Tag Archives: Cryptocurrency

Markethive

Breaking: SEC Will Review Decision of Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Rejection

Leave a comment

Breaking: SEC Will Review Decision of Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Rejection

The securities and exchange commission has granted a request by the Bats BZX Exchange, Inc. to review its decision of disapproving the bitcoin ETF back in March this year. According to a document signed by Eduardo A. Aleman, Assistant Secretary at the SEC:

“The petition of BZX for review of the Division’s action to disapprove the proposed rule change by delegated authority be GRANTED; and It is further ORDERED that any party or other people may file a statement in support of or in opposition to the action made pursuant to delegated authority on or before May 15, 2017.”

Aleman is the person who, through delegated authority, made the decision on March the 10th which some in the bitcoin community saw as an intentional slap. In a fairly angry article back then, I wrote

“How can one man have so much power? We were told there will be a vote, but apparently, the SEC commissioners didn’t think this decision was important, delegating it to Aleman. Then, what’s the point of the commissioners?… Delegating this decision to a faceless bureaucrat is an insult. For them to hide behind an Assistant Secretary, not even a Secretary, is an intentional slap.

The decision document mentions a specific date, data analyzed by the 28th of February. That’s almost two weeks ago. Could he have not released the decision then? Did he have to allow so much speculation? Was it an intentional insult to the entire bitcoin community for this clearly already long ago made decision to be released at the very last hour? Who knew of the decision before it was released? Did any of them trade the market?”

Aleman’s reasons for rejecting the ETF was because he wanted a surveillance sharing agreement between exchanges and because he said much of the trading was carried out in unregulated Chinese bitcoin exchanges.

The latter part was out of date even at the time of the decision. PBoC has moved in, laying out some red lines for Chinese exchanges. Aleman further said Gemini lacks liquidity, but that’s mainly because traders naturally go to exchanges with futures and margins, two necessary facilities that CFTC continues to deny to regulated American exchanges such as Gemini and Coinbase.

It is surprising, however, that the decision is now to be reviewed. Even more so because the person who rejected the ETF, Aleman, has approved the review of his own decision. It is still too early to say how this review will be carried out, but one thing I hope we can say for sure is that Aleman will have no further part in any of it.

That’s for obvious reasons which do not even need to be stated. One can’t review their own decision in an institutional context. It’s like carrying a judicial appeal in front of the same judge who clearly has already reached a decision against you.

This review should be carried out at the commissioners’ level. To them, I say what I said just a day before Aleman’s decision, a day when I thought it was the commissioners who were to decide, specifically the acting chairman of the SEC:

“Dr. Piwowar, open the doors for business. Welcome innovation. And not by default approval. Stand in front of the world and show that America has two parties, show that this administration means free market capitalism, hail the geniuses who bring new things to this world, lift the spirits of this great nation.”

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive Inc

Andrew Quentson on 25/04/2017

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin Has Power to Break People Out of Poverty, Current System Broken

Leave a comment

Bitcoin Has Power to Break People Out of Poverty Current System Broken

Bitcoin Has Power to Break People Out of Poverty, Current System Broken

Can Bitcoin help people break out of poverty? What if we could build a financial system with Bitcoin that would lead to a more equitable and fairer society?

Bitcoin has been around for nearly a decade now and it has survived many doomsday predictions regarding its demise. It has grown to become an accepted medium of transferring money, it has also been recognized as a currency in some countries like Japan.
 

Why is the existing system broken?

The present financial system is supported by large-scale financial institutions that provide financial services. This means banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, housing finance companies, money transfer companies etc.

The problem is that while these businesses have existed for a long time, accessibility has always been an issue. According to the world bank, two bln people still do not have access to a bank account. Yet this present financial institution based payment system is stuck in an archaic era.

People are expected to use cash by withdrawing it from a bank account, they are supposed to deposit money physically at a bank teller or a machine and there are costs attached to just using and maintaining the system.
 

Digital is the answer

Digitalization and using modern technology like smartphones has many benefits. The World Bank Working Paper titled – The Global Findex Database 2014, Measuring Financial Inclusion around the World says:

“Moving from cash-based to digital payments has many potential benefits, for both senders and receivers. It can improve the efficiency of making payments by increasing the speed of payments and by lowering the cost of disbursing and receiving them.”

The report points out further that digital payments increase transparency of payments reduce leakages and provide a first entry point to a formal financial system.

 

The currency is the financial system

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have emerged have several advantages. Firstly they are digital. There is no cash to handle. You do not need vaults, armored cars or any of the other infrastructure that makes handling cash expensive.

Secondly, some cryptocurrencies have features like smart contracts built in, which can be used by people to conduct transactions securely with each other without the need for intermediaries institutional or otherwise.

As MIT Technology Review recently quoted Joi Ito, Director of MIT Media Lab as saying about Bitcoin:

“Whether you’re an individual trying to get access or you’re a pensioner with lots of money tied up in the market, you’re going through these intermediaries that don’t represent you very well. [Bitcoin] creates a much more level playing field, and hopefully, it will reduce the complexity of the financial system.”
 

The poor need to be unshackled

Regulatory hurdles need to be surmounted before digital currency can truly go mainstream, however, there is hope for the future as countries are getting around to the idea of Bitcoins becoming a part of the system.

There are advantages as well. Digital currencies are transparent and some currencies like Bitcoin offer a transaction ledger that is public. These currencies can help the poor gain freedom from cash which is money that offers anonymity to drug dealers, corrupt officials and others preying on them. Digital currencies also takes out the need for people living in remote areas to go to centers of population for making transactions.

Conversely, it also frees up financial institutions from having to put up infrastructure and staff in remote locations. Whichever way you look at it, the poor gain significant freedom from the advent and use of digital currencies.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

By Shivdeep Dhaliwal

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Arbitrage – What it is and how it works

Leave a comment

Arbitrage refers to the process of instantly trading one or more pairs of currencies or odds for a nigh risk-free profit.

Usually, this involves two exchanges (this is then called a two-legged arbitrage); although more are, of course, possible.

crypto currency arbitrage

There are several steps when executing an arbitrage:

Find a suitable opportunity
Execute trades
Rebalance accounts

Step 1: Find a suitable opportunity

This step is relatively easy. Simply check the order books of as many exchanges as you like, compare bids vs asks, and check if you can find a negative spread.

A small discourse into what a spread is

I will assume you're familiar with bids, asks and what an order book is – if not, you should definitely look up those first. As for the negative spread, I'll elaborate a bit more on that. The spread is what is used to refer to the difference between bids and asks – lowest ask – highest bid = spread. This should be (and typically is) a positive value, since the best bid at an exchange must be lower than the lowest ask of an exchange – otherwise the matching engine of the exchange would settle these orders automatically.

In a perfect world, all markets and all market participants would have the same information, hence all top bids and all top asks of all exchanges would be the exact same, after fees were applied.

If you've seen the recent US elections, however, you're probably aware that the world isn't perfect, though. Hence, not all participants of a market know the same thing as the others, resulting in bids at exchanges which are higher than the asks at other exchanges – and this is what is called a negative spread.

Step 2: Execute trades

Let's assume you've found an amazing opportunity at exchange A and exchange B – a negative spread of 100$!

Exchange A: Ask 1BTC@450$
Exchange B: Bid 1BTC@550$

Luckily, you have proper funding at both to match these instantly – but how do you go about doing that? Easy! Just place an order on the opposite side at each exchange with the quote's prices!

Exchange A: Place Bid of 1BTC@450$
Exchange B: Place Ask of 1BTC@550$

Since your placed order match an order on the opposite side of the book, the trading engine matches them and the trade is settled, leaving you with a theoretical profit of a smooth 100$! Why theoretically, you ask? I'll get to that point further below.

Step 3: Rebalance Accounts

Unfortunately, you were only able to trade once today, but hey! Tomorrow's another day – but in order to be able to properly trade, you need to even out your balances. Right now, your accounts look like this:

Exchange A: 2 BTC | 50$
Exchange B: 0 BTC | 1050$

Hence, you go about and send 1 BTC from Exchange A to Exchange B, and 550$ dollars to Exchange A from Exchange B. No magic here – all accounts are re-balanced and you're ready to make a fortune again, tomorrow.

Exchange A: 1 BTC | 550$
Exchange B: 1 BTC | 550$ 

Arbitrage – Why everyone's not doing it

This all sounded wonderful? That's exactly what I thought when I first set out with my own arbitrage bot. However, there a some technical aspects that can really turn a sunny day into a poopy rain on your parade.

Caveats and risks

1. It needs to be as close to real-time as possible

This is possibly one of the hardest things to get right, and also the most underestimated aspect of arbitrage in crypto currency. The markets, compared to ForEx trading, are ridiculously slow – at busy exchanges, there may be a couple of dozen trades executed. Which gives the illusion, that polling data for bots via the most common API type, RESTful, is enough to trade risk-free. This is a misconception. Maybe for today this may appear to be enough – but what if markets picked up the pace? just 1 trade (or simply a placed order) within one second can change your opportunity from profit to loss.

2. Always trade limits, never market orders

Under the aspect of being the fastest, it might seem like a good idea to use market orders in order to be settled asap – you'd be terribly wrong. As discussed above, your data could be as old as 1 second (with above mentioned one order messing up your opportunity) – perhaps someone cleared the entire top level and all you're left with is a bid for twice the price you intended. Yikes.

3. REST API call rates make your life hard

Many exchanges employ a API call rate limit – that is, you're allowed to query data at the exchange X times every Y seconds. The differences are wide and nearly every exchange does its own little thing when it comes to limits. The problem with them is, they severely limit your actions. If you don't constantly keep an eye on how often you send a request, you might run into the limit when it seriously counts – for example when you have to cancel an order, because you couldn't place its counter part at another exchange. Unfortunately, websocket APIs are still rare and their brother on steroids, FIX sockets, even rarer – leaving you stuck with the turtle of programmable interfaces.

4. Integration with APIs can be a nightmare

There is no unified, standard definition for what an exchange API can do, or what data it returns. Which technically wouldn't be a problem, if they were documented properly. Incidentally, the exchanges with seemingly many opportunities also have the worst documentation (take btc-e.com's Documentation for example – heresy!). Of course, also the opposite is true – GDAX, Kraken, Bitfinex all have excellent documentation. But nonetheless you have to dig through them to understand how they work, what their rates are, how they handle data types, authentication and so forth. That is, if they even mention anything about that.

5. Fees will minimize, if not eliminate your profits

In my above step-by-step guide, I purposely omitted fees of all kind. But of course, they're essential to successfully arbitraging. The most commonly known fees, are trade commission fees – these range anywhere from 0.1% to 0.6% and need to be considered in Step 1: Find a suitable Opportunity. On top come fees for deposits and withdrawals during Step 3: Rebalancing Accounts. Depending on your preferred pair, these may range from feasible (transferring crypto currencies usually is cheap enough) to quite steep. For example, a deposit / withdrawal at Bitfinex entails the following fees:

Bank wire withdrawal & Deposit: 0.1% of amount deposited/withdrawn, 20$ minimum
And this does not include processing fees of your house bank – for me, for example, that's an additional 10€ for deposits, plus a 1% conversion fee. If you do the math you'll quickly realize that you don't even have to bother starting to trade at Bitfinex, unless you have a really big stack to trade with.

But this does not just apply to BTC-Fiat pairs. Alt-coins suffer a similar fate. In order to make arbitraging worthwhile, you will have to have enough funds at as many exchanges to make trades AND re-balancing worthwhile. And this quickly gets to a point where you realize your last month's savings aren't equipped to get the job done.

To give you a further example on how fees affect your profits, let's take a look back at the example from step 2, this time factoring in all fees. I'll walk you through it. For the argument's sake, we'll pretend to be a european trading BTCUSD at Bitfinex (Exchange A) and Kraken (Exchange B).

Bitfinex: Ask 1BTC@450$
Kraken: Bid 1BTC@550$ These prices are raw- they do not include trade commission fees, not transaction fees. Let's add those….

We'll define a taker fee of 0.25% at both exchange – the taker fee applies whenever you remove liquidity from the order book. Next, let's add deposit & withdrawal fees to the mix. At Bitfinex, we pay a minimum of 20$ for each fiat withdrawal & deposit, or 0.1% of the moved amount (if its more than 500$). At Kraken, we pay 0.09€ per fiat withdrawal, deposits are free. In addition, btc withdrawals cost 0.0005 BTC at kraken, while Bitfinex charges no fees for this. Deposits cost nothing at both exchanges. Furthermore, we can't transfer fiat directly from exchange to exchange – an additional 10€ fee per sent out transaction needs to be facotred in, as well as 1% conversion fee whenever we receive or send fiat from our bank account (2 times total).

Let's list these fees to try and maintain an overview

  1. Profit from arbitrage (bid – fee – ask + fee )
  2. Withdrawal Fee Bitfinex (20$)
  3. Deposit Fee Kraken (0.0$)
  4. Miner Fee for withdrawal at Kraken (0.0005BTC)
  5. Transaction Cost of our house bank (10€) (Bank to Bitfinex)
  6. Conversion Fee of our house Bank (1% of transfer amount x 2)

Let's put some numbers to these:

  1. (550 – 550*0.0025) – (450 + 450 * 0.0025) = 97.5$
  2. Move ~497$ to House bank = 20$
  3. 0.0$
  4. 0.0005BTC * 500$ = 0.25$ # Assuming this is the end of day price of the coin
  5. 10€ * 1.05 = 10.05$
  6. (497 * 0.02) = 9.94$

Which brings us to net profit of: 57.26$ This translates to 42.74% reduction of your originally seen profit.

This is neither a worst, nor a best case scenario – it's merely designed to show you how many hidden fees are involved in an arbitrage. Also, keep in mind that a 22% arbitrage opportunity is practically non-existant.

As a matter of fact, had the spread been anything less than 40$, the fixed fees of our house bank and Bitfinex alone would have made our supposed arbirtrage opportunity a loss.

6. Volatility of coins is your enemy

"No matter where the market goes, arbitrage makes a profit anyway!"

This is true – if your currencies don't tend to drop or rise by 50% within 24 hours. Ideally, both currencies you trade in should be relatively stable, while still showing a certain volatility – no volatility would mean the chart is a flat line, resulting in no opportunities for you.

The problem with pure crypto currency arbitrage (LTCBTC), however, is that Alt-coins can go completely fubar – as opposed to a fiat-based crypto arbitrage (i.e. BTCUSD). A personal anecdote:

When ZEC launched, I was instantly fascinated at the terrible market efficiency and arbitrage opportunities of almost 5% regularly. Hence, I bought in at 1ZEC@1.2BTC, thinking this is probably where market will stay at (at least it's not as bad as the guy who bought a ZEC for 3k BTC). I started arbitraging and immediately increased the amount of ZEC I was holding – completely oblivious to the fact that since I started trading, the price had fallen to 1ZEC@0.1BTC. My ZEC was worth 90% less, and I lost almost half a bitcoin worth of money.

Some volatility is great for arbitrage – too much volatility isn't.

7. Exchanges aren't as technically robust as they ought to be

Most of the time, you will find that smaller exchanges offer opportunities more often than big exchanges. This is in part due to the previously mentioned slow movement of information, but also their (often significantly lower) trading volume. Initially, this may appear like a steal – but there's usually a reason that particular exchange only has the low volume it currently does.

In a time where any one in the world can open up an exchange running on his raspberrypi and Ethereum, trading on the more alternative exchanges can be a serious risk to your investment.

From things like DDOS attacks and overloaded matching engines not matching your orders, to more serious issues like stuck withdrawals due to too low miner fees, or even theft – and the latter is a very omnipresent issue not exclusively affecting small exchanges, as the Bitfinex Heist has shown this summer; the list of potential technical failures is long and you should be aware of these at all times.

Conclusion

I'm aware this answer is overtly negative – this was intentional. Arbitrage, as well as crypto currency in general, is not the quick buck everyone on forums and dubious sites advertising trading bots make you believe. While its inner mechanisms and workings are still quite cryptic* to even the most professional traders (sorry for the pun), even the fabled cryptographic adheres to some basic principles, afterall. The 'quick way to wealth' usually will just end up quickly making you wealthless.

Start by opening up some of the well known exchanges … do not use ones such as localbitcoins .. far too risky. A good one is OKCoin.com as they have a good verification system.

(*) Another great myth is that the chinese dictate the BTCUSD market. There is no empirical proven correlation between chinese and american markets. The only defacto correlation that has been found was that of google searches for bitcoin to btc trading volume – but whether this was positive or negative was inclusive.

If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show on this page.

Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive
markethive.com

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

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

Leave a comment

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

 

Trade Coin Club

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

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

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

Let’s check what I dug up about them!

What Is Trade Coin Club? 

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

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

They have registered their domain name for 10 years. 

Products Trade Coin Club Offers

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

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

The Trade Coin Club Compensation Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They also provide residual commissions on binary compensation structure.

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive Inc

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Should You Accept Cryptocurrency In Your Small Business?

Leave a comment

should you accept cryptocurrency in you small business

Should You Accept Cryptocurrency In Your Small Business?

 

Despite the controversy and challenges that occur — small-business owners are embracing cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin. The main reason, according to the more savvy entrepreneurial-types, is that by using the latest technology they can stand out from other businesses.

Does that mean that accepting cryptocurrencies is the right fit for your business? It actually depends on your business’s particular situation and needs, but for the most part, cryptocurrencies can offer the following advantage for business owners.

In years past U.S. merchants have had to pay over $78 billion in credit and debit card processing fees. Since cryptocurrencies are decentralized, meaning that they don’t require a bank to verify each transaction, you can eliminate those transaction fee which normally cost 2 percent up to 5 percent for each transaction.

In other words, it costs almost nothing for your customers to transfer funds to you. As for you — as a business owner — don’t have to share your hard-earned revenue with that third party financial institutions.

More privacy and security for your customers.

According to a research by Statista, 17 percent of shopping cart abandonment is over payment security concerns, with another 18 percent is due to excessive payment security checks.

With cryptocurrency transactions, customers don’t have to share personal data when making purchases because they rely on a send-only protocol, meaning that counterfeiting and identity theft are decreased because there aren’t any number for hacker to steal.

Transactions are processed quickly.

Waiting for a funds to become available in your bank account isn’t just frustrating, it can negatively impact your cash flow. That’s not the case with cryptocurrency transactions. In most cases, these transactions occur in real-time because there aren’t multiple banks holding-up the payment process.

Even if it’s not that quick — funds are typically available in just a couple of minutes.

It’s an international currency.

If your business exports goods and services, or purchases supplies or materials from other countries, then cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can help you get around those expensive foreign transaction fees, exchange rates, or currencies.

Since eCash, like bitcoin, is a global currency and it’s not tied to any single government or company. In other words, it ignores border restrictions. So as long as both parties accept bitcoin, you’re good to go.

No fraud, no chargebacks.

 

Cryptocurrencies are similar to cash, in that you either have it or you don’t and all transactions are final. This is because transactions are added to the blockchain via a complex system called mining.

This system verifies funds and makes it pretty much impossible to spend more than you own. Also, since both parties must approve the transaction, there aren’t any disputes to worry about it. This means that chargebacks don’t occur and are a thing of the past.

Acquire new customers.

There are serious die-hard fans of cryptocurrencies. Having your customers already familiar with cryptocurrencies is a plus and can be a major assist for your business since they actively seek out businesses that accept digital currencies.

Of course, that’s a niche market. However, as a general rule of thumb, when you offer more payment options the more customers you’ll be able to attract. In fact, it’s been found that up to 28 percent of shopping cart abandonment is caused by the lack of a payment option a shopper prefers to use.

We’re moving away from paper.

Both cryptocurrencies and digital wallets are continuing to grow. In fact, both the blockchain and bitcoin had banner years in 2016. Bitcoin was the top currency in 2016 and is being valued at around $1,000.

It’s expected this trend will continue in 2017 and and began a high growth beyond 2017 as people become more familiar with this digital currency.

Instead of resisting this change, it would make more sense for your business to become an early adopter and embrace cryptocurrencies so that you can set yourself apart from your competitors.

The bottom line.

While accepting cryptocurrencies can set you apart as an innovator and an early adopter of fintech. Cryptocurrencies are faster and cheaper than processing traditional payments, and are relatively secure.

As yet, cryptocurrency is not equally regulated. Some countries are working to restricted cryptocurrency use.

If is not considered as stable, yet. Cryptocurrency isn’t as regulated as the price of eCash and it can fluctuate suddenly.

Limited scaling. The system is designed to only process so many transactions at this time. However, the fintech revolution is solving many of the issues surrounding the scaling.

Lack of applications. There aren’t as many applications to process virtual currencies as compared to apps that can process credit or debit cards. However, several companies are in the race to come up with the MVP app for cryptocurrencies.

Security. While identity theft and counterfeit can be greatly reduced with this type of system, there’s no system in place to prevent human error, technical glitches, or fiduciary fraud. (Of course, there never has been anything to stop those very same issues in traditional banking, either. Cryptocurrency still remains the most secure banking method as a result of the blockchain process.)

Makes planning more challenging. Since cryptocurrencies are decentralized, and 100 percent digital, it can make preparing financial statements, determining taxes, and figuring out your prices difficult.

If you do decide to start accepting cryptocurrencies after weighing the pros and cons, you can easily get started by using digital wallets like Due and Coinbase.

There’s also POS systems like XBTerminal that allows customers to pay from any mobile bitcoin wallet by using NFC or QR code.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

This article was originally published on Due.com.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

3 Simple Ways for Earning Cryptocurrency From Home

Leave a comment

3 simple ways of earning cryptocurrency from home

3 Simple Ways for Earning Cryptocurrency From Home

Cryptocurrencies represent awesome payment systems that enable anyone to send and receive money to and from anyone in the world; convert it to fiat currencies easily and use it to buy whatever one might choose whether online or offline. However, one of the drawbacks of cryptocurrencies is that it can be somehow hard to buy them, especially in selected countries where it is difficult to open a bank account.

Throughout this article, I will show you three ways to make money online in the form of cryptocurrencies using just your laptop/PC and an internet connection:

1-Blogging on Steemit.com

Steemit.com is a blockchain based social network, that incentives its users for posting and curating (upvoting) content. On Steemit, you can make money online, in the form of crypto, for posting new content and/or curating (up-voting) the content of others. The social network has three forms of currencies/tokens:

STEEM: which represents a cryptocoin that is tradable on a number of exchanges such as Poloniex.

Steem backed dollars (SBD): whose value is linked to the USD. SBD is also tradable on cryptocurrency exchanges.

STEEM Power: which are influence tokens that give users control over the amount of earnings they gain by posting and curating content.

When you publish a post on steemit, you will receive rewards for it after 24 hours depending on the number of upvotes it received by other users, who create content. Your earnings will be divided into 3 portions

a. 50% will be in the form of STEEM Power

b. 25% will be in the form of STEEM

c. 25% will be in the form of SBD

STEEM and SBD can be instantly transferred to an exchange and sold for Bitcoin, while you can only convert STEEM Power to STEEM, to be able to sell it, through a complex process known as “Power Down”.

 

2- Mining Altcoins Via Minergate:

Even though I remember that I used to mine around 1 whole Bitcoin every 36 hours in 2010,using just my PC, it is now impossible to mine Bitcoin and most major altcoins using a PC, as the networks of all these coins have grown massively and their networks’ difficulties have skyrocketed too. However, there are a handful of altcoins that you can still mine using a PC with reasonable specifications.

Minergate provides a descent service that enables you to mine a number of altcoins using your PC or laptop including Monero, bytecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum classic and others. The software also has a great option; “Smart mining”, which automatically picks up for you the best coins to mine according to market prices and network difficulties.

With a few clicks, you can download, install and start mining cryptocurrencies using your laptop. The higher the specifications of your PC (processor, RAM) and GPU, the bigger the amount you can make via Minergate’s mining software. Roughly speaking, a dual core i5, 8 GB RAM PC with a 1 GB Nividia Geoforce GPU can mine what is worth around 10 cents per day.

 

3- Donating your PC processing Power for Gridcoin GRC:

Gridcoin Research (GRC) is a cryptocurrency network that is created to facilitate multi-party computing and reward volunteers who donate their computing power to BOINC projects with GRC. You can make between 8-30 cents per day via donating your PC’s processing power to the gridcoin network.

Follow the BOINC client and gridcoin installation guides on gridcoin’s official website and in less than 20 minutes, you will be earning gridcoin for donating your computer’s processing power.

 

David Ogden

Entrepreneur

 

Author Dr Tamer Sameeh

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

This Is Worth Watching.

Leave a comment

The following is a link to April 13, 2017 ( Thursdays ) Bitqyck Webinar. 
Webinars start at about frame 8:03 min.  http://hive.pe/uf  or the link that follows:

https://www.facebook.com/mybitqyck/videos/vb.1234335153282829/1283779645005046/?type=2&theater

————

Remember there is no cost to join as an affiliate. There are no monthly fees, no autoship requirements and there is no cost to any merchant that join. 
 

But, the company does have a Firstmover/founder opportunity that will end May 1, 2017. 

This gives an affiliate the opportunity to own a nice amount of Bitqy Coins and company Stock.

BITQYCK Optional -The FirstMover/Founder Option Is As Follows: 
Pkg# 1 $199 = 10,000 Bitqy Coins
Pkg# 2 $349 = 20,000 Bitqy Coins
Pkg# 3 $499 = 30,000 Bitqy Coins
Pkg# 4 $1000 = 66,700 Bitqy Coins With Revenue Sharing From Partner Companies.
** Bitqyck $1000 Founding Packages are Running out **
All FirstMover / Founder Packages end May 1, 2017 

The $1000 Pkg are no longer available. 

Again it is Free to join. Email or Call me if you have any questions. 

You can take action now at my link that follows: http://hive.pe/ua

Ven Dance
worldcommere@gmail.com
626-277-8424

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken adds Dash to Listings

Leave a comment

cryptocurrencey exchange kraken adds dash to listings

Dash, the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap, has announced its partnership with Kraken Digital Asset Exchange – one of the world’s oldest bitcoin exchanges with the largest selection of digital assets and national currencies.

The partnership comes in the wake of a record surge for the cryptocurrency, which experienced a 6x increase in price per ($11 to $72 USD) and a 10x increase in trading volume ($3 million to $30 million USD) across Q1. Dash is now open for trading on the platform with buy and sell pairings including DASH / EUR, DASH / USD, and DASH / BTC. Kraken is expected to offer Dash margin trading in the near future, the release said.

“Kraken is excited to offer Dash on their trading platform and our teams are working closely to ensure clients can begin trading the currency immediately. Kraken is an incredibly well established and well structured organization, and amongst the best in the exchange business. In terms of reputation, they represent the highest standard for client satisfaction. Dash is a project that has implemented very original ideas that resonate well with the market, and as a top tier exchange, Kraken’s mission is to provide clients with access to digital currencies that are in demand and provide value”, Dash VP of Business Development, Daniel Diaz, said.

Following several business partnerships around the world, the implementation of the Sentinel software upgrade and the announcement of revolutionary decentralized payments system called Evolution, Dash has been on record breaking trajectory. Its total market cap skyrocketed from $78 million USD (January 1st) to an all time high of $835 million USD (March 18th), with new international markets unlocked alongside user demand.

“As the leading exchange in the Euro market, Kraken’s global reach helps Dash successfully meet the needs of our users and investors. The entire integration experience was very positive and we have high expectations for the partnership going forward. This is a significant achievement for Dash because our ecosystem needs high quality and trustworthy exchanges like Kraken to thrive, and we know they will play an important role as a fiat gateway”, Diaz continued.

Founded in 2011, Kraken Digital Asset Exchange is based in San Francisco, with offices around the world. Trusted by hundreds of thousands of traders, institutions, and authorities, including Germany’s BaFin regulated Fidor Bank, Kraken is the first exchange to display its market data on the Bloomberg Terminal, pass a cryptographically verifiable proof-of-reserves audit, and one of the first to offer leveraged margin trading. Kraken investors include Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Hummingbird Ventures, Money Partners Group, and SBI Investment.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin Steams Ahead

Leave a comment

Bitcoin Steams ahead

Bitcoin Steams Ahead

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts will have noticed that bitcoin’s price has been going up steadily over the past few days. It is always difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for this behavior. Japan’s new cryptocurrency regulation went into effect, and there is a big bitcoin marketing campaign on the /r/place subreddit. Both factors may contribute to future bitcoin price gains moving forward.

BITCOIN PRICE PREPARES FOR ANOTHER MAJOR RALLY

It is impossible to deny the recent bitcoin price gains. Over the past few days, the value per BTC has surpassed US$1,100 once again, after a few weeks of downward price momentum. Enthusiasts always believed this negative price trend was only temporary, though, as there is no reason for the bitcoin price to lose value over time.

That being said, the ongoing scalability debate hasn’t done the bitcoin price any good. Bitcoin Core and Unlimited supporters continue to “duke it out” on the internet, which generates some negative attention for the popular cryptocurrency altogether. However, it would appear even those debates are no longer sufficient to keep the bitcoin price down for an extended period of time.

It is also worth mentioning there is some positive attention on bitcoin right now. Japan recently introduced their new virtual currency regulation, which effectively removes the sales tax on bitcoin purchases. This makes bitcoin more approachable and affordable to everyday consumers in the country. Regulatory developments like these can pave a bright future for bitcoin moving forward.

Moreover, there is a dedicated bitcoin marketing campaign taking place on the /r/place subreddit. Reddit remains a key place to discuss bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Advertising on other subreddits will introduce more mainstream internet users to cryptocurrency as a whole, which can only be a positive thing in the long run. The bitcoin logo is getting some good exposure on this subreddit, that much is certain.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

Author JP Buntinx

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin wobbles as traders turn to other cryptocurrencies

Leave a comment

bitcoin wobbles as traders turn to other cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin wobbles as traders turn to other cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin wobbles as traders turn to other cryptocurrencies

It's been a volatile period for Bitcoin investors, as holders of the cryptocurrency prepare for a potential 'fork' in the blockchain.

From Friday morning until Monday afternoon, Bitcoin was trading under the $1,000 level, and even fell beneath $900 on Saturday. This is significant as, barring the weekend of March 18 and 19, Bitcoin has traded above $1,000 since early February and hit a fresh all-time high of around $1,325 on March 10.

Bitcoin is currently back above the $1,000 handle, but is well off these recent highs, wiping billions off of its market cap value.

There are several causes for the recent volatility: Chinese regulators cracked down on Bitcoin exchanges, while U.S. authorities rejected a proposal for a Bitcoin-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF). The current concern is over the future of the Bitcoin technology.

Bitcoin faces a scaling issue, where the number of Bitcoin transactions that can happen on the blockchain at any one time is limited. This is creating a backlog of transactions that are needed to be processed and slowing down the system.

A group called Bitcoin Unlimited advocates for increasing the size of the blocks on the blockchain in order to process more transactions, but this has split the community. To increase the block size would involve splitting the blockchain, causing a fork and creating two major blockchains. This would effectively create two different coins and it's not clear which would become dominant.

As a result, investors are hedging their bets or selling out of Bitcoin, waiting to see whether or not the fork will happen, and if so, which blockchain will be favored by the market.

Data from Bitfinex indicates around 49 million more coins have been sold than bought, or roughly 5 percent of total coins traded, in the last 30 days. Through March, the number of long Bitcoin positions held by investors has decreased from 26,858 to above 23,142, while the number of short positions has increased from 9,820 to 14,731.

Meanwhile, the market cap of blockchain assets other than Bitcoin, such as ether, dash and monero, has more than doubled since March 10 from $3.5 billion to more than $7 billion, according to Chris Burniske, blockchain products lead analyst at ARK Invest.

"At the same time, Bitcoin's market cap has gone from $19 billion to $16 billion. Hence, Bitcoin's market cap has lost $3 billion in value while the combined market cap of all other blockchain assets has added more than $3 billion," he told CNBC via email.

"Given these market indicators, it would appear investors are diversifying their blockchain asset holdings, positioning themselves for a generally rising tide in this emerging asset class."

Whether or not the fork happens is hard to tell, but it may harm Bitcoin's brand, according to Jani Valjavec, co-founder of ICONOMI, a digital asset management platform for cryptocurrencies. Valjavec argues the brand is the main thing behind Bitcoin's value.

"It has wide acceptance now, real world use cases, it can be a great store of value, and it is currently trusted by the community. Our understanding is that a hard fork, instigated by two parties with very competing interests, will primarily weaken the brand," he told CNBC via email.

"The next biggest brand in the distributed economy is Ethereum, and that's why we believe it will benefit the most."

However, Fran Strajnar, co-founder & CEO of data and research company Brave New Coin, says the market is still within the parameters of a Bitcoin bull cycle.

"The proposed contentious fork is unlikely but better to happen now than in the distant future. We would end up with the original Bitcoin and remaining miners activating segwit (a well-designed package of system upgrades) and a new, much smaller, privatized alternative version of Bitcoin," he told CNBC via email.

"The sum result of all the network fork (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is we are seeing investors hedge by buying into ether. We expect a price drop if there is a fork but a similar outcome to Ethereum, where the long term market capitalization increases for both assets."

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

Luke Graham

 

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member