Year: 2018

Barclays Plc considering crypto trading desk

If you don’t believe that cryptocurrencies are having an effect on mainstream society, then you should really check out the latest information coming from Barclays Plc.

One would think a bank like Barclays would be as traditional as they come, but that is no longer the case. It has been reported that they are now gauging interest on a potential cryptocurrency trading desk.

Bloomberg has reported that Barclays are well into the preliminary assessment of the trading desk. Although no concrete plans are yet in place, this would represent a massive step into the future for the British bank.

If they were going to go down this road, they would become the only big European investment bank to do so. The likes of investment chief Tim Throsby and CEO Jess Staley may need to give it the go-ahead, as this isn’t in line with what other continental banks are doing.

Staley and Throsby are no strangers to showing innovation in leadership; for instance, Throsby authorised the transfer of huge sums of capital to high-risk trading from safer corporate lending already.

There is an existing demand for the services, with the likes of bitcoin hedge funds eager to find banks that can look after their transactions. Crypto hasn’t found its home within the banking sector just yet, but once it does, it could be a lucrative partnership for all involved.

This is especially true if you consider that the amount of hedge funds focusing on crypto grew significantly from in the year ranging from February 2017 to February 2018.

Goldman Sachs haven’t been shy in expressing their ambition around digital currencies. The American organisation has set up a trading desk, which it hopes will begin trading this summer.

Crypto Highlights 17/04/18

Indian police extorted builder for Bitcoin

Nine Indian police officers felt the full force of the law after being arrested for extorting nearly $50,000 in cash and 200 Bitcoins from Surat-based builder, Shailesh Bhatt, who claims he was kidnapped in a local hotel by the crime branch cops last February.

Read more here from NDTV.

Cardano scores with its launch on Huobi

Yesterday Huobi Pro announced that Cardano (ADA) will start trading on the 17th April at 14:00 GMT +8. Huobi is one of China’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a daily trading volume exceeding a billion dollars. The listing of the coin has already pushed the price up by 9.30% in the last 24 hours and is expected to significantly increase as more trading starts.

Coinbase acquires Earn.com for $100 million

Coinbase has acquired Earn.com for a cool $100 million. The firm was one of the most funded startups attracting $116 million over several rounds. CEO & Co-founder of Earn, Balaji Srinivasan, will become Coinbase’s first chief technology officer.

Read more here from Recode.

Tax day passing could help cryptos surge

Tax-selling has undoubtedly been a huge contributor to recent price dips but this could quickly reverse with the US tax deadline on the 17th of April predicted to be a day that cryptos increase.

Read more here from CNBC.

IMF boss says crypto could make finance safer

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – Christine Lagarde, believes digital currencies and blockchain technology could make the global finance system safer by increasing the speed, cost and safety of transactions.

That level of diversity could build a “financial ecosystem that is more efficient and potentially more robust in resisting threats”, she said.

Read more here from the Guardian.

Is your country a Bitcoin revolutionary?

Crypto enthusiasts across reddit are competing with each other in a challenge to prove which country is the most Bitcoin friendly. Users have posted Bitcoin signs spotted in stores across Romania, Saigon, Bali, Toronto and many more locations.

Read more here at The Next Web.

Honesty is the best policy?

An increasing numbers of ICO’s are promising all kinds of weird and wacky things from Bananas on the Blockchain (so ap-peel-ing) to AI that can predict the future. This week we seen the launch of Honest Coin “The Most Honest Cryptocurrency Ever Invented”. The project aims to be completely honest with their goals from day one.

Find out more here

Your ticket to the moon

No… we are not talking about psychedelics or bull markets however you can still ride yourself to the moon with CryptoRider, a mobile game developed to virtually ride those price charts. Now you can experience the highs and the lows again and again and again. Sounds like fun right? Download here.

Worlds first DNA on the Blockchain

A Los Angeles-bases cryptocurrency/ genetic firm has performed the worlds finda DNA sequence transfer on the Ethereum Blockchain. The Enterobacteria phage phiX174 sensu lato virus was transferred.

World’s first DNA sequence stored on the Blockchain

Is Monero the new tax haven?

Forget the Cayman Islands, Monero could be the next big tax shelter. With 8 months left of 2018 its time to become “tax efficient” by simply getting your boss to pay you in the pro privacy currency says hacked.com.

Indian crypto exchange offers bounty for information

Indian-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinsecure has offered a 10% bounty ($356,000) for information leading to the recovery of the $3(+) million funds stolen last week.

Read more here from India Times.

John Mcafee is Bullish on Bitcoin

Crypto personality John Mcafee believes that the Bitcoin price prediction of $20,000 in 2018 for Bitcoin is “absurdly low”. Agree or disagree we don’t recommend putting any body parts on the line.

Crypto-enthusiasts seek supportive Thai tax policy

In a bid to help domestic funding fro ICO’s and Cryptocurrency businesses in Thailand, enthusiasts have petitioned the Finance Ministry hoping the Revenue Department will reconsider its tax policy.

Read more here, the Bangkok Post.

Shipping on the Blockchain?

ShipChain is launching a pilot program this summer with CaseStack solving supply chain, tracking and tracing issues in the shipping industry. CaseStack works with Amazon, Target, Duracell and many other Fortune 50 companies in the world.

Read more here from Influencive.

Mastercard will tackle fraud with Blockchain technology

A patent has been filed by Mastercard that will use Blockchain technology to verify and store identity data to combat fraud.

Read the patent here filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Ethereum will power deep space exploration

The The University of Akron’s (UA) and NASA will work together to help spacecraft avoid floating debris, the assistant professor Dr. Jin Wei Kocsis has received $330,000 in the form of a grant from NASA.

Read more here from The University of Akron College of Engineering.

Not so illegal

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies released a report which found less then 1% of Bitcoin is used for illegal purposes.

Read more here from NewsBTC.

Insurance on the Blockchain

Marsh, ACORD Corporation and ISN Software Corp are working with IBM to develop insurance verification on the open-source hyperledger fabric technology and IBM blockchain platform. With the soft launch expected later this year. It will be used to speed up hiring contractors, transferring risk and coverage certainty.

Read more here from Seeking Alpha.

 

That all folks, until next time.

World’s first DNA sequence stored on the Blockchain

Los Angeles-based DNAtix, also known as the ‘genetic blockchain company’ has successfully performed the world’s first DNA sequence transfer on the Ethereum Blockchain.

The complete genome sequence of the Enterobacteria phage phiX174 sensu lato virus was transferred in a proof of concept test on the Ethereum blockchain and is believed to be the world’s first single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) virus to ever be stored in this manner.

The human genome contains 3 billion base pairs which is approximately 100 gigabytes in raw data. This amount of data is too large to be supported by any current blockchain technologies however the team at DNAtix have developed specialised compression algorithms which reduce the size by 75%, resulting in an impressive 700 megabytes. The team is also confident that this can be improved even further with a total 99% size reduction in the future.

“For the purpose of the POC we uploaded the virus sequence which is ~5400 ‘letters’ that equals about 1348 bytes,” explains Ofer Lidsky, DNAtix’s CEO and co-founder.

This transfer of DNA on the blockchain opens up many doors for medical services and applications like DNAtix who wish to develop autonomous, distributed and redundant global ecosystems.

The firm also hopes that by placing DNA on the blockchain it will open up data access and research for 3rd parties to push forward developments, advancements in treatments and preventative medicine for the benefit of humankind.

Chilean banks shut down crypto exchange accounts

Three Chilean-based cryptocurrency exchanges – CryptoMarket, Buda and Orionx –are seeking new banking partners after having their accounts shut down.

With little to no explanation, Banco del Estado de Chile, Itau Corpbanca and Bank of Nova Scotia have ceased providing their banking services for the exchanges, with some pointing the finger at the government secretly forcing the banks to do so. But as yet this is unclear.

South Americans are concerned that the ban is mimicking the cryptocurrency bans of other countries, such as China and the UK, whose banks have notoriously formed a cartel to block any cryptocurrency businesses gaining access to a bank account.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Guillermo Torrealba, Buda’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said: “They’re killing an entire industry. It won’t be possible to buy and sell crypto in a safe business in Chile. We’ll have to go back five years and trade in person. It seems very arbitrary.”

Chile’s cryptocurrency market is small but burgeoning. Entrepreneurs created digital coins Chaucha and Luka, whose names play off local slang used for money, while locally-based exchanges like Buda and CryptoMarket operate across Latin America. Buda traded about $1 million per day before losing its bank account, compared with about $2 billion for the world’s biggest exchanges.

Chile’s cryptocurrency industry is still small but rapidly growing with the Buda exchange trading around $1 million per day in digital assets.

The shutdown exchanges have said they follow stringent know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering practices by running checks with authorities and agencies.

Thousands of Chileans and crypto supporters around the world have taken to social media to support the exchanges with the tag #ChileQuiereCryptos.

The exchanges have formed a joint case at the appeals court, which has already agreed to hear their case; but the bank accounts remain shut until further notice.

UnicornoGo – The Next Level of Cryptogaming

While the cryptocurrency market takes a bearish turn and most tokens go through record plunges, the blockchain technology does not stand still and continues to develop in all directions very rapidly. The gaming industry is also moving forward. After the success of PokemonGo and CryptoKitties, meet UnicornGo, a blockchain based online game with elements of augmented reality created by a solid team of developers in collaboration with genetic engineers.

Just imagine, a beautiful fantasy world where you can become an owner of mythical creatures, the unicorns, buy plots of land, grow candy trees and participate in tournaments. Each unicorn is unique and has its own colour, character and abilities. This is achieved through gene crossing and inheritance of various traits by the next generation of unicorns. Unicorn owners will be able to predict offspring traits by selecting a partner with genetic attributes of interest, resulting in unique unicorns that can bring significant profits to their owners. Unicorns with higher attributes are very desirable on a marketplace as breeding partners, allowing its owner to set a higher price for siring.

Users can buy unicorns using Ethereum or its own in-game currency, CandyCoin, which is already being traded on the ForkDelta exchange and will be listed on other exchanges in the near future. The tokens are based on Ethereum smart contracts, with a limited release of 12,000,000 tokens. But in nearest future, UnicornGo plans to move the game to the Universa blockchain, for higher speeds and almost zero transaction fees. CandyCoin is used on the in-game marketplace to buy/sell/exchange unicorns, plots of land, candy tree seeds to grow food for unicorns and other fairy tale accessories.

At the moment, users can buy the first generation GEN-0 unicorns on the game’s website play.unicorngo.io/. Sales of GEN-0 will last until 30,000 unicorns are sold, after which no new GEN-0 unicorns will ever be created again. All subsequent generations of unicorns will come from the GEN-0 generation. Furthermore, every purchaser of GEN-0 unicorn has a 30 percent higher chance than in later generations to receive a Legendary unicorn, which will have unique traits. All the lucky users who will randomly get the Legendary unicorn will also receive a special gift from UnicornGo team worth the amount of 10,000 USD!

On 8 April of 2018 the marketplace has been released, where all created unicorns can be traded. Users also can find partners for breeding, put their unicorns for sale and evaluate future opponents for tournaments. The presale of land plots has begun as well. It should be noted that land is a very important asset because it acts as a means of resource production in the game. Users can play around in sandbox mode and construct potential unicorns by visiting the page: http://demo.unicorngo.io/

The next stage is the integration of the UnicornGO interface with augmented reality in conjunction with IZETEX, as well as the introduction of mind control technology. The neural interface has already been developed by the BasisNeuro startup. In the next 2 to 4 months UnicornGo specialists in cooperation with a team of creative designers will develop a new gadget which will allow users to control unicorns with the power of thought, providing an incredible experience for everyone and great opportunities for disabled people. And this is only the beginning. Considering the strong support of the community and innovative development, the project has a great future.

To learn more about the project or buy unicorns visit the official website: https://play.unicorngo.io/

Discover the Easiest, Cheapest, and Safest way to File Taxes on your Cryptocurrency Gains

No matter what you may think, the IRS knows about your trading and expects you to pay tax on earnings or face hefty penalties.

In previous years, cryptocurrency traders managed to stay under the radar with fewer than 900 people reporting capital gains on Bitcoin to the IRS from 2013 to 2015.  It is likely that many believed they could avoid paying taxes because of the perception that their trades would not be traceable. For example, AlphaBay, the successor to the illicit online market “Silk Road,” was still recommending using Bitcoin as a privacy coin in 2016.

But the assumption that Bitcoin is anonymous or untraceable is unfounded. The FBI was able to trace $13.4 million in Bitcoin from the Silk Road to its apparently anonymous founder, Ross Ulbricht, by tracing public transactions on the blockchain – and that was back in 2014. The next year, the IRS partnered with Chainanalysis to identify suspicious activity among owners of digital wallets. The Daily Beast published a copy of their contract that explicitly states it intends to “trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy” in order to “identify and obtain evidence of individuals using bitcoin … [to] conceal income as part of tax fraud”.

It is easy to imagine how anxious the IRS is to receive the unreported earnings, especially given the huge growth in cryptocurrency investments last year. For example, only 804 Americans declared taxes on Bitcoin gains in 2015—despite an estimated 500,000 to 1.2 million people owning Bitcoin that year. In 2017, the crypto market grew 30 fold from $18 billion in January to $573 billion by year end. And in November 2017, a federal judge ordered the exchange Coinbase to release data on 14,355 account holders who had traded in over $20,000 USD.

Many don’t even realize that they need to declare their cryptocurrency earnings. Most exchanges do not send users a 1099 form like stock trading websites do (Coinbase does only if the user has traded over $20,000). And tax filing websites like TurboTax and H&R Block don’t ask if you sold cryptocurrency in the previous year. It is up to individuals to stay proactive and inform themselves of new tax laws.

If the IRS catches you not paying taxes, common fees include a “substantial understatement” penalty and “negligence or disregard of the rules” penalty, which are an additional 20 percent of the net understatement of tax. And if the IRS thinks you knowingly and intentionally did not pay your tax, it will charge you an additional 75 percent for committing fraud.

Now that you’ve decided to file your cryptocurrency taxes, how do you do it?

In the US, cryptocurrencies are treated by the IRS as property, similar to stocks. This means that you must pay capital gains on your investments that you have sold and basic income tax if mining or earning cryptocurrency for work.

Most people will have income from buying Bitcoin or an altcoin and selling it at a higher price; these sales need to be reported on Schedule D, an attachment to Form 1040. If the period between the purchase and sale is less than a year, it is taxed as ordinary income. If it is longer than a year, it is taxed as a long-term capital gain between 0 to 20 percent. If you are in the top three highest income brackets, you must also pay 3.8 percent tax on net investment income. Mining and sales receipts in cryptocurrency is also taxed as ordinary income between 10 to 39.6 percent depending on your tax brackets. The coins are valued at the historical price on the date the action occurred, so you must look up the spot price on a site like CoinMarketCap.com.

This sounds very complicated. Aren’t there tools to make this easier?

If you have made more than a handful of trades, and especially if you have used multiple exchanges, it can be a nightmare trying to calculate the capital gains, even for an experienced accountant. Fortunately there are a handful of websites that can import your trade data, look up the historical prices, and calculate the gains on each trade.

GetCryptoTax.com

Our recommendation is to use GetCryptoTax.com because it is cheap, user-friendly, and almost anonymous.

This app has one of the slickest user interfaces out there and provides a hand-holding, informative tutorial to help you extract your trade data from exchanges. It uses spreadsheet imports instead of API connections because, if you set up your API access incorrectly, the app could potentially trade with your money! They don’t have a large list of exchanges yet, but they are adding new ones almost every day; you can email them with recommendations.

GetCryptoTax.com just launched in April 2018, so if you sign up early enough, you can download your reports for free while they are beta testing – they only ask that you give feedback on any bugs you may find or features you would like to see. They plan to eventually price it around $10.

Bitcoin.tax

Bitcoin.tax has been in operation since 2013, so they have worked out the kinks by now and have a lot of options.

You can connect all of your exchanges to it via their API keys and it will import your trades and calculate the data for you to give to your accountant. You can even choose which cost basis you want to use and they will recommend which is cheapest; we don’t recommend using anything other than FIFO, though, as the other methods may raise red flags with the IRS. If you do not want to give them access to your exchanges via API, you can still upload spreadsheets like GetCryptoTax, but it only accepts one spreadsheet format and each exchange has its own unique format so we found this feature to be quite impractical to actually use.

Bitcoin.tax starts at $29.95 per year for 10,000 transactions and goes up to around $100 for higher volume traders.

Cointracking.info

Cointracking.info has also been around since April 2013 and has built a lot of features by now. Although we do not recommend it to the average user due to its overwhelming complexity, it can be a real boon to hardcore traders or accountants who are willing to invest the time to learn their way around it.

The cheapest option for tax preparation costs 0.012 BTC ($84 with Bitcoin currently at $7,000 USD) for up to 3,500 transactions. You can get unlimited transactions for 1 year for 0.019 BTC ($133) or unlimited lifetime for 0.289 BTC ($2,000 USD). This could be a great option for serious traders, although as more competitors enter the market and develop new features, we expect prices to come down.

Cointracker.io

Cointracker.io is another relatively new site that launched in August 2017. Like Get Crypto Tax, it has a pretty nice user interface. It does not seem to offer spreadsheet uploads but it can do API access like the other sites and even has a feature to read trades from your public wallet addresses.

Cointracker.io starts at $49 for 100 transactions, $149 for 1,000 and $999 for 15,000.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be tax or legal advice. Please consult your own professionals.

Coinzilla – The Crypto Advertising Network of the moment?

If you own a crypto-related website, you probably have looked into various methods to promote your work. However, if you want high-quality traffic on your platforms, you need to pay for such services. As everyone knows by now, qualitative traffic is vital for the reputation and exposure of a website. You can easily earn enough money to live off from your website if it has high-quality traffic, but, usually such thing is pretty hard to find. A majority of the ad networks available out there offer junk or sponsored advertising.

Many webmasters spent over the time a large amount of money trying to find a network that provides much-needed quality traffic services. If you’ve invested a lot of time and money analyzing and testing a long list of existing ad networks, but have yet to find one that provides the desired services, then you should try Coinzilla.

Founded in 2016, the Coinzilla Ad Network became one of the top 3 crypto advertising networks in a short amount of time. So far, the company only has favorable reviews on the Internet, which might make some people suspicious. No bad reputation or shady operations are associated with this network,  and with good reason.

The network offers high-quality floating and standard IAB banners that have been designed in a way to instantly attract the attention of visitors, guaranteeing a high CTR. The banners have strategic placement on the websites, which have been proven by statistics and user behavior.

The platform is very user-friendly and intuitive, so any new user can create an account and understand the use all its functions. The team behind Coinzilla is fast and ready to help its clients with anything they might need.

Coinzilla employs a S.M.A.R.T. bidding system, which was created by studying customers’ behavior, with the purpose of supplying qualitative marketing services at the lowest prices. Behind this simple interface are complex algorithms that basically do all the hard work for you, showing you the results in detailed statistic charts.

The traffic you will receive will come from top referrers websites like coinmarketcap.com, themerkle.com, 99bitcoins.com, coinranking.com and other relevant crypto-related sites. This quality traffic will make your site more visible to Google, and increase your rank daily until your website is at the top!

Coinzilla’s employees are very fast, have great technical expertise, and a unique account manager is assigned to all users.

To sum up, if you own a crypto-related business or an ICO, Coinzilla is the best advertising provider for you. Their quality services and professionalism will ensure that you will be a faithful and satisfied customer, and you’ll never need to go through the hassle of finding a different ad network ever again!

PROS:

 

 CONS:
·       Quality traffic

·       Highly competitive rates

·       Personal account managers

·       99% Fill rate

·       Top referrers (coinmarketcap.com, coinranking.com, 99bitcoins.com)

·       Because this is a bitcoin advertising network, they accept payments made through Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Euro bank transfers

·       Highly converting HTML banners designed by them

 ·       Your website must have crypto-related content

·       Your website must look professional (it’s a problem if you are inexperienced)

·       Your website should be live for at least a couple of months

·       Your website must not be an adult content website

You can contact Coinzilla’s staff anytime on:

Useful links:

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adsbycoinzilla/

OKEX is expanding to Malta

In a statement issued today, cryptocurrency exchange OKEX has confirmed that it has started expanding operations to blockchain friendly Malta.

After meeting with the Maltese regulatory and government leaders to discuss their legislative plans, OKEX confirmed that they will “make Malta a foundation for further OKEX growth”.

This comes as no surprise given Malta’s position not only on blockchain technologies but also other sectors that are otherwise heavily scrutinised and regulated in much of the rest of the world. For example Malta has long been supportive of gambling and finance firms seeking better tax incentives and more flexible legislation.

The news follows in the footsteps of Binance who also recently migrated to the country for the same reasons.

OKEX carries a daily trade volume of over $1 billion dollars with millions of customers globally.

“This is just the start. Other companies will soon establish their operations in Malta”, said Silvio Schembri.

This is just the beginning. OKEX and Binance are currently among a growing number of crypto companies that are being forced to expand operations in Malta due to harsh regulatory conditions that are being set in their home countries – a trend, which if unaddressed will stifle innovation and growth in much of the developed and western world.

Mayor of Bogotá announces workshop for teachers interested in Blockchain tech

The Mayor of Bogotá has announced a workshop for teachers interested in Blockchain technology in partnership with the High District ICT Counseling who will be hosting the workshop on Thursday 12th April called: ‘Technology blockchain: an experiment for the schools of the District’.

The workshop is aimed at teachers of public institutions who are interested in learning more about the uses and applications of blockchain technology that serves to authenticate and verify data and transactions.

The results of a blockchain prototype and its impact on the application of student representatives of the
Rafael Bernal Jiménez and El Rodeo schools will be announced, as well as reflection on democracy held at Colegio Unión Colombia .

Attendees will also learn about financial, medicine and notary uses of the Blockchain and will be asked to input ideas on how this exciting technology can be applied in the education sector.

Sergio Martínez, High ICT Adviser, said “The Mayor of Bogotá wants to demonstrate to teachers that the application and use of blockchain technology for pedagogical processes is feasible. “We take as an example the elections of the student representatives that took place in the schools, since it is the first step towards exercising the right to vote and a healthy democracy through state-of-the-art technologies,” he said.

Monero (XMR) Ledger Support Coming Soon!

Monero 0.12.1 will support Ledger hardware wallets

Monero (XMR) code lead Riccardo Spagni has confirmed that the privacy-focused coin will soon receive official Ledger support.

Currently, various options exist for secure storage of XMR cryptocurrency, from mobile wallets to the official desktop wallet, but so far no hardware wallet is available for public use.

The Ledger integration news broke when Riccardo confirmed during an interview on an episode of the Doug Polk podcast that integration had ‘already’ occurred for users who have the ‘dev kit’, but the public release will probably be available alongside the Monero 0.12.1 release.

Hardware support for cryptocurrencies is no longer deemed overprotective. It has become the de facto way of ensuring your assets are secured most effectively.

You can find the Github here for the Monero wallet application.

Monero was trading at roughly $172 before the Ledger news broke, increasing to $178 before dipping back to $164. This has now stabilised at $170 at the time of writing.