Category: News

0Chain’s dStorage teams up with Oracle Blockchain to provide a single source of truth for Hyperledger Fabric data

0Chain LLC, a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today, announced a collaboration with Oracle to provide Hyperledger Fabric customers a solution to use 0Chain dStorage as a trusted party for file-based transactions that require data validation from endorsers. The concept is to have enterprises upload the data to dStorage and submit a transaction to the Fabric with the document hash, and have it verified by endorsers retrieving the data directly from dStorage or through a 3rd party distributed verifier.

There are several use cases for multi-party transactions involving documents in various verticals. One example is in healthcare where a medical claim document shared between patient, hospital, doctor, lab, and insurer need to be secured to prevent fraudulent activity. Other verticals such as supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, banking, real estate, agriculture, identity, voting, insurance, cross-border payment, clearing house, licensing & IP, energy trading, certificates, deeds, ad, registry, telecom, forensics, and government industries could all use the Fabric with dStorage for an end-to-end secure transaction platform.

“The 0Chain dStorage platform protects enterprises from data breaches and provides a single source of truth for multi-party transactions to reduce costs associated with fraud, liability, and dispute,” said Saswata Basu, CEO, 0Chain LLC. “Oracle and 0Chain are at the forefront of innovation and with this relationship, customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the blockchain seamlessly.”

About 0Chain
0Chain is a decentralized storage platform, protecting enterprises from data breaches, and providing a single source of truth for data, with unparalleled privacy, security, transparency, and performance. For more information about 0Chain, please visit https://www.0chain.net, or email at zero@0chain.net

About Oracle PartnerNetwork
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is Oracle’s partner program that provides partners with a differentiated advantage to develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle’s products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Partners engaging with Oracle will be able to differentiate their Oracle Cloud expertise and success with customers through the OPN Cloud program – an innovative program that complements existing OPN program levels with tiers of recognition and progressive benefits for partners working with Oracle Cloud. To find out more visit: https://www.oracle.com/partners/index.html.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 16, 2019 / article by PRNewswire/ —

The Intercontinental Exchange has released the details on the upcoming Bakkt futures:

” ICE Futures U.S. will begin to trade and ICE Clear US will begin to clear the BakktTM Bitcoin (USD) Monthly and Daily Futures contracts on Monday, September 23, 2019. The Exchange notice announcing the launch as well as full contract specifications can be found here. As such, the following tentative margin requirements will be effective with the opening of business on September 23,2019 and there after”

Interesting detail is that the initial hedge requirement will be $3900. More in the PDF below:

Bakkt Futures details PFD

Since the decision on the ETF-application is again delayed by the SEC, VanEck has found another way yo offer a bitcoin backed product to institutional investors. Therefore, VanEck and SolidX announced that the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust (the Trust) will issue shares (the Shares) to Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act).

VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust 144A Shares (the “Trust”) looks and feels like a traditional ETF. The Trust seeks to provide qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) access to a convenient and cost-effective way to buy and hold bitcoin through a cleared security that is tradeable through traditional and prime brokerage accounts. The investment objective of the Trust is to reflect the price of bitcoin, less the expenses of the Trust. The bitcoin held by the Trust are protected by multi-factor, cold storage security. The Trust’s bitcoin holdings are audited and insured by a syndicate of A-rated underwriters against loss or theft.

“Institutional demand for bitcoin exposure is uncertain, because institutional quality vehicles simply have not, to this point, been readily available,” said Jan van Eck, Chief Executive Officer of VanEck. “We’re introducing a solution for institutions that fits within their operational processes and the current regulatory framework.”

This news has already resulted in a spike for Bitcoin, will it reach new highs again?
Read more in the official announcement.

Of the top 5 cryptocurrencies, it is fair to say that Ethereum has had the most turbulent time. Heralded as the Bitcoin beater on its arrival to the market, it looked like the sky was the limit for Ethereum. Then things began to falter and the once stable wheels began to wobble.

Last year, the currency was in a fight for survival and was trying to rally against a resurgent XRP. Its long-held number two spot was under real threat, and worse still, the gap between the remaining chasing pack and Ethereum was narrowing with each passing day.

Although the Ether price has recovered now, whether the coin will be the second-to-the-king for long remains to be seen. But if you’re looking for an attractive prospect to diversify beyond Ethereum, here is the list of its main contenders.

Litecoin
It hasn’t always shone, but has always offered a viable alternative to the big three cryptocurrencies.

It has also been going for a very long time as it was first released in 2011. Technically, Litecoin was a fork (one of the first) on the Bitcoin blockchain and it is no surprise that it operates in almost the same way as Bitcoin.

It tends to do as well or as badly as Bitcoin. The price of Litecoin is almost always linked to the fortunes of its bigger brother. Currently though, Litecoin is far cheaper to buy than Bitcoin or Ethereum. That doesn’t mean it is as cheap as chips, Litecoin holds a fair amount of value per coin and normally operates around $100 per LTC.

If you’re looking for a friendly cryptocurrency to use, trade or invest in, then Litecoin offers this and a great deal more. Like Bitcoin, its usage is being implemented in the real world too, so it might be a matter of time before you’re shopping with Litecoin.

Stellar Lumens
If Litecoin is the same as Bitcoin, Stellar Lumen represents something completely different, although the Stellar Foundation have made use of the Bitcoin brand and even dubbed the Stellar prototype “Secret Bitcoin Project”. After getting a lot of funding from security tech company Stripe, the cat was out of the bag and Stellar was released.

Since then it has plodded along, gathering traction in spurts and its functionality has been lauded as its major strength in the market. Essentially, Stellar Lumen facilitates payments across borders even if the payment is across two currencies. This means it has gained a lot of traffic in the African market and has a large user base.

Today the coin enjoys a relatively comfortable place in the top 10 cryptocurrencies although it holds promise to break into the top 5.

For traders and investors, Stellar Lumen offers a very attractive coin price and market share with positive projections from its fans and developers. So far, Stellar Lumens are mostly present at non-fiat exchanges, but there are a few platforms that will allow you to buy it for fiat money. One such platform is CEX.IO. Here, you will be able to buy XLM using both euro and dollar. So you will have no problem trading Stellar Lumens at the exchange. Another clear advantage of CEX is that it supports multiple payment options for it — credit cards (both Visa and MasterCard), as well as wire transfers.

Dash
Many altcoins are Bitcoin forks. Dash is in the same boat except it has travelled in a very different direction to most Bitcoin forks. Bitcoin is notoriously slow for processing transactions which has led to many coins being created to offer a faster payment solution, but still use Bitcoin’s blockchain technology.

Dash goes one step further and not only provides faster transaction times, but also the transactions that are very difficult to trace. It is one of the cryptocurrencies along with ZCash that aims to provide anonymous transactions. This system is great for users who wish to hide their identities or conduct business in complete privacy, but it has also raised a lot of red flags with regulators and law enforcement agencies.

Dash operates around four times faster than Bitcoin. But despite its ‘speedy’ name, it isn’t the fastest coin on the market. What it does offer new users is an accessible buying price and the potential for plenty of growth. This makes it a viable and well-respected altcoin.

There may be trying times ahead, with transparency of transactions likely to be scrutinized a lot more closely, but this intense focus extends across much of the cryptocurrency market at the moment.

To Sum It Up
Hopefully you have enjoyed looking at the other options to Ethereum, and there are many altcoins that sit lower down the food chain that offer real opportunities. Be careful when selecting cryptocurrencies that seem to promise something too good to be true, especially if they are very new to the market. Sometimes, it is best to let these coins ‘marinade’ a bit and see how they develop before taking the plunge and backing them.

Remember to always stay safe and protect your cryptocurrency investment.

This is a paid for article by Mary Ann Callahan from Cex.io

As expected, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again postponed their decisions on proposals of an exchange-traded-fund(ETF). An ETF is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks. An ETF holds assets such as stocks, commodities, or bonds and generally operates with an arbitrage mechanism designed to keep it trading close to its net asset value, although deviations can occasionally occur. Most ETFs track an index, such as a stock index or bond index. ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features.

Three asses managers have applied to the SEC to list their ETF:
– VanEck SolidX
– Bitwise Asset Management; and
– Wilshire Phoenix

The SEC has delayed their decisions to October 2019. The Commission finds it appropriate to designate a longer period within which to issue an order approving or disapproving the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider this proposed rule change.

These three ETF’s can fall in line with quite a few other delayed decisions and rejected ETF’s, such as the Gemini ETF by the Winklevoss twins.

An ETF is to believed one of the turning points in crypto adoption, since it would make trading against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies more accessible to normal market investors. It appears that the crypto-community has to hold its breath for a few months longer than expected.

In this article I will give you some pointers in how to recognize scam coins & projects through whitepaper research. Although most projects that turned out to be a scam had a great whitepaper, some of them gave away their bad intentions in the whitepaper.

What is a whitepaper?
So what is a Whitepaper exactly? When a company intends to launch a new cryptocurrency, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. This document contains the technical, financial and commercial information about the project. This document normally explains in plain language what they’re planning to build, to attract investors and other interested parties. In other words, the whitepaper explains the project’s purpose and process, the Why and the How.

Not every project or coin starts with a whitepaper. Litecoin started by giving a video presentation on ‘Creating Litecoin’ at a Coinbase event. Loom Network decided not to write a whitepaper, but immediately started developing and delivering code. Others are just forks of existing projects, like Bitcoin, so they don’t have their own whitepaper. Some projects bring out a Pink Paper, Green Paper or Yellow Paper and other projects, such as Cardano, bring out multiple whitepapers to describe every part of the tech they are building. Luckily, 99% of the cryptocurrencies and ICO’s still release a whitepaper at some point to outline their project and tech. So if you thinking about investing in a new coin or ICO (and to avoid scams) your first stop is reading the whitepaper.

What parts of a whitepaper do I need to check to avoid scams?
Although scam projects are getting better and better in not raising any suspicion, there are some sections of the whitepaper which you need to take a closer look at to filter out unreliable projects.

Technology – The most important thing is the project’s proposed (technical) solution to a real and relevant problem. It makes no difference if it’s something new or a better application of existing tech, when the problem they’re trying to solve doesn’t need solving, there’s a big chance the project will fail or is set up to raise a quick buck. This is usually the most difficult to verify, but keep an eye out for common buzzwords that are solely used to confuse u without really explaining what the project is about.

Team, Advisors & Partnerships– The people behind the project should be easy to verify. Check their Linkedin, online profiles, company profiles, any addresses you find, advisors, partnerships etc. Don’t be afraid to openly ask them if they’re involved in the project. Fitrova, a project that did an exit scam, boasted about great partnerships, but after checking with those partners they denied even knowing the CEO. Declouds, also a scam, wanted to prove his alleged partnership with a bank, by photoshopping himself into a picture of the board members of that bank. And finally I almost participated in an ICO with fake team members, but just in time the community found out that all the pictures where stolen from some Australian School Board website. So always doublecheck the information provided to you about the people behind the project and don’t forget to do a reverse image search on their pictures.

Roadmap – Technical development always takes longer than promised, but a roadmap gives you an idea if they’re realistic about their goals. If the roadmap states that a mainnet will be delivered within a few months, that would be great, but could also indicate that they’re trying to make a quick buck (unless the started the development way before the ICO of course).

Token Allocation & Price – Things to look at are the amount of tokens they are going to bring out. It’s a difficult factor, but it might give you an idea if they’re realistic about the project or just want to make a lot of money. If their total token supply and pricing results in a really high marketcap, you should be suspicious about their intentions. Other thing to look at: Will the tokens be locked up (vesting) for team members? Will they burn unsold tokens? Can they bring out extra tokens whenever they decide to do so? Normally the best token allocation for investors is projects with a low token supply, so you get a bigger piece of the pie when you invest, but this strongly depends on the other factors.

The Rest – There are so many things that could be red flags. Make sure to also verify the information on their websites and social media, does it look real or are they just using empty words, fake testimonials and social media bots. It wouldn’t be the first time that you are let to believe they already have a nice User Interface for their wallet, but in reality that are just stolen pictures from another project. Also beware of dubious statements, like stating they’re SEC-compliant or already have secured listing on big exchanges. Or things like saying their product can be used in any store or with every bank. Watch out for Ponzi Schemes like Bitconnect, with promised returns on investment for holding their coins. Sometimes they bloat with big whales who have invested already. Always check out the contribution address and try to trace back those big whales, to make sure it’s not the team contributing to itself faking that they already have landed investors.

Conclusion
In the end, you must feel safe about the project’s intent after reading the whitepaper. A lot of projects that turned out to be a scam had a legit whitepaper at first sight. But after looking closer into the promises they make in the document, how they’re going to build it and with whom they plan to make it a success, it should’ve been possible for investors to pick out the red flags. Of course there are many other factors that could lead to the conclusion that the project is a scam, but researching the whitepaper is one of the most accessible ways for you to verify it yourself.
Fortunately, www.allcryptowhitepapers.com has the largest whitepaper database in the world. With almost 1700 projects in our database, it’s the best place to start your research. Also don’t forget to check out the Whitepaper of the Week and News section, so you don’t miss out on anything. Knowledge is power!

The SEC also has made a great website to warn people about risky ICO’s and scams and they also included a whitepaper about their fake-scamproject, in which you will recognize many of the pointers I brought up in this article, You can check that out here:Howeycoin.

Header image by https://photos.icons8.com/

STO’s are expected to be the new ICO’s. But with every hype, you will also have to be careful that you are not being scammed by malicious projects and people who are trying to profit from gullible investors. In this short article I will give you some pointers in how to research a crypto project by researching its whitepaper. Apart from making sure that you invest in a solid project, whitepaper research could also help you avoiding scams.

What is a whitepaper?
So what is a Whitepaper exactly? When a company intends to launch a new crypto, they usually set out all the details in a Whitepaper. This file contains the technical, financial and commercial information about the project, such as an overview of the market, risks, and the use of invested funds. It normally sets out in plain language what they’re planning to build, to attract investors and other interested parties. In other words, the whitepaper explains the project’s purpose and process, the Why and the How.

Some projects do not start with bringing out a whitepaper. Loom network decided not to write a whitepaper, but immediately started developing and delivering code. Litecoin started out by giving a video presentation on ‘Creating Litecoin’ at a Coinbase event. And others are just forks of existing projects, like Bitcoin, so they don’t have their own whitepaper. Some projects bring out a Purple Paper, Green Paper or Yellow Paper or, such as Cardano, bring out multiple whitepapers to describe every part of the technology they’re developing. Luckily, almost every cryptocurrency and STO still release a whitepaper at some point in their roadmap, to outline their project and tech. So if you thinking about investing in a new token or STO and also want to avoid scams, your first stop is reading the whitepaper.

What to look for in a whitepaper?
Technology – The most important thing is the project’s proposed (technical) solution to a real problem, for a large enough relevant market. It makes no difference if it’s something new or a better application of existing tech, when the problem they’re trying to solve doesn’t need solving, there’s a big chance the project will fail or is set up to raise a quick buck. It shouldn’t be a ‘decentralized’ solution to a problem that has already been solved ‘centrally’, without the need for a blockchain or cryptocurrency.

Scam warning: Keep a look out for common buzzwords that are solely used to confuse u, without really explaining what the project is about.

Team – The people behind the project are essential for making it a success. Check out the team and their advisors thoroughly. What is their previous experience? What is their education? Are they involved in more projects? Ask questions if you are in doubt.

Scam warning: Scourge the internet and Linkedin for the team members and verify that they are the real deal. Don’t forget to Google their pictures, if any, to see if they’re legit and not copied from another project/website. There have been some rumors about a scam-project that copied the UI/UX imagepreviews from another company and the pictures of their alleged team members were actually some stolen pictures of middle school teachers in Australia. Also verify the project’s claimed partnerships, since some other scam-projects were suspected by the communities of advertising fake partnerships or photoshopping themselves in pictures with the board members of those ‘partners’.

Roadmap – Technical development always takes longer than promised, but a roadmap gives you an idea if they’re realistic about their goals. If the mainnet is set to be delivered in 1+ years, that might be a more risky investment considering the rapidly changing crypto environment and other (similar) projects popping up.

Scam warning: If the roadmap states that a mainnet will be delivered within a few months, that would be great, but could also indicate that they’re trying to make a quick buck (unless the started the development way before the STO of course).

Token allocation – Things to look at are the amount of tokens they are going to bring out. Will the tokens be locked up (vesting) for team members? Will they burn unsold tokens? Can they bring out extra tokens whenever they decide to do so? Or are they gradually releasing new tokens at set times? Is there an inflation rate? What is the consensus mechanism? These are all factors to take into consideration when you make an investment. Normally the best token allocation for investors is projects with a low token supply, so you get a bigger piece of the pie when you invest, but this strongly depends on the other factors.

Scam warning: this is a difficult factor, but it might give you an idea if they’re realistic about the project or just want to make a lot of money. If their total token supply and pricing results in a really high market cap, you should be suspicious about their intentions.

SEC-compliance – The SEC is going to release a guidance on security token analysis. This enables security tokens to be structured in accordance with securities regulations, so that token holders’ rights can be similar to those who buy shares in a publicly traded company. You can check with the team if there’s been a SEC-filing and read the SEC’s rules to confirm the STO is going in the right direction.

The rest – Many other things in a whitepaper could be a dealbreaker for smart investors. What are the short and long term goals of the token holders? What role do the tokens play in the project? Can you use the tokens for a certain product, or are they more like shares in a company? Are there many large private sale investors with influence on the team or are the tokens distributed to many smaller investors? What is their marketing strategy?

Scam warning: There are so many things that could be red flags. Make sure to verify any info on their websites and social media, does it look real or are they just using empty words, fake testimonials and social media bots. Are there no dubious statements? For example, IOTA (which was not a scam at all) allegedly claimed a Microsoft partnership, which actually was just an Office 365 subscription. Be aware of claims that their product can be used in any store or with every bank. Watch out for Ponzi Schemes like Bitconnect, with promised returns on investment for holding their tokens. Sometimes they bloat with big whales who have invested already. Always check out the contribution address and try to trace back those big whales, to make sure it’s not the team contributing to itself faking that they already have landed investors.

Conclusion
In the end, you must feel some form of excitement after reading the whitepaper. You have to have faith in the Why & How of the project and the team. You want to leave your money into the hands of a trustworthy project with a clear road ahead. A lot of projects that turned out to be a scam had a legit whitepaper at first sight. But after looking closer into the promises they make in the document, how they’re going to build it and with whom they plan to make it a success, it should’ve been possible for investors to pick out the red flags. Of course there are many other factors that could lead to the conclusion that the project is not a solid investment, but researching the whitepaper is one of the most accessible ways for you to verify it yourself.

Fortunately, www.allcryptowhitepapers.com has the largest whitepaper database in the world. With 2600+ projects in our database, it’s the best place to start your research. Also don’t forget to check out the Whitepaper of the Week and News section, so you don’t miss out on anything. Knowledge is power!

Article by John van Rijck from www.allcryptowhitepapers.com

Header image by https://photos.icons8.com/