Thursday, 5 April 2018

Ripple Would Pay to Play on Leading US Exchanges

It is not an everyday affair that we get to know how does the cryptocurrency reach in the top list of major exchanges in the market itself. But today we will be aware of the measurements taken by Ripple, the No. 3 digital coin in the market cap of the cryptocurrency, and how would it reach its heights to get XRP coin listed on the leading trading lists of the cryptocurrency among the top selling currency like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

According to a report by Bloomberg Ripple is facing some problem in getting the XRP in the top leading list. This startup controls the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency also the banks have signed onto its network and have promised to help them to bring equity stakes in the business itself. The reports also stated that Ripple has offered “financial incentives” to the bitcoin exchanges to Gemini of Winklevoss and it will be a twin affair as the Coinebase will also be on the list of exchanges in the market. And there will be standard procedure for payment of these equities on the list in the market but there are not to be unnecessarily loosened but the unregulated cryptocurrency market so far.
But reportedly it is said that Ripple had offered to pay $1 million cash money to Gemini for getting into the list of Q3 2017 and also had proposed to grant a loan of $100 million in XRP to Coinebase which would help the investor in trading for the exchange. Its suggested through the report that Ripple after granting the payment would have accepted it back in the form of fiat money or XRP. The profit acquired from the deal has to be given to a US- based exchange.
A spokesman from the company has openly denied some of the details which are given out and which are said to be unclear. He spoke in an interview to Bloomberg: “ We want the XRP to be the most liquid digital asset possible to enable faster, cheaper global payment.”
But the market participants had been worrying lately as for the US policy makers as to what would be their regulatory framework be regarding the concept of cryptocurrencies, XRP and also would they be falling under the securities camps of the country.  But for now the greater the speculation of the XRP at the exchanges the greater are the possibilities that the price of the coin will be benefited, as for an instance at the year-end of 2017 and last month of the year.

Gray Area

XRP is required but the merchants in the cryptocurrency market, there is also large demand on forums and in social media. But Ripple have not been able to secure themselves in the major exchange lists in US trading platforms till now. But despite the fact that San Francisco-based Ripple had been on that had started the blockchain and was able to create a bridge between the cryptocurrency companies and traditional banks all around the world.

According to a research by
Autonomous Next LLP, cryptocurrency exchanges have been raking in million dollars from ICO operators and have been trying to secure a spot for themselves for their tokens on high volume platforms so far. The cost of an issuer varies from $1 million to $3 million as per the listing, with the higher end of the spectrum in order to provide access to higher liquidity. In one of the Bloomberg stories it was cited by an attorney that what Ripple had proposed to Coinebase and Gemini it very well good in the eyes of the law meaning that it is legal.
But the Gray Portion in the graph comes to being whether XRP get characterized as a security token or not, but in the other case it will be muddies the water. And for an instance, if the regulators decide that XRP is an unregulated security token then they have to label some ICO tokens for the later purpose, which will also lead to cause some problems both for the Ripple and the exchanges that support it.

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Crypto Exchange OKEx to Reverse ‘Irregular’ Transactions Post Bitcoin Crashes


The global cryptocurrency exchange platform OKEx has announced that it is holding back a number of Bitcoin future transactions to address and tackle the string of sporadic sell-offs that took place recently  from their trading site.


The exchange has a major platform in Hong-Kong and has declared last Friday that it would undo the crypto transactions made earlier that morning around 4:47 AM to 6:30 AM (HKT). This was the specific time around which the value of Bitcoin drastically dropped to a price of 4,755 dollars on the OKEx platform. This was especially low for Bitcoin, considering other exchanges valued Bitcoin at an average price of 7,000 dollars.

Since the value of Bitcoin was remarkably lower than otherCs for this time period of the crash, there are speculations towards manipulation in the market. Some users blame the OKEx trading platform itself. The extreme fluctuation of the price, especially on this particular exchange, has led to the liquidation of many users assets as they have been margin called. There were reports of a trader having lost more than 1 million yuan or 1.8 million dollars in the process and threatening to commit suicide outside the OKEx office.

OKEx has officially stated that, “In order to protect the interests of customers, after a careful discussion, OKEx will roll back weekly, weekly, and quarterly contract data for all currencies”.  The rollback had occurred at 3:30 PM HKT on Friday.

This large scale sell off is specific to only to OKEx as other markets in Hong Kong and worldwide have dropped but steadily made a comeback over the past few days. Bitcoin’s price is currently listed at 6,897 dollars on Bitfinex with a lower range drop at 6,614 dollars. Bitcoin’s market range is around 117 billion dollars, a low range from its previous $325 billion in December 2017.


Many major altcoins like Ether, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash have also been trading at their all time lowest prices. Bitcoin is maintaining a moderately higher price than these altcoins but depends heavily on the trends of the crypto market as a whole. OKEx holds the rank as fourth most popular cryptocurrency exchange and holds a daily trading volume of 1.3 billion dollars.

Tuesday, 27 March 2018

Goldman Sachs Accuses Jaipur-based Bitman Sachs for Trademark Violation

The global investment banking company, Goldman Sachs, has announced that it is charging Bitman Sachs, a Jaipur-based cryptocurrency exchange, for violating their trademark name of Sachs and infringing intellectual property. The exchange, registered under Bitman Sachs LLP with a website called Bitsachs.com, has been warned of impending legal action that will be taken by US company Goldman Sachs.

Founder of Bitman Sachs, Ashish Agarwal, has reacted to the threatened lawsuit saying, “We are not using Goldman anywhere in our brand name and Sachs is a very common surname in Germany. So I don't know how this could be an infringement of intellectual property or trademark”.

Goldman Sachs defended the accusation saying that, “Sachs provides extensive financial services for clients in currency, cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies”. This means that both the financial company and the indian exchange are in the crypto investment and trading business. Bitman Sachs, relatively new, allows users to access different types of cryptocurrency, hold them simultaneously in their wallet, and exchange coins to currency on a peer-to-peer based platform. Popular coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple can be purchased on Bitman Sachs exchange.

Agarwal claims that his exchange is drafting a reply in cooperation with their legal team. He also says that he was surprised to hear of the lawsuit and the notice, stating, “What is interesting is that Goldman Sachs and its analysts have been panning Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies but in the legal notice they claim they themselves have interest in the business. This is bit strange for someone like me who is a big believer in future of Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies”. Cryptocurrencies work on the basis of decentralised systems which is a major part of their appeal.

There was no no sign of any social media response by Bitman Sachs to the allegations and notice served that same morning. The chairman of Goldman Sachs, India, Sonjoy Chatterjee and its Asia Pacific spokesperson received no reply either. The notice was sent on February 21st by US law firm Andrews Kurth Kenyon to Bitman Sachs’ founder Ashish Agarwal.

In the notice the following was stated as the misdoing on Bitman Sachs’ part, “The infringing mark is confusingly similar to Goldman Sachs Mark, as is also partially evidenced by your use of a company name that copies the ‘Man Sachs’ name. This was clearly intended to draw association with Goldman Sachs”.

One of the main reasons for the concern of similar sounding names is that Goldman believes that their clients may be confused. They are also worried that clients will associate Bitman with Goldman as a subsidiary of the larger firm. They do not wish to be affiliated, confused with, or associated in any way with Bitman Sachs.
Goldman’s head of global investment research, Steve Strongin, stated earlier in February that the value of many cryptocurrencies will plunge and eventually reach zero due to the instability and volatility of the market and system. However, as of the end of February, Goldman is investing in the crypto space and experimenting with crypto trading.


Many Indian cryptocurrency exchanges have had a hard time functioning in coexistence with the government and with the traditional banks. Over the last couple of months numerous tax raids, legal notices, and the suspension of numerous crypto company bank accounts have set them back quite a bit. Even traders and investors in cryptocurrency are not safe from the tax department who has sent notices to half a million investors.

#MTCX_India #Bitman #Goldman_Sachs #Jaipur-Based #India

Cryptocurrency Market Progressively Affected By Bitcoin Crash to $8,500

As of March 25, Bitcoin suffered a huge hit when the value of the coin fell to 8,500 dollars. This drop has affected the cryptocurrency market and it is has been struggling ever since to come back to its previous mark in the $350 billion regions. Many other cryptocurrencies have also suffered a drop in value as a result except that of small coins like Ontology and Ethos.

Bitcoin and Ethereum Record No Hike
The two most popular coins in the crypto market, Ethereum and Bitcoin, are unable to make any significant change to the price drop scenario since the crash on March 25th. The only change incurred was a minimal decline in Bitcoin price from $8,580 to $8,490, hardly more than 1 percent. The trading volume of Bitcoin on a daily basis is around $4.5 billion, that is three times more than the daily trading volume of Ethereum.

The second most liquid cryptocurrency in the market, Tether, sustains a daily trading volume of $1.4 billion at the moment. The most useful advantage of Tether is that it is used as a hedge for determining the value of cryptocurrency in the market. This is because most traders use Tether to judge the position of crypto coins and their value instead of using regular currency for risk comparisons. Binance, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, allows users to make cryptocurrency and Tether pairings, to hedge for risks and even in times when the market is most volatile. One indication of cryptocurrency risks and instability comes from the extreme high daily trading volume of Tether. It also means that a large portion of users are hedging the value of cryptocurrencies.

CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, commented to CNN that the trading volumes for most cryptocurrencies are back up on exchanges. However, this amount is still low especially when compared to the volume that was traded back in March first week when Bitcoin was at a higher value of $11,700.

In comparison to the crypto markets in South Korea and Hong Kong, premiums for Bitcoin are still higher than in most countries. Premium in South Korea, is at $8,723, a small 3.2 percent higher than in the US crypto market. A cryptocurrency brokerage platform called Gatecoin which allows bitcoin-to-cryptocurrency trades in Hong Kong, has priced Bitcoin in the $9,000 region.

There still appears to be investments from prominent markets in Asia, and premiums on Bitcoin are maintained relatively high. Countries with strict regulations or low trading premiums have their investors moving to markets in Hong Kong and South Korea for trading. Many Chinese investor have joined the Hong Kong market to trade cryptocurrency especially after harsh regulation from the government.

Will Altcoins Prosper?
Although many smaller cryptocurrencies are unaffected by the drop in Bitcoin and its low daily trading volume, it is still too soon to predict whether smaller coins will prosper or not. It can be notified that numerous smaller coins have profited better than Bitcoin since the crash. Ontology and Ethos have both logged a gain of 20 percent more than Bitcoin over the past week and  coins like Nebilo and Walton Chain are showing significant performance better than Bitcoin for the last five days.


Now, one of the reasons for altcoin popularity could be from their lack of significant progress in the past and recent outperformance over Bitcoin. Unless there is a steady and slow progress for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple to regain their previous value, altcoins will not be able to outperform for much longer. Bitcoin was previously valued at $12,000, Ethereum was $900, and Ripple was $1.

Saturday, 24 March 2018

Pablo Escobar’s Brother Roberto, Responds to BTC Scam with ‘Dietbitcoin’

Roberto Escobar has recently launched a Colombian version of cryptocurrency and alternative to Bitcoin called Dietbitcoin (DDX). This BTC hard fork coin has been initiated as an Escobar Inc. venture as reported by TheNextWeb. Roberto also wrote a book which is available on the website of his cryptocurrency, and is titled, ‘The True Story by Roberto Escobar: Pablo Escobar’s Dietbitcoin’. In its description it mentions,”After making $100 billion dollars, Roberto Escobar launches the dietbitcoin ‘DDX’ cryptocurrency”.

The book includes interesting in depth chapters on “The Other Peruvian Plane,” and “Noriega, The Traitor”, as well as the basis for Robertos proposal to create a new cryptocurrency. He mentions his intentions for DDX saying, “I am the first person in the world, Roberto De Jesus Escobar Gaviria, to publicly come out and claim that Bitcoin was created by the American Government, and I am not going to be the last person to say this. The world is going to wake up. The world is going to see that this was created by them. And when they see it, it is too late, and when the CIA founds out that the world knows about this, the CIA is going to sell all of their coins, and they will destroy the value of Bitcoin…That’s why I am creating my own cryptocurrency called dietbitcoin (DDX)”.

Dietbitcoin is currently running an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that consists of three rounds with 1 million DDX coins as the cap for the crowdsale. The pre-ICO round 1 offers a total of 300,000 coins for $2 a coin, a sale price from the $50 originally listed, pre-ICO round 2 offers 300,000 coins for $100 each, and the ICO will have 400,000 tokens for $1000 each.

Roberto, in his book, makes it known that the elusive Nakamoto himself approached him for the creation of DDX, but it was a ploy by the US government to invade his Escobar Inc. He declares that his DDX will remain out of the reach of ‘Americanos’ who monitor Bitcoin users and track their activity. He also made contact with another crypto leader, John McAfee, founder of McAfee software but Roberto broke off the deal of them making DDX together because he believed that the vision was too small.


Roberto has an interesting opinion on Ethereum (ETH) and doubts its legitimacy as a cryptocurrency due to the young age of the co creator Vitalik Buterin. He states in his book, “Ethereum is a complete scam. This is nice technology, but it was created by a small child. Who cares about this child? I do not care. He can come here and talk to me in my face. I will say ‘Sir, you are a gringo. You think I care about the gringo coin? I don’t care.’ All of these other coins and tokens; do not even get me started on tokens”.

#Pablo_Escobar #Dietbitcoin #DDX #ICO #Roberto_Escobar

Friday, 23 March 2018

How Indian Startups are Fundraising With Cryptocurrency ICOs

A new method of raising funds is available to companies and startups similar to that of the existing IPO or initial public offerings. The trending alternative, called ICOs or initial coin offerings is based on cryptocurrencies. The use of this platform for fundraising has led to a capital advance of over 200 million dollars for Indian startups in just a few or one time pitch of ICOs. On a worldwide scale, startups have managed to raise 3.7 billion dollars, reported by the accounting firm EY. The use of ICOs is not limited to only Indian markets as startups take their fundraising to foreign investors and markets.

When fundraising via ICOs the startup has to give prospective investors special crypto tokens that can be redeemed later for cryptocurrency. The investor in return invests funds into the startup venture in the form of Bitcoin or other Altcoins. It is a similar process in IPO but investors are granted shares instead of tokens.
One successful startup that used ICOs for fundraising in its initial stages was Drivezy, which is one of the first peer-to-peer platforms for sharing vehicles. The co-founder, Abhishek Mahajan, credited the alternative crypto-based strategy and stated, “We had been operating for three years and had achieved significant traction. But the problem was we needed a lot of capital to put cars on our platform. Instead of reaching out to VCs, which would have led dilution of our equity, a couple of Japanese investors suggested an ICO”.

Another success story comes in the form of a crypto exchange platform called Belfrics.The exchange was founded in 2014 and was able to raise upto $2.2 million by using an ICO pitched the year before. Praveenkumar Vijayakumar, founder states that “We raised funds to build a KYC-compliant blockchain and a token exchange platform. The funds came in bitcoins and most of our investors came from Europe".

One of the most beneficial aspects of using an ICO for fundraising is that the startup that initiates one can make the rules for the investors. They control the length of time that the ICO will remain open for investment, the value of the redeemable token, and even when the token can be exchanged for cryptocurrency. For Belfric, the exchange platform set the rate of their tokens as 2000 Belfric tokens being equal to 1 Bitcoin. After their fundraising period ended and they met their capital goals, the ICO was closed. Their investors were free to either cash in the tokens or trade them on token exchange platforms. When the ICO closes the startup no longer regulates what the investor does with their remaining tokens.

The uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies in the India market drives startups to find other sources of funding for their ventures. Some of the best countries to get ICO based funding is the US, Europe, and Singapore. Belfrics found investors from Singapore and  Drivezy raised capital in Japan.


Thursday, 22 March 2018

Tracking of Bitcoin Users by NSA Revealed By Snowden Papers

In an interesting update from the Edward Snowden papers, reveals that the US government has expressed considerable interest in Bitcoin ever since its use became popular. The Intercept, an online magazine, has posted the leaked undisclosed documents from Snowden that actually provide evidence that the United States National Security Agency or NSA has been keeping track of Bitcoin users from around the world as described in a 2013 report for the agency. There could be a coincidence of the report leaking not too far away from the recent ban on American use of Venezuelan national cryptocurrency Petro coin by President Trump.

The report is cryptic with code names and classification of data that will help the NSA “track down the senders and receivers of bitcoins,” as the report stated. The Bitcoin monitoring mission by the NSA is called “project Oakstar”, and the purpose of its initiation was to tackle terrorism facilitated by Bitcoin or crypto transactions. The report indicated that the NSA was not randomly tracking users but were monitoring persons or groups involved in suspicious activities and whom utilised the privacy and anonymity of Bitcoin for making illegal transactions like laundering money. An expert from the NSA report states, “[NSA agent] is hoping to use the access for their mission of looking at organized crime and cyber targets that utilize online e-currency services to move and launder money. These illicit finance networks provide user access to international monetary systems while providing a high degree of anonymity.”

Utilising the professional surveillance tools accessible to the NSA for security purposes, data was able to be collected, decrypted, and interpreted to gain the identity of protected Bitcoin users. There were reportedly two other platforms monitored, the first being the Liberty Reserve, that had dealt with money laundering involving cryptocurrencies leading to its close, and one other. Bitcoin is not the most privacy controlled and anonymous cryptocurrency of all coins in the market, yet it was considered top priority for the NSA according to the report.

Unapproved Access
Even though Bitcoin incorporates Blockchain which makes all ledgers public access, the NSA infiltrated further into users private information to get more in depth research on potential terrorists. NSA hacked into users computers to gain sensitive information like passwords, sessions of the user, billing information, IP address, and media access control address. They dug deep into what targets they acquired and tried to highlight any connection the select Bitcoin users had with illicit activities.


It seems that no matter how hard the government tries to uncover and penalise Bitcoin and Blockchain users, the crypto community will always find a way to retaliate and strengthen their stance on supporting a decentralized system.

G20’s Agenda in the Washington Meet is to bring back Cryptocurrency Regulation

One of the largest economies in the world, the G20 had a meeting in Washington where their topic for discussion was to build a regulatory ...