Month: July 2018

Fresh analysis from KPMG shows that blockchain investment in the U.S. in the first half of 2018 has exceeded the overall total seen in 2017, according to its biannual “The Pulse of Fintech” report released today, July 31. KPMG is one of the world’s largest auditing firms, collectively known as “The Big Four” — alongside Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. KPMG suggests that blockchain tech is “moving beyond experimentation” to draw “significant” attention from investors in the first two Read more …

Ethereum-based startup Solidified is developing a decentralized, smart contract audit platform, aiming to make the process easier to arrange and to provide a transparent and accountable metric of smart contract security. The company recently conducted a Seed round with Innogy New Ventures to develop a new initiative in security — the Bug Prediction Market. “Solidified is an established, full-service audit platform, having helped secure large Ethereum projects such as Gnosis, Polymath, Bankera and Melonport among 50+ others,” said Eduard Kotysh, Read more …

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has acquired mobile ethereum wallet Trust Wallet, the startups announced Tuesday. The acquisition will enable Binance to add a mobile wallet to its services, while Trust Wallet will be able to tap into advantages offered by the exchange, including both its existing user base and a proposed decentralized exchange, according to a press release. Although Trust Wallet has been acquired, its team will continue operating autonomously, the founders said. Compatible with ethereum-based tokens, the platform is open-source, decentralized Read more …

San Francisco-based marketplace DCEX will become the first cryptocurrency exchange to use XRP as its ‘base currency’, available for both retail and institutional investors. DCEX will function as a crypto-to-crypto marketplace wherein all digital currencies will be trading against Ripple’s token XRP as the platform’s “base currency”, the exchange operator said in an announcement. The exchange and trading platform will be powered by industry services firm AlphaPoint, DCEX added. While registrations are currently open for users, the exchange will commence Read more …

Regulation In recent regulatory news, Dutch police have reported an increase in electricity fraud associated with crypto mining, a Michigan Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee has urged Congress to make the development of clear guidelines overseeing the cryptocurrency industry a top priority, and digital currency advocacy group, Chamber of Digital Commerce, has published a report outlining regulatory principles governing the cryptocurrency industry. Also Read: Interest in Philippines Economic Zone Crypto License Spikes – 17 Firms Paid in Full Read more …

In the blockchain movement’s ideology, the 2008 financial crisis holds a special spot. A critical juncture in the history of global capitalism, it readily provides a bedrock narrative that justifies the very purpose of a decentralized digital currency. This is what happens when we put too much trust in centralized custodians of wealth; this is what the breakdown of centralized trust — taken to the extreme — looks like. The year of 2008 is thus the legendary beginning of cryptocurrency Read more …

No longer after we published our analysis on July 30th, 2018, the Bitcoin price against the USD started to slip heavily owing to overlong sideways action. In the past 24 hours. The BTC/USD pair has dropped over 5%, summing-up the overall 9% drop since the July’s high at 8512-fiat. Nevertheless, our intrarange strategy played out well while the BTC/USD dropped. Our short on a bounce from 8324-fiat towards the interim support at 7814-fiat made a decent profit. As we slip Read more …

Video game marketplace Steam removed an alleged crypto miner from its platform Monday amid user complaints, Motherboard reported. Steam’s parent company, Valve, booted Abstracticism from Steam for hijacking gamers’ processing power to mine cryptocurrencies. The company further banned publisher dead.team and developer Okalo Union from the platform going forward. The game also reportedly tried to scam its users by creating fake items for them to purchase or sell on grey market websites for profit, according to the report. “We have Read more …

Major U.S. cryptocurrency wallet and exchange Coinbase announced in a July 31 blog post that ex-Pershing exec Jeff Horowitz will join the company as its Chief Compliance Officer. Horowitz previously worked as the managing director and global head of compliance at Pershing LLC — a BNY Mellon Company — as well as leading a variety of compliance and anti-money laundering (AML) programs at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Salomon Brothers, and serving as a banking regulator with the Federal Deposit Insurance Read more …

News Over the past few months, many Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponents have been discussing ideas such as representative tokens and smart contracts powered by the BCH network. Further, a few well-known organizations like Bitmain, Cryptonize.it and other BCH developers have introduced their own tokenization ideas. Now the firm Bitprim has announced the launch of a new token creation and smart contract platform called ‘Keoken’, an open protocol for extending blockchain functionality. Also Read: Market Caps for Privacy-Centric Currencies Have Dropped Significantly Read more …