Venezuela is Launching Yet Another Cryptocurrency to Save the Economy (News.Vice.com)
Nicolas Maduro is so convinced that cryptocurrencies are going to save the failing Venezuelan economy that he’s launching the state’s second official digital token in the space of a week. On Wednesday he announced Venezuela will launch the “petro gold” next week, following Tuesday’s launch of a pre-sale of the petro, a digital currency backed by the country’s oil reserves, Maduro hopes it can raise as a much as $6 billion, and he said the pre-sale had raised $735 million in one day, but he gave no details about who had invested.
TRON: A Prospect for the Future Cryptocurrency Market (GlobalCoinReport.com)
TRON, a decentralized blockchain-based protocol, is one of the most widely used and effective cryptocurrencies among those recently converted cryptocurrencies. TRON is basically a blockchain based protocol that is designed for the digital entertainment industry and offers a decentralized platform capable of providing various entertainment contents by leveraging a combination of blockchain and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. TRX, the official cryptocurrency of TRON, aims to curtail the unmitigated control of a certain number of organizations like Google, Amazon, etc over the internet by handing the ownership of the data pool to the user. Here, a few aspects of this new cryptocurrency and its surmised future will be discussed.
Pixabay/Public Domain
What Is Viacoin? (TheMerkle.com)
What Is Viacoin Exactly? While most people know Viacoin as just another cryptocurrency with a Scrypt mining algorithm, there is a lot more to this project than meets the eye. It is also one of the early adopters of Scrypt merged mining, which means one can mine Viacoin alongside other supported currencies without losing hashrate. Under the hood, the Viacoin project has some very interesting features to take note of. It’s also 25 times faster than Bitcoin in terms of transaction speed.
Bitcoin Drops Below $10K as Crypto Markets Dip (CoinDesk.com)
Signs of bull market exhaustion in the bitcoin market may be having a knock-on effect across cryptocurrencies in general. All of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization – bar nano, dentacoin and tether – are in the red today, according to CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped over 8 percent in the last 24 hours, as was indicated by the bearish reversal pattern on the daily charts and head-and-shoulders breakdown on the hourly chart. As of writing, BTC had dropped to $9,958 – down 16.72 percent from the recent high of $11,958 hit on Feb. 20.
What Is Stellar Cryptocurrency? (Investopedia.com)
Even as bitcoin garnered headlines last year, there were other cryptocurrencies which racked up more impressive gains and traction among developers. Stellar was one of them. With its price shooting up by approximately 41,900 percent in 2017, the cryptocurrency was among last year’s star performers. It has continued the sterling performance this year. In a market marked by steep declines, the cryptocurrency has eked out gains of 5.26% since the start of 2018 and had a market cap of $7.5 billion, as of this writing.
Ethereum Startup Healthureum To Bring Blockchain To Indian Healthcare (Blocktribune.com)
Estonia-based startup Healthureum is bringing blockchain technology to Indian healthcare through an ethereum platform that consolidates all medical data. It expects widespread adoption in hospitals and clinics by November 2018. Spearheaded by a team of medicine specialists, data scientists and technologists, Healthureum’s platform is designed to improve efficiency and interoperability of healthcare services. It operates on the ethereum blockchain using an ERC20 standard to deploy smart contracts for health-related services.
UK Treasury Mulls Regulating Cryptocurrency ‘Whilst Not Stifling Innovation’ (IBTimes.co.uk)
The Treasury Committee is launching a new inquiry into digital currencies and distributed ledger technology, looking at the opportunities and risks the technology may bring to consumers, businesses, and the Government. The Treasury, Financial Conduct Authority, and the Bank of England will assess how regulation could be balanced to provide adequate protection for consumers and businesses without stifling innovation. It will also consider the potential impact of distributed ledger technology on financial institutions, including the central bank, and financial infrastructure, said a statement.
Litecoin Cash Has Forked But It’s Hardly Trading (CoinDesk.com)
Call it a slow start. A plan to launch a new cryptocurrency by forking the litecoin blockchain went off without a major technical hitch over the weekend, but at press time, the market isn’t exactly embracing the new coin. Currently trading at just $5 on a little over $1 million in volume, litecoin cash (LCC) is valued at just 2 percent of the price of the official litecoin project, the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency by total value and one of the few cryptocurrencies to see nearly $1 billion in trading volume. The lackluster pricing follows what had been a notable start as far as the price action is concerned.
Founder of Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Exchange BitFunder Arrested and Charged (Metro.co.uk)
The founder of a Bitcoin exchange was arrested yesterday during a probe into a huge cryptocurrency heist. Jon Montroll, founder of BitFunder, is accused of lying to American regulators in a bid to avoid taking responsibility a theft in which hackers escaped with a stash of Bitcoin that is now worth almost $70 million. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan announced the charges against BitFunder founder Jon Montroll the same day the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit accusing him and the company of running an unregistered securities exchange that defrauded its users.
669 Cases of Dubious Cryptocurrency Transactions Reported in 2017 (The-Japan-News.com)
TOKYO (Jiji Press) — A total of 669 cases of dubious cryptocurrency transactions, such as suspected money laundering cases, were reported by exchange operators to authorities in Japan in 2017, a National Police Agency report released Thursday showed. About 500 cases, or over 70 percent of the total, were reported in the final three months of the year. Beginning April last year, cryptocurrency exchanges are obliged to report suspicious transactions to authorities. According to the Financial Services Agency, in Japan as of Feb. 2, there were 16 registered cryptocurrency exchanges and as many exchanges applying for registration. The report showed that 146 cases of dubious transactions were reported to authorities by jewelry and precious metals dealers, up over five-fold from the previous year. The rise apparently reflected growth in the number of gold bullion smuggling cases.
Maduro Says New ‘Petro’ Cryptocurrency Made $735 Million in First Day (LoopTT.com)
Cash-strapped Venezuela on Tuesday became the first country to launch its own version of bitcoin, a move President Nicolas Maduro celebrated as putting his country on the world’s technological forefront. In its first hours on the market, the so-called petro racked in $735 million worth in purchases, Maduro said without providing details. The petro is backed by Venezuela’s crude oil reserves, the largest in the world, yet it hit the market as the socialist country sinks deeper into an economic crisis marked by soaring inflation and food shortages that put residents in lines for hours to buy common products.
