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Thousands of Japanese Retailers, Restaurants May Halt Accepting Bitcoin

Thousands of Japanese Retailers, Restaurants May Halt Accepting Bitcoin

 

More than 5,000 retail stores and restaurants in Japan may stop accepting Bitcoin

as a form of payment starting Aug. 1, 2017. This possibility could push through if Bitcoin payment processors will halt their services.

Bitcoin payment processors plans

The retailers and restaurants accept Bitcoin through payment processors bitFlyer and Coincheck. The latter is also partnering with Recruit Lifestyle in order to expand its operation and accept more than 260,000 additional stores across Japan as clients. BitFlyer, however, has announced that it could stop Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, along with its payment services from July 31 to Aug. 2. Coincheck has separately announced that it will temporarily halt Bitcoin deposit and withdrawal starting Aug. 1.

The company says:

“On Aug. 1, 2017, we may temporarily suspend Bitcoin deposit and withdrawal for Coincheck exchange and payment services to protect users assets…The resume date is unspecified, but we expect several hours to several days. Also, if we decide that a Bitcoin fork will not take place on Aug. 1, 2017, 12 am, the suspension of services will not happen.”

Japanese companies likely to be affected

The move by the government of Japan to recognize the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as a legal tender in the country has led to the increase in the number of stores and retailers which use it in their operations. Among them are restaurant chain Heichinrou, eyeglass retail chain Meganesuper and the electronics retail group Bic Camera.

Post-split

The plans by the payment processors and the various Japanese establishments were triggered by impending developments in Bitcoin platform. These include the planned scaling for Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the possible split of the platform. The plans to temporarily halt Bitcoin payments, however, are expected to have limited effects on the operations of the retailers and restaurants as their businesses are mainly transacted in cash or credit cards.

Tim Draper Acquires 10% of Anti-Email Spam Blockchain Project Credo

 

Bitcoin investor Tim Draper has purchased a 10 percent share of Credo,

a project that aims to eliminate spam emails. Draper invested ahead of Credo’s scheduled public initial coin offering (ICO). Credo is an initiative of the company BitBounce.

Draper’s credentials as an investor

Draper is widely-known in the cryptocurrency market as an aggressive investor in the leading digital currency Bitcoin. He has already bought a large amount of Bitcoins from different Silk Road auctions. He also actively participated in various ICO projects involving cryptocurrencies. The Bancor and Tezos ICOs were among the successful digital currency projects that were supported by Draper.

Draper’s decision to invest in digital currencies is mainly driven by his desire to diversify his portfolio of investments. Even though there are significant risks in investing in cryptocurrency ICOs, Draper has shown his willingness to take them as long as the projects’ proponents can successfully convince him on the feasibility of their proposals.

Operational concept

The concept of the Credo project is to use tokens as a payment method for an email service provided by BitBounce. The BitBounce email service allows users to send direct email messages to the leaders of various industries. The service also includes incentives to ensure that the recipients of the emails will answer them. This project appears to be a sound one as BitBounce already has more than 7,750 active users of its email service so far. The company also appears to be processing more than 42,000 emails per day.

On its way to yet another successful ICO?

It is not yet certain if the Credo project will be successfully launched, survive and turn profits in the near future. The support and endorsement of well-known investors like Draper, however, is a proof of its sound concept. Let us wait and see if Draper’s public support of Credo will result in the success of the project’s scheduled ICO.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Utility Settlement Coin Creator to Open-Source Modular Blockchain Software

 

The company behind the Utility Settlement Coin project,

one of the first designed to enable central banks to utilize distributed ledger tech, is preparing a coming-out party of sorts. After working in almost complete secret on what founder and CEO Robert Sams calls "foundational technology," venture-backed blockchain startup Clearmatics will soon begin a rather unusual roll-out of new offerings for the open-source community. In a new exclusive interview, Sams said he plans to share the first of several waves of software with the financial sector before the year’s end.

He told CoinDesk:

"We view the technology – the actual source code – in a very modular way, and we think that not only is this a space that definitely, firmly belongs in the open-source domain, the approach to the development of the software needs to be more modular."

While little is being revealed about the technology itself, Sams contrasted his platform with bitcoin, which relies on an unspent-transaction model, and ethereum, which uses an account-based system. Instead, Sams said the yet-to-be named software will be "tightly coupled" implementations of various components, distributed consensus algorithms and networking stacks. He compared the modular architecture to the various components of the Linux operating system, saying the software would be coupled with standards for how users implement the solution. "You'll see over time less and less discussion about this or that platform," said Sams. "And more and more discussion … on how to put these components together to conform to a set of standardizations."

Twin projects

While Sams acknowledged that his work with the Utility Settlement Coin, his most well-known project, "informs" the soon-to-be-revealed open-source code, he made explicit that they are distinct from each other. Last year, Clearmatics unveiled a Utility Settlement Coin consortium comprised of BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Santander and ICAP – since rebranded as NEX. Sams said the group recently completed the second phase of its work to help central banks and other financial infrastructure providers capitalize on blockchain, but that the results would remain proprietary.

While the Utility Settlement Coin project is largely focused on the business logic required to help legacy financial infrastructures increase efficiency using blockchain technology, Sams said the open-source work itself will largely consist of technology and an early version of related standards.

Sams concluded:

"The open-sourcing of Clearmatics is not the open-sourcing of Utility Settlement Coin."

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

There’s a new way for sophisticated investors to get in on the cryptocurrency craze

There's a new way for sophisticated investors to get in on the
cryptocurrency craze

  • Coinlist, founded by Protocol Labs and AngelList, is a new exchange that standardizes the initial coin offering process.
  • Filecoin will be the first company to run its token sale through the Coinlist platform.
  • Coinlist offers a more streamlined ICO process that could potentially attract more sophisticated investors to the digital currency world.
    

Despite their surging popularity,

initial coin offerings for digital currency start-ups remain almost entirely unregulated, leaving many institutional investors on the sidelines waiting for more clarity. They're unsure if the cryptocurrencies should be treated as securities, which would subject them to heavier regulations and scrutiny from the SEC. Often the companies have no product to back, but just the promise of one.

Filecoin is seeking to attract sophisticated money managers with a new type of offering. The project, developed by start-up Protocol Labs, said on Wednesday that it will launch its ICO this month on Coinlist, a new platform it created with cooperation from AngelList, a service that connects startups and investors. "The SEC is very well aware of this whole market and I think they're going to appear at some point and will try to fix it," Juan Benet, the founder of Filecoin, told CNBC.

Rather than making crypto tokens available to anyone, Coinlist is open only to accredited investors — those making over $200,000 a year or have a net worth of over $1 million — gating out the less sophisticated investors who tend to drive more volatility. It also uses a new security protocol called SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) that was designed to meet existing securities regulations.Filecoin's technology makes it easy for people to buy and sell unused storage space on their personal computers and uses blockchain technology to verify and track those transactions. The tokens being sold in the offering can be used to buy storage or they can be held as an investment. Filecoin plans to sell up to 10% of its tokens through this offering, though it did not disclose how much it's trying to raise.

Filecoin's ICO represents a new development in the digital currency space. ICOs have drawn huge attention, with more than $1.2 billion raised this year alone, according to Autonomous NEXT, but they've been riddled with problems. Just this week, the CoinDash ICO lost $7 million to hackers. Benet said Coinlist's platform could help broaden the accredited investor base by enabling more compliant offerings. It has a standardized profile page for each sale, and a unified payment structure that can be used across the platform. It could also help attract more U.S. investors who are often blocked out from directly investing ICOs. "It makes the whole experience more accessible," he said.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

2×9 BitMax Review: Matrix-basedbitcoin cash gifting

2×9 BitMax Review:
Matrix-based
bitcoin cash gifting

                             

The official 2×9 BitMax Facebook group lists five admins

There is no information on the 2×9 BitMax website indicating who owns or runs the business. The 2×9 BitMax website domain (“2x9bitmax.com”) was privately registered on January 10th, 2017. The official 2×9 BitMax Facebook group lists five admins; Kamran Baig, Atolagbe Dorlee, Steve John, Martin Germer and Faye Brown. The generic-sounding Steve John is the listed referral if one visits the 2×9 BitMax website without an affiliate referral link. This suggests he is running the show. Unfortunately Steve John doesn’t appear to exist. The Steve John Facebook profile was created in December, 2016 and hosts no content. As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

2×9 BitMax Products

2×9 BitMax has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market 2×9 BitMax affiliate membership itself.

The 2×9 BitMax Compensation Plan

2×9 BitMax affiliates gift bitcoin to each other via a 2×9 matrix. A 2×9 matrix places a 2×9 BitMax affiliate at the top of a matrix, with two positions directly under them:

    

These two positions form the first level of the matrix.

The second level of the matrix is generated by splitting each of these first two positions into another two positions each. Levels three to nine of the matrix are generated in the same manner, with each new matrix level housing twice as many positions as the previous level. A 2×9 BitMax affiliate begins by signing up and gifting 0.0002 BTC to the affiliate who recruited them. This payment in turn qualifies the affiliate to receive 0.0002 BC from two affiliates recruited into the first level of their matrix. Levels three to nine of the matrix operate in the same manner, the only difference being the amounts gifted at each level.

  • level 1 – gift 0.0002 BTC to the affiliate who recruited you and receive 0.0002 BTC from two subsequently recruited affiliates
  • level 2 – gift 0.0003 BTC and receive 0.0003 BTC from four affiliates
  • level 3 – gift 0.0006 BTC and receive 0.0006 BTC from eight affiliates
  • level 4 – gift 0.003 BTC and receive 0.003 BTC from sixteen affiliates
  • level 5 – gift 0.02 BTC and receive 0.02 BTC from thirty-two affiliates
  • level 6 – gift 0.1 BTC and receive 0.1 BTC from sixty-four affiliates
  • level 7 – gift 0.25 BTC and receive 0.25 BTC from one hundred and twenty-eight affiliates
  • level 8 – gift 1 BTC and receive 1 BTC from two hundred and fifty-six affiliates
  • level 9 – gift 4 BTC and receive 4 BTC from five hundred and twelve affiliates

Joining 2×9 BitMax

2×9 BitMax affiliate membership is tied to a minimum 0.0002 BTC gifting payment. Full participation in the 2×9 BitMax income opportunity costs 5.3741 BTC.

Conclusion

From the 2×9 BitMax website;

Lifetime Validty [sic]  – Turn 0.0002 into 2337 BTC Profit

2x9BitMax is a Person to Person, Direct Funding and Donation Sharing Platform.

Despite referring to itself with three descriptions, each used is an MLM underbelly synonym of cash gifting. All funds paid into 2×9 BitMax are from one affiliate to another, with the admin(s) running the show retaining most of the deposited money via pass-ups at each matrix level. A few early adopter affiliates get’s what’s left, with the rest of the 2×9 BitMax affiliate-base losing out when the scheme inevitably collapses.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Tokens Are ‘Eating The World’, Become “Another Killer App”: Vinny Lingham

Tokens Are ‘Eating The World’, Become “Another Killer App”: Vinny Lingham

    

Civic CEO Vinny Lingham has stated tokens are “eating the world”

as his startup’s token becomes exchangeable. In a Medium post Monday, Lingham said that tokens released by companies as value assets are becoming “yet another killer app.” “We are now entering a realm where its (sic) possible for applications to be built on top of Blockchain technology, and this is enabling new use cases and, more importantly, the ability to create ‘private economies,” he surmised.

Lingham received praise for the distribution methods of Civic’s CVC token last month as other ICOs, and token sales gained criticism for their perceived lack of technical robustness and impact on the Ethereum network. Currently trading on Bittrex, EtherDelta and COSS as well as ShapeShift, the average cost of CVC is now just over 20 cents – already double that of the token sale price. “When we look at Civic, we don’t see how the value of Civic tokens is correlated to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, except that there is demand from crypto buyers/traders,” he continued.

“We aren’t dependent on the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other crypto.” The post serves as a vote of confidence in CVC’s future as much as in tokens in general. Lingham also highlights the benefits of having a token not dependent in any way on fiat currency by default. Gift cards, which Lingham dealt with daily for his previous business Gyft, are vulnerable to inflation as they are controlled by the health of the fiat currency they represent, he notes as an example. he entrepreneur has often called for restraint in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Meanwhile, arguing too rapid a price rise would lead to instability and a detrimental effect on the cryptocurrency’s long-term image.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

How to Build an Inbound Marketing Strategy in 24 Hours

How to Build an Inbound Marketing Strategy in 24 Hours

                

"I'm active on social media."

"I'm blogging regularly." "I'm using SEO best practices." "I feel like I'm doing everything right, but I'm not seeing results." Do any of these statements sound familiar? A lot of marketers and CEOs we talk to feel like they are doing all the right things.  But, they aren't achieving their goals. A recent survey from DM News confirms this is common. 46% of the executives surveyed, stated that a "lack of an effective strategy" was the biggest obstacle in achieving their inbound marketing goals. So why is everyone struggling? I'm not quite sure as to WHY, but in this article, I'll show you HOW you can overcome this obstacle…and overcome it in the next 24 hours.  Let's roll!

What is Strategy?

First, let's identify what strategy actually is. It really doesn't have to be that complicated.  Strategy is simply a plan of action designed to achieve an expected goal.  So, we need a goal to get started. For the purpose of this article, let's say that our goal is to generate 50 qualified leads per month for the sales team. A worthy goal. Now, we need a plan of action that will get us there. You may have a different inbound marketing goal, so just apply this same framework in order to backtrack from your goal, to an activity plan.

Identify Audience

If we're going to generate 50 qualified leads per month for the sales team, we need to define a "quality lead". Let's pretend we're a software company that provides project management software for contractors like roofers, electricians, plumbers, etc.  The sales team says that if they can get a Demo Request, they consider that a quality lead. Okay, so now we've got an audience and we know what a quality lead is.  We're getting closer to being able to build our plan of action.

Action Steps for Identifying Your Audience:

  1. Nail down your target market. Target Market Example: Contractors located in the United States that are doing between $500,000 and $20M in revenue annually. 
  2. Talk to the sales team and establish what a quality lead is. In this case, we know we need 50 Demo Requests each month.

Time Estimate: 2 hours

  1. Honestly, this should be something you already know (your target market).  But give yourself an hour to talk to a few people inside your company, read through your messaging, and establish who you're really after.
  2. Give yourself another hour to talk to a few sales reps or the sales manager at your company. Or potentially, you're talking to the owner or president.  Make sure you find out exactly what will be considered a quality lead.

Identify Where Your Audience Lives Online

Once we know who our audience is and what our goal is, we need to locate our audience.  Where are they online?  You'll want to look at social media, blogs, websites, and forums.  Make a big list!  Here's what I might do if I were looking for contractors.  First, I'd dive into social media. I know LinkedIn is better for B2B, so I head there first.  There are tons of various groups, so I started looking for groups full of my audience. A quick search for "roofers" brings up 38 different groups.

I will continue my search for "HVAC", "plumbers", and "electricians".  After spending some time gathering a list, hopefully I've identified at least 25 solid groups that have my target audience.  Next, I'll explore other social media options to see if there is anything industry specific.  After spending some time on Google, I run across Houzz, a social network for contractors, builders and remodelers.

Still further, I'll spend some time on Google again looking for blogs, forums and other websites where I might find my audience. At the end of this research process, you should easily have 50-100 websites (forums, blogs and other websites), groups (on LinkedIn or Facebook) and communities (on Google+) on your list. Now, we're getting somewhere! We're narrowing down the Web and locating the corners in which we want to spend our time and effort.

Action Steps for Finding Your Audience:

  1. Spend time looking at social media, websites, blogs and forums for your target audience.
  2. Create a master list with links to these places.

Time Estimate: 4 hours

  1. Don't shortchange yourself here.  Put in the time to locate your audience.  This step will serve you well for many inbound campaigns into the future, so spend about four hours doing your research.
  2. Create the list as you go along.

Identify Pains, Problems, Questions

Ok, just to re-cap.  We now know:

  • Our goal
  • Who we're targeting
  • Where they live online

Now, it's time to dig for pain. As you're doing your research and visiting groups, websites and blogs with your audience, start listening. What does that mean, really? How do you listen? What are you listening for? What you want to do is listen to the problems that your audience is expressing. You want to write down the questions they are asking.  Write down the things they are complaining about. You want to be able to speak their language. You'll start to see different discussion questions, comments on blogs, or frustrations. Here are a few sample discussion topics I pulled from a LinkedIn Group full of roofers.

  

Obviously, you want to identify challenges and pains

around the product or service you offer, but sometimes you can get some really powerful insight just by writing down any common questions or problems. You'll start to see some trends. As you'll see in the next section, we want to use these questions, pains and problems in our content and messaging.

Action Steps for Identifying Pains, Problems and Questions:

  1. Go to 10-20 places on your master list and start copying and pasting your audience's discussions and questions.

Time Estimate: 2 hours

  1. This should take you about 2 hours, but don't be afraid to spend 3 or 4 if you feel you're not seeing any trends.

Create a Content Calendar

Alright, now we're ready to create a content calendar. Most people want to rush into this step because it feels like you're accomplishing something. However, this step won't be worth much if you haven't dedicated the time to your research. Basically, now that we've got a sense for what our audience is dealing with, we can brainstorm some effective blog titles, maybe some webinar topics and definitely some e-book ideas. If we think back to our goal of 50 qualified leads per month, you might be asking, "How many blog articles should I be writing?" or "How many lead generation offers, like e-books, do I need?" You can make an educated guess, but this is always the unknown with strategy. (Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty)  You make the best plan of action you can to achieve your goal, but you'll need to adjust your plan over time depending on how close you are getting to that goal.

Based on my experience, without knowing how much traffic this hypothetical website is getting or how many leads it's currently generating, you'll want to be creating 2-3 blog posts per week. You'll also want to have at least two or three e-books that you can leverage to capture leads. In addition to the e-books, you'll want to create email nurturing campaigns that will move leads down the funnel towards the goal step of a Demo Request.  For a quick and effective guide to lead nurturing, check out this document here.  It will walk you through the steps of taking an e-book lead and moving it towards a goal like a Demo Request.

Action Steps for Content Calendar:

  1. Brainstorm blog topics, e-book and/or webinar topics.
  2. Map out how many blog articles you'll need to create each week.
  3. Plan your e-book creation.
  4. Plan your lead nurturing sequences.

Time Estimate: 2 hours

  1. Spend 1 hour brainstorming topics and titles.
  2. 15 minutes for mapping out your blog calendar.
  3. 20 minutes for planning out your e-books.
  4. 20 minutes mapping out your lead nurturing sequences.

Create a Promotions Plan

Your promotions plan is just as important, if not more important that your content plan and calendar.  Most marketers feel like once they hit "publish", it's time to start working on the next piece.  Not true!  Once you hit publish, it's time to go to work promoting that article.  You spent time writing it, editing it, finding an amazing photo and placing a relevant call to action.  Now, it's time to zero in on our audience and share that content with them. This is how we'll drive people back to our content, they'll click on our e-books, receive our emails and ultimately sign up for that demo! Creating your promotional plan will be much easier now that you've got a master list of where your audience lives. You'll be able to share your blog articles as discussions in exactly the right LinkedIn Groups.

You'll be able to comment on other websites and blogs and reference your content in a super relevant fashion because you know exactly what your audiences challenges and pains are. You'll be able to craft blog titles that are irresistible to your audience because you studied their problems and pains. Your promotions plan should basically be the time you spend promoting your article to all the places on your master list. It might look something like this: Blog Title: 5 Project Management Struggles Roofers Face…and How to Solve Them

Promotion:

  • Create a discussion in all 20 LinkedIn Groups and frame it with the question "What is your biggest project management challenge right now?"
  • Share article on Twitter using the hashtags #projectmanagement #roofers #contractors #HVAC #plumbers. Rotate hashtags. Schedule 10-20 Tweets over the next 30 days.
  • Jump into a couple of forums and find the discussions around project management.  Add value to the discussion and add a link to the blog post as a reference point.
  • Find individual contractors on Houzz or other websites and send a personal email with a link to the article.
  • Send out an email to all current leads in the database and share the article.

So, your promotions plan will have some activity that you'll do every time you create a blog post.  Then, for specific topics, you may have additional activities you'll want to add that make sense based on the topic.

Action Steps for Content Calendar:

  1. Write out all the possible promotional activities you might have for a specific blog post.   Each time you publish, go to that list and execute as many as possible!

Time Estimate: 1 hour

  1. Spend an hour brainstorming all the ways you could promote a blog post, e-book or piece of content.

Your Strategy

Phew!  There's a lot of work there, but you can do it… and you can do it in less than 24 hours!  The total time spent in this process totals 11 hours.  Obviously, it would be a long work day to push through these activities, but you'll be setting yourself up for success over the next several months, if not years. If you can't block off an entire day to do this, spend a couple hours each day for a week and you'll be all set. Your goals and strategy will change over time, but I wanted to break down a very simplistic way to create a strategy quickly and start moving forward. 

Just to re-cap what you need to do:

  1. What is your goal?
  2. Who are you targeting?
  3. Where do they live online?
  4. Develop your content calendar.
  5. Create a promotional list.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about
-Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap Continues to Shrink, Bitcoin Price Heads Toward Sub-US$1900

Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap Continues to Shrink, Bitcoin Price Heads Toward Sub-US$1900

It is a very rough weekend for cryptocurrency holders,

as is to be expected. With the value of Bitcoin going down even further, most other altcoins see similar losses. We also saw both Dash and NEM suffer from their market cap going below US$1bn. Moreover, the total cryptocurrency market cap continues to drop and is on target to go below US$60bn in the coming days.

The Cryptocurrency Downtrend Continues Unabated

Do not be mistaken in thinking we like to report on massive losses in the cryptocurrency world. At the same time, there is no reason to ignore the obvious facts staring us in the face right now either. Cryptocurrency is not in the best of places and the overall downtrend is not over just yet, by the look of things. Bitcoin has dipped below US$2,000, as we predicted in yesterday’s article. We wouldn’t have minded being wrong in that assumption, though. Looking at the current price, Bitcoin is holding its own around the US$1,900 level. That doesn’t automatically mean the price won’t go below that target, though. Rumors and speculation on Telegram hints at how BTC may even hit US$1,400, although that may be wishful thinking at best. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind buying some additional bitcoins while they remain cheap. Now is a good price to buy Bitcoin, assuming you expect the value to bounce back over time.

Other currencies are not doing much better either. If the Bitcoin price goes down, the rest of the ecosystem will automatically follow. It is one of those unwritten rules in the world of cryptocurrency. Ethereum lost another 24%, with Ripple putting up similar numbers. Litecoin “only” lost 4% – which is quite remarkable – whereas Ethereum Classic dropped 13.3%. It is quite interesting taking note of these different percentages, even though the overall trend is anything but positive.

As is to be expected, there is always one currency to buck this trend. On this Sunday, that coin is none other than IOTA. Given the recent beating IOTA has taken across the exchanges prior to this Bitcoin drop, the reverse trend is quite intriguing to take note of. Whether or not this momentum can be maintained for the long run, remains to be seen. Most currencies are noting losses of well over 12%, which is quite a bit higher than Bitcoin’s 7% loss. All things considered, Bitcoin is still in a better position than most other currencies, with the exception of Litecoin. The bigger question is why this extended downtrend is taking place right now. The upcoming SegWit2x and UASF activation certainly cause a lot of fear among novice users. Moreover, it appears some exchanges will halt Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals during that period. That is not uncommon by any means, as the risk of a chain split is very real. Halting trading at such a critical point in history is the best course of action and shouldn’t be any cause for concern whatsoever.

If the cryptocurrency market cap continues to shrink at the same rate, we will go below US$60bn very soon. Right now, the total cap is just below US$64bn, which is well below the US$110bn mark we reached a few weeks ago. A correction was bound to happen sooner or later, though. We have seen a lot of money pour into cryptocurrency as of late. Such a massive trend can’t be sustained indefinitely. The markets will bounce back eventually, though, and now is a good time to hold and not look at charts until early August.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Buckle Up: Bitcoin Price Heads For Below $2,000 As August 1 Nears

Buckle Up:
Bitcoin Price Heads For Below
$2,000 As August 1 Nears

    

Bitcoin has fallen almost 12 percent in 24 hours

as the reality of the Aug. 1 scaling deadline unsettles markets. Current trade prices according to Coinmarketcap, which averages readings from across major exchanges, shows Bitcoin at $2,076 – its lowest price for two months. The knock-on effects for altcoins in the top 10 were as palpable as ever, with Ethereum, Litecoin and others following Bitcoin downhill. Ethereum has fared particularly badly over the past week, with monthly losses to its market cap now nearly $18 bln. As always, internal reactions with cryptocurrency were mixed, some despairing while others are eyeing a keen

buying opportunity.

$5.5million of new $BTCUSD short positions have opened up within the last 12hrs on Bitfinex

While a general consensus points to the upcoming hard fork probability as the principal motivation for market uncertainty, mainstream media have been quick to sound the alarm about Bitcoin once again. “Rival factions of computer whizzes who play key roles in Bitcoin’s upkeep are poised to adopt two competing software updates at the end of the month,” Bloomberg reported Friday, announcing Bitcoin could be “nearing a total meltdown.” “That has raised the possibility that Bitcoin will split in two, an unprecedented event that would send shockwaves through the $41 bln market.”

Major Swiss Online Bank Unleashes Bitcoin In Week’s Second Swiss Breakthrough

    

A further major Swiss financial institution has begun accepting Bitcoin

this week as Swissquote follows Falcon Private Bank. In a press release issued today, Swissquote describes itself as the “first online bank in Europe to offer Bitcoin investing.” The decision opens up Bitcoin investment to the platform’s 302,000 customers with a combined capital of 17.8 bln francs ($17.6 bln). “Many investors are interested in cryptocurrencies, but are afraid to trade them, because the players in this market are mostly little-known and they often require the transfer of funds to a foreign account,” CEO Mark Buerki commented in the release. “As a Swiss bank, we offer our clients a simplified, transparent process, without foreign transfers, that is within reach of everybody.”

The news comes just days after Swiss private bank Falcon announced it had partnered with Bitcoin Suisse to allow its customers to “to hold, buy and sell Bitcoin directly through their e-banking platform or account manager.” Prior to that, it emerged that a Bitcoin certificate was on “most days” the most popular financial product available on Switzerland’s main stock exchange, SIX. Meanwhile, for its project Swissquote will use Bitstamp, the exchange currently headquartered in Luxembourg, to handle payments and provide pricing information on Bitcoin. “The Bitstamp-Swissquote partnership marks a milestone in the already promising development of Bitcoin, which is being implemented gradually into the traditional financial system,” the release adds. Switzerland is already considerably ahead of its neighbors Austria and Germany in the race to propagate emerging Blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Are Boys With Midas Touch About To Make Move On ICO Market?

Are Boys With Midas Touch About To Make Move On ICO Market?

    

The recent maneuvering by the billionaires into the world of Initial Coin Offerings

Our London correspondent Nick Ayton aka The Sage of Shoreditch explores the recent maneuvering by the billionaires into the world of Initial Coin Offerings, AI and Blockchain. ICOs have enjoyed their best run ever, albeit it’s a new phenomenon in recent time. The last six months have seen the ICO market leave traditional funding mechanisms in their wake. Will ICOs become the preferred mechanism for entrepreneurs of all shapes and wallet sizes?

It seems so.

"The Midas touch boys are moving in as they know a good thing when they see it. And they don’t like to miss out."

It can come as no surprise to me to see billionaire moves by Mike Novogratz who placed 10 percent of his wealth into crypto and Mark Cuban who has announced his own ICO of Unikrn, a sports betting business. And there will be more to follow.

ICOs coming of age

Some are calling ICOs into question, demanding regulations and government intervention, others see it at a big scam. But ICOs are attracting a lot of interest from very successful entrepreneurs who are turning their back on banks as a source of capital that becomes very expensive, with its high fees and

lots of strings attached.

"The involvement of the Billionaire Boys is the sign that ICOs are not only becoming mainstream but also a legitimate alternative capital market for already successful entrepreneurs."

Is this the extra endorsement needed where Bill Gates who has already said if he would start a new business today it would be in AI on the Blockchain?

Are records about to be broken, again

With Bancor, Status, Block One and others that have easily passed the $100 mln mark,  are we likely to see soon the first billion dollar ICO? Enter stage left, Gurbaksh Chahal who certainly has the Midas touch when it comes to backing the latest technology and is already disrupting global advertising with his AI marketing engine Gravity4. He wants to launch the largest ICO ever breaking the $500 mln plus mark, and who would be against him?

Can he make Gravity4 a leader in Artificial Intelligence Big Data Cloud, the largest ICO in ever surpassing $500 mln or even $1 bln as they take what is known as High-Frequency Marketing to the next level? Who would bet against this maverick entrepreneur of Indian-American descent who founded his first company aged 16 and sold it for $40 mln?  Further going on to sell four businesses for $300 mln:  BlueLithium (behavioral targeting) to Yahoo, RadiumOne (programmatic advertising) and ShareGraph and innovative tech business.

Gurbaksh explains:

“We intend to take what we have done in AI marketing and connect it to the Blockchain. We have already created the world’s first Artificial Intelligence Big Data Cloud called Mona Lisa and we are already way ahead of SalesForce, Oracle and Adobe.”

Gravity4 already has a footprint in most of the major Fortune 1,000 brands globally and many consider their offering to be way ahead of anyone else. The business is on track to deliver $200 mln revenues in 2018 and so this is no mere startup.  

High-frequency machine learning

Gravity4 is the world’s first high-frequency machine learning marketing operating system built to enhance advertising across SaaS Industries. It collates customer experiences so marketers can target customers more effectively through the entire customer journey, regardless of delivery channel. The proprietary AI technology ‘Mona Lisa’ builds a ‘consumer persona’ aggregating the data from all channels and touch points, using semantic graphs to form connection clusters and correlation variables in a single click of the mouse, optimizing and automating the effort in what is a $200 bln global advertising market.  

The worlds of AI and Blockchain sit well together and deliver a powerful combination indeed. With Gravity4 we are not seeing a startup trying to raise capital to build a Blockchain. Gravity4 is already a very successful global business and wants to raise further capital to extend its R&D to dominate the high-frequency machine learning marketing industry. Who would be against them?

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Silicon Valley is hot on a new cryptocurrency that could become worth 100 times its current value

Silicon Valley is hot on a new cryptocurrency that could become worth 100 times its current value

    

Ether, the unit of cryptocurrency used on the Ethereum blockchain,

has given investors a wild ride lately. Its value more than doubled in May, peaked in June at more than $400 an ether, and then lost more than half that value by early this week. That may sound like a bubble bursting. But some investors are still optimistic and are prepared to ride it out. Aaron Batalion, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said he expected to see more 50% price jumps in ether, with big returns down the road.

"Over the next five to 10 years, I believe it will be worth 10 or 100 times its current value," Batalion said. Jason Calacanis, an early investor in startups including Robinhood and Uber, recently tweeted: "I think I need to own some #Etherium — what % of net worth would you allocate to crypto as a 46 year old with stable income?" Matt Galligan, a serial entrepreneur and investor in ether, said he was also looking to the five-year mark, when he expects the platform to have matured to the point when it has a lot of uses. "The space is still really early," Galligan said. "There's going to be a lot of froth and volatility."

What are Ethereum and ether?

Ethereum is a platform for sharing information that cannot be manipulated or changed. It's a blockchain similar to the one underlying the bitcoin cryptocurrency that records information chronologically and publicly. In the future, Ethereum may be used to securely transfer money to your bank or to send documents to your insurance company. Today, these processes require multiple steps for verification and authentication, but Ethereum makes verification a one-step process because the information is incorruptible in the first place. Ether is the unit of currency in Ethereum. It's a token that can be exchanged for services on the platform. The currency is the "fuel for the Ethereum virtual machine," said Andreas Weiler, the head of markets at Smith and Crown, a crypto-financial research group.

Ether, Ethereum, and bitcoin are not the same things

While often compared to bitcoin, ether is not actually a competing currency. Bitcoin is explicitly a digital form of money and payment system, whereas ether is a means of buying services within Ethereum. Ethereum is still in beta and not widely used, but some investors believe it may someday be a foundational layer of the internet. Ether is still a financial risk, however, because Ethereum hasn't yet taken off — and there's no guarantee that it will. "When you invest in ether, you are not actually doing anything — you are holding ammo, which will allow you to execute code when there is code worth being executed on the platform," Weiler said.

In the meantime, though, you have to be prepared for a lot of volatility.

The price of ether shot up this spring, rising from less than $20 a digital coin in March to an all-time high of $420 in midday trading in the middle of June, according to Global Digital Asset Exchange, the primary Ether-trading platform. In May alone, it rose to nearly $230 an ether from less than $90. In recent weeks, though, investors have been selling off the digital currency. It sank to as low as $175.56 earlier this week, according to GDAX, before rebounding. In recent trading on Wednesday, it was at $208.87.

Part of that instability comes from people not knowing what they're investing in, Weiler said. "It really did smell like dumb money coming in and not knowing what Ethereum is about or what role ether plays in the economy in the first place," he said. But the currency's price may stabilize as Ethereum scales and becomes more commonplace. It is this possibility that is keeping some investors in the game. "As with any new technology innovation, the early attempts are fraught with challenges, but this technology will not go back into a box and disappear," Batalion said. "We will see meaningful companies built using this technology and fund-raising approach, even if the normal end user doesn't realize it's part of the foundation of a product [or] service they use."

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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