Tag Archives: Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin Virus ‘Has Infected 30% Of Russian Devices’: Putin Advisor

Bitcoin Virus ‘Has Infected 30% Of Russian Devices’: Putin Advisor

 

Russia’s chief presidential advisor on the Internet

has stated a Bitcoin mining virus has infected up to 30 percent of Russian computers. Speaking in interviews with RNS and RBC, Herman Klimenko said that although infection rates varied by region and device, it involved at least 20 percent of machines. “In regions with lower bandwidth instances are reduced, but we’re looking at 20 to 30 percent of devices being infected – iPhones and Macs are less prone,” he commented.

The figures, if true, are alarming, yet Klimenko’s assessment has already come under public criticism. Speaking to RBC in light of the findings, Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev called them “rubbish.” “These viruses appear for example on devices of users who have given permission for them to start running,” he said, adding the issue was not about Bitcoin mining but stolen credit card details and similar characteristics. Klimenko, meanwhile, also chimed in on the motives of the hackers behind the recent international WannaCry cyberattack. “In the case of WannaCry, the perpetrators managed to accrue around $50-100,000,”

he told RNS.

“I’m therefore convinced the perpetrators of WannaCry were children because they do not understand where they can earn money in the Internet sector.”

Earlier this month, Russian research lab Group-IB warned of a domestic Android virus circulating consumer devices which would gain access to and empty any associated bank accounts.

Bitcoin, Altcoins Meet London Art As ‘Gray’ Artsy Nets $50 Million
 

 

London’s “tradition-bound” Cork Street art empire is getting an innovation injection

as customers meet Bitcoin and even Monero as payment options. As the BBC reports Tuesday, one gallery, Dadiani Fine Arts, has begun accepting cryptocurrency in what its owner describes as an “intuitive” move. "This is not a demand-driven decision at all, it's intuitive based on the way things are going," Elena Dadiani told the publication. With the global art market worth around $60 bln and average purchase amounts high, the benefits of additional payment channels are obvious. The gallery is not stopping at Bitcoin; Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Litecoin, and soon Monero will also be featured. "For me, the Blockchain is going to be the biggest thing since the Internet,” nonetheless hinting she intends to convert at least part of the payments to fiat currency as a matter of course.

Like Blockchain, meanwhile, the art industry itself is undergoing rapid change. Artsy, the online art marketplace seeing huge expansion, this week announced the closure of a $50 mln funding round, something already causing suspicion in a manner strikingly similar to some recent Ethereum-based ICOs. “The news has left many in the industry with two questions,” industry news resource Artnet reports describing the platform as a “gray market.” “First, since Artsy has chosen to keep its actual valuation pitch-black to the public, how much is the company really worth? Second, and just as important, how is that valuation justifiable?”

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Delaware Governor Signs Blockchain Legislation Into Law

 

The governor of the US state best known as the home

to a majority of the country's incorporated businesses has officially signed a bill making it explicitly legal for those entities to use blockchain for stock trading and record-keeping. After weeks of anticipation, Delaware governor John C. Carney Jr. signed the bill on Friday, effectively bringing closure to an effort that began in May 2016 when his predecessor, Jack Markell, launched an initiative to promote blockchain efficiencies in government.

First publicized in March this year and introduced formally in May, the bill, which amends Delaware's General Corporation Law, saw a swift passage by state lawmakers. The move further comes weeks after it passed a key vote in the state legislature, a milestone advocates sought to label as "historic" given the state's history and the increase in experimentation that could result from legal certainty. Just how impactful could the law be? Industry analysts suggest that by giving the greenlight to experimentation, the law could make it possible for the custodianship, issuance, redemption and trading to take place on a distributed ledger.

Equity Markets on a Blockchain: Delaware's Potential Impact

Noelle Acheson is a 10-year veteran of company analysis and the author of CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday, exclusively to CoinDesk subscribers.Last week, Delaware passed amendments to state legislation that, once signed into law by the end of July, will give corporations registered in the state the right to issue and trade shares on a blockchain platform.While this may on the surface sound like a small modification, it is a big deal. Companies and exchanges around the world have been investigating how distributed ledgers could help with issuance, execution and settlement (some have even issued shares on a blockchain). However, they have been doing so under a cloud of regulatory uncertainty, unsure of whether the stakeholders – including the relevant governing bodies – would allow the innovations to take hold.

For the first time, businesses will be able to experiment with new processes knowing they have the protection of the law. This is likely to pave the way for the entire life cycle of a share – the issuance, custodianship, trading, shareholder communication and redemption – to be enacted on a blockchain. The result could be a reframing of the global securities network, one of the cornerstones of our modern capitalist economy. The equity infrastructure used in most markets today evolved around paper-based issuance, and essentially has the same conceptual backbone as in the 17th century. Processes are complex, involving several steps, each with fees. Centralized clearing creates systemic risk by presenting a single point of failure, and since in most jurisdictions legal ownership rests with the transfer agents, true ownership can be obfuscated – in turn, this can violate rules that limit shareholdings. Furthermore, a paper-based system – even a digitized one – is vulnerable to fraud, and centralized databases can suffer security breaches.

Settle for less

With a blockchain system, investors and issuers can interact directly with each other, in theory cutting out brokers, custodians and clearing houses, thus reducing transaction costs. Settlement can happen within hours instead of days, releasing funds and lowering carrying fees. Legal ownership would be restored to investors and companies, and would be more transparent. Dividends and stock splits could be automated, reducing cost and error.

Also, a distributed ledger platform would remove the single point of failure risk, help make proxy voting more transparent and accurate and make it easier to manage cap tables as well as collateralisation. There are disadvantages. Transparency, for one: not all investors want their positions to be visible. Error resolution is another: mistakes happen, and on an immutable ledger, how do you fix them? What’s more, counterparty risk doesn’t go away, it just shifts. But as work on services and solutions picks up in the light of regulatory approval, so will the development of solutions.

Share the benefits

That this milestone was reached in Delaware is significant. The state is 49th in the nation in terms of size and 45th in population, but it boasts two-thirds of US listed companies and 85% of IPOs. It has more registered legal entities than it has residents. This is due to its relatively flexible business legislation and tax framework, and to its reputation for being a standards bearer in corporate law. What’s more, the recent amendment is part of a larger initiative to streamline corporate and governmental processes. The Delaware Blockchain Initiative, launched over a year ago, commits the state’s government to incorporating blockchain technology in the handling of official documents such as land titles, birth and death certificates, professional licenses, collateral claims and company filings.

So, here we have the US state with the largest concentration of registered corporations, and a reputation for supporting innovation, offering businesses the chance to test a new form of financing and governance. While adoption will probably be slow, at least at first, the pace is likely to pick up as the benefits become even more apparent. Other jurisdictions could follow suit to avoid losing a chunk of their domiciled businesses. And the structure of financial markets could start to gradually, but fundamentally, change. While the Delaware amendment won’t create a market revolution overnight, it does raise a question which highlights the systemic importance of the move: Will traditional equity markets still exist 10 years from now?

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor

Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

The crypto-currency craze

The crypto-currency craze

The crypto-currency craze

 

In the late 1990s, as investors woke up to the promise of the internet, shares in any company with dot.com after its name soared to giddy heights.

Then the bubble burst.

Now there are warnings of another technology investment bubble – this time related to the fascination with crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.

On the Tech Tent podcast this week, we examine the phenomenon of ICOs – Initial Coin Offerings – which have seen over $1bn raised so far this year from investors who get little more than a token and a vague promise of involvement in a new business.

The term ICO – designed to mirror the IPO that sees a firm issue shares and float on a stock exchange – seems to mean different things to different people. Early versions were simply ways of getting a new crypto-currency off the ground, but now many are promising to use the blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin and similar currencies to create businesses.

Among the ICO projects listed by Smith + Crown, which researches the crypto-currency scene, is a business raising money to create the world's most lucrative lottery based on blockchain, and another that promises to rent out high-quality office space using digital tokens.

On Tech Tent, we talk to an entrepreneur who is boldly going into uncharted territory with this new investment technique. Pavlo Tanasyuk is the founder of Spacebit, which aims to create what he calls "a distributed space agency unshackled by state or national sponsorship".

Next month, he will invite investors to take a stake in this venture, which he describes as a crypto version of Elon Musk's Space X. He will only accept payment in Bitcoin, Ethereum or other crypto-currencies and in return backers will get tokens and a role in deciding how the business is run.

But the finance blogger Frances Coppola has compared ICOs to the tulip fever of the 16th Century and other investment bubbles.

"The enthusiasm for ICOs is coming off the back of the Bitcoin and Ethereum booms," she says.

She warns that such schemes are completely unregulated, and fears that many who invest in them simply won't understand what they're getting into.

"There will be scams in this – I'd be astonished if regulators aren't looking at this."

Even Pavlo Tanasyuk concedes there is plenty of risk attached to this kind of investment. "Ninety-five per cent won't deliver – but we will. It's important to set an example. We're doing something real and have a strong management team in place."

When the dot.com bubble burst, it became clear that many investors had not really understood what the firms they were backing actually did or the nature of the technological challenges they faced. Today, the world of crypto-currencies and the blockchain looks even more impenetrable.

Consider this description of one project, Neverdie, which has already raised more than $2m (£1.5m) in an ICO: "A virtual reality infrastructure platform that bridges virtual worlds with popular MMORPGs [massively multiplayer online role-playing games] on the Ethereum blockchain."

Doubtless those who have bought the coins that are meant to fund this vision have read the white paper describing the project, and the disclaimer at the end: "Neverdie Coins and Teleport Tokens do not represent ownership in any real-world companies. These tokens are designed to activate virtual utilities."

Real money is going into a virtual world and if it disappears in a puff of virtual smoke, no regulator will be there to cry foul. Let's hope those who back these kind of ventures are going into them with their eyes open.

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

David Ogden Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur

 

Author: Rory Cellan-Jones

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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

Bitcoin is booming because a split in the cryptocurrency has been narrowly averted

Bitcoin is booming because a split in the cryptocurrency has been narrowly averted

Bitcoin is booming because a split in the cryptocurrency has been narrowly averted

 

Bitcoin has risen as much as 28% over the past 24 hours, driven by news that an imminent split in the cryptocurrency has been narrowly averted. The price of bitcoin nearly hit $3,000 late on July 20, within spitting distance of its all-time high, set last month.

The remarkable rally took place as bitcoin’s miners coalesced around one of several competing proposals that would increase the number of transactions that can be processed on the network. The issue has gained urgency in recent months, because one of the measures, known as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (BIP 148), would lead to a split in the cryptocurrency on Aug. 1 if implemented.

The price rallied as bitcoin’s miners began broadcasting their support for a less radical proposal, BIP 91, in increasing numbers yesterday. This proposal avoids the so-called “hard fork” by stopping short of altering the hard-coded limit on transaction capacities that is the bone of contention within the bitcoin world, while offering slightly enlarged transaction capacity.

The threshold for activating BIP 91 is 80% of all the processing power on the bitcoin network. That was achieved in the early hours of July 21. Currently 97% of the processing power on the network, which is largely controlled by miners, is voting in favor of BIP 91.

But it’s not settled yet. Although enough miners have signaled support for their preferred proposal—a process akin to broadcasting a preference over the network—enough of them must now run the software that implements this proposal within the next two and a half days. Failure to maintain a simple majority of the processing power, also called the hash rate, would mean BIP 91 does not activate. This would put the bitcoin world back at square one, with just a week to go before the potentially destabilizing hard fork on Aug. 1.

There are also still signs that the fundamental disagreement that led to this showdown—a “civil war,” as some call it—is far from resolved. The fight is between bitcoin’s miners and the influential programmers who contribute to bitcoin’s open-source code, known as the “core developers.” The core devs say bitcoin is at risk of being controlled by a cartel of miners who, by virtue of their huge investments in processing power, are able to dictate what changes are made to the code—anathema to bitcoin’s decentralized founding ethos. But the miners, and other heavy users, like payment processors, point out that the bitcoin network could be abandoned if it doesn’t enlarge its limited capacity soon.

The architect of BIP 91, James Hilliard, a miner himself, told industry publication CoinDesk: “This is where mining centralization makes things easier, because I can just message everybody on WeChat and help them if needed.” That may be so, but it won’t comfort the parts of the bitcoin world concerned with centralization of the cryptocurrency, even if the current fix to bitcoin’s problems goes according to plan.

 

David Ogden
Entreprener

cryptocurrency entrepreneur

 

Author:  Joon Ian Wong

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

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