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US Court Ruling: Initial Coin Offerings Covered by Securities Law

A new ruling by a federal judge in New York has put Initial Coin Offerings under the umbrella of securities law, in a first-of-its-kind legal case against a man charged with promoting digital currencies that were supposedly backed by non-existent real estate and diamonds.

The case, being held in a Brooklyn, New York, court, ultimately resulted in a win for federal prosecutors, who gained Judge Raymond Dearie’s favor in both the prosecution of the defendant, Maksim Zaslavskiy, and as the classification of Initial Coin Offerings as securities.

The ruling regarding the classification of ICOs was a key part to the case because Zaslavskiy’s lawyers built their case on the premise that “security laws are unconstitutionally vague as applied.”

Judge Dearie responded to the defendant’s claim, saying that:

“Congress’ purpose in enacting the securities laws was to regulate investments, in whatever form they are made and by whatever name they are called… Stripped of the 21st-century jargon, including the defendant’s own characterization of the offered investment opportunities, the challenged indictment charges a straightforward scam, replete with the common characteristics of many financial frauds.”

SEC Charges ICO Superstore with Operating as Unregistered Broker-Dealer Following Ruling

Following the ruling by Judge Dearie regarding the classification of ICOs as securities, the SEC announced that they had charged and reached agreements with two companies and their owners that were operating illegally in the US.

The first company charged by the SEC is TokenLot, a self-described ICO Superstore, that settled charges with the SEC as operating as an unregistered broker-dealer. The SEC also charged the owners of the site, noting that Lenny Kugel and Eli L. Lewitt had “promoted TokenLot’s website as a way to purchase digital tokens during initial coin offerings (ICOs) and also to engage in secondary trading.”

According to the SEC, the Michigan-based company has received over 6,100 orders from investors for more than 200 digital token offerings, many of which the SEC deemed as securities. In order to offer securities to US-based investors, companies must register as a broker-dealer, and if they don’t they can be subjected to multiple charges.

Stephanie Avakian, the Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, spoke about the importance of broker-dealer registration, saying:

“U.S. securities laws protect investors by subjecting broker-dealers and other gatekeepers to SEC oversight, including those offering ICOs and secondary trading in digital tokens. We continue to encourage those developing digital asset trading businesses to contact the SEC staff at FinTech@sec.gov for assistance in analyzing registration and other securities law requirements.”

It is important to note that although TokenLot was operating illegally, they cooperated fully with the SEC, which led to much lighter charges than their actions would have otherwise resulted in.

Steven Peikin, also the Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, discussed TokenLot’s cooperation, saying:

“The penalties in this case reflect the prompt cooperation and remedial actions by TokenLot, Kugel, and Lewitt. TokenLot, Kugel, and Lewitt provided valuable information to Commission staff, stopped the conduct, and refunded money to investors.”

In addition to settling the charges with TokenLot, the SEC also moved against Crypto Asset Management LP (CAM), a cryptocurrency hedge fund that had been operating illegally in the US, while falsely claiming to be the “first regulated crypto asset fund in the United States.”

The fund’s manager, Timothy Enneking, had raised more than $3.6 million over a four-month period from investors, while falsely claiming that his operation was completely registered with the SEC. Also, the SEC claims that more than 40% of the assets in his fund are digital securities, making his fund an unregistered investment company.

Dabney O’Riordan, the SEC’s Co-Chief of the Asset Management Unit, spoke about the rise of unregistered crypto hedge funds, saying:

“Hedge funds seeking to ride the digital asset wave continue to proliferate. Investment advisers must be sure that the funds they offer adhere to the applicable registration obligations and must accurately represent their funds’ regulatory status to investors.”

It is likely that the SEC will begin moving to charge more illegally operating funds and companies following the classification of ICOs as security offerings.

Featured image from Shutterstock

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Ripple Development Update: Company releases ripple-lib version 1.0.0

On September 10th, Rome Reginelli, Documentation Engineer at Ripple Labs announced on their official developer blog page, the release of Ripple’s Lib v 1.0.0. The library, written in JavaScript will act as an interface to the XRP ledger.

The document briefly explains the changes and improvements the new version provides. The added changes will better the performance and flexibility of the library. The library holds new methods that provide access to rippled [server software that powers XRP Ledger] APIs.

The blog recommends using rippled version 1.0.1 or higher to enable online functionality.

The release includes several new methods including:

Three new methods [request(), hasNextPage(), requestNextPage()] have been added by the dev team for accessing the rippled APIs.

A prepareTransaction() method has been added to prepare a raw txJSON element.

The new version will allow XRP amounts to be specified in drops. The dev team has provided two conversion methods xrpToDrops() and dropsToXrp().

A new getTransaction() method has been added that includes a property by name channelChanges which will provide details of a particular payment channel.

In the next section, the document describes the data validations and error fixes the team has worked on. The amounts in XRP and drops have been checked for validity. The team has imposed a maximum fee limit, which if exceeded will cause the library to throw a ValidationError.

It stated that the team has worked on several errors and a lot more data validation functionalities have been added to the library. Earlier, the team faced a problem with the getPaths property which has now been corrected to filter paths correctly when the destination currency is XRP.

The document also explains several breaking changes that have been made to the high-level JavaScript library summarized below:

In the getTransaction() and getTransactions() methods, the specification.destination.amount field has been removed from the parsed transaction response.

To determine the amount a particular transaction delivers, the team has included an outcome.deliveredAmount.

To obtain information regarding the provisional requested ‘Amount’ from the actual transaction, the blog stated that the users can make use of the getTransaction() method’s includeRawTransaction option or getTransactions() method’s includeRawTransactionsOptions. As an alternative, the users can directly use rippled API with request() method, it said

The rawTransactions field has been removed from the getLedger() response object for consistency reasons.

The metadata field has been renamed to meta to provide consistency with rippled’s tx method from getLedger() and ledger_index has been added to each raw transaction.

Furthermore, the full documentation of ripple-lib is available on the XRP Ledger Dev Portal.

Nick Bougalis, Lead of  C++ dev team at Ripple, answered a few questions regarding the release on Twitter.

When asked by Twitterati Shashinda jayalath if the new maximum fee limit may lead to some transaction rollback, Bougalis said:

“The library has a configurable “maximum fee limit” to help prevent programmers from accidentally specifying too high a fee. By default, it’s set at 2 XRP, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the fee required to pay a transaction.”

He further added:

“And worry not, if you really want to spend over 2 XRP in fees, you can simply override the limit in the RippleAPI constructor.”

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Blockchain Records to be Accepted as Legal Evidence: China’s Supreme Court

The Supreme People’s Court of China has issued new rules which state that blockchain records must be considered as legal evidence in the court. Local publication South China Morning Post reports that China’s Internet courts will have to consider digital data as if it is verified using methods like timestamps, the blockchain, and digital signatures.

The new rules are brought into effect immediately after the court announced them last Friday. The official announcement by the Supreme People’s Court stated:

“Internet courts shall recognize digital data that are submitted as evidence if relevant parties collected and stored these data via blockchain with digital signatures, reliable timestamps and hash value verification or via a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity of such technology used.”

Three months back, China’s first internet court in Hangzhou, a city in Zhejiang Province, issued a ruling that any evidence authenticated using the blockchain technology will be legally binding. Zhang Yanlai, a patent lawyer with Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Kending Law Office, said that although courts usually depend on third-party organizations to authenticate the evidence, blockchain provides a great alternative which is “secured, efficient, convenient and low in cost.”

The Chinese government and authorities are working extensively to push the use of blockchain technology across multiple business sectors. Even the local government of major cities like Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai has issued policies that encourage the blockchain development.

Recently, a second internet court has been opened in the capital city of Beijing. China also plans to open the third one in Guangzhou by the end of this month. All the case proceedings right from lawsuit filing to the announcement of the verdict will be made available online. Litigants can also attend the hearings through online video streaming.

Chinese Courts Not The First to Use Blockchain Technology

China is not the first one to use blockchain records as admissible evidence in the courts. Two years back, the U.S State of Vermont issued a bill that allows digital records registered on a blockchain to be self-authenticating. Vermont’s conduct of trial rules stated:

“A digital record electronically registered in a blockchain shall be self-authenticating pursuant to Vermont Rule of Evidence 902, if it is accompanied by a written declaration of a qualified person, made under oath, stating the qualification of the person to make the certification…”

Last month, the U.K government also announced running a blockchain trial which uses digital evidence stored on the distributed ledger. This trial was conducted as a part of the experiment to bring reforms while creating an audit trail in evidence management and a tamper-proof custody using the blockchain technology.

Currently, the pilot project is undertaken by Tribunals Service

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A New Precedent: FINRA Charges Crypto Broker With Securities Fraud

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a non-profit watchdog for public brokerage firms in the U.S., has had its first run-in with the cryptocurrency industry. The self-regulatory organization is filing a complaint against a Massachusetts man for “the unlawful distribution of an unregistered cryptocurrency security called HempCoin.”

Timothy Tilton Ayre, FINRA alleges, illegally associated sales in his publicly traded company, Rocky Mountain Ayre Inc. (RMTN), with the marijuana industry token. Allegedly purchasing the rights to HempCoin in June of 2015, Ayre rebranded the coin as an RMNT-backed security, FINRA’s complaint states.

According to FINRA, Ayre attempted to market his “worthless” company and sell shares through HempCoin by advertising the cryptocurrency as “the first minable coin backed by marketable securities.” Heralding HempCoin as “the world’s first currency to represent equity ownership” in a public company, Ayre reportedly guaranteed that each token represented 0.10 shares in RMTN.

Since Ayre never registered HempCoin with the SEC, FINRA is charging him with “unlawful distribution of an unregistered security.” Moreover, the self-regulatory body accuses Ayre of defrauding investors “by making materially false statements and omissions regarding the nature of RMTN’s business, failing to disclose his creation and unlawful distribution of HempCoin, and making multiple false and misleading statements in RMTN’s financial statements.”

FINRA explains in its statement that the filing does not constitute legal action. As “an initiation of a formal proceeding,” Ayre can respond to the filing by requesting a formal disciplinary hearing. In the event that Ayre’s defense doesn’t hold up and he’s found guilty, he could be fined, censured, suspended or barred from the securities industry; relieved of his gains; and/or forced to pay reparations to investors.

The filing is the first action taken by a self-regulatory industry against an individual involved in the cryptocurrency industry, and it’s the first time FINRA has engaged with a securities dispute directly relating to the cryptocurrency market.

That said, formal regulators have wrestled with the unregistered sale of securities before, even outright scams. Both FINRA and the SEC’s reckoning with token projects and the sometimes unscrupulous actors who promote them continues to insert itself into the debate on the distinction between utility/security tokens and the merit of cryptocurrency regulations.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

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Ripple and R3 Reach Settlement in Year-Long Court Case

A year-old legal battle between two of the crypto industry’s leading organizations is coming to a close.

After a volley of countersuits that had the companies jumping from courthouse to courthouse, Ripple and R3 have brokered a settlement that will put the drama to rest. The terms of the settlement, however, are being kept under wraps by both parties.

In correspondence with Bitcoin Magazine, a representative for Ripple stated that the company has “nothing to share beyond the statement issued yesterday.”

The legal proceedings date back to July of 2017 when R3 accused Ripple and Brad Garlinghouse of breaching an agreement that would allow R3 to purchase 5 billion XRP, Ripple’s native currency, at a rate of $0.0085 before September 2019. By the time the court proceedings came to light, XRP was trading at $0.26.

After the Delaware Chancery Court threw the case out, the suit continued in the California State Supreme court when Ripple filed a countersuit against R3 to dismiss the suit. After this case was thrown out, as well, the case was moved to New York.

In the ongoing case’s latest filing, Ripple claimed, “R3 breached separate and distinct promises it made to Ripple and XRP II.” This included withholding information that financial institutions J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would be leaving R3’s consortium during the terms of the agreement, these banks being integral to Ripple’s adoption, the company claimed.

Seeing as R3 failed to “assist Ripple [in signing] up a single bank,” the countersuit sought to nullify the original agreement and award Ripple with a settlement for related damages.

Ripple has become a familiar defendant on the floor of the U.S.’s judicial system. Aside from its legal trouble with R3 — arguably its most important court case to date — the blockchain company is currently juggling three separate lawsuits charging it with the sale of unregistered securities.  

At press time, R3 had not yet responded to Bitcoin Magazine’s request for comment. This article has since been updated with a comment from Ripple.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

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RRChain Will Bring Decentralization to Global Computing Market

China-based private equity fund management platform known as Horus Capital is focused on providing support to the most promising emerging industries. Nearly 100 firms have already received investments from the platform which has helped Horus Capital to achieve excellent results in its fund performance. Horus Capital has gained a reputation of a first-class domestic fund with cutting-edge views on the business.

Moreover, the fund invests in promising blockchain-based projects and one of them is the Recycling Regeneration Chain (RRChain) that is aimed at creating a decentralized global computing trading platform with a view to find feasible ways to use the unused computing power of personal computers for cloud computing needs. Now Horus Capital is offering an in-depth overview of the RRChain project for investors to consider.

If we compare the project with the traditional cloud computing service, we will see that RRC is a much simpler solution. It is able to offer stability and low costs for computing power. These features can make the solution widely applied.

The RRC team will create a distributed computing network with autonomous public chain, according to the Horus Capital’s Evaluation Report. It will be possible thanks to full use of distributed technology. As a result, the RRC network has all chances to become the largest distributed supercomputing network and computing power supermarket in the world.

The global computing market that exists today is absolutely centralized and monopolized by a number of giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, and Alibaba. These companies use their market positions to increase the prices for their services and to get higher profits as a result. But despite growing price and centralization, the global cloud computing market continues its growth.

The main idea of the RRC team is to bring decentralization to the industry. RRC is going to connect computers, mobile phones and other devices that have computing power via the P2P network which will let users rent computing power to other participants of the network. So, the computing power that is rented will fulfill computational tasks in some specific aspects, including big data analysis, artificial intelligence, image processing, game computing, etc. Such an approach will significantly increase the use of the unused computing power of PCs.

The project has a team of professional developers who have significant experience in blockchain and software. The project consultant team is represented by the specialists who have dealt with different companies and startups and can provide high-quality consulting services in their professional fields.

RRC has already been invested by top venture funds and investment institutions in the blockchain sphere, including FBS capital and Horus Capital. These institutions boast excellent reputation and their support has a very significant importance for the project.

According to the project’s roadmap, during the period that started in August and will last till the end of the year, the team will carry out testing of different versions of the platform and in December of the current year it is planned to launch the public chain.

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Ripple and R3 Reach Agreement Over Earlier Legal Dispute

In a press release earlier today it has emerged that Ripple has reached an agreement with R3 over a legal dispute that dates back to 2017. The two parties appear to be trying to leave the incident in the past but are keeping most of the details confidential.

Ripple and R3 Put Legal Battle Behind Them in Secret Agreement

The legal dispute between Ripple and R3 began around September 2017. The disagreement arose over a deal in which Ripple offered to pay R3 a total of five billion XRP tokens at a considerably reduced price. In exchange for the tokens, R3 would provide Ripple with various key contacts from the banking industry. According to a report in Finder, these may have included huge names such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley.

R3 claims that Ripple failed to deliver the XRP tokens, which the latter had agreed to sell for less than one cent each. Ripple countered this by stating that R3 entered into the agreement in bad faith. They went on to state that their competitors had used the deal to appropriate some of their experience to help them to create a product that would offer direct competition to the Ripple payment processing network. They also allege that R3 knew that several key banks that were important for Ripple’s development would “soon be departing from its consortium.”

According to the Finder article, anonymous R3 insiders lend some credence to the claims made by Ripple. They reportedly called R3 as “something like a company of bankers without a bank”. They went on to say that as technology moved on, many members of the R3 consortium found being involved as less attractive due to a “lack of exclusivity.”

It remains unclear when exactly the discussions between the two began last year. However, at the time of the lawsuit, the XRP token was trading above 20 cents. This would have meant that R3 could have sold their payment for over $1 billion. Evidently, those at Ripple felt the contacts that R3 could have provided them were worth such an enormous price.

The legal battle between the two seems to have been resolved now. Precise details of the deal they have reached remain unknown. However, according to a press release dated yesterday, they are now looking to put it behind them:

“R3 HoldCo LLC, R3 LLC, Ripple Labs Inc. and XRP II, LLC announce that they have reached a settlement of all outstanding litigation between the parties. The terms of the agreement will remain confidential and both sides look forward to putting these disputes behind them.”

  Image from Shutterstock

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Paris Saint-Germain Soccer Club Partners with Socios.com to Launch Fan Token

According to today’s press release, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), a French top-league professional football club and the country’s most popular team, has successfully collaborated with tokenization platform Socios.com to launch a token ecosystem.

Socios.com represents itself a Malta-based fan marketplace, which leverages blockchain technology to engage and monetize fans globally. The platform is backed up by a sports blockchain venture chiliZ, one of Binance coin investors, which boasts to have raised $66 million in funding.

Now, after the official partnership announcement, PSG will be able to launch its so-called Fan Token Offering (FTO) with the help of Socios.com. The FTO will let football fans to take part in choosing the jersey color, stadium music, and logo, as well as to vote for certain sports aspects, such as MVP, Player of the Match or Month, friendlies matches, summer tours, charity line-ups, etc.

The FTO represents a limited token mechanism. It is focused on incentivizing and monetizing fan engagement and experiences via crypto without tokenizing the club’s existing corporate structure.

As Marc Armstrong, Chief Partnership Officer of PSG, has commented:

“Paris Saint-Germain is determined to leverage the opportunities that cryptocurrency can provide. This revolutionary technology will have an important impact on the club’s overall business strategy and the way we engage with our fan base.”

PSG fan tokens will be tradable within the Socios.com platform only against $CHZ, the chiliZ native token. The exact rate has not been revealed yet, neither has the exact date of the upcoming FTO. Reportedly, it is set to be held before the start of the coming soccer season.

According to Alexandre Dreyfus, the football club’s CEO, PSG’s initiative to join the blockchain movement can be a good opportunity for football fans to get engaged into the crypto world. The PSG’s step forward in embracing the idea of blockchain and cryptocurrency follows the examples of some other European soccer clubs.

Last month was successful for seven major clubs in the U.K.’s Premier League, including Newcastle United, Crystal Palace, and Leicester City, which signed up the collaboration with online investment firm eToro to allow sponsorship payments in Bitcoin, as well as for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which officially completed the trial of a blockchain-based ticketing application for a match between two top Spanish clubs.

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Recap: Crypto Exchange OKEx CEO Allegedly Arrested by Shanghai Police

According to a report from China’s Sina News, Star Xu, the founder of cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx and OKCoin, has been arrested by Shanghai authorities on the suspicion of committing fraud against investors. He has now been released from custody due to a lack of evidence connecting him to a potentially fraudulent cryptocurrency project taking place in Shanghai’s jurisdiction.

Star Xu Off The Hook … For Now

The fraud accusation against Star Xu stem from a cryptocurrency project Xu is involved in, called WFee Coin. Xu is a shareholder in the project, which describes themselves as being “the world’s first WiFi sharing eco-system based on blockchain technology designed for the globe,” with a goal of solving “security, trust, sharing willingness and privacy issues accrued from WiFi sharing.”

The controversy regarding the WFee coin is due to multiple investor complaints to Shanghai authorities regarding the issuance of the tokens and the purpose of the fundraising effort, which many investors claimed was fraudulent with the goal of enriching the founding team, rather than developing a practical product.

Star Xu was taken in by the Shanghai police for questioning due to his suspected relations to the fraudulent project. Following news of the arrest, cnLedger, a China-based blockchain and cryptocurrency news publication, reported that Xu’s Shanghai company did not have any involvement in the WFee project, and that the suspected fraud was actually conducted by Xu in Beijing.

It now appears that Xu has since been released by Shanghai authorities, and that they are handing over all the evidence to authorities in Bejing. It is unclear at this time whether or not the Beijing authorities will take any actions against Xu.

According to Heslin Kim, a cryptocurrency researcher based in South Korea, the OKEx team has denied the arrest of Xu, stating that the event had not happened.

– Just confirmed with the @OKEx_ team the arrest is fake news. @WhalePanda @cryptomanran @iamjosephyoung

— Korean Cryptocurrency & Blockchain News (@BlockchainROK) September 11, 2018

OKEx Controversy Under Xu’s Leadership

Although the story is still developing, and it is unclear whether or not Xu will be arrested or charged by Beijing authorities, this event is not the first time that he, or his companies, have faced controversy or have been accused of conducting shady business practices.

In late July, Xu’s OKEx exchange was shrouded in controversy following a forced liquidation event that ended up costing investors a significant amount of money and called into question the power exchanges have to move the markets.

On July 31st of this year, OKEx force liquidated a huge long position in Bitcoin, triggering the exchange’s risk management systems which caused a full account clawback to occur.  The clawback is part of their societal risk management mechanism that is triggered when the exchange’s insurance fund cannot cover the total margin call losses.  When this rare scenario occurs, users with a net profit across all three contracts for that week have a portion of their profit taken by OKEx to cover the difference between the liquidated and settled price.

Following this event, many traders accused Xu’s exchange of manipulating the markets, leading many to claim that the event pushed Bitcoin’s price from $8,000 to $7,300 immediately following the incident.

The event occurred as a direct result of OKex not implementing enough procedures in order to prevent these types of incidents from occurring. The exchange has since implemented new practices, including a larger insurance fund, in order to prevent these types of events from occurring, and to better protect investor’s positions from losses due to manipulative actions taken by the management team.

The story regarding Xu’s arrest is still developing, and more information will be available once Beijing authorities act on the documents provided by the Shanghai authorities.

Featured image from Shutterstock

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Bitcoin [BTC] preferred by people as no one controls it, says Andrew Ross Sorkin

Recently, during an interview with CNN, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the author of ‘Too Big to Fail’, stated that rise of Bitcoin [BTC] is an embodiment of the lack of trust in governments.

The book speaks about the 2008 financial crisis, the events which drove the citizens of the US to elect Donald Trump and the connection between the two.

The author stated that the there has been a clear distrust in the idea of governments, elites and the privileged, who ostensibly understood what was going on. He further said that their failure in protecting everyone one else is what changed everything.

Andrew quotes Bitcoin as one of the examples of the change. There was a whole group of people, out of the blue,  around the world which did not trust the Federal Reserve and the central banks. These people were driven towards the digital currency which was not controlled by anybody or anything, claiming to trust the currency more than the people at the top, in control.

The author also believes that there will be something bigger, more cataclysmic event than the recent financial crisis that is going to occur. Moreover, Andrew adds that the phrase, Too big to fail, was previously used in the context of banks and financial institutions. Whereas now, it is used in the context of cities, municipalities, states and countries.

In addition, these factors signify that debt is the match that lights fire to every crisis. He said that the debts load of the country is seen a remarkable increase, even under President Trump, it has increased by a trillion dollars. This, to him, is going to unravel a new crisis.

SpontaneousDream, a Reddit user said:

“…in my opinion he painted it in a more neutral light. It was more like ‘people don’t trust the federal reserve with their money, so they’re resorting to Bitcoin, which isn’t even controlled by anyone!’ He said it in a more ‘can you believe people are doing this?’ shocking/surprise kind of way. Overall though I’d say it’s good for Bitcoin. He didn’t bash it, had his facts straight, and explained why people are going to Bitcoin.”

To which, WorriedHistory said:

“That’s the kind of press that Bitcoin needs. Senseless negativity just harms it for obvious reasons, and baseless claims of it being the savior of the world’s economy just make us all look like tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists. There need to be some balance shown, especially in giving the context that it exists in an incredulous appearance.

The Redditor further added:

“We really do live in strange times when a digital cryptocurrency based on blockchain algos is more valuable than other assets. No one would’ve believed this even 10 years ago.”

Recently, the author of Bitcoin Mastermind, Andreas M Antonopoulos, stated that Bitcoin [BTC] is the innovation which cannot be bought by financial institutions and that it cannot be stopped by the governments.

Moreover, according to him, the first message which was embedded on the Bitcoin blockchain speaks of the failure of the financial institutions. The message speaks about the motivation behind Bitcoin and that a part of the motivation is that the financial institutions have not evolved much and is not serving the people even after existing for 20 years.

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Decentralized Exchange Bisq Launches Mobile App, Holds Market Kickstart Event

Fully decentralized peer-to-peer crypto exchange Bisq has launched a mobile notification app for both Android and iOS systems. The platform saw record growth last month and is holding a market kickstart event as a way to boost liquidity.

Also read: 160 Crypto Exchanges Seek to Enter Japanese Market, Regulator Reveals

Bisq Mobile App Launched

Bisq, a fully decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchange that allows users to trade fiats against cryptocurrencies, has launched a mobile notification app for both Android and iOS systems.

The project’s developers announced on Sunday, September 9, that “The Bisq mobile notifications app for iOS is now available from the app store.” This announcement came two days after the team announced, “The initial release of the Bisq mobile app for Android is now available.”

Both the Android and iOS versions of the app allow users to customize alerts for trades, offers, disputes, and prices. The app is linked to the desktop software where all trading is done, in a P2P environment.

Bisq’s latest version, v0.8.0, has a number of new features such as “Local / face-to-face trading, iOS and Android mobile app notifications, Halcash as a new payment method, [and] privacy improvements,” according to the developers.

August Was Record Month for Bisq

Bisq continues to grow in the number of users and trades this year. On September 4, the team shared the platform’s growth statistics for August, revealing:

August was a massive month for Bisq, setting a new record of 358 BTC traded…That’s a 26% increase over the previous record month of June 2017, and at a much higher average BTC/USD price…Also, 13,000 trades as of today.

Bisq developer Christoph Atteneder added that, in August, the total number of trades was 926 and the average number of trades per day was 30.

Since Shapeshift announced its move to a new membership model that requires know-your-customer (KYC) information from its users, Bisq has been highlighted as an alternative to Shapeshift. The Bisq developers tweeted on September 5, “Big news. Shapeshift bowing to KYC regs could mean many more users coming Bisq’s way soon.”

September Market Kickstart Day

The Bisq team is not solely relying on Shapeshift’s policy change to grow their userbase. To help build the liquidity of the platform’s order book, they are preparing for an event dubbed the “September Market Kick-Start Day.” The developers explained:

On September 20th 2018 we will try to get as many people as possible to place offers on Bisq as a way to kick-start liquidity after the summer and also launch the newest release.

They elaborated that “If we can reach 300 offers published on one day we will see a new high in [the] number of trades,” noting that participants who make at least one offer on that day will be rewarded 10 BSQ, the project’s own token designed to help fund platform development.

What do you think of Bisq’s development? Would you use Bisq? What do you think of their market kickstart event? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Shapeshift, Twitter, and Bisq.

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Decentralized Exchange Bisq Launches Mobile App, Holds Market Kickstart Event published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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Blockchain App Factory Moves into Security Token Offering Development (STO)

Blockchain App Factory Moves into Security Token Offering Development (STO) published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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$30 million worth Ethereum [ETH] sold by ICOs in the last week

ICOs saw a boom in the market in the year 2017 and the beginning of this year. The surge drew a lot of attention from major market players including the mainstream media. The rise of the ICOs was one of the reasons for the glorious days of the Ethereum [ETH] platform.

Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency in the market at present, became the smart contract which led to the rise of several projects. This includes EOS and Tron [TRX] which have now launched their own MainNet with the aim of surpassing Ethereum.

However, along with the advantage of being the first mover and preferred smart contract platform by the developers, it has its own disadvantages. The bear’s grip which has taken a toll on the whole market has had an adverse effect on Ethereum, especially.

Ethereum [ETH] has seen a constant drop this year, with the price looming below the $200 mark. The dip in ETH’s value turned out to be the most shocking outcome in the cryptocurrency space. Reports have emerged that the price taking the downward slope was because of the ICOs.

Some projects which have raised millions of tokens in the market through Initial Coin Offerings have started to shill in the market, according to reports. The main reason is believed to be either the effect of the bearish market or the failure of their projects.

Moreover, it has been pointed out that almost $30 million worth of Ethereum was sold during the past few days in the market, by Kevin Rooke, a Twitterati. He tweeted:

“ICOs have spent over $30 million worth of ETH this week (153,500 ETH). This is more than any week since March 2018. The scary part? These ICOs still have over $600,000,000 worth of treasury ETH in their accounts (3,000,000+ ETH). Will they sell? Will they hold?”

ETH spent by ICOs over the past few months | Source: Twitter

This could have resulted in Ethereum plunging below the $200 mark and the reason it was amongst one of the coins which were affected the most in this bearish market.

According to CoinMarketCap, at press time, Ethereum [ETH] was trading at $194 with a market cap of $19.86 billion. The coin has seen a significant dip of more than 32% in the past 7 days.

El Novato, a Twitterati said:

“Of course they will sell. What will they do HODLING? They have to buy their Lambo’s, Islands and plan retirement packages..”

CryptoBitfolio, another Twitterati said:

“There is still a lot of selling to happen… And we haven’t seen the bottom yet this year”

Nuno Bispo, a cryptocurrency investor and trader said:

“Talking about selling your crypto low… No wonder! It’s not their own invested money in the first place..”

In addition, recently over $5.5 million was transferred to Bitfinex wallet from one of the genesis blocks. This was around 93,750 ETH and the transfer did not show any significant impact on the price of Ethereum at the time of transfer.

The post $30 million worth Ethereum [ETH] sold by ICOs in the last week appeared first on AMBCrypto.

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Denmark's Biggest Bank is Combing Through $150 bn Involved in Money Laundering

Denmark's Biggest Bank is Combing Through $150 bn Involved in Money Laundering published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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Bitcoin [BTC] developer Jimmy Song in trial by combat with Bitcoin Cash [BCH]’s Roger Ver

On 10th September, a YouTube channel published a video from the ongoing blockchain cruise in Spain. Here, Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song and Bitcoin Cash [BCH] proponent Roger Ver debated with the purpose of rebutting each other. The argument contained the subject of centralization in Bitcoin Cash. Furthermore, Jimmy Song made a statement saying Bitcoin Cash is fiat currency.

Jimmy Song’s tweet | Source: Twitter

Song opened the debate and stated several points by backing them up with great ease. The developer believes that Bitmain acts as a centralized reserve bank for Bitcoin Cash. Furthermore, the hard fork is actually a group of elites who determined the roadmap for the project and forced the upgrades on the community, stated the techie.

Regarding the central body of BCH subsidizing payments, he also said that it does so through large blocks, instead of listening to the market that opposes the idea. The Bitcoin supporter also argued that BCH is paternalistic.

He based this argument on the recent event that occurred within the BCH community wherein two parties split the community over a clash of ideas. According to Song, Bitmain’s Jihan Wu and Craig Wright are fighting for ‘control over the direction of BCH’.

The highlight of the talk was when Song spoke about the relationship between centralization, Bitcoin Cash and Bitmain. He stated:

“Bitmain is the central bank of BCH. Bitmain has tried to maintain a peg to their reserve currency, BTC, and has failed. Bitmain has failed to keep the peg at 0.15 BTC, 0.12 BTC and recently capitulated the 0.1 BTC level. This is a central bank selling its reserves to keep its peg to another currency. What’s worse, much like a central bank, they’re running out of reserves and BCH will finally float on the market instead of having the artificially inflated value that it has now.”

On all these allegations, Roger Ver did not have much to say at the beginning of his turn. He refuted all the arguments put forth by his opponent by quoting those arguments as ‘nonsense’. Here, Song took to the podium again and continued to state his points.

In one of the statements, Song said that BCH exists without a legitimate purpose. He named nearly a dozen other hard forks of Bitcoin Core, defining the unique selling point of each cryptocurrency. The hard forks included by him were Bitcore, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Gold, Super Bitcoin, Bitcoin Vote, Bitcoin File, Bitcoin World, Bitcoin Atom and many others but highlighted Bitcoin God as being his ‘personal favorite’, in the interest of sarcasm.

Over the issue of BCH centralization, Roger Ver made an attempt to rebut and turn the argument around. He responded by saying that decentralization is the reason for multiple parties fighting in the BCH ecosystem. According to him, that is what happens in a decentralized space.

Ver also added a challenge in the debate wherein he made a 10-year bet with Jimmy Song claiming a prediction that BCH will have a higher market cap than BTC over the next decade. However, Song showed no interest in the matter, given that the timeline of the claim was too long.

A Twitter user and a cryptocurrency follower named CareNotDude replied to Song’s Twitter post on the same and wrote:

“it’s an affinity scam, If it’s better than bitcoin it doesn’t need to have bitcoin in the name, it can’t stand on it’s own merits so it has to market as “the real bitcoin” in order to sucker people into buying what was created out of thin air with no proof of work.”

Node, another Twitterati also commented:

“I wonder when Jihan decides to dump it all”

The post Bitcoin [BTC] developer Jimmy Song in trial by combat with Bitcoin Cash [BCH]’s Roger Ver appeared first on AMBCrypto.

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Russia may Toughen its Political Views on Cryptocurrency Regulation

Russia may Toughen its Political Views on Cryptocurrency Regulation published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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DevCon 4 Will Set the Stage for Ethereum’s Next Milestone: Constantinople

Ethereum is embracing the Constantinople milestone at the end of November 2018, after DevCon4 in Prague. Constantinople is the latest Ethereum release, introduced through a hard fork, that will include five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs):

Bitwise shifting instructions (EIP 145) in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) allow for direct manipulation of bytes on the EVM layer.

Skinny CREATE2 (EIP 1014) adds a new opcode that creates a contract but determines the deployed address differently to the existing CREATE opcode.

The EXTCODEHASH opcode (EIP 1052) adds an opcode which returns the keccak256 hash of a contact’s byte code.

Net gas metering for SSTORE (EIP 1283) introduces a new gas cost scheme for the SSTORE opcode.

The difficulty bomb delay (EIP 1234) stabilizes block times and issuance by keeping block times at approximately 15 seconds for another 12 months and reducing block rewards to 2 ETH.

To the regular application user, these updates offer nothing noticeably different, except perhaps an update to their Ethereum clients. For developers, these EIPs provide extended capabilities to the EVM, allowing for improved flexibility for smart contract development. All of these changes are backward compatible, ensuring previously deployed smart contracts remain usable and secure.

This hard fork does not address scalability yet. Layer 1 scaling solutions, such as sharding + casper or Shasper, are still in the research phase and will not be addressed before the Serenity milestone which is not expected to be deployed to Ethereum until 2020 or later.

A more tangible change to the Ethereum user experience is the use of Plasma chains and state channels. They are currently in development and some are being tested in experimental production environments. For regular users, this means the first Layer 2 scaling solutions will be available soon, allowing for a higher rate of transactions that are crypto-economically ensured, which is an important step toward faster and cheaper transactions.

Making the Decisions

For a closer look into how the decisions on the accepted proposals were made, the Ethereum Foundation live-streams core developer calls on LivePeer and YouTube after posting a public agenda and call for participation on GitHub prior to the meeting. More technical information specifically about the Constantinople release can be found at Constantinople Progress Tracker on GitHub containing an overview of Ethereum client teams implementing each of the accepted proposals.

Miners, investors and other community members were invited to a call to state their opinions during the last Ethereum Core Devs Meeting 45. This was done to get an idea of what the different stakeholders that make up the network think. A week later, Ethereum Core Devs Meeting Constantinople Session #1 was spent largely debating EIP 1234. A majority of the developers were in agreement that, although current signaling mechanisms for ascertaining consensus are not optimal, the best option is to have the conversations openly.

The nature of the Constantinople session was constructive, as Afri Schoedon, technical communications engineer at Parity Technologies, concluded:

“What we are doing here is not [trying] to dictate a new block reward, but we are trying to find a compromise, somewhere in the middle. Agreeing on 2 ETH per block is the best thing we can do.”

Another more important discussion point was Programmatic Proof of Work (ProgPoW), a modified version of Ethash. Consensus algorithms resistant to Application-Specific Integrated Controllers (ASICs) have become relevant due to concerns from community members and small miners regarding current progress made to ASICs targeting the Ethereum network and interfering with current mining incentives. There is a strong community sentiment in favor of changing the algorithm.

The main conclusion of the developer meeting was that much more work has to be done on testing and integration before a move to a new consensus algorithm in an upcoming hard fork is realistic. The main decisions concluded upon in the August 31 session can be summed up through a quote by Piper Merriam, core developer with the Ethereum Foundation:

“I believe this is us making the decision to reduce issuance to 2; to do another hard fork 8 months after Constantinople; and to push the difficulty bomb to 12 months after Constantinople.”

Developers are looking forward to a subsequent hard fork in summer 2019, the Istanbul milestone, when we can expect to see more improvements and potentially a change to the Ethash consensus algorithm. In summary, Constantinople is an important step forward for Ethereum in optimizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the tools for the future of Ethereum contract and DApp development.

Thank you Hatcher Lipton and Greg Markou for helping with edits..

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

DevCon 4 Will Set the Stage for Ethereum’s Next Milestone: Constantinople published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions