Musiccosmos

As the clock races down to Brexit next spring, uncertainty around the nature of Great Britain’s relationship following its exit from the EU is increasingly shaping business and investment decisions. Much of the media coverage of Brexit has focused on impact it will have on London’s once-dominant financial services industry. It is becoming increasingly clear that Brexit will have a tremendous impact on more than just the City of London, with the crypto world preparing itself for the impact of a messy British exit.   On March 29, 2019, Great Britain is set to exit from the European Union. The British decision to leave the EU occurred via a referendum in 2016, despite no clear framework for what the nations ongoing relationship with the European Union would look like after exiting. Bungled and incompetent negotiating by the British government, combined with an increasingly hardline EU line on continued British access to the single market means markets are beginning to price in th...

Bitcoin prices gained $300 in less than one minute August 22 in a leap the cryptocurrency community is broadly attributing to Hong Kong trading platform BitMEX going offline. Bitcoin Hits $6750 In Record Time Data from various price trackers confirms Bitcoin’s increase to $6750 occurred almost simultaneous as BitMEX began a period of scheduled maintenance. The maintenance ran from 0100 UTC to 0200 UTC Wednesday, during which time BTC/USD 0 0 hit a peak of $6850 before correcting to around $6680, where it has since remained. On Twitter, BitMEX said it had encountered additional problems with its login process, as well as a DDoS attack which had delayed the full restoration of its platform’s functionality. Major trading platforms have been indirectly at the heart of the controversy over sudden Bitcoin price moves before. Earlier this month, settling of futures contracts on Chinese exchange OKEx sparked alarm after executives reported manipulative behavior close to the settlem...

The UAE continues its involvement in the field of digital currencies as a local company is set to launch the very first cryptocurrency exchange compliant with Shariah legislation. Moving Forward ADAB Solutions, a UAE-based company, is reportedly going to launch the very first cryptocurrency exchange compliant with Shariah law. The project is conveniently called the First Islamic Crypto Exchange (FICE). The cryptocurrency exchange will operate globally, and it intends to further the involvement of Muslims and users of Islamic finance in the cryptocurrency market. Supposedly, this will become the first digital asset exchange which will be carrying out the transactions in accordance with the regulations of Islamic finance. Timur Turzhan, founder and CEO at ADAB solutions, said: Ideas that correspond to the norms of the Shariah are based on the understandable material value, have a clear business strategy, and this allows us to confidently assert that halal projects are incom...

Despite the fact that the overall cryptocurrency market has declined with around 70 percent since January 2018, interest in blockchain-based technology grows stronger. Yet another major company, UPS, demonstrates its serious intentions for implementing DLT in its operations. UPS Boards the Blockchain Bandwagon The shipping giant UPS has filed an application for a patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office. The company seeks legal protection for a system which takes advantage of blockchain-based technology for storing different types of information within a distributed ledger network. The data includes details about the package’s destination, its actual movement, as well as transportation plans and others of the kind. The patent reads: An exemplary method comprises receiving and storing in a distributed ledger service offers for transporting a shipment unit; receiving and storing in a distributed ledger shipment unit data comprising an origin, a destination, and transpor...

Police in China has detained three men suspected of pulling the country’s biggest ever cryptocurrency heist — worth 600 million yuan ($87 million).  Theft is China’s Biggest: Reports As multiple outlets report quoting local news publication Huashang News  on August 19, authorities concluded an investigation spanning almost six months into three men who allegedly hacked a computer for Bitcoin and Ether. “Our bureau has not dealt with this kind of case before,” South China Morning Post quotes a police officer as telling Huashang .  “It’s the first virtual currency-related case in Shaanxi.” According to Huashang , the investigation behind the arrest of the men — known as Zhang, Cui and Zhou — began in March, when the victim came forward to report a hacking of his computer. At the time, losses were thought to total 100 million yuan. Having analyzed “30,000 pieces of information” related to the event and the alleged perpetrators, the arrests were made on Wednesda...

On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a new single exchange rate for the bolivar that’s pegged to the Petro virtual currency. Under the new guidelines, one Petro would equal $60 dollars, which means the nation’s currency is essentially devalued by 96 percent.  Amid immense political and economic turmoil in the South American nation, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro recently proclaimed a variety of economic overhauls during a speech broadcast on state television. The socialist leader said he would boost the minimum wage by upwards of 3,000 percent, increase the corporate tax rate, and raise subsidized gas prices over the next few weeks. Maduro also made another big announcement related to the nation’s Petro virtual currency. He said one Petro would now be worth $60 dollars and be equivalent to 360 million Venezuelan bolivars. The new rate means one dollar will equal 6 million bolivars, which is a rate pretty close to what is seen on the black market. Ho...

Bitcoin seemed on the verge of a breakout above $6,650 but a failed third attempt, followed by a lack of buying interest has given bears an opportunity to snatch back control and it looks like BTC has dropped a shelf for a bit of sideways trading in the $6,200 – $6,400 range. Bitcoin Price Market Overview Earlier this week on CNBC Fast Money, host Melissa Lee described the narrow channel between $6k and $7k as ‘Bitcoin Purgatory”. Guest speaker and head of Digital Assets group at Susquehanna International Group, Bart Smith, said “Bitcoin is in show me mode ” as the cryptocurrency market currently seems resistant to trend changes driven by good news and positive developments for cryptocurrencies. Smith believes investors are searching for verifiable proof that the market has turned bullish before setting up positions, hence the sporadic spikes and trend of declining volume for bitcoin. It seems the entire market is contingent on the SEC’s approval or denial of exchange-traded fu...

Graphics chip manufacturing giant Nvidia saw huge growth in late 2017 and throughout most of 2018 as demand for its high-end Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), used for cryptocurrency mining, skyrocketed. The recent bear market has caused demand for GPUs to dwindle, leaving Nvidia to readjust its strategy. Nvidia In Its Heyday It seems Nvidia is throwing in the towel on the development and production of its cryptocurrency mining focused graphics cards and chips. Nvidia has seen some explosive growth over the last few years and is currently seeing a 68% increase in value in the past year alone (indicated below in yellow), although this week the stock price has slipped almost eight percent (indicated below in red). Nvidia’s biggest rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), also saw record highs recently, gaining more than 100% in just the past quarter. Nvidia was especially successful riding the waves of the huge cryptocurrency boom of November and December, gaining an impressive 42% f...

Canadian Coinberry and Swiss-based BRD announced a partnership, which is set to introduce 1.2 million BRD customers to crypto trading. New Crypto Trading Platforms Streaming Into the Market Trading bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies continues to attract investors. For instance, despite a bear market, cryptocurrency trading platforms are still being added to the market. On August 15, 2018, Coinberry and BRD announced a partnership “which will introduce 1.2 million BRD customers to the Canadian crypto trading platform.” Better together. We’re happy to announce the @BRDHQ & @coinberryio partnership at @Futurist_conf . Now it’s easier than ever to buy and safely store your #crypto . Stay tuned, we heard there’s another announcement coming soon! #FUTURIST18 pic.twitter.com/HFN0gEWRDR — Coinberry (@coinberryio) August 15, 2018 BRD claims to have been the first cryptocurrency app available in the iOS space. According to the announcement: Now available via iPhone and Andr...

Despite the sluggish price, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency has been settling more transaction volume than gold since Q2 2017. Bitcoin Showing More Utility Than Gold Bitcoin 0 0 is on track to clear more transaction volume than the global gold markets. Bitcoin has been clearing more tx volume than global gold markets since early 2017. BTC: on pace to process $1.1 trillion in 2018 transactions Gold: on pace to process $0.4 trillion in 2018 transactions Sources: https://t.co/eVqQiq56gv for BTC https://t.co/zqh4eykqNb for Gold pic.twitter.com/oc5piRvrXE — Kevin Rooke (@kerooke) August 15, 2018 Interestingly enough, though, this is not a one-off event – it has been happening consistently since the second quarter of 2017 after the world’s first cryptocurrency hit ‘parity’ with the price of an ounce of gold in spring of last year. It’s also worth noting that despite the serious hit Bitcoin took in 2018, it’s still outperforming the precious metal by a facto...

Yet another blockchain investment fund is set to launch in South Korea. Messaging giant Line furthers its foray into the field of cryptocurrencies and is dedicated to streamlining early-stage startup investments with a $10 million fund. Additionally, the company announced the successful listing of TRON to its cryptocurrency exchange. South Korea Sees Serious Investments in Blockchain Line, the Japanese messaging company harboring over 200 million users announced August 15, that is set to launch a $10 million investment fund through its Korea-based blockchain subsidiary Unblock Corporation. With this initiative, LINE will become one of the very first publicly traded companies to formalize investments in tokens through a dedicated corporate fund. The fund aims to “boost the development and adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.” Furthermore, the announcement also made it clear that the fund is “expected to expand in the future.” Just yesterday Bitcoinist reporte...

New academic research  released by RWTH Aachen University has discovered that cryptocurrency miner  CoinHive   is very profitable. In fact, it’s generating over $250,000 worth of Monero profit every month by hi-jacking internet users’ CPUs. One of the users could have easily been you.  As reported by The Next Web , the research itself provides a broad overview of browser-mining activity across the Web. It reveals that Monero accounts for 75 percent of all browser-based cryptocurrency mining. The organization CoinHive is behind most of it. Thus, it is no wonder that security and investigation reporter Brain Krebs warns readers by  claiming : Multiple security firms recently identified cryptocurrency mining service Coinhive as the top malicious threat to Web users. What is CoinHive? CoinHive offers an in-browser, JavaScript-based miner for the Monero Blockchain. People can embed the mining script into a website. Then, when a user visi...

South Korea is showing a greater interest towards the field of cryptocurrencies, budgeting upwards of one trillion won (around $880 million) for the fields of blockchain technology, AI, and the sharing economy.  South Korea Doubles Investment in Blockchain According to an official press release , South Korea will invest a total of 5 trillion won (around $4.4 billion) in its “Growth Through Innovation” plan. The strategy will fund a total of eight pilot projects, which plan to develop a “platform economy” comprised of a digital platform for big data analytics and transactions, as well as a hydrogen fuel cell supply chain. South Korea plans to invest a total of between 9 and 10 trillion won in the initiative, recognizing the nationwide impact that it would have on other industries. The official release also places an emphasis on blockchain-based technology as an important part of boosting the sharing economy: The government will focus on promoting big data and AI, ...

bloXroute Labs and a team of Northwestern University students believe Bitcoin’s biggest problem, scalability, can be solved without affecting its chief virtue — decentralization. Northwestern and bloXroute Labs Are Working to Solve Scalability Issue Critics have always identified the limited number of transactions that Bitcoin’s 0 0 network can process as its most significant problem. They point out that this is what has prevented Bitcoin from becoming the most effective form of payment in the world. Several techniques have been and are currently being implemented to address the issue of scalability and high transaction fees. Nevertheless, they are not good enough to compete today with Visa, for example. bloXroute Labs identifies the problem that affects Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’ networks, as follows: Specifically, they employ a trustless P2P network model to propagate transactions and blocks, which does not scale as the volume of transactions increases, a fact rese...

ICO exit scams over the last two years have left people $96.8 million out of pocket, according to data compiled by blockchain intelligence firm Diar. However, this is only a drop in the ocean with regards to the influx of investment the cryptocurrency space is receiving. For context, blockchain start-ups have raised over $6.8 billion from ICOs in 2018 alone. Nonetheless, $100 million is an eye-watering amount. Let’s look at the top 5 ICO exit scams. 1. $60,000,000 – ACChain, Puyin, and BioLifeChain The Chinese company Shenzhen Puyin Blockchain is responsible for $60 million of all thefts. The company raised funds for three ventures – ACChain, Puyin, and BioLifeChain – none of which materialized. Shenzhen police have since arrested six suspects involved in the fraud. 2. $12,000,000 – Cryptokami Cryptokami promised to be, “The New 3 rd Generation Blockchain Infrastructure for Global Financial Services.” It would do so by giving “a biological community foundation to outsid...