 Show Posts
|
|
Pages: [1]
|
US Stablecoin Project Basis Raises $133 Mln From Major VC Firms  The US-based Blockchain project Basis (formerly known as Basecoin), which claims to provide a non-volatile cryptocurrency or stablecoin, has recently raised $133 mln in funding from big name investors, according to an official blog post published today, April 18. Basis announced today that they had raised $133 mln in private placement from a slew of major venture capital players, including Bain Capital Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Basis was launched in 2017 as a cryptocurrency startup that aims to provide a stablecoin by means of automated operations carried out by Blockchain-based "algorithmic central bank”. Though Basis co-founder Nader Al-Naji told Techcrunch about his early Bitcoin (BTC) devotion, recalling how he began mining bitcoins on his college campus in 2012, Basis developers aim to make their coin antonymous to the scarce and highly-volatile Bitcoin. On their site the company claims “cryptocurrencies have been too volatile for mainstream use.” Other investors in the project’s fundraising round include such names as GV, Stanley Druckenmiller, Kevin Warsh, Lightspeed, Foundation Capital, Wing VC, NFX Ventures, Valor Capital, Zhenfund, INBlockchain, Ceyuan, and Sky9 Capital. The project’s developers declined to comment on the expected date of the cryptocurrency’s launch. Basis is not the first company that has been focused on creating a stable cryptocurrency. Such project as CoinoUSD, NuBits,and Tether have attempted to develop a stable digital currency that is pegged to the US dollar. In March, Cointelegraph reported that a group of financiers had raised $30 mln to create a fiat-pegged stablecoin called Saga. Earlier in January, Havven project was reported to launch the “world’s first” token sale for a decentralised stablecoin platform. Andreessen Horowitz was also among high-profile VC investors to fund Blockchain securities platform Harbor, who yesterday, April 17, announced they had raised $28 mln in a funding round. |
|
|
|
Monero Price Jumps 12% as Crypto Market Posts Recovery  Monero, the 11th largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of nearly $3.6 billion, jumped more than 12 in the last 24 hours as its price rose to $233.74.  Monero, a privacy-centric currency, trails 10th place IOTA, which has a market cap of more than $4 billion. Recovering $1 BillionMonero has gained $1 billion this week, having begun the week at $167.78 with a market capitalization of $2.66 billion. The cryptocurrency has almost recovered the capitalization it gave up over the past month; the price reached $233.53 on March 21 with a market cap of $3.732 billion. It still has a way to go, however, to reclaim the $389.03 price on Jan. 20, when its market cap topped $6.078 billion. The price remains well above the $40 to $50 range it was in last year. Monero was among a host of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, that allowed the market to climb to $334 billion, eyeing a move to $350 billion. Bitcoin rebounded to $8,100 over the past 24 hours after it dropped to $7,850 on April 17. Hard Fork Brings ImprovementMonero activated its semi-annual hard fork on April 6, bringing a host of new upgrades. One particular Monero upgrade, though, threatens to split the network into two competing chains. Monero earlier this year announced its intention to update its instance of the Cryptonight Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining algorithm at regular intervals to prevent mining hardware manufacturers from developing Monero-compatible Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, as critics allege that these devices lead to mining centralization and threaten the network’s health. ASIC chips maximize efficiency to such an extent that it becomes no longer profitable to mine with GPU miners, whose chips are general-purpose and use for everything from PC gaming to searching for extraterrestrial life. |
|
|
|
Bank Of Japan: Central Bank Digital Currencies Could Destabilize Existing Financial System The Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) deputy governor spoke negatively about the effects of central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDC) on the current financial system in closing remarks at a fintech conference, published yesterday, April 16. In his remarks, Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya stated that while central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDC) could have a negative impact on the current financial system, the bank is open in the future to applying emerging economical technologies like crypto. The conference was held jointly by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Japan’s Financial Services Agency, and the Bank of Japan. The Deputy Governor spoke about the previous challenges for international financial authorities, i.e. the global financial crisis in 2008, which was a time when “crypto-currencies [sic] had not yet appeared.” With the arrival of this new innovation, Amamiya notes that CBDCs are now “stimulat[ing] global discussion on to what extent central banks should provide their payment and settlement infrastructures to society.” Amamiya sees the current “two-tiered” role of a central bank as communicating with other banks, who then deal with the private sector directly, as “reflect[ing] the wisdom of human beings in history to achieve both efficiency and stability in the currency system.” According to this point of view: “The issuance of central bank digital currencies for general use could be analogous to allowing households and firms to directly have accounts in the central bank. This may have a large impact on the aforementioned two-tiered currency system and private banks' financial intermediation.” Amamiya also mentions that central bank-issued cryptocurrencies could affect the way that the central bank gathers transaction information to maintain the stability of its payment system: “To sum up, IT innovation raises many fundamental questions and challenges related to the currency system, the design of central bank infrastructure and the utilization of information attached to economic activities.” Amamiya concludes that although the Bank of Japan will not be issuing its own virtual currency right now, the bank understands that the application of emerging technologies is always a possibility for central bank infrastructure. The Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are currently working on a joint initiative, Project Stella, researching Blockchain’s potential use for securities settlements. |
|
|
|
KOMODO  The Komodo/Bitcoin (KMD/BTC) pair ignited its bull run on December 20, 2017, when it took out 0.00045 resistance. Using the strong base below 0.0004, the market skyrocketed to as high as 0.0012598 on January 4, 2018. In about two weeks, KMD/BTC grew by almost 180%. Those who bought the breakout took the chance to lock in gains. Faced with heavy selling pressure, the market plummeted to 0.0004513 on January 5. Bottom pickers bought the dip and carried the market to 0.0009999 on January 6. However, those who bought above 0.001 on January 4 saw the rally as an opportunity to minimize their losses. The increased selling pressure forced bottom pickers to quickly take profits. With sellers dominating the market, KMD/BTC snapped 0.00045 support on February 19. It then generated a series of lower highs and lower lows until it bottomed out at 0.0002866 on March 18. The pair has been rallying since, and it looks ready to resume its bull run. Technical analysis show that KMD/BTC is in the process of breaching 0.00045 resistance. To complete the breakout, bulls must print at least 1 million units of Komodo in volume. Those who bought above 0.00045 on April 14 might dump positions to minimize losses. The market needs buyers to absorb the selling pressure. The strategy is to buy the breakout at 0.00045 as long as the prescribed volume is met. If bulls take out the resistance, the market may zoom to our target of 0.00057. The process may take less than a month. Daily Chart of KMD/BTC on Binance As of this writing, the Komodo/Bitcoin pair is trading at 0.0004477 on Binance. Summary of StrategyBuy: Breakout at 0.00045 with 1 million Komodo volume. Target: 0.00057 Stop: 0.0004230 after the breakout. Disclaimer: The writer owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading. |
|
|
|
Crypto Hedge Funds Face Tough Choices on Tax Day  US investorsU.S. investors in crypto funds (other than tax-exempt investors) will typically invest in domestic partnerships or LLCs. Onshore funds could stand alone but could also be part of larger structures, incorporating one or more entities accommodating tax-exempt and non-U.S. investors (e.g., mini-master, master-feeder, and side-by-side structures). As partnerships, onshore crypto funds are generally not subject to tax, but rather their investors are taxed on the funds' profits. Each year, investors receive "K-1s" reporting their respective shares of the crypto fund's items of income, gain, loss, deduction and credit for the prior year, regardless of whether profits were distributed. Investors may be limited when claiming certain deductions or losses, including passive activity losses, business losses, business and investment interest expenses, and miscellaneous itemized deductions, which are currently non-deductible (including for alternative minimum tax purposes). In addition, crypto funds should restrict withdrawal rights or limit the number of investors to avoid classification as publicly-traded partnerships, which are taxable as corporations. Unlike partnerships, corporations are taxed on their income, and shareholders, on distributions. Funds that do not limit withdrawal rights or a number of investors rely on the "qualifying income" test to avoid publicly-traded partnership classification. It is unclear whether 90 percent of a crypto fund's income would be "qualifying income" to avoid publicly-traded partnership classification. If crypto funds allow investors to contribute cryptocurrency (rather than fiat) when subscribing to fund interests, investors may be required to recognize gain (but not loss) on the contribution. If contributions in-kind can be made tax free, crypto funds must track the contributors' bases in the contributed cryptocurrency and allocate any pre-contribution gains or losses to such investors. Investor or trader?Different U.S. federal income tax rules apply to investors, traders and dealers. Generally, dealers make a market in an asset class by being willing to buy and sell assets at certain prices, profiting from bid-ask spreads. Most crypto funds will not be dealers. Crypto funds will be traders if their trading activities are substantial, seeking to profit from short-term market swings (rather than "holding" for long-term appreciation). In determining a fund's status as a trader, relevant factors include the total number of trades in a year, the frequency of trading activity, and portfolio turnover. Unlike traders, investors are not engaged in a trade or business. Crypto funds that are not traders in crypto will be investors. Classifying crypto funds as traders or investors affects whether expenses (other than investment interest expenses) of the funds are deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Traders in commodities, which may include crypto for this purpose, can elect to mark-to-market their open commodities positions (other than those identified as held for investment) at the end of each year, recognizing gains or losses as ordinary income or losses. Funds with significant mismatches between long-term capital gains and short-term capital losses may want to make this election, since recognition of short-term capital losses may be limited. In addition, crypto futures that are "1256 contracts" and remain open at year end must be marked-to-market. Any gains or losses will be treated as 60 percent long-term capital gains and 40 percent short-term capital gains. This tax treatment carries through to the general partner as part of their carried interests. However, straddle rules might delay recognition of losses if crypto funds hold, for example, crypto long and crypto futures short. Other investorsNon-U.S. persons and tax-exempt investors in crypto funds will typically invest in an offshore corporation formed in a no- or low-tax jurisdiction. Offshore funds will either invest into a master fund (master-feeder), into an onshore fund (mini-master) or alongside an onshore fund (side-by-side). Unless an offshore fund's activities is limited to certain investments, the offshore fund (but not its investors) may be subject to U.S. federal income tax to the extent the offshore fund is engaged in a U.S. trade or business. Generally, offshore funds will not be treated as engaged in a U.S. trade or business if the funds only buy and sell stocks, securities and certain commodities for their own account (and certain other requirements are met). These are known as the "securities trading safe harbor" and the "commodities trading safe harbor." For purposes of the securities trading safe harbor, securities generally means debt instruments. For purposes of the commodities trading safe harbor, the commodities must be "of a kind" that is customarily dealt in on an organized (i.e. CFTC-regulated) exchange and the transaction is "of a kind" customarily consummated at such place. For this purpose, "commodities" generally means commodities in the ordinary financial sense. The CFTC, which generally regulates commodities markets, has stated that cryptocurrencies are commodities. The commodities trading safe harbor may apply to crypto trading if the crypto is "of a kind" that is customarily dealt in on an organized commodities exchange. Currently, only bitcoin futures are traded on an organized exchange. While non-U.S. persons' bitcoin trading activity in the U.S. should fall within the commodities trading safe harbor, it is not entirely clear if trading other cryptocurrencies (e.g., ethereum, litecoin and altcoins) come within the commodities trading safe harbor. |
|
|
|
Asura Coin Community Airdrop Asura World is the World’s first self-sustainable eSports platform, powered by NEO. Asura World aims to unite the global eSport community by incentivizing users to simply be kind & helpful towards others. Asura World aims to provide in-depth game analyses to guide players through the intricate details of professional gameplay. This will include teaching professional decision-making processes, winning strategies, item-builds, skill-builds, situational advice, and so on. Asura Coins used within the ecosystem flow within it, fueling other parts of the ecosystem where necessary. Asura Coin holders can bet, stake, be rewarded, pay, and earn within the platform. To emphasize our passion for the community we are trying to create; the Asura Team is happy to announce an exciting opportunity to receive Asura Coins (ASA). Criteria We are airdropping 250 ASA tokens for each registered participant. Tokens will be rewarded on a first come first serve basis. Please complete the airdrop registration form here: https://form.jotform.co/AsuraCoin/airdrop-registration-form and subscribe to our mailing list. You must join our telegram chat: https://t.me/asuracoin. Please contribute to the discussion positively! You will be awarded 250 ASA upon completion! Participants who use fake accounts, create multiple accounts, or are found gaming the airdrop program in any way will be disqualified from the airdrop campaign entirely! Airdrop Schedule Tokens will be awarded no later than 10 working days after the end of our Public Crowd Sale. The ICO date is currently set for 21st May 2018. Whitelisting and KYC registration dates will be announced within the next week. NOTE: Please beware of scammers. Asura Coin will never request any form of contribution from you via email or private message. Do not send funds to any address without first verifying it. If you are unsure, please ask an administrator in our Telegram group to verify the message for you. Keep an eye out for further details on the Asura World platform and the ICO, happening in Q2 2018. For more information on the Asura Coin ICO Website: https://asuracoin.ioTwitter: https://twitter.com/asuracoinFacebook: https://facebook.com/asuracoinReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsuraCoinTelegram: https://t.me/asuracoin |
|
|
|
exploring Blockchain Enabled Positive Sum Business Models Circular economies are based on a closed-loop production-consumption model that turns trash into treasure. Consider corn husks: to many businesses, the food waste is trash, but in a circular economy business, these same corn husks can be used as fuel. With the growing popularity of environmentally minded communities — from composting at home to producing one’s own energy — “circular economics” has become a favorite, often ideal model in private, public, and business life. Designed to cut waste and create value beyond what’s measured on balance sheets, naturally, circular economics have become popular in the cryptocurrency world.  With the invention of blockchains, Bitcoin, the world of ‘tokenomics’ economic models that create value into a closed loop system is being experimented with on a global scale. In these systems, value contributors are rewarded with an asset that’s closely associated with the system they’ve contributed value to. These rewards are often called network tokens and they exist to ensure the usefulness of the network, by incentivizing valuable contributions. It’s worth noting that rewards are not always financial; status plus mission fulfillment can be enough to motivate contributors, like with Wikipedia. However, with tokens, systems can be “Better Than Free” because contributors receive rewards that are fungible. Circular token economies and their “Better Than Free” applications have the potential to profoundly impact internet based businesses and the way they create scarcity. As Kevin Kelley would say, the internet is a copy machine and once something on the internet has been copied ad infinitum, it becomes financially valueless.internet-basednancial value, internet based businesses need to invent methods to create scarcity to give value to their products: In circular token economies, there is often a fixed number of total tokens that will ever be created, thus creating some scarcity. With methods like staking and token curated registries, “Better Than Free” design architecture creates additional scarcity. These methods give token holders certain rights, access, or abilities, like participating in achieving consensus or curating lists. We think about these economic models a lot at Deconet, where we’re building the economic layer to open and free digital infrastructure. We have implemented a fixed token supply and a token curated registry to create scarcity. To bring our tool set for financially sustainable open source to market, we host distributed & open source product development contests where developers are rewarded for building technical solutions for businesses. You can think about is as Github where software engineers and contributions get paid if businesses commercialize their software. This is when we asked ourselves, “What does access for enterprises look like in circular token economies?” From that question, “Enterprise Hodl” was born. What’s Enterprise Hodl? In the Enterprise Hodl model, companies buy and hold tokens for access to a product, service, or network. Contributors earn tokens for adding value, by moderating contest for example, and the platform that sells the tokens will accept tokens as fees for certain types of usage. This token capture and redistribution powers the circular aspect of the economy. From the perspective of enterprise customers, this new model can feel a lot like subscription billing tiers, with levels of access based on annual fees. Enterprise Hodl has tiers based on the duration and volume of tokens held On “Better Than Free” platforms, users and contributors earn tokens for their efforts. By layering on the Enterprise Hodl model, contributions are conceivability more valuable since companies have a stake in the success of the ecosystem. Designing an ecosystem this way serves to align the incentives of enterprises, users, and contributors. To explore this, let’s imagine Salesforce.com as a “Better Than Free” application that has minted it’s SFDC token and implemented an Enterprise Hodl model. For a bit of background, Salesforce is a CRM and also sells contact data, like phone numbers and email address. Salesforce customers are enterprise sales teams and use the CRM to stay organized and purchase contact data in order to do cold calls and emails. Sales teams spend a lot of time curating the right people to reach out to and put significant resources into confirming contact information is correct, like understanding if a person still works at a certain company. Every sales team repeats this effort independently. This duplicated effort is wasteful. In order to cut waste, Salesforce could implement a circular token economy. Their enterprise customers would buy and hold tokens for access to curated and accurate lead lists; we call this Enterprise Hodl. Independent value contributors would be able to earn tokens for the curation of lists and confirmation of data, so for them, contributing back to the platform would be “Better Than Free” because they could earn tokens for doing so. Finally, Salesforce would take a fee, in tokens, for the usage of the CRM product. In this example, Salesforce’s enterprise customers would benefit by creating deeper incentives for independent value contributors to curate lists for them. Normally, getting this kind of benefit would require these enterprises to pay contractors or employees, which would be an expense for them. In a circular token economy, enterprises get the benefits without having a pure expense because they are purchasing and receiving a cyptoassest. This notion that all parties involved get a better outcomes is at the heart of positive sum games, and circular token economies present the best opportunity to experiment with these new kinds of models. Our mission is focused on having equitable and automated value flow back to contributors and maintainers of open source software. That’s why we’re implementing Enterprise Hodl for a global and distributed open source development contest we’re hosting in June. Enterprise and blockchain projects buy and hold the Deconet token in order to list challenges to an extended developer and product community of 10,000+ developers and contributors.  New technologies, like blockchains and smart contracts, provide a unique opportunity to experiment with incentives and value creation models. At Deconet, we’re focused on applying these models to the world of open source and blockchain ecosystem development, and would love to hear how you’re thinking about new models in the industry you’re focusing on! |
|
|
|
BTCEffect Bounty Wallet Submit
It's time to submit your NEO wallet address.
Thanks for taking part in the Effect.AI Bounty program.
How do I submit my NEO wallet?
It's simple, just reply to this email with your Telegram Name & Wallet address and you're done!
@TelegramUsername
[WALLET ADDRESS]
All confirmed NEO wallets will be shown on our Wallet sheet here. Submit This Email - wallet@g0blin.comWallet SpreadSheet - http://www.g0blin.com/wallet/Goblin Telegram Group - https://t.me/g0blinbounties |
|
|
|
|
