Cryptocurrency

Considering the horrible 2018 that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have had, PR pros might rightfully wonder if the digital currencies are still worth the time and investment. After all, Bitcoin's value has plummeted—the currency was booming at $19,352 on December 17th, 2017, but had a value of just $3,360 almost a year later, on December 12th, 2018. Add to this the fact that several cryptocurrency startups have been forced to close over the last year, and the digital gold rush seems to have ended. Such news doesn't mean that cryptocurrencies are not still without their brand value,  though. The transparency that a brand gains when trading with cryptocurrencies—and more importantly, implementing a ledger of crypto transactions known as blockchain—can be artfully used to assuage consumer distrust or questions about the honesty of your brand's dealings. That is, if you know how to talk about crypto, of course. Here are 10 terms that can make communicators sound smart wh...

According to the Cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering Report from Ciphertrace some $927 million had been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges in the first three quarters of 2018 alone. That total will almost certainly have hit, if not smashed straight through, the $1 billion mark by now. So, who were the hackers behind the heists and how did they get away with it? The how remains sadly predictable throughout the year, truth be told; exploiting vulnerabilities in crypto wallet software and servers, social engineering/password compromises and insider theft. The who covers equally predictable territory with lone wolf criminal opportunists at the lower end of scale through to well-resourced nation-state actors at the other. So, there's a 21 year old opportunist criminal who managed to steal $1 million from the Coinbase and Gemini accounts of San Francisco resident Robert Ross after convincing the victims mobile network provider to assign that phone number to his own device. Once h...

FOMO Moments Crypto markets lethargic on New Year’s Eve; Bitcoin Cash sliding as usual, the rest immobile. Crypto markets have remained inactive on the final day of 2018. There has been very little movement in any of the major cryptocurrencies as total market capitalization remains just below $130 billion. Compared to December 31, 2017 they are down 77% but the rate of descent has slowed over the past few months. Bitcoin has not moved on the day and remains just over $3,800 at the time of writing. BTC reached an intraday high of $3,900 but pulled back to $3,860 and is currently heading south from there. Since last Monday Bitcoin has lost over 9% as it failed to break resistance over $4,000. Ethereum is also flat during Asian trading this morning; it has remained just over $135 where it was this time yesterday. Likewise with XRP which hasn’t moved either, the gap between the two for second place is now at around $660 billion and shrinking as Ethereum closes . There is more red than gre...

Coinopsy and DeadCoins have reported that nearly 1,000 cryptocurrency projects have officially become 'dead' projects.  The term 'dead' projects relates to projects that were either scams or projects that failed to deliver any product, eventually leading to zero trading volume. While 2018 has seen a year-long bear market, this could be attributed to some projects falling victim to becoming defunct. However, most of the projects were simply initial coin offerings (ICO) which took advantage of the popularity of ICO's in late 2017. Most of these projects simply turned into cash grabs or even more blatantly, exit scams, losing investors millions and running off with the investor funds. DeadCoins currently features 934 coins which are categorized as either scams, hacked, deceased or parody projects. While Coinopsy features a more in depth analysis totalling 462 coins but does not feature the past months results. Coinopsy includes ICO dead coins, joke dead coins, sc...

We may one day look back on 2018 as the year the great cryptocurrency dream died. And the case of banking startup Hush  could serve as a cautionary tale about the risks that were always inherent in this relatively unregulated sector. Founded in my backyard of Toulouse, France, Hush was a “neo-bank” that wanted to revolutionize banking by using cryptocurrencies and tokens to create a participative community service that would foster a decentralized governance model. The company appeared to be credible because it was founded by Éric Charpentier, who had been the founder of banking startup  Morning . Charpentier’s past wasn’t without a touch of controversy, however. Two years ago, Morning’s operations were suspended by financial regulators, who accused the startup of mishandling funds. Eventually, Morning was acquired by French bank Edel, which continues to operate it. Meanwhile, Charpentier launched Hush, which started  getting a lot of buzz  as the founde...

A new trademark application has turned up in the UK – and it’s got Samsung’s name all over it… The end of the year is bringing with it fresh interest from Samsung in the cryptocurrency sector, following rumours that have been swirling around for the past few weeks. Just the other week, a story popped that Samsung was looking to include a cold cryptocurrency wallet on its upcoming top of the range S10 smartphone, a rumour the company itself has firmly played down. You can read our report on that here . But the story has come come back up again with the news that the company has filed a trademark application in Britain. It made a filing just after Christmas – how’s that for trying to get news out in a quiet news period? – with the UK Intellectual Property Office. The name of the trademark? “Samsung Crypto Wallet”. And that, even to our bleary post-Christmas eyes doesn’t look very vague to us. Under the ‘classes and terms’ section of the trademark filing, meanwhile, are the following...

The UK financial regulator is probing more than a dozen companies in connection with cryptocurrency transactions amid concerns about growing market risks. The Financial Conduct Authority on Sunday confirmed it was investigating 18 businesses involved in the sale of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin . The regulator has also issued alerts and warnings about dozens of companies suspected of cryptocurrency investment scams. Currently, the transfer, purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies is not regulated in the UK. However, companies that sell regulated investments with an underlying cryptocurrency element, may need FCA authorisation to do so depending on their activities. As of November 12, the FCA had opened inquiries into 67 companies involved in the cryptocurrency business, according to the Sunday Telegraph, which obtained the details from the regulator through a Freedom Of Information request. As an industry, we have been calling for the introduction of proportionate regulation ...

40% Of Chinese Surveyed Want To Invest In Bitcoin According to a survey conducted by PANews, routed through Chinese crypto-friendly media outlet 8BTC , 98.22% of those surveyed had heard of cryptocurrency technology, whether it be Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), or otherwise. The survey had 4,980 respondents, 4,200 of which responded in a valid/bonafide manner. Survey: Nearly 40% of #Chinese Would Like to Invest in #Bitcoin Despite Prolonged Bear | https://t.co/z0jfNUUekk https://t.co/ueoNl57mYn — 8BTCnews (@btcinchina) December 29, 2018 While essentially all respondents have heard the good word of crypto, so to speak, only 14.6% of those surveyed have purportedly made a capital allocation into the crypto market. Yet, 40% have claimed that they are willing to invest in cryptocurrencies sometime in the future. This discrepancy can likely be chalked up to the lack of infrastructure in China, as fiat on-ramps are restricted, if not banned, and accessing crypto-related media,...

This year Bitcoin’s ( BTC ) average daily price change was the lowest value reported in the past nine years, self-proclaimed professional cypherpunk Jameson Lopp tweeted Dec. 30. This year, the average daily value change for Bitcoin was -0.33 percent, according to Lopp’s tweet. In second place for lowest average daily price change was 2014 at -0.25 percent. The year with the highest average daily change was 2010, when Bitcoin saw an average 0.82 percent price change daily — followed by 2017, with an average 0.78 percent daily price growth. As Cointelegraph recently reported , Morgan Creek Digital Assets founder Anthony Pompliano told CNBC that Bitcoin’s price will fall lower, bottoming below $3,000. His declaration comes just a month after he similarly predicted that Bitcoin would fall to around $3,000, a point that it approached on Dec. 15, hitting $3,192. Cryptocurrency trader Tone Vays warned in a market update Dec. 16 that a collapse to at least $1,300 could be imminent. S...

Pascal Thellman is CMO at Bounty0x, a simple service for earning crypto, and an advisor at PolyGrowth, a crypto PR firm. The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s  2018 Year in Review .  2012 and 2016: What do they both have in common? Bitcoin underwent what is referred to as the “ halving ,” where the yearly bitcoin inflation was algorithmically reduced by 50 percent. This is part of bitcoin’s deflationary monetary policy and why Austrian economists refer to bitcoin as “hard money.” If you look at the bitcoin price chart , you will notice that these two years have one more thing in common. The bitcoin price increased significantly the year leading up to the halving. Furthermore, the rally leading up to the halving was in both cases followed by a brutal parabolic move just a few weeks after the halving. With the next bitcoin halving expected to happen in May 2020, the time has come for investors to start paying attention to this pattern. Historically, the ...

For many average Joes, Bitcoin’s use case is viewed as nebulous, a concept squirreled off in the ether by crypto’s pundits. Yet, a leading investor took to Bloomberg to accentuate that Bitcoin (BTC) is fundamentally a store of value (SOV), and one that is even better than gold, the de-facto king of investments for millennia. Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Better Than Gold Prominent venture capitalist Lou Kerner, the founding partner of CryptoOracle, sat down with Bloomberg on Sunday to eulogize the flagship cryptocurrency. When asked about value propositions, the investor claimed that Bitcoin has “the opportunity” to replace and oust gold, which sports a cumulative market capitalization of $8 trillion, as the “dominant store of value.” Kerner even noted that if BTC fails to surmount the powerhouse that is gold, there is potential for the asset to appreciate dramatically. Yet, the CryptoOracle partner shunned the idea that gold isn’t on its way out, simply quipping that holding BTC is “...

Regardless of bitcoin’s price volatility, 2018 saw an explosion of activity among African users. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful increased its transaction volume by 130 percent since January 2018 with an average of $21 million a week, compared to $8.5 million in 2017. The growth was driven in part by Paxful’s user base almost tripling in Ghana, with 41,243 accounts, and more than doubling in Nigeria to 321,476 accounts. According to Paxful CEO Ray Youssef, African bitcoin traders accounted for 41 percent of all of the platform’s new users in 2018. On average, their transactions are worth less than $90 each. African users now make up roughly 35 percent of accounts on Paxful , a platform with 160,000 monthly users. “Amazon, eBay, all these big companies won’t send there [Nigeria] because of the huge fraud rates,” Youssef said. “What [new users] want to know is: How can I use this to do business outside the area where I’m living?” Paxful isn...

Over the weekend things have been standing still with a minor sideways movement for the evaluation of the cryptocurrency market cap but with an overall increase from Friday when the evaluation was at around $120B at its lowest point. Market Cap: $127,252,197,066 24h Vol: $14,404,858,143 BTC Dominance: 51.9% Looking at the global chart you can see that from Friday the market increased and was in an upward trajectory until a minor horizontal resistance was reached as the evaluation peaked to $134,464,000,000 at it’s highest point. Since the evaluation has been in a downward trajectory as the market has been decreasing in the evaluation. The sentiment is still bearish as the market is predominantly in red with an average percentage of change among top 100 coins ranging around 3.72%. Consequently, the Bitcoin market dominance has been steadily hovering around the same levels around 52%. Bitcoin Price Analysis BTC/USD From Friday when the price of Bitcoin was $3712 at the...

Latest Bitcoin News As a year comes to a close, BTC prices are stable and bullish. Still, investors are edgy, and unless otherwise, prices surge past key liquidation levels then we shall retain a neutral stand. At the moment though, our attention shifts to a new report by Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI). According to BTI, up-to 80 percent of mainstream exchanges where traders get to exchange main coins for altcoins are Wash Trading. Wash trading is where an exchange creates a false impression that there is demand by simultaneously buying and selling the same asset. It is misleading, and in regulated exchanges, the practice is unscrupulous and illegal. From the list Binance, BitFinex and Liquid attract real volumes. “Included in this report we have calculated the true volume of the CMC top 25 BTC trading pairs. Most of these pairs actual volume is under 1% of their reported volume on CMC. We noted only 3 out of the top 25 pairs not to grossly wash trading their volume, Binance...

A blockchain-based platform says it is the first that puts all users and ecosystem participants on an equal level, and has set out its vision for how its platform will develop in the coming months and years. Transcendence describes its blockchain as open source and decentralized, and says it offers full compatibility with existing systems such as AmiCloud, an internet-based file storage and file sharing facility, and the indieGO app store. The company says it wants its platform to offer an open marketplace for developers and artists, giving content creators a way to interact through a decentralized messaging service that provides an option for private communication. Wallets for Telos Coin, Transcendence's native cryptocurrency, are being made available through eight operating systems. As well as Windows, iOS, Mac, Android and Linux, support is being offered for those who use AmigaOS, AROS and morphOS. Through the online web wallet for Telos, the company says that users no lo...

Devin Finzer is the co-founder of OpenSea, a decentralized marketplace for crypto assets. The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’ s  2018 Year in Review .  Games frequently serve as an experimental playground for new technology. Since the launch of CryptoKitties  – a digital cat-breeding game built on ethereum – roughly a year ago, games have provided a digitally native playground for early adopters to experiment with the unique benefits of open protocols. Currently, most of the top dapps by transaction volume are games. While there’s a lot of early excitement in the blockchain gaming space, there’s some rightful skepticism. Tony Sheng’s post on why Fortnite probably won’t embrace the blockchain any time soon sparked a great discussion about how the tech fundamentally changes in-game economies. At its core, his post argues that incumbents in the gaming industry likely won’t embrace blockchain because true digital scarcity breaks their existing busi...

Romaine lettuce, beef, a popular cereal brand, eggs, salad dressing: these were just some of the food items that consumers saw recalled in 2018 . Continue Reading Below In these and many other food safety cases, the CDC’s warning is consistent yet confounding:  if you don’t know where your food came from, don’t eat it. We need to re-establish consumers’ faith in the global food supply chain – not just in the choices we make about which food to buy, but in ALL of the choices that are made in every step of the process from the farm to our tables. And that is where blockchain could help. Broken chain: $1T in waste According to the  World Health Organization , an estimated 600 million –- almost 1 in 10 people in the world – fall ill after eating contaminated food with 420,000 dying every year, resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years. And for all of its logistical sophistication, the food supply chain is in many ways broken. It’s estimated that app...