Israel Securities Authority Chairman Schmuel Hauser Addresses Ico Issues
Professor Schmuel Hauser from the ISA finally discussed the authority’s concerns with ICOs.
The Israel Securities Authority (ISA) chairman, professor Schmuel Hauser recently delivered an address wherein which he outlined and discussed several concerns the regulating agency had regarding cryptocurrencies as well as initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Upon commencing his address, Hauser firstly discussed the difficulty of finding a distinction between cryptocurrencies and its underlying blockchain technology. Hauser was notably optimistic about blockchain technology’s future, however, and confirmed that the technology is likely to become an omniscient and powerful part of daily life in the future. The chairman stated that this will be the case, especially in the financial industry.
However, in regards to cryptocurrency Hauser preached caution and careful consideration. He noted that while cryptocurrency is dependent on blockchain the two are radically different. Hauser stated that to him, Bitcoin seemed like an investing bubble. Because of the risks involved, Hauser stated that the ISA is determined to ensure that cryptocurrency is safe for their users and not simply a dangerous new investment scheme.
According to the chairman, the ISA intends to assess each ICO on a case-by-case basis in order to establish the regulatory and legislative requirements and responsibilities of the industry. Hauser did confirm that the ISA has no intention of enforcing an outright ban on ICOs.
According to Hauser, those ICOs which are considered to act as a security will be subject to the ISA’s regulatory policies. However, if an ICO is categorized as a cryptocurrency, it will not have been regulated by the authority. Hauser did note, however, that the latter rule could change depending on certain corporate laws.
According to Hauser, one of the ISA’s main concerns regarding ICOs is the industry’s inherent lack of transparency. While Hauser acknowledged the industry’s significant contribution to the evolution of the financial sector, he cautioned that proper and regulation and management is imperative when dealing with ICOs.
In September earlier this year, the ISA put together a committee in order to review the need for ICO regulations within Israel. This committee was also tasked with determining whether ICOs should be compliant with securities regulations. While the committee is scheduled to deliver their recommendation on 31 December. Hauser’s latest address seemed to confirm the general trajectory of the committee’s impending decision.
Chia, The World’s First Eco-friendly Cryptocurrency To Be Released Next Year
BitTorrent creator, Bram Cohen, has been working on an environmentally friendly cryptocurrency which will be released next year.
Some of the world’s leading developers have been teaming up to create the world’s first environmentally friendly cryptocurrency, called Chia. While the Chia Network is yet to confirm whether they intend to launch their cryptocurrency via an initial coin offering (ICO), Chia will undoubtedly prove to be a revolutionary step forward for the cryptocurrency industry.
While Bitcoin’s ideal is to be entirely decentralized, that is not dependent on any governmental or financial institutions, there is strange sort of elitism amongst Bitcoin users which undermines its decentralized ideals. Mining Bitcoin is an incredibly expensive process which requires specialized and pricey equipment in addition to huge amounts of electricity resources. These requirements make mining only available to individuals who can afford it, or who have access to inexpensive resources. However, the process has undermined Bitcoin initial wealth distribution ideals.
The Chinese company, Bitmain currently holds the monopoly on mining equipment, especially when it comes to ASICS chips. However, even if a new miner can afford the equipment, their required processing power will prohibit many from entering the market.
According to a recent report, mining a single Bitcoin requires the same amount of electricity that the average American home uses in a week. Bram Cohen, co-founder of Chia Network stated that the costs involved in mining Bitcoin are so high that it is hardly worth it for the miner in most instances.
According to the cryptocurrency analyst, Alex de Vries, the 293,000 daily Bitcoin transactions account for 0.12% of the entire world’s electricity usage. Unfortunately, the cryptocurrency’s carbon emissions have grown alongside its popularity. In order to address this growing concern, the creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, has designed a new cryptocurrency whose blockchain works in a radically different way.
According to Cohen, Chia miners would get rewarded for their efforts. In addition, the awards would be directly proportional to the amount of work put into every block created. Cohen compared the process to printing lottery tickets, and every time a new ticket is printed, miners win.
Industrial mining rigs have increasingly been dominating the Bitcoin system. However, this creates the problem that the market becomes so flooded that smaller entities have no chance of being noticed. According to De Vries, currently, the international mining sector create about $6.2 billion in annual revenue. This, according to Cohen is indicative of an unfair playing field.
Other teams have previously tried to address this concern. Most notably, the earlier Bitcoin Gold fork which happened earlier this year in October attempted to address the growing inequality in the Bitcoin mining industry. Bitcoin mining is a complex process which requires huge amounts of processing power to solve its algorithms and accommodate its hashing operations. To solve the growing problem, Chia network created a new token which operates in an entirely different way using proof of space.
According to Cohen, when it comes to Chia, they will use the term farming instead of mining, as it’s a more environmentally friendly process. This system requires significantly fewer energy resources.
Chia’s team is a veritable all-star team of programmer which include professor Krzysztof Pietrzak from the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria as well as the CEO of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark.
Chia farming does not require ASICS or any other specialized hardware. Technically it can be done on a normal computer. Chia utilizes unused storage space on a device that is not even monitored by the internal file storage system. Seeing as the rewards are proportional, a farmer will receive rewards that are the equivalent of the amount of work they put in.
Chia is set to launch towards the end of 2018. Upon launching, Chia will incorporate Lightning Network Channels for faster transactions. The team also intends to bring about other tweak and changes that they believe will make the cryptocurrency the better and more environmentally friendly Bitcoin.
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Cryptocoin News has only been live for just under three months, but we have already achieved some top results in terms in interviews with those people on the cutting edge of the crypto, blockchain, alt currency and ICO world. Our views have also quadrupled this week, and we’ve even seen some of our content being cheekily swiped by larger media outlets who should know better. Overall it’s a great position to be in, and we look forward to bringing you even more interviews in the future too. Thanks for reading. Image from pixabay here.
Hellenium Ico: Migrating The Service Industry Onto The Blockchain
The services industry is massive. It covers a huge array of sectors, from tourism, to accountancy, insurance, software, health care, and many, many more.
Traditionally, the services industry -both for tangible and intangible goods- has relied on monetary exchanges to complete any given transaction, with banks or any other similar financial entities underpinning the entire concept. This has been the status quo for many decades.
But that was before blockchain technology revolutionized the business world. This new technology has enabled the creation of decentralized business platforms that no longer require the participation of financial entities.
Hellenium offers a novel ‘Automations as a Service’ platform, aided by AI-powered algorithms. The company presents itself as the ‘Amazon equivalent of services’.
This piece is a full disclosure, a statement of facts without any intention of advice or endorsement about the Hellenium value offer.
Service offers through the blockchain
Hellenium’s proposition is bold, and ahead of its time. The company intends to design and build an ecosystem where services can be offered and purchased without the need for hardware-based automation and software-based system integrations. The idea is to replace all this with custom-made AI routines, running on the blockchain.
Participating service providers will connect to this ultra-modern platform via APIs , so they can sell to consumers and other providers. In Hellenium’s view, this approach may bring about savings of over 60% on current tariffs.
Hellenium plans to deploy the first group of services in 2018. This first deployment will cover mobility-related services (motor insurance, transport, etc.) via Roadebit.
What we do [009]. WE PRACTICE SOCIOECONOMY. We will put an end to marketing driven wants. SOCIETIES WILL DECIDE THEIR NEEDS not elites pic.twitter.com/QDBo3YPHSb
The first group of businesses to be added to the Hellenium platform is codenamed Roadebit.
Roadebit’s proposition is to simplify all your mobility-related needs, from how much motor insurance you pay, toll collections, parking, etc. The idea is to use a mobile phone’s GPS system to transmit an individual’s mobility status to the blockchain, which would then process all these payments while on the go.
In a nutshell, Roadebit is a mobility-solutions framework running on the Ethereum blockchain which will require a mobile app and an e-wallet to work on the customer side.
The initial Roadebit offering will include the following services:
Pay-as-you-go 2.0 motor & travel insurance
Automated toll collection
Pay-as-you-go road tax collection (this is a global first)
Automated congestion charges collection
Cashless & cardless parking (both gated and roadside)
Cashless & cardless mass transport ticketing and even
Cashless & cardless driverless car sharing payments
Hellenium proposes to transform Roadebit into the must-have app for everyone, to simplify all the motoring and mobility needs.
If the initial concept is successful, the Hellenium platform could be expanded to integrate a myriad other service industries, potentially growing hugely in terms of reach and revenue.
The Hellenium team
The human factor behind Hellenium is lean in numbers. The White Paper lists eight people as ‘Core Team’, plus one Advisor.
Every member in the Core Team is linked to their LinkedIn profile. The Advisor is not.
Such lean team has the advantage of more focus from the individual’s perspective, which creates a stronger team overall because there is less reliance on someone else to do the job. Everyone’s mission is critical.
Overall, the combined expertise of the team inspires the confidence that investors may need to participate in the project.
There is no mention of expanding the team at the time of writing, though this may change.
White Paper
What we do [010] Did you know that OUR WHITEPAPER received 100/100 from @ICObench. WE KNOW HOW TO BUILD A GREAT BUSINESS AND IT SHOWS pic.twitter.com/iz8s5hFVjp
A well laid out, informative, comprehensive White Paper is a must for any ICO, if they are to be taken seriously. Documentation is sometimes treated as an afterthought, leaving many companies open to unnecessary criticism.
In Hellenium’s case, the White Paper is well presented, and detailed. Particular mention goes to the timeline and the pie charts reflecting the intended token distribution, usage, etc.
However, I found it to be laid out somewhat backwards. The Timeline, a crucial element for investors, is only shown at the very end, for example. It should feature more prominently. Same with the Hellenium team, they are pushed to the very end of the document. Both the Timeline and the Team should be introduced much earlier.
Expanding on the Timeline, it is slightly confusing and hard to understand, its design could have been improved with better graphic work.
A further criticism can be levelled against the paper: There are a number of grammar and orthographical issues scattered throughout, which somewhat mars the overall experience. Using proofreading services would have eliminated this particular problem.
Overall though, Hellenium’s White Paper is of good quality, but a little attention to detail would have gone a long way.
Website Quality & Layout
A company’s website is the de facto first port of call for investors, or anyone with a passing interest on the project. Hence, a good quality website will speak volumes about the overall experience.
Hellenium’s site, while well designed and laid out, sports two potentially fatal flaws.
One, the landing page is not SSL-certified, which means this part of the site is not secure. Two, the Registration page, while secure, it features some odd looking design, with off-putting standard forms and redirects to Google Docs. The overall feel is untrustworthy, so I would personally think twice about going through with investing here. There are also some basic spelling mistakes, ‘currecy’ instead of ‘currency’, for example, and odd grammar.
These are pretty basic deficiencies that certainly detract from the otherwise solid proposition offered by Hellenium. Better web design is required here.
Social Media & Digital Footprint
ICOs and business live and die by their Social Media presence these days. Hellenium’s digital footprint is not great.
LinkedIn – No presence as Hellenium as a whole, though the company’s staff do have profiles
Twitter – 245 followers – poor
Medium – 4 followers – very poor
It is perhaps early days for Hellenium. Its Social Media presence is certainly very, very limited at the time of writing. This aspect would be cause for concern at this particular time.
Conclusion
The Hellenium Project, while interesting and advanced in its conceptual design, does stumble in some basic hurdles, namely its poor Social Media representation, and website design. The team does not have a Web Designer in its ranks, so the job was likely contracted out to an agency. Whether working to specification, or on its own accord, the work can certainly be improved.
That notwithstanding, the concept is sound and does have the potential to shake up the services industry to the core, bringing about much needed change, and more importantly, lower prices.
Consult Hellenium’s White Paper for more information.
Halal Cryptocurrency In The Works For Muslim Communities
The Islamic community’s enthusiasm regarding cryptocurrency could soon create a demand for them to create their own policies and cryptocurrency.
An Islamic economics and financial adviser to the Russian Muftis Council, Madina Kalimullina has recently confirmed that cryptocurrency in the Islamic economic landscape is currently a huge point of discussion. In addition, Kalimullina added that an Islamic crypto community, policies, and currency could be developed within the next two to three years.
According to the Russian news agency, TASS, Kalimullina stated that cryptocurrency with its current features is technically deemed halal. However, she added that this is simply due to a lack of Sharia standards which address the particular issue. In a conference in Kazan, the adviser noted that perhaps Islamic policies regarding cryptocurrency could be created in the next two to three years.
The Russian Islamic community has increasingly raised the topic of discussion both casually but also in Islamic-centred economic meetings. The city of Kazan already boasts its very own “meet-coin” a currency which was designed for livestock settlements.
Kalimullina pointed out that there are several active cryptocurrency exchange platforms in various predominantly Islamic countries. The first wallet to appear in the Middle East, BitOasis, has since its launch been extended to users based in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. In addition, Bitcoin operates in Indonesia, and Malaysia has its very own Coinbox.
However, according to Kalimullina, one of the largest obstacles that the Islamic community faces when it comes to cryptocurrency, is the lack of a single regulator. One of the biggest concerns raised in the high risk (maisir) and uncertainty (garar) in the market, as well as the fact that cryptocurrency offers no tangible assets or endorsements from the state.
Despite the concerns, Islamic people are permitted to freely partake in cryptocurrency-related activities. In an attempt to address some concerns, the UAE recently launched its own cryptocurrency which is backed by gold.
If banking solutions intend to appeal to Islamic sensibilities, they have to comply with the Islamic teachings. This includes adhering to the strict prohibition of both maisir and garar. In terms of assets, Sharia law dictates that an asset needs to be tangible. In addition, the Islamic teaching strictly prohibits money linked to debt, as well as any profits gained from loan installments. Lastly, currencies that seek to be considered halal must be immune to inflation and demonstrate stability in the market.
Plans For Segwit2x “suspended” – Competing Chains Averted
The architects of the contentious and highly-controversial “Segwit2x” (S2X) hard fork to the Bitcoin software have abruptly called off their plans to trigger a block size increase, which was expected to happen in mid-November.
In an email announcement on November 8 written by wallet software BitGo’s CEO Mike Belshe, the reason for the suspension was made in the interest of a united Bitcoin community:
“Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together.”
Since 2014, the Bitcoin community has been split around the intense debate on scalability of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency and has, at times, resulted in antagonistic rivalry.
S2X and a 2MB block size increase had appeared set after its proponents finally yielded to delay a hard fork, signalling for Segwit implementation support that resulted in consensus and activation earlier in August. It was understood by many to be a concession by Bitcoin’s core developers – in exchange for the block size upgrade later on.
However, as the months progressed, support for S2X waned, with original signatories – mostly miners – to the so-called New York Agreement dropping out, some saying they were unaware of what they had committed to under that agreement.
Last month, Bitcoin.org publicly denounced companies supporting the hard fork, warning against attempts to rebrand Bitcoin or depriving users of Bitcoins (for example, by not implementing replay protection on wallet services).
Most Bitcoin commentators will be relieved by the news, with fears that S2X would result in two competing chains, with average users unable to tell the difference had companies supporting S2X followed through on Bitcoin rebranding.
S2X supporters were mainly caught off guard, however, with many taking to social media expressing their shock and disgust at the announcement:
It would seem that mounting pressure and a deepening mistrust of the corporate- and miner-led hard fork attempt has finally caused an official retreat by S2X. However, the message may leave enough to feel that the fight may continue on another day:
“As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase.”
The letter was also signed by Wences Casares (Xapo CEO), Jihan Wu (Bitmain co-founder), Jeff Garzik (Bloq co-founder), Peter Smith (Blockchain CEO) and Erik Voorhees (Shapeshift CEO), some of the strongest supporters of S2X and original signatories to the New York Agreement that initially found support with more than 80% of the world’s total Bitcoin hashing power.
Note: Many want to find best reviews or opinions about the up and coming ICOs. So this is a full disclosure, my articles are NOT any form of advice or recommendation. This is me rolling it out to the best of my abilities for analysing the business. This post will be as neutral as possible with stating key points and facts about this Startup:Experty
Project Brief
Experty is the first Ethereum powered voice and video application which allows users to monetize their time, knowledge, and expertise on a global scale. The Ethereum blockchain allows for automatic payments from client to contractor based on the predetermined rate and the length of the conversation. Experts on any subject can share a link to their Experty profile on any platform they see fit, including but not limited to, social media, websites, and emails. There is no central marketplace.
Basically, it is an Ethereum based skype-like tool for professionals to earn while advising online, securely and efficiently.
The ICO
ICO Coin Name: EXY
Total Tokens: 100 000 000 EXY
Soft cap: 2000 ETH (Est.€510000)
Hard Cap: 5000 ETH (Est. €1273000)
Initial token rate: 1ETH / 1400 EXY (€300)
The Experty token will mainly be used for payment within their platform or applications. Unlike other ICO reviews, Experty is a straightforward application with no complicated multiple usages to its tokens.
Experty is using the ERC223 standard token as the basis of their tokens, which has extra features the ERC20 lacks like zero percent token transfer loss.
Team
The team are all based in Poland with no international team members. I personally believe in diversity and hope they do as well. There are eleven members who are mostly mobile developers with one female employee who is the Software QA. There are three founders KAMIL PRZEORSKI, TOM DYL and GREG KUCMIERZ. All the founders seem to have an engineering background and that is a very big plus.
One small disappointing setback is that there are Business professionals in the team, no Operations or community managers. It’s not all about the beautiful tech, it’s the success of the Startup.
They seem to have more Advisors than the team, depending on how they are utilised an overall decision making can be overwhelming. On a positive note, I found most had very high profiles and good professional background after researching their LinkedIn.
MVP
As far as the MVP (Minimal VIable Product) They have a video demo of the application on Android. I cannot see any indication that there is an actual app that I could physically use or demo myself. The rest of the white paper explains how the app works, which is nice. They do indicate that there will be an Android and Apple app available as alpha release end of 2017. The Beta release will be out the first quarter of 2018. All this is shown on their roadmap on the website.
The main idea of the concept is that Your knowledge provider and knowledge seeker agree on the payment schedule and Amount per minute beforehand. Once the contract is done the knowledge provider receives the money where it was saved as an escrow on the sidechain. If there was any dispute Experty will handle the issue and hold the amount until it is resolved.
Intellectual Property
The guys at Experty don’t have anything listed on their website or the white paper on the intellectual property. My guess would be that their IP is programme the handles the voice call timer when it monetized by using their tokenised system.
Their Github account hasn’t been very active. They do have a list of repositories but they’re last activity was over 15 days ago. Here’s a link below for more details:
The white paper as well designed and there is a good explanation of how the tokens will work and how they will be distributed among the investors. Â they also explain how the app will work well. Â They also have there been listed but not enough info is written about them. A short bio on the core team can be very helpful.
Milestone
Most of its milestone is based on the product map. It is detailed enough with the roadmap on the website going back since 2014 When Their parent company React Poland was established. The roadmap indicates that they received a seed investment fund of $700,000. It goes bit more detail for 2018 when they start schedule in the product releases from mobile apps to web apps and then their desktop version by end of 2018.
Value Proposition
Their value proposition is mainly focused on consultants who are specialists in their industry is no matter where it is. They identified three types of clients the knowledge provided, knowledge seekers, and third party services.
Experty did indicate a potential route to market  Using API  utility to integrate with the likes of  LinkedIn, Github, Qoura.com and coursera.orgÂ
Legal Entity
Experty is partnering with www.MME.ch for legal work. They also indicated that they will comply on a country by country basis. This includes legal and administrative costs regarding our product launch for European and US markets, as well as unbanked regions.
They have two offices one in Poland and in one in Zug, Switzerland. Here are the addresses:
Wieczorka 11/9
44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Baarerstrasse 14-16
6300 Zug, Switzerland
Website Quality
The Website is of high quality and it seems to have a custom built. Â It is well designed and the user experience is easy-to-use. The website loads up quickly which indicates that they are on a European data centre.
The website seems to be hosted by Amazon AWS. That usually indicates the seriousness of their work And development process. They have a high-level SSL certification although free by Let’s Encrypt and DST Root CA.
Social presence
Most of the team have working LinkedIn profiles. Here are some statistics on their social media during the post of this article:
Twitter (3534) not bad!, LinkedIn (1), Telegram (2822), Medium (38). All in all, the Medium blog is updated regularly and their Twitter followers are impressive enough. The company LinkedIn profile is virtually nonexistent which is not a good idea as it is a very important platform if they are targeting professionals as potential customers.
Bottom line
Team is heavy on the developers with very little business development knowledge pool. More activity on LinkedIn would be heavily highly advisable and their github activity is low which makes me wonder if they are actually working on the development of the platform or the apps. Maybe they are working separately on it and then will launch it once it’s ready for alpha testing. This also need to work more on the business model From a validation point of you. There isn’t much validation on the concept or testimonials from Influencers, users and professionals they are seeking to use their services. Something to seriously consider
A Guide To The Best Wallets To Use For Cryptocurrencies
Markets go Mad following Cancellation of Hard fork
16th November had been pencilled in for the SegWitx2 (2x) hard fork. However, in a statement issued today by 2x founders Mike Belshe, along with Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik Voorhees, the hard fork is cancelled immediately.
2x had been created to increase the blocksize and improve Bitcoin scalability. The previous three years had seen the Bitcoin community in crisis according to Belshe’s statement with only 30% support amongst miners for 2x.
Belshe who is CEO and co-founder of bitcoin wallet software provider BitGo, issued the statement in a email today which has caused the markets to go wild. Bitcoin surging up, while alts fell. However, at time of writing these were beginning to bounce back. More volatility is expected.
Initially there was a lot of support  for the project as it broke deadlock in August in phrase one of the project. Phase two as to increase the size of blocksize by 2MB.
Belshe said: ‘Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together. Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x.’
Belshe still believes in on-chain capacity on the blockchain to moderate rising fees. However, in the absence of consensus he announced the suspension of current plans.
Belshe concluded by thanking everyone and confirming his continued dedication to Bitcoin.
Hashgraph Could Eliminate Many Of The Issues Facing Blockchain
Hashgraph – can it give Blockchain a run for its money?
Jillian Godsil, CryptoCoin.News
Ken Anderson, admin of the official Hashgraph Telegram Dev Group as well as CTO for Irish ICO Mingo, believes that Hashgraph has the potential to either eliminate or upgrade the many issues facing the Blockchain.
‘It makes sense that the next step is not another public Blockchain, but a new distributed ledger technology,’ he says. ‘Development is all about improving technology, not getting a piggy back just for the sake of it.’
Maybe it is his background as an ex-Military Intelligence Specialist in the US Army that makes Anderson somewhat fearless when it comes to evaluating new technology. ‘I’m committed to vetting Hashgraph,’ he says.
Anderson and his developers in Mingo have been given permission to go inside the technology but it will be several months before he will commit to his final verdict on the new distributed ledger.
So what is Hashgraph and why might it have the potential to overthrow Blockchain? Firstly, it should be noted that the Hashgraph platform, which is a distributed ledger developed by Swirlds, is currently a private ledger, does not have an ICO planned nor does it have a cryptocurrency.
It does however, take some pretty big swipes at the problematic issues facing Blockchain.
‘If you asked me to say why Hashgraph is looking so good, I’d have to say it is because it addresses issues such as speed, size and fairness before we even look at the core elements of Hashgraph which is also provable, Byzantine, ACID compliant, efficient, inexpensive, timestamped, DoS resistant, and optionally non-permissioned,’ says Anderson.
Hashgraph claims it is much faster than Bitcoin. Bitcoin can only handle 7 transactions per second compared with Visa which can handle 100,000 transactions. Theoretically Hashgraph can handle 250,000 in the same time and maybe more if the bandwidth is sufficiently wide. Bandwidth is the defining factor unlike Blockchain which needs to increase its size to increase transactions which only adds complexity.
Then there is the issue of Proof of Work (POW) in Blockchain. Originally conceived as a consensual and fair way of allocating rewards to miners there are difficulties.  In Bitcoin, miners can control the order of transactions – often on arbitrary terms. Given that Bitcoin can never 100% guarantee confirm a transaction, despite the more blocks moving towards consensus, this creates an inherent, albeit random, bias in the system. It also one of the main reasons mining is so expensive.
Hashgraph on the other hand operates a consensus time stamp approach which means no miner can sideline another and all blocks are accepted in the chain, purely on a timed basis.
In Hashgraph once an event happens everyone on the network knows this. In addition, since there is full disclosure on the network then old blocks can be consigned to history and discarded if wanted. This shrinks the amount of storage from Bitcoin’s current 60GB to a fraction of a single gigabyte. That would even fit on a typical smartphone.
Much of the problems in Blockchain development and future direction also lies in the difficulty by which consensus is achieved – it is not a given but only a growing probability which can lend itself to hard forks and slow reactions to changes.
Hashgraph on the other hand uses the Byzantine fault tolerant protocol. This means no one individual can stop a decision, nor can a decision be reversed by an individual. To maintain this progress Hashgraph also uses Gossip about Gossip protocol. This protocol is well known in the programming community where nodes exchange information to every other node randomly, no one is left hanging and every bit of information – or gossip – is shared on the chain.  Therefore how each node will vote is known in the chain as well as what each node knows and when it got that information is time stamped. If there is an affair in the village then everyone knows about it. This is one village not to plan adultery if you want to stay married.
Currently Hashgraph is a private distributed ledger so it will take people like Anderson to evaluate its claims. If they are right – and it is faster, safer, fairer, cheaper and better as claimed – then it looks likely Hashgraph will give Blockchain a run for its money.
Visa And Monaco Announce First Ever Pre-paid Cryptocurrency Card For Singapore Users
Singapore users will soon have their very own pre-paid cryptocurrency card to use for payments, thanks to VISA and Monaco’s latest joint venture.
Last week Monaco and VISA announced their latest product, a cryptocurrency pre-paid debit card which will be made available for Singapore-based users. Monaco is a Switzerland-based card issuer, and VISA currently boasts being the world’s biggest payment network. The physical card will be used by Wirecard AG.
The physical cards are already available to Singapore-based users to register via the card’s app which is available to download for both iOS and Android. To register, a user is required to enter their email and phone number and verify these contact details, before they can be placed in line to receive their card.
The pre-paid cryptocurrency debit cards do not come attached with any service fees or minimum spend requirements. However, there are four different tiers linked to the card, and a user is placed in a tier according to their Monaco token stakes for a period of six months.
The highest tier in the four-tier system is the Obsidian Black tier. The card is noted for its rarity, as only 999 of these cards will be in circulation at any given time. The Obsidian Black card will provide its user with unlimited interbank exchange rates as well as free ATM withdrawal up to a limit of $1000. After the limit is reached, each withdrawal will come at a 2% charge. In addition, the card features a 2% cash back benefit.
To qualify for this tier, the user has stake a minimum of 50,000 Monaco Tokens for a period of six months. Currently, a single Monaco Token is valued at $6. This means that the user would have to stake Monaco tokens with a total value of $300,000.
The starting tier is the Midnight Blue tier which requires no Monaco Tokens stake and comes free of charge. A Midnight Blue user will be allowed a limited interbank exchange rate per month with the value of up to $2000. After the limit has been reached, each transaction will be subject to a surcharge of 0.5%. In addition, users can enjoy free ATM withdrawals up to the limit of $200.
Others tiers include the Ruby Steel and Precious Metal tiers. These require a stake of between 50 Monaco Tokens and 500 Monaco Tokens over a six month period. This equates to $300 and $3000 respectively.
