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#USA Rothy’s just landed $35 million from Goldman Sachs to sell more of its popular ballet flats

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Rothy’s, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a variety of colorful flats for women, has some more walking-around money today. According to Bloomberg, the company just closed on $35 million in funding from Goldman Sachs’ asset management unit.

The round brings the young company’s total funding to $42 million, including an early $5 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, and $2 million in convertible notes, including from Finn Capital Partners, M13 and Grace Beauty Capital.

Goldman’s interest in the company isn’t surprising. Rothy’s doesn’t disclose how many pairs of shoes it has sold, but the company tells Bloomberg that it expects to see slightly more than $140 million in revenue this year, and, as the outlet surmises from some back-of-the-napkin math, that equates to roughly 1.4 million pairs of shoes sold.

Judging by its enthusiastic consumer base — it has 161,000 Instagram followers, for example — many of those are likely women who own multiple pairs, too.

What they love about the shoes, seemingly: their style, in large part. On this front, it helps that some fashion icons have gravitated toward the shoes, including actress-turned-Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who has been photographed in Rothy’s.

The company is also selling eco-conscious comfort by making the shoes out of recycled materials that include water bottles. Because of their constitution, they are also machine washable, yet another selling point.

Yet where Rothy’s has really shined is in marketing, including spending hugely on Facebook and to a lesser extent, Instagram and other social media platforms. Indeed, the company has been recognized repeatedly (including by us) for its shoes seeming ubiquity online. Though these platforms have grown more crowded in the short time since Rothy’s launched, it spent big on marketing from the outset — it flooded the zone, so to speak — and that campaign has seemingly paid off for the startup.

Today, the company, which runs its own 100,000-square-foot factory in China and employs roughly 500 people — including 50 people in the Bay Area — is selling four types of shoes, including its two best-known silhouettes — a $125 rounded flat shoe and a $145 pointed flat — along with loafers and, more newly, sneakers that are reminiscent of Van’s iconic shoes. 

Somewhat ironically, one of the biggest threats to Rothy’s ongoing rise — other than fickle shoppers — is companies that are beginning to copy Rothy’s designs, reports Bloomberg.

The company says, for instance, that it is currently suing at least one outfit, a Virginia-based company, for selling a shoe that looks to Rothy’s alarmingly like one of its own productions.

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#Blockchain Cointext Rolls Out Mobile BCH Services in Bangladesh, Now Services 38 Countries

Cointext Rolls Out Mobile BCH Services in Bangladesh, Now Services 38 Countries

Cointext has launched internet-free mobile BCH wallet services to users in Bangladesh. The announcement comes following the recent rollout of Cointext’s services in many new regions, bringing the total number of countries now able to access the company’s services to 38.

Also Read: How to Spend and Give Bitcoin Cash Over the Holidays

Cointext Launches BCH Services in Bangladesh

Cointext Rolls Out Mobile BCH Services in Bangladesh, Now Services 38 CountriesCointext, a BCH wallet provider that enables users to conduct bitcoin cash transfers without internet through text message, has announced the launch of its services for Bangladeshi citizens.

A press release published by Cointext cites GSMA’s findings that Bangladesh had only 21 percent mobile phone penetration and a meager smartphone penetration of just 5.4 percent at the of end 2017. According to GSMA, Bangladeshi mobile phone adoption is expected to roughly double by 2025.

Cointext founder and chief technology officer Vin Armani described Bangladesh as comprising “the ideal country” for his company, stating: “Very few people have smartphones or cellular data in Bangladesh. Cointext enables basic feature phones to access international currencies like bitcoin using SMS.”

Following the introduction of services to consumers in Ukraine, Italy, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic earlier this month, Cointext now services 38 nations, including those located in Latin America, Europe, Oceana, Asia, and North America.

Crypto and DLT Gradually See Greater Adoption Throughout Bangladesh

Cointext Rolls Out Mobile BCH Services in Bangladesh, Now Services 38 CountriesSince reports emerged in 2014 asserting that Bangladesh had prohibited the use of bitcoin, Bangladesh appears to have softened its stance regarding cryptocurrency, with the country’s central bank issuing a “Cautionary Notice” during December 2017.

Earlier this month, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) announced that Bangladeshi start-up W3 Engineers will be among the first distributed ledger technology (DLT) companies based in emerging markets to receive investment from its Innovation Fund.

W3 Engineers is one of six emerging DLT companies that UNICEF has announced will each receive $100,000 in funding. According to data recently published by Mineable, Bangladesh is among the cheapest countries in which to mine cryptocurrency, with a single BTC estimated to cost $2,379 to mine.

Do you think that bitcoin adoption will continue to increase in Bangladesh? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!


Images courtesy of Shutterstock


At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The post Cointext Rolls Out Mobile BCH Services in Bangladesh, Now Services 38 Countries appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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#Blockchain Irish Court Finds Silk Road Dealer’s ETH to Be Proceed of Crime

The High Court of Ireland has ruled that 25,000 euros (approximately $28,400) worth of ethereum held by Neil Mannion, a 37-year-old man currently serving out a prison sentence for drug offenses, comprise proceeds of crime.

Also Read: Google AI Briefly Describes Bitcoin as ‘Collapsed Economic Bubble’

Irish High Court Rules Crypto Comprises Proceed of Crime

Irish Court Finds Silk Road Dealer's ETH to be Proceed of CrimeIn what has been described by Irish media as a case that has “broke[n] new ground,” the High Court of Ireland has found cryptocurrency to comprise a “crime proceed.”

The judge presiding over the case, Ms. Justice Carmel Stewart, granted orders pertaining to Neil Mannion’s 2,000 ETH that were sought by Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau.

The Criminal Assets Bureau also sought proceedings asserting that the funds contained in various bank accounts owned by Mannion were derived from criminal activities.

Mannion Unsuccessfully Opposes Criminal Asset Bureau’s Orders

Irish Court Finds Silk Road Dealer's ETH to be Proceed of CrimeMannion attempted to oppose the orders, claiming that his personal rights had been breached through the investigations into his cryptocurrency holdings. While Justice Stewart noted that the arguments had merit, Stewart dismissed Mannion’s opposition, stating that the investigation had in fact been hindered by the intricate details of the data privacy rights pertaining to cryptocurrency exchanges.

Stewart also noted the likelihood that future cases may result in individual rights being breached in investigations into cryptocurrency holdings believed to be associated with crime, advocating that Ireland’s juridical apparatus be prudent in preparing for challenges pertaining to individual rights and cryptocurrency investigations.

‘The Hulkster’ Arrested in 2014

Irish Court Finds Silk Road Dealer's ETH to be Proceed of CrimeMannion is currently serving a six-and-a-half year sentence in Wheatfield Prison, a medium security institution in Dublin. He was arrested following a raid conducted by the police service of the Republic of Ireland in November 2014 at premises in Dublin and was jailed during the following year.

Mannion confessed to using the property as a distribution center for his narcotics sales in addition to trafficking his products via Silk Road and Agora using the pseudonym ‘The Hulkster’ and was charged for the possession of amphetamine, LSD, and cannabis resin with intent to sell or supply. Proceedings were closed in February 2016.

The Criminal Assets Bureau again sought for the ETH to be ruled as comprising proceeds of crime during July 2016 following a review of the case.

What is your response to the High Court of Ireland’s ruling on Neil Mannion’s ETH? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!


Images courtesy of Shutterstock


At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The post Irish Court Finds Silk Road Dealer’s ETH to Be Proceed of Crime appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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#USA Coinbase lets you convert one cryptocurrency into another

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It’s hard to believe that you still had to convert your BTC into USD in order to buy ETH on Coinbase. The company is finally adding direct cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency conversions.

The feature works with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), 0x (ZRX) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It is only available to U.S. customers for now, but the company plans to roll out the feature to other countries too.

Let’s look at the fees more closely. If you live in Europe or the U.S., every time you buy or sell cryptocurrencies using USD or EUR, you pay at least 1.49 percent in fees on top of the spread (the difference between the highest selling price and the lowest purchasing price). Fees are even higher if you’re using a credit or debit card.

Coinbase says that the spread between a fiat currency and a cryptocurrency should be around 0.5 percent but may vary depending on the trading pair and the order queue.

If you buy or sell less than 200 USD or equivalent, fees get much more expensive. For instance, a $10 order will generate $0.99 in fees, or 9.9 percent. Customers pay 3 percent in fees for a $100 order.

But the good news is that it’s a completely different story with token-to-token transactions. Coinbase doesn’t charge you any markup fee — but there’s some inevitable spread. And with some obscure trading pairs (exchanging ZRX for BCH for instance), you might end up paying around 1 percent in spread. Still, it’s a much better user experience for those who just want to trade on Coinbase.

Without even mentioning other exchanges, Coinbase Pro users have been able to trade between multiple cryptocurrencies for a long time. But Coinbase is still the entry gate for many new cryptocurrency users.

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#USA At cobotics startup Formant, ex-Googlers team up humans & machines

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Our distinct skillsets and shortcomings mean people and robots will join forces for the next few decades. Robots are tireless, efficient, and reliable, but in a millisecond through intuition and situational awareness, humans can make decisions machine can’t. Until workplace robots are truly autonomous and don’t require any human thinking, we’ll need software to supervise them at scale. Formant comes out of stealth today to “help people speak robot” says co-founder and CEO Jeff Linnell. “What’s really going to move the needle in the innovation economy is using humans as an empowering element in automation.”

Linnell learned the grace of uniting flesh and steel while working on the movie Gravity. “We put cameras and Sandra Bullock on dollies” he bluntly recalls. Artistic vision and robotic precision combined to create gorgeous zero-gravity scenes that made audiences feel weightless. Google bought his startup Bot & Dolly, and Linnell spent 10 years there as a director of robotics while forming his thesis.

Now with Formant, he wants to make hybrid workforce cooperation feel frictionless.

The company has raised a $6 million seed round from SignalFire, a data driven VC fund with software for recruiting engineers. Formant is launching its closed beta that equips businesses with cloud infrastructure for collecting, making sense of, and acting on data from fleets of robots. It allows a single human to oversee 10, 20, or 100 machines, stepping in to clear confusion when they aren’t sure what to do.

“The tooling is 10 years behind the web” Linnell explains. “If you build a data company today, you’ll use AWS or Google Cloud, but that simply doesn’t exist for robotics. We’re building that layer.”

A Beautiful Marriage

“This is going to sound completely bizarre” Formant co-founder and CTO Anthony Jules warns me. “I had a recurring dream [as a child] in which I was a ship captain and I had a little mechanical parrot on my should that would look at situations and help me decide what to do as we’d sail the seas trying to avoid this octopus. Since then I knew that building intelligent machines is what I do in this world.”

So he went to MIT, left a robotics PhD program to build a startup called Sapient Corporation that he built into a 4000-employee public company, and worked on the Tony Hawk video games. He too joined Google through an acquisition, meeting Linnell after Redwood Robotics where he was COO got acquired. “We came up with some similar beliefs. There are a few places where full autonomy will actually work, but it’s really about creating a beautiful marriage of what machines are good at and what humans are good at” Jules tells me

Formant now has SAAS pilots running with businesses in several verticals to make their “robot-shaped data” usable. They range from food manufacturing to heavy infrastructure inspection to construction, and even training animals. Linnell also foresees retail increasingly employing fleets of robots not just in the warehouse but on the showroom floor, and they’ll require precise coordination.

What’s different about Formant is it doesn’t build the bots. Instead, it builds the reins for people to deftly control them.

First, Formant connects to sensors to fill up a cloud with Lidar, depth imagery, video, photos, log files, metrics, motor torques, and scalar values. The software parses that data and when something goes wrong or the system isn’t sure how to move forward, Formant alerts the human ‘foreman’ that they need to intervene. It can monitor the fleet, sniff out the source of errors, and suggest options for what to do next.

For example, “when an autonomous digger encounters an obstacle in the foundation of a construction site, an operator is necessary to evaluate whether it is safe for the robot to proceed or stop” Linnell writes. “This decision is made in tandem: the rich data gathered by the robot is easily interpreted by a human but difficult or legally questionable for a machine. This choice still depends on the value judgment of the human, and will change depending on if the obstacle is a gas main, a boulder, or an electrical wire.”

Any single data stream alone can’t reveal the mysteries that arise, and people would struggle to juggle the different feeds in their minds. But not only can Formant align the data for humans to act on, it can also turn their choices into valuable training data for artificial intelligence. Formant learns, so next time the machine won’t need assistance.

The industrial revolution, continued

With rockstar talent poached from Google and tides lifting all automated boats, Formant’s biggest threat is competition from tech giants. Old engineering companies like SAP could try to adapt to new real-time data type, yet Formant hopes to out-code them. Google itself has built reliable cloud scaffolding and has robotics experience from Boston Dynamics plus buying Linnell’s and Jules’ companies. But the enterprise customization necessary to connect with different clients isn’t typical for the search juggernaut.

Linnell fears that companies that try to build their own robot management software could get hacked. “I worry about people who do homegrown solutions or don’t have the experience we have from being at a place like Google. Putting robots online in an insecure way is a pretty bad problem.” Formant is looking to squash any bugs before it opens its platform to customers in 2019.

With time, humans will become less and less necessary, and that will surface enormous societal challenges for employment and welfare. “It’s in some ways a continuation of the industrial revolution” Jules opines. “We take some of this for granted but it’s been happening for 100 years. Photographer — that’s a profession that doesn’t exist without the machine that they use. We think that transformation will continue to happen across the workforce.”

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#Blockchain Transnistria Welcomes Crypto Miners, Plans to Expand the Industry

The government of Transnistria has recognized the importance of cryptocurrency mining for the territory’s economy and budget. The unrecognized republic in Eastern Moldova now plans to expand the industry by attracting more miners with a crypto-friendly business climate and favorable regulations.   

Also read: CEO of Romanian Exchange Coinflux Arrested on US Warrant

Tiraspol Plans for 100 MW of Mining Capacity

Transnistria Welcomes Crypto Miners, Plans to Expand the IndustryEarlier this year, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) adopted legislation that legalized crypto mining and provided incentives for foreign investors to set up mining farms within its borders. Under its provisions, a free economic zone was established for these companies and authorities promised to provide the necessary infrastructure, including unrestricted access to the Transnistrian electrical grid.

The new law “On the development of information blockchain-technologies in the PMR” also allowed tariff-free imports of mining equipment and exempted mining incomes from taxation. As a result, facilities with a total consumption of between 5 and 7 MW of electricity are now operating in the country.

But the government in Tiraspol doesn’t want to stop there. According to its prime minister, Transnistria plans to increase that number to 100 MW and has already managed to secure the needed investments. In an interview recently broadcasted by two local TV channels, Aleksandr Martynov stated:

We adopted a fairly liberal law that stimulates mining activities in Transnistria. We also isolated them from our tax system.

The head of the executive power further emphasized that Pridnestrovian authorities do not exercise any control over the revenues from the production of cryptocurrencies and don’t claim any portion of the income generated by entities that operate mining facilities. He added that the main goal set by the government is to sell more electricity to the bitcoin farms, and Transnistria can offer a lot of it at a low price.

Miners Utilize Excess Generating Capacity

Transnistria Welcomes Crypto Miners, Plans to Expand the IndustryThe largest producer of electricity in the region is the Russian-owned Moldavskaya GRES, a thermal power station built on the shores of Lake Kuchurgan on the Ukrainian border. It has an installed capacity of 2,520 MW. The station burns mainly Russian natural gas which the self-proclaimed republic does not even pay.

The fuel is billed to Moldova which claims sovereignty over the separatist territory in a frozen conflict with the government in Tiraspol that dates back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The $6 billion of money owed by the Kuchurgan power station are considered part of Moldova’s debt to the Russian supplier, Gazprom.

Cryptocurrency miners help to utilize the excess capacity of the power plant. And more mining farms means higher revenues for the station, which translates into increased budget receipts for Transnistria, Prime Minister Martynov explained. He added that the projected income, which he described as significant, has already been included in PMR’s draft budget for the next year.

What do you think of Transnistria’s policies towards the crypto mining industry? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


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#USA SpaceX said to be raising $500m to help fund internet service

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SpaceX is raising $500 million at a valuation of $30.5 billion, according to a WSJ report citing people familiar with the matter. The company is said to be raising the capital in part to help fund its ambitious Starlink internet service project.

According to the announced plan, SpaceX intends to launch 11,000 satellites to plaster the globe with internet connectivity. So far, SpaceX has launched just two prototype satellites even though earlier reports stated SpaceX, at one time, projected it would have 400 satellites in orbit by the end of 2018.

If this funding goes through, it will bring SpaceX’s total amount raised to about $2.5 billion of equity funding, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Last month, SpaceX raised $250 million through a high-yield loan sale.

The WSJ reports that for this equity round SpaceX turned to existing investors and new investor Baillie Gifford & Co, a large investor in Musk’s Tesla. The report stats that SpaceX and the investors have agreed to the financing terms but the money has yet to be sent.

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#USA Sphero is finished making Star Wars products

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Sphero’s on-going deals are about more than just priming the pump for the holidays. The Colorado robotic toy startup is also in the process of cleaning out inventory of what are now be marked “legacy” products on its site. All of the Disney licensed products now carry a “THIS IS A LEGACY PRODUCT AND NO LONGER IN PRODUCTION” tag, and in many cases are no longer available through Sphero’s site.

The move is no surprise, of course. The company announced nearly a year ago amid layoffs that its licensed products would be a casualty of its shift toward education. Looks like that’s all finally run its course. Sphero CEO Paul Berberian confirmed the move with the Verge, noting shrinking returns.

“When you launch a toy, your first year’s your biggest,” he told the site. “Your second year’s way smaller, and your third year gets really tiny.”

BB-8 was a notable hit for the company, selling millions of units and putting Sphero on the map for many. It eventually spread itself too thin, however, double, tripling and quadrupling down with robotic toy takes on R2-DR, Lightning McQueen for cars and Spider-Man.

It was clearly too much, too fast, making its Disney partnership both a blessing and curse. Ultimately, the company saw STEM education as the clear path forward for its offerings.

For those who purchased one of the above, Sphero has promised to offer app support for “at least two years.” You might still be able to get a deal on one if you hurry. 

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#Blockchain Google AI Briefly Describes Bitcoin as ‘Collapsed Economic Bubble’

Reports have documented the recent description of Bitcoin as comprising a “collapsed economic bubble” on the part of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI). The bizarre depiction of the world’s first cryptocurrency came as a result of an edit made to Wikipedia classifying Bitcoin in said terms, with its author justifying such as representing “the majority view.”

Also Read: Cypherpunk Godfather Timothy May Was Lightyears Ahead of His Time

Google Displays Bearish Description for Bitcoin

Google AI Briefly Describes Bitcoin as 'Collapsed Economic Bubble'Screenshots have shown that the world’s largest search engine, Google, briefly described Bitcoin as a “collapsed economic bubble.”

The obscure categorization of Bitcoin by Google’s results page was due to the search engine displaying a snippet from the description given on Wikipedia, which at the time asserted that “Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash,” adding that “The bitcoin market is widely viewed as a collapsed economic bubble as the price fell by 82% in the year ending December 2018.”

Said description of Bitcoin was penned by Wikipedia user “Smallbones’ on Dec. 12, who claimed that his edit greater reflected “the majority view” regarding the cryptocurrency. His edit, however, would not last, with fellow Wikipedia user ‘Bradv’ reversing Smallbones’ revision and requesting that the author stop inserting their personal point-of-view into the lede of the article.

Wikipedia Entry Reverted to Previous Version

Google AI Briefly Describes Bitcoin as 'Collapsed Economic Bubble'Furthermore, Bradv requested that Smallbones no longer be permitted to make edits to the Wiki page for Bitcoin, asserting that Smallbones’ edit was “inappropriate for any number of reasons, but especially because of Smallbones’ clear point of view.” Bradv also proposed Smallbones no longer be qualified to edit the article, stating that “their edits are clearly soapboxing.”

Both Wikipedia and Google’s search engine results page now state that “Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash,” adding: “It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user-to-user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.”

Wikipedia placed a 24-hour restriction on edits being made to the page for Bitcoin, in addition to barring users from rolling back edits more than once per day on the page.

What is your response to the categorization briefly given to Bitcoin by Google? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even lookup the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The post Google AI Briefly Describes Bitcoin as ‘Collapsed Economic Bubble’ appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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#Blockchain The Daily: HTC Blockchain Phone Delayed, Exchange Security Ratings Updated

HTC's Blockchain Smartphone Can Be Ordered With Bitcoin

In Tuesday’s edition of The Daily, there’s a little of everything in the mix: a story about hardware, in the form of the delayed Exodus 1 smartphone, one about security, concerning the latest crypto exchange ratings, and finally a human interest story. This latter tale concerns a war of words between two passionate figures within the cryptocurrency space.

Also read: Cypherpunk Godfather Timothy May Was Lightyears Ahead of His Time

HTC’s Exodus 1 Phone Has Yet to Ship

The Daily: HTC Blockchain Phone Delayed, Exchange Security Ratings UpdatedCustomers who made an advanced purchase of the Exodus 1 blockchain phone are still waiting to receive their devices. The crypto-friendly cell phones, priced at 0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH, were rapidly snapped up by cryptocurrency proponents, who were promised that the devices would ship in December. While there’s still time for that to happen, manufacturer HTC is cutting it fine with Christmas less than a week away.

Figures such as Charlie Lee helped to promote the project, and by early December advance orders for the phone, which features a built-in BTC and ETH wallet, had stopped being taken. In the project’s Telegram channel, buyers have become impatient as they await delivery of their eagerly anticipated phones. “Biggest scam in the history of smartphones,” vented one irate buyer. His assertion, while very wide of the mark, captures the frustration that Exodus 1 customers have felt as they’ve awaited news. Today, Dec. 18, European customers received an email from HTC Exodus that explained, vaguely:

We are contacting you to let you know the shipment of your order has been delayed, as we are currently finalizing the last certification for European devices. We are working hard to get your order to you as soon as possible, and will keep you updated when we have a confirmed shipping date. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Cryptocurrency Exchange Ratings Updated

There’s a ratings system for everything within the cryptocurrency space these days, from influencers to coins, and from exchanges to blockchains. In October, news.Bitcoin.com reported on ICOrating.com’s exchange security assessment that deemed 54 percent of trading venues to have security holes of some kind. ICOrating.com has now updated its report to reflect new information and additions that have served to alter its assessment of the top 10 exchanges. Coinbase Pro, which occupied the top spot, has slipped to ninth, while Kraken has leapt from second to first.

The Daily: HTC Blockchain Phone Delayed, Exchange Security Ratings Updated

Binance has dropped out of the top 20 altogether. “Overall, only 16 percent of exchanges fall into the A category. None of the exchanges have received an A+ rating,” noted ICOrating.com. While all ratings systems are subjective to a certain degree, their existence can only be a good thing if it spurs their subjects into improvement. Increased transparency and commitment to adopting better security standards will benefit not only exchanges, but also their customers, who can trade with confidence.

Crypto Figures Get Into a Tiff

The Daily: HTC Blockchain Phone Delayed, Exchange Security Ratings Updated
Ran NeuNer as he appears on Twitter

A war of words has broken out between Ran NeuNer, host of CNBC’s Cryptotrader, and Larry Cermak of The Block. Cermak, together with his colleague Mike Dudas, published an exposé of a fraudulent ICO called BCT and accused NeuNer of being embroiled in it. The CNBC host hit back with threats of legal action, ordering The Block pair to delete tweets and amend their story, after explaining that he’d done nothing to facilitate BCT’s misbehavior, and was in fact a victim himself. In a rambling blog post titled “An open letter to The Block”, NeuNer wrote:

According to Larry, the alleged fraud, scams on investors and employees and a man working in this industry under a fake identity, weren’t the interesting part, but rather my alleged “involvement”. [Larry] went on to make a series of accusations  —  most of which are incorrect, negligent, inaccurate, defamatory and damaging.

NeuNer then complained of The Block only giving him six hours to provide his side of the story before Cermak’s publication went to press, which he believes was a deliberate move on their part. He finished: “I was a fan of The Block and a regular reader of its stories, but if I go by my experience of your unethical business practice, false reporting and lack of verification, then The Block is unfortunately not that publication.” Mike Dudas, for his part, has responded to NeuNer’s open letter by stating that The Block stands by its story, and extended him an interview invitation. NeuNer has yet to respond.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits as featured in The Daily? Let us know in the comments section below.


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