital currencies have experienced, on average, relatively small price fluctuations over the past 24 hours. A notable high volatility outlier was Ethereum, which traded between $395.88 and $474.22 today, with an average price of $423.95.

Its range was $277.85 – $299.39 with an average of $293.47. Our proprietary Block Tribune Volatility Index is a measure of daily price variability compared with variability over the prior 30 days.

50 indicates an average day. Greater scores indicate a wider range of trade prices while lesser scores indicate a relatively flat trading period.

The data below was compiled on a per-currency basis using reports from the exchanges that saw 1% or more of the total trade volume for that currency. It is as of 1:00 p.m. US Eastern Time and includes the digital currencies with the greatest trading volume, as measured in U.S. Dollars.

http://blocktribune.com/ethereum-big-mover-block-tribune-volatility-index/

The Ethereum price broke $400 for only the second time in its history on Thursday, setting a new all time high early on Thanksgiving morning in the U.S.

A rival cryptocurrency to Bitcoin, Ethereum rose as high as about $425 Thursday, a gain of more than 16% in a 24-hour period. Until then, the Ethereum price had for months hovered below its previous peak in June, when it had briefly surpassed $400 for the first time.

The surge came as the billionaire cryptocurrency investor Mike Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager on Wall Street, reversed his bearish prediction on Ethereum. In June, shortly after Ethereum first hit $400, Novogratz had sold much of the cryptocurrency he owned, saying “I think we may have put the highs in for the year in Ethereum, and you’re going to slowly consolidate.”

Novogratz’s call turned out to be prescient, and the Ethereum price did not revisit its earlier highs—that is, until this week, when the influential investor suddenly turned bullish again.

“Just in the last few days Ethereum has started to move, and I actually think it’s going to put a new high soon,” Novogratz said in an interview on Bloomberg TV Tuesday. It took less than 48 hours for the Ethereum price to prove Novogratz right again.

“I think we end the year at close to $500 in Ethereum,” he predicted, adding that the Bitcoin price, which reached as high as $8,300 this week, would hit $10,000 before 2017 comes to a close. “There’s a lot of positive things happening in the Ethereum ecosystem,” added Novogratz, who has recently begun raising money for his new cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund.

The Ethereum price has already risen more than 50 times this year. To reach $500 before 2017 is out, Ethereum would need to rise another 25% from the $400 mark where it was trading early Thursday morning—all in a little more than a month.

Fueling the rally is increasing business interest in the Ethereum blockchain, which can be used to build applications with uses beyond digital currencies. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (hpe, +1.68%), for one, recently demonstrated an application using the Ethereum protocol to power iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner.


http://fortune.com/2017/11/23/ethereum-price-prediction-all-time-high/

An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns has lost over $117,000 in Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network.. An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns a Bitcoin account has lost more than 100,000 euros ($117,000) worth of Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network in a restaurant in Vienna, Austria.. The Austrian police, however, claimed that they are still investigating whether the victim’s account was already hacked before he opened his account on the unsecured network, CBS reports.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-account-holder-loses-100k-over-public-wireless-network