I have a bit of Tron with me. About $30,000 worth. And it sank recently to $25,000. So I was wondering what are some of the other coins that allow you to stake or lease your coins to a super representative or super node?
Please don't name drop random shitcoin, the coin I am looking for needs to have at least some kind of liquidity for easy exit. So preferably something that is listed on coinmarketcap..
Thank you in advance everyone..

[Satoshi Nakamoto Revealed: Stylometry & Bootstrapping Proof, Claims UK Nonprofit]

Satoshi Nakamoto Revealed: Stylometry & Bootstrapping Proof, Claims UK Nonprofit

Self-described informative and interactive crypto website, Zy Crypto, a nonprofit based in England, believes it has struck ecosystem gold by discovering Satoshi Nakamoto’s real identity. It’s the second attempt by the outfit, and both times they’ve relied upon stylometry before concluding that Bitcoin Cash developer Gavin Andresen is Satoshi hiding in plain sight. This go-round analysis involves not only statistical analysis of prose, but also Maciej Eder’s bootstrapping method in an attempt to eliminate natural bias in such conclusions.

Bitcoin Cash Developer Gavin Andresen Is the Real Satoshi Nakamoto
Two upfront admittances, if readers indulge. The first is, I am a Troy Watson fan. I enjoy his work, and count myself as someone who approves of his earnest dive into such subjects. Second, I have probably read more about the present pseudonym under examination than is healthy, and not just because I make my living in the space. Flatly, I am obsessed. No clickbait here, or not intentionally. No hype. This is a fun pursuit, and one worth some effort as it involves cryptocurrency’s origin story.

Zy Crypto is a curious little outfit based in a lesser-known part of the United Kingdom. They’ve the site proper, a news aggregation service, and what appear to be variations on the public relations themes of initial coin offerings and blockchains. To publish one, let alone two articles asserting both times how Bitcoin Cash developer Gavin Andresen is Satoshi, for once and for all, speaks volumes about either the confidence Zy has in its writer or the fact they’re sporting for clicks.

Consider this sentence, hitting readers right between the eyes: “We identified Bitcoin Cash developer Gavin Andresen as being the real Satoshi Nakamoto,” Mr. Watson boldly asserts before an immediate pivot towards technique. The primary methodology used in both examinations is what’s known as stylometry. It’s the study of prose put up against other writers as a way of determining patterns and is an actual predictive of authorship when done well.

Stylometry has picked up in recent years as an investigative tool when faced with the spectre of Satoshi Nakamoto. The pseudo anonymous creator of Bitcoin holds more than five percent of bitcoin in circulation, making him the first crypto billionaire. Should Mr. Nakamoto decide for shits and giggles to dump a significant amount of coin onto the market, not only would the price drop by virtue of economic law, confidence would probably crash as well, bringing down a giant chunk of whatever value bitcoin has. It’s a big goddamn deal who Satoshi is.


Stylometry’s False Positives or Conclusive Hits
The technology to out a writer wishing to remain in has proven its worth. In the mid 1960s, Frederick Mosteller used stylometry to establish authorship of the hotly contested Federalist Papers, determining James Madison as their probable main author (instead of Alexander Hamilton). It took him almost half a decade, whereas today software exists to run such analysis pretty fast. More famously, and recently, no less an author than zillion-selling Harry Potter creator JK Rowling was found to be the actual author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. A few years ago she wished to have her writing evaluated on its own merits, and so Ms. Rowling took a pen name. Stylometry outed her.  

And Zy Crypto isn’t the first to attempt applying the statistical method to Satoshi’s true identity. As bitcoin’s price began to skyrocket, so did interest in who its creator might’ve been. During Craig Wright’s supremely odd public display, outed by supposed hackers, claiming to be Satoshi and then suggesting it was a hoax, a couple of once well-regarded tech journals believed Mr. Wright to be Satoshi. International Business Times employed the very firm used to blow Ms. Rowling’s cover, Juola & Associates. They soon determined what most in the know suspected: Mr. Wright wasn’t bitcoin’s father (he’d respond that he and partner David Kleiman collaborated on the project, but even that has been posthumously tainted). He managed to fool or convince or onboard original Bitcoin dev Gavin Andresen, who went so far as to record video testimony (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum genius, weighed in on the noise of the matter, and later just outright spat fraud in Mr. Wright’s direction).    

Late 2017, price fever pitch reached maximum overdrive, and Michael Chon took his own swing at discovery. The Georgetown University and Booz Allen Hamilton alum concluded Satoshi was a group of devs, with some authoring the whitepaper while others engaged in email exchanges. He narrowed it down to four: “Nick Szabo, Ian Grigg, Wei Dai, and Timothy C. May.” Gavin Andresen wasn’t considered, a subject to which we return.

Mr. Watson details how “using Eder’s bootstrapped stylometry method…this finding supports our previous article on the topic that also identified Gavin as Satoshi using Principal Component Analysis and Burrows’ delta.” Knowing full well the history I’ve outlined above, he concludes, “A big part of this failure can be attributed to the lack of convergence validity in the stylometry field.” And a pitfall within the field itself is how “stylometrics often cherry pick results due to their algorithms producing vastly different results when slightly tweaked,” he acknowledged. This led to suggesting Wei Dai as Satoshi, at least for a time.
Using Stylometry Analysis I Have Discovered I May Be Satoshi Nakamoto
This time, Mr. Watson’s confidence in Mr. Andresen as Satoshi extends from Maciej Eder, who “created a bootstrapping method specifically designed to overcome the problem of cherry picking elements like Most Frequent Words (MFW). The approach uses Burrows’ delta to find a difference between two texts, but also uses random sampling of MFW ranges so as to output more robust results. Burrows’ delta is basically a manhattan distance of z-scores which is sourced from a list of top words used in an entire corpus.”

The rest of the article reads similarly, and the interested would do well with frequent searches of Wikipedia. Nevertheless, he’s “found that the first nearest neighbour was Satoshi’s email texts followed by 3 of Gavin Andresen’s Github documents and then followed by Satoshi’s forum texts. These findings are quite reasonable because not only do they validate the links between the Satoshi whitepaper-emails-forums but they also cluster Gavin as the likely author. It’s also of interest that Gavin’s style was so much like Satoshi’s whitepaper that he beat Satoshi himself with the forum texts!”

Still more discussion of limitations and technical methodology follows, and those without a statistical or mathematical background are cautioned. It’s somewhat like reading French if you don’t speak French. Yeah, there’s the standard Latin alphabet and all, but that’s about as far as most will get. Again, Wikipedia is a friend.

I don’t buy it in the end, and have instead relied upon resident ecosystem muckraker, Crypto Cornelius, as my prime response. “I have identified Myself,” he typed in the patois of most these studies, “an amateur crypto enthusiast as being the real Satoshi Nakamoto using Yeder’s bootstrapped Coronary Angiogram stylometry method. This finding supports a previous thought when I woke up one night and thought ‘Could I be Nakamoto?’” Sides splitting, tears dropping on the laptop as I type to you Dear Reader, he continues, “Nano Stylometry was invented by Elon Musk and is a set of methods that aim to identify an unknown author by statistically deciphering their style using statistics, hard to understand graphics and random information.” For geeks like me, good old Cornelius is necessary to bring us back to reality. Happy reading.

 
https://news.bitcoin.com/satoshi-nakamoto-revealed-stylometry-bootstrapping-proof-claims-uk-nonprofit

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Verge (XVG) has been the victim of another hack, in which 35 mln XVG were stolen over a period of a few hours, The Next Web reported yesterday, May 22.

Verge tweeted that their mining pools were under a DDOS attack on May 21, noting that they were working to resolve it.

XVG is currently down by a little over 14 percent over a 24 hour period to press time, trading at around $0.041 according to data from CoinMarketCap, which makes the hack currently equal to around $1.4 mln.

Verge was also hacked of 250,000 XVG in the beginning of April, losing 25 percent of its value as a reaction to the news. Verge developers had “resolved” the April hack by accidentally initiating a hard fork, according to Suprnova mining pool’s OCminer comments on Bitcointalk. Verge’s Twitter account was also compromised in March, with hackers tweeting about a fraudulent giveaway of Verge coins in exchange for coins being sent to them.

Verge has not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment on the hacks at press time.

OCMiner, who pointed out the first attack, posted again about Verge’s vulnerability on Bitcointalk on May 22, noting that “since nothing really was done about the previous attacks (only a band-aid), the attackers now simply use two algos to fork the chain for their own use and are gaining millions:”

In other Verge news, last month the cryptocurrency announced a partnership with adult entertainment streaming site Pornhub, which will now accept the coin as payment for Pornhub Premium and all Pornhub purchases.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/altcoin-verge-hacked-for-second-time-in-two-months-around-14-mln-stolen

Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) held a focus group on cryptocurrency regulation today, May 21, streamed on Facebook Live. The hearing focused on the SEC’s approach to crypto-related businesses and fundraising through Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), local news outlet Siam Blockchain reports.

Today’s focus group clarified that ICOs can only raise funds in the Thai baht and cryptocurrencies permitted by the SEC – those that “have enough liquidity and are not associated with money laundering.” Projects running ICOs, whose applications must be completed in 60 days, will also need to adhere to KYC and AML standards.

Siam Blockchain also reports that the ICO Portal of Thailand will not list any international ICOs, and that the Thai SEC will not be involved with the ICOs of stable coins, which instead are directed to the national bank for regulation.

Last week, the Thai SEC released a crypto regulatory framework that defined cryptocurrencies as “digital assets and digital tokens” under their regulatory jurisdiction. Thai Finance Minister, Apisak Tantivorawong, said that the new legislation is supportive of ICOs, as long as they are officially registered.

Cointelegraph reported last week that the new regulations have left some Thai crypto companies confused about how to follow the framework, particularly the sections on registration and taxes, as the new regulations will require that all Thai-based crypto exchanges, brokers, and dealers register with the proper authorities.

On May 14, the general secretary of the Thai SEC confirmed with a local news source that additional laws will be introduced to the crypto regulatory framework. Siam Blockchain reports that a Thai SEC hearing on crypto will be held on May 30.

In February, the privately owned Thai Digital Asset Exchange (TDAX) announced they were deferring the trading and registration of ICOs for two weeks while waiting for the SEC’s regulatory framework.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/thai-sec-holds-focus-group-to-clarify-new-crypto-ico-regulations

[Crypto Exchange Bittrex Reopens Registrations, Users Lambast New Interface]

Crypto Exchange Bittrex Reopens Registrations, Users Lambast New Interface

Update: due to “an overwhelming response from new users,” the Bittrex exchange has paused new registrations, promising to resume them “as soon as possible.”

Crypto exchange Bittrex, the 7th largest worldwide by trading volume as of press time, has reopened its registration portal for new user accounts, the company announced April 10. In December 2017, the exchange was forced to start temporarily turning away new users, due to a massive influx of signup requests.

Not everyone in the crypto sphere is celebrating however. The vast majority of tweets responding to Bittrex’s stirring declaration — “The.Wait.Is.Over” — were disgruntled by the new interface, with one user decrying it as “merely an exercise in CSS prettiness,” and another:

Where is the buy price, bid price, last price and 24hr high and low. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️ you have one job. Just one job. pic.twitter.com/sy58s1F0Kh

— $XVGHODLER “Will not giveaway Verge” (@Nachillo1) April 10, 2018

Others apparently faced unexpected errors when attempting to register and even log in, and within hours of reopening, Bittrex in fact had to again temporarily pause sign-ups, citing “the overwhelming response” from new users as its reason.

Crypto person “Tulips de’ Medici” quipped:

Look I’m trying to open an account for my future kids. This is important.

— Tulips de' Medici (@cryptodemedici) April 10, 2018

Bittrex is a major US-based crypto exchange, and its founders have a background in security at Microsoft.

Bill Shihara, Bittrex’s CEO, has emphasized the exchange’s commitment to KYC and AML compliance in a Unikrn Radio podcast, and in October 2017, Bittrex disabled thousands of accounts for compliance reviews without prior warning.

The excitement of some other users is nonetheless hard to deny:

pic.twitter.com/ON3ozM9XrP

— Crypto2U [APRIL 16th MOON BEGINS] (@Crypto2U) April 10, 2018

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-exchange-bittrex-reopens-registrations-users-lambast-new-interface

[Monero Announces Network Upgrade]

Monero, a leading privacy-centric cryptocurrency, has undergone a hard fork in recent days – producing a new Monero chain in addition to the now renamed ‘Monero Classic’. The fork was initiated to protect Monero against mining centralization, as Bitmain had developed ASIC units purpose-built for mining XMR tokens.
Monero Announces Network Upgrade
On the 28th of March, Monero announced that it had scheduled a major upgrade for April 6th – which would see network undergo a hard fork.

The official announcement gave two primary outcomes that it intended to achieve through the fork. “First, a PoW tweak to curb any potential threat of ASIC and preserved ASIC resistance, and “Second, the minimum ring size is bumped to 7.” Monero’s expansion in minimum ring size was executed in order to strengthen the privacy afforded by XMR.

It was revealed last month that Bitmain had developed a new ASIC product specifically developed to mine Monero, creating a perceived urgency to fork among developers.

Read more https://news.bitcoin.com/asic-resistance-increasingly-hot-topic-in-crypto-as-monero-forks

[Aggregating the Wisdom of the Majority]

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the concept of prediction markets is a topical subject. There are a few projects in the works hoping to build decentralized prediction markets such as Augur and Hivemind. One particular project, although not fully ‘trustless’ at the moment, Fairlay, has been moving a staggering amount of volume over the past few months with over 100 to 150 BTC per day at times.
Aggregating the Wisdom of the Majority
This week news.Bitcoin.com spoke with the Fairlay CEO Gabriel Oliveira about the bitcoin prediction market and exchange he operates. The marketplace got its origin around three years ago. Oliveira tells us that Fairlay is basically a cryptocurrency infused prediction marketplace that allows sports betting in a digital asset environment. Users can create their own markets, bet on any event, and create insurance instruments and trade financial derivatives such as CFD and binary options, Oliveira emphasizes.

“With our platform, we specialise in getting reliable information for everyone by crowdsourcing predictions on a totally open market,” Oliveira explains to news.Bitcoin.com. “You can foresee the public confidence on various events such as crypto, economics, politics and general news — By using bitcoin we empower users to demonstrate where their confidence lies regarding a specific event by aggregating the wisdom of the majority.”

read more https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-prediction-market-fairlay-sees-sizable-volumes

Trading has officially opened in South Korea on the Beijing-born Huobi crypto exchange, according to Huobi Group’s official announcement March 30.

Huobi’s new South Korean subsidiary supports 100 altcoins and trading on 208 markets (77 ETH markets, 98 BTC markets, and 33 USDT markets).

It also offers an investor protection fund and program to swiftly recompense investors in cases of losses incurred outside of their control.

Huobi Pro global exchange currently ranks second worldwide by trade volume, according to Coinmarketcap as of press time.

The Huobi group launched its Huobi Pro exchange, headquartered in Singapore, after the Chinese government clamped down on ICOs and domestic crypto-fiat exchanges in September 2017. Chinese measures continued to toughen in January and February of this year.

Amid this regulatory onslaught, Huobi is now targeting overseas markets, with a US launch set to follow South Korea. The South Korean context offers its own promises and contradictions.

The country is estimated to have the world’s largest crypto user base after the US and Japan. Such has been the Korean crypto frenzy that altcoins formerly traded 30% above other markets, although this so-called “Kimchi-premium” dissipated earlier this year. The country is reported to have a dozen crypto exchanges.

In December 2017, the Korean government banned anonymous crypto trading, and in January 2018 over 200,000 South Koreans signed a public petition following misinterpreted rumours of an outright national ban on crypto trading.

The South Korean government is reportedly looking to revoke its ban on ICOs, and six major national banks continue to support crypto exchanges.

A taxation framework for the South Korean crypto market is due to be unveiled in June.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/trading-opens-on-crypto-exchange-giant-huobi-in-south-korea

German Ingolstadt-based car manufacturer Audi is testing Blockchain technology for its physical and financial distribution processing, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported today, March 30. With its new solution, Audi aims to increase the security and transparency in its global supply chains.

The car manufacturer released a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) of its Blockchain system last year, after successfully testing the technology based on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric. Due to positive feedback, Audi’s management decided to advance the project beyond the PoC stage.

The research team comprised of representatives from various organizational units such as finance, production, logistics and IT are currently exploring the representation and documentation of international logistic processes, including financial settlement.

Furthermore, the team is exploring various use cases for Blockchain to improve the safety of data transfers, effectiveness of supply chains, management of local energy grids and for the management of digital entities.

Alexander Dietmeier, Head of Group Treasury at Audi AD, stated in an interview with Die Produktion that Blockchain has potential to change various operating principles within industrial companies and opens up new possibilities. Dietmeier also stressed that he believes it likely that Audi will be offering cryptocurrencies as a payment method in the near future.

Other German car manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes and Porsche have recently hit the headlines with announcements of their own experiments with Blockchain technology.

Mercedes Benz, a subsidiary of the automotive group Daimler AG, is issuing its own cryptocurrency MobiCoin to reward drivers for environmentally cautious driving. Carmaker Porsche is exploring the utilization of blockchain apps in its vehicles in cooperation with the Berlin-based startup XAIN.

BMW is reportedly planning to expand its portfolio by partnering with a Blockchain startup and jointly developing a system for ethical sourcing of cobalt for its products.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/audi-is-exploring-blockchain-for-its-distributional-network

[Exit the Dragon]

Celebrity endorsements of ICOs are a great way for projects to get mainstream media exposure and might appear to be a risk-free way for the stars to get some tokens. However, if a specific ICO, or the entire industry, gets negative press it can hurt the reputation of anyone associated with them. For example, Steven Seagal seems to have decided that his link to the Bitcoiin ICO is no longer in his best interests.  
Exit the Dragon
90s action movie star Steven Seagal is no longer the official Brand Ambassador for Bitcoiin. According to an announcement on the project’s website, both Seagal and the founders of the ICO have exited from their roles at Bitcoiin.

The positive spin is that “As Bitcoiin goes through the conversion phase from token to mineable coin we wish to advise that Bitcoiin will join the likes of the original Bitcoin and become a truly open source. Therefore a big thank you to the Founders and to our Brand Ambassador whom we wish all the best in their future endeavors. However, from this point on Bitcoiin will function within its ecosystem and become a genuinely anonymous cryptocurrency with no individual or individuals having control over the entity!”

Read more https://news.bitcoin.com/steven-seagal-karate-chops-bitcoiin-ico-goodbye

[South Korea’s Largest Multi-Billion Dollar Conglomerates Enter The Cryptocurrency Market]

South Korea’s Largest Multi-Billion Dollar Conglomerates Enter The Cryptocurrency Market

South Korea’s largest multi-billion dollar conglomerates in various sectors including insurance, telecommunications, gaming, and Internet are entering the cryptocurrency market by funding up-and-coming exchanges.

The country’s leading corporations have funded such exchanges as Korbit, Bithumb, and Upbit to be involved in the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange market, and be at the forefront of Blockchain development.

NHN and OKCoin
NHN Entertainment Corporation, better known as NHN, is a $1.2 bln company founded in 2013 which operated under the name Hangame Communications from 1999 to 2013. Alongside Nexon, NHN remains the largest gaming conglomerate in South Korea, with a market valuation of 1.29 trln Korean won.

On March 21, local cryptocurrency-focused media outlets reported that the NHN funded OKCoin  - formerly the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in China prior to the country’s cryptocurrency trading ban in 2017 - was to launch OKCoin Korea.
read more https://cointelegraph.com/news/south-koreas-largest-multi-billion-dollar-conglomerates-enter-the-cryptocurrency-market

[Wall Street Analyst Lowers Price Targets Of AMD, Nvidia Shares In Reaction To Bitmain Competition]

Wall Street Analyst Lowers Price Targets Of AMD, Nvidia Shares In Reaction To Bitmain Competition
Wall Street firm Susquehanna has changed the rating of semiconductor firm AMD from neutral to negative and lowered the price forecast for shares in GPU processing manufacturer Nvidia, citing the rising competition from Bitmain’s Ethereum (ETH) mining ASICs, CNBC reports today, March 26.

Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland told clients in a note that Bitmain will be shipping an ASIC for mining ETC starting in the second quarter of 2018, adding that although “Bitmain is likely to be the largest ASIC vendor (currently 70-80% of Bitcoin mining ASICs) and the first to market with this product, we have learned of at least three other companies working on Ethereum ASICs, all at various stages of development."

The preponderance of ETC ASIC miners will negatively affect AMD and Nvidia, according to Rolland, companies whose graphics cards for ETC mining make up about 20 and 10 percent of the companies’ respected revenues.

The new target price for AMD shares is $7.50, down from $13.00, and is $200 for Nvidia shares, down from $215 at Friday’s market close. Rolland noted that Nvidia’s neutral rating is the same, because "Nvidia has a stronger and more durable gaming franchise which would help it work through this potential Ethereum-related unwind.”

A research report released in February of this year showed that the four-year-old Bitmain had made between $3 and $4 bln in profits in 2017, while the twenty-four-year-old Nvidia had made about $3 bln during the same time frame.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/wall-street-analyst-lowers-price-targets-of-amd-nvidia-shares-in-reaction-to-bitmain-competition

[Today’s Bitcoin Buyers Are Still Early Adopters]

A new survey of Americans has discovered that the cryptocurrency community still has a long way to go to in order to simplify the technology or to reach out and educate more people in the United States, especially among women and older folks.
Today’s Bitcoin Buyers Are Still Early Adopters
Personal finance comparisons portal Finder recently commissioned a survey of 2,001 American adults to help map out the cryptocurrency landscape in the US. It found that 7.95% of the population has invested in a cryptocurrency, leaving much room for adoption to grow among the vast majority of Americans. And among the 92.05% of didn’t buy any cryptocurrency, 7.76% do plan to purchase some in the future.

As for the reasons people didn’t invest in cryptocurrency, 35.02% fear that the risk is too high, 27.04% find it too difficult to understand, 17.97% say it’s a scam, 16.12% are waiting for the “bubble” to burst, 11.40% find it too difficult to use, and lastly 5.75% think that there are too many fees. Just 40.01% say they are not interested or they think there’s no need for them.

read more https://news.bitcoin.com/survey-says-8-of-the-american-population-now-own-cryptocurrency

[Setting a Precedent]

A district court in Kiev Oblast has accepted a lawsuit which is setting a precedent in Ukraine. The plaintiff seeks compensation in bitcoin for “moral damages” caused by law enforcement officials. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled after the presiding judge found no legal grounds to reject the claim.
Setting a Precedent
For the first time in Ukraine’s judicial practice, a claim for compensation in cryptocurrency has been accepted by a local court. Ukrainian citizen Dmitriy G. wants to be paid 1 BTC for “moral damages” he suffered in result of an “unlawful” search. He is suing officers from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and their colleagues from the Prosecutor’s Office who conducted the operation.

Borispolskiy District Court in Kiev Oblast has agreed to look into the case and has even scheduled a preliminary hearing, Forklog reports. Judge Zhuravskiy found no legal grounds to reject the lawsuit, according to a document, acquired by the outlet.

All applicable norms have been observed, according to the court, which has already sent a copy of its resolution to the defendants. They have 15 days to respond officially to the claims made by the plaintiff. If the government agencies fail to do so, the court proceedings will continue based on the available information.

Regardless of the end result, the legal action has already set a precedent in Ukraine’s court practice. If Dmitriy is granted the bitcoin compensation he seeks, that would de facto legalize cryptocurrencies as means of payment in the country.

read more https://news.bitcoin.com/ukraine-to-compensate-a-citizen-in-bitcoin-for-moral-damages

[No Consensus for Global Crypto Regulations]

The Financial Stability Board, G20’s global watchdog, does not consider cryptocurrencies a risk to financial stability. In a letter to the Group of 20 central bankers and finance ministers, its Chair Mark Carney said FSB was pivoting away from designing new policies and focusing on reviewing existing rules. His comments suggest there is no G20 consensus on common crypto regulations, despite calls from member-states for adopting global guidelines.
No Consensus for Global Crypto Regulations
The Financial Stability Board (FSB), the body that coordinates financial regulation for the G20 countries, has effectively dismissed calls from member-states to adopt global cryptocurrency rules. “The FSB’s initial assessment is that crypto-assets do not pose risks to global financial stability at this time,” its Chair Mark Carney said in a letter to central bankers and finance ministers, Reuters reported.

Representatives from G20 countries are meeting today in Argentina. Statements in several member-states suggested that crypto regulations would be on the agenda of the summit. In February, high-ranking French and German officials issued a letter urging their colleagues to discuss the implications of cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, within the G20 format. According to recent reports from Tokyo, Japanese representatives intended to push for global rules on cryptocurrencies.

read more https://news.bitcoin.com/g20-watchdog-says-cryptos-not-risk-resists-calls-new-rules/

[MasterCard Open To ‘Not Anonymous’, State-Issued Cryptocurrencies, All Others ‘Junk’]

MasterCard Open To ‘Not Anonymous’, State-Issued Cryptocurrencies, All Others ‘Junk’
MasterCard is receptive to the idea of using central bank-issued national digital currencies in the future, according to the co-president of Mastercard’s Asia-Pacific business, the Financial Times reported today, March 19.

Senior MasterCard executive Ari Sarker told the Financial Times that “if governments look to create national digital currency we’d be very happy to look at those in a more favourable way [as compared to cryptocurrencies in general]”:

“So long as it’s backed by a regulator and the value . . . it is not anonymous, it is meeting all the regulatory requirements, I think that would be of greater interest for us to explore.” 

Ajay Banga, the CEO of MasterCard, had also said last fall that MasterCard would find a “way to be in the game” for government-created digital currencies, labelling all other cryptocurrencies without government-backing as “junk.”

Government-issued currencies have been discussed in several countries globally, but as-of-yet the centralized crypto phenomenon has not been realized by most. The most notable example of a successfully-issued state crypto is the Venezuelan Petro, which was recently released under a cloud of controversy.

Sarker also said that MasterCard was currently running a Bitcoin (BTC) pilot program in Japan and Singapore that would allow BTC holders to cash out onto a MasterCard, adding that the program involves both KYC and AML components:

“We are not operating trading of bitcoin through the MasterCard network [...] [The pilot] is a toe in the water, we're fully cognisant of the reputational risk.”

Read more https://cointelegraph.com/news/mastercard-open-to-not-anonymous-state-issued-cryptocurrencies-all-others-junk

[Improving Global Services at Poloniex]

One of the main concerns for the cryptocurrency investing community over the last year was the ability of exchanges to handle the huge influx of new traders into the ecosystem. Circle seems to have picked up on that sentiment, going on a hiring spree in order to improve the service at its recently acquired venue Poloniex. The move is meant to help the exchange expand globally, with an emphasis on serving Asian clients, while Circle continues to focus on the US market.

Improving Global Services at Poloniex
Circle Internet Financial Ltd., the Boston-headquartered fintech startup that acquired Poloniex last month, will reportedly expand the cryptocurrency exchange’s staff with a hundred new employees. The move is meant to improve the operations, customer support and technology for Poloniex clients around the world. Specifically, Circle is said to hire between 25 and 35 extra people to grow its operations in Asia, expanding a local workforce of just ten in Hong Kong and mainland China, and creating new offices for South Korea and Japan.

Besides focusing on localized services, it appears that Circle will also make sure Poloniex cooperates with regulators in different markets. “The long-term view is that every form of value on the planet will become a crypto token. We want to offer more markets, more assets, we want to localize it, and launch it in more international markets and, critically, we need to work with the most important regulators,” co-founder Jeremy Allaire said in a Bloomberg interview.

read more https://news.bitcoin.com/circle-goes-on-a-hiring-spree-to-improve-service-at-poloniex

CoinJob has failed to meet its requisite funding goals during their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) according to an announcement on their website in February, now it informs on error.

The project for a low-fee, distributed labor marketplace for computer-based work was launched in August 2017 and planned to raise up to 60,000 ETH, but collected $7,639 (less than 30 ETH at press time), according to ICObench.

“Definitely after the first day of the pre-sale, we knew we weren't going to make it because we just didn't see that many people are talking about it,” a former team member told Cointelegraph anonymously.

According to the source, the biggest problem was insufficient investment in marketing and not giving themselves enough time to advertise. “I think our idea was solid and our team was fantastic but, at the time, there were not standardized routes to having a successful ICO, so we were doing a lot of stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t,” he said.

“I learned that having a great project means nothing if no one knows about it, and building a brand and getting the hype around your project is the most important things,” the source said, adding that the team is going to return money raised to contributors.

Last summer was a good season for ICOs, with more than $1.5 bln raised by 119 ICOs from June to August 2017, according to statistics of ICObench.

In 2017 ICOs raised a total of $4 bln, according to an EY study that analyzed 372 projects.  More than 10 percent of ICO proceeds are lost as a result of hacking attacks.

Besides suspicious cases like PlexCorps, DRC or RECoin there are unsuccessful ICOs that raised significantly less than expected and should close their project and those who continue their business but postponed the launch of the product.

Jan Brzezek CEO & co-founder of Crypto Finance believes that only five percent of ICOs will survive five years and only one percent will actively generate revenues for their clients in an amount which would be standard for private equity (P/E) investments. In October, Vitalik Buterin predicted that about 90 percent of token startups will fail.

“Even good projects are not raising the kind of money as in the past,” said Wulf Kaal, professor at the University of St. Thomas and director of Private Investment Fund Institute. Since late 2017, the ICO volume has been slowing down, and fewer projects are reaching fundraising goals, in November 2017, less than 25 percent hit goals, compared with more than 90 percent in June, according to the EY study.

source https://cointelegraph.com/news/icos-are-over-so-what-about-the-product

Cryptocurrencies, as the product of the digital realm, have always existed in the ether - no pun intended - meaning that physically there was nothing to hold, or to lose/have stolen. The threat for Bitcoin users when it came to getting fleeced of their digital currencies always existed online, leaving savvy investors safe offline.

Now however, thieves are cottoning on to the fact that there is a way to reach coins offline and have taken their plundering to the streets. A number of cases have been reported where Bitcoin owners are being attacked face-to-face by thieves and being forced to deposit huge amounts of digital currency into anonymous wallets.

It seems that even the usual safety measures taken online are no longer good enough, but there are some steps people can take to make sure they do not become a victim of face-to-face Bitcoin burglary.

Read more https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-thieves-no-longer-just-an-online-threat-how-to-stay-safe

[Coinbase Releases Tax Calculator But Many Users Will Likely Not Qualify]

Coinbase Releases Tax Calculator But Many Users Will Likely Not Qualify

US exchange and wallet provider Coinbase released tax reporting tools for users to file to US authorities on March 13.

In a blog post, Coinbase announced some users could use its form generation options to calculate tax owed on cryptocurrency gains ahead of this year’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reporting deadline of April 17.

The move comes following years of struggle between the company and the IRS, with court battles over data access dragging on after the agency suspected Coinbase of aiding tax evasion by its users.

“For our customers who have only bought or sold digital assets on Coinbase, we offer a tool that automatically calculates your gains or losses based on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) accounting method,” the post confirms, adding that other calculation methods are also supported.

The number of Coinbase users eligible to use the tool may be limited.

The blog post also contains a list of circumstances which would exempt a user’s transaction history from being compatible, these including participating in an ICO or even simply using another exchange.

The company states:

“Please be advised that this report will only be accurate for customers who have not transacted outside of Coinbase. Do not use this report if you have:

1. Bought or sold digital assets on another exchange

2. Sent or received digital assets from a non-Coinbase wallet

3. Sent or received digital assets from another exchange (including GDAX)

4. Stored digital assets on an external storage device (i.e., Trezor, Ledger, etc.)

5. Participated in an ICO

6. Previously used a method other than FIFO to determine your gains/losses on digital asset investments”

Coinbase is not the first tax calculation offering to hit the market. In August 2017, fellow US startup Node40 released calculation software, initially focused on Dash but which then expanded to other currencies including Bitcoin.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-releases-tax-calculator-but-many-users-will-likely-not-qualify