Debunking Blockchain Myths
(And How They Will Impact )
(The Future Of Business)

Blockchain technology has gained so much momentum

over the last few years, earning enough buzz that mainstream pundits are claiming that 2017 will be a major year for the platform. But just as many misconceptions came with the rise of smartphones and the internet, the myths surrounding blockchain technology are worth debunking. As the co-founder and CMO of Factom, a blockchain-as-as-service company, and author of Blockchain For Dummies, I've seen this firsthand and think it's important to set the record straight.

So, what are blockchains? For the technical crowd, blockchains are strings of cryptographic proofs chained together and audited in a public network by nodes. For the rest of us, it’s essentially a chain of cards put into a card catalog (like from an old-school public library) — a permanent one that is publicly audited for unauthorized changes at regular intervals. Each "block" of records within any given blockchain is tied to the previous one in a "chain," creating links that establish permanence. With a publicly accessible ledger, there is no central authority overseeing authenticity and security. The network itself acts as the judge and jury and guards itself against internal and external attacks.

Those are the basics. Now let’s deep-dive a little more into myths and facts about blockchains.

"The blockchain” exists.

Media coverage of "the blockchain" can make it seem like there is only one big blockchain, sort of like the internet. This is not at all true. There are many different blockchains, and each one was designed and created for a different purpose. There are big public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum that anyone can participate in at any level. There are also semi open networks, like Ripple, that have some gating to participate. What's more, completely private networks exist that are only operated by known parties.

Blockchain records can never be hacked or altered.

One of the main selling points about blockchains is their inherent permanence and transparency. When people hear that, they often think that means that blockchains are invulnerable to outside attacks. No system or database will ever be completely immune, but the larger and more distributed the network, the more secure it is believed to be. What blockchains can provide to applications that are developed on top of them is a way of catching unauthorized changes to records.

Blockchains have to be publicly accessible.

At their core, blockchains are a type of database. A key feature is publicly vetted data, but the "public" aspect is flexible. It could just be all the parties that are interested in the data being secured and shared. It is also possible to take a private blockchain and stack it on top of a public blockchain — thus delivering an easy and efficient source of authentication based on external crowd resources, without exposing private information. Building systems like this would enable crowd-based auditing at a fraction of the cost of building the whole system within a public blockchain.

Cryptocurrency is used for untraceable black-market transactions.

There has been a long-held belief that cryptocurrencies are only used for black-market purposes. While it is true that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be used for such nefarious activities, it’s ignorant to assume that it is solely an untraceable underworld enabler. Cryptocurrency is simply a means for exchanging digital assets. For a public ledger like the Bitcoin blockchain, there is always a record of every transaction, and in fact, that immutable and public record is essentially why it was built. Thus, all transactions can be traced back once a user leaves the cryptocurrency world to cash out in the real world, regardless of the purpose of the transaction.

Blockchains have no business or commercial applications.

Blockchains tends to be associated with the transfer of value. However, the very nature of their design — secure blocks of information, verifiable data and permanent records — creates a model that can be used for any sensitive data. A good example is patient medical records: They often need to be sent from a provider to a range of different recipients, including insurance companies, referrals, and other departments within the same facility. This data includes things like medical history, social security numbers, and insurance information. Blockchains provide a means to access and transmit these records securely and privately.

By debunking the many myths about blockchains, executives can begin to grasp the paradigm shift they can provide in many different sectors — and why the mainstream has started exploring them. Technology analysts are already discussing the way blockchain technology will reshape online security. All of this boils down to one crucial point: Blockchains are becoming an important piece of how we will all do business in the future.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Tcc Bitcoin

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Trade Coin Club Review – Legit Company or Big Scam? Find Out Here…

Welcome to my Trade Coin Club Review!

There has been some buzz about this company lately, so it’s time for another review! As I always say, the best way to make sure you are joining the right company is to do lots of research before signing up. The last thing you want to do is invest your money in a company that collapses just a few short months later. My review will provide you with information on the company, the products, and the compensation plan. So let’s get started!

Trade Coin Club Review – The Company

First things first, I couldn’t find any real information on the company website about who owns or operates Trade Coin Club. When I visited the website, there wasn’t anything more than the company’s logo. I did find out that the Trade Coin Club website domain was registered privately as “tradecoinclub.com” on the 2nd of August, 2016. Also, it seems that the two biggest sources of traffic to the company website are the US and Brazil.

Trade Coin Club Reviews – The Products

Trade Coin Club does not offer any retail products or services. Affiliates who sign up with Trade Coin Club can only market and sell the affiliate membership.

The Trade Coin Club Compensation Plan

Affiliates who want to take part in the Trade Coin Club compensation plan must invest bitcoin that offers a daily ROI:

• 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

Every affiliate who participates in the compensation plan is required to pay a 25% fee on ROIs every four months.

Referral Commissions

Affiliates can also earn referral commissions that are paid out through a unilevel compensation structure. This type of compensation structure puts an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team that places every personally sponsored affiliate right under them on level 1.

When a level 1 affiliate brings in new affiliates, they are put on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
When a level 2 affiliate brings in new affiliates, they are put on level 3, etc. Payable unilevel levels are capped by Trade Coin Club at eight.

Affiliates are paid a percentage of the money that is invested by their unilevel team, like so:

• 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

Residual Commissions

Trade Coin Club pays residual commissions to its affiliates through a binary compensation structure. This compensation structure puts an affiliate at the top of a binary team that splits into left and right sides. Both sides begin with one position and, once filled, a second level is made by adding another 2 positions under each of the first two, for a total of 4 positions. Additional levels of the binary team are made as they are needed, with each new level holding twice as many positions as the level above it.

When each day ends, new investment volume is counted on both sides of the binary team and the affiliate is paid a percentage of the money that is invested on the weaker side of their binary team. The percentage they receive depends on their Trade Coin Club affiliate 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)

Recruitment Commissions

Besides investment volume, every Trade Coin Club affiliate is required to pay a monthly fee:

• Apprentice – 0.015 BTC
• Trader 0.03 BTC
• Senior Trader – 0.045 BTC

These monthly fees are used to pay recruitment commissions through a 3×12 matrix. A 3×12 matrix puts an affiliate at the top of a matrix that has 3 positions right under them. These first 3 positions make up the first level of the matrix and the second level is made by adding another 3 positions under the first three, for a total of 9 positions. Additional levels of the matrix are made the same way, up to 12 levels, and when it is full it holds 797,160 positions.

Matrix positions are filled through direct and indirect recruitment of new affiliates. Every time an affiliate fills a matrix position they are paid 0.003 BTC a month, as long as each affiliate continues to pay their monthly fee. Affiliates can earn a bonus 0.003 BTC commission if a personally sponsored affiliate earns 5x the amount they’ve invested.

Rank Achievement Bonus

Trade Coin Club offers a Rank Achievement Bonus that is determined by the amount of bitcoin an affiliate earns through residual binary commissions a month.

• 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

Cost To Join Trade Coin Club

The cost to join Trade Coin Club as an affiliate is based on the amount an affiliate invests:

• Apprentice (0.015 BTC a month) – Invest 0.25 to 0.99 BTC
• Trader (0.03 BTC a month) – Invest 1 to 4.99 BTC
• Senior Trader (0.045 BTC a month) – Invest 5 BTC or more

The moment you have been waiting for in this Trade Coin Club review…

The Verdict On Trade Coin Club

Apparently, the way Trade Coin Club gives out daily ROI’s is based on cryptocurrency trading software:

Our system makes millions of micro transactions every second, making it humanly impossible. Allowing our members to generate profit every second, every hour and every day.

Now I don’t see any evidence of this trading software generating those ROI’s… Plus if that is true, why do they need affiliates investments? Why can’t they just get a loan from the bank and do it themselves… Another red flag is the 25% ROI fee… Honestly, the only income source coming into this company is the investments of other affiliates and that’s how ROI’s are being generated… Newly invested funds paying off existing members while more people recruit…

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Simple Steps to Automate Your Content Marketing

  

As a business owner who has to perform multiple tasks in a day

— sometimes simultaneously — you likely appreciate the benefits of working with systems. Having systems in your business takes away some of the strain and helps you focus your energy on things that really need it.The same goes for content marketing. But even if you enjoy this task, you're a busy person who probably doesn't want to have to spend any more time than necessary creating and sharing content. 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Social-Media Marketing Strategies for Companies

Social media is crucial to the success of any company's digital marketing strategy.

Despite this, brands of all kinds and sizes are not using this tool to its full potential. Although the number of "follows", "likes" and "shares" is still important, the credibility of a brand is distinguished by far more than just this. Today, social media requires a unique set of skills whereby brands need to fully understand the needs of their audience. To help you out, I've put together 10 social media strategies you need to implement this year, whether you are a young entrepreneur or a well-established brand.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Chicago saw a 58 percent increase in homicides between 2014 and 2016, effectively negating two-thirds of the decrease in homicides the city had experienced since the early 1990s. Some city leaders, including Superintendent Eddie Johnson of the Chicago Police Department, have suggested that social media posts like Gakirah’s might be contributing to the surge. Their diagnosis may sound to some like an attempt to duck responsibility for the failure of the local law enforcement system to interdict more illegal firearms or do more to stop repeat shooters before they injure or kill again.

But having studied the phenomenon – known in the academic community as internet or cyberbanging – I can tell you that the frequency with which young people use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to hurl insults, taunt enemies, and brag about violent acts is playing a meaningful role in fueling retaliatory efforts between gangs and cliques in marginalized neighborhoods. It also has significant implications for gun violence prevention.

For the past four years, I have examined the relationship between Twitter activity and gang violence among young people who live in Chicago. Because of the complexity of interpreting social media communication, it has been important to develop an interdisciplinary team. I work with social workers to accurately decode what teens are saying, and collaborate with data scientists to detect patterns in social media communication that may lead to gang violence. The process often feels like an archaeological dig, carefully combing through Twitter conversations, studying emojis and hashtags, videos and images, to figure out the cues that often end with gunfire erupting.

In our rush to understand whether social media causes violence, we often forget what brings young people to social media in the first place: connections to other young people. Those connections were apparent in Gakirah Barnes’s tweets, even as she was becoming notorious enough to be dubbed the “Teen Queen of Gangland Chicago” by the Daily Mail. Unique in her status as a female shooter for her gang, Gakirah kept up a feed full of threats and taunts to “opps,” or members of oppositional groups. But after analyzing her social media communication, I noticed that Gakirah and other users in her network also used Twitter to collectively cope with losing friends to shootings.

A pattern emerged in Gakirah’s tweets. First, there would be a post expressing general loss or grief. Then, it would be followed by a more aggressive or directly threatening tweet. For example, at 10:53 a.m. one day, Gakirah turned to Twitter to grieve the death of a friend. Less than 10 minutes later, Gakirah posted a second message, vowing revenge. A scan of news reports from the time suggests that Gakirah’s friend may have died in a fatal confrontation with police, but it’s not law enforcement from whom she plans to exact retribution. Instead, she sends notice that she will be hunting gang rivals, squaring the ledger of loss by targeting a mutual foe of her deceased friend.

Jeffrey Lane of Rutgers University has identified a code of the “digital street,” wherein informal rules established in a brick-and-mortar neighborhood dictate how young people communicate with each other online. As this pair of tweets from Gakirah shows, online expressions of trauma take what would have been a moment of private mourning and put it on cyber-display. The code of the digital street then compels rivals to reply with posts disrespecting the dead. And from there, an obligation to strike back at the offending posters takes hold. One such “opp” replied to Gakirah’s tweet, baiting her to enter his terrority — so that then he would have a reason to retaliate against her crew. (Identifying information has been blocked to protect the identities of the users who are still living.)

Social media doesn’t allow for the opportunity to physically de-escalate an argument. Instead, it offers myriad ways to exacerbate a brewing conflict as opposing gangs or crews and friends and family take turns weighing in. The dynamic poses challenges to existing approaches to violence interruption, which treat shootings like a communicable disease that spreads through face-to-face interactions and can be prevented by steering one of the parties toward peaceful alternatives to armed response. Those programs, developed before social media became part of daily life, don’t have the capacity to keep up with thousands of users hurling endless insults at each other. Gakirah was shot on April 11, 2014, three blocks from her house. She died in the hospital. Her last original tweet (below) included her address. (TMB is an abbreviation for Trap Money Brothers or Boys).

After her death, many of Gakirah’s Twitter friends articulated deep pain. But there were also the too-familiar, unmistakable plans to retaliate, with other followers changing their handles to reflect intentions to avenge her killing. The future of gun violence prevention depends on a deeper understanding of how social media fills a need for disadvantaged communities hungry for connection, and when a hashtag or emoji is a signpost to the next exchange of gunfire. As research provides that understanding, the question will then become: What responsibility do tech companies bear for the shootings bred via their servers? 

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Better Safe Than Sorry:
Simple Effective Ways to Secure
Your Cryptocoins

  

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bank-friendly Ripple (XRP) still exists, to the surprise of many, the author included. Not only that, but it has continued its apparent strategic partnership initiative, partnering with Asian and Australian banks in conjunction with its stated goal of acting as a sort of Paypal mechanism for large interbank transfers. Four short weeks ago, the coin was sitting around a penny a pop. But with more enthusiasm building among traders, it has steadily risen, and today saw a spike of over 30%, rounding out just under 5 cents each.

Ripple has been getting a ton of attention

as of late, and not the negative kind like it once received for managing to get a $700,000 fine from the federal government and thereby underscoring the risk of having a known entity backing a cryptocurrency. Just a couple of examples of this are recent video in Bloomberg News and inclusion in a Bank of England program. Skepticism among more traditional cryptocurrency people still thrives. The centralization aspect and the inherent issue of being able to identify coin users as well as reverse transactions certainly is a specter of wrongdoing for many of us. But as one writer put it, “one man’s sh**coin is another man’s treasure.”

The fact that the Ripple project has continued to develop its platform and strategic partnerships continued to bring on talent, and continued to grow its community means that they are at least serious, not scammers looking for a quick buck. The “Paypal of banks” aspect is important, and paralysis in the Bitcoin community over a simple issue certainly gives any bank pause when it comes to partnering with cryptocurrencies. A recent report from IBM shows that over 90% of banks are investing in some form of blockchain technology.

Another factor of improvement for Ripple is the unofficial Swiss sector of its network. Something called PathShuffle has been introduced which aims to anonymize transactions in the same way that they are on the likes of the DASH network. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are both very young technologies, and the future is wide open. The first mover, Bitcoin, continues to have its share of problems, and as its drama continues it becomes easier and easier to envision a future where alternatives actually stand a fighting chance. The recent, impressive success of Ethereum is one example, along with  DASH, and perhaps Ripple will be up there with them, centralized though it is, serving its own corner of the market.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member