Cycle Your Way to Wealth With 50cycles
Have you ever looked out the window on a rainy morning and thought, “I wouldn’t cycle to work if someone paid me to do it”? Well, you might reconsider as now someone really will pay you to brave the bad weather and traffic, and get on your bike. 50cycles, a London based startup has partnered with LoyalCoin to develop a scheme to reward cyclists for doing what they do best: cycling!
And the scheme is as easy as riding a bike. By using 50cycles’ newly developed e-bike, cyclists will earn LoyalCoin of an equivalent value of £20 for every thousand miles they cycle. That works out at just over £0.02 per mile, which might not be enough to get some of you dusting off your Lycra shorts. The e-bike itself costs almost £1700. But don’t worry, you only have to cycle a mere 85,000 miles before you’ve recouped the cost. Surely it’s all downhill after that!
Hollywood to Tackle Blockchain in Indie Thriller, “Crypto”
If you are finding that the current Cryptocurrency market lacks drama, you may soon be able to watch the Hollywood version in your local cinema. The Hollywood Reporter announced this week that an indie thriller set in the murky world of crypto money laundering is about to go into production. The movie, which stars Kurt Russel along with a host of familiar faces from TV hits Westworld and Mad Men, will focus on an anti-money laundering unit and its efforts to tackle a criminal gang that is using cryptocurrency to hide its dodgy dealings.
Director John Stalberg Jr promises a “timely, thrilling story” and the project is bound to attract interest from the blockchain community who will, no doubt, be eager to see how the film explains the intricacies of the technology to the movie going world.
Denver Drops Paper In Favour of Blockchain
It is well known that newspaper sales have fallen in recent years, and many people now prefer to find their daily news fix online. In Denver, Colorado, journalists have taken this one step further by setting up a media outlet in partnership with blockchain startup, Civil Media Company.
The journalists left their jobs as writers for the Denver Post following the paper’s acquisition by a New York hedge fund. Seeing that their beloved paper was being turned into little more than a vehicle to sell advertising, the journalists decided to go it alone. Their new venture, called The Colorado Sun will store data using blockchain technology and is being launched with a grant from Civil Media Company. More funding is needed however, and the Sun has launched a kickstarter campaign in the hope of attracting further investment. If successful, the paper will be the first fully ad-free, journalist owned news outlet in the world and could signal the dawn of new era in news reporting. Civil Media Company, meanwhile, hopes to have a thousand news outlets on the Ethereum blockchain by the end of the year.
Monero Cryptojackers Arrested in Japan
In another first of its kind, police in Japan have arrested sixteen people suspected of using the processing power of unsuspecting computer owners to mine Monero. The process, known as cryptojacking was carried out by installing malware, including the Coinhive programme onto computers. The programme then mined used the processing power of the computers to mine Monero and pass the currency back to the cryptojacker. Coinhive has been in the news more than once since its launch last year. In January, a hacker used Google Ads to deliver Coinhive to unsuspecting computer owners, even using the app to target YouTube.
Although the arrests will be seen as a success for law enforcement of this type of crime, how the suspected culprits will be punished is another matter. Japanese law does not appear to outlaw this type of activity at the present time. However, it is likely that law enforcement agencies around the world will be watching this story closely to learn how best to deal with a type of fraudulent activity that can easily go undetected for long periods of time.
Altcoins Show Drop In Prices
Ether was volatile this week, with large swings particularly in the middle of the week. It opened on Monday at $532 before plummeting to $467 on Wednesday. It dramatically climbed to $517 on Thursday before seeing out the week around the $500 mark. Ripple followed a similar pattern, opening at $0.58 and dropping midweek to $0.52 and struggling to make up any ground for the rest of the week. It closed on Sunday trading at $0.51. Bitcoin Cash was the one hit hardest by the midweek slump, opening at $935 on Monday and hitting a low of $826 by Wednesday. A slight recovery followed and it finished the week at $850. EOS fared little better, opening at $11.25 before plunging to $9.46 on Wednesday. It was back at a week high of $11.52 by Thursday but couldn’t better $10.70 by the week’s end. Litecoin reached its lowest point of the year this week when it traded for $91 on Wednesday. This was following an opening of $107 on Sunday. Like elsewhere, a sharp upward curve on Thursday gave way to steady decline and Litecoin finished the week at $97.
Altcoins slumped on Wednesday along with Bitcoin, as so often happens. It is likely that the expiry of Bitcoin futures led to a sell-off, and where Bitcoin goes, Altcoins tend to follow. Check current prices here.
