Author: CoinSpectator

Launched just last week by Jersey-based financial firm CoinShares, the Ether Tracker One and Ether Tracker Euro exchange-traded note (ETN) has now surpassed $10 million since trading on Nasdaq Stockholm.

CoinShares combined assets under management (AUM) (which included the Bitcoin Tracker One and Bitcoin Tracker Euro) are now at $330 million since launching in 2015.

 

 

“When the group’s bitcoin ETNs – which are now at $330MM in AUM – launched in 2015, it took one year to attract the initial $10MM in AUM. The Ether Trackers achieved that in less than a week” says Ryan Radloff, Principal at CoinShares.

Due to popular demand by investors CoinShares is now providing professional asset research into the top 5 crypto-assets, this they believe is something new due to all previous research that was carried out more or less focused just on Bitcoin.

The first research is named Ether Asset Highlight launched today: https://coinshares.co.uk/#research

“We are excited to bring CoinShares Research to life as we begin to support the needs of the next wave of crypto investors. Now that we have a team covering ether, bitcoin and a few others on a full-time basis, expect more great coverage to come soon,” says Ryan Radloff, Principal at CoinShares.

The brand comprises two exchange traded bitcoin notes (COINXBT & COINXBE), two exchange traded ether notes (COINETH & COINETHE) and two funds (GABI & CoinShare Fund 1). All of these represent ‘first of their kind’ products in their respective categories.

For many investing in cryptocurrencies can be unfamiliar territory due to the complexity of managing wallets, dealing with exchanges and the related security concerns. ETN’s act as a gateway, simplifying the process for everyday investors who want to dabble in the cryptocurrency market but don’t know how.

In the volatile and tense crypto space, there is a new accountless exchange that takes a firm stance opposing Segwit2X. Flyp.me just launched with 14 cryptocurrencies, shares 50% of the profits and has the ambitious goal of becoming the leading accountless exchange.

The team at Flyp.me came out recently with a fully working exchange that doesn’t require any registration whatsoever. Users only need their crypto address to make an exchange. No email required and no lengthy wait to see the deposit hit your account.

With Flyp.me, the user only chooses the amount to exchange, which cryptocurrency to send to Flyp.me and which cryptocurrency to receive back. It’s fast and as simple as sending a transaction and receiving your exchanged crypto straight in your wallet.

This team opposes Segwit2X and supports the key role of overall consensus. They aim to rebalance the power between users of an exchange and the exchange itself. Flyp.me focuses on the speed, privacy and ease of use of its exchange service. It also uses distributed policy-making to take the best path for the community and the future of the exchange.

It is fully working and has a growing user base. New coins have already been added with PIVX – last week – becoming the 14th cryptocurrency accepted. The Flyp.me team plans to implement new coins, integrate decentralized asset platforms and invest in R&D for 2^nd layer solutions. To finance that, they are running an ICO now. They have raised a little more than 2,000 ETH and the ICO will finish in a few days.

During the ICO, Flyp.me generates FYP Tokens which receive benefits such as 50% share of the profits generated by the exchange, the ability to propose new features or coin additions, vote for key decisions and audit volumes. After the ICO, no additional FYP Tokens will be created meaning the same amount of tokens will share 50% of the profits.

Every three months, Flyp.me will distribute 50% of the profits to FYP Token owners in proportion to their ownership of tokens. Following the first two payouts, the timing of the payout will be voted by the FYP Token owners.

Flyp.me is developed by the team at HolyTransaction, the multicurrency wallet launched in 2014 and still active today. They have also released an API that allows businesses and developers anywhere to accept multicurrency payments via Flyp.me. Interestingly, the API is permissionless so anyone can start using it right away.

If you want to know more, visit Flyp.me

You can connect with others interested in Flyp.me on their Telegram, Twitter and Facebook

Leverj is a decentralized, leveraged cryptocurrency futures exchange. The Leverj token sale, which is supported by ConsenSys, begins on November 7, 2017 and the whitelist registration is currently open.

The idea of decentralization is infectious as it is irresistible. People new to crypto are astonished at the possibility of holding assets and trading without relinquishing control to a third party. Then they are hooked. Once you taste freedom you never want to go back …

… except for the user experience. Current DEX offerings cannot compete with the speed and responsiveness of centralized exchanges. If it takes 60 seconds to know if your order went through or 3 days to settle a trade on chain, users fatigue and give up. This traps crypto traders in centralized exchanges and mainstream traders in fiat exchanges.

Leverj can offer the high speed of centralized exchanges by keeping the critical path of order-cancel-fill off the blockchain. Segregated wallets ensure only an account owner can deposit and withdraw funds. Fraud-proofs move the verification into the hands of the users keep the blockchain cost light and the smart contract simple.

Fraud-proofs are necessary because any centralized component can be compromised and can be used to skim and favor a colluding user. A user’s cancelled order for example, may be held and matched at an adverse price. Repeated a few million times over many users, skimming can be a serious attack that is unnoticed for a while.

On Leverj users can simply submit a fraud proof to the smart contract and prevent any loss of funds. Combining segregated wallets and fraud proofs combines the safety of decentralized exchanges with the responsiveness of centralized exchanges.

Our token sale starts Nov 7th and is open to non-U.S., non-China persons. To avoid a last minute rush, you can sign up on our whitelist.

Want to learn more?

• Join the whitelist
• Check out the website
• Read our white paper
• Follow us on Twitter
• Join our Telegram group

The minimum fund cap was reached within hours of the pre-sale launch on 7 October 2017.

CRYPTO20’s goal is to bring peace-of-mind cryptocurrency investment to mainstream investors. It is an index fund that holds and autonomously rebalances a data science proven portfolio of the top 20 cryptocurrencies.

Actively managed funds have consistently failed to beat the market index despite decades worth of data, billions of dollars and hundreds of analysts at their disposal. When they have, their fees dilute investor returns to less than if they had simply held the index.

Due to rising crypto prices, the fund value per token exceeded the price of tokens being sold. Pre-sale investors were able to acquire $1.10 of underlying crypto assets for $0.95 per token.

The CRYPTO20 pre-sale is now over, with over 2000 backers from 93 countries and $5 million in total funds raised. The main ICO starts on the 16th of October 2017 at 18:00 GMT and ends on the 30th of November at 00:00 GMT.

A Finished Product Offering Value Now

The fund’s token, C20, is a representation of an investor’s share of the fund, and the fund’s value is equal to the combined value of its assets. CRYPTO20, unlike many of the other offerings in the marketplace today, is a finished product and not a platform.

As evidence of this fact, CRYPTO20 has released trading tools and insights that are generated live from the 8 exchanges connected to the system via API. The trading tools are available here and include information on slippage, the best price and trading pair to acquire assets with and the volume by exchange.

Token-holders are able to liquidate the C20 token for their share of the underlying assets via the smart contract. By going directly to the end-user as a cryptocurrency itself, CRYPTO20 gives investors the ability to sell or exchange their tokens at will. The fund is fully AML/KYC compliant and operates as a registered LLC in the Cayman Islands, a popular fund jurisdiction.

The CRYPTO20 fund mitigates risk and volatility and historically has provided better returns than the market cap leader, bitcoin, alone.

Discover more at https://www.crypto20.com.
Join the CRYPTO20 Slack channel and chat with the founding team directly.

The insurance industry is days away from a technological and business milestone. The Aigang Network’s token sale on November 15th brings together Internet of Things devices and Autonomous Insurance, promising self-paying insurance claims on a subset of the 55 billion IoT products forecastto be produced over the next eight years. Aigang has created Proof of Concept products on the Ethereum blockchain that detect faults or failure dates (initially in mobile phones) and pay insurance claims to the user without the requirement for any human oversight. In other words, we are creating an insurance DAO; a Distributed Autonomous Organisation.

The Aigang insurance software, which includes all policy details, can be bundled with a device so that it is active when started-up or opted-in during configuration. The software detects imminent failure of components and triggers a payment automatically if insurance conditions are met.

Candidates for this solution include phones, drones, fitness trackers, gaming consoles, home electronics, white goods, cameras and watches.

Autonomous Insurance is not limited to completely automated use cases, since Aigang’s protocols provide for aspects of a product’s insurance policy to be passed off to conventional reinsurers. In other words, some claims for your self-driving car might require manual oversight, some may be automatically dealt with. This enlarges the universe of products that can access Aigang’s insurance.

The Proof of Concept app, on the Ethereum Testnet platform, has more than 7000 downloads and around 2000 smart insurance contracts have been issued. Aigang has deployed smart contracts that issue policies, conduct risk assessment and process claims. It has also deployed smart contracts that perform insurance profit calculations, create reserves and tokenise the insurance risk pool. The protocol architecture is able to integrate other insurance products.

There are a number of other innovative aspects to the Aigang Network, including the use of prediction markets to evaluate the viability of insurance products. Aigang are incentivising insurance industry experts and business analysts to participate in these prediction markets by rewarding successful predictions with status and tokens.

Internet connectivity is becoming the default for new products. All these devices, vehicles, appliances and systems are potentially insurable. Automating insurance will drive down policy costs, increase the diversity of insurance products and disintermediate inefficient insurers. Aigang is positioned to be a leading player in this space.

Advisors to the project include Bok Khoo (blockchain) and Niv Calderon (IoT). The team comprises longstanding insurance industry executives based in Europe and Asia, as well as developers with experience on all relevant technology platforms.

Aigang has already raised 10% of its total target funding. 60% of funds raised in the token sale will be applied to protocol development, with 15% allocated to security, 15% to operations and marketing, and 10% to legal and consulting expenses.

The token sale is individually capped during the first 24 hours and early-stage contributors can register here prior to Token Sale which is on November 15th, 13:00 UTC.

Renowned businessman and security analyst John McAfee has partnered with and will sit on the advisory board of BitIndia, an open source blockchain wallet and exchange for the streets of India.

With less than 0.5% of indians currently utilising Bitcoin, the company aims to educate and promote cryptocurrencies to directly take on the very real and growing issue of high banking rates that currently plague over 1.2 billion of the country’s people.

John McAfee talks about Bitindia & its Potential https://t.co/1BMYM2N5iG … @officialmcafee @Applancer_pro @Cointelegraph #bitindia #india

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) October 9, 2017

This is to be achieved through an easy to use cryptocurrency platform that takes away the complexities of cryptocurrencies and replace them with an intuitive system which not only allows the average layman to store and use Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple currencies but to also trade them against the national currency, the Indian Rupee.

Plans also include for seamless integration on a local level allowing users to access terminals that allow for everyday and recurring purchases such as groceries, bills and dining out.

Given the size of the Indian population and its urgent need for a decentralised and fairer economic system if executed properly BitIndia is in a prime position to spearhead and develop the Indian Cryptocurrency space into a major global player, one that will shortly rival China and South Korea.

John Mcafee’s no stranger to business, his role at Bitindia will bring a great deal of unparalleled expertise and guidance.

Bitindia is currently running an initial coin offering (ICO) which allows anyone to invest in the exchange and make a share of the profits, find out more here https://bitindia.co/ or read the whitepaper https://bitindia.co/whitepaper.pdf

This year we’ve seen the launch of many ICO’s, with the majority just being blatant scams or just down right useless.

That said every so often a project comes along that not only only has a genuine purpose but also thrives in a blockchain environment. This week that project is Upfiring, a blockchain company aiming to revolutionise the P2P file sharing industry as we know it.

Utilising the Ethereum Blockchain, Upfiring has created a decentralised autonomous P2P network that allows anyone to easily share files regardless of if they are on a desktop computer or smartphone.

File-sharing is currently seen as an unrewarding process for both seeders (due to little to no return for sharing) and frustrating for downloaders (due to the lack of seeders and slow speeds).

Upfiring has a solution to address this. The company has developed technology which solves many of the current problems we see today with P2P file sharing such as seeding, searching, downloading, ratings, and peer evaluation.

In layman’s terms the Upfiring process is as follows:

1. A seeder shares a file through the Upfiring network
2. The file is encrypted by the platform
3. A downloader requests access to the seeded file but can only download once they have paid using the currency of the network which is UFR tokens.
4. Once downloaded and paid for in full the file can be decrypted.

The above is a seamless process that requires no technical; knowhow on the user’s part. Given that UFR is also a tradable currency allows both seeders and downloaders to utilise exchanges to buy and sell the tokens as and when required.

Despite file sharing existing since the early days of the internet recent statistics show that the industry has continually grown over fifty percent since 2008. With no sign of this slowing down the industry has long been overdue a technology overhaul to speed up and improve efficiency.

Some of the Issues with current file sharing platforms:

• Lack of seeders
• No benefit to seeders
• Risk for seeders
• Snooping/ privacy concerns
• Massive disparity between file download and availability ratio.

Benefits of incentivised file sharing:

• Seeders are compensated (resulting in more high quality seeds)
• Larger variety of seeds
• Seeds can be rated more effectively
• Faster access and downloads
• A self sufficient system that settles payment publicly

Upfiring is currently running an initial crowd offering where anyone can invest in the technology in exchange for Upfiring tokens. You can find out more about the project and support it at: https://upfiring.com/

Their whitepaper can be accessed here: https://upfiring.com/Upfiring_Whitepaper.pdf

The UK’s financial regulatory body has issued a press release warning consumers about the risk of investing in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

ICOs are very high-risk, speculative investments.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said ICOs are very high-risk and that anyone investing should be prepared to lose their entire stake.

The FCA does not have the power to regulate a high majority of ICO’s as they fall outside of their legal boundaries, but some may be conducting regulated activities including the exchanges selling the tokens.

We have issued a consumer warning about the risks associated with Initial Coin Offerings (‘ICOs’): https://t.co/UorniFOQdI

— FCA (@TheFCA) September 12, 2017

If you are not aware of how ICO’s operate they work similar to normal crowd funding events but instead of investors paying in fiat they are paid for with a token or coin e.g Ethereum or Bitcoin in return for a project token.

It has been estimated that around £1bn in fiat has been invested into ICO’s so far and this number is growing exponentially.

The FCA’s warning issued today swiftly follows the People’s Bank of China who have allegedly issued similar warnings and have recently “banned” some ICO’s although experts say this ban was temporary.

You should be conscious of the risks involved and fully research the specific project if you are thinking about buying digital tokens.

As with any ICO’s we recommend carrying out your own independent research to ensure the legitimacy and that it’s worth risking your own money. Common red flags include no whitepaper, unverifiable team members (missing Linkedin profiles or social profiles), projects in the very early stages without any prototype. ALl in all the best policy is to just use common sense when assessing each project and remember if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is.