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Electroneum [ETN] Continues To Target Developing Countries By Launching Free and Affordable Services

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The financial markets across the world are not uniformly distributed: some regions have access to 24 x 7 banking while other regions have millions of unbanked citizens. Electroneum, the popular cryptocurrency organization has decided that the asset will be sued to bring a better financial structure to the poor countries of Africa.

Electroneum has launched its own ‘AnyTask’ feature for developing countries to give the power back to the people. The selected countries include citizens who are not able to conduct basic tasks like paying bills because of the sheer effort required to do so. 

The cryptocurrency company recently stated that ‘AnyTask’ wanted to solve conventional day-to-day problems faced by people. The main aim of ETN is to bring the burgeoning digital economy to those who are less fortunate.

AnyTask works as a freelance platform where people can post their skills which can be used to hire them. The buyer has the option to pay using a debit or credit card while the seller receives the payment in Electroneum. This is a big boon to the unbanked sectors within developing economies across the globe.

Payments are processed by the crypto company itself and converted into Electroneum (ETN) by one of their partners. This makes the entire process simple for both buyer and seller. To make the online process easier, Electroneum has ensured that they have Partnerships with third-party airtime and data providers.

Electroneum had taken significant strides to ensure that citizens in Africa can use their phone to conduct payments and that led its launch in Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria. During the launch, Electroneum CEO Richard Ells had said:

“We are pleased to announce the launch in these three African nations, where we see a clear opportunity to enable Electroneum users to top-up mobile airtime through a third-party provider of the major mobile network operators.”

Out of the 25 million mobile subscribers in Uganda, 99 percent of them can top-up their phone using ETN now. This mobile reach allows them to access services such as TaskSchool. This service provided by Electroneum aims to educate people on various skills that they might need. Due to the steps taken by Electroneum and cell providers such as Africell and Airtel, millions of people are able to access such services.

Financial inclusion is the need of the hour and cryptocurrencies such as ETN are right in the thick of it. Electroneum officials are out to prove that the asset can provide real-time solutions and is not just a whitepaper. According to reports, companies such as Electroneum target large unbanked populations because they also tend to have the fastest-growing economies.

The untapped markets in developing regions are not just a social issue but also an economic one. Electroneum’s early entry into the African market is expected to earn them massive dividends soon because of projected growth rates.  According to some estimates, the addition of developing countries into the digital fold will open up another $3.7 trillion in terms of Gross Domestic Product [GDP].

Infamous Bitcoin Scammer Gets Deserved jail time; Victims Wait For Compensation

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Cryptocurrency scams have been prevalent in the industry since its inception and several people have lost their holdings to scammers and fraudsters. In a new turn of events, one such scammer has been caught and sentenced by a court in the United States.

Just recently, Patrick McDonnell, was prosecuted by a US Magistrate court for scamming multiple people of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin by using a fake company.

The fraudster, who was called ‘evil’ by Judge Nicholas Garaufis was found guilty over the weekend for defrauding investors of their money using a company called ‘CabbageTech’. The fraudulent activities took place between 2014 and 2018, right on the cusp of the Bitcoin boom. The 47-year-old McDonnell told his victims that he would buy and trade virtual currencies [esp. Bitcoin] if they invested in his made-up organization. He conducted his business from Staten Island and ensured that he used fake names and masks at all times.

Multiple people had invested in McDonnell’s company with one paying close to $170,000 in BTC. This particular victim released a tell-all letter to the court which described the steps taken to McDonnell to loot him off his savings. The scammer had used the pseudonym ‘Jason Fleck’ to call the investors multiple times for a chance to be a part of ‘CabbageTech’.

The victim had initially paid $250 on a trial basis but ‘Fleck’ wanted more to further his malicious cause. The letter provided by the victim stated that he brought another $25,000 worth of cryptocurrencies which he invested in the aforementioned company.

McDonnell’s website showed that the man’s investment had multiplied to $100,000, all of which was pocketed by the scammer. Making the ruling on the case, Judge Nicholas Garaufis said:

“You are evil… And these people are injured. I have little sympathy for this defendant.”

Post the judge’s decision, McDonnell pleaded guilty and expressed remorse at his actions. He claimed that he knew he had hurt a lot of people by lying to them and will do everything to turn over a new leaf.

McDonnell had a run-in with the law earlier too when the United States CFTC had initiated a lawsuit against him in 2018. The regulatory body revealed that CabbageTech had scammed just above $11 million from prospective suitors. The CFTC had then decided to issue a penalty on $1.3 million on McDonnell although the maximum amount was much heftier.

The fraudster had broken several subsections of the Commodity Exchange Act and the latest court decision was conceptualized from that.

The presiding judge, as well as the CFTC, have both stated that no form of scams will be tolerated with the US now having the technology to lock-in on digital asset frauds.

Source:New York Daily News

Peter Schiff Blames Crypto Industry for BTC Shutout; Erik Voorhees, Jameson Lopp claim he’s crying wolf

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There have been several reported cases of people losing their digital assets like Bitcoin mainly because of negligence or actions taken by bad actors. In a recent twist of events, it has been discovered that a gold proponent had lost all of his BTC holdings.

Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and major Gold ‘shiller’ tweeted recently that he had lost all his BTC because of a supposed problem with his Bitcoin wallet. This news resulted in several crypto evangelists coming forth to defend the characteristics of the world’s largest cryptocurrency. 

The host of the Peter Schiff show has a reputation for being against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Schiff has also maintained strongly that no matter what the developments, gold will always reign supreme over Bitcoin. This sentiment was one of the reasons why crypto supporters thought Schiff’s latest story was fabricated. His tweet read:

The error message on Schiff’s wallet pointed out that there was an issue with decrypting the individual wallet file. Now it is not really confirmed if Schiff actually lost all of his assets but some BTC proponents were having none of it.

Erik Voorhees, the CEO of Shapeshift candidly stated that the mistake was all on Schiff because there was no integral mistake with the Bitcoin wallet. Voorhees claimed that he had helped Schiff set up the wallet and had even asked him to secure it properly.

According to the Shapeshift official, Peter Schiff had actually forgotten his password and was trying to blame the cryptocurrency for no substantial reason. Even Jameson Lopp joined hands with Voorhees in stating that crypto provides financial sovereignty, albeit to users who are careful.

Schiff followed up his original tweet with one saying that the BTC he lost were ‘gifted’ to him. He reiterated that he did not believe in Bitcoin but was rather planning to HODL his assets till ‘Bitcoin sank’. It was understandable as to why the crypto community questioned the authenticity of Schiff’s comments.

The gold bug had made multiple headlines earlier when he claimed that marijuana was more useful than Bitcoin. His logic was that users cannot do anything with BTC but if the same person smokes marijuana, they get high.

Despite the cloud surrounding this event, the issue of cryptocurrency wallet losses has been persistent within the industry. Last year, customers lost almost $145 million in terms of holdings due to the death of Quadriga CX CEO, Gerald Cotten. This was a major reminder to people that they need to be more careful about their private keys and passwords so that they can retrieve their BTC safely.

IOTA’s Value Expected to Hit $700 Billion by 2035, Claims Fundstrat’s Latest Report

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Twenty-twenty has been seen as the year when altcoins will surge and grow at substantial reports, according to analysts. At a time when Bitcoin has been holding near the $9000 mark, Fundstrat has come out with a report pointing at another unlikely hero.

Fundstrat’s latest report stated that IOTA, the cryptocurrency based on the concept of the Internet of Things can grow to become the global standard for machine to machine payments. 

The company’s report claimed that the 22nd ranked cryptocurrency’s market cap had the potential to rise to $700 billion. This comes at a time when the BTC market cap was near $155 billion mark. Over the past year, IOTA has been trying to break into the distributed ledger technology [DLT] network, competing with bigwigs such as XRP. The DLT market is estimated to climb towards a whopping $3.3 billion and IOTA is expected to grab a healthy 20 percent of the total.

According to Fundstrat:

“IOTA is in the process of establishing standards and contributing its open-source code to a contributor network in partnership with the standards body Object Management Group (adoption process expected to be completed by late 2020). We believe the winning standard will have dominant market share.”

Fundstrat has taken multiple strides in the cryptocurrency space and Tom Lee’s comments on the industry have also popularized it. The market strategy organization stated that IOTA possessed several key features that were hallmarks of a seamless cryptocurrency.

One major factor was IOTA’s feeless and permissionless payment methods. This allowed several users to conduct a large number of secure, encrypted, low value and no-value transactions. The IOTA ecosystem enables users to proceed with micropayments for data sharing between users and devices. Several cryptocurrencies consider micropayments as the next potential growth sector, including Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

Fundstrat believed that IOTA would grow significantly only on the back of standard adoption and partnerships, a key aspect within the industry nowadays. The Internet of Things gave a major boost to IOTA, especially after the interest taken by institutional investors. The report stated that the solutions provided by IOTA would boost eight-core verticles.

These verticals included retail, health, energy, mobility, cities, manufacturing, public services and others. All the aforementioned sectors fell in the ‘business-facing’ category while IOTA also targetted the ‘consumer-facing’ department. As per the new report, the total value of the global data and payments market is projected to hit $684 billion in 2035. Out of this, IOTA has the opportunity to revel in the $68 billion DLT market with a projected revenue share of $3.3 billion.

IOTA has been one of the few cryptocurrency organizations that have created partnerships with several mainstream companies, including the EDAG Group and Jaguar Land Rover. These tie-ups have also been included in the projections conducted by Fundstrat. The predictions for IOTA are based on its performance on the charts and the cryptocurrency will need more bull runs to sustain the growth.

At press time, IOTA was trading for $0.24 with a total market cap of $667.96 billion. The cryptocurrency’s 24-hour market volume was $14.6 million after taking a 3.84 percent hit in the daily timeframe.

Source:https://www.ccn.com/

Faketoshi Fails to Show Keys to His Satoshi Nakamoto Treasure, BTC Worth $8 Billion Hangs in Limbo

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The inception of Bitcoin has been probably the best story in the cryptocurrency space however that has additionally been tangled up in multiple controversies. This included the infamous claims made by Dr. Craig Wright, who said that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto

Wright or ‘Faketoshi’ had recently made news when he claimed that he had the private keys to access the $8 billion belonging to the original Satoshi Nakamoto. Yet, yesterday, the story took a new turn when the computer scientist’s lawyer revealed that there were no private keys at all. 

Wright had before filed a statement in the Southern District of Florida last Tuesday where he repeated that he had information about the billions worth of BTC addresses. The general consensus in the cryptocurrency industry was that only the real Satoshi Nakamoto would possess these details.

The nChain Chief Scientist had told the court that the private keys would come via courier well before the court proposed the deadline of February 3. Despite the arrival of the courier, Wright’s lawyer said that he was still not able to access the millions of BTC that were supposedly his.

The legal battle between Wright and Ira Kleiman, brother of the late Dave Kleiman has been ongoing for a year now. The case hinged on the fact of whether Kleiman was cheated of his Bitcoin earnings because of Wright and his claims of being the sole miner in their partnership.

Andres Rivero, a partner at Rivero Mestre and the Wright’s attorney stated:

“The file that he’s received did not include private keys. The critical thing about the ruling is that it allows us to go to trial to prove that no partnership existed. The prior ruling by the magistrate judge that was vacated determines the facts of the case. A district court judge has vacated those rulings and has left those questions open now to the jury.”

The lawyer argued that his team had interviewed and questioned multiple people close to Kleiman to get to the bottom of the issue. According to Rivero, nobody had backed up Ira Kleiman’s version of David Kleiman being the co-inventor of Bitcoin.

As the situation gets more and more tense, there was another development in the Bitcoin space directly related to it. On January 15, Whale Alert reported that a million BTC worth $8.7 billion was transferred from ‘Craig’s imaginary wallet’ to Huobi.

This occurred right after Wright’s initial claims that he could prove he was the owner of the Private keys. Later analysis of the transfer showed that it was not actually Wright transferring the money but rather was Bitfinex refilling its hot wallet.

North Korea’s Lazarus Targets Crypto Users in UK and China

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In the latest series of reports, it has been revealed that North Korean Lazarus Group were targetting cryptocurrency holdings in the United Kingdom as well as other countries. At the same time, the United Nations has asked people to stay away from an upcoming conference in the closed-off country.

Cryptocurrency scams have taken up a lot of air time recently with each one being more devious and massive than the last. This has also been one of the main reasons why a lot of institutions refrain from entering the decentralized ecosystem.

North Korea's Lazarus Targets Crypto Users in UK and China
Lazarus Targets Crypto Users in UK and China

The Lazarus Group is a cult hacker organization known for audacious cyber heists around the world. The group, which is based out of North Korea and as per sources, were accused of launching waves of attacks on several regions in a bid to collect massive amounts of cryptocurrencies. Some have even claimed that the stolen capital will be used to fund the autocratic regime run by Kim Jong-Un.

Although Pyongyang has denied all said allegations, investigations are still being conducted to confirm the actual source and perpetrators. Kaspersky Labs, the cybersecurity company had assigned researchers to track the fund trial. They discovered that the UK was one of several countries to be hit with this menace, a list that also included Poland, Russia and China.

Kaspersky confirmed that a majority of the victims were linked to crypto business entities. Hackers usually prefer cryptocurrencies because legal agencies have no way of tracking such expenditure of transfers.

The Lazarus group has also dabbled in spreading a malware called UnionCCryptoTrader via the popular messaging platform Telegram. The malware usually targets critical data on the user’s phone rendering all information privy to phishing. The scares about the cyber attacks were not the only events connected to North Korea.

Yesterday, the United Nations issued a warning to proposed visitors attending the NK CryptoCon in North Korea. The regulatory body stated that going to the conference would be a direct sanctions violation, according to a confidential report due to be submitted to the UNSC.

The conference website clearly pointed out that any citizens could enter the premises except for natives from South Korea, Japan and Israel. This message was clearly of paramount importance because it was displayed on the conference website saying:

“We will provide a paper visa separated from your passport, so there will be no evidence of your entry to the country. Your participation will never be disclosed from our side unless you publicize it on your own.”

The warning came directly in conjunction with reports about Lazarus and how the funds were channelled to run shady deals. The investigations were conducted by independent UN experts who passed the information onto the General Assembly.

‘Bitcoin will See a Boom, Just Not Tomorrow’, Says CNBC’s Brian Kelly

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January 2020 has become an active month for the cryptocurrency market after several popular coins saw major hikes in value. In this increasingly bullish atmosphere, Bitcoin has remained steady in its quest to reach new price highs.

The popular financial analyst Brian Kelly claimed that Bitcoin had gone a bit bananas this year after resurgent comebacks from bearish territories, The world’s largest cryptocurrency rose by 22 percent this year. This growth has come in the span of 15 days, with many claiming that the bear run was upon us.

Brian Kelly’s comments were, however, a complete one-eighty from the popular market sentiment. In his words:

“If you look at the Bitcoin’s price movement right now, you cannot really call it a comeback. Even though the current price point has not been since last September, Bitcoin has still not broken any long-held record.  Bitcoin was the best performing asset last year, peaking with an 80 percent growth.”

According to Kelly, the current trajectory was just reminiscent of the cryptocurrency’s 2019 performance. The only thing that users need to notice is the address growth metric, which speaks volumes about the market’s actual condition, said Kelly.

The CNBC official stood firm on the fact that a lot of people do not pay attention to the fundamental pieces of the Bitcoin prize puzzle. He stated that mispricing the Bitcoin address growth was one of the few reasons why people lost money in Bitcoin trades.

If the address growth of Bitcoin is more than its price, it usually means that it is a buy signal. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was more than the address growth which was usually indicated that people need to HODL their assets. Brian Kelly claimed that there will be a huge upside for Bitcoin, but the turn will not occur “tomorrow”.

Conclusion

Kelly may have been right about Bitcoin’s price dynamic because, for the first time in a week, the hourly and daily growth blinked red. Bitcoin was trading for $8625 with a total market cap of $156.67 billion. After a 24-hour fall of 1.32 percent, the 24-hour market volume had fallen slightly to $34.67 billion.

Credit Card Giant Visa Strengthens Its Hold in Cryptosphere With $5.3 Billion Acquisition

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The confluence of traditional players with cryptocurrency organizations has usually been considered a major metric in judging the former’s success. With the daily progress of the decentralized industry, it has become more and more common to see traditional players take the leap with fintech companies. 

According to recent reports, Plaid, another major fintech organization had made the leap to mainstream applications by getting integrated with credit and debit card giant Visa.

Plaid works by allowing start-ups to connect with banks and includes a large number of high profile customers such as Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, and Venmo. Visa has reportedly shelled out $5.3 billion to buy the Silicon Valley-based startup. The acquisition piqued the interest of bigwigs in the cryptocurrency industry, including Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Post the news of the acquisition, Garlinghouse tweeted:

 

Plaid’s reach in the financial ecosystem has been so massive that the company claimed one in four Americans was connected to its application via some platform. The acquisition created a sensation in the field because it was one of the biggest buyouts in the fin-tech space.

Plaid has also made significant strides in terms of monetary benefits, raising $250 million in a 2018 Series C funding round. Visa and MasterCard had both taken part in the funding round, something that has earned them both significant dividends. This elevated the company’s valuation to a massive $2.7 billion. According to Plaid’s financial reports, the company witnessed a compound annual growth rate of roughly 100 percent since 2015.

The Al Kelly led Visa stated that the latest integration was done in a bid to expand the credit card giant’s access to fin-tech firms. At the same time, Visa also wants to accelerate its movement to areas other than just debit or credit cards. With its latest endeavor, Visa plans to address the critical security issues that are generally considered the bane of the digital assets industry.

The Plaid acquisition will give Visa the overwatch over 11,000 odd banks and the 200 million customers connected to it. Visa claims that the industry is still in its nascent stages and developments from the grassroots level is of utmost importance. Zach Perret, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer [CEO] of Plaid added:

“We feel fortunate to have been there for the early days of fintech, and to have helped develop that ecosystem. This represents an important milestone, and the ability to work with Visa to make our products much bigger and better — both domestically and internationally.”

Visa has been slowly but surely reinforcing its entry into the fintech industry for quite some time now especially with the acquisition of Earthport in 2019. Visa had to tussle with rival MasterCard for the buyout but had its path cleared when the latter dropped out on its own.

 

Winklevoss Brothers Remain Bullish on Bitcoin, Warns that China is US’ Biggest Threat

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Bitcoin’s recent price surge has gotten the entire cryptocurrency market talking and it does not look like the phenomenon is about to end anytime soon. The moment the industry predicted a bear run, the world’s largest digital asset took a u-turn to climb to near bullish territories.

Another reason for Bitcoin’s rising popularity has been its proponents trying their level best to push the cryptocurrency into the mainstream fore. A big part of this has been played by the Winklevoss brothers, Tyler and Cameroon.

According to the founders of Gemini exchange, Bitcoin was on its way to disrupt the gold and investment market. The twins, who first shot to fame with Facebook, have become an integral part of the cryptocurrency market since they founded Gemini. The two have even brought in several institutional players into the digital assets space, mostly through collaborations and tie-ups.

The Winklevoss brothers spoke about how increasing Bitcoin holdings was the way to go for the future of the decentralized financial ecosystem. The two brothers were present at the recently concluded Crypto Finance Conference where they spoke about the roadmap for Bitcoin as well s the cryptocurrency industry. Tyler Winklevoss stated:

“If you have gold, start building up bitcoin reserves. We think bitcoin will disrupt gold. Once the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos start mining gold on asteroids, which will happen within 25 years, gold’s value will change.“

The Gemini officials also gave their two cents on the recently Bitcoin price surge that has gotten the entire cryptocurrency market flustered. The Winklevoss twins revealed that they were still bullish on Bitcoin, despite many claiming that the latest surge will be short-lived. The twins reasoned that Bitcoin would only see its price go up because of the upcoming BTC halving slated to occur this May.

Bitcoin enthusiasts have drawn parallel to the fact that the cryptocurrency’s price shot up during the last two halvings. Although there is no conclusive proof that a halving correlates to a direct boost in prices, it is still a marker for positive sentiment in the Bitcoin industry. Although the regulatory climate had improved in the United States, the Winklevoss twins believed that other countries such as China were far more superior in terms of FinTech developments. Tyler added:

“The U.S. has been slow. China will likely issue a stablecoin first. This could be the first in modern times that the U.S. hasn’t been first on something like this.”

Gemini was serious about the importance of the Chinese market because of its pipeline plans to enter the Red Dragon. Although no concrete plans have been set yet, the fact that major organizations were considering China was a clear indication of its prowess in the digital assets industry.

The buzz has been all about Bitcoin because of how quickly it rectified its bearish nature in 2020. At press time, Bitcoin was trading for $8,660.48 with a total market cap of $157.302 billion. After a week of steady growth, the BTC 24-hour market volume was at $35.134 billion.

Samson Mow’s Doubles Down on Lightning Network’s Capabilities in The Wake of BitMex Report

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Blockchain technologies have been trying their best to outperform institutional assets and in many cases, that has been a success. Experts in the decentralized space believe that as long as decentralized technologies can beat traditional competitors the field will continue to sustain.

In a recent Twitter thread, Samson Mow, the CSO at Blockstream touched upon the fact that the Lightning Network’s total work rate had surpassed those of its competitors and even traditional mainstays. 

According to analysis, the Lightning Network’s scaling capabilities had allowed it to overtake transaction rates put forth by Next-Gen blockchains as well as Visa and Alipay. The entire sector celebrated the fact that a blockchain solution had managed to beat the efficiency of worldwide systems such as Visa.

“Next-Gen” blockchains

Research showed that the Lightning Network-enabled by private channels could conduct up to 25.2 million transactions per second [tps] while the traditional Lightning came in second with 17.8 million tps. The hyped “Next-Gen” blockchains could only handle 400,000 tps while Visa and Alipay clocked a dismal 65,000 and 50,000 respectively.

The low transaction rates possessed by popular cryptocurrencies have been one of the major hindrances for its adoption rate. Bitcoin, while being the largest cryptocurrency in the market only possessed a transaction rate of 10 tps. Elaborating on LN’s capabilities, Mow tweeted:

“We also estimate that ~40% of channels and overall capacity are private. That means total LN capacity is approximately 1218 $BTC or ~10 million USD. #LightningNetwork theoretical throughput is calculated based on the total number of channels and a per channel capacity of 500 tps.”

The quick micro-transactions capability that the LN is known for has even made it to mainstream online markets. Eagle-eyed users noticed recently that the Lightning bug had even bitten pop sensation Lil Pump. The singer’s website now accepts Bitcoin payments via the LN for purchases.

Mow’s comments came in the wake of a BitMex report that showed that non-cooperative channel closures within the BTC LN made up of a majority of its activity. A non-cooperative channel closure occurs when a single member of an open channel leaves and reclaims their holdings from the network. Even Jameson Lopp had gotten in on the action by tweeting against the Lightning Network. The computer scientist went in all guns blazing stating:

“New report from BitMEX Research has found far more non-cooperative Lightning Network channel closures than expected, suggesting that there are a significant number of private channels that normally can’t be seen”

Conclusion.

The report has been doing the rounds for quite some time now but the proponents of the Lightning Network continue to stand steadfast on its capabilities. Bitcoin‘s peripherals have garnered a fresh boost because of the cryptocurrency’s recent price surge allowing it to climb towards the $9000 mark.