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Ukraine’s crypto business sector has decided to address the deficit of developers in the field. Several companies, the industry’s association and an educational organization have teamed up to organize a professional course that will teach students how to create solutions utilizing crypto technologies.
Six companies, including a number of prominent crypto platforms, the Blockchain Association of Ukraine (BAU) and the Ukrainian National IT Factory (UNIT) are behind the educational project. Its first Blockchain Hub Academy course has already started and in the next four months it will prepare the first group of 30 students to take on the challenges facing the crypto industry in their country. Quoted by Forklog, BAU vice president Vitaliy Bulychev commented:
The aim of the initiative is to prepare tech specialists for the crypto industry… This is one of the few niches where a rapidly growing industry provides ample opportunities to monetize knowledge, while giving a feeling of satisfaction from value creation, where the products are open to the world and everyone is a brick in the foundation of the new paradigm of economic relations.
Bulychev also noted that in Ukraine “there are people willing to learn and there are carriers of unique knowledge.” In his words, that’s a “win-win situation for all stakeholders.”
The educational program has been developed with the participation of experts from major Ukrainian companies working in the crypto space such as Distributed Lab, Pandora Boxchain, Kuna Exchange, Remme, Atticlab, and Blocksoftlab. It is based on UNIT’s peer-to-peer approach which means there will be no lecturers.
Students to Learn to Create Wallets and Smart Contracts
The 4-month course is divided into two segments. The first part called “Satoshi Way” is focused on Bitcoin and the basic distributed ledger technologies associated with the first cryptocurrency. The second, titled “Post-Satoshi Era,” will cover the full spectrum of related technologies and developments that appeared after Bitcoin.
During the course, students will learn how to create cryptocurrency wallets, smart contracts, and how to work with different protocols. They will also acquire knowledge in cryptography and game theory. Upon completing the program, the participants will have the necessary expertise and skills to develop their own blockchain solutions.
Despite having a relatively developed crypto sector, Ukraine is yet to adopt dedicated regulations and legalize the industry. A number of draft laws have been filed in the country’s parliament since the fall of 2017 but the legislation is still pending approval by the Verkhovna Rada.
In October 2018, a new regulatory concept was announced by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The document states that Ukraine should fully legalize cryptocurrencies and related business activities within the next three years.
According to a report published last spring, the daily trading volume of digital coins with the Ukrainian hryvnia surpasses $1.9 million. Another study released in December estimated that Ukrainians trade around $775 million of cryptocurrency annually.
What do you think about the educational initiative of the Ukrainian crypto industry? Tell us in the comments section below.
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CALLING ALL TRADERS!
Think you’re good at trading… Well, it’s time to put your skills to the test.
Hong Kong – Cryptocurrency exchange, trade.io, continues to make waves in the crypto space as it is set to launch a series of exciting trading competitions to add to their line-up of innovative products and services.
In conjunction with the competition, trade.io has partnered with KRATOS to launch a massive airdrop to entice the entire crypto community! More details can be found on our Medium page.
To kick off their first competition with a bang, trade.io is offering 1 million KTOS tokens (worth 130,000 USD!) where traders need to trade as many KTOS as they can to have a chance to win a first prize of 200,000 KTOS, or one of 99 more prizes!
The tenacious team behind the trade.io name is encouraging their community to challenge friends and other TIOnauts.
trade.io’s Chief Operations Officer, Roy Gutshall, shared his excitement on the KTOS competition & airdrop:
“We’re thrilled to be launching the trading competition as it adds diversity to our already innovative portfolio of key services and brings value to our TIOnauts who have been eagerly anticipating our next move.
“It has been a pleasure to work with KRATOS during their ICO and we are excited to see the evolution of their project with the listing of KTOS on the trade.io Exchange. We believe this generous airdrop and attractive trading competition, will help further promote the adoption of both trade.io and KRATOS platforms. We thank KRATOS for their continued support and opportunity to share in their continued success.”
To have a chance of winning your share of 1 million KTOS tokens, here’s what you need to know…
How to enter:
● Users must sign up to the trade.io Exchange by 22nd January. Anyone signed up to trade.io Exchange is eligible to participate in the competition.
● On Wednesday 23rd January, users will be airdropped 75 KTOS tokens to their account.
● KTOS will also be listed on this day, so users can purchase more tokens to compete with to increase their chances of winning!
● The competition will take place for a total of 10 days, from 22nd January – 1st February.
What’s next?
Start trading KTOS! The winner of the competition will be the person with the highest amount of KTOS tokens traded against any of its pairs.
The total prize fund is worth over 130,000 USD (1 million KTOS tokens).
In addition…
All accounts participating in the trade.io Liquidity Pool will share 1 million KTOS tokens proportionally.
KRATOS is a blockchain-based platform that is accessible 24/7 for the commodities trading industry, and acts as a single source of truth.
Smart contracts between the trading parties allow for more efficient, accurate and simpler processes leading to lower overhead costs and time delays.
TIOnauts – hold onto your hats!
Well, what are you waiting for?! Be sure to sign up to the trade.io Exchange if you haven’t already and get ready to compete!
The launch of trade.io’s exclusive competition is just the first of many and the latest to their line-up of exciting products & services. Lots more trading competitions & prizes will be announced soon.
This is a paid press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.
Flexciton, the London-based startup that is using AI to help factories optimise production lines, has raised £2.5 million in funding, in a round led by Backed VC. Also participating is Join Capital and company builder Entrepreneur First. The young company pitched at EF’s 6th London demo day in 2016.
Riding the so-called “Industry 4.0” wave, Flexciton has developed an AI-driven solution to optimise the way manufacturers plan and schedule “multi-step production lines,” which it says is a complex mathematical task faced by all manufacturers. It’s also traditionally quite a manual one, with existing software solutions still leaving a lot of the heavy lifting to humans.
“Running every factory in the world is a plan for that factory’s production,” explains Flexciton co-founder Jamie Potter. “This plan dictates everything which goes on in the factory. Plan well and a factory can be very profitable but plan badly and the same factory could deliver late on customer orders, overspend on equipment and materials and have its margins destroyed”.
Potter says that typically a human manually creates a plan based on their past experience, which isn’t always optimal. “The difference between an Ok plan and the optimal plan is huge for a factory, planning well can save a single factory many millions of pounds per year. The problem is, finding that optimal plan is one of the hardest mathematical problems that exists in the real world”.
Which, of course, is where more machines can help. Flexciton’s AI technology learns from a factory’s data, and Potter says it can understand exactly how that factory works. “It can then search through the trillions of different options to find the most efficient production plan. The results can be staggering too as our technology has shown time and again that it is capable of double-digit performance gains to a factory!” he says.
Already revenue-generating, Flexciton has customers in the textiles, food, automotive and semiconductor sectors. “We love to work with particularly complicated factories. Here the planning problem is the hardest and this is where we add the most value,” says Potter.
To back this up, Flexciton has recruited a number of experts in the field of industrial optimisation and AI. The current Flexciton team has published over 140 peer-reviewed academic papers, which focus on the practical application of this technology in eight different industrial use cases. To boot, Flexciton’s senior optimisation scientist, Dr. Giorgos Kopanos, has even published a book on the subject.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2QZC12p
There’s a lot to love about Ledger’s hardware wallets. There’s also a lot to loathe. From a design, manufacture, and presentation perspective, they’re a dream. From a software perspective, they’re capricious, prone to connecting and disconnecting on a whim. The new Ledger Nano X continues that tradition.
I’ve got something of a love-hate relationship with Ledger hardware wallets (HWs). I love their aesthetics and theoretical functionality. I hate their practical functionality, because in practice, Ledgers never work for me. I’ve got four of ‘em sitting in a drawer somewhere, one of which I purchased myself and the others sent by Ledger for reviewing purposes. I managed to get all of them to work, eventually, after much cursing and teeth-gritting, but predicted that I would be unlikely to use those particular devices again. I’ve kept my word.
My review edition of the Nano X was great until I unboxed it.
The new Ledger Nano X, unveiled at the start of this month, is a device I want to crush on, or at least develop as much of an affinity for a HW as it’s natural for a man to have. And, straight out the box, I feel all those feels. No other HW manufacturer makes devices that look as good as Ledger. You name them – Cold Card, Ellipal, Cobo Vault – I’ve reviewed them and found them functional, but none looked as slick as Ledger’s wallets when the cellophane was peeled off.
There’s a much more desirable attribute of hardware wallets, however, than looking good in the palm of the hand, and that’s where Ledger and I don’t see eye to eye. I don’t know if it’s my laptops or my attitude, but Ledgers hate me. I had been hoping their new Nano X, scheduled to ship in March, would end my lousy run of luck with Ledgers, but it wasn’t to be.
‘Our Most Advanced Hardware Wallet Yet’
Ledger’s “most advanced hardware wallet yet” is basically the best-selling Nano with Bluetooth bolted on, an extra button, and the new Ledger Live mobile app as a companion. The X is the future of Ledger’s production line, with the original Nano now reduced to 70 bucks, as the French firm looks to get shot of stock and make way for the sleeker Nano X, which will retail for around $140.
The Nano doesn’t feel dated until you look at the Nano X, whereupon it feels as obsolete as a first edition iPhone. That’s not to slate the trusty Nano however – it remains a highly regarded hardware wallet, and there is no need to upgrade to the X. If you’re shopping for a new Ledger, however, it’s all about the X. It’s hard to overstate how much utility is added by simply upgrading from one push button to two. Entering your PIN into the device is much easier now, with the buttons serving as left and right respectively, while pushing them in unison acts as ‘enter’.
The Nano X comes with 5x the storage capacity for applications as its predecessor, allowing it to store more cryptocurrencies than any other major HW on the market. The test version of the device I received came with instructions noting that “Many things will be improved [in final production] including firmware, battery life, laser engraving quality, screen luminosity, general quality.” So pretty much everything then. The build and finish quality of the X look perfectly good to me. My only issue – and it’s a major one – is with the software.
In theory, software is a lot easier to fix than hardware, not least because it doesn’t require recalling 100,000 devices. That said, Ledger have been working on their Ledger Live wallet management software for over six months now, and it’s yet to work for longer than a few minutes at a time for this reviewer.
My laptop would ideally have one Ledger application – not four.
A Long and Fruitless Week
When it comes to product reviews, my policy is to wait until everything’s working correctly before putting fingers to keyboard. After a long and frustrating week with the Nano X, however, in which far too many hours were frittered away on fruitless troubleshooting, it behoves me to write this review. As I type these words, I have yet to send or receive cryptocurrency using my Nano X, but despite this failure, I feel well qualified to expound on what the X can and cannot do.
Given that bluetooth and a standard mini USB are fitted to the Nano X, there are two ways to install the Ledger Live software onto the device. If I can’t get Ledger Live on desktop to work, I figure, I’ll just do it over bluetooth using the Ledger Live mobile app. It was a nice idea, but it wasn’t to be. I was stymied at first by this error message:
After reaching out to Ledger support, I was informed that “Yesterday, we announced a new firmware version. Our servers were overloaded that’s why you have this error message. Can you retry tomorrow?” I certainly could. Only, the next day Ledger Live was still producing the same error message – on two desktop devices and also on mobile. The next day it was the same. And the day after, and the day after that. This evening, however, while the desktop software was still being unresponsive, I made a breakthrough on mobile at the umpteenth attempt.
Hope Springs Eternal
With some relief, I sat down to write my Nano X review in the knowledge that I was just a few clicks away from having the device fully operational. The last step was to install a cryptocurrency app, because Ledger insists on forcing users to install apps within apps. If you want to store 100 cryptocurrencies on the X, for example, you have to install 100 apps onto the HW. Utter madness.
Pretty soon, I’m installing the BTC app, though I can’t tell from the onscreen prompt whether it’s being downloaded onto the mobile app or onto the HW itself. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter, as I’m soon greeted by a message that reads “Operation was cancelled. Something went wrong. Please retry or contact us.” I try a different app, ETH this time. “Installing Ethereum. The installation of Ethereum app may take a while, please keep the app open,” I’m informed. Again, I’ve no idea whether this means the app on my phone or that I should keep the Nano X open and powered on. A moment later, I’m greeted by an entirely new error message:
And that’s about the point where I gave up. I would have no problem cutting Ledger some slack on what’s an early production model of their Nano X, were it not for the fact that the problems with this device have nothing to do with manufacturing and everything to do with coding. The Nano X works as well as its predecessor, which for this reviewer means barely/not at all. I still want to find a Ledger HW I can love, and I still dream of opening one of their devices to find it works straight out the box. Until that happy day arrives, however, I’m resigned to composing verbose reviews that don’t even begin to convey the lengths I went to in order to get this damn thing to work. Better luck next time.
What are your thoughts on Ledger’s hardware wallets? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
Ten African tech startups have been selected to take part in the #Africa4Future accelerator programme, which helps aerospace startups speed up their innovation and scale.
Disrupt Africa reported in November on the launch of #Africa4Future, which is an initiative of global aerospace accelerator Airbus BizLab, GIZ’s Make-IT in Africa and the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST).
The programme aims to assist talented African entrepreneurs using innovative aerospace based solutions to tackle the continent’s most pressing challenges such as transportation, agriculture and healthcare.
After 314 entries were received from companies representing 19 African countries, 10 have been chosen to take part. They include three from Kenya – drone company Astral Aerial, environmental monitoring solution Lentera, and water monitoring solution MobiTech Water Solutions – and two from South Africa – smart manufacturing company Elemental Numerics, and wireless charging solution WiPo Wireless Power.
The rest of the cohort is made up of drone companies Cote d’Ivoire drone (Ivory Coast) and Maisha ICT Tech (Ethiopia), health supplies delivery platform MamaBird (Malawi), urban mapping solution Map Action (Mali), and construction project management tool Track Your Build (Nigeria).
#Africa4Future begins with an intensive six-month business incubation and accelerator programme involving technical, commercial and mentorship activities in France, Germany and South Africa. This includes workshops and coaching sessions with Airbus experts as well as Make-IT in Africa, MEST and Innocircle coaches.
The programme will culminate with demo day events at the biennial Paris International Airshow and a special event in Germany from June 19-26, when finalists will launch their products, define their collaboration with Airbus and announce their investment commitments in front of representatives from across the aerospace industry.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is due to make a decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin ETF next month, and the deadline cannot be extended further. However, since the U.S. government is currently shut down, a securities lawyer explains what is likely to happen to the ETF, including the likelihood of an automatic approval.
Jake Chervinsky, a lawyer who focuses on litigation involving securities, commodities, futures and other derivatives, explained in a series of tweets on Friday how the current U.S. government shutdown could affect the upcoming decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
The commission has designated a date by which it shall either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change filed by Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of Vaneck Solidx Bitcoin Trust. The “final deadline to approve or deny the ETF is February 27. That’s 240 days after the ETF proposal was first published in the Federal Register,” Chervinsky tweeted, emphasizing:
The SEC doesn’t have the power to extend the 240-day deadline. The statute absolutely prohibits any further delays … By law, that means if the SEC fails to make a decision by the February 27 deadline, the ETF will be automatically approved.
However, he proceeded to explain why it is “*extremely* unlikely” that the bitcoin ETF will be automatically approved.
SEC Not Totally Shut Down
While many U.S. government departments have completely shut down due to political deadlock between President Trump and Congress over the southern border wall, the SEC posted a notice on its website stating that “Effective Thursday, Dec. 27 and until further notice, the agency will have a very limited number of staff members available.” The commission added that they will “respond to emergency situations involving market integrity and investor protection, including law enforcement.”
The SEC has posted its operational plan during a shutdown on its website. The document explains that the agency will discontinue “review and approval of applications for registration . . . with respect to new financial products,” which include bitcoin ETFs, Chervinsky clarified.
He believes that the commission views “preventing controversial financial products like bitcoin ETFs from being auto-approved due to blown deadlines” as one of the “activities necessary for a short period in order to ensure an orderly shutdown of operations,” elaborating:
In fact, the SEC has *already* taken action during the shutdown to avoid missing deadlines on other proposed rule changes … the SEC has a skeleton crew handling proposed rule changes during the shutdown.
Therefore, if the government shutdown continues until Feb. 27, “that same crew should be around to issue an order approving or denying the ETF,” the lawyer wrote.
Chance of Approval
While acknowledging that there is still a chance the SEC could approve the bitcoin ETF, Chervinsky believes that if the shutdown continues past the deadline then the chance “is near zero.” He further asserted that even if the ETF is automatically approved:
It isn’t likely to stay in effect for long. Automatic approval isn’t a lifetime guarantee & can be undone easily. When the shutdown ends, the SEC can just force the ETF to be delisted.
The lawyer also commented on Bakkt’s pending approval by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). “Unlike the SEC, the CFTC has no statutory deadline for making a decision on Bakkt,” he clarified. “So it can delay as long as it wants. Don’t expect anything on Bakkt until after the shutdown (maybe months after).”
What do you think will happen to the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin ETF? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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The African video on demand (VoD) space has been much-hyped for years, but there is little evidence of any tangible successes.
Nigeria’s iROKOtv is the flagship “local” startup, competing against the likes of Netflix and Showmax, but the recent sale of iflix operations in Africa spoke to the major challenges associated with building VoD platforms on the continent.
One startup, however, believes it has cracked it, and the numbers certainly speak to that. Ivory Coast-based startup StarNews Mobile launched in July 2017, targeting the mass market with a network of over 50 mobile channels offering celebrity-based content priced at low daily subscription rates.
“StarNews Mobile works with local and international celebrities such as Davido, Fally Ipupa or Sauti Sol to create dedicated mobile channels where celebrities publish exclusive short videos,” founder Guy Kamgaing told Disrupt Africa.
It deployed in Ivory Coast in partnership with operators MTN and Moov, and broke the one million subscriber mark back in April 2018. Since then it has launched in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, and is targeting 20 extra markets in total through its MTN partnership.
Users can subscribe to their favorite celebrities’ channel through their operator for as low as US$0.10 per day. Once subscribed, they receive a video link via SMS to watch exclusive videos daily. The revenue generated from the subscription fee is then shared between the operator, the content provider and StarNews Mobile.
“Basically we have found a way to adapt SnapChat, or Instagram Stories, to the African context,” Kamgaing said.
Africa is the fastest growing mobile market in the world, and the number of smartphone users is set to reach 690 million in 2025. The continent’s young, social media savvy population is hungry for locally-relevant content to consume on their mobile phones, but Kamgaing said exploiting this opportunity, finding the right content, and monetising it has been a challenge.
“In the past few years dozens of OTT platforms have launched on the continent and many have failed, because of technical limitations and costs of data and content licensing versus low disposable income levels,” he said.
“Others such as Showmax and iROKOtv are heavily funded and holding on, but the truth is that user acquisition is extremely hard in Africa. Free platforms such as YouTube or Instagram are popular but generate little to no revenue for content providers. Mobile operators also have their own mobile video stores, but they don’t always get the content right.”
Kamgaing believes StarNews Mobile has managed to find solutions to all these problems.
“We’ve got content that young people are passionate about, the videos are short and delivered seamlessly by our operator partners so the service just works, and users pay small amounts they can afford through their pre-paid data,” he said.
Bootstrapped to its current six-figure US dollar gross monthly revenue, StarNews Mobile is now looking for external funding to support rapid expansion.
“We’ve self-funded the business in the first 18 months but the company also started generated sizeable revenues soon after launch in the summer of 2017, so we’ve been able to bootstrap our way so far,” Kamgaing said.
“In October we signed a group deal with MTN to launch in an additional 20 countries in the next two to three years, so this means a steep ramp up. We’re now raising our first seed raise to fuel this growth.”
It did take some trial and error to find the right product-market fit, however, and Kamgaing said StarNews Mobile was fortunate it had previous experience working with mobile operators, a process he said can “break” many small companies. Other challenges included building the right technology to fit into a telecom environment, which Kamgaing said the startup is still struggling, and selling this unique business model to an audience of local content providers.
“But when it started taking off, it just kept growing, and we knew we had something. Now our challenge is about scaling from three to 20 countries, which means rethinking and rebuilding our technical platform in order to be able to sustain this rapid growth,” he said.
As bitcoiners celebrate the 10th anniversary of Satoshi’s invention, veteran enthusiasts will be aware that a lot has changed since the early days. One business that was once incredibly popular is the art of manufacturing loaded physical bitcoins. Government regulations have forced operations to cease, causing the physical bitcoin minting business to virtually grind to a halt.
Manufacturing Loaded Physical Bitcoins Is a Lost Art
Not long after Bitcoin was launched, people managed to create paper wallets and soon the concept of physical bitcoins was born. After that, individuals took the idea to another level and minted metal bitcoins were created. Casascius coins quickly became a collector’s item with these shiny keepsakes loaded with digital currency. However, after Mike Caldwell, the creator of Casascius coins, started selling his physical bitcoins loaded with whole units or fractions of BTC, he was shut down by the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The U.S. regulator considered minting Casascius coins illegal money transmission and Caldwell had to stop selling loaded coins. Since then a number of other manufacturers have attempted to sell loaded bitcoins to investors who may find numismatic value in these physical collections.
This Casascius coin funded with 1BTC sold for $28,700 on Ebay a year ago on Jan. 13, 2018. At the time of sale, 1BTC was worth $14,300.
From 2013-2016, physical bitcoins were extremely popular and demand for these coins has remained robust among collectors. Some rare Casascius coins have sold for more than 4-10X their loaded value. In the early days there were so many physical bitcoins that cryptocurrency proponent Elias Ahonen managed to author an entire encyclopedia of physical bitcoins. In recent years, however, the art of molding loaded physical bitcoins is all but lost. Companies like Ravenbit, Alitin Mint, Cryptmint and Titan Bitcoin have all gone out of business. Last April the Japanese manufacturer Satori Coin told customers it was forced to close operations due to the Financial Services Agency’s AML/KYC standards introduced in 2018. Similarly, the cryptocurrency firm BTCC launched its own physical bitcoin forge and ended its operations in October 2018.
Loaded Titan Bitcoins. The physical bitcoin manufacturer Titan is no longer in business.
Bobby Lee, the co-founder of the company, explained to his Twitter followers how BTCC Mint’s physical bitcoin sales in China touched record highs before it closed operations. The mint did manage to produce a 2018 series, which is still available to U.S. customers through a company called Rogue Bitcoin. In fact, there are plenty of physical bitcoins for sale on secondary markets as third parties have managed to hoard these coins and sell them for a profit. On Ebay, and many other auction and e-commerce websites, there are plenty of Casascius, Satori, Titan, and BTCC loaded coins. However, collectors will find that prices are way higher than what the coin was sold for originally and well above what it holds digitally.
Loaded Satori coins. The Japanese manufacturer announced this past April it had to close up shop due to the FSA’s strict regulations.
Governments Don’t Like Competing Bearer Bond Instruments
The biggest reason for most of these firms going out of business is predominately overreaching regulation. The U.S. government, for instance, may be okay with people exchanging cryptocurrency in a regulated manner digitally. However, issuing physical bitcoins that are loaded or any other type of manufactured bearer bond instrument that competes with the U.S. dollar is not a good idea and you could wind up in prison.
Liberty Dollars created by Bernard von Nothaus. U.S. law enforcement said the Liberty Dollar coins were marked with the dollar sign ($); the words dollar, USA, Liberty, Trust in God (instead of “In God We Trust”); and other features associated with legal US coinage.
This can also happen to coin creators even if the products are minted without digitally loaded value inside them. On March 18, 2011, the U.S. government convicted 67-year old Bernard von Nothaus for being the monetary architect of a currency. Essentially von Nothaus’s “Liberty Dollar” operations ended immediately and U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins did not take kindly to the creation. “Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” Tompkins explained at the time.
Denarium products can still be purchased from the Finland-based dealer with up to 2BTC loaded on certain coins.
There are plenty of coin makers that sell metal ‘bitcoins’ with no digital funds, but there is one company that still issues physical bitcoins that are loaded. Denarium sells a variety of pre-funded physical coins in bronze, silver, and even .999 gold. The pieces are made by a Finnish company called Prasos and private keys are covered by a tamper-resistant hologram. Some of Denarium’s products have units like 1 BTC tied to them, while with other types of coins, the customer can add a custom sum. The Denarium Custom Gold Plated 2018 piece can be loaded with fractions of BTC and up to a maximum of 2 BTC per coin. Besides Denarium and overpriced secondary markets, finding physical cryptocurrency manufacturers who are willing to sell coins loaded, unfortunately, is now all but impossible.
What do you think about the lack of physical bitcoin manufacturers in 2019? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Images via Denarium, Satori coins, Titan Bitcoins, BTCC Mint, Casascius, and Pixabay.
Have you seen ourwidget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. They’re pretty cool, and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, and forum threads. There’s also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.
The cryptocurrency ecosystem is filled with unique individuals with a penchant for sharing dank memes. Besides an arsenal of killer graphics that depict the current mood of the markets, they’re also equipped with a wide variety of animated GIFs to virally share across social media and messaging platforms like Telegram.
Over the Last Two Years, There’s Been No Shortage of Crypto GIFs
During 2018, a steady influx of memes and GIFs provided some relief from the market turmoil. Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) animations are a popular medium across the internet, but cryptocurrency fans have a particular fondness for them. Various animations portray bitcoin markets, hodlers, traders, and rekt individuals in a humorous manner. What follows is a look at some of the top crypto-related GIFs that have provided light relief amidst all the market fakeouts.
Feels Guy Working at McDonald’s Watching Crypto Candles
Vitalik Impress
Christopher Walken Hodler
FOMO Kitten
Kramer Changes the Crypto-Market Trends
Bought the Dip
Hold This Altcoin Bag, Pleb
HODL
We Dump Them Every Day
Limp Chart
Feels Enters the Capitulation and Despondency Stage
Our portfolios may be worth less in fiat terms, but at least we’re rich in GIFs. 2019 will likely conjure up more market turmoil, cushioned by an array of fresh memes and GIFs to be savored, shared and passed down to the next generation along with our magical internet money.
What do you think about the popular GIFs shared on social media and Telegram this year? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Images via Shutterstock, Telegram, Twitter, and Imgur.
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Our editorial bent is more clear-cut: How much money is going into startups? Who is putting that money in? And what trends can we suss out about the health of the market over time?
So let’s talk about the state of AI startups and how much capital is being raised. Here’s what I can tell you: funding totals for AI startups are growing year-over-year; I just don’t know precisely how quickly. Regardless, startups are certainly raising massive sums of money off the buzzword.
To make that point, here are just a few of the biggest rounds announced and recorded by Crunchbase in 2018:
SenseTime, a China-based startup that is quite good at tracking your face wherever it may be, raised a $1 billion Series D round. It was the largest round of the year in the AI category, according to Crunchbase. But what’s more mind-blowing is that the company raised a total of $2.2 billion in just one year across three rounds. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a face is worth billions of dollars.
UBTech Robotics, another China-based startup focusing on robotics, raised an $820 million Series C. Just a cursory look at its website, however, makes UBTech appear to be a high-end toy maker rather than an AI innovator.
And biotech startup Zymergen, which “manufactures microbes for Fortune 500 companies,” according to Crunchbase, raised a $400 million Series C.
Now, this is the part I normally include a chart and 400 words of copy to contextualize the AI market. But if you read the above descriptions closely, you’ll see our problem: What the hell does “AI” mean?
Take Zymergen as an example. Crunchbase tags it with the AI marker. Bloomberg, citing data from CB Insights, agrees. But if you were making the decision, would you demarcate it as an AI company?
Zymergen’s own website doesn’t employ the phrase. Rather, it uses buzzwords commonly associated with AI — machine learning, automation. Zymergen’s home page, technology page and careers page are devoid of the term.
Instead, the company focuses on molecular technology. Artificial intelligence is not, in fact, what Zymergen is selling. We also know that Zymergen uses some AI-related tools to help it understand its data sets (check its jobs page for more). But is that enough to call it an AI startup? I don’t think so. I would call it biotech.
That brings us back to the data. In the spirit of transparency, CB Insights reports a 72 percent boost in 2018 AI investment over 2017 funding totals. Crunchbase data pegs 2018’s AI funding totals at a more modest 38 percent increase over the preceding year.
So we know that AI fundraising for private companies is growing. The two numbers make that plain. But it’s increasingly clear to me after nearly two years of staring at AI funding rounds that there’s no market consensus over exactly what counts as an AI startup. Bloomberg in its coverage of CB Insights’ report doesn’t offer a definition. What would yours be?
If you don’t have one, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Professionals constantly debate what AI actually means, and who actually deserves the classification. There’s no taxonomy for startups like how we classify animals. It’s flexible, and with PR, you can bend perception past reality.
I have a suspicion there are startups that overstate their proximity to AI. For instance, is employing Amazon’s artificial intelligence services in your back end enough to call yourself an AI startup? I would say no. But after perusing Crunchbase data, you can see plenty of startups that classify themselves on such slippery grounds.
And the problem we’re encountering rhymes well with a broader definitional crisis: What exactly is a tech company? In the case of Blue Apron, public investors certainly differed with private investors over the definition, as Alex Wilhelm has touched on before.
So what I can tell you is that AI startup funding is up. By how much? A good amount. But the precise figure is hard to pin down until we all agree what counts as an AI startup.
from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2T5sjgK
