Core Magazine January 2018

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE JANUARY ISSUE 2018

The crypto man of the year 2017

Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Has John McAfee Been Marked For Death By Government Officials In Belize?

Cryptocurrencies to Keep an Eye On in 2018! &

WAVES Launches WAVES Labs

http://ardorplatform.org/

Crypto Core Media

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.

We embed a sensible moral code to ensure there are no misunderstandings regarding our motivations.

Copyright

Initio

© 2018 Core Group LLV. All rights reserved. Ab

Core Magazine

3

Table of Contents Bitcoin's Emerging Role in the Third-World Andreas Antonopoulos - The Masterful Orator

9 12

Has John McAfee Been Marked For Death By Government officials in Belize? 16 The Crypto-Revolution with a Historical Perspective

19

Cryptocurrencies to Keep an Eye On in 2018!

22

Wall Street Strategist Tom Lee Sees Bitcoin Hit $20,000 by Mid-2018

24

Monero Mining Botnet Infests Facebook Messenger as Mining Craze Continues

26

Taxes on Cryptocurrency Effective January 1st, 2018 Continues 28 The central banks response to bitcoin and cryptocurrency

30

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency are becoming Mainstream

32

Tulip Mania Economics Outdated | New Resilient Bitcoin Unaffected

34

Opinion | Killing Net Neutrality Could Negatively Affect Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

40

IOTA’s Data Marketplace Project Aims To Securely Monetize Data

42

Zcash Announces for 2018

44

Opinion | Mainstream Media’s Bitcoin Bubble Talk Helps Cryptocurrency

49

AirDrops- A Crypto Hobby or A Viable Source Of Income?

53

Crypto Hedge Funds On The Rise

56

Blockchain Humanity | Technology As A Catalyst For Higher Intelligence 58 Australian Government Cryptocurrency | Path to a State-Backed Digital Currency

62

Komodo Makes Successful Bitcoin Cash Swaps

66

WAVES Launches Waves Client 1.0 BETA in Amsterdam

69

WAVES CEO Sasha Ivanov's Christmas Q&A

72

WAVES Launches WAVES Labs

74

Oil Pipeline Giant Transneft hit with Monero Mining Malware

76

MobileCoin Aims To Improve Payment Options For Cryptocurrencies

80

Speculation Takes Over as Bitcoin Cash Is Added to Coinbase’s API

83

John McAfee Labels Verge (XVG) ‘Best Buy’

85

What’s Behind the 2017 DASH Rally?

87 Continues on next Page

Legalization and Regulation Challenges Posed by Cryptocurrencies in India and Worldwide

89

Crypto Charity Event Mery Merkle Tree Raises $70,000 in Ether for Troubled Youth

91

Cryptocurrency Jobs Creating New Careers

93

South Korean Cryptocurrency Exchanges Breached With "Basic Technology," Report Reveals

95

BlockTower Capital Reportedly Bet $1 Million on Bitcoin Hitting $50,000 Next Year

98

Chrome Extension With 105,000 Users Caught Mining Monero as Cryptojacking Trend Continues

103

Petro Cryptocurrency: Venezuela's New Oil-Backed Digital Currency

105

Various Bitcoin Exchanges Halt User Registrations due to Overwhelming Demand

107

oCoin: oBike's Tron Platform-Based Cryptocurrency

109

Poloniex Exchange to Impose User ID Verification as per KYC Legislation

111

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

DIRECTORY

3rdstryker 3rdstryker@coregroup.info

Kevin Deckel - aka Kevondo kevondo@coregroup.info

Lori Brown aka Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Antonio Madeira aka Kanoptx kanoptx@coregroup.info

Marlon Diaz aka MACO maco@coregroup.info

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blaise Pereira - aka juniorhouse juniorhouse@coregroup.info

Ignacio Figueroa aka TheWalk_er ignacio@coregroup.info

Vincent Pereira aka House house@coregroup.info

Futurist futurist@coregroup.info

Jon Prints aka Prints prints@coregroup.info

Angelo Timoneri aka Lootz lootz@coregroup.info 6

Core Magazine

EDITORIAL

2

018 Brings Momentum

Abundance

and

2017 was a year of many improvements in the Crypto Core Media family. For those who have known Core Group for any amount of time, the consensus has been that we are a talented team of the brightest minds, luckiest finds, and we span the entire globe.

There are always amazing people who come and go within this growing circle of contacts surrounding CryptoCoreMedia.com.

We sailed through shifts in the tides that placed challenges before us, and we redeemed our true value time and time again, only to prove that this is not a fading fire.

No matter where you are now, there is probably a Core team member who is around the corner.

We closed the door on a few pieces of the Core puzzle, and we opened up shop in other sectors in our fields of expertise.

At the center of Core there is the strength of goodness.

As the Core branches reach further in the crypto-space, remember- we are solid!

Once you are swinging from our branches and vines, we will not let go.

Be assured, Core Group is Steadfast

You will not be dropped into the

perils of the planet alone- ever.

We are strong. You are with us.

Congratulations!

Great Reveals As we continue forward, we will stay connected, collected and creative in order to produce the quality content, news, and publications that our readers have come to expect from us at Core. You are welcome.

Our Core Token project reached its retirement and while for some of us, it was a bittersweet closure, it signifies an immense amount of wisdom and foresight.

It means our vision is clear and the future is exponentially full of bountiful harvests.

The reason for the decision to close the door on the token is regulatory compliance.

To continue operating at our best as a leader in content production we could no longer dabble in something that may have been tagged as a securities operation according to the Securities Exchange Commission in the USA- where a dominant percentage of our audience and interested parties reside and report from.

We continue to operate at a pace that is swift and in style. Our team is firmly planted in a position to enjoy life as the trusted trail-blazers in crypto and in the media.

Our focal point and our stomping grounds has been Bitcoin, Blockchain technology and the rapidly expanding world known as the crypto-sphere.

We aim to continue on with our mission as mass adoption becomes a reality.

We have discovered, reached out and inherited a plethora of brilliance in our team.

Our crew is hand selected and in some cases headhunted for each of their unique flavors and input which Core deems to be instrumental in adding a true value to the crypto community.

We are proud to be home for highly regarded radio personalities, unmatched writers, fine tuned digital artists, and skilled graphics designers.

Our team rivals the very best in our industry, and yet we welcome our peers without prejudice to join the action.

You probably know us all by now- and if not- you are hereby invited to know us from now on. We are here, and we are not slowing down.

As always- we welcome your feedback and encourage your participation in some banter within our Slack Channel, in our news portals and on social media everywhere.

Just look for us at CryptoCoreMedia.com and when you reach us- you will know you are onboard with the coolest keepers of the crypto spirit.

Enjoy.

Lori Brown aka Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Bitcoin's Emerging Role in the ThirdWorld

B

itcoin’s emerging role seems to be in absorbing fiat currencies, especially in areas of political and economic uncertainty. Countries like Venezuela have been hit hard by U.S. sanctions. The U.S. sanctions are not the only reason why Venezuela’s economy has been crippled. Corruption by its government

and a sharp decline in oil prices play a vital role. Hyperinflation has also caused many Venezuelans to turn to bitcoin mining. Some people in Venezuela are even playing video games to earn bitcoin.

The IMF has reported that inflation levels in Venezuela are close to 700%. Apparently, Core Magazine

9

SPECIAL ARTICLES

the electricity in Venezuela is subsidized to the point that it is profitable to mine bitcoin or other cryptos. Venezuelan citizens are not the only ones who’ve turned to bitcoin.

Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have seen a dramatic increase in cryptocurrency activity.

Although not nearly as severely as Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil are also suffering from inflation.

African countries like Zimbabwe are experiencing extreme political, economic, and social unrest culminating in a recent coup d’état. Zimbabwe’s own currency collapsed in 2009. U.S. dollars, South African Rands, and a few other fiat currencies are being used instead. People in Zimbabwe have more faith in bitcoin because even fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar are hard to come by. The circulation levels are extremely low.

It seems as if mining bitcoin in Zimbabwe is too expensive because of high electricity costs. Apparently, there aren’t too many options or exchanges serving Zimbabwe.

Golix, perhaps the only legitimate crypto exchange in Zimbabwe, has seen demand skyrocket while supply is very limited. This is one of the reasons why bitcoin prices remain significantly higher in Zimbabwe compared to international markets.

The Golix company profile mentions that it is practically impossible to conduct international transactions for the average person in Zimbabwe. In cases where it is possible, maybe for the relatively well-off citizens, the process is described as “painful, time-lengthy, and expensive”. Unfortunately, rampant corruption, especially in the underdeveloped countries of the world 10

Core Magazine

has robbed the people of inalienable rights including financial freedom.

Extremely low salaries and exorbitant prices have inflicted the third-world countries with abject poverty. Even in countries like Pakistan which are comparatively much better off than the vast majority of African nations, the average yearly income of white collar workers is only $14,358. The fiat currency has been steadily declining in value against the U.S. Dollar and major international currencies. Although the majority of the population in Pakistan has not begun to adopt or take much interest in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, a new crypto called Pakcoin has been launched recently. Very few merchants are accepting it at the time of this writing, but these new initiatives might help pave the way for some sort of financial freedom and relief for the citizens of the third-world.

With the advent of globalization, availability, and accessibility of new technologies, it has become a lot of easier for people globally to conduct business. Digital currencies like Bitcoin could be the ultimate savior for dwellers of third-world countries, with the potential to be a lot more practical than local fiat currencies, especially when it comes to international commerce.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Andreas Antonopoulos - The Masterful Orator

A

ndreas M. Antonopoulos is a renowned bitcoin and cryptocurrency expert, enthusiast and promoter. He has been interested in cryptography and digital currencies since the 1990s. His gift of being able to explain complex technical 12

Core Magazine

concepts with unbelievable accuracy, by using his mastery over words, is truly remarkable and underrated. Perhaps there is no better explanation available for what bitcoin actually is and its significance than that by Andreas Antonopoulos.

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Born in 1972, Andreas comes from Greek and British roots. His personal biographical website says that he’s an entrepreneur, coder (computer programmer), public speaker, and author. Andreas’s LinkedIn account mentions that, in the early 1990s, he earned Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science and Networks & Distributed Systems from University College London, respectively.

In one Q & A session from August 2017, he was asked whether he thinks bitcoin will be banned in China and if cryptocurrencies will become mainstream. His responses were clearly among one of the most articulate and well explained. His use of light humor, practical scenarios, and real-world examples while advocating the use of bitcoin and other digital currencies keeps his audiences engaged.

Andreas Antonopoulos has probably spread, through his sound and well-informed knowledge of crypto, more awareness about the benefits of bitcoin than maybe anyone else on this planet. He’s well-known to professionally and accurately criticize the numerous times people inaccurately asserted that bitcoin will be dead. O’Reilly Media, publisher of Andreas’s 2014 book: “Mastering Bitcoin”, says that the book is one of the best technical resources on bitcoin. Another one of Andreas’s books, “The Internet of Money”, which was published in 2016, is considered the definitive guide on highlighting the relevance and importance of bitcoin.

Andreas Antonopoulos has great insight and foresight. In 2015, he pointed out in an interview that in the year 2000, 90% of internet startups failed, and nearly a trillion dollars worth of value was wiped out.

Shockingly, according to Andreas, that was the internet’s best year, even though it was at the time of the internet bubble. He thinks it was the turning point, partly due to the explosion in mobile technology, beginning of smartphones, and mobile internet.

If you follow Andreas Antonopoulos on Twitter, then you’ll realize that he’s a worldrenowned, prolific public speaker who has spoken to audiences in 49 countries.

Andreas is quite outspoken about the power of decentralization. This is evident when you watch a November, 2017 YouTube video. In the video, Andreas is asked what he likes the most about bitcoin. His response is that “[bitcoin] takes power away from centralized institutions and gives it to people”. Andreas is regularly asked what his views and predictions are regarding bitcoin.

The main topic of this interview was the bitcoin bubble. Andreas had basically been comparing and contrasting the growth and adoption process of the internet to that of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

According to Andreas Antonopoulos, there have been several bitcoin bubbles. He aptly analyzes each of the “bubbles” and how, with bitcoin, it was literally proven that you can bootstrap a global currency from nothing.

He also correctly predicted, as we now know, that bitcoin’s ups and downs in its prices were not over, would continue for the next 3 or 4 years, and that you could not expect bitcoin to be “steady”.

On December 5th, Roger Ver, a famous Core Magazine

13

SPECIAL ARTICLES

bitcoin investor with over 335K followers on Twitter, tweeted:

revealed, through a series of posts on Twitter and Patreon, that he had been struggling with his finances, his followers sent millions of dollars worth of bitcoins to his bitcoin address. Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift, a leading blockchain digital asset exchange, had one of the best possible tweets: Erik Voorhees

Although Roger Ver praised and acknowledged Andreas’s competence as a speaker on bitcoin, he didn’t forget to point out that Andreas didn’t invest in bitcoin during its early days.

Of course, had he done so, he would be a millionaire. Andreas Antonopoulos replied, in the most humble manner possible, that he had essentially been working for free. Most people are motivated by money and focus on acquiring as much of it as they can their entire lives. Andreas, however, is one of the very few members of our society who sincerely follow their passions and concentrate more on helping other people instead.

Soon 14

after

Andreas

Core Magazine

Antonopoulos

The contributions Andreas Antonopoulos has made to the world of cryptocurrency are truly remarkable. The University of Nicosia, which has the unique distinction of being the very first university to develop a Masters Degree program

for Digital Currency, sought the help and expertise of Andreas Antonopoulos.

Andreas was the main person responsible for designing the curriculum for this Masters program and he even does some co-teaching for the university.

After deciding to dedicate nearly all his time and attention to bitcoin and the

SPECIAL ARTICLES

cryptosphere in 2012, Andreas quickly built up a solid reputation and credentials. In 2014, the Senate of Canada was so impressed and convinced of his expertise on bitcoin that they asked him to speak about bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. Antonopoulos took on the role of expert witness as he testified during the hearings of Canada’s Banking, Trade, and Commerce Committee.

Primarily, Andreas’s testimony served to answer questions the committee had regarding the regulation of bitcoin. There seems to be a general consensus that Andreas’s testimony was instrumental in formulating public policy related to bitcoin worldwide. In 2015, even the Australian Senate Economics References Committee on Digital Currency requested Andreas Antonopoulos to deliver a testimony regarding bitcoin.

Apart from being a trusted authority on bitcoin and digital currencies, Antonopoulos is also an exemplary global citizen. He recently donated money to Lambda Digital in order to help the organization combat the discrimination faced by the LGBT community and people suffering from HIV. Via his Twitter account, Antonopoulos revealed that he also donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the EFF. Both organizations fight for the right to free speech and, while EFF specifically advocates for digital rights. Antonopoulos thinks that digital rights fall under human rights and that both should be supported.

Here’s what we, at the Core Group, have to say about Andreas Antonopoulos: “Andreas Antonopolous can simplify the

very essence of the cryptography inside of Bitcoin transactions, then explain all the use case examples of how bitcoin can save humanity; only a moment later he will say something with a tinge of sarcasm and a hint of anger that will make the room shake with laughter, and will keep the audience squirming in their seats. Andreas Antonopoulos is a remarkable human being and I hope to one day meet him.”

-Lori Brown Aka “Lorilikes” Core Group.

“Andreas Antonopoulos’ books and videos are some of the best resources newcomers can use to learn about cryptocurrencies and their true potential. His work helps the cryptocurrency ecosystem avoid becoming a speculative bubble, as those who pay attention to his words quickly learn it’s not about making money, but about changing the world.”

- Francisco Memória, Core Group.

Since falling in love with bitcoin in 2012, there has been one person for me, who has consistently delivered on the message of hope, freedom and purpose for cryptocurrency with such deliciously fresh articulation,. Andreas’ gravity of conviction is as mesmerizing as his vernacular. Without fear, he takes gigantic strides across the feifdom. As he stands before authority with sword and shield, reminiscent of the epic battle between David & Goliath, I am humbled by his tenacity, motivated by his ferocity and nourished by his exceptional clarity. There is no other person I have greater respect for in the Crypto ecology than Andreas Antonopoulus.

-Vincent Pereira Core Magazine

15

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Has John McAfee Been Marked For Death

By Government Officials In Belize?

16

Core Magazine

SPECIAL ARTICLES

O

n December 5, 2017, John McAfee contacted me, for an exclusive conversation that he allowed me to record. This was not our first conversation, and I knew in advance that John wanted to discuss a specific topic for the call, and I had an agenda of my own. He wanted to talk about the target he believes has been painted on his back by the government of Belize, and I wanted to get a few predictions from him and to talk about his presence in the crypto community.

I must get the fun part out of the way first.

During the 11 minute call, you will hear John McAfee as he does the following: • He predicts Bitcoin will be priced at $1 million by 2020.

• He says there is no such thing as a bitcoin bubble • says Bitcoin Futures are “just fine” and will “have absolutely no affect on crypto” because they are not relevant to one another.

• He explains McAfee coin as a way for the people to have a chance to shape the world they live in by helping in the process of choosing where venture capitalism will allocate funds. The people who will use the technologies and products of the immediate future will be able to have a say in the world around them.

“Bitcoin and other alternative cryptocurrencies are based on a paradigm that has no connection whatsoever with the existing paradigm of investment, where if you

get 10% a year you go Dam, that was good! No. If you get 1000% a year that is low and you have invested in the wrong cryptocurrency.” McAfee Continued “Cryptocurrencies do not obey the laws of existing investments. Things like bubbles- there can’t possibly be a bitcoin bubble things like corrections, what the fuck does that mean?”

“We are in a new Paradigm with no connection whatsoever with the old Paradigm. Banks are going to disappear. The Fed will disappear.

Governments, unless they can figure out a way to get taxes not based on income, they are going to disappear.

The world Has changed. “ I must be abrupt as I switch the topic because as much as I quickly ran through the motions with McAfee during our call, it feels cheap and easy to just regurgitate facts and opinions about bitcoin only to candy coat the unpleasant transitional paragraph between the fun stuff and the subject that is heavy on Johns mind.

What somber topic has John McAfee twisted in knots? McAfee made me promise to explain these things to the public. He believes he has a target on his back painted by the Government of Belize. He believes they want him dead, and he even tells me that his wife Janice has confessed to being an instrument in a plot to kill him. She is casual on this topic for the cameras, it is alarming.

Core Magazine

17

SPECIAL ARTICLES

All sounds very crazy, does it not?

Here is why I believe that John McAfee is in danger.

1. He claims to have incriminating evidence of despicable crimes against humanity in his possession. He says the crimes and scandalous acts are proven by audio and video footage and recordings that he obtained through a flawed security feature that he exploited to retrieve the data.

2. He is John McAfee, the INVENTOR of anti-virus software, the man absolutely can get the information that he says he has. If anyone can- it would be him.

3. His motive for coming out to the public with this corruption is clearly based on his instinct to survive in a world where he feels constantly threatened and at risk.

4. Even if he is wrong or “paranoid”, I would think that resting on the assumption that McAfee might have conjured up these circumstances from a hallucination is a lazy conclusion.

What good would it be to him to admit such paranoid thinking? Anyone who has ever partied knows that paranoia doesn’t announce itself proudly. This man firmly believes he is at risk - and he needs help- immediately.

5. Even though John is blunt, sometimes reckless and pointedly arrogant when addressing me- I still see the marvelous inventions that are his thoughts. The 18

Core Magazine

McAfee story does not end with some sleaze in Belize. It just doesn’t.

When I asked McAfee about the crazy Newsweek article last week about his revelations regarding corruption in Belize government officials. It is not hard to believe that his experience in security and virus protection would eventually be a way for him to get sophisticated files with sensitive information, from anywhere. John asserts that what he retrieved from the Belizian government incriminates esteemed officials and proves mass corruption including murder, human trafficking, and mayhem. His plan is to release 400 hours of surveillance and audio recordings that he alleges to be proof of the Belizian crime rings.

Whatever assumption people want to make about McAfee should be forgotten.

Focus on the human being who is in front of you. See a man who has more chivalry in his smallest finger than an entire country of men. He may be in some trouble, and he needs some backup.

Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

The CryptoRevolution with a Historical Perspective

B

itcoin’s rise has been complemented by the rise of Ethereum and a number of other altcoins. Ethereum’s market capitalization is now approximately $80 billion. Bitcoin almost reached $20,000 trading levels before correcting itself while ETH has been trading at over $800 and its price has just about doubled in less than a 2-week period. Not only have bitcoin and Ethereum experienced exceptional success in terms of value, other altcoins like Litecoin, Ripple’s XRP, and Qtum have also had a good run this year. While we are all aware of these impressive numbers, careful observers and

critics of the cryptosphere might question what exactly led to this crypto-revolution?

The 2008-2009 Financial crisis caused people to lose faith in the banking system and the financial institutions that they supported. People were looking for relief from their financial hardships and coincidentally this was also the time that the bitcoin whitepaper was released. The concept where the middleman (bank) is eliminated and payments can occur directly between sender and recipient were truly appealing.

Core Magazine

19

Blockchain News

There seems to be a general consensus that bitcoin was invented to serve primarily as a digital form of payment and possibly an asset.

Ethereum, on the other hand, was designed as a decentralized platform for application developers. One could argue that bitcoin and Ethereum complement each other and that both were created partly in response to a pressing need: financial freedom and more flexibility.

It seems as if history repeats itself because almost every tragic event documented in modern history is followed by a brutal revolution. Many historians agree that there are hardly any historical events that can rival the French Revolution of 1789, which shook the very foundations of Europe. This was an extremely tense and turbulent time when the cost of two loaves of bread was equal to someone’s monthly income.

Louis XVI was the last King of France because his execution by guillotine effectively ended the centuries-old rule of the monarchy. Louis XVI had involved France in costly wars and his lavish lifestyle along with the rest of the nobility had depleted the nation’s resources. France was left with huge debts which resulted in the suffering of the working class and peasants (the majority).

US president George W. Bush engaged the United States in a decade-long war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Bush also went to war with Iraq based on a loose assumption that Iraq was carrying Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). President Obama continued to engage the United States in different disputes across the world, including fighting off the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011.

20

Core Magazine

As most of us are aware, the United States is a country that’s heavily in debt. Recent estimates indicate that the US national debt is over $20 trillion. Part of what contributed to the 2008-2009 Financial crisis was America’s excessive and disproportionate spending on the defense budget at the expense of hardearned taxpayers money. When the citizens of a country have to suffer the consequences of financial and economic meltdowns, their reactions are usually in the form that fits the criteria of a revolution.

Even though the stock market is booming and the US unemployment sits at 4.1% (relatively low), the overall growth rate of the US economy has been fairly low for quite some time now. People worldwide have been struggling. Just a year after the Financial crisis of 2009, a huge wave of protests broke out in the Middle East. Armed with the power of social media in 2010, the Arab Spring revolutions spread across much of the Middle East area, dramatically starting in Tunisia when Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire. These revolutions consisted of a series of violent and non-violent protests against the financial hardships, lack of job opportunities (especially for the young workforce), and crippling poverty. Ruthless dictators had ruled over these countries for decades in totalitarian fashion. They had exhausted the country’s financial resources in order to live a selfish life of unimaginable opulence.

Although the citizens of America and much of the developed world might not have suffered nearly as much as the citizens of France centuries ago; or, like many of the citizens of the Middle East who ignited the

Blockchain News

Arab Spring, they still have suffered enough.

Wealth inequality exists in America and the developed world as well. Many people in America work on minimum wage which is not considered a living wage considering housing costs have risen sharply.

It seems like change is coming. John McAfee, the creator of McAfee’s old school anti-virus software, has boldly predicted that the Federal Reserve will disappear and maybe even governments. He’s even predicted that the price of a single bitcoin will be $1 million by 2020. While these predictions may seem unrealistic, there’s no denying that the landscape of the global financial world could be changing.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Ethereum along with their underlying blockchain technology could revolutionize the way most industries operate. This could potentially create many new job and career opportunities. Although the cryptorevolution is not a violent revolution, it has the potential to significantly affect and alter how governments and financial institutions operate. This is one of the main things most violent revolutions have sought to achieve.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

MAGAZINE

Adevertise with us press@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

21

Blockchain News

Cryptocurrencies to Keep an Eye On in 2018!

A

s we enter into 2018, there are a few cryptocurrencies that have stuck out and that you probably should keep an eye on. By no means is this article intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive list. Also, perhaps more importantly, the information in this article is not meant to promote or encourage any type of investment in these cryptocurrencies. The motive is to inspire further research and investigation of the crypto-market which has now a respectable market capitalization of over $600 billion 22

Core Magazine

(CoinMarketCap).

With that said, one of the cryptocurrencies to keep an on is Bitcoin Cash. Coinbase announced that it will fully support Bitcoin Cash (BCH). This means that it will become possible to trade and make payments with BCH via Coinbase. Support and update information for BCH on GDAX was also reported via Twitter by GDAX. More than likely, this news has caused Bitcoin Cash’s price to increase around 40% in a 24-hour

Blockchain News

span (CoinMarketCap). Bitcoin Cash (BCH) came into existence primarily due to scalability issues with bitcoin.

Generally speaking, supporters of cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin, like Bitcoin Cash, believe in increased block sizes. Therefore, block sizes with bitcoin cash are 8 MB compared to only 1 MB. Basically, BCH enthusiasts want to see faster transactions whereas the original bitcoin community doesn’t agree with this approach.

Regardless of their differences, for a huge crypto-exchange like Coinbase to accept Bitcoin Cash has increased its legitimacy. It should be interesting to see how the cryptocommunity continues to react to Bitcoin Cash.

Another cryptocurrency to look out for is Verge (XVG). This cryptocurrency places top priority on maintaining user anonymity and a high level of security.

Considering bitcoin’s scalability issues and slow transaction processing times, Verge aims to keep transaction times between 5 and 10 seconds. It accomplishes this by using the Simple Payment Verification (SPV) protocol with its Electrum wallet. With SPV, it is not necessary to download the entire blockchain. Only header information is needed to process transactions. Verge has been gaining momentum as its price has increased by 800%.

Many crypto-investors have also turned to Litecoin (LTC) this year because one of Litecoin’s priorities is to process transactions faster. Litecoin has increased in value by 8000%. This is many orders of magnitude greater than bitcoin. Litecoin transactions

can be completed in a mere fraction of the time compared to bitcoin’s transaction times.

Litecoin transaction costs are negligible.

Litcoin has also been around since 2011, which adds to its credibility and legitimacy.

Over the years, it has also become easier to acquire Litecoin. It’s worth noting, however, that Charlie Lee, the creator of the cryptocurrency has recently sold all of his LTC coins.

Qtum, a Chinese blockchain company, has found its place among the top 20 cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of over $4.5 billion. Like Ethereum, Qtum facilitates Smart Contracts and decentralized applications, but is designed in a way that makes it more practical for businesses to work with (according to Qtum’s official website). On December 17th, Qtum was trading around $30 USD, but has since jumped to nearly $70 at the time of this writing (CryptoCompare).

Coinbase recently surpassed the Youtube app to become the #1 most downloaded application on the Apple App store. This indicates that people are continuing to take more interest in cryptocurrencies. It would not be unreasonable to expect cryptocurrency market capitalization to surpass $1 trillion, at least by the end of 2018. However, what’s more important is if the underlying technologies behind cryptocurrencies continue to develop in a way that makes them conducive to mainstream adoption.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

23

Blockchain News

Wall Street Strategist Tom Lee Sees Bitcoin Hit $20,000 by Mid-2018

A

ccording to Fundstrat Global Advisors cofounder Tom Lee, the first major Wall Street strategist covering Bitcoin, the recent cryptocurrency price pullback just gave investors another opportunity to buy the 24

Core Magazine

flagship cryptocurrency, as he sees it reaching $20,000 by mid-2018.

“Revising mid-2018 Target to $20,000 from $11,500” - @fundstrat — Blockchain Sam Ro (@

Blockchain News

bySamRo) December 22, 2017 Lee started endorsing Bitcoin’s rise when it was still below the $5,000 mark.

According to him, last week’s correction that saw Bitcoin drop from its all-time high of over $19,000 to $13,600 was healthy for the cryptocurrency, so much so he raised his mid-2018 price target up from $11,500.

At press time one BTC is currently trading for $15,800, and Lee estimates the cryptocurrency’s fair value to be of $19,103, 21 % above its current levels. In a note, he said: “We are revising our mid-2018 target to reflect the surge in activity in the past few months — that is, the base of users is up.”

The strategist’s price target takes into account a projected unique IP Bitcoin wallet address increase of 50% by mid2018, with user activity rising by 10% from its current levels. Notably, back in August, Lee’s original prediction was for the flagship cryptocurrency to hit $6,000 by mid-2018, but he has since raised it twice now.

Per Fundstrat, the number of wallets and transaction activity per wallet help us explain “about 93% of Bitcoin’s rise” since 2013. Lee dismisses the idea of a speculative bubble driving Bitcoin’s value up and says that those who claim a bubble is inflating Bitcoin haven’t done their homework. He said:

deemed a bubble that’s only held by a few?”

Bullish on Bitcoin Bitcoin has risen over 1,900% this year, even if we take into account last week’s steep decline. Despite bubble rumors, investors and strategists are seemingly more bullish on Bitcoin than ever. As recently covered by Core Media, BlockTower Capital reportedly bet $1 Million on the cryptocurrency hitting $50,000 by the end of next year.

To Lee, Bitcoin will hit $25,000 by 2022, which spells bad news for BlockTower capital’s bet. Per his analysis, $11,000 is becoming a support price for BTC, followed by other support levels at the $10,131, $7,918, and roughly $7,000 marks.

John McAfee, the cybersecurity pioneer, and eclectic personality is also bullish, seeing BTC’s price hit $1 million by 2020. In the past, McAfee predicted the cryptocurrency’s new all-time high, a mere 24 hours before it occurred.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

“If someone says Bitcoin’s a bubble, it’s the smallest, least held bubble I’ve ever met (…) I don’t know very many institutions that own Bitcoin. So how can something be Core Magazine

25

Blockchain News

Monero Mining Botnet Infests Facebook Messenger as Mining Craze

A

s previously covered by Core Media, The Pirate Bay’s Monero mining botnet experiment, in which the torrent index started using JavaScript code to mine Monero using visitor’s CPUs, saw a Monero mining craze begin, using that same code. Its latest infected victim was oil pipeline giant Transneft.

According to cybersecurity firm TrendMicro, the Monero mining craze has now reached Facebook users. Security experts report a cryptocurrency mining bot is spreading via Facebook Messenger, in the Google Chrome browser for desktop.

Dubbed Digmine, it was first seen in South Korea but already spread to various countries including Venezuela, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

Given how fast its spreading, it’ll likely show up in other regions soon.

Digmine essentially masquerades as a link to a non-embedded video file that, in reality, 26

Core Magazine

is an executable script. Once the file is clicked on, the script downloads components from a server so it can install a Chrome extension to mine Monero. Then either streams a bogus video or manipulates the person’s account to send its link to their Facebook friends – if their account is set to log in automatically.

The researchers wrote: “A known modus operandi of cryptocurrency-mining botnets, and particularly for Digmine (which mines Monero), is to stay in the victim’s system for as long as possible. It also wants to infect as many machines as possible, as this translates to an increased hashrate and potentially more cybercriminal income.”

Interestingly, Digmine only works on Chrome, and on desktops. If the victim clicks on the link using another browser or a mobile device, it won’t work as intended.

Blockchain News

Digmine bypasses the Chrome web store, which extensions have to go through, using a command-line interface.

Once active on a victim’s computer, it uses its resources to mine the privacy-centric cryptocurrency. This, then, makes the PC feel sluggish and forces its fans to spin at an unusually loud level. The effects are similar to those caused by JavaScript-based miners, such as Coinhive and Cryptoloot.

Staying safe After finding Digmine, Trend Micro quickly contacted Facebook, which removed most links associated with it. The social network released a statement: “We maintain a number of automated systems to help stop harmful links and files from appearing on Facebook and in Messenger. If we suspect your computer is

infected with malware, we will provide you with a free anti-virus scan from our trusted partners. We share tips on how to stay secure and links to these scanners on facebook. com/help.”

To avoid infection on social networks, enable your account’s privacy settings, avoid unsolicited messages, and avoid suspicious links. The malware’s authors can upgrade it to hijack Facebook accounts down the line, experts note.

The Monero mining craze has gotten so big, bad actors already hijacked the CBS-owned Showtime websites to mine using visitor’s CPUs. Moreover, it forced Cloudflare to crack down on websites that didn’t ask for user permission.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

27

Blockchain News

Taxes on Cryptocurrency Effective January 1st, 2018 Continues

Taxes on Cryptocurrency ew taxes on cryptocurrency have been announced. Under the Trump Administration, a $1.5 trillion tax cut was recently passed. US President Donald Trump referred to it as, “the largest tax cut in the history of our country”. Although the bill is designed to slash tax rates for giant corporate companies, there has been a great deal of skepticism around it.

N

The bill also includes taxes on cryptocurrency. For example, bitcoin to ether trading transactions will no longer be exempt from tax. Before this bill, users of cryptocurrency were taxed, but usually only 28

Core Magazine

when the cryptocurrency was exchanged for US dollars or any other fiat currency; or, it was used to purchase an item.

There might have been some ambiguity about taxes on cryptocurrency, but it seems like this new bill has made it clear that cryptocurrency trading will be taxed. Kelsey Lemaster, a tax lawyer working for Goodwin Procter LLP, considered the bill to be bad news for crypto traders because every transaction they make will be taxed starting January 1st, 2018. May not be such a great way to ring in the new year if you’re a crypto investor.

Blockchain News

Since a legal framework for taxes on cryptocurrency is still in its infancy, exchanging one cryptocurrency for another had been categorized as “like-kindexchanges”. Under this type of categorization, you could exchange two similar types of assets without being taxed. It wasn’t until early 2014 when the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) announced its stance on cryptocurrencies. At the time, cryptocurrency was not recognized as a real currency. Instead, it was considered to be a “property”. So, the same kind of tax rules that govern traditional property would apply to cryptocurrency.

Coinbase refused to do this. It said that it had a policy of maintaining a certain level of privacy for its clients and turning over these reports would be against that policy.

Tax Evasion using Cryptocurrency According to the IRS, cryptocurrency “property” should be subjected to the same tax rules as traditional stocks and bonds.

Therefore, they must be reported on the same type of tax form: Form 8949. There seems to be a major problem when it comes to collecting taxes on cryptocurrency. Only 802 taxpayers documented crypto-currency transactions in 2016, according to IRS court papers. Martin Mushkin, a lawyer focusing on cryptocurrency laws, said that the number of these reports were “ridiculously low”. This might be a sign that people could be trying to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for tax evasion purposes.

It might just be a matter of time that more taxes on cryptocurrency related activity are imposed. Other crypto exchanges and businesses who deal in cryptocurrencies could eventually come under the scrutiny of the IRS. It might seem unfair that the new tax bill passed by the Trump administration will be taxing crypto-to-crypto trades, but it is reasonable to expect that citizens accurately report their earnings to the IRS, including those made from cryptocurrency.

However, the IRS had been battling Coinbase in court, and recently, a Court ruling required Coinbase to turn over certain customer information to the IRS. This includes customer social security numbers (aka tax ID numbers, records of account statements and activities, and even certain correspondences between the user and Coinbase.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Final Thoughts In an effort to collect taxes on cryptocurrency related business or trading, the IRS had requested that Coinbase report customer data to them. Coinbase has seen such a high volume of crypto trading that it recently experienced a major outage. The IRS demanded over three years’ worth of crypto-transactions made by its clients, but Core Magazine

29

SPECIAL ARTICLES

The central banks response to bitcoin and cryptocurrency

T

he Group of 7 (G7) accounts for nearly two-thirds of global wealth and almost half of the global nominal GDP. G7 members include the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. Consider central banks response to bitcoin. Although the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market cap is 30

Core Magazine

approaching $600 billion at the time of this writing (CoinMarketCap), this amount is still rather minuscule compared to the $263 trillion of net wealth belonging to the G7.

However, due to the remarkable growth in cryptocurrency activity, especially in 2017, will the central banks of G7, China, and the European Union give it more serious

SPECIAL ARTICLES

consideration?

Andrew Sheng, China Banking Regulatory Commission’s chief advisor stated just a few months ago that “Central banks cannot afford to treat cyber currencies as toys to play with in a sand box”. Obviously, Andrew’s statement is a bit of an exaggeration.

The banking sector has given bitcoin and cryptocurrency some attention, especially the blockchain technology. However, are bitcoin and cryptocurrencies a legitimate threat to the traditional financial transaction system controlled so tightly by the world’s central banks? John McAfee, perhaps most famous for his creation of the McAfee antivirus software, has asserted that the “Fed will disappear”. This seems like an outrageous claim, but McAfee’s views and opinions are still valued and respected by a number of people in the crypto community.

Central banks have enormous power and control over the circulation of fiat currency.

The daily circulation of fiat currency is around $5 trillion. The current circulation in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market is nowhere even close to this amount, but it’s growing rapidly. What banks should be concerned with most is that there’s a significant amount of money that’s circulating without their approval or involvement.

China, along with a number of other developed countries, has been working to develop a state-backed cryptocurrency.

Canada has introduced the Rivermont Crypto Fund. This fund will start by investing in bitcoin and ethereum and then gradually expand its investments into other cryptos, and maybe even a few ICOs. Canada has also been working on its own version of

cryptocurrency, called MintChip since 2012.

Estonia, a super-technologically advanced country, has attempted to introduce Estcoin, its own digital currency. Estonia is a very internet-friendly country offering numerous free public wifi-hotspots.The country believes that free internet should be considered a basic right of its citizens. European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi was quick to state that no EU member should try to introduce its own currency. This might be an example of central banks showing resistance against digital currencies because they might perceive them as a threat to their financial ecosystem.

Russia and Holland have begun to show interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies by launching their own projects. As we get ready to enter into 2018, it should be reasonable to assume that more countries and their governments will try to get involved in the cryptosphere. The current chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has refused to acknowledge bitcoin or cryptocurrency as “legal tender”. However, the former chair of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, remarked that virtual currencies “may hold long-term promise”. What’s interesting to note here is that Bernanke made that statement back in 2013, when bitcoin or cryptocurrency, in general, did not seem to be as much of a threat to the global dominance of central banks.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

31

Blockchain News

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency are becoming Mainstream

S

an Francisco-based payments and financial services company, Square, Inc., started selling bitcoins a few weeks ago. Square, Inc. has been actively trading as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for over 2 years now. Cboe, the largest U.S. options exchange, was the first to launch bitcoin futures. And now, bitcoin futures have also been launched by the global leader in futures exchange, the CME group.

These are just a few strong signals or developments indicating that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies might be going mainstream.

As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies begin entering the mainstream stage, 32

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

the current reality is still one where cryptocurrencies are traded on unregulated exchanges and P2P platforms. Is some kind of regulation necessary for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to be considered truly mainstream? Conventional bank accounts are FDIC insured which gives their users a reasonable level of confidence that their deposited funds will stay safe. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallets are not.

currencies and the blockchain that they’re based on because of their highly technical nature. Perhaps this is why many people also fall victim to fake news or the misinformation propaganda. For example, in June of 2017, it was falsely reported that Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, had died in a car crash. The circulation of this fake news may have caused the market value of Ethereum to fall by approximately $4 billion.

If government institutions are not or cannot regulate cryptocurrencies, then how or why should they insure them? A lot of questions, particularly about how to apply a legal framework to cryptos, remain unanswered.

When any technology or industry is in the process of “making it big” or going mainstream, there will always be people and organizations trying to bring it down because they might perceive it as a threat.

JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon called bitcoin a fraud and a bubble similar to the Dutch tulip bubble. In spite of these types of comments from public figures in the financial sector, blockchain technology seems to have the potential to disrupt a number of well-established industries. For instance, it seems that it might now become possible to dabble in real estate using a blockchain.

Bitfinex, one of largest Bitcoin exchanges, has reportedly been hacked on multiple occasions. The estimated loss was in the tens of millions of dollars. What might be equally as concerning is that we know very little about Bitfinex. One of the few things we do know is that it’s incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. US regulators have even fined Bitfinex for not following certain registration policies in the past.

Overstock.com, a billion-dollar online retailer, has been accepting bitcoin as payment Despite these issues, traders and investors for several years now. When reputable and continue to use Bitfinex and other bitcoin well-established companies start embracing and cryptocurrency exchanges. In fact, cryptocurrencies, it’s a sign that they might be Bitfinex is ranked second, right behind on their way to going mainstream. Even Bank Bithumb, in terms of 24-hour trading of America seems to be joining the bitcoin volume which runs into billions of dollars. and cryptocurrency world by developing Furthermore, the value and the market a cryptocurrency exchange system. There capitalization of bitcoin and cryptocurrency appears to be significant potential for bitcoin continues to rise faster than ever. and cryptocurrency to go mainstream.

Even after the latest cryptocurrency price rallies, especially in 2017, many people still do not understand these complex digital

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

33

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Tulip Mania Economics Outdated | New Resilient Bitcoin Unaffected

The Tulip Mania Hype

I

f you pay attention to the mainstream media, you have likely heard the term Tulip Mania in close connection with

34

Core Magazine

our beloved, bullish Bitcoin. The crypto community is abuzz with this goofy name, and it sounds almost as alarming as the formidable swine flu or worse yet the mad cow disease. The phrase Tulip Mania is far more alarming than the circumstance it describes.

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Tulips will not cause epidemic illness nor will a tulip’s beholder drift into a state of mental disarray, as the silly expression implies.

a young child where you would suddenly realize you had forgotten your pants? Usually, this brand of nightmare comes with an unreasonable obstacle or two that somehow Tulip Mania describes an economic prevents your pantsless bottom from safely phenomenon with embarrassing social taking cover. You try running away but your implications. The mania of the French- legs are made of the heaviest iron, and you can fashion-flower is usually mentioned in hardly move at a sloths pace. Sometimes you conjunction with widespread consumerism find shelter behind a tiny chair (or similarly related to extreme price spikes and sudden, useless object in a pants emergency). The sharp declines. It is a fancy way to say“You might point is we have all experienced some level of lose your ass. You might embarrass yourself.” disgrace, even if only in a bad passing dream.

The Back Story Of Tulip-Fever The origin of Tulip Mania points to a period between 1619 and 1637 where the unlikely “market” for tulips experienced such disproportionate heights that some desperate Dutch residents allegedly gave their estates in trade for a rare and highly desireable tulip bulb named “Viceroy”. One Viceroy was advertised in 1637 for ten times the average yearly wages. 1637 was also the year of the tulip’s sudden decline, which legend would have us believe, caused the financial ruin of many bulb-hype participants. The various historical accounts of this hyperinflated flower fiasco have been contested thousands of times in the centuries that followed this Dutch Golden Age. The Smithsonian says the floral hype was mostly a myth.

What Is The Relation Between Tulips and Bitcoin?

The exaggeration of events surrounding the meltdown of the tulip party has an underlying effect that brings the most delicate part of a human psyche out into the spotlight. Do you recall having a dream as

Media Influences Exploit Our Secret Fear Of Making Mistakes What happens to a human when reminded of an embarrassing moment? A discomfort rises warmly from the heart up to the neck and heats up even the coolest of cheeks, turning aloof faces into a telling shade of pink. This is a vulnerable state of being and it makes for an easy, moldable society if applied correctly.

Exploitation is a nasty subject though.

Why You Should Enjoy Saying “Tulip Mania Does Not Apply To Bitcoin.”

Tulip mania applies when society is without choices regarding their finances.

People have been led astray by unreasonable, strategic price swings. Bitcoin is an alternative form of currency. Using a peer to peer network without a central authority, bitcoin users are in control. We make the price and the dips. It is not manipulation it is merely the way peer-to-peer, decentralized payment networks operate. Each user is immediately creating value by using the coin. Of course, there will be new economic shifts and driving patterns being studied, and they are nothing like the days when Tulip Mania filled the people with Core Magazine

35

Blockchain News

unreasonable desires to spend frivolously.

What Is The Difference Between Banks and Bitcoin?

• A central authority does not govern Bitcoin. Let one man try to crumble it and he will be alone. With his crumbs.

• Bitcoin hath no ruler, no kingdom, and no slaves! Yes, I did use the word ‘hath’. Preserving SOMETHING from the past is the goal since we are demolishing the inefficient record keeping of the past and replacing it with public, immutable ledgers called blockchain. Let us keep the word hath.

• With Bitcoin, you will never have edited history because it is impossible to alter a confirmed block of data.

Nobody can be sneaky, so nobody feels cheated.

• All user payments are sent out from user command. Utilities, credit cards, the IRS, Law Enforcement are can waltz into your wallet and remove a payment. Bitcoin can be sent to a chosen wallet and only the wallet owner can send out. Banks are different. The bank decides when your paycheck is safe to allow withdrawals when to clear a deposit, and what to do with your funds when an overdraw request is made. Traditional banking permits service providers to remove money for payments in ACH transfers.

• Fiat is always at risk of being lost by a cloaked entity who has the ability to deny or grant your withdrawals using hidden information kept out of the eyes of the consumer.

• Bitcoin can be hacked if the user does not secure their wallet correctly. Once 36

Core Magazine

bitcoin gets sent out it is permanent.

Protect your information and passwords. Never give out a private key.

Confused?

Baffled by cryptocurrency, a frenzy has begun. Hundreds of headlines induce meaningless panic in readers with emotionally charged keywords such as mania, and bubble. In fair recognition of what motivates sensationalist, verbiage watch carefully for visual clues. Urgent messages on the news are coming from people who think that the sudden uprising of bitcoin price means certain and imminent doom.

Bubbles Are Relevant To Past Financial Institutions The exponentially rising bitcoin price is not in a bubble unless by bubble you mean giant, fluffy cloud of wonder. A bubble is temporary and guaranteed to burst, vanishing in an instant. If the Federal Reserve had created Bitcoin, perhaps, then, it would be a valid fear because the central hand of big brother is always a touch away from hitting the big red button that grants or denies us access to”our” money.

In a recent conversation with John McAfee, he enlightened me on the subject with simple and profound words.

“Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies do not obey the laws of existing investments. Things like bubbles- there can’t possibly be a bitcoin bubble. Things like corrections, what the fuck does that mean?” John McAfee as heard on the audio recording of our phone conversation from 12/5/2017

Blockchain News

A few days after the call McAfee Posted his thoughts on ‘bubbles Within my very own work group, we have varying opinions on the bubble concept. To read Francisco Memorias perspective on this topic visit this article: https://cryptocoremedia.com/bitcoin-

bubble-talk/ Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

37

Blockchain News

Opinion | Killing Net Neutrality Could Negatively Affect Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency

N

et neutrality is supposed to ensure that all traffic on the internet is treated fairly, equally or in the same way. If an ISP has to abide by the principle of net neutrality, then it cannot alter the speed with which you access certain websites or online content. Under net neutrality, ISPs can’t block or restrict access to websites or 40

Core Magazine

internet services as long as they’re posting legal content. Recently, the FCC chose to repeal net neutrality, which could turn out to be quite problematic for bitcoin and the cryptocurrency world in general.

In 2015, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) basically ruled in favor

Blockchain News

of keeping the internet “free and open”. On December 14th, 2017, FCC chairman Ajit Pai opted to reverse the decision on net neutrality.

If net neutrality goes away, giant American ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T could not be legally penalized for restricting access to bitcoin and cryptocurrency services and exchanges. Crypto exchanges like Coinbase are already having a tough time keeping up with all the trading and have experienced major outages recently.

If ISPs begin to slow down traffic, these outages could potentially be even worse.

Verizon already has a history of blocking access to certain internet services when it prevented its smartphone customers from being able to download and use Google Wallet to make payments back in 2011.

Although Verizon later reversed its decision, this shows that ISPs have the power to manipulate or control what happens on the internet to serve their own interests.

Therefore, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that they could try to manipulate the bitcoin and cryptocurrency world.

The telecommunications industry has expressed a great deal of interest in blockchain technology, It’s quite possible that bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges could enter into business partnerships that would allow them to create a monopoly over the internet.

Furthermore, ISPs could begin to give preference to certain bitcoin or crypto wallets.

websites in terms of traffic or popularity, the end-users (customers) could be charged extra to use them. Since the internet continues to grow and evolve so rapidly, it is difficult for any entity to properly monitor it. If ISPs are given the free hand, it could definitely impact the cryptocurrency market.

At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at nearly $20,000. ISPs could even manipulate crypto news outlets and online resources that investors use. Live streaming pricing data for cryptocurrencies might not be as accessible. This could greatly affect or influence trading in a negative way. At this point, the best we can do is hypothesize or speculate. However, we should all do our part in staying informed and, if possible, take action to protect our financial rights and freedom.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Slack Channel here https://join.slack.com/t/ coregroup-global/shared_invite/

Professor Emin Gün Sirer, who is the codirector of Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts at Cornell University, has stated that since peer-to-peer applications are not usually ranked among the top Core Magazine

41

Blockchain News

IOTA’s Data Marketplace Project Aims To Securely Monetize Data

T

he IOTA Foundation, headquartered in Berlin, identifies itself as a nonprofit organization. IOTA’s market capitalization has increased from approximately $4 billion to over $10 billion over the past couple of weeks (CoinMarketCap). A rise in its value is primarily due to the company’s announcement that it intends to create a decentralized data marketplace. For this project, IOTA will be collaborating with Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, and Fujitsu.

42

Core Magazine

So, how will this project be implemented?

Basically, the company’s tokens are designed to be traded on the Internet of Things. The “things” are usually physical devices such as appliances or even vehicles. The information produced by the devices can be reliably, safely, and securely stored on a decentralized ledger. Once this data has been stored, it cannot be corrupted. If anyone wants to acquire this data, then they can easily do so via a seamless transaction with the owner of the data. There is also no transaction fee.

There are over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are

Blockchain News

generated every 24 hours. Unfortunately, almost all of this data turns to “cyber waste” because there’s currently no effective way to monetize, sell, or distribute this data securely. With this new data marketplace project, a viable solution will be provided to harness the data.

Unlike the majority of cryptocurrencies that use a standard blockchain to conduct transactions, IOTA utilizes a “tangle”.

The architects of tangle have based its design on a mathematical, directed, acyclic graph. A *tangle* is used instead of a regular blockchain because blockchain transactions have become very expensive.

Furthermore, using a blockchain could create scalability issues as the IoT (Internet of Things) network grows larger.

On the IoT network, there are no miners.

There’s no concept of mining. Instead, the entity that initiates a transaction does so by also validating two randomly chosen previous transactions. Both (previous) chosen transactions also refer to two additional previous transactions.

The founders of IOTA are quick to point out that the data marketplace is currently in its experimental or beta stages. Cryptocurrency researchers at MIT discovered certain faults in IOTA’s security. However, this issue

has now been resolved. Relatively minor, fixable, and temporary issues or setbacks shouldn’t be too concerning.

It’s best to look at the broader picture.

Another minor setback also came when there was some confusion regarding IOTA’s exact relationship with Microsoft and the other conglomerates.

Initially, it was thought that IOTA had entered into proper and official partnerships with these companies, but this was clarified when it was learned that these companies had taken on the role of “participant” by deciding to test out IOTA’s data monetization project.

When this was announced, IOTA’s price dropped but it’s still trading at levels which are significantly above those from last month (November, 2017).

Reports have surfaced that Samsung, Cisco, and Volkswagen will also be working cooperatively with IOTA on its decentralized data marketplace. While the bulk of attention is focused around bitcoin or ethereum, IOTA and Ripple’s XRP should also be noted for their commendable gains.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

43

Blockchain News

Zcash Announces Development Plans

T

he Zcash company has announced its plans to enhance usability and security features for the year 2018.

The company claims that mobile phone users will be able to securely process transactions using the cryptocurrency. The original idea behind the development of the Zcash digital currency was to offer a greater level of anonymity for the existing bitcoin users. Even though Zcash transactions are visible on its blockchain, pertinent transaction details such 44

Core Magazine

as the identity of the receiver and sender and the amount being transferred can be hidden.

Hiding these transaction details is an optional feature and transactions that are hidden using this feature are referred to as “shielded transactions”. It can be argued that this could potentially provide a gateway for money-laundering or other illicit activities.

These are real concerns because there have been 170+ reported bitcoin-laundering cases

Blockchain News

in Japan recently. However, a closer look at how Zcash works does reveal that third parties can ask users for their “view keys”. This will allow the third party to verify and even audit the pertinent details of the transaction.

The concept of zero-knowledge cryptography is implemented into the Zcash blockchain. According to the Director of Research at Coin Center, Peter Van Valkenburgh, what zero-knowledge cryptography “potentially gives you is the ability for you to prove something about a data structure without revealing the data inside the data structure”. It’s kind of like providing a valid social security number to prove your eligibility to legally work, but that’s a gross oversimplification. It has only been little over a year (October 2016) since Zcash made its debut, and the cryptoworld will be looking out for the upgrades that have been scheduled for 2018.

The first scheduled update is called “Overwinter”. It is scheduled for June 2018. Not much has been disclosed regarding the details of this upgrade except that the security around network upgrades will be improved. The Zcash roadmap blog also mentions that network upgrades will be handled more safely, including “governance contention”. The use of the term “governance contention” is vague at best as of right now.

time and memory requirements of shielding transactions. What most people might be looking forward to with this upgrade is that “carrying” mobile wallets will become practical.

Because almost everything about Zcash and most other cryptocurrencies is opensource, an international community of researchers and developers are constantly trying to develop ways to improve the existing technology and infrastructure.

The Zcash blog regarding updates ends by stating that they’ll be working on trying to accommodate (theoretically) an unlimited number of transactions and “private and scalable smart contracts”.

At the time of this writing, Zcash is trading for around $475 with an impressive market capitalization of over $1.35 billion (CoinMarketCap). These numbers are impressive considering Zcash has only been around since October 2016. Still, what concerns many reputable investors is that the cryptocurrency market is extremely volatile. With that said, Zcash is among one of the cryptocurrencies to keep an eye on as we begin the new year.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

The second scheduled update is called “Sapling” because it will incorporate updates to the Sapling protocol. It’s scheduled for September 2018. The main goals of this upgrade are to significantly cut down on the processing Core Magazine

45

Blockchain News

Opinion | Mainstream Media’s Bitcoin Bubble Talk Helps Cryptocurrency

M

ainstream media outlets and other financial publications have been trying to smear bitcoin for years now, so much so that most bitcoiners started ignoring these claims., although they’re arguably helping the cryptocurrency ecosystem grow. Back in 2013, when one bitcoin was still worth $84, Whistling in the Wind published a story

dubbed “The bitcoin bubble has burst.”

In it, the author stated that it “finally happened” and that once we looked at the charts it was clear all was left to do was “watch its steady an inexorable decline.”

Per that post’s author, there was no reason to see why there shouldn’t be a bit of smugness in his words, as bitcoin’s “crash” mirrored other crashes, and allowed us to Core Magazine

49

Blockchain News

draw conclusions on how an economy would operate without a central bank. The author’s words certainly didn’t age well, as bitcoin is currently trading at $17,650 and recently hit a new all-time high above $17,900, according to data from Cryptocompare.

Although the bubble talk has clearly been around for years, it has been intensifying due to bitcoin’s recent heights. Recently, various Wall Street personalities and financial news outlets have been comparing bitcoin’s growth to the 17th-century tulip bulb bubble, to the dot-com bubble, to the South Sea bubble, and to the housing bubble.

Vice News recently published a video dubbed “This is what it’s like to be addicted to bitcoin.” In the video, Jay Kang tells us his bitcoin story, which he calls his “life on the bitcoin bubble,” where he somehow doesn’t remember any good moments but only crashes. In the video, Kang admits he gambled away three bitcoins in a soccer game between two teams he didn’t even know when he heard about China’s cryptocurrency crackdown.

What they’re showing us is their bias.

Is This A Bitcoin Bubble?

The short answer here is: we don’t know. An asset’s price is typically derived from its fundamentals, defined as the aspects that asset has that make it valuable.

These fundamentals could be the income earned from dividends, the company’s cash flow, or the rent a property will yield.

Bitcoin is a currency, it doesn’t pay dividends, there’s no rent involved, nor is it attached to a national economy like fiat currencies. The world has never seen anything like Bitcoin, and in search for fundamentals some have looked at its limited supply, regulated by its own technology, and to its number of users.

Truth is, economists don’t know how to value bitcoin yet. It is uncharted territory to which historical examples may or may not apply.

All we truly know is we are witnessing a new phenomenon, which can either be a complete failure,or the emergence of the people’s money.

Yet, mainstream outlets keep trying to smear bitcoin, with headlines such as “Is This shows us that Kang (probably) has Bitcoin a Bubble? 96% of Economists a gambling problem and that he didn’t Say ‘Yes”. When JP Morgan CEO Jamie buy bitcoin for the right reasons – he Dimon compared bitcoin to the Dutch bought the currency as an investment, tulip bubble, the media went crazy over it, hoping it would make him money. Later yet most (or all) neglected to mention that, on in the video, however, he has the nerve as a matter of fact, the “tulipmania” story to add that “everybody’s a genius right has been completely distorted throughout now because everybody’s getting rich.” the years. Per these ludicrous headlines, bitcoin has already died over 200 times.

Vice’s video, much like various mainstream media articles seem to be trying to There’s no other good store of value fill the cryptocurrency community With all of the above being said, many and the unsuspecting public with may argue bitcoin’s fees are currently fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). stopping it from being a currency, hence most 50

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

people just buy it as an investment. Most and gold. Out of these, only one can’t be may buy it as an investment, partly thanks manipulated, or transferred without the to the media’s ludicrous headlines, and need of an intermediary, for example. partly due to FOMO (fear of missing out).

Bitcoin is censorship-resistant money that’s Either way, once their money is on the here to stay. All the media’s bitcoin “bubble” line, they’ll study the cryptocurrency and talk is doing is showing cryptocurrency will then see the big picture. They’ll see to the world. Coinbase, one of the U.S.’s traditional savings accounts don’t even most popular cryptocurrency exchange, allow people to keep up with the pace of recently surpassed the 10 million user actual inflation, they’ll see central banks mark, with Blockchain.info going past control the currencies people use, and 20 million. In the words of Oscar Wilde: manipulate them to keep interest rates low.

“There is only one thing in life worse than being Moreover, they’ll notice stocks, bonds, and talked about, and that is not being talked about.” estate are all in a bubble, as the economy has reached its “maximum sustainable output,” Francisco Memoria something that hasn’t happened since franciscom@coregroup.info 2007 – and we all know what happened next. Only two options are left: bitcoin

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

Core Magazine

51

Blockchain News

We also speak Spanish

52

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

AirDrops- A Crypto Hobby or A Viable Source Of Income?

What Are AirDrops? irdrops are becoming a common marketing tool for coin projects.

Whether you are a recent addition to the world of cryptocurrency or if you have been around since Satoshi Nakamoto was still writing the Bitcoin Whitepaper, you probably know what an “AirDrop” means to crypto enthusiasts. Let us first look at the definition of the term as defined by Google’s built-in dictionary.

A

When

searching

the

definition

of

“Airdrops” you find this: air·drop /noun 1. an act of dropping supplies, troops, or equipment by parachute from an aircraft. verb 1. drop (such things) by parachute.

More recently, approximately 7 years ago Apple devices got a new feature, this is where the modern AirDrop was first seen.

Apple AirDrops are similar to bluetooth file sharing, and much like the old stuff-fallingCore Magazine

53

Blockchain News

from-a chopper definition, this is about things being delivered from one party to another.

AirDrops to those involved in the world of cryptocurrency are events during which a coin or tokenized project distributes tokens or coins to early adopters, totally free.

Interestingly, the idea of something being delivered, or supplied by an aircraft is quite well aligned with the more modern association used in the cryptosphere. To members of the crypto community, an AirDrop means free tokens or coins that are usually given to participants as a gift, and often times this free gift turns into a substantial amount of money when exchanged. Who says no to free money? Even though the freebies in an airdrop don’t fall from a military chopper, like the term used to imply, the airdropped tokens or coins do seem to magically appear from the sky since usually, the only requirement is the participant’s knowledge that the AirDrop has been scheduled and ownership of that particular token or coin digital wallet. Sometimes as a part of the criteria to be on the receiving end is that the wallet owner holds a certain amount of a specified cryptocurrency.

An example of an airdrop that had tons of participants is The Deep Onion project who has risen from $0.11 to $3.14 at the time of writing. OmiseGo, a project who held a very popular airdrop, required participants to have Ethereum. The coins started at $0.60 in value and are now worth $14.50 at the time of writing. That is a huge jump, and many people received thousands of them for free!

54

Core Magazine

A coin airdrop may be done on any blockchain. The most popular ones are bitcoin and ethereum but we see them on Komodo, NXT, Waves, and many others as well.

Be Careful!

Due to the phenomenon of the rise in crypto awareness, with the value has come many opportunistic scam artists. Always stay on your guard, because where there is potential to profit there is potential for abusive activity, and with the mostly concealed user base, criminals like cryptocurrency. They ruin all the fun, so please make sure to exercise good judgment. Do you due diligence and make sure the project you are working with is actually a viable, working project. Even beyond this, you should verify that the people claiming to give the tokens away are not imposters. Never share passwords and more importantly NEVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE KEYS WITH ANYONE NO MATTER WHAT or you will surely be scammed.

How To Get In On The Action If you have not yet, you should register an account at bitcointalk.org and try to frequently post and reply to others in the forum to help increase your ranking therewhich leads to better inside deals and special invitations to AirDrop clubs. It is the best way to keep up to date with news and sometimes you must have a certain amount of time in the forum before you can even apply to some of the AirDrops. There are also many Facebook groups, just do a quick search using the term airdrop.

Blockchain News

Why Does Anyone Give These Freebies?

To raise awareness for their cryptocurrency project what better way to secure loyalty from early adopters than to offer them a reason to hang around.

Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

What Are They For? The free coins or tokens you receive are mostly worthless at the start. Most people will probably try to sell them on exchanges once they are able to do so. The rare beauties like bitcoin will be worth A LOT more than they start out at.

Can you imagine being one of the adopters who received hundreds and even thousands of free bitcoin? If anyone from those days managed to hold on to a few- they might be millionaires now.

At the start of this post, there was no satisfactory definition available in Urbandictionary.com’s database for the term “AirDrop”. So we added one and it was accepted a moment ago. Check it out here for laughs but look for the creator named Lorilikes or you are going to see unpleasant definitions. Read at your own risk. -> UrbanDictionary.com Core Magazine

55

Blockchain News

Crypto Hedge Funds On The Rise

T

he number of crypto hedge funds has increased dramatically in 2017.

Currently, there are over 100 crypto hedge funds and what’s more impressive is that more than 80% of them have been launched in just the past year. Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s largest financial 56

Core Magazine

services firm, has determined that hedge funds invested approximately $2 billion in the cryptocurrency industry.

Michael Novogratz, former hedge-fund manager and partner at Goldman Sachs, is planning to launch a $500 million crypto

Blockchain News

hedge fund. What’s surprising is that Novogratz thinks crypto is the “biggest bubble of our lifetimes”. His statements and actions are clearly contradictory in nature because he has also predicted that bitcoin’s price will surge to $40,000 by the end of 2018.

According to data tracking company HFR, crypto hedge funds have yielded gains of over 1600%. HFR currently offers two investable indices: HFR Blockchain Composite Index and HFR Cryptocurrency Composite Index. The HFR Blockchain Composite Index focuses on investments in the blockchain architecture while the HFR Cryptocurrency Index deals with funds that trade in cryptocurrencies.

to Pantera Capital, which has yielded a whopping 24,004% return. Hedge fund company, Typhon Capital Management, will be introducing a new crypto hedge fund next year. The initial goal of this fund will be to invest in ICOs and various cryptocurrencies.

The company’s CEO says that they are more confident now in investing their client’s money into the cryptosphere.

Crypto hedge fund manager, Johnny Steindorff, made investments in bitcoin, Ethereum, and Qtum through his company Focus Investments, which he started in 2014.

One of Steindorff ’s funds even performed better than bitcoin if you do the calculation from 2014 up till today. Steindorff along with a few other veteran cryptocurrency investors have now launched Distributed Global, a promising new set of crypto funds.

HOLD 10 Index, which gauges that performance of the crypto-market by keeping track of the top 10 biggest coins, Although the crypto-market remains revealed that the value-weighted index of volatile, it continues to attract enthusiasts the top crypto-assets “gained a mere 1226%”. and investors from all over the world. Crypto hedge funds might still represent a relatively Crypto hedge fund BlockTower Capital’s small percentage of the cryptosphere.

CIO, Ari Paul, classifies cryptocurrencies However, their rise, especially in 2017, as hyper-volatile, emphasizing the fact that indicates that we might continue to see bitcoin’s value has dropped by 80% on 5 increased activity in this sector. different occasions. He also mentions that, at present, challenges remain around how Omar Faridi to securely hold cryptocurrency and how to omar@coregroup.info regulate it. Despite these risks, at least 84 new crypto hedge funds have been launched this year. This number is huge considering that there are only a little over 100 crypto hedge funds in total and that they began to start up in 2011.

One of the most impressive gains of this year is by a crypto hedge fund belonging Core Magazine

57

Blockchain News

Blockchain Humanity | Technology As A Catalyst For Higher Intelligence

B

lockchain humanity is a phrase that comes with a certain value. If your first reaction to the term blockchain humanity is to roll your eyes, that may be a sign that you have “heard it all before’. I can almost hear my own dad saying something like “sounds like hippy talk”. Blockchain technology is a catalyst for higher human intelligence, and everyone on earth will soon be faced with this truth, and it is a blessing of many gifts.

58

Core Magazine

Blockchain Humanity Will Not Erase The Past The human experience, up until recent years, has been recorded using methods that are deemed reliable but incomplete. This means that we transfer the information in ways that are trustworthy, like online writing outlets and forums, books, emails, videos, and photographs. These are all suitable ways to share information, however, there are flaws to each of these options.

Blockchain News

Human history has been filtered and refined by central governments and groups who held a position of power over society.

Before computers, typewriters, photography and even ahead of modern mankind, the people passed all information along through storytelling, and through the creation of hand-scribed books. These handmade compilations were some of the only documented accounts of what life was for the people pre-dating modern technologies.

seems like the same legends, myths and even history which is taught as truth. There are common themes, similar characters and remarkably matching storylines to many history lessons, religious texts and scientific studies. Pereria reminds the reader that in the years before modern record keeping and technology, some of the information passed along through the divided people were not different at all- they were only being recalled in new and evolving languages.

Gross Manipulation Of History Leads To Repeated Mistakes Immeasurable numbers of texts and irreplaceable scriptures were subject to censorship, religious pruning and in many circumstances, humanity lost enormous pieces of its past. The flaw is painfully evident in these types of written history since we simply cannot go back to confirm or retrace the steps that have been erased.

“The reason why there are so many historic stories across the different cultures of the world revealing the same characters and events is because they are the exact same characters and events, only told in the new languages that were created.”

Vincent Pereria, author of Centuries explained

“Although the scriptures themselves are authentic, the compilation of these scriptures into a Bible is not, in my opinion complete.” Vincent Pereria, the Author of Centuries states. The author explains with an example. “One such book that is omitted is the Book of Enoch, written

by Noah’s grandfather and referred to in the Bible itself...”

Manipulation Of Facts Means Mistakes Could Happen Again The gross manipulation of the recorded sequence of events that took place on earth, along with an underdeveloped understanding of the sciences made a very blurry backdrop for the next generation to work from. The problems that arose for civilizations of our ancestors seem to be cycling on a repeating loop through the centuries.

As Pereria points out in Centuries,his book, which is intended as a historical supplement to the existing biblical record; there are parts of the puzzle that are missing. Of the history that was preserved through the ages, many cultures have their own adaptation of what

Have you heard the old cliche,”History repeats itself ”? When you consider the great strides mankind has taken with the incredible technology we really should be able to alter the path at least enough to prevent ourselves from forging a straight road to our own demise AGAIN. Core Magazine

59

Blockchain News

Recognizing The Cycle Of Omission Is Not Enough KNOWING that we are cycling is not enough to change the course of our legacy, yet this awareness is the cornerstone of the buildout of our future as a species. It is true that we have been repeating the mistakes of our ancient families, however, the shielded truth and the concealed events of our human history greatly reduced our ability to learn from these concealed events. This is no longer a valid excuse for our future shortcomings as a species.

Accountability Is This Way Through Blockchain Blockchain technology is complex but it is the most clever upgrade humanity has come to, in this era of information. The things that make a blockchain different than other methods of recording were explained 60

Core Magazine

by David Brown the Chief Technology Officer at R3 in a broken down cluster of features. He called the 5 traits “The Blockchain Bundle�. The blockchain bundle is comprised of the following: Consensus - In the blockchain model, each user And each transaction is verified multiple ways by unrelated parties.

Validity- Once a transaction is confirmed it is considered valid and correct and is permanently sealed into the public ledger.

Uniqueness - The blockchain offers solutions for problems that apply uniquely to the users, no matter what the blockchain is used for.

Immutability- once a transaction is verified, valid and recorded in a block it cannot be hidden or altered.

Each block is added to the chain of blocks representing all the events or transactions that have taken place. You

Blockchain News

can’t erase, undo or manipulate block data that is already confirmed.

Authentication - users authenticate transactions as they get confirmed and recorded, then that transaction is closed and irreversible and forever traceable without revealing too much actual private data of the people behind the wallet addresses.

All of these features can play a crucial role in the better accounting of our human journey so we can collectively grow from our mistakes and lessons learned. This came to mind in a creative tweet volley between the effervescent @Stellabelle on Twitter that inspired this entire train of thought.

The Crypto Slothicorn was seen tweeting that people should study the reasons the Roman Empire fell - because as the lovely Crypto-Super-Talent further explained, she knows what is commonly accepted to be true about people and that is the tendency to make mistakes repeatedly. To my shock and delight, I had the epiphany that we may have the solution that eliminates bad replays of our historical faux pas. What if we simply looked at the past on the blockchain and altered the next moves?

Blockchain Humanity Is The Way Forward Can you imagine for a moment a world where history is never erased because it is all stored, confirmed and permanent in a factual public accounting of humankind and their lives? It is not (yet) possible to go back to the era predating technology, and therefore we have many gaps and unclear explanations of the past. When censorship was the popular way to “undo” something, chunks of time and history were hostilely removed from our

recollections leaving much unsettled.

This blatant act of robbery will never happen again, with the help of modern data sharing. Eventually, we will be able to say with total certainty, what happened along our timeline to create each event. Ideally, this will be a humanity cloud that stores the story of our species in a way that cannot be blotted off or patched up.

Blockchain Humanity - A Road Paved With Lessons Learned Coming from a position of trustless accounting in a publicly kept ledger could be the difference between “history repeating itself ” and humanity reaching a higher level of intelligence- like AI. By referencing the cloud of safely kept data and seeing the truth of how our people have done everything humans do, we might eliminate the paths that previously led to misfortune and instead take an alternate road paved with lessons learned.

To Be Continued For The Rest Of Our Time On Earth.

Now Accepting Contributions To This Forming BrainStorm.

Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

61

Blockchain News

Australian Government Cryptocurrency | Path to a StateBacked Digital Currency

P

lans to Create an Australian Government Cryptocurrency An Australian Government Cryptocurrency. Australia’s Reserve bank reported that they had been examining cryptocurrencies and could create a virtual currency backed or based on the Australian dollar. It could be argued that counterfeit versions of this crypto could be created.

However, difficult to copy intrinsic 62

Core Magazine

features and signature properties could be incorporated into its design to prevent this type of fraud.

Estonia and Lebanon have also been planning to develop their own versions of digital currencies. Even Canada has worked on its own digital currency. A few months ago, Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group and Japan Post Bank announced that

Blockchain News

they wanted to launch Japan’s own virtual currency right around the time of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Dubai, a popular tourist destination and business hub in the Middle East, has issued its own state cryptocurrency.

It’s quite possible that these developments have influenced Australia into thinking about implementing its own digital currency.

For now, Australia has shelved its plans citing concerns that it could negatively affect Australian banks. This might be a temporary thing because many Australian startups have been asking the Australian government to consider their proposals regarding a statebacked cryptocurrency.

Australian Startups Focusing on Cryptocurrency The Australian government had been reviewing proposals by fintech startups advocating the necessity of a governmentbacked cryptocurrency. According to FinTech Australia chief executive, Danielle Szetho, a state-backed cryptocurrency could increase people’s trust and confidence in using cryptocurrencies. FlashFX, an Australian startup company based in Sydney, was among one of the startups that had expressed interest in working on a cryptocurrency endorsed by the Australian government. Recently, FlashFX acquired a financial services license which would allow it to make overseas money transfers by using blockchain technology.

Cryptocurrencies have been rising in popularity in Australia. CoinJar, a reputable cryptocurrency exchange based in Melbourne, has grown rapidly since its inception in 2013. It has accumulated more than 70,000 customers and has helped them successfully

complete transactions now totaling more than $100 million. Power Ledger, which has the distinction of being Australia’s very first startup to generate funds via an ICO, leverages blockchain technology to help people exchange renewable energy assets.

AgriDigital is another promising Australian startup that uses blockchain technology to make agricultural supply chains more effective.

Although these startups have been using blockchain technology to conduct their operations, they’re still processing payments using traditional fiat currencies. This might be due to a lack of trust and questions over the stability of cryptocurrencies. Perhaps this is why AgriDigital is also among one of the companies that have approached the Australian government about helping it issue a state-backed cryptocurrency.

Conclusion Despite a recent market crash, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have had a sensational year as their values increased exponentially.

A very large number of people firmly believe in the technology on which cryptocurrencies are based. The Australian government, along with the governments of other countries around the globe, will not be able to ignore or suppress the booming crypto-market.

China tried, this year, to curb crypto activity by banning centralized crypto exchanges and ICOs, but the people found ways to bypass state-imposed regulations.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

63

SPECIAL ARTICLES

64

Core Magazine

https://www.komodoplatform.com

Supernet News

Komodo Makes Successful Bitcoin Cash Swaps

G

racefully hiding in the #tradebots channel in Komodo slack are the pioneers of the latest atomic swap, that of Bitcoin Cash. This is the very first Bitcoin Cash atomic swap ever made. A cross chain atomic swap refers to a swap between two blockchains that does 66

Core Magazine

not go through a medium of exchange or on a centralized server. The most common medium of exchange is Bitcoin.

In the process, Komodo received some positive press from major media outlets including Reddit.

Suprenet News

Contrary to some articles BTC won’t disabled in BarterDex, except during periods of high mempool congestion (when BTC atomic swaps are very likely to fail).

Meanwhile BCH will soon be integrated: The motivation behind adding Bitcoin Cash was that of a high degree of traffic on the Bitcoin network; congestion of unconfirmed transactions. Unfortunately, in this case, atomic swaps are impossible to do and they must be put on hold until the transactions clear. All of these problems are occurring due to the Bitcoin communities unwillingness to increase the block size to allow more transactions per second to occur. As of December 8th, there is a total of 200,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be processed on the Bitcoin network. Komodo’s hand was forced, adding Bitcoin Cash to BarterDEX was essential.

“BCH is a high volume bitcoin protocol coin and is poised to become the payments coin that is used; as bitcoin, itself won’t be able to due to the tx fee problem caused by the mempool backlog. But we are coin agnostic and just want to provide the ability for people to trade the coins they want to trade. By giving people the most choices I believe it makes it the most attractive” - JL777 With a market cap of 15 billion, Bitcoin Cash certainly made

a splash upon its arrival. To be the very first to make an atomic swap for such an important coin in the cryptocurrency space is quite some achievement. Bitcoin Cash, unlike its twin Bitcoin, is an alternative, or some might say a hedge, against large transactions fees and long transaction times on the Bitcoin network. With the Bitcoin network coming very so bloated with transactions, some large names such as Roger Ver have backed the rebellion against Bitcoin and are pushing for Bitcoin Cash. Unfortunately, it may take time for Bitcoin Cash to become a household name like Bitcoin is.

Another coin that made its first atomic swap is legacy coin Blackcoin.

Blackcoin has existed for quite some time dating back to 2014. Blackcoin states that it is “original Proof of Stake” coin and it has overtime updated the Proof of Stake protocol which is now in version 3.0.

All of these cross chain atomic swaps are of course made on the Komodo BarterDEX. The BarterDEX is a piece of software that allows users to do atomic swaps easily. BarterDEX has just had another upgrade, that of v0.7.7-beta. If you wish to give it a try, head here to download it.

3rdstryker 3rdstryker@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

67

wavesplatform.com

Waves News

WAVES Launches Waves Client 1.0

F

inally, the awaited Waves client 1.0 has arrived. The client was revealed in Amsterdam at a release party that invited Waves investors, journalists and connected projects such as Deloitte, Primalbase, Oceanlab and Wavesnode. The event also starred Sasha Ivanov, the CEO of Waves, who gave a rundown of where Waves is at now and where it is moving.

The Amsterdam release party was a success.

Investors were able to test out the client individually, as well as listen to various talks and learn about upcoming projects on the Waves platform. The new Waves

client interface itself has been completely reworked in order to give the user an online banking experience. The client is aimed to be accessible to new users as well as more advanced users. The main feature that must be stressed is that the platform is well rounded, in that it will satisfy all the needs of upcoming businesses. At the end of the presentation, Sasha made it clear that Waves is going to play a huge part in the cryptocurrency world within the upcoming years.

On top of the client release was a new website and Waves logo. The team opted for a straightforward logo with the Waves name Core Magazine

69

Waves News

in lowercase and a simple rotated blue square.

The logo speaks a thousand words, for it is easy on the eye, professional and trendy. The new website itself maintains this approach, a simple, not overly complicated that does not overload the user with information at first visit. With this design, it is clear Waves is gearing up for mass adoption.

Waves’ roadmap for 2018 was revealed with some very interesting additions.

Smart contracts (including fully Turing complete by the end of the year) are to be added, as well as, decentralized voting, messaging, atomic swaps, off chain protocols and hardware wallets.

It was also announced that despite bureaucratic delays, Tokenomica has finally been approved via the Singapore 70

Core Magazine

Waves News

government. The goal of Tokenomica is to provide a 100% fully compliant framework for ICOs; Tokenomica has been named the “JP Morgan for the crypto world”. Sasha also talked about upcoming ICO incubators that will help businesses transfer smoothly to the blockchain as well as helping to get them off the ground. As stated in a previous article, Waves also plans to airdrop a liquidity token to provide liquidity to upcoming projects.

Other speakers like Artem Tolkachev also provided some interesting insights into how Deloitte is currently working with governments in order to create some kind rules on compliance. Deloitte currently has a project named the “Better Tokens Project” aimed at preventing scams in the ICOs sphere.

The idea behind such initiative is to get ahead of the pack and prove the ICOs are a viable option and nothing to be afraid of. With

government suspicious of the blockchain and how it will affect their countries, it is important to have ideas on compliance before it even brought to government speakings.

A favourable stance on cryptocurrencies within governments will not only be good for Waves but for the whole world too.

The Waves token is going finish the year strongly with the current market cap at over 1.5 billion, the price now well over $10, and a massive rise in volume. There is no doubt that this can be attributed to most recent releases such as Waves-NG, the new Waves Client 1.0 and the Liquid token. But we can also assume that as is shown in this presentation, Waves investors are now looking long term as this is just the beginning.

3rdstryker 3rdstryker@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

71

Waves News

WAVES CEO Sasha Ivanov's Christmas Q&A | "Real Possibility" of World Cup Loyalty TokenBETA in Amsterdam

S

asha Ivanov conducted a Christmas Q&A that updated investors on current events and the future. The video was the first time recorded within the Waves office itself and had Natalya Malyova, Waves Chief Global Communication Officer, asking Sasha questions asked by the community.

First and foremost, Sasha stated that he is taking to “several” developer team’s that are considering using the Waves platform for their loyalty token. Now that Waves72

Core Magazine

NG has been implemented, a protocol that currently is processing 100 transactions a second, the opportunity to implement more loyalty tokens is now very possible. In fact, the Waves CEO indicated that there was a “real possibility” of a World Cup loyalty token because the World Cup preparation building is located next to the Waves’ office.

While this is not set in stone, it is exciting news considering the marketing possibilities for such a collaboration. Long-term wise, however, real companies are going to be aggressively targeted to move to the Waves

Waves News

platform.

implemented over time, beginning with easier smart contracts to more complex in One main theme within the Q&A was a the future. Waves Smart contacts will be focus on “completeness” within the Waves focused on “high load, high throughput, and ecosystem. In other words, Sasha’s vision is to production ready systems”, in other words, create a complete system that will give business a Smart Contracts that do not overload all the much needed to tool to integrate itself the network with spam like the successful into the blockchain. The Waves software Ethereum application, CryptoKittes. Atomic built on top of the blockchain is only one Swap is also a very technological feature element in the ultimate vision. Having the that is planned, where you will be able to software is one thing, but the pushing of swap coins from two different blockchains adoption is another. This is ultimately where without entrusting a third party. Another Waves Lab and Tokenomica come into play. exciting feature that may arise in the future Sasha stressed that Waves Lab will provide are gateways for Ethereum tokens to be the “seed funding”, legal, PR and advisory stored on the Waves Platform. knowledge needed for these start-up’s to flourish. On top of this is Tokenomica, a Another question was concerned with free market regulatory body that aims to the decentralization of the network. When set regulatory standards within the ICO comparing the network to Ethereum, there industry. are much fewer nodes. Countering this was the lowering of the minimum requirement Sasha also stated that they soon will be needed to run a node down to 1000. Being focusing on integrating Waves into hardware/ that the technological requirements for ledger wallets. What ultimately was holding running a Waves node are quite low, this them back was merely a “matter of focus”, will see a lot of smaller miner’s entering the in that integrating Waves into these hard network. One question pointed out that the wallets is not difficult now that the initial bigger nodes actually get 20% more revenue hurdles of integrating DEX and WAVES- than other nodes. Sasha responded to this by NG into the software are now complete. stating the Proof of Stake algorithm will be This is a common theme, in that Sasha tweaked and improved in the future. aimed to prioritize the fundamentals before branching out into other areas. The Waves The Q&A with Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov integration is estimated to be implemented goes into more detail into more subjects in February. outside of this article, and it is encouraged you take a look at the above video to listen to Technology that is planned to be the full detail. implemented next year includes Smart Contracts and Atomic Swaps. Sasha 3rdstryker stated that the atomic swaps were going 3rdstryker@coregroup.info to be scalable, user-friendly and cheaper.

Also, these smart contracts are going to be Core Magazine

73

Waves News

WAVES Launches WAVES Labs

A

s of recent weeks, the news out of the Waves camp has been ramping up significantly. All this is loosely based on the activation of Waves-NG which will allow the network to undergo 100 transactions per second. This activation, which will occur on December 22nd, allows the Waves team to finally spread its wings for now as the network can meet potential demands from clients. Before Waves-NG, the network was clogged regularly so advertising the platform heavily was counterproductive; now Waves-NG and the new Waves Client 1.0 allows the Waves team to put their best 74

Core Magazine

foot forward before engaging with potential clients. This is where Waves Labs comes in.

Waves Labs is a blockchain incubator which aims to assist new startups to put their project on the Waves Platform. Waves Labs aims to provide important services that a new startup needs to get off the ground running.

The most appealing of which is “seed funding” where capital of up to $300,000 is advanced to thinking and competent projects of the Waves Labs choosing. Another very important element in advisory and legal support. No doubt, with Deloitte’s current

Waves News

involvement in discussions with the Russian, Kazakhstan and Belarus governments, the Waves team will have a firm grasp of the most current cryptocurrency regulations.

As Sasha stated in an interview with CoinTelegraph, the most likely scenario is that most governments will adopt the same regulations over time. Furthermore, with the recent green light given for Tokenomica, a 100% regulatory body for token crowd sales, Waves will be a market leader in regulatory standards. Lastly, the lab will also provide PR & Marketing to help ICO’s create strategies for marketing their product.

development is huge, for the possibilities are endless. What important to note is that the Waves Lab effect will not only add projects from the incubator, but other projects will jump onboard due to the network effect.

As more and more legitimate projects join the Waves network, other projects will take note and will realize the Waves blockchain is a serious option. In fact, with other successful blockchains like Ethereum having bloated blockchains, this may have projects migrating to other blockchains that have prepared for high volume in advance like the Waves Platform.

The Waves Lab will mark a new phase in If you believe you have a good idea and you the crypto sphere, namely a real active effort to wish to put forth your idea, head to http:// get real-world businesses on the blockchain. waveslabs.com/ and send in your application.

While most crypto projects spend most of its capital on actively tweaking blockchain 3rdstryker technology, Waves is looking into the real 3rdstryker@coregroup.info world economy to add non-cryptocurrency projects into the crypto sphere. This Core Magazine

75

Blockchain News

Oil Pipeline Giant Transneft hit with Monero Mining Malware

A

s previously reported by Core Media, The Pirate Bay’s Monero mining experiment triggered an upsurge of cryptocurrency mining malware throughout the web. A new victim has just come forward. The torrent index website’s experiment adds a Monero mining code provided by Coinhive to its website to mine cryptocurrency using visitor resources without disclosing its presence.

76

Core Magazine

Bad actors started using the code to take advantages of people’s computer resources so much that even CBSowned Showtime websites were affected.

The latest Monero mining code victim, according to Reuters, is oil pipeline giant Transneft. The oil giant recently had to clear malware from its systems after someone infected them with Coinhive’s code.

Blockchain News

Transneft referred to multiple incidents without revealing how many computers were affected. The Transneft vice president, Vladimir Rushailo made a statement.

Russia’s central bank (CBR) revealed it planned to regulate the cryptocurrency market by limiting individual purchases.

The pipeline company incident is just the “Incidents where the company’s hardware latest high-profile Monero mining breach. was used to manufacture cryptocurrency have Recently, Starbucks’ free Wi-Fi secretly been found. It could have a negative impact on hijacked people’s computers to mine. Even the productivity of our processing capacity.” mobile devices have been tapped into by cybercriminals looking to make a few bucks.

The former interior minister didn’t elaborate on the attack, but the company revealed that The Monero mining craze has gotten so big it has already shored up its security systems to that, at one point, hackers even managed to prevent future attacks. Speaking to Reuters, hack Coinhive itself and redirect mined XMR Pavel Lutsik, a cybersecurity expert said that to a wallet they controlled. As cybersecurity per Russian law,a person who attempts to hack expert Pavel Lutsik told Reuters, people corporate systems faces up to six years in jail. have learned that “they don’t even need to stand up from the sofa to make money”. The Warnings implication was that they can simply use Russian authorities have recently issued other people’s computer resources to mine. a warning on cryptocurrencies, alleging their use is mainly for laundering and Francisco Memoria terrorism financing. Earlier this year, franciscom@coregroup.info

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

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

77

Blockchain News

MobileCoin Aims To Improve Payment Options For Cryptocurrencies

O

ne of the primary goals behind any new invention should be to make it as accessible and user-friendly as possible. Although cryptocurrencies attempt to simplify monetary transactions, the current reality is that bitcoin can only process up to 7 transactions per second compared to Visa that can process thousands of transactions in a second. Moxie Marlinspike, founder 80

Core Magazine

of Open Whisper Systems, has decided to use the Stellar blockchain to power a new cryptocurrency called MobileCoin.

MobileCoin’s architecture is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), which claims to implement a faster, more reliable, and more efficient payment network. Ted Livingston, founder of Kik Messenger,

Blockchain News

has decided to switch from Ethereum to Stellar. Livingston has gone as far as calling Ethereum the “dial-up era of blockchain”.

So, what does MobileCoin plan to offer?

Well, if a technology solution truly qualifies as being accessible, then it should be as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. If a technology, and in this case cryptocurrency (MobileCoin), is intuitive, then it must be simple as well. In addition, the solution must safeguard the privacy of its users and offer reliable and secure methods of transactions.

MobileCoin plans to offer all of these features and more.

Although these claims seem promising on the surface, it is too early to jump to any conclusion. What real-life, practical evidence do we have that MobileCoin will deliver on its promises? We can read through the MobileCoin whitepaper, carefully analyze the document on the Stellar Consensus Protocol, and the Stellar blockchain, but even then the best we’d be able to come up with is an educated guess, or rough hypothesis, on just how MobileCoin will work in real life.

What we do know is that the best proven orchestrator of financial transactions are banks. Whether we like it or not, banks are still more trusted than cryptocurrency by the majority of people on this planet. However, banks are not as accessible to people, especially in Africa, where only 1 out of 3 people have access to banks. MobileCoin seems to have the right idea, to simplify and increase the accessibility of financial transactions, but how it will do so (the actual implementation) remains to be seen.

To his credit, Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of MobileCoin has managed to launch a fairly successful private messenger app called Signal. It has received over 171,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.6. However, it’s worth noting that this is simply a messaging application and not a complex payment system that MobileCoin will be. So, the moderate success of the Signal app does not mean that MobileCoin will be successful. Nevertheless, it is a step, or at least a thought, in the right direction because it aims to “fix” the most common problems associated with cryptocurrencies.

When you think of ease of use and simplicity, then you also think that you might have to compromise on security.

However, this will not be the case with MobileCoin. Even though the security of digital transactions is made possible by implementing sophisticated cryptographic algorithms, the end-users need not be aware of these intricacies. Just how MobileCoin will offer simplicity in addition to robust security remains unclear. This is why the best we can do is closely watch or monitor the upcoming MobileCoin developments.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin depend on centralized exchanges like BitFinex, Kraken, and Bittrex to offer accessibility to its users.

Crypto users get to interact with a realistic user-interface that they can comprehend to a fairly reasonable extent. One can argue that this is against the spirit or principle of decentralization that cryptocurrencies were founded upon. Some work has been done to develop decentralized exchanges such as EasyDex. Core Magazine

81

Blockchain News

One of the driving forces behind MobileCoin and EasyDex is to stop hackers from maliciously infiltrating the system, which is easier to do if the system is centralized. We have all heard of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange that was hacked several years ago. Hackers managed to steal approximately $450 million worth of bitcoins. While we are all aware of the foul play that occurs in the crypto-sphere and many coins are launched claiming they will resolve these issues, how can we be sure that MobileCoin will truly resolve these issues?

We cannot. That’s why this wouldn’t be the time to invest, or even think of doing so, in MobileCoin.

Clearly, there are serious architectural issues that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether face. The gravity of these issues are severe. Marlinspike explains that these issues can be resolved by allowing powerful servers, simply referred to as nodes, to take over all the complex processes involved in verifying and securely processing transactions. The

nodes will only have access to as much information that is absolutely necessary for them to complete their tasks.

For example, the nodes will not have direct access to the ledger. Since the ledger contains sensitive transaction details, it can no longer be exploited. SGX technology is used to prevent access to what’s referred to as the enclave. Essentially, private data such as a users’ private keys cannot be accessed by the nodes because they’re stored in the impenetrable enclave. The concept behind all this is that you only get access to the information you absolutely need in order to get your job done. This ensures privacy and security.

The official MobileCoin website claims that its ledger will be opaque. Whether this is exactly a good thing or not remains unclear.

MobileCoin plans to seamlessly integrate and function with popular and user-friendly chat applications like Whatsapp and will be launched sometime in the middle of or late 2018. It’s evident that everything is still in the experimental phases and there is not much more one should do other than keep any eye out for future developments.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

82

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

Speculation Takes Over as Bitcoin Cash Is Added to Coinbase’s API

E

arlier this year, as reported by Core Media, Coinbase and its Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) revealed a new cryptocurrency inclusion framework. The company made it clear it plans to add new cryptocurrencies that meet certain criteria to its platform, and a new clue may point to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) being among the new additions.

On the r/btc and the r/BitcoinCash subreddits, various top threads detail that developers who were exploring Coinbase’s API found references to Bitcoin Cash. Users who held Bitcoin on August 1 this year got

an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash at the time of the network split, and the company’s move essentially means the company is working on BCH support, presumably so that those who had their bitcoin on the platform will be able to withdraw the cryptocurrency, as per the company’s announcement on August 3.

However, some users have pointed out that the move may also mean Coinbase will add full support for Bitcoin Cash on its platform, which would be an extremely positive move for the cryptocurrency, given that Coinbase has over 10 million users and is one of the biggest U.S.-based exchanges.

Core Magazine

83

Blockchain News

Lee went on to clarify that this is only in the operational side of things, as brand confusion may also be a factor. He stated: “Coinbase is targeted towards consumers. Having both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will cause all sorts of issues.” At press time Bitcoin Cash is trading at $1,791.07, according to Cryptocompare, as the cryptocurrency’s value is seemingly not being affected by the rumors.

Other users dismissed Coinbase’s API as evidence the company is going to fully support Bitcoin Cash, as some pointed out that when the Ethereum network split in two, Ethereum Classic (ETC) was also added to its API. Moreover, Litecoin creator and former Coinbase employee Charlie Lee used Twitter to point out his stance on Coinbase’s move: In a subsequent tweet, Charlie Lee added that this doesn’t mean the cryptocurrency won’t be traded on GDAX, as it could be “quite profitable.” For BCH to be listed on Coinbase, per Lee’s tweet, it would need very good liquidity on GDAX as that’s where the coins would come from. As an example, he added that Litecoin was only added to Coinbase when liquidity existed on GDAX. 84

Core Magazine

Nevertheless, various users remain bullish, taking into account that the company announced the addition of new cryptocurrencies, and that Bitcoin Cash withdrawal support is already going to be added to the exchange, trading pairs would be the next logical step. One user stated: “Coinbase is supposedly going to be adding more cryptocurrencies next year, and they’re enabling BCH withdrawals, so I’d think it’s a good guess that BCH will come to Coinbase at some point in the future.”

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

John McAfee Labels Verge (XVG) ‘Best Buy’

J

ohn McAfee, the cybersecurity pioneer and eclectic personality that has in the past successfully predicted Bitcoin’s new all-time high a mere 24 hours before it occurred, and who publicly stated that bitcoin will hit $1 million by 2020, recently used Twitter to point out that privacy-centric cryptocurrencies “will have the greatest future.”

In his Tweet, McAffee mentioned three different cryptocurrencies: Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Verge (XVG), a not-sowell-known privacy-centric cryptocurrency whose value, thanks to McAfee’s tweet, surged.

The tweet surprised various users. Some questioned why he dealt with bitcoin if he was bullish on these cryptocurrencies, given that bitcoin is only semi-anonymous. In response, McAfee stated that it was the easiest coin to predict, and agreed with the user that bitcoin, just like the three aforementioned cryptocurrencies “cannot lose,” presumably Core Magazine

85

Blockchain News

as they’ll stay out of governments’ reach.

McAfee’s tweet mentioned Verge next to major privacy-centric cryptocurrencies Zcash and Monero. As such some users wondered whether or not that was a mistake, forcing the cybersecurity pioneer to clarify that he believes Verge is the “best buy.”

This helped Verge’s value surge, as the cryptocurrency is currently up by 109% in the last 24-hour period, with its token recently hiting a new all-time high of $0.022, or 121 Satoshi. Prior to McAfee’s tweet, Verge’s token was trading at $0.0125 or 67 Satoshi, according to data from Cryptocompare.

Verge may not be a wellknown cryptocurrency, but it has been supported by a passionate community over time. One of the cryptocurrency’s biggest advocates, XVG Whale, has visited John McAfee earlier this year, and shared his experience on social media.

Notably, Verge holders recently had to face bad news as those who used the multicurrency wallet CoinPouch lost their funds due to a node hack. It isn’t yet completely clear how the hackers managed to compromise the node, but reports suggest 126 million coins, at the time worth over $675,000, were stolen from its users.

More on Verge (XVG) Verge was initially launched as DogeCoinDark back in 2014, and was developed on the bitcoin blockchain, with added privacy features, such as the use of anonymity-centric networks like Tor. The currency also supports multialgorithm mining, adding security to its decentralized system.

In 2016, DogeCoinDark rebranded to Verge and saw its price surge to a then all-time high of $0.0089 per token in November this year, where it reached a market cap of $76 million. With McAfee’s help, the cryptocurrency’s market cap recently hit $289 million.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

86

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

What’s Behind the 2017 DASH Rally?

O

verview of Dash in 2017 The value of Dash, one the ten largest cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization, has increased exponentially this year. It was trading at only around $11 in January 2017 and is now trading at over $1200. Dash, short for Digital Cash, is an open-source peer-topeer cryptocurrency that you’re supposed to be able to use everywhere, according to its official website. For example, you can use it to make payments online.

and maintain a high level of anonymity by using sophisticated algorithms to encrypt IP addresses and transaction details when using PrivateSend, anothe feature brought forward by the masternode network found in Dash.

What is causing the Dash rally?

Regions of political, social, and economic turmoil such as Zimbabwe have caused its citizens to try to find a safe haven in cryptocurrencies. Dash has picked up on these signals and has now made the cryptocurrency accessible to the people of Zimbabwe. Supporters of the Dash cryptocurrency have collaborated with KuvaCash in order to tackle the problems associated with hyperinflation.

According to its official website, Dash transactions can be completed in a matter of seconds which is considerably faster than bitcoin transactions, especially if you use the InstaSend option which makes use of Dash’s second layer network of master nodes.

As Dash attempts to infiltrate the Transactions with Dash also cost much les continent of Africa in order to bring about Core Magazine

87

Blockchain News

a new type of financial inclusion through blockchain technology, its presence is also being felt in the Asia Pacific region. The Bithumb exchange, South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, currently accounts for nearly 50% of the volume of global trades performed with Dash. Even as the majority of the central banks of the world’s leading economies express skepticism over legalization and regulation of cryptocurrency, the value of Dash has increased by 8000% this year. This astronomic increase can partly be attributed to the fairly large amount of trading in Dash in South Korea alone, a country known for its interest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others.

Perry Woodin, the CEO of Node40, a company that offers a blockchain accounting service and allows users to operate a Dash masternode, says that Bitcoin cannot effectively function as digital cash, or method of payment, due to its scalability problem.

Therefore, investors are exploring other viable options which include Dash, among others. Also, according to Woodin, Dash has the potential to compete with credit cards when it comes to transaction processing times.

Dash has been on a tear, especially since the beginning of November, when its price was still below $300. Its value recently stormed past the $1500 before suffering a slight correction Another reason why Dash’s value might have surged could be because of its software and network updates. There upgrades will allow for larger block sizes.

Currently, the block size is set to 2 MB, but 5 MB block sizes can be expected in the foreseeable future, a prospect that will allow 88

Core Magazine

even more transactions per second to be supported by Dash Lastly, Dash’s increasing number of joint ventures like the one announced with Alt Thirty Six, have added to the legitimacy of the cryptocurrency and its team. The project with Alt36 will aim to develop a POS (Point of Sale) system that will incorporate Dash as one of the payment options for the legalized marijuana industry, one that is currently forced to deal exclusively with cash due to the federal laws imposed in the U.S. Dash Could be Headed for Mainstream As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to move towards mainstream adoption, Dash could be joining them as well. Already, support for Dash has been added to popular crypto exchanges like Bitfinex, Bittrex, Kraken, and Binance. Dash has also entered the world of academia by teaming up with Arizona State University to perform research on blockchain scalability and efficient mining techniques.

The scope of possible uses for Dash is rapidly growing. Although bitcoin remains the uncontested leader among cryptocurrencies, particularly in terms of market capitalization, there’s no denying that Dash has made impressive gains and has also brought about some pretty exciting innovations on the tech side. Other altcoins, such as Ripple’s XRP and Litecoin, have also record-breaking gains. It’s possible that these cryptocurrencies could grow and evolve to create their own specialized niches.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Legalization and Regulation Challenges Posed by Cryptocurrencies in India and Worldwide

L

egalization and regulation of cryptocurrency in India have yet to begin officially. However, India’s tax collection authorities have begun to investigate crypto transactions. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Executive Director, S. Ganesh Kumar, stated last month, “Our current position on bitcoins is that we will not be using it for any payments and settlements…though the underlying technology crypto-currencies will not end”. There’s been some speculation around

whether India might be trying to develop its version of cryptocurrencies which would be backed by some fiat currencies.

Reports surfaced early last month that government officials had suggested to shut down cryptocurrency exchanges. As the crypto world continues to develop and evolve, cryptocurrency exchanges continue to experience problems. However, the legalization and regulation of cryptocurrency Core Magazine

89

Blockchain News

is not something India or any other country should attempt to prevent. After all, crypto market capitalization is now over $479 billion (CoinMarketCap).

The Blockchain Foundation of India has emerged to support the growth and adaptation of blockchain technology, which has the potential to be applied to many different industries. In early 2017, the Times of India reported that a new organization, Digital Asset, and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) had been established to assist in the legalization and regulation of bitcoin.

It could serve India’s Reserve bank and other governmental institutions well if they worked symbiotically with these organizations to help facilitate India’s cryptocurrency market.

An article on India’s Economic Times stated that India’s Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley does not consider bitcoin to be “legal currency” according to the findings of his committee. Even the chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, has said that bitcoin “doesn’t constitute legal tender”.

While it is clear that world governments and their respective reserve banks have been unable to define a comprehensive legalization and regulation framework around the crypto-market, it is something that they should aim to achieve sooner than later to serve the overall best interests of the global financial community.

The European Union has not recommended any legalization and regulation strategy. However, it has stated that standard VAT/GST should be applied to items bought using bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

Mainland China has gone back and forth between making 90

Core Magazine

cryptocurrency exchanges and ICO’s legal or illegal. Since China is predicted to become the world’s biggest economy in the next 1520 years, overtaking the U.S., it should be one of China’s priorities to learn to legally and effectively regulate cryptocurrencies.

Russia is currently working on a legalization and regulation process of cryptocurrencies within its borders. While Russia’s finance ministry has recommended making mining crypto unlawful, acquiring cryptocurrencies will be legal. Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian government to start formulating a plan to regulate cryptocurrencies. It seems evident that the crypto-market is growing and spreading so rapidly that world governments and leaders feel pressured about how to react.

Latin and South American countries, especially Brazil, have been slowly recovering from a recession which has resulted in the hyperinflation of their state-backed fiat currencies. Desperate citizens have tried to find hope by turning to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Despite the socioeconomic turmoil, the Brazilian IRS has stated that bitcoin and other cryptos will be taxed. International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, has said that “We’re about to see massive disruptions” and, therefore, digital currencies deserve serious attention. As the world institutions continue to respond to the cryptosphere, it seems as if the legalization and regulation of cryptocurrencies could usher in a new world economic order.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Crypto Charity Event Mery Merkle Tree Raises $70,000 in Ether for Troubled Youth

C

ovenant House, a charity that helps at-risk, homeless, and trafficked youth, recently held a crypto charity event around a “Merkle Tree.” The tree was a Christmas tree connected to the Ethereum blockchain, and it lit up every time an Ether donation was received. The event, dubbed “Merry Merkle Tree” aimed to raise $25,000.

However, after after catching the eye of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, it managed to raise over $70,000 in Ether.

“We noticed there’s [sic] a lot of people who made a lot of money this year in this space and a lot of people who have a real desire to give back.

We thought this would be something cool that was just fun for a really good cause. Our community just wanted to try it out, and the results were really, really awesome.”

According to CBC News, event organizer and Truebit COO Robbie Bent, along with other cryptocurrency traders, decided to give back some of what they earned thanks to this year’s cryptocurrency craze. He stated:

The crypto charity event organizers accepted both Ether and fiat donations.

According to Bent, cash donations totaled around $3,000. The money collected so far is expected to provide about 100 youngsters Core Magazine

91

Blockchain News

with food for three months. After blowing past their initial goal, the event’s organizers now hope to raise $200,000, enough for a year.

Bruce River’s, Covenant House’s executive director, thanked the community for its support. He said: “We’re very grateful to the blockchain community and excited about this new opportunity to raise funds for our agency through cryptocurrency.”

Covenant House is Canada’s largest charity dedicated to helping atrisk youth, anywhere between the ages of 16 and 24. It currently provides shelter, healthcare, job training, and counseling to 250 youngsters a day.

To help the organization improve its reach, the fundraiser is set to continue for another two weeks.

Crypto charity efforts Although bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies haven’t been around for even a decade, charity is already part of their history. According to CNBC Fidelity Charitable, a donor-advised charitable trust fund run by Fidelity Investments, raised over $22 million in bitcoin this year.

Last month a bitcoin millionaire going

92

Core Magazine

by “Pine” created the Pineapple Fund. The fund is set to donate $86 million in bitcoin to charitable organizations, and has already donated $15 million. Some of its donations were sent to organizations fighting for universal health care, clean water, internet privacy and net neutrality, and stable housing worldwide. All donations were of $1 million.

The Dogecoin (DOGE) community is particularly known for its charitable donations. In the past, Dogecoin community members raised $80,000 to help the Jamaican bobsled team make it to the Sochi Olympics.

The team had qualified, but couldn’t afford the trip without the donations. Last year, the “Dogecoin Socks For the Homeless” project was created with the goal of donating socks to homeless people on a continual basis.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Cryptocurrency Jobs Creating New Careers

C

ryptocurrency Jobs in High Demand With the exploding cryptomarket and Wall Street strategist Tom Lee predicting bitcoin will hit $20,000 in mid-2018, there has also been a much higher demand for cryptocurrency jobs. The

number of crypto-related jobs have gone up by 306% on LinkedIn over the past year or so. This rise has a strong positive correlation with the rising prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In another report published

by AngelList, an American website for jobCore Magazine

93

Blockchain News

hunters and startups, there has been a 100% increase in cryptocurrency jobs.

AngelList’s report is already three months old, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the number of cryptocurrency jobs available right now might be even higher. According to LinkedIn, their data indicates that there were nearly 5,000 job listings that mentioned bitcoin in 2017. This is a jump of literally thousands of percents. One key thing to note here is that this number doesn’t even take into account the number of cryptocurrency jobs that could be out there related to blockchain technology and other cryptocurrencies.

Crypto-Jobs Dominated by Technology Sector It has been determined that the bulk of these jobs can be found in the financial and technology sectors. While the demand for jobs in the finance industry has risen at a faster rate than in the tech sector, 70% (the majority) of jobs needed to be filled are still tech jobs. This should be good and welcoming news for skilled programmers and other technology specialists.

Coinbase has stated that it had to hire twice as many people as it already had in 2017 alone. The average salary for cryptocurrency jobs is estimated at a respectable $122,000 per annum.

The Financial Times has noted that the numbers of ads for cryptocurrency jobs or crypto-related information has gone up significantly. Princeton and Coursera are offering crash courses on cryptocurrency. Prestigious institutions 94

Core Magazine

like MIT and Stanford are also offering courses on crypto. Students from Harvard and Wharton have even made specific requests for more courses on blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Growing Awareness of Crypto As Job Skill These courses are designed to prepare students for various cryptocurrency jobs that are both technical and non-technical.

Jobs dealing with the regulations of cryptocurrencies have also popped up.

Since the legal and regulatory framework around cryptocurrencies is sketchy right now, law firms like Latham & Watkins have realized the need to give more attention to the cryptosphere.

There is also a growing rate of awareness among working professionals about cryptocurrency. The number of people listing cryptocurrency as a skill on LinkedIn has gone up nearly 30 times over a four-year period. Just like many people had to work hard at becoming computerliterate, it’s now time for people to become crypto-literate as well. A rise in the number of cryptocurrency jobs, any kind of jobs for that matter, is usually a good sign for the economy.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

South Korean Cryptocurrency Exchanges Breached With "Basic Technology," Report Reveals

Core Magazine

95

Blockchain News

I

n the wake of the hack that led to the bankruptcy of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit, which took 17% of the company’s total assets from its hot wallet, a local news outlet decided to see how safe other cryptocurrency exchanges in the country were – and found five were breachable using “basic hacking technology.”

To get to its results, South Korean news outlet MBC hired a security company to help it test the security systems of various local exchanges, including “the largest exchange in Korea” – presumably Bithumb, an exchange with a $3.7 billion trading volume.

MBC’s experiment, according to a translated version of the report, essentially saw security experts create accounts on all five exchanges, so they could then compromise these accounts. Per the report, experts managed to gain “user IDs and passwords,” by going as far as circumventing two-factor authentication.

The report reads that the exchanges were “easily hacked” but seems to point to vulnerabilities on the user’s side, not on the exchange’s side. The security experts potentially used malware such as keyloggers, or social engineering tactics, to obtain login credentials.

Kum Sun-Tae, an employee at the hired security firm, stated (roughly translated): “If you receive something like an illegal program or surf the Web, you can be infected with a high probability, and the exchange is vulnerable in that way.”

96

Core Magazine

The report goes on to add that changing passwords was useless, and that anti-virus software failed to catch the “malicious code used by the hackers.” Notably, it ended by stating experts believe the “exchange’s main server” is vulnerable.

Exchanges compromised before Bithumb and Youbit have been hacked earlier this year in attacks that saw both user funds and data being stolen. In Bithumb’s case, an employee’s computer was reportedly compromised, not its servers. Moreover, some were phished, as someone contacted them stating they worked for the exchange, and then scammed them out of their funds.

As for Youbit’s case, most pointed out that clues led them to believe the attacks – including the one that led to its bankruptcy – were purported by North Korean actors trying to steal its funds. Per the Independent, the regime employs as many as 1,700 statesponsored hackers, backed by more than 5,000 support staff.

As for its experiment, MBC revealed that prior to publishing the report, it contacted the South Korean government to notify it on the security issues local cryptocurrency exchanges may be exposing their users to.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

SPECIAL ARTICLES

Core Magazine

97

Blockchain News

BlockTower Capital Reportedly Bet $1 Million on Bitcoin Hitting $50,000 Next Year

E

arlier this week, according to the Wall Street Journal, an unknown trader decided to place a million-dollar bet on bitcoin’s price reaching $50,000 by the end of next year. The report uses trading data from LedgerX, the first U.S. exchange to list bitcoin derivatives, that shows someone paid $990,000 for the right to buy 275 BTC on December 28, 2018, at $50,000 per coin.

98

Core Magazine

According to Business Insider, the unidentified trader was actually cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital. The fund’s bet was made using a call option, a contract that gives its buyer the right to buy an asset at a specific price, on or before a set date. These options allow for that specific price, regardless of its current market price.

Blockchain News

BlockTower Capital paid an average of $3,600 per bitcoin, in order to lock its price at $50,000 by the end of 2018. To even break even, the cryptocurrency’s price will have to be at least $53,600 at the time, and the fund will pay about $14,740,000 for the 275 bitcoins. However, if the cryptocurrency’s price is at $60,000, for example, the fund will have nearly doubled its money.

The hedge fund is among the bestknown in the crypto space, which already includes over 175 firms. BlockTower was founded by Ari Paul and Matthew Goetz, a former portfolio manager at the University of Chicago and a former vice president at Goldman Sachs, respectively.

Curiously, when the Wall Street Journal reported on the move, Ari Paul tweeted:

In a subsequent tweet, Paul added: “One thing to understand with options: a deep out of the money call is not a bet that something *will* happen, it’s a bet that something *might* happen. Risk a little to win a lot.”

In other tweets, he further revealed how far his math went, stating – just as above – the break-even point, and adding to it that if Bitcoin ends 2018 at $70,000 the fund will have made five times its money, and that if it ends at $100,000 it will make 14 times its money. Last but not least, if the flagship cryptocurrency ends the year at $200,000, it will make 45 times its money.

Bitcoin’s growth At press time, one Bitcoin is currently trading at $14,891, down from an all-time high of over $19,700 from earlier this month.

The cryptocurrency has been recovering from a correction that saw its price drop below $10,500 on some exchanges This year, the cryptocurrency surged over 1,400% and if its surge keeps going throughout 2018, a $200,000 target is definitely possible provided the cryptocurrency keeps growing at the rate it grew this year.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup. info

Core Magazine

99

Listen to our show!

https://soundcloud.com/coremediaradio

Blockchain News

Chrome Extension With 105,000 Users Caught Mining Monero as Cryptojacking Trend Continues

U

sing other people’s CPU resources to mine the privacycentric cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) has gotten so popular it’s now called cryptojacking. Core Media

has reported on the trend ever since it started, with The Pirate Bay’s Monero mining experiment, and subsequent use of user’s computer resources to mine XMR. Core Magazine

103

Blockchain News

The trend’s latest victim, according to Bleeping Computer, was a popular Google Chrome extension dubbed “Archive Poster.” It essentially helps Tumblr users reblog and repost from other blogs, and was compromised with Coinhive’s Monero mining code.

Several users noted their computers were excessively slow, and discovered the extension was hijacking their machines to mine cryptocurrency. As a result, the extension was flooded with negative reviews, with one user revealing it had the script. He added: “once installed it makes requests to coinhive which eats up your CPU time and slows your computer down massively. Avoid.”

Users noticed the change around the beginning of December, although its unclear when the cryptojacking code was actually added. Essence Labs, the organization behind Archive Poster, confirmed the mining code was there, but claimed it had been hacked.

In an email to PCMag, Essence Labs wrote: “An old team member who was responsible for updating the extension had his Google account compromised.

Somehow the extension was hijacked to another Google account.”

It isn’t clear who exactly was behind the hack.

Cryptojacking and Monero’s wild ride As previously covered by Core Media, the Cryptojacking trend has led to various high-profile incidents. CBSowned Showtime websites, for example, 104

Core Magazine

briefly ran the Monero mining code, and oil pipeline giant Transneft was also hit.

Recently, a mining botnet infected Facebook Messenger. It spread the cryptocurrency mining code via a nonembedded video file that once clicked executed a script. That script both ran a miner, and streamed a bogus video to distract the victim.

The craze got so big, hackers managed to hijack Coinhive itself – the code provider. After hijacking the company, they redirected mined Monero to their own wallet, forcing the company to pay users back their lost coins. Security experts are now cracking down on the trend, with Cloudflare banning websites that don’t warn users about CPU usage, and Opera browser adding a built-in anti-Cryptojacking tool.

At press time, Monero is trading at $316.89, up from roughly $16 per XMR in the beginning of the year. The privacy-centric cryptocurrency surged not just because of the Cryptojacking trend, but thanks to adoption from now-defunct darknet market AlphaBay and artists accepting it for merchandise.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Petro Cryptocurrency: Venezuela's New Oil-Backed Digital Currency

P

etro Cryptocurrency Backed by State Reserves Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, has said that Venezuela will be launching the Petro cryptocurrency in the next few days. Earlier this month, the president stated, “every single Petro will be backed by a barrel of oil... and gold”.

The president also confirmed that the petro cryptocurrency will be backed by the country’s gas and diamond reserves. Speaking

at a press conference, which was broadcasted on national television, Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said, “It is a matter of days before we announce the first issuance of the petro cryptocurrency”.

Venezuela’s petro cryptocurrency will be backed by over 5 billion barrels of oil.

This equates to roughly $267 billion in value. With the launch of this state-backed digital currency, President Maduro intends Core Magazine

105

Blockchain News

to improve Venezuela’s current economic condition. Furthermore, the president plans to overcome the financial blockade against Venezuela by facilitating the mining of the cryptocurrency throughout the country. A group of crypto experts will work throughout the country to mine this new cryptocurrency.

Already, cryptocurrency mining in Venezuela has become very popular over the last few years.

inflation rates will also continue to rise in 2018. Given this bleak forecast, the Venezuelan government is hoping that petro cryptocurrency will help Venezuela’s economy recover from the US-led financial blockade. Maduro thinks that by using the new cryptocurrency, international suppliers will resume business with the country that is plagued by seemingly insurmountable debt.

Venezuela’s population of over 31 million has now been subjected to several years of crippling recession. The country’s government points the finger mainly at the US and other members of the international community for its problems. However, the government’s critics blame the country’s crisis on widespread corruption and bogus government policies.

Strong Disapproval from Members of the Opposition The Venezuelan bolivar has become almost useless. The country introduced a 100,000 bolivar note due to a staggering 4,000% inflation. 100,000 bolivars are still worth just around $1.00. When Maduro first announced plans to create the cryptocurrency earlier this month, opposition members were quick to mock and criticize the president.

It’s Always the Innocent Who Suffer According to opposition member, Angel Venezuela’s Information Minister, Alvarado, “It’s Maduro being a clown. This Jorge Rodriguez, thinks that the world’s has no credibility”. “dictatorial financial centers” will not be able to stop Venezuela’s petro cryptocurrency Despite the heavy criticism and skepticism from helping to lift the country out of from the opposition, Maduro released a economic ruins. Ultimately, whenever a document that is supposed confirm, through country is hit with international financial an “international certificate”, that Venezuela or political sanctions, the innocent people actually has 5 billion barrels of oil that will of the country are the ones who suffer. Why back its new petro cryptocurrency. The should millions of innocent people live in Venezuelan government clarified that its misery simply because world governments cryptocurrency will not be like bitcoin can’t amicably resolve their matters? Not or other cryptocurrencies because it will just Venezuela, but many third-world be backed by the state’s reserves of oil, gas countries have turned to bitcoin and other and even diamonds and gold. cryptocurrencies for relief from economic Petro Cryptocurrency Provides Hope collapse. Can cryptocurrencies save them? for Venezuela The International Monetary Fund Omar Faridi (IMF) predicts that the Venezuelan omar@coregroup.info economy will continue to suffer and 106

Core Magazine

Blockchain News

Various Bitcoin Exchanges Halt User Registrations due to Overwhelming Demand

T

his year, bitcoin’s price increased over 1,500%, even if we consider its recent dip from over $19,000 to $15,100 at press time. The cryptocurrency’s surge is partly justified by an inflow of new users that brought bitcoin exchanges to their knees. While some now offer degraded services, others seemingly decided to halt new user registrations to ensure quality standards.

Bittrex, a top cryptocurrency exchange

with a $2.3 billion daily trading volume, says it received “an enormous number of new account registrations” over the past few weeks. As such, the exchange halted new user registrations to avoid suffering outages and offering a bad user experience.

The company’s blog post reads:

“Unfortunately, we have to make a few upgrades to our support and backend systems to handle the Core Magazine

107

Blockchain News

increased traffic and load. As such, create an account are met with the following: Bitcoin exchanges on their knees we have halted new user registrations for the time being.

Bitcoin exchanges that haven’t closed Users who wish to move to CEX.io are their doors are struggling to cope with the also out of luck. A blog post explains that number of users they now have. Exchanges every day an “enormous number of users” like Poloniex and Coinbase are now known registers on the exchange, meaning its for offering a somewhat degraded customer support and verification teams are under a support service. Coinbase even suffered lot of pressure. Given that this is creating outages amid trading frenzies triggered by all kinds of damaging rumors, the exchange bitcoin’s new heights, weeks after adding 100,000 users in a single day. decided to halt new user registrations.

Per its blog post, CEX.io will only open registrations once it can “guarantee a decent response time to each and every ticket or verification request.” To tackle the issue, the company will also be expanding its support team and adding new communication

Kraken, a top European exchange, recently started upgrading its systems to handle the traffic it receives. However, Reddit users claim they’ve disabled verification processes, indirectly turning away new users.

Either way, Kraken still admits its struggling. A blog post reads:

“Unfortunately, we were not able to complete all of the upgrades and the most impactful measures are yet to come. For the time being, systems should still be considered degraded and unreliable. Our team is working through the weekend and holidays to accelerate our timeline. channels.

Bitfinex, another top bitcoin exchange with a $2 billion trading volume, has also halted new registrations. Those who try to 108

Core Magazine

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

oCoin: oBike's Tron Platform-Based Cryptocurrency

o

Bike will Cryptocurrency

Launch

oCoin

oBike, a smart bike-sharing company founded in Singapore, has announced its plans to issue its own cryptocurrency. oBike, which has 10 million users, has decided to

call the new cryptocurrency oCoin. The company plans to introduce oCoin sometime early next year. oBike will be using TRON, a decentralized blockchain-based protocol, to create oCoin. The Tron platform is becoming increasingly popular since its launch in September 2017. Already, Tron’s token, TRX, Core Magazine

109

Blockchain News

is among the top 20 coins with a market cap of over $2.3 billion (CoinMarketCap). oBike already makes use of high-end technology since all their bikes come with a built-in bluetooth lock. This feature makes bike-riding with oBike much more convenient because you don’t always have to end your ride at a designated docking point.

You are free to bring your ride to end almost anywhere. oBike has had its share of problems, stemming from its bluetooth system and lack of an autonomous GPS system. This has caused its customers to book rides which were not even available. So, the question still remains whether the company will be able to effectively leverage blockchain technology in order to create its very own cryptocurrency. Trying to compare issues the company has had with its bluetooth and GPS to its ability to create a worthy cryptocurrency might not make a lot of sense. However, it does lead one to question whether the company has the right people on board to roll out a solid cryptocurrency. oCoins Supposed to Incentivize Bike Rides Even More Despite these concerns, oBike has expanded its operations to over 20 different countries. This list of countries includes the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Australia, and Germany to name a few.

Currently, not much has been shared by the oBike company regarding its new cryptocurrency, oCoin. One of the few things that we do know is that the oCoins will be accepted as payment for bike rides.

110

Core Magazine

Plus, tt will be possible to somehow earn oCoins while riding the company’s bikes.

Users of the company’s bike-sharing services will also be able to use oCoins to top-up their oBike wallets. oBike also plans to let its customers use oCoins to pay for online content. In addition, all applications running on the Tron platform will be able to use oCoins.

Just a few days ago, Justin Sun, founder of TRON, tweeted: Clearly, this means that oCoins will be accepted for audio from Peiwo, an app intended to be the Chinese version of SnapChat. And, oCoins could be used for Uplive, a fairly popular, high-end streaming app.

More Practical Uses for Cryptocurrency With the introduction of oCoin, it seems that companies like oBike are putting cryptocurrencies into more practical, dayto-day use. If more companies focus on creating more utility for the cryptocurrencies that they develop, then it will help make them go mainstream. Transportation costs, in terms of their effects on the environment and the typical costs of fuel, roads, and vehicles could be reduced with services like oBike.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Poloniex Exchange to Impose User ID Verification as per KYC Legislation

P

oloniex, one of the longest-running cryptocurrency-only exchanges, recently announced it upgraded its customer identification and verification systems. As a result, it will now require users to verify their ID in order to continue

trading.

Through a press release, the U.S.-based exchange announced the move that brings its processes in line with the wider industry, following Know Your Customer (KYC) legislation. KYC processes vary, but they Core Magazine

111

Blockchain News

usually involve making customers prove who they are, by submitting their ID and a photo.

Poloniex Statement:

of its customers.” The move comes at a time in which various cryptocurrency exchanges halt new user registrations due to overwhelming demand.

Incorporated in Delaware, Poloniex is currently the 6th biggest cryptocurrency exchange, with a daily trading volume of over $860 million. The company didn’t reveal how many legacy accounts are affected by the change.

“We have recently completed a major upgrade to our customer identification and verification systems. As a result, we will soon require legacy accounts to become verified through the latest version Community reactions to the Poloniex of our verification portal.” announcement According to the press release, its deadline for identification verification will be released in the first quarter of 2018. Users who fail to verify their IDs will no longer be able to trade, lend, open orders, or deposit.

Part of the cryptocurrency community seemingly applauded Poloniex’s move. On the Bitcointalk forum, one user wrote “at least they give ample warning long before the new measures go into effect.”

Margin position will be given an eightweek grace period in which traders will be able to diminish or close them. After eight weeks positions will be closed, and all users will be able to do is withdraw their funds from the exchange.

On Reddit, another user noted that it is better for the exchange to comply, than for it to shut down. To him, paying taxes and complying is better than going down with people’s money in its wallets.

Those who’ve recently set up an account with Poloniex shouldn’t need to worry, as they had to undergo the verification process as part of their initial setup. After the verification process, users will be able to use the exchange at will. The verification allows for a $25,000 daily withdrawal limit, up from $2,000.

The exchange noted that “as a registered money services business, Poloniex is committed to compliance with all applicable law requiring identification and verification 112

Core Magazine

Others restated that they’ve been waiting for verification for weeks, implying the exchange won’t be able to handle the move.

Poloniex has in the past been under fire for its poor customer support service, so much so it created damaging rumors Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Previous Issues of CORE Magazine

July 2017

August 2017

September 2017

October 2017

November 2017

December 2017

Like what you see? Subscribe today! coremedia.info cryptocoremedia.com CORE™ Copyright © 2018. All Rights Reserved. All Natural Rights Intact. All Intellectual Property Rights Maintained Ab Initio.

Core Magazine

113

Here we are Welcome

2018

114

Core Magazine