Matt Liston is starting his own religion — and he’s putting it on the blockchain.

Liston has had a turbulent past in the crypto eco-system, suing the company he claims he helped found for $152 million.

Augur created a market prediction tool and raised $5 million in a 2015 ICO in which 8.8 million REP tokens were sold at $0.60 each. REP would eventually trade as high as $100 at one point before correcting to the current value of $37.50.

 Liston was demonstrably involved in the early stages of the company and left or was forced out over disagreements regarding the technological and commercial goals of Augur. With the case ongoing, Liston has a very different project in mind: the blockchain religion he calls 0xΩ.

As Forbes reports, donations and community consensus will all be carried out through blockchain consensus and smart contracts executed on the Ethereum platform.

“It’s a religious framework that could allow for belief sets to update much more quickly and also to democratize the relationship between membership and convergence on what everyone believes in this religion,” said Liston.

Last week Liston got things started at a launch party/religious ceremony as part of a larger exhibition hosted by the Rhizome arts group at the New Museum in New York.

The ceremony involved marking hyperinflated currencies of the past such as the Reichsmark of the Weimar Republic with public and private Ethereum keys — Liston also unveiled a “totem” aimed at being the first sacred object of the religion.

The crypto-guru handed out 40 copies of what he calls a “flame paper,” his take on a traditional white paper, outlining how the religious governance model of 0xΩ will be carried out. The first step is modeled on the method stockbrokers might use a proxy vote to update by-laws in an organization, allowing believers to identify, approve, and evolve sacred texts via a smart contract.

Unsurprisingly, the sacred texts of Liston’s new religion will be derived from the flame paper itself.

“The idea is you can take an existing religion, say Judaism, and you could place the scripture in a blockchain,” said Liston.

The congregation of the blockchain cult will be able to appoint leaders and fund projects that fulfill the religion’s mission, and the faithful can also fund religious artwork and commission the construction of religious temples without going through a middleman, using the smart contract system which allows two parties to enter a contractual agreement which is executed on the blockchain without a middleman.

Religion is a multi-billion dollar industry with religious donations in the US alone reaching $122.94 billion in 2016, according to a Giving USA report. Liston claims he will himself be donating, not personally receiving funds from church-goers and supporters.

Artist Avery Singer unveiled a “Dogewhal” statuette at the ceremony, pointing out that works like this could be commissioned by religion members and paid for collectively through a distributed autonomous organization.

Singer, who refers to Liston as a “Cryptsiah” and a “Cryptophet”,  says she was drawn to the religion because of its decentralized nature needing no overall leader.

“In this religion, the people participating and involved could essentially vote and continuously change the structure and nature of it” says Singer.

The idea of “democratizing religion” has emerged with other projects before with Jesus Coin stating the goal of “decentralizing Jesus.”

Liston perhaps aims to take things a step further, and take the reins of a new religion altogether – whether the religion will be truly decentralized or will feature Liston at the helm as the overall leader remains to be seen, and it’s possible that much like Pastafarianism/The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, 0xΩ will gain more publicity over the coming weeks and months as the online community gets involved with one of the most unusual uses of blockchain technology to date.

https://www.ccn.com/crypto-cult-augur-founder-creates-ethereum-based-religion-called-0x%CF%89/

EOS Price Pumps after Mainnet Release, But This Rally’s Not Quite Organic

The EOS price rallied 16 percent on Saturday following the release of the blockchain project’s open-source mainnet software, but there’s more to this pump than first meets the eye.

EOS Price Makes Market-Leading 16 Percent Rally
Today’s EOS price surge came as part of a wider market rally, but the token nevertheless managed to outpace every other cryptocurrency ranked in the top 100.

EOS spent most of the day trading just over the $12.00 mark but began to surge at approximately 6:15 UTC on Saturday morning. Within hours, the EOS price had peaked above $14.40 on Bitfinex, though it has since declined to a present value of $14.07.

EOS now has a market cap of about $12.5 billion, ranking it fifth on the market cap charts and $5.2 billion behind fourth-ranked bitcoin cash.

Somewhat remarkably, EOS is actually priced at a discount on South Korean exchanges, which as a general rule force local investors to pay a premium. Volume is very well distributed, with no single trading pair accounting for more than 13 percent of the token’s global volume or trading venue accounting for more than 20 percent.

Block.one Releases Mainnet Software, Tokens Locked on Exchanges
The clear impetus for the rally was the formal release of EOSIO 1.0, which development company Block.one shipped this morning at the conclusion of its yearlong $4 billion initial coin offering (ICO).

Until now, EOS tokens have been structured as ERC-20 tokens and have run on the Ethereum network, meaning that users must transfer their tokens to the coin’s independent blockchain. During this complicated process, token balances held in ERC-20 wallets have been locked, and exchanges have frozen deposits and withdrawals. However, exchanges continue to allow users to trade the limited supply of EOS tokens currently held on their platforms, creating an environment that is not entirely comparable to other trading pairs.

For example, an early EOS investor who would ordinarily consider selling tokens at $14.00 may not be able to do so since they cannot currently deposit EOS on an exchange. In essence, the reduced EOS supply will translate into increased price volatility until the nascent EOS mainnet achieves stability.

Notably, Block.one has said that it will not launch an EOS mainnet, nor will it commit to continuing to develop the software beyond the current release. Consequently, it is expected that there will be several networks claiming to be the “EOS mainnet,” and it could be some time before a clear winner emerges.

https://www.ccn.com/eos-price-pumps-after-mainnet-release-but-this-rallys-not-quite-organic/

Bitcoin Price Analysis: Buy Crypto While It’s Cheap, Says Hedge Fund Owner.

The cryptocurrency market has languished in recent weeks, as a widely-anticipated bitcoin price rally has yet to materialize. However, Dan Morehead, founder of cryptocurrency hedge fund Pantera Capital, says that now is a perfect time to buy.

Speaking with CNBC, Morehead noted that the bitcoin price has broken below its 230-day moving average, an event which has historically proven to be an excellent trading opportunity for investors willing to purchase bitcoin and hold onto it for at least a year.

“Without even thinking about it,” he said, “you make an average of 239 percent.”

“That’s the essence of this trade: It rarely ever gets cheap to its long-term average,” added Morehead, a former Goldman Sachs executive. “So today is a good day to be buying.”

Morehead, as CCN reported, correctly predicted that bitcoin would see a massive correction from its mid-December highs. However, a subsequent prediction that the market was beginning to enter a bull cycle perhaps jumped the gun because the bitcoin price stalled at $9,990 and dipped back down to a present value near $7,500.

Nevertheless, Morehead said that Pantera is still experiencing positive returns, largely because it has diversified its portfolio to include a range of cryptoassets. He said that the firm currently holds investments in approximately 35 initial coin offering (ICO) tokens, as well as 25 liquid cryptocurrencies. He is particularly excited about Augur, whose mainnet prediction market is preparing to launch after years of development.

“All cryptocurrencies are very cheap right now, he said. “It’s much cheaper to buy now and participate in the rally as it goes.”

He advised investors to enter the markets sooner rather than later so that they will already have strong positions once institutions become comfortable with making strategic investments in the space.

“Many institutions are essentially buying the rumor and selling the fact,” he said of concerns that the government will impose new regulations on the space. “Getting invested now so that in three, four, five months when the institutional, quality-regulated custodians that we’re hearing about come online, they’ll already have their positions.”

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-price-analysis-buy-crypto-while-its-cheap-says-hedge-fund-owner/

Cryptocurrency trading platform eToro is considering holding an initial public offering (IPO) as it seeks to expand its products further into the global marketplace.

According to the Financial News, the Tel Aviv-based eToro has been holding early-stage discussions with a variety of London investment banks about the potential IPO.

The report cites “bankers familiar with the matter” but does not quote anyone on record. A spokesperson for eToro declined CCN’s request for comment, stating that the firm does not comment on market rumors.

The company launched in 2007 as a commodities trading platform, nearly two years before the bitcoin Genesis block ushered in a new era for finance. However, the firm was an early adopter of bitcoin derivatives, and it has become a high-volume cryptocurrency trading venue since adding more cryptocurrency-related products last February.

One of the platform’s most popular features is CopyTrader, which allows amateur traders to easily mimic the portfolios of other users who have successful trading strategies.

In March, eToro concluded a $100 million funding round, after which it announced plans to launch a full-fledged cryptocurrency exchange and open its platform to US traders. The company has now raised a total of $162 million, providing it with an $800 million valuation.

Though a variety of cryptocurrency companies have experienced soaring valuations over the past several years, few have gone public. Consequently, the success of eToro’s IPO — if the firm decides to pursue it — will be observed closely by other large industry players as they mull similar moves.

As CCN reported, China-based cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer Canaan Creative filed last month to hold an IPO on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX). The firm, which says that it sold 300,000 ASIC miners last year and turned a $56 million profit, is said to be seeking $1 billion through the offering.

https://www.ccn.com/cryptocurrency-trading-platform-etoro-mulling-an-ipo-report/

Tron (TRX), the tenth-largest cryptocurrency, has begun the transition from the Ethereum network to its own public blockchain.

The Tron mainnet — dubbed Odyssey 2.0 — officially launched on May 31 at 12 am UTC, initiating the first step in moving the $4 billion cryptocurrency to an independent network.

The network will remain in beta for most of June, providing developers with the opportunity to configure their wallets and browsers before the network goes live. Token migration will occur from June 21 to June 24, when users must deposit their ERC-20 tokens at participating cryptocurrency exchanges to receive an equivalent number of TRX on the new blockchain.

The transition will culminate on June 25 — a date that developers have dubbed “Independence Day” — when the Genesis block will propagate across the network and investor predictions that Tron will be an “Ethereum killer” will finally be put to the test.

“The independence of our protocol is a crucial step in ushering in the next phase of the internet through democratization and decentralization,” said Tron founder Justin Sun in a statement, adding:

“Our team maintains a high standard of excellence as we head towards becoming a mainstream public blockchain. The move of the TRON Protocol to MainNet makes it easier for developers to break away from Ethereum and opens up new doors towards better scaling, commercialization and express lanes needed for global dApp development.”

Until now, Tron has functioned exclusively as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network, and the TRX token has steadily climbed the market cap charts despite high-profile controversies and the fact that the cryptocurrency’s network had not even launched.

In this latter regard, TRX is not unique. EOS, currently the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, has raised approximately $4 billion through a yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) and is also preparing to release its mainnet software in June.

Notably, optimism surrounding Tron’s mainnet launch did not manifest in the token’s short-term price movements. The Tron price declined five percent on Wednesday ahead of the release, which was the worst performance of any top 10-cryptocurrency. At present, TRX is trading at $0.06.

https://www.ccn.com/tron-begins-transition-to-its-own-blockchain/

On May 17, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency and bitcoin exchange Bitfinex officially asked its users to submit tax IDs and social security numbers that could be utilized by government agencies in the countries its users are based into tax gains recorded in the cryptocurrency market.

“We request that you complete the appropriate self-certification form and upload it to your Bitfinex account by May 24, 2018, at the latest. If you are a US person or an entity with at least one 25 percent owner who is a US person, please complete the appropriate FATCA form. You are required to provide us with such information,” said Bitfinex.
Targeted Users

Whalepool, a community of day traders focused mainly on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Bitfinex, emphasized that they strongly disavow the decision of Bitfinex and have withdrawn their funds from the exchange.

“Bitfinex is now requiring users to give their tax information so that it can send it to BVI which will exchange it with your country’s tax authorities. We strongly disavow. If you also disagree with this decision, peacefully protest it by withdrawing your money from Bitfinex,” the Whalepool team said.

In response to the statement of Whalepool, the Bitfinex team noted that it has “deliberately targeted users” that it believes have an obligation to self-disclose and emphasized that only a portion of the Bitfinex user base was asked to disclose their tax identification and personal information.

In some regions like the US and France, capital gains tax on cryptocurrency investment is quite substantial. Until this month, the gains tax imposed on cryptocurrency trading was 45 percent, which was decreased to 19 percent by France’s Council of State because investors were not willing to disclose their earnings just to be taxed 45 percent.

In consideration of the high capital gains tax imposed on cryptocurrency trading, it is understandable that investors in the global cryptocurrency market try to avoid disclosing their tax IDs and prevent from being forced to pay abnormally large taxes on trades.

The abrupt decision of Bitfinex led the cryptocurrency market and investors that trade the bitcoin-to-USD, which is still the majority of investors in the market, to panic sell and withdraw their funds out of Bitfinex.

According to CryptoCompare, a cryptocurrency market data provider, Bitfinex remains as the biggest bitcoin-to-USD exchange with more than 29 percent of the market share.

Bitcoin Price Falls

The period in which Bitfinex sent out its official statement to its clients coincided with the fall in the price of bitcoin on May 17, when the bitcoin price reached a two-month low at $7,925. It is highly likely that the price drop of bitcoin was largely caused by Bitfinex and the sell-off of investors on the platform trading the bitcoin-to-USD pair.

The cryptocurrency market still remains extremely volatile. Over the past 24 hours, the daily trading volume of the cryptocurrency market has dropped $5 billion, from $21 billion to $16 billion. As such, it is possible that the bitcoin price falls further below from the current rate at $8,320. But, given that the market has already started to recover from the May 17 dip, it is likely that the bitcoin price rebounds soon, along with other major cryptocurrencies and tokens.

https://www.ccn.com/how-bitfinexs-tax-requirement-may-have-contributed-to-the-bitcoin-price-correction/

Let’s go over what happened in crypto last week.

Price Watch:

    Bitcoin Price is down 1% this week after dropping around $1,000 last week. The drop comes in stark contrast to what some high-profile analysts had predicted. Investors have been waiting patiently to regain the all-important $10,000 support level.
    Ethereum is up 5% this week after being down around 8% last week. The price rise comes as Ethereum regains some momentum. Steve Wozniak came out as a bull this week saying Ethereum could be “as influential as Apple”. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance also launched a new platform with some important features aimed at developers.
    The entire crypto market remained flat this week after falling almost 10% this week. The move comes despite strong performances from several Altcoins and strong expectations due to historic price performance during Consensus with the conference normally resulting in double or triple digit price increases.
    Zcash Price up 50% on news of Gemini Listing: Zcash, the 21st-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of more than $1.4 billion, jumped more than 50% this week, according to CoinMarketCap, pushed by the news that the Gemini exchange will list the cryptocurrency next week.

Bulls & Whales:

    ‘Almost Irresponsible’ to Not Invest in Bitcoin: Billionaire bitcoin bull Michael Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital Capital Management, says every investor should have 1% to 2% of their portfolio in cryptocurrency. Not to do so, he told CNN, is “almost irresponsible.”
    “No Future in Traditional Finance” – Barclays Trader: Traders at top finance firms are taking massive pay cuts to move to crypto firms. We also reported on the same thing happening at JP Morgan.
    Cookie Monster Talks Bitcoin: I’ll let you check this one out for yourself. Turns out, he’s a big bull!
    More Whales are Diving into Crypto: JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other large corporations are are all diving into cryptocurrencies.
    47% of South Africans Plan to Invest in Cryptocurrencies With extremely optimistic growth projections for the African continent the influx of capital could be huge.
    Bitcoin Price to Hit $50,000 in 2018 – BitMEX CEO: Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and CEO of Seychelles-based BitMEX, the bitcoin mercantile exchange, has a bullish prediction for the bitcoin price, which he believes will skyrocket to $50,000 by year-end 2018.
    Coinbase Building More Products for Whales: Coinbase announced a partnership with an SEC-regulated broker-dealer for third-party auditing and financial reporting validation. The custodial product offering maintains a high standard of reporting validation that institutional firms require in broker-dealer relationships.
    Japanese Giant Announces Cryptoasset Custody Service: A global venture called Komainu has been created to provide a secure digital asset custody solution for institutional investors.

Bears:

    Jack Ma Joins the Bitcoin Bashing Brigade: The Alibaba founder said during the World Smart Conference in Tianjin that bitcoin is a bubble. He remains positive on blockchain as a data privacy solution.
    ‘Big Short’ Investor Bashes Bitcoin: Wall Street veteran Steve Eisman rose to fame by shorting the sub-prime mortgage market ahead of last decade’s financial crisis. He’s arguing that only use cases for cryptocurrency are speculative investing and money laundering.
    Paypal Claims Bitcoin Price too Volatile for Merchants: The bitcoin price is too volatile to make it a useful payment tool for merchants, PayPal CFO John Rainey claimed in a recent interview. He joins a long line of Paypal executives who have bashed cryptocurrencies.

Crackdowns:

    Indian Cryptocurrency Exchanges Fighting Back: Following the Reserve Bank of India’s blanket ban on purchasing cryptocurrencies last month, the exchanges are fighting back. While some are outright ignoring the banks statements, others are moving from Crypto-Fiat to Crypto-Crypto trades.
    Kazakhstan President wants U.N. to Issue Crypto Rules: The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is urging the global community to work together to draft common rules regarding the use of cryptocurrencies.
    Bing Bans Crypto Ads: Search engine Bing has joined social media giants Google, Twitter, and Facebook in banning cryptocurrency advertising, citing the need to protect users from scams.

https://www.ccn.com/more-whales-bans-and-an-optimistic-cookie-monster-this-week-in-crypto/

Cryptocurrency Market Rebounds After Poor Week, Ether Gains 5% and Aelf Rises 17%.

The cryptocurrency market has rebounded over the past 24 hours by around $17 billion, from $365 billion to $382 billion. Major cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ether and EOS increased in the 3 to 7 percent range, pushing the cryptocurrency market towards the $400 region.
Ethereum and Tokens

Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, has been the best performing cryptocurrency amongst major digital assets in the likes of bitcoin, EOS, and Cardano. The price of Ether recovered to $713, rising by more than 5 percent.

The daily trading volume of Ether has started to near its previous levels in early January and February, during a period in which the price and volume of Ether achieved an all-time high. The rise in the volume of Ether has demonstrated the increase in the demand for cryptocurrencies from investors in the global market, especially in regions like Japan and South Korea.

According to CryptoCompare, a cryptocurrency market data provider, the daily trading volume of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Japan and South Korea had significantly dropped from May 15 to 18, by nearly 30 percent.

Some experts including Bithumb and UPbit executives previously stated that the imposition of impractical policies by the South Korean government led the volumes of exchanges to fall, but it remains unclear as to why the volume of Japanese exchanges suddenly fell within a 3-day period. It is possible that rumors surrounding bitFlyer caused the market to lose confidence temporarily, as the volume of the Japanese market started to recover after bitFlyer executives refuted rumors of potential hacking attacks.

As seen in the chart below, the volume of bitcoin has continuously declined since it tested the $10,000 support level earlier this month. After reaching $9,900, the price of bitcoin dipped below $7,900 and the volume of the global market declined.

Unlike bitcoin, the daily trading volume of Ether has been relatively stable and in comparison to its volume in January, when the valuation of the cryptocurrency market was still in the $500 billion region, the volume of Ether has not fallen substantially. As such, in the short-term, it is highly likely that Ether will outperform most cryptocurrencies in the market.

Investors in the cryptocurrency market often reallocate their funds in major cryptocurrencies to tokens and small-scale cryptocurrencies if they start to become more confident in the short-term future of the market.

Over the past 24 hours, tokens such as 0x (ZRX), Aelf (ELF), and Polychain (POLY) increased by around 10 to 20 percent, signifying the improvement of market conditions and increase in confidence from investors in the global cryptocurrency market. With the exception of some tokens such as DigixDAO, Binance Coin, and Storm, the majority of tokens outperformed bitcoin over the past 24 hours, gaining by more than 5 percent in value.
No Consensus Pump

Earlier today, Tom Lee, an analyst at Wall Street firm Fundstrat, stated that the cryptocurrency market did not benefit from the Consensus 2018 event, which Fundstrat previously described as a potential catalyst that could lead the cryptocurrency market to rebound.

https://www.ccn.com/cryptocurrency-market-rebounds-after-poor-week-ether-gains-5-and-aelf-rises-17/

By large, cryptocurrency investors, enthusiasts, and observers are aware of the number of “shitcoins” in circulation. But, Wall Street Journal suggests that the number of fraudulent cryptocurrencies available today could be much more than earlier thought, quoting a figure of over 200 as an estimate.
Which Is the Most Legitimate Of Them All?

Facing the most heat are Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a novel fundraising method that gained massive popularity in 2017 after making several overnight millionaires.

Of the 1,450 tokens analyzed, 271 raised distinctive red-flags, and were found with plagiarized documents in addition to having fake team listings or making claims which displayed all characteristics of deceptive ponzi-schemes.

Furthermore, most “whitepapers” – which discuss a project’s technology and applications in detail – were found to be copied verbatim from other projects, laughably copying even team names and mission statements in some cases. Other than this, the projects by large plagiarized marketing plans, security features, and developer notes.

Reportedly, freelancers on popular job sites offer their services for as little as $100, and it is imperative that they might have one small script which they keep regurgitating out with different words.

Bradley Bennett, formerly of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), puts it perfectly:

    Copied language, the absence of named employees and promised high returns are warning signs for investors.

Least Cautious Investors Face Expensive Outcomes

Despite the widespread appeal to conduct extensive research before participating in an ICO, naive investors have drained north of $1 billion into these 271 projects, with some of them still raising funds.

So far, only a total of $273 million has been claimed in the form of lawsuits, which goes to show that investors are still ignorant about the true nature of these projects.

The lure of ICOs as a fundraising method is undeniably impressive,  with over $9 billion raised in the form of cryptocurrencies since 2017, as per a Satis Group report.

In a bid to prevent major investor losses, the United States’ SEC has sprung intoaction, and recently displayed a rather innovative undertaking – a fake ICO – to apprise investors of common fraud giveaways.

Several official warnings have been released by the SEC in the past, both to investors and cryptocurrency projects, to inform them of displaying caution and breaching regulations respectively. Additionally, the regulatory body has come down on controversial projects making bizarre claims, such as promising a fixed amount of profits after a certain time period.

An example is that of Plexcorps, which raised over $15 million on the premise of returning over 1,300 percent profits to investors in the short period of one month.

Naturally, the SEC was not impressed.
Stay Safe Investors!

In conclusion, CCN appeals its readers to conduct due-diligence before investing in cryptocurrency projects, and most of all, being alert for clear giveaways like buggy websites, generic stock images, and online reviews on reputed forums.

Not all cryptocurrencies are fraudulent though, as there are certainly great projects in the market which solve real-world problems and are backed with impressive partnerships. Echoing these thoughts is Mr.Bennett, a law partner at Baker Botts LLP, stating:

    There are going to be some legitimate players that emerge from this but it’s going to be a handful—a lot of it looks like penny-stock fraud with lower barriers to entry.

https://www.ccn.com/ico-scams-have-raised-more-than-1-billion-report-claims/

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck has will delist trading pairs for privacy-centric cryptocurrencies monero (XMR), zcash (ZEC), and dash (DASH) next month.

The Tokyo-based exchange, which was purchased by brokerage firm Monex following a high-profile January hack that saw the platform lose $530 million in NEM tokens (XEM), announced on Friday that it will no longer facilitate trading for these cryptocurrencies, which provide their users with the ability to make transactions that are less traceable than those made with bitcoin and most other blockchain-based coins.

Coincheck said that it came to the decision to cease support for these cryptocurrencies following a “drastic review” of its internal control system and as part of a new “management strategy that thoroughly protects customers.” It is “not appropriate,” the firm said, to deal with these currencies, as they present risks to the firm’s ability to maintain compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

As CCN reported, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) — the regulatory agency that licenses cryptocurrency trading platforms to operate in the country — is rumored to be pressuring exchanges to delist privacy coins.

Coincheck, whose FSA license was pending at the time of the record-setting hack in January, was acquired by Monex in part because its former owners were said to be unable to abide by the business improvement order that the FSA issued to it following the theft. Consequently, the move to delist these privacy coins could be interpreted as an attempt by the new management to bring the platform back into the FSA’s good graces.

Augur’s reputation token (REP), which will be the native asset of the startup’s prediction market, will be delisted as well, perhaps due to its perceived association with unlicensed gambling.

Traders have until June 18 to withdraw their XRM, DASH, ZEC, and REP. Coins that are not withdrawn will be sold at market price and converted into JPY, which will then be credited to customer accounts.

https://www.ccn.com/coincheck-to-delist-privacy-coins-monero-zcash-and-dash/

Coinbase’s new venture capital fund has announced a strategic investment in Compound, a startup that is building money market accounts for cryptocurrency investors.

Compound is the first project to receive venture funding from Coinbase as part of the company’s new efforts for fostering blockchain innovation. As CCN reported, Coinbase announced the new venture fund to incubate early-stage startups in the exploding industry.

Coinbase’s funding is part of a larger $8.2 million seed funding round, which pools other backers including Bain Capital Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, with participation from Transmedia Capital, Compound Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Danhua Capital.

While other coin and token projects have debated ways to generate interest or dividend income, Compound has run with the idea.  In a blog update,  Salil Deshpande, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures, he states that current lending solutions for cryptoassets “are not good enough: they are either centralized and have substantial counterpart risk, or require robust order books for each type of cryptoasset, which generally do not exist.”

Compound’s mission is to put cryptoassets to work that now “sit idle on exchanges and in wallets, yielding no interest,” according Founder Robert Leshner in a blog update about the funding announcement.

Leshner continues:

    “…when Compound launches it’s [sic] first money markets on the Ethereum blockchain, individuals, institutions and applications will earn interest on Ether, stablecoins and utility tokens, with complete liquidity — similar to the overnight rate for dollars and government currencies.”

The core technology behind Compound is a decentralized blockchain infrastructure that is centered around a series of open-source smart contracts. As part of the smart contracts, the interest rates for each asset adjust dynamically in response to the borrowing demand for that asset. An algorithm makes these adjustments in real time, according to the project’s whitepaper.

Compound hopes to attract borrowers such as hedge funds, sophisticated speculators, and other Ethereum applications.

As Compound’s technology aligns closely with Coinbase’s entrenched status as a company that is revolutionizing traditional finance, it is no small wonder why it has received the firm’s backing. The company’s target market of institutional investors is in line with Coinbase’s recent rolling out of a suite of tools for only these clients, as CCN reported on May 15.

Compound’s core technology also eases reporting, since each money market is transparent, auditable, and completely predictable. Coinbase itself has also worked hard on institutional-grade reporting as part of efforts for becoming an SEC-regulated brokerage.

https://www.ccn.com/interest-earning-crypto-compound-gets-nod-from-coinbase-with-funding/

The bitcoin price sank below $8,000 on Thursday for the for the first time since mid-April, further erasing the progress that the flagship cryptocurrency had made over the previous month.

Bitcoin had traded near $8,300 for the majority of the day, but this support level began to falter heading into the early evening.

At approximately 20:42 ET, the bitcoin price dipped below the $8,000 mark on Bitfinex, ultimately extending as far down as $7,925 at 20:55. Bitcoin then made a brief recovery above $8,000, but the bears ultimately forced it back into sub-$8,000 territory shortly before 22:00 ET. Currently, bitcoin is valued at $7,991 on the exchange, representing a 24-hour decline of more than 4.5 percent.

Thursday marked the first time that bitcoin had traded below $8,000 since April 18, shortly after the market began a rally that ultimately carried bitcoin to $9,990 — but failed to push it past the psychologically-important $10,000 threshold.

Notably, the pullback came during the high-profile “Blockchain Week,” which Wall Street strategy firm Fundstrat had predicted would inject a bullish sentiment in the market.

https://www.ccn.com/newsflash-bitcoin-price-drops-below-8000/

Ethereum client Parity has added support for on-chain private transactions in its latest software update, providing developers with the ability to create and deploy encrypted smart contracts.

Released on Tuesday, Parity 1.11.1-beta introduces several new features to the software client, which remains popular even though several bugs in Parity’s multisig smart contract libraries have given the company a black eye — and have caused users to lose access to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funds.

The most eye-catching feature in the new release is the support for private transactions, which allows developers to encrypt smart contracts. The underlying code is stored in a private contract, which is permissioned and thus not publicly viewable. The private contract is then wrapped in a public contract, enabling authorized users to interact with it on-chain without exposing the private contract’s code.

From the release notes:

“Private Transactions make it possible for you to store, modify, and view code and state for a set of permissioned participants. This means that with private transactions on public chains, all contracts and transactions are accessible only by those with the right permissions viewable by anyone, but now you can work with others in the open behind strong encryption.”

And here’s another explanation, posted on Reddit by Parity developer Maciej Hirsz:

“Private Transactions are basically Private Contracts, where the state and the code of the contract are both encrypted. Transaction is first sent off-chain to a number (specified by the contract) of Validators that all have to agree on what the new state is, then you take the new encrypted state with signatures of all of the Validators to update it on-chain. Key sharing is enabled using a threshold cryptography scheme that enables certain parties to be permissioned to securely receive key parts from what we call Secret Store.”

In the initial release, this feature has several limitations, including the ability to execute only one private transaction per block per contract. Moreover, there is not currently a way to configure how many validators must verify private transactions, so all validators must do so under the current structure.

In addition to private transactions, Parity 1.11.1-beta improves the client’s “warp sync” functionality, which allows users to sync their nodes to a recent blockchain snapshot, saving significant time over conventional methods. The new version also gives nodes the ability to verify transactions in parallel, optimizing the process considerably.

https://www.ccn.com/ethereum-client-parity-adds-support-for-encrypted-smart-contracts/

Exclusive: 200 Million Users Messaging Giant LINE Partners Blockchain Project ICON.

ICON, the $1.6 billion blockchain project created by developers from South Korea, has secured an official partnership with LINE, Japan’s largest messaging app that supports more than 200 million monthly active users.

LINE’s Entrance Into Cryptocurrency Exchange Market
On January 31, CCN reported that LINE is set to launch a cryptocurrency exchange within 2018 with an intent to enter the global cryptocurrency sector and to promote research and development of blockchain technology.

Since then, over the past four months, LINE has continued to explore the blockchain sector and innovative projects within it. This week, LINE announced that through a joint venture called UNCHAIN, the development team of LINE will deploy various decentralized applications (dApps) and its blockchain mainnet on the ICON blockchain protocol.

The official press release obtained by CCN noted that LINE and ICON will collaborate to develop and deploy a wide range of dApps that could be utilized by hundreds of millions of users on a daily basis.

With the creation of its independent blockchain lab, the LINE development team will begin exploring the potential of blockchain technology and research innovative methods of commercializing the technology in the long-term.

In an interview with CCN, the ICON team stated:

“We believe that, over time, more conglomerates and enterprises around the world will begin to see genuine use cases and efficiencies blockchain technology can bring to their business. At ICON, we’ve been working diligently to work with them to realize this through education, research, and collaboration.”

ICON Could be Used by 200 Million Active Users
LINE, which is the most widely utilized messaging app in Japan, has more than 200 million active monthly users on its platform that send and receive messages on a daily basis. The ICON team told CCN that the joint venture between ICON and LINE could lead to hundreds of millions of users of LINE potentially utilizing the ICON blockchain on a daily basis to access dApps.

“At current low adoption level, this access and impact would benefit ICON and the blockchain industry in a powerful way. We believe partnerships with players like LINE with such reach and scale are absolutely necessary for a wider and faster blockchain adoption. This is something we’ve all been waiting to see and we are glad to be the one make this happen,” the ICON team explained.

To this date, the blockchain sector is yet to see widespread adoption of blockchain technology and several experts including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin have publicly expressed concerns towards the large market valuations of blockchain projects that are not comparable to their adoption and usage.

In November, as the cryptocurrency market achieved a $0.5 trillion market valuation, Buterin stated that while the blockchain sector has provided some value to major industries such as finance and technology, it has not done enough to justify its valuation.

“So total cryptocoin market cap just hit $0.5T today. But have we earned it? How many unbanked people have we banked? How much censorship-resistant commerce for the common people have we enabled? How many dapps have we created that have substantial usage?” said Buterin, adding The answer to all of these questions is definitely not zero, and in some cases it’s quite significant. But not enough to say it’s $0.5T levels of significant. Not enough.”

Long-term partnerships and joint ventures between blockchain projects and large-scale conglomerates allow the development of blockchain platforms and applications that could potentially be adopted globally and actually utilized on a regular basis to demonstrate the potential of the blockchain.

As for LINE, the ICON team said that the LINE development team was attracted to the interoperability benefits provided by the ICON network and the technical capabilities of the ICON team.

“We believe this goes to show the quality of ICON team’s technical and business capabilities. At the end of the day, it’s about how comfortable you are working with your partners. Both LINE and ICON have strong mutual respect for one another,” said the ICON team.

https://www.ccn.com/messaging-giant-line-partnership-icon/

Bitcoin Cash and EOS Drop 13% as Cryptocurrency Market Sheds $30 Billion Overnight.

The cryptocurrency market has dropped by more than $30 billion overnight, from $408 billion to $377 billion. Major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, and Cardano dropped in the 5 to 13 percent region, with Bitcoin Cash and EOS dropping 11 percent and 13.5 percent respectively.

Bitcoin Cash and EOS
Traders have often described Bitcoin Cash investment as leveraged bitcoin trading because on both the upside and downside, Bitcoin Cash moves by larger margins. Throughout April, as the market continued to recover and bitcoin started to gain momentum in the $9,500 region, Bitcoin Cash experienced a 10 to 20 percent increase in value quite regularly.

However, as the cryptocurrency market started to fall, Bitcoin Cash began to record losses with significantly larger margins in comparison to bitcoin and Ethereum. Today, on May 16, Bitcoin Cash fell by more than 6 percent against both bitcoin and Ethereum, which also fell by 5 percent.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) of Bitcoin Cash is at 50, signifying a neutral zone for BCH. If the RSI of BCH signifies an oversold condition, the price of BCH could bounce relatively quickly in the short-term but given that the RSI of BCH is neutral and both exponential and simple moving averages are demonstrating a negative short-term trend for BCH, it is likely that the price of BCH will continue to fall over the next 24 hours.

Other cryptocurrencies and tokens that have performed strongly against the US dollar over the past month such as EOS and 0x (ZRX) have also slumped over the past week. EOS has dropped by more than 38 percent from its monthly peak in April against bitcoin.

Within a period of two weeks, the price of EOS declined from 0.0024 to 0.00149 BTC, by 38.17  percent. Considering that the price of EOS increased from 0.0009 to 0.0024 BTC from early April to April 29, the sudden drop in the price of EOS was unexpected.

But, the struggle of EOS, which has been able to secure strong momentum throughout April, demonstrates the current state of the market. Despite the initiation of the Blockchain Week in New York and the Consensus 2018 event, the cryptocurrency market is failing to rebound from its short-term losses.

Bitcoin to $50,000
On CNBC, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes stated that he sees the price of bitcoin reaching $50,000 by the end of 2018, despite the correction the market has seen from February to May.

BitMEX, which supports margin trading, profits from both the downside and upside of bitcoin because traders can register short and long contracts.

“If it goes up, if it goes down, if you have Bill Gates calling it a fraud … Short it, I don’t care. If you think it’s going to be $1 million in a few months, great, buy it. I still don’t care. We just match trades,” Hayes said, emphasizing that his prediction of bitcoin reaching $50,000 is objective as increase in the price of bitcoin does not impact the profitability of the exchange.

https://www.ccn.com/cryptocurrency-market-drops-30-billion-overnight-bitcoin-cash-and-eos-down-13/

Telegram Takes Alleged Trademark Squatter to Court over Cryptocurrency Naming Rights.

Encrypted messaging company Telegram has filed a trademark suit against a Florida company that also intends to create a cryptocurrency named “gram.”

The suit, which was filed on May 11 in the San Francisco branch of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Lantah LLC violated Telegram’s service mark rights when it filed a trademark application for “gram” in February. The news was first reported by legal publication The Recorder.

As CCN has reported, the Pavel Durov-led firm raised $1.7 billion from a group of less than 200 accredited investors to fund the development of the future Telegram Open Network (TON), whose native cryptocurrency will be called GRAM.

However, in February Lantah LLC filed a trademark registration for “gram,” stating that it intended to develop a “virtual currency for use by members of an on-line community via a global computer network.” That application, incidentally, was filed after Telegram had begun raising funds for its network.

Telegram claims that it has acquired “common law trademark rights” to GRAM since it has already conducted a “widely reported on and highly successful offering of Purchase Agreements” using the term. The firm further alleges that Lantah is operating in bad faith and seeks to profit from brand confusion.

From the complaint:

“Lantah’s unauthorized use in commerce of a service mark that is confusingly similar to Telegram Messenger’s GRAM mark has caused and is likely to continue to cause confusion or mistake, or to deceive consumers and potential consumers, the public, and the trade concerning an affiliation, connection, or association between Lantah and Telegram when there is no such affiliation, connection, or association.”

Such brand confusion can have serious consequences. When Venezuela began accepting preorders for its “petro” cryptocurrency earlier this year, an unrelated token of the same name briefly experienced a pronounced price rally as confused investors purchased it thinking they were buying the state-backed token.

Daniel Jeffrey, the principal owner of Lantah LLC, told CCN in an emailed statement that, contrary to Telegram’s claim, Lantah was using the “gram” trademark before it was even aware that Telegram had decided to market a product under the same name.

“Lantah was publicly using the Gram name before we were even aware of Telegram’s decision to market one of their products with the same name.  This was backed up by the availability of the trademark,” he said. “We are now having the matter reviewed by counsel.”

https://www.ccn.com/telegram-takes-alleged-trademark-squatter-to-court-over-cryptocurrency-naming-rights/

51 Percent Attack in Silicon Valley Movie Is Real but Doesn’t Work like That.

The 51 percent attack is featured in the finale episode of the Silicon Valley Hollywood movie. While it features a real threat where miners can attack the network by hijacking a more than 50 percent of the network, it is exaggerated. 

 The “Fifty-One Percent” is the name of the Silicon Valley movie season finale and it features an organized group of cryptocurrency miners who crowd a blockchain network to reach 51 percent consensus and then hijack the network and disrupt it. According to the trailer, a group of miners attack a blockchain network called Pied Piper blockchain network. However it attempt to delete all the network users, developer apps and then crash the coin.

And while such a threat where miners control more than 50 percent to execute hidden motives. Thus, their operations are only limited according to Cornell cryptographer Emin Gün Sirer.

Sirer explains,
“Miners at 51 percent or more have a lot of powers, but they do not have the ability to change the actual rules of the system, nor can they usurp funds. They can rewrite the existing blockchain in a limited fashion. Also they cannot introduce transactions that don’t already exist. And they can omit any transaction that they want. However, they certainly cannot change any of the existing rules”.

In the real world, this type of attack has been deployed against Krypton and Shift which are clones of Ethereum. Both were attacked by a group called 51 Crew. After holding a majority of coins in both attacks, the crew sent the coin creators a ransom note saying serious damage would result if they were not paid.

And in the real world of blockchain, cryptocurrency projects are aware of the fact that miners who control more than 50 percent of the network can bring chaos on the network when acting as a group with hidden agenda. They can stop payments between users, and can even reverse certain completed transactions. So as to appear as if the coin holders spent them.

Also, rewriting transactions can ruin legitimacy of all transactions and end up killing the coin, especially for smaller coins. However, attackers would not be able to delete all users and apps according to Cornell cryptographer Emin Gün Sirer.

It is a problem whose solution is not clear although different companies continue to implement different solutions. Therefore, the episode does good work to highlight a real problem that deserves some attention inside of blockchain, even though it is exaggerated.

https://coinpedia.org/news/51-percent-attack-silicon-valley-movie/

There are numerous bitcoin price predictions floating out there, but when the head of a major bitcoin derivatives exchange shares his forecast, the price prediction has legs.

Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and CEO of Seychelles-based BitMEX, the bitcoin mercantile exchange, has a bullish prediction for the bitcoin price, which he believes will skyrocket to $50,000 by year-end 2018, he told CNBC.

While the bitcoin price has bounced back and is inching closer to the $8,800 level, it’s still a far cry from Hayes’ price prediction. Though as Fundstrat market strategists have pointed out, much of the gains in the bitcoin price tend to unfold over just a handful of days each year.

Even at the start of the new year, when the bitcoin price was trading in the doldrums, Hayes wasn’t phased, though he pointed out “it’s [his] job to make predictions” whether or not they come true.

Hayes, a Citigroup alum, explained that he is a volatility trader, and he makes his money on the volatility in the bitcoin price, which there has been no shortage of year-to-date. “If it goes up, if it goes down, if you have Bill Gates calling it a fraud … Short it, I don’t care. If you think it’s going to be $1 million in a few months, great, buy it. I still don’t care. We just match trades,” Hayes said.

Asia-focused BitMEX is geared toward retail investors but instead of spot trading, it has some of the advanced features that you might expect to see on an institutional trading platform, including derivatives, margin trading and up to 100x leverage (which is more of a “headline number” and not something most traders take advantage of). The exchange supports short trading in perpetual contracts.

Market Dynamics
Hayes also addressed the cultural differences that affect cryptocurrency market dynamics in the Western world and Asia, the latter of which is where some suggest two-thirds of the market originates from.

“I think Asia dominates crypto because they’re very used to trading digital assets,” said Hayes, pointing to South Korea, where locals are accustomed to trading virtual goods in video games and where the culture is easily transferred to cryptocurrency trading.

And it’s individuals, not institutions, that are driving most of the volume.

“There’s really not too much institutional presence right now in crypto. It is a retail phenomenon,” Hayes told CNBC.

But many are expecting that institutional investors that have been sidelined are on the brink of a shift where they too will enter the space, especially with traditional Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs launching a trading desk and the NYSE also jumping in. When that happens, Hayes said BitMEX is prepared to support them, pointing to the exchange’s API.

Hayes got the Twitter-sphere talking when he claimed in a tweet to show up at Consensus 2018, which is unfolding in midtown Manhattan this week, in one of those famous crypto Lamborghinis.

If Hayes is correct and the bitcoin price attains $50,000 as he predicts, there could be a lot more Lambos on the road in the not-too-distant future.

https://www.ccn.com/bullish-call-bitmex-chief-predicts-50000-btc-by-year-end/

Proof of Work cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are facing struggles with the wave of ASIC mining hardware. Nakamoto envisioned a decentralized cryptocurrency mining consensus spread across a large pool. But of late it’s turned into a environment where two or three major players reap a large portion of mining profits.

As a result, developers and communities are implementing solutions in a learn-as-they-go fashion. An update from Sia coin developer David Vorick provides a lay of the land and breakdown of the team’s foray into the world of mining with their Obelisk project.

Opposing Viewpoints to the Resistance
Like other projects, the introduction of cheap ASIC miners has introduced headaches for project but also unique solutions to resistance. Projects have historically tried to keep a level playing field for all chip types, including GPUs and CPUs. The work to resisting ASIC take-overs has fallen mostly on algorithm developers. But Vorick and Sia as a team don’t think this is a winning battle. Hardware engineers have the flexibility to design around resistance quicker and cheaper than developers can keep up.

He writes:

“At the end of the day, you will always be able to create custom hardware that can outperform general purpose hardware. I can’t stress enough that everyone I’ve talked to in favor of ASIC resistance has consistently and substantially underestimated the flexibility that hardware engineers have to design around specific problems, even under a constrained budget. For any algorithm, there will always be a path that custom hardware engineers can take to beat out general purpose hardware. It’s a fundamental limitation of general purpose hardware.”

The takeaway seems to be that allowing space for ASIC mining is the path of least resistance. Manufactures like Bitman are willing to produce less than efficient hardware for profitable mining in any way possible, and projects have to come to terms with that.

Other projects, however, have taken different stances. On the other end of the spectrum, for example, Monero created a hard fork that project claims will brick ASIC miners. Manufactures scramble to recoup losses for their miners of Monero’s Cryptonight algorithm, even though retail purchasers mined it at their own peril.

Mining Hardware Manufactures: Willing to Play Dirty for Gain
asic miner.

Chinese ASIC manufacturer Bitmain has become the central heavyweight in the cryptocurrency mining industry. Competitors face touch obstacles of price and scale when they go toe-to-toe with the giant. The company has also been accused of setting up secret mining establishments that crowd out any profits for GPU miners.

The centralization of mining is a constant concern for cyptocurrency projects, and critics allege that Bitmain shows little concern for the dangers. Vorick’s post goes in detail as to why he believes this is the case, and he argues that it is because Bitmain’s hardware brings in huge profit margins for the company.

He writes:

“Our investigation into the mining equipment strongly suggests to us that the total manufacturing cost of the equipment is less than $1,000, meaning that anyone who paid $10,000 for it was paying a massive profit premium to the manufacturer, giving them the ability to make 9 more units for themselves.”

So even when mining profits dwindle for their miners, they come out ahead. Always staying one step ahead of algorithms that resist ASICs is a boon to business.

With projects ironing out defensive tools for mining centralization, ideas are flourishing. Aggressive manufactures and mining farms are here to stay, but they will face obstacles from communities working hard to democratize a level playing field in line with Nakamoto’s original vision.

https://www.ccn.com/secret-asics-hidden-farms-and-manufacturers-playing-dirty-status-update-on-cryptocurrecy-mining/

The Bytecoin price has risen sharply for the day, from $0.012075 on close of trading May 13 to $0.012438 on Monday. However, the coin’s price has seen a series of odd events and swings since Binance announced its listing on May 7.

By May 9, Bytecoin hit an all-time high of $0.0300, a whopping 343 percent 24-hour price spike. As rumored with new Binance listings, cypto enthusiasts saw this as another pump and dump, unsure Bytecoin would maintain the gains for long. Allegations also circled around the coin’s network and withdrawal issues. By May 11, the price dropped to $0.009889, an extreme that even surprised some of the skeptics.

Unphased by the criticism, BCN resumed its rally on Monday, ratcheting up the charts to a present value of $0.012494. This represents a seven-day increase of 82 percent; however, it also represents a 91 percent decrease from the all time high set six days ago.

Network and Deposit Outages
Around the time of the Binance listing, Bytecoin’s network experience outages. On May 9, its listing on CoinMarketCap also disappeared, even though the coin is in the top 100, at rank 16.

As of this writing, the historical price data for May 9 is missing on CoinMarketCap’s website. The site also has a notice informing visitors that BCN is undergoing maintenance or wallet issues, which the company’s official Twitter account confirms.

As CCN has reported, the project has seen its fair share of controversy and price pumps. The project prides itself on fully anonymous payments.

As Bytecoin’s website states,

Bytecoin is an open-sourced decentralized cryptocurrency with untraceable payments that was started in 2012. Join us to be a contributor of a worldwide network system that predicts the future.

Founded in 2012, it’s an old hat compared to other coin projects. And more exchanges are getting on board, despite a clearly overloaded network. A May 9 update on the project’s blog states reasons behind the network outages:

“After a closer investigation the source of the problem was determined to be a combination of recent big miners that joined the network with outdated bytecoind versions built more than a year ago and a minor bug in how the block sizes are calculated for consensus. As the hash power of miners who were using the outdated software reached ~25%, the probability of generating a block not accepted by the new bytecoind increased.”

Thankfully the project’s adoption rate of new versions is improving, according to a following update. Users of the coin have shown thanks for the team’s transparency on the network issues and development road map. The outages could just be a growing pain in growing adoption.

https://www.ccn.com/bytecoin-price-explodes-82-following-series-of-strange-events/