Core magazine december 2017 by Crypto Core Media

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE DECEMBER ISSUE 2017

Komodo Platform Releases BarterDEX Windows GUI

Beauty Is The Brains: Meet The Top 10 Females In Crypto 2017

Sasha Ivanov Reveals New DEX interface

Will Blockchain Tech see Salaries replaced with incentives &

APTOIDE INTERVIEW

The ABCs Of ICOs

Crypto Core Media

reserved. Ab Initio

What is the Core Group

Core Group is the name given to our multi medium ‘Crypto’ project built from the ground up by real people. As blockchain enthusiasts, our executives are community members, investors and managers in a vast network of technologies. We are a well advised panel with the highest moral and ethical values, personally handpicked by both CEO and Founder. We work diligently to inform all new and existing participants in the world of Cryptocurrency. Using a variety of platforms, we report on project improvements, ground breaking achievements and fraudulent activities.

Core Magazine

We embed a sensible moral code to ensure there are no misunderstandings regarding our motivations. Our revenue is derived from trading crypto currencies and sales generated by content creation across our media channels. Funds raised from the sale of our asset are used to improve our treasury portfolio and expand our business model. Crypto Core Media An information portal of truth, honesty and integrity. We report on the latest technological advancements within the blockchain protosphere and maintain a level headed, objective analysis of crypto currencies, asset tokens, ICO’s, regulatory advancement and related achievements. Core Media Properties include the Crypto Core Media news portal, Core Radio and our Core Magazine monthly digest.

Table of Contents Will Blockchain Tech see Salaries replaced with incentives & bounties?

Beauty Is The Brains: Meet The Top 10 Females In Crypto 2017

A Quick Rundown of Bitcoin’s Various Hard Forks

Extreme Sportsbook: Solving Old Gambling Problems With New Tech

Coinbase, GDAX to Add New Cryptocurrencies as Company Releases New Inclusion Framework

Music Star Björk Joins The Blockchain Revolution

SegWit2x Called off Due to Lack of Consensus, Leading Bitcoin to a New All-Time High

Appcoins: Disrupting the Billion Dollar App Store Economy

Aptoide Interview

Komodo Cryptocurrency Added to Binance, Upbit, and Others

Sasha Ivanov Reveals New DEX interface in Slack Q&A

Waves Project Manager, Alexey Kofman, Conducts Q&A: Overview

A Chat With James Allen from CoffeeCoin: Creating Solutions For The Coffee Industry

Interview with Digilira, Turkish lira Gateway for Waves

The ABCs Of ICOs

FBI Arrests Banker’s Brother for Stealing $300,000 in Two Fraudulent ICOs

China Warms Up To ICOs On The NEO Blockchain, Tension Builds In Crypto Community

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Earth Token and Kariba REDD+ Partner to Bring Environmental Sustainability to the Blockchain

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Co-Founder of IOTA Proves He Is Creator Of The NXT Platform

105

How to Keep CryptoShuffler Malware Away From Your Bitcoin

110

Malwarebytes Adds BitConnect to Its List of Blocked Websites, Cites Poor Reputation

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Tether Says Nearly $31 Million Worth of Tokens Were Stolen, Locks Them Away

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EDITORIAL

Here we are again. Another month of crazy market movements, endless drama, and incredible news in the cryptosphere. A lot has happened this month, including another all-time high record for Bitcoin and multiple altcoins. We’ve seen SegWit2X get cancelled and we’ve seen the creation of 'BitPico', a mysterious group who vowed to follow through with the hard fork any way. We’ve also seen both the Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold forks achieve their own price records, despite their low popularity amongst many members of the community. There was no shortage of “drama” this month either, with Tether being allegedly hacked for $31 million in USDT and many prominent members of the crypto community questioning the truth of this claim. Regardless of all the drama, the show must go on and members of the developer community are used to work through all the noise. Thankfuly, we’ve also seen our fair share of technological advancements, such as the announcement of the upcoming Dragonmint ASIC miner and Komodo's Zeroconf Atomic Swaps. To sum it up, November saw no shortage of excitement and December will probably be no different! So be sure to read our magazine and to keep up with Core Media to stay up to date and on top of your crypto game! António Madeira aka kanoptx

Core Magazine

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

DIRECTORY

3rdstryker 3rdstryker@coregroup.info Lori Brown aka Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info Marlon Diaz aka MACO marlon1maco@gmail.com Ignacio Figueroa aka TheWalk_er ignacio@coregroup.info Futurist futurist@coregroup.info Angelo Timoneri aka Lootz lootz@coregroup.info

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Blaise Pereira - aka juniorhouse juniorhouse@coregroup.info Vincent Pereira aka House house@coregroup.info Jon Prints aka Prints prints@coregroup.info Nuno Teodoro nunoteodoro@gmail.com

Kevin Deckel - aka Kevondo kevondo@coregroup.info Antonio Madeira aka Kanoptx kanoptx@coregroup.info Core Magazine

Sections 10

SPECIAL ARTICLES

BLOCKCHAIN NEWS 1

INTERVIEW

KOMODO NEWS

WAVES NEWS

BLOCKCHAIN NEWS 2

SPECIAL ARTICLES 2

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Will Blockchain Tech see Salaries replaced with incentives & bounties? Bitcoin is, in and of itself, a fascinating piece of technology that is bound to change the world in many ways. Although Bitcoinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary use is as a replacement for the current monetary and banking system, its underlying technology, the blockchain, has shown potential in nearly every industry out there, removing middlemen and providing transparency (or privacy) as needed. 10

Core Magazine

While the inner workings of blockchain technology and its individual use cases are exciting to say the least, it is also interesting to try to understand the consequences that blockchain technology may have. We can already observe how the community that is connected to the technology functions and how certain projects in the space are creating

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a new kind of economy where both the work and revenue can be distributed throughout a large number of users and not just a selected few.

and overhead fees currently charged by the middlemen and large corporations that provide services or connect service providers with clients.

Although this shift can already be observed in the small online communities that populate the cryptosphere like BitcoinTalk and others, where bounty hunters perform small tasks like translations or social media posting in exchange for a token bounty, the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts can ensure that users are always correctly rewarded according to their work, a prospect that has always required trust from the employeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective. Now, smart contracts can distribute salaries/bounties/incentives in a trustless manner, ensuring that fraud is not viable from either the employee or employer.

One of the predominant examples in the blockchain space is decentralized cloud storage. A business that has been mostly dominated by companies like Google and Amazon, cloud storage allows users to save files online and access them quickly. The dominance of certain companies in the space allowed them to charge high fees and to apply inefficient subscription models that are disadvantageous for the user.

Today, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to take a look at some of the projects that can change the way we perceive work and remuneration. These projects seeks to create a prosumers market where anyone can be a consumer or producer of a certain service or product according to their need and where the rewards for workers are distributed in a trustless manner. This projects often end up benefiting the user in multiple ways, providing them privacy, cheaper prices and a replacement for the outdated subscription models for a fair payas-you-go system where the user only pays for what he uses.

Now, thanks to blockchain applications like Storj, Sia Coin and FileCoin, users can access decentralized cloud storage services in which the service provider is not a specific company or entity. Instead the service provider is a regular user who allows the application to use their idle computer space to store files. The payments made by the customer are allocated to the node(s) that provided the data storage service at hand. This system ensures that prices stay low due to competition and that customers can pay for what they use only. Other advantages include security and privacy which are enhanced in systems like Storj, Sia and FileCoin.

The cloud storage industry is but a glimpse The implications for the widespread use of of what the future may hold when it comes these projects and other similar concepts that to decentralized services. Gladius is another may follow them are enormous. In the future, perfect example. The Gladius platform we may have a society where everyone can, to allows users to allocate their idle or unused a degree, be a freelancer and provide services bandwidth to provide DDoS protection and that others require, free of the inefficiencies content delivery network (CDN) services. Core Magazine

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With Gladius, the same advantages apply. Users get cheaper prices and a more efficient pay-as-you-go model, while providers get to monetize their idle bandwidth. It’s clear to see that the only “losers” in this future are the large companies that have so far held a monopoly on these industries/ services, in most cases, due to their large financial backing. However, with systems like Filecoin and Gladius, the service provider does not need any large financial holdings. He doesn’t need to invest in servers for data storage, for example. Instead, he can start with any HDD or internet connection and join the collective nodes that, together, provide a service that is as good or better than their centralized counterparts. Another good example of a project working to establish an incentive-based economy is MyTrackNet. MyTrackNet is a lost and found platform that allows users to earn rewards by walking around with their cell phone. The bluetooth of their phone allows MyTrackNet to create a CrowdGPS network in which participants are incentivized to provide coverage. Users looking to find a certain item pay a fee in MTN, the network’s native token, in order to leverage this CrowdGPS network. In MyTrackNet, users can also find lost items that do not have a bluetooth device by posting an image and description along with a bounty for the user that successfully finds and retrieves said item. Even pets can be found with MyTrackNet. The system employed by MyTrackNet, not only allows anyone to earn rewards 12

Core Magazine

simply by walking around, it also provides a unique and useful service, one that has never been successfully provided to a mainstream audience. The use of a blockchain network as an incentive layer creates an incentive for the widespread use of the platform both by bounty hunters and by users looking for lost items. In the case of MyTrackNet, the project does not improve on a specific industry, but creates a whole new one instead. And the examples go on. From Ridesharing applications to house rental platforms, blockchain technology is being used to “decentralized” various industries and jobs, opening up opportunities for workers, freelancers and service providors that may have been previously restricted for a number of reasons. So, can bounty hunters and incentivebased service providers replace regular 9-5 workers in the future? Would the world benefit from it? If successful in its journey to mainstream adoption, blockchain technology may provide the answers. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

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Beauty Is The Brains: Meet The Top 10 Females In Crypto 2017 As any female cryptocurrency enthusiast will agree, it is sometimes a challenge to find like-minded gals to converse with on what we think is the most fascinating topic. When a group of girls swarm off to the ladies room in a giggling whirlwind, it is not likely that the topic of conversation has anything to do with the recent fluctuations of Bitcoin prices. To a select few, the subject of Bitcoin is as juicy as a Kardashian love affair. There are a growing number of females who are tuned in to the world of crypto, especially as the value of bitcoin continues to amaze the crowds by zooming upward in value. Out of all the women who are starting to pay attention to the current events in the world or blockchain and cryptocurrency, there are a few who stand out in the crowd.

Lori Brown Email lorilikes@coremedia.info

Core Magazine

These extraordinary, fintechsavvy women are leading the way in the crypto community and proving to the world that they are intelligent, capable, tech ready gals and the future looks brighter with them in it. The women chosen to be in the list shared a few special traits. They are influential in their current position, they are relevant to the blockchain and crypto community and they exceed the average when it comes to their levels of intelligence. When reviewing the gals chosen, it is noticeable that they are a group of attractive women- but this is a fortunate bonus because this list was compiled based on the sexiest attribute of all, the mind.

We asked each of these women this question: What can you tell people, especially females, who aspire to be as successful as you have been, in the competitive world of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency? *You will find all 10 females* and their corresponding replies to the question we asked, randomly placed throughout the magazine. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roughly 2 females for every 10 pages, all the way to the last page. Enjoy the hunt! Cheers!

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Investor at JJRichman.com

Jonha is a marketing communications advisor for multiple blockchain companies and a well known writer. Jonha made the list because of her many influential roles in blockchain startups, and for her strong presence in popular publications like Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider. She has a fanatic following on twitter where it is clear that the crowds love this girl. Can you blame them? She is darling, and even with all her crowds of admirers she still remains sweet and humble and always brilliant.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Many people tend to just go with the flow and take just about any opportunity that comes their way and often tend to get lost in the process. Instead, envision what you want to achieve in your professional career and see if the next step aligns with that vision. Having such a vision helps you get through the toughest times and continue to be valuable in the industry or space you choose to excel in.â&#x20AC;?

SPECIAL ARTICLES

A Quick Rundown of Bitcoinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Various Hard Forks

Core Magazine

itcoin hard forks have been plaguing the cryptocurrency this year. Starting with Bitcoin Cash, things quickly started looking sour for the cryptocurrency as one after another, new forks seemingly kept on coming and using its brand to help the newly created cryptocurrencies have a better chance of being successful. The first fork created Bitcoin Cash, and was ultimately the result of a three-year-long scaling debate within the cryptocurrency’s community. Before it occurred, various scaling proposals were put on the table, including Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic, and Bitcoin Unlimited, among others. An agreement was never reached, and to better understand the politics behind every proposal, a little bit of background needs to be added. Bitcoin was originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto a peer-topeer, decentralized cryptocurrency. Initially, transactions were cheap and fast, but as adoption grew, congestion ensued as a transaction backlog started appearing, and miners started choosing transactions with higher fees. As time goes by, the problem is only getting worse. While one side of the debate states that increasing Bitcoin’s 1 MB block size is the ideal solution, as every transaction will easily go through, and the one in line with Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper, the other side claims increasing the network’s blocksize will only put the cryptocurrency’s decentralization in jeopardy. Bigger blocks will indeed drive down the network’s fees and reduce transaction

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confirmation times, while simultaneously making it more expensive to spam the network with bogus transactions in an attempt to clog it. Those who argue in favor of bigger blocks claim they would make bitcoin easier to use, and as such drive up adoption. However, some on the other side of the debate say increase Bitcoin’s blocks comes with a number of tradeoffs. For one, resource requirements to operate a full node will increase, effectively, to a certain extent, contributing to the cryptocurrency’s centralization if the number of users running nodes decreases. Additionally, bigger blocks would decrease block propagation over the network, which would potentially benefit larger miners and almost halt up-and-coming miners from entering the industry, another centralizing effect. That being said, the community reached a conundrum: on one side, high fees and slow transactions mean a lot of people won’t want to use bitcoin, slowing down its adoption. On the other side, centralization can make it easy for governments or rogue organizations to pressure miners or users running nodes, which could lead to Bitcoin’s demise. Among the proposed solutions, two gained the most popularity. One was to merely increase the network’s block size through a hard fork that could lead to a network split, while the other one was to implement Segregated Witness (SegWit), which essentially splits transactions into two segments, removing the signature -the “witness” – data from the original portion, appending it as a separate structure at the end.Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Core Magazine

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To solve the conundrum, part of the community eventually reached an agreement, which became known as the New York Agreement. In it, 58 companies located in 22 countries, representing 83.28% of the network’s hashpower, agreed to activate SegWit at the 80% threshold, and activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months. However, to the “big block crowd” the deal wasn’t acceptable, as six months was way too long to wait, and discussions were reportedly being censored on Bitcoin’s popular subreddit, r/bitcoin, and its most popular forum Bitcointalk.. Because of this, among other problems, a group of miners decided to part ways with Bitcoin and create another cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash was born in August, at around the same time the SegWit soft fork was activated on the cryptocurrency’s network. The project, initially defined by the Bitcoin ABC software implementation, essentially too ka snapshot of Bitcoin’s blockchain and created a new, incompatible version of it. Among its features, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has 8 MB blocks, and is prepared to scale them even to 1 GB if necessary. This would allow bitcoin’s network, which can now process about 6,000 to 7,000 transactions per second, to overcome Visa’s throughput of over 24,000 transactions per second, allowing Bitcoin to become a widely adopted global currency.

another name altogether. Moreover, it didn’t add prefixes to its addresses, meaning various users mistakenly sent Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash addresses, losing their funds. Moreover, to deal with a lack of mining hashpower compared to Bitcoin’s network, Bitcoin Cash added a difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) that inadvertently triggered a miner “gold rushes.” Various exchanges and wallets added support bit Bitcoin Cash, while others have announced they would do so, but didn’t implement it yet. Bitcoin’s biggest wallet provider with over 19 million users, Blockchain, notably announced it would first add support for Bitcoin Cash, and only then for SegWit. One of the U.S.’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase, announced it would add support for BCH, but is yet to do so.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Following the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, ad before the SegWit2x hard fork planned for mid-November, another one was suddenly announced: Bitcoin Gold (BTG). This new cryptocurrency doesn’t want to increase Bitcoin’s throughput, but wants to create an Application Specific Integrated Circuited(ASIC)-resilient mining environment, so the cryptocurrency can be mineable with CPUs and GPUs.

In plain English, this means that Bitcoin Gold essentially changes the cryptographic However, Bitcoin Cash is still somewhat puzzles miners have to solve, so that GPUs controversial. For one, some say it has no right and CPUs have an efficiency comparable to to use the Bitcoin brand to its advantage, ASICs. This way, everyone with a computer and that those who support it should’ve used can participate in the network. Bitcoin 20

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Gold’s goal is to make Bitcoin mining decentralized, so that major mining pools don’t dominate the industry and have the potential to manipulate certain aspects of the network. The project has, however, been somewhat controversial. The cryptocurrency’s development team allowed itself a premining period of 8,000 blocks as a way to reward themselves for the work they’re doing, but this means the team can just dump the premined coins and stop working on the cryptocurrency. Moreover, the cryptocurrency didn’t initially add replay protection. Just like other hard forked cryptocurrencies, it was created based on a copy of every bitcoiners’ holdings, and the lack of replay protection allows transaction to be “replayed” on the other branch, without the user’s intentions. It has also recently been discovered that a Bitcoin Gold developer added a 0.5% fee to one of the mining pools that sent the funds directly to his wallet. In his defense he pointed out that the code was out there and could be removed, but to any cryptocurrency users, it’s important that developers are there for the right reasons, and these moves put that into question for Bitcoin Gold. The developer stated “0.5% for a regular miner is less than a $1 a month. Don’t act like it is too much. The other software has 1 – 2% fees and are closed source, you cannot remove it.”

SegWit2x (B2X)

While at first it looked like the community

agreed with the New York Agreement, it soon became clear things weren’t that simple. For one, Bitcoin is often seen as the people’s money, so it’s scaling debate could never be resolved by a group of CEOs and company representatives behind closed doors, in a meeting at a hotel organized by the Digital Currency Group. Bitcoin was born in an open-source ethos. Bitcoin Core contributors discuss the cryptocurrency in a public IRC channel, and potential protocol upgrades as discussed on a public mailing list anyone can access. A “backroom deal” tells bitcoiners they aren’t in control of their own money, as companies were essentially deciding what would happen to it. To some, opposing SegWit2x for this reason wasn’t just about principles, it was also about not setting a bad precedent. Moreover, prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community decided to go against the SegWit2x hard fork, as its initial plan was to stop a hard fork on the cryptocurrency’s network, and at the time two had already taken place. Among other reasons, those who opposed the hard fork also saw that part of its plan was to get Bitcoin Core, the dominant client on the network, “fired.” Not many people in the world understand Bitcoin as Bitcoin Core’s current contributors, which means giving control over the code that “controls” a billion dollar market to inexperienced developers is extremely dangerous. The opposition against the hard fork was such that its proponents eventually signed an email calling it off, citing a lack of community consensus. Nataly, however, a mysterious Core Magazine

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miner group named BitPico claimed to have about 30% of the network’s hashrate, and vowed to follow through with it. In reality, BitPico – to our understanding a group of miners who continued to signal for the fork – had minor power in the network, and would be unable to help it survive in the long run, even if the SegWit2x hard fork did occur. However, as the bitcoin blockchain approached block 494,784 – at which the hard fork was supposed to be triggered – the BTC1 nodes, developed to be compatible with the SegWit2x chain, stalled two blocks before. The hiccup was attributed to an off-by-one error on a piece of code was on BTC1 and hadn’t been reviewed. Moreover, among other complications, a bug in the mining software stopped miners from actually triggering the fork by mining a 2 MB block. The bug was identified and Jeff Garzik – a BTC1 developer with experience in Bitcoin Core – pushed out an update. Those who found errors claimed to have seen more, but didn’t want to support the hard fork and as such did not reveal them. So far, the hard fork didn’t occur. SegWit2x futures – here named B2X – were once trading at $1,8000, but lost most of their value as complications started being revealed and as the hard fork was called off. At press time, B2X futures are trading at $179.65 per token, showing some still believe the hard fork will occur. 22

Core Magazine

What’s next? Bitcoin’s hard forks have been damaging to Bitcoin, to a certain extent. The cryptocurrency recently hit an alltime high above $8,000, but chain splits may be showing newcomers that there isn’t a limited number of Bitcoins, and that may damage the Bitcoin brand in the long run. Initial Fork Offerings (IFOs) are now becoming popular, as various new projects are trying to create altcoins based on the Bitcoin brand. One such project is that of Super Bitcoin (SBTC), which intends to increase the cryptocurrency’s block size to 8 MB, while making its maximum supply 21,210,000 SBTC, out of which 210,000 SBTC are premined for the developers. A solution to the Bitcoin scaling debate is called the Lightning Network. The solution is expected to make Bitcoin transactions nearly instant, while reducing its fees to negligible amounts. Most cryptocurrency enthusiasts, including Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash supporters, believe the solution is viable, although it’s still far from becoming a reality, despite SEgWit’s implementation being a step towards it. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

Blockchain News

Extreme Sportsbook: Solving Old Gambling Problems With New Tech

ambling is an extremely old and popular practice. Sports betting for one dates back to ancient Rome, having evolved from bets made on the stairs of the colosseum to worldwide online gambling which is now a multi-billion dollar industry that connects millions of people around the globe. Regardless of how much sports betting has evolved since then, there

are still crucial problems that need to be solved such as the inherent lack of security, privacy and transparency found in traditional online gambling platforms and the restrictive regulations applied by many governments. As technology evolves, these problems can be dealt with greater efficiency. This is the case with blockchain technology which Core Magazine

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has the potential to disrupt the gambling industry, making it safe, fair, transparent and globally accessible. Extreme Sportsbook is a decentralized gambling platform that plans to disrupt the sports betting industry, leveraging blockchain technology to provide all of the aforementioned advantages and more.

The Blockchain Solution Extreme Sportsbook will use a new Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain network to provide its decentralized sports betting services. From the user’s perspective, the sports betting platform will be accessible through the Extreme Sportsbook wallet, an app that can be easily downloaded and installed. The wallet interface will not only be fast and intuitive, it will also add an extra layer of security to the platform when compared to traditional gambling websites where users’ funds are protected by a username and password combination. With Extreme Sportsbook, however, this system is replaced by the same public/private key model used in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, where the cryptographic private key is needed in order to access users’ funds. Once installed, the wallet will need to be loaded with XSB, the native value token in the Extreme Sportsbook system. Once the deposit has been confirmed, users can start gambling through the decentralized “parimutuel” betting process. In this system, the users bet against each other so there is no house take. The odds are are determined once the period for wagering has been closed and 24

Core Magazine

then calculated by sharing the pool among all the winners. The XSB cryptocurrency allows betting to take place anonymously and globally with no restrictions. Once the wagers are initially placed, the XSB tokens are publicly burnt given that there is no “house” or operator taking the payments and distributing payouts. Instead, these are handled by the blockchain itself in the form of block rewards. In the case an event is cancelled, the wagers are returned to their respective XSB wallets. This autonomous system eliminates the need for house operators, resulting in higher payouts and outcome accuracy.

PoS and Masternodes In order to secure its blockchain and provide users with a decentralized betting system, the Extreme Sportsbook platform leverages both a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism and a second layer network of Master Nodes. PoS nodes can stake their XSB holdings to receive 40% of block rewards. This can be done by any user that holds XSB and leaves his wallet running. Master Nodes acts as service providers who process private and/or instant transactions in exchange for a fee. Users who want to host Master Nodes must have at least 10,000 XSB. For their services, Master Nodes are rewarded with 40% of the block reward and with 0.1% of all wagers placed. The remaining 20% from block rewards are reserved for presale VIPs (10%) and the development team (10%). As a community-

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driven project, Extreme Sportsbook allows Master Node operators to vote on how the development budget is used.

XSB and token sale Right about now, you may be wondering how you can start betting on your favorite sport without having to worry about all the problems that Extreme Sportsbook solves. At the time, the project is still in its development stage. In order to fund the development and marketing of the platform and to distribute tokens in an open and transparent manner,

Extreme Sportsbook will host a token sale. The upcoming fundraising campaign will see 18 million XSB distributed for a $0.25 price during the VIP presale and for $0.35 during the main sale. To learn more about Extreme Sportsbook and its upcoming token sale, visit the official website and read the whitepaper. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

Core Magazine

Amanda B. Johnson Youtube Sensation and Crypto Spokesperson

This fabulous female mystifies the masses with her quirky, almost-nerdy-somehow-sexy youtube videos, focused on crypto. She is most known for her former affiliation to DASH and her brilliant marketing campaigns that went viral within minutes of launching, She has given presentations in front of enormous crowds of people and does it with the same ease and calm as she does in her own living room for her popular Youtube appearances. Amanda promised to notify us when her show resumes, since she has taken a break for a few months. We can’t wait to see her next adventure in the crypto space.

“I’ve found success in not selling my gender as a part of my overall package. Everyone knows you’re female - it’s obvious. Offer the best product or service you possibly can, and if the current cryptosphere sees your gender as an added benefit, so much the better.”

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Coinbase, GDAX to Add New Cryptocurrencies as Company Releases New Inclusion Framework

he largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, claims to have 11.9 million users and, so far, has only supported three cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Its 28

Core Magazine

marketplace, the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) recently released new framework to help new cryptocurrencies make their way onto the platform, in line with the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past announcement on

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adding new cryptocurrencies this year. In a blog post, GDAX’s head Adam White pointed out that the company’s mission is to “create an open financial system for the world” that it believes will be promoted by adding new assets. He added that there are now over 1,100 cryptocurrencies listed on various exchanges, and that over 100 crypto hedge funds managed to raise over $2 billion, while venture firms have now invested over $800 million in digital asset startups. Back in May, when Coinbase announced Litecoin support, it clarified that the move was part of its “shift to supporting more types of digital assets.” GDAX’s new framework for digital assets mentions six factors that the exchange will pay attention to when considering adding a cryptocurrency. These are: -Mission and values -Technology -Legal & compliance -Market supply -Market demand -Crypto economics Each one of these factors is filled with sub-factors the exchange will consider. After looking at the document, Core Media determined that GDAX is essentially making sure cryptocurrencies on its platform are in line with its goals and will add value to its platform users. After taking a closer look, it’s clear that GDAX is looking for cryptocurrencies that support certain values, such as economic freedom, equality of opportunity, and

decentralization. Technological factors include the team’s composition, whitepaper, security and coding capabilities, and scalability. As would be expected, GDAX is looking for assets with high trade velocity and circulation, that are available on numerous exchanges around the globe. These need to have high customer demand, high community activity, and a satisfactory number of nodes. As for crypto economics, the used token standard, the coin’s utility, inflationary factors, and transaction fees and addresses influence the exchange’s decision as well. Assets will need to meet GDAX’s user agreement, and can’t be classified as securities.

Rumors suggest Golem (GNT) may be added While it may be a little soon to speculate on what new cryptocurrencies Coinbase/ GDAX will add to their platform, rumors are already circulating the web. A prominent one, that’s been circulating the web for a while, is that Golem (GNT) will be added by the company. Behind the rumors are a screenshot, allegedly taken from Coinbase’s JavaScript code that references Golem in it. Moreover, on the r/ethtrader subreddit, redditors speculate that an ETH address, which recently moved over $2 million worth of GNT tokens, may be Coinbase gaining liquidity on the token as the address started accumulating Golem following the company’s Litecoin announcement. Core Magazine

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Some, however, point out that Coinbase Zcash (ZEC), and Monero (XMR). likes to play it safe and wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t add Golem just yet. Other cryptocurrencies the company may Francisco Memoria add, according to its digital asset framework, Email franciscom@coremedia.info would be, among others, Dash (DASH),

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Music Star Björk Joins The Blockchain Revolution

celandic singer Björk will become one of the first major musical artist to sell her work in exchange for cryptocurrencies

Björk is known for not being afraid of trying out new things. That is evident on her music, her eclectic musical style draws influence from many different genres, and 32

Core Magazine

her love affair with technology, her latest album from 2015 called “Vulnicura” had several tracks transformed into a virtual reality experience. It seems her focus has now turned to another technology, blockchain. Her newest album, “Utopia”, is scheduled for release

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on the 24th of November and fans will be able to purchase it with their hard earned cryptocurrencies. The musician has teamed up with Blockpool, a British blockchain startup,that is working with One Little Indian Records online store in order to integrate a plugin that accepts cryptocurrencies as a method of payment. “People have done things with crypto and artists before, but this is the first time a global artist has done anything like this. While it will be interesting to see how the crypto community responds to this, Utopia is also a gateway for people to go into crypto for the first time. Björk is the best artist in the world we could imagine doing this,” Kevin Bacon, Blockpool CEO The album can be purchased with four different cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, AudioCoin, LiteCoin and Dash) and fans who pre-order the album will receive 100 free AudioCoins, a cryptocurrency that was designed specifically for the music industry two years ago. Although 100 AudioCoins are only worth $0.26 at the moment, Björk intends to give fans the opportunity to earn more AudioCoins by attending her concerts and for engaging and promoting her on social media, a move that can spike interest in the cryptocurrency. It is still unclear how this integration will work, but it seems the music industry is a pioneer into adopting decentralized ledger technologies.

Blockchain And The Music Industry Although Björk will be the first major artist to accept cryptocurrencies for her work, she is simply following the footsteps of other, lesser known, artists. Imogen Heap, an English singer, was a pioneer in selling her “Tiny Human” single in exchange for Ether in 2015 and created the Mycelia platform, a fair trade music business inspired by blockchain. The same startup that helped make this possible, Ujo Music, also helped Portuguese DJ RAC launch his album “Ego”, the first full-length album distributed on the ethereum blockchain. And it seems more artist are also jumping on the ICO bandwagon. Famous DJ Grammatik will launch his own cryptocurrency, GRMTK, on the 9th of November and singer Tatiana Moroz also has her own cryptocurrency, TatianaCoin. Can blockchain bring fairness back to the music industry? As with any solution, blockchain technology probably won’t be a perfect answer to all the problems. However, more and more artists are starting to embrace the technology with the hope that, by cutting off middlemen, a more fair revenue share will take place. In time we will see how decentralized technology will integrate with the music and arts industry. Nuno Teodoro Email nunoteodoro@gmail.com

Core Magazine

Evelina Lavrova Marketing, PR and Business Development for The Waves Platform

Aside from having an incredibly sexy name, this woman also happens to be a part of the team at The Waves Platform which is one of the leading blockchain platforms where users can create their own asset or token. Evelina helps the members of her team stay ahead of the curve, and it shows in the success of her employer. Evelina has enormous reach through her blogs and through the various Waves social media outlets. Her style and charisma are an added bonus.

“There are many projects that are technically strong. It is the relationships that let down the ones that fail. It’s not enough to be smart and technically savvy. You need to be able to communicate - you need relational skills as well as technical ones. Emotional intelligence as well as raw IQ. I recommend that girls turn their attention to the cryptocurrency market and blockchain technology. This is a very fast-growing market with huge potential. Set yourself ambitious goals and achieve more!”

Blockchain News

SegWit2x Called off Due to Lack of Consensus, Leading Bitcoin to a New All-Time High

itGo CEO and co-founder Mike Belshe recently announced the end of the SegWit2x hard fork on the SegWit2x mailing list, effectively calling off what some considered the resolution of a three-year-long scaling debate revolving around allowing more transactions through the network. SegWit2x was set to increase 36

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block sizes to 2 MB at block 494784, expected to occur around a week and a half from now. The announcement that called off the hard fork was signed by various SegWit2x supporters, including Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Bitmain founder Jihan Wu,

Blockchain News

SegWit2x lead developer Jeff Garzik, and ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees. In it, Belshe argued that SegWit2x was too controversial to move forward and that although its supporters consider a block size increase important, they see community consensus and bitcoin’s growth as priorities. The announcement reads:

“Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together. Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x.” Belshe added that, until then, plans for the upcoming 2 MB upgrade are suspended. The market quickly reacted to the announcement, as bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $7,800 right after it was made. At press time, the price has corrected back to $7,277.10 according to data from CryptoCompare. The announcement comes soon after the largest derivatives exchange in the world, the CME Group, announced it

would launch bitcoin futures by the end of the year, which previously helped the cryptocurrency’s price stabilize above $7,000. Belshe’s announcement ends with a message of unity, thanking everyone who contributed to SegWit2x, whether for or against it. It reads: “We want to thank everyone that contributed constructively to Segwit2x, whether you were in favor or against. Your efforts are what makes Bitcoin great. Bitcoin remains the greatest form of money mankind has ever seen, and we remain dedicated to protecting and fostering its growth worldwide.” Prominent community figures, including Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, already reacted to the announcement on social media. Notably, Lee pointed out that a 2MB block size may be needed in the future, but only when there’s consensus. Segwit2x hardfork has been called off ! Common sense prevails. Let’s now work together towards scaling safely. We may need something like a 2x hardfork in the future, but let’s do it when there’s consensus and not rushed. ? (Removing my NO2X tag now.) ? https://t.co/FuaUy2Kzex — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) November 8, 2017 Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info Core Magazine

Blockchain News

“Buy Bitcoin” Now More Popular Than “Buy Gold”, Google Trends Data Shows

t a time in which Bitcoin’s controversial hard fork, SegWit2x, gets called off, Google Trends data shows that people all over the world are now searching 38

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for the term “buy bitcoin” more than they are for “buy gold.” The cryptocurrency’s rally, that led to a new alltime high above $7,800 this week, is seemingly drawing

increasing interest from investors all over the world who now see bitcoin as a more interesting investment than gold. Searches for “buy bitcoin” had previously exceeded searches for how to

Blockchain News

purchase silver, but the cryptocurrency’s interest partly comes from gold’s decline. According to Bloomberg, concerns over Brexit and Catalonia’s push for independence failed to increase demand for gold, and as the dollar strengthened and global equities set new records the precious metal fell behind. So much so, the amount of gold changing hands on BullionVault’s trading platform dropped by nearly a third of its 12-month average. BullionVault’s research director, Adrian Ash, commented on bitcoin’s new heights and gold’s decline, stating:

“With the U.S. stock market setting fresh all-time highs day after day, it’s no surprise gold prices have retreated. Some investors are also being distracted by the noise around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Altogether, that’s made interest from new gold investors the weakest since the metal’s halfdecade price lows of end-2015.”

the number of buyers and sellers, still points to a slightly higher number of buyers than of sellers. Google Trends’ search data reveals that the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, Canada, Australia, India, and others still show a larger interest in gold investments, while countries such as Chile, Venezuela, Russia, and most of Europe as well as a few African nations show an increased interest in bitcoin. Notably, one of the queries Google suggests as being related to bitcoin is that for “BitConnect,” a platform that allows users to invest in BitConnectCoin to earn interest on their investments. BitConnect is widely believed to be a Ponzi scheme, so much so Malwarebytes recently added it to its “blocked websites” list. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

Gold recently dropped by about 6 percent, making this year’s gain fall back to 11 percent. Bitcoin, on the other hand, surged from about $970 to over $7,200 at press time, meaning it had over 13 times the advances of the best-performing commodity Bloomberg tracks. Although “buy bitcoin” surpassed “buy gold” in search queries, BullionVault’s Gold Investor Index, which measures Core Magazine

Amy Castor Author For Bitcoin Magazine

This mega beauty writes for Bitcoin Magazine and her work is always poignant, eloquent and sometimes a touch of sassy. Amy is a valuable personality in the crypto crowds because she analyzes ferociously and always keeps her readers satisfied. Most notable for her early entry into the cryptosphere, she is considered a pioneer for females in the fintech arena.

“Being a woman in a field full of men is hard, but you just have to put your head down and barrel forward. When I feel down or negative or depressed, I channel that back into my work. I’m an obsessive person, so when my mind latches on to things, there is no letting go. I’m not sure about the definition of ‘success.’ You have small wins along the way and plenty of setbacks. It is more like climbing a mountain and getting a foothold in one tiny crevice, enough to push yourself ahead a little bit, and then doing it again, over and over. But I don’t consider myself a success. There are lots of people in the space who are smarter than me, who drive nicer cars and have more followers on Twitter. But to other females, I would say, barrel forward, stay focused on your work, try to learn from others, even if they screw you over, and be kind.”

Blockchain News

Appcoins: Disrupting the Billion Dollar App Store Economy

obile apps got their â&#x20AC;&#x153;interface momentâ&#x20AC;? with the inception of the App store in 2008, allowing developers to get their applications in front of millions of iPhone users and to monetize their work. Since then, the app store has evolved tremendously and has also made way for new and more advanced app stores, creating an industry that is expected to reach $189 billion by 2020. Although the app store has evolved throughout time, bringing us new and modified versions, along with multiple alternative app stores for different operative systems, there are still several problems and inefficiencies that plague the appstore ecosystem, thus limiting the experience of the developers and of the 2.1 billion smartphone

users they serve. Aptoide, an alternative Android app store wants to fix these inefficiencies, making inapp purchases accessible to everyone and perfecting the in-app advertising system which is currently plagued with middleman. Aptoide also wants to rid the app store ecosystem of malware and fake apps and to build a fair and distributed system, free of monopolies. To do so, blockchain technology will be used. Based on Ethereum, the Appcoins protocol is the result of years of experience and mindful observation on the app store industry. The team behind the project has identified the major flaws throughout the years and blockchain technology will allow Core Magazine

Blockchain News

them to fix these issues once and for all. The white paper reads:

“Over this incredible journey to earn the trust of Aptoide users, without any paid acquisition, we discovered that app stores can be much more. The app discovery can be much better. The financial transactions like advertising and in-app purchases - can be much more efficient. The sharing can be much more powerful. The current state does not benefit the developers or the user. It only benefits Google and Apple. In a closed market, they can impose margins and their own distribution rules.” So, what exactly is Appcoins and how does it work? Focusing on three main problems, advertising, in-app purchases and app approval, the Appcoins protocol will create a new way for developers and users to interact with the app economy, leveraging the power of the blockchain both as an incentive layer and as decentralized voting tool. Starting with advertising, Appcoins will remove all of the intermediaries currently associated with the advertising process, including RTB/Exchanger, CPI Network, DSP, Ad servers, SSP and Attribution Platforms. Instead, only the app store in which the app is advertised and the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) will keep a percentage of the advertising budget. Without these middleman, Appcoins will be able to incentivise users directly, rewarding 46

Core Magazine

them for installing and using the app with Appcoins (APPC) which can then be used for purchases within the app. This system not only incentivizes users to install and try out the app, it also gives them purchase power within the app store, perfecting the advertisement process and making in-app purchases available to those who could not afford them previously. Two birds with one stone. The use of the Appcoins ERC20 token for in-app purchases is not only fixing the above problems, it also benefits the developer with higher margins given that there are no conversion or payment processing fees, apart from the tx. fee paid to miners. Further leveraging this system, Appcoins will also use these blockchain transactions for in-app purchases as an immutable record for the developer’s reputation which will follow him on all appstores. This immutable reputation is empirical in the Appcoins system as it allows it to solve the last aforementioned issue which is the widespread presence of malware and the inefficient app approval process currently used by legacy app stores. According to Aptoide,“the app screening may be performed through manual and/or automatic processes and differ between stores as they are defined by their own policies.” To ensure that app stores using the Appcoins protocol are both safe from malware and open to new and groundbreaking apps, the developer reputation will culminate in a developer rank: Unknown,Trusted or Critical. These ranks are attributed by users who have downloaded the app. Once a developer

Blockchain News

joins, he’s categorized as unknown and will later earn the “trusted” badge after a promotion which depends on the number of transactions in each of the developer’s apps compared to the number of transactions in other popular apps. The Critial rank will be attributed through disputes which may have several outcomes for the parties involved. The crowd-sourced reputation mechanism employed by Appcoins ensures that malware and other types of problematic apps are mitigated and that the app stores cannot censor app content based on their own personal views or ideologies, a problem that kept Dash away from the Apple App Store, triggering several complaints and even a parody video by Dash’s Amanda B. Jonhson.

Currently ongoing, the Appcoins presale and subsequent ICO will allow the team to fund the development and marketing of this new protocol while creating a community of vested users and a fair distribution method for app store users and developers alike. According to Paulo Trezentos, CEO of Aptoide, “having your potential users as investors brings value to the network”. To learn more about Aptoide and Appcoins, visit the official website and read the white paper. You can also check out our upcoming interview with Paulo Trezentos, CEO of Aptoide, in the next article. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

Core Magazine

The Interview

Aptoide Interview

Can you describe Aptoide briefly and why it was created? ptoide is one of the Top 3 Android App Stores in the world. Last year 142 million unique users had use

A 48

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Aptoide to install Apps. It started as a result of research activities on the topic of installing software components in Linux operating system, back in 2009.

The Interview What is Appcoins? AppCoins is an open protocol that aims to support the main financial and reputation flows inside app stores. It is independent and can be adopted by any App Store. Using blockchain technology, the protocol enables trust between Developers, Users, OEMs and App Stores. What problems will the Appcoins protocol solve? Today, the main flows in app stores have severe flaws. Two examples. If an user pays for an item inside a game, why the developer of that game has to wait 30 days or more for that revenue ? Google Play retains the developerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cut for that period but with smart contracts, the developer receives directly from the user. And how much more malware do we have to install until App Stores change the trust model ? Examples like this (link: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ fake-whatsapp-app-fooled-millionandroid-users-on-google-play-didyou-fall-for-it/) could be avoided if the reputation of the developer could be based in a blockchain track record, as proposed in AppCoins white paper. How will Appcoins (APPC) be used? Will it be adopted by other app stores? For now, it is being adopted by one of the Top 3 app stores (Aptoide) but others will come after. The challengs of other non-Google

app stores are similar. How did the idea for Appcoins come along? The trust problem inside app stores existed for a long time. But there was not technology that could bring that trust. When the Aptoide team started to explore the blockchain technology, we found that the public ledger together with the smart contracts, would bring a complete new model to the app store ecosystem. You are leveraging the Ethereum blockchain in order to build Appcoins. Why use Ethereum? Did you consider any other platform? Ethereum provides a solid base for the AppCoins protocol. Although the scalability is a major issue, we are internally studying the best alternatives. The team was at DevCon3 and the roadmap for sharding presented by Vitalik sounded very reasonable. We also had interact with OmiseGo and Raiden teams to see how we can benefit from their breakthroughs regarding scalability. Are there any interesting partnerships for Appcoins that we should know about? We closed a partnership (https:// blog.kyber.network/kyber-networkto-collaborate-with-appcoinspowered-by-aptoide-b5fcd9556703) with Kyber Network that will allow app developers and users to transact AppCoins using any ERC20 tokens and ETH. In other words, a user could Core Magazine

The Interview pay in any ERC20 cryptocurrency while the developer could receive the payment in AppCoins. Other partnerships are being closed and will be announced in the next weeks. The ICO is set to start on the x and last x days. What will happen after the ICO and what’s the time-frame? The ICO sale will occur during December, begin of January. After the ICO, we have a very aggressive roadmap. In 6 months time, the first Aptoide beta users will start to use AppCoins in the transactions. Between month 9 and month 12 of our roadmap, AppCoins will be rolled out to the 200 million users base. Why do an ICO? Did you guys consider any other form of funding for the Appcoins project? Aptoide, as a start up, had been backed by VCs in our seed round and in the Series-A. However, having your potential users as investors brings value to the network. We still believe in the role of VCs, but it will change the way is done today. You’re one of the first ICO/ cryptocurrency projects from Portugal, the first being Utrust. How would you describe the cryptocurrency landscape in Portugal and its community? Do you think that the wonders of crypto are yet to reach the country? The interesting part of the crypto50

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talent is that is... decentralized. Like the technology, the talented people are not concentrated in a city or a region but are spread around the world. Portugal, and cities like Braga and Lisbon, are home of a vibrant crypto ecosystem with companies coming from other countries to benefit of the weather and engineering skills. How can we learn more about Appcoins and Aptoide? I’d suggest a visit to https:// appcoins.io and to our Telegram group (https://t.me/joinchat/ G337zg6z0ACm6QTvUU9_Yw). For a 3 minutes introduction, I suggest the video in the site. Before investing in AppCoins, I suggest as well a reading of the white paper. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Core Magazine

Elizabeth McCauley Blockchain Business Development and Marketing Consultant

Elizabeth heads up a business development for bridge21 and serves as global business development head for Coinsecure. Elizabeth also serves on the boards of the Bitcoin Foundation and Code to Inspire. This bright young beauty has earned her spot in this years top 10 thanks to her remarkable influence in these and many other projects all of which are relevant to the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Find something you are passionate about. I am passionate about leveraging Bitcoin to empower women, the marginalized and the unbanked around the world. Bitcoin is a phenomenal technology to enable individuals to have financial freedom and independence and it is an amazing technological innovation to use to help people globally.â&#x20AC;?

https://www.komodoplatform.com

Supernet News

Core Magazine

Suprenet News

he Komodo team announced the Windows GUI for its decentralized, private and secure cryptocurrency exchange, BarterDEX. The first of its kind, BarterDEX offer a fully-decentralized structure in which no escrows or proxy tokens are used. Instead, all trades are done through atomic swaps. The ordermatching process is both decentralized and automatic. You can access the wiki page here.

reviewed product. A respected programmer and the co-creator of the innovative Komodo Platform, known widely by his nickname JL777, announced the product update after making several successful atomic swaps. He announced it in a nonchalant post in the SuperNET slack channel, in between mundane responses to various user troubleshooting inquiries and social announcements. Since the announcement, many have volunteered to help test the new Windows / BarterDEX GUI and some have found issues when making orders, and the ever resourceful JL777 was seen addressing the issue via slack this way: “In order to deal with the user troubles to make orders, I will be making single purpose tradebots. One is for limit buy, the other for limit sell, duration until it completes or it stopped. Necessarily more txfees will be incurred, which is not a big deal for anything but BTC, but the user should confirm they understand this. In order to parallel the development, I am posting the api ahead of time.”

The new Windows release needs testers to find all bugs and to participate in the creation of a highly functional and peer-

You can join this effort and this communication by joining the SuperNET slack, and then joining it’s tradebots channel, to catch up with all of the latest development and to get the experts to troubleshoot as needed. Lorilikes Email lorilikes@coremedia.info Core Magazine

Supernet News

Komodo Cryptocurrency Added to Binance, Upbit, and Others

Binance Adds KMD

Komodo, the native cryptocurrency in the Komodo Platform, was recently added to Binance, a popular altcoin exchange led by Changpeng Zhao. The addition allows Binance users to buy and sell KMD for BTC and ETH, with both pairs currently available on the exchange. #Binance Lists $KMD@ KomodoPlatform https://t.co/ eBVJH0m3YQ — binance (@binance_2017) 7 November 2017 To celebrate the addition, Binance and Komodo are running a promotional campaign that will see gifts delivered to KMD traders. The official announcement reads: 58

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“To celebrate KOMODO listing on Binance, we have committed some presents to give away to our fans worldwide. We will rank users from 1 to 5 in terms of the total KMD volume traded on your account (includes both buys and sells) during the competition period.” The prize list includes a Samsung S8 Smartphone, a Samsung Gear S3 Smartwatch, KMD coins, and a Komodo T-shirt. According to Binance, the prizes will be distributed on the 17th of November.

Exchanges Komodo

Rush

Add

Most recently, and probably due to the marketing efforts being undertaken by the

Suprenet News

team, exchanges have rushed to add KMD to their exchanges. It seems that Komodo is becoming extremely popular to the east with multiple exchanges in South Korea adding trading pairs for the KMD coin. Among them is Upbit, a South Korean exchange launched by Bittrex in partnership with Kakao. The Upbit addition will expose traders in the region to the Komodo cryptocurrency, allowing them to buy or sell it with the national currency, the south korean won. Further expanding the reach of KMD in the country, Coinrail, another South Korean exchange, has also added KMD markets. The team has also announced the upcoming listing on HitBTC, a widely popular crypto-fiat exchange that is known for its vast selection of trading pairs. Not only is KMD being added to exchanges, but new and more efficient tools for traders are also being made available, including CryptoTrader, an algorithmic trading platform for cryptocurrency traders that provides them with “cloud-based automated trading solutions”. $KMD / $BTC now listed for #Algorithmic (automated) #Trading! Easy-to-use, backtesting, cloud-based #TradingBots on https://t.co/uYDtOQKSRv pic.twitter. com/wesNAzh1V6 — rnr (@komodonotary) November 3, 2017

BarterDEX and Monaize dICO As new exchanges continue to add Komodo to their platforms, the team has also made progress on its own decentralized trading platform, the BarterDEX. Powered by atomic swaps, the BarterDEX platform will allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and fiat tokens with no third party or proxy tokens involved. The latest Windows release for the BarterDEX software has also granted users a new Graphic User Interface (GUI) that is both simple and functional. Not only will BarterDEX be the first decentralized exchange of its kind, it will also allow users to participate in the first ever decentralized Initial Coin Offering (dICO), launched by Monaize. The dICO will allow users to buy Monaize (MNZ) tokens with Bitcoin and Komodo through the use of Atomic Swaps. Issued through Komodo’s assetchain technology, the MNZ token will use the same dPoW protection employed by KMD itself and will also leverage an innovative on-demand block generation system for mining. A guide on how to participate in the first dICO can be seen here. You can also check out the recent AMA session where the KMD team delves into more details about the BarterDEX and dICO technologies. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

Core Magazine

Supernet News

Komodo Successfully Makes Zeroconf Atomic Swaps, New BarterDEX Whitepaper and MORE

he Komodo team has been hard at work over the past few weeks, slaving away in slack perfecting their atomic swaps for the upcoming Monaize dICO. Unfortunately, the dICO has been delayed for further testing but there is much news to wet your Komodo appetite. 60

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After seeing an array of technological advances from the Komodo team, including vast amounts of atomic swaps from native wallets and electrum wallets, the Komodo team have just pushed the technology further. It was announced yesterday that the

Suprenet News

Komodo team are successfully doing Zero Confirmation Atomic Swaps (Zeroconf Atomic Swaps). What this means is that the user will be able to do fast atomic swaps if they toggle the option to use zero confirmations.

a matter of few seconds, which makes our truely decentralized exchange equal to the level of high frequency trades of centralized exchanges. And for traders out there, it’s the MOST exciting feature.”

Confirmations obviously confirm transactions, so zero confirmation atomic swaps allow the trade to occur before a confirmation occurs. In order to achieve this, a deposit must be made and put into a time-locked multisignature address prior to the trade. This is done to prevent hackers from doing a double spend attack where the attack reorganizes the blockchain it is receiving from before the confirmation sticks. If this is the case, the receiver who did not get the funds can alert a Komodo representative (who has access to the multisignature address) who will in turn access the deposit and transfer the attacker’s deposit to the receiver. Since the nodes are constantly checking pending swaps, once a hacker is found to be attempting a double spend attack, he/she will be penalized and they will lose their deposit.

The mastermind behind this new technology, JL777, believes that in the future he may even be able to automize the penalization process where bots will constantly be analyzing the blockchain for attacks. This, however, is for the distant future. Zeroconf Atomic Swaps are said to be extremely quick, clocking in at 5 seconds using a native wallet and 30 seconds using an electrum wallet. While there is a possible double spend attack vector, Zeroconf Atomic Swaps’ real use is to trade with a trusted source. However, the deposit that is needed to conduct the swap does discourage an attack from an untrustworthy source. Again, it is important emphasize that these Zeroconf Atomic Swaps are optional and not mandatory which means that the user can always choose to keep a certain amount of security

Commenting on Zero Confirmation Atomic Swaps, Grewalsatinder of the Komodo team stated:

In other news, the Komodo team released a new updated version of their BarterDEX whitepaper. The whitepaper is highly technical in its analysis of BarterDEX, however, it does give an insight into the complicity behind the atomic swaps the Komodo are making. As it stands, the Komodo team have done over 8000 atomic swaps. The progress can be followed at this website. For more layman’s terms on how BarterDEX work, please read this recent post by the Komodo team.

“In a truly decentralized exchange, users have to wait for the blockchain transaction confirmations a for secure trade. It is the best way to trade, and will always be. The second best is Zeroconf Atomic Swap. It’s the user’s choice if they want to use it or not, since it doesn’t need blockchain confirmations at all! The trade happens at the quickest time the blockchain network finds there’s a new transaction on the network. This is only

In an extremely bizarre fashion, an ERC20 Core Magazine

Supernet News

token by the name of eKOMODO is being airdropped to Ethereum accounts that are responding to an online form. However, the project is not associated with the Komodo team whatsoever. Ie technologies, such as Atomic Swaps, on the Ethereum Blockchain. However, on chain swaps are nothing new, in fact, these have been possible for years. Atomic Swap refers to off-chain swaps, not on-chain swaps. However, the token does give Komodo some unorthodox advertising nevertheless.

Unfortunately, in regards to the Monaize dICO, the team still hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t set a date, however, the Komodo team did state that investors will be given two weeks notice before the dICO begins. Whilst disappointing, it needs to be stressed this is the very first dICO in cryptocurrency history and it is important that the technology is 100% ready before the dICO begins. To find out more, read this blog post by the Komodo team. 3rdstryker Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info

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https://coregroup.info/shop/ Core Magazine

Tanya Bivic PR Consultant for Blockchain and ICOs

This freelance PR consultant for blockchain projects is known for her charming weekly show on RTVSLO.si called Dobro Jutro. She sparked plenty of interest for her affiliation with the Viberate project that raised over $10 million in just a few minutes. Her drive is impressive and her influence is hard to deny when you see the way her following stays with her on each of her projects. Tanya is a great example of how a lady can combine a great mind with a foxy attitude for a stunning result.

“Success is when you love what you do and when your business decisions are in sync with your true self. In that way you have no regrets, because you have done all that you could do in a certain situation and in the same time you stayed true to yourself, to your beliefs and values. All of this is not easy in the crypto world, because at the moment this is an industry still heavily dominated by men, let’s be real. So, women in crypto, please, don’t be shy, be loud, let your voices be heard. I know it is hard because no matter what you say or do there will always be haters. But making enemies means you are doing something right.”

Waves News

Sasha Ivanov Reveals New DEX interface in Slack Q&A

asha Ivanov, CEO of the WAVES Platform, revealed the latest WAVES decentralized exchange interface in a Slack Q&A session. The WAVES community seemed to be very happy with what they saw: Fresh $WAVES DEx teaser taken from the @wavesplatform Slack during a live Q&A with its founder @sasha35625. The new DEx looks amazing! pic.twitter.com/ GP35vdpITI

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ben Fresh (@bag_holdr) 2 November 2017 The beta is said to be available on November 20th for all the test. The interface (GUI) with the dark background that was revealed in the past is said to be the old GUI, however, Sasha did mention there may be a dark option in the upcoming GUI. After a recent hiatus in slack, most likely due to a packed schedule for the WAVES CEO; Sasha answered many questions about Core Magazine

Waves News

the WAVES platform.

Bitcoin Cash Airdrop

Yesterday, it was announced that Bitcoin Cash would be airdropped to WCT holders and determined by how much is held. According to Sasha, these airdrops will come in batches, starting next week with 1000 BCC being planned for the first airdrop. Sasha did also indicate that WAVES holders may receive some BCC too.

New Gateways

Sasha indicated that the British Pound and Japanese Yen are two fiat pairing that is “doable”. The closest to completion is, however, the Turkish Lira with the Waves user named “srknbyr” stating, “We are working on Turkish Lira Gateway, we are now the official company and we have deals with 6 Major banks in Turkey.  On 11th of November, we will have a meeting with Waves Team in Moscow.  Stay Tuned for Turkish Lira Gateway. www.digilira.com.” He did, however, state that getting a Yuan gateway is difficult at the present time.

WAVES brand out to the public. However Sasha reassures us that, “We have big marketing budgets, close to 100k per month. We’ll market [WAVES] NG and new interfaces heavily once they have been launched.” Generally speaking, it did seem as if the PR so far is only a fraction of what is coming, in that the PR will kick off once the new decentralized exchange GUI is officially online and WAVES NG is fully implemented. This seems like a wise decision, as WAVES NG purpose is to prepare for more volume.

New Exchanges

Waves have had a hard time with exchanges, however, Sasha made reference to three exchanges. First, he stated that Waves will be added to Binance, a new Chinese exchange with a huge volume. Kraken, he states, “has some internal things in the works”. Lastly Tidex, he states, is about to make a major announcement. Tidex, along with Yobit, has been consistently topping Waves volume in the past few months.

Tokenomica and SelfRegulation

Sasha also made a general announcement about more alternative coin gateways stating: Staying compliant appears to be “if there are people from dash, monero important for the Waves team, and in the communities here please reach out to me. Q&A it was evident that there will be layers We’ll do the gateways”. of regulations. Tokenomica will be the first layer, where startups have a framework to PR comply with legal bodies, according to the While there has been some PR for Tokenomica website, WAVES, like Forbes articles, CNN appearances and other bits and pieces, “We’re developing a centralized platform, there were still concerns about getting the Tokenomica.com, which is going to work 68

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Waves News

on top of the Waves blockchain, and provide 100% compliant legal framework for different types of token crowdsales, including private equity crowdsales. We’re working with top legal firms on this, and we are pleased with their commitment and interest in this new emerging business. Blockchains are becoming mainstream, and the feedback we get from legal companies is really encouraging.” This is the first layer, to legalize ICOs before the crowdfunding process. Once this is established, the “self-regulating” part kicks in; the second layer. The WCT token will be a key role, as holders vote on complement and safe ICOs; a process which will likely see money following into more legitimate ICOs rather than fake/scam ICOs. According to Sasha, fake ICOs are still allowed to be created, however, the two layers are to phase out these fake/scam ICOs with more compliant ICOs that will most likely have a higher vote ranking. According to Sasha, “Compliance is the key to success now and of course, we need to do the vetting process as decentralized as possible.” The system in the past to put a green tick next to legitimate tokens was, according to Sasha, worrisome as investors may have thought the Waves team are vouching for some projects and not others.

Other Bits and Pieces

For investors in previous Sasha assets sitting on the NXT blockchain, like Cryptofund and Coinomat, Sasha stated that there is still plans to migrate and it will likely be connected to a Waves fund; “it just has to be done in a correct way, from legal point of view.”

Sasha also indicated that they had “several other partners” in Russia, however, they are waiting on new regulations in Russia before moving forward. With rumors of the Russian Government possibly creating a “CryptoRuble”, it is indeed a good idea to wait in order to see the cryptocurrency landscape after the dust has settled. Sasha also stated they participate in the discussions, as well as Belorussia and Kazakhstan. In response to some gateways transactions taking up to a week to send, most notably USD and EURO, Sasha stated: “You have to go through KYC and AML, so it takes time when you do the first transfer, then it’s faster.” Although the Waves team is most likely concentrating on the new decentralized exchange and Waves NG, Sasha did say this about smart contracts, “smart contracts will be implemented in stages. First, we’ll have low-level smart contracts (multisig, oracles, and such), and then more high-level structures, turing complete”. With the recent sell-off in the altcoin markets due to traders moving into Bitcoin to catch a cluster of hard forks, the was Q&A was good timing to reassure investors. Despite the price, Waves has much to look forward too, with the new interface for the decentralized exchange and Waves NG for faster and more transactions. One aspect of Waves that has been lacking was the communication, however, Sasha has vowed to do a weekly Q&A from now on Friday nights. 3rdstryker Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info Core Magazine

Waves News

Waves Project Manager, Alexey Kofman, Conducts Q&A: Overview

n November 17th, Alexey Kofman, Waves Project Manager, answered questions to an eager Telegram Waves chatroom. Alexey was first asked what his role is,

“My role is closer to product manager of waves node and in general our blockchain. I’m defining requirements for new features and build development team. Currently 70

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mostly thinking about Waves-NG and a bit of planning for future changes like Smart Contracts.” The interview was packed full of goodies, however, one defining moment came when he said confidently that there will be a new release of something on the main net this month. Whether this is the new DEX or WAVES-NG is yet unknown.

Waves News

After recently finding out the results of the WAVES-NG on the testnet, being that WAVES-NG is expected to do 100 transactions per second, it was asked if the technology can be pushed further to process more transactions. Alexey stated that 100 transactions meet the current demand but in the future, the WAVES community as a whole can decide to increase transaction capacity. In other words, WAVES-NG’s has the ability to do more than is what is going to be released on mainnet very soon. WAVES-NG is still currently being tested with another version, however, it is only being tested internally. There were multiple of questions asked regarding Waves smart contracts which are scheduled for next year. Alexey gave a couple of examples of why Waves’ smart contracts will outdo Ethereum’s, stating that the transactions would be cheaper and simpler (leading to fewer bugs and errors). Furthermore, he stated smart contracts will be developed using the sigma-language. One interesting question was about the on-going dominance of certain leasing nodes like WavesGo. In order to counter this, more Miner’s Reward Tokens (MRT) are being sent to smaller nodes. Alexey also reiterated that the MRT tokens will be used next year for an upcoming voting system. When asked about the 2-Factor Authentication feature, Alexey confirmed that 2FA was possible, however, this feature will only surface after Smart Contracts are fully ready. In regards to news about the new GUI, it was announced shortly after the Q&A session that a closed beta test of

the GUI will start on the 20th of November. Users can participate here. Rewards will be given to the most active users and bug finders. It was also announced prior to the Q&A that WAVES is moving to a new office. This is due to massive growth within the WAVES company; coming to over 50 people now employed for the startup. The team is certainly building, but when Alexey was asked about if they were properly staffed, he stated,

“We have 8 high-skilled senior Scaladevelopers, I can say that this is one of most professional teams I’ve ever worked with. Maybe we will get some other roles like QA or Analysts in future.” The mysterious part of the interview, however, was in his final words. When asked about additional teams within the WAVES office, Alexey stated,

“Actually yes. The voting system may be developed by a separate team, we’re still thinking on this. We’ll also create a team for other blockchain projects, not so closely related to Waves Platform….some states also may want national crypto-currencies ;)” 3rdstryker Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info

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A Chat With James Allen from CoffeeCoin: Creating Solutions For The Coffee Industry

s the Waves platform grows in maturity, the ecosystem surrounding it becomes more diverse by the day. As the CEO of the platform Sasha Ivanov once proclaimed, he realized that any business or organization, no matter how big or small, no matter what industry, could find a useful purpose for the blockchain. The Waves platform, as it stands, provides a simple solution that makes token creation. 72

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One untapped industry yet to move to the blockchain is that of the coffee industry. With coffee being the second most sought after commodity in the world, with a market cap of $48 billion dollars, it was time for this special bean to move to the blockchain. CoffeeCoin is doing just. In order to get a better insight into this new Waves token, I chatted with the owner of CoffeeCoin, James Allen. The interview covers how he

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got to where he is now, to the cryptocurrency situation in Indonesia, to obviously the utility behind the CoffeeCoin itself. Upon reading the interview, it will become very apparent that James has been driven solely by his passion for coffee and the relationships he has built throughout his journey. It is also wonderful to read how a real-life problems are truly being solved by the blockchain. Q: Tell us about yourself, how you got into the coffee business and what brought you to blockchain technology? I first learned about Bitcoin in 2012 while living in New Zealand. I had been hearing about this new technology on a number of the free-market websites and newsletters I followed. To me, the private, decentralized peer-to-peer payment solution Bitcoin offered sounded like the perfect alternative to the nightmare the central banks had created in our world. It was then I downloaded my first Bitcoin wallet and purchased my first Bitcoins – they cost around USD $18 dollars each at the time – and started learning about and experimenting with blockchain technology.

my free time to learn all I could about the production end of the coffee chain. In Bali, I began visiting coffee farms there and in neighboring Java, meeting the incredible local farmers and their families and learning hands-on all I could about coffee growing, harvesting and processing. Soon I bought a locally-built coffee roaster that could roast 1 kilogram at a time. I began roasting coffee direct from the farms I visited, brewing and sharing the coffee with my friends in Bali. Many of my friends were also getting into Bitcoin – so this all came together during our coffee roasting, brewing and drinking sessions at our villa. I learned quickly about the struggles coffee farmers were having – especially in terms of getting a fair price for their coffee. It seemed to me a lot of this had to do with inefficiencies in information flow, logistics, and payments throughout the supply chain. In Bitcoin and the decentralized ledger features of the developing blockchain technologies, I saw a potential for these inefficiencies to be addressed.

In early 2013, my family and I left New Zealand for what was supposed to be a one-month trip to Bali, Indonesia. We fell in love with the place immediately though and ended up staying a year straight. (We’ve made it our part-time home ever since.)

Initially, I felt I could help by showing people how Bitcoin could be used in realworld commerce. Bitcoin’s first main feature – as a decentralized global digital currency - meant that issues with multiple currency transfers and exchanges through the slow and expensive traditional banking system could be overcome by using Bitcoin instead of fiat.

Indonesia is the fourth largest producer of coffee in the world – so as a life-long coffee fanatic, I decided while I was there I’d use

All this led to “The Roast Station Project” in late 2013. I set up a simple webpage offering packages of fresh-roasted, direct Core Magazine

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from source Bali Arabica coffee in exchange for Bitcoin. I advertised on several of the Bitcoin discussion forums I was a member and got some additional press – all which generated quite a number of sales during the few months I ran the project. I received payments in Bitcoin – direct to my Bitcoin wallet - from buyers around the world. At the time, there was no Indonesian Bitcoin exchange yet – BUT Bali was already a hub for other digital nomads – some who were more than happy to exchange local currency with me for bitcoin in-person. I was then able to purchase green coffee directly from the farmers for cash and roast and ship it to Bitcoin-supporting coffee drinkers around the globe. Here I was - using this amazing new technology, connecting local producers with global buyers and making global sales transactions – all without a single bank involved. At that point, I was as hooked on blockchain tech as I was on coffee! In early 2014, soon after the end of the Roast Station Project, the first Bitcoin bubble occurred. During that time, Bitcoin’s value in USD terms increased to over $1000. Before the first bubble burst, I used some of my bitcoin holdings to fund additional travel research into both the coffee supply chain and blockchain technology. I visited coffee farms in Costa Rica, Indonesia and Thailand and attended many coffee and bitcoin-related conferences, meetups and trade shows in Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia. From then on, I was determined to find 74

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more ways to use blockchain technology to improve the coffee supply chain. Q: What current inefficiencies are there in the current international trade for coffee? The inefficiencies are many - but it boils down to slow and large companies and too many middlemen using too much-outdated technology. The international coffee trade has been around for nearly four-hundred years - some of the oldest and largest companies have held a stranglehold on the market for a long, long time. It has served them well to prevent farmers from knowing the value of their crops and to keep them in a state of perpetual debt with small yearly loans that they must struggle to pay back. All this has prevented both the quality of life for farmers and the quality of coffee from improving quickly. That said, these companies have signed their own death warrant though, as they did not keep up with new and developing technologies - in fact, many of the largest coffee traders are still using FAX machines. Meanwhile, small farmers now have smartphones and access to world coffee market prices and consumers are becoming more aware of how direct-sourced coffee benefits the producers. The time is right for a new way of buying and selling coffee. Q: How do you aim to fix these inefficiencies with CoffeeCoin? CoffeeCoin works as a “single currency” for rapid global transactions - which removes

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issues and loss of value in the global specialty coffee supply chain due to the current use of multiple currencies and exchange fees. CoffeeCoin (COF) can be traded easily and freely on the Waves Decentralized Exchange (DEX). This means, for example, a producer in Indonesia can sell his coffee directly to a buyer in America without going through the traditional system requiring banks, loans and middlemen. The producer receives a better price for his coffee, the buyer receives a direct-trade high-quality specialty coffee.

directly from those willing to offer them. This opens up the door to thousands of boutique roasters who previously had limited access to smaller volumes of specialty grade beans. It also offers coffee farmers and cooperatives more opportunities to sell their best beans at a higher premium.

To showcase how the CoffeeCoin token can perform these functions, we have already developed our first working service. As of Oct. 16, 2017, our functioning prototype of CoffeeChain is live and is already As a utility token on the Waves network, using CoffeeCoin as the utility token for CoffeeCoin transmits and preserves transmitting and preserving green coffee verifiable data on the blockchain ledger. This buy, sell and service offers on the blockchain. means it can be used for coffee contracts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_ pricing quotes, origin details and verification, continue=11&v=7IMzl6wJq2g shipment tracking and more. This can reduce or even eliminate the need for the multiple Q: I see you are based in Malaysia and communications via fax, phone and email Indonesia, what is the state of blockchain that are standard in the industry now. As technology adoption in these countries? the blockchain ledger is decentralized, data Is there a big demand for Bitcoin and other is immune from loss and alteration common alternative currencies? to data stored on centralized servers. Indonesia is not only the 4th largest Farmers and roasters can use CoffeeCoin producer of coffee in the world, but also has to crowdfund sales and purchases of specialty a huge crypto supporting community. In fact, coffee lots - so they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to rely as just last month Bitcoin.co.id, the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heavily on loans and middlemen to keep largest crypto exchange, added the WAVES their businesses and families afloat. This token. Sasha Ivanov, the founder of Waves raises the value of the coffee for farmers, spoke at the recent blockchain conference in keeps both the farmers and roasters out of Bali Indonesia and while there he spoke with debt and increases business for the importers the head of Bitcoin.co.id and begin making and exporters as they are still needed to help plans to add an Indonesian Rupiah gateway with the shipping logistics and customs to the Waves client too. paperwork for the coffee from source to roaster.

Small-batch roasters will now have access to micro-lots of specialty-grade beans more

All of this bodes extremely well for the CoffeeCoin project, as we have many coffee sources in Indonesia. We will be able to use our platform right away for direct-fromCore Magazine

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source coffee transactions using CoffeeCoin, convertible instantly to Waves and then into local currency - all in-app - thanks to these developments. After our token sale, once CoffeeCoin has liquidity on the Waves Dex, we plan to approach crypto exchanges in Indonesia and other coffee producing countries to have CoffeeCoin listed as well. Being based in south-east Asia allows us access to not just Indonesian coffee, but also micro lots of high-grade Arabicas from Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines and Thailand. Also, Singapore is at the heart of this region and gives us access to global coffee logistics providers along with a massive and growing community of blockchain developers and a crypto-friendly legislative regime.

Waves were the first platform to offer what we needed for our project - a way to easily create a token that could be used both as a crypto-currency voucher and as a utility token that could transmit and preserve additional data on the blockchain. It only took a few minutes to create our token and our tech partners at Oceanlab.eu were able to easily integrate our token into our prototype coffee trading platform at https:// CoffeeChain.io. Furthermore, once the Waves NG protocol is live, Waves will be the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fastest blockchain, which means weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be able to scale our CoffeeCoin-powered coffee trading platform and tools to handle more transactions in the future.

Coffee Presentation in Kuala Lumpur

Roasting in Thailand

Q: Why did you choose to host your coin on top of the Waves platform? 76

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For full details and instructions on participation, along with our whitepaper and direct-from-farm videos please visit https:// CoffeeCoin.io 3rdstryker Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info

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Interview with Digilira, Turkish lira Gateway for Waves

he WAVES platform consists of a Decentralized exchange where multiple Waves tokens can trade with each other. This is achieved through proxy tokens, tokens that are backed 1:1 and are interchangeable through gateways. Currently, there is two fiat pairs, USD and EURO, as well five cryptocurrencies, BTC, ETH, LTC, ZEC and of course WAVES and its custom tokens like Mercury, Waves Community Token and many others. The next fiat gateway installment is likely

going to be the Turkish Lira, provided by a Turkish company named Digilira. The most interesting part is that this is the first fiat gateway pushed by a private company, rather than by the WAVES team. Interested to find out more, we asked the owner of Digilira, Serkan Bayar, about the motivations behind his new company, how he got here, the cryptocurrency situation in Turkey and more. Core Magazine

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Q: Tell us a little about Digilira A: Digilira is a platform that allows you to convert Turkish Liras (TRY) into cryptocurrency tokens named wTRY. This wTRY token, issued on top of the Waves platform, is backed 1:1 by real Turkish Liras. Digilira will serve as a gateway for both of them, between real Turkish Liras and wTRY tokens. The Digilira company name is a shortened version of Digital Turkish Lira. We call it Digilira because it sounds euphonic. Our company was established on October 10th, 2017. Our company aims to create and sell a value in an electronic environment, to establish and operate websites to carry out these purposes, register members to these websites and earn income from these services. Before the establishment of our company, we asked the “Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency” in Turkey about our company’s business activity. The response was optimistic and they only requested us to warn our users about cryptocurrencies volatility and requested us to prevent AML (Anti-Money Laundering) activities. So we will warn our users about volatility and we will request their identities for KYC/AML policies. 78

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We will request people to use their real names while they are signing up for our service. We have access to the national judiciary informatics system, so we will be able to check if the given ID is fake or not. We will not accept deposits if a deposit doesn’t match the member’s name. We will not accept deposits if the deposit is made from an ATM. If this occurs, we will issue a full refund. Users will able to withdraw only from accounts that match with his name and ID. After we got a good response from Banking Regulation and Supervision agency, we started to get in touch with banks. We prepared a document and explained to them about our intentions and services. They sent our documents to their head offices. Some banks have a blockchain management unit and we got responses from those units or the head offices. Their approach was positive and they asked more about our KYC/AML policies. As of now, we have an agreement with 6 major banks in Turkey, and some more are underway. Those banks are, Turkiye Is Bankasi, Denizbank, Garanti, Akbank,

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Ziraat Bank and QNB Finansbank. Q: Why did you choose the Waves platform for your upcoming Turkish Lira Gateway?

In Turkey, there are 3 major exchanges where you can buy and sell Bitcoins. Those are Paribu, BTCTurk and Koinim. These 3 exchanges have a total of 15 million dollars volume on average every day. All of these exchanges are centralized. By using Digilira as a gateway service, our customers will have lots of benefits. Here they are:

Get Rid of High Commissions Today on average, a 0.4% commission is paid on a centralized exchange. For example, a person who trades with 10 Thousand Turkish Liras pays a commission of 40 Turkish Liras when he gets Bitcoin from a centralized exchange in Turkey.

A: We believe in the Waves Platform as we are early adopters. Waves have a lite client so a regular user of Waves Platform doesn’t need to download the whole blockchain to operate. Also, Waves has a built-in DEX. Digilira will allow our customers to use You can easily store your assets on the Waves the Waves Platform’s decentralized exchange Platform and trade safely. so users can trade with minimum fees (0.003 WAVES). For example, a person who trades In Turkey, there are a lot of Waves 10 Thousand Turkish Liras only pays a total supporters. There are 250 pages written in commission of 0.5 Turkish Liras. the Turkish Waves thread. After the demand for Waves, I personally opened a blog site to spread the Waves Platform for the Turkish people. www.wavesturkiye.com

Don’t Stick with Bitcoin

All other exchanges in Turkey are legal and they pay taxes from profits. When you decide to buy Bitcoin, you can buy directly from those 3 exchanges. But if you want to Core Magazine

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buy any other alternative currency, you have to transfer your Bitcoin to other exchanges. This is where the problem begins. You can’t buy any alternative currency with fiat money in Turkey.

Users of common centralized exchanges are often complaining about the lack of orders, site upgrades without prior announcement, and inability to access the site temporary especially when it is volatile.

Digilira will offer our customers to buy WAVES, Bitcoin, Ethereum, LiteCoin, Zcash, WavesGo, MobileGo, Primalbase, ZrCoin and more using our wTRY proxy token.

www.digilira.com offers customers to trade on the decentralized exchange built in the Waves Platform to remove centralized exchange uncertainty.

Time is Cash It is very time-consuming to send Bitcoin from one exchanges to another when the markets are very fluctuating. The time lag between sending and receiving Bitcoins from one exchange to the next can lead to losses, especially when you are dealing with large capital. With www.digilira.com, you can buy or sell any cryptocurrency with your own currency (Turkish Lira) from the Waves decentralized exchange. In this way, it will be much faster to move from one cryptocurrency to the next.

Decentralized Exchange

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Security

Centralized exchanges keep your private keys and in the event of hacks, exchanges can lose their private keys. By using digilira.com’s service, you will trade on a decentralized exchange, meaning, you will have full control of all your crypto holdings. Digilira Technology Corp is 100% legal and will pay taxes to the Republic of Turkey. Q: What has the process been so far to get the gateway up and going? A: After we decided to build the Turkish Lira gateway for Waves, we decided to name our brand as “Digilira”, then we applied at the Turkish Patent and Trademark office to get a patent for our brand. Luckily, the

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“Digilira” brand wasn’t taken before we got our patent but there was a barrier in front of us. The URL of www.digilira.com was already taken. We reached out to the owner and started to bargain. We agreed on the price and we bought the URL. With our company now established, we applied for the www.digilira.com.tr (as only legal companies can get the .tr URL) but we will use www.digilira.com for our services. Negotiating with banks was the longest step as we had some requirements. We requested banks to give a live feed of our accounts so we can track deposits live. It took around 4 weeks to deal with banks in regards to this issue. Now banks will provide data for specified IP addresses where our servers are located. We also got an agreement with a firm called Manim. This firm will listen to banks and provide JSON data for us. This way we will collect deposit requests from digilira. com then JSON data of the deposit. If this data matches then we will send the wTRY automatically. So the deposit process will be autonomous but the withdrawals will be manual. Q: Have you discussed wthe WAVES team about the gateway? What was the response from the WAVES team like? A: We are in touch with Waves team and people who have close relations with the Waves team in the slack channel. Marc Jansen (Hawky), Martin (mx), Cyrille Wetter (karlkarlsson) supported us. After the establishment of the company, we sent

an e-mail to Alexandra Pestretsova. She then forwarded our e-mail to Vadim Radskiy (Integration manager) to arrange a meeting at Waves Headquarters on the 11th of November. We are aiming to come back with an official announcement for Turkish Lira Gateway. Q: What is the cryptocurrency situation in Turkey? Do you anticipate there will be a lot of demand for your services? The president of the Turkish Central Bank said that “Cryptocurrencies may contribute to financial stability”. We know some banks in Turkey are doing research on blockchain technology. A construction firm in Turkey named MiaVita started to sell their houses with Bitcoin. http://miavita.com.tr . The cryptocurrency sector is on the rise in Turkey. We wanted to act fast and bring the real Turkish Lira into the cryptocurrency sphere. We are now a legal company and we will pay taxes from commissions we get. As we said before, on an average day Turkish exchanges have 15 million dollars volume. We are aiming to get 10% in 3 months. We are now collecting e-mail addresses to inform our customers when we go live. Now we have over 450 e-mail addresses. Our topic on bitcointalk has 131 replies and almost everyone is excited and wants to use our services. Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info Core Magazine

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Q: Thank you for your time. Lastly, do you have an ETA for your product?

Team. If everything goes well in Moscow we are planning to go live by the end of the November.

We are almost ready to go live, just waiting to get permission from Waves

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Are you about to prepare an ICO? Contact us press@coregroup.info

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Susan Poole Founder Of Blockbridge Advisory and consultant for Blockchain startups

Susan is more than a pretty face. She made the cut because of her vast influence in the community of cryptocurrency users. She is known for being the founder of Blockbridge Advisory which helps blockchain startups get their feet on the ground firmly. When you speak with this woman, it is easy to see why her colleagues are so fond of her. Susan takes pride in her word, which she proved by taking her time and carefully considering the advice she should give to you, our valued readers.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Right now is the time when women are welcomed to soar in Blockchain and crypto - the key is to show up, engage, collaborate, innovate - start with meetups, events, and LinkedIn and create your journey in these emerging technologiesâ&#x20AC;?.

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The ABCs Of ICOs

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ICO- Initial C In A Digital F

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Coin Offerings Profiting From The Phenomenon Of Token Sales Frenzy The Structure Of The Team Members The Team Roles The Importance Of Your Team Introductions A Website Dedicated To The ICO / Token Sale Token Talk: Choose A Token Platform The Way Of The Crypto Community Declare Your Purpose: The ANN Thread Bountiful Rewards Makes The Crowd Say Ahhhhh Marketing, Press, and Social Buzz Before You Begin Your Own ICO / Fundraiser / Token Sale Token Regulatory Guides

Written By Lorilikes for House of Core Group

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ICO- Initial Coin Offerings Profiting From The Phenomenon Of Token Sales In A Digital Frenzy ICO- A â&#x20AC;&#x153;Catch All Phraseâ&#x20AC;? The term Initial Coin Offering is a crowdfunding event or time period in which participants can chip in on an idea or project that has potential, they hope, for some profits. These participants are then awarded digital coins or tokens that can have multiple purposes depending on the individual project at hand. The growing popularity of ICOs have proven them to be an effective method of growing an idea to its fullest potential. Below is a chart showing some of the best 2017 ICO results. Hedge funds are no longer the only high rollers in venture capitalism.

The funding participants of an ICO usually exchange a common cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum for an allotment of tokens specially created for the fundraising event. In some ICOs the token allotment will be replaced with a similar coin allowance or newly born cryptocurrency that may or may not have a tradeable value. Most often the tokens are symbolic only of implied FUTURE returns, and buyers often have to wait for a later date of issuance to retrieve the coins or tokens that they paid for in order to allow the developers or the smart contract to distribute them.. The funds that are collected during an ICO event become a part of a pool from which the ICO team is expected to jumpstart the development of a promised product or to capitalize on a business expansion. Usually the ICO concept will be documented in a white paper which serves as the project explanation and overall project plans. . The white paper in most tech projects will be revised dozens of times and a committed team should make an effort to keep their public documentation links current.

The Structure Of The Team Members

At the foundation of every great house, there is a set of measurements and materials that will ensure a lasting, durable structure. The team members selected to handle each part of an ICO should be well calculated, too. Each person should be assigned, firmly to their duties. With a well planned foundation 88

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you increase the likelihood of building a monumental success story.

In addition to the roles usually undertaken by a company’s CEO, CTO, CMO and so forth, an Initial Coin Offering campaign will need additional expertise to ensure its success. Below are some of the most important positions when it comes to a running a successful ICO.

An Editor For All Shifts– Many publications, articles, blogs and various texts will be rapidly flowing about and around your ICO project. An editor must be readily available to ensure the materials put out makes your project and team look good. If it is in writing, it must be correctly conveyed and spelt. Accuracy and completeness are extremely important especially in technical publications which are likely to be dissected by the experts in the space.

A Project Manager – A person who monitors everything and makes decisions for the team while delegating tasks as needed. This role is the cement that holds it all together.

Advisors- These are the thinkers. Your ideal strategist will be talented at reading the public opinion and will have a knack for drawing business in. They should be experts in their field.

The Team Roles-

2-3 Community Managers / “Social Media Keepers” – These are the front line personalities who will need to master the balancing act between creating an enjoyable atmosphere, and swiftly patching up any misunderstandings or negative attention if it stirs up. The Community Managers are there to respond to incoming questions as quickly as possible, in every communication channel, 24/7. A

Bounty Campaign Manager – This person will monitor and drive the bounty reward program. A Public Relations Team– A mass media squad will ideally be resourceful, sharp and observant to keep up with the demands of the public. These team members work closely with the whole team. A cryptofocused company that is both efficient and flexible is hard to come about. This is where the Core Group comes in.

The Importance Of Your Team Introductions

The importance of your front line cannot be emphasized enough. People want to see people. Give them PEOPLE! Your website and your whitepaper must have a page entirely dedicated to the individual members of your team. A portrait or head shot is most common. Link to your social media wherever possible- but please take steps to ensure your privacy and your family and friend’s privacy too when including links to your more personal social media accounts like facebook. A team page that displays the faces of each of the key crew members is highly recommended. Each portrait should include a name, position or title, and brief description of why they are qualified. You can mention schooling and work history, but if there isn’t an impressive college degree don’t worry! ! Core Magazine

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The info in the bio should be a justification for the given role. It is better to state the reason the person got the job they are in than it is to list off past jobs. Here is a quick example of what this means for Sally who is great at her job but she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go to college like her associates. The reason she was hired

A Website Dedicated To The ICO / Token Sale

is because she is AMAZING at making people satisfied no matter how disgruntled.

The website needs to prominently display the ticker or countdown to the time your project will launch and officially start the Your ICO must have an attractive, fully fundraising process. Once the date has arrived functional website dedicated to the project. you will need to replace the countdown ticker The website needs to have a ready to click with a live status feed showing investments as language selector and as many languages as they come in to the connected ICO addresses. possible to ensure nobody will be excluded The function should show how many bitcoin from the opportunity to buy in to your ICO. and ethereum have been collected to date, We cannot stress the importance of a good- and it should show how close the project is looking website enough. We know that to the expressed goal. your project has a lot more to offer and that the website is probably the least important The website should contain links, thing to focus on but if your goal is to attract prominently displayed to technical investors, then your website must be intuitive, documentation, the whitepaper, any existing easy on the eyes and it must provide compact website for the company from which the information in simple language. project comes from, and relevant reference 90

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materials if applicable.

the technology and the math involved in any blockchain project is complex and for The website must have simple links to some people it looks and feels as familiar all of the social media accounts and contact as a foreign language for which there is no methods, including Slack, Discord,Telegram, translator. Luckily there is such a thing as Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, a token platform or token host which will Steemit, Pinterest, Tumblr, Youtube and offer its users a token template and sandbox other Google services, Bitcointalk.org, and environment to create and distribute the any other outlet that is available where the tokens to the various token holders and public gathers to communicate and socialize. investors. The technical details are a topic Of all the virtual workspaces and outlets pay for a different day. Here are the three special attention to Slack and to Telegram, choices that are recommended when you for these are extremely useful in connecting are ready to choose the token launcher for the world to the inner stitches of the project your project. There are several others, and and its main players, Slack is a good tool you are encouraged to research and choose that encourages productive, flexible work whichever platform strikes you as pThe environments. Word to the wise: Be cautious! One. Slack has also become a breeding ground for spammers and scammers who often try 1. Waves to impersonate the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s administrators Easy to use for all levels of experience. to scam users of their funds. This can lead With the Waves Platform, you can store to serious reputation problems, so if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re multiple common cryptocurrencies along using Slack, thread carefully. with Waves tokens and all other Waves made tokens. Also, the popularity of The Waves Platform is quickly growing and the Token Talk: Choose A Token user interface is smooth and comes with improvements in every update. https:// Platform wavesplatform.com/ Unless you have a team of developers who have invented a blockchain and you 2. Komodo want to spend too much on the creation of a The Komodo Platform is perhaps a more blockchain that has a rare chance of survival, challenging platform to work from due you are going to need to choose a platform to the technical knowledge and hardware from which you can launch a new token, and requirements. Komodo has some incredible, it is a hefty science. Technical talents can be innovative technologies such as some of easily borrowed from the geniuses who are the earliest noted atomic swaps, or crossbehind the blockchain platforms that host chain trading, plus they are also amongst the token sales. earliest pioneers of decentralized ICOs that If you are scratching your head, baffled can be completely anonymous with the use at the marvel that is cryptography, you of their Komodo privacy project tools. are not alone. Many people agree that Core Magazine

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So much to love about this option! https://komodoplatform.com/en 3. Ethereum The Ethereum blockchain is the leader in terms of time since inception. Using Ethereum, you can create a smart contract for your fundraiser. You can add rules that will hold a contributor’s money until any given date or goal is reached. Depending on the outcome, the funds will either be released to the project owners or safely returned back to the contributors. Ethereum is the clear leader of the ICO contenders. https://ethereum.org/

The Way Of Community

The

Crypto

The crypto community has developed a very specific set of standards- and the criteria doesn’t come easy, especially to a newcomer. To save time you will learn a few of the rules here that took most of us a year or more to understand. Follow these first rules because the people before you did it, now you do it. Ooga Booga. You can boss the next group around. Ok, to put it more politely: You can also try your own innovative addition, although the crypto community has grown used to the process described below, so it’s advisable that you stick to it first and foremost.

has a ranking and some stats in their profile. The members who have been in the forum since Satoshi Nakamoto created the site have actual political sway within the cryptosphere. Their opinion of your trustworthiness will lead you to your path of fortune or it can drag you through the coals and mud. Don’t do anything that will prompt these high ranked forum members to doubt you. Bitcointalk. org is a valuable part of a successful ICO. All of the biggest ICO projects seem to begin in that forum, in fact Bitcoin code was written in a whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto- all in the public scrutiny, in that forum. This is a strange and quirky part of the whole crypto spirit. It’s worth noting, however, that it will be impossible to keep EVERYONE happy, so do your best and respond to negative comments or accusations with class.

2. Be Transparent - Transparent affairs are the only affairs in crypto. This means hide nothing of your activities lest you be discovered as a fact concealer, then forever be deemed a scammer. Something as small as forgetting to disclose that you are representing one company and acting as an advisor to another project- this could be seen as a deceitful choice, and this could lead to a trusted, high ranked forum member choosing to leave the dreaded red writing of doom. When a user gets a red rating from a default trusted member, this makes a blemish that has only 2 ways to end. The first way is forever bruised and shamed into 1. The BitcoinTalk.org Forum - Open the scammers group whether it is deserved an account right now. If you have an or not and the other, less likely outcome is a established account, keep it in good status. resolved problem where the trusted member Do not anger the people who operate the removes the red writing on the wall, restoring forum and don’t get into heated arguments green status, Once a member gets a red mark with other users. You will see each member it is very difficult to have it reversed. Refer to 92

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rule number one, many times a day to avoid being swept into the red zone. 3. Have A Face - Many will disagree with this rule, due to the finicky nature of crypto vets. The Anarchistic push towards decentralized anonymity is awesome in theory. Down with “Big Brother” is the undertone, and I am proud of those who remain off the grid. This is a controversial pivoting point that is written from the perspective that people deserve freedom yet con artists are salivating at the delicious temptations before them. It is fact that when cloaked by the cover of crypto, there is an opening for abuse that should be carefully considered when forming opinions. When an entity is gathering large amounts of

cryptocurrency to pay for a project it is best practice to reveal yourself to your peers. Basic manners are at the at the root of this rule. It is polite to show your humanity when being entrusted with so much money. Anonymous people are not going to run off with a million bucks 9 times out of 10. There really is at least one bad guy in every crypto crowd just waiting for the chance to swipe as many wallets as possible, and they don’t even have to run away if they are cloaked. If nobody knows the guy, he can be in the same room as you and it would go unknown.

As a respectful measure of good faith in the project you plan to stun the world with, please have a face. Social media accounts, news feeds, blogs and regular, personalized updates for your crowd will go very far with most people.

Declare Your Purpose: The ANN Thread

Back to the Forum, you will need to set up an aesthetically pleasing, informative announcement thread, better known as an ANN thread. There is a designated place in the bitcointalk forum for such threads and EVERY successful project has one. Notice the present tense, HAS one. The ANN thread is your stomping grounds. It is a canvas and it is a vital piece of your ICO puzzle. Do not shrug this away. Take this ANN thread as your project’s lifeline. Bitcoin has one. Ethereum has one. Every rinky-dink scam has one. Every monumental success has one. It will grow to be thousands of posts and hundreds of forum pages if you regularly update the people who stop by, and if you stay on the path with your project This is your office and your break room. Please study other ANN threads to emulate success and add your own touch of uniqueness both to the content and to the design. It is a free, enormous outlet for your project’s voice. Use it!

Bountiful Rewards Makes The Crowd Say Ahhhhh In addition to the ANN Thread, it is customary (and fruitful) to create what Core Magazine

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crypto crowds call the bounty thread. You can locate examples in the Altcoins section, in the area labeled Marketplace. In the bounty thread, your main goal is to announce a system of rewards for various tasks like promotional creations on youtube.com, or a specific tweet or facebook post. Typically, the participants in a bounty campaign get paid in tokens following the ICO. Sometimes within the bounty thread the manager will also offer a signature campaign opportunity which is an incentivized program offering paid impressions. Every post will usually be awarded a small amount of bitcoin, so long as the signature members have met the posting criteria. The company holding an ICO will need an attractive and functional signature designed in the forums native language which is BBCode. This is not something to try out for the first time for a signature campaign. You have more important, income producing tasks to handle. You can easily hire an affordable designer to customize a cool look for your signature campaign. The idea is simple. Through a process of selecting good quality members to post â&#x20AC;&#x153;constructive postsâ&#x20AC;? while wearing your ICO information on their public profile and in their signature space, the image leaves a positive impression on thousands of cryptocurrency users daily. Sometimes a signature campaign will be totally separated from the bounty thread, and those will be found in the section labeled services in the marketplace. 94

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Once you have a eye catching design for the signatures of each level you will ask to participate, you will have your designated signature campaign manager select the best people for the job, and they are brutally picky. Your paid impressions in this forum will be precisely targeted. It is considered to be a valuable way to get your brand name circulating and trusted. Marketing, Press, and Social Buzz The fact that you are reading this right now signifies your willingness to accept input regarding your success. Wise rulers always value advice from those with experience and knowledge, even if they do not plan to take every suggestion.. During the time that your project is holding its ICO event, it is important to unleash the power of a well-timed press package. You will benefit enormously from a strong, but subtle media presence. Your brand will gain traction through the use of finely crafted, heavily picked up press releases, full scope articles, radio interviews, ICO list placement and a strategic outreach to the influential people in your target audience. These are the ingredients that lead to success. One of the goals should be to get as many people talking about your brand as possible. Take advantage of available advertisement methods, especially consider Facebook, Twitter and Google paid campaigns, and ask your media reps what they can provide for you in these social spaces. Leverage all of these tools for results.

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You will need to trust your professionals to do what they do best, and judging by your current reading materials, you are on the path to the plentiful. Before You Begin Your Own ICO / Fundraiser / Token Sale Token Regulatory Guides The ever-changing legalities, and the jurisdiction-variable rules for ICO projects is a topic of discussion among the cryptocurrency community. It is not the most fun part, and it is a fast changing portion of our industry. This is an important conversation that should happen, openly between the project team leaders and their designated media representation. This applies to all who are interested in ICO awareness services, press packages and any other marketing or promotional dealings. With many countries across the globe declaring unique regulations on ICO projects, it is imperative that anyone who wishes to enter the token arena checks with their local authorities to get a current status on their jurisdiction. We cannot monitor the laws across the globe and are not to be held liable for any misconduct or misfortune that may occur to the people involved in the paid media process. In other words, we are not to be blamed in the unlikely event of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;dudâ&#x20AC;?. You have the right to be picky and you have the right to have high expectations of your chosen media reps. We have that same right and we have high expectations of our clients as well. We will be acting in our clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best interest- always, to the extent of the law

and to the best of our knowledge of it. We expect the same from our clients, and any intentional misconduct that is detected will constitute a justifiable severance of business relations and may lead to civil action. Questions you should ask your local law enforcement agency include: 1. Are there any new laws or regulations I need to know about relevant to ICOs, cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency exchanges or related ventures? 2. Who is the person in charge of financial crime prevention and investigations? May I contact that person to ask about any recent scams I should be aware of ? These are great ways to find the information you need to stay in compliance with local laws and it is also a way to get a heads up regarding who and what to avoid in order to protect yourself, your project, your brand and your participants from being victimized by fraudsters. Ultimately, it is up to the project managers and founders to determine what route to take when embarking on an ICO path. This document and any related material provided with it is not advice. Before allocating funds toward ANY new opportunity, seek legal counsel and advice from a financial professional. The opinions and statements in this document are not reflective of the entity or person who provided the materials, and should not be taken as endorsement or agreement of any kind. It would be a good idea to copy the Core Magazine

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text from this paragraph and save it for the disclaimers YOU will need to make in your own white paper. The goal is to protect the team and the participants from making hasty investment decisions and to give fair warning to the participants of any activity that involves monetary risk.

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FBI Arrests Bankerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Brother for Stealing $300,000 in Two Fraudulent ICOs

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BI agents have recently arrested Maksim Zaslavskiy, the brother of a Morgan Stanley banker, at his Brooklyn home for defrauding investors in two separate Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) that netted him over $300,000. Maksim Zaslavskiy, a 38-year-old businessman, essentially pushed two fraudulent ICOs he claimed were backed by real estate and diamond investments, when in reality they were just scams he was using to make himself rich. One of the ICOs,for REcoin,was promoted as the “first ever cryptocurrency backed by real estate.” Investors would reportedly profit from owning the cryptocurrency through the company’s investments in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, according to court papers.

According to Bloomberg, U.S. Magistrate judge Ramon Reyes later released Zaslavskiy on a $250,000 bond secured by his family’s house and co-signed by both his parents and his brother Dmitry, a big-shot executive at Morgan Stanley who during the hearing claimed to make $450,000. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Zaslavskiy over the same allegations. Although it was one of the first cases in which the regulator sued someone over fraud in ICOs, various outlets pointed out it may not be the last one.

In its statement, the SEC accuses the businessman of selling unregistered securities and coins that do not exist to unsuspecting investors, using companies that were defrauding them. The regulator also The other one, known as Diamond pointed out Zaslavskiy promised “sizeable Reserve Club, was supposed to be backed returns” from each ICO, while misstating by diamonds held in “secure locations” how invested money would be used, and that would allow investors to profit. In a misrepresenting how much had already been statement, acting U.S. attorney Bridget M. invested. Rohde stated that “Zaslavskiy knew that no real estate or diamonds were actually backing According to CoinSchedule,ICOs this year the investments.” have already raised over $3.25 billion, some of them with little more than a whitepaper to Assistant director-in-charge at the show for it. As if using fake cryptocurrency Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, William exchange apps and cryptocurrency stealing Sweeney, stated: malware wasn’t enough, some fraudsters try to get other people’s money with fraudulent “As alleged, Zaslavskiy and associates ICOs.

led their victims to believe they were hedging their bets on cryptocurrency secured by real estate and diamond investments.”

Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

Core Magazine

Chrissa McFarlane Founder and CEO of Patientory

Patientory was a highly revered ICO that collected over $7 million dollars. The project reshapes the entire medical records system for its users which includes patients and health care providers. Chrissa was working in the healthcare industry and saw the need for change- and she implemented it, big time! This is why we chose this bold beauty to be on the list. We like her visionary skills and her practical application of blockchain technology to healthcare.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am ecstatic to be presented as one of the females on the list. It is important that we have female representation in an emerging industry such as crypto which tends to be dominated by our male counterparts. Diversity in any project or company is truly an asset to any endeavor worth undertaking.â&#x20AC;?

Blockchain News

China Warms Up To ICOs On The NEO Blockchain, Tension Builds In Crypto Community

he NEO platform is hosting the first Microsoft NEO Dev Competition, which signifies a soft spot in China’s ICO-Ban-Armor. Submissions must meet certain criteria and one of the requirements is that the developing projects use the NEO blockchain. On the NEO official blog, readers are met with the following message: 100

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“As NEO’s first dev competition, this is an unparalleled opportunity to unleash your creativity, passion, and ambition. This global get-together of NEO community developers will give you a chance to inspire others while being motivated by your fellow

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competitors’ intellect and grit. Join built specifically for launching ICOs and other blockchain projects. NEO works with us. Get inspired.” - The NEO team

The Details Of The Contest • The competition will be held from November 20, 2017 and will continue until midnight on March 10, 2018. • Participants are required to develop on the NEO blockchain • Submission must contain executable programs and codes Judges include NEO founder and core developer Zheng Zhang Wen, Chen Rong, Onchain chief architect Li Jun, and several Microsoft experts from China. There will be a total of 16 awards, valued at $490,000 including a first prize of $150,000 worth of the winners project tokens. In other words, the project who wins will have a guaranteed investor paying $150,000 and then giving the team BACK the tokens. You can rgister and submit your own entry into the competition here. “Prize winners will be awarded equivalent amount of bounties in GAS. Outstanding teams will get invitations for Neo’s DevCon in Silicon Valley”- NEO Team The event is hosted by NEO with sponsorships from Microsoft and Innochain among many others.

What Does China See In NEO? NEO, formerly Antshares is a platform

multiple, common programming languages which means faster development and deployment of smart contracts. Along with C+, .Net and Java, they will soon support Python and Go which, according to Github, is used by 90% of developers. A beginner can work on the NEO blockchain using a much bigger knowledge base of languages applicable to NEO unlike Ethereum where programmers must learn Solidity.

Tension And Bickering There have been a few sessions of public bickering between strongly opinionated bloggers and NEO representatives. While the negative tone in some of their publicly exchanged words are causing a few eyebrows to raise sharply, it is clear that the insult volley is based on individuals and their love for decentralized blockchain products for which there is no controlling entity manipulating the system. Peer to peer blockchain projects are what NEO claimed to be creating, yet one of the main complaints seen in social feeds is that NEO is in fact becoming a centralized blockchain product. Here is what one blogger said about NEO becoming centralized:

“NEO is incredibly centralized. The entire network only has 13 validating nodes. Developers whitelist who can run validating nodes.The whole point of cryptocurrencies is a decentralized validation system where anyone can operate nodes and validate Core Magazine

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transactions in the network. valid evidence supports the opinion. As of this writing, Bitcoin has 11,191 nodes, Ethereum has 19862 nodes, and QTUM has 1319 nodes. But NEO only has 13 nodes. This is because NEO’s team hand picks who can run nodes. This is incredibly alarming. How can a blockchain project that is more than 2 years old with a market cap of more than $3 billion only have 13 nodes? Why is the public not allowed to participate in securing the network? Two years is a very, very long time in the cryptocurrency world and there is simply no excuse for this degree of centralization” https://storeofvalue. github.io/posts/major-neoredflags/ Dancing with China, where banning of ICOs became headline material repeatedly in 2017 does make one wonder. The recent squabble with NEO as the topic may be a personality conflict well disguised in technical jargon. While some scrutiny has revealed an inadequate system of accountability for the delegated nodes, conclusive opinions should be drawn only if 102

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It is noble to stand up for one’s beliefs, but, if China wants to put some conditions on allowing ICOs to be revived in their great lands, isn’t that at least some progress? One central blockchain effort does NOT a bad investment make, in terms of profitable endeavors. Too poetic? Ok, let’s just say that it may not be a bad thing that NEO is working with China’s government to align with regulatory guides. It may be the economic fountain of wealth- OR it could be the dreaded opposite. It is too soon to tell. Be cautious when investing and try to think of monetary value and social values as two different things. Only while those two concepts are not co-mingling can a man or woman make the best business decision. Lorilikes Email lorilikes@coremedia.info

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Earth Token and Kariba REDD+ Partner to Bring Environmental Sustainability to the Blockchain Kariba REDD+, one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest Carbon Mitigation and Conservation projects has partnered with impactChoice to make natural assets available for trading on the EARTH token Natural Asset Exchange. Although the Kariba REDD+ project has a long-standing relationship with impactChoice, this news partnership will see Kariba REDD+ use the Natural Asset

Exchange to make its natural capital assets available for Earth Token. Leonard Harley, Managing Director of impactChoice stated:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Having supported the Kariba REDD+ project for a number of years we are excited to see them join the NAE initiative as early adopters on Core Magazine

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the supply side. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with Carbon Green Investments and the Kariba REDD+ project on our mutual journey towards driving the use of carbon credits as a cornerstone component of environmental sustainability efforts.” The partnership will see Kariba REDD+, one of the world’s largest Carbon Mitigation and Conservation projects, act as the first supplier in the blockchain-based Natural Asset Exchange, making its natural assets available for trade from the moment the exchange becomes operational.

Natural Asset Exchange and Earth Token A project spearheaded by impactChoice, the Natural Asset Exchange is a blockchainbased platform that will allow the producers and consumers of the natural capital asset class to connect directly, skipping middleman inefficiencies and fees. Additional advantages include the lack of registration fees, escrow accounts, and a limitless transaction volume. Thanks to the decentralized nature of the platform, Natural Capital Asset producers will be able list and sell their products (e.g. carbon credits, REC’s, metered output, etc.) directly to their consumers without the need to trust third party registries to record sales and retirement of assets. An Ethereum-based crypto, the Earth Token (EARTH) will power the Natural 104

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Asset Exchange, acting as the sole currency in the platform. The use of a cryptocurrency token will allow the platform to be accessed on a global scale and will eliminate the need for currency conversion and associated fees.

Kariba REDD+

Active since 2011, the Kariba REDD+ project is one of the largest ongoing conversion projects, covering some 785,000 hectares of prime forest around Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe and working with local communities and offering a range of sustainable conservation and farming alternatives such as beekeeping, tree cultivation, and low impact brick making. The official website reads:

“This forest conservation project is aimed at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities for poor communities in Northern Zimbabwe, a region still suffering heavily from deforestation, poverty, and drought. Its aim is to reduce deforestation and forest degradation through a range of activities such as conservation farming, proposed by local communities and supported by carbon finance.” Kanoptx Email kanoptx@coremedia.info

Exclusive

Co-Founder of IOTA Proves He Is Creator Of The NXT Platform

fter years of speculation, the founder of the NXT platform has revealed his identity.

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The above is the donation address and the private key used to donate to BCNext while he was asking for BTC to fund the NXT Platform in 2013. This was posted by Comefrom-Beyond via tweeter during a twitter storm with founder of Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin. BCNext and Come-fromBeyond’s real name is Sergey Ivanchego; Sergey became a self-made multimillionaire from being NXT creator and IOTA CoFounder.

Although many have stated BCNext was Coming-from-Beyond in the past, including this groundbreaking interview with the CoFounder of IOTA, David Sønstebø. After recent revelations, there now can be no doubt to BCNext’s identity. Finding the creator of the NXT platform is a significant event. Those who have been around the cryptocurrency sphere long enough to remember will note that NXT was a legacy coin like no other. Well ahead of its time, NXT had several groundbreaking features, including full Proof of Stake, forging, a fully functional Decentralized Asset Exchange, voting on the blockchain and more. Being that NXT was well ahead of its time, the platform attracted many entrepreneurs that shared such forward thinking visions, such as Sasha Ivanov of WAVES and James Lee from Komodo. Both of them created assets built on top of the NXT platform. Sergey also traded his own asset on the NXT platform, the “Jinn”. Jinn’s original purpose was to issue revenue from an upcoming Internet of Things project. That project eventually turned into IOTA, his most latest venture. The beginning of NXT, however, was marked by controversy with how the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) was funded. BCNext on September 23, 2013, created a forum thread stating he would create a “second generation” cryptocurrency and asked for small donations. In total, there were only 21 BTCs raised, which at the time, was only $800 per BTC, amounting to a total of $16800. Being that only 73 engaged in the

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ICO, the coins were distributed amongst the participants and as a result, the 73 investors became very wealthy after distribution. This created some resentment behind NXT, however, ICOs at the time were a very new concept and the cryptocurrency community was still in its infant stage. Given that Sergey Ivanchego is behind the NXT Platform, this puts a lot of weight behind his project, IOTA which will undoubtedly become associated with NXT. “After Sergey Ivanchego left NXT, JeanLuc took over the development for the years

to come. However, last year Jean-Luc moved all resources to his new project, Ardor. Ardor itself will be building on top of the technology built into NXT by providing child chains, chains built on top of the Ardor blockchain. NXT’s status as it stands is tricky, for on the one hand it has a vibrant history and still to this day hosts important tokens on it’s blockchain, however, it has been made clear that the vast majority of resources will move to Ardor.” 3rdstryker Email 3rdstryker@coremedia.info

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Victoria Adams Data Scientist and Advisor To Federal Agencies for Blockchain Initiatives

Victoria is a “major league” player in the blockchain industry, and a beautiful one at that! She works as a business development leader, and senior data scientist with Booz Allen where she leads a team of 10+ data scientists with $10 million in annual revenue. Victoria has a lead role in Booz Allen’s blockchain initiative and she works with multiple Federal agencies to develop a public sector approach to blockchain. That’s hot.

”Explore as much possible. Join everything, talk to anyone (especially the strange ones), read everything interesting (don’t worry it if seems “relevant”), collaborate with the people with the big idea, and don’t be frightened of failure. Everyone fails on the way to greats. Don’t worry so much about what it means for your ‘career’, exploring will opens doors. By knowing what’s possible and what animates you, you’ll be able to create your own path.”

Blockchain News

How to Keep CryptoShuffler Malware Away From Your Bitcoin

s Core Media recently reported, a malware that’s been around since at least 2016, CryptoShuffler, recently launched a new campaign targeting cryptocurrency users in order to trick them into sending their funds to the attackers’ wallets.What CryptoShuffler does is sit idly on users’ computers while watching their clipboards, so it can spring into action once an address is copied onto it, and replace it with that of its admins. It affects various popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash, and Litecoin, and has netted its creators at least 23 BTC.

sure your sending your money to the correct address, always check the first and last digits of the entered address to make sure it’s the correct one. To be extra safe, check a few in the middle as well.

To protect yourself against the threat, it’s clear that paying attention is a must. To make

According to our research, antikeylogging tools are the best way to escape

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However, both CryptoShuffler’s admins and security experts know that often the normal process is to just copy and paste addresses, so special precautions need to be taken. Using popular antivirus and antimalware systems may be good way to start, although they may not detect every malicious program on your computer.

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CryptoShuffler or any other type of malware that attempts to take advantage of what you do with your clipboard. Two paid solutions we believe will do the trick are SpyShelter and Zemana Antimalware. Both mentioned tools essentially encrypt typed information to ensure nothing gets out. Even if your anti-virus solution misses a keylogger or CryptoShuffler in your system, you won’t have to worry about it as apps will be barred from accessing your clipboard. Moreover, by encrypting the information all keylogger admins will receive is random, meaningless text, instead of your sensitive information. If you believe paying for something that can be fixed just by paying attention isn’t worth it, ArsClip may also interest you. This clipboard management tools essentially lets you know what’s on your clipboard at all times, and gives you advanced control over it. It may not be an anti-malware tool, but it’ll help. As pointed out, cybercriminals are increasingly trying to get to your bitcoins. While Kaspersky Labs has pointed out that most cryptocurrency-related malware wallets often only earn $50-$100, others similar to CryptoShuffler may be out there. Always double-check your addresses, and make sure you’ve got things right. Earlier this year, two fake Poloniex apps were found on Google Play, stealing user credentials to get to the funds they had in the exchange. A third one may still be out there. To stay safe, make sure services you use do have official apps, and always use 2FA.

Voice of experience A user who’s previously been infected with similar malware shared his story with this piece’s author. According to the user, this type of trojans can easily cling onto your computer whenever you download dodgy software, and cybercriminals may try to put everywhere they can to infect as much users as possible. He noticed his computer was infected after sending a BTC transaction and noticing it never got to its destination. After losing the money he started paying attention, and quickly wiped his computer clean and ran Malwarebytes afterwards to get rid of the malware, but some damage had already been done. He cautioned the addresses the malware uses can be similar to those the funds were going to be sent to, stating: “You can get these viruses from installing dodgy software. That includes pirated music and media. I would imagine hackers are introducing such Trojans to anything they can get people to download. You wouldn’t know unless you used BTC and paid attention. The one I caught even made the address seem very similar. So it looks the same at a glance when you paste.” Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

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Malwarebytes Adds BitConnect to Its List of Blocked Websites, Cites Poor Reputation

rominent anti-malware tool Malwarebytes recently added BitConnect.co, BitConnect’s official website, to its list of blocked websites. When users inquired staff about the blockade, they were told that the website has a “very poor reputation” and that users are advised to stay 112

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away from it. On Reddit, various users celebrated the move and shared screenshots of what they got when attempting to access the website. BitConnect is widely believed to be a Ponzi scheme that will one day lead to a loss of

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funds. Malwarebytes is known for actively protecting its users against websites with a poor reputation. Recently, Core Media pointed to the tool as an effective one to use to remove CryptoShuffler malware, which hijacks cryptocurrency addresses copied to clipboards and switches them for the attackers’ address. Others have also recently attempted to protect users against BitConnect. A Twitter account associated with the cryptocurrency Dash (DASH) recently tweeted at CoinMarketCap, asking the cryptocurrency index to remove BitConnectCoin (BCC), BitConnect’s cryptocurrency, from it.

through a supposed trading bot they created. Those who invest more are promised higher returns, as according to the website those who put over $10,000 of their own money will earn “volatility software interest” plus a 0.25% guaranteed daily bonus. These returns, as most users point out, are unsustainable. The website is paired with a cryptocurrency that users need to purchase with their money to lend and earn interest. The cryptocurrency, BitConnectCoin, is currently trading at $267 and has a $573 million market cap, according to data from Cryptocompare. Besides its promised returns, users also believe BitConnect is essentially a Ponzi scheme due to its cryptocurrency mostly being traded on its own exchange. At press time, its BCC Exchange had an $18 million trading volume on the BCC/BTC currency pair, while the second biggest exchange trading the cryptocurrency, Livecoin, has a $480,000 volume on the same pair. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, when questioned about BitConnect by Ponzi Crypto Coins, also pointed out it’s likely a Ponzi scheme: Although it isn’t clear who created

What is BitConnect?

BitConnect is a platform that promises investors high returns, of about 1% a day,

BitConnect, it is generally believed that the Core Magazine

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cryptocurrency survives because new users keep on investing in it. Once investments slow down and its creators aren’t able to pay users back, the website will presumably be shut down. Finally, it is unclear what BitConnectCoin is actually used for, other than lending to the platform’s supposed trading bot. A few popular YouTubers and content creators actively promote the cryptocurrency in an attempt to earn more using BitConnect’s referral system. They claim that the cryptocurrency’s value is pegged to that of

Bitcoin, as both cryptocurrencies surged in value this year. Core Media reached out to two BitConnect-promoting YouTubers, but neither was immediately available. We will update the piece if we hear back from them. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

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Tether Says Nearly $31 Million Worth of Tokens Were Stolen, Locks Them Away Tether, the company that issues Tether tokens (USDT), reportedly backed by fiat 1:1, recently revealed through an announcement on its website that nearly $31 million worth of USDT were stolen from its treasury wallet.

originally launched as Realcoin, has been the subject of controversy as it has been failing to reveal where its banking, leading some users to believe USDT tokens aren’t, in reality, backed by anything.

The post on the project’s website – which has since been removed – names the $30,950,010 USDT theft a “malicious action by an external attacker.” The company,

In response to the attack, Tether quickly revealed that it will not redeem any of the stolen funds and that it would try to prevent them from entering the cryptocurrency Core Magazine

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ecosystem. The announcement read:

“$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on Nov. 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address. As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem.” Notably, the company further revealed it would release a new version of the Omni Core software, in which Tether is built on, to lock the stolen tokens. If the network adopts the new software, it will essentially blacklist the address in which the funds are being held.

Before the announcement, various cryptocurrency enthusiasts were already skeptical of Tether as, according to them, their tokens are being used to artificially pump Bitcoin’s price on Bitfinex. According to data from Cryptocompare, Bitcoin’s price was indeed affected by the announcement, but quickly recovered from it. These suspicions led to a large-scale community investigation in which prominent members participated. Among them was Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer, who

The Tether teams’ centralized and unilateral decision to lock the address was criticized by various cryptocurrency industry analysts and experts, as some asked which addresses may be blacklisted next, and for what motive. Various cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken, OKex, KuCoin and others already announced they are upgrading their software to support the Omni hard fork, so the stolen funds are rendered useless. Other exchanges using USDT tokens that seemingly didn’t yet announce an upgrade include HitBTC, Binance, and Poloniex. 116

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noted that the treasury wallet was created right before the attack, hinting at a possible inside job: Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s certain, is that the incident will drive Tetherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s controversy to new levels, as those who believe something is going on

now gained the attention of various outlets and exchanges, whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been forced to answer customer questions on social media. Francisco Memoria Email franciscom@coremedia.info

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Heidi Chakos Self Created Youtube Sensation and Cryptocurrency Spokesperson

This gorgeous creature landed on our radar because of her enviable youtube presence under the username of Crypto Tips. She has intelligence and sway. It isn’t often you find a beach bunny who can keep up with the likes of cryptographic developers, but this lady hangs with the best. Stop drooling guys and pay attention to her actual words, they are wise! Kudos, lady!

“As much as this space is dominated by males, never let them discount what you can bring to the table. I’m also not much a fan of playing the gender card. In my experience, there is so much to learn and explore with this new technology that there is very little time to be bothered by that petty drama. Be strong in what you know, and be humbled knowing there’s so much more to learn.”

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