Tag Archives: TCC

AMD shares are surging with bitcoin because digital currency ‘miners’ need its graphics cards

AMD shares are surging with bitcoin because digital currency 'miners' need its graphics cards

  • AMD told CNBC on Monday the "newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets" are driving demand for its graphics cards.
  • Computer hardware retailers are sold out of most AMD RX 570 and RX 580 graphics card models, according to NowInStock.

    

AMD shares rose as much as 7 percent

Tuesday after the company revealed the dramatic jump in digital currency prices is driving demand for its graphics cards. The stock was the top performer in the S&P 500 on the day. "The gaming market remains our priority. We are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering," an AMD spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC late Monday.

Ethereum cryptocurrency is up over 2,900 percent year-to-date through Tuesday morning, while bitcoin is up nearly 200 percent this year, according to data from industry website CoinDesk. The digital currency jumped more than 8 percent at one point Tuesday to a record nearing $3,000. AMD is one of the market's best performing stocks in the past year with its shares up nearly 170 percent in the past 12 months through Tuesday morning compared with the S&P 500's 15 percent return.

Cryptocurrency miners use graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia to "mine" new coins, which can then be sold or held for future appreciation. AMD traditionally has a better reputation for mining cryptocurrencies. Computer hardware retailers are sold out of most AMD RX 570 and RX 580 graphics card models, according to NowInStock. AMD launched the RX 500 series of graphics cards on April 18. The strong demand is spreading to older graphics cards as well. Used AMD RX 470 graphics cards are selling for well over $100 list price on eBay.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

BitCart Ditches Bitcoin For Dash, User Uptake “Soars”

BitCart Ditches Bitcoin For Dash,
User Uptake “Soars”

    

Discount gift card supplier BitCart

has taken the unusual step of abandoning Bitcoin in favor of Dash payment, with demand “soaring” as a result.

BitCart, an Irish startup competing with the likes of Gyft, now only offers customers the option of paying for their Amazon gift cards with Dash. The cards, purchased at a discount, effectively give holders a 15 percent saving on Amazon products. The scheme will shortly expand to include hotels.com. “From a merchant’s point of view, bitcoin is extremely problematic,” CEO Graham de Barra said in a press release about the move.

“Bitcoin as a method of payment on BitCart is simply not sustainable and it's a nightmare from a merchant point of view; every twenty or so transactions the platform would stop working and we would have to reintegrate the API.” Dash has meanwhile managed to keep its value in the face of rising and falling altcoin markets, while Bitcoin’s network woes are compounded by an influx of new users. “Since we integrated Dash six weeks ago, we haven't had a single problem. Dash is so easy to use from both a consumer and merchant perspective and since we disabled bitcoin, demand for BitCart has gone through the roof,” de Barra continued.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

GAW Miners Creator Josh Garza Fined $12 mln For “Ponzi Scheme”

GAW Miners Creator Josh Garza Fined $12 mln For “Ponzi Scheme”

    

Former GAW Miners creator Josh Garza faces a $12 mln fine

for running what lawmakers have certified was a “Ponzi scheme.” Garza, who was charged with securities fraud in 2015 and is also facing separate criminal proceedings for running the fraudulent mining operation, received a final judgment from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 2. “According to the SEC's complaint, GAW Miners and ZenMiner did not own enough computing power for the mining they promised to conduct, so most investors paid for a share of computing power that never existed,” the official filing reads. “Returns allegedly paid to some investors came from proceeds generated from sales to other investors.”

GAW Miners and sister scheme Paycoin attracted widespread accusations while it was active during 2014, despite Garza’s persistent efforts to denounce what he considered defamatory propaganda on the part of users, commentators and the media. A ruling is yet to be made on what should happen to the Bitcoin funds collected by Garza and his associates, with the virtual currency’s price having markedly increased in the intervening period. The penalty specifically takes the form of “$10,384,099 in disgorgement and prejudgment interest. The final judgment also requires each entity to pay a civil penalty of $1,000,000.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Qatar Blockchain Experiments Can Help Rescue Country From Sudden Isolation

Qatar Blockchain Experiments Can Help Rescue Country From Sudden Isolation

    

Blockchain could come to Qatar’s rescue after four Middle Eastern countries cut ties

with the country over its alleged support of terrorism. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates announced they had severed diplomatic and transport ties on Monday while neighboring Pakistan said it currently had “no intention” of following them. The Financial Times quotes a Saudi news agency stating the government enacted the policy for the “protection of national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism.”

Qatari sources reacted saying the collective move “was founded on allegations that have no basis in fact.” While the government added it would “not affect the normal lives of citizens and residents,” Qatar’s isolation could provide a timely opportunity for disruptive innovation to take hold. The country has been an active participant in Blockchain experimentation, specifically in its banking sector, with pilot schemes being successfully completed for money transfers in April.

“We have just started blockchain, a cutting-edge technology that will be used for remittances. We are the first bank in Qatar to actually pilot this approach,” Joseph Abraham, CEO of the Commercial Bank of Qatar, told local news resource The Peninsula last month. Of the four states pressuring Qatar, the UAE and increasingly Bahrain are also becoming major players in Blockchain.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Fujitsu Joins Blockchain Race With Hyperledger Platform

Fujitsu Joins Blockchain Race With Hyperledger Platform

    

Japanese technology giant Fujitsu has announced it is developing Blockchain

software for data handling, access and distribution. The as-yet unnamed product, which the company hopes to commercialize later this year, will offer three core features putting data handling on the Blockchain for business. Registering data information based on the storage location, managing access and automating data request processes are all part of the plan for the product.

“Recently with the spread of technologies such as IoT, a variety of information relating to people and things has been recorded and stored as data. Efforts to create new value through big data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) have also become significant worldwide,” an accompanying press release explains.

“In order to generate such value, large volumes of diverse data will be necessary and it will be important for organizations and individuals to share them.” Like IBM’s competitor Blockchain platform, Fujitsu is leveraging Hyperledger technology to build its solution, while a prototype demonstration will go live at the upcoming Interop Tokyo 2017 conference, taking place from June 7-9. The company is just one of an increasing number of international enterprises looking to Hyperledger to help them get ahead of the curve in implementing Blockchain technology.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain Success Sees BTL’s Interbit Aim For Production

Blockchain Success Sees BTL’s Interbit Aim For Production

    

Blockchain platform BTL Group has announced it is to pursue the development

of its Interbit trading solution after a successful oil market pilot. Interbit, which has been used by BP and Eni in conjunction with Wien Energie to handle oil trades, will now work towards a “go-to production phase,” Finance Magnates reports.

“Having demonstrated the reductions in risk and cost savings that are achievable we now have an opportunity to deliver the first successful blockchain based application to the energy market,” BTL co-founder and CEO Guy Halford-Thompson said. “We are also very excited that the pilot has enabled participating companies to better understand the benefits of Interbit and identify other areas in their organizations where they can apply it.” The 12-week oil pilot, which began in February, showed its value even while under initial scrutiny, Reuters further reports on Monday, as it unearthed an accounting issue which would otherwise have caused delays later on in the trading process.

Ernst & Young, which provided consulting support during the pilot, said the benefits of Blockchain extend far beyond simple accounts reinforcement. “Use of such technology can help by streamlining back office processes, leading to reduced risk, better protection against cyber threats and ultimately significant cost savings,” partner Andrew Woosey commented, adding that “further engineering and organisational effort is needed to achieve these outcomes.” Blockchain is also making inroads into oil trading streamlining elsewhere thanks to IBM’s Hyperledger-based IBM Blockchain platform and other partnerships.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Newegg Canada Drops Bitcoin Payments, BitPay in Spotlight

Newegg Canada Drops Bitcoin Payments, BitPay in Spotlight

    

Newegg’s Canada arm appears to have dropped Bitcoin payments

after BitPay’s halting of settlements in Canadian dollars (CAD) last week. Citing information from a company representative, a Reddit user claimed Newegg, which was one of the first major retailers to begin accepting Bitcoin, will no longer offer the option to customers on its Newegg.ca platform. Asked why Bitcoin was no longer a payment method, the representative during an instant chat stated they were “not provided with more information” but that “bitcoin is no longer available to be used on Newegg.ca.” Newegg’s main .com site appears not to have adopted the policy, suggesting the problem lies with the company’s payment processor, BitPay.

In a circular last month, BitPay said that it “will no longer be able to support settlements in CAD” and that businesses in Canada would have to accept BTC or USD payouts instead. “You still have the option to continue accepting bitcoin payments via our platform and receive your settlement in BTC (bitcoin) or via USD (US Dollar) wires going forward,” it stated, with the new arrangement effective May 31. BitPay introduced minimum $1,000 minimum withdrawals after losing its Canadian banking partner in May last year. More recently, it has added further changes to its gateway in response to rising mining fees.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin Price Retakes $2,500 To Continue Eight-Week Overall Rally

Bitcoin Price Retakes $2,500 To Continue Eight-Week Overall Rally

    

Bitcoin price is headed towards $2,600

as of Monday as a week of sustained growth reverses losses from the last week of May. Altcoins broadly followed suit, the top 10 adding up to eight percent in the 24 hours to press time on the back of Bitcoin’s steady upward trend. The move marks a return to more stable price action following last month’s comparatively significant volatility.

Eighth week factor

Analyzing Bitcoin, one commentator nonetheless drew attention to the fact that the virtual currency was completing its eighth week of overall growth. This had only occurred twice before, both periods signifying bubbles. While multiple sources had warned about the adverse effects of a third bubble and considered it to be far from over following the recent correction under $2,000, the reversal is now challenging them to forecast new ceilings once again. Despite the rapid rise in 2017, Bitcoin’s current price is only around twice the previous all-time “bubble” high of $1,200 in November 2013.

A curious big mover in June, meanwhile, has come in the form of SysCoin, the asset which was first to debut Lightning Network transactions on its mainnet at the end of April. Having seen a spike to around $0.165 per coin at the time, prices then tailed off, suddenly racing back in recent days to hit almost $0.23.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Why Your Sales Team Needs Inbound Marketing Strategy

Why Your Sales Team Needs Inbound Marketing Strategy
    

Real time is a new mindset in marketing,

and that is what inbound marketing is all about. Interruptive sales approaches include telemarketing calls, direct mail, email spam, print advertising, television and radio ads, interstitial and transitional online and pre-rolls ads. And you know what? Your customers are fed up with these outdated and traditional approaches. In the digital era, outbound sales practices such as the ones mentioned above are losing their effectiveness rapidly.

Inbound marketing strategy is the new kid on the block!

Rather than pushing your product/service to consumers, an inbound approach focuses on educating them about a particular offering. Inbound marketing is a type of permission-based marketing which concentrates on presenting offers and related information to people who are actively looking for the same product/service. There are several ways to increase your leads, but the most effective way is to increase your lead capture rate. An inbound marketing approach could also help your sales team in maximizing this rate. So how does this methodology help your sales team in boosting their work productivity? Let’s find out…

Why your sales team needs an inbound marketing strategy ASAP!

Saves Time and Money (and a lot of it)

A primary advantage of the inbound methodology is that you can easily identify your customer’s behavior and develop a precise buyer persona. This approach saves a lot of money and time for your sales team as they can quickly eliminate all the leads which don’t match the persona. Your sales team can easily identify the ideal prospect which enables them to focus more on the leads that require more attention, in terms of calls or in-person meetings.

Helps you get more Qualified Leads

Sales teams wind up losing tremendous time and effort on low quality leads. With inbound marketing, you can improve your lead quality by running more relevant and effective campaigns. Let’s say your sales team is using a CRM to track conversions. With inbound marketing, your sales rep can record all their activities in the CRM and send it to the marketing team to review. Your marketing team can then check all the logs and collaborate easily with the sales team for better feedback. This invaluable data enables marketing department to learn more about the effectiveness of each campaign and improve the buyer persona in the future. These small improvements can generate high quality leads for your sales team in the future.

Inbound methodology attracts a customer base that is truly interested in your product or service. By offering the most valuable and relevant content to visitors, the entire process not only assists your sales team in getting better leads but also provides a huge amount of relevant content to share during the sales process. As a result, you can build your own loyal customer base. This method also helps amplify  the reach of your content which boosts your chances of getting more qualified leads.

Enables Collaboration Between Sales & Marketing teams! (smarketing!)

In most companies, sales and marketing teams tend to have a troubled relationship.There is no alignment between both teams and blame games are quite common. Inbound marketing strategy plays cupid between both teams! Inbound methodology increases collaboration between ales and marketing teams through a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This agreement:

  • Holds both teams accountable to each other
  • Measures outcomes of respective teams
  • Helps in determining exactly what is going wrong if enough leads aren’t being generated.

The whole process creates a unified sales and marketing alignment or as we like to call it – Smarketing

Facilitates meaningful Sales Conversations:

Gone are the days when a sales rep closes a deal by blabbering a few persuasive words. Due to information explosion on the digital platform, people refuse to accept traditional sales gimmicks. In inbound marketing, the role of a sales rep is more of an educator than a hardcore seller. By understanding the buyer persona and buyer journey of a customer, a sales rep can have a much more meaningful communication with the prospect. By determining interest levels of a customer and establishing a plan beforehand, your sales team can close deals armed with relevant knowledge about the prospect. Has your sales team considered going inbound? Or have you already adopted the inbound route? How well did it work out for you?

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Here’s some Inbound Marketing Strategies for Your Business

 Here's some Inbound Marketing Strategies for Your Business

-“Inbound” has become a bit of a buzzword in the world of marketing lately –

so much so that many business owners, CEOs, and marketing managers are beginning to abandon their old ways, choosing to market their business with inbound strategies instead. They’re catching on to the fact that outdated “interruption marketing” strategies like cold-calling and impersonal spam emails simply don’t work. Inbound marketing is all about attracting visitors with strategies tailored to their individual needs, rather than going out into the market and begging for their attention.

Savvy marketers know that a customer who is earned, rather than forced, is more likely to convert. Even better, they’re more likely to become a long-term account than someone who wasn’t the right fit for your products or services from the start. Regardless of your niche, every business can adapt at least a few inbound marketing strategies to meet their needs. And when you do, you’ll understand what the inbound buzz is about.

Creation of marketing plans

Every inbound strategy is basically the same – attract leads, turn them into qualified accounts, close the deal, and keep them coming back for more. The mistake that many marketers make is jumping right into the Attraction phase, without knowing who their customer really is. Inbound marketing’s biggest strength is the personalization behind every single strategy. Regardless of whether it’s a seemingly insignificant social post or a complex, time-intensive whitepaper, every strategy must be perfect tailored to the intended audience. The scope of the project is relatively insignificant here – what really matters is the targeting.

For your strategy to be perfectly targeted, understanding your buyer persona in relation to your marketing plan is the first thing you need to do. When you don’t have a definitive plan that clearly outlines your business goals and how they relate to your ideal customer, your strategy is bound to fail. The most effective inbound marketing plan calls for a clear definition of your target customer, or buyer persona. Everything you do from then on depends on your buyer personas. Well-researched buyer personas tell you not only what content you should create, but where it should be placed, on what networks to advertise, how to position yourself, and even what language to use.

Without a marketing plan that ties goals to buyer personas, any strategies you use will be a shot in the dark. Conversions happen when your content is aligned with the right audience. Aside from creating necessary buyer personas, things like market research, data analysis, and deep discovery help create a strong foundation for your marketing plan. When you’re armed with the right data and buyer personas, you can better leverage any other marketing strategy you want to use.

Emphasis on content

We’ve already mentioned content quite a few times by now. That’s because without content, you don’t really have an inbound marketing strategy – or any marketing strategy for that matter. The new age of marketing is all about proving your worth by using content to educate, engage, and ultimately encourage the lead to become a customer. Content can be anything from the 140 words your tweet out to your followers on a daily basis to the 1,000-word blog post you carefully curated to help solve a problem your potential customer might have. Inbound marketing stresses the importance of content because without it, you’re left with very few ways to prove you’re valuable to potential customers.

But can content really provide that much value? According to Curata, 95% of buyers consider vendor-related content as trustworthy. This means that the whitepapers, eBooks, blog posts, and even Facebook updates your company puts out increases your trustworthiness among your potential customers. And when people trust you, they want to buy from you. Even other non-vendor related content like informational blogs or educational infographics create trust. This happens when the content becomes highly useful to the reader, or even helps to answer a question or solve a problem they have. Gaining the customer’s trust well before your services are even introduced sets you up for long-term success more than anything else can – all thanks to good content.

Running email campaigns

The final big inbound marketing strategy every marketer should be using is a good email campaign. You may recall a few years back when marketers were claiming that email was dead. Just like snail mail, people were calling email out as the next biggest waste of marketing dollars. They claimed there was very little return for all of the effort you’d need to put into running a campaign. While email open rates and click-through greatly depend on your given industry, they are rarely above 25% and 6% respectively. In the past, marketers have looked at these numbers as proof that their time and money is better spent elsewhere.

Despite lower engagement metrics than other strategies, an email marketing campaign is arguably the best way to nurture your leads. How else are you going to deliver on offers leads may have shown interest in and signed-up to receive? Email campaigns go far beyond delivering an offer, though. They can help turn leads into customers, than eventually nurture that relationship into a lasting one. A drip email campaign is the perfect way to align the goals and objective in your marketing plan with the content you created, presenting it to your ideal user at just the right time. You can deliver on a promised offer like an eBook or whitepaper download. Then once you have that person’s email, they can be shifted into an entirely new email campaign aimed at getting them closer to a bigger conversion.

These new campaign are often referred to as “drip” campaigns – as they work to create multiple touch-points, getting you in front of the right customer at the right time in their buying journey. Drip campaigns cans are used to nurture the lead, moving them further down the sales funnel and closer to a conversion. You can use these to send leads informational content like an eBook, then later an offer for a free demo when you know they’re closer to being ready to buy.

Email is also effective for forging a bond between your company and an existing client. Have someone that recently purchased a specific product? Create a return customer email campaign to send discount codes and coupons personalized to past purchases. From the first interaction after signing up for an offer to regular interactions to encourage a return purchase, an email campaign helps take your lead full circle.

These are just a few inbound strategies that can boost your marketing strategies to the next level. Inbound marketing revolves around the customer, earning their attention and giving them valuable information through their entire buyer’s journey. Instead of aiming and missing, take the time to target your marketing to right customer at the right time, and the conversions will follow.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member