Founded in November 2014, by Nick Williamson and Eric Benz, Credits is a Blockchain Software as a Service (SaaS) initiative from the Isle of Man, with an office in Lodon. Williamson also founded Manx startup Pythia, the parent company building Credits.

Credits began offering the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tools, for building secure and scalable blockchains, on April 6. The Level39 member launched the public beta version of their PaaS at Money 20/20.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/credits-and-skyscape-partner-to-provide-blockchain-as-a-service-to-the-uk-public-sector/

The technical setups posted use simple trend detection, support and resistance, channels, pattern and candle analysis. We aim for high-probability trade setups on BTCUSD and use very few indicators. All charts use BNC’s Bitcoin Liquid Index for maximum accuracy.

The timeframe for trades is 1 to 7 days, so we’ll use 4h candlesticks. Bitcoin is best traded as a purely speculative commodity on 4h+ timeframes.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-price-analysis-the-weak-hands-are-out

Whaleclub Director of Operations, Petar Zivkovski, along with Director of Marketing and Business Development, Jessica Lee, took over operations of Whaleclub in October 2015. This was merely a year after TradingView members founded the Club as a real-time feed of bitcoin trade ideas, supplied primarily from the TradingView and Teamspeak communities.

While Lee has a background in Public Relations and international journalism, Zivkovski has been trading professionally and building trading systems for over two decades. He began using bitcoin in early 2013, and quickly started trading.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/whaleclub-trading-powered-by-bitcoin-and-only-bitcoin/

The Bitcoin mining industry exists in a very close competition; every miner must stay on the cutting edge of the technology, in order to compete and stay profitable. Any potential efficiency gain creates an instant arms race, and is nearly impossible to overlook while remaining in the game.

Cryptocurrency experts and Mathematical researchers, Dr. Timo Hanke and Sergio Demián  Lerner, recently announced their new ASIC mining chip technology, called AsicBoost, that claims to improve mining performance and revenues by up to 20 percent.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/asicboost-claims-20-efficiency-improvement-in-bitcoin-mining/

While cryptocurrencies have received increasing attention with the rise of Bitcoin, there is perhaps more excitement and utility for real businesses in using the underlying technology, the blockchain.

Founded by Shumilov in December 2013, Emercoin was established as a currency for various internet projects, including social networks, research projects, networking, and gaming, as well as supporting and sponsoring high-tech projects such as robotics, electric vehicles and submersibles.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/blockchain-platform-emercoin-moves-beyond-cryptocurrencies/

Digital Currency Group is an investment firm founded in March 2015, by prolific Angel Investor Barry Silbert. The company has invested in 72 different companies, more than two-thirds of which operate in the bitcoin space.

In the last four months alone, the company acquired the biggest bitcoin news site, CoinDesk, and along with it, the biggest bitcoin conference, Consensus. The company already had investments in Bitpay, the industries leading payment service provider, as well as coinbase and Kraken, two of the largest platforms for trading bitcoin.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/western-union-wont-make-the-same-mistake-with-blockchain/

The introduction of Bitcoin sparked a revolution of finance and economics. Bitcoin set money’s value free from government constraint, value can now be determined solely by the market.

Instead of depending on centralized third parties for every financial transaction, people can exchange value around the world cheaply, and in a completely decentralized manner. Bitcoin ushered in the age of truly digital cash.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/dash-the-anonymous-evolution-of-bitcoin/

Innovate UK works with companies to de-risk, enable, and support innovation. Incorporated by Royal Charter in February 2007, Innovate UK was originally established as the “Technology Strategy Board,” which is still the organization's legal name.

The organization has committed over £1.8 billion to innovation, and has helped more than 7,600 organizations with projects since 2007. They estimate adding between £11.5 billion and £13.1 billion to the UK economy, creating 55,000 extra new jobs. Earlier this month, Innovate UK announced it will invest a further £561 million in UK-based disruptive businesses.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/uk-government-awards-250k-grant-to-develop-blockchain-foreign-exchange-prototype/

In the latest edition of the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief, released earlier this month, remittance only grew marginally last year. Remittances to developing countries amounted to $431.6 billion in 2015, an increase of 0.4 percent over 2014.

Although still growth, the pace is the slowest since the global financial crisis. Global remittances, which include those to high-income countries, contracted by 1.7 percent in 2015, to $581.6 billion.

Nonetheless, remittances remain buoyant in key remittance-receiving countries. Remittances to Vietnam are estimated to have increased by some 10 percent in 2015.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/global-remittances-slow-while-regulation-restricts-access

The Imperial College of London's‎ Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering and Digital Catapult ran a policy hack day for UK government representatives on the 26th April, in order to help government officials identify possible applications of blockchain technology in public service delivery.

The event was attended by representatives from policy, academia and government, with in-depth discussions around how and when blockchain could be applied in a broad variety of government use cases.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/uk-cabinet-minister-rt-hon-matt-hancock-spearheads-government-blockchain-adoption/

The Valve Corporation recently started accepting bitcoin payments on the digital distribution platform Steam. The service offers some of the world's most popular video games, including Grand Theft Auto, Dota, Fallout, Team Fortress, and Counterstrike.

At any given time of the day, several million users are on the platform, the peak number of players logged in last weekend was just shy of 13 Million. More than 125 Million gamers had active accounts in 2015.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/steam-accepts-bitcoin-with-bitpay/

The United States has historically favored centralized voting methods. Over time, punch cards and lever machines gave way to electronic voting machines and optically scanned ballots, which were used prolifically in the 2012 election.

Both of these systems are vulnerable, and depend on a trusted central auditing authority to count the votes. Even in the United States, one of the most successful democracies in the history of the world, there have been numerous cases of potential voter fraud, murky ballot handling, flawed registration processes, and vulnerable technology.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/the-parallel-2016-us-presidential-election

Peter Todd is one of the longest-serving core bitcoin developers remaining, a Canadian with 92 separate contributions to the bitcoin code base to date. He has worked on projects like Colored Coins, Counterparty, and Stealth Addresses, but is best known as someone who  searches for vulnerabilities in the bitcoin system.

Last Thursday, Todd published an article claiming that the MIT ChainAnchor Project is, “in part an attempt to get Bitcoin users to register their real world identities and associate their transactions with those identities.”

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/core-bitcoin-developer-claims-chainanchor-plans-to-bribe-bitcoin-miners-to-regulate-bitcoin/

The European Central Bank (ECB) considers Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as “one of several possibilities” when it comes to assessing possible technical solutions, according to Yves Mersch, ECB Executive Board Member.

At the Deutsche Bank Transaction Bankers' Forum 2016 on Monday, Mersch stated that not only is there “big demand for research into the DLT related questions and their policy implications,” the ECB is “certainly open to new technologies and, like many market players, have launched some experimental work.”

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/distributed-ledger-technology-could-be-a-game-changer-states-european-central-bank-board-member

On June 5 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a Report describing a rare lung infection in five young, previously healthy, men. They all had other, unusual, infections as well, indicating that their immune systems were failing. Two of the patients had died by the time the report is published, and it marks the first official reporting of what became known as the AIDS epidemic.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/ethereum-powered-heal-bonds-join-fight-against-aids/

The technical setups posted use simple trend detection, support and resistance, channels, pattern and candle analysis. We aim for high-probability trade setups on BTCUSD and use very few indicators. All charts use BNC’s Bitcoin Liquid Index for maximum accuracy.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-price-analysis-houston-we-have-liftoff/

The price of a bitcoin reached US$450 per coin last week, before consolidating just above $450. This is the second highest peak of the year, and is only a dozen dollars short of years high on January 7th.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoins-current-bull-run/

Less than fifteen kilometers south of Hungary, on a swampy scrap of the Danube river bank, between Serbia and Croatia, is an unrecognized, yet uncontested micronation. the Free Republic of Liberland.

Founded by President Vít Jedlička, from the Czech Republic, on April 13th 2015, the English-speaking nation is only seven square kilometers in size. Only two countries are smaller,  Vatican City and Monaco.

Interest from potential citizens has been overwhelming in the past year, there have already been over 405,000 citizenship registrations through the website. Of those, 91,000 are eligible for citizenship.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/liberland-celebrates-first-year-anniversary-and-releases-cryptocurrency-plans/

Manulife Financial is a Canadian-based financial services company, offering a diverse range of financial protection products and wealth management services. As of 31st December 2015, the company had US$676b in assets under management and administration.

More than 16,000 Canadian businesses entrust their employee benefit programs to Manulife’s Group Benefits, while Manulife Private Wealth offers a seamless and integrated approach to wealth management for affluent clients.

The group has operated in Asia for more than 100 years, and currently has over 63,000 contracted agents, more than 100 bank partnerships and more than 500 dealers, independent agents and brokers.

In the United States, Manulife operates as John Hancock, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2012. With more than 6,300 employees, John Hancock is the number one provider of target Lifestyle Portfolios in the United States based on assets invested in Annuities, Retirement Plan Services, Variable Life Insurance and Mutual Funds.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/manulife-to-explore-wealth-management-blockchain-application-partners-focus-on-ethereum

Bitcoin has a new and potentially considerable threat to its reputation, if California cybersecurity firm Proofpoint is correct. Last week, the company warned that a previously undocumented ransomware sample that they found, CryptXXX, would not only be encrypting files locally and on all mounted drives, “it’s stealing Bitcoins and a large range of other data.”

Not only is CryptXXX a multi-purpose thief, but the company's analysis shows it spreads in new and powerful ways; through a common trojan called Bedep after infection via the extremely popular Angler exploit kit.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/cryptxxx-set-to-become-the-worst-bitcoin-stealing-ransomware-yet/