Digital currency markets road to recovery has obstacles
Crypto markets witnessed a sizable pullback on Sunday, as bitcoin lurched back below $3,600 and major altcoins registered slight to moderate declines. Although 2019 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for cryptocurrencies, the path to recovery is riddled with obstacles, chief among them being damaged investor sentiment and a myriad of regulatory issues.
Market Update
With the exception of Tron, all major cryptocurrencies have registered declines in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market cap and trading volume, swung back below $3,600 through the early part of Sunday. The bitcoin price reached a session low of $3,567.25, according to CoinMarketCap. At last check, it was down 0.3% at $3,595.25.
XRP fell 1.8% to $0.3111, where it was approaching several bearish technical confluences. This comes despite Ripple announcing it had sold $535.6 million worth of XRP last year.
Ethereum declined 1.9% to $114.89. Bitcoin cash was nursing a loss of 2.8% to trade at $123.97. The value of EOS fell 2.1% to $2.40.
After peaking north of $0.03, Tron was back trading around $0.0290, having gained 1.2%. TRX has gained a whopping 21.4% over the past seven days. Read more: TRX Price Explodes While Tron’s Justin Sun Implodes on CNBC; BTT Token Will Be ‘Hybrid’.
Outside the top ten, Binance...
Andreessen Horowitz and PayPal Co-Founder Backed Crypto Custodian Launches
The Anchorage cryptocurrency custodian for institutional investors launched following a $17 million funding round led by venture fund Andreessen Horowitz, a press release states Wednesday, Jan. 23.
According to the announcement, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin’s SciFi VC, venture company Khosla Ventures, Mark McCombe of investment firm Blackrock, and others also took part in the series A funding round.
The developers claim they intended to make a custodian that would be more secure than cold storage in order to better support institutional investments, along with enabling active on-chain participation.
Anchorage claims to be based on the principles of easy access to assets, voting, auditing proof of existence, and quick transactions. Anchorage believes that large scale investments in digital assets, such as those from institutional players, will bring new growth...
Educating the Next Wave of Bitcoin & Blockchain Developers
Hyperbitcoinization enthusiast and writer
Educating the Next Wave of Bitcoin Developers
Bitcoin is an open-source protocol that anybody can interact with. It is getting attention and attracting participation in different ways, whether it is through speculation, investing and sending money, all the way to contributing to what’s underneath the hood. The entire Bitcoin repository is on GitHub, inviting any developer to see the protocol’s code and perhaps contribute toward solving existing problems if they can.
A noteworthy fact, however, is that the pool of developers today is quite small.
“It's not an easy field to get into,” Jimmy Song, author of Programming Bitcoin and instructor at Programming Blockchain, told Bitcoin Magazine. “Interestingly enough, the thing that makes Bitcoin hard to get started on is the cryptography, and that's hard because the math is not familiar to developers. Specifically, finite fields and elliptic curves.”
Some would argue, though, that the small number of developers in Bitcoin today is not too small. In fact, it’s perfectly fine at the size it is for such a new industry.
“Bitcoin has only been around for 10 years, and it only started getting a lot of mainstream attention in 2017, so it hasn't been a long time to build up an ecosystem of developers,” said John Newbery, a Bitcoin Core developer and Bitcoin engineer at Chaincode Labs.
“It’s something that we hear a lot, that it is difficult to find experienced Bitcoin engineers … [Bitcoin] really only started getting mainstream attention two or three years ago, so it’s as expected. We’re doing everything we can at Chaincode to widen and deepen that pool.”
Even outside of developer knowledge, there are many aspects of various fields of expertise that require a significant level of understanding in order to grasp Bitcoin all around. Since there are so many paths that need to be explored, the question is: Where do you start?
It is important to be realistic and realize that a complete understanding of the digital currency will always be unreachable.
“I don't think it's possible to understand all aspects of Bitcoin,” Newbery said. “The frontiers...
2020 Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard invests in cryptocurrency
US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is running for president of the United States in 2020. In December 2017, Gabbard bought Litecoin and Ether at the height of the crypto bull market, according to federal filings.
“I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week,” Gabbard tells CNN on Jan. 12 (see video below).
“There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people…that I want to help solve.”
Gabbard: US Must Stay out of Mideast Wars
Gabbard says her main concern is to make sure that the US does not continue to intervene in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
Her other priorities include climate change, health care, and criminal justice reform.
There is one main issue that is central to the rest, and that is the issue of war and peace.
Gabbard, 37, is a fresh, energetic face on the American political scene. However, her chances of winning the Democrat Party’s nomination are slim, given the huge field of candidates.
For example, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is also running for president. Warren is a crypto critic who says the virtual currency market is full of scam artists.
Gabbard Bought Crypto at Height of Market
As CCN reported, Tulsi Gabbard bought $1,001 to $15,000 of Ether and Litecoin in December 2017. At the time, the bitcoin price soared to a record high of $19,500.
It’s unclear how much crypto Gabbard currently holds. However, it’s likely...
Ethereum developers have postpone Constantinople hard fork, crypto price impacted
The core developers of Ethereum have called for a delay to the activation of Constantinople, just hours before the long-awaited hard fork was scheduled to go live on the third-largest cryptocurrency’s network.
Ethereum Hard Fork Delayed
In a statement, the Ethereum Core Developers and Ethereum Security Community said that they decided to postpone the hard fork after security researchers identified a potential vulnerability in one of the software upgrades.
“Security researchers like ChainSecurity and TrailOfBits ran (and are still running) analysis across the entire blockchain. They did not find any cases of this vulnerability in the wild. However, there is still a non-zero risk that some contracts could be affected,” the statement read.
Because the risk is non-zero and the amount of time required to determine the risk with confidence is longer the amount of time available before the planned Constantinople upgrade, a decision was reached to postpone the fork out of an abundance of caution.
According to the statement, that potential vulnerability stemmed from EIP-1283, which introduces a cheaper gas cost for SSTORE operations. Researchers believe that it’s possible that had EIP-1283 been activated, certain smart contracts that are already running on Ethereum could have become vulnerable to reentrancy attacks.
ChainSecurity has published a more thorough explanation...
Cardano ADA jumps 5% as crypto attention grows
Cardano’s recent run of good fortune continued on Friday, as the multi-asset chain protocol emerged as one of the market’s top performers. The public blockchain project has been riding a wave of positive momentum thanks to an active developer community and optimism concerning the evolution of Internet 3.0.
ADA Approaches Two-Week High
The value of ADA rose 5.3% on Sunday to reach $0.0473, its highest since Christmas Eve. The coin that powers the decentralized platform has returned 9.3% over the past seven days, placing it among the top performers for the week. by comparison, bitcoin traded flat for the week while XRP lost nearly 3%.
At current values, the Cardano blockchain is worth $1.2 billion, placing it 11th among active projects. Six months ago, the cryptocurrency was worth nearly $5 billion and was ranked eighth by market cap. Over that stretch, ADA has dropped more than 70%.
The latest run of good fortune has been accompanied by a notable rise in trading volume. Since last Tuesday, ADA trades have increased by 200%, according to CoinMarketCap. Nearly $44 million worth of ADA was transacted on virtual currency exchanges in the last 24 hours. ZBG and Binance each...
Bitcoin Cash payment API Gateway.cash launches new features
Last October, news.Bitcoin.com reported on a new Bitcoin Cash (BCH) payment processor called Gateway.cash. Since then the Gateway developers have added a variety of features to the BCH platform like instant web-sockets, custom audio, and client-side callbacks for real-time applications.
Also read: How to Spend and Give Bitcoin Cash Over the Holidays
After the BCH Split Organizations Like Gateway.cash Have Emphasized ‘We Will Compete’
After the Bitcoin Cash split, the Money Button and Yours.org creator Ryan X Charles told his Twitter followers his apps would be following the BSV network. Four days later on Twitter, Charles said: “I look forward to seeing the ABC competitors to Yours and Money Button — Best of luck to you all.” Not too long after the post, a new Bitcoin Cash blogging website was launched called Honest Cash and the payment processor Gateway responded to Charle’s tweet.
“Hi, Gateway.cash will be a Money Button competitor for Bitcoin Cash and is now released open-source — The project is led by Ty Everett and he is looking for contributors,” the Gateway organization stated responding to Charles on Nov. 19.
New API Enhancements
Since the Gateway bitcoin cash-powered payment button and the processing application launched, the developer has added a slew of new features to the application program interface (API). Added enhancements include callback URLs, native currencies, custom audio sounds, client-side callbacks for real-time applications, instant web-socket payments, direct deposit to an address, and more. The Gateway developers have also published specifications for the Gateway.cash API which gives...
TRON Showing Bullish Trading Signs
TRON Symbol TRX | Decentralize The Web
The TRON Protocol, one of the largest blockchain based operating systems in the world, offers ... TRX consistently handles 2,000 transactions per second, 24x7.
TRON (TRX/USD) closed 2018 with strength relative to the last couple of months. It is currently trading around $0.0208. At this price level, the market is up more than 90% from its 2018 low of $0.0111 on November 25.
This huge surge in less than one month is more than enough reason for many traders to be bullish on TRON. However, one must also consider that when the market bottomed out, it lost close to 90% of its value from the 2018 peak of $0.10041. Thus, it would also make sense to say that the recent bounce is nothing more than a relief rally.
That is why it is important to examine the market closely to see whether TRON has more upside potential. We did that for you and what we saw was promising. In this article, we reveal how TRON is showing bullish signs.
Structure Resembles Market Leader
In any asset class, whether it be equities or cryptocurrencies, there are some instances when a market leader emerges and then everyone else follows its direction. For example, Apple Inc. was down big yesterday, January 3. Notice how many tech stocks followed suit.
As for cryptocurrencies, the clear market leader right now is Ethereum (ETH/USD). It is currently trading around $160 to put the market up by over 95% from its 2018 low of $83. More importantly, Ethereum has taken out firm resistance of $145. This triggered the breakout from the cup and handle pattern.
ETH/USD daily chart
TRON appears to be following the same pattern. It established...
The best blockchain conferences and events to attend in 2019
2019 is a big year for the blockchain and cryptocurrency markets. Here is a curated list of the events you should look at attending. The next wave of post-2018 scale is coming into the markets. The contraction created the opening for big companies to enter the markets.
2019 is going to be an exciting year for the blockchain community. After a very volatile 2018, we are all looking for a brighter future for our cutting-edge blockchain technology and wide community to emerge back.
The event listed below are sorted by dates, from the beginning of 2019, all the way to the end of the year.
If you would like to add your event, please feel free to contact me directly:
Telegram: https://t.me/fybish
Email: asaf@guerrillabuzz.com
Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/asafybish/
The event will gather the most authoritative Blockchain professors around the world, the public chain projects with the most advanced technology, and technical experts, to discuss the most cutting-edge Blockchain academic research, problems, and solutions. By including keynote speeches and panels covering topics from research to application, the conference will explore the next big opportunity in the Blockchain industry.
Date: Jan. 11, 2019.
Location: San Francisco Marriott Marquis.
Keynote Speakers: Vitalik Buterin, David Chaum, Jun Li, Dawn Song, Mic Bowman and more!
Come with DAIBC series congress, at the World Digital Asset and Blockchain Congress in Dubai. We will create a social networking experience for connecting global investors and entrepreneurs together in Dubai. Meanwhile, we’ll discuss the future of global Blockchain technology, as well as the innovative application of Blockchain technology in different Industries. 30 hot topics will bring you with the most comprehensive case study of innovation project showcases and help you foresee the development trend of Blockchain in the next few years.
Date: Jan 16–18, 2019.
Location: Downtown Miami, James L. Knight Center.
Keynote Speakers: Shiv Madan, Ben Swann, Nebil Ben Aissa, Jhon Harris and more!
The Crypto Finance Conference is offering conference attendants educational keynotes by industry experts, insightful panel discussions about current and future trends as well as unique networking opportunities with other hand-picked participants in a remote and private setting. Additionally, investors get the opportunity to learn more about new crypto businesses. The Crypto Finance Conference is a place to learn, connect and invest with the best.
Date: Jan 16–18, 2019.
Location: St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Keynote Speakers: Charles Hoskinson, Eva Kaili, Helen Hai, Andy Bromberg and more!
Join the entrepreneurs, developers, industry leaders and investors at The Blockchain Event. Learn everything how Blockchain business models will take this distributed ledger technology to disrupt every market imaginable from shipping to commerce. Hear real-life case studies from companies across industries and learn from their successes and failures. Industry experts and cutting-edge global startups will discuss everything from the advertising implications to potential regulation to security concerns. Finally, we will focus on what the future holds for Blockchain and how your company can benefit now.
Date: January 30 — February 1, 2019.
Location: Greater Fort Lauderdale / Broward County Convention Center.
Keynote Speakers: Andey Zanovskiy, Pramod Achanta, Gary Davis, Chong Li and more!
Netherlands-based banking giant ING published a customer report recently where it was declared...
TRON has 50+ dApps, reaching 100M transactions in 173 Days - Justin Sun
Justin Sun - Founder & CEO - Tron Foundation | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn
On Thursday, Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, said that the network supports more than 50 decentralized applications (dApps) and is on track to reach 80 dApps in the short-term.
#TRON now has more than 50+ Dapps. 80+ we are coming! #TRX $TRX
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) December 21, 2018
The statement of Sun follows a major milestone achieved by the blockchain network earlier this month, achieving 100 million transactions in 173 days, averaging 578,034 transaction per day.
Usage of TRON DApps
In August, Martin Köppelmann, the founder of Ethereum-based prediction market platform Gnosis.ph, said that an important statistic to reference in measuring the rate of growth of a smart contract protocol is the usage of dApps and the number of dApps that interact with each other.
Köppelmann said:
The numbers we care about is the usage of decentralized applications. And as a next step, the number to look out for is DAPPs that seemlessly interact with each other and draw a benefit from being on the same platform. As a side effect, ultimately the price of ETH will then be a function of the demand for the use of applications in this reliable, open, and interlinked environment.
Like Ethereum, TRON is a smart contract protocol and its value comes from its ecosystem of...