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Crypto Highlights 19/04/2018

Kraken CEO we will not answer NYC AG’s enquiry

Jesse Powell, the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has made it clear the firm does not plan to answer the New York Attorney General’s inquiry into cryptocurrency exchanges.

Powell added “Why don’t you try extracting this information from those businesses actually operating in your state?”

Chinese police smash ‘Pyramid-Scheme’

An investigation by the Public Security Bureau Economic Investigation Detachment in China’s Xi’an district cracked a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme wide open, the team behind Da Tang Coin (DTC) allegedly defrauded investors of $13 million dollars selling he useless coin for $0.50. They made wild claims of guaranteed profits and hired a western chairman to appear more like a “high-tech multinational corporation” said police.

Brazil investment firm to open OTC exchange

Bitcoin’s booming in Brazil according to local media, the countries biggest investment firm XP Investimentos is planning to open an over-the counter (OTC) cryptocurrency exchange.

Riot Blockchain received SEX subpoena

Earlier this week Riot Blockchain received a subpoena from the SEC seeking “certain information from the company”. This comes as no surprise as Riot have long raised many red flags with worried investors citing canceled board meetings at the last minute, with insiders dumping right after the firm changed their name from Bioptix.

Pound backed currency would not be popular

Research has revealed 60% of British people surveyed would not support a Bank of England-backed cryptocurrency linked to the pound.

Crypto hacks rely on human error

A report carried out by security firm Proofpoint has found that human error is the biggest factor in crypto attacks being successful from fake domains to dodgy plugins they all rely on the user making a mistake.

Huobi to open London office

Singapore-based crypto exchange Huobi has announced plans to set up shop in London as it seeks to continue its expansion outside of Asia.

Reserve Bank of India orders the shut down crypto

India’s central bank has started a crack down on the trading and purchase of cryptocurrencies in India, announced at there bi-monthly monetary policy press conference. The order gives institutions currently working with cryptocurrencies three months, this has not gone unchallenged by many exchanges and businesses operating in india who are starting joint legal proceedings.

Bank Negara Malaysia issues warning against fake cryptocurrency certificate

The Central Bank of Malaysia has issued a warning to the public after a bogus university certificate sporting official stamps was found to be in circulation.

The certificate, which “certifies” that the holder has been awarded a degree as a “Certified Crypto Asset Consultant”, is stamped with both the Central Bank of Malaysia and University of Malaya logos, in what appears to be an attempt at fooling interested businesses or employers seeking an expert in such services.

“BNM does not recognise these certificate holders who use such documentation in offering consultation services. Members of the public are advised to verify the validity of any certification programme before registering” said the Central Bank of Malaysia earlier in the week.

The bank has insisted that members of the public who have been presented with such certificates should verify the authenticity before entering into a relationship.

Cardano (ADA) Ledger support coming soon!

Cardano (ADA) will support Ledger Nano s hardware wallets in the future

Open-source crypto wallet Daedalus is currently the safest and only supported option for thousands of Cardano users who are looking to store their ADA cryptocurrency. However, it’s been riddled with teething problems over the last couple of months. But, the good news is that Ledger support is coming in the near future.

Users seem to have no initial problems when setting up the Daedalus wallet, creating a seed or downloading the blockchain, but are later locked out of accessing the wallet when they restart the software due to the screen freezing and displaying the sprint message, “Connecting to network…”

Users have tried a plethora of potential fixes, from completely uninstalling the wallet to tinkering with firewall settings and everything in between, with no success in sight.

On the March 7th, 2018, Daedalus released version 0.9.0 and Cardano 1.1.0 but, for many, this does not seem to have not provided any solution.

We spoke to the team behind Cardano regarding the wallet problems that we have witnessed, to see if a more successful solution would be coming soon. We are pleased to say that it’s good news all round, as we can announce that users will be able to store ADA on their Ledger hardware wallets in Q3 2018.

CS: Lots of users are reporting problems with syncing the Daedalus wallet, this seems to be a common problem in the community?

The latest Cardano SL release 1.1 is designed to address syncing problems experienced recently by some users. This update was released by IOHK on the 7th March, and they are now monitoring the performance of the Daedalus wallet to assess if further action is required.

CS: When will users be able to store Cardano on their Ledger Wallets, will this be pushed in 2018?

Stage one of the Ledger integration project is complete. This means that we now have a functioning Ledger app, but this still needs to be fully tested. Stage two of this project requires IOHK to develop an interface and test it. At present this work is scheduled to be completed by Q3 2018. This will provide Cardano holders with the highest level of security by allowing users to store Ada offline.

Hardware wallet support for cryptocurrencies once seemed like an overzealous way to store digital assets, but it’s now become the de facto method due to exchanges being regularly hacked, phishing attempts and all sorts of weird and well thought out hacking methods which are used to steal your assets.

‘North Korea may have up to $210m worth of Bitcoin’ – International expert

North Korea is renowned for many, many things, but until now, cryptocurrency investment wasn’t one of them.

However, that might be all about to change as an international expert has said that the country has made an absolute mint from Bitcoin recently.

Former US National Security Agency officer, Priscilla Moriuchi, told reporters that the politically isolated country took in more than $200 million in digital cryptocurrency transactions in 2017.

Ms Moriuchi, made this claim during an in-depth interview with Radio Free Asia. She also discussed the subject with Vox.com, where she stated that she has reason to believe that these coins are being liquidated and the resulting cash is being used to support North Korea’s military.

She said: “I would bet that these coins are being turned into something – currency or physical goods – that are supporting North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme.”

She estimated that the regime took in 11,000 Bitcoins in 2017, which would have been worth around $210 million at the currency’s peak value.

This revelation comes after unconfirmed reports of a state-sponsored hacking regime, which is focusing on cryprocurrencies.

According to a report of the incident on the Daily Telegraph, North Korea’s government continuously deny any criminal doings but the evidence points towards genuine activity from Pyongyang.

The report read: “Pyongyang consistently denies all hacking allegations. However, cyber security experts and defectors have claimed that promising students are handpicked from prestigious universities to join Bureau 121, the hermit kingdom’s shadowy cyberwarfare agency.”

Many believe North Korea is attracted to cryptocurrency because of its lack of traceability and loose regulations.

Bitwala to relaunch as a crypto-first bank… Sign-up now

“Change is good” is a sentiment that Bitwala is definitely getting behind, as they have announced their intentions to re-launch as a crypto-first bank.

The award winning firm is now allowing potential customers to sign-up to a waiting list for their new offering, with the first accounts expected to open in the middle of this year.

Their move comes in the wake of high demand for crypto-friendly banking – which many believe there is currently a deficit in. Bitwala, who had to suspend their regular services in January due to regulation changes, intend to fill this gap in the market.

Bitwala were unable to reveal which bank they’ve partnered with but stated that its an “established German bank”.

Users will have full control of their private keys and thus will not be the holdings of Bitwala or the partner bank, this means the 100,000 Euro protection scheme will not cover cryptocurrencies but Euro deposits only.

Bitwala stated that users will be able to make transfers in and out of their account via SEPA transfer, making the selling and purchasing more flexible. Most of the established cryptocurrency exchanges are partnered with banks in Poland who are also on the SEPA network opening a quicker transfer time.

We asked Bitwala if they were anticipating any problems with users transferring funds in and out of the account, which is a common problem with banks blocking users from purchasing cryptocurrency.

“The foundation that we’ve built with our partner bank is very solid and based on German banking law, so we don’t expect any problems. This is not to say that we will not comply with the rules. Our partner bank and we are working very closely with regulators to ensure that all KYC and AML measures are in place.”

Co-founder and CEO of Bitwala, Jörg von Minckwitz said:

“Our founding vision has always been to bridge the gap between traditional and crypto economies. We believe that traditional banking was and has always been the weak link of the whole process, and we are looking forward to build an account that will tackle these very weaknesses.”

All new accounts that they open will come with a German IBAN and will be regulated by The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht).

Up until January Bitwala was a digital payment processing system that worked using blockchain technology. It made a name for itself through simplifying complicated processes and making them more accessible to as many individuals and companies as possible.

We have no doubt that von Minckwitz will hope to keep these values in place as they move to the next stage of their development in the crypto economy.

Users will only be able to sell and buy Bitcoin at present but more cryptocurrencies are planned for the future.

AI Startup Neuromation.io Sells 60M NTK In Just 8 Hours

Neuromation continues to establish itself as a global AI on blockchain industry leader by exceeding all expectations

Tallinn, January , 2018 – Neuromation, an award-winning distributed computing and synthetic data platform for deep learning applications, has sold out of its issued Neurotokens (NTK) after just 8 hours of public sale.

The public sale along with the preliminary sales period resulted in 60 million Neurotokens sold for a total of 50 million USD at the time of the final sale. The contributions were collected in Etherium, Bitcoin, and other major altcoins. Participants from 89 countries registered on the platform during this period, highlighting Neuromation’s global reach.

The issued Neurotokens will be used by companies on Neuromation AI marketplace platform for settlement between contracted parties.

“Thanks to Neuromation’s global reach we’re closer than ever to implementing our vision of democratization of AI industry.” said Maxim Prasolov, Neuromation’s Chief Executive. “Granting Let’s Enhance with computing power was our first step toward this goal and our next will be donating 10% of token sale proceeds as grants toward AI start-ups and neural network researchers”.

In addition to giving back to the AI community as a whole, Neuromation will use funds raised to build its platform which will quickly become the chosen destination for AI services for the cost conscious organizations including small and medium enterprises.

The platform’s first version is slated to be available at the end of first quarter 2018.

About Neuromation: Neuromation is a tech company headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia. Its Neuromation platform is designed for the AI ecosystem and offers a much-needed solution to the industry by uniting market resources, the scientific community, and related parties in an all-in-one, user-friendly marketplace. For more information visit https://neuromation.io/.

Interview requests : Daria Posrednikov, [email protected]

trade.io Announces Historic Partnerships & Introduces Tiered Structure Further To Community Demand

01 December 2017, Zug Switzerland. Highly anticipated upcoming ICO trade.io has made three major announcements this week, which have strengthened its positioning as one of the leading ICOs to invest in, for 2017.

The company has launched an historic partnership with The University Of Nicosia.

Two post-doctoral seats, funded by trade.io will focus on advanced research in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). The research will have a specific focus on side-chains and cross-chain interoperability, as well as smart token corporate governance best practices and implementation.

trade.io has partnered with HitBTC.

HitBTC is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, exceeding upwards of half a billion in daily volume, and operating since 2014. Once listed on the HitBTC exchange, the Trade Token (listed as TIO) will trade against the counters Bitcoin (BCT) and Ethereum (ETH).

The company has introduced a four-part tiered pricing structure

Further to overwhelming demand from the community a tiered pricing structure is now in place:

7-14 December: 1 ETH = 900 Trade Tokens

14-21 December: 1 ETH = 800 Trade Tokens

21-28 December: 1 ETH = 700 Trade Tokens

28 December – 4 January: 1 ETH = 600 Trade Tokens

On this, CEO Jim Preissler commented: “Our community has spoken. You have been asking us to extend the low Trade Token price for the ICO. The strength of trade.io lies in our community, your voice acts as a directing force for strategic decisions. With this in mind, our board has agreed to extend the low pricing by adding a tiered structure, giving early movers a bigger incentive to contribute and also to allow more time for such contributions”

Crypto broker LH-Crypto has collected $2,500,000 during the pre-ICO

Today has started the ICO of the project LH-Crypto, the first Forex broker that will work fully on the cryptocurrency. During the Pre-ICO was collected $ 2 555 426 and was determined the price of the token LHC and it is $0.128.

According to the mechanism of the sale of the tokens, every week the tokens LHC will become more expensive – so on the ICO the price of the token was $0.1352 (5% higher than pre-sale price). During the second week of the sale the price of the token will increase in comparison with the pre-ICO by 10%, during the third by 15%, and finally in the last week of sale by 21%. Thus, the company motivates investors to invest at an earlier stage. However, in the case of the crypto-broker it is really beneficial as early investors participate in the program Early Bird. Here, as elsewhere, those who buy tokens at the beginning pay less and those who buy in the end – pay more, that’s just the smart contract is set up so that with higher prices in the next step the difference is divided between the early participants.

All the project investors receive a guarantee of return of the token at +20% annually: if the tokens’ value will not be equal to “nominal + 20%”, the company will pay the missing funds into personal account of investors. This amount can be used for trade or immediately withdrawn.

And the main thing of the project is the monthly income which receive holders from operating activities. Regular crediting of funds to client’s personal account with a debit card on the brokerage account carries a high commission, but the transfer of cryptocurrencies doesn’t have such a cost. That’s why the company has decided to save 5% monthly from all incoming payments and at the end of the month to transfer them to the holders of the tokens.

LH-Crypto is the project of the company Larson & Holz which is broker with a 13 years of history. Why has a successful international broker decided to enter the cryptocurrency market? First of all, it will allow to solve the problem of mutual settlements with other countries, primarily with China, India, Arab countries, where the currency legislation considerably differs from the European one. Second, the “hype” around cryptocurrency is attracting to the market new and new people. Individuals who are interested in increasing their capital and in speculating. It expands the client base. Thirdly, the use of cryptocurrencies allows to avoid the territorial and legal constraints, including lengthy and complex process for obtaining licenses, and the limits of financial regulators will not have such a large value. And finally, the use of cryptocurrency helps to reduce transaction costs in 6 times up to 1%, which will attract more people.

To participate in the ICO LH-Crypto: https://lh-crypto.io

CanYa will completely change the world’s $2tn ‘gig economy’.

CanYa will completely change the world’s $2tn ‘gig economy’. CanYa will be a fully decentralised, international platform for people to book and pay (or be paid) for both home and digital services. Want to book a local plumber? Use CanYa. Want to get a graphics designer from overseas for your new website? Use CanYa. By providing a meaningful reason to spend cryptocurrencies in the real world, CanYa will help accelerate the mainstream adoption of crypto.

CanYa already has a working platform with thousands of jobs completed. The road map will move the platform to a completely decentralised ecosystem where payments, governance, storage and eventually compute will all become decentralised. It will become a truly international meritocracy for services that is run entirely by those who use the platform. This has never been done before and will revolutionise the way we book and pay for services.

The CAN token is an ERC20 utility token with three clear use-cases which provides a steady and constant demand for the CAN token. Firstly, users can pay for real-world services in CanYaCoins, which utilises the hedged escrow and is trustless, automated and secure. Secondly, service providers can also promote their profiles each month by purchasing CAN tokens within the platform. Lastly, 20% of all tokens are reserved to economically incentivise users to use and share the platform, such as referral rewards, transaction cash-backs and welcome bonuses.

The ICO will also be rewarding participants who contribute to CanYa’s community through its ‘Dolphin Tier’ – an exclusive invite-only pre-ICO bucket with a 40% bonus. Basically, we want to reward the community who believe in the project and have helped us spread the word about CanYa. Only people who help the CanYa ICO will be invited. See more details here: https://goo.gl/JhYRGW

Those who receive an invitation to the Dolphin Tier will be rewarded with an exclusive 40% CanYaCoin bonus and the best responses will win a CanYa Ledger Nano S—there are five to be won every week. The 50 most effective contributors will also receive a limited edition Founders Series coin.

Dolphin Tier

Investers can now bet on the price of Ethereum through Nasdaq

Jersey-based CoinShares announced today that two Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) connected to the price of the Ethereum cryptocurrency can now be traded on Nasdaq.

Denominated in both Swedish Kronor and Euro, the ETNs are designed to track the price of Ethereum and are based on the average value of a select group of liquid Euro exchanges.

This comes as no surprise with other providers including XBT issuing similar ETNs for tracking Bitcoin last month and GABI, the first regulated BTC hedge fund combining the two entities to launch CoinShares who have crypto assets of around $300 million. These previous ETN’s were made available to investors through Hargreaves Lansdown.

Investing in cryptocurrencies have been notoriously difficult for everyday investors due to wallet, transaction and exchange complexities however with CoinShares historic NASDAQ announcement non tech-savvy investors will now have full access to the cryptocurrency market.

In the last 18 months at least fifteen cryptocurrency funds have launched and around five crypto-based investment products are currently pending review with regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“Today is a historical moment for Ethereum and ether as an asset; and for the future of crypto-assets. It was a little over two years ago that the bitcoin ETNs began trading – offering investors exposure to bitcoin via an established exchange for the first time. Today, we are able to bring ether to the market and mark another major first. It is important to remember how far and how fast the space has matured in the less than 8 years since this revolution began,” says Ryan Radloff, Co-Principal at CoinShares.

We put some questions to CoinShares in a short interview:

What type of investors do you hope to attract with the ETH ETNs?

Product is for any investor who has qualified access to Nasdaq Stockholm.

Can you give us an estimated $ price of what you think Ethereum will trading at by 2018?

No price target right now – though we did a valuation model in our latest Ethereum research which may be helpful

Do you plan to trade on other exchanges such in currencies such as £ or $ ?

Cannot comment on future plans of that nature, apologies

What other cryptocurrencies do you have in mind? are you open to other ETNs with other currencies?

We delivered this product because the market had been requesting it since last year. We will follow market demand for future products as well.