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#Blockchain Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned Theft

Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned Theft

Ever since 1929, the FBI has shared annual crime statistics via the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Each year, it breaks down criminal activity into such categories as homicide, weapons, human trafficking, and hate crime. One category that is noticeably absent from the report is civil asset forfeiture. In the eyes of the law, this is a perfectly reasonable provision for seizing ill-gotten gains from suspects. But for the victims of this procedure, it goes by a simpler name – theft.

Also read: Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance

From Money Laundering to Civil Forfeiture

Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned TheftIn the olden days, being found in possession of money was not a crime. As a result, police had no authority to seize a suspect’s funds unless they could prove that they were the proceeds of a heist. If you were a jewel thief, you could simply swap your gemstones for dollars and stuff them under your mattress in the knowledge that the feds couldn’t touch them. Then money laundering and proceeds of crime laws came into effect, triggering a cat and mouse game between cops and robbers that has persisted to this day.

One of the most controversial laws to have been introduced is civil forfeiture. It enables U.S. law enforcement (LE) to take cash from individuals who have not been charged with any crime, and to use it for their own ends. With cops authorized to act merely on the “preponderance of evidence” rather the on “beyond reasonable doubt,” which is the standard required for conviction, it’s trivial to seize the assets of anyone police take a disliking to. Retrieving them, for the victims of the forfeiture act, is virtually impossible.

In the last 10 years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has seized over $4 billion in cash in this manner, despite the fact that in over 80% of cases, no criminal charges were ever filed. With agencies strongly incentivized to enforce asset forfeiture, it’s a law that is ripe for abuse.

The Long History of Civil Forfeiture

Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned TheftLike many laws, civil forfeiture has a storied history that, in this case can be traced back to the 17th century. In the mid-1600s, British maritime laws obliged ships entering domestic ports to fly the British flag. Failure to comply would result in the cargo being seized, regardless of whether the vessel was carrying contraband. Four centuries later, and little has changed. The cargo today is generally drugs – or at least that’s the reason stated for seizing funds, as if that alone was justification for relieving potentially innocent citizens of their cash.

The legality of the war on drugs is a debate for another time. What is beyond debate, however, is that an overwhelming proportion of those targeted by civil forfeiture laws are minorities who, in many cases, have done nothing wrong other than to be of the “wrong color” and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In extreme cases, cops become robbers and go through suspected dealers’ doors, pocketing the proceeds which don’t even make it to the precinct. But even when LE doesn’t act outside the confines of the law, it retains the power to act unreasonably through confiscating the assets of individuals using the sort of hearsay evidence that wouldn’t stand up in court.

If Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned Theft, Bitcoin Is the Solution

Civil forfeiture is a provision that requires victims to prove a negative if they wish to keep their cash. How do you prove that your assets aren’t the proceeds of crime? Look around the objects in your home, for example: you might know that your designer clothes, furniture, gadgets and consumer electronics weren’t illegally obtained, but could you prove that to law enforcement if put on the spot? It’s a burden of proof that hardly anyone would be able to meet. If the feds decide they want your assets, you’re screwed.

Given the impunity with which LE can acquisition the wealth of anyone they take a disliking to, seizure-resistant money sells itself. It’s a case that doesn’t require overstating, but there are nevertheless caveats to add. If the bitcoin owners don’t conceal their assets, as the likes of Ross Ulbricht and Alexandre Cazes discovered, the feds will seize your crypto along with anything else they can get their hands on. Thankfully, bitcoin is easily concealable, requiring little more than a dozen words scrawled on a piece of paper and stashed in a safe place. As Walter White found in Breaking Bad, concealing millions of dollars in cash can be a headache.

Civil Forfeiture Is State-Sanctioned Theft

However you acquired your fortune, you owe it to yourself to conceal it from prying eyes and probing three-letter agencies that have no right to requisition it. To date, bitcoin is the best form of seizure-resistant money that’s ever existed. Store your wealth in crypto and then stash your private key in a safe place, be it a bank vault, a box in the ground, or your brain.

Do you think civil forfeiture laws are wrong? Let us know in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

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#Blockchain Van Eck Associates CEO: Bitcoin Investors Will Add Gold This Year

Gold and bitcoin markets have have attracted comparisons for some time now, with gold investors taking an interest in the cryptocurrency during the 2017 bull market. But some of these investors are now reintroducing gold to their portfolio, according to Jan Van Eck of Van Eck Associates. 

Also read: 8 Food Delivery Sites That Accept Cryptocurrency 

Bitcoin vs Gold

Van Eck, whose firm created the most popular gold exchange-traded funds, has said that investors are now going back to gold, despite being lured away from it last year. He said that his company had polled bitcoin investors and learned that they were now interested in adding gold as an investment. “I do think that bitcoin pulled a little bit of demand away from gold last year, in 2017,” Van Eck was quoted as saying in an interview with CNBC. He added:

Interestingly, we just polled 4,000 bitcoin investors and their number one investment for 2019 is actually gold. So gold lost to bitcoin and now it’s going the other way.

Van Eck’s comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, however, as his survey didn’t ask investors outright whether they prefer gold over bitcoin. Rather, it asked them which assets they planned to own in the future in addition to bitcoin, of which gold, their first choice, is an obvious candidate.

Gold has long been a safe bet for investors. But bitcoin, described by some as “digital gold,” has also been hailed as a store of value. Tim Seymour, chief investment officer of Seymour Asset Management, was quoted as saying: “Not only have we lost all liquidity on the underlying [commodity] but truly outside of the existential blockchain argument, it’s been very difficult to argue [that bitcoin is a] store of value which is really what we started hearing about.” He added: “Gold is a store of value and there’s no disputing that.”

Bitcoin’s Relationship With Gold

Bitcoin has a complex but intimate relationship with gold. Researchers have previously said that the value of cryptocurrencies spikes when gold markets slump, and when gold prices jump, digital assets drop in value. When BTC’s price surged in December 2017, there was a marginally negative correlation with gold, though the correlation has previously been difficult to prove as bitcoin is such a new asset.

Van Eck Associates CEO: Bitcoin Investors Will Add Gold This Year

Many bitcoin proponents, analysts, and gold investors have made the connection between the two as they are seen as safe havens that form an effective store of value and protection against the world’s volatile economy.

What do you think about the relationship between gold and bitcoin? Do you agree with Van Eck’s comments? Share your thoughts in the section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service. 

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#USA Wellness startup Hims enters the unicorn club with $100M investment

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Hims, known by many for its phallic New York subway advertisements, has raised an additional $100 million in venture capital funding on a pre-money valuation of $1 billion. The round was first reported by Recode and confirmed to TechCrunch by sources with knowledge of the deal.

A growth-stage investor has led the round, which is ongoing, with participation from existing investors. Our source declined to name the lead investor but did say it was a “super big fund” that isn’t SoftBank and that hasn’t previously invested in Hims.

Hims officially launched just over one year ago and has raised $197 million already, as well as incorporated a women’s wellness brand, Hers, to go alongside its flagship men’s wellness brand. The business sells sexual wellness products, skin care and hair loss treatments directly to consumers. In addition to erectile dysfunction medication, it offers the birth control pill to customers with prescriptions and Addyi, the only FDA-approved medication for women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

According to Recode, Hims spent months negotiating with investors, “with some of them balking at the valuation.” Meanwhile, our source says Hims passed on several viable terms sheets and had plenty of IVP — which led its last round — money in the bank ahead of their latest infusion.

$1 billion, a 2x increase from its previous valuation, is a hefty price tag for such an early-stage digital health startup. Then again, most valuations for venture-backed businesses are foolish.

San Francisco-based Hims is also backed by Forerunner Ventures, Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, SV Angel, 8VC, Maverick Capital and more.

 

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2G8SvDt

#Blockchain Bitcoin Mixing Concept Payjoin Makes a ‘Huge Mess’ for Blockchain Surveillance

On Jan. 24, Adam Gibson, author of Waxwing’s Joinmarket blog, wrote about an interesting Coinjoin concept called Payjoin. The protocol further obfuscates the ownership of UTXO inputs during a Coinjoin transaction mixing cycle. According to Gibson, the Payjoin technique is “another nail in the coffin of blockchain analysis.”

Also read: Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance

Payjoin Bitcoin UTXO Mixing Method Improves Coinjoin’s Privacy Technique

Over the past few years, blockchain analysis has kicked into high gear as law enforcement and governments have begun heavily funding companies that offer this service. On the opposite side of the spectrum, cryptocurrency privacy advocates have been building applications that make bitcoins more fungible. One way of adding privacy to bitcoin core (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) transactions is a method called Coinjoin. The practice combines multiple payments from multiple entities into a single transaction. This technique makes it difficult for blockchain analysts to find each derivation point and the identity of the spenders. The Joinmarket project uses the Coinjoin method and allows users to mix their coins and keep control over their private keys throughout the process. The application also incentivizes people to add liquidity to the market by providing users with the ability to charge fees. However, Gibson notes that a traditional Coinjoin transaction is susceptible to looking different to typical unmixed transaction.

Bitcoin Mixing Concept Payjoin Makes a 'Huge Mess' for Blockchain Surveillance
A Coinjoin BTC transaction.

This is because a Coinjoin uses precise and multiple equal-value outputs, which essentially showcases an anonymity set. Repeated mixing rounds create a much larger anonymity set, but they are still noticeable by a trained blockchain analyst. Essentially the Payjoin concept allows Bob to create an “obfuscation of ownership of the inputs without it looking different from an ordinary payment” with his customer Alice. Gibson’s research details that he’s not entirely sure who came up with the Payjoin idea, but he’s seen it mentioned in a blog post written by Matthew Haywood last summer and a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) published by developer Ryan Havar.

Payjoin’s Four Advantages

Gibson’s study also emphasizes that there are four fundamental advantages to the Payjoin concept. The first is hiding the payment amount and Gibson states that blockchain analysts see this as “a huge mess.” Advantage two is breaking heuristics and doing so without flagging that breakage has occurred. “This is enormously important, even if the breakage of the assumption of common input ownership on its own seems rather trivial (especially if Payjoin is used by only a few people), with only two counterparties in each transaction,” Gibson remarked.

Bitcoin Mixing Concept Payjoin Makes a 'Huge Mess' for Blockchain Surveillance
Two advantages of using the Payjoin method.

The next benefit is Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) sanitation and Payjoin bolsters this action by making each payment that comes in consume the UTXO of the last payment. The last advantage is hiding out in a large crowd, which basically makes anonymity sets “indistinguishable from ordinary payments.”

“Let’s say 5% of payments used this method — The point is that nobody will know which 5% of payments are Payjoin — That is a great achievement because it means that all payments, including ones that don’t use Payjoin, gain a privacy advantage,” explains Gibson’s post.

The author conceded:

This is another nail in the coffin of blockchain analysis — If 5% of us do this, it will not be safe to assume that a totally ordinary looking payment is not a Coinjoin.

Gibson explains that right now there are only two services providing this type of Coinjoin solution: Samourai Wallet’s Stowaway, and Joinmarket 0.5.2 which was just released. Gibson has published a demonstration of Payjoin in his prior blog post and notes that while helpful in a peer-to-peer fashion, both Stowaway and Joinmarket are not ready for large scale merchant automation.

What do you think about the Payjoin concept? What projects do you see improving cryptocurrency fungibility? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Waxwing’s blog, en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coinjoin, and Pixabay. 


Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

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#USA Former Munchery employees sue company, blame CEO for shutdown

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The Munchery saga continues.

In a new class-action lawsuit, former Munchery facilities worker Joshua Philips is claiming the startup owes him and 250 other employees 60 days’ wages, citing The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, a U.S. labor law that requires employers with an excess of 100 employees to give notice 60 days ahead of mass layoffs.

Munchery, a prepared meal delivery company headquartered in San Francisco, announced in an email to customers on January 21 that it would cease operations, effectively immediately. The abrupt shutdown not only came as a surprise to Munchery’s community of customers, but shocked vendors, many whom had been expecting payments from the business for several weeks. Munchery’s own employees were left in the dark, too, according to several former workers who spoke to TechCrunch about their debt and dissatisfaction with chief executive James Beriker.

Munchery ordered mass layoffs on January 21, per the lawsuit, the same day customers were notified the company would go out of business. In total, Philips is seeking equal to the sum of his and other affected employees’ “unpaid wages, salary, commissions, bonuses, accrued holiday pay, accrued vacation pay, pension and 401(k) contributions and other ERISA benefits, for 60 days, that would have been covered and paid under the then-applicable employee benefit plans.”

Munchery is deep in a pile of debt. The startup’s former vendors, which includes San Francisco-based Dandelion Chocolate and Three Babes Bakeshop, say they’re owed tens of thousands in overdue payments. Those businesses, and several other small vendors in San Francisco and Los Angeles that notified TechCrunch following the publication of this story, are still awaiting overdue payments, with one supplier claiming to be owed north of $100,000.

As of Monday morning, Munchery had yet to file for bankruptcy.

“They entered into a 14-month payment plan with us to cover nearly $150,000 in debt, but never had the intention of fulfilling their obligation,” an LA-based Munchery vendor, who asked not to be named, told TechCrunch. “The entire meal prep business is not sustainable on a grand scale like these companies envision.”

On top of its outstanding debts to vendors and facilities workers, Munchery also failed to send final paychecks to delivery drivers. Several Instagram messages provided to TechCrunch show a cluster of drivers in the San Francisco and Sacramento area are confused by the lack of communication from the venture-funded startup and are hopeful checks will arrive.

After arguing with Munchery employees, a delivery driver in Sacramento by the name of Sharon Howard said she finally received a “janky looking handwritten check” from the business on Monday and is hopeful it will clear.

“My co-workers up here in Sacramento have not received their final checks and are just um…waiting,” Howard wrote in an Instagram message shared with TechCrunch. “I sort of have the feeling that if they don’t speak up, they’re just gonna be forgotten about … It’s just not right to work with the expectation of getting paid and then just allow Munchery to turn a blind eye.”

Munchery chief executive officer James Beriker joined the startup in 2016

Munchery had raised $125 million in venture capital funding at a peak valuation of $300 million from Sherpa Capital, Menlo Ventures, Greycroft and more since its founding in 2010 by Tran and Conrad Chu. Aside from a small $5 million check, all that cash was deployed under the leadership of Tran, who struggled to improve Munchery’s margins and was eventually replaced by Beriker, the former CEO of Simply Hired.

Munchery, however, struggled under Beriker, too, and ultimately shut down its Los Angeles, Seattle and New York operations and laid off 30 percent of its workforce. A former Munchery employee, who asked not to be named, said Beriker’s poor leadership is to blame for the startup’s failure.

“The CEO was very disconnected to the business,” the person said in a text message. “We would see him maybe once every other week and only for 15 minutes — if that. The kitchen staff didn’t even know who he was when he came to the facility. In my time with the company, he was rarely truthful or transparent about the current state of the business and the future direction. Not to mention his very hefty salary that compared to that of a publicly traded Fortune 500 company.”

“My heart goes out to all of the big and small businesses that Munchery’s closure has and will affect,” the person added. “I am also hopeful that the staff who had zero advance knowledge of the closure will find employment quickly.”

Beriker has not responded to multiple requests for comment from TechCrunch. We’ve reached out to Munchery’s investors for additional detail surrounding the strange, sudden and silent shutdown.

Here’s a look at the full legal complaint:

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FU15aa

#Blockchain Arwen Enables Self-Custody for Traders of Centralized Crypto Exchanges

Centralized exchanges are a common security concern in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. As a single point of failure they can be strong-armed by governments, routinely targeted by hackers, or operators could pull an exit scam and elope with client funds. Despite these risks, they dominate cryptocurrency trading volumes. A new solution promises to enable trade to use centralized exchanges but without handing over control of coins to them.

Also Read: Belarus’ Largest Bank May Establish a Cryptocurrency Exchange

Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins

Boston-based startup Arwen (formerly Commonwealth Crypto) announced on Jan. 28 the release of its testnet trading application. The company aims to bring atomic swaps to mainstream cryptocurrency trading with its technology. Using the service, traders can deposit their coins in an onchain escrow, rather than with an exchange, removing the need to trust the centralized venue to handle the money. This allows them to maintain custody of their coins while trading on a centralized exchange without having to transfer coins to the exchange’s omnibus wallet or their keys to a third-party web server.

Arwen Enables Self-Custody for Traders of Centralized Crypto Exchanges

“If you do not hold the keys, you do not own your coins,” Arwen’s CEO Sharon Goldberg stated. “The ethos behind cryptocurrency is built upon a trustless, non-custodial technology. Centralized exchanges are needed for liquidity; however, the exchange of customer coins should be executed in a trustless way. We have solved … that problem.”

Kucoin Is Already on Board

Arwen also announced it is teaming up with the popular Singapore-based global cryptocurrency exchange Kucoin to offer its customers the possibility of using the new service. In addition to Kucoin, the startup reports being in talks with other exchanges about integrating the protocol. It currently supports trading on BTC, LTC, BCH, ZEC and ETH as well as ERC20 tokens.

Arwen Enables Self-Custody for Traders of Centralized Crypto Exchanges

Kucoin President Eric Don commented: “KuCoin has been working hard to ensure the security of the exchange itself, and we are one of the few exchanges that are rated A in terms of security by ICOrating, but we are also exploring other ways to satisfy users who have extreme security requirements and do not trust any third party. [Arwen’s] escrow mechanism enables users who have extreme security requirements to have a higher sense of security in transactions.”

What do you think about using a protocol such as Arwen’s for trading? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

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#Blockchain Back to Basics: What Is Money?

Our current economic system can be compared to a merry-go-round that has us consuming, trapped in debt and spending as quickly as we earn. What is fiat currency? Why do we use it and who controls it? And how does it compare to gold and bitcoin? It is worth going back to basics, to better understand the fundamentals of what makes money money.

Also Read: Why a Global Recession Would Be Good for Bitcoin

What Is Money?

Back to Basics: What Is Fiat Money?
The earliest coin, featuring a lion

The first ever currency is credited to King Alyattes in Lydia in 600BC, and the first coin ever minted features a roaring lion, according to the Greek historian Herodotus. Fast forward to the 21st century, and fiat money is now paper money and coins are not convertible into gold or silver but are made legal tender by fiat (order) of the government. Fiat currency is used for trade, to facilitate the direct exchange of goods and services. Without money we cannot easily acquire basic necessities such as accommodation, food and clothing.

The value of a nation’s currency is strongly tied to the value of its imports and exports. So any country that exports gold or has access to gold reserves will also see an increase in the strength of its currency when gold prices rise since this increases the value of the country’s total exports.

Back to Basics: What Is Fiat Money?A new medium of exchange in the form of cryptocurrencies arrived when Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin in 2009. Unlike government issued currencies, Bitcoin has no central party responsible for controlling it.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization that monitors global economic and financial developments. It defines money as follows:

In short, money can be anything that can serve as a store of value, which means people can save it and use it later—smoothing their purchases over time; unit of account, that is, provide a common base for prices; or  medium of exchange, something that people can use to buy and sell from one another.

The IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde acknowledges that money itself is changing, as cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum vie for a spot in the cashless world, with the promise of quicker and cheaper settlement.

Who Controls Fiat Money?

Back to Basics: What Is Fiat Money?

In the U.S., monetary supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve, while around the world prominent central banks such as the Bank of England, European Central Bank, Swiss National Bank, People’s Bank of China, and Bank of Japan control fiat by adjusting its supply and the cost of borrowing it through setting interest rates. 

The interest rate is the percentage charged on the total amount you borrow or save. Even a small change in rates can have a huge impact. These tools give the Federal Reserve and central banks free will to create booms and busts within the economy. Central banks also monitor the amount of money in the economy by measuring so-called monetary aggregates.

Politics and macroeconomic trends are important themes to follow as this affects the quantity of money circulating in an economy. This is why the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is extremely important to follow. The IMF has warned that trade war could cost the global economy $430 billion. The impact of this will trickle down and hurt consumers. As U.S. President James Garfield noted in 1881:

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

Understanding Inflation

In economics, inflation is the increase in the price of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. Inflation occurs when the economy’s aggregate volume of spending grows at a faster rate than its output. This is how governments and banks take your money – through the inflation of their fiat.

Dr Edward W. Younkins, a professor of accountancy and director of the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality, writes: Inflation is a dishonest and deliberate policy and tool of politicians who do not wish to reduce their spending. The government creates new money in order to cover what it spends in excess of its income. The existence of an unbalanced budget is a frequent reason for the government to print more money. When more is spent than is raised by taxes, the government makes up the difference with fiat money. The basic cause of inflation is the government’s unwillingness to cut its spending plans or to raise the funds it desires by increasing taxation or by borrowing from the public.”

The Great Depression and Bank Runs

Back to Basics: What Is Fiat Currency?
Bank run scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. The vast majority of economic crises have been caused by flaws in the monetary system that have recurred repeatedly over the years.

In examining the history of money, is is essential to take in the outbreak of the Great Depression in the fall of 1929 which caused much economic hardship. A “bank run” occurs when a large number of people rush to withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future as it lacks the funds to cover all of its financial obligations. When the monetary system becomes unstable, a bank run becomes a possibility, although this is less likely in a system with moderate inflation. The classic Hollywood movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” captures the Great Depression and bank run perfectly.

Back to Basics: What Is Money?
Northern Rock bank run, 2007.

Bank runs are not a thing of the past. In 2007, Britain had its very own such event. Northern Rock, the U.K’s fifth-biggest mortgage lender at the time, saw the first bank run in Britain since 1866. It was only after the Bank of England said it would stand by the troubled Northern Rock that people calmed down and the pandemonium was quelled.

One of the good things about bitcoin is it’s spurred more people into asking questions about the purpose and function of money.


Sir William Paterson, a Scottish trader and founder of the Bank of England in 1694, perhaps put it best:

The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.

The U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, and no country today has its currency backed by gold. More than ever, therefore, fiat currencies, and the interest rates set by the central banks who control them, are backed by nothing more than a promise. Proof of work cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, in comparison, while wholly digital in nature, are backed by the energy expended by tens of thousands of miners that secure the network and validate transactions. Coupled with the provable scarcity that comes from having a fixed and knowable supply, and bitcoin takes the best elements of gold and combines them with fiat currency’s ease of exchange. Modern technology has given us the opportunity to evolve our monetary system and bitcoin is leading the way.

Will bitcoin become the new global currency? Let us know in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock, BBC, British Museum, IMF and IMDb.


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#USA Sapphire Ventures bets big on esports and entertainment with new $115M fund

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Sapphire Ventures, formerly the corporate venture capital arm of SAP, has lassoed $115 million from new limited partners (LPs) to invest at the intersection of tech, sports, media and entertainment.

A majority of the LPs for the new fund, called Sapphire Sport, have ties to the sports industry, from City Football Group, which owns English Premier League team Manchester City, to Adidas, the owners of the Indiana Pacers, New York Jets, San Jose Sharks and Tampa Bay Lightning, among others.

The firm plans to do five to six investments per year, sized between $3 million and $7 million. So far, they’ve deployed capital to five startups: at-home fitness system Tonal, live soccer streaming platform mycujoo, digital sports network Overtime, ticketing and events platform Fevo and gaming studio Phoenix Labs. Sapphire began backing tech startups in 2008; in 2016, the firm closed on $1 billion for its third flagship venture fund.

Sapphire managing director and co-founder Doug Higgins is leading the effort alongside newly tapped partner Michael Spirito, who joined from 21st Century Fox, where he focused on business development and digital media for the Fox Sports-owned Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, in September.

Higgins was an investment manager at Intel Capital for four years prior to co-launching Sapphire. Throughout his career, he’s managed the firm’s investments in LinkedIn, DocuSign, Square and more.

“We invest in anything that tech is disrupting,” Higgins told TechCrunch. “We were early investors in Fitbit, so we saw the beginning of digital fitness and how tech can impact the lives of anyone, not just high-performance athletes … We are also investors in Square, TicketFly and Paytm and what we’ve been seeing — the dream as a VC — is these massive markets in the sports, media and digital health world that are getting disrupted by tech.”

Sapphire is betting its traditional and well-established venture platform, coupled with the expertise of leading sports entities on board as LPs, will give it a competitive edge as it targets some of the best emerging sports tech companies.

“We see a lot of FOMO happening in this world, where everyone wants to have a play, but to make the best investment you need to have the widest perspective,” Higgins said. “So if you’re a team owner of a particular football team you are going to make better decisions if you are able to share perspectives with owners of other teams.”

“The best entrepreneurs, the ones we all want to invest in, there’s not a draft, they have to select you,” he added.

Investment in esports and gaming has skyrocketed, surpassing a total of $2.5 billion in VC funding in 2018. According to PitchBook, a handful of startups have already raised a total of $65 million in VC backing this year, including a $10.8 million financing for ReKTGlobal, a provider of esports infrastructure services.

“You can’t ignore the numbers on esports,” Higgins added. “They just continue to grow massively and people who have teenage kids, like myself, [those kids] want to grow up to be the next ninja, not the next Tom Brady .”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2G5aGtP

#Blockchain Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Shift Mining Pool Dominance Immensely

During the first month of 2019, studies have revealed the growing trend of unknown miners processing blocks on the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network. A few years ago, most mining pools began revealing their identity via the coinbase parameter when they found a block. Over the last two years, however, unknown miners have started to dominate as established operations have lost a considerable share of hashrate.

Also read: Bloq Labs Reveals Software Suite That Aims to Increase Hash Power by Double Digits

Unknown Bitcoin Miners Have Been Shifting Hashrate Dominance

The bitcoin mining industry is extremely competitive, with the overall SHA-256 hashrate for major public blockchains growing immensely over the years. Between the two most popular mined SHA-256 coins, bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin core (BTC), 41.8 exahashes per second (EH/s) are currently securing both chains. A recent study from the researchers at Diar explains how unknown miners are shifting the dominance of major known mining pools.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
Unknown pools have shifted the dominance of large mining pools like Btc.com, Antpool, and Viabtc.

“Unknown miners closed December having solved a whopping 22% of the total blocks up from 6% at the start of last year,” explains Diar’s research report. It continues:

The small miner exodus could be a possible positive for Bitcoin’s network security as smaller miners joined to the hip of large pools began turning off their computing power resulting in a decline in mining pool dominance.

The researchers say there could be “concerns” with the growth of unknown mining pools. Diar’s report explains that just because the miner chooses not to disclose its identity doesn’t mean the source of the hash power isn’t an existing known pool. The researchers note that the three large pools of Btc.com, Antpool, and Viabtc have all seen their percentage of total hashrate decline over the past year, even though they have added a 55 percent increase in pooled resources. In January of 2018, those three combined pools had 53 percent of the network while now they have less than 39 percent the report details.

Coinmetrics Notices the Resurgence of Mystery Miners After Parsing 450,000 BTC Blocks

Diar is not the only analysis team that has picked up on this growing trend of unknown mining pools. During the first week of 2019, cryptocurrency analytics site Coinmetrics noticed the same thing. After parsing the coinbase outputs from the last 450,000 BTC blocks, the researchers noted that one mystery arising from the charts is “the resurgence of unknown miners.” Coinmetrics details that between mid-2015 and mid-2017, most miners disclosed their identity through the coinbase parameter to identify themselves with the name of their pool.

“However, through 2018, unknown miners picked up — This may be due to the waning importance of miner signaling due to the resolution of the Segwit saga, a newly-found appreciation for privacy, or the emergence of miners who have something to hide,” explains Coinmetrics’ granular mining pool mapping research.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
Coinmetrics chart of the 450,000 BTC blocks the team parsed that shows the resurgence of anonymous miners.

Unknown Mining Pools Have Increased Since the Peak of the 2017 Scaling Debate

The resurgence of unknown miners is also prevalent within the BCH network. During the first few months after Aug. 1, 2017, the BCH network had a significant amount of unknown miners processing blocks. This period of time is when the shift seemingly began for both the BTC and BCH networks as it introduced the possibility for SHA-256 mining pools to switch between both chains depending on profitability.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
BTC mining pools (left) and BCH mining pools (right) on Jan. 28, 2019. Today, mystery miners command more than 22% of the BTC chain and 17% of the BCH chain. 

Since then, the rise of unknown mining pool sightings on both chains has continued to increase, and during the Nov. 15, 2018 BCH chain split, there was a huge influx of unknown miners on both networks. At the time of publication, unknown mining entities make up more than 17 percent of the BCH network. Similarly, on Jan. 28, 2019, the BTC chain’s hashrate distribution shows there’s roughly 22.7 percent of unknown miners processing BTC blocks.

What do you think about the resurgence of unknown miners taking away the dominance of known mining pools? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Diar, Coinmetrics, Blockchain.com, and Coin Dance. 


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The post Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2FUh348 Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance

#Blockchain Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Shift Mining Pool Dominance Immensely

During the first month of 2019, studies have revealed the growing trend of unknown miners processing blocks on the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network. A few years ago, most mining pools began revealing their identity via the coinbase parameter when they found a block. Over the last two years, however, unknown miners have started to dominate as established operations have lost a considerable share of hashrate.

Also read: Bloq Labs Reveals Software Suite That Aims to Increase Hash Power by Double Digits

Unknown Bitcoin Miners Have Been Shifting Hashrate Dominance

The bitcoin mining industry is extremely competitive, with the overall SHA-256 hashrate for major public blockchains growing immensely over the years. Between the two most popular mined SHA-256 coins, bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin core (BTC), 41.8 exahashes per second (EH/s) are currently securing both chains. A recent study from the researchers at Diar explains how unknown miners are shifting the dominance of major known mining pools.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
Unknown pools have shifted the dominance of large mining pools like Btc.com, Antpool, and Viabtc.

“Unknown miners closed December having solved a whopping 22% of the total blocks up from 6% at the start of last year,” explains Diar’s research report. It continues:

The small miner exodus could be a possible positive for Bitcoin’s network security as smaller miners joined to the hip of large pools began turning off their computing power resulting in a decline in mining pool dominance.

The researchers say there could be “concerns” with the growth of unknown mining pools. Diar’s report explains that just because the miner chooses not to disclose its identity doesn’t mean the source of the hash power isn’t an existing known pool. The researchers note that the three large pools of Btc.com, Antpool, and Viabtc have all seen their percentage of total hashrate decline over the past year, even though they have added a 55 percent increase in pooled resources. In January of 2018, those three combined pools had 53 percent of the network while now they have less than 39 percent the report details.

Coinmetrics Notices the Resurgence of Mystery Miners After Parsing 450,000 BTC Blocks

Diar is not the only analysis team that has picked up on this growing trend of unknown mining pools. During the first week of 2019, cryptocurrency analytics site Coinmetrics noticed the same thing. After parsing the coinbase outputs from the last 450,000 BTC blocks, the researchers noted that one mystery arising from the charts is “the resurgence of unknown miners.” Coinmetrics details that between mid-2015 and mid-2017, most miners disclosed their identity through the coinbase parameter to identify themselves with the name of their pool.

“However, through 2018, unknown miners picked up — This may be due to the waning importance of miner signaling due to the resolution of the Segwit saga, a newly-found appreciation for privacy, or the emergence of miners who have something to hide,” explains Coinmetrics’ granular mining pool mapping research.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
Coinmetrics chart of the 450,000 BTC blocks the team parsed that shows the resurgence of anonymous miners.

Unknown Mining Pools Have Increased Since the Peak of the 2017 Scaling Debate

The resurgence of unknown miners is also prevalent within the BCH network. During the first few months after Aug. 1, 2017, the BCH network had a significant amount of unknown miners processing blocks. This period of time is when the shift seemingly began for both the BTC and BCH networks as it introduced the possibility for SHA-256 mining pools to switch between both chains depending on profitability.

Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance
BTC mining pools (left) and BCH mining pools (right) on Jan. 28, 2019. Today, mystery miners command more than 22% of the BTC chain and 17% of the BCH chain. 

Since then, the rise of unknown mining pool sightings on both chains has continued to increase, and during the Nov. 15, 2018 BCH chain split, there was a huge influx of unknown miners on both networks. At the time of publication, unknown mining entities make up more than 17 percent of the BCH network. Similarly, on Jan. 28, 2019, the BTC chain’s hashrate distribution shows there’s roughly 22.7 percent of unknown miners processing BTC blocks.

What do you think about the resurgence of unknown miners taking away the dominance of known mining pools? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Diar, Coinmetrics, Blockchain.com, and Coin Dance. 


Want to create your own secure cold storage paper wallet? Check our tools section.

The post Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance appeared first on Bitcoin News.

from Bitcoin News http://bit.ly/2FUh348 Mystery Bitcoin Miners Are Altering Mining Pool Dominance