Russia’s national standards authority is working toward the standardization of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.

Russia’s Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology, also known as Rosstandart, has announced the formation of a new technical committee tasked toward the standardization of “the software and hardware of distributed register and blockchain technologies”.

In its announcement, the Rosstandart adds that blockchain technology is “actively spreading” in its adoption across the Russian Federation.

“Blockchain is a digital platform that records and verifies transactions in a public and secure manner based on decentralized solutions,” reads a loosely translated excerpt from the statement. “Initially appearing as technologies that facilitate the mechanisms of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies are finding more and more fields of application around the world. In recent years, these technologies are quite actively spreading in the Russian Federation.”

On a global scale, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) – commonly seen as the primary global standards authority – appointed Australia to lead an international technical committee with 35 ISO member nations to develop a uniform approach to introduce global standards for the technology. Earlier this year in March, Standards Australia unveiled its roadmap to develop these international standards, overseen by technical committee 307 or ISO/TC 307.

Russia’s standards authority references these developments at the ISO whilst adding that it “abstained” from joining ISO/TC 307 at the time of its formation. However, the Russian Federation is now among 20 participating members of the committee. The newly established Russian technical committee will also presuppose international cooperation with the ISO committee.

Explaining its reasons for working toward its own standards, Russia’s standards states:

   
The move by the national standards authority to explore the standardization of blockchain technologies comes at a time when the Russian government is actively considering the introduction of regulations for the decentralized technology in 2019. Herman Gref, chief executive of Sberbank – Russia’s largest bank by assets – has predicted blockchain technology to see commercial applications on a nationwide scale in two years.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/russia-begins-work-developing-blockchain-standards/

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Back in June this year, everyone was talking about the flippening, an event where Ethereum’s market capitalization overtakes that of Bitcoin. However, fast forward two months we find that Bitcoin has extended its lead over Ethereum by a huge margin. While Bitcoin’s market capitalization is about $66 bln, Ethereum is far behind at approximately $27 bln.

Usually, a rising tide lifts all boats, which is not happening now. Only Bitcoin is marching ahead, leaving the rest behind. This divergence between the top currencies is unlikely to continue for a long time. Soon, either Ethereum and the others will play catch up, or Bitcoin will correct.

Let’s see, what is more likely to happen.

BTC/USD

Today, after reaching a high of $4,434.42 and trapping aggressive bulls, Bitcoin reversed direction and is in free fall.

It is a normal correction, which had been expected. Now, to what point can Bitcoin fall?



It is trading within the channel. The price has returned from the upper end of the channel resistance. Its next target on the downside is close to the $3,600 levels, where it should find some support. However, if $3,600 breaks, the fall can extend to the $3,000 levels, which should be a major support.

Therefore, traders should not be in a hurry to enter long positions until a strong support is visible either at $3,600 or at $3,000.

ETH/USD

Ethereum is slowly correcting towards $270 where it has support from the trend line and the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA). We expect to see a bounce from the support levels.



Therefore, traders can watch for about three to four hours and go long near the trend line if the support holds and buying is visible. A close stop loss is advisable because if the support level breaks, Ethereum can fall to $215 levels.

However, if the price turns around and rallies from the current levels, traders can go long above $330 and keep a stop loss below the recent lows with a target objective of $400. It is better to wait for the breakout to reach about three percent above the overhead resistance, therefore, instead of going long at $324, we have suggested going long at $330.

Read more
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ethereum-nem-bitcoin-cash-price-analysis-august-15

Кстати, я тут посмотрел, в долларовом эквиваленте цена на Хуманик не изменилась, просто в сатошах сильно просела, если бы разработчики выкатили бы обещаное приложение, или что-то новое, тогда можно было бы надеятся на повышение цены.

Current price for HMQ is horrible. I hope developers will do something soon, make at least video of working app, do something, please.

A big percentage of bitcoin’s transactions are in one way or another related to gambling. This comes as no surprise, as bitcoin’s lack of real world identity and overall network neutrality means that there cannot be any interruption between players and gambling platforms.

Back in 2013, it was assumed by researchers, that online gambling accounted for nearly half of bitcoin’s transactions. While no more light has been shed on the topic since that time, it’s reasonable to assume that bitcoin gambling has grown ever since. However, with fees rising and consequently transactions becoming more expensive, off chain gambling was popularised, making it harder to monitor the percentage of bitcoin transactions related to gambling.

With the assumption that bitcoin gambling grew along with bitcoin’s economy, but being unable to calculate by how much, one could say that gambling is no longer an as important part of bitcoin as it used to be in 2013. Things have sure changed since bitcoin first started to be popularized, but stricter regulation might be bringing those usecases back.

While online gambling has through the years continued to be mostly illegal in the US, citizens with an aversion to taking maximum risks with their funds in the form of gambling started reaping the benefits of bitcoin as an immutable currency from early on. Even before bitcoin reached the mainstream, free and unrestricted gambling was a feature offered by many unregistered platforms thanks to it.

Now, with regulation getting stricter and governments tightening their control over the online activities of citizens, a second wave of adoption for bitcoin gambling could be coming soon. A few examples include Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. All three countries recently implemented blocking through local ISPs to circumvent traffic away from internationally operating and unlicensed gambling websites.

With Poland being the one implementing a more strict block along with restrictions for fiat gambling platforms to operate legally on a local level, there’s now an ever growing list of banned websites that currently includes more than 900 addresses.

Bitcoin certainly has the potential to help users avoid regulation by being able to transfer funds to crypto gambling websites without local governments noticing. But more importantly, it’s harder for governments to implement any effective regulation for websites operating with bitcoin. Not only is it almost impossible to trace and intervene funds, there’s also no way for governments to legally cut off the operators from servicing users under a country’s jurisdiction.

Aside of bitcoin’s novelty that still serves as great defence against lawmakers, as long as the parties operating an online web space can not be physically affected by a country’s law enforcement, the operation of the platform remains safe and government interference unlikely.

With the trend of increasing regulation for fiat online gambling conquering the rest of Europe slowly, more and more platforms could be resorting to bitcoin to resume their operations and soon we might be seeing a wave for adoption from gamblers affected by government blocks.

https://www.crypto-news.net/how-europes-gambling-regulations-favor-bitcoin/

Hm, maybe you are right, but that article was posted on bitcoin.com and the author is  Kevin Helms. He could use incorrect information in his article, but he is one of the most popular observers.

Russia Discusses Starting Cryptocurrency Mining With Its 20+ Gigawatt Surplus

Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov has revealed that discussions are underway regarding the creation of government centers for cryptocurrency mining, according to local publications. Meanwhile, a bill is being finalized to provide a legal framework for digital currency including bitcoin.

Government’s Cryptocurrency Mining Centers

The Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who is the most senior member of the cabinet besides the Prime Minister, reportedly said that his government is discussing the creation of government centers for mining cryptocurrency, RBC reported last week.

Shuvalov is responsible for the Russian federal budget and economic policies. Regarding cryptocurrency mining, “we talked about the future of this sector in Russia, given that it is developing so rapidly in the world,” he said. Among the discussions he mentioned was a question of which electricity generators exist that mining centers could be placed nearby. However, he noted that it is still a discussion with no concrete project yet, adding that:

     
According to Bitfury Group, Russia currently accounts for only 2% of the world’s mining capacities while China leads with 60%. The U.S. and Canada collectively hold the second largest market share with 16%, followed by Georgia at 6%, and by Europe at 5%. Bitfury was founded by Valery Vavilov, a Russian-speaking native of Latvia.

Read more
https://news.bitcoin.com/russia-discusses-starting-cryptocurrency-mining-with-its-20-gigawatt-surplus/

На бирже сейчас вообще можно их купить в 2 раза дешевле, только есть ли смысл, как я понял краудсейл был провальным, продано только 10% токенов (где то встречал информацию, может ошибаюсь, поправьте). Хочется понять какая дальше судьба проэкта.

Dear devs, with all due respect, why to change the rules in last moment?

If someone join the campaign for the 2 week support, and the first rule was twitter campaign till 6 august, now you changed final date to 3 august, just when you rised your 30 millions.


Same with signature, it`s hard you know to post 15 post for 2 days, if you are not spammer of course.

Please give stakes to people who had made their posts till 6 august, in any case they were devoted to the project, and the collected funds allows this easily.

Thank you.

I say yeah, we should expect ETT price increase by 200-300%, just after the burned tokens will be carried out and devs publish conformation on their accounts. I didn`t hear before about such steps like "buy walls", for me these only means that team aimed at long-therm project support, not just earned on crowdsale and disappeared in the fog.

Слава Богу пока не идет вниз курс, а только растет. Хорошо бы чтобы разрабы выпустили под шумок еще пару крепких новостей чтобы закрепить результат.

For the last 7 days PTOY tokens value increased by 106%! Does anybody know what was the reason for such a growth? I can`t find news updates concerning current situation with Patientory platform development.

Bank of America has filed three new blockchain-related patents geared towards data authentication and identity verification. The new patents are the latest in a growing number of blockchain patents filed by the financial services giant.


Financial services company Bank of America has submitted three new blockchain patents that focus primarily on authenticating information as well as those who handle it.

According to the official website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO), one of the patents focuses on the conversion of non-secure “instruments” through a validation process into “transaction confirmation outputs”.  The document explains:

    
Essentially the patent would allow Bank of America to authenticate user and transaction information through a blockchain system.

The second patent utilizes a distributed ledger system that monitors and verifies user identities on a network. In the patent documents, it is described as following:

    
The last patent is centered around a system that monitors changes in user history at a specific timeline and creates a “map” of the user and his history. The patents suggest that Bank of America is going to heavily invest in Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

What are your thoughts on these patents?

Read more:
http://bitcoinist.com/bank-of-america-files-three-new-blockchain-patents/

Who knows, when the real work on the project will start? OpenANX proposes so much interesting and innovative key deliverables on exchange market, so it`s wonder why current token price so low. Need real marketing steps from developers to show the community how they can practically utilize platform.

Thank you openANX team, i`ve gotten my bounty. I'm kind of pinning my hopes on this new platform. There a lot of key deliverables of openANX, so team need plenty of time to cover all the tasks.

Two days after the chain split that resulted in the launch of Bitcoin Cash, the fledgling coin is quite an unusual position. The Bitcoin Cash network is almost non-functional due to extremely slow block times, inherited as a result of Bitcoin’s mining difficulty at the time of the fork. The token itself is quite valuable—trading for over $400—but only for a small fraction of the people who own them.

Exchanges

No major exchanges have Bitcoin Cash deposits enabled, which means that the only people who can sell Bitcoin Cash are the ones who had funds on certain exchanges before the split. Those exchanges (including Bitfinex and Kraken) have credited their users with the appropriate amount of Bitcoin Cash and have enabled trading pairs.

Not all exchanges will be launching Bitcoin Cash trading pairs. Of the exchanges that don’t trade Bitcoin Cash, some will be crediting users and allowing them to withdraw their Bitcoin Cash. Others may choose not to even acknowledge Bitcoin Cash, and may not credit their users with the tokens.

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink

Bitcoin Cash deposits are disabled at all major exchanges because the Bitcoin Cash network is not yet safe to use. Due to its low mining hash rate, the Bitcoin Cash network is extremely vulnerable to attacks. Likewise, because of the small number of blocks that have been found since the split, a dedicated attacker could easily trigger a Blockchain reorganization.

Such an attack would wipe out all trading history on the new network. Furthermore, it is difficult to send transactions on the Bitcoin Cash network at all, due to the incredibly long block times. All of this has resulted in a situation where most would-be sellers of Bitcoin Cash are completely unable to trade.

Bitcoin Cash crash?

All of this begs the question: is a crash imminent? At present, demand is absorbing an extremely limited supply and pushing prices up. Once the Bitcoin Cash network stabilizes and exchanges begin opening up deposits, there will likely be a massive influx of sellers. Assuming that demand remains stable, such a drastic increase in supply will likely cause the price to drop significantly.

The Bitcoin Cash code includes a feature to reduce the mining difficulty if the time between blocks is too long. That code should activate at some point today, resulting in a much lower difficulty and much faster discovery of blocks. Once the network stabilizes, and it is safe to do so, exchanges that trade Bitcoin Cash will likely open up deposits.

One last wild card

So far Bitcoin has been largely unaffected by the chain split. After briefly dropping from $2,900 to $2,600 shortly before the split, Bitcoin’s price has stabilized in the $2,700 range.

Virtually all Bitcoin miners are still mining Bitcoin, with almost none having switched to Bitcoin Cash. However, this could conceivably change, although it’s unlikely.

The only remaining wild card is the following scenario. What if the Bitcoin Cash network stabilizes, exchanges open up Bitcoin Cash deposits, and the price somehow remains stable (or drops then quickly rebounds)?

In such a situation, Bitcoin miners might see that it is more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash, and enough miners might switch over to cause a small increase in Bitcoin block times.

Safety valve theory

The most vehement political opponents of the Segregated Witness scaling solution are likely to fully embrace Bitcoin Cash and leave the Bitcoin community altogether.

Consequently, the new currency will act as a sort of safety valve, allowing steam to escape before the pressure climbs high enough to rupture the vessel. Other big blockers who are willing to accept the SegWit2x compromise will likely remain, but grow less political.

Assuming that the “2x” part of SegWit2x is actually implemented as planned, Bitcoin’s long civil war may finally be over.


Read more >>> https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-cash-price-poised-to-plummet-once-network-stabilizes

Forgetting about everything except bitcoin is also not a best idea. Young man also has it`s own expenses, for example dating with a girl, buying clothes, etc. Save and hold some money in BTC is best option for today, but nobody can promise that Bitcoin would not depreciate someday. So people, live and enjoy today.)

I think the more countries like Japan and South Korea legalize Bitcoin as their national currency and would have foreign exchange reserves not only in USD but in Bitcoin also, then we could expect less volatility in Bitcoin currency.

Germany’s Largest Bitcoin Exchange Gave Police User Details Without Court Order: Report



Germany’s largest Bitcoin exchange Bitcoin.de gave police sensitive user data on request without being obliged to by law, a report has revealed.

An exclusive piece by Vice published Tuesday unveils “at least eight cases” in which Bitcoin.de, under pressure from police but not the law, handed over personal details of customers.

Those involved in January were allegedly under suspicion of having used Bitcoin to acquire drugs from the now-defunct Chemical Love online marketplace.

“I’m speechless”

“In total, Bitcoin.de [...] relaid personal details associated with eight addresses, which included real names and nicknames, place of residence, email addresses, phone numbers, order totals, bank details, account transactions, login histories and IP addresses,” Vice writes.

The Bitcoin addresses involved had no proven links to Chemical Love, but were merely of interest to police and “could have” ties required to make a conviction.

Bitcoin.de had at first refused to cooperate without a court order, documents seen by the publication explain.

After a telephone call from police, however, “on the same day [...] it was arranged and agreed that company would at least investigate the first Bitcoin address without a court order.”

“I’m speechless,” one Bitcoin.de and Chemical Love user said reacting to the revelations. “I thought this is a serious business and that my data was safely preserved.”

Source
https://cointelegraph.com/news/germanys-largest-bitcoin-exchange-gave-police-user-details-without-court-order-report

Summary: In a groundbreaking agreement the stage is set to give traders access to Bitcoin through a traditional and well-regulated market. The CBOE and Gemini plan to allow more sophisticated options to traders as soon as later this year.

Bitcoin futures and options

The Chicago Board Options Exchange, hereafter CBOE, and Bitcoin exchange Gemini announced a joint agreement on Aug. 2. As part of the deal, Gemini will supply data to support the CBOE in a future listing of Bitcoin derivatives.

Gemini, owned by the Winklevoss brothers is known for multimillion dollar auctions of Bitcoin and recently launched Ethereum auctions as well - although they lack the buyer interest that Bitcoin has captured. It should be noted that the CBOE and Gemini still await regulatory approval, although it is expected to be granted soon.

The news comes just days after the CFTC regulated SEF and DCO (swap execution facility and derivatives clearing organization) announced that is has received approval from the Commodity Future Trading Commission - a milestone as the first federally regulated platform to offer options and future contracts for Bitcoin.

Sophisticated trades

The agreement gives the CBOE exclusivity to Gemini data that can be used to create indices. Coupled with futures and options, we see that the cryptocurrency trading space is quickly becoming more mature and sophisticated. In a statement, Gemini CEO does note that security and compliance remain at the forefront.

Tyler Winklevoss says:

    “Gemini’s key concerns in the cryptocurrency ecosystem have always been security, compliance, and regulatory oversight. By working with the team at CBOE, we are helping to make Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies increasingly accessible to both retail and institutional investors.”

Taking seriously

The CBOE seems very welcoming of Bitcoin to the market, chairman Ed Tilly states:

"We very much look forward to responding to the growing interest in cryptocurrencies through the creation of Bitcoin futures traded on a regulated derivatives exchange, with the many expected benefits that this brings, including transparency, price discovery, deep liquidity and centralized clearing...Gemini has demonstrated time and again its foresight and expertise in this area of finance. The team’s focus and determination to grow the Bitcoin market and secure appropriate regulatory oversight as a New York trust company makes them ideal for this venture. We are incredibly proud of this agreement and look forward to all that we can achieve together.”

    "If all goes to plan, we will see Bitcoin included on the CBOE as soon as Q4 this year early 2018."

As more traditional financial markets begin to take cryptocurrency trading seriously, the next hurdle is clearly well regulated and safe exchanges. As recently as this year another exchange exit caused a stir for traders - this time it was BTC-e after being closed down due to money laundering operations.

Source
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-futures-options-to-appear-on-chicago-exchange