Core Magazine February 2018

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE FEBRUARY ISSUE 2018

Weiss, a Securities Ratings Company, Has Assigned Ratings to Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin's Volatility Forces Ransomware Extortionists to Denominate Ransoms in Fiat

The Crypto Industry Is Going Full Ponzi, and It Won't End Well

current.us

Crypto Core Media

What is the Core Group

Core Group is the name given to our multi medium ‘Crypto’ project built from the ground up by real people.

As blockchain enthusiasts, our executives are community members, investors and managers in a vast network of technologies.

We are a well advised panel with the highest moral and ethical values, personally handpicked by both CEO and Founder.

We work diligently to inform all new and existing participants in the world of Cryptocurrency.

Using a variety of platforms, we report on project improvements, ground breaking achievements and fraudulent activities.

We embed a sensible moral code to ensure there are no misunderstandings regarding our motivations.

Copyright

Initio

© 2018 Core Group LLV. All rights reserved. Ab

Core Magazine

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Table of Contents Ripple Sold Nearly $100 Million Worth of Its XRP Token in Q4 2017

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Weiss, a Securities Ratings Company, Has Assigned Ratings to Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

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Opinion: The Crypto Industry Is Going Full Ponzi, and It Won't End Well

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Brisbane Airport Partners with TravelbyBit to Become Crypto-Friendly

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Health Nexus, A Simply Vital Health Product Extracts Value And Optimizes Data Flow 23 Luka Mueller, an Experienced Cryptocurrency Lawyer, Claims Legal Framework for ICOs is Ineffective

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Perth Mint, Australia's Largest Gold Refiner, Announces Plans for Its Own Cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin.org removes “fast transactions” and “low fees” from its homepage Continues

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Opera Browser is Now Equipped With Tools to Stop Cryptojacking

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Switzerland ”Should Become the Crypto-Nation,” Says Its Economics Minister

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India's Government Sends Tax Notices to Thousands of Crypto-Traders

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Bitcoin's Volatility Forces Ransomware Extortionists to Denominate Ransoms in Fiat

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Putin Wants to Create More Legislation for Cryptocurrencies

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Vitalik Cuts Down Involvement With Fenbushi in order to Work on Ethereum for 2018

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Crypto Cruise Attracts Diversity From McAfee, Politicians, Healthcare Innovators

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UK Calls For Tighter Regulations on Cryptocurrencies During Meeting in Davos, Switzerland

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Starbucks Just Hinted at Accepting Cryptocurrencies As Payment In the Future

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Teenage Bitcoin Millionaire Says It's Still Possible to Make Millions in Cryptocurrencies

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Arsenal Football Club to Promote CashBet's Cryptocurrency at Emirates Stadium 66 ODEM.io CEO gets candid

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Current.us Aims To Spread The Wealth To Include Content Creators And Users

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Casino Gambling Using Crypto Could Become Difficult to Regulate

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South Korea Customs Services Uncovers Nearly $600 Million in Crypto Crimes

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Crypto Goes Mainstream: Japanese chat app giant, Line, to launch crypto services

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What do I look for when investing in Cryptocurrency ? Part 1

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Hacker Nets $150,000 Worth of Ether After Phishing Experty ICO Investors

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Regulators Order Coincheck to Improve Business Operations Following Historic Crypto Hack

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Canada's Central Bank Chief Says Bitcoin Trading Is "Gambling", Calls for Regulations

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Samsung Will Start Manufacturing ASICs Chips Designed Specifically for Cryptocurrency Mining

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Ethereum-Based Prodeum Ico Pulls Exit Scam, Vanishes From the Web

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Regulations for Cryptocurrency Market in the Philippines Will Be Out Soon

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Facebook Bans All Cryptocurrency-Related Ads to “Prevent Scams”

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Bitcoin Trader Coerced at Gunpoint into Transferring over a "Fortune" in Bitcoins

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Youtube Ads Have Been Running Cryptocurrency Mining Code on Visitors' CPUs

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Disgruntled Investors Who Lost Over $770,000 Hit BitConnect With Class Action Lawsuit

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How CoinDash helps in diversifying portfolio

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Robinhood App Will Let Its Users Trade Cryptocurrencies Free of Cost

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Bitcoin Users in Indonesian Island of Bali Face Potential Crackdown

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Square´Cash App Adds Bitcoin Buy/Sell Options to Nearly All Users

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European Commission Wants the European Union to Take Advantage of Blockchain Technology

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NXT Platform: What is it and What does it Offer?

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Blockchain News

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE

DIRECTORY

3rdstryker 3rdstryker@coregroup.info

Kevin Deckel - aka Kevondo kevondo@coregroup.info

Lori Brown aka Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Antonio Madeira aka Kanoptx kanoptx@coregroup.info

Marlon Diaz aka MACO maco@coregroup.info

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blaise Pereira - aka juniorhouse juniorhouse@coregroup.info

Ignacio Figueroa aka TheWalk_er ignacio@coregroup.info

Vincent Pereira aka House house@coregroup.info

Futurist futurist@coregroup.info

Jon Prints aka Prints prints@coregroup.info

Angelo Timoneri aka Lootz lootz@coregroup.info 6

Core Magazine

EDITORIAL Here we are! Another month, another year, another Core Magazine Issue. If you’re reading this after launch, then you’re probably not the happiest person alive, given the bloodbath currently underway on all corners of the cryptosphere. Has the bubble popped? Will Crypto wither and die out now that the endless flow of lambos seems to have been cut off ? I’d say no. As the blockchain space continues to mature, it’s only logical that we’ll start seeing a more sane market in which assets don’t double or triple their value in days, a necessary step if we want to ensure cryptos go mainstream. A correction was also long expected and if you’ve been in crypto for a while, you know how long these bear markets can last.

So, what else is new? Regulators continue to focus on cryptocurrencies, with Putin himself wanting to create more legislation around cryptocurrencies and the UK calling for tighter regulations on blockchain currencies. Nevertheless, new and exciting projects continue to surface in the ICO industry, setting themselves apart from the many, many scams, hacks and thefts in the space, including projects like BitConnect which was now hit with a class action lawsuit.

We have also witnessed the biggest hack in crypto histroy, with Coincheck being taken for more than $500,000 worth of XEM. Curious? Keep reading to find out more!

Blockchain News

Ripple Sold Nearly $100 Million Worth of Its XRP Token in Q4 2017

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ipple, the payments company behind the XRP token, currently the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, reportedly recently sold nearly $100 million worth of XRP, after the token saw its value surge nearly 30,000 percent.

According to CNBC, the company that’s developing blockchain-based systems for banks sold $91.6 million in its XRP tokens 10

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last quarter. Per the company, the markets “ended the year with a statement,” that will “likely be remembered” as a milestone in the XRP token’s history.

The token’s surge was essentially a huge boom to the company’s balance sheet. Ripple owns about 60 percent of all XRP tokens in existence. Thanks to token sales it raised $180 million in 2017, without giving up any

Blockchain News

equity. In total, there are 100 billion XRP tokens, and Ripple holds 61 billion.

Most of its holdings – 55 billion – are held in escrow, to control the flow of XRP entering the market. At press time, according to Cryptocompare, each XRP token is trading at $1.31., meaning the company holds a total of $78.6 billion. Speaking to CNBC, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, a now paper billionaire thanks to his XRP holdings, stated the sale of funds held in escrow is limited to 1 billion a month.

Per reports, Ripple has made over $185 million in XRP sales since September 2016. While some thoroughly believe in the token’s potential, others see it as a way for the company to make money. Speaking to Bloomberg, ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin stated:

former executives at seven global banks, who requested anonymity, claimed there was a “scant chance they would ever entrust their corporate clients’ payments to a cryptocurrency” like XRP. Notably, some of the represented financial institutions are partnered with Ripple.

Behind the banks’ attitude are regulations.

If regulators don’t approve the use of XRP, then banks are certainly not going to use it, according to an executive in the payment industry “familiar with Ripple’s business.”

That said, Ripple recently announced a partnership with MoneyGram. The latter is now using Ripple’s xRapid technology and XRP for cross-border payments, according to an announcement.

MoneyGram recently clarified XRP

“It’s bewildering. Effectively, it’s a totally useless token except that it is being used by that company to make a lot of money to fund some of their activities.”

The company’s main product, RippleNet, currently doesn’t rely on the XRP token. RippleNet is similar to Swift, as it’s primarily a system that tells banks where to send the money, and helps them settle transactions.

Nevertheless, Garlinghouse stated that XRP is “absolutely at the core of what Ripple is doing.”

Ripple’s XRP crusade According to Bloomberg, current and

is just being used for a pilot program.

In a separate announcement, Ripple stated IDT Corporation and Mercury FX will also start using its xRapid technology to “settle remittances and corporate transactions quickly.”

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Weiss, a Securities Ratings Company, Has Assigned Ratings to Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

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eiss Ratings Gives Grades to Cryptocurrencies Weiss Ratings, LLC, an independent, 47-year old securities ratings company, has become the first organization to give grades to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin was given a rating of C+ while the EOS platform and Ethereum received a B rating. According to the rating firm, bitcoin received a lower grade because of its relatively higher transaction costs and longer times to process transactions. The company stated 12

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that it was aware of the fact that bitcoin’s developers were trying to solve these issues.

However, these ratings seem to be based on the current usability of cryptocurrencies.

Although none of the 74 coins covered were assigned an A rating, Ethereum and EOS stood out from the rest of the cryptoplatforms by being the only two cryptos to get a B rating. The main reason for Ethereum’s fairly high rating was that its platform was able to handle upgrades a lot better than other cryptos. Cardano (ADA), Dan Larimer’s Steem, and NEO received a

Blockchain News

rating of B-.

Historically, these grades seem to be consistent with the company’s rating system.

For example, the agency is known to not give A ratings, or high ratings in general, when it came to traditional stocks or mutual funds (back in the 1990s and early 2000s).

Low Rating for Ripple & Weiss Hacked Surprisingly, Ripple’s XRP received only a C rating from Weiss. As most crypto watchers are aware, Ripple’s platform has managed to gain the interest of the world’s leading banks, especially the ones operating in Japan and South Korea. It is also among the top 3 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization (CryptoCompare). At this time, it is not clear how Weiss issued this rating because there’s not enough detailed information available about its grading criteria.

Before the securities rater announced its ratings, cryptocurrency investors were quite concerned. They were afraid that their cryptos might get a low rating, which could potentially hurt their business. The fear of negative ratings probably led to a series of denial-of-service attacks from South Korea. Crypto investors, mainly from S. Korea, also tried to initiate an effort to shut down Weiss’ rating website. Apparently, a few hackers were successful in breaking into the company’s website.

Social Media Used to Spread Fake Ratings After breaking in, the hackers began to steal information from the website.They then altered this information, probably in a way that would suit their own agenda, according to Weiss. The company tweeted out: “Urgent

consumer alert: Beware of fake cryptocurrency ratings posted on Twitter accounts and the Internet”. The long-time securities ratings firm’s founder, Martin D. Weiss, said that he was well aware of the fearful commentary circulating on social media. He stated, “So this may be an attempt to thwart our release today”.

Ari Paul, co-founder and chief information officer at BlockTower Capital, a crypto investment company, thinks that the development of a rating system for cryptoplatforms indicates a movement towards their institutionalization. Mr. Paul believes that this is a good thing by calling it a “healthy addition”. However, he did criticize the rating company for “misunderstanding” the real value and purpose of cryptocurrencies.

He feels that the rating system did not give enough consideration to a crypto’s “protocol stability, security, and decentralization”.

Although a rating system for cryptos might sound like a good idea, it does seem to be biased. Notably, Weiss assigned a low C rating to Ripple. This might be due to the fact that it’s centralized. Whatever the real reason might be, companies giving ratings to cryptocurrencies could potentially lead to unfair discrimination. Therefore, ratings for cryptocurrencies by an independent entity should not be relied upon to make investment decisions, or any other kind of decision when it comes to cryptos. It would be better if people performed their own research and tried to learn from their own experiences.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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cryprocoremedia.com

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Opinion: The Crypto Industry Is Going Full Ponzi, and It Won't End Well

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hose new to the cryptocurrency ecosystem may not remember this, but a few years ago Bitcoin had to battle the idea that it was only used for illegal transactions. The cryptocurrency was 16

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widely believed to just be used on darknet markets, such as now-defunct Silk Road and AlphaBay. It took years for the cryptocurrency to start

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flourishing, as people started seeing it is an actual currency, used by people who just want to be in charge of their own money. In fact, subsequent studies showed cryptocurrencies are marginally used for illegal purchases.

When AlphaBay went down, for example, Bitcoin’s price wasn’t affected at all – if it were the cryptocurrency’s main purpose, Bitcoin would’ve crashed.

Now, Bitcoin has to fight the idea that it is in a bubble, and that investing in it is gambling. But where did this new idea come from? The answer is somewhat complex, but it is important to understand what’s going on.

Currently, the cryptocurrency industry is seemingly the equivalent of a Ponzi scheme to some new investors, who are trying to invest before others get a chance to, so they can see their tokens’ value skyrocket off of other people’s investments. The usefulness of the tokens they’re purchasing is apparently secondary.

Bitcoin’s surge In early 2017, one Bitcoin was trading at about $950. Throughout the year the flagship cryptocurrency surged to $19,000, but then its price crashed, and it closed the year at $13,850. This is a 1,350% surge in

only 12 months. It was, however, justified.

Bitcoin saw various businesses accept it, started being frequently mentioned in the media, and saw software updates implemented. Bitcoin’s userbase surged, just like its price, so much so that major companies struggled to keep up with increasing customer demand. Various exchanges even had to halt user registrations to ensure the quality of their services.

Bitcoin is used for semi-anonymous peer-to-peer transactions, it’s the gateway cryptocurrency most use to buy altcoins, and is used as a store of value. At press time, its market cap is of $212 billion, while the cryptocurrency ecosystem’s market cap is $613 billion. Bitcoin’s dominance index dropped from 84% to 34.7% in under a year, despite its 1,350% gains.

The altcoin craze During bitcoin’s incredible rise, it got a lot of attention. Whenever a mainstream media outlet wrote about bitcoin, it was about how much its price increased, not about its potential to give people control over their own money. Given that one bitcoin is now worth over $12,000, and that a lot of people don’t know you can buy a fraction of a bitcoin, some potential investors assume the cryptocurrency is now too expensive, and its potential returns are low.

On the other hand, there are altcoins. Some, like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, are somewhat expensive and have real purposes. They’re useful and Core Magazine

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valuable, and can accomplish incredible things. Others are clones, parodies, and downright useless, but see jaw-dropping investments pour in.

Part of the reason behind these investments, as commodities and digital assets trading house Octagon Strategy’s managing director Dave Chapman put it, is that these coins are perceived as cheap.

New investors have a specific mindset that they’ve missed the “upside opportunity” with established cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, and as such believe these might give them similar returns to those early bitcoin adopters saw.

He said: • “The two most well known cryptocurrencies (i.e. bitcoin and ethereum) are considered too expensive for most new entrants. Despite being able to purchase a fraction of each, there is a real psychological barrier around owning something in its entirety.”

XRP, a token issued by Ripple, saw its value surge from $0,006 to $3.37 in little over a year, a 56,000% increase in an extremely short period of time that helped ittemporarily become the number two cryptocurrency with a $130 billion market cap. Notably, the cryptocurrency is issued by a company that’s set to help banks improve their systems, not help people stop needing banks, like Bitcoin.

signed an agreement to sell no more than $10,000 per week, and once he attempted to sell $1 million through an exchange in one go in, the company froze his attempt. A lawsuit followed, and the exchange had to settle the dispute, according to reports.

Another cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, has recently hit a $2 billion market cap as its token reached a $0.016 all-time high. While Ripple is continuously updated, Dogecoin hasn’t been updated for over two years. It was originally created as a parody and, as reported by Core Media, its recent rise even surprised its founder, Jackson Palmer, who left the project in 2015.

He said:

• “The fact that most conversations happening in the media and between peers focus on the investment potential is worrying, as it draws attention away from the underlying technology and goals this movement was based [on]”

The fact that a parody cryptocurrency that has been maintained but not updated in over two years got to a $2 billion market cap, shows us how the market is currently going full Ponzi. New investors are trying to be the first to put their money on penny cryptos, so they can benefit when the price goes up. Just like in a Ponzi scheme, they’re waiting for new investors to put their money on the line and shamelessly promote these projects, so they can make a profit.

In fact, Ripple has a Balance Freeze feature. It was introduced in August 2014, and was used when one of its co-founders, Some are even trying to invest money Jed McCaleb, tried to cash out some of his billions in XRP after leaving Ripple. He had they don’t have, without even thoroughly 18

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understanding what they’re investing in. https://twitter.com/ademon/ status/949892236468150272 As history has shown us, when people forget about the fundamentals and just invest in whatever they can to try to make money, a crash usually ensues. Given that most altcoins are seeing their value increase without any regard for their fundamentals the next cryptocurrency market crash may be a big one for some of these penny cryptos.

in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as soon as traders on the other side of the world started taking profits those who wanted to cut their losses short started withdrawing, leading to a “crash.” This happens every year, around mid-January – this wasn’t the hit I was referring to.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

In early 2018 we saw the market shed over $300 billion in a significant correction.

This “crash” had multiple explanations, with the main one being the Lunar New Year.

Since Asian markets have a big influence

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Brisbane Airport Partners with TravelbyBit to Become CryptoFriendly

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risbane Airport Will Soon Become Crypto-Friendly

Brisbane, capital of the Australian state of Queensland, will be making its airport terminal “crypto-friendly”. The plan is to have most of the airport’s restaurants, coffee shops, and other stores accept payments in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Brisbane 20

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Airport (BNE) will be partnering with TravelbyBit, a tourism company that offers a digital currency payment platform, to help various retailers at the airport to accept payments in cryptocurrency.

Roel Hellemons, General Manager for Strategic Planning & Development at Brisbane Airport Corporation, believes that

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many people who have made large profits from investing in cryptocurrencies also tend to travel a lot. Therefore, he says,

“it makes sense to offer a digital currency experience within our terminals”.

Some of the retailers at the airport that will accept crypto payments include Forte Espresso, Merino Collection, Windmill & Co, Botanist, and Carry On. TravelbyBit’s Merchants

Growing

Network

of

TravelbyBit, which started off as a relatively small crypto-startup, has managed to build a network of over 20 merchants in Brisbane who will accept payments in crypto. These merchants include up-scale hotels and airport transport companies. Caleb Yeoh, cofounder of TravelbyBit, says that there is a practical use case for digital currencies in the tourism sector. He explains that international travel requires dealing

“with multiple currencies and you never know what exchange rates the banks are charging you”.

Because of these complications, travelers would be better off if they switched over to cryptocurrencies, according to Mr. Yeoh. He describes crypto-transactions as “simple” and “safe” with “no bank fees”.

Since TravelbyBit has already put together a network of merchants in Brisbane who accept cryptocurrencies, extending this network to include the city’s airport seems logical and it will probably just make it even more convenient for travelers who prefer to use cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment.

According to recent data, Brisbane’s airport happens to be one of Australia’s busiest airports. Nearly 23 million people traveled through the airport in 2016 alone. So, giving people the option to pay using crypto could potentially encourage a lot more people to spend money at the city’s airport. Obviously, this would be good for business.

Challenges That Lie Ahead By allowing the airport’s passengers to pay for goods and services with cryptocurrencies, the city’s airport could become a pioneer among the world’s airports that offer a crypto-friendly environment. Furthermore, TravelbyBit’s crypto payment system network could grow even faster due to its partnership with the bustling airport. However, it may not be as safe and convenient to pay with crypto as TravelbyBit and its partner airport might have you believe.

Although they’ve come down a bit recently, transaction fees with cryptocurrencies, particularly bitcoin, can be quite high. In addition, it may take a long time to process transactions with certain cryptocurrencies.

It’s also not as safe as to deal in cryptocurrencies as TravelbyBit might claim.

To date, approximately $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen by hackers.

Clearly, crypto-related technology needs to be improved; but these types of initiatives, where organizations are working towards developing real-world use cases for cryptocurrencies, should be encouraged and supported by the crypto community.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Health Nexus, A Simply Vital Health Product Extracts Value And Optimizes Data Flow

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common desire in any room of people is likely to be a medical system that is efficient, affordable, and effective in the realm of healing and illness prevention. The problems that slow the progress in the practice of medicine are numerous, yet the solutions available are

scarce.

Many attempts are made each year to correct the shortcomings found in the provider process and still at the end of the day, many physicians have hallways filled with sensitive patient data in the form of Core Magazine

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scribbled out notes on flimsy folders and everyone is complaining in the waiting room, only adding fuel to the fire.

Care providers are overwhelmed by the outdated methods of transferring data, yet they are required by laws in many regions to electronically store such information plus they must protect the privacy of patients at the same time. This passes a problem onto the healthcare patients by creating a frantic and lengthy process by which everyone is expected to conduct themselves to stay legal.

The process becomes so tedious and so time consuming with all the red tape that actual wellness takes a backseat to bureaucratic process.

The team at Simply Vital Health saw the glaring need to improve the way healthcare data is shared, stored and used, to better benefit providers and at the same time improving results for patients. With these fragments in mind, the team decided to take action to disrupt the ineffective methods in which information and data is handled in the field of medicine. Health Nexus, an open source blockchain protocol was created as a solution to the multitude of drawbacks that providers have grown accustomed to “dealing with”.

Not only does the Health Nexus aim to improve the accuracy and efficiency of information when shared between authorized parties, but Health Nexus is incentivized in a way that benefits the provider most generously for what they call Value Based Care- and it is based around results of treatments rather than time on the clock.

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When asked what message the team hoped to convey to their audience this is what Lucas Hendren, Co Founder and CTO had to say.

“ Medical care costs are rising, and with new and secure blockchain tech, we can help lower those costs quickly and securely with little training required.”

explained Lucas Hendren, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer for Simply VItal Health.

Aligned with the Co-Founders sentiment, David Akers, the Senior Advanced Blockchain Engineer for Simply Vital Health added his thoughts.

“There’s no doubt that in the next few years decentralized tech, like blockchains, will be employed to bring healthcare technology forward, solving otherwise impossible problems, and ushering in new value opportunities.”

David Akers, Senior Advanced Blockchain Engineer

Why is Simply Vital Health important for the field of medicine?

By opening up and crowdsourcing health data through Simply Vital Health and its an open source platform, called Health Nexus, the possibilities for medical breakthroughs increases exponentially.

Changing the current paradigm of how health data is utilized, bought and sold has the potential to benefit everyone from the patient, to those seeking data, to society at large through increased opportunities for

Blockchain News

medical advancement.

Here is what Kat Kuzmeskas, MPH, and Chief Executive Officer of Simply Vital Health explained.

“We created the Health Nexus (HLTH) protocol to unleash the value of healthcare data that’s currently locked up in monolithic, disconnected silos into a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform that will accelerate breakthroughs in medical treatments and outcomes — for patients, researchers, and medical providers alike”.

To explain further, Jake Dreier, The Director of Growth & Operations explained the projects impact for three groups including providers, field students or researchers, and consumers.

“All three groups of participants in the marketplace will benefit from the Health Nexus platform: • Benefits to Providers: The HLTH protocol enables HIPAA-compliant apps, giving healthcare providers immediate access to secure and up-to-date patient history to provide value-based care, driving down significant operational costs; • Benefit to Researchers: Academic institutions and scientific research communities can have direct and transparent access to global demographic data directly from those who are keen to participate in healthcare studies; • Benefits to Individuals: Individuals and patients can participate monetarily by sharing their private health data in an

anonymized way, advancing medical research and scientific breakthroughs.”

To emphasize the amount of urgency that is present for the early blockchain adopters in the healthcare field, this was what Jake Dreier, the Director Of Growth and Operations explained.

“I want to convey a sense of urgency.

Right now everyone seems aware that blockchain will be revolutionary but many in the healthcare industry are comfortable waiting. There really isn’t time to wait on this. By the time it feels comfortable and mainstream others will have already become market leaders. Simply Vital Health is important for the field of medicine because we are providing a way for healthcare leaders to be the visionaries of their field. The fact we have a strong healthcare and tech background on our team makes us perfectly positioned to do this.”

See what the Simply Vital Health team is working towards, by visiting https://www. simplyvitalhealth.com/ Be sure to read the whitepaper here.

Participation dates for the crowdfund sale will be announced for mid February.

In the meantime, the team at Simply Vital Health recommends getting whitelisted to participate as soon as possible to ensure your eligibility. You can start here: https:// tokensale.simplyvitalhealth.com/ Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Luka Mueller, an Experienced Cryptocurrency Lawyer, Claims Legal Framework for ICOs is Ineffective

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uka Mueller says Current ICO Legal Framework is “Stupid”

Luka Mueller, partner at MME Legal AG in Switzerland, has stated that the legal framework around ICOs has become “stupid”, “inflexible”, and outdated. These comments should not be taken too lightly, considering Mr. Mueller played a key role in developing legal guidelines for ICOs. ICOs have been under attack by regulatory 28

Core Magazine

authorities all over the world with countries like South Korea and China attempting ban them completely.

The latest research and findings on ICOs, conducted by Ernst & Young (EY research), reveal that more than 10% of the capital raised via ICOs is either “lost” or stolen. EY research arrived at this conclusion after examining hundreds of ICOs. Research data indicates that around $400 million of

Blockchain News

the total $3.7 billion raised through ICOs to date was stolen by hackers. That’s a serious problem.

Numerous ICOs Have Been Identifying as Swiss Foundations Luka, whose MME law firm helped lay the legal groundwork of the largest ICOs in the world, recommends that crypto groups, particularly those engaging US investors, would better serve their clients if they established proper companies instead of Swiss foundations. These “foundations” declare themselves to be non-profit entities, so that they can enter the lesser taxed bracket.

Furthermore, the capital raised from ICOs is considered to be a donation. Therefore, there’s no obligation to return it.

Although Mr. Luka thinks that ICOs functioning as non-profit foundations are misrepresenting their business operations, he does suggest that an ICO can establish itself as a foundation if it’s centered around technical experts (instead of investors).

Notably, the focus of Mr. Luka’s statements has been around U.S. investors. He asserts,

“If...the background is more an investor environment rather than a technical environment, yes, do all the registrations. If you want to sell it, if you want to be active and actively promoting it in the US, apply U.S. law.”

ICOs are Big in Switzerland, but Not Without Problems Switzerland has been at the forefront of

the crypto-market, given that it’s behind 4 of the world’s 10 biggest ICOs. The main reason behind this might be because the country has a history of maintaining business-friendly regulations and a neutral political outlook. However, money raised by Swiss foundations, particularly those for the Tezos project, which claims to offer a better blockchain than bitcoin or Ethereum, has been widely criticized.

The criticisms of the Tezos project have turned into full-blown class action lawsuits in the United States against the startup’s founders.

Plaintiffs allege that Tezos crowdfunding was technically a sale of securities, but failed to comply with the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulations.

Tensions around the Tezos venture escalated after $232 million had been raised through its ICO, but the launch of the much anticipated Tezos network became long overdue. Due to constant ongoing battles between the foundation’s president and its developers, it doesn’t seem likely that the Tezos network will be launched anytime soon.

Given the serious issues and problems with ICOs, Mr. Luka Mueller might be right by referring to current ICO laws as “stupid”.

ICOs have certainly managed to create a lot of conflict and controversy. It’s evident that ICOs should not try to market themselves as non-profit foundations. Instead, they should identify as startups focusing on raising the maximum amount of capital to further their agenda, because that’s what they really are.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Perth Mint, Australia's Largest Gold Refiner, Announces Plans for Its Own Cryptocurrency

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erth Mint Might Be Entering the Crypto-Market

Perth Mint,the largest gold refiner in Australia, might be launching its own cryptocurrency 30

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soon. The state-owned refiner will back its cryptocurrency with precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum. According to the company, the reason for developing its own crypto-platform is to simplify the process of

Blockchain News

purchasing precious metals. In developing its own crypto, the long-time refiner will be utilizing blockchain technology. The company believes that this will enable “realtime market visibility” while enhancing the security of precious metals and making them more traceable. Exactly how this will be accomplished is not clear at the moment.

Generally speaking, Perth Mint has been trying to keep its services up-to-date with modern technology. A few years back, the company launched its own online trading platform. By using this portal, its customers can easily and securely invest in precious metals. With the launch of its crypto-gold product, the company thinks that gold and other precious metals will become more accessible while making investments more transparent.

Bringing Investors Back to the Precious Metals Market The asset-backed cryptocurrency is intended to attract investors back to the precious metals market. Due to the surge in the crypto-market, the gold refiner would like to tap into this growing market by incorporating crypto-technology into its own services. Richard Hayes, CEO at Gold Corporation, the organization that operates Perth Mint, says that his company’s crypto-gold currency will be a good choice of investment for investors who want to stay away from the extremely volatile nature of most cryptocurrencies.

Mr. Hayes feels that an asset-backed cryptocurrency, like the one his company is proposing, should be far more stable than traditional cryptos. The company has not

announced an official release date for its crypto-gold product. However, Mr. Hayes gave this vague statement, “the next 12 to 18 months would result in significant movement in that direction”. It’s quite possible that his company might just be gauging the response from the cryptocommunity regarding its crypto-related plans.

Building On Its Success If the Perth Mint’s crypto-gold product is successful, then the company can take advantage of its existing dominance in the precious metals domain to become a major player in the cryptocurrency market. For quite some time, the gold refiner has generated billions of dollars in revenue each year by delivering precious metals to clients in over 100 countries, valued at approximately $18 billion according to the most recent estimates.

Currently, Australia is the world’s secondbiggest producer of gold, mainly because of Perth Mint’s operations. Therefore, the company can easily leverage its prominent global presence to capitalize on the cryptomarket, even if its crypto-gold product achieves only a moderate level of success.

However, there’s no reason to get too excited about this crypto, considering cryptocurrencies and their technology are still in their infancy.

A lot more work needs to be done to improve existing crypto-platforms and the blockchain technology that underpins them, according to Ethereum founder and leading crypto-expert, Vitalik Buterin..

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Bitcoin.org removes “fast transactions” and “low fees” from its homepage Continues

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ne of the things that drew people to bitcoin in its early days were the fast and cheap peer-to-peer transactions. Now, after months of high fees and long confirmation times, Bitcoin.org removed the “low transaction fees” from its 32

Core Magazine

homepage. The website no longer mentions “fast transactions” as well.

Now, the popular website created by bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto himself markets “peer-to-peer transactions,” “borderless

Blockchain News

payments,” and “fraud protection.” While the homepage has ben changed, the introductory video still mentions low fees. The video has notably been seen over 5 million times and is used by many as a way to learn about the cryptocurrency.

Via Twitter, Bitcoin.org co-owner CobraBitcoin expressed how hard the change was for him. In a tweet, he stated:

Cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, and Dash are all accepted by various organizations throughout the world, and saw adoption increase in the last few months.

Bitcoin itself already has a scaling solution in the works: the lightning network. However,

“I feel like I’ve lost a piece of my soul after merging this pull request. At some point we all forgot that Bitcoin was supposed to be decentralized money, and we became OK with outrageous fees and centralized mining, all to chase the $$$.”

On Bitcoin’s Github, Cobra added that the whole website mentions low transaction fees. As such, a lot of pages need to be changed and translated. He added that fees were “supposed to come down with Segwit anyway,” presumably implying something failed with the technology’s adoption.

Bitcoin’s high fees and slow confirmations times were, according to some, the reason for the ‘rise’ of most altcoins. This led the flagship cryptocurrency’s market share down to 34.7 percent at press time. According to Cryptocompare, one bitcoin is currently trading at $10,921, while its market cap is at $183.4 billion. As covered by Core Media, its volatility recently forced ransomware extortionists to denominate ransoms in fiat.

Escaping bitcoin’s high fees In response to bitcoin’s current state, various users turned to altcoins.

although a few mainnet nodes already exist, the technology is still not yet ready to handle bitcoin’s users.

Nevertheless, SegWit is still helping the network. BitGo, a multi-signature security service provider, recently revealed a 2MB block has been mined on the bitcoin blockchain, all thanks to SegWit. Bitcoin’s fees have recently dropped to about $1. The drop coincides with a drop in the number of transactions users have been making. What caused the drop is unknow, but as soon as word of low fees spread, the number of transactions quickly surged.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Opera Browser is Now Equipped With Tools to Stop Cryptojacking

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pera Browser Can Now Stop Cryptojacking Numerous websites have started hogging the processing power of their visitors’ CPUs for crypto-mining purposes. In fact, more than 2500 of the world’s most frequently visited websites are now running the popular Coinhive mining software on their visitors’ devices. This malicious activity is considered to be a cyber security threat and is called “cryptojacking”.

It is carried out by programmed scripts that consume a device’s resources, like a parasite, in order to mine cryptocurrencies for the website’s owner. Often times, these scripts are added to the website by hackers or rogue 34

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employees without the webmaster’s concent.

When these scripts take over a device, they tend to slow it down considerably, draining the CPU’s power and electricity. In response to this, the Opera browser has introduced a new feature that stops mobile devices from being used to mine cryptocurrencies.

Crypto-Mining Blocker Seems Easy to Use Opera first added what they call a cryptomining blocker to the desktop versions of their browser. Given that the majority of people now access the internet using mobile phones, smartphones running the Opera browser will also be able to prevent

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cryptojacking. Users can easily turn on this security feature by enabling the Ad blocker.

By default, this is supposed to prevent crypto-mining by outside parties. In case you’re wondering if your device is being used for crypto-mining, you can easily check by running a cryptojacking test offered by Opera.

Cryptojacking is Hard to Detect & Damaging Jan Standal, VP Product Marketing and Communications at Opera, stated, “When you browse the web, there are no visual clues that your device is exposed to mining”. He then gives an example of a tab on your browser being unintentionally left open leading to the unwanted consumption of a significant amount of battery life. This battery power could have been used to accomplish plenty of other useful tasks, of course.

This type of crypto-mining software will

also overheat the battery of devices due to the extreme burden it puts on CPUs. As a result, devices might become unusable pretty quickly.

Trying to Become More Competitive Google’s Chrome browser, Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are the most popular browsers, considering that they account for over 80% of the browser market share. However, if you want to run an anti-mining tool on them, you’ll have to download and install some extensions.

With the Opera browser, the anti-mining feature is now embedded into its standard installation file. This might seem like a relatively small advantage Opera might now have over its competitors, but it just might help the company attract some more users.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Switzerland ”Should Become the Crypto-Nation,” Says Its Economics Minister

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n an interview with news outlet SFT, Switzerland’s economics minister Johann Schneider-Ammann recently

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stated that the country should attempt to “become the crypto-nation.” This, if experiments in the Canton of Zug,

SPECIAL ARTICLES

colloquially known as the Crypto Valley, are successful.

Per the minister’s words, these successful experiences could be extended to the whole nation, thus helping Switzerland become a “crypto-nation.” He stated (roughly translated):

“The Canton of Zug, the Cryptovalley, has come a long way. There we can gain experience. If the experiences in Zug are positive, we can extend that to the nation. Therefore the statement: It does not need to stay with Cryptovalley, it should become the crypto-nation.”

During his interview, the country’s economics minister addressed a few key concerns for those looking at the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

The Crypto Valley is home to various blockchain companies, including the Ethereum Foundation. Seemingly addressing its success, the minister stated Switzerland has “grown big by everything that means innovation.”

Will the ‘crypto-nation’ cryptocurrencies?

regulate

When asked about potential regulations, Johann Schneider-Ammann made it clear he thinks it’s too early. The minister added that experience dealing with cryptocurrencies is “still too low,” and implied regulations could stifle innovation.

SFT pushed further and asked if potential regulations could lead to a crackdown in the country, like in China. In response, the minister stated:

“We are who we are. We must and want to be able to determine our own future. We make our experiences and of course we make cross-comparisons with the neighbors and the distant competitors.”

Notably, Switzerland isn’t a member of the European Union (EU). The country remains neutral, independent and sovereign, meaning potential regulations affecting EU members won’t affect it. This, in part, is what made the country attractive to blockchain startups.

He added that cryptocurrencies are part of the “fourth industrial revolution.”

However, he cautioned that only those who The minister also implied that banks which understand financial markets and who can dismiss the cryptocurrency craze as “hype” do afford to lose money should deal with them. so for a reason. To him, the reason is based on professional concerns, as cryptocurrencies Per the minister’s words, cryptocurrencies directly affect their business. He added that if are still in an initial phase and, as such, the technology’s risks outweigh its benefits, haven’t stabilized. Nevertheless, taking then the country would “do without it.” risks and investing in them now could mean new opportunities in the long run. Given that it could create jobs in the future, he expressed his support.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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India's Government Sends Tax Notices to Thousands of Crypto-Traders

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ndia’s Government Wants to Tax Crypto-Traders India’s government has sent out tax notices to thousands of cryptocurrency traders. The notices require individuals participating in crypto-related business to pay taxes on their capital gains. Just prior to sending out the notices, the country’s Income Tax Department conducted a nationwide survey to assess crypto-related activity. One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine the patterns of crypto-trading, according to an investigation specialist.

The findings of the survey indicated that approximately $3.5 38

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billion worth of crypto-trading had occurred in the country during a span of 17 months.

Survey data also revealed that the majority of crypto-traders were involved in either the jewelry business or real-estate. Previous surveys found quite a few exporters, textile traders, and youngsters engaged in the country’s crypto-market as well.

Comprehensive, Nationwide Crypto Survey Data for the country-wide survey was taken from 9 crypto-exchanges operating in Bengaluru New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Gurugram, and Pune. Koinex, Zebpay, VirWoX, and Localbitcoins are some of the country’s most active exchanges. India’s government also ordered its tax department to obtain more information regarding all the assets which crypto-investors currently possess, including their sources.

According to survey data, there were approximately 2 million entities registered on the country’s crypto-exchanges. An estimated 400,000 of these entities were found to be actively engaging in cryptotrading. Now, in addition to the tax notices that have been sent, India’s government has also been monitoring these accounts in order to prevent tax evasion.

Crypto is Very Popular in Bollywood Many famous actors and actresses from Bollywood, which is India’s version of Hollywood, seem to have profited from cryptocurrency investments.

Perhaps the most famous Indian actor, Amitabh Bachchan, has reportedly made millions of dollars through crypto. Other famous Indian

icons who might also have also made it big in the cryptosphere include the gorgeous Nargis Fakhri and Shilpa Shetti.

Since these entertainers are among the nation’s High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), India’s government will definitely hit them with tax notices, considering that most Indian icons and celebrities have publicly declared their love for crypto.

Warnings from India’s Government Although India’s government is now looking to tax crypto earnings, it has issued several warnings about the dangers of investing cryptocurrency. A few Indian authorities have even compared cryptocurrencies to Ponzi schemes. The country’s finance ministry is thinking of placing certain types of restrictions on digital currencies, perhaps through new regulations. Countries like South Korea have been attempting to ban all kinds of crypto-related activity, and this has caused a major uproar from its citizens.

As India and the rest of the world continue to deal in crypto, it would be nice to see governments and their citizens find a happy medium. This might seem like wishful thinking given that both parties are almost never satisfied with each other.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

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Bitcoin's Volatility Forces Ransomware Extortionists to Denominate Ransoms in Fiat

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ccording to cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, bitcoin’s volatility has forced most ransomware extortionists to denominate their payments in fiat currency equivalents, presumably to ensure more people pay them.

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Proofpoint’s researchers found that over the last quarter of 2017, cybercriminals sent their victims ransoms denominated in bitcoin 73% less.

They increasingly started asking for a figure in U.S. dollars, or any other local fiat currency, instead of specifying the sum in

Blockchain News

bitcoin. According to reports, over two-thirds of ransomware strains are now denominating payments in fiat currencies.

people pay for their ransoms. Given bitcoin’s volatility, some victims could presumably reconsider sending them the funds.

Researchers stated:

At press time, one bitcoin is trading at $11,542. This week the cryptocurrency fell to a $9,200 low, while last month it was close to its $19,200 all-time high. According to data from Cryptocompare, bitcoin’s market cap is currently of $194 billion and cryptocurrency is up 1.26% in the last 24 hours.

“Surging cryptocurrency values are a boon for holders of bitcoin. But they are a challenge for anyone who tries to price their product or service in bitcoin — threat actors included.

In Q4, newer ransomware strains appeared to take this into account.

Sigma ransomware first appeared in mid-November demanding a payment denominated in US dollars.”

These, however, still demand payments be carried out in bitcoin, as its semi-anonymous nature given them an extra layer of security.

Moreover, bitcoin’s value has increased over the years, so it may be a “gift” that just keeps on giving.

Ransomware extortionists carefully price ransoms Like conventional salespeople, ransomware developers reportedly pay careful attention to the amount they demand.

Per The Guardian, some criminals offer discounts to their victims, while others offer cheap solutions to developing nation residents. Some even use an escalating price, to pressure victims into paying as soon as possible.

By denominating their ransoms in fiat currency, the cybercriminals manage to maintain pricing stability, so as to ensure more

As covered by Core Media, cybersecurity expert Lee Chen recently warned cryptocurrency-related hacks will increase.

Chen, CEO at A10 Networks, stated that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are here to stay. As they become mainstream, he reasoned, more attackers will target adopters.

Late last year, cybercriminals even hacked people’s mobile devices in an attempt to mine cryptocurrencies. They did this by planting apps on app stores that mined cryptocurrency in the background, without asking users for permission.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

Slack Channel here https://join.slack.com/t/ coregroup-global/shared_invite/

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RewardMob Pioneers The First Crypto Boxing Sponsorship

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ewardMob, a tournament platform that rewards its users for mobile gaming activities has once again pioneered into new territory. RewardMob is first known cryptocurrency sponsorship in professional boxing, and they are proud to support Malcolm Elton Klassen, through his exclusive manager, Alexander King.

Malcolm will be fighting in his 9th World Title fight in Russia, on February 10th 2018. Details available in the Telegram chat for Rewardmob.

The team at RewardMob is excited and proud to be a part of the upcoming success in the young boxers career. You can learn more about Malcom and his career stats here: http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/20257 Download the RewardMob in your app shop below, and get prepared for the launch of the ticket sale which begins on the 13th of March and can be initiated here: https://ticketsale.rewardmob.com/ iTunes Google Play You will need to confirm your email address in order to continue with the ticket sale.

When you sign up, this is why it is a good idea to start this process early in case any snags pop up along the way.

You can ask questions and socialize live on the RewardMob Telegram Channel which you can access at this address: https://t.me/rewardmobinc Stay current on all the latest updates and technology as it becomes available by starting here: https://ticketsale.rewardmob.com/ Download the whitepaper here 50 Free RMOB Tokens giveaway- must follow the steps to qualify, first come first serve. *Download the RewardMob app (linked above) *Once in the app you will find the link to the RewardMob Telegram Channel. *Send your waves address to RewardMob from the app you just downloaded. * When asked for your code - enter in Core2018 to get your 50 tokens.

1 per person- cheaters will be banned, no exceptions.

Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

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Putin Wants to Create More Legislation for Cryptocurrencies

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utin Thinks Crypto Requires More Regulations

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has stated that the country’s crypto-market will require a proper regulatory framework if it is to survive. The country will also consider legalizing crypto-trading based on votes.

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Putin and the Russian government, like most other governments around the world, believe that cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, the blockchain, are definitely worth studying. As, Core Media has already reported, Russia and a number of other countries are looking into developing their own state-backed cryptocurrencies.

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Crypto Not “Backed” By Anything TASS, a Russian news agency, reported on January 11th that the country’s central bank “has sufficient authority” at the moment, according to Putin. However, the Russian president has also said that the country’s crypto-market might eventually require oversight legislation. He also noted that cryptocurrencies should not be looked at as a store of value. He stated: “It is known that the cryptocurrency is not backed by anything. It cannot be a store of value. No material valuables are behind it and it is not secured by anything. It can be a settlement medium to a certain degree and in certain situations.

This is done quickly and efficiently”.

Crypto Could Lead to a Paradigm Shift Even Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has said that he fails to understand what is backing bitcoin and other cryptos. This has been a popular topic of discussion and debate among Reddit users.

If you go through the threads, some people claim that even fiat currencies and gold are backed by faith; and, so is bitcoin. Then, other people discredit this claim and point to the fact that something need not have a physical existence to be real. However, what we could be looking at here is a paradigm shift that could change everyone’s perception of what money is. However, this is dependent on if bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies prevail.

Comparisons to Shared-Equity Construction Putin has compared cryptocurrencies to

a controversial housing/real estate scheme called shared-equity construction. The scheme deals with people attempting to sell property at various points in the construction process. He might be comparing apples to oranges here, but he stressed that the country cannot afford to get entangled into similar situations in the future.

Although his thought process and line of reasoning might be unclear or questionable, he thinks that the state will have to deal with the consequences if cryptos are not properly regulated. He might have a point here in some cases, like if it’s crime-related. However, it’s hard to buy this argument if he is claiming that the state will have to assist people if they incur financial losses. Already, billions of dollars have been lost or stolen over the years by people and organizations in the cryptoworld due to a multitude of reasons.

Mixed Signals It seems that the Russian government might want to slow down a little when it comes to deciding how it responds to the crypto-market. Not too long ago, news had been circulating about Russia developing its own cryptocurrency, the CryptoRuble.

While the latest reports about the CryptoRuble might just be updates, the Russian government keeps changing its position on crypto all too quickly. Russia is not alone when it comes to countries being fickle. The South Korean government has become notorious for trying to put different types of bans on crypto-related activity.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

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Blockchain News

Vitalik Cuts Down Involvement With Fenbushi in order to Work on Ethereum for 2018

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V

italik Wants More Time to Work on Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin, the well-known cofounder of Ethereum, has decided to cut down his involvement with Fenbushi Capital, a Chinese venture capital firm that invests in various blockchain projects.

According to Vitalik, he would like to focus more on further development and improvement of the Ethereum platform.

The 23 year old computer programmer would also like to see people pay more attention to the actual technology behind cryptocurrencies, instead of always being obsessed with price. This happens to be quite an important issue that needs to be addressed.

The Importance of Crypto’s Technology Ravi Menon, Managing Director of Singapore’s Monetary Authority, stated on Monday, January 15th, that “I do hope when the fever has gone away, when the crash has happened, it will not undermine the much deeper, and more meaningful technology associated with digital currencies and blockchain”.

Although Mr. Menon may not be a crypto-expert, he does have the aptitude to recognize that the world needs to understand how crypto works, and how it can benefit society. This is exactly what Vitalik, one of the world’s leading crypto-experts, wants to convey to the crypto-community.

especially its underlying blockchain technology. He predicts that addressing scalability issues will be one of the hottest topics for 2018. In addition, he thinks that there will be a lot of talk and work being done on privacy and security issues, plasma, and proof-of-stake, Crypto Has Been Over Hyped Vitalik believes that cryptocurrencies, and maybe even blockchain, have been overhyped or given more credit than they deserve at the moment. In his opinion, which is probably shared by most of the crypto-community, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to improve cryptorelated technology. He points to the fact that investors have poured in large amounts of money into the cryptomarket without actually bothering to understand what they’re getting into.

Many people and companies have also flooded social media with crypto-related information that’s not always accurate. Scam artists have also managed to steal people’s money by luring them in with false and outrageous claims.

Vitalik also feels that blockchains might have become less usable partly due to rising costs of crypto-transactions.

Here’s a noteworthy tweet from his Twitter accounts with over 562,000 followers:

Vitalik has been using his Twitter account and other social media outlets to engage people in intellectual discourse on the practical benefits of crypto, Core Magazine

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Clarifying Buterin’s Role with Fenbushi Although most news outlets have correctly reported what Mr. Buterin would like to work on during 2018, they’ve used misleading titles for their articles. For example, it has been reported that Mr. Buterin has left Fenbushi Capital. This is simply not true. It’s kind of like clickbait or something. The real story, when you actually read these articles, is that Buterin was never employed with Fenbushi on a fulltime basis. He was simply a general partner.

Now, he’ll still remain affiliated with Fenbushi, but will take on more of an advisory role.

Crypto-Market Down BIG The cryptocurrency market seems to be crashing. Billions of dollars have been wiped off from its value in a matter of a few days. If you take into consideration what Vitalik Buterin has been trying to tell us, that we’ve overhyped crypto and maybe even overrated it, then this crash makes sense. Hopefully, this crash will help people look at cryptocurrencies more realistically.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Crypto Cruise Attracts Diversity From McAfee, Politicians, Healthcare Innovators

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rypto Cruise Attracted Familiar Faces 1-16-2018-Crypto cruise!

The ship has sailed for crypto, literally.

A luxurious cruise ship has sailed from the Sea in Singapore headed for the coast of Thailand. The theme of the cruise is blockchain innovation and cryptocurrency.

This lavish 4-day event has attracted the crypto community’s most popular names along with noteworthy project leaders and a few notorious personalities.

Amongst the guest list, there is the beloved king of crypto-rants and ICO-raves, the leader of the crypto misfits, - John McAfee.

McAfee is named as a headline speaker on emerging cryptocurrencies and how they will change business as we know it.

He is expected to explore the impact new cryptos will have on established currencies like Bitcoin. He most certainly will be sipping some cocktails, surrounded by his signature puffs of smoke, as he lounges in the Singapore sun.

Crypto Cruise Brings New Faces Too In contrast to the experienced and outspoken John McAfee, there are many brand new powerhouse additions to the crowd. One brilliant individual that stands out, as the crowd often agrees, is Katherine Kuzmeskas, MPH but she is likely to have you call her Kat. Kat is the CEO of Simply Vital Health- which uses Health Nexustheir own blockchain protocol, to disrupt and improve how healthcare data is shared between relevant parties. Simply Vital Health is aiming to launch a token sale in February so the timing of this cruise proves

to be serendipitous indeed.

When asked about the benefits of going on a fun-filled “business” cruise, Katherines reply caused a chuckle.

“Everyone will benefit from adoption of blockchain technology, and what better way to keep the attention of the most capable venture-capitalists and influencers in the crypto space?

They can’t run far if they are stuck on a boat! I am here to learn and to share my plans. Simply Vital Health has gained new supporters on the cruise that may not have seen the project otherwise.”

Katherine Kuzmeskas, MPH

Also in the crypto cruise-ships remarkable assortment of guests, Kaspar Korjus, the e-Residency Managing Director of Estonia. Kaspar is at the center of some of the most ICO and crypto friendly innovations in mega modern Estonia. Estonia is a technology marvel embodied in a country.

E-residency is the equivalent of physical residency, only it is a virtual presence for the purpose of conducting business in a legal way from anywhere in the world. Kaspar Korjus is the brains behind the e-residency operations and this makes doing legit business better for thousands of people, from all over the world.

The crypto cruise sold out completely, so many were sadly turned away when they intended to purchase a ticket. In the spirit of living vicariously through the lucky travelers aboard that ship, take a look at the Core Magazine

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line up as promised to the cruise attendees.

As shown on the Coinsbank Blockchain Cruise Homepage DAY 1 Blockchain Cruise Asia begins. Departing from Singapore DAY 2 Blockchain Cruise Conference.

Welcome Speech/Opening, Susan Poole Entrepreneurship, Ann Charleus Blockchain, Internet 3.0, and Staying Secure in the Cryptocurrency Age, Travis Wright E-Governance, Taavi Rõivas - Member of Parliament/Prime Minister (2014-2016) E-Residency, Kaspar Korjus Economics and Governance, Dr. Jose Gomez Government Panel Discussion - Taavi Roivas, Kaspar Korjus, Pratin Vallabhaneni, Tim Bird, Antonio Morales, Jose Gomez, Artem Subotin, Sergey Drobyshevsky Disembark on Penang, Malaysia

DAY 3 Cruise will make a stop at Phuket Island Gathering for Paradise Beach disembarkation on Deck 5 Emerging cryptocurrencies and their impact on businesses and on established currencies like Bitcoin - John McAfee Bitcoin. Altcoins . Diversification. Securing Your Accounts.

Income Inequality - Ronnie Moas Cataclysmic Disruptors - Andrew ‘Flip’ Filipowski Blockchain - A Force for Business and Social Good - Sally Eaves Transfer back to the Mariner of Seas

DAY 4 Thailand back to Singapore Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies, Savoy Theatre, deck 3 Welcome Speech/Opening - Susan Poole Bitcoin vs FinTec what will be in 5 Years - Jörg Molt Modes of Entry to US markets - Pratin Vallabhaneni Regulation: Global Position - Tim Bird Regulation: US token sales - Katrina Arden 54

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Cryptocurrency in Africa - Tameez Abramjee Current and Future Cryptoasset Investing Opportunities - Jack Tatar The crisis of the global information/alternative Blockchain Andriy Todosiychuk Bitcoin Speculation - History of Price bubbles & its economic outlook - Tone Vays Bitcoin. Diversification. Securing Your Accounts. Income Inequality - Ronnie Moas Keys for eCommerce to Meet Bitcoin Commerce - Jimmy Nguyen Is Blockchain changing the world we live in? - Ronny Tome Blockchain of the future: What is it, and how do we get there? Ronny Boesing Impact of Blockchain in People Management & Work - Muhammad Salman Anjum Closing Ceremony/Awards Tokensales & Investments Section, Conference center, deck 2 Panel discussion. Investing in Blockchain Projects / Seeking Value in Blockchain Projects - Jack Tatar, Jake Brukhman, Andrew Filipowsky, Ted Moskovitz Blockain & Trusted Quality - Vlad Trifa Evaluating Cryptoassets and ICOs - Jack Tatar How Blockchain is Revolutionizing Cybersecurity - Alex Momot Life after ICO - Masha Bertroot Panel discussion. Tokensale through the eyes of the projects - Vlad Trifa, Anti Danilevski, Oxana Kunets, Alex Bessonov Token Economics - Jake Burkhman IQeon - decentralized gaming PvP platform; Paul Moukhin, Alexander Pavlov Panel discussion. Media take on tokensales - Richard Kastelin, Hitesh Malviya, Jayanand Sagar, Anupam Varshney, Travis Wright Cryptocurrency for new telepresence markets; How to use peer-topeer and blockchain technologies to offer ubiquity to the world Fulvio Dominci Carnino Introducing keynote speaker - Travis Wright Closing Keynote - Ronnie Moas Closing: auction, voting, time capsule - Lena/Oxana Arrive in Singapore port.

Safe travels and well wishes.

Core Magazine

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UK Calls For Tighter Regulations on Cryptocurrencies During Meeting in Davos, Switzerland

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U

K Leaders Want to Regulate Cryptocurrencies

Theresa May, UK’s prime minister, has said that we need to start “looking at [cryptocurrencies] very seriously”. She seems to be concerned that they’re being used by criminals. Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated that the UK needs to create tighter regulations around cryptotrading. He did, however, point out that the blockchain technology underpinning cryptocurrencies could be quite useful.

Both May and Hammond issued these statements while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The UK is certainly not alone when it comes to voicing concerns against cryptocurrencies being used for illicit activities. As reported earlier by Core Media, France and Germany have decided to initiate a joint effort to place tighter controls around their country’s cryptorelated activity. Meanwhile, China and South Korea,where crypto-trading is at its peak,have also been cracking down on crypto-trading.

The Need to Regulate Crypto Before It’s “Too Late” Hammond went on to assert that he was actually interested in bitcoin. He stressed the fact that the Bank of England had “been leading on looking at Bitcoin”. This might be true because there were reports earlier that the country’s central bank has been researching cryptocurrencies, and might even create its own cryptocurrency. According to Hammond, cryptos are “an interesting new development”. However, he adds that we need to be “cautious” and set up regulations

soon. He also feels that this needs to happen before bitcoin and other cryptos become so “large” that they begin to significantly impact the 74 trillion dollar global economy.

Clearly, the crypto-market has a long way to go before this could happen. In fact, the entire crypto-market has yet to hit even the $1 trillion mark (CoinMarketCap).

When regulating cryptocurrencies, we should make sure that we do not impede the healthy growth and improvement of crypto-technology, according to Hammond.

The Bigger Picture Theresa May pointed out that when the UK leaves the European Union, she would like more tech companies to start coming to the country. In her opinion, her country offers a business-friendly environment.

Furthermore, she believes that her nation “already has a leading edge” when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. This might be a bit of an exaggeration according to various reports.

The reality is that the United Kingdom’s level of economic productivity has been declining.

If May and Hammond want their country to regulate cryptocurrencies, then they should look to experts in the field to guide them.

If regulations are put together by people who don’t know much about how cryptos work, then UK’s economy might miss out on benefitting from the booming cryptomarket in the foreseeable future.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Starbucks Just Hinted at Accepting Cryptocurrencies

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tarbucks CEO Talks Crypto Starbucks just dropped some hints about accepting cryptocurrencies.

Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO at Starbucks Corporation, believes that there’ll eventually be a few “legitimate” cryptocurrencies once the crypto-market matures. He also added that these cryptos will have to be “legitimized” by reputable, brick-and-mortar establishments that are willing to accept them. Mr. Schultz might be overlooking the fact that big name companies have already been accepting cryptocurrencies.

Wordpress, Wikipedia, 1-800-Flowers.

Com Inc, Subway, LOT Polish Airlines, and Overstock are just a few of the well-known organizations that accept bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

Nevertheless, Mr. Schultz thinks that we’re going to see “a significant level of a digital currency that is going to have a consumer application” and that his company “is in a unique position to take advantage of that”. He goes on to clarify that his company doesn’t have any concrete ideas about how to enter the crypto-market at the moment. Furthermore, he stated that Starbucks isn’t planning to develop its own crypto or make any substantial investments in the crypto sector.

Starbucks Doesn’t Believe in Bitcoin, but Likes Blockchain The giant coffee shop’s CEO stressed that his company does not believe bitcoin will become a legitimate currency of the future. However, he feels that the blockchain technology that underpins most digital currencies could help launch

consumer applications that will gain the trust of many. He also suggests that his company could benefit financially due to advancements in blockchain tech. In addition, he asserts that Starbucks could help legitimize cryptocurrencies once it starts to accept them and “significantly create longterm shareholder value”.

Notably, Starbucks Corporation’s stocks are down recently, primarily due to concerns among investors that the company might gradually be losing its US market. Is it possible that Starbucks has started talking about cryptocurrencies so that their shares can get a boost? It’s quite plausible considering that stocks of many companies surged when they announced that they were entering the cryptosphere. For example, Long Island Iced Tea saw its share price spike by over 400% after revealing that it was looking into blockchain technology. And, as reported earlier by Core Media, Kodak, the 130 year old imaging products company, tried to become relevant again by entering the crypto-market with its own token, KodakCoin.

Starbucks’ Mobile Payment App The coffee company introduced its mobile payment app a few years ago. It has been quite successful due to the convenience it provides and its loyalty rewards program.

Back in 2014, it was reported that the company had been processing a staggering 4 million mobile wallet payments per week. If Starbucks can enter into a partnership with a “crypto payment system” provider who could help them incorporate a “payment with crypto” feature into their app, then this might become popular with its coffee drinkers.

Omar Faridi Core Magazine

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Teenage Bitcoin Millionaire Says It's Still Possible to Make Millions in Cryptocurrencies

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rik Finman, a 19-year-old who became a bitcoin millionaire by investing in the cryptocurrency, recently spoke to Business Insider about the current state of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Notably, Finman pointed out that one can still become a millionaire by investing in cryptocurrencies, and that you can also lose a lot of money.

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The bitcoin millionaire initially invested in the flagship cryptocurrency when he was 12 years old. Using a $1,000 gift from his grandmother, he bought bitcoin at $10, and saw its value surge throughout the last seven years.

Regarding the recent market correction that

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saw over $300 billion leave the ecosystem, Finman stated that most anticipated the ‘crash’ as most experts kept mentioning it would happen. It was, to him, caused by a decrease in momentum. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop cryptocurrencies from advancing, as people will “continue to invest,” and will be “increasingly emotionally connected with digital currencies.”

To the bitcoin millionaire, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a “new kind of Silicon Valley” as there are plenty of money-making opportunities. He stated that those who can invest in the right thing at the right time can make fortunes “even better than before.” He added:

That said, he revealed he’s still sticking with bitcoin as his preferred cryptocurrency.

However, he added that bitcoin is “like Netscape or Myspace.” This means that although it is currently the number one cryptocurrency, nothing stops others from taking its place. In the future, he sees bitcoin either scale to solve its high fees and slow transactions problems, or lose the number one spot. Notably, these problems forced Bitcoin.org to remove references to these advantages the cryptocurrency used to offer.

When confronted with the risk of total loss, he agreed that before investing, proper analysis needs to be done. Plus, he added that everyone is free to start their own business.

This could both improve the ecosystem, and make the entrepreneur a fortune.

He stated:

“These issues need to be addressed at the technology level, by giving a new coin or updating a coin. Add to that the electricity costs for the mining — to mine a bitcoin, you need so much energy, with which you could cover the needs of a house over a whole year.”

He further added that Myspace and Netscape were around for a long time before better products like Facebook and Google Chrome appeared. This means that new projects are still appearing in the cryptocurrency industry, and that those who make smart investments can make fortunes.

“Therefore, I say if you do not become a millionaire in the next 10 years, then it’s your own fault.”

The biggest mistake a potential bitcoin millionaire can make To Erik Finman, the worst mistake investors can make is get out of the market when the price dips. According to him, corrections like the one we saw late last year are “just a setback.” He noted bitcoin will “probably continue to rise.”

Furthermore, the bitcoin millionaire believes buying the dip is actually a good strategy, as cryptocurrency prices may never again be this low. Those who don’t have the courage to get involved then may in the future look back and wonder why they didn’t act.

Featured image by Mike Lawrence, Flickr, CC by 2.0 Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Arsenal Football Club to Promote CashBet's Cryptocurrency at Emirates Stadium

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rsenal Football Club Steps into the Cryptosphere

partner”.

Dangers of ICOs Regulators around the world have been London’s Arsenal football club has agreed cracking down on ICOs with countries like to a sponsorship deal with CashBet, an China attempting to ban them completely. online gaming business based in California. There seems to be a good reason for doing CashBet would like to help gaming companies so, considering that over 10% of the funds facilitate bets placed using cryptocurrencies put towards ICOs ends up getting “lost” or with its software. The well-known premier stolen. This amounts to over $400 million. league team will be promoting CashBet’s There have also been numerous fraudulent ICO. Most of the advertising will take place schemes that have been orchestrated under at the Emirates Stadium during Arsenal’s the guise of ICOs. If something similar home games. happens with CashBet’s ICO, then this could tarnish Arsenal’s reputation. Since CashBet intends to raise between $40- ICOs are increasingly being linked to scams, $70 million through its ICO. The gaming this just might be an ill advised move by the company would also like investors to use football team. its coins to place bets on different online games. Vinai Venkatesham, the Chief Betting with Crypto Commercial Officer at Arsenal F.C., said Nevertheless, the gambling world is that his company was looking forward to no stranger to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin working with CashBet as the company gambling is already pretty popular. As gets set to launch its coin. However, when reported earlier by Core Media, Asian questioned about suggesting that fans should casinos are now trying bring crypto to their bet with CashBet coins or promoting a gambling floors. Whenever you put two rather risky and volatile venture, a company high risk activities together, in this case spokesperson remarked, “Not at all...It cryptocurrencies and gambling, you’re bound [partnership] does not exist to encourage to run into problems. Although gambling fans to bet with CashBet Coin.” with crypto seems thrilling, it could become quite challenging to regulate. However, if Due to this kind of contradictory we can accept sports betting, then why not information, provided by CashBet and accept sports betting with crypto? It’s all Arsenal representatives, the exact purpose good until something shady happens. This is of this partnership remains unclear. Notably, a risky scenario financially, but somewhere, this happens to be the first time that a the potential reward MUST outweigh major sports organization has promoted the risks or this group of business-minded a cryptocurrency-related business under people would not have all agreed on this new public scrutiny. CashBet says that Arsenal is partnership. Keep an eye on this, definitely. its “exclusive and official blockchain partner” while the football club’s representatives call Omar Faridi CashBet their “first official cryptocurrency omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

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https://www.komodoplatform.com

The Interview

ODEM.io CEO gets candid

1.What is your name and role with ODEM? Richard Maaghul, CEO 2.What did you do before the ODEM.io project?

I’ve been a serial entrepreneur with 6 years experience as an industry leader in education through my company, Excelorators 70

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3.What does ODEM mean? What do the letters stand for?

On Demand Education Marketplace 5.What inspired the project?

We saw firsthand at Excelorators how education systems were failing students

The Interview and were inspired to make our vision of affordable, high quality education a reality.

It was important to us to remove bad actors in the ecosystem and evolve a platform to better serve the educational community. The best available education is often siloed off for only the elite and made unattainable by its inherent high cost of entry. We’ve found that through blockchain technology we can enhance the efficiencies of complex program creation, making education more accessible on a global scale.

6. What problems will ODEM solve for the educational industry?

ODEM lowers the cost of higher education, removes barriers to admission, simplifies cross-border payments, and builds transparency into the process. Students are given direct access to premium education and able to directly connect with qualified professors. Currently, intermediaries not only increase the cost of educational programs, but also significantly bottleneck fulfillment of courses. Through the use of smart contracts, ODEM creates a “trustless” system where educators and students may confidently confirm payment with no risk of lapse.

7.Why will ODEM be a success, in an industry with many promises and many failures?

ODEM is built on the success of Excelorators, which has 6 years of experience in the educational program industry. We are leaders in the business of providing top quality education across borders. We work with a core group of 200 educators, and total network of 600 educators within our successful business. We have already proven successful and look to expand to

further benefit the community. The biggest issues we’ve seen in education have been a lack of transparency. We have a history of success with Excelorators and are utilizing blockchain to further scale our efficiency and lower costs. This creates a win-win in the ecosystem to provide more opportunities to educators and directly benefit students.

8.What makes ODEM different than the competition in the same field?

ODEM is the only in-person marketplace for education. We are industry professionals in providing educational programs on an international scale and through our experience are confident that the best education takes place in conversations. ODEM offers small class sizes of 30-50 with top educators from elite institutions in areas that are currently underserviced. While we laud and support online platforms for providing reach in knowledge, it is real classroom experiences that engage and broaden opportunities.

9. What are the financial goals of your crowdsale?

We are looking to raise €12 million to make our dreams of global, accessible education a reality. This will enable us to jump start creation of the ODEM platform, build our development team and platform, expand our physical presence, and provide scholarships to underprivileged students.

10.What about after the sale- what will the project look like? What about a year from now?

Immediately following the crowdsale, we will continue development of the ODEM platform. We are on track to launch the 1.0 BETA version of the ODEM platform July Core Magazine

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The Interview ‘18 and continue testing in our current US and Asian markets. In September ‘19 1.0 will be launched and in market with 2.0 live by December ‘18. Educators and students that are early adopters will benefit from ODEM Tokens to incentivize contribution and participation. A year from now, ODEM will be well ramped and continuing to expand our presence in the international community. We will be expanding support and partnership with universities to continue to our vision of scaling low-cost, premium education.

Let’s talk about the team. Name your top people to know within your project.

Bill Bayrd, COO - Michael Zargham Systems Engineer, Adel Elmessiry - CTO, Gustavo Guimaraes, Kirsten Montgomery Director of Finance and Resources 11. Tell us how people can participate.

The ODEM crowdsale is launching February 17th, 2018. We recommend creating your account and getting preapproved at ODEM.IO via our KYC process to confirm your spot. Completing KYC takes only a few minutes with approval in 30 minutes in most cases. You will also receive a referral code via email, which entitles you and your contacts to 200 ODEM Tokens for each friend that contributes .25 ETH or more. When the crowdsale opens, you will be able to access your account and purchase your desired number of tokens.

12.If you could convey a message to the people who are considering their options in terms of where to allocate funds, why should people look to your project? What makes your project truly special?

ODEM.IO is a secure blockchain-based global marketplace for buyers and sellers of 72

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short-term, on-site, premium educational courses. The platform is designed to improve student access to high-quality education by reducing costs through the elimination of inefficient intermediaries. For education buyers, ODEM.IO simplifies research and decision making by empowering students with full transparency of course options and ratings within a single ecosystem. For educators, the platform raises their marketing profile among students, generates real-time feedback on courses and pays incentives for development of popular courses.

13.Anything you want to add? Speak to your audience.

ODEM is the only On Demand Education Marketplace geared towards a future of inperson, accessible, quality education. We are empowering students to design their education and engage directly with world class educators around the world. We have 6 years success and a team of industry veterans driving our history success. Through our use of short-to-long-term academic experiences and blockchain technology, we are making management, deployment, and iteration of educational experiences scalable on an international level.

Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Current.us Aims To Spread The Wealth To Include Content Creators And Users

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urrent Pays You For Streaming Favorites | Begins Registration

Dan Novaes is back, and this time he is doing more than his usual inspiring of the masses and disrupting the broken parts of

our world economics. In the latest project created by Novaes, called Current, the puzzle that is our daily variety of apps to stream content from has become more manageable and potentially, profitable too. Current is a hub for plugging into and streaming your Core Magazine

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preferred content from the most popular content sources - including but not limited to Soundcloud, Youtube and Spotify. Users have an opportunity to earn the in-app coin,CRNC (pronounced currency) by interacting with the Current features.

CEO of Current

Aligned with the impressive concepts the world has grown to expect from Dan Novaes, Current fits his reputation by being useful, attractive and simply brilliant, while somehow, remaining accessible and In his personal biography page, Dan approachable for the average person. The Novaes clearly sets a pace that is swift, and Current app is already downloadable for thorough. A common reaction to those who Apple product users in the app store and you stumble across Dan’s many business ventures can even stream familiar content from your is “Why didn’t I think of that?” and “Genius!”. favorites- such as Crypto Core Radio with When asked about his Current project, his Lootz. response clarified the concept.

To participate and to learn more about “At Current we are setting the the Current project token sale, check out the precedent of what media consumption token sale website here: https://tokensale. will look like in the next 2-5 years current.us/. Communicate with the team and beyond. The value exchange is working tirelessly to roll out this project, here: info@current.us and visit them in broken today. It’s our belief All media their Telegram chat here: https://t.me/ ecosystems will adopt this incentive CurrentCRNC. Read the whitepaper here: based model and that will become The Current Whitepaper.

the next Netflix’s of the world. The avg human lives 30,000 days in a lifetime. The average 19 year old spends 5 hours a day on their phone, projected out that’s 16.23 years of your life consuming content and that number only going up. You don’t own your own data, attention, and time companies do. We believe everything you do you must do with purpose or get compensated for it. That is why we are building Current platform and Current protocol.” Daniel Novaes,

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Lorilikes lorilikes@coregroup.info

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Casino Gambling Using Crypto Could Become Difficult to Regulate

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asino Business & Crypto Steve Vickers, ex-commander of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, and now the CEO of Steve Vickers & Associates, has stated that Asian casinos could become the target of Chinese regulators.

That’s if a casino indulges in certain types of crypto-related activities. Mr. Vickers asserts, “Potentially from an organized crime point of view, cryptocurrencies… do afford opportunities for the avoidance of government duty.” He then brings up the Core Magazine

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“anonymity feature” of cryptocurrencies and how it could aid in making the identities of the people engaging in crypto-transactions far less traceable.

Casinos Using Crypto First, let’s discuss how Mr. Vickers thinks cryptocurrencies can be used to bypass governmental controls. This is also pertinent when it comes to casinos because if you can dodge the government by using crypto, then casinos won’t be immune to such activities either. According to Vickers, China’s government has put forth a significant effort to curb capital outflow.

By using crypto and the technology behind it, he thinks it will be pretty easy to “move” capital anywhere, without much resistance.

So, what does this have to do with a casino?

Mr. Vickers explains that if a casino makes “VIP trade” the focal point of its business operations, then it could get targeted by China’s anti-corruption laws. By using the words “VIP trade”, he seems to be referring to a casino facilitating crypto-trading for its VIP customers. For now, this just seems to be a lot of speculation.

Floating Cryptocurrency Casino Macau-based Dragon Corp announced, during the final months of 2017, that it aimed to raise $500 million through an ICO. According to the company, part of the funds raised would go into developing a floating casino in Macau. If you visit the Dragon Token website, then you will learn that the underlying theme is to bring gaming to the 21st century by creating a decentralized currency for casinos. This initiative has the potential to drive regulators wild since they’d have to frantically monitor the accounting 76

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departments of casinos worldwide.

The most popular destination for casino gamblers, Las Vegas, is certainly no stranger to cryptocurrency. The legendary Golden Gate casino, located in the area known as the “Old Strip”, started accepting bitcoins as payment as early as 2014. However, as soon as these payments are received, they are quickly converted to USD and documented in the record books as fiat transactions.

Crypto-Gambling It’s no secret that bitcoin gambling has become very popular over the years. However, it has yet to hit the floors of a physical casino.

Maybe this will soon become a reality the way that the crypto-market is booming and headed towards mainstream. World governments already have their hands full trying to regulate cryptocurrencies, so cryptogambling on casino floors will surely present even more challenges to regulators. Almost every industry has started offering cryptorelated services, so why should casinos not join the party?

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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South Korea Customs Services Uncovers Nearly $600 Million in Crypto Crimes

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outh Korea Customs Service Uncovers Crypto-Related Crimes South Korea Customs Service (KCS) claims that it has tracked down cryptocurrency crimes related to crypto foreign exchange trading worth almost $600 million. According to KCS, these findings stem from a larger nation-wide investigation of its crypto-market. Notably, these crimes have been uncovered just a few days after Korean regulators banned anonymous cryptocurrency accounts, effective January 30th.

WON and is said to have been carried out via unregistered exchanges that remitted payments from South Korea to Australia, between March and December 2017.

Money Laundering & Illegal Trading Other reports indicate that local investors purchased around 1.7 billion WON ($1.59 million) in crypto through an FX agency, and sent it abroad to various companies using online wallets. Transferred funds were reportedly converted to fiat currencies, resulting in undocumented capital flows. In other notable cases, KCS states that Japanese traders engaged in illegal currency trading by sending around 53.7 billion WON worth of Japanese yen ( JPY) to a number of South Korean citizens.

Although the organizations or individuals allegedly involved in illegal crypto-related currency exchange have not been publicly identified, KCS did reveal typical methods used to orchestrate this crimes. For example, in one particular incident, illegal foreign South Korean law requires that only currency trading amounted to 472.3 billion banks, brokers, or financial institutions 78

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with proper licenses may facilitate foreign exchange transfers. Furthermore, if individuals or domestic companies want to transfer amounts exceeding $3000, they must inform the country’s tax department, and specify why they want to transfer the money.

The customs office of South Korea stated that it had been working to track down money laundering and illicit trading. However, the office did not mention what it had been doing to stop these illegal activities. Meanwhile, regulatory authorities around the world have expressed concerns that cryptocurrencyrelated companies can prove risky to use and often lack transparency.

Cryptocurrency Market is Suffering This has been a rather uneventful week for the cryptocurrency market. As reported earlier by Core Media, Coincheck, a popular Japanese crypto-exchange was hacked.

Approximately $534 million worth of

NEM tokens were stolen due to the hack.

Although this incident alone might not have contributed to bringing down the cryptomarket, it must have had some impact.

Moreover, bitcoin is down over 27% since the new year began (CoinMarketCap). Bitcoin’s value has not dropped as much during a 1 month period since January 2015. More than likely, the primary reason for this drop is due to regulators worldwide cracking down on their country’s crypto-related businesses and trading.

Cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, particularly blockchain, have the potential to be used in so many constructive ways. Unfortunately, certain individuals and organizations are using them for all sorts of illegal purposes. If this abuse continues, the crypto-market might not survive, which could be a great loss for humanity.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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NEWS

MAGAZINE

Are you about to prepare an ICO? Contact us press@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Crypto Goes Mainstream: Japanese chat app giant, Line, to launch crypto services

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ine, a Japan-based instant messaging application with more than 200 million monthly users announced today its plans to move forward with their cryptocurrency service integration, a prospect that was previously revealed by anonymous sources at the start of the year and that is now coming to fruition.

The Japanese messaging app giant plans to incorporate several financial services such 82

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as a cryptocurrency exchange, a lending platform and insurance all within the Line application. According to Line, the exchange will be fully compliant and its currently undergoing application process with the Financial Services Agency (FSA).

The company cites the success of LINE Pay, “a mobile money transfer and payment service available on the LINE messaging app� launched last year, as one of the main

Blockchain News

reasons to establish a new company, the LINE Financial Corporation (“LINE Financial”) and to provide customers with a wider range of financial services, both in the legacy and digital economy. The official announcement reads:

one of the most popular messaging apps out there, known for its privacy features, Telegram is planning a $2 billion ICO that will see the launch of the Telegram Open Network and its utility token, TON. Messaging apps aren’t the only ones looking to expand and capitalize on the technology.

One of the largest app stores in the world, Aptoide has also recently undergone an ICO, launching its Appcoins (APPC) token which will be used redefine the “app economy”, improving advertisement, in-app purchases, and quality control.

“In addition to its LINE Pay business, LINE will reinforce its position in the financial business domain through its businesses in LINE Financial Corporation and will continue closing the distance between people, their money, and services. LINE hopes to become a leader in the Not for everyone Not everyone is ready to board the FinTech industry as the world moves increasingly towards a cashless cryptocurrency train. Among the celebrity voices that have spoken up against Bitcoin wallet-less society.”

Big Boys Join Crypto For crypto holders, traders and investors, the news will come as an exciting development that inches cryptocurrency closer to mainstream adoption, given the reach of the Line app and its popularity within and outside of Japan. However, Line is just one of the latest to board the crypto train.

Other large companies are also exploring the benefits of blockchain technology and integrating crypto-related services into their businesses/products. Kik, for example, a mobile messaging app with approximately 300 million registered users has recently undergone an ICO campaign, netting nearly $100M that allows users to earn and spend KIN inside of the Kik application.

are the legendary investor, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and many others.

More importantly, some companies have made sure that they are not associated with cryptocurrencies. One prominent example is VISA, who has recently cut ties with Wavecrest, leaving rendering cryptocurrency debit cards useless for many users.

Other companies are taking action to ensure that they do not play any part when it comes to Initial Coin Offerings and other investment-related content. Facebook has recently announced that it will be banning all cryptocurrency-related advertising, a move that may be crucial when it comes to protecting uninformed investors.

Kanoptx kanoptx@coregroup.infoADD

Another noteworthy company is Telegram, Core Magazine

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What do I look for when investing in Cryptocurrency ? Part 1

Want to invest in Bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrency but do not know where to start?

Well, Crypto is a large space and thousands of coins have come out over the years that do various things, just look at CoinMarketCap.

Some that have no reason to exist and some that have a purpose. Blockchain Technology is the technological railroad tracks that all these coins run on and taking advantage of the technologies utility is what you want to look for. I will personally tell you a few of the Core Magazine

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factors I look for when examining a coin in this article and I hope it helps get you started on your way down the crypto rabbit hole.

What problem does this coin solve?

Let’s take a coin like ATMOS and ask ourselves why? Why the fuck does this exist?

What is its purpose? Well at first it was hard to understand the white site (whitepaper alternative). Then after reading all the drafts, I understood that it is a tool that allows for data to be found on the IPFS or any other system you connect it to. The Query system is fully anon and distributed and that alone gives it an A+. I know that finding stuff on IPFS is hard to do (I have operated many IPFS Nodes for fun in the past) and this will be very useful once Filecoin and IPFS become more mainstream.

Some other examples of coins solving problems: Komodo - Decentralized Exchange and Decentralized ICO platform.

Monero - Fully Anon and eventually lower transaction fees Burst - Smart Contract, Hard Drive Mining (Very efficient mining)

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Mysterium - VPN Privacy Do they have a community?

How big of a following do they have and where is it? Well, we will use SIA coin for this example as they are on Discord and have thousands of followers. Very popular coin, at times you may find a telegram... I am not a fan of telegram but some coins do well on it. Other coins use different types of community applications such as Slack, Ryver, IRC, etc. Some just have a forum. So the end of the story, if they have a huge community it is a huge plus and if you see no community then... you may remain flaccid for a long time.

How long have they been around and do they have a Dev Team with active development?

One thing that allows me to invest in confidence is knowing that the coin has a genius developer behind it aside from just a team. You can listen to youtube videos or SoundCloud interviews with them to understand the people they are. Also, you can check the development of the projects here https://cryptomiso.com Feel free to message the Developer and test him, ask them questions, I have done

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this with the list below and you can do the same for other coins. If they respond with good answers then once again... A+ Examples: Vericoin -Doug Pike Komodo - JL777, Grewal Satinder, CA333, Peanut Butter and others.

ATMOS - Asphyxia How does the website look and what does the traffic look like?

Coming from an SEO background I understand traffic and why it exists. So another factor would be checking https:// www.alexa.com/siteinfo and seeing if they are getting any traffic, all in all, this will tell you if others are interested as well. A website is hard to examine but if you know how to do it, check the code and make sure it’s not a copypasta site.

Do they have a budget for things like marketing?

Many coins will have some type of premine for this or percentage that they keep for development costs and other things like marketing. Good Press Releases are not cheap and good help is hard to find at any price. So when I see a coin holding 15% of the coin or less it is understandable but anything over this is a red flag in my eyes.

At the end of the day, these are just a few factors to consider when investing in coins that I personally look for. Use the above as a research tool because this is not investment advice. My name is LooTz and I have done over 100 interviews in this space over the last 4 years. You can find my interviews here https:// soundcloud.com/coremediaradio I am very active in the space and a very active miner and pool operator on top of many other projects in the works that Core will bring this year.

You can also use tools like Buzzsumo and Stay tuned for Part 2...

HootSuite, to monitor and check social media Angelo Timoneri aka Lootz and other publications on the coin.These tools lootz@coregroup.info are expensive so it is best to maybe share the expense with a friend so you can both utilize it.

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Hacker Nets $150,000 Worth of Ether After Phishing Experty ICO Investors

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ccording to Bleeping Computer, a hacker managed to phish Experty ICO investors by sending emails to those signed up for notifications on behalf of the company. The emails stated that a pre88

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ICO was now live, and added an Ethereum address that doesn’t belong to the company.

Exerpty’s ICO was keenly-awaited. The company is set to launch a Skype-like voice

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and video application based on blockchain technology. Its users will be able to pay with cryptocurrencies. The ICO, selected as one of the top 10 to watch in 2018 by Inc.com, will help the company raise funds to build the service.

On January 26 and 27, users started receiving phishing emails. These were littered with poor spelling, but urged users to invest within 12 hours to receive bonus Experty tokens (EXY). Some emails promised a 33% bonus, while another one tweeted out by Chris Koerner promises a 300% bonus. This means the hacker could have also used more than one wallet.

worth of stolen Ether to an exchange.

Following the breach, Experty and Bitcoin Suisse – a service the company uses to handle the token sale – started warning users.

The hacker managed to get his hands on Experty’s mailing list by compromising one of its employees. Per the company, the hacker managed to compromise the computer of one staffer who carried out Experty’s proofof-care (PoC) review.

Experty to compensate users As a gesture of goodwill, Experty recently announced that it will give 100 EXY tokens (worth roughly $120) to users whose address was listed on its now-compromised database. After presumably being pressed by various users, the company announced it will reimburse the victims.

It added that ETH sent to the hacker’s address after the announcement was published won’t be refunded to “prevent people from purposely sending money to the scam address to receive EXY tokens.” The announcement was published on January 28.

The announcement reads:

The email was fake, as Experty’s ICO was set to begin on January 31. The Ethereum address in it belongs to the hacker that, at press time, seemingly moved the $150,000

“We are greatly saddened by the recent email scam that has targeted our community due to recent data breach. We will be contacting the victims that are in our database in order to distribute the proportional amount of EXY tokens to them, including the bonuses for their tier, from our company allocation” Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Regulators Order Coincheck to Improve Business Operations Following Historic Crypto Hack

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ollowing the largest hack in cryptocurrency history, in which Coincheck lost over $530,000,000 in customer funds due to poorly secured wallets, the exchange is now under the scrutiny of the Financial Services Agency, a government agency and financial regulator responsible for ensuring the stability of Japan’s financial system.

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According to Coincheck itself, who announced the order by the financial watchdog yesterday, the company has received an order to improve their business operation, according to the Payment Services Act defined in Article 63-16. The official announcement reads:

“We earnestly accept the terms of the order and vow to re-examine

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our business practices while simultaneously striving to make all facts involved in this case clear, discover the root cause of the breach, safeguard our customers, and develop stronger and more effective measures for system risk management and prevention of similar events in the future.”

the community.”

Coincheck to refund users Despite the severy of this latest cryptoheist, the Coincheck exchange is not throwing the towel and has plans to return the funds to its customers. A previous blog post reads:

Contents of Order to Improve Business Operations The FSA’s order is comprised of five main instructions which Coincheck is required to follow if it wishes to remain open. Coincheck is required to open an investigation of the facts and causes surrounding the hack and to provide “proper support” to its clients.

“This notice is to announce that a reparations policy towards the approximately 260,000 users affected by the recent illicit transfer of NEM from the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coincheck, run

by Coincheck, Inc. (CEO Wada Koichiro), has been decided upon...”

The exchange is, not only required to understand what went wrong and where the responsibility lies, it’s also in charge of making sure no such hack takes place again through the creation of new measures for “system risk management” as well strengthening its current security measures which have obviously proved faulty.

This is an extremely important decision that demonstrates just how serious cryptocurrency exchanges can be, despite of security and technical difficulties. Hacks like the Bitfinex heist and others in which the company was able to return stolen funds to the customers may help certain users trust the cryptocurrency industry as a whole.

The exchange also took the opportunity to apologize to its clients and community in general. The blog post reads:

Coincheck plans to refund its customers based on the NEM/JPY exchange rates of the Zaif cryptocurrency exchange. An average price will be derived from the prices during the period in which the suspension of NEM trading on Coincheck begun until the 28th of January, the date in which the announcement was posted on Coincheck’s blog.

“Once again, we would like to offer our sincerest apologies to our customers and everyone else who has been affected by this incident. We will do our utmost to enact meaningful changes to our platform in order to regain the trust of our customers and

Kanoptx kanoptx@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Canada's Central Bank Chief Says Bitcoin Trading Is "Gambling", Calls for Regulations

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tephen Poloz, the governor of the Bank of Canada, recently stated that bitcoin trading is “gambling.” Per the central bank governor, digital currency buyers should “beware,” as cryptocurrencies 92

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aren’t neither assets nor currencies. To him, they’re more like securities.

Speaking to CNBC, Poloz added that he is currently working with global

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regulators to develop regulations around cryptocurrencies. Notably, he joined a group of personalities, including central bankers and Nobel laureates, claiming bitcoin has no intrinsic value. He stated:

clarified that “no one is in a rush” as cash is still doing its job. He said the development of such a cryptocurrency would need to be carefully examined. The banker noted, however, that if Canada were to ever have one, it would likely not use blockchain technology.

“There is no intrinsic value for something like bitcoin so it’s not really an asset one can analyze. It’s just Poloz added that a national digital currency essentially speculative or gambling.” would be backed by the Canadian dollar, and

implied it would still be part of a governmental system of control. This, partly because of his rejection of blockchain technology.

According to Poloz a potential crash in the cryptocurrency markets could not have implications for the wider economy.

He said: He compared the current cryptocurrency ‘craze’ to a ‘tech wreck’ scenario. Poloz added “The reason that it has such appeal that a tech bubble bursting didn’t have any in the case of bitcoin is it gives you perceptible effects on the “real economy” finality of settlement that eventually because it was just one of its segments.

He went on to add that if something like a ‘tech wreck’ were to happen in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it would have smaller consequences. However, Poloz noted that he didn’t want to minimize the risk posed by cryptocurrencies, “because any mania has the scope to get much bigger.”

grinds through the distributed ledger and therefore you trust that.

Whereas the central bank, if the Bank of Canada, were to issue a digital currency, well you already trust the Canadian dollar, and so you don’t need a distributed ledger in order to believe you just received final payment in your digital wallet.”

Poloz said that “for the purposes of consumer protection,” regulations will be Canada is a country that’s notably developed around the cryptocurrency space.

To regulators, it’s important to protect becoming more cryptocurrency-friendly. consumers, while making sure they don’t KFC Canada, for example, recently launched a “Bitcoin Bucket” that can be purchased stifle innovation, he said. using bitcoin Will Canada have a national cryptocurrency?

When asked about the issuance of a national cryptocurrencies, the central banker

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

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Samsung Will Start Manufacturing ASICs Chips Designed Specifically for Cryptocurrency Mining

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amsung is Planning to Enter the Crypto-Mining Business South Korea’s Samsung

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Electronics has announced that it will start manufacturing ASIC chips, which will be designed specifically to mine

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cryptocurrencies. The tech giant made this announcement in its annual earnings report. A representative from the company confirmed that Samsung’s foundry business was working on crypto-mining chips, but did not provide any information on its potential customers. Notably, Samsung is now the world’s largest chipmaker, a position that had previously been held by Intel. According to the earnings report, Samsung’s 4th quarter profits for 2017 exceeded $11 billion.

Bell, a Korean newspaper, stated Samsung had chosen ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips, because they’re ideal for handling one particular task at a time, in this case, cryptocurrency mining.

Mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will only become more challenging in the future. This is because solving math problems, required to validate blockchain transactions, becomes increasingly complex as more cryptocurrencies are mined.

Demand for High-Powered Chips Has Increased Significantly When people first started mining crypto, they used the more typical integrated graphics cards. However, as more crypto was mined and mathematical calculations became more difficult, miners started to use GPUs, which were meant for videos games. Now that the crypto-mining industry is maturing, customized ASICs chips seem to be a better option.

Although Samsung has not disclosed much about its crypto-mining chips, reports from Korean media claim that it might be working alongside TSMC, Taiwan’s

leading chipmaker. TSMC has already entered the crypto-mining industry. It sells its chips to various companies that specialize in mining. Already, TSMC has generated nearly $400 million in revenue through sales of its crypto-mining chips.

Even though this might be impressive, it’s not anywhere near as substantial when you compare it to Samsung’s chips that bring in $69 billion in yearly revenue.

ASICs Chips are Popular with CryptoMiners The technology behind ASICs chips was first introduced in the early 1980s.

Due the rise of the crypto-market, the mining sector for digital currencies has started looking into specialized ASICs. chips. Mining experts have determined that customized ASICs chips have the potential deliver much better performance, compared to GPUs, when it comes to solving difficult math problems required for crypto-mining. Although these mining-specific chips might not be able to handle any other type of workload, they should be able to perform functions related to cryptocurrency mining better than any other piece of hardware.

With big name companies like Samsung entering the cryptosphere, it is definitely good news for the cryptocurrency market.

If established companies can continue to find ways to incorporate crypto-related technology into their existing services, then the digital currency market could begin to gain the trust of a lot more people.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Ethereum-Based Prodeum Ico Pulls Exit Scam, Vanishes From the Web

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ryptocurrency investors are constantly looking for the next big thing. Most participate in ICOs and, every once in a while, the team behind one pulls an exit scam and just vanishes with people’s money. Ethereum-based startup Prodeum just pulled one on its investors.

Prodeum, supposedly based in Lithuania, was set to “revolutionize the fruit and vegetable industry. It would do this by putting a new price look-up code system (PLU) on Ethereum’s immutable blockchain. This way, people could track where their fruit and vegetables came from, effectively improving the industry’s transparency.

On January 28, however, its website suddenly went down. Its layout was replaced with a white page with the word “penis” on top. At press time, the website is still unavailable.

Upon investigation, various users found that Prodeum paid Fiverr users to write its name on their bodies and then share the images on social media.

Further investigation revealed that Prodeum’s team essentially used a bunch of stolen profiles. According to Reddit users, when the original profile of a team member was found, it was quickly changed to a new one. The project listed four individuals on its team. Its founder, Petar Jandric, has seemingly deleted its LinkedIn profile since the team pulled the exit scam.

The exit scam seemingly didn’t have a great payout. Although a few users claim it managed to rake in “millions,” Core Media’s investigation only found an Ethereum address that received about 2.5 Ether. At press time, that’s less than $3,000.

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Prodeum exit scam was full of red flags As is common with these schemes, Prodeum’s scam was filled with red flags. As soon as we look at the project’s announcement on Bitcointalk, we can see it is little over one week old. Moreover, the announcement itself just seemingly shills the project, and doesn’t answer any legitimate questions about it.

Upon researching the project’s team on LindkedIn, we can see that there’s no mention of Prodeum, anywhere. In fact, after the exit scam, the project’s supposed lead engineer and strategist distanced himself from it.

He stated:

“Yesterday I became a victim of an identity theft. My name was used as a tool to attract investments into a project that I have neither no relation with nor ever heard of it before, I want to send my condolences to every Investor that has participated in the project named Prodeum. I will do my best to find and bring the people behind this violent act to justice.”

Investing in ICOs can be extremely profitable, but caution is advised. As recently covered by Core Media, a hacker managed to net $150,000 worth of Ether after phishing Experty ICO investors.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

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Regulations for Cryptocurrency Market in the Philippines Will Be Out Soon

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egulations for Crypto in the Philippines Coming Soon Securities and Exchange Commission in Philippines, the country’s monetary regulator, has decided to formulate regulations for its cryptocurrency market.

They’re on track to be completed sometime this year. According to Emilio Equino, SEC commissioner, there’s a good reason to take action at this time, particularly due to the overwhelming number of ICOs that have been coming out. He asserts that there’s a need for his country to draft its own 102

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regulations, and that “You have to be extra careful how investors in this new space are protected”.

Although Joseph Calata, a prominent Filipino businessman, was issued a cease and desist order as he attempted to sell “the world’s first agriculture marketplace crypto equity ICO”, the regulatory authorities in the Philippines will not be taking a hardline stand on ICOs. Mr. Equino acknowledged that coin offerings have extreme price fluctuations and there’s often a chance

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of fraud. However, he also feels that they can offer sound investment opportunities.

Philippines Won’t Ban Cryptocurrencies Unlike other countries such as China, the Filipino SEC commissioner says that his country does not want to ban cryptocurrencies. The commissioner realizes that regulatory authorities across the globe are trying hard to come up with suitable regulations for cryptos, especially those pertaining to ICOs. He is also aware that currently, only New York might have proper regulations for ICOs, and that around 2000 of them have been launched so far. Given this scenario, Mr. Equino again stresses that “We have to be extra careful and have really hands-on involvement especially at this stage”.

Mr. Equino admits that his organization doesn’t know quite how to handle ICOs and cryptos at the moment. However, he thinks that gradually they should be able to figure it out. Even though Filipino authorities might not know how to respond to their crypto market yet, cryptocurrency transfers have been rising in popularity in the Philippines.

In fact, the Philippines is one of the world’s largest markets when it comes to international money transfers. This is because a large number of Filipino workers go abroad to oil-rich countries like Kuwait for more lucrative employment opportunities. Filipino culture places a lot of importance in supporting your family, so these expat

workers send a lot of their earnings back home.

Millions of Dollars in Crypto Transferred The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which is said to have a friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies, reported that there was approximately $8.8 million worth of crypto transactions each month during the first half of 2017. Notably, this amount increased to $6 million per day in October. All this is happening despite the country not even having proper regulations for crypto. The only type of licensing that can be found are local crypto exchanges who identify as remittance companies.

It might not be advisable for the country to keep going on like this.

Therefore, the country’s regulators propose that the new ICO regulations will offer guidelines regarding the online security of the country’s cryptomarket. Additionally, these guidelines will require that crypto investors be well informed regarding their investment decisions, and be used to determine the eligibility of the people involved in the crypto business.

The Philippines could benefit from a proper legal framework for its cryptocurrency market. However, regulations should not be designed in a way that could potentially hinder the healthy growth of cryptos and the technology behind them. If regulators can keep this in their mind, then new crypto guidelines could be beneficial for everyone involved.

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Facebook Bans All CryptocurrencyRelated Ads to “Prevent Scams”

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ocial media giant Facebook has recently announced it’s banning all cryptocurrency-related ads. The move, according to the social network’s announcement, is part of its core belief that “ads should be safe.” As such, Facebook’s 104

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product management director Rob Leathern writes, deceptive ads don’t belong on the platform.

Facebook’s announcement reveals that the company is banning all ads related to bitcoin,

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cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs). The new rule prohibits “financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” This, according to Leathern’s post, includes binary options, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies.

The policy is far-reaching, but Facebook claims it purposely made it so. The goal is to discover deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforce the new rule through its platform. This includes both Facebook and Instagram, which collectively have well over a billion users. Mark Zuckerberg’s company noted that as it improves its signals, it will revisit the policy.

Facebook’s post reads:

“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception.

That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”

ban also applies to legitimate businesses.

Speaking to Business Insider, a Facebook spokesperson revealed that the rule sees no exceptions.

This means that if a legitimate cryptocurrency wallet service like Blockchain.info or Coinbase wants to advertise on the social network, it can’t. Presumably, even individuals or businesses selling Ethereum-mining equipment can’t post ads on Facebook.

As recently reported by Core Media,Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently revealed he is studying cryptocurrencies. Per his words, cryptocurrencies could help decentralize the internet, and give more power to its users.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

The company further notes that it may not be able to initially catch every ad the broad policy encompasses. As such, it asks for the community’s help, asking it to report content that violates it.

Facebook ban applies to legitimate crypto ads Although the policy initially seems to just affect deceptive ads and businesses, the Core Magazine

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Bitcoin Trader Coerced at Gunpoint into Transferring over a "Fortune" in Bitcoins

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itcoin Trader Coerced Transferring Bitcoins

into

Thames Valley police in Britain are asking for help in tracking down a group of four armed robbers who reportedly barged into the £800,000 house of a bitcoin trader on Monday, January 22nd. After forcing their way inside the house, the group allegedly 106

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coerced Danny Aston, a prolific crypto trader, at gunpoint to transfer his bitcoins to their address. This is the UK’s very first “crypto heist” and although the exact amount stolen has not been disclosed, it might have been a small “fortune”.

After the violent incident, Mr. Aston and Amy Jay, his 31-year-old partner, are said to

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be hiding at a secret location. One of their neighbors said,

that the police will be monitoring the area more closely from now on.

“I was not here at the time but I know the couple have left and are staying Schools Nearby Took Precautionary with relatives, they haven’t been Measures The village of Moulsford (crime location) back since”.

Their neighbor also stated that their community was not used to these types of incidents and was quite “shaken up”.

A Targeted Incident Together, the couple owns a business called Aston Digital Currencies Ltd. Mr. Aston has been reported to use the alias ‘Goldiath’ while online. Now, police are trying to find witnesses who might have seen the raiders as they committed the crime. Specifically, the officers would like to get their hands on any dashcam footage or even cell phone images that might have been captured by people in the area around A329 road. The house where the crypto robbery occurred is said to be located in the upscale Oxfordshire village of Moulsford.

Although this seems to be a bitcoin heist, the police did not confirm local reports stating that armed men were only after cryptocurrency holdings from the bitcoin trader. It’s not clear any physical property was also stolen. However, the police did classify it as a targeted incident and said that no serious injuries occurred due to the robbery. Also according to the authorities, the investigation is currently in its preliminary stages. The neighborhood where the crime took place has been notified

happens to be an affluent neighborhood with luxurious redbrick homes. It has previously served as the setting of Midsomer Murders, a made for TV detective drama. There are also a couple of schools located in the small village. As the bitcoin trader was being robbed, a student from the nearby Cranford House Preparatory School said that pupils were asked to “get to safety”. Meanwhile doors in the classrooms were locked, curtains drawn, and students were instructed to crouch on the floor.

Nobody even knew what exactly was happening, but it left everyone terrified.

According to the local police, the robbers were wearing balaclavas, and had jumped over a fence on the opposite side of the road where the bitcoin trader and his partner had been living. At this time, nobody has been arrested. For now, anyone who might have information linked to the crime can contact 101, a non-emergency number. Or, crimestoppers at 0800 555 111.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Youtube Ads Have Been Running Cryptocurrency Mining Code on Visitors' CPUs

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outube Ads Are Using Your CPU to Mine Crypto ?

Recently, reports have surfaced that Youtube Ads have been “infected” with cryptocurrency mining 108

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code. The mining code starts running by using the CPU power of people watching a Youtube video. People in Japan, Spain, Taiwan, France, and Italy have complained that their antivirus software detected

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suspicious crypto mining code while they were on Youtube. These users also tried to change their browsers and visited other websites. However, the mining code was only found to be running while on Youtube.

According to an investigation by Trend Micro, a cybersecurity company, hackers had used the DoubleClick Ad system, offered by Google, to take over people’s CPUs. After gaining control, the mining code started to execute and mined the Monero cryptocurrency.

Disgruntled users took to social media to voice the concerns. However, a Google employee soon responded by stating that the Youtube Ads found running the mining scripts had been blocked within 2 hours. The employee also claimed that the attackers had been kicked off of the website. Another Google representative said, “Mining cryptocurrency through ads is a relatively new form of abuse that violates our policies and one that we’ve been monitoring actively”.

had probably been targeted because many people have a habit of spending a lot of time on it. Cryptojackers, attackers who hog other CPUs for crypto mining, exploit their habit to mine crypto for themselves. Mr. Mursch also mentioned that malicious mining scripts were programmed to consume as much as 80% of their victim’s CPU power.

Youtube Ads running crypto mining scripts to attack unsuspecting users isn’t the only problem that Youtube has faced recently.

A popular Youtuber named Logan Paul, who has more than 16 million subscribers, uploaded a video of him visiting the infamous suicide forest in Japan. Although other users have done something similar, he was the first to actually show a dead body in the video. This created a lot of controversies and Logan Paul was strongly condemned for his actions. The way Youtube responded was also heavily criticized.

Youtube Needs to Act More Responsibly Whether it’s compromising user security Although this might have temporarily solved with parasitic mining code or allowing the problem, what’s stopping these attackers videos on its platform that show dead from coming back? One way to avoid bodies of people who’ve committed suicide, crypto mining attacks might be to switch it’s clear that Youtube has not been acting over to the Opera browser. As reported responsibly. Although this won’t nearly be earlier by Core Media, the latest version enough to stop people from visiting Youtube, of the Opera browser now blocks crypto considering that 5 billion videos are watched mining software from outside parties. It’s on Youtube daily, the folks behind the available for both mobile and desktop users. world’s largest video portal should try a lot harder to safeguard the security and privacy Why Was Youtube Targeted? of their users. Additionally, people who visit Typically, the crypto mining code is Youtube should protect themselves and written in JavaScript, and the Coinhive remain vigilant. software is used in 90% of all crypto mining attacks. Troy Mursch, a security researcher Omar Faridi at Bad Pockets Report, stated that Youtube omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Disgruntled Investors Who Lost Over $770,000 Hit BitConnect With Class Action Lawsuit

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s reported by Core Media, BitConnect, the company behind what is widely believed to be a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, recently shut down its lending and exchange platform. The 110

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company made its move citing legal troubles and external pressure. Some investors are trying to get their money back through legal action.

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According to public documents filed with the Southern District Court of Florida, the company was recently hit with a class action lawsuit, from plaintiffs that claim the company swindled them for a total of over $770,000. The lawsuit notably alleges the company’s exchange platform was a “widereaching Ponzi scheme.”

with its BitConnect X ICO, and has vowed to launch a new cryptocurrency exchange.

While some of its promoters now encourage naïve investors to participate in the ICO, others split.

Going after BitConnect promoters The case, brought by six individuals, is filed on behalf of all investors who lost their funds using BitConnect’s lending platform.

It names several BitConnect branches in the UK, and interestingly goes after promoters as well.

According to the documents, the investors who filed the lawsuit claim things at BitConnect weren’t what the company claimed they were. Per the complaint, the site’s promoters “illogically promised” monthly returns as high as 40 percent, and It lists marketers such as Glenn Arcaro, 1 percent compounding daily interest. This who’s reportedly a director at the company, could amount to 3,000 percent annual gains. and YouTubers such as Trevon Brown (known as Trevon James), Craig Grant, and It was operating using its BitConnect Token CryptoNick, filed as John Doe. (BCC), required to lend on the platform, as an unregistered security. As such, the BitConnect’s team isn’t listed on its website, plaintiffs argue that BitConnect violated nor does the firm have a whitepaper the Securities Act Further, they allege the describing its business model. Company funds weren’t used for a so-called trading records in the UK don’t include a phone bot, but were instead used to pay earlier number. As such, no outlet has seemingly investors, making it a Ponzi scheme. been able to reach a company representative.

It specifically cites BitConnect’s website:

a

passage

from

“This investment option involves profiting from BitConnect trading bot and volatility software. You will receive daily profit based on your investment options. Upon investment term completion, you will receive your capital back to take out from the BitConnect lending platform or optionally reinvest back in lending platform to continue receiving daily profits.”

Some of those who promoted the scheme – including Arcaro – have now deleted their videos and posts related to BitConnect.They started doing so after the company received cease and desist letters from regulators in Texas and North Carolina. Nevertheless, cryptocurrency blogger Bitfinex’ed saved some of their now deleted videos, and shared them with the public.

Francisco Memoria franciscom@coregroup.info

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How CoinDash helps in diversifying portfolio

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here’s no doubt about the fact that cryptocurrencies are exploding like never before. In the year 2017, BTC or Bitcoin grew from US $1000 to more than US $10,000 per BTC. With this kind of growth comes a huge explosion in the trading market which continuously 114

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keeps increasing the value of the currency.

This can definitely be an ideal choice for the novice cryptocurrency traders due to the fact that you won’t require any personal wallet for cryptocurrency and the traders can get a feel for the movements of the market without the need to purchase it outright.

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How should you invest in cryptocurrency?

If you’re someone who wishes to invest in cryptocurrency and not only for buying,trading and selling, you will have few options. The traders who are beginners can choose between:  The GBTC trust the way it is sold from the stock market  An exchange to purchase coins and a wallet where you can store coins  A cryptocurrency IRA although this isn’t recommended unless someone uses it  A hybrid exchange-broker-wallet which lets customers buy,sell or even store cryptocurrency.

If you’re not sure what a cryptocurrency wallet is, it is a place where you can store all kinds of encrypted passwords which represent coins. Just like when you wish to trade stocks, you require a bank account and this is similar to storing money in a bank account.

CoinDash – A social trading platform for making better investments As long as the best platforms for online trading are concerned, CoinDash needs mention. This is basically a social trading platform which leverages a crypto based platform. With this CoinDash, you can trade in an effective manner and perform different tasks in an effective manner. It is possible to get valuable insights on your cryptocurrency trading portfolio with the help of this platform. You can also follow investors for their best performance so as to invest funds in the way the investors did.

Well, there are many things that separate CoinDash from the others and if you wish to know the USP of CoinDash,here are few points:  CoinDash already has a working product  They are the first project and the contributors of this project are the end-users as well  CoinDash is the first to introduce the features of social trading on a cryptocurrency platform  They’re based in 2 different offices at the same time in Shanghai and Tel Aviv  Almost all the team members are experienced in the world of cryptocurrency Based on the product, the Beta version of this has already become popular among 2K users and the final product of CoinDash will be out during the middle of 2018 and there are lots of features which are already operating and which can be used at the present moment.

You can take into account the abovementioned points before taking a plunge into the world of cryptocurrency trading.

NOTE: Guest posts are complimentary submissions and not to be seen as an endorsement or investment advice Adriana Platen

What is so special about CoinDash and how is it different from the rest?

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Robinhood App Will Let Its Users Trade Cryptocurrencies Free of Cost

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obinhood App will Not Charge Users who Trade Crypto The Robinhood App, which lets its users engage in free stock trading, has decided to let people trade crypto for free as well. The company’s founders feel that people are overpaying for crypto-trading and investing, and they shouldn’t have to.

Scheduled to be launched sometime next month, the app will let users buy and sell bitcoin and ethereum. Currently, Coinbase transaction costs range between 1.5-4%.

According to Vlad Tenev, co-founder of Robinhood, the company is not yet planning to generate any profits from its crypto service. It seems like this might be a move to encourage more people to use the company’s trading app, which already has around 3 million users and over $100 billion transacted via its app.

2018. However, he also indicated that the services would be introduced “slowly” and “steadily”. The company’s goal is to make make crypto more “stable” and “reliable”, according to Mr. Bhatt. Furthermore, Mr. Bhatt also mentioned that his company will make sure that the app is in compliance with cryptocurrency regulations.

Given the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, the creators of the Robinhood app intend to offer their customers the option to search for the lowest price on several crypto-exchanges.

This is after they’ve committed to a buy or sell order. The first version of the crypto-trading platform will only allows users in California, New Hampshire, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Montana to access the app. It’s quite possible that the company is testing its service within a limited geographical area.

Based on the results, the company might extend its service across the US and even internationally.

Bringing Back the 1980s Style The Robinhood crypto app will try to bring back the 1980s retro design. For those who are old enough to remember “Blade Runner” and synthwave, the app’s user interface might stir up feelings of nostalgia, according to company co-founder Mr. Bhatt. This seems like a clever marketing tactic, because nostalgic feelings can trigger powerful emotions that can make users feel more connected with the app. However, the app will still have to offer quality cryptotrading services, because it can’t hope to keep people interested only by offering a cool looking UI.

A Slow and Steady Approach Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt, co-founder at Robinhood, says his company’s crypto services should be accessible to the majority of US consumers during the first half of

In addition to letting its users trade BTC or ETH, the Robinhood App will help users stay up-to-date with news and pricing information regarding 14 other cryptocurrencies. These cryptos will include Monero, Zcash, Ripple, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. By using its crypto app, the company hopes to guide the newcomers to the world of crypto. It would also like to see more crypto investors take interest in trading equities and options.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Bitcoin Users in Indonesian Island of Bali Face Potential Crackdown

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ndonesia is seemingly ready to expand its stance against bitcoin into a full-blown crackdown, as according to Reuters, authorities are currently investigating the use of bitcoin in the holiday island of Bali.

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As covered by Core Media, Indonesia’s central bank, Bank Indonesia (BI) has in the past shut down bitcoin processors. Last week, it issued a warning stating bitcoin and other

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cryptocurrencies are a risky investment. The announcement noted bitcoin isn’t a legal medium of exchange.

According to the Jakarta Post, the financial institution has now teamed up with the country’s national police. Their goal is to prevent cryptocurrency transactions in Bali, a popular tourist destination. Given its popularity, it has reportedly been considered an “alluring place to carry out illegal transactions.

Causa Iman Karana, head of Bank Indonesia’s representative office, stated: “We are looking out for bitcoin transactions in Bali, particularly in tourist spots. We will take measures against non-rupiah transactions. (…) We warned people not to carry out transactions with virtual money because there is no authority that regulates the transactions” Per Karana, the island is being investigated because of social media posts that appear to show Bali is becoming a “haven for bitcoin transactions.” Working undercover late last year, BI and the national police found two cafes processing bitcoin transactions on the island. They also found 44 other businesses that previously accepted the cryptocurrency, but now no longer do.

confirm and incurred a 123,000 rupiah ($9.8) fee. This reportedly discouraged the cryptocurrency’s use in the island, Karana added.

Nevertheless, the crackdown against bitcoin users is to be enforced. The official stated: “The next step is we will ban them as mandated by the law. We ask them not to use it anymore. Along with the Directorate of Special Crime Investigation unit, we will enforce the rule that all transactions in Indonesia must use rupiah.”

While trading cryptocurrencies is yet to be banned in Indonesia, the central bank has already stated it’s looking into the issue. Per the financial institution, cryptocurrencies can be used to launder money, finance terrorism, and may have an impact on the country’s economy. All of this could be harmful to society.

According to Indonesian exchange Bitcoin. co.id, one bitcoin is currently trading for 161,000,000 rupiah ($12,075) in Indonesia.

At press time, one bitcoin is trading at an average of $11,527, according to Cryptocompare. This makes it clear Bank Indonesia’s moves created a premium for bitcoin users in the country.

Bitcoin users at risk in Bali Featured image by Thomas Depenbusch While the official didn’t name the (Depi), Flickr, CC by 2.0 businesses accepting the cryptocurrency, he detailed how it worked at one of the Francisco Memoria cafes. The cafe only processed transactions franciscom@coregroup.info of over 243,000 rupiahs ($18.2) in BTC. Transactions took an hour and a half to Core Magazine

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Square´Cash App Adds Bitcoin Buy/ Sell Options to Nearly All Users

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Back in November 2017, Square’s Cash App started allowing users o buy and sell bitcoin from their accounts. The feature was secretly rolled out to a “small number” of users, reportedly to test user interest. The Cash App has been helping people send and receive money without fees for a while, and now made the bitcoin buy/sell options official.

Via Twitter, Square CEO Jack Dorsey – who also runs social media giant Twitter – revealed the move. In his tweet, he also included a short cartoon titled “My First Bitcoin,” explaining the cryptocurrency. At the end of the cartoon, it prompts users to buy bitcoin using the app.

$10,000 worth of Bitcoin per week. The cryptocurrency’s price on the app is based on a quoted mid-market price, an average across major exchanges. Regarding the announcement, Square’s website reads: “Cash App is already the easiest way to send and receive money with friends and family.

We’ve made it just as easy to buy and sell BTC straight from your Cash App balance.

Unlike other apps, most of our buys and sells happen in seconds. You can even spend your proceeds from a free Visa debit card.”

Cash App introduces newcomers to bitcoin Jack Dorsey’s company didn’t just introduce bitcoin buy and sell options to all its customers, it is also educating newcomers.

Using the “My First Bitcoin” cartoon, The feature is now available to nearly all Cash App’s official Twitter account is also Cash app users. It isn’t available for those in spreading the word.

New York, Georgia, Hawaii or Wyoming, Other than that, Square is selling presumably because of local regulations. The bitcoin-related merchandise to its users. company revealed it’s working on bringing The company is seemingly empowering the feature to all its users, but didn’t add any people by giving them access to the financial other details. system, and helping them learn more about it.Given Cash App’s recent activities on Square rolling out the feature is significant, social media, its bound to keep helping its as it allows newcomers to easily buy and users learn about bitcoin and its underlying own bitcoin. Although the company warns technology. Square’s moves comes after the bitcoin’s price is “volatile and unpredictable,” Robinhood app revealed it will allow users to it adds it won’t charge additional fees on trade bitcoin and Ethereum. cryptocurrency purchases made through the Francisco Memoria Cash App. franciscom@coregroup.info Users won’t be able to buy more than Core Magazine

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European Commission Wants the European Union to Take Advantage of Blockchain Technology

European Commission Wants E.U to Benefit from Blockchain The European Commission has decided to allocate resources to the growth and development of blockchain technology.

The Commission has also launched the Blockchain Observatory and Forum, which will conduct research on blockchain technologies. Through this initiative, the commission would like to see members of the European Union benefit from the opportunities that blockchain has to offer.

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This isn’t the first time that the European Commission has expressed an interest in Blockchain technology. In fact, it has been setting financial resources aside for a number of blockchain-based initiatives since 2013.

These efforts are linked to larger research projects called Horizon 2020 and FP7.

There have been quite a number of practical use cases proposed for blockchain. Notably, several cloud-based tests were performed using various blockchain technologies by

Blockchain News

HSBC, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland in early 2016. These tests were used to determine how effective cloud computing and blockchain could be in executing trades between financial institutions. According to Robert Half Financial Services, the majority of people in the financial industry think that “blockchain will have made a genuine impact on the financial services industry by 2022”. He went on to add that organizations which have already applied blockchain tech to their business practices have reported greater levels of transparency, “empowered users”, and even faster transaction processing times.

Potential Use Cases for Blockchain Tech Apart from being used in the finance sector, Lantmäteriet, Sweden’s mapping, cadastral and land registration authority, is testing whether blockchain can make property transactions more efficient.

There’s also a gate-less border using biometrics and blockchain being developed by the government of Dubai. By using this technology, passengers will be able to go directly to baggage collection without having to go through passport control. Biometric verification will occur through digitized passports as they walk around to collect their luggage, which would legally register them into the country.

Clearly, many countries and organizations feel that blockchain has a lot of different practical applications, so the European Commission seems to be making the right move by also looking into this revolutionary distributed ledger.

European Commission Believes in Blockchain The European Commission believes blockchain tech has great potential. Per the Commission, distributed ledger technology is “expected to impact digital services and transform business models ...such as healthcare, insurance, finance, energy, logistics, intellectual property rights management and government services”. Andrus Ansip, an Estonian politician and Vice President for Digital Single Market at the European Commission, stated that blockchain could make social and economic transactions much more secure while also eliminating the need for intermediaries. He further added that he’d like Europe “to become a leading world region that will develop and invest in the roll-out of blockchain”.

Meanwhile, Mariya Gabriel, commissioner of Digital Economy and Society at European Commission, remarked that blockchain could be a “game-changer” and she wants Europe to be one of the world’s leaders when it comes to effectively adopting this technology. Most countries, organizations, and world leaders think that blockchain technology has the potential to be applied in many different industries. Lately, regulatory authorities around the world have cracked down on cryptocurrencies, and countries like India are seemingly planning to ban them completely. However, the same organizations want to embrace blockchain technology, which underpins most digital currencies.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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NXT Platform: What is it and What does it Offer?

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N

XT Platform Overview The intended purpose of this article is to provide a fairly broad overview of the NXT platform. Many details have been omitted, but will be covered in future articles. The official NXT website describes NXT as a blockchain platform. It was created in late 2013 by a programmer in Europe with the alias BCNext. Not much is known about BCNext except that he’s an old member of the Bitcoin talk forum. At first, BCNext chose to work on the project by himself. In order to develop the Nxt client and a few decentralized exchanges, BCNext did hire some programmers. BCNext then handed over the responsibilities of the NXT project to a community. A few members of this community are affiliated with the Nxt foundation

educator focusing on blockchain technology, explains that, “in bitcoin, you generate blocks and then you are rewarded with coins. These coins didn’t, at first, exist on the network.

So, bitcoin creates new coins every time”.

Basically, this is how a proof-of-work system functions.

NXT’s Proof-of Stake Algorithm In a proof-of-stake system, all coins that will ever exist are created in the very beginning. Also, no more coins are created afterwards. A total of 1 billion NXT coins were created with the very first block.

Generating blocks with the bitcoin network uses up too much computing power. If you use the NXT platform, the number of active coins determine how many blocks will be generated. This means that all active wallets get an opportunity to create blocks.

So, what does NXT offer? The NXT Furthermore, the more NXT a user has, platform enhances the capabilities of the the greater their chances are for being able very first digital currencies like bitcoin. to generate more blocks. Once an entity By emphasizing and focusing on the vast generates a block on the NXT network, potential of decentralization, the NXT they’re compensated with the transaction platform taps into numerous applications of fees associated with that particular block. blockchain technology. These applications include leveraging blockchain to build a According to Wisselink, this method flexible payment system and an open-source makes it possible for NXT to function on a cryptocurrency. “much lighter system”. This is supposed to be more efficient than proof-of-work systems, Transactions are processed on the NXT which require much more computational network by using the proof-of-stake power to operate. The Nxt client can run algorithm. Bitcoin transactions are based on desktop computers, laptops, and even on the proof-of-work algorithm. With smartphones.

NXT, there’s no concept of mining. There is, however, something somewhat related Different Programming Language used called forging, which will be covered in with NXT another article. Before understanding NXT’s Although the overall concept behind proof-of-stake, let’s briefly look at bitcoin’s the NXT platform is somewhat similar to proof-of-work. Bas Wisselink, a speaker and Bitcoin, it was programmed using a different Core Magazine

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programming language ( Java). Because of this, standard APIs can be used by thirdparties to communicate with the platform.

Block times are a lot faster as well. Anyone can easily download and install the Nxt client on Android, Linux, Mac, Windows 32-bit/64-bit operating systems.

The NXT plug-in feature is used by third-parties, usually programmers, to add more features to a Nxt client. Data from December 2014 indicates that block times with NXT were only 90 seconds. However, as the network scales, this time should decrease.

Therefore, these block times will be around 60 seconds. In comparison, block times with Bitcoin are around 10 minutes.

Nxt Account Ledger NXT should not be thought of as a cryptocurrency. This would be inaccurate because NXT is actually a crypto-platform.

You can think of it as an economic ecosystem.

This is made possible by utilizing Nxt tokens as opposed to coins. One thing to note here is that when we say coins, we can also refer to them as tokens. These subtle differences in terminology might seem confusing, at first. However, a closer look and examination makes the differences easier to understand.

One of things that is very easy to understand is the Nxt account ledger. The ledger comes with the Nxt client and can be used to check on account balances and transaction history. The way this is set up is conceptually similar to a typical bank statement, so it’s intuitive. Other relatively easy to grasp concepts include the option Nxt client users have to “tag” another Nxt account using a small piece of data. This 126

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data can be used by traders on the network to identify Nxt accounts with which they’ve transacted with before.

Nxt accounts can also be quickly verified.

So, if a user on the NXT blockchain wants to prove that they’re the real owner of a Nxt account, then they can do so easily. This is done by using sophisticated cryptographic techniques and principles. The user need not have knowledge or understanding of how these cryptographic algorithms work, but they can benefit from the high level of security they offer.

NXT Asset Exchange The NXT Asset Exchange offers the ability to conduct peer-to-peer exchanges. Trading can be done quickly, efficiently, and securely without the need of a third-party.With NXT, there are a multitude of transaction types. Depending on the type of transaction, tokens can be labeled accordingly. If you use the NXT asset exchange, you should know that it’s based around the concept of colored coins. Colored coins are traceable to the point where they originated from. You will be able to create tokens and give them a certain value. With this type of functionality, users are able to trade just about anything.

So, you can sell, buy, or issue orders using the Asset Exchange.

NXT assets can represent anything.

Coins that haven’t even been introduced into the market are also tradeable on Asset Exchange. Loyalty coins can be issued and traded as well. Even crowdfunding can be done. Furthermore, encrypted membership cards on websites can be pegged to tokens.

Typical use cases for NXT Assets include:

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copyrights, software licenses, patents, bonds, and private and public equities.

Data Transfer & Data Storage with NXT Data storage on NXT happens mainly on the NXT Data Cloud. Storage is completely decentralized. There’s an option to securely store user-defined (customized) data by simply uploading it to the NXT blockchain.

The Data Cloud can be thought of as an added feature or functionality on top of NXT’s intrinsic messaging system. Every time data is uploaded to the NXT blockchain, a unique tamper-proof time stamp is generated. This ensures that the data remains immutable and permanent.

The NXT Alias System The NXT Alias System makes it possible to assign a purely random value to another random value. Moreover, a piece of text can serve as a replacement for another piece of text.This allows for key-phrases to be defined, which represent whatever a user wants them to represent. For example, accounts can simply be identified with an alias instead of having to always specify a hard to remember account number. For advanced users, you can also create a decentralized DNS system.

Even full-fledged shopping cart applications can make use of the alias system.

Furthermore, all transactions occur on the same blockchain, which means they can work cooperatively. Let’s say you wanted One of the great things about this is that to create a game on the blockchain. Then, legal contracts can, therefore, be reliably your game can use the intrinsic messaging stored on the NXT blockchain. And, system for sharing data. And, you can use nobody can alter the contracts created by the the Asset Exchange to keep track of assets original author. Common use cases for this within the game. All data can be kept on the include: business licenses, passports, forensic blockchain so it can be accessed by anyone information, and government regulatory on the blockchain. records. Educational data can also be securely stored such as degrees, student transcripts; Multi-Signature Accounts & Voting medical records or even genome information System can be stored.

NXT Account Control beefs up the security of accounts. With NXT’s multiThe system behind NXT’s data transfer signatures feature, fully decentralized and and data storage is referred to as arbitrary autonomous accounts can be created. These messaging. This feature can be used to accounts remain locked until all the required deliver everyday messages that we send to signatures from the specified users have been each other. Around 1 MB of data can be obtained. The signatories might be holders of transmitted between accounts. Software certain currencies or assets.The voting system applications running on the network can can be used to require that transactions be use this functionality to communicate. In executed after certain number of votes have addition to this messaging system, there’s an been accumulated based on spending. alias system.

With the NXT Voting system, you can Core Magazine

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vote based on the number of coins, voting by account, or voting by asset exchange (tokens).

For example, balloting can be done by sending people asset exchange tokens. Only these people would be allowed to participate in the vote. Typical use cases include: private insurance or investment funds, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), and charity accounting.

Furthermore, the NXT voting system can be used by decentralized entities on the blockchain to arrive at a consensus. An entity can be defined as an organization, person, place, thing, or concept about which information can be recorded. Consensus can be achieved by conducting polls. Polls that we normally encounter in real life, such as those used to determine the winning candidate or even to assess public opinion, can be implemented using the NXT platform.

A few other practical use cases include: government accounting and transparency, package delivery process, and arbitration.

NXT Monetary System With the NXT Monetary system, it is possible to create your own cryptocurrency.

If you’d like to trade crypto, then you can do this as well, as long as they’re supported by the NXT platform. Users are able to generate their own custom tokens (aka currencies).

These tokens can be backed by NXT’s cryptocurrency to give them more stability.

Currencies within NXT’s monetary system can easily be traded inside of the NXT system or even on outside exchanges as long as that exchange offers support for NXT’s Monetary system. A few use cases include: escrow, micro-finance, and crowdfunding.

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NXT Market Capitalization Currently, the NXT market capitalization is almost $210 million and trading at around $0.21(CoinMarketCap). It’s the 84th largest crypto-platform in terms of market capitalization. The purpose of this article, as stated previously, is to offer a broad overview of the NXT platform. Not all features and concepts have been covered in their entirety.

Other articles on NXT and related platforms and technologies will be covered in future articles.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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