Core Magazine June 2018

BLOCKCHAIN

NEWS

MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

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Waves Platform Launches Smart Contracts to Compete with Ethereum

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REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE HERE

Price

$5 USD

EOS Platform | Critical Vulnerability Detected

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DIRECTORY Executive Board Vincent Pereira aka House house@coregroup.info Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Futurist futurist@coregroup.info

Angelo Timoneri aka Lootz lootz@coregroup.info

Ignacio Figueroa aka TheWalk_er ignacio@coregroup.info

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

Staff

Nuno Menezes nuno@coregroup.info Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

Marlon Diaz aka MACO maco@coregroup.info Angel Figueroa angelfigueroa@coregroup.info

Contributors

Ben Benedict Shruti Kaushik

Table of Contents Tuur Demeester And His Crypto Journey

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Quantstamp Audit Clears Binance ERC20 Tokens

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Charles Hoskinson – Man Behind Cardano

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Elikem Kofi Attah

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EOS Platform | Critical Vulnerability Detected

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Waves Platform Launches Smart Contracts to Compete with Ethereum

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Olaoluwa Osuntokun | Nigerian Mainstreaming Crypto Micro Payments Through Lightning Labs

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US States to Take Cryptocurrencies as Tax Payments

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Adryenn Ashley | Mixing Dating and the Blockchain

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Hard Forks are Altcoins Says Top Bitcoin Developer Jimmy Song

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Preserve the EARTH for future generations

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Crypto Market Getting Closer to Mass Adoption

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Huobi Token is Surging because notably Use cases

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Ugly Truth About World Crypto Network

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Coincall Marks Bitcoin Cash as Shitcoin

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Why Ethereum Isn't Going Anywhere

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Nejc Kodric | The Cryptocurrency Exchange Pioneer

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Cybermiles | Decentralizing The E-Commerce Market

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MaidSafeCoin | A decentralized currency for a decentralized network

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Mauritius Central Bank Governor Exposes Coindesk article

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Cortex | Artificial Intelligence On A Blockchain

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Know Your Crypto Terminology | Part 1

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Bitfinex vs Poloniex | Exchange Battle

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GOOD NEWS for Bitcoin Payment Options as it's becoming more Practical

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India and Pakistan take Irresponsible Approach Toward Cryptocurrency Market

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Huobi Labs Providing a Nurturing Environment for Blockchain Startups

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ByteCoin and Binance Involved in Market Manipulation

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Linda X | A Scam-Free Token Platform

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Dan Larimer | From Bitshares To Steem To EOS

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Nathaniel Popper | Digital Gold Author Detailing Bitcoin History

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ZenCash | Cryptocurrency Platform Built to Serve Humanity

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Ethereum Could Become As Pervasive as Apple

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Coindesk Misled Us On Venezuela's Petro

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Agrocoin | The Mexican cryptocurrency backed by the habanero pepper

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Continues on next Page

Nick Szabo | a Cryptocurrency Legend Known Around the Globe

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Critical Vulnerabilities Exposed in EOS Blockchain | Could Delay June 2nd Mainnet Launch

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Bitcoin Price Could Surge As Jim Rogers Predicts Great US Recession

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Vinny Lingham | Identity Protection Over the Blockchain

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Bitcoin Will Hit $20,000 Again, But Only After There’s Better “Structure”

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Trading Knowledge on Graphpath ’s Knowledge Marketplace

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Ethereum vs Tron | Epic Battle

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Moldova Gets Crypto Powered Renewable Energy

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Crypto Interview | Earth Token | Creating Positive Environmental Impact with Blockchain

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Ella Zhang Now Heads Binance Labs While Custodian Services Come To Crypto

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IBM Using AI and Blockchain Technology To Develop a "Super Lens"

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Why All Muslims Should Use Bitcoin | Especially in Ramadan

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Justin Sun Pushing or Pumping Tron Higher?

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Blockchain Colombia Association to Provide Education on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

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Remittances and Micropayments | Stellar vs Bitcoin

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Verge -XVG | Reportedly Being Hacked at $1,000 Per Minute

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Andreas Antonopoulos Uses Not the “Choicest” of Words for Blockchain

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Ride Sharing App Using Blockchain Proposed By Leading Chinese Entrepreneur

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HTC Jumps on Blockchain Bandwagon with its New Smartphone

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Rhett Creighton Is The King of Forks, But He's Not Alone

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JasperCoin | The Argentina Cryptocurrency That Aspires to Surpass Bitcoin

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Regulators Launch Largest Cryptocurrency Crackdown in History

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Questions About Bitcoin in Dutch Math Curriculum

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Smart Contracts and Futures Contracts For Ethereum Making Strides

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vDice | Blockchain Gambling Games

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Swiss Alps Energy | Bitcoin Mining with Renewable Energy

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Fortune 100 Companies Leverage Blockchain While Cardano, Bitcoin, Ethereum Advance

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Transaction Processing: Stellar Lumens (XLM) versus Ripple (XRP)

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More Bullish Bitcoin Price Predictions | Here is Why

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Digital Currencies – particularly Bitcoin – Aren’t Going Anywhere

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EDITORIAL

W

e’re again happy to bring you the June 2018 edition of our monthly magazine here at Crypto Core Media (CCMedia).

Our team of experienced industry professionals have put together an informative, unbiased, and extensive collection of articles in order to help promote awareness about the latest cryptocurrency and blockchain related developments. Although the digital currency market has taken a sharp nosedive, due primarily to the largest cryptocurrency crackdown in history and the US Justice Department probe into Bitcoin (BTC) price manipulation, the good news is that the flagship cryptocurrency and altcoins are being

more widely accepted.

There’s an entire ecosystem and legitimate economy building around the revolutionary crypto technology. So, in this digital magazine you will find news that’s often overlooked or not circulated widely enough due to many news media outlets focusing more on the negatives rather that the positives. At CCMedia, we strive to bring you unique and pertinent information, in addition to valuable insights from crypto industry professionals. This month, we interviewed the Earth Token Director of IT and Cryptocurrency, Wesley Carlson, who confirmed that the Ethereum blockchain is getting too clogged up. It has exceeded Core Magazine

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1 Terabyte in size and is only growing larger in size as time progresses due to an overwhelming numbers of crypto projects that use its blockchain. This poses a significant scalability problem along with other closely related and problematic issues. Therefore, in this month’s magazine you will find articles that take an in depth and unbiased look into this matter.

Summer 2018 is here and a number of crypto projects will be launching their mainnets. News has already surfaced regarding critical vulnerabilities in the EOS blockchain. These vulnerabilities have also been covered in this month’s edition. Furthermore, we bring to you updates about cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase preparing for the expected arrival of institutional investors to the crypto market. Coinbase along with other exchanges such as the London based LMAX traditional asset exchange have made substantial investments into developing products and services to accommodate the institutional investors such as hedge funds and banks.

Billions of Muslims around the world are fasting this month as it’s the holy month of Ramadan. Numerous trending articles on the internet have also surfaced regarding whether the use of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies is permissible in Islam, the religion Muslims follow. We’ve taken a detailed look into this matter, with a purely objective and informative point of view. So, you also have this to look

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forward to reading in our monthly CCMedia digital magazine.

Additionally, it’s always good to compare and contrast different technologies provided by competing vendors. Therefore, we’ve included a number of in-depth articles that compare the services offered by Coinbase and Binance.

We also take a look at the whole TRON versus Ethereum debate. Which platform is better?

Will TRON overtake Ethereum or will any other platform potentially replace it? While nobody in this space can accurately predict what the future holds, we can objectively analyze all the information from credible sources. And, this is exactly what our writers have done this month - as usual. So, you can expect to find these topics covered here as well.

We’d like to thank you for the time and interest you invest in reading our articles. We’d also like like to bring to your attention that not only do we publish a monthly digital magazine on crypto related topics, but we also have a very active CryptoCoreMedia.com website. You can check for updates on there daily along with Crypto Core Radio.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

https://www.komodoplatform.com

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Tuur Demeester And His Crypto Journey Tuur Demeester

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uur Demeester invests in cryptocurrency businesses and projects. He also shares his views on important issues in the space. That’s not all. He is the founder of the cryptocurrency research firm known as Adamant Research. Tuur should be on any list of top cryptocurrency personalities to follow. We will find out why after reading this coverage of his work in the cryptocurrency 10

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community.

Before Bitcoin

Demeester studied modern languages at St. Louis College of Bruges. He also took classes in Economics, Political Science, Philosophy, African Studies, and History from Gent University between 2003 and 2006.

Based on what Tuur Demeester did later on in the field of economics, we can tell

the lessons from Gent stuck with him. He co-founded the Rothbard Institute which had Austrian Economics as one of its main focus areas. Tuur also started a Sudbury school called De Kampanje where pupils take personal responsibility for what they learn.

Before getting into crypto fully, he worked as an editor at Goldonomics and later Macrotrends.

Goldonomics was into wealth management

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while Macrotrends was his own newsletter with a finance focus. It must be said that it is not surprising that a man with an economics background and an interest in the concept of kids taking learning into their own hands would go crazy for Bitcoin. There are some striking similarities between that and taking one’s financial freedom into one’s own hands.

What He Does Now

Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Adamant Research. Adamant research is also finance and economics related with a focus on Bitcoin and blockchain investment opportunities worldwide. The end product of the research here is a newsletter which is available upon subscription at adamantresearch.com.

Aside from providing research-based investment information for others, Tuur Demeester invests himself. He has invested in a number of startups in the cryptocurrency space. The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange and Cointerra are examples of businesses he has invested in.

Tuur frequently adds his voice to debates on issues in the cryptocurrency space. He has spoken at events and written articles covering topics like “Bitcoin Seen Through the Eyes of a Central Banker”, privacy, fungibility and the famous block size debate. These days, with Bitcoin news everywhere, people do not need to be told why they should buy some. Back in 2013, Tuur Demeester amongst others had to tell people why they

should invest in Bitcoin. More recently he expressed concerns about the proof of stake design being proposed for Ethereum and got himself a reply from Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum.

Tuur Demeester was already a man on the move before he found out about Bitcoin in Argentina. You could say his past experience in finance and economics had already prepared him for Bitcoin. Either way he accepted it and has since been a useful contributor to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

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Quantstamp Audit Clears Binance ERC20 Tokens

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uantstamp is a security firm that helps in auditing the Smart Contracts built on top of the Ethereum network.

Recently, the company audited the ERC20 tokens listed on Binance exchange and found out that all of them are safe and not affected by the recent vulnerability that was found in most of the ERC20 tokens.

Let us have a detailed look at this audit.

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Batch Overflow Bug

We have already covered about this in our previous post about the bug that was found in most of the ERC20 tokens.

The BatchOverflow vulnerability was deducted in most of the ERC20 tokens and is vulnerable to loss of millions of funds if this is not fixed.

The hacker can theoretically get access to a huge amount of tokens by exploiting this bug.

After this bug was discovered,

many exchanges froze the wallets of all the ERC20 tokens to safeguard customers’ funds.

The Bug was first reported

by PeckShield when he ran an automated scanning on one of the ERC20 tokens and found out that a large number of tokens were getting transferred from the BeatyChain (BEC) smart contract. This led to the discovery of the batch overflow bug and later it was found that most of the ERC20 tokens are vulnerable to this bug.

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exchange. Binance is an important exchange since billions of dollars of tokens and cryptocurrencies are traded on a daily basis. They cannot afford to lose funds due to vulnerability since the impact will be on a large scale.

Binance is known for the high standards and gives security its top most priority while listing any coins or tokens. The procedure to get listed on Binance exchange is tiresome since they follow strict policies and procedures.

Quantstamp Supporting Affected Tokens

Quantstamp is an independent security firm that audits Smart Contracts for security flaws. The firm has contacted many tokens and exchanges to help them fix this vulnerability. Their intention is to help the community and make the Ethereum ecosystem more robust and they won’t be making any profit out of it.

Quantstamp Clears Binance

Quantstamp did an audit on all the ERC20 tokens listed on the Binance

Quantstamp notably performed automatic and manual audits on all the ERC20 tokens listed in the Binance Exchange. To everyone’s surprise, they have not found a single vulnerability affecting any of the tokens listed on the exchange. They also declared that all the tokens listed are safe and the recent BatchOverflow bug is not affecting any of the tokens listed.

Below are the comments from Quantstamp after doing a successful audit in the world’s biggest exchange

in protecting their customers and supports the exchange’s ambitions to create the gold standard in security for the mass adoption of digital currencies. In light of the recent vulnerabilities, we are proud to have assisted Binance in its mission to help protect their token holders and the wider Ethereum community” We are really happy to see that some of the big exchanges like Binance are very responsible and give customer safety and security the utmost importance rather than listing all the tokens without any proper procedure or policy. Most of the other exchanges should learn this from Binance and follow suit to give a secure environment for their customers to trade.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

“Quantstamp shares Binance’s safetyfirst philosophy Core Magazine

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Blockchain News

Charles Hoskinson – Man Behind Cardano

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harles Hoskinson is a legendary cryptocurrency entrepreneur and valuable asset to the cryptocurrency space. He is the co-founder of three top cryptocurrences; Ethereum, 14

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Cardano (ADA) and Bitshares. He is also the founder of the cryptocurrency related startup known as Invictus innovations. Cardano, his latest project, is said to have the potential to overtake Ethereum

in the future. Let’s look at how Charles has contributed to the cryptosphere and how influential he is in the cryptocurrency space.

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Early Life of Charles Ethereum Board Hoskinson Room Fight led to Start of Cardano Charles Hoskinson attended the University of Colorado and Metropolitan State University of Denver to study Mathematics. This helped him understand cryptography and also gave him an opportunity to gain the required experience through industry exposure. It was this exposure that led to him meeting Vitalik Buterin while attending an online school and later becoming the co-founder of Ethereum.

Charles then founded the IOHK -blockchain development. This is a firm that promises to provide financial services to billions of unbanked people. IOHK is also the company that developed and launched the Cardano (ADA) blockchain. It manages Ethereum Classic – the original blockchain of Ethereum that continued to live on after the DAO incident.

Charles’ boardroom misunderstandings with Vitalik led to the start of IOHK and later Cardano. The major difference in opinion between Charles and Vitalik was that the former wanted Ethereum to be a for-profit entity by getting funding from venture capitalists. On the other hand, Vitalik wanted the project to be non-profit and open-source with decentralized governance.

Charles Hoskinson moved away from the project with another Ethereum colleague called Jeremy Wood. Together, they started the IOHK organization. IOHK birthed Cardano – a public blockchain and a smart contract platform.

Cardano Blockchain (ADA) Cardano is much like an Ethereum blockchain that helps run computation on a

blockchain and uses the ADA cryptocurrency. IOHK developed the Cardano blockchain to run Smart contracts and other decentralized applications. The ADA cryptocurrency runs on the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL). There is a second layer in addition to CSL called the Cardano Computational Layer (CCL). The smart Contracts run on this layer. If we compare Cardano with Ethereum, we can say that both CSL and CCL run on the same blockchain layer in the latter.

The Cardano blockchain uses sidechains to connect the CSL and CCL. Charles Hoskinson is one of the entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency space coming out with different innovations in blockchain technology.

With each innovation having different functionalities and use-cases, different solutions are found for various problems in areas that blockchain technology can be applied.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

Core Magazine

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Blockchain News

Joseph Lubin | Creating Tools For The Decentralized Systems Joseph Lubin

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orbes estimates Joseph Lubin’s cryptocurrency holdings to be worth a figure between $1 billion and $5 billion. This isn’t surprising.

We can expect that of a successful entrepreneur and one 16

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of the co-founders of the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Joseph Lubin also started Consensys, a software engineering company building applications for the Ethereum platform.

Education And Career Before Ethereum

Joseph Lubin graduated from Princeton University in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science certificate in Electrical

Blockchain News

Engineering and Computer Science. He went on to manage the Robotics and Expert Systems Laboratory at the same university for five years.

Following his time at Princeton University, Lubin worked as a research scientist and software engineer for Vision Applications and TOMANDANDY, which specializes in creating entertainment mobile apps and music production. He later spent two years working for the private wealth management division of Goldman Sachs before moving on to Blacksmith technologies’ New York office in the capacity of director. Lubin also took part in the SyNerG Music in Jamaica before he got wind of the whole Ethereum idea or whitepaper.

Co-Founding Ethereum

With his experience in the business world as well as the tech world, Joseph Lubin was in a good position to take advantage of the opportunity to be a part of the creation of

Ethereum. Of course, he had prior to this, learned about Bitcoin and its potential.

When the opportunity presented itself in the form of the Ethereum whitepaper and getting in contact with Vitalik Buterin and other pioneers of Ethereum, Lubin took it and got involved. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Ethereum foundation.

What Consensys Does

Consensys was established

by Joseph Lubin in October 2014. The company aims to help in the building of the Ethereum ecosystem. It does this by creating applications as well as startups that use blockchain technology to solve problems in various industries.

It already serves as a launch pad for a number of innovative teams in the blockchain industry.

management and health sector amongst others.

One of the main goals of the Ethereum network is to help make social, political and economic organizations all over the world become more decentralized to better serve the people the organizations were created for. Joseph Lubin continues to work towards this goal through Consensys and other startups springing up from it. A look at the life and work of influential blockchain personalities like Joseph Lubin would remind anybody with doubts about the future of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology that we are still in the early days. With the great amount of work being done, greater things can be expected in this industry.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

Consensys also consults for businesses from the financial, energy, education and supply

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Elikem Kofi Attah Being On The Move

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y name is Elikem Kofi Attah and I am happy to be writing for Crypto Core Media and for you. This is going to be about who me of course, and what I have been doing with my life so far and my decision to write for Core magazine.

Somewhere in the third year of my first degree course, I decided to not consume all my free time doing meaningless 20

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things, and start to produce or create. For instance, I took the playing of video games down a notch and became less and less passionate about my favorite football club. I tried not to watch way too many movies or series. Instead, my focus shifted toward doing more myself. So I took my school work more seriously and became a more active member of the Ghana Chess Association and other groups. Another thing was that even though reading was one my favorites hobbies, I decided to start writing too.

The Learning Process: From Stocks and Mutual Funds To Cryptocurrencies

Fast forward to 2016, a year after graduating with a political science degree, I came across a book that gave me some understanding of what cryptocurrencies were. Note that I had to read it twice to have that basic understanding and then went on to read more

Blockchain News

articles on the subject, joined social media platforms about cryptocurrencies, and watched numerous YouTube videos to satisfy my curiosity.

I think my business background from high school and the Ghana Stock Exchange Securities course I took in 2013 contributed to my interest in the cryptocurrency subject. My little experience in trading stocks in Ghana at the time also made me want to know more about this new thing I had bumped into. From an early age, one of my mains interests was money, how to be self sufficient and financially free. With all this, it was only a matter of time before I got into cryptocurrencies.

Let’s fast forward one more time. This time it’s February 2018 and I am still learning but it’s not just about cryptocurrencies. I am currently a few months away from finishing my MBA course in China. I took the opportunity to study

in China after a year of my national service in August 2016.

I also served as a teaching assistant at the political science department of the University of Ghana. This was a good experience to have. I quickly figured out that learning for oneself was a little different from learning to teach others.

The latter gives the teacher a deeper understanding of whatever is being taught. Studying in China has also been a good experience. I have met a lot of nice people, learned a lot of new things and gotten a broader perspective on various issues.

It Was Time to Get Involved

Please go back with me to February 2018 again. At this point, I felt it was time to also contribute to the cryptocurrency space and not just consume information. I kept learning as I went through the crazy highs and lows of the year 2017. I watch itching to get on

the move. I, therefore, planned to start various cryptocurrency related projects back home in Ghana once I complete my MBA program. Luckily, did not have to wait till then to start contributing.

The opportunity to write for Core Media gave me a chance to participate more actively in this space. I am also learning even more now that I have to share what I find out with an audience. I have thoroughly enjoyed this experience so far.

Apart from trying to produce and not only consume, I tend to drink deep or drink not. This means you will be seeing more from me at Core Media so expect even more quality content in the future.

Once again, I am glad to be in this space and also part of Crypto Core Media.

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EOS Platform | Critical Vulnerability Detected

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recent audit of the EOS platform

by Chengdu LianAn Technology Co and VaaS (Verification as a Service) revealed a critical vulnerability in the smart contract platform.

This bug is similar to the one found in ERC20 tokens a few days ago. We covered that in this post.

EOS Platform

The EOS platform is similar to the Ethereum blockchain. The objective is to build a decentralized operating system. The EOS team, however, wants to improve on the Ethereum blockchain by making The EOS platform more scalable and with low

fees. EOS is aiming to handle millions of transactions per second using their robust platform. Ethereum is currently struggling to scale with high fees in the form of Gas. The EOS blockchain is said to have the following properties : Can scale to allow millions Core Magazine

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of transactions per second.

Zero fees.

Easily upgradable, allowing dApps to fix bugs with ease.

Smooth functioning of dApps with low latency. dApps are processed in parallel to distribute the workload to save time.

The above properties of EOS will help in improving the smart contract performance while keeping fees at zero. In Short, EOS can be said to be an improved version of Ethereum in this regard. It is however still in the testnet and not out yet. Once it is on the mainnet, we can know if the platform would live up to the expectation and possibly dethrone Ethereum.

Critical Vulnerability Reported

The bug, as stated earlier, is similar to the ‘batchoverflow’ vulnerability that we recently noticed in several ERC20 tokens. The bug will grant the hackers unimaginable amounts of funds in the form of tokens when one tries to pass a very large number through the code.

After several ERC20 tokens were found to have this bug, LianAn tech started to investigate the EOS platform to see if the same bug exists in their smart contracts. This examination was done using overflow vulnerability detection and security verification tools. To everyone’s dismay, the same vulnerability was found on the EOS platform too.

This has raised serious questions. Is the platform a

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true competitor to Ethereum?

Does it need more work to be able to rival Ethereum and emerge as the best smart contract platform?

EOS’market cap has reached $18 Billion and is growing very fast even in this bear market. It is currently worth more than Elon Musk’s Space X. Many investors placed their bets on this technology even though it is still in testnet. Whether the platform would meet the expectations of the investors and deliver a better product than Ethereum is a serious question to be answered in the near future.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

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Waves Platform Launches Smart Contracts to Compete with Ethereum

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he Waves Platform is a well-known decentralized blockchain that helps in building the bridge between fiat currencies and other Cryptocurrencies.

The platform now plans to incorporate Smart Contracts too. This is expected to make it a tough competitor of Ethereum. We will look into this exciting development and how it could be a game-changer for Waves.

Waves Platform In a Nutshell

Waves Platform is a decentralized trading platform that helps in connecting the various fiat and cryptocurrencies. The fiat currencies that are supported by Waves are the US dollar, Euro, and Chinese Yuan.

Waves by itself is a token that fuels the blockchain. Its major function is to help users send money anywhere in the world instantly. It also attempts to

provide liquidity to cryptocurrencies it supports by allowing investors to make purchases using their fiat currency.

Waves also has a decentralized exchange (DEX). The Waves DEX is a decentralized trading platform that enables the settlement of trades on its blockchain. The exchange is quite fast and secure compared to other decentralized exchanges.

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The Waves token is used to fuel the blockchain. It was valued at $6.80 with a market cap of USD 680 million at the time of writing. This token can be traded on the Waves DEX as well as other major exchanges like Binance, Hitbtc, and Bittrex.

Waves Smart Contracts

We have already reported in this post that the Atomic Swaps functionality was going to be incorporated in the Waves platform to enable the addition of ERC-20 tokens to its DEX. It turns out Waves need not list ERC-20 tokens.

Waves would rather have its own Smart Contracts tokens listed on the platform. The Waves Smart Contracts are currently running on its testnet and should soon be available on the mainnet. The Waves team announced this in a tweet on Thursday and informed the community to download the testnet with the Smart Contract features from Github.

The Smart Contract integration would make Waves an Ethereum competitor. Ethereum is at the moment facing scalability and code vulnerability issues. We reported in this post that several ERC-20 26

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tokens got affected by the ‘Batchoverflow’ bug that makes it possible for hackers to steal humongous amounts of funds in the form of tokens.

There are many other platforms that want to compete with Ethereum in providing robust and secure Smart Contract platforms. Amongst these platforms, Waves has proven itself with working products and its secure and reliable blockchain. Based on this, we can expect Waves to provide a better platform for companies to build their dApps on.

Apart from being scalable and secure, Waves has the added advantage of a DEX. The platform can handle hundreds of transactions per second in a trustless and decentralized manner. Also, unlike other centralized exchanges, the DEX has no limits for withdrawal of funds.

Benefits of Waves Smart Contracts

The Waves Smart Contracts provide the following advantages over other platforms: • dApps are supported in a decentralized manner • No additional fees like GAS in Ethereum

• •

• • •

Smart Contract Secure and affordable compared to Ethereum and other blockchains Due to the availability of the DEX, one can immediately trade the tokens on the platform Multi-signature wallets to avoid one-point failure.

Atomic Swaps to convert tokens would be introduced in the future It allows the founders to lockup the tokens in the platform itself

The above benefits and the past record of Waves gives us more confidence that their entry into Smart Contracts will be a successful venture. By allowing future dApps to move forward with advanced and more robust technology, Waves could become a force to reckon with and a strong Ethereum competitor. One can see the Waves token becoming more valuable in the future if they successfully implement this Smart Contract and attract more blockchain companies to develop their products on their platform. We wish them the very best in this venture.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

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Olaoluwa Osuntokun | Nigerian Mainstreaming Crypto Micro Payments Through Lightning Labs Olaoluwa Osuntokun – Lead Developer at Lightning Labs

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laoluwa Osuntokun is the Nigerian lead developer behind the Lightning Labs project. One of

the first creations of Lightning Labs is a Bitcoin-powered video streaming platform. A platform that allows customers anywhere in the world to easily pay for their video content rather than suffering free adsinfested options.

The talented young programmer, holds a bachelors

degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Masters in Computer Science from the same university.

Taking the road less traveled, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, in 2016 founded Lightning Labs, a project set up to build products that would run on the BitCore Magazine

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coin protocol. This is in direct contrast with the usual path of other programmers who build products aimed at solving the almost unlimited problems ailing the Bitcoin protocol.

What Lightning Labs Can Do

Lightning Labs first creation is a video streaming product that will disrupt the traditional digital advertising system we have today. In a bid to achieve this, efforts are also being made to update the Bitcoin protocol. Notably, one example is the activation of Segregated Witness (SegWit), which heralded the launch of DApps that can process high volume transactions.

Unreasonably high Bitcoin transaction fees has made micro payments needed for content subscription unfeasible, thereby bringing to the fore the need for implementation of Lightning Labs. Even before this happened, some developers were already using the open source code to build other products, usually geared towards digital media and advertisement that allow crypto micro payments.

Products built using Lightning Network will be able to 28

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require zero login or sign up.

Also, since all forms of media will be accepted, payment for media will act as an effective spam blocker. Using YouTube as an analogy, what this means in essence is that, to access YouTube, you will not need to login or sign up. All you have to do is pay for the content you wish to access. This means you can avoid those nasty ads.

While this is not happening yet, it’s in the roadmap.

How It Works To allow for micro payments for things like digital media content, Olaoluwa Osuntokun came up with something he called HTLC-DASH. This came about via implementation of Lightning (LND) on the Lightning Labs software.

HTLC-DASH micro payments are then added to the media sending technique.

Payments for content are mandatory and automatic via “hashed timelock contracts,” a basic component of the Lightning Network software. This invariably means the more data consumed, the more payments made. Of course, a distributed system is needed to store content. Options like BitTorrent, IPFS and Blockstack are being

considered.

In his several public presentations on Lightning Labs, Olaoluwa Osuntokun has pointed out that developers using Lightning Network would prefer it to the Bitcoin protocol as issues such as unconfirmed or chained transactions would be nonexistent. This could make micro payments integration with projects effortless.

Best part of his claims is that Lightning Network, when implemented, will unlock amazing new use cases for Bitcoin.

Since going live about a month ago, although still in beta, Lightning Network has demonstrated a significant improvement of situation. At the moment, there are over 1000 Lightning Nodes.

Sometimes, it’s not about how far, but how well. Bitcoin is actually in danger of losing its king of Crypto position if issues like scalability and high transaction fees are not addressed. That’s where Lightning Labs founded by Olaoluwa Osuntokun comes to the rescue.

Faith Obafemi

Exclusive

US States to Take Cryptocurrencies as Tax Payments Regulations For Cryptocurrencies – Not Bans

B

anning cryptocurrencies has not completely gone out of fashion.

There are still a number of countries that have made crypto dealings illegal. The ef-

fects of such bans on the price of cryptocurrencies have, however, reduced greatly. On the other hand, political leaders are beginning to learn what happens when cryptocurrencies are banned. Crypto activities simply go underground and/ or move to more welcoming countries. The countries ban-

ning them simply lose out on the innovations that are coming out of the industry as well as the opportunity to be the leaders in the space. In view of this, we now see more countries reacting more positively towards virtual currencies.

There has been more green Core Magazine

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lights than red shown by the most powerful country in the world in 2018. ICOs are getting more attention from regulatory bodies, but the February 2018 testimony of CFTC chairman Giancarlo at the Senate was a good sign. So is the fact that a whole chapter on cryptocurrencies was included in the economic report issued by the US Congress in March. At the ,state level, we see positive moves from three states namely, Arizona, Illinois, Georgia and Wyoming. These states are at various stages of passing laws to allow the acceptance of cryptocurrencies as taxes.

Arizona, Illinois, And Georgia Move To Accept Cryptocurrencies As Tax

In Arizona, the Senate Bill 1091 was recently passed by the House of Representatives in the state. This follows the passing of the bill by the Arizona Senate on 8th February 2018. With this bill, Arizona locals can pay their taxes using cryptocurrencies the Arizona department of revenue chooses to accept.

The state of Arizona is, however, not going to be long-term holders of these 30

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cryptocurrencies, should the bill eventually become law. The cryptocurrencies are expected to be cashed out within 24 hours of receipt.

Illinois is also considering the House Bill 5335, which would accept cryptocurrencies as payment for taxes. The Revenue Cryptocurrency Bill is to make changes to the Illinois Civil Administrative Code to add cryptocurrencies to other legal tender accepted for tax payments. Behind this Bill is Representative Michael Zalewski.

Just like the state of Arizona, Illinois does not plan to hold the cryptocurrencies for more than 24 hours. It appears no one in government rues the missed opportunity of holding on to the Bitcoins seized during the famous “Silk road” case. The US government missed out on being a large holder of Bitcoins and some huge gains. The decision could be due to problems that could arise from the responsibility of keeping the cryptocurrencies safe. Either way, just like Tim Draper bought those Silk Road Bitcoins, there should be buyers willing to scoop up the cryptocurrencies the governments of these states would be selling.

Georgia is doing same as Illinois and Arizona. With this bill proposed a couple of months ago, the state wants :

“To amend Code Section 48-2-32 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to forms of payment of taxes and license fees, so as to require the state revenue commissioner to accept cryptocurrencies for payment of taxes and license fees; to require conversion of Cryptocurrency payments into United States dollars; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.”

Once again, the state does not intend to hold on to the cryptocurrencies they would receive.

No Cryptocurrency Property Tax In Wyoming

Wyoming is moving in the opposite direction. The agenda in Wyoming is to exclude

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cryptocurrencies from state property taxation. The bill making this possible is the Wyoming Senate Bill 111.

This is very much in line with the state’s tax-friendly policies.

There are two expected outcomes of this action of the State of Wyoming. The first is that it would attract more blockchain and cryptocurrency businesses and professionals. The other is that other states could be incentivized to follow suit to enjoy the same benefits. States competing for cryptocurrency businesses in the future would only be good for the growth of the industry.

What It All Means

Being able to pay taxes with crypto means holders would not have to cash out anytime they have to pay them. We would, however, find out if holders of crypto would prefer paying taxes in crypto or in fiat currencies. If you continue to believe in cryptocurrencies, chances are that you would want to use fiat currencies for taxes and hold on to your valuable crypto.

These steps taken by the above-mentioned states would be key in ensuring that they are not left behind as the blockchain revolution takes place.

This indicates that the states

want to be at the forefront of cryptocurrency developments and position themselves to benefit from its many applications.

Seeing countries and even individual states get involved with crypto also means the fears of governments not allowing the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry to thrive would subside and give room for more innovation in the space.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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Adryenn Ashley | Mixing Dating and the Blockchain Adryenn Ashley – How the Blockchain can Disrupt Online Dating

Adryenn Ashley is an award-winning Film/TV producer, social influencer, blockchain entrepreneur and innovator who has greatly contributed to the popularity of this new technology.

Ashley is ranked as one of the first 100 most influential Fintech people in the world.

In fact, she is currently ranked at #14 by the Rise.Global website. Ashley goes around the 32

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world giving speeches on what are the best entrepreneurial practices to help newcomers start successful businesses. She is also the creator and founder of the blockchain-based dating app, Loly.io.

Adryenn Ashley

University and an MA in Film Production and Finance at the Sonoma State University. She also earned a PhD in Jurisprudence. She has engulfed a lot of professions as she is also an Asset protection specialist, a certified divorce financial analyst and Forensic accountant.

Ashley completed a BA in Psychology at the Dominican

Ashley is best known for taking part in movies such as True Love (1997), Metal (1999) which was an awardwinning work at the Mill Valley Film Festival and Making Metamorphosis (2001), Fly on the Wall and the 2005 documentary called Anarchy Ahead: The Harvesting of American Families. In 2013,

Adryenn Ashley has built her empire working hard. She worked with many different companies and hopped around a few industries. She is a filmmaker, actress, author, business consultant as well as TV host who was born on October 10, 1968.

Blockchain News

Ashley took part as a Host in a late-night show called The f-word.

Ashley also wrote a few books, and in 2008, she published Every Single Girl’s Guide to Her Future Husband’s Last Divorce. In 2009, she published Law of Business Attraction, and Law of Business Attraction and Spotting The Kook. In 2012, she worked along with Anjanette Harper and co-authored the book Spotting The Kooks. Ashley is already writing her new book which is almost ready. In this book, Minting the Future, she focuses on the shift from VC funding to crowdfunding and in the use of the blockchain in several spheres. Around 2015, Ashley hopped into blockchain technology and begun developing Loly.io, a blockchain-based dating app.

Ventures and personal projects

In 1995, she launched Production Company 21st Century Pictures Group that helps filmmakers by providing talent pool. Later in 2006, she began business consultancy company Wow! – a company that helps entrepreneurs get the most media exposure. In 2011, she launched a company

that provides business training around several segments and helps overcome competitors called Red Carpet Results.

She is a board of director SafeGuard Guaranty Corporation and joined the advisory board of social messaging company Kamere in 2013. Apart from that, she is also a blockchain consultant and currently advises about a dozen blockchain companies as well as organises ICO programs.

Loly.io Loly.io is a blockchainbased dating app which focuses on consent and privacy along with the meaning of taking responsibility for your actions.

It is a revolutionary AI driven dating platform that uses blockchain technology and aims to disrupt the online dating industry.

With this dating app, Adryenn Ashley is trying to create a way of making sexual encounters safer, while using a matching algorithm which measures sexual appetites to match profiles, thus making it more enjoyable.

The platform runs an extensive matching algorithm to match users with a sexually compatible partner. After that, the users matched are con-

nected via Instant Video Chat.

This way, users can talk to one another before advancing to a meeting in person. Users also have the option to run a background check on their matches. Once the pair agrees to meet and connect sexually, the platform presents them with a consent agreement to which two parties will need to acknowledge and that will be enforced by the blockchain.

This will be done by a Smart Contract which will also allow a stance where the users can call off the agreement in case they so desire.

The platform is set to be launched for iOS and Android applications with augmented reality capabilities. It will also be delivered in a desktop version which allows enhanced profile matching capabilities.

By using the blockchain and her background in Sexual Education and counselling, Ashley hopes she will deliver the first blockchain consent platform poised to make dating better.

Nuno Menezes

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Hard Forks are Altcoins Says Top Bitcoin Developer Jimmy Song Hard Forks are Altcoins

I

n a recent medium post, Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song asserts that hard forks and not upgrades to a crypto platform’s network.

They’re “altcoins”. Before diving into his explanation of 34

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why he considers them to be altcoins, Jimmy writes:

“Bitcoin is the oldest coin by far and is backwards compatible. That is, the software that was used back at the

beginning can at least in principle be utilized today.”

He then proceeds to state that the flagship cryptocurrency has “no peers” because every other coin out there is just a copycat of Satoshi Nakamoto’s

SPECIAL ARTICLES

creation. The skilled developer takes us back to 2011 when there was an outburst of various coins that came out. He gives the example of IxCoin that was released, which required a premine. As crypto enthusiasts would know, premines are done so that their developers can use them to compensate themselves for their work.

Notably, premines have been criticized because oftentimes the developers are rewarded excessively, when you compare the premine to the total supply.

Namecoin and Litecoin

Jimmy then gives the example of Namecoin and Litecoin, both of which did not have a premine, and made proper announcements so that everyone would be able to mine them. Then the Bitcoin developer writes that 2013 started the wave of ICOS; in fact, Ethereum and Factom had their own ICOs. The wellwritten and easy to understand crypto history lesson by Jimmy then starts to explain what hard forks are.

In case you’re unaware, hard forks are not backwards compatible, thus producing two separate networks.

“Technically speaking” as

Jimmy writes, the coin that starts trading on the upgraded network is referred to as the the hard fork of the coin from the previous version of the network. The developer then gives the example of the most well-known August 2017 hard fork: Bitcoin Cash (BCH). He explains that the Bitcoin ledger remained intact with this hard fokr, but it incorporated a “backward incompatible change.” These changes were a much larger 8 MB block size compared to only 1 MB on the original Bitcoin network. Also, replay protection was added by using a different signature hash.

“distribute” them. This part, Jimmy acknowledges is the “hard” part. With ICOs, he points out that this is taken care of through “social means.”

The ICO development team does this by taking money from interested people and giving them a token in return.

The funds raised via the ICO are then directed toward more marketing efforts and attempting to get the token listed on various crypto exchanges. This, of course, is done to further increase distribution.

Significant Issues that Altcoins Have

“How do they get value at all?”

Other ways to raise funds, according to the Bitcoin developer, is simply by word of mouth or via Airdrops. He explains that Airdrops are handing over coins to a limited number of people according to a specified yet “artbitrary criteria.” A number of wellknown crypto platforms gave away coins via Airdrops such as Ripple and Decred.

He says that there are several ways to give value, but the primary method is to make them serve some kind of use or purpose. You need not just make them “useful”, but you also need to make sure you

After explaining what Airdrops are, Jimmy writes that a hard fork is like a “brand new altcoin”. The key difference though is that with a hard fork, the party in charge of initiating the hard fork

According to the developer, ICOs, altcoins, and hard forks experience the same kind of problem. He states the problem by posing the following question:

Airdrops Explained

by Jimmy Song

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receives an airdrop. Because of this, Jimmy argues that you can think of every hard fork of any coin as simply a completely new coin. He also points out that the original ledger remains intact, but the software for the new coin becomes backwards incompatible.

Altcoins are Ledger + Software

The developer further writes that it is logical to think of a coin to consist of a ledger and accompanying software.

Also, he says that altcoins require some “initial state.”

The ledger can begin with a blank slate, the way Litecoin did. Or, you can use an initial state to benefit the creators the way Bytecoin did. Better yet for the creators, you can begin with an initial state that is sold to the general public – that’s what ICOs do.

But in the case of Bitcoin Cash, the ledger began with the same state that Bitcoin had. After giving a few more examples, which you can read by referring to his medium

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post itself, Jimmy states that altcoins require software, which is pretty obvious. He then adds:

“The software is what validates each ledger and strictly speaking, each combination of backwards-incompatible software and ledger is itself a new altcoin.

What was interesting was that for most of the history of cryptocurrency, the combination of old software and ledger was more or less abandoned.

This changed with the hard fork of Ethereum resulting from the DAO hack.”

He then explains that the people who believed the old version of the Ethereum software was more “fair” chose to stick to it, thus creating Ethereum Classic. By this logic, he says that “every hard fork in any coin creates a new altcoin.”

Here though, with a few final comments, I’d like to argue that a hard fork might technically be an altcoin, but for all practical purposes it is not. For example, we’ve got the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork slated for May 15th. The software upgrade will increase the block size from 8 MB to 32 MB. It will also remove SegWit and bring back the op codes left out by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2009 due to security concerns. One could argue that Bitcoin Cash could become what Satoshi Nakamoto had really wanted Bitcoin to be.

Therefore, I say that hard forks should not really be referred to as altcoins. Moreover, Bitcoin Cash, despite having a lunatic leader like Roger Ver, is actually a legitimate coin with meaningful use cases.

You can now refer to the Jimmy Song’s medium post for a few more pertinent points he makes.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Preserve the EARTH for future generations

https://www.earth-token.com/

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Crypto Market Getting Closer to Mass Adoption

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number of recent developments indicate that governments and traditional financial institutions are beginning to accommodate the rapidly evolving crypto and blockchain industry. This nascent technology, which was first heavily criticized for facilitating illicit activities 38

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such as money laundering and drug trafficking, is now being given serious consideration as a legitimate tool to help pave the way for future innovation and for the betterment of humanity.

Let’s explore and analyze some of the latest cryptotechnology news.

South Korean Authorities Bringing More Clarity To Crypto Industry

Korea Times reported on May 2nd that lawmakers in South Korea are in the process of drafting a bill which will

Blockchain News

introduce a legal framework for ICOs. Ruling South Korean Democratic party representative Hong Euirak stated: “the bill is aimed at legalizing ICOs under the government’s supervision.”

Hong’s comments came during a National Assembly forum dedicated to blockchain technology and ICOs. The politician added that the crypto bill was being drafted with the help of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) and that the main objective of the legislation would be to “remove uncertainties facing blockchain-related businesses.”

The nation’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) along with the Ministry of Science and ICT will closely monitor all ICOs launched by private or public entities.

National Assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun acknowledged the beneficial aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, but emphasized the need to “reduce political uncertainties they face.” Notably, this proposed bill is the first official attempt by the nation’s parliament to counter the ban on ICOs placed by the South Korean government toward the end of

last year.

Not only are governments being pressurized to reconsider their previous hostile stance toward the crypto market, but financial powerhouses like Goldman Sachs are also giving in to the overwhelming demand from obsessive crypto traders. In fact, the New York Times reported on May 2nd that Goldman Sachs is planning to use its own funds to facilitate Bitcoin futures trading for their customers.

Goldman Sachs Board of Directors Approve Bitcoin Futures Trading

Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs are now planning to launch Bitcoin futures trading in the foreseeable future. The NY Times report further states that the financial giant will “create its own, more flexible version of a future, known as a nondeliverable forward, which it will offer to clients.” According to Goldman executive Rana Yared, the bank decided to offer the crypto service due to a lot of interest from their customers in holding Bitcoin as an investment.

While speaking to the NY Times, Rana said,

“It resonates with us when a client says, ‘I want to hold bitcoin or bitcoin futures because I think it is an alternate store of value.’”

Justin Schmidt, an avid digital currency trader, will be spearheading Goldman’s crypto operations. Justin’s previous experience includes working as professional trader at Seven Eight Capital, a hedge fund company.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein had mentioned earlier this year that the bank was considering offering Bitcoin futures to its customers, however, these initiatives would have to be fully supervised and approved

by US regulatory authorities.

In order to remain compliant with regulations, Rana noted that the company was treading quite carefully. The investment banking executive stated:

“For almost every person involved, there has been personal skepticism brought to the table. It is not a new risk that we don’t understand. It is just a Core Magazine

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to put more effort into supporting the development of use cases for digital currency platforms.

There are tons of crypto exchanges operating right now and there are not enough legitimate use cases for cryptocurrencies to complement the heavy trading.

heightened risk that we need to be extra aware of here.”

Unhealthy Speculation in Crypto Markets

Although the above developments are quite positive for the cryptosphere, there’s still a lot of speculation in the crypto market. The following comments by Redditors show that there is still an unhealthy amount of focus and obsession on Bitcoin price: Based on the comments above, it is obvious that there is a lot of focus on how much Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be worth. It would be better if the crypto community tried 40

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Current Crypto Technology Far From Perfect

Due to the highly technical nature of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there is also a lot of confusion regarding even some of the most basic things. For example, it was recently revealed that the 17th millionth Bitcoin was mined and it should be simple enough to know when and if this milestone was reached.

However, that’s not the case.

While many crypto community members were hyped up about the exciting milestone, as indicated by Blockchain.info, Jameson Lopp, the founder of another Bitcoin data website called Satoshi.info, remarked:

“Today I’ve learned that a lot of data sources are incorrectly reporting the total bitcoin supply. We haven’t actually hit 17 million BTC yet.”

What Jameson was referring to here is that Bitcoin miners might not have been able to claim their full block rewards. This was likely due to software bugs and various other technical reasons. Digital Asset Research (DAR) CEO Greg Cipolaro also chimed into this discussion by saying that blockchain data providers tend to use “opaque” techniques to report information.

Clearly, there are a lot of issues to be resolved in the crypto industry. But, they can be considered growing pains at this time. Once cryptotechnology and the ecosystem around it begins to improve and mature, many of these problems should be resolved.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Exclusive

Huobi Token is Surging because notably Use cases Huobi Token; A Brief Intro

O

ver the course of three months, Huobi Token (HT) has almost tripled in value. What could be the reason behind this, especially considering that the HT was launched without an ICO? Yes, the secret lies in Huobi Token and its use cases.

This article aims to explore all the use cases of HT with focus

on its voting features and how users can earn money when they vote with HT. Huobi Token is an ERC20 token hosted on the Ethereum blockchain which basically works as a point system for blockchain distribution and management.

Unlike most other tokens issued via ICO launch, HT are acquired through

myriad means. One of such is purchasing the Huobi Pro Point Card. The Huobi Pro Point card is Huobi’s pre-paid card for basic service chargetrading fees. It costs about $990, and when purchased, user is gifted 1000 HT for free.

There will be only 500 million HT ever, with 300 million of that being set aside for gifting to the Point Card purchasers.

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Earning Money with Huobi Tokens and HADAX Voting

Voting on HADAX using HT is just one of the ways in which HT can be utilized. HT spent on voting for projects are refunded regardless of the outcome. Projects which come out as top three, get to be listed.

Thus, users who vote, will earn free tokens, as a reward, from the projects they voted for, if the projects eventually get listed. That means just by voting one can earn free tokens, a great incentive to purchase HT for voting. Moreover, HT is refunded after voting, regardless of outcome. That’s what you call a classic case of win-win. This is one of the major reasons why HT’s value has been leapfrogging of late as users purchase the Huobi Token to utilize it for voting.

Also, the amount of HT held impacts on whether such project would get listed. This invariably means that projects desiring to have their tokens listed must be ready to HODL substantial amounts of HT.

Different Things You Can Use Huobi Token For

1. Using HT for your trading 42

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2.

3.

4.

5.

will automatically entitle you to a trading discount.

Depending on which level of VIP status is purchased, users can claim discounts during trading, up to 50%.

As a trading pair on Huobi Pro cryptocurrency exchange. Being a crypto asset, HT can be paired in the following options: HT/ BTC, HT/ETH and HT/ USDT. Perhaps, most popular is the use of HT for HADAX voting. We discuss this in details below.

Holders of HT are automatically eligible for free tokens from newly listed projects. Holding HT means you can earn passively, that’s a great incentive to HODL. The projects decide who gets their random airdrops.

Talk about innovative, Huobi Pro is probably the only project ever known to buy back its own tokens.

This has been termed Liquidity Protection, with the aim of protecting users’ interests. Huobi Pro has pledged to buy HTs available in the open market each season. The purchase would be made using 20% of Huobi Pro’s transaction fees profit earned within that period. To answer your

question on what the HTs bought will be used for, they will be held in the Huobi User Protection Fund. The purpose of this fund is to protect users’ interests by compensating for their losses from the fund in event of an emergency like coin being delisted, a hack or developers abandoning the project. As this buyback is done every season, it reduces the amount of HT in circulation, thereby causing scarcity and driving up the value.

6. Practicing the ‘Customer is King’ principle, Huobi Pro regularly conducts surveys made available to only HT holders. Thus, if a particular evaluation process receives a high level of support from HT holders, Huobi Pro would adopt it in its project evaluation process.

Usually, tokens have limited uses such as purchasing the product and services of the project or just HODLing for future profit. Huobi Token, like a cat with nine lives, has numerous uses which has helped in driving up its value is such a short time.

Faith Obafemi

Blockchain News

Ugly Truth About World Crypto Network World Crypto Network (WCN)

W

orld Crypto Network is an independent media organization that gives us up to date news on Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies.

WCN is has been operating since 2014 by creating content

and podcasts with many prominent personalities in the Crypto space, who have been giving their valuable insights.

There is a massive following for WCN since it is unbiased and honest media with the best commentators contributing to the podcast.

Many

famous

Crypto

personalities like Andy Hoffman, Tone Vays, Adam Meister, Jimmy Song and Vortex are actively participating in useful discussions that enrich the users with dayto-day Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency news and updates. There is a massive following for WCN across the globe and people actively listen Core Magazine

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Blockchain News

to WCN due to the unbiased, honest commentary from the world’s most prominent crypto personalities.

World Crypto Network is a non-profit organization that relies only on the revenue from its YouTube channel and Podcast. Followers can also donate Bitcoins to the channel to extend their support and show their gratitude. The motive of the channel is to educate the people across the world about cryptocurrencies and make them understand the disruptive nature of this technology. This media organization is one of the biggest in the crypto space with 56K followers on Twitter and thousands of followers on YouTube and podcasts channels.

WCN is Different

World Crypto Network is different from other media organizations focusing on Blockchain / Crypto news.

Other media tend to be biased and always shill their favorite coins. Noobs who don’t have any idea of this space get diverted and fall prey to many scammers on YouTube and Twitter. Many people disguise themselves as Veterans in this space and quickly grow followers and then misguide 44

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them in the wrong direction.

Many YouTubers try to create hype in a project and try to pump up the price of a coin.

Noobs who get excited, buy the coin at the top and get rekt.

Since this space is unregulated, investors cannot go to the authorities and complain if they lose money.

On the other hand, WCN is unbiased and honest in giving the news and valuable information to their followers.

This is one of the reasons for it to build trust among people and grow a massive following in a short span. People trust this media more than any other media in the crypto space. Also, all the speakers are thoughtful leaders and genuinely knowledgeable in crypto space.

Infighting in WCN

In recent times, the flavor of WCN has changed a bit, and the people from the same media accuse one another. One can differ in opinion and has the full privilege to disagree with others’ views and thoughts, but accusation and personal attacks in the public forum cannot be accepted. These attacks happen publicly on social media like Twitter and Youtube, and this has made WCN look ugly.

World Crypto Network is not a corporation or organization, but an independent media organization where experts from across the globe come and share their valuable insights on cryptocurrencies. So there can be a difference of opinion, and the media empowers each one of them to come out

with their thoughts and ideas.

But this freedom cannot be misused by them to attack one another. This also creates a lot of confusion among the audience when one disagrees with the others’ opinion. If one says a particular thing and the other from the same media negates it, then it will create a negative image for WCN and also creates confusion among the viewers.

Andy Vs. Tone

There are many examples of speakers accusing each other. One such case is Andy Hoffman criticizing and tweeting against Tone Vays all the time on Twitter. Both of them are respected speakers at WCN, but they both accuse each other, forgetting that it will create an ugly picture for

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Andy calling Tone a “King TA FUDster.”

Andy WCN. Below is a tweet from Andy Hoppman accusing Tone as a FUDster, since his TA pointed that Bitcoin is remaining in the bearish zone and might go down further.

The funny part of this episode is that Tone Vays’ trade analysis is also broadcasted on WCN podcasts. If WCN is corporate, it would have fired Andy right after his first tweet, since it goes against the idea of the organization. If Andy feels that the Tone’s TA is wrong and misguiding the followers, he should first ask the admin of WCN to remove them from the channel and then come and tweet against it. Instead, he allows it to be a part of the media and also speaking against it is creating a lot of confusion among the followers.

Imagine if a regular follower of WCN watches Andy’s video blasting Tone’s TA and then the next video is Tone’s TA, then one will go mad and will get confused on who is right and which one to follow.

Below is another tweet from

Many people have warned Andy to be careful and cautious while tweeting against Tone since both come from the same media network.

Meanwhile, others add fuel to the fire by tagging Andy to some of Tone’s tweets and watching them fight on Twitter.

WCN Speakers Promoting Shitcoins

The WCN integrity and respect has suffered after its speakers started promoting some forks of Bitcoin that have received massive backlash from the crypto community.

For example, we have already mentioned in my previous post about Bitcoin Private pump and dump and how Rhett used it to his advantage. The members of WCN are promoting this fork of Bitcoin and Zclassic. Also, Bitcoin Rhodium is another fork of Bitcoin that is going to be launched; this too has been shilled by its members. The project is delayed by months, and they log your IP addresses while claiming your coins from

them, which compromises your privacy. Below is a tweet from one of the developers – Ben Verret mentioning the danger in claiming the coins from them.

Ben We want World Crypto Network to be more responsible and reliable media because its followers can get honest content only from them. If this gets contaminated, people don’t have many places to go since other media are just pretending to be advisors but are only promoting scams in the background.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

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Blockchain News

Coincall Marks Bitcoin Cash as Shitcoin Coincall Market Price Coin Tracker

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oincall is a Cryptocurrency Market price tracker. It is very easy to track one’s cryptocurrency portfolio using this site. It is an investment platform allowing users to handle their cryptocurrency assets. This tracker allows the user to know the 46

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total worth of their investment portfolio. If we own different currency, this tool will help us to calculate the total amount of money we own in any currency of their choice.

Coincall Marking Shitcoins with Symbol

Coincall has started marking coins that are considered as scams as shitcoins. They have a

Blockchain News

separate column that has a symbol with “Pile of Poo”.

If a particular coin has this symbol then that coin is considered a shitcoin.

This is very useful because Noobs won’t get scammed by these coins and will not lose money.

• Plexcoin They have also mentioned that the collective marketcap of these shitcoins comes to a staggering $29.12 Billion. In addition to all this, they went one step further in mentioning the real-time chart of the shitcoins’ marketcap. This is really hilarious.

Coincall labels Explanation on Coincall Exposing Crypto Bitcoin Cash as In their blog, they Shitcoin

have mentioned that the beginning of ICO opened the doors for easy money.

This in-turn helped greed to take over. A lot of dubious projects appeared to steal money from the people. They also added that these projects deliver zero value and in the long term give a bad reputation to the whole of Crypto and ICO space. So they have decided to go public about it.

They mentioned an initial list of shit coins and in that, we can see the below coins • • • • • • • •

Bitcoin Cash Tether Bitcoin Diamond Veritaseum BitConnect Davorcoin Regalcoin Centra

Many were stunned to see Coincall labeling Bitcoin Cash as a shitcoin on their website.

They have given the explanation that this was labeled since Bitcoin Cash was trying to confuse new users and creating brand confusion with Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin Cash was taken as an example of a shitcoin, so we can say that BCH is the flag bearer here.

interview in rage since he felt insulted for calling Bitcoin Cash Bcash. In the description of the video, they have mentioned the below quote

The video below features the main figure behind Bitcoin Cash, Roger Ver. You can judge for yourself if this is the kind of leader you want behind something you invest in : https://youtu.be/oCOjCEth6xI Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

In their explanation, they have clearly mentioned that Bitcoin Cash’s supporters try to use Bitcoin’s name and try to confuse new users. They have also mentioned how they bought the @bitcoin twitter handle and used it as a Bitcoin Cash’s propaganda tool.

They also included Roger’s famous interview with Bitcoin Error Log where he quit the Core Magazine

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Why Ethereum Isn't Going Anywhere The World’s Computer

Considering the fact that a number of projects yet to launch mainnets are sitting on the top 10 list of cryptocurrencies, it can be argued that being a top cryptocurrency these days does not mean much. Ethereum is the cryptocurrency platform, other than Bitcoin, that is being widely used for purposes other than speculation. It is the second largest by market cap and the largest when it comes to blockchain size. Will 48

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this continue to be the case in the fast-paced cryptocurrency world? Will Ethereum remain relevant in coming years or lose out to its numerous upcoming competitors?

Ethereum Killers

There are quite a number of smart contract platforms that have use cases similar to that of Ethereum. EOS, Cardano, Ethereum Classic, NEM, NEO, Bitshares, and Waves are some of the already existing ones. More and more

cryptocurrency platforms are also launching and proposing smart-contract platforms. For instance, Monero plans to come out with a smart-contract enabled second layer know as Tari.

Some of these projects, even the ones that are yet to launch their mainnets have a very huge following and market caps.

EOS, which is on course to launch its mainnet in a couple of weeks is a top 5 ranked cryptocurrency by market cap. Others have working

Blockchain News

Problems with Ethereum

platforms with applications running smoothly. Waves, Bitshares and NEM have wellfunctioning platforms with DApps.

An advantage most of these relatively newer platforms have over Ethereum is that they have had the opportunity of studying Ethereum, taken note of its problems and made attempts to avoid such problems on their own platforms. These new platforms can handle a larger number of transactions per second, are simple and easy to use, and come with arguably better governance systems. For instance, users of the Waves platform can very easily create their own tokens without possessing any special computer programming skills.

The size of the Ethereum blockchain has already gone beyond 1 terabyte. This isn’t great news because users who wish to run full nodes would have to find space on their devices to download the entire blockchain. The huge size of the blockchain, therefore, becomes a disincentive for running a full node and leads to less decentralization of the network.

The scaling problem on Ethereum becomes more obvious each time a popular decentralized application with lots of transactions sees massive adoption. For instance, the popular digital cat breeding and trading game, Cryptokitties, clogged the network after it gained popularity after its release in late November 2017.

On the other hand, smart contract platforms like the Graphene-powered Bitshares have demonstrated the capability of processing 100,000 transactions per second.

An important feature of blockchains is that they are immutable. Ethereum disqualified itself from being consid-

ered immutable after a change was made to the protocol to reverse the “hack” or exploitation of a vulnerability that led to the loss of millions of dollars’ worth of Ether. For many in the cryptocurrency space, this was a serious problem since it went against the whole point of having cryptocurrencies.

The DAO hack is not the only case of a vulnerability being exploited on the Ethereum network. There is quite a long list of similar cases over the years. The Parity hack of July 2017 and the Classic Ether wallet hack of June 2017 are well-known cases. Even though attempts were made to resolve all these issues, the network has often been criticized for not being secure considering the value it holds.

The plans to move from proof of work to use the proof of stake consensus mechanism on Ethereum has also drawn some criticism and concerns.

The concerns are that the proof of stake consensus mechanism is not as secure as proof of work even though the latter is wasteful in terms of energy consumption. The argument is that with proof of work, electricity, which is an external resource is used whereas the staking of tokens or coins Core Magazine

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requires no external resource and is, therefore, less secure albeit more cost-effective and efficient. The debate on which of the two systems is the better is still on. However, many are of the view that PoW is more secure and with better incentives for good behavior because it requires the use of an external resource for mining.

What Really Matters

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The Ethereum network has over 1500 decentralized applications based on it. This indicates that it is very widely used. It is not just the huge market cap and following but real applications being built on the platform that makes Ethereum the top platform for decentralized applications.

This is what separates Ethereum from its competition. As a matter of fact, the main reason for Ethereum being more successful than Ethereum classic

is that there are more applications being built and used on Ethereum. The network effect takes time and is not very easy to achieve. So far, from all indications, it’s not very easy to overtake a cryptocurrency platform that already has the network effect.

With respect to having problems, Ethereum is not alone. The competing platforms do have similar problems as well as problems of their own

Blockchain News

Nejc Kodric | The Cryptocurrency Exchange Pioneer

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t takes dedication, focus and consistency to own the oldest and largest cryptocurrency exchange in the European Union and Nejc Kodric has been able to accomplish this feat. The giant exchange you see today was launched in his garage with his co-founding partner Damijan Merlak in 2011. They started out with an initial capital of one thousand euros, two laptops and a server. But steadfastness and self-motivation

grew the exchange to what it is currently. We can rightly call him a cryptocurrency exchange pioneer.

The Stimuli

Nejc’s love for technology was instrumental in developing Bitstamp into one of the most trusted and highest volume bitcoin exchanges in the world.

Nejc made a move to ensure that Bitstamp became the first fully licensed virtual currency exchange in EU, which was

granted in 2016. A lot of effort was put into the company and the efforts were awarded with the Best Virtual Currency Startup award at The Europas in June 2014.

Nejc, who was born in Slovenia, has a net worth of £112 million. He actually started Bitstamp in Slovenia before moving the company’s registration to Luxembourg. He is a cryptocurrency influencer, a libertarian and an AngelList Core Magazine

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investor. He studied Organization and Management of Information Systems and Economics and prior to Cofounding Bitstamp he owned a computer company which sold components, laptops, etc.

Target Audience

His target for the exchange was European users and he backed up his actions with the following reasons:

“The simple answer would be to concentrate liquidity. Back when we started operating, buying bitcoins in EU for USD was a hassle. You would have to wire to MtGox and pay large fees for a wire transfer, and EUR/BTC markets

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were way underdevel- believes in adopting the best practices. He says, oped.”

Therefore, the company worked on establishing a USD market for Europeans that would have lower fees. To make this possible, Bitstamp introduced the free SEPA deposits along with low conversion rates. This is why Bitstamp is respected in the EU as a Cryptocurrency exchange pioneer who paved the way for others.

Challenges the Way

Along

As a cryptocurrency exchange pioneer, it is often expected that challenges will come along the way. Bitstamp has had its fair share. Last year, a lot of exchanges were faced with regulatory actions.

As the oldest cryptocurrency exchange in the EU, Nejc

“exchanges that do not follow these rules and are unable to comply or take regulation seriously will be those that pose systematic risk. There is a chance that this may result in restrictions being imposed and some of those exchanges might be shut down.”

He also believes that banks are a challenge as owning a bank account when you own bitcoins can be really tough.

But he believes that very soon it will be a thing of the past.

Rebecca Asseh

Blockchain News

Cybermiles | Decentralizing The E-Commerce Market E-

users would get for using the platform.

ybermiles simply wants to put the E-commerce industry on a blockchain. This E-commerce blockchain is to be compatible with the Ethereum platform. Its other selling points are that it is faster and more secure than Ethereum.

This article covers what the Cybermiles E-commerce blockchain entails and what its

The platform comes with the token known as CMT. The Initial Coin Offering ended on 22nd November 2017 with over $30 million raised. At the time of writing, the token was priced at $0.3 on coinmarketcap.com. The same website states the Cybermiles market cap as $191,593,331.

Decentralizing Commerce

C

Underwritten Cobinhood

by

Cobinhood had its own ICO on 13th September 2017.

It is primarily a cryptocurrency exchange but also offers ICO services. Underwriting other ICOs is one of the services Cobinhood provides. They basically want to save you the time and effort you would otherwise put into finding out how legitimate an ICO project is and other legal issues you Core Magazine

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might want to be clarified.

Cobinhood only underwrites ICOs that meet their standards after they are examined.

For instance, with Cybermiles, Cobinhood ensured legal requirements were met and the smart contract code was up to scratch. It is, however, worth noting that Cobinhood itself is still relatively new in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Cybermiles was the first ICO to be underwritten by Cobinhood.

Another ICO patronizing this service was the J Token which had its ICO on 13th March.

We would have to see more of these partnerships being successful over a longer period of time before concluding that Cobinhood has proven itself in terms of delivery of their ICO services. For now, we can just say it’s a plus for Cybermiles to be partnered with them.

How Cybermiles Is Different

The first difference to note is that whiles Ethereum and other smart contract platforms are more general in terms of who can use them, Cybermiles is focused on one particular industry. By focusing on just the E-commerce market, the platform would be more capable of meeting the needs of 54

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enterprises in the space than the more generalized ones.

Supporting the E-commerce platforms is another platform for E-commerce ICOs, a loan marketplace, and an identification platform.

As mentioned in the introduction, Cybermiles is said to be faster and more secure than Ethereum, the most widely used smart contract platform.

Whereas Ethereum handles about 20 transactions per second, Cybermiles has been designed to process at least 2000 transactions per second.

When it comes to security, the Cybermiles team has put in place measures to tackle loss of funds through bugs in codes. This fund recovery mechanism is to help restore funds that might be lost due to vulnerabilities in code.

Cybermiles uses the Delegated Proof of Stake mechanism when it comes to verification of transactions.

With this mechanism, holders of the CMT who stake their tokens get to democratically select those who would handle the process of verifying transactions.

Why Players In The E-Commerce Industry Would Want To Use The Platform The Cybermiles technical whitepaper spells out how it improves on Ethereum in terms of making it “more userfriendly and enterprise ready.”

With its “Smart Business Contracts” a more tailor-made and easy to use platform is created for businesses in the E-commerce industry.

Cryptocurrency projects are increasingly finding ways of rewarding users for their attention. On the Cybermiles platform, users would also get paid to view advertisements.

This benefits advertisers too because it increases the likelihood of their adverts being given more attention by their targets.

Access to multiple Ecommerce platforms is another incentive for would-be users of Cybermiles. With the Cybermiles platform, E-commerce merchants have access to multiple websites or platforms to trade instead of sticking to just one centralized website.

All platforms supported by Cybermiles would be available

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to all users.

A governance structure is in place to deal with bad actors on the platform. If a user is accused by another of wrongdoing, the matter is resolved by way of having other users examine the accusations and rule on the matter in a democratic manner. This is an improvement on the norm of having users of E-commerce platforms removed or banned without sufficient explanation.

There is also Peer mediation as a means of settling conflicts between buyers and sellers on the platform. A peer mediator is any user willing to help resolve such misunderstandings and be rewarded with the CMT tokens.

The Cybermiles platform can also support E-commerce related ICOs. This means players in the industry need not use other blockchains if they have good ideas and projects they want to raise funds for. An advantage of this is that it expands the Cybermiles ecosystem.

Unlike it is on Ethereum where users have to purchase Gas, Cybermiles has no such user fees. This helps encourage more activity on the platform.

Once again, according to the Cybermiles team, this has been done in a manner that does not comprise the security of the network.

Disrupting The ECommerce Industry

In summary, the platform is like an Ethereum network specialized for the E-Commerce market. It is faster, more secure and puts in place incentives to encourage its usage.

The testnet for the Cybermiles blockchain is already live. We are, however, still about half a year away from the set date for the release of the mainnet. We will be following how blockchain technology disrupts yet another industry.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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MaidSafeCoin | A decentralized currency for a decentralized network MaidSafeCoin – a game changer in the internet

The internet is changing. There are many centralized platforms that store the information of their users, who do not know how private their information is kept. We have already discovered cases in which applications and companies have used personal information of their users without their consent, such as Facebook and Google.

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MaidSafeCoin emerges to combat this situation being the world’s first and only autonomous data network.

MaidSafe, based in the U.K., is a young and growing company known for the development and implementation of the SAFE network (Secure Access for Everyone), a secure and next-generation network that may be one of the world’s most ambitious projects. This is the first and only network in the

world that has managed to circulate data independently and escape any type of control.

The current internet is based on centralized servers, owned by a few large and powerful organizations to host our data.

These central points act like honeypots for hackers and advertising companies trying to monetize our data.

Instead of paying a giant corporation for storage on a centralized server that can

Exclusive

be hacked at any moment, the SAFE network wants to use the extra space on the hard drive and the processing power of other users to help others. Pretending to end the dependence of data storage companies like Google.

How does the SAFE network operate?

The network consists of two main users: customers and farmers (farmers). Clients access various network functions such as navigation, data storage or money transfer. While farmers store and care for their data until they are needed, that is when they may receive a reward for their service.

All stored data is encrypted.

When someone uploads a file to the network, it is divided into parts, hashes and cyphers.

These fragments are distributed randomly on the network.

If someone who stores part of their information is disconnected, copies of the data are created so that the information

cannot be lost.

How does MaidSafeCoin work?

MaidSafeCoin is the incentive mechanism behind this safe network and is a tool to keep the network moving. It allows anyone with a computer to be rewarded by providing unused resources to the network, and this reward depends on the quantity and quality of storage capacity they provide. It’s not just another cryptocurrency.

In fact, it doesn’t even use a blockchain.

When a user wants to access their data, farmers compete to be the first to find it for the user and offer it to them. If a farmer makes it to the front of the queue, maybe he/she will win a MaidSafeCoin. When completing the Proof-of-Resource, the name of a SafeCoin is generated randomly on the network.

If this does not belong to any-

one then it will become yours, but if you already have an owner you will be left without a reward. The network also allows the exchange without cost and instantaneously of Safecoin as currency.

The current state of MaidSafe MaidSafe expects its currency to have value and serve to incentivize miners to provide their additional resources as it will require that Safecoin upload data to the network and use applications. The current price of MaidSafeCoin is $0.43 USD with a market capitalization of approximately $ 197,782,148, as shown on the CoinMarketCap page.

The SAFE software download is free, the accounts are easy to create and it is easy to establish the resources that are available.

For more information visit their official website.

Angel Figueroa angelfigueroa@ coregroup.info

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THE BEST ETHER GAMES IN THE UNIVERSE! http://www.vdice.io/

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India Becoming Notorious for Cryptocurrency Crimes and Scams Cryptocurrency Crimes Run Rampant in India

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he cryptocurrency market seems to be getting closer to mass adoption. Unfortunately, however, crypto-related crimes

and scams are on the rise as well. Notably, Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Jagdish Patel has been arrested due to suspected involvement in a Bitcoin extortion case. Patel is currently on police remand and was taken into custody by the state CID crime unit.

A high-ranking CID officer issued the following statement in regards to this incident:

“As majority of the plot is clear on the basis of investigation so far, the attempt is made to establish the Core Magazine

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evidences. Thus, the rule of the accused is crucial. From the search at residences of Patel’s confidante in Amreli, we found two briefcases from which digital and paper evidences including bank documents were recovered. Scrutiny of the documents is on as we are trying to prove the money trail from Patel to other accused in the case.”

Disturbingly, it appears that this “money trail” is beginning to uncover other criminal activity. Surat, where this incident has been reported to have taken place, is a city located in the Indian state of Gujrat.

The Times of India notes that Surat has been quite a popular place for cryptocurrency transactions. Also, the report mentions that large sums of black money has been “converted into digital currency.”

Many More Cryptocurrency Crimes in India The incident mentioned above is not the only recent cryptocurrency related crime 60

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that has taken place in India.

In fact, a Chennai resident became the target of a crypto scam in which she lost INR (Indian Rupees) 17 Lakhs, which is roughly the equivalent of $26,000. According to the victim, Indirani, she was contacted by P. Madesh, a representative of Wow Digital Solutions. She was then lured into “investing” into a “Wowcoins” cryptocurrency.

The company directors told her that Wowcoins would appreciate in value nearly 1000 times their present value in only 3 years. This, in itself, should be a red flag for anyone looking to invest their hard earned money. These returns are simply not realistic and are usually “promised” by malicious scammers. However, presumably due to lack of research and careful consideration, Indirani chose to part with her cash.

Another red flag was that the company directors said Wowcoins would “beat” Bitcoin. This claim by anyone should not be taken seriously, as most sensible crypto watchers would know. After handing over a total of around $26,000, the woman is now unable to contact the company. She reports that their office has been closed since January. Also, she

says that “e-accounts” that were supposedly “set up” for their clients, or shall I say victims, were all fake.

Cryptocurrency Crimes Everywhere

It must be noted that the most ruthless criminals do not discriminate who they target.

Their main goal, of course, is to do whatever it takes to get innocent and unsuspecting people to part with their hard earned money. At Crypto Core Media, we also personally came across a possible scam where a LinkedIn user was attempting to “sell” Bitcoins worth nearly $500 million.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Jackson Palmer - Providing Free Crypto-Education to Newcomers Jackson Palmer – Providing Free Education to Cryptocurrency Newbies Jackson Palmer is one of the

most prominent figures in the world of cryptocurrency. He is the creator of the popular cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) which was launched in 2013. When Palmer created Dogecoin (DOGE), he ended up starting a revolution that

would change the cryptocurrency ecosystem forever.

Who is Jackson Palmer?

Jackson Palmer is a product growth and data hacker at Core Magazine

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Adobe. Palmer is also an expert coder and technologist who was responsible for the development of Dogecoin (DOGE) which became one of the most popular cryptocurrencies to date.

In 2014, Jackson abandoned the Dogecoin project, but he still keeps some connections with the community. Nowadays, he is working as a product manager in the e-commerce industry and recently launched According to his webpage, a Youtube channel where Jackson Palmer is a he provides free education on cryptocurrencies and the “Product and data blockchain technology. Jackson geek at Adobe by day. still keeps following the crypto Coder and producer by community and comments important events via his Twitter.

night.”

Jackson is passionate about the growing management of the complete customer life-cycle/ journey. He has been working on building data-driven decision-making software as well as designing go-to-market methodologies and strategies.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that features a Shiba Inu dog as its mascot. Dogecoin was launched on 6 December 2013 as a “joke currency”, but rapidly gathered a robust online community. According to coinmarketcap, in January 2014, Dogecoin already counted with a market capitalisation of US$60 million. Unlike many other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin schedule was set to have a fast initial coin production.

In 2015, Dogecoin had already around 100 billion coins in circulation. The following years were established to have the issuance of an additional 5.256 billion coins each year.

quickly had the interest of the community, because it allowed micro-transactions to be made with little to no cost. The cryptocurrency gained a lot of traction when it was realized that it could be used as an online tipping system. Moreover, Dogecoin rapidly became very popular and was responsible for bringing a lot of new blood on to the ecosystem.

Jackson’s contribution to the community

A lot of people would say that Jackson best contribution to the cryptocurrency community was DOGE. DOGE was actually an amazing contribution to the community as it enabled a new tipping system and micro-transactions to be made with little to no cost.

After abandoning the DOGE project, Jackson Palmer kept his ties with the Dogecoin community but went on ahead to start a new phase of his crypto career. In 2017, he finally jumpstarted his Youtube Channel where he offers free education on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

According to his LinkedIn webpage, his technical expertise is partly set in significant data analysis along with product growth strategies for SaaS and marketing services. He also advises on software and hosted services companies. Jackson holds a lot of experience in the strategic planning for increasing usage of cross-segment mobile and desktop apps as Palmer was also a strong well and is considered an exOn June 30, 2015, there critic of all scams and frauds in pert in planning and building were already 100k million the ecosystem. In fact, this was “customer focus techniques.”

Dogecoin in circulation. Doge one of the reasons that made 62

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him leave DOGE. Following a move from a scammer that ended up running away with a lot of the community’s money, he felt betrayed and decided to leave the project. Right after abandoning Dogecoin, he started a campaign where he

adverted for the dangers in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and tried to give a picture of the several ways scammers use to get easy money.

Palmer believes there is an increasing need for a cultural

shift within the community which can enable a new refocusing in solving real problems and new methods to avoid the shadow of fraud.

Nuno Menezes

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Mauritius Central Bank Governor Exposes Coindesk article Mauritius Central Bank Contradicts Coindesk

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he Mauritius government has made it clear that it is against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The government has taken a stand to stay away from them at any cost. They are also trying to convince people that this new kind of money is a threat to their economy and also useful for money laundering. It is evident from this speech that Mauritius wants strict regulation of cryptocurrencies.

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The speech below was made by the Governor of the Mauritius Central Bank. It exposes the false news repeatedly being published by Coindesk about Mauritius being a crypto friendly country. It is always recommended to follow the media outlets that are honest rather than following ones that are simply exciting to read. Core group always places emphasis on honest media content coming right from the source and does not believe in attracting readers using false and misleading news.

Central Bank Governor’s Speech on Cryptocurrencies

The Governor has clearly stated that there is an overreaction to the illusory attraction and an under-reaction to reality. He indirectly mentions the fake news of Coindesk and calls it “illusory”. He mentions that Cryptocurrencies attract anonymity and helps people to launder money.

“Cryptocurrencies are found to be attractive to those seeking anonymity. It means

Blockchain News

what it means. This is rightly an occasion for me to clear the cloud surrounding the Bank of Mauritius stands about cryptocurrencies” He further adds that the bank is investigating the use cases of blockchain technology in regular banking, but related to the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies there is a huge question mark in the central bank community.

The governor doesn’t deny the fact that the cryptocurrencies eliminate fees and other charges, but at the same time helps people to launder money.

He adds that there are 1300 cryptocurrencies and the number is more than that of national currencies in existence.

The central government finds it difficult to regulate them and also in recognizing the valid ones in the “vast jungle”.

He raises the below questions and mentions the difficulty in regulating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

“In a world characterized by the dense traffic of post-truths and fake news, policymakers need to consult research studies produced by responsible organizations. Truths are turning out to be underpowered antibiotics….”

“How do we recognize them and who is who in this vast jungle?

The above mentioned was And how do we effec- indirectly pointing to the tively regulate them?” Coindesk article mentioning But he reassures that the bank is very digital-minded and was the first to go for realtime electronic payment and settlement in 2000. He added that they will be launching a National Payment Switch next year and it will be a pillar for Mauritian digital economy.

“While the argument that cryptocurrencies eliminate fees, charges and other costs of intermediation is no doubt valid, the He strongly reiterates that argument that they are a very convenient the Central Bankers are viewmeans of laundering ing Bitcoin and altcoins having money is equally valid” the potential to make the fuHe further states that cryptocurrencies are only a speculative investment playing almost no role as a means of payment.

It doesn’t physically exist and is invisible, the governor notes.

the responsible organization.

ture financial crisis even more devasting and the risk associated with digital currencies are far from minimal. Finally, he requested the public to avoid Fake news and only consult research studies produced by

that Mauritius being friendly to Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies.

Fake and False News Everywhere

The above excerpt of the speech by the Central Bank Governor reiterates that they are against cryptocurrencies.

There are also rumors that they plan to freeze bank accounts of those entities dealing directly or indirectly with cryptocurrencies. This is one such example of the media reporting false news on cryptocurrencies.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Cortex | Artificial Intelligence On A Blockchain Blockchain And AI Tech In Vogue

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he seventh episode of the popular TV show known as Silicon Valley was entitled “initial coin offering”. This is not new. Since 2017, Lots of TV shows have featured or referenced cryptocurrencies in one way or the other. “The Big Bang Theory”, “Mr. Robot”, “Billions” and “The Ellen Show” are all a part of this growing list. Kanye West even mentioned Bitcoin in a 66

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recent interview. These are signs of cryptocurrencies going mainstream. Another area of technological advancement that is hot is Artificial Intelligence.

There are currently lots of investments pouring into developments in this field as well. In fact, the 5th and 6th episodes of Silicon Valley was centered on AI. This article is not a review of TV shows but a look at Cortex, a new cryptocurrency that puts AI on the Blockchain. Let’s see if this token could be a hit.

About The Token

Being ranked 72nd on coinmarketcap.com barely a month after the launch of a project is quite impressive especially when we are not talking about a Bitcoin fork or airdrop. One Cortex (CTXC) token is currently worth $2.1.

The current price is more than double the $0.83 price of 17th April. With a circulating supply of $ 149,792,458 CTXC, the market cap of Cortex stands at $ $313,806,212.

Blockchain News

Smart AI contracts

Cortex basically wants to build a smart contract enabled blockchain for the purpose of creating machine learning models. Users of this Cortex machine learning platform would be able to create AI decentralized applications or AI DApps.

Now, the need for AI smart contracts stem from the fact that smart contracts, as we have them on Ethereum and similar platforms are too simple, and incapable of handling AI programs. On the Cortex Virtual Machine (CVM), the said AI programs can be supported. The difference between this and the Ethereum Virtual Machine is that the CVM is optimized with added features to be able to support more complex AI DApps.

Why Have AI On A Blockchain

One obvious advantage with a decentralized AI platform is that there is shared models between all users worldwide.

Centralized organizations developing AI on the other hand keep their models to themselves.

Sharing of models also leads to faster improvement and

development. This is because any problems or malfunctions can be detected by other users and improvements made much quicker than it would be in the case of centralized organizations.

Team and Partnerships

the Cortex project. Out of the listed exchanges on the Cortex website, Huobi, OKex, CoinEx and Coinbene have already listed Cortex. Once again, this is impressive considering the fact that many new cryptocurrencies have difficulties getting listed on major exchanges.

One thing you notice when going through the members of the Cortex team is that most of them have computer science and engineering backgrounds.

Various members of the team have experience in the fields of machine learning, deep learning, cryptography, finance and distributed systems.

The three top academic institutions working with Cortex on this project are Tsinghua University of Beijing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Carlifornia. Behind the project is research done by academics from these and other universities.

The partners of Cortex listed on their official website are mainly investment funds.

The interest from that many investors of note adds more legitimacy to the project. As a matter of fact, the private round of fundraising for the project was oversubscribed.

This meant there was no need for an ICO. CTXC tokens were, however, distributed to encourage community support on various social media platforms.

The Cortex Project In a Nutshell

There are also academic institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges involved with

With the exception of the not so simple explanation of what it is they are working on, it is difficult to find faults with this project. This can, however, be excused if they deliver on their promises. If the steps taken by the team so far is anything to go by, we can expect them to deliver results eventually.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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Know Your Crypto Terminology | Part 1 Crypto Terminology – Altcoins | Mainnet | Testnet | Coin | Token

J

ust like any discipline or field of study and industry, you are bound to come across technical terms and terminology that is closely tied to whatever it is you’re reading or researching about.

The people who are immersed in the particular subject that you are trying to discover and learn about usually have their own language. So if you’re a noob, you’ll have your work cut

out for you as you try to learn all the lingo that people in the ecosystem you are studying already know and might have even created some of the words themselves. In this brief article, we will go over a few words that are so very often used in the crypto space, so that you are up-to-date on your Crypto Terminology.

Let’s Get Down to the Crypto Teminology Basics

First off, there’s just some basic jargon that it is a bit obvious to decipher. Namely,

altcoins are all coins other than the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Hence the name: alter(native)coins.

Then, you might have come across mainnet, which is short for main network. Mainnet refers to the production-ready and live blockchain of a cryptoplatform. Meanwhile, testnet is short for test network, which is like the beta (or test or experimental) version of a blockchain network. Note that testnet and mainnet have become a part of crypto terminology now, but can also (and were originally) be used to describe just about Core Magazine

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any technology’s platform, not necessarily crypto technology.

You are sure to have come across the word “coin” during your crypto journey. The word coin should ideally be used to refer to a cryptocurrency whose main purpose is to serve as a mode of payment (money).

Bitcoin and Litecoin are prime examples of cryptocurrencies that are often used and accepted as a medium of exchange.

Usually, it is also easier to gain a conceptual understanding of what a coin is versus a rather complex cryptocurrency that has more advanced use cases, like the EOS platform.

Tokens Vs Coins

It is best to refer to a cryptocurrency as a token if it has some utility beyond functioning as replacement for money. For instance, the ERC-20 tokens by Ethereum have some very practical utility in the cryptosphere. In fact, ERC-20 refers to an actual standard that a token complies with and its implementation is based and programmed using its codebase and design principles.

Getting a bit more advanced now, you have permissioned and unpermissioned blockchains. While blockchain 70

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is usually the word used to refer to a data structure that has been cryptographically programmed to function as a public distributed ledger, distributed ledgers may also require their users to have permission to use them. Hence, the name “permissioned” blockchain; so, it’s not publicly accessible and requires authorization to be accessed. Meanwhile, there are unpermissioned blockchains as well, which are free for all and anyone can access them at will.

This leads us to opensource code.

Opensource Code

Blockchains and cryptocurrency do not exist magically. They have a creator. These creators are called programmers who use programming languages to create blockchains and digital currencies. The language that you are reading this article in is a language as well, but it is a natural language.

A natural language is any language spoken, written, and understood by human beings.

Whereas, a programming language might also be understood by humans, but it’s the language that computers understand, after it has been broken down to long strings of just 1s and 0s. Code written and accessible to everyone, so

they can contribute to it, is referred to as opensource code.

So, this would be some more general techie terminology, which is a superset of crypto terminology.

Notably, there’s not much really that computers can understand. The only thing a computer actually does, and does much better than any human being is: add and subtract really, really fast.

(Multiplication and Division are just an extension of basic addition and subtraction.)

That’s all it does, even the most sophisticated and powerful supercomputers are simply able to add and subtract super fast. They are not yet capable of original thought and action.

The added functionality that we see and use thanks to the efforts of application developers is actually us telling computers what do every step of the way through lengthy code.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Blockchain News

Bitfinex vs Poloniex | Exchange Battle Many cryptocurrency exchanges are competing with each other to take the leadership position. In that list, Bitfinex and Poloniex are two major exchanges that come in the top list having the highest trading volume. Many new coins and tokens try their level best to get listed in these exchanges to get more volume and become a leading crypto-

currency or token. Let’s have a detailed comparison between the two to know which one is better and will become the leader in this space.

Bitfinex – One of the World’s leading Exchanges

Bitfinex is one of the biggest exchanges in terms of trading

volume. It has a very intuitive design and straightforward interface to trade. Many traders and trading analysts prefer Bitfinex over other exchanges.

The Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices on Bitfinex are taken as standard price globally.

High volume is very important for best bid and asks prices, and that’s why traders prefer to trade on big exchanges like Core Magazine

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Bitfinex.

The exchange is based in Hong Kong and has a daily trading volume of more than $1 billion. The exchange doesn’t support any fiat currency, but supports Tether (USDT) – a US dollar backed cryptocurrency that has value pegged at a dollar value.

Poloniex – Best Exchange for Altcoin Trading

Poloniex was launched in 2014 and is based in the US. The exchange was recently acquired by Circle, a company owned by Goldman-Sachs.

Poloniex is an exchange that is well suited for altcoin trading.

This exchange is also very userfriendly and has a very easyto-use interface for trading.

Since this exchange is owned

by Goldman-Sachs, Poloniex wants to be the first registered exchange, fully compliant with SEC. The exchange has a vast number of altcoin trading pairs, and it is best for trading altcoins. The wide range of altcoins pairing is helping the exchange to grow exponentially since the altcoin market is growing at a fast pace. The altcoin trading options avail74

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able are Tether, Bitcoin, Ether, and Monero.

Another important feature of the exchange is its security.

The exchange provides high security and is multilayered for sending or receiving funds.

Also, the user funds are stored securely offline, and only the funds required for active trading are online. This minimizes risks and makes it difficult to hack the funds stored in cold storage. Users are allowed to enable 2-FA (two-factor authentication) for login and while sending funds one will get the email notification, and the funds are released only after the user confirms the email approval.

Bitfinex vs.

Poloniex

Both Bitfinex and Poloniex are very big exchanges that are leading in global volume. It is important to compare the two exchanges for traders to analyze and choose the one that is best suited for their trading preferences.

Advantages over Bitfinex :

of

Poloniex

Many altcoins pairs to trade and benefit.

Liquidity is high especially

for altcoins Very secure and impossible to hack.

Going to be regulated exchange fully compliant with SEC Variety of altcoins to trade.

The exchange is transparent since it is backed by Goldman Sachs.

The advantage of Bitfinex over Poloniex : Very high liquidity Very low fees The exchange has been hacked but is now very secure.

Poloniex has poor support compared to Bitfinex.

The website is fast and fluidic compared to Poloniex.

Both the exchanges add value to the cryptocurrency space since they are serving millions of traders and investors globally. Exchanges like Poloniex and Bitfinex are very important centers for pulling in liquidity into the crypto market. Even though both the exchanges have some disadvantages over the other, one needs to keep in mind that big exchanges like this are going to rule the world globally when Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies go mainstream.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

GOOD NEWS for Bitcoin Payment Options as it's becoming more Practical Bitcoin Has a Growing and Supportive Ecosystem & Economy

Bitcoin (BTC) is becoming a lot more spendable for European digital currency traders and investors. There’s an entire ecosystem and economy being built around not only the flag-

ship cryptocurrency, but also its successors such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH). A number of excellent crypto payment processors such as Paytomat and Wirex are now widely available throughout the progressive continent. Moreover, any merchant that accepts Visa may take advantage of accepting alternative medium of exchanges such as Bitcoin

(BTC) and a number of other widely-used cryptocurrencies.

Regardless of what you may hear in the news about regulators cracking down on various crypto-related scams, the reality is that Bitcoin (BTC) is a legitimate medium of exchange. It’s still in its early days, but that does not mean it cannot be used to pay for Core Magazine

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typical things such as travel tickets or even VPN services.

Moreover, Bitcoin provides a safe, secure and decentralized means to exchange value. This excellent use case is often overlooked and instead of focusing on developing a supporting ecosystem and technologies around Bitcoin, there’s heavy emphasis on launching crypto projects and coins which do not have a legitimate chance at being successful.

Paytomat and Wirex Offering Crypto Payment Processing

It appears that a lot of people have taken this advice such as the creators of Paytomat and Wirex crypto payment solutions. Due to their efforts, Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash holders are now able to spend their cryptocurrency in numerous retail outlets and even restaurants. Notably, debit cards that provided a way to pay with cryptocurrency were cancelled toward the end of last year.

However, this small step back did not get in the way of many crypto-related companies partnering with payment service providers. And now, it appears that crypto debit cards are making a comeback.

Crypto Debit Cards Making a Comeback

Wirex recently sent out crypto payment cards to the UK and a number of other European countries where customers had been waiting for these types of cards to return. Additionally, Paytomat which now supports ZenCash, provides payment solutions for 11 (total) cryptos. However, currently Paytomat is used mostly by Eastern European countries and that too mainly restaurants – but there are over 330 restaurants that use Paytomat. This is still commendable and now reporetedly the payment processor has plans to enter the Western European markets.

The better approach at this time would be to focus more on learning just how the Bitcoin protocol works and figuring out ways how you can contribute to providing more real-world use cases for the flagship cryptocurrency. In other words, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Just stick to the fundamentals and you will find that there are numerous ways to launch a business without having “an out of this world” type coin which claims it will be better than Bitcoin.

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Speaking on his company’s expansion, Paytomat CEO Yurii Olentir noted:

“Amsterdam is one of the most cryptofriendly places, so we chose it for our kick-off in Western Europe.

With millions of tourists visiting every month, cryptocurrencies can be a very convenient payment method. For example, a transaction in Bitcoin Cash takes just a couple of seconds and the fee is miniscule.”

It appears that payment solutions and the number of merchants willing to transact in digital currencies is increasing despite harsh probes from the US Justice Department into Bitcoin (BTC) price manipulation. Although these crack downs send market prices downwards, it cannot take away from the fact that even long established banks are beginning to take cryptocurrencies a lot more seriously.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Does Johnathan Corgan Hate Blockchain Technology?

Since the invention of Bitcoin, there has been a battle of the supremacy of some sort between Bitcoin and blockchain. While some folks are of the belief that Bitcoin will not be what it is today if not for blockchain technology, quite a number of cryptocurrency devotees are of the opinion that blockchain technology will be useless if it wasn’t made use of when implementing the

Bitcoin protocol. Now, while both parties have come up with reasons to support their claims, this bone of contention remains inconclusive. To a lot of believers in blockchain technology, blockchain is the future of financial technology. However, some Bitcoin enthusiasts such as Johnathan Corgan believe that blockchain is just an ingredient in the invention of Bitcoin and will be nothing

without digital currency.

Johnathan Corgan Johnathan Corgan is the president of Corgan labs. He is also a machine learning researcher, a Bitcoin developer, a navy submarine vet, a pilot, and a cypher-punk. He is one of the many cryptocurrency devotees that believe that although blockchain provides Core Magazine

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the transparency that Bitcoin needs and is an important ingredient in the invention of the flagship cryptocurrency, it is not the most vital ingredient.

What does Johnathan Corgan hold Against Blockchain Technology Just after the end of Consensus 2018 conference, Johnathan Corgan took to Twitter to air his view on the lack of attention given to Bitcoin.

Although he was not the first person to air his displeasure towards the outcome of the Consensus 2018 conference, he gave an in-depth explana-

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tion of why he thinks that blockchain is nothing without Bitcoin. To him, rating blockchain ahead of Bitcoin can be likened to geeks being bashed publicly by popular kids that secretly try to look into their assignments.

What is Blockchain Technology Blockchain technology can be likened to the internet. It is a technology that has the ability to store information that cannot be corrupted and is believed to promote transparency. With blockchain technology, the authenticity of any business related transactions can be ascertained. So far, there have been no cases of in-

valid transactions, unapproved exchanges and machine errors.

The many qualities of blockchain technology have proven to be very inbstrumental to the overall success of Bitcoin.

It has also made some individuals consider it to be much bigger than Bitcoin which brought it to limelight. In as much as there are valid points that support the claim that the blockchain technology is more valuable than Bitcoin, there is still no conclusion as regards which is greater, blockchain or Bitcoin.

Ben Benedict

Blockchain News

India and Pakistan take Irresponsible Approach Toward Cryptocurrency Market India and Pakistan Unwisely Take Hostile Stance Toward

Cryptocurrencies India and Pakistan, countries which are nuclear powers and once under British rule,

two both were have

had their share of problems and conflicts. Both nations vehemently accuse each other for wrongdoing and fight constantly over heavily disputed territory, Kashmir. However, Core Magazine

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that’s an entirely different topic from what I am about to discuss with you.

Due to the rise of the global cryptocurrency market, regulatory authorities have had their work cut out for them when it comes to regulating the trade and use of these blockchainbased currencies. Some progressive world leaders such as Switzerland’s government and the United States are beginning to embrace digital currencies and are also in the process of providing their citizens with a proper and safe regulatory environment to trade and invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Backward Thinking and Irresponsible Attitude

Unfortunately, the governments of India and Pakistan have acted irresponsibly by not working cooperatively with local cryptocurrency traders and not taking adequate measures to educate their citizens about the vast potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, the technology that underpins these revolutionary new digital assets.

While, in the past, many world leaders have said that 80

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Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not legal tender, the reality is that a growing number of merchants have begun to accept digital currencies as a form of payment. For instance, large online retail company Overstock.com has been accepting Bitcoin as payment for a number of years. You can even purchase a package from Express VPN using Bitcoin.

Notably, you can even pay for porn from Pornhub or Brazzers using Verge crypto-platform’s XVG.

Crypto and Blockchain Becoming Mainstream

As Nasdaq gets set to launch a regulated crypto exchange, State Bank of Pakistan and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have instructed local banks not to serve customers who are dealing in cryptocurrencies.

This is in stark contrast to what US states like Arizona are doing. Arizona and other US states are willing to accept cryptocurrencies as payment for taxes. On the other hand, RBI and State Bank of Pakistan choose to remain ignorant by prohibiting crypto trading and any transactions related to them.

There are a number of reasons why Pakistani and Indian authorities have decided not to accept crypto transactions.

One of the main reasons is that it takes time, money and effort to set up an environment that is appropriate and safe for people to use a new technology.

Due to high levels of corruption and lack of accountability among almost all high-level government and bank officials, precious resources that should be channeled toward serving the deprived citizens of both countries are snatched up by the “elite” for personal use and gains.

Indian Citizens Lash Back at RBI

Just like the citizens of South Korea fought back against an attempt by their authorities to ban crypto trading, Theblockchainstory platform in India has filed a petition against RBI in the nation’s Supreme Court.

Notably, the Writ has been filed under Article 32 of the Indian Constitution, which aims to “provide a remedy for violation of fundamental rights.” Theblockchainstory founder and petitioner Satyam Tiwari asserts, citing Article 14 & 19 (1)(g) which serves to protect inalienable rights such as “Freedom to Trade

Blockchain News

and Business ” and “Right to Equality” in all matters, that the Impugned Circular put forth by the RBI fails to meet any objective.

Moreover, the petitioner states that the reserve bank has not provided sufficient proof or verifiable empirical data which would justify its hostile stance toward the crypto and blockchain ecosystem. Further, the petitioner has rightfully said that this move could potentially impede technological advancements and stifle innovation. The Writ filed by the petitioner is in response to an April 6th, 2018 statement by the RBI which instructed all financial institutions and merchants to refrain from engaging in transactions involving cryptocurrencies.

Exact Words from India’s Central Bank

Here’s an excerpt from the official reserve bank orders:

“In view of the associated risks, it has been decided that with immediate effect, entities regulated by RBI shall not deal with or provide services

to any individual or business entities dealing with or settling VCs (virtual currencies). Regulated entities which already provide such services shall exit the relationship within a specified time.”

There’s always the argument that the bank might have taken this decision to protect its citizens from fraudulent activities related to cryptocurrencies. There have recently been a growing number of incidents during which individuals have been a victim of a crypto-related scam. However, this is not the appropriate way to respond to such incidents.

Not the Right or Responsible Way to Respond

There’s a lot of money laundering and illicit activities that go on using fiat currency.

So, does that mean we should stop using fiat money? Of course not. What responsible and competent governments do is create proper regulations and safeguards to ensure the safety and well-being of their citizens. And, this is exactly what India needs to do.

In response to RBI’s negligent attitude, petitioner Tiwari remarked: “This step by Reserve Bank of India is an obstacle to innovation which will force businesses to move out of India.”

Tiwari’s statements are quite accurate considering crypto exchanges such as CoinSecure, BuyUcoin, and Zebpay have already looked toward moving business operations abroad where they might find a more friendly and progressive working environment.

Pakistan Follows India in Hostile Stance Toward Cryptocurrencies

Pakistan has followed in the footsteps of its Indian neighbor by attempting to restrict cryptocurrency transactions.

State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) warned Pakistanis in early April (last month) against using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Pakcoin. The post stated that anyone found using cryptocurrencies to send money abroad would face legal action. Acting in a similar manner to the Indian central bank, the SBP ordered local financial institutions, payment service Core Magazine

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providers, and merchants to refrain from engaging with customers who deal in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

The SBP further stated that cryptos are not considered “legal tender”; therefore, it cannot grant any authorization or license which would allow any business or individual to conduct cryptocurrency transactions. The Pakistani reserve bank issued the following statement:

appropriate response to this would be to provide proper education and awareness regarding the responsible use of cryptocurrencies. Let’s not think of them as a way “to get rich quick”. Instead, let’s think of productive ways to use them and learn about them.

Another point brought up by the SBP is that there have been a number of hacks of digital currency exchanges, which have led to huge financial losses for numerous investors. Sure, this is a valid concern, but it does not mean that we should stop transacting in cryptocurrencies. Rather, we should try to contribute toward learning about the technology and using all the necessary precautions to safeguard our crypto accounts.

“Virtual currencies/ coins/tokens provide a high degree of anonymity and can be potentially used for facilitating illegal activities. Also due to the ambiguous nature of Virtual Currencies, 2-Factor no legal protection or Authentication recourse is available to Two-factor authentication any individual.”

(2FA) provides an additional

SBP Has Raised Some Valid Points

Admittedly, the SBP has some valid reasons for not accepting cryptocurrencies. That being the crypto market is extremely volatile and failure to invest without proper research could lead to large financial losses. However, the more 82

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layer of security to your online accounts. There’s the popular Google Authenticator that people can use to enable 2FA. So, in addition to providing your password upon log in, you also need to provide a randomly generated 6 digit code before from Google Authenticator in order to be able to access your email. Similarly,

peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange LocalBitcoins.com uses 2FA (both mobile based and paper-based) to verify login credentials.

2FA is optional on LocalBitcoins, but this is where YOU come in. People need to take responsibility for their personal safety as well. Being careful about your online habits and how to protect your private information should be everyone’s top priority. Let’s not rely or depend on others for our own personal safety.

Let’s all learn to be more independent and self-sufficient.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Huobi Labs Providing a Nurturing Environment for Blockchain Startups Huobi Labs Inks Deal with Tianya Community

Huobi Labs recently revealed that it will be working with the Tianya Community to introduce a $1 billion Global Blockchain Industry Fund.

Tianya is among China’s most popular internet forums. The

partnership was announced via a signing ceremony.

The partnership involves creating a “Global Cultural and Creative Blockchain Lab” in the island province of Hainan. According to a week old press release on Huobi’s official website, this initiative aims to reform the economy in

support of the Hainan Special Economic Zone. Typically, these types of trade zones remove many trade-related taxes and make it more lucrative to conduct business for foreigners. Moreover, the press release stated that this project would complement China’s “new era of socialism characteristics.”

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Hainan Province Moving Toward Rapid Innovation

The 30 year old Hainan Province has been focusing extensively on reformation efforts and its community and administration has been quite receptive to innovation.

So, this sandbox project could potentially attract talented professionals from across the globe. This initiative extends beyond simply the Hainan Province since China’s President Xi Jiping has been closely working on this project with his administration, making it one of his top priorities.

Is China Rethinking its Stance on Crypto?

Just like South Korean lawmakers have been forced to retract their hostile stance toward cryptocurrencies, it appears that Chinese politicians might also be in “backtracking mode.” As Crypto Core Media reported a few months back, China attempted to ban crypto trading, particularly centralized exchanges. But now with developments such as this, it appears that China does not want to skip out on all the awesome crypto technology.

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Notably, Huobi Group was only launched 5 years ago, but has already introduced a number of notable products such as: Huobi Autonomous Digital Asset Exchange (HADAX), Huobi Pro & OTC, Huobi China & Huobi Mining Pool.

The hot company now plans to enter Europe by setting up some of its branches in London.

Presumably in an attempt to compete with Binance, Huobi – the third largest crypto exchange – features Huobi Labs (there’s Binance Labs too), a place where cutting-edge blockchain projects and ideas can grow and be realized.

This is done by providing the resources necessary for blockchain startups to become a thriving business.

Roadmap – 2018 Based on the WeChat moments of Li Lin, the CEO of Huobi Group, the following is to happen in the coming months: Huobi China headquarters will shift to the Hainan Ecological Software Park. This is probably so that the company can work more closely with the Tianya Community, which is already situated in Hainan

Province.

Establish strategic partnerships with other leaders in the Blockchain Ecosystem.

Launch a global blockchain research institute.

Construct a 40,000 square meters building for advancing business operations Finally, launch the $1 billion Global Blockchain Industry Fund.

Although there is heavy censorship in China, the country with their hardworking population never really wants to be left behind when it comes to adopting and developing innovative technology.

As most would know, China is set to surpass the United States to become the world’s leading economy in terms of GDP. However, considering that China’s population is four times that of the US, the United States should remain a dominant superpower even in the distant future. Nevertheless, China will surely becoming a stronger contender for superpower status as the years go on.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

ByteCoin and Binance Involved in Market Manipulation

B

ytecoin (BCN) is in the news again for its listing on Binance, and this helped in its price surge by 130% today.

But there was a widespread speculation in the social media that Bytecoin and Binance were involved in market manipulation. Let’s discuss this in detail.

History of Bytecoin

Bytecoin is another privacyfocused coin like Monero, Zcash or Dash helping in hiding users’ transactions and concealing senders’ addresses.

Bytecoin was started in 2012, and it was the first to implement the Cryptonote algorithm.

Monero and Dash are forks of

Bytecoin. Many big exchanges have listed BCN, and this has helped in its adoption. Monero forked from BCN, citing the reason that the latter is highly centralized with 82% of the coins being premined and held by some unknown actors.

Controversy in Core Magazine

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Biance Listing

Bytecoin got listed today on one of the biggest exchanges in the world: Binance. This, in turn, helped the price of the coin to surge by 130 %. But, experts and crypto community point to many red flags regarding this listing and also the price surge that followed.

It was widely reported that 693 million BCN were artificially created out of thin air.

And social media was abuzz with reports that this 693 million was then given to Binance for getting it listed. The news spread like wild wire all across the social media and below is a tweet from one of the people following it.

Bytecoin In short, 700 million was printed out of thin air and paid as bribe to Binance for listing.

Bytecoin and Binance Involved in Market Manipulation

Another controversy that 86

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was widely shared in social media is that the Bytecoin management and Binance were involved in the inorganic price rise of Bytecoin to an extent of 130% in a short period of time. We would like to explain it in detail to our readers on what might have happened with Bytecoin (BCN), as it was said and shared in social media that it coule be one of the most sophisticated pumps and dumps.

BCN was trading at around 72 satoshis on both HitBTC and Poloniex; there was a surge of 30% when the news broke out that it would be listed on Binance. When it was listed on Binance, the price was 300 satoshis and it slowly rose to 2320 satoshi on Binance, whereas the price remained the same on HitBTC and Poloniex at 190 satoshis. To put this into perspective, the circulating supply of BCN is 183,878,867,869 (taken from CMC), whereas the current price on Binance is 0.22$. This puts BCN on a market cap of $40 billion; right on the third position, between Ethereum and Ripple.

Withdrawals from HitBTC and Poloniex were not working nor were the BCN web wallets. When checking their

blockchain explorer, no new blocks have been mined for the past 2 hours. Since the time trading started, only 46 blocks have been mined, containing a total of 997 transactions. The number of transactions that went through seems very small for a coin that just went up over 32x in a few hours. Thus, most investors are not able to sell their BCN on Binance.

This still caused a 150%+ surge on exchanges such as HitBTC and Poloniex.

Not saying that the Bytecoin team is involved, but it seems very shady that their coin got listed at a time that (nearly) no one can move their token towards Binance.

More importantly, we think it’s strange that Binance still listed a coin that is (nearly) impossible to move around and thus easy to manipulate.

Not only by listing BCN, but also by keeping trading enabled while there’s such a huge price discrepancy between different exchanges, and also while there’s no ability to arbitrage it. We’ve seen the same kind of pumps happening before on coins that couldn’t be moved around, for example, Bitcoin Diamond.

Anger on Social Media Many expressed their anger on social media. Below are

Blockchain News

some of the angry tweets.

Exchanges like Binance can be more careful and responsible during the listing of new coins to avoid such issues.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

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Linda X | A Scam-Free Token Platform

A

Token Platform For Linda

Information coming from the Linda team tells us about their intention to create a token platform. The leaders of the cryptocurrency have decided that the way forward 88

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for Linda is to come out with a platform that would support other tokens like the Ethereum platform does. In this article, we go into the details of this announcement and why the Linda team believe their Linda X token platform would be

better than the already existing ones.

About Linda Token

The announcement does not seem to be having much of an effect on the price of

Blockchain News

Lindacoin. The price has stayed relatively stable since the announcement was made earlier today.

The cryptocurrency has a circulating supply of about 9 billion Linda and a market cap of $14.2 million. The price stood at $0.00158 at the time of writing. This is a fall from the January 2018 heights of about $0.012. However, if you bought at 0.00032 in July 2017 then you probably have no worries.

Lindacoin trades on 7 exchanges including Cryptopia, which contributes over 90% of its trading volume.

What Would Be Unique About Linda X

One thing the Linda token platform, Linda X, would be doing differently is that the tokens to be supported by the platform would be vetted. This step is aimed at preventing fraudulent projects from being launched on the platform in the first place. This seems like a compromise on decentralization in order to have more legitimate projects and avoid loss of investors’ funds.

Linda would also be very

involved with the tokens that would be hosted on its platform. Projects to be supported by the platform would receive assistance in various ways to increase chances of successful delivery of solutions.

The assistance to be provided by Linda X would include development support. This means even teams that do not have the technical know-how to create ERC 20 tokens would be able to do so on Linda X. Additionally, teams that choose to build their token projects on Linda X would be able to use all features of the Linda app. The team behind Linda expect these incentives to attract more projects to the Linda X platform. It should be interesting to see what a scam-free token platform with assistance for projects would look like.

Lending Platform

Aside from the token platform, the Linda team also has a lending platform in the works.

The purpose of this platform, according to the announcement, is to allow holders of Linda tokens to lend them on the platform.

Details on how the lending would be done and what lenders would get in return are, however, yet to be made public.

Preparing For The Launch

In anticipation of the upcoming changes, the Linda whitepaper is being updated to cover all the new developments. Information on the upcoming token platform and lending platform would be included.

There are also behind the scenes discussions with potential partners taking place at the moment. This is to attract more projects when the platform finally goes live. The date for the launch of the new additions to Linda is expected to be set and made public once all the above are taken care off.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article, and please take some time to check out our monthly magazine with 100% original content!

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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Dan Larimer | From Bitshares To Steem To EOS Dan Larimer

Dan Larimer has been a successful entrepreneur with businesses in the area of software. When it comes to cryptocurrencies, he has been actively involved with Bitshares, Steemit and now EOS. He has been coming out with innovative solutions using cryptocurrencies over the years.

At the moment, he serves as the chief technology officer of 90

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BlockOne and CEO of Cryptomex. BlockOne is the organization behind EOS whereas Cryptomex focuses on the development of blockchains and blockchain applications.

Before Crypto

Dan has a bachelor of engineering certificate in computer science from Virginia Tech.

His adventure with computing did not begin at Virginia Tech, but in his childhood, when he was exposed to computers

and began experimenting with them. This led to him developing an interest in building things. In addition to this, Dan Larimer learned about Economics and got into libertarianism and volunteerism.

All these, coupled with his desire to be his own boss set him on the path to becoming the important innovator he is in the cryptocurrency world.

Albeit being an entrepreneur, Larimer’s motivation to

Blockchain News

get into cryptocurrencies was not monetary gain but rather the idea of a peaceful world devoid of violence. Virtual currencies were a way of achieving this goal in Dan’s view. While researching into this, he found out about Bitcoin in 2010 and became one of the first people on the Bitcoin forum discussing the technology.

As Dan got to understand more about the technology, he became aware of Bitcoin’s scaling problem and the fact that it could not be easily used as a multipurpose platform.

Creating Bitshares

Bitshares was Dan’s attempt to create a cryptocurrency that could scale and have multiple uses as well. In 2014, with Charles Hoskinson, Dan Larimer secured funding from Bitfund venture capital firm and created Bitshares.

Bitshares’ Graphene-powered blockchain is capable of handling 100,000 transactions per second. The platform also comes with a decentralized exchange (DEX) and distributed autonomous companies (DACs). The DACs are companies that are more decentralized, open and global.

Next Was Steem

Dan Larimer left Bitshares because he felt it was impossible to attract more people to adopt the cryptocurrency without making core changes to it. He cited funding as another problem that forced him to leave. Larimer did not walk out of the cryptocurrency community but started a new project.

This new project was Steem, a blockchain-based decentralized social media network.

Steem was easier to sell as an idea because it had incentives for participation. Steemit is the social media platform built on the Steem blockchain. It has attracted even people with no idea about cryptocurrencies simply because of the incentive for sharing content. Steem is also Graphene-powered and thus can handle a huge amount of transactions in a second.

Steem has been quite successful so far. Lots of new users can’t wait to be approved to join the platform. The platform is one of the few that have been touted as the answer to be centralization problem of social media giants like Facebook.

Would He Leave EOS Too?

EOS is Dan’s latest project.

It is already in the top five list of cryptos by market cap.

The EOS mainnet is yet to be launched but investors seem to be aware of the potential impact it would have if successful.

With EOS, developers can build fast and easy to use blockchains and smart contract platforms. As explained in this article, the platform would be more of an operating system.

The EOS platform is also being built to be able to scale to handle up to a million transactions per second.

Blockchain technology is still young. In these early days, it is the work of innovators like Dan Larimer that would help us see where weaknesses are and where new opportunities for applications exist. Dan has, however, said that there would be no reason for him to leave EOS since he could simply build any project he wanted on the EOS platform in the future. Hence, the EOS community need not fear his departure for further experiments in the future.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Nathaniel Popper | Digital Gold Author Detailing Bitcoin History

N

athaniel Popper

Nathaniel Popper is a San-Franciscobased journalist specialized in covering finance and technology. Popper worked for the New York Times and was the author of one of the best-selling books on Bitcoin, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the inside story of the 92

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Misfits and Millionaires.

Who is Nathaniel Popper?

Nathaniel Popper was born in Chevy Chase, Maryland in 1979. He is a famous journalist working for the New York Times. Popper studied history

and literature and graduated from Harvard University in 2002.

He is an experienced writer who dedicated himself to cover the field of innovation, finance and technology. Before that, he was covering the Wall Street action and mainly wrote about

Blockchain News

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

Before joining the New York Times, he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, the Forward and Let’s Go Travel Guides.

He now lives in Oakland with his family, but while he was living in New York, Popper was mainly covering financial matters. It was when he got acquainted with Bitcoin that he started to write about cryptocurrency, blockchain and financial technology firms like Square, Credit Karma and Social Finance.

He then later authored one of the most popular books on Bitcoin – Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires. This is his only book on the digital currency subject, but along his career, he has published all sorts of articles on the matter.

Nathaniel Popper – contributions to Bitcoin

Apart from authoring one of the first and most popular books on Bitcoin, Nathaniel Popper has been a Bitcoin evangelist and has made a lot of contributions to the public understanding of digital currency.

He generally provides basic

knowledge of the concepts surrounding cryptocurrencies for The New York Times.

He has met with Terri Gross on Fresh Air to discuss the history of Bitcoin. He cohosted an episode of Planet Money about Bitcoin’s recent struggles, and much of his reports are featured in a popular documentary called Banking on Bitcoin. Lately, Popper was the responsible for the production of a documentary series for TechCrunch, entitled, Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain. Popper is also one of the figures featured in a Report documentary called the Future of Money.

Digital Gold – Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires

Trying to Reinvent Money is one of the first books ever written about Bitcoin, as well as his only book, though he has been writing a lot of articles on the subject.

significant amount of Bitcoins.

This first article woke his curiosity leading him to spend time researching the true nature and origins of Bitcoin and the blockchain. The knowledge gathered gave him the push to write Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires. The book was edited and published in the UK by Penguin and in the U.S. by HarperCollins in 2015.

In the book, Poppers tells the history of Bitcoin – who the inventor was, and the whole mystery behind him. He also goes through the big players in the ecosystem, the early adopters, the developers and all the dramatic events throughout the years until 2015. Digital Gold was reviewed and praised by the Financial Times, Bloomberg, The New York Times among a few other places. The book was also pointed out for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year as well as the New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

Nuno Menezes

Poppers first “met” Bitcoin after writing an article describing how the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, had managed to gather a Core Magazine

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ZenCash | Cryptocurrency Platform Built to Serve Humanity

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Cr yptocurrency Platform to Protect Human Rights

ZenCash is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency platform that uses the zero knowledge proof protocol. It’s one of several cryptos, such as ZCash and ZClassic, that use this 94

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protocol to hide transactionrelated information, in order to protect the privacy of users.

In addition to offering features that enable secure and private transactions, ZenCash aims to provide:

“a distributed blockchain system leveraging the latest censorshipevading techniques, fully encrypted communications, and a social and

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governance model in the privacy-focused crypto. ZenCash. So, you can use this privacy-focused token to designed for long term Notably, ZenCash is a fork conduct transactions through viability.”

The excerpt above is from the first version of ZenCash’s whitepaper.

The document further states that the cryptocurrency platform will focus on protecting inalienable human rights such as the right to privacy.

ZenCash also plans to help people exchange ideas and create value in a secure environment.

Positive Reviews from Industry Leaders After being launched on May 30th, 2017, the ZenCash platform now has a market capitalization of well over $100 million. It has also received positive reviews from the Digital Currency Group (DCG), a very large crypto investment company that owns Coindesk. Commenting on ZenCash’s vision, DCG founder Barry Silbert said that the cryptocurrency platform was on his company’s “conviction list”. From this, we can safely assume that DCG has made substantial investments

of Zclassic, which was a fork of Zcash. There are a number of (additional) noteworthy features that ZenCash has such as a built-in voting system. And, just like Bitcoin, there is a 21 million cap on the number of tokens. There was no ICO held to launch this cryptocurrency platform and no premine. In case you’re unaware, a premine is carried out by the developers of a crypto in order to secure some of the tokens or coins for themselves, usually to compensate themselves for their work.

Support From Industry Leaders ZenCash can now be securely stored using the Ledger Nano S crypto hardware wallet. As most crypto traders would know, the Ledger Nano S is considered one of the best hardware wallets in the digital currency market. It offers support for a number of major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum.

Another crypto industry leader, Paytomat, which provides payment processing services for digital currencies, now offers support for

easy-to-use Paytomat. Currently, Paytomat is used by approximately 150 retail companies and most of the major cryptocurrencies are supported such as Bitcoin (BTC), Nano, Waves, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and a few others. Commenting on Paytomat’s decision to support ZenCash, the crypto platform’s co-founder Robert Viglione stated:

“ Z e n C a s h ’ s integration as a form of payment in the Paytomat platform represents a critical step forward in making Zen becomes a more widely adopted and easily accessible cryptocurrency. We are confident that this partnership will incentivize more users to adopt ZenCash as a means of secure and private payment and advance our mission of promoting financial freedom around the world.”

Meanwhile, Paytomat CEO Yurli Olentir noted Core Magazine

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that ZenCash’s focus on user privacy was in line with their objectives. Olentir added that he believes cryptocurrencies will become a popular medium of exchange in the foreseeable future. Additionally, the Paytomat CEO stressed the importance of creating “fiat-tocrypto gateways” by partnering with the leading point-of-sales (POS) providers, while also helping merchants process cryptocurrency payments.

Future Outlook for ZenCash

Based on these recent developments, I think it would be well worth your time to seriously consider looking into ZenCash. Please also note that this article is not meant to be a comprehensive guide and explanation as to what this promising cryptocurrency platform is all about. It’s meant to promote further discussion and awareness.

For more technical updates on ZenCash, please refer to the

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company’s newest whitepaper.

And, you can look forward to more news about this platform right here on Crypto Core Media. Our next article will cover ZenCash’s partnership with IOHK, a leading R&D company that focuses on distributed systems and cryptography.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Ethereum Could Become As Pervasive as Apple Apple Co-Founder Says Ethereum will Be As Influential As Apple Computer programmer and co-founder of Apple Computer Steve Wozniak recently drew comparisons between Ethereum and Apple. While speaking at the WeAreDevelopers conference in Vienna, Steve said that in due time Ethereum would become as

pervasive as Apple. According to a post on Forbes, Steve came across cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum in their “early days.”

The tech pioneer says that he currently does not hold much crypto, only 1 Bitcoin (BTC) and two Ethereum (ETH).

He adds that the only reason he holds some crypto is to actually try using it to pay for things. Notably, Steve has previously described blockchain as “the next major IT revolution

that is about to happen.” He says that cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that underpins them will mature within the next 10 years. Many crypto experts, such as exJPMorgan head of blockchain efforts Amber Baldet, share the same opinion. In fact, Baldet has referred to the blockchains of today as “1960s internet”.

So with the passage of time, we will probably see much better versions of blockchain.

Core Magazine

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Bitcoin More “Genuine and Real” than the US Dollar

The Apple co-founder referred to Bitcoin as an asset which is superior to the US dollar and gold. Steve made these comments at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The reasoning behind his claim he gave is that there’s only a limited supply of Bitcoin (BTC) that can ever exist (21 million). This, according to Steve, makes the flagship cryptocurrency “more genuine and real” compared to the almighty US dollar.

The American inventor even used the word “phony” to describe the US dollar

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since he claims that it’s often “manipulated” due to political decisions. When discussing real estate, Steve said a house or property has monetary value and even decades later, it remains a house (or property) that has value. Meanwhile, he said there might be a finite supply of gold, however:

University. There are currently 31 “Woz” coding camps located throughout the United States. Working alongside the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak can be considered one of the leaders of the personal computer (PC) revolution during the 70s and 80s.

“Bitcoin is even more mathematical and regulated and nobody can change mathematics.”

In fact, both tech gurus developed the first Apple computer back in 1976. Apart from Steve’s contributions to Apple, he also helped invent the world’s first universal remote.

Steve’s Continued Contributions to The Tech World In addition to being the cofounder of Apple, the tech entrepreneur has launched a coding school called Woz

Source: Forbes article on Steve Wozniak Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Our social Media @ccm_house www.facebook.com/cryptocoremedia/ https://plus.google.com/102527442008724559166?hl https://discord.gg/ADKFEqM

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Coindesk Misled Us On Venezuela's Petro Is The Petro Real?

Coindesk is under fire again.

This time it is for publishing fake news articles on Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency. The reality on the ground in Venezuela differs greatly from the news reported by Coindesk.

Most Cryptocurrency news websites, in order to get more views, try to publish articles that are exciting to read but not necessarily honest. In this article, we point out the differences between what was 100

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reported on Venezuela and the reality on the ground.

Coindesk Article on Venezuela

The Coindesk article mentioned that the Venezuelan president was launching a youth bank to be funded by their own cryptocurrency “Petro“. It went on to state that the Petro cryptocurrency was launched in February 2018 and was backed by oil. Below is the quote from the magazine.

“Venezuela is launching a youth bank to be funded by the state’s controversial petro cryptocurrency. Announced Thursday by the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, the country will set up a bank for students and young people that will begin its operations with 20 million petros, according to news source Telesur.”

Maximo Exposing Fake News

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Maximo, a Venezuelan resident, was on Adam Meister’s Youtube show to explain what was actually going on in the country. He mentioned that all the articles that get published

by Coindesk / Cointelegraph were not true reflections of happenings in Venezuela.

Maximo clarified that President Nicolas Maduro, in his press conference, did promise to give $1.2 billion in Petro to start a new bank for young people. He added that it was just a quote from the president.

In reality, decisions are yet to be made regarding the launch of such a youth bank in the country. He also warned people to be careful with the articles that are published by Coindesk and Cointelegraph, since they are often far from the truth and are focused on getting more views. According to him, the media did not do the research to find out the truth, but just quoted what the government or president mentioned in a press conference.

The Reality In Venezuela

Maximo explained the reality on the ground in Venezuela, in spite of the danger of him being harassed by the authorities for exposing the truth. He

mentioned on the show that the government was restricting citizens from having a free market. The latest out there is that no one can bring in Bitcoin miners or mining rigs unless the importer is an official working for the government.

Adam Meister further questioned Maximo on the existence of the Petro Currency. Maximo replied that the Petro was launched on the NEM blockchain and not the Ethereum blockchain. There was also no evidence that the government is selling nor had he found anyone using it.

Does Petro Really Exist?

Another interesting part of the Petro issue is that a few months back, when Maximo appeared on Adam Meister’s show, he explained that the registration website for claiming Petro for Bolivar was having some Javascript issues. The issues are yet to be rectified as of now. The government has not yet fixed the errors even several months after launching Petro. There is a huge disconnect between reality and what is being reported to readers.

Zack Voell, one of the panelists on the show, also

mentioned he noticed that the Petro had not yet moved from the initial addresses and wondered if it was being used as a medium of exchange. Maximo clarified this too. According to him, there might be only two or three transactions that might have happened so far. He also refuted president Maduro’s claim that he had sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Petro to the people.

There are no transactions backing the claim. So, in short, we can say that Petro doesn’t even exist in reality. Coindesk, however, keeps writing articles about it to lure more readers.

The above revelation is evidence that the mainstream media in crypto make use of the hype surrounding the crypto community to make quick bucks but fail to report the truth. This is generally bad for the entire crypto community.

Below is the video in which Maximo talks about the situation in Venezuela. https://youtu.be/-IxHFiaISPg Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Agrocoin | The Mexican cryptocurrency backed by the habanero pepper

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grocoin | The Mexican cryptocurrency backed by the habanero pepper Mexico represents a wide variety of options for agricultural production, such as

corn, chilies, avocado, wheat, among others. For Mexicans, the habanero pepper is one of the spiciest in existence, and is essential for Mexican cuisine.

There are many companies that market and harvest habanero peppers; and the company

Amar Hidroponia was the first to create an agricultural cryptocurrency based on the commercialization of hydroponic habanero pepper.

Amar Hidroponia was born three years ago to promote the Core Magazine

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Mexican countryside and currently has 120 hectares of land, 50 of them in production and 80 in process. Amar Hidroponia visualizes an ecosystem where people from all over the world can participate in agribusiness projects in Mexico and the Americas. That´s why Rodrigo Domenzain, managing director of Amar Hidroponia, created a new cryptocurrency called “Agrocoin”.

Agrocoin is an investment model that thanks to Blockchain technology and smart contracts, allows the investor to participate in the profits generated in a Production Unit of Habanero Pepper. Because “each token represents one square meter of crop”, mining would not be an activity related to Agrocoin. The value of this cryptocurrency is based on the production and sale of these chili peppers.

“Today we only have 5 hectares for Agrocoin, but up to date 30 new investors are integrated. Those who come to invest can do so with only 500 pesos (around 25.5 dollars) and will have a revenue of 170 pesos ($ 8.7 dollars) per year, ” said Domenzain.

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Suitable for all types of investors In the words of Domenzain, this investment is affordable to anyone who is interested in a type of productive asset that can guarantee a return. Armando Navar, public accountant, is one of these investors.

He bought a few square meters of land in Cancun, Mexico to obtain a yield through the production of chili. In exchange for his capital injection he received Agrocoins.

Navar thought it was a good investment, because there is a productive asset behind this virtual currency: the Habanero pepper.

of the investment opportunities that are offered.

“I needed to know if the company I was going to invest existed, if it was set up and how feasible it was to offer me those returns,” says Navar.

The Agrocoin is aimed at small investors, and those who wish to participate in this business model must register on the platform https://agrocoin. com.mx/signup/. Then they must wait for an agent to be contacted who evaluates and makes a plan to integrate them into the investment model.

Amar Hidroponia expects to sell 500 million pesos (almost $ 26,000,000 dollars) in Agrocoins.

“It’s not speculation.

The word “cryptocurrency” is just a name” says Navar. Before making the decision to invest, the accountant Angel Figueroa traveled to the state of angelfigueroa@coregroup.

Quintana Roo to know info the planting area and how the project was progressing. Due to the many frauds that have been committed in the crypto world in so many different ways, people should be alert to most

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Nick Szabo | a Cryptocurrency Legend Known Around the Globe Nick Szabo

Best described as a cryptocurrency legend, Nick Szabo is one of the most influential people in blockchain. Although Nick Szabo might not be a name that is considered

world famous, the name “Nick Szabo”is a name that is well known by cryptocurrency and cryptography devotees. The cryptocurrency legend, Nick Szabo is responsible for the ideas, Bit Gold, “a direct pre-

cursor to the Bitcoin architecture”, and smart contracts. He is also considered to have laid the foundation for the invention of Bitcoin.

Nick Szabo is both a computer scientist and a legal Core Magazine

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scholar. He obtained a degree in computer science from the University of Washington in 1989; he also holds an honorary professorship at the University of Francisco Marroquin.

Nick Szabo and Bitcoin It is a generally accepted fact that Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of world famous digital currency, Bitcoin. However, what remains unknown is who exactly Satoshi Nakamoto is. In as much as no one has made claims to being behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto, rumors have it that Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin. Although Nick has denied this over and over again, lots of cryptocurrency devotees are quite convinced that Nick Szabo is the face behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The reasons for these convictions are; GOOD NEWS for Bitcoin Payment Options as it’s Becoming More Practical

Bit Gold Some years before Bitcoin was created, Bit Gold, a digital currency was proposed by Nick Szabo. Apart from having 106

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some very close similarities, the same group of people were contacted for both the Bitcoin project and the Bit gold project for both advice and feedback.

Similar Content According to a report by Gizmodo, there are indications that Szabo and Nakamoto have some marked similarities in their writings. Some of the similarities between the writings of Szabo and Nakamoto are their phrasings, their mannerisms, and a closely related writing pattern. In addition to having similar phrasings and mannerisms, both Nick and Nakamoto gave very closely related reasons why the digital currency, Bitcoin should be taken very seriously and should be of very high value. Although it is very likely that two different people with very similar interests will come up with the same reasons in support of a subject, the uncanny similarities between the arguments of both Nick and Nakamoto point to the fact that they were most likely written by the same person.

Conclusion Over the years, there has been lots of evidence which

point to the fact that Nick Szabo is not just a cryptocurrency legend, but also the founder of Bitcoin. However, in the mist of all these evidence, none is overwhelming and none has provided any accurate proof of Szabo’s involvement with Bitcoin.

Ben Benedict

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Critical Vulnerabilities Exposed in EOS Blockchain | Could Delay June 2nd Mainnet Launch

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ritical Vulnerabilities Spotted in EOS Blockchain

Qihoo 360 – an cybersecurity firm based in China – has uncovered a number of vulnerabilities on the EOS blockchain. Potentially, these vulnerabilities could make EOS nodes susceptible to attacks from remote entities, according to a report published

by Qihoo 360. In the report released on Tuesday May 29th,

the internet security company states that EOS developers have been informed and that the EOS mainnet might not go live, unless these vulnerabilities are removed.

Per Chinese news media company Jinse, the EOS team requested that these vulnerabilities not be disclosed to the public while also claiming that the vulnerabilities had been removed. Qihoo 360’s report published on the Chinese

Weibo news website claimed that an attacker could potentially write code within Smart Contracts, which would allow access to a supernode on the the EOS network. The code, per the report, could be easily entered into a new block on the EOS blockchain. After which, the bad actor could gain control of all nodes on the blockchain.

EOS Technical Core Magazine

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Vulnerability

Easy Access to Users’ Private Keys on EOS Blockchain After being able to control all nodes on the EOS blockchain, the attacker would

also gain access to users’ data since he would have access to their private keys. Additionally, the bad actor would control all the cryptocurrency on the EOS blockchain. He/she could even begin to mine other cryptocurrencies on the EOS network.

Per the Qihoo 360 team, these vulnerabilities pose “unprecedented security risks.”

As noted by the company’s researchers:

“the discovery and disclosure of this loophole will cause the blockchain industry and security peers to pay more attention to 108

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the security of such issues and jointly enhance the security of the blockchain network.”

EOS Might Be Easily Hacked

As most crypto platforms are, EOS is open-source so anyone can view its source code. Its smart contract based network is often referred to as “Blockchain 3.0”. The stated goal by its developers is to enable computer programmers to create dApps (decentralized/ distributed applications) on its blockchain, similar to TRON and Ethereum.

Also worth noting: the vulnerability is a buffer out-ofbounds write problem which is present in the functions called

by EOS nodes in order to

process smart contracts. Here’s a timeline, which reports the vulnerabilities, put together by Yuki Chen from Qihoo 360 and Zhiniang Peng: –> EOS Out-of-bound Write Vulnerability – Detected May 11th, 2018 –> Full Exploit Demo of Compromise EOS Super Node – Completed: May 28th, 2018 – Reported to EOS: May 28th, 2018 –> EOS Fixes Vulnerability, But Fixing NOT Complete – Reported: May 29th, 2018 Sources: EOS Vulnerabilities Exposed https://www.jinse.com/ news/blockchain/197227.html https://weibo.com/ ttarticle/p/ Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.infoshow? id=2309404244993110866922

Innovating in crypto news

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Bitcoin Price Could Surge As Jim Rogers Predicts Great US Recession Economic experts like Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are predicting a bigger bear market and higher interest rates for the US economy ,which is quite bullish for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Let’s look into their

prediction for the US economy and how this could propel the rise of Bitcoin.

Jim Rogers Predicts Bigger Bear Market

Jim Rogers is an American businessman and a financial commentator. He has also writCore Magazine

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ten many best-selling books like “Hot Commodities” and “Street Smart.” His financial commentary and his economic viewpoint are mostly based on Austrian School of economics.

In his recent interview, he has predicted that there will be an extreme bear market coming within next two years. This is quite bullish for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since people will try to move their wealth to safe havens like gold and Bitcoins.

Jim Rogers is a businessman and investor living in America.

Investors listen to him and also follow his advice since he is considered to be quite experienced and knowledgeable on investment and current economic trends. He said in his recent interview that everything starts small, while everyone seems to be too busy to notice it. For instance, in 2008 Iceland went bankrupt and no one took note of it since it is a small country. This led to the systematic collapse of the banking industry, and finally, we entered the bear market with the fall of the Lehman Brothers.

The bear market doesn’t happen suddenly overnight, but it forms slowly, and only those who don’t see it coming 112

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are surprised. Jim Rogers is also of this opinion and says it may take a year and he adds that he can see it coming and points out that there are a number of companies that are going bankrupt in China. Also, the banking system in the republic of Latvia collapsed recently.

There are all indications that the bear market could be right around the corner.

Roger says that there might be several reasons that might trigger the next recession and says he is not yet sure if the current trade war, real war or any other reasons will trigger the next economic collapse.

But he is confident that if the next bear cycle comes, it will be the worst in his lifetime. The primary reason for it is that the debt of many countries has skyrocketed. His final advice to the public is that they should only invest in things that they understand and stay away from investing in things that they do not know anything about.

Peter Schiff Predicts Interest Rates About To Shoot Through the Roof

Peter Schiff is a famous American stockbroker and

financial commentator like Jim Roger. He is the Chief Operating Officer of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. Schiff also voices his strong support for the Austrian School of economics.

Peter Schiff in his recent speech in a conference titled “Calm Before the Storm” has also emphasized that the current US economy is at the edge of recession and interest rates are going to shoot through the roof.

Peter mentioned that the US stock market hit its peak in February 2018. He also said the US dollar had the worst January in 30 years that triggered the stock market sell-off. He added that the US government predicted 5.4% GDP growth in first quarter of 2018 but ended up getting 2.2%. This scared the stock market investors and led to the sell-off.

Peter also pointed out that the US government introduced the tax cuts and at the same time passed the spending bill. Increasing the spending but decreasing the earnings has taken a toll on the US economy. At present, the US is running at a deficit of $100 billion dollars a month. This puts the deficit at $1.2 trillion deficit a year. Peter notes that the borrowing is much higher

Exclusive

than the last time when previous president Obama borrowed during the 2008 financial crisis to revive the economy. In short, he means that president Trump is spending a lot more money than Obama did even during the worst economic situations. Also, he revealed some more shocking news that the US government will be spending $5 trillion in the next fiscal year. The trade deficit is also at an all-time high due to the rising oil prices, which will add more pressure on the US economy.

the interest rates are going to keep rising due to the record deficit and the inflation that has been building up over the years. This rising interest rate will have a depressing impact on the economy due to the debt-based economic model followed in the US. Anything that is a function of credit like housing or the auto market will be majorly impacted, he added.

Below is his video

He said that oil prices rising at the same time when the US dollar is rising will increase the trade deficit for the US and is not at all good for the economy. He further added that the rising oil prices, record trade deficit, budget deficit and increasing interest rates all put together took a toll on the bond market. The yield on the 10-year bond market spiked to a new high and almost reached 3.1%. The stock market should resume its downfall from now since the bond market is at an all-time high.

How US Economic Collapse will Help Bitcoin Adoption

So because of all the above reasons, Peter thinks that interest rates are going to rise much higher than anybody can ever imagine. He predicts that

https://youtu.be/CvMyiBw8R18

It is not only Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers who are predicting the collapse of the dollar and US economy, but many experts point to the economic slowdown and fall of the dollar. Already Iran, Russia, and China are planning to move away from transacting in US dollar due to sanctions.

The US economic collapse and the dollar’s fall could fuel the price rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

to the US government’s bad monetary policy. But this time there could be an alternative such as buying Bitcoin, which is not yet fully dependent on the performance of any traditional asset or store of value. So buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is a wise decision now to potentially circumvent any losses due to a (possible) economic collapse. Bitcoin will also rally during the next collapse due to the fact that people will start moving their US dollar to what might be considered a safe haven at that time, like Bitcoin and gold.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

This is because of the fact that in the last recession people were struck by economic difficulties such as job losses due Core Magazine

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Vinny Lingham | Identity Protection Over the Blockchain

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inny Lingham – The Internet Enterpreneur

Vinny Lingham is a South African entrepreneur and businessman responsible for the development of the popular Identity Protection and Management Startup Civic (CVC). Lingham already had a lot of experience from his 114

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previous endeavors, as he was the founder of a few successful startups. He was the man behind the SiliconCape project, an NGO aiming to give birth to a technology hub with significant influence in Africa, including Cape Town.

He also co-founded the investment fund Newtown Partners, which acted as an incubator to

support startups such as Sweep South and Augmentors.

Vinny Lingham – Founder of Many Successful Online Companies

Vinny Lingham is a South African of Indian origins born in East London in 1979. Soon

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after completing high school studies at the age of 17 he went to the University of Cape Town to study Information Systems. He didn’t complete his studies due to the country’s financial instability and the market crisis during 1998.

He is currently an entrepreneur and the founder of several successful online companies.

Notably, Vinny founded Gyft & Yola, Inc in 2003 and currently serves as its CEO. In the same year, Vinny also cofounded the marketing firm incuBeta, an investment holding company and its subsidiary company Clicks2Customers.

He was the CEO of these two companies. One of Vinny’s most innovative projects is Civic – the well-known identity protection and management startup.

Career and professional accomplishments

Three years after launching incuBeta and Clicks2Customers in 2006, Vinny was chosen as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and in 2009 he was recognized a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2007, he launched Yola, a web development platform. In 2012, he

co-founded Gyft, a mobile gift card company. In just two years, he was able to make Yola the leading service in the gift card industry. In 2014, he ended up selling Yola for more than $54 million.

In 2014, Vinny was one of the investors on a South African TV show called Africa’s Dragons’ Den. In 2016, he was one of the participants on the follow-up to Dragons’ Den, Shark Tank South Africa. In November 2016, he made headline news by using Bitcoin to finance a company on Shark Tank. And in 2017, he participated on Undercover Angel, a non-profit National Geographic TV show. He also co-authored “I’m In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs”, a book for investors and businessman alike.

Civic (CVC)

It was only in 2015 that Vinny launched Civic (CVC), his first project in the cryptocurrency space. Civic is a startup company that specializes in encryption identity information using smart contracts that reside on the Ethereum blockchain. Civic offers a personal identity verification protocol that works over the blockchain to provide the best security and management for

digital identities.

Civic aims to provide a quicker, cheaper, more secure and more efficient identity verification process for companies, institutions and individuals. With Civic, companies and individuals can streamline their identity verification processes.

In 2017, Vinny launched the project’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and was able to raise over $33 million in funding. Civic quickly developed its capabilities and in August 2017 partnered with WikiHow, to enable encrypted login functionality.

Vinny Lingham has made significant contributions to the cryptocurrency space, particularly with Civic. Through this great project, he was able to deliver an Identity Verification and Protection platform that enables users to protect their identities without relying on services from a third-party.

Nuno Menezes

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Bitcoin Will Hit $20,000 Again, But Only After There’s Better “Structure”

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itcoin Could Rise Again

Danny Masters, CEO of crypto investment company CoinShares, believes that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach the same record-level price of $19,783.21, which was set on December 17th, 2017. However, certain things must be in place before this can happen.

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According to Masters, better cryptocurrency “structure” must be built and we also need “custody solutions”, indices, and reliable ways to gauge market performance.

Additionally, the CoinShares chairman said there has to be a “token life cycle” after an ICO has completed its final

rounds. He also stressed the need for better customer service by providing a higher level of “clarity”, increased transparency, and “better expectations.”

Notably, CoinShares was the first financial services company to introduce Bitcoin and Ethereum funds which could be traded on a public platform.

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Crypto Market Continues to Follow Bearish Trends

Despite the growing interest around blockchain, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, their prices still remain well below their record-breaking highs from December 2017.

In fact, Bitcoin price even dropped below $6,000 during February 2018. And, even though there were a huge number of crypto experts and enthusiasts who attended the Consensus and Blockchain Week events in New York, the flagship cryptocurrency’s price is still following a downward trend.

Notably, Masters commented that only just three years ago, the level of interest around cryptocurrencies was far less than what it is now.

In 2015, there were about 650 people who showed up for Consensus, but in 2018 more than 8,000 people attended.

Clearly, many more people are now aware of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, but Masters thinks that Bitcoin “is still [in its] very early [stages].”

It’s Still Early Days The CoinShares explained:

CEO

“In derivatives, indices, pricing models and so on that go on around [in creating financial infrastructure]…

We’re nowhere near that part yet. We’re not even at the part yet where I’d say institutional investors even started in commodities. Because these things — indexation, custody and so on — aren’t there to bring in those bigger people just yet.”

pany has set up shop out in New Jersey and there’s already a waiting list of users eagerly wanting to use the company’s crypto services.

Clearly, there’s a growing level of interest in the cryptosphere and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.

This, along with steady improvements to crypto-related technology which are happening as I write this, will likely contribute to a very large cryptocurrency market capitalization…well into the multi-trillion dollar range (in my humble opinion which is shared by several experts).

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

The financial infrastructure for the cryptocurrency market might not be there yet, however, the rate of ongoing development in this evolving industry continues to increase.

Social trading and multi-asset brokerage firm eToro has now expanded into the US markets by offering a cryptocurrency trading platform. Remarkably, eToro was able to raise $100 million in funding, which it is now using to establish itself in the United States. The comCore Magazine

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Trading Knowledge on Graphpath ’s Knowledge Marketplace GraphPath Creates Another Application of Blockchain

Some days ago we covered how Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain were two hot areas and how a cryptocurrency project was coming out with a product based on both technologies. This time we discuss GraphPath and their knowledge marketplace. With 120

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their “knowledge graphsas-a-service platform” and the Graph operating system (graphics), businesses in the industry can trade data with each other.

Making a Knowledge Marketplace Possible

As mentioned in the introduction, this knowledge

marketplace is facilitated

by GraphPath’s “knowledge graph-as-a service platform and the GraphOS. Before we go into the details of what these two are, let’s first understand what is meant by knowledge graphs.

In simple terms, a knowledge graph is a network of data and how they interrelate with each other. A well-known example is Google’s knowledge graph which is very useful for

Blockchain News

its search engine.

Now, GraphPath created Knowledge Graphs-as-a-Service (KGaaS) platform to help companies benefit even more from the knowledge graphs they have created using their own data and resources. Having knowledge graphs from organizations in one industry interconnected, managed and developed by GraphPath’s Knowledge-as-a-Service platform makes it easier to create the knowledge graphs and also gives the participating entities a chance to get value for their knowledge.

chain would make this trade of knowledge assets possible.

The Graph operating system would also be a completely open source project.

Experienced Team, GraphOS Consortium

The Graph Operating System or GraphOS for short puts the knowledge graphs service spoken about on a blockchain.

The secure and decentralized nature of blockchains is a benefit of having the network of knowledge graphs on a blockchain.

The GraphPath team is a solid one with experienced members. Damian Bellumio, Martin Enriquez, and Gustavo Arjones make up the leadership team. All three have experience in running a number of organizations including those with work related to what GraphPath seeks to achieve.

For instance, Damian Bellumio, the Founder and CEO worked as COO of Senzari Inc. where the focus was on media issues related to graph computing. Enriquez also co-founded Socialmetrix, a company recently acquired by GraphPath. Socialmetrix was into social media listening and analytics.

Another is that participants and contributors to the system would be able to execute trades of resources such as data and code on the network. The GraphOS protocol which would govern the smart contract enabled GraphOS block-

The list of advisors and investors also features individuals playing roles in organizations that have long been involved in related fields. Hans-Christian Boos, for instance, is currently the CEO of Arago AG, a company that is focused on

Graph Operating System

replacing human labor with automated jobs in the information technology sector. His wealth of experience is the field of Artificial intelligence would come in handy for the GraphPath team.

GraphOS consortium is one of the efforts being made towards the creation of an ecosystem around the service GraphPath wants to provide.

This community to be built around the technology would be made up of various stakeholders who would be playing different roles towards the advancement of the technology.

It is also worth noting that GraphPath as a company has been in existence for roughly a year. It is an offshoot of Auken Labs which has done lots of work in the field of Artificial Intelligence over the years.

This is yet another case of blockchain technology being used to bring about important improvements in a particular industry. Proof that beyond the buzz, there is real work being done.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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SPECIAL ARTICLES

Ethereum vs Tron | Epic Battle Ethereum and Tron are always engaged in fierce battle, and there were also cases of twitter battle between their founders Vitalik Buterin and Justin Sun respectively. The battle is fought for becoming a superior tech with mass adoption. Let’s look into this rivalry and see if Tron can outperform Ethereum in the long run.

Tech Behind Tron

Tron was created by Justin Sun as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. It was created to compete directly with Ethereum and address some of its shortcomings. The project is still in the preliminary stage, and only its testnet has been launched. Tron has 122

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migrated from the Ethereum blockchain in order to compete directly with it. This is what Sun has to say regarding the future of Tron and also the split from the Ethereum blockchain to launch its testnet.

“From today to the last day, we are no longer the ERC20 token and in the future, we will compete with Ethereum as a DApp platform. We will compete face to face with Ethereum, and we have confidence we will build a large ecosystem; a much large ecosystem than

the Ethereum” Tron is supposed to address all the shortcomings and technical issues of Ethereum namely security, scalability, fees and network speed. We will need to wait and watch to see if Tron can compete and win against the Ethereum blockchain. It is still in testnet and only after launching its mainnet, we can see if it lives up to the expectations.

Tech Behind Ethereum

Ethereum is the second biggest blockchain with a marketcap of $61 billion at the time of writing. It is also called as “World Computer.” Most of

SPECIAL ARTICLES

the smart contracts and dApps run on Ethereum blockchains.

It is time-tested, and many decentralized applications want to run their smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain for its robust network and high security.

It doesn’t mean that Ethereum is perfect and the most efficient network for smart contracts. It has its own problems of a slow network, high network fees (GAS) and many vulnerabilities that were exploited to steal funds from the network. The famous hack attempt known as the DAO hack was one of the massive hack attempts to steal 3.6 million ether. This incident also led to the creation of Ethereum Classic. Also, the vulnerability in the Parity Wallet led to the accidental locking of millions of funds in Ether. The two incidents prove how programs running on the Ethereum blockchain can be vulnerable to hackers and can end up in loss of funds.

Vitalik vs. Justin Sun

There were much war of words between Vitalik and Justin Sun regarding the superior tech debate between Ethereum and Tron. Justin Sun tweeted

the seven reasons that make his network a better tech than Ethereum. Below is the list 10000 transactions per second compared to 25 TPS. Zero Fees.

Consistent Coinburn to increase the value of the coin. $1 Billion USD developers reward.

Strong extensibility.

100 Million users Tron expects developers to develop dApps in java instead of Solidity in Ethereum.

Vitalik sarcastically tweeted the eighth point by making fun of the Tron whitepaper that was alleged to be copied from another ICO. Below is his Tweet.

Vitalik also in his interview hinted indirectly about Tron.

In his interview, he mentions

that there are projects that never had a soul and they are only quick rich schemes that are only focused on price and not the tech.

Can Tron Overtake Ethereum

throne Ethereum since there are thousands of ICOs and smart contracts running on the Ethereum blockchain. Also, most of the companies prefer the Ethereum blockchain for building dApps. Tron only has a testnet with marketcap of $4.7 billion, whereas Ethereum is a live blockchain with a $61 billion marketcap.

Tron is planning to migrate its 100 million users from Ethereum to its blockchain.

This could surely impacts Ethereum, but it doesn’t stop with this. There is also an airdrop announced by Tron management, and $1.7 million worth of airdrops would be awarded for ETH holders who have more than 1 ETH. This could affect Ethereum since more people might hold Tron and will appreciate the tech behind it.

Only time will tell if Ethereum will be dethroned by Tron or it remains as a pump and dump with no use case.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

It is not that easy to deCore Magazine

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Moldova Gets Crypto Powered Renewable Energy Moldova is a country in Eastern Europe bordered by Romania and Ukraine. The country is going to get renewable energy with the help of a blockchain startup called Sun Exchange. Let’s look into this blockchain news in detail.

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Moldova – Small Country in Europe

Moldova is officially called as “Repbulic of Moldova”.

This is a small country with a population of 3 million – 4 million with a GDP of $20 billion. The country is a member state of United Nations. In per

capita terms, Moldova is the poorest country in Europe and its tourism industry is also not very big, unlike other European countries.

Sun Exchange

Sun Exchange is a cryptocurrency related business

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where they provide Solar cells in exchange for a cryptocurrency coin. One can buy the cells and place them in schools or universities and earn passive income paid in a coin called SolarCoin. The Solarcoin is a cryptocurrency launched by blockchain startup ElectriCChain.

Electricchain is a blockchain based company that dynamically posts live solar production and usage data to a single blockchain. Electricchain is posting live solar data from seven million global solar facilities worldwide. Scientists and researchers also make use of this open blockchain data to analyze the data on solar energy and use it for analytics and research. Electricchain uses SolarCoin as the cryptocurrency and is used as an exchange for solar cells.

University of Moldova Get Crypto Powered Solar Energy

The University of Moldova is going to be powered by solar energy once they buy 1 megawatt of energy from Sun Exchange and this was achieved by crowdfunding and also with the help of UNDP. Moldova’s energy cost is very

expensive since it imports 74% of its energy from outside.

The university is getting powered due to the initiative that was taken by UNDP – United Nations Development Program. If this is successful then UNDP plans to replicate this with other neighboring nations.

Moldova is making use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies to improve its struggling economy and getting powered using an abundance of solar energy.

Win-Win Situation

Moldova is going to get all the benefits since the country has 10,000 square meters of unused rooftops on public buildings. This crypto-related project would help its struggling economy and will help it become less dependent on imported oil and gas from Russia.

This is a Win-Win situation for the country as well for the Sun Exchange because the crypto-related startup helps in reducing the cost of going solar. Many poor countries hesitate in going solar due to the exorbitant cost related to it. But this crypto-related project not only reduces the cost of going solar dramatically but

also helps in earning passive income in terms of cryptocurrency. This helps the poor countries in earning a steady source of sunlight-powered income in crypto.

Many Cryptorelated Usecases Helping Humanity

This is not the only use case of blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology is also reported to be used for childsex trafficking. Children don’t have an identity on their own and they run the risk of getting kidnapped. Blockchain technology helps to record their biometric details to blockchain hence helping them to be tracked easily.

Due to various benefits and use-cases, neighboring countries like Ukraine are trying to legalize cryptocurrencies and blockchain products to help humanity make use of blockchain technology to the fullest.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

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Crypto Interview | Earth Token | Creating Positive Environmental Impact with Blockchain Earth Token Director of IT and Crypto – Wesley Carlson Today, I spoke to Wesley Carlson, Earth Token’s Director of IT and Cryptocurrency.

The company behind this token was established in 2009 in Mauritius. As Carlson went on 126

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to explain, the organization’s intentions had been to conduct operations related to trading and other business in South Africa. So, Earth token happens to come from an already established and successful business model that continues

to focus on making a positive impact on our environment.

The IT Director noted early on during our conversation that he introduced the company’s former CEO, who has now unfortunately passed

Blockchain News

away, to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in 2015.

This was around the time that a number of now established crypto industry specialists and consultants were beginning to experiment with various aspects of the digital currency space such as crypto mining.

Gradual and ResearchBased Move into Crypto Initially, Carlson said that he was serving in a “very limited” advisory capacity as the company’s IT and cryptocurrency consultant. However, as cryptos became more widespread, the environmentallyfocused company began to consider developing products and services that used blockchain-based technologies. In Carlson’s words, part of what Earth Token does and aims to do is develop a natural asset exchange.

country or organization to produce a certain amount of carbon emissions and which can be traded if the full allowance is not used.”

Using Blockchain For Increased Transparency So, extending this (carbon credits) concept and leveraging crypto and blockchain-tech, Carlson intends for his company to bring more transparency and efficiency to the process of issuing carbon credits certificates. Notably, facilitating the smooth working of the carbon credit issuance process happens to just one aspect of what Earth Token aims to offer. The director also clarified that they are not looking to tokenize carbon credits.

There are companies who “negatively impact” the environment, as the IT specialist explained, and for them Earth Token provides a way that they can “balance” this with a “positive impact” by using the platform’s token and products.

For instance, there’s something called carbon credits which Dictionary.com defines as:

The primary focus of the company, according to Carlson, is more broad. It’s to “mitigate” the impact of harmful environmental factors that can have an adverse effect on our planet Earth. The experienced techie also mentioned that they are aware of the issues surrounding climate change, however, they’re not too keen to get involved in the related and heavily politicized debate.

That’s also not one of the main goals of their organization.

“a permit which allows a

ERC-20 Token Now, But

Advancements Are Planned Currently, Earth Token is simply an ERC-20 token and their platform uses the Ethereum blockchain. Due to scalability issues and other challenges the Ethereum blockchain is now facing, Carlson would like to move to another blockchain platform in the foreseeable future. While Ethereum currently uses proof-of-work (PoW) and could transition fully to proof-of-stake, the tech specialist noted that PoW does not quite fall in line with their environment-friendly mission as the protocol consumes too much energy. Therefore, it would only be appropriate for a platform of their kind to migrate to preferably their own blockchain, where they have more freedom to implement the type of products and solutions they want – without having to work on an overcrowded blockchain.

The company’s ICO, which Carlson explained, was meant to raise funds and “bootstrap” the marketplace and community. Additionally, they would want to see more awareness being created about what Earth Token is all about. To achieve this, it would be beneficial if there was more stable and substantial trading volume for their token. Already, the Core Magazine

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Earth Token platform has a market capitalization of over $1.7 million and a daily trading volume of around $67,000 (based on current data from CoinMarketCap).

Earth Token’s Own Blockchain The process of migrating to a different blockchain is not yet set in stone, as everything related to this is in its “preliminary” stages according to Carlson. Also, once there is enough awareness and trading of their token, the IT expert plans to lead his company into possibly migrating over to their own blockchain. As Carlson mentioned, the blockchain will be public/permissionless.

When asked why his company decided to use a blockchain-based solution, the director said that it was for the simple fact that blockchain is an “immutable, public ledger.”

He also said that there has to

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be more transparency in the trading process and there’s a need to eliminate all the unnecessary middlemen and brokers who’re involved in the asset exchange process, which uses the traditional system of documenting and transacting.

Bringing Artificial Intelligence to the Blockchain Space Carlson said his organization will be engaging in partnerships with companies that are developing sophisticated AI-enabled image capturing technology.

For instance, users of this technology would be able to take an image of a tree using their smartphone and then that image would have proprietary software and intelligence which would tell you how old the tree was, along with its other characteristics. This concept is not too far-fetched at this point considering that IBM has launched what it calls a crypto anchor verifier,

which is able to use cuttingedge hardware and software to determine the authenticity of anything ranging from highquality wine to the cut grade of diamonds.

We will probably see a growing connection between artificial intelligence, internet of things, big data, and blockhains – because the development teams and research organizations behind them are working more actively than ever before. You can look forward to hearing more from us about Earth Token and its ongoing projects right here at Crypto Core Media.

Please visit this platform’s website to learn more, directly from the source: https://earth-token.com/ Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Exclusive

Ella Zhang Now Heads Binance Labs While Custodian Services Come To Crypto Ella Zhang – Head of Binance Labs

Binance tweeted yesterday that they’ve appointed Stanford graduate Ella Zhang as Head of Binance Labs. Similar to Huobi Labs, Binance Labs is an incubator that helps promising cryptocurrency and blockchain startups. Oftentimes, newly-launched companies have great ideas and talented people, however, they lack the financial resources and industry experience required to develop the products outlined in their whitepaper.

Ella Zhang reportedly served as investment director at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a leading investment advisory company.

The Binance tweet also mentioned that she has previously worked at Google and Tencent, a major Chinese multinational investment firm. Ella’s other notable professional experience includes working in sales at UTStarcom, a worldwide provider of telecommunications infrastructure. Additionally, the University of Electronic Science and Technology graduate is the co-founder of

XiaoduoAI, which provides natural language processing (NLP) chatbot services to large online retail companies such as Taobao.

Binance Already Outperforming Leading Financial Institutions

Binance, as most crypto enthusiasts would know, has now become more profitable than Deutsche bank, Germany’s leading banking institution.

In fact, as Crypto Core Media Core Magazine

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reported, the giant cryptocurrency exchange achieved $200 million in Q1 2018 profits. In comparison, Deutsche bank only generated $146 million in Q1 2018 profits. It also appears that digital currency exchanges are a lot more efficient in terms of the the amount of resources required.

Binance only has a couple of hundred employees while Deutsche bank has more than 100,000 workers on their payroll. With the recent addition of Ella Zhang to Binance’s executive roster, it’s a sign that the company could be looking to further boost its sales and marketing efforts. Notably, there is clearly no comparison here when we take operations efficiency into consideration – Binance wins hands down.

Moreover, the legitimacy of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are heavily traded on Binance and other digital asset exchanges such as Coinbase, has recently taken a big step forward.

Institutional Investors To Enter Cryptocurrency Market

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the exchange provides. There are multiple authentication and verification procedures built onto the exchange’s website, such as the typical 2 factor-authentication and ID is required for transactions of over 2 BTC per day. This should help limit the use of digital currencies in money laundering and other illicit activities.

Till now, crypto trading and investments have mainly attracted individual and retail investors. However, things are beginning to really warm up.

Notably, LMAX Exchange, a London based forex trading company that has helped clients trade over $10 trillion in fiat currency, recently announced that it’s set to launch an FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) regulated cryptocurrency exchange. All the major cryptos will be supported such as Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Ethereum (ETH). The exchange will be called LMAX Digital and is designed specifically to serve institutional investors.

Institutional Investors Coming to Coinbase and BitMEX

Also, as Crypto Core Media reported yesterday, Coinbase is

developing products targeted for institutional investors, as the exchange expects tens of billions of dollars in investments from institutional clients. Similarly, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes told CNBC that his company is preparing to serve institutional investors as well. Notably, banks and hedge funds have been hesitant about investing in the digital currency market because they are looking for a legitimate solution which will help them safely and securely manage cryptocurrencies.

To provide such services, Coinbase and LMAX Exchange aim to provide custodian services. Presumably, it would only be a natural progression for Binance and BitMEX to provide similar services in order to accommodate institutional investors, where all the big money comes from. Also, Binance might look to Ella Zhang to help them with her lead generations skills, which she used to target giant online retailers such as Amazon and Newegg while working for Google.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Do you want to start an ICO? We can help you office@cryptocoremedia.com

Blockchain News

IBM Using AI and Blockchain Technology To Develop a "Super Lens" IBM Introduces Crypto Anchor Verifier

IBM intends to hire 1,800 new employees in France to work specifically on artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and blockchain related projects. The American multinational tech giant has also released a new product: crypto anchor verifier. Report134

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edly, it’s a lens that is able to not only “see” animal cells, but also identify their individual differences. Also, objects not visible to the human eye can be “seen” by the crypto anchor verifier – even objects the size of a micron.

“imperfections” in diamonds which cannot be seen through human eyes. In addition, the verifier can tell you whether a drug is real or not and even distinguish between high quality and low quality beverages.

So, how is all this possible?

According to a post on Forbes, the crypto anchor verifier appears to be quite a useful invention as it is able to detect

How IBM’s Verifier Works

All you have to do is download proprietary software

Blockchain News

developed by IBM from their official website onto your smartphone. Then, there’s a customized lens which can be attached to a smartphone camera. Apparently, this lens along with IBM’s software is supposed to be able to do all what’s stated above. Alright, so now where should all the data related to the crypto anchor verifier be stored?

IBM fellow Donna Dillenberger thinks the data should be stored on a blockchain. But, why a blockchain? Why not use just a simple database to store the data? In order to understand why Donna proposes using blockchain, let’s go into a bit more detail about what IBM’s new AI-enabled lens actually does.

Capturing the Finest Details

The lens of IBM’s crypto anchor verifier is able to “see” things the size of only onemillionth of a meter. Perhaps what appears to be even more impressive is that the verifier is able to produce large amounts of data based on an object’s shape, viscosity, spectral value, and saturation value. This data is then used by IBM’s software to determine whether the object being examined is

real or not, like in the case of diamonds mentioned earlier.

Donna explains that the crypto anchor verifier can be incorporated on multiple levels in a supply chain, while recording the related data on blockchain-based technologies. She then gives a few examples:

“We as consumers buy things, and somethings we pay a premium to make sure this is really a particular gem grade or really an extra virgin olive oil or really a $1,000 bottle of wine. What we can do at the point the oil, gem or product is grown or developed, is record that and send it to a blockchain.”

Companies Already Using IBM’s Verifier At present, it appears that IBM has entered into a few NDAs with a number of companies who reportedly intend to use the product verifier.

For instance, Donna says that there’s a company that makes passports for governments and wants to use the verifier to determine the authenticity of

the documents they process.

Also, Donna mentioned that there’s an alcohol bottling service that is considering using IBM’s verifier to satisfy its customers about the quality of its products.

Notably, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) is currently using IBM’s verifier and plans to use blockchain technology to store and process related data. Tom Moses, a researcher from GIA, said that the product verifier will scan diamonds and process data related to the gem’s cut grade, clarity grade, color grade, and carat weight. Reportedly, this will give the institute a comprehensive set of data, capturing all the relevant details, which would then be used to verify the authenticity of the diamonds using IBM’s software.

Based on these developments, it appears that artificial intelligence and blockchain technology are already being used together to create realworld products.

Source: Forbes Article on IBM’s Crypto Anchor Verifier Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Why All Muslims Should Use Bitcoin | Especially in Ramadan Muslims May Use Bitcoin Without Hesitation

There have been a number of Islamic scholars and Muslims who have declared Bit136

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coin to be haram, or forbidden, in Islam. In December 2017, Muslim scholar Sheikh Assim Al Hakim stated that using Bitcoin is not permissible under Shariah (or Islamic) law.

Assim said:

“We know that bitcoins remain anonymous when you deal with it… which means that it’s an open gate for money laundering, drug money and

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haram money.”

Before I go into what else the Saudi Arabia based cleric said, let’s just examine the above statement he made.

Yes, Bitcoin (BTC) transactions have a certain level of anonymity, but does that really make them haram? If we go by this logic, then there are ways fiat currency can and is used anonymously as well.

ing as well? It has been used in money laundering ever since it has existed. The point here is that any medium of exchange can be used for good things and bad things. So, it’s how you use a medium of exchange, be it Bitcoin, gold, fiat money, or any other asset that has value.

If you use that asset to engage in illicit activities like human trafficking, then that is haram.

It’s not only haram, but also immoral and illegal.

Fiat Transactions Can Be Anonymous Nothing About Bitcoin Itself As Well For instance, you could deal That’s Haram entirely in fiat cash and not go through a bank, which requires proper ID. There are a number of money changers I’ve personally worked with that accepted my fiat currencies without requiring me to provide any ID. These money changers are out here in Pakistan, Kuwait, and Turkey – all Islamic countries. And, of course, they also accept large amounts of fiat money from people without ID throughout the world. So, that can be considered “anonymous“. But, does that make fiat haram? Absolutely not.

Assim also says that Bitcoin can be used in money laundering. That’s true, but is not fiat money used in money launder-

Therefore, the claim that Bitcoin itself is haram is absolutely invalid and baseless.

There’s no logical argument to support this claim based on what’s written in the Quran (holy book for followers of Islam) nor does it state anywhere in the Quran that it’s forbidden to use a medium of exchange, which is just what Bitcoin (BTC) is.

With all this talk about Bitcoin being permissible in Islam or not, I can tell you what IS probably haram: Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts.

That’s because you’re betting, which is gambling, on the future price of BTC. And, gambling is not permissible for

practicing Muslims.

Ramadan – A Great Time to Use Bitcoin

Notably, billions of Muslims worldwide are observing the holy month of Ramadan right now. During this month, followers of Islam must fast from sunrise to sunset. Also, Muslims are required to give zakat throughout the year, or donations to the poor. The amount to be paid in zakat is 2.5% of your income. This is only for those who are financially stable and can afford to do so. If you happen to be searching for articles on crypto at this time, you must have come across a number of trending articles about a mosque (Muslim place of worship) accepting donations in either Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH).

There’s nothing wrong with this at all. In fact, it should be encouraged. These donations are going to a noble cause, which is to make the lives of the less fortunate better.

The way I see it, there’s no greater purpose than serving humanity. Before us humans are Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or any other faith / belief, we are humans!

So, humans helping other less privileged humans must always Core Magazine

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be encouraged. Just by using Bitcoin, you are spreading knowledge and awareness of a revolutionary new technology as well.

Seeking Knowledge Is A Must for Muslims

There are many verses in the Holy Quran that explicitly and clearly state that one must seek knowledge. Here are a few:

“And say: My Lord, increase me in knowledge.” (Quran 20:114) “Allah raises of those who believe and those who have been given knowledge many levels.”(Quran 58:11).

that which he knew not” (Quran, 96: 1-5) So, above it clearly stresses the importance of seeking knowledge. By seeking knowledge and then gaining knowledge, we make a conscious effort to not be ignorant.

Being informed allows us to make better decisions in life.

There’s probably no argument against that. Now, if all Muslims would actually open their holy book and adhere to the actual source itself, rather than relying on some “scholar”, then they would realize just how valuable their own brain that God gave them actually is.

So, what does this have to do with using Bitcoin in Ramadan? By using it, you are not only helping the less fortunate, but you are also spreading awareness (knowledge) about a great technology. So, not only Muslims, but every human on this Earth should embrace new technology, learn more about the latest innovations through independent research, and then inform others as well.

“Read! In the Name of your Lord Who has created (all that exists). He has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).

Read! And your Lord Other “Verdicts” From Isis the Most Generous. lamic Scholars About Bitcoin Who has taught (the Now, let’s go over what else writing) by the pen. Assim said about Bitcoin: He has taught man “Bitcoin is something 138

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that is recent and new and there are a lot of serious concerns when it comes to dealing with it … whether it’s from the origin or from the aspect of sustainability and security. As of today, one bitcoin that was [worth] 0.1 cents is now equivalent to $11,000 plus. This is ridiculous. This is not something physical you can touch.”

With all due respect, what Mr. Assim fails to realize here is that since Bitcoin is new and recent which he correctly points out, the majority of the world does not know much about it. So, this is not something wrong with Bitcoin itself. However, what needs to be done is do what the Quran itself tells us to do, which is to seek knowledge, as so clearly expressed in the Quranic verses mentioned above. Also, as the world is beginning to learn and appreciate the flagship cryptocurrency, its value is being understood and so it’s rising. There’s absolutely nothing illogical about that.

Bitcoin (BTC) was worth

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practically nothing at one point only because the world knew nothing about it. How ignorant can one be to think that if he or she does not know about something, then that something is worthless?

There’s no shortage of rulings

by Islamic scholars that are not based on sound logic or the fundamental teachings of Islam. Notably, here’s a statement from the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs:

“Buying and selling virtual currencies is not compatible with religion at this time because of the fact that their valuation is open to speculation.”

Bitcoin, Just Like Anything, Can Be Misused

The key words to note here are “at this time”. Yes, the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies market is driven a lot by speculation right now.

However, that’s not the fault of cryptocurrencies themselves.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. It is us, the users, who are abusing them.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has said on many occasions that we should learn more about the technology behind cryptocurrencies instead of thinking of them as a “get rich quick” scheme. And, he’s absolutely right.

trate pump and dump schemes.

It’s us humans that decide to scam people by misusing cryptocurrencies. Similarly, scams run rampant with fiat money or just about anything. This does not mean we stop using Bitcoin, traditional money, or any other valuable asset. All Islam and other religions teach us is to exercise good moral judgement and a responsible attitude. Although I could go on more on this topic, I will end it here and perhaps in a future article, I will address some of the other misconceptions about Islam, Muslims, and Bitcoin.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Justin Sun Pushing or Pumping Tron Higher?

Justin Sun

Tron is the latest entry into the top ten list of cryptocurrencies. It currently sits at 9th place on coinmarketcap.com.

All this was achieved without a mainnet and within months of launching its initial coin offering. Whether this is as a result of its sound value proposition or exuberance in the cryptocurrency market is a topic for another day. Tron has a fairly large team behind it but we can attribute most of the successes chalked to its founder Justin 140

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Sun. Before coming out with Tron, Justin worked at Ripple Labs and also created a successful app in China. He has appeared on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list for the past three years.

Mr. Sun graduated from Peking University, China’s top university, with a bachelors degree in History. During the course of his study, he became the president of the university’s association of western studies and also made the dean’s list regularly. He furthered his education at University of

Pennsylvania and graduated in 2013 with a Master of Arts Degree in Political Economy.

A couple of months ago, Justin also graduated from Hupan University where he presented his thesis on “The Birth of a Decentralized Internet.”

With his background and achievements, Justin has shown that the blockchain world and tech world at large is not reserved for only computer engineering graduates. Skills and knowledge from different backgrounds can also be put to

Blockchain News

productive use in the space.

Creating a Fast Growing Cryptocurrency

With Tron, Justin wants to have entertainment content on the blockchain. By doing this, he plans to have content providers and consumers more connected and do away with middlemen. Tron was also designed to be able to scale and handle the high number transactions such project would have if successful. At the center of this platform is the Tronix coin (TRX).

The crowdsale for Tronix coin (TRX), the token for the Tron platform, raised $70 million in September 2017. Since then, the price of the token has increased tremendously both in dollar and Bitcoin terms.

Even without actually releasing the final product, we can say Mr. Sun has already been successful.

One reason for this success is that he and the Tron team pushed to have the token listed on cryptocurrency exchanges early on. In less than a year, Tronix (TRX) is already being traded on top exchanges like Binance, Huobi, OKEx, Bittrex, and Upbit.

Also, Justin is probably the type of founder most cryptocurrency holders would want for their altcoin. Amongst other contributions of his, Justin Sun frequently provides twitter updates on Tron. The cryptocurrency’s founder simply doesn’t shy away from talking up the price. Such announcements have often led to increases in the price of the cryptocurrency. Tron has in recent months been a top gainer on the cryptocurrency market on a number of occasions.

With the launch of the Tron virtual machine slated for 25 May and the mainnet launch expected on the 31st of the same month, we can be prepared to see more social media antics from Justin as well as positive price action for Tron. As a matter of fact, this might already be happening.

The price of TRX has seen a 10% increase within the last 24 hours.

Before Creating Tron

As stated in the introduction, Tron was not Justin Sun’s first rodeo. He is also the brain behind the highly successful app known as Peiwo which is Chinese for “call me”. The

app which is focused on voice streaming is very popular amongst young people in China. With over 10 million users, the app was able to attract several investors. In February this year, the Tron team announced that substantial work on the integration of Peiwo app into the Tron platform had been completed. We await further developments to see fruits this integration would bear.

The same year he graduated from Univerisity of Pennsylvania, Sun worked for Ripple Labs’ China operations for about 2 years. At Ripple Labs, he worked as chief representative in Greater China, special representative and later played the role of advisor.

We have become used to young and successful individuals in the tech world but this does not mean it has become easier to reach such heights at an early stage in life. At the age of 26, Justin Sun already has an impressive track record.

With Tron and the blockchain world, there should be more to come. We will continue to follow progress on Tron and see if it lives up to the hype.

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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Blockchain Colombia Association to Provide Education on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Colombia Home To Many Blockchain Companies

Blockchain technology is becoming fashionable in most countries. Colombia has not been left out of the blockchain 142

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boom. Six public and private companies (Buda Colombia, Bitcoin Colombia, Cajero.co, IntiColombia, Panda Group and RSK) have come together to launch the “Blockchain Colombia Association� (Asociacion Blockchain Colombia).

This association aims to promote training and education in relation to the operation of cryptocurrencies and blockchains. Another mandate of the association would be to serve as a bridge that would give voice to institutions and serves as an

Blockchain News

interlocutor for dialogues with the government.

Mauricio Tovar, co-director of IntiColombia started the event with a talk on the usefulness of blockchain technology and the revolution it has started in various areas of daily life. A reason for the technology to be considered the fourth industrial revolution in history by many.

“It is very important that Colombia is included quickly (in the Blockchain space) to take advantage of the opportunities.

The foundation wants to be an actor that articulates the whole system and that finds the solutions to adopt this technology”, Tovar said

Corrupt Traditional Financial System

Maurico Toro, a representative of the “Partido Verde” elected by Bogota to the Chamber, spoke about the situation that exists in the Senate in relation to the discussions associated with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

“The financial system today is abusive to Colombians with extremely high rates as well as additional costs that should not be charged. This is why “technologies that oblige banks to self-regulation are needed,” said Toro.

Mauricio Tovar gave as an example, the operation of a blockchain network to guarantee the security of information, confidence in operations, transparency in the process, decentralized management of information and reduction of cost.

Optimal Technology The World Desperately Needs

the hands of the people. This also implies greater responsibility for the individual.

To carry out all these tasks, the association has contemplated focusing on areas of special interest for the evolution of the ecosystem at a local level, as well as being in search of institutional alliances that reinforce the work that is to be promoted.

The Blockchain Colombia Association will be organizing events and meetings soon to inform the members of the community about the progress and the initiatives that they plan to carry out in the short and mid-term.

Angel Figueroa angelfigueroa@coregroup. info

He stressed that the sector in which this technology has generated the most impact is the financial one. This is because blockchain technology optimizes processes that originally consume a lot of time and are costly. It also eliminates double spending.

He mentioned that as blockchain technology is applied in more spheres of our daily life there will be more control in Core Magazine

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Remittances and Micropayments | Stellar vs Bitcoin

A

re Remittances

By Stellar Really Stellar?

Stellar aims to facilitate fast, secure, and cost-effective cross-border transactions. The 144

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crypto-platform plans to form a Silk Road type link between financial institutions, payment processors, and their customers in order to make it easier to “move money”. The official

Stellar.Org website states that “The Future of Banking is Here” and it will include remittances, micropayments, mobile money, mobile branches, and services to the underbanked.

Blockchain News

Remittances, with Stellar, can be processed “for a fraction of a cent” and support for many “different currencies” is offered. One of Stellar’s partners, Tempo Money Transfers, is a remittance transfer provider that helps individuals and businesses to process remittances from Europe to almost anywhere in the world. With Stellar, Tempo can handle 600k transactions for just a penny ($0.01). Tempo has built up a network that serves 120 countries with 190,000 different locations. Using Tempo, customers can easily pay for health insurance coverage and basic utilities such as water and electricity. By partnering with Stellar, the company intends to increase transparency in the remittances industry.

Stellar Micropayments

Oftentimes, we need to pay for the “little things” such as a $12.95 monthly payment for Express VPN. At present, if we try to make that payment with Bitcoin (BTC), then we’d have to use a third-party payments processor like Bitpay.

That’s a bit inconvenient, however, once you go through the process, you will learn that Bitpay only supports a limited number of crypto wallets. So,

should you happen to be using the user-friendly Waves wallet, your wallet is not currently supported.

Stellar BitPay As you can see from the screenshot above, there is a network cost associated with using Bitpay. Of course, it’s negligible, but it begins to add up because if you choose to use the Bitcoin Core wallet, then you will have to transfer your BTC from your Waves wallet over to the Bitcoin Core wallet. For this transfer, you will have to pay a 0.001 BTC, the Waves network gateway fee, and a tiny Waves currency fee.

Notably, 0.001 BTC is about the same amount as you are being charged for the VPN service itself. So now you see how highly inconvenient this is.

Stellar to the Rescue?

This, apparently, is where Stellar comes to the rescue.

According to the cryptoplatform’s official website, they have built a blockchain-based prototype with giant financial consulting company Deloitte that leverages the Stellar network. The prototype reportedly cuts down transaction fees by 40%. Not only that, but transaction processing time is only 5 seconds. If we compare that to BTC transactions, which can sometimes take hours and in extreme cases even weeks, then you’ll really appreciate this.

However, be aware that the Bitcoin blockchain is the most secure and trusted network in the world. Reputable crypto-platforms like Factom and Komodo use the Bitcoin blockchain to back up their data. Also, the Bitcoin protocol has never been hacked and has an established history of nearly 10 years of accurately and effectively validating transactions. Meanwhile, Stellar is still a relatively new creation.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Verge -XVG | Reportedly Being Hacked at $1,000 Per Minute

V

erge – XVG – Being Stolen Reportedly

Reports have recently surfaced that privacyoriented Verge (XVG) might be getting hacked. What we know so far is that there are 146

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certain bugs in the code which are reportedly pumping out $1,000 in XVG per minute.

Notably, this bug appears to have similarities with the one found just last month, which was referred to as “Time Mal-

leability”. It involved hackers manipulating the transaction timestamps that are recorded during crypto mining.

The miners exploiting last month’s vulnerability were able

Blockchain News

to use a made-up timestamp, which happened to show a time that was an hour before the real time. This “fooled” the XVG protocol by making it believe that the last block mined using that algorithm occurred an hour before than it actually did. So, in the block that followed that had the present time, the XVG protocol was tricked into adding the fictitious block onto the mainchain as well.

Thus, new coins were being minted literally “out of thin air”, just by manipulating the timestamps associated with the blocks. And, even though Verge’s developers reportedly removed the vulnerability, there was this posted on BitcoinTalk.org:

Perhaps the most troubling part of all this is that the bug does not appear to have been fixed, as the same issue is happening even now. A Redditor commented:

“Earliest block I found as a starting point is 2,155,913. https://prohashing. com/explorer/ Verge/ still shows the current growth of the blockchain at around 25 blocks per minute resulting in 18250XVG or 950$ per minute for the attacker. Currently sitting at around 650.000$ worth of XVG.”

Notably, the official blockexplorer reported later a MUCH higher block height.

Based on the Redditor’s calculations, approximately 50,000 blocks could have been mined, netting them a staggering $1.9 million.

Moreover, commenting on

the end of the attack, it was estimated that 35 million XVG had been generated within a matter of hours. Also, there does not yet appear to be a fix for this disaster.

Just When Things Were Beginning To Look Up

If you follow crypto-related news regularly, then you’d know that Pornhub had agreed to support XVG payments. Also, a number of other merchants had begun to offer support for the privacy-centered crypto.

But now it seems that we’re left with some big question marks.

The most important question is whether Verge platform’s code is actually secure? Could this incident impact the coin’s price – short-term or longterm?Will this be mixed with a pump and dump scheme? Are the developer of Verge even seriously addressing this issue… or much worse, are they a part of this?

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Exclusive

Andreas Antonopoulos Uses Not the “Choicest” of Words for Blockchain

A Bullshit

n d r e a s Antonopoulos Says Blockchain is

Prior to the Consensus 2018 event, Andreas Antonopoulos stated:

“Bitcoin is the future and Blockchain is bullshit.”

The Bitcoin evangelist has also previously said that the 148

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flagship cryptocurrency has a type of “weirdness” to it. This “weirdness” along with Bitcoin’s decentralized nature is what can “offend” and has probably offended people, according to Andreas. It’s now been 5 years since he has been spending the majority of his time educating people about Bitcoin. He has repeatedly stated that Bitcoin is revolutionary because it is not controlled by a central authority.

Emphasizing the “Open” Nature of Bitcoin Andreas also points to the fact that Bitcoin cannot be censored and that it is “open”.

By “open” he’s referring to a number of things. First, the Bitcoin protocol and its source code is open-source, which means that anyone can view its codebase, find out how it works, and even contribute to its further development and improvement. Second, Bitcoin

Exclusive

is “open” because all BTC transactions can be viewed by anyone on its publicly shared distributed ledger.

So, why is blockchain “bullshit”? Well, according to Andreas Antonopoulos, if you remove the “weirdness” and the “offend” part, meaning you pretty much remove Bitcoin’s decentralized exchange of value from the equation, then

particularly in reference to the level of understanding Consensus 2018 conference members had when it comes to really knowing how crypto and blockchain related technologies work. Moreover, Jimmy and Johnathan felt that this year’s Consensus did not focus as much as it should have on Bitcoin.

Jimmy Song, along with Andreas Antonopoulos, point out that Bitcoin is “the real innovation here.” Also, Jimmy says that this year’s Consensus was all about “buzzwords” and that what he said “verbalized what probably a large [number] of the people in the audience were thinking.”

“what you’re left with – this Blockchain – is a sterile, unexpressive (sic), uninvented environment; a corporate plaything that has been sanitized of every interesting and left as Meanwhile, tweeted: an empty shell.”

Andreas made these comments during the Polish Bitcoin Congress held in Warsaw on May 12th. It is worth noting that these recent statements from the Bitcoin educator should not come as a surprise, because he has previously said similar things during his numerous public speeches.

Johnathan

Arguing his viewpoints further, Johnathan said that Bitcoin was the only legitimate use case for blockchain technology that has been developed to this date. He also noted that the distributed ledger was too costly to implement and was not much more than just a “slow database.”

Commenting further on the importance of Bitcoin versus Blockchain, Johnathan said:

“It [blockchain] is a necessary but *insufficient* ingredient, and not even the most important one, of a system (Bitcoin) designed to provide monetary sovereignty to its voluntary participants.”

These statements were to support his colleague Jimmy’s views about an obsession of “sprinkling Blockchain dust all over a problem and it will be OK.” They even compared the Consensus crowd to “cargocult engineering”, implying that they’re blindly building some type of system with all the latest buzzword technology in the desperate hope that they will make a lot of money.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Highly skilled Bitcoin developers Jimmy Song and Johnathan Corgan have expressed similar viewpoints, Core Magazine

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Ride Sharing App Using Blockchain Proposed

By Leading Chinese Entrepreneur Ride Sharing App on a Blockchain

Weixing Chen, who’s the man behind Kuaidi Dache – a 150

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very popular ride sharing app – has now decided to use blockchain technology to launch a similar app. The reason for using the distributed ledger

would be to make the process more efficient and safer for people to use. Notably, there have been numerous incidents around the world, when people

Blockchain News

have used Uber and other major ride hailing apps, that have resulted in kidnappings or other serious crimes.

Although these companies claim that they perform thorough background checks on their drivers, current ride sharing apps have still proven to be not 100% safe. Presumably, Chen would look to better ensure the safety of the users with the new blockchain-powered app. What we know so far about this project is that Chen will be working with Yang Jun, who is one of the founders of Meituan, an on-demand local services company.

First Real Test of Blockchain on a “Mass Scale” Social App

Commenting on the use of blockchain technology, Yang Sun stated:

“I’ve been asking myself what’s the value of the blockchain. My definition is to see whether and where people can actually use it. With the use of blockchain, we can build a set of economic systems different from the previous ones…We can direct traffic from the Internet and add on different services to meet users’ needs.”

Jun’s statements came during the China International Big Data Industry Expo in Guizhou, China. Also, according to his partner Chen, the launch of a ride sharing app using a blockchain would be putting the immutable ledger to its very first real test in this type “mass scale” application.

Chen Might Be Wrong…Not the First Time

is has been proposed. Decentralized Alternative Cabs Serving & Empowering Everyone (DACSEE), a ride sharing app that also uses blockchain technology has already been launched. DACSEE started off in Malaysia and can be used on Android and iOS. The plan, according to its creators, is to serve customers in China, Thailand, and Indonesia. The creators of DACSEE have managed to receive quite a bit of funding for their project. In fact, they’ve reportedly raised $25 million since they introduced the idea back in December 2017. Also, as is the case for most blockchain platforms, DACSEE uses a simple ERC-20 token to incentivize the platform.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

While the idea of using blockchain for a ride sharing app might be worth looking into, it’s not the only time that

Core Magazine

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HTC Jumps on Blockchain Bandwagon with its New Smartphone 152

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Telecom Companies Looking Into Blockchain Technology

Blockchain has managed to attract a number of telecom giants and as the technology continues to grow beyond cryptocurrency’s boundaries, companies have increasingly begun exploring ways to utilize its decentralized network model. After Sirin Labs announced last week the specs of their first blockchain-based smartphone, called Finny™, HTC is next in line.

Making blockchain phones a reality, HTC’s upcoming Android phone Exodus will reportedly use advanced security features that are designed to ensure users’ safety by preventing attacks from malicious hackers. HTC’s new smartphone initiative is being led by the development efforts of Phil Chen, who is in charge of HTC’s business and corporate development. He stated:

would like to support the entire blockchain ecosystem, and in the next few months we’ll be announcing many more exciting partnerships together.”

What can we expect from Exodus?

There are a number of things we can expect from Exodus.

For example, it promises to be a “universal cryptocurrency wallet.” This will be achieved by enabling support for several blockchain protocols. Additionally, users’ security will be a top priority by implementing a highly secure exchange portal.

There will also be a “pointto-point” resource sharing ecosystem for various types of applications and options to securely store digital currencies offline by making private keys unshareable.

“Through Exodus, Sirin Labs Finny in we are excited to be Competition with supporting underlying HTC Exodus? protocols such as Last summer, Sirin Labs Bitcoin, Lightning Networks, Ethereum, announced the launch of its Dfinity, and more. We $1000 blockchain powered

smartphone by the end of October 2018. Although Finney seems to have the same basic features as HTC Exodus plans to have, it remains to be seen which phone will become more popular among users.

Notably, Sirin Labs claims that it has already received 25,000 pre-orders and hopes to sell at least a million units of its smartphone.

A Decentralized Web?

Exodus will leverage a native blockchain network which will allow for easy cryptocurrency trading among smartphones users. However, blockchains store a large amount of data and it could potentially slow down a smartphone. So, one might ask, is it even necessary to create a blockchain-based smartphone?

Is this just another move by yet another company in an attempt to raise its share prices?

Regardless of what the actual motive might be, Exodus will soon be available for pre-orders and bitcoin payments will be accept as well.

Shruti Kaushik

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Rhett Creighton Is The King of Forks, But He's Not Alone Rhett Creighton Has Company

After being fired from the Bitcoin Private team, as reported by Crypto Core Media, Rhett Creighton continues to defend his actions. Here’s a little something he tweeted yesterday:

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Come on, Rhett Creighton.

Just stop it.

It’s really quite disgusting how low people can and will go just to make money. However, the purpose of this article is not to bring these types of people into the limelight.

I’ll be hitting you with a few

important quick, hard facts that you as a crypto enthusiast should know in order to be aware of the different deceptive tactics being used in the crypto space.

Not Just ICOs Oftentimes, when we hear about crypto-related scams, they’re associated with initial coin offerings (ICOs). However, that’s not the only type of cryptocurrency scam out there. Notably, since the first Bitcoin fork on August 1st,

Blockchain News

2017 that gave birth to Bitcoin Cash, there have been 44 forks of Bitcoin’s blockchain, as reported by a BitMEX blogpost.

Here’s

a

screenshot

of

BitMEX’s findings: The coins listed above are not the complete list. For that, you may visit BitMEX’s official blogpost link provided above. The point here is that people like Rhett Creighton have plenty of company. So, pointing the finger at just one person might not be the right approach.

The Bigger Picture

Moreover, the bigger picture here is that a fork is supposed to be an upgrade to an existing blockchain in an effort to simply make things better. By better I mean to help solve

some of the problems plaguing major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum today such as slow blockchain networks and high transaction fees, or to provide more real-

world use cases. Unfortunately, this is not what the motive has been behind most of these forks. The primary objective has just been to make more money, regardless of whether it’s in an ethical way or not.

Rhett Creighton and others who use the same “modus operandi” should know that people are getting smarter by the day, and are definitely not as naive or gullible as you might think they are. In fact, data from CoinMarketCap shows most of the 44 Bitcoin forks have not been popular. There’s hardly any trading volume associated with the majority of these

forked coins, which indicates that crypto traders are not interested in them. Also, based on data from CoinMarketCap, just four bitcoin forks have more than $100,000 in 24 hr trading volume. Those being: Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Private, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Diamond.

Anyone Can Fork Bitcoin In order to facilitate just about everyone, even novice programmers, there are now popular services like Forkgen that let inexperienced coders create Bitcoin forks. George Kimionis – CEO of Coinomi, the company behind popular multi-cryptocurrency wallets, has said:

“Unfortunately, most fork-based projects we see today are more of a sheer money grab.

Looking back a few years from now we might realize that they were just mutations fostered by investors blinded by numerical price increases — rather than honest attempts to contribute to the blockchain ecosystem.”

Omar Faridi

Core Magazine

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JasperCoin | The Argentina Cryptocurrency That Aspires to Surpass Bitcoin JasperCoin (JAC)

Entrepreneurs from Argentina are developing JasperCoin ( JAC), a virtual currency that could potentially change how cryptocurrencies are mined in the future. Gerardo Ratto, the CEO of JasperCoin, highlighted that the platform is based on blockchain technology and includes putting 156

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together a team for the mining of the cryptocurrency.

Focus on Payments

JasperCoin will initially be aimed at purchases and payments for products and services between companies.

Preferably, the companies should be SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).

For mining, it will use a

“Jaspberry� minicomputer which can be connected to a WiFi network and operates with low power consumption.

This would be a qualitative difference when a comparison is made with how Bitcoin operates. Bitcoin mining requires large equipment with huge electricity consumption for mining. The platform also

Blockchain News

includes a digital wallet that will work as an app on smartphones.

Any person or company can acquire a Jaspberry (do not confuse with the raspberry). The Jaspberry comes with a mining license when purchased. When JAC is successfully mined, the coins will automatically appear in the users’ digital wallet. The reward for the miner would be 100 JACs in the initial stage, but this number would gradually reduce to create zero inflation conditions. The Jaspberry project will be financed through the Kickstarter platform.

A More Accessible and “Cleaner” Mining Process “Jasper is an equal, decentralized and non-competitive platform,” said Gerardo Ratto. Jasper aims to make the mining process more accessible and generate a value proposition so that the currency can be used as a business tool. When explaining why JasperCoin is a sustainable option, Ratto pointed out that unlike Bitcoin mining, that requires large amounts of energy at high costs, mining JACs is simple and economical. Only a CPU with minimal electricity consumption is needed.

less power means the mining of JACs solves a major environmental problem.

“Our goal is for the cryptocurrency to be in the hands of millions of people,”

Ratto said. The Jasper network is designed to operate with a high volume of transactions at a speed 40 to 50 times greater than the Bitcoin network. All this is done in a more economical way and is also scalable.

“We are focused on delivering a good customer experience,” Ratto pointed.

Ratto encourages the population as a whole to study the use of cryptocurrencies because they are here to stay. His other reason was that the Latin American market would not want to be left behind. If you are interested in Jaspberry, you can check out its website for more details. https://www.jasperfoundation. org/ Angel Figueroa angelfigueroa@coregroup.info

The mining process that creates the JasperCoin ( JAC) currently uses a small fraction of the electricity required by the proof-of-work (PoW) platforms. Consuming Core Magazine

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Regulators Launch Largest Cryptocurrency Crackdown in History Regulators Launch Massive Probe Into Potential Crypto Scams

North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), an international investor protection organization, recently launched 70 investigations into a number of questionable cryptocurrencyrelated investments. Reportedly, over 40 state and provincial regulators from the United States and Canada are part of this massive crackdown. The main target of these probes are ICOs and “investment schemes.”

Joseph Rotunda, Director 158

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of Enforcement Division at Texas State Securities Board, stated that that the cryptocurrency market is “saturated” with numerous fraudulent schemes. He also said that their preliminary investigations have only uncovered “the tip of the iceberg.” Moreover, deceptive marketing tactics are being used to lure investors into various crypto-related scams, according to US regulatory authorities.

BTCrush and Wind Wide Coin Targeted

By Regulatory Authorities

BTCrush was warned

by American regulators this

month for posting videos that showed potential investors the company’s large cryptocurrency mining farms. According to regulatory authorities in Texas, who’ve been leading the charge when it comes to cracking down on crypto scams, the videos had been taken from publicly shared stock footage.

In the warning letter sent to BTCrush, Texas regulators alleged that the UK-based company had violated securities laws and had used deceptive marketing tactics.

Wind Wide Coin (WWC Inc), which claims that it’s the “fastest growing cryptocurrency trading company” and was offering investors 10x

Blockchain News

return on their investments, is now also the target of Texas regulators. Reportedly, WWC Inc used misleading marketing and advertising tactics, including posting pictures of Prince Charles and Jennifer Aniston in order to promote their crypto “business.” Interestingly, if you go to the company’s website right now, then you will see a message saying that they’re “down for maintenance.”

Commission have been heavily cracking down on cryptocurrency scams, especially since the past 6 months. Due to the rise of digital currency market, the number of fraudulent activities related to them have also increased drastically. In order to show people how these scams are typically orchestrated, the SEC has even gone as far as creating a website of their own called howeycoins.com.

Using Online Media Content To Deceive Crypto Investors

The purpose of SEC’s fictitious website is to show potential investors just how easy it is to create a whitepaper and nice-looking website, along with an online presence on various social media platforms.

What the federal regulator is trying to convey to people is that we must never believe everything we read and see on the internet. Also, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Commenting on these potentially fraudulent crypto schemes, Rotunda noted:

“Promoters also know that anyone can be anyone and say anything about anything on the internet. Not surprisingly, they are also manipulating photographs, media, testimonials and other online information to deceive the public into believing their claims.”

US federal regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading

This Is Actually Good News For Bitcoin & Other Cryptocurrencies

If you check crypto market prices right now, they are down considerably. More than likely, it’s because of this widespread crackdown on cryptocurrency scams. The bigger picture, which many might fail to

realize here, is that regulatory authorities are cleaning up the digital currency market for us right now. They’re working hard to weed out all the criminal elements operating in the crypto ecosystem.

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Francis Galvin, stated that the NASAA has uncovered around 30,000 registered cryptocurrency domain names. Also, most of them started to pop up toward the end of 2017 when the the cryptocurrency market reached record-level highs.

However, Galvin clarified:

“Not every ICO or cr yptocurrencyrelated investment is fraudulent, but we urge investors to approach any initial coin offering or cryptocurrencyrelated investment product with extreme caution, [because] it is a serious threat to … investors.”

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Questions About Bitcoin in Dutch Math Curriculum Exam Questions About Bitcoin

Students in the Netherlands are now reportedly being asked questions about Bitcoin on their exams. Approximately 200,000 high school students had to write their math exam a few days back. And, in the 160

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exam, there were actually questions about Bitcoin. The exam is titled, “Examenprogramma wiskunde A vwo”, according to a Dutch school board’s official website. This happens to be a compulsory exam that all pupils have to take and pass in order to enroll in a local institute of higher learning, a

university in most cases.

It would be difficult to navigate the website and find where it actually says Bitcoin, unless you speak and write Dutch, a west Germanic language spoken in the Netherlands.

However, thanks to a Redditor who probably does know the

Blockchain News

language and Google translator, we were able to understand most of what was being asked in the questions about Bitcoin. So, roughly translated

by Google:

“Bitcoins The bitcoin is a digital currency that only exists online. He exists since January 1, 2009 and can be used to pay in online stores or for other online services.

Bitcoins are not, as normal money, by a central bank circulation.”

Challenging Math Questions About Bitcoin

The translated text goes on to explain that computers solve difficult math problems in order to validate Bitcoin transactions. Then, after the brief explanation, students are asked to solve the following problem:

“Calculate the number of bitcoins in circulation starting from this year above 18 million as the rate at which bitcoins are

in circulation not be that progressive European countries like the Netherlands changed.”

The exam even provides practical background information about Bitcoin transactions and the number of Bitcoins in circulation.

Furthermore, the examination paper explains how rewards for Bitcoin miners are halved

every 4 years. Notably, cryptography, from which the protocol for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is derived, is all related to math. Therefore, it is only logical for students of all age groups to start learning about what digital currencies are and also about their underlying blockchain technology.

The Numbers Don’t Lie In response to the post about an exam asking Bitcoinrelated questions, an excited Redditor commented: This is definitely a positive development, because it shows

are definitely taking the right approach to the emergence of cryptocurrencies. In stark contrast, the governments of India and Pakistan are not embracing this revolutionary technology.

The reserve banks of India and Pakistan have both issued statements citing the abusive nature of cryptocurrencies.

They say that digital currencies can be used for illegal purposes such as money laundering.

However, the exact same thing can be done, and is being done, using fiat currencies such as the US dollar. When we take into consideration the Human Development Index, which is a composite index that basically measures the overall quality of life in a country, Netherlands ranks number 7 in the world. It has a very high HDI of 0.924.

In comparison, India has a significantly lower HDI of 0.624 and Pakistan even lower at 0.550. Additionally, there is almost no corruption in the Netherlands. In fact, it is ranked as the 8th least corrupt country out of a total 175 countries. On the other hand, Pakistan ranks as the 117th least corrupt nation out Core Magazine

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of 175. Sure, it’s not the most corrupt, but the numbers do indicate that there is a high level of corruption in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, India ranks as the 81st least corrupt country.

Admittedly, these numbers are not always 100% accurate, however, I think you get the point here. Corruption and irresponsible governments ultimately end up hurting the innocent citizens. So, I think we can all take a page from Netherlands’s books.

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References: Reddit Post on Dutch Exam with Bitcoin Questions https://www.examenblad. nl/examen/wiskunde-avwo-2/2018 (school website) https://tradingeconomics. com/ http://hdr.undp.org/

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Smart Contracts and Futures Contracts For Ethereum Making Strides Smart Contracts Are Being Improved

Smart Contracts Solutions, a startup company, has launched ZeppelinOS on the Ethereum blockchain. The

goal behind the project is to create a set of libraries which can be used by smart contracts apps, in addition to other tools and features offered over the Ethereum network. In order to motivate developers to

contribute to its codebase, the creators of ZeppelinOS plan to reward them with their own cryptocurrency.

One of the main objectives behind ZeppelinOS is to Core Magazine

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develop a standard platform where programmers can code, organize, and run smart contracts applications, according to company executive Demian Breneer. The company members further note that “hundreds of million of dollars” could be lost because of current vulnerabilities found in smart contracts. Due to the prohibitive costs associated with removing these bugs, there has not been too much that has been done to fix them.

Incentivized Platform for Smart Contracts Developers

“They’ve proven to be an industry leading smart contract auditor and security focused organization and we hope to leverage their expertise and ZeppelinOS for future work on the OpenBazaar token.”

OpenBazaar is an opensource community focused on creating a protocol for the e-commerce business.

CME Group Considering offering Ethereum Futures Contracts

With the introduction of ZEP tokens, native to the ZeppelinOS platform, developers will now be incentivized to work on fixes where they find vulnerabilities and also contribute to upgrading and updating the set of libraries created by the startup. Other startups including TrueBit, Storj, and OB1 have already begun experimenting with the platform’s mainnet, which was released on Friday.

While work is steadily being done to improve the existing Ethereum blockchain, the financial industry is also busy exploring options related to futures contracts offered with various cryptocurrencies. CME Group, Chicago’s derivatives exchange, is now assessing the demand and appetite for Ethereum futures contracts, after introducing a benchmark and price index for ETH.

Meanwhile, OpenBazaar executive has stated:

Tim McCourt, head of equity solutions at CME, told Bloomberg that the exchange

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will be looking into whether or not it should offer Ethereum futures contracts, based on clients’ interest level. He stated:

“We’ll continue to gauge with them to ascertain the demand for futures. There are no plans at the exchange to launch one currently.”

Just this past Monday, CME Group released its benchmark Ether Reference Rate and Ether Real Time Index, both of which are used to deliver audited prices for ETH/USD. Data is accumulated from top exchanges including Kraken and Bitstamp and then its further processed Crypto Facilities, a crypto derivatives exchange.

These developments above indicate that work is clearly being done to improve cryptotechnology and the financial products and system around it.

You can expect to read about more positive news here at Crypto Core Media.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

vDice | Blockchain Gambling Games vDice – Blockchain Gambling Games vDice is a site displaying Smart Contract betting games on Ethereum. It is a comfortable UI with which to interact with these games. Developers have already put two games live. This is dice and slots, implemented as code directly on the Ethereum network. A new game called vPax is currently under development and more games will follow, from a

variety of development teams building for the platform and token system. The games run completely on the blockchain.

There is no third party who ever touches funds. You send your ETH to the smart contract. The smart contract processes the bet. For the uninitiated, a Smart Contract is simply code that executes autonomously on decentralized blockchain networks, like Ethereum, without interference. Once the code is verified on the network, it’s enforced

by the network’s computing power. No one controls it and no one can take it down. The game owns itself.

The code is open to everyone. Anyone can read it.

Everyone can see. It does exactly what it should do. You only have to trust the Smart Contract. This is public, verified code, that lives on the very public Ethereum blockchain.

The VSL token ties everything together and interacts directly with the platform. It serves a Core Magazine

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variety of useful functions.

As a platform and brand vDice allows developers all over the world to harness the power of blockchain betting and gaming.

Games and betting games more specifically have become quite popular on Ethereum.

They are leading the way in actual use cases for the new network and smart contract platform. This trend is expected to continue. With a lot of hype, games and betting games offer an obvious and necessary real world use case for the technology.

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The vDice brand is just one possible implementation of a front-end; a lens through which you can view game activity on the Ethereum network. Developers are free to work on their own, interacting with the smart contracts directly.

Gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been revolutionized by the internet.

With online gambling accounting for a significant proportion of the world’s betting activity, the decentralization offered by blockchain is expected to usher in even more dynamic changes.

Official Website: www.vdice.io/

http://

Blockchain News

Swiss Alps Energy | Bitcoin Mining with Renewable Energy Swiss Alps Energy is a startup company based in Switzerland, specializing in the mining & energy sector.

It is reportedly setting up a hydropower plant to do Bitcoin mining in the energy-rich country. They are also in the process of launching an ICO for the initial finance required for the mining activity.

Swiss Alps Energy

Swiss Alps Energy (SAE) is a distributed energy supplier and is also involved in providing mining infrastructure.

It’s involved in environment-

friendly mining activity using hydro and solar power plants.

Their environment-friendly mining is achieved through the set up of a data center in the unused buildings in the Swiss Alps. Swiss Alps are made up of thousands of unused structures and government does not let people to use them for residential purpose. Swiss Alps wants to make use of these places by converting them to environmentally-friendly mining facilities powered by renewable energy only.

The Swiss Alps Energy team consists of members coming from the field of

blockchain technology, cryptocurrency mining, developers, and various other specialists.

This wide range of intelligent members will help set up the mining facility to add more hashpower to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Swiss Alps Energy uses renewable energy only, so the mining activity related to their efforts would not affect the environment. The company has many hydroelectric power plants and also has long-term contracts with energy providers to run the miners. They have plans to start mining facilities in different places in Switzerland Core Magazine

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to take advantage of the favorable climatic condition of the country, while minimizing the energy consumption.

Objectives of Swiss Alps Energy

The company will not only will be providing the energy and the infrastructure for mining, but has a wider objectives to serve the energy-intensive cryptocurrency space and also for the economy of the country. Below are some of their objectives: Promote blockchain technology, and its uses cases to the general public Address environmental issues arising out of mining by using only renewable sources of energy.

Provide energy to third parties using distributed ledger technology.

Support the economy in the Swiss alpine areas.

Provide the third-party vendors with a decentralized infrastructure to develop their blockchain project.

Swiss Alps ICO

Swiss Alps Energy will hold an ICO in 2018. The company plans to use the funds to finance the expansion of mining 168

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facilities and also to acquire more hydroelectric power plants. They plan to raise the capital via an ICO to set up the corporate structure. The total number of ASIC miners that would be deployed will be decided based on the funds raised by the ICO. The ICO also helps in expanding the team necessary for production and maintenance of the SAE “cubes�.

SAE cubes are nothing but a system that helps to build and implement prefabricated dust resistant mining components.

The company will rent out the cubes or only the mining capacities from SEA cubes. They also guarantee high energy efficient and cost competitive mining. The SAE will have its token called SAM token. The individuals and organizations that want to rent mining facilities will pay the power charges in the form of SAM tokens.

The Advantage of Mining in Switzerland

Switzerland is a safe country with high environmental standards. It is becoming the center of blockchain technology in Europe because of the government encouraging the adoption and development

blockchain technology and has a favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies. The other advantage of setting up the mining facilities here is the abundance of renewable energy and this energy can also be sold abroad. This is the reason for Switzerland to be a good place for setting up mining farms.

A lot of hydropower plants are available and the excessive energy produced can be used for mining cryptocurrencies.

The most important advantage is that the country becomes very cold during winter and so the mining facilities that generate a lot of heat will not require any cooling equipment. Instead, it will get cooled down naturally because of the cold conditions prevailing in Swiss Alps.

We wish Swiss Alps Energy the very best in their ICO and also in setting up of mining facilities across Switzerland that would help in decentralizing the mining activity globally.

Kadhir Velavan Ramasubramaniam kadhir@coregroup.info

Blockchain News

Fortune 100 Companies Leverage Blockchain While Cardano, Bitcoin, Ethereum Advance Fortune 100 Companies – Oracle, Amazon, IBM – Embrace Blockchain

Fortune 100 companies are what fuel and drive the world’s capitalistic markets.

While many of them have been heavily criticized for their monopolistic practices and paying relatively low wages to their lower level employees,

there’s no doubt that they have offered and continue to offer quality services that are in very high demand.

integrated onto it. Furthermore, the company will launch blockchain-powered apps some time next month.

Oracle Corporation, which sits at the #81 spot on the list of Fortune 100 companies, has announced plans to launch what it calls platform-asservice blockchain. Thomas Kurian, head of product development at Oracle, noted that the new product will allow for other platforms to be

Blockchain for Nigeria and Big Pharma

The American multinational computer technology company is also using Hyperledger to monitor and document bank-to-bank transactions, with the help Core Magazine

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of Banco de Chile. Notably, Oracle is working the Nigerian government as well by helping it to leverage blockchain technology in order to log customs and imports data.

The Fortune 100 company intends to penetrate the pharmaceutical sector in the foreseeable future with its blockchain efforts. It plans to use the distributed ledger to help pharmaceutical companies cut down on product recalls by efficiently monitoring the distribution of medicine. Other Fortune 100 companies have also entered the blockchain industry, including Amazon.

Amazon and Microsoft Working Extensively with Blockchain

The retail giant launched blockchain templates as a product on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The templates are designed specifically to work with Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure, a cloudcomputing service, offers Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service (E-BaaS), which it developed through a collaboration with ConsenSys. Blockchain-as-a-Service 170

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(BaaS) has become quite a popular product among Fortune 100 companies. In fact, there is heavy competition between Amazon, IBM, and Oracle as all three try to offer their customers the best service possible. AWS launched BaaS just six months after Oracle released its own version, which also happens to use Hyperledger Farbic.

IBM seems to remain ahead of the pack, though, releasing its BaaS product a year prior to Amazon.

Facebook Announces Formation of Blockchain Research Group

Facebook has also made it official that they will form their own blockchain research group so that the company can “best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch”, according to Facebook Messenger Vice President David Marcus. This appears to be a follow-up and update from January of this year when the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he would begin learning about cryptocurrencies, so that his team can integrate them into their services.

Blockchain Use Cases Being Explored By Everyone

It is not only Fortune 100 companies that are looking into blockchain technology.

Just about every type of organization, including world governments and the departments working under them, are now engaged in efforts related to adopting this distributed ledger technology (DLT). Recently, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced the development of a blockchainpowered platform which will allow authorities to record evidence from police investigations.

This was revealed by the nation’s Intellectual Property Office, after a patent for the blockchain solution was acquired back in November, 2017. The blockchain system records data transferred to the cloud and uses timestamps.

First, however, the deposition data is forwarded to a cloud service provider and then after obtaining multi-signature authorization from all the contributing parties, the record is permanently stored on a blockchain. This is basically how a blockchain system works, so it

Blockchain News

remains unclear as to actually why the government body had to register a patent.

China Becoming a Blockchain Hub

Notably, China is poised to become the world’s leading economy, surpassing the US in terms of annual GDP by 2030, and it remains at the forefront of cutting-edge technology such as blockchain.

In fact, the nation’s 30-yearold island Hainan province is where Huobi Labs will set up a “Global Cultural and Creative Blockchain Lab.” While most of the Fortune 100 companies are still largely based in the United States, this may begin to change and we might see more of them being based in China, as we head into the future.

It has been reported for quite some time that China’s capital city Beijing now has more billionaires than the state of New York. Moreover, Beijing has more billionaires than any other city in the world. And, even though there are no crypto or blockchain related companies that have entered the ranks of the Fortune 100 companies, this could change as well in the next decade or two. This, of course, would depend heavily 172

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on the long-term success of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. At this point, the best we can do is carefully watch all the developments unfold in the cryptosphere and positively contribute to them as best as we can.

Cardano, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Architects Continue to Work Progressively The developers of Cardano are planning to make meaningful contributions as they recently announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology.

Per the MOU, the Cardano team will work closely with Ethiopian developers to develop blockchain solutions for the country’s Agritech sector.

Although Cardano’s mainnet has not yet been launched, the crypto-platform sits comfortably in the top 10 cryptos in terms of marketcap.

To its credit, Cardano has a solid development team backing it, which has largely been put together by former Ethereum leader Charles Hoskinson. However, many respected crypto experts still believe that Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, will continue to play its dominant role in terms of

market adoption and acceptance. This can be credited to perhaps the strongest group of loyal and skilled programmers and companies backing its ongoing development and upgrades.

Yes, transactions on the Bitcoin network are still painfully slow, however, a layer-two solution known as lightening network is being worked on extensively. The goal is to leverage the lightening network to make Bitcoin scale more effectively. Basically, this layertwo technology aims to work by transferring transactions onto off-chain payment conduits. This is done so that BTC payments can be processed without the requirement of having to spend time waiting for the next transaction block to mined.

Companies working aggressively to make this promising solution a reality include ACINQ. Last month, in April, ACINQ introduced a wallet app for Android that uses the lightening network to send payments. At this stage though, the app is not yet set up to receive payments. There are also various types of implementations being worked on for Bitcoin’s proposed lightening network. For instance, the

Blockchain News

version that ACINQ is working on is called “eclair”. Meanwhile, the Lightening Labs company is behind the “ind” implementation. Ideally and hopefully, the objective behind these efforts is to make BTC payments as easy and userfriendly to process as swiping a credit card.

As Bitcoin and Cardano developers work intensively on their blockchain networks, Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum squad also seems to be making substantial progress. Similar to Bitcoin’s lightening network, there’s no official deadline or target date set for Ethereum network’s heavily anticipated upgrades. However, a number of noteworthy developments for the Ethereum blockchain have recently surfaced.

On Tuesday, Ethereum’s Casper developer Danny Ryan shared the first release of a network upgrade on GitHub that will enable the platform’s software users to build applications using their preferred programming language and also to test the new release. The Ethereum

community envisions that the successful implementation of this and other related initiatives will enable the network’s blockchain to function in a “hybrid” manner by using proof-of-work and proof-ofstake. For now, proof-of-stake will only be used to validate “checkpoints” at set intervals due to the prohibitive 1,500 ETH cost (stake) of running a validation node.

Proof-of-work will continue to be used by the Ethereum blockchain, which of course, consumes a lot of electricity due to mining. Future plans include migrating completely over to proof-of-stake by significantly lowering the stake amount and after more network upgrades. In the meantime, the first Casper release will be subjected to extensive auditing procedures and will also require more coding, specifically for Ethereum clients. It’s imperative that this code be written and be written properly because Ethereum clients are like the end-product that people use to run the network’s protocol.

Final Thoughts

Getting into the habit of becoming a close and objective observer of the developments in the crypto and blockchain space will likely pay off in the long-run. That’s because it’s not only the Fortune 100 companies that are beginning to immerse themselves in this futuristic industry, as we have covered here. The crypto and blockchain industry is now also establishing connections with the ongoing development of Artificial Intelligence.

Let’s try to bring more positive energy into these promising ecosystem, so that it can further help our future generations.

If you enjoyed reading this article, please check out our monthly magazine with 100% original content!

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info

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Transaction Processing: Stellar Lumens (XLM) versus Ripple (XRP) Transaction Processing using Ripple or Stellar

Both Stellar Lumens (XLM) and Ripple (XRP) aim to provide payment processing solutions between large 174

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institutions. There is also some aspect of value transfer between consumers with Stellar.

One thing that makes Stellar different from Ripple is that it’s the product of a non-profit entity. Being a non-profit, users of the Stellar network are not required to pay heavy

transaction fees. To get the Stellar project off the ground, it received funding from Stripe, an online transaction processor for internet based businesses.

So, what’s so “stellar” about Stellar? Why even use it? One of its best use cases is that of

Blockchain News

sending money from let’s say a GBP (Great British Pound) account to a CNY (Chinese Yuan) account. In this type of transaction, there are currency conversion fees involved; but if you use Stellar’s XLM currency to conduct the transaction, then you would need to pay only 0.00001 XLM in transaction fees – which is merely fractions of a cent. The negligible transaction fee is paid by the sender.

Serving the Underbanked

Similar to this, the Ripple company has a suite of products which also aim to make cross-border transactions more efficient and cost-effective. We will not be going into details regarding how the Ripple or Stellar payment systems work, as this is something we’ve previously covered. However, it must be noted that digital transactions on the Stellar blockchain can be seen by everyone and they can be verified. This is something that’s generally true for most public blockchains, and it can help in fraud prevention.

Another thing that sets Stellar apart from Ripple is that the former focuses more on socioeconomic issues such serv-

ing the underbanked, meaning those who are unable to access traditional banking services.

Furthermore, for people who have to conduct cross-border transactions regularly, Stellar presents a more affordable option compared to using a bank. In many cases, citizens of third-world countries work outside their home country and need to send money back home frequently. So for them, Stellar might be a better alternative.

Stellar Partners with IBM

Notably, Stellar received great praise from Forbes in 2017, when the leading news media outlet compared it to Venmo, a popular mobile payment service owned by PayPal.

“Venmo, but on a global scale – and for larger bodies like banks and corporations.” – Forbes

In addition to being commended by major news and media companies, XLM was soon listed on giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, further adding to its legitimacy.

Also, the popular and widelyused hardware wallet Ledger Nano S supports storage for XLM.

In October 2017, the developers of Stellar revealed that they would be collaborating with IBM and KickEx in order to:

“develop a blockchainbased cross-border payments solution proven to significantly reduce transaction costs and increase transaction speeds.”

This announcement itself helped XLM’s price surge by 54% in less than 24 hours.

Ripple Company Has Over 100 Corporate Clients In much the same way as Stellar but even more so, the Ripple company has now over 100 corporate clients worldwide. It also has offices in Luxembourg, India, Singapore, and the United States.

One of Ripple company’s most notable clients is Banco Santander, which is the 37th largest corporation according to the Forbes Global 2000 list.

Recently, Ripple company revealed that it has established business relations with five additional clients whose transactions will reportedly be powered by RippleNet / Core Magazine

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xVia – the firm’s cross-border payments solution.

These partners include payments focused companies Exchange4Free, FairFX, MoneyMatch, UniPAY, and RationalFX. xVia has an API based interface that enables clients to access RippleNet and conduct transactions in XRP. Asheesh Birla, Senior VP of Product Development at Ripple stated:

“All of these customers run into the same problem: building bespoke connections to banks and networks all over the world. It’s expensive and timeconsuming. xVia enables them to grow their overall market share by reaching new customers in new markets, easier than ever before.”

BLOCKCHAIN

Based on these partnerships, their super active communities, and that both cryptocurrency platforms sit comfortably in the top 10 list of digital currency platforms by marketcap, indicates that we can continue to expect a lot of competition between the two. Also, which platform people or organizations will choose could largely come down to which one provides the best customer service.

NEWS

Omar Faridi

MAGAZINE

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Exclusive

More Bullish Bitcoin Price Predictions | Here is Why Bullish Long-Term Price Projections

As always, no one knows what the Bitcoin price is going to do next. Until the recent $1,000 dollar drop in the price, many analysts were of the view that we were on the verge of another bull run. With the

failure to break $10,000 per Bitcoin and the drop to the region of $8000, most people are not so sure about another bull run in the short-term. In spite of this, there are still some bullish signs. We had positive research-based predictions and comments from Thomas Lee and Tim Draper.

Thomas Lee and Fundstrat on the Bitcoin Price

A couple of days ago, Thomas Lee, a research analyst, put out the Bitcoin price analysis done by Fundstrat Global, a firm he co-founded.

This analysis of the Bitcoin Core Magazine

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price was based on the ratio of the Bitcoin price to mining break-even cost. According to Fundstrat Global, this ratio serves as a crucial support level for the Bitcoin price.

The reasoning behind this is that miners are expected to sell when the price is high and accumulate Bitcoins when prices are too low. Since miners are the biggest sellers of the coins, they help keep the lows above their break-even price, since they tend to hold when the price drops and approaches those points. The break-even price of the Antminer S7 and the Antminer S9 were stated as $6,003 and $2,368 respectively.

Their analysis also pointed out that the release of improved mining equipment in the future would cause further drops in the cost of electricity for mining, bring in more miners and increase the hash rate.

From their calculations and analysis, Fundstrat expects the price of Bitcoin to be between $20,000 and $64,000 by the end of 2019. More specifically, they expect one Bitcoin to be worth $36,000 by then.

Tim Draper on 178

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the Superiority of Bitcoin

countries with weak currencies can use Bitcoin to protect their wealth.

If the viewers of Closing bell on CNBC had forgotten or were not aware of the features of Bitcoin, they got a short lesson on it from Tim Draper on 10th May. Draper is a venture capital investor and founder of DFJ Venture Capital. To explain why Bitcoin is better money than traditional currencies, he touched on how Bitcoin is more secure, global and open to all.

In short, Tim Draper stated that Bitcoin is a better currency and would become a global currency untethered by political influence.

On Bitcoin being more secure, he compared banks to the Bitcoin blockchain and pointed out that banks were getting hacked frequently. On the other hand, the Bitcoin blockchain is yet to be hacked by anyone.

By “open to all�, Tim Draper meant Bitcoin was accessible to even the unbanked.

He used undocumented immigrants without access to bank accounts as an example. With Bitcoin, they could send funds back home to their families.

He also touched on how Bitcoin worked well as a store of value compared to fiat currencies of countries like Argentina and Nigeria. People in

More Bullish Signs As the chart below shows, the Bitcoin hash rate has grown considerably over time and continues to grow.

It is true that people mine for various reasons but it would not be far from the truth to suggest that more investments flowing into the industry and more miners being powered up are signs that the technology is here to stay.

Another bullish sign is that big players in the finance sector are beginning to get involved in the cryptocurrency industry. NASDAQ has recently expressed interest in becoming a cryptocurrency exchange. Goldman Sachs is also considering opening a cryptocurrency trading desk.

Once again these are signs that Bitcoin is unlikely to be a flash in a pan.

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There are also already existing cryptocurrency businesses that are doing well. An example is Bitbond, a cryptocurrency lending platform based in Germany. The continuous success of such cryptocurrency lending platforms shows that more and more people have faith in cryptocurrencies. Institutions being prepared to lend against an asset is one of the ways to show that the asset in question is a bona fide one with a future.

Bitbond was established in 2013, secured a license to operate as a bank in 2016 and expanded their business

to meet global customers’ demands in 2017. Bitbond allows both lending and borrowing of Bitcoin. This business has survived multi-year bear markets and still managed to grow bigger.

Lastly, the fundamentals of Bitcoin remain strong. The network isn’t congested and the fees are low. Segwit adoption continues to grow and the Lightning network is here. All these didn’t look so good in the latter part of 2017 yet the Bitcoin price was consistently going through the roof in spite of complaints about high

fees and network congestion.

Somehow, the fundamentals seem to be far removed from the price of Bitcoin in recent years. The fundamentals are stronger now but don’t seem to have any effect on the price at the moment.

What’s your take on Fundstrat’s price prediction for the end of 2019? Do you consider their prediction a modest one?

Elikem Kofi Attah elikem@coregroup.info

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Digital Currencies – particularly Bitcoin – Aren’t Going Anywhere Digital Currencies, mainly Bitcoin Now In Mainstream Demand

Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins are not going anywhere. The digital currency revolution is real, but it still needs to go through its growing pains as is indicative by the current bear market. There are a number of major developments in the cryptosphere that confirm the legitimacy of Bitcoin as a convenient, reliable, and decentralized model facilitating the exchange of value. Additionally, traditional financial companies are taking cryptocurrencies seriously, as they realize their vast potential, and are now responding 180

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to requests from their clients to incorporate Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies in their services and products.

One such traditional financial services firm that has decided to do so recently is Sygnia.

South African Sygnia Asset Management company has announced that it will launch its own cryptocurrency exchange at some point this year. Magda Wierzycka, the firm’s CEO, said the exchange which will be called SygniaCoin and will be introduced in 3rd quarter 2018. The CEO noted: “The cryptocurrency market is evolving at a rapid pace internationally and domestically, and is attracting

both domestic and international flows. With its fintech focus, Sygnia is well-positioned to become the first major financial services institution to embrace cryptocurrencies and to offer investors a secure trading and execution platform backed by an international infrastructure, well-designed custody and integration with standard savings products.”

Many Traditional Financial Companies Jumping into Crypto Although Sygnia Management currently ages over $14 billion in assets, the statement

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by Wierzycka might not be completely accurate. That being Sygnia is definitely not the only “major” traditional financial institution to attempt to offer crypto services. There are other financial industry giants such as UK’s LMAX Exchange, which has helped their clients trade $10 trillion in fiat currency, that has also announced the launch of their own cryptocurrency exchange.

The Broader Outlook

The bigger picture is that institutional investors have remained on the sidelines because there’s not yet been a way to safely and securely store valuable digital currencies. Now though, it appears that Sygnia Asset Management plans to bring custodian services to crypto, along with LMAX Exchange and Coinbase.

Similar to the focus of efforts noted by LMAX and Coinbase, Sygnia intends to place heavy emphasis on complying with regulations and security. Some would argue that crypto is not meant to be regulated, however, many would agree that if they have something valuable, be it any type of asset – digital or physi-

cal, that they would not want to lose that asset. So until crypto technology has evolved to the point that it no longer has significant security vulnerabilities, a sensibly regulated crypto market that strikes an optimal balance between not stifling innovation while also preventing fraud seems to be the best course of action.

Taxation System for Cryptocurrencies Under Development

In light of this development, Wierzycka pointed out that digital currency trading and related profits are taxable according to South Africa’s Revenue Service (SARS).

Per the Sygnia CEO, a more comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies is being worked on by the country’s regulators. For now, her company will adhere to guidelines for crypto related businesses currently available and provided by New York State such as BitLicense in August 2015.

To better serve both retail and institutional investors, Sygnia intends to allocate a fund specifically to be used for investments in a number of different digital currencies.

This fund would be managed

by Sygnia for its clients. In addition to keeping traditional assets in their Sygnia portfolio, clients of the company will be able to manage their cryptos through the same interface.

Reserve Bank of South Africa Careful Not to Stifle Crypto Innovation

Recently, the reserve bank of South Africa classified digital currencies as “cyber tokens” and stated that they “don’t meet the requirements of money.” This appears to be a follow-up of the central bank’s appointment of a fintech research group this year, which was tasked with examining regulatory requirements for cryptocurrencies. Notably, last month the bank announced that it had put together a selfregulatory body to monitor the developments in the cryptocurrency and fintech sector. The main goal of this self-regulatory entity is to avoid “systemic risk” while also not stifling innovation in the rapidly evolving crypto and blockchain industry.

Omar Faridi omar@coregroup.info Core Magazine

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