US Dollar Will End 2017 as Worst Year Since 2003, While Bitcoin is Up 1,372%

The US dollar is set to end 2017 recording the largest decline in its value since 2003, while Bitcoin is en route to ending the year with a 1,372 percent increase.

The US dollar has recorded the largest annual decline in value since 2003 and is forecasted to end 2017 at a three-month low against other major currencies like the Chinese yuan and Japanese yen.

Separating money and state

Meanwhile, Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency in the market with a $227 bln market valuation, is en route to ending the year recording a 1,341 percent increase in value, as one of the most profitable cryptocurrency in the global market behind Ripple, Litecoin, Dash and Ethereum.

Several analysts such as Chris Gaffney, president of World Markets at EverBank, told Reuters that the value of US dollar would likely further decline throughout 2018, with no signs of short-term recovery.

“The dollar will face more headwinds in 2018. The Fed won’t be going at it alone in terms of taking off more gas from the stimulus pedal.”

Jens Nordvig, CEO of Exante Data, also told CNBC that while it would be normal for analysts to expect a recovery after such a large loss in value, this time, most analysts have a negative bias on the US dollar.

Nordvig said, emphasizing the rapid growth rate of the global economy and key players like China:

"We have a negative bias on the dollar, which is extraordinary considering that interest rates are going to rise at a very good clip. It got too strong before January, and the other factor is that global growth is very strong.”

Long-time Bitcoin investors and cryptocurrency researchers believe that the rise of cryptocurrencies as a new emerging asset class is playing a small role in the decline of fiat currencies across the globe, by separating money and state.

For many decades, governments have had absolute control over the global monetary system, especially of the fiat currency system with which they can easily manipulate the supply of circulating money.

In November, ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees noted that Bitcoin is continuing to grow in terms of market valuation, user base and user activity because as a decentralized currency and store of value, it is providing an alternative financial network to the fiat currency system. Voorhees said:

“Why does Bitcoin keep growing? Because it's time to separate money and state.”

In response to a criticism of the abovementioned statement, Voorhees added that although short-term price bubbles in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets are fueled by greed, long-term price growth demonstrates the demand for non-state finance. He explained:

“The short-term price bubbles are full-on speculation, agreed. But the long-term increase in value and price is due to the fundamental utility of non-state finance.”

Most important chart

Earlier this month, Zerohedge released a chart entitled “The Most Important Chart in the World,” which demonstrated the decline in the value of the US Treasury since 1987. While Bitcoin has recorded consistent gains throughout its eight-year history with the exception of 2014, since more than 30 years ago, the US Treasury has been on a decline.

Consequently, analysts have started to evaluate the long-term bubbles in the traditional finance industry, and whether emerging assets like Bitcoin should be described as bubbles or traditional assets that have been on a decline for many decades should be considered as long-lasting bubbles.

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2Coy5F4
via IFTTT

Ripple Briefly Achieves $100 Billion Market Cap, Can it be Justified?

The post Ripple Briefly Achieves $100 Billion Market Cap, Can it be Justified? appeared first on CCN

Ripple, the cryptocurrency that was designed to handle large volumes of transactions for banks and financial institutions, recently surpassed Ethereum to achieve a staggering $100 billion market cap. Justification of Ripple’s Market Cap However, some experts including Ryan Selkis of ConsenSys revealed that it is difficult to justify the market cap of Ripple at this

The post Ripple Briefly Achieves $100 Billion Market Cap, Can it be Justified? appeared first on CCN

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2Ckj3Au
via IFTTT

Ripple Becomes Largest Altcoin As Bitcoiners Issue Warnings

Ripple is causing a stir on both the markets and social media as its price continues to explode.

Ripple (XRP) has overtaken Ethereum as the largest altcoin by market cap in a surge which has divided the cryptocurrency community.

After the payment network’s token reached as much as $2.65 on some exchanges this week, investors are celebrating returns which have topped 1,000 percent in just three weeks. At the start of December, XRP traded at just $0.24.

Multiple altcoins have seen astronomical gains towards the end of this year as Bitcoin’s own surge fueled copycat behavior which saw new all-time highs for assets including Monero, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

With a market cap of $91 bln at press time Saturday, however, it is XRP that has stolen the show from Ethereum, which currently has a market cap of $68 bln. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s overall market share has sunk to new all-time lows below 38 percent.

Reasons for Ripple’s rise revolve around new partnerships with traditional finance, institutions keen to leverage its technology to cut costs and save time.

Despite its newfound successes, however, Bitcoin figures appear wearier than ever, highlighting the project’s centralized structure and comparative lack of use cases for XRP versus the platform itself.

“There is a clear mispricing here between the (past) and the (future),” BitFury CEO George Kikvadze commented on Twitter Friday.

Ripple - Centralised Solution; Trust in One Company - Worth $100Bln?

Bitcoin - Decentralised Solution; Trust in Mathematics and Cryptography - Worth $235Bln?

There is a clear mispricing here between the PAST and the FUTURE

— George Kikvadze (@BitfuryGeorge) December 30, 2017

Popular personality WhalePanda meanwhile went further, comparing Ripple’s ethos in terms of bonafide Blockchain qualities to notorious MMM scheme OneCoin.

If you really believe Ripple, which isnt even a blockchain project, is the future of cryptocurrencies... then I have some Bitconnect and Onecoin to sell to you.

— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) December 30, 2017

Placeholder VC’s Chris Burniske and Blockchain technologist Preston Byrne also voiced concerns about the rate of XRP’s growth.

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2DAjvHz
via IFTTT

SegWit2x Version 2.0 - a Farce?

The ‘revival’ of the supposed SegWit2x Bitcoin fork seems highly suspicious.

If we are to believe what we are told - the Bitcoin Blockchain has forked once again after the revival of SegWit2x.

The fork, which was abandoned in November due to a lack of consensus among original signatories of the New York Agreement, proposed an increase in Bitcoin’s block size from 1mb to 2mb in an effort to improve its scalability.

Much like Coinbase’s surprise announcement of Bitcoin Cash support a week ago, SegWit2x’s revival popped up on the internet courtesy of a new website, headed up by a completely new team of developers from those that had worked on the original SegWit2x code.

The developers celebrated the launch of SegWit2x at block number 501451 on Dec. 28, although potential users will only have access to the new B2X coins on Jan. 15, 2018.

The Long Awaited Launch of New Bitcoin SegWit2X Fork Finally Took Place! http://pic.twitter.com/GC46rYFoOI

— Segwit2X (@Segwit_2X) December 28, 2017

According to the website, B2X features will include a unique address format, a two and a half minute block generation rate while the mining complexity will be recalculated after each new block is generated.

Furthermore, the block size will be increased to four mb, as opposed to the original two mb proposition by the original SegWit2x developers. Replay protection is also being touted, which was a major shortcoming in the proposed fork a few months ago.

All of this sounds great - but it actually sounds too good to be true.

Outlandish promises of Satoshi Nakamoto’s premined Bitcoin

In addition to their proposed changes, the developers have promised to give users a share of 2 million B2X coins, which they claim stem from Satoshi Nakamoto’s original pre-mined Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin, B2X will have a 21 mln coin cap.

We are told that supporters of the fork will get a share of Nakamoto’s originally mined Bitcoin, converted to B2X at a 1:1 ratio.

“In addition, we will distribute a proportional number of "Bitcoins of Satoshi Nakamoto" to all those who support hardfork! By “Bitcoin of Satoshi Nakamoto” we mean what the founder and chief developer of Bitcoin [BTC] mined at the time of zero network activity. They will be credited to the crypto-exchanges and wallets of our partners gradually. The list of partners will be constantly updated on our website! Even if Satoshi Nakamoto wants to get B2X for his pre-mining, he is not able to do this, as we blocked the initial blocks for conversion to Bitcoin SegWit2X. It is worth noting that this present to users who supported us will be credited sometime after the basic conversion 1:1”

Furthermore, the developers insist that only those two mln coins will be premined.

“Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin [BTC] will be mined and distributed proportionally to all Bitcoin holders on the crypto-exchanges and wallets of our partners (2 mln). There will be no additional pre-mining!”

As Cointelegraph reported on December 28, the SegWit2x GitHub repository actually shows that six mln coins will be premined - with three different addresses committed in the code at different block heights.

The picture below shows two of the three different pre-mine commands going to different wallet addresses.

Pump and dump fears

What this suggests is that the developers will have access to 6 mln B2X coins when trading begins, giving them a massive amount of power over the valuation and supply of the newly-forked cryptocurrency.

If and when people start trading B2X, there is a chance that the developers could pull a ‘pump and dump’ move, selling their new coins at inflated prices, making quick returns on coins that they’d premined.

According to Investopedia, this practice is a scam and is illegal.

Futures trading

Another factor that points towards fishy behavior is the fact that B2X futures contracts are already available on some exchanges - meaning people have started betting on future valuations of the cryptocurrency.

An insider could stand to make some massive short-term gains - with those futures having launched on Dec. 19, according to the website:

“Already now, Bitcoin SegWit2X futures [B2X] are traded on large crypto-exchanges, the list of which is constantly replenished. Stay tuned for updates on our website and social channels!”

Coinmarketcap data shows that futures trading of B2X has been highly volatile - after hitting a high $1205.05 on Dec. 27. That has now dropped to $272.25 as of Dec. 30:

Wallet support

B2X will be supported by FreeWallet and Zumminer, but other wallet providers like Trezor have distanced themselves from the project on their Reddit page. It’s also bizarre to see that exchanges like Coinbase have not made any statements about the new launch.

Draw your own conclusions

All of this information could point to an outright scam. A completely different team of developers seem to have hopped on the SegWit2x bandwagon, hijacked the name and are looking to make a quick buck out of gullible and uninformed investors.

Their website may look legitimate, but poke around enough and there are holes everywhere.

The fact that most of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges have not even recognized the fork or the new B2X coin shows that the legitimacy of the fork is questionable at best.

It will be interesting to see what the coins are trading at on Jan. 15 - and how the wider cryptocurrency community reacts.

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2CsHfOL
via IFTTT

Bitcoin Price Dips Below $13,000 Again, as Ripple Records Massive Gains

The post Bitcoin Price Dips Below $13,000 Again, as Ripple Records Massive Gains appeared first on CCN

The bitcoin price has dipped below $13,000 for the second time in December, following the December 23 correction which led the price of bitcoin to plummet to $11,500. Bitcoin Dominance Index at 37.9 Percent Analysts have attributed the recent decline in the price of bitcoin to the unexpected surge in the valuation of several cryptocurrencies

The post Bitcoin Price Dips Below $13,000 Again, as Ripple Records Massive Gains appeared first on CCN

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2pZEfXw
via IFTTT

What DAO? Charting Ether's Epic 2017 Price Climb

Ether's price began 2017 below $10, shooting to as high as $800 earlier this month.

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2Cqmsv5
via IFTTT

Top 10 Companies of the Blockchain Industry in 2017

Here are the most successful companies and projects by market capitalization this year.

2017 was definitely the year of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has surged from more than $950 at the beginning of the year to as high as $20,000.

The total market capitalization of all the cryptocurrencies hit the $600 bln mark in December.

We also saw an enormous growth in the number of the Initial Coin Offerings - from one or two a week in 2016, to dozens of ICOs in seven days in 2017.

Cointelegraph is launching the “New Year’s Special” series of articles to highlight the results of this year and to get ready for the upcoming 2018.

In this article, let’s have a look at companies that have performed better than others during this remarkable year for the industry.

Ethereum

Market capitalization: $73 bln

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that works with smart contracts. Smart contracts allow making agreements that are executed automatically without any human interaction.

Vitalik Buterin, the winner of 2014 World Technology Award, and Jeffrey Wilcke, the former Vice President of Amazon, launched the project July 30, 2015.

In 2017, every three out of four projects were performed on the Ethereum platform, making it the most popular platform for ICO over the year.

Around 13 mln people use its services. Its token, ETH, is currently the third among all the currencies after Bitcoin and Ripple in market cap.

Vitalik Buterin

Jeffrey Wilcke

Vitalik Buterin was also listed among Bloomberg’s Top 50 Most Influential People this year.

IOTA

Market capitalization: approx. $15 bln

IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger specialized in the Internet of Things. This system has no transaction fees, low confirmation time and is stable regardless the number of transactions since its technology is based on an innovative consensus model “Tangle.” This model does not have blocks, chains and miners. If you want to make a transaction, you have to approve two previous transactions pointed by the system. These actions prove that all nodes have the same current state.

The project was launched in July 2016 by David Sønstebø, a serial entrepreneur and Dominik Schiener.

In November 2017, IOTA partnered with PwC, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom and others for data monetization program.

The company also received significant investments from the Bosch Group this year.

David Sønstebø

Dominik Schiener

Up to November 2017, IOTA platform’s had over 65,000 users.

Coinbase

Market capitalization: $2 bln (GDAX)

Coinbase is one of the top digital currency wallet and platform for exchange. A simple announcement that Coinbase is going to launch support for Bitcoin Cash significantly affected the BCH price. The platform is one of the three Blockchain projects that got BitLicense, the business license issued by New York State Department of Financial Services. In 2016, it was transformed to GDAX, the Global Digital Asset Exchange.

The exchange is the first Bitcoin exchange licensed in the US which proves its actions are reliable due to the close supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Brian Armstrong, who worked with Airbnb, Deloitte and IBM and Fred Ehrsam, the former trader at Goldman Sachs, launched the company in July 2011.

Brian Armstrong

Fred Ehrsam

The Global Digital Asset Exchange has over 13,300,000 users.

Ripple

Market capitalization: $30 bln

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement and currency exchange. Its main goal is to make an entire system devoted to money transferring. Launched in 2012, the company is working on ensuring real-time transactions between the banks.

Currently, the company is working with over 75 banks all over the world. These banks are implementing and testing the technology in their internal payment systems. In December 2017, Ripple announced that Japanese and South Korean banks had started testing Blockchain to make international payments between the banks cheaper.

The company was organized in October 2012, by Brad Garlinghouse, the former Senior Vice President at Yahoo!, and Stefan Thomas, the founder and co-founder of six other companies.

Brad Garlinghouse

Stefan Thomas

Brave

Market capitalization: $340 mln

Brave is a web browser that blocks advertisements and trackers. As a result, websites work faster and traffic decreases significantly. So you save your time and money. In addition, you cannot catch any malware in the ad clicking on it accidentally.

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript programming language and co-founder of Mozilla, and Brian R. Bondy, a winner of Microsoft MVP Award for Visual C++ in 2010-2011, launched Brave in May 2017.

Brendan Eich

Brian R. Bondy

At a rough estimate, Brave has about two to three mln users. Brave is also one of the fastest ICO. The team raised $35 mln in 27 seconds.

Qtum

Market capitalization: $5 bln

Qtum is the first UTXO-based smart contract system with a proof-of-stake consensus model. The platform use Account Attraction Layer to combine Bitcoin Core and Ethereum Virtual Machine. Proof-of-stake model reduces the computational difficulty in the network and increases scaling possibilities. On Dec. 28, 2017, Qtum and Baofeng, the largest video hosting in China, announced the partnership to transform the music and movie industry work.

Patrick Dai, Neil Mahi, the former Chief Blockchain Architect at BitSE, and Jordan Earls launched Qtum in March 2017.

Patrick Dai

Jordan Earls

In 2017, Forbes China included Patrick Dai in the “30 Under 30 China” list for his achievements.

OmiseGO

Market capitalization: $1,700,000,000

Launched in June 2017 by Jun Hasewaga and Donnie Harinsut, OmiseGO is the decentralized financial technology for exchange and payment services. The founders developed a mechanism to keep high token liquidity. The Ethereum-based platform is a link between payment systems, gateways and financial organizations. Though the team might be unfamiliar to the Blockchain community, their advisors are well-known. Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Poon, Roger Ver - it’s just a part of star advisors. The team is supported by Thai Minister of Finances.

Jun Hasewaga

Donnie Harinsut

In August 2017 OmiseGO became the first Ethereum-based token with the capitalization over $1 bln.

Steem

Market capitalization: $850 mln

Steem is the decentralized social publishing network. Your reward depends on the number of “likes” your post gets. The way the community responds shows how you can improve your skills. You may also create new tokens in the network to raise funds from the community.

Ned Scott

Dan Larimer

Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, CEO and CTO in a number of companies, launched Steemit in July 2016 and now around 500,000 people are using the platform.

Augur

Market capitalization: $1 bln

Augur is the prediction market platform for real events. If you are sure that something is to happen, you can buy shares for this outcome. Since the system is Ethereum-based, smart contracts will make sure payments are processed. And as all the predictions work on public Blockchain, nobody can change their prediction afterward.

Jack Peterson

Joey Krug

Augur was started in August 2015, by Jack Peterson and Joey Krug, investor and Co-Chief Investment Officer at Pantera Capital.

Golem

Market capitalization: $500 mln

Golem is the first open-sourced decentralized supercomputer. The network is powered by the users’ computers. A number of industries require a lot of computations such as biology, DNA analysis, cryptography, discrete logarithm, machine learning, big data, etc. The service provides the power for them.

Julian Zawistowski

Piotr Janiuk

Launched in November 2016, by Julian Zawistowski, the vice president and a chairman at Institute for Structural Research and Piotr Janiuk. Golem has reached four mln users this year.

from Cryptocracken Blogger http://ift.tt/2BVZ9bj
via IFTTT