BTC/USD Medium-term Trend: Ranging

Resistance Levels: $6,100, $6,200, $6,300
Support levels: $5,900, $5,800, $5,700

Yesterday, June 27, price of Bitcoin fluctuated between the resistance level of $6,308 and the support level of $5,820. Today, price of the cryptoasset had been sustained above the $6,000 price level. Meanwhile, MACD line and the signal line are below the zero line which indicates a sell signal. Also, the 12-day EMA and the 26-day EMA are neither above nor below the price bars of Bitcoin which indicates that the cryptoasset is ranging.

As the cryptoasset is range bound, the possibility of a breakout is imminent. Traders can adopt the use of pending orders to trade the market. At the resistance level, you can place a ”buy stop” for a bullish breakout. Similarly, at the support level, you can place a ”sell stop” for a bearish breakout.Meanwhile, the relative strength index period 14 is level 46 which indicates that price of Bitcoin is in the range bound zone.

On the 1-hour chart, the price of Bitcoin is in a sideways trend. The MACD line and the signal line are neither above nor below the zero line which indicates a neutral signal. Also, the price bars of Bitcoin is neither above nor below the 12-day EMA and the 26-day EMA which indicates that a sideways trend is ongoing.

What is your opinion about this?

Thanks. I also hope that it will be useful for users and investors

Thank you for your comment! 

Thank you 

Thank you for your comment. Please share your story with us there or by email!

Thanks for your comment 

Thank you

En semanas recientes, el valor de ripple ha aumentado, convirtiéndola en la segunda divisa digital más valiosa y haciéndola obtener atención reciente.

La criptomoneda relativamente oscura, también conocida como XRP, ahora vale cerca de 2,6 dólares con una capitalización de mercado de más de 100.000 millones de dólares, de acuerdo con Coinmarketcap. A principios de diciembre, cotizaba a tan solo 25 centavos.

Incluso con el aumento, ripple vale considerablemente menos que un bitcoin. Después de un diciembre tumultuoso, el bitcoin cotizaba a cerca de 15.000 dólares a finales del martes, con una capitalización de mercado de más de 250.000 millones de dólares.

Lo que es diferente sobre ripple es que está controlada por solo una empresa: Ripple, con sede en San Francisco. Existen reportes de ejecutivos actuales y antiguos de Ripple que se convirtieron en multimillonarios de criptodivisas a partir de su auge reciente.

Ripple fue lanzado en 2012 para facilitar las transacciones financieras globales. Se diferencia de otras plataformas de divisas digitales por sus conexiones con bancos legítimos. Empresas que usan la plataforma de Ripple incluyen a Santander, Bank of America y UBS.

En semanas recientes, las empresas de servicios financieros en Japón y Corea del Sur han adoptado la tecnología de Ripple, ayudando a incrementar el precio de la criptodivisa.

De acuerdo con Stephen Powaga, jefe de investigación de la firma de inversiones Blockchain Momentum, ripple y otras criptodivisas tienen costos de transacción relativamente bajos, lo que los hace populares cuando la gente comenzó a buscar alternativas al bitcoin.

Pero a diferencia de bitcoin, Ripple no es creado, o “minado” por los usuarios. La empresa tiene el control.

Inicialmente creó 100.000 millones de monedas ripple y 38.000 millones de ellas se encuentran en circulación en este momento. Los administradores de Ripple pueden liberar hasta 1.000 millones de monedas al mes, lo que Powaga predice podría sobresaturar el mercado.

“Esto es algo preocupante para mí, pues si eligen liberarlas tan rápido como puedan, dentro de tan solo cuatro años, veremos duplicarse el suministro de Ripple”, dijo.

Eso podría ejercer presión sobre su precio.

“No estoy seguro de que algunos de los participantes más nuevos del mercado aprecien completamente el potencial de inflación”, dijo Powaga.

Los pagos que cruzan las fronteras que pueden tomar horas con bitcoin o días con transacciones financieras tradicionales pueden pasar en cuestión de segundos con Ripple, de acuerdo con la compañía.

Al igual que bitcoin, la red de pagos de Ripple, RippleNet, usa tecnología blockchain.

Un blockchain es un libro de contabilidad público que contiene la información de transacción de cualquiera que use el servicio. Las transacciones son agregadas a “bloques” o enlaces de código que componen la cadena, y cada transacción debe ser grabada en un bloque.

Más de 60.000 millones de dólares en valor de mercado de las principales criptomonedas se evaporaron en solo 24 horas. El bitcoin se acerca a una peligrosa encrucijada, varias empresas prohibieron su uso como forma de pago y su publicidad ¿Por qué se están tomando estas medidas? Lo discutimos con Adriana Sanford, abogada, profesora en Loyala Marymount University y experta en seguridad cibernética.

Uno de las bolsas de bitcoin más grandes del mundo dijo este miércoles que le robaron más de 30 millones de dólares en bitcoin.

Bithumb, una bolsa con sede en Corea del Sur, dijo en una nota en su página web que todos los depósitos y retiros de los clientes fueron suspendidos mientras revisaba la situación.

En el anuncio no se estableció cómo fueron robados los 35.000 millones de wones (32 millones de dólares) en criptomonedas o cuáles fueron robados.

La compañía dijo que compensará las pérdidas con sus propios fondos y que los bienes de los consumidores fueron “guardados de manera segura” en los “monederos en frío” de la compañía.

Bithumb se disculpó por la alteración y dijo que dará más información a su debido tiempo. La compañía no respondió inmediatamente a requerimientos para obtener más detalles.

Este es el último caso en una serie de robos reportados por bolsas de criptomonedas en los últimos meses.

Solo la semana pasada, otra bolsa de criptomonedas en Corea del Sur, Coinrail, dijo que hackers robaron cerca del 30% de su moneda virtual.

Corea del Sur emergió el año pasado como uno de los más grandes mercados para negociar bitcoin y otras monedas virtuales.

Según el sitio web de la industria CoinMarketCap.com, Bithumb fue la sexta mayor bolsa de criptomonedas en todo el mundo por el volumen de operaciones en las últimas 24 horas.

Las noticias del robo en las bolsas afectan los precios de las criptomonedas. Bitcoin cayó cerca del 2%.

Los analistas dicen que muchas bolsas de monedas virtuales son vulnerables a los hackers porque han crecido rápidamente sin implementar una seguridad lo suficientemente fuertes.

En enero, la bolsa japonesa Coincheck dijo que los hackers robaron más de 500 millones de dólares en criptomendas. El año pasado, dos bolsas de bitcoins cayeron en bancarrota después de ser víctimas de infracciones similares.

- Jungeun Kim contribuyó con este reporte.

Decentralized energy platform ImpactPPA announced at Consensus 2018 in New York City that it has partnered with the Indian government to re-energize India’s cottage industry.

Under the auspice of the Honorable Minister Shri Giriraj Singh, ImpactPPA will be working with India’s Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to carry out the government’s Bhartiya Harit Khadi Gramodaya Sansthan (BHKGS) initiative. Translated roughly as “Indian Green Cotton Textile Village Development Organization,” the initiative will push to introduce some 50 million jobs for female workers in India’s more rural states.

Starting in Khanwan village in Bihar, the program plans to install textile looms in the homes of women workers. Per the partnership, ImpactPPA is charged with delivering renewable energy to power these looms, using the Ethereum blockchain to manage supply-chain logistics for the initiative.

“It’s an honor to work with the government of India to deploy out technology solutions,” Dan Bates, CEO of ImpactPPA, said in a statement. “A project of this scope clearly demonstrates that the use of renewable energy and blockchain technology has reached the mainstream. This partnership perfectly aligns with our fundamental mission to help improve quality of life with energy as the engine for social good and greater economic justice.”

The project estimates that its female workers could generate 8,000–10,000 rupees (~$115–145 USD) a month right out of their homes. This would mean that some families could experience a 60 percent increase to their monthly incomes, as the joint monthly income for families in some of India’s poorest villages just barely clears 7,000 rupees ($~100 USD).

Come June, the program expects to unveil the first iteration of its project, ushering in the milestone with a ribbon-cutting ceremony by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The inaugural facility in Khanawa will consume 100 KW of energy provided by ImpactPPA, as well as 2 KW systems to deploy the facility’s solar-powered looms.

“Having worked with the government of India on various solutions and projects for social impact, this alliance is a game-changer,” remarked Aradhana Singh, CEO and managing director of Sarang Services Pvt. Ltd., a company serving as India’s domestic partner for the project. “We are thrilled that ImpactPPA will be the provider of energy and blockchain technology and services for the project, bringing tangible economic growth opportunities while advocating women’s empowerment.”

ImpactPPA’s Mission and Story
With a history of providing renewable energy to underdeveloped areas for over 10 years, ImpactPPA wants to cut through the bureaucratic processes that it claims keeps clean, reliable energy from circulating in areas that need it most.

ImpactPPA plans to cut through the red tape of centralized NGOs and governments with its distributed platform and token (MPAQ). Through a combination of blockchain technology, smart contracts and its SmartPPA energy protocol, the project will streamline energy financing by allowing anyone to submit a project proposal to the network for consideration. Community members can then vote on which projects should see funding with the MPAQ token. If approved, ImpactPPA can then easily deploy energy to electricity anchors, called smart meters, whose data is connected to the blockchain.

ImpactPPA believes that its tokenized model can free energy innovations and electrical infrastructure projects from outdated financing processes. Most of all, it seeks to serve the underprivileged and destitute, as it envisions a future in which energy projects can easily enter into poorer areas thanks to a decentralized, global approach to funding and approval.

In an informal statement made at Yahoo Finance’s All Market Summit: Crypto, William Hinman, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s director of corporate finance, indicated that the regulatory agency has no plans to deem ether a security.

“... based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions,” Hinman said in a speech at the summit.

Along with ether, Hinman stated that the SEC would not classify bitcoin as a security, either. Rather, both cryptocurrencies function similar to commodities like gold, silver or oil, the agency believes.

But not all coins are created equal, Hinman expressed in his speech, and the SEC’s leniency on crypto’s top assets won’t relieve tokens from scrutiny. Tokens and Initial Coin Offerings, he continued, are most likely to be considered securities. The distinction lies in how the asset is offered or sold to the public.

“… strictly speaking, the token — or coin or whatever the digital information packet is called — all by itself is not a security … But the way it is sold — as part of an investment; to non-users; by promoters to develop the enterprise — can be, and, in that context, most often is, a security — because it evidences an investment contract,” Hinman stated.

This analysis seems to prioritize circumstance over semantics when deeming a token’s securities status. Projects will often dance around their token’s nomenclature to avoid self-branding as something that could be seen as a security, but Hinman conveyed that the SEC isn’t fooled by the verbal footwork. He made it clear in his speech that “simply labeling a digital asset a ‘utility token’ does not turn the asset into something that is not a security … the economic substance of the transaction always determines the legal analysis, not the labels.”

Hinman appeared to contradict himself when he dove into an analysis of token sales likely falling under the blanket of securities, only to dismiss ether from this classification. But this absolution comes from “putting aside the fundraising that accompanied the creation of Ether,” he said, as a token or coin can’t be deemed a security if no central organization or company is directing it after launch.

“Can a digital asset originally sold in a securities offering eventually be sold in something other than a security?” he posits, eventually concluding that it cannot. “But what about cases where there is no longer any central enterprise being invested in or where the digital asset is sold only to be used to purchase a good or service available through the network on which it was created? I believe in these cases the answer is a qualified ‘yes.’”

The speech shed substantial clarity on a question that has loomed over the industry for some time: namely, whether or not ether would be ruled as a security. And, while this speech is sure to quell the anxieties of enthusiasts and investors alike, it leaves a gray area open for the SEC to color in its treatment of each individual token and coin under Hinman’s interpretation.

Still, the developments are positive for an industry that, in the context of the United States, has made a slow crawl toward regulatory legitimacy.

“We are glad the SEC agrees with our long held analysis of how securities law applies to decentralized cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Coin Center Executive Director Jerry Brito said in a statement. “We are thrilled to see it take a strong pro-innovation approach to this nascent technology. With this guidance, the SEC is showing that taking a pro-innovation approach does not have to come at the expense of protecting investors.”

While the words carry weight from one of the SEC’s highest officials, it’s worth noting that they were spoken somewhat informally and may not represent a cohesive message across the SEC’s regulatory staff.

This morning, Valerie Szczepanik, the SEC’s first crypto czar, issued what looks like a caveat on this front, stating in a panel at the summit that individual staffer comments may not be wholly in line with the SEC’s official stance.

The cryptocurrency market has recorded a loss of over $17 billion in the past 24 hours, triggered by the loss of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and EOS.

EOS recorded the largest loss amongst major digital assets, demonstrating a loss of more than 10 percent overnight. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Stellar, and Cardano fell behind EOS, falling by just over 7 percent.


What Triggered the Sell-Off?
On previous reports, CCN noted that the cryptocurrency market is still in a bear cycle and that it had only initiated a corrective rally, not a bull rally. In mid-June, the market seemed more stable than any other period throughout the past two months. But, the unforeseen hacking attack of Bithumb, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, terminated the corrective rally of the market and led major cryptocurrencies to a short-term decline.

Prior to the Bithumb hack, the cryptocurrency market had shown significant momentum, as Bitcoin rebounded from $6,300 to $6,700. But, the breach of the most widely utilized digital asset trading platform in South Korea, the third biggest cryptocurrency market behind the US and Japan, led investors to panic, even though the outcome was not particularly detrimental.

On June 21, CCN reported that Bithumb confirmed $30 million was stolen from its hot wallet and has started to cooperate with the Korea Internet and Security Agency, a sub organization of the Ministry of Science and ICT, to minimize its losses. The Bithumb team stated that the $30 million figure could decrease in the future, as KISA and Bithumb security experts initiate various recovery efforts.

“After the incident occured on June 20, Bithumb quickly followed the procedure to immediately report [the] incident to KISA announcing that about 35 billion Korean Won worth amount of cryptocurrency was stolen. However, as we undergo recovery process on each cryptocurrency, the overall scale of damage is getting reduced. Hence, we expect that the overall damage will be less than the amount we initially expected,” the Bithumb team said.

Bithumb also confirmed that with company funds, valued around $450 million, the exchange will be able compensate its investors fully with ease, as the stolen amount only accounted for around 6 percent of company funds.

Hence, the end result of the Bithumb security breach was not detrimental to the point of triggering a 6 percent cryptocurrency market correction. Rather, it was the end of an optimistic short-term corrective rally triggered by Bithumb that led the cryptocurrency market to experience a minor correction.

Where Ethereum Goes Next
Ethereum experienced the biggest loss amongst major cryptocurrencies today alongside EOS, and given that smaller cryptocurrencies and tokens follow the trend of BTC and ETH, the short-term trend of ETH is important to observe.

Various momentum indicators indicate neutral zone for ETH. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) of ETH is at 40.5 and the MACD of ETH is demonstrating a buy signal. But, a neutral signal for ETH, in a strong downward trend, could mean that its decline could be prolonged to the higher end of the $400 region, from the current price of ETH at $503.

BT has been fined £77,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after it sent nearly five million nuisance emails to customers

The 4.9 million emails were sent between December 2015 and November 2016 promoting three charity initiatives: the BT `My Donate’ platform, Giving Tuesday and Stand up to Cancer.

During the investigation, BT accepted that emails for Giving Tuesday and Stand up to Cancer were unlawful but disputed the assessment that My Donate emails were direct marketing.

The commissioner found that all of the emails sent constituted marketing and were not simply service messages. These messages were found to have been delivered to recipients who had not given the necessary consent and were therefore sent in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations Act 2003.
 

The ICO found that although BT did not deliberately break the rules, it should have known the risks and it failed to take reasonable steps to prevent them.

ICO head of enforcement, Steve Eckersley, said: “Organisations have a responsibility to ensure they are acting within the law. Where they do not, the ICO can and will take action. This particular investigation was prompted by a concerned member of the public. We investigated the matter and uncovered the full extent of this activity which shows how important it is for people to report nuisance emails.”

There have been calls by prominent industry leaders for a Tezos hard fork, following the prolonged delay in the issuance of the Tezos token to investors.

Speaking on the issue, Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum co-founder twitted ,

“This seems backwards, Why can’t third parties just run a script to scan the BTC/ETH blockchains, see how much everyone contributed, calculate how much XTZ everyone should get, and generate the genesis block without Tezos Co involvement? That’s how the Ethereum launch worked.”

The Tezos ICO which was held in July 2017 generated $232 million, making it the highest grossing ICO at that time. Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman then made a post that the launch of the blockchain would be in Q1 of 2018 or even earlier.

However, trouble started when the couple founders fell out with the Tezos Foundation president Johann Gevers with each party accusing the other of fraud. The issue was resolved after Gevers resigned but not before the Foundation and company have been slapped with a number of class-action lawsuits.

With the resolution of the crisis, expectations were high that the investors would soon be offered their Tezzies (XTZ) tokens, but the company recently released a statement saying that investors will have to comply with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti money laundering (AML) verifications which many are unwilling to do.

Many are not willing to do the KYC

Some of the users are asking why the company never stated it was part of the requirement during the ICO wondering why it should change the rules at the middle of the game. In a release, Tezos said,

“it has become best practice to verify that contributors meet basic KYC/AML criteria”

Tokensoft, a US based third party entity has been hired by the company to collate the data. An investor who has undergone the process said that the check asked for a name, phone number, address, government-issued ID and a selfie.

Another Reddit User wrote “Changing the deal after the sale has been completed for months is bad business, no matter how they try to dress it up.”

Indeed, the KYC/AML protocol has never really been enforced as Matt Gertler, general counsel at Digital Asset Research said. He found the company’s stance on the issue unconvincing, saying, “The rules haven’t changed, It’s not that KYC/AML has become the norm, you either had to do it or not.”

Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist who is one of the investors in the ICO agreed with the company’s stance, saying it is their call on how best the issue should be handled. He believes the company has probably weighed all options and felt the path chosen is the best.

However, many investors are not impressed. Some are simply demanding that their money be repaid. Interestingly, in the Tezos agreement between the company and the investors, it was stated that investors should consider their involvement a “contribution” stating that they may never get the tezzies they paid for.

The ICO terms which states state that,

“contributions were not investments, but actually “non-refundable donation.The contributor understands and accepts that TEZOS [the Tezos Foundation] cannot guarantee that contributors shall have any allocation of XTZ when the TEZOS Network is created.”

Crypto loves Lamborghinis.

So much so it seems that a startup looking to release movies – early offerings include a biopic about the founder of the car company and his feud with the founder of Ferrari – has raised a whopping $575 million off its private sale of TTU crypto tokens from investors including BlockTower Capital and even a prince.

With that, the startup, called TaTaTu, has raised the third largest round ever using the initial coin offering (ICO) model – surpassed only by EOS and Telegram, according to data from CoinDesk's ICO Tracker.

If that sounds crazy – such a huge raise by a company called TaTaTu with no history in the crypto space – you wouldn't be alone. Even one of the project's backers admits that the news, announced today, will catch many off guard.

"The large round seems surprising in the context of a crowded and bearish crypto industry, in which investors typically participate with crypto, and not fiat. We think it, in fact, isn't," Allan Cassis, the CEO of Lvna Capital, told CoinDesk. Cassis' family gave money to the project, but Lvna Capital did not participate in the round.

Pointing to a new category of interested crypto backers, he continued, saying, "This is new money coming into the markets at a time when we continue to see delays from the long-expected institutional investors' participation in bitcoin."

Sure enough, some of that new money is coming from European royalty and nobility – Prince Felix of Luxembourg, second in the line of succession, and Lady Monika Bacardi, of the family that owns the famous liquor company, Bacardi Limited. (CoinDesk was not able to confirm Prince Felix's investment by press time, but TaTaTu previously disclosed Lady Bacardi's pledge on its Medium blog, where it "estimated" her backing at $100 million.)

Plus with BlockTower Capital investing and Lvna Capital acting as a strategic advisor, there seems to be quite a bit of support for TaTaTu's endeavor – which isn't only about movie making.

On top of creating its own video content, TaTaTu plans on building a token-powered video-on-demand platform to compete with Netflix. According to the press release, the funds raised will be used to build the platform, build audience and promote an ad-supported service that will share revenue with viewers.

TaTaTu CEO Andrea Iervolino said in a press release:

"The response is further validation that our model of acquiring and producing our own content mixed with rewarding users with TTU tokens to watch that content on the platform will benefit everyone."

Still, there's a number of things about this round that may give observers in the space pause.

For starters, huge rounds tend to make people more skeptical than reassured, plus projects that flaunt celebrity-like backers have many times ended badly. Plus there's a number of small things – including spelling errors on websites, the white paper and in the press release – that will add doubts (spelling errors are generally seen as the mark of scammers).

But perhaps one of the most notable breaks from typical industry practice is that the white paper does not indicate how many tokens will be created for TaTaTu or whether more will be created over time.

Instead, the white paper only acknowledges that 57 percent of the project's ethereum-based tokens were set aside for the private sale. And provided that hasn't changed, that would value the token supply at a little over $1 billion.

While BlockTower Capital's Ari Paul did not respond to a request for comment, he did confirm that he gave this statement for the announcement:

"I'm excited for projects that will spread cryptocurrency beyond the current less than 0.5 percent of the world that holds it."

The TTU economy
The way TaTaTu plans on getting crypto into the hands of everyday users is by sharing its revenue with content viewers and creators.

The basic idea behind TaTaTu is simple on its face: viewers of the content distributed through the service will share in the ad-revenue earned by the service, as will creators who provide their work.

And according to the white paper, revenue from advertisers will be paid in the native crypto token and all rewards for the viewing of content will be paid out in TTU as well, which it calls advertising video-on-demand (AVOD). But later in the document is where the business starts to blur since it explains that AdMob, a Google-housed mobile advertising company, will be the "preferred monetization solution" and "pay TaTaTu in fiat."

The white paper goes on, though, stating that regardless, the funds that come in from third-party ad providers will be converted into the platform's tokens – and those will then be shared with viewers (whose identities will be verified) and content providers over the next few weeks.

Here again, TaTaTu breaks from the norms of most ICO-backed companies, as the white paper discloses, "TaTaTu takes a small percentage of profits in order to run the platform while the large majority goes to the user."

Many ICO issuers have decided to send all revenue to users, with the company making money off the growing value (as adoption increases) of crypto tokens held in reserve. That said, TaTaTu will also earn funds in that way. The white paper indicates that unsold tokens are held in a reserve (35.5 percent), which will be used for stabilizing the market, but another 5 percent is set aside for the team and advisors and 2.5 percent for the founder.

And if that in itself didn't add a significant amount of complexity, once the video-on-demand service goes live, it only becomes more complicated.

The white paper describes eventually adding features familiar to other major websites, such as celebrity profiles, blockchain-based digital rights management, peer-to-peer recommendations and user-generated video, among other ideas. It also describes other kinds of video content, such as sports streaming.

According to the white paper, these additional features will be completed between now and sometime around March 2019.

Users already?
It's an ambitious plan, but according to the press release, one that has garnered significant attention not only from investors but also future users.

The platform launched an alpha release on June 15 for 500 users, yet the press release states that 200,000 people have joined the waiting list to participate in the new platform.

Early users will earn tokens for testing and interacting with the platform, and much like other content platforms, such as Steemit, these early entrants are likely to receive some of the richest rewards if the new protocol works as planned.

That said, the project's priority appears to be content over technology. According to the white paper, only 15 percent of the funds raised will be used for overhead, which includes software development. Meanwhile, 35 percent will be devoted to user acquisition and another 35 percent to content acquisition. Lastly, another 15 percent will be put towards marketing.

Indeed, the Lamborghini film isn't the only one slated for the service; another film the company is promoting is a forthcoming documentary chronicling actor Jeremy Renner's efforts making music for the animated film, "Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad."

Speaking to her support of Iervolino's past work in film, Bacardi said in the press release:

"Andrea is a forward thinker who has always met, an in many instances exceeded, his own high business standards."

Still, with TaTaTu's charge into film distribution, the company will face an extensive array of competition on the blockchain, as many other projects have entered into different aspects of this space. The most direct competitor is Flixxo, but others include YouNow and VideoCoin.

That said, if money is what will make or break this use case, TaTaTu's reported fundraising round is larger than all those other efforts combined.
__

UPDATE JUNE 21th, 2018 :

According to the latest information we have received and the investigations carried out, we think we have identified some members of the rogue team of Matyas Zaborszky and Yogesh Dhiman.


From the complaints received:
Name: Darko Popovski
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darko-popovski-57b43b137/
E-mail :  popovskidarko@yahoo.com

The SCAM Darko Popovski is a young man who lives in Macedonia and who presents himself as an expert in "video editing". On his Linkedin profile he claims to work for different Company as an expert but we discovered that it is actually a scam.

SCAM DarKo Popovski sends messages saying that these parents are sick and that he needs to get a cash advance on his work because he has to pay the medical expenses. And if we do not send a cash advance, then he does not do the work and starts sending insult and threat emails and, like Matyas Zaborszky, he starts threatening to make smear campaign if we pay him not.

So please WARNING, if the SCAM Darko Popovski asks you for money before finishing are so-called video editing work, to cover the expenses of those sick relatives, especially not pay.

Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman Shares Comments On ICO Investors Being Manipulated

The cryptocurrency industry brings in billions of dollars of revenue each year, which seems to come more from retail investors than anyone else. Most platforms introduce themselves to the community with an ICO or a pre-ICO, giving a chance for consumers to get a discounted rate on the tokens before they reach full value. However, the CEO of NASDAQ doesn’t see things that way.

At the Future of Fintech conference, which recently took place in New York, the CEO said,


The CEO refers to the investors as victims of these platforms, as they have limited access to ongoing information about the way they will function.

The SEC requires that cryptocurrency companies release the same information that financial institutions provide in IPOs, but the crypto industry isn’t regulated at all. CEO Adena Friedman also noted at the conference that none of the transparency that banks offer, which makes her nervous that the they are only raising capital through the ICO.

During an ICO, the crypto exchange puts up their tokens for sale, similar to the way that a crowdfunding campaign works. However, instead of earning rights to certain stakes in the company, they will receive “utility tokens,” granting them access to the platform. Though they are sometimes supported by physical assets as incentive, they usually don’t offer anything at all.

For instance, less than a month ago, Block.one was started up in the Cayman Islands, raising $4 billion in their ICO as the biggest offering this year. All of these funds were raised before the platform was even launched.

Recently, the SEC begun to put more pressure and restrictions on ICOs. Some have received warnings, while others have been shut down entirely. So far, the SEC Chairman hasn’t found an ICO that isn’t essentially a securities offering. In an interview with CNBC, he noted that the NASDAQ may even consider a move to digital currency as the industry matures and eliminates the common problems in it.

In April, NASDAQ established a partnership with an exchange by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss called Gemini. With this deal, Gemini will be able to use the surveillance technology that NASDAQ owns. In a statement about the partnership, the CEO said,


As far as cryptocurrency goes, the CEO is still on the fence.


John

Capgemini Crypto Survey Poll Shows More Millionaires Looking to Invest, Interest Growing

Millionaires May Not Have Enough Cryptocurrency Advice

According to a survey released on June the 19 by Capgemini, 29 percent of millionaires – also known as high net worth individuals – have an important degree of interest in cryptos. But there is a problem, they are not receiving adequate advice from wealth managers.

The information has been released by Reutres and gathered it from the Capgemini’s annual survey known as the World Wealth Report. The report shows that over 26.9 percent of these investors are ‘on the fence’ when it’s about cryptocurrency investments, which means that 55 percent of the respondents are interested or have a good knowledge about cryptocurrencies.

The company, Capgemini is located in paris and works as a consulting enterprise. Those HNWIs are considered people with at least $1 million dollars available to invest, outside their holdings like cars or houses.

At the beginning of 2018 there were 15.2 million such people in the world, but the number may be different now that we are arriving to the first half of this year. These group of individuals controls more than $70 trillion dollars and in the future (more precisely for 2025), the Capgemini expects that the number will grow to $106 trillion.

It is also important to mention that the survey shows that 71.1 percent millionaires below 40 years old, place ‘high importance’ about receiving information regarding cryptocurrencies from their wealth management firms. The number is reduced to 13% on those who are aged 60 and over, and that’s quite surprising. In general, older people tends to be more conservative towards investments, but in this case, they seem safer than youngers investing in this market.

Only 34.6 percent of them received cryptocurrency information from their wealth management. This shows that wealth managers may be behind the market. I would be important for them to be providing good quality analysis about future trends, investments possibilities and more.

Cryptocurrency hedge funds have been growing during the last year. The same happened with venture capital companies that are searching opportunities in the virtual currency world. Important players like the Rockefeller Foundation, Goldman Sachs or even Nasdaq, have been trying to enter the market.

If the market starts to be bullish again, these firms related to crypto investments will start to grow and expand everywhere.

Bancor has announced today it will launch a network of blockchain-based community currencies in Kenya.

The new project is expected to combat poverty through the stimulation of local and regional commerce and peer-to-peer collaboration.

By using the Bancor Network, disadvantaged communities in Kenya will be able to create digital currencies that can hold one or more balances in a connected way such that integrated currencies can be swapped for one another without needing a counterparty.

Bancor will launch the new currencies by contributing capital from the proceeds of its $153 million token sales in 2017.

In correspondence with Bitcoin Magazine, Galia Benartzi, Bancor’s co-founder, said, “Bancor will serve as one of several donors in the program providing initial capital to fund the token balances contained within each of the community currencies. In addition, Bancor will provide in-kind operational support, including technical and integrations work, marketing and hardware to get the currencies distributed and operational.”

The company will partner with Kenyan nonprofit foundation Grassroots Economics, who has experience developing community currency programs in Africa.

Grassroots Economics founder Will Ruddick, who is also the newly appointed director of community currencies at Bancor, will oversee the launch of the community currencies from Nairobi. The team will use Bancor Protocol to expand the current paper currency system used by local businesses to reduce poverty and create stable markets.

Ruddick believes that when “communities have the same right as nations to create and manage currencies, they will unlock their full potential.”

Kawangware and Kibera are the focal points for the pilot launch. These communities, which happen to be the largest slums in Kenya, will be used to circulate the currency by incentivizing customers to use it.

Bancor expects that as more people in the community buy and hold the local currency, its market cap can increase, which will create more wealth and a higher purchasing power for the holders.

Community members and supporters of the initiative will have the option to buy and sell the local currencies via the open-source Bancor Protocol using any of the popular cryptocurrencies or a major credit card.

Before its partnership with Grassroots Economics, Bancor had launched a similar program in Israel. The pilot program, aimed at mothers, was processing over 1,000 daily transactions before activities peaked due to the difficulty of transferring wealth outside of the community.

Chain Accelerator has launched in France. It is the first startup acceleratordedicated to the blockchain that can call Europe its home. Among the organization’s chief operators are Hyperloop Transportation Technologies chairman Bibop G. Gresta, former SWIFT CEO Leonard Schrank, and Ledger president Pascal Gauthier.

The company will assist startups with initial coin offerings (ICOs), business development plans, marketing and public relations.

In a statement, co-founder Nicolas Cantu explained, “At a time when the President and the Government want to make Paris the capital of the ICOs, Chain Accelerator is positioning itself as a key player. By setting up a global and operational network in Paris, it brings together the best talent, extends the circle of contributors, and prepares for disruptions to help blockchain projects develop protocols in all sectors.”

France has been relatively mixed when it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency culture. Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy and Finance, has been particularly wary of cryptocurrencies in the past, and has called on regulators to implement strict rules when it comes to governing and controlling their activities.

In May, however, Le Maire expressed a drastic change of heart in a blog post for a French startup, writing:

“A revolution is under way, of which Bitcoin was only the precursor. The blockchain will offer unprecedented opportunities for our startups. I was a neophyte a year ago, but now I’m passionate. Let us show a lot of pedagogy with our fellow citizens to make France the first place of blockchain and crypto-active innovation in Europe.”

The integration of Chain Accelerator in France could help Paris become a major hub for blockchain development. Currently, the executive board of Chain Accelerator consists of over 30 individuals who will serve as mentors to Europe’s growing list of crypto-based startups, thus increasing the company’s potential to succeed and expand.

In addition, as blockchain technology and cryptocurrency garner more acceptance throughout the continent, more startups may arise, seeking the company’s aid.

National Assembly for Paris member Pierre Person states, “In France, as everywhere in the world, blockchain projects face many uncertainties and complexities, whether financial, legal, or technical. Yet this technology will revolutionize our daily lives. As such, it is essential today to have both a legislative framework enabling its full development and structures enabling the emergence of such projects. Our country must become a leader in the blockchain. I am convinced that Chain Accelerator — the first blockchain incubator — will contribute greatly to this.”

Despite its hard work, France will face competition with countries like the U.K. and Switzerland, which have positioned themselves as some of Europe’s primary fintech and cryptocurrency centers. According to U.K. Secretary of State for International Trade Dr. Liam Fox, the country’s fintech space has already attracted over $2.4 billion in investments in 2018 alone, while Switzerland was recently home to four of the world’s largest ICOs.

Chain Accelerator will be headquartered in Paris’s Station F, a large startup campus that opened in the summer of 2017. Station F director Roxanne Varza commented, “The blockchain universe, inherently decentralized, stands out for its global and international nature. Innovation comes from everywhere, talents are rare, the need for support is exacerbated. We are pleased to welcome Chain Accelerator.”