Tag Archives: bitcoin

Cryptocurrency explainer: Everything you need to know

Cryptocurrency explainer:
Everything you need to know

  

Everything you need to know CryptoCurrency Bitcoin Stack

If you’ve ever had a company or friend offer to pay you with Bitcoins or another type of digital money, you’ve encountered cryptocurrency, also called crypto-money or cryptoassets. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is created through the use of encryption software. This approach is a solution to security and control issues that prevented a purely digital currency from being successfully developed in the past. If you hear someone talking about one of these currencies, it’s almost certainly in a cryptocurrency format. This type of digitally created and secured money is currently in a period of very cool experimentation, so let’s take a look at how it work, why it’s popular, and where cryptocurrency is heading in the future.

How does cryptocurrency work?

DopaMINE Cryptocurrency Mining Case

How does a currency exist in a totally digital format? What is it based on? While the process varies a little between different cryptocurrencies, they all follow the same general system. First, cryptocurrency chooses a base unit and how much that particular unit is worth when compared to other currencies (often, the U.S. dollar is used as a baseline). Some cryptocurrencies are more imaginative than others at this point. They try to represent debt registries, contracts, or the act of currency exchange itself. It can get a little weird, but ultimately the unit in some way relates to the value of other currency, as is true of all currencies in the world.

Units of cryptocurrency are then created, typically when a transaction occurs. The units are carefully formed and preserved through algorithmic encryption, then linked together in vast chains of data, where the currency can be tracked and exchanged. However, at this point, cryptocurrency is still too vulnerable and too easy to fake. The currency units need to be time stamped processed to make them more concrete and harder to copy. A third party developer can do this, but most cryptocurrencies prefer to crowdsource the process to those with the right hardware and software to “mine” the currency.

Mining uses algorithms to go through each transaction, encrypt the cryptocurrency, and add it to a digital ledger, essentially verifying it and cementing its position online. This process may also be referred to as “consensus protocols” or “consensus platforms,” depending on the currency. This process is meant to make the currency impossible to duplicate, though whether it’s successful is up for some debate. Some cryptocurrencies are highly centralized, with someone — usually the organization that created the process/software — making decisions about how much currency is created and how it is used. Other types are very decentralized, controlled only by how and where people are willing to use them.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Weekly Round-Up and Cryptocurrency Markets Update

Weekly Round-Up and
Cryptocurrency Markets Update

   

Last week saw Bitfury striking xxxxxx

a deal with the Ukranian government to put the latter’s data on a Blockchain platform. The deal will ensure blockchain recordings for areas like public health and services, state registers, energy and social security. In a twist, High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV plc is reported to have acquired nChain, a Blockchain company associated with Wright Craig, the man who once claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The company plans to make available their intellectual property assets to the blockchain community via royalty-free licensing and open sourcing.

An initial Coin Offer intended for mining activities to support the signaling of Bitcoin Unlimited has been halted as a result of not reaching its goal. The ICO was allegedly linked to Chinese Angel Investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic, Chandler Guo. On the Bitcoin Network scaling front, the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool, F2Pool has declared its support for Segwit. Wang Chun, Owner of F2Pool revealed on Friday that 56 percent of his network members are in support of Segwit.

Eventually, the advent toward mainstream adoption of blockchain gets after Mark Carney, Bank of England’s Governor, claimed blockchain technology can save banks tens of billions of dollars a year. The governor was speaking International Fintech Conference last week in London, where he further revealed that the next generation of Britain’s interbank wire system will be blockchain-compatible.

Market Updates (as of Monday)

Bitcoin’s current price recovery

is outstanding despite the fact that the scaling debate is still raging on. Some experts believe it is being driven by mainstream adoption in Japan. As at 22:00 GMT, Bitcoin has appreciated by 0.22 percentage point and its market value was $1180.73 maintaining the number one position on CoinMarketCap. Ethereum is still holding on to the 2nd spot and has kept the velocity from the current altcoin rally although it lost 0.82 percent today. Its market price was $48.49.

After a stratospheric rise that resulted in Ripple ousting Dash from number three, it has slow down to some degree. The cross-border transfer crypto with KYC was selling at $0.033308 with a 1.33 percent downward adjustment. The battle for number four is so titanic. For three days now, Litecoin and Dash has been dislodging each other to take over momentarily. However, at the time of filing this report, Dash was reigning with a 0.21 percent depreciation, posting an exchange rate of $75.23. Litecoin also took a fall of 1.02% and was being sold for $10.71. It must be stated that the decision to implement Segwit has boosted its price and market cap.

Even though Monero was recently indicted in a finding that found out that some of its transactions are traceable, it doesn’t seem to be affected much and is still at the 6th position. It scored a negative 1.76 percentage point and the exchanges listed it for $20.38. Moreso Ethereum didn’t have a good time either. At number seven, it could be bought for $2.65 and dip 0.42 percent. With a market price of $0.024212 and 0.48 percent upward gain, NEM kept its 8th position intact. The consistency for the Smart Contract platform is impressive.

Angur with the selling rate of $11.52 and a 2.55 percent upward adjustment maintained number 9 as well as the biggest gain on top 10. In a surprising move, PIVX has pushed Maidsafecoin to the 11th position and it is now counted among the top 10 Cryptos on CoinMarketCap. This anon digital currency in a few months has established itself among the elites. It bagged a 0.93 percent growth and its price was $2.01.

Gainers And Losers

On the top 20,

Factom rose by a significant 14.37 percent. It is one of the Cryptos below top 10 that must be watched keenly. Sadly Bitconnect which was at top 10 briefly on Wednesday fell negative 26.63 percent to be the biggest loser.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

ICO Report: iEx.ec

ICO Report: iEx.ec

  

The iEx.ec project

is all about connecting Blockchain technology and cloud computing business. It aims to create a decentralized cloud and set up a marketplace for computing resources. Its founders conducted numerous scientific research over the years at prominent research institutions, such as the French INRIA and CNRS. The team has a step-by-step plan for the four years ahead. iEx.ec will rely on a set of its own technological solutions. However, the team has not done a lot of dissemination work till recently. Its track record on Github is quite modest. So the question remains open, whether the iEx.ec technological base is as good as they claim it to be.

Konstantin Lomashuk, CEO of Satoshi.Fund:

“The market of cloud computing is huge and we will see more and more new companies aiming at it. It’s really good for the decentralized ecosystem.”

iEx.ec

iEx.ec stands for “I Execute”. Headquartered in Lyon, France, the project was created in October 2016. It is a spin-off company from INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. iEx.ec aims at starting off as a fully distributed Blockchain-based cloud platform. It is designed for distributed Blockchain-based applications (DApps) with plans to evolving into a market network for decentralized computing products and services. In total, their five editions of the project planned within four years from the launch date. The last outlined edition will represent a fully distributed platform for Blockchain computing.

Potential market

The iEx.ec market network will be designed for various participants of the distributed computing ecosystem. It will enable them to do business with each other to better monetize their products and services. Each new version of the network will be updated to host new types of participants:

  • DApps providers (version 1)
  • application and server providers (version 2)
  • data providers (version 3)
  • mining farms, miners, GPU apps providers (version 4)
  • emerging classes of applications (version 5)
  • at this stage, iEx.ec also plans to partner with telecom companies, attracting the latter, among other, with the possibility to halve their infrastructure costs, distributing small data centers along their network point-of-presence

The market network is to provide its users with

  • full traceability and trust
  • a wide range of customers and, consequently, new markets
  • an innovative Blockchain-based environment, tailored for its users’ features and needs

Competitors

The project’s closest challenger is the Golem Network. It is a decentralized economy of computing power, where one can rent it out or develop and sell software. As pointed out in iEx.ec whitepaper, the key difference between the two is that Golem, with its supercomputer, focuses mainly on High-Performance Computing (HPC) users, while iEx.ec, with its decentralized cloud, will first attract DApps and expect Cloud and HPC users to join later when the Network will evolve becoming more competitive. The economy of DApps is on the rise now, and iEx.ec seems to fit perfectly in it.

Main features

  • Desktop Grid Software XtremWeb-HEP, to enable use of any computing resources to execute compute- or data-intensive applications
  • Blockchain, to coordinate the access of computing resources to distributed apps
  • Claim of Proof-of-Contribution consensus protocol, to certify off chain contributions directly on the Blockchain
  • Matchmaking smart contracts, to pair a resource request with a resource offer according to their description
  • Simplified version of a multicriteria scheduler [MulticritSched], to enable customers to define their own preferences based on specific criteria
  • Market management framework, including API to register bids, a set of template contracts, a web user interface and JavaScript code
  • Result checking algorithm, including escrow mechanisms and a reputation system, to choose business partners from the market based on their provable reputation and on the established budget
  • Native RLC token, to pay for Application, Server and Data providers on the market network

Team

The core team members, including Gilles Fedak, Haiwu He, Oleg Lodygensky, and Mircea Moca, have an impressive research and development background in big data, grid and cloud computing. Gilles Fedak alone co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers. The core features underlying the iEx.ec are their own developments. They were produced in the scope of their work at INRIA and CNRS. The team is also linked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Blockchain part is done by two experts from La Javaness, a French digital innovation accelerator. There are also a data management expert, the Energy Positive Server developer, two PR specialists and a new media expert based in the company’s China office. In the future, the team considers collaborating with several well-known European and Chinese universities in research. It also intends to obtain complementary funding through national and European research agencies.

ICO Details

  • Launch: 19 April, 2017 at 13:00 UTC
  • End: as soon as the max cap of 60.000.000 RLC is reached (otherwise – in 30 days)
  • Max RLC total supply: 87,000,000 RLC
  • Max RLC sold by crowdsale: 60,000,000 RLC
  • RLC minimum objective: 10,000,000 RLC
  • Both BTC and ETH are accepted
  • 1 BTC = 5000 RLC
  • USD/ETH – to be defined at the start of ICO, according to the ETHBTC rate
  • 20% bonus – April 19 to April 29
  • 10% bonus – April 29 to May 9
  • Crowdsale terms and funding URL: http://crowdsale.iex.ec

Token distribution

  • Maximum of 60,000,000 RLC – crowdsale
  • 12,000,000 RLC to 15,000,000 RLC – founders, team and early investors
  • 1,700,000 RLC to 6,000,000 RLC – a fund for developers, to be distributed in the form of bounty grants, marketing actions, and research grants
  • 1,700,000 RLC to 6,000,000 RLC – special contingency reserve (not sold on markets)

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Meet Bitcoin Plus – The Next Great Cryptocurrency

Meet Bitcoin Plus –
The Next Great Cryptocurrency

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Trade Coin Club Reviews – Is It A Scam Or A Legitimate Opportunity?

Trade Coin Club Reviews – Is It A Scam Or A Legitimate Opportunity?

 

Trade Coin Club

I found out about this company called Trade Coin Club as I was surfing the web. This company is a fresh new company and as always, I have decided to have a detailed look at their business.

I am sure if you are like me, many of you would also like to know more about this new venture. Even more so, those of you, who are looking to invest in this web MLM business.

To help you guys, I have spent some time researching and prepared this Trade Coin Club Review. I have divided this into company profile, products, compensation plan and finally my thoughts.

Let’s check what I dug up about them!

What Is Trade Coin Club? 

Trade Coin Club may very well be the newest of the online bitCoin based MLM business. As for the domain registration, this company just started its operation in November 2016. I am not scared of being involved in a company in its infancy because if it is a good company I can get a head start. 

Like most of the online businesses similar to this one, this company does not have any information about the company owners, stakeholders or management teams., however, they are licensed as a legitimate trading platform. Another point to note they offer all trades to be logged and viewed in the back office. 

They have registered their domain name for 10 years. 

Products Trade Coin Club Offers

Trade Coin Club does not have any physical or digital products to sell or rent.

After becoming an affiliate member, members can sell or promote memberships of Trade Coin Club. Each member is set up with a trading platform that allows them to have their cryptocurrency ie "Bitcoin" traded against the top ten cryptocurrencies. I like this because of the aligator tooth (the up and down price of Bitcoin) this allows members to not really be concerned about the lack of knowledge of trading because it trades on auto-pilot and they choose the level of risk. High, medium, low. More on this later in the study.

The Trade Coin Club Compensation Plan

You can join Trade Coin Club by signing on for one of 3 available investment plans.

  • Apprentice – Invest 0.25 to 0.99 BTC and receive a 0.35% daily ROI for 8 months
  • Trader – Invest 1 to 4.99 BTC and receive a 0.4% daily ROI for 12 months
  • Senior Trader – Invest 5 BTC or more and receive a 0.45% daily ROI for 12 months

However, you have to pay a 25% fee on your earned ROI every four months. So basically, you are actually earning 75% of their promised ROI.

Affiliate members can also earn referral commission on unilevel structure up to level eight. Your unilevel positions can be filled by both your directly sponsored members and their own sponsored members.

  • Apprentice – 10% on level 1, 3% on level 2, 2% on level 3 and 1% on level 4
  • Trader – 10% on level 1, 3% on level 2, 2% on level 3 and 1% on levels 4 to 6
  • Senior Trader – 10% on level 1, 3% on level 2, 2% on level 3 and 1% on levels 4 to 8

When you advance in affiliate ranks you receive rank advancement bonus.

  • Trader Level 3 – Earn 10 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a Montblanc pen
  • Trader Level 4 – Earn 50 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a cruise
  • Trader Level 5 – Earn 100 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive an “international Caribbean travel” cruise
  • Trader Level 6 – Earn 200 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a Rolex watch
  • Trader Level 7 – Earn 500 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a Toyota Corolla car
  • Trader Level 8 – Earn 750 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a BMW 320 car
  • Trader Level 9 – Earn 1500 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a BMW Z4 car
  • Trader Level 10 – Earn 5000 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a BMW 18 car
  • Trader Level 11 – Earn 10,000 BTC or more in monthly binary commissions and receive a Lamborghini Huracan car

They also provide residual commissions on binary compensation structure.

Your downline investment volume will be counted every day on both sides of the binary team and you will be paid commissions on the weaker side of your leg. The amount will be dependent on your rank.

  • Apprentice – 8% (capped at 2 BTC a day)
  • Trader – 9% (capped at 10 BTC a day)
  • Senior Trader – 10% (capped at 15 BTC a day)

Additionally, members can earn recruitment commissions through a 3×12 matrix. When an affiliate fills a matrix position they are paid 0.003 BTC a month, as long as each member continues to pay their monthly fee.

So I have researched results from other existing members. A member that I had talked with has earned a documented 174 Bitcoin since December 24, 2016. They were nice enough to show me in their back office and that they have received full withdrawal after the trade period was over. So I do know at this point this is a real trading platform.

To see the company presentation and to make your own decision Click Here

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive Inc

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Cryptocurrencies Surge in Value – Threefold Increase since last year

Cryptocurrencies Surge in Value - Threefold Increase since last year

Cryptocurrencies Surge in Value – Threefold Increase since last year

The combined market value of bitcoin and other crypto-currencies is now $27bn, representing a threefold increase since the start of 2016, with bitcoin miners having earned more than $2bn since trading in the electronic currency began in 2009.

These are some of the findings of a new report the Global cryptocurrency benchmarking study by Dr Garrick Hileman and Michel Rauchs of the University of Cambridge.

The authors note that ten years after the publication of a white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto which led to the creation of bitcoin, the crypto-currency markets now have approximately the same valuation as AirBnB, with the value of individual coins, the total number of users and the number of crypto-currencies in use all rising fast.

The prices of bitcoin and "altcoins" such as dash, monero and ether have all rocketed in price in the last 18 months, more than doubling in the case of bitcoin and with monero worth 16 times more than at the start of 2016.

At the same time, the number of daily bitcoin transactions has risen from 201,595 in Q1 2016 to 286,419 a year later, with the ether being traded more than twice as much reaching 47,792 daily transactions in January-February 2017.

With the future direction of bitcoin uncertain due to arguments about the best way to increase its scalability without centralising power in the hands of a few giant "miners" (generally companies operating a large number of powerful servers that verify transactions on the bitcoin blockchain), alternative currencies such as the ether have risen in importance as a hedge for investors.

The alternative approaches threaten to split bitcoin in two, forking the blockchain. This could create difficulties as there would be two different versions of bitcoin in circulation, and other coins and services built on the bitcoin blockchain and currency exchanges would have to decide which way to go. However, despite the feuding, the price of bitcoin against the US dollar is close to an all-time high.

The transaction fees that miners can earn have risen sharply as the number of transactions, and hence the size of the blockchain, has grown, with users opting to pay more for a quicker transaction time. This has left the big miners with a lot of power and a vested interest in the way bitcoin evolves.

The report estimates the current number of unique actve users of crypto-currency wallets be between 2.9 million and 5.8 million, with between 5.8 million and 11.5 million wallets in active use. The industry is thought to employ around 2,000 people worldwide.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

John Leonard

Author

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin vs Onecoin

A lot of people seem to think Onecoin is a far better investment compared to bitcoin. While nothing could be further from the truth, it is not hard to see why people would invest in Onecoin rather than bitcoin. To the average consumer, bitcoin makes little sense. However, it is evident bitcoin will always be the superior currency.

2. ONECOIN

Over the past few years, Onecoin has made quite a name for itself. The people responsible for this project advertise Onecoin as a digital currency that will not only make investors rich over time but also provides a gateway to product and services as part of the Onelife ecosystem. However, there are quite a few caveats regarding Onecoin that most less tech-savvy people tend to overlook. After all, the concept looks appealing, but can its creators back up any of their initial claims?

That is where the Onecoin project falls apart almost immediately. While it is true investors will see their account balance update over time, that does not necessarily mean they own said funds. In fact, until they request  a payout from Onecoin, they will never control their profits or original investment ever again. Moreover, the account balances one sees update every so often is nothing more than a number in the Onecoin site database being changed, even though it has no value whatsoever.

Moreover, the Onecoin team claims they have made a digital currency, which is issued over a blockchain. So far, there has been no proof of a Onecoin blockchain, simply because it doesn’t exist. Nor will it ever come to fruition either, as the project team has no idea on how they would create such a technological marvel in the first place. It is evident Onecoin is not even a currency with proper use cases, other than the ones provided by the Onelife network. No one has ever been able to buy food or pay a bill with Onecoin directly, that much is certain.

1. BITCOIN

Which brings us to bitcoin, the so-called “inferior currency to Onecoin”, according to some of the platform’s investors. In fact, one can argue bitcoin is everything Onecoin is not and vice versa. Unlike the scammy counterpart above, bitcoin is an actual currency that can be used around the world without requiring approval from a centralized company that has no honest intentions whatsoever. It is rather interesting the OneLife network does not accept bitcoin payments, nor does any other merchant around the world accept Onecoin payments.

Moreover, bitcoin is a digital currency, as it does not merely exist in one website’s database. The entire world can see bitcoin transactions take place in real-time without having to install special software to do so. Onecoin transactions, on the other hand, have never been publicly documented. This begs the question whether or not there is any value to the Onecoin “currency” in the first place, considering it has no use cases.

Speaking of use cases, thousands of merchants and retailers around the world are accepted bitcoin payments as of right now. Both online and offline purchases can be completed with bitcoin. Additionally, there are also bitcoin debit cards, whereas Onecoin has no debit card whatsoever. That is quite surprising, considering the value of Onecoin seems to increase every so often. Striking a deal with a credit card issuer would not be all that hard in this regard. Then again, bitcoin has a value, and Onecoin does not, which explains why no card issuer wants to deal with Onecoin right now.

Chris Corey MarketHive Chief Marketing Officer

 

author: Jdebunt

JP Buntinx is a FinTech and Bitcoin enthusiast living in Belgium. His passion for finance and technology made him one of the world's leading freelance Bitcoin writers, and he aims to achieve the same level of respect in the FinTech sector.

 

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

German Finance Watchdog Shutters OneCoin Payment Processor

German Finance Watchdog Shutters OneCoin Payment Processor

Germany's top finance regulator has moved to shut down a payment processor tied to the OneCoin cryptocurrency scheme, a digital currency service that has faced widespread allegations of fraud.

The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) said on 10th April that it was freezing the accounts of IMS International Marketing Services GmbH, which is registered in Germany.

According to BaFin, the firm accepted €360m on behalf of OneCoin between December 2015 and December 2016. Of that amount, €29m is being held in the accounts frozen by the regulator.

The agency went on to threaten financial penalties in excess of €1m, going on to say:

 

"In case IMS should not abide by the order to cease business, BaFin threatened to impose a coercive fine of €1.5m; for non-compliance with the winding-down order, it would impose a coercive fine of €150,000. By law, the administrative acts, including the threats of coercive fines, are immediately enforceable."

With the move, BaFin becomes the latest regulator in Europe to take action against elements of the OneCoin scheme.

OneCoin is a multi-level marketing scheme that pitches an eponymous digital currency as an investment opportunity. Prospective buyers purchase batches of tokens which can then be redeemed online, though those involved are strongly encouraged to find buyers of their own – a characteristic that lends itself to accusations that OneCoin is a pyramid scheme.

In the past year, regulators in several African countries have warned consumers about local efforts by OneCoin to solicit investors. In the UK, London police have been investigating OneCoin since as early as September, while in Italy, regulators moved last month to prohibit promotional efforts for OneCoin by local proponents.

Notably, BaFin made it clear in a statement that it was moving against the firm due to unlicensed money activities rather than the legality of sales of OneCoin tokens.

"BaFin does not have the right to decide as to the validity under the civil law of the 'OneCoins' sales contracts. It may therefore not answer questions of this nature," the agency said.

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive Inc

 (@mpmcsweeney) | Published on April 18, 2017 at 14:00 BST

Closed sign image via Shutterstock

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin Mining Pool ViaBTC Says No toSegwit

Bitcoin Mining Pool ViaBTC Says
No to
Segwit

  

Following a previous announcement by F2Pool

that they are now to signal for segregated witnesses (segwit), ViaBTC has publicly reiterated they do not support segwit for a number of reasons.  The bitcoin mining pool says:

SegWit, which is a soft fork solution for malleability, cannot solve the capacity problem… Even if SegWit after activation can slightly scale up block size with new transaction formats, it’s still far behind the demand for the development of Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin has been running at full capacity for months with numerous proposals put forward and rejected by miners. The latest ones are segwit, currently at around 32% hashrate share, and Bitcoin Unlimited which stands just under 40%. Segwit’s main aim is to send transactions off-chain and onto second layers, such as the Lightning Network or sidechains. ViaBTC says such transactions “are NOT equal to Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer on-chain transactions” before adding that “LN will also lead to big payment “centers”, and this is against Bitcoin’s initial design as a peer-to-peer payment system.”

The main criticism against segwit is its use of a 1:4 ratio, which many suspect is a political decision that will bind bitcoin’s trajectory for decades to come regardless of technical factors. ViaBTC says: “SegWit lifts the block size limit to 4MB with 1MB base and 3MB witness block. However, from the current transaction data, the average effective block size will be less than 2MB even if all transactions upgrade to SegWit. This is a tremendous waste. If we want to double the capacity of Bitcoin, we’ll need to make sure the internet bandwidth to run full nodes can support at least 8MB blocks, instead of 2MB. This will make it even tougher to increase block size in the future.” Moreover, the decision to upgrade to segwit is irreversible, according to ViaBTC. So if something goes wrong, bitcoin might be stuck because:

“On technical terms, SegWit uses a transaction format that can be spent by those who don’t upgrade their nodes, with segregation of transaction data and signature data. This means SegWit is irrevocable once it’s activated, or all unspent transactions in SegWit formats will face the risk of being stolen.” Some 70% of miners have now made a decision on whether to support segwit or Bitcoin Unlimited, a proposal which simply increases the blocksize as set by nodes and miners. It’s not clear what the other 30% are waiting for, but it will be interesting to see what they do decide once they get around to exercising their duty.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

ICO Market: from $6,000 to $150 mln. Overview with Waves CEO

ICO Market: from $6,000 to $150 mln. Overview with Waves CEO

  

The concept of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

has made massive progress since its emergence in 2013 – evolving from makeshift efforts on Bitcointalk to unbelievable campaigns which raked in millions of dollars in mere minutes. Today, we take a look back, as well as try to predict the future of the market of ICOs, together with one of its largest players – the Waves Platform and its CEO Alexander Ivanov. ICO is the practice of securing funds for an early-stage company, issuing a digital token, cryptocurrency and selling a part of its total supply to the intended audience of the project. That way, the startup is able to fund further development of its product, and in return, the users get a tradable asset that may appreciate in value with the future success of the company.

As the name suggests, ICOs are somewhat similar to a much older concept of an Initial Public Offering (IPO), although they aren’t as clearly defined or regulated. Like almost everything in the Blockchain industry, the question of how an ICO should be organized and conducted is an ongoing evolutionary process and a rapid one at that. It’s not hard to surmise that ICOs are a godsend to the young Blockchain-powered startups, which often manage to build a large and loyal fan following based on the idea alone, but may struggle to convince the conservative and incredulous venture capitalists. However, there’s still a long road ahead for the community, before an ICO truly becomes a standard in funding such projects. This ongoing progress can be defined in terms of several prominent trends described below.

Growing numbers

The most evident is the growth in sheer numbers. More and more campaigns are being launched year-on-year and each one of them is able to bring in more and more money, as time goes by. The earliest examples of ICOs, which weren’t even called that at the time, were ad hoc efforts conducted in 2013 by the developers of various cryptocurrencies on the Bitcointalk.org forum. Such projects as NXT and Mastercoin had a proof-of-concept and a fan base but not much money. To them, it seemed reasonable to fund the development of the final product by selling a part of the total supply of coins to the enthusiastic crowd.

And so they did, perhaps unknowingly giving birth to what we now call an Initial Coin Offering. As improvised as they were, these efforts were rare and not too mind-blowing money-wise, at least by today’s standards. Mastercoin has managed to secure a little over half a million dollars, while NXT has grabbed a mere $6,000. But, the precedent was set, and in the next year, it was a massive success. Ethereum, a decentralized applications platform, has secured over $18 mln in a crowd sale of its ETH tokens in July to August 2014.

Some may argue that this was the breakout, needed to propel the concept of ICOs to popularity, especially considering that Ethereum developers made good use of the collected money. Today, the cryptocurrency can boast the second-highest capitalization, only exceeded by Bitcoin itself. It only went uphill from there, as the community realized that any Blockchain-based project can be funded this way, not just the cryptocurrencies. Waves Platform, SingularDTV, ICONOMI, Golem – 2016 truly became the year of ICOs, with 64 campaigns bringing in an incredible total of $103 mln.

Cointelegraph: What is your opinion on the fast rate of growths of the ICO market? Some have noticed similarities to the early days of the dot-com boom. Are we in for a bubble burst, or is this a natural growth driven by real demand?

Alexander Ivanov:

“It’s certainly real demand. These are real projects, with real people and companies behind them. The rate of growth is fast but it’s not fake. People are simply starting to access funds a different way. If it’s not possible to start a business with a loan from a bank or with VC funding – as it’s not for many people – they will turn to the alternatives. The ICO market is a subsection of the crowdfunding sector more broadly, and we’ve seen how popular platforms like KickStarter have been.”

Perhaps, the most impressive testament to the strong – if reckless – appetite the Blockchain community has acquired for this new paradigm of fundraising was The DAO. The absolute record in the history of crowdfunding, it was able to secure over $150 mln, which it would hold to this day, were it still active. The DAO was built as a decentralized autonomous VC fund, meaning that it didn’t have a conventional management structure, and was instead governed by software. Soon after the ICO was finished, some unidentified hackers have exploited a software vulnerability to siphon off one-third of The DAO’s funds, leading to its eventual demise.

Self-regulation

Although the investors did get most of their money back, in the end, adequate preventative measures would have likely made the attack impossible in the first place. Thus, the story of The DAO highlights another major trend present on the ICO market – evolving self-policing measures and increasing compliance with financial regulations. Hacker attacks aren’t the only danger here. The anonymous and permissionless nature of cryptocurrencies often allows scammers to dupe investors out of their money in a crowd sale and then disappear into thin air, never to be heard of again.

Legitimate startups have quickly realized that self-imposed restrictions are the only way to ensure the investors’ trust and, by extension, their contributions. So, gone are the days when a good idea backed by a fuzzy whitepaper were enough for a developer to secure the money to move forward. Today, if an ICO wants to be taken seriously, it has to provide a whole range of detailed data regarding the developers, the project, its goals, the terms and conditions for the investors, and so on.

The use of escrow wallets to store the collected funds is basically a given. These wallets ensure that the money for development is released in parts and only after certain milestones have been reached on the project’s roadmap. Otherwise, the danger of the company just unilaterally withdrawing all the money and disappearing with it is too high. Waves Platform, a service which allows anyone to set up their own digital token and use it in an ICO, is a prime example of this trend. It works exclusively with fully AML/KYC-compliant fiat gateway organizations. Not only that, it has also established its own, decentralized analogue of those regulations, which allows to pinpoint and eliminate unscrupulous actors from the network.

Cointelegraph: What customer protection measures are implemented on your platform, and what is their importance?

Alexander Ivanov:

“With a decentralized platform, it’s hard to have the kinds of protections that people take for granted with existing crowdfunding solutions. Waves is an Open Blockchain platform, so by design, you can’t stop people from issuing their own tokens on it. What we have done is start a system of community-based due diligence through the creation of the Waves Community Token. This will allow holders to vote on a project and make a collective decision about whether it is viable and trustworthy.”

ICO platforms

In fact, Waves is also an example of another big movement on the ICO market – the development of platforms designed specifically to serve as aggregators of ICOs. They provide the necessary tools for the startups to set up their campaigns, and for the investors to look for and contribute to them. Crowdfunding was an option long before the Kickstarter was a thing, but it was the appearance of this platform, where the projects and backers could find each other with unprecedented ease, which made it into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. Platforms such as Waves and ICONOMI are trying to do to ICOs what Kickstarter did to crowdfunding. By creating a single place for Blockchain startups to list their campaigns and the potential investors to find them, they may soon enable a similar explosion of growth on the ICO market.

Cointelegraph: How is the experience of launching an ICO on a specialized platform different from launching your own token? In which ways is it better?

Alexander Ivanov:

“It’s hugely different. All of the infrastructure is taken care of. It’s a very simple matter to launch a token on the Waves platform – it takes less than a minute and costs less than a dollar. And it’s very easy to distribute those tokens to your investors. Compare that with creating your own coin from scratch – cloning and altering bitcoin, at the very least, or coding a new platform from the ground up; bootstrapping the network and ensuring its ongoing security; creating a custom solution for crowdfunding investment, and then distributing coins. All of this has a significant financial and technical overhead. It’s hard to do well and security is key. Waves is a proven and secure solution that takes that headache away from token issuers – which is why a growing number of regular businesses are using it.”

Looking into the future

Trying to predict what’s going to happen next is never easy, especially in a such a fast-growing and changing environment as ICOs. Perhaps, the most likely scenario is that we’ll keep seeing more of the same: continued growth in numbers, the emergence of legal regulations, further development of the tools and practices involved in conducting a campaign.

It’s definitely not too early to say that 2017 is turning out to be a good year for emerging startups. Qtum, a platform for mobile decentralized applications, has secured over $15 mln back in March. Humaniq, a Blockchain-powered decentralized bank for the unbanked, has just collected $5.4 mln for the ICO. ChronoBank, an innovative time banking platform, has grabbed more than $2.7 mln in January. The $103 mln secured in ICOs in 2016 are impressive, but it’s still nowhere near the $34 bln valuation of the crowdfunding industry as a whole. As the crowd sales of digital tokens become more accessible to the newcomers – especially with the development of the ICO platforms and evolving regulatory environment – we may see larger numbers of crowdfunding enthusiasts taking part in them.

Cointelegraph: Any predictions you might have for the near future?

Alexander Ivanov:

“Well, interest will only increase – both in Blockchain and in ICOs. It’s likely that Blockchain crowd sales will grow to a point where they rival and even overtake VC funding in the coming years. That point will probably come sooner rather than later as we see a large number of small ICOs as well as more multi-million dollar ones.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member