Recently launched cloud server cryptocurrency mining service, Splitt is now making the heads turn in the global crypto community. Designed to make cryptocurrency mining user-friendly and safe for all, Splitt has secured an investment of well over $5 million from more than ten thousand investors over the last three months.
Splitt, a recently launched cryptocurrency mining service equipped with a cloud server, is now taking giant strides towards becoming a highly preferred choice amongst the crypt mining enthusiasts around the world. Following its mega launch in August, Splitt has done well to secure close to one hundred thousand users and ten thousand investors in less than three months. Official sources have revealed that the company has already received an investment of more than five million for further development of the business.
As a result of drastic increase in the number of miners, bitcoin mining has become extremely competitive these days. Along with this growing competition, the bitcoin network has increased the difficulty level of solving the puzzles. As a result, it has become necessary now for the miners to up their game to stay in the race.
The crypto cloud of Splitt meets these challenges by offering mining services with ASIC integrated chips. This is considered to be the latest breakthrough in crypto mining because it is faster compared to the traditional GPU and CPU mining, and consumes less power. Splitt cloud mining requires no specialized hardware as it utilizes shared processing power from data centres.
Thousands of users have recommended Splitt as their crypto mining alternative because of the following features.
Flexible multi-algorithm cloud mining
No pool fees, no waiting for equipment and no system crashes
Hashpower is purchased and is retained for the whole contract duration.
Dedicated to transparency and discloses everything to the public
The company can be located easily and its representatives attend a number of events regularly
Mining a number of different cryptocurrencies from scrypt and proof of work algorithm coins as well as ASIC and GPU...
People know that financial institutions think of cryptocurrencies as arch enemies. But with the increase of opinions from financial advisors that the world is on the brink of another financial collapse because of inflation, maybe digital currency are the solution to some of the problems. Although not perfect, digital currency are still developing and will have a far bigger impact that most people give them. So it wouldn’t come as a surprise when financial institutions end up adopting the technology they are so actievly against. For investors, adapting to circumstances has always been the correct way. Different people use cryptocurrencies for different reasons: some want to get rich quick, others want independent control over their financial assets and some idealists desire an entirely new and efficient global economy built on blockchain technology and digital currency.
Whatever a person’s reasons for using crypto and blockchain are, there will always be a huge cultural clash when cryptocurrency holders and Wall Street ideals meet. A huge influx of institutional money would be extremely beneficial for cryptocurreny prices in the short term, but in the long term this will cause extreme volatility. Recently the sixth-biggest fund manager in the world, Fidelity started to offer digital trading services and it shook the landscape even more. The announcement of this project was aimed at the trading demands of large institutional investors. These demands will in turn provide services like “institutional-grade custody”, large scale leverage trading and more, all of which should pump cryptocurrency prices, but will basically just bring more whales to the digital currency free market.
Institutional money will spike Digital Currency prices
People who believe or want to be financially independent from banks will not like this. In fact, most supporters and users of Bitcoin stand firmly behind Bitcoin’s philosophy that you can be your own bank. Developers and investors with insight however, knew that this day would eventually come. Risk management will see those institutions passing off the risk of holding the said assets to...
Whether it’s Power Mining Pool today or Bitconnect yesterday, the crypto space is festering with parasitic scams and opportunistic swindlers. The conditions are ripe for them and there’s money to be made.
Among the dangers, Bitcoin mining scams are a tough one to identify and parting the good from the nasty can be tricky. Mining scams are wrapped up in an already technically demanding task of Bitcoin mining. They are billed as a consumer-friendly method for building exposure to Bitcoin mining, and when run like this, they really do provide value for investors looking to diversify.
Legit Bitcoin cloud mining pools are too often buried in search results and outranked by throngs of fly-by-night operations. Finding the legit pools can be a tall order and require sifting through Reddit posts and Bitcointalk forum entries.
With that said, there are legit mining operations out there. As always, do your own research and stay skeptical as we settle and develop this wild frontier. For now, let’s take a look at what a crypto mining scam looks like to hopefully better prepare us to identify the key red flags.
Cloud Mining Pools and Ponzi Schemes: A Match Made in He….
Let’s take a moment to clear up what a cloud mining pool is and why they attract Madoff-like Ponzi schemes faster than ants at a picnic.
What’s a Cloud Mining Pool?
A cloud mining pool is the most hands-off version of crypto mining you can get. They allow a participant to rent or lease hashing power not directly owned by themselves. The rented hashing power is then pooled and paid out proportionally to the members (after fees and operational costs).
A traditional mining pool instead requires participants to supply their own hashing power and pool it with other miners. The participant owns and operates their own hardware and contributes to the pool’s overall hashing power.
The critical difference between a cloud mining pool and a traditional mining pool is the ownership of the hardware.
Cloud mining: you don’t own the hardware (hashing power).
Traditional mining: you own hardware (hashing power).
Why pool at all? In short, block rewards become more difficult to obtain as overall hashing power of a particular blockchain increase.
Take Bitcoin as an example. There was a time in Bitcoin mining when a standard CPU could mine whole blocks itself. Gone are those days. Bitcoin mining is now big business with plenty of stakeholders leveraging their resources into the security of the blockchain.
Miners with serious hashing power make it improbable for small miners to reasonably expect block rewards. Their hashing power is just not enough to compete.
The solution: gather together all these smaller players and pool their hashing power. Miners in a pool no longer compete for blocks of their own, instead, they work together and proportionally share the booty.
What’s a Ponzi Scheme?
It’s theft, let’s just clear that up. If you’re in a Ponzi scheme you are either being robbed or doing the robbing yourself.
A typical Ponzi scheme involves enticing participants to invest their money into a fund or investment strategy that has seemingly guaranteed returns. In reality, and with variation, the returns are not gained by real-world trading or superior business acumen. Conversely, new investments to the funds are distributed around existing investors and represented as market returns.
Charles Ponzi – infamously known to have created the investment scheme.
Ponzi schemes require a constant flow of new investment to keep the machine moving. Once things fall apart or new investment slows, the scheme is often revealed for what it is. In the world of crypto Ponzi schemes, a collapsing Ponzi scheme is followed by a hasty exit scam.
Keep in mind that Ponzi schemes thrive in times of economic expansion and speculative bubbles. Capturing collective optimism is pivotal to its success. Bitconnect is a choice example of the market fervor getting the best of investors.
Identifying the Red Flags of a Cloud Mining Ponzi Scheme
Firstly, the duck test. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
The duck test isn’t scientific by any standard but can be used to leverage your gut feeling to identify early warning...
So far, this year has been marked by bad news for institutional investors interested in pursuing cryptocurrencies.
One of the most lauded and most highly anticipated crypto investment instruments, the crypto Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), has faced steady regulatory headwinds as the SEC continually rejects attempts to bring ETFs to market.
Since many crypto enthusiasts see institutional investment as the next frontier for crypto adoption, these setbacks are frustrating. However, that doesn’t mean that all opportunities for institutional investors are impossible.
In that regard, it’s been a big week for Bitcoin as a series of leaks reveal that major financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Citibank, are creating or developing investment products intended to provide their substantial customer base with access to digital assets.
Morgan Stanley is preparing a crypto product
This week, Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley is preparing an investment product that will provide their customers access to Bitcoin derivatives. Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg contends that Morgan Stanley will provide customers with “synthetic exposure” to Bitcoin markets by enabling investors to take long or short positions on the digital currency.
In this way, Morgan Stanley is joining several other mainstream financial institutions striving to produce mechanisms for their clients to trade in Bitcoin without providing direct access to digital currencies. Bloomberg’s source notes that Morgan Stanley will charge spread fees to accommodate the inherent risks in brokering Bitcoin products.
Tezos is a distributed, peer-to-peer, permissionless network that seeks to improve on older blockchain protocols such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
One of its differentiating features is its on-chain governance that promises a self-amending blockchain – the protocol can evolve by upgrading its own code after coin holders have approved the changes.
This avoids some of the political and technological issues that have affected other blockchains, such as the Ethereum hard fork following the DAO hack, and the hard fork drama that happened in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
The project had a two-week uncapped ICO in July 2017. It collected approximately $232 million worth of cryptocurrencies and set a record for the largest ICO at the time. It currently has a market cap of over $782 million (as of October 31, 2018) and ranks among the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world in terms of market cap.
There are 3 key layers in Tezos – network layer, transaction layer, and consensus layer. The components are modular, which makes it easy to upgrade by swapping modules in and out seamlessly. Other networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, can be represented within Tezos by implementing the proper interface to the network layer.
Self-amending: Tezos can be upgraded without the need for forks in the blockchain because of its self-amending feature. On-chain governance also means XTZ owners vote on the direction of the blockchain – the election cycle provides a formal process for any proposed protocol changes.
Liquid Proof-of-Stake: Tezos uses a proof-of-stake consensus model where every stakeholder can participate in validating transactions on the network and be rewarded accordingly.
This table summarizes the differences between Tezo’s proof-of-stake consensus model and delegated proof-of-stake:
Tezos Comparison
Formal verification: The Tezos blockchain facilitates formal verification, a technique which mathematically proves the correctness of the code governing transactions. This helps secure smart contracts and avoid bugs in the code.
Turing complete smart contracts: Tezos supports Turing complete smart contracts and provides a platform for building smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).
It should be noted that in the original white paper, it was stated that the Tezos network would launch in “summer 2017”. However, the network was not launched until June 30, 2018, almost a year after the initial promise.
The delay was partly due to the infighting between the foundation board members which led to the ICO funding being unutilized for a while.
XTZ is the native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain. With Tezos, any coin holders can participate in the validation process by making a security deposit. This is a process calling “baking”. They are rewarded for contributing to the network and ensuring its security and stability and can lose their deposit if they exhibit dishonest behavior.
Initially, the inflation of the circulating supply is set at a maximum of 5.5% per annum. Each block is “baked” by a stakeholder and endorsed by 32 other random stakeholders. Coin holders can delegate their stake to a baker who can bake the coins for the holders for a fee. Click here for a list of bakers.
Transaction fees on the Tezos network are optional and users can send transactions with zero transaction fee. However, we believe that if the network is congested, bakers will prioritize transactions with higher transaction fees.
Part of the newly minted XTZ coins will be rewarded to the contributors that won the proposals voted on-chain. The contributors will use the funding to execute the proposals.
Tezos was created by Arthur Breitman and his wife, Kathleen Breitman. They released the position paper and whitepaper in 2014 and the project had been in development ever since. The biographies of the two co-founders are summarized below:
Arthur Breitman – Arthur was born in France and studied at École Polytechnique in math, physics, and computer science. He went on to a career in quantitative finance, working in various positions at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He also worked as a portfolio manager for White Bay Group, a family office.
Kathleen Breitman – Kathleen co-founded Tezos in October 2016. Prior to that, she worked in strategy and consulting at R3 CEV (a distributed ledger startup), Accenture, and De Dicto and in various positions at Bridgewater Associates, The Wall Street Journal, etc. She obtained her BA from Cornell University in...
Amazon and ConsenSys-Built Kaleido Launches Full-Stack Marketplace
Blockchain software-as-a-service (SAS) project Kaleido has launched a marketplace to provide its users with a “full-stack enterprise platform.”
Their “Blockchain Business Cloud” now features a “new marketplace [of] trusted tools and services from Kaleido, AWS, and members of the new partnership program, all offered as plug-and-play.” The suite of services will feature oracles, wallet and ID services, supply chain tools and even legal contract software.
According to a company statement, “Clients now have access to native AWS integrations, popular services such as HD wallets for privacy and ID registries for organizational identity, as well as industry products such as Chainlink for smart contract oracles, Viant for supply chain management, OpenLaw and Clause.io for real-time legal contracts, and many others—all...
One of the key events of the year took place last week in Zurich´s “Crypto Valley”. The Cryptosummit was — for me — both engaging and stimulating because the broad focus and main topic of it was the tokenization of securities, which is where — with Untitled-INC — I am more involved.
Of course, with such a packed agenda and thought-provoking panels running simultaneously on 3 stages, I had to make a choice and follow only those which were — for me at least — the most compelling. Most certainly I have missed interesting stuff, but the following were for me the key “take-aways” from the event.
Charles Hoskinson, formerly Ethereum CEO and currently at Input Output HK, gave me comfort that the global adoption path of crypto is nowadays irreversible. He captivated the audience mentioning his experiences while travelling for crypto projects in lands such as Mongolia where — perhaps not surprisingly — cryptocurrency adoption is progressing at a faster rate than in many western countries. He emphasized that Securities Token Offerings (STOs) will be the key instrument for driving the growth and capital allocation to developing countries. This is the first time in history that developing countries are not constrained in accessing capital for development. And of course this will be a radical shift for those countries which will have the unique opportunity to free themselves from the chokehold of western powers and financial institutions such as the IMF. For the first time in history those countries can now sell tokenized bonds backed up by their commodities and rare earth resources, without the need to sell them out to multinationals in exchange of “peanuts”. The first time in history that they can access a global, decentralized market of investors to fuel their growth. I find this is pretty exciting.
Juwan Lee, founder and CEO of Nexchange, presented interesting datasets to show where crypto investments stand today when compared with the hedge funds in the 90s. Crypto investments stand today where the hedge funds sector stood back in 1997, at the very beginning of its growth phase. Since then the hedge fund sector has grown in volume more than 15 times, going from the early phases, through institutionalization, consolidation and finally to the current maturity phase.
Crypto funds are also still quite minuscule in terms of managed funds. The large majority (approx. 208) have less than US$10m under management. Only the largest funds — approx. 28...
After a positive week for the alternative coins, a correction came to remind us of the risks involved with market volatility. However, the sharp declines have already been halted for the moment, getting closer to the dangerous $6000 zone.
Ahead of the expected Fork of Bitcoin Cash hard fork, the price of the currency has risen by tens of percent and has attracted considerable interest from traders and investors who are eyeing the market.
In light of the upcoming decisions regarding Bitcoin ETFs and other financial instruments related to the crypto markets, a trend has recently been initiated by regulators turning to large-volume crypto exchanges that affect the Bitcoin price and other altcoins in order to try to understand the price discovery mechanism.
The end of the year is near, and November began with a positive altcoin trend. The recent price hikes brought a positive sign to the market. But if we put the prices of the coins aside and look at the development of the infrastructure, the number of companies, employees and the partnerships that are being formed, one might expect another bullish wave in the near future.
Bitcoin continues to be the dominant and leading currency in the market and begins to show signs of stability with support around $6,200.
SEC Charges EtherDelta’s Founder for Operating an Unregistered Exchange. The U.S SEC has heavily fined Zachary Coburn for operating an unregistered platform that allows people to buy and sell tokens that the agency had earlier...
According to the ministry’s tweet, the system is designed to issue and verify the authenticity of university-issued degrees. The new government-backed consortium will initially be comprised of six public universities and their diploma-verifying system is set to operate using the NEM (XEM) blockchain. According to the ministry, the new system was developed by a team led by a professor from...
Bitcoin is not without its vocal band of critics and naysayers. The Nouriel Roubinis and Paul Krugmans of this world would have you believe that Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation is 100 percent doomed to fail.
Bitcoin Doesn’t Need Men with Guns
Earlier in the year, Bitcoinistreported on Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times where the Nobel Prize winner in Economics took aim at cryptocurrency asking what problems virtual currencies solve. This week, Economics professor Saifedean Ammous offered a robust reply to the flawed rhetoric espoused in Krugman’s piece.
For starters, Bitcoin $6393.00 +0.02% doesn’t need men with guns to enforce its value. According to Krugman:
Fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do. And this means that their value isn’t a bubble that can collapse if people lose faith.
If the above is true then the current situation in places like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iran, Turkey, and even Argentina shouldn’t be happening. This author is going out on a limb to say each of...
