Jan 3, 2018  -  A post from IKIGUIDE - As a professional who has been doing Public Relations/ Community Management in the cryptoworld for some time already, it recently came to my attention that some of my friends are completely lost when my fellow traders and I discuss crypto stuff. This is because we tend to spam cryptocurrency jargons like water.

Indeed, cryptocurrency jargons can sometimes be quite confusing to a person who isn’t familiar with crypto! Yet if you are just starting out in crypto in Singapore, you will see such language used really often on reddit and in telegram. Having said that, don’t worry. Here’s presenting a Top 5 Must-Know Cryptocurrency Jargon Post to help you decrypt some of the potentially confusing language.

Cryptocurrency Jargon #1: “HODL”Everytime you read Facebook Groups, Telegram, Reddit–there will be at least one person who uses the term “HODL”.

So initially when I first started out in the cryptoworld and doing research, I was totally judging redditors. “Cannot even spell ‘HOLD’ meh? So fail.”

But actually, “HODL” refers to “Hold On for Dear Life”. It’s not a misspelling or autocorrect for the word “HOLD”.

Well as I’m typing this, TRX is like mooning again due to its newest listing today on a major exchange. So someone might tell you to “HODL” because the prices will be increasing (X10? X100?) over the next few hours or days.

Which brings us to our next jargon…

Cryptocurrency Jargon #2: “Mooning”Basically the action verb of mooning describes the increasing price of the cryptocurrency.

Contrary to popular language, it’s not describing an ass. (HAHA– that was what one or two friends speculated).

Sometimes crypto traders use the phrase “to the moon” to describe the skyrocketing prices of that particular coin.

Cryptocurrency Jargon #3: “FOMO”This abbreviation stands for “Fear Of Missing Out”.

The shittiest feeling in crypto is when you cannot buy ETH as coinmama/ coinbase/ xfers is taking forever to verify your account, or you buy a coin at a relatively high price because everyone else is doing so.

Take the recent example of VERGE. A couple of days ago, there were massive rumours surrounding the verge wraith protocol release. The prices of VERGE fell due to loss of confidence, then peaked when a developer “leaked” a picture of a wraith protocol screenshot on snapchat.

So why did the price of VERGE peak due to pure speculation? It’s the fear of missing out or FOMO. So there you go

Jan 3, 2018 - Ether, the coin or token associated with the ethereum platform started 2018 right reaching an all-time high of over $900 this morning January 2. Ethereum is the third largest cryptocurrency by capitalization after being overtaken by Ripple for second place late last year.  Ether's market capitalization is almost $85 billion. 79 million coins are in circulation.

Dec 27, 2017  -  If 2017 was the year of the ICO, 2018 will be the year of the great ICO hangover.  It will also be the year major financial institutions adopt digital assets, and mark the birth of hybrid blockchains.

Dec 21, 2017 - A coalition of tech start-ups is using blockchain to build a database of small tea farmers in Malawi to improve supply chain transparency.  The tool, which is being piloted by both Unilever and Sainsbury’s as well as several international banks, uses a number of different technologies to gather and record standardised information on small farmers and producers, including quality and price.

Dec 21, 2017  -  TL;DR–an item that represents the work that someone invested is a representation of value. This has been true throughout history and it is true now.

The origin for this post is a bit unusual….the Old Testament.

I was reading a story about Joseph when he was viceroy of Egypt and how his brothers came down from Canaan to buy food during the famine. The text says that they brought “money” with them (in the form of silver coins).

The question that I had then was: Why would believe that the ruler of a foreign land would accept their silver coins in payment for something of “actual” value, in this case, food?

Physical Proof of WorkThroughout history, some metals have achieved the status of “precious” and been used as a form of money.

As we talked about the other day, money needs to have a few characteristics to make it work.

It needs to be durable, transportable, and relatively scarce, among other things.

One possible reason that a silver (or gold) coin works as money is that it actually is a physical representation of the fact that someone put their labor (which is value) into the mining, refining, smelting, forging, etc. of the coin.

So, the coin in your hand is a “proof of work.”

That proof, then, represents value and it can be transferred from one person to the next.

That’s the physical world.

Digital Proof of WorkThe reason why (some) blockchains have value is because of the “proof of work” algorithm.

In this case, the miners invest work (computing power and electricity) to verify transactions and add blocks to the chain. When they do, they get new Bitcoins which are the digital representations of the fact that they did the work.

The more I think about it, the more I realize Satoshi’s genius in outlining the terms for the Bitcoin blockchain as he did.

When you can prove that work was done to create something, that thing has some inherent value.

The Problem with FiatWhich brings us to fiat currency.

When the US dollar was backed by gold (until 1971), we just had an easier, more transportable way of representing the proof-of-work that went into creating the gold.

When Nixon took the US off that standard, however, it became free floating.

Ironically, it is the US dollar that isn’t really backed by anything (except for the government’s ability to coerce you to use it when paying your taxes and jail you if you don’t).

For 46 years, we’ve had the inertia of the value of a US dollar because everyone else accepts the dollar for payment. It’s a big magic trick we all play on each other.

But here’s the challenge.In order to create new dollars, there is no “work” that needs to be done. Someone pushes a button and POOF…money is created.

Argentinians, Zimbabweans, Turks, Cypriots and others have seen firsthand what happens when this is taken to its extreme. That is the danger of being able to create money without any actual work behind it.

What’s Old is NewSo, the reason why the ancient Near East accepted gold or silver coins is the same reason why more and more people are accepting cryptocurrencies. It represents a proof of work.

All of us know that our labor has value.

By having an incorruptible proof of our labor (a gold coin or a blockchain-based coin), we can give others greater confidence that they can accept the proof in exchange for their assets.

Source:  Jeremy Epstein for Never Stop Marketing  ||  December 21, 2017   |||

Dec 20, 2017  -  Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is having a field day. It's currently trading at $850, a new all-time-high, after an incredible rally in which it nearly doubled its price in nine days writes Stan Schroeder on Mashable.

Ethereum's current market capitalization is $82 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin, by far the biggest cryptocurrency with a $318 billion market cap, has also grown in this period, but at a much slower pace. It's currently trading at $18,976. Its price neared the important psychological milestone of $20,000 on two occasions but has swiftly bounced back.

There was good news for both Bitcoin and Ethereum in December. Two large exchanges, CBOE and CME, started trading Bitcoin futures this month, and the launch went pretty much without a hitch. Futures at both exchanges are trading above current price for January, at $19,490 and $19,600, respectively.

Ethereum likely benefited from a recent statement from SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, which commented on the state of ICO or initial coin offerings — crowdfunding events typically held on Ethereum's platform. Clayton warned potential investors of the dangers of unregulated ICOs but he also made it clear that some digital tokens generated in ICOs are not securities and do not fall under SEC's regulations.

Continue here to read the full article and view graphs on Mashable  ||  December 20, 2017   |||

Dec 19, 2017  -  Bitcoin: Flipping the Coin  - You must be familiar with the above quote if you’ve watched the Christian Bale movie The Big Short. Does that mean the Bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst? Maybe. The truth is no one knows just yet. It’s difficult to assess whether something is a bubble by simply reading the news or following the market. So, let’s begin by understanding what is a Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized, digital cryptocurrency. Confused? Let’s take an example. Let’s say that you are ordering headphones from Amazon via a seller and you want to know exactly where they’ve been before they were shipped to you. How do you find out? The answer is, you cannot. You can’t know the exact source of the product and you definitely cannot find out all the transactions related to those specific headphones.

Imagine if there was some sort of a digital ledger that could tell you all that and more? There is. Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that stores all transactions related to a specific product or asset. But then what is a Bitcoin? Blockchain technology is what makes the Bitcoin possible.

Bitcoin is a peer to peer decentralized digital currency that is used to buy and sell products online. Decentralized means that the Bitcoin is not managed or issued by a company, government or financial institution. Bitcoin uses blockchain to store all transactions in a digital ledger which is then accessible to everyone globally using their computers. Now that you understand the basics, let’s understand why there is so much hype surrounding the Bitcoin.

1 Bitcoin costs $10,886.85 at the time of writing this article. Crazy, right? Bitcoin was worth $1 in April 2011 and now, 6 years down the line, it’s worth more than 10,000 times its original value. But, why is the price of the Bitcoin so high? Bitcoin’s growing demand and the awareness amongst the public about cryptocurrencies is causing the price of the Bitcoin to rise.

The price of the Bitcoin has been fluctuating a lot recently but some are betting that the price of the Bitcoin will rise to $40,000 by the end of 2018. People are even purchasing 5% of 1 Bitcoin so that they can sell it off and earn a profit when the price rises again. Various Bitcoin exchanges like Coinome, Zebpay, Unocoin and several others in India are currently allowing the public to purchase and sell Bitcoin also known as BTC. So, should you invest in Bitcoin? I hope I can help you answer that question by the end of this article.

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest individuals and a person who is widely regarded as one of the best investors of his time had this to say about the Bitcoin: “It’s a mirage.”

Several others share his thoughts but does that mean that they are right? Well, they could be but it’s quite difficult to assess something like this and who knows what could happen in the future. Let’s take a look at some important points:

1. Volatility: The price of the Bitcoin has been fluctuating a lot and although it has been termed as a currency, a 15% change in price in a single day is concerning. Although, you wouldn’t be thinking about this today if you had invested in Bitcoin a few years ago because you would have been a millionaire by now.
2. Regulatory problems: Various countries such as China have imposed various restrictions to try and regulate Bitcoin and some countries have even banned the use of Bitcoin completely. Some believe that a few countries are working on their own cryptocurrency which means more regulations.
3. Bubble: Bitcoin has drawn several comparisons to other bubbles in the past specially due to the fluctuations in price and the massive hype surrounding it.
4. Legality: Although, buying or selling a Bitcoin is considered neither legal or illegal in India but the Reserve Bank of India has not declared it a currency yet.
5. Fraud: Various individuals and companies are contacting the public to ask them to invest in Bitcoin through them but because Bitcoin investments are not regulated, if you are cheated by someone you can’t do much about it.
6. Price: The golden rule of investment is to not invest an amount that you cannot afford to lose. If you want to invest in a Bitcoin then purchase a small portion of 1 BTC but do not purchase a large amount if you do not fully understand the market. Also, it would be a good idea to buy it when the price is lower than usual.
7. Future: The market cap of the Bitcoin is much higher than any currency or stock. It is used throughout the world and is truly international.
8. Wallet: After you purchase a Bitcoin online, they are stored in a virtual wallet but they are not entirely secure as the company that owns the wallet might get hacked. It’s important to remember that if you decide to buy bitcoin, do not store it with an online coin exchange platform. Instead, withdraw it and store it on a hardware or offline wallet so that it is secure.
9. Supply: The number of Bitcoin in existence is not expected to exceed 21 million and because “No one can see a bubble. That’s what makes it a bubble.” — The Big Short there is a finite number, the demand continues to grow.
10. Futures trading: Anyone who has invested in stocks before understands the meaning of futures. Futures are contracts to buy or sell something after a set period of time at a predetermined price. Why am I mentioning this here? It’s because Bitcoin futures could be a reality, in fact US regulators have given the green signal to a few companies to allow Bitcoin futures trading.

Hopefully, some of these points helped you make a decision whether you should or should not currently invest in Bitcoin. Invest wisely and only invest in something you truly understand and believe in.

Source:  FreeCodeCamp  ||  December 2, 2017   |||

Dec  13, 2017  -  Earlier this year, we committed to placing 55 billion XRP in a cryptographically-secured escrow account to create certainty of XRP supply at any given time. As promised, today we completed the lockup.  By securing the lion’s share of XRP in escrow, people can now mathematically verify the maximum supply that can enter the market. While Ripple has proved to be a responsible steward of XRP supply for almost five years – and has clearly demonstrated a tremendous track record of investing in and supporting the XRP ecosystem – this lockup eliminates any concern that Ripple could flood the market, which we’ve pointed out before is a scenario that would be bad for Ripple!

This move underscores Ripple’s commitment to building XRP liquidity and a healthy and trusted market. Long term, the value of digital assets will be determined by their utility. XRP has emerged as the only digital asset with a clear institutional use case designed to solve a multi-trillion dollar problem – the global payment and liquidity challenges that banks, payment providers and corporates face.

Unlike other digital assets purely driven by unexplained speculation, real institutional customers are already using and finding value in XRP, and governments, regulators and central banks are increasingly recognizing the role it could play in the global system.

XRP goes beyond what Bitcoin does well — a store of value — and delivers transaction speed and throughput that is orders of magnitude faster than BTC or ETH. While other digital assets continue to bump against their transaction limits, XRP remains the fastest, most efficient and most scalable digital asset in the world – making it the best digital asset for payments. It’s no surprise that institutions are looking to XRP to provide much-needed on-demand liquidity for cross-border payments.

Game changer for $XRP! 55 billion XRP now in escrow Tweet This

Here’s how the escrow works:

The Escrow feature in the XRP Ledger allows parties to secure XRP for an allotted amount of time or until specific conditions are met. For example, Escrow allows a sender of XRP to put conditions on exactly when a payment can be completed, so the payment remains cryptographically locked until the due date.

We use Escrow to establish 55 contracts of 1 billion XRP each that will expire on the first day of every month from months 0 to 54. As each contract expires, the XRP will become available for Ripple’s use. You can expect us to continue to use XRP for incentives to market makers who offer tighter spreads for payments and selling XRP to institutional investors.

We’ll then return whatever is unused at the end of each month to the back of the escrow rotation. For example, if 500M XRP remain unspent at the end of the first month, those 500M XRP will be placed into a new escrow account set to expire in month 55. For comparison, Ripple has sold on average 300M XRP per month for the past 18 months.

Ripple’s vision remains the same – to enable the Internet of Value in which money moves like information moves today – and XRP is at the heart.

To learn more, please visit ripple.com/xrp.

| A Ripple release  ||  December 7, 2017   |||

Dec 11, 2017  -  The NEM.io Foundation, the organisation behind the NEM blockchain technology, is setting up shop in New Zealand as part of what it says is $US40 million global expansion plan, and has been in New Zealand promoting a $US90 million ($130m) global development fund that it says will help kick start local blockchain companies.

The NEM.io Foundation is a Singapore based not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is “to introduce, educate, and promote the use of the NEM blockchain technology platform on an international scale to all industries and institutions.”

NEM has its own cryptocurrency, XEM, that is says is “recognised as one of the top ten cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.”

A NEM.io Foundation team, led by Jason Lee, global director, partnerships and strategic alliances is hosting a series of introductory events in Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga throughout December. The team also presented at the Blockchain Summit Auckland 2017.

A spokesman said that, in addition, the NEM.io Fondation team had been engaging with the Blockchain Association of New Zealand, universities and various blockchain companies and startups interested in the building on the NEM blockchain via the global development fund.

The head of the NEM.io Foundation in Australia and New Zealand, and a council member of the NEM.io Foundation, Nelson Valero, said the global development fund would help businesses, academics and developers feel empowered about the NEM blockchain technology and its potential to disrupt the way they manage information and data.

Lee said all applicants for funding had to be active members of the NEM community, but that this meant, “simply getting involved in conversations on our online forums.”

However, “If you are new to the community, you must have an endorser whom you think will be able to help you quality and contribute to your blockchain project,” he said.

The Foundation’s New Zealand initiative follows the opening of a NEM Blockchain centre in Kuala Lumpur as a joint initiative with the Australia-based Blockchain Centre (a not-for-profit sponsored by Blockchain Global and IBM). It says the centre will be a knowledge and innovation hub that will serve as an accelerator, incubator and co-working space.

The foundation claims to have a unique implementation of blockchain technology. “NEM is built from scratch as a powerful and streamlined platform for application developers of all kinds, not just as a digital currency,” it claims.

“Using NEM in your application is as simple as making RESTful JSON API calls allowing you to configure your own ‘Smart Assets’ and make use of NEM’s powerful blockchain platform as your fast, secure and scalable.

“Configured for your use, NEM is suitable for an amazing variety of solution classes, such as direct public transactions via streamlined smartphone app, efficient cloud services that connect client or web applications, or a high-performance permissioned enterprise back-end for business-critical record keeping.”

A technical whitepaper on NEM is available here.

| A COMPUTERWORLD RELEASE ||  DECEMBER 8, 2017   |||

Nov 27, 2017 - Blockchain project TravelChain today announced that for their token sale they are not going to use the Ethereum smart contract, which they have posted earlier on GitHub. The token sale is going to be on their graphene-based blockchain and going to start on December 10. TravelChain is a breakthrough in the travel industry and is the core of the SmartTraveling Ecosystem which is going to provide reliable tools for developers willing to create services that meet demands of contemporary leisure travelers.

“Data is the “oil” of the 21st century, but in most cases, it circulates within corporate systems and cannot be used by other companies to create innovative services. We are looking to bring fourth digital revolution in the travel industry using blockchain.” said TravelChain co-founder and CEO Ilya Orlov. “We designed TravelChain to bridge the gap between all stakeholders in the travel industry and incentivize the consumers. Travelution is coming”

| About TravelChain

TravelChain is a decentralized data exchange platform for the travel industry. It is globally scalable data storage infrastructure, secure by its design.

Graphene-based blockchain allows us to make the public information available for every part of the system, while private information is safely encrypted and stored with just the mark about the type of the information inside. Individual users (private or corporate entities) own the keys to their data in order to control secure storage or distributing/selling their data in real time.

A key component of TravelChain is Traveler Passport, a model with distributed trust that allows you to form an image of another person without being acquainted personally. When dealing with unknown people, it is difficult to predict their actions. However, this is critical when it comes to money, private property, and health.

Key features of Traveler Passport:

• Sociability
• Benevolence
• Responsibility
• Professionalism

| MARKET OVERVIEW

Data market is currently not monetized outside of advertising space. Alphabet (Google, YouTube), Facebook, AirBnB, Amadeus and other services barely reach outside base advertising products and services to individuals.

TravelChain provides different models, enabling data sharing among individuals and business on equal terms.

Target for consumers: To make profit from sharing their data, to get the best deals and offers from businesses and an ability to make the C2C escrow deals.

Target for businesses: Information about potential customers, big data for better market analysis, immediate feedback from customers about goods and services and an ability to provide the best possible conditions for any customer. Access to the TravelChain ecosystem data can significantly reduce marketing costs of business.

|  TravelToken sale

Travel chain is going for its token sale on 10th December 2017, and it’ll last for up to two month. Limited part of tokens is going to be out there with 15% bonus. The value of 1 TravelToken is going to be around 0,0000016 BTC (26.11.17 rate). In total 693 000 000 tokens shall be released during the TokenSale. For more information, you can check out the travel chain whitepaper https://travelchain.io/files/TravelChain.WhitePaper(ENG).pdf

| A NEWSBTC release  ||  November 27, 2017   |||