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421

Mining / Bitmain to desert its Hong Kong IPO plans; listing to lapse on March 27

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:46:42 PM »

Bitmain Technologies, the Chinese Bitcoin mining giant, might abandon its IPO application on the Hong Kong Stock exchange, which is due to lapse tomorrow. 27 March would mark the completion of six months since it filed a draft prospectus for the IPO application. According to norms, if an applicant fails to hear from the exchange’s Listing Committee after a stipulated time of six months, the listing lapses, cited Finance Magnates.

However, this has not discouraged the company as in a blog post, Bitmain said that they will restart the listing application work “at an appropriate time in the future.”

Bitmain makes the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining computers and seeks to raise up to $3 billion in new capital and achieve a market valuation of over $15 billion.

However, Founding Partner of Primitive Ventures, Dovey Wan, reported on Twitter that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange had moved the file from the active column to the inactive status, with effect from 26 March.

Source: Twitter

Bitmain was hoping to be listed on a major exchange, becoming the first crypto-business to become part of a major stock exchange. The IPO was expected to take place during the first quarter of 2019. However, ever since the company informed local market regulators of its flotation plans, Bitmain faced difficulties from all sides. It included declining prices of crypto negatively impacting its sales, and the below-par technical performance of its mining hardware, reported the publication.

The company in their blog post noted that the listing process made it more transparent and standardized, and that the process of rationalization and optimization made their business more focused.

Earlier this year, concerns were raised over Bitmain’s sustainability after it registered a net loss of $395 million in Q2 of 2018. It was also reported that they spent $500 million on failed chips over the past 18 months. These developments and rumors heavily impacted the company’s financial capability as it lost about $500 million in the third quarter of 2018. To cut their losses, the Beijing-based company laid off an undisclosed number of staff in December 2018.

Bitmain’s market status hurt the profitability of mining operations and demand for the custom chips. The competition is also growing as Samsung announced that it would be entering the ASIC chip market for crypto-mining.

Bitmain said they established a clear business division for mining hardware, AI, mining farms and mining pools. It also integrated the resource lines for chip design, hardware, and software to provide more effective support for their important business lines, and to allocate premium resources to their key projects. The company added that it enabled the company’s main business to flourish, while reiterating their commitment to customers.

In a series of changes carried out by Bitmain, the mining giant appointed Haichao Wang as the CEO of the company, due to his experience in the field. He was previously heading multiple departments at the company. The founders of the company, Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu, will serve as directors of the company.

Source: https://ambcrypto.com/bitmain-to-desert-its-hong-kong-ipo-plans-listing-to-lapse-on-march-27/

422

Trading / Binance to Begin New Trading Pairs for Cardano [ADA] and NEO

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:44:45 PM »

Despite the shattering crypto market, Binance spotted as the only exchange ruling crypto market with fortunate trading volume. The exchange has recently announced new trading pairs to Cardano (ADA) and NEO (NEO) which consequently hit trading on March 27.

Per the announcement, Binance exchange will list Cardano ADA with pairs of ADA/PAX, ADA/USDC, and NEO as NEO/PAX and NEO/USDC. The blog further reads that the trading of ADA and NEO with these pairs will begin on March 27 at 4:00 AM (UTC).

https://twitter.com/binance/status/1110489609228541953

New Trading Pairs to Cardano (ADA) and NEO (NEO)
Like Binance, Cardano or ADA is the sole coin that blinks green among top 20 cryptocurrencies. Following the announcement of new trading pairs, ADA is up with 0.18% within a couple of hours and managed to trade at the value $0.06 against US Dollar.

Nevertheless, the quick look at the ADA’s trading volume reveals that the Binance exchange contributes significant trading. As such, ADA with USDT and BTC performs higher than other exchanges including Huobi global, ZBG, UPbit, HitBTC, Bithumb and unlike.

With Cardano, NEO, the 17th largest cryptocurrency will also trade with new pairs on Binance exchange. Anyone with PAX and USDS holdings can hit Binance to buy/sell/trade NEO cryptocurrency. At the moment, the NEO token is trading at $8.93, declining with 2.64 percent over the past 24 hours.

Source: https://coingape.com/binance-new-trading-pair-ada-neo/

423

Hybrid/Other Tokens / Louis Vuitton Owner LVMH Is Launching a Blockchain to Track Luxury Goods

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:42:45 PM »

Luxury brand conglomerate LVMH, owner of the iconic Louis Vuitton label, is preparing to launch a blockchain for proving the authenticity of high-priced goods, CoinDesk has learned.

Code-named AURA, the cryptographic provenance platform is expected to go live in May or June with Louis Vuitton and another LVMH brand, Parfums Christian Dior. It will then be extended to LVMH ‘s other 60-plus luxury brands, and eventually those of its competitors. 

LVMH has enlisted a full-time blockchain team who have been in stealth mode for over a year, working closely with ethereum design studio ConsenSys and Microsoft Azure, according to two people familiar with the project.

AURA has been built using a permissioned version of the ethereum blockchain called Quorum, which is focused on data privacy and was developed by JPMorgan.

Neither LVMH nor its partners ConsenSys and Microsoft would comment ahead of the project’s official launch. But a source involved in the build told CoinDesk:

“To begin with AURA will provide proof of authenticity of luxury items and trace their origins from raw materials to point of sale and beyond to used-goods markets. The next phase of the platform will explore protection of creative intellectual property, exclusive offers and events for each brands’ customers, as well as anti-ad fraud.”

White label
Stepping back, LVMH controls over 60 luxury brands including many well-known names like Dior, Dom Pérignon and Hublot. The group reported revenues of $53 billion in 2018.

But it’s not the first to propose an authenticity-tracking blockchain; there have been other luxury provenance platforms and mini consortia, such as Arianee or Vechain.

According to the source involved in the project, LVMH questioned why it would allow third parties to position themselves between its brands and their partners – especially since blockchain is supposed to be a technology for eliminating intermediaries.

The source added:

“This should be done in the form of an industry consortium rather than a third party actor coming into the marketplace.”

As such, LVMH intends to offer the service in a white-label form to other brands including the group’s competitors. So rather than creating an app of some kind, AURA will run behind the brands using it.

“So if you are a customer of a luxury brand, you are not going to see AURA; you are going to see the Louis Vuitton app or the app of another luxury brand,” the source explained. 

Equal footing
This all sounds great – in theory. But it can be tricky getting your competitors onto a blockchain platform, particularly if you happen to be as big and influential as LVMH.

To avoid the sort of problems experienced by the blockchain venture between IBM and Maersk, LVMH will donate all intellectual property (IP) to a separate entity and that entity, in turn, will be owned by the participating brands, said the source, who added,

“So Gucci, for example, could decide to join the platform and be a shareholder – in which case their claim to the IP would be as great as Louis Vuitton’s claim to the IP. That is the main difference between this project and the IBM Maersk project. which hopefully makes it much more comparable to Komgo, the trade finance consortium.”

In addition, Quorum’s data privacy tools should ensure that no information will be leaked between brands or their customers.

Further facilitating cooperation among firms, the project is very much in line with luxury-goods industry standards, the source said, and particularly with the recent anti-counterfeiting efforts of the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

Beyond CryptoKitties
It’s not surprising LVMH chose an enterprise variety of ethereum since it’s the blockchain which gave birth to the ERC-721 non-fungible token (NFT) standard. This allows for digital representations which are not only immutable but provide a hallmark of a one-and-only, unique item. 

While the most famous example of NFTs is the whimsical game CryptoKitties, this kind of token has serious business potential.

For example, it could conceivably identify an individual handbag and trace the whole journey of its lifecycle from an alligator farm to the store where it was sold for the first time, and then the multiple chains of owners that have owned and sold it.

Another fundamental reason LVMH chose ethereum is that the group sees today’s permissioned version as merely an intermediate step to a grander vision, once the technology matures, said the source, adding,

“They [LVMH] see down the line permissioned and public networks as needing to be interoperable if they are to put the power back to customers. It’s also a way for a global network of distributors and resellers to connect to a network without restriction.”

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/louis-vuitton-owner-lvmh-is-launching-a-blockchain-to-track-luxury-goods

424

Chinese Language / Taiwanese Development Council to Form Blockchain Alliance in Three Months

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:41:42 PM »

The National Development Council (NDC) of Taiwan announced today that it will launch a blockchain alliance in three months, English-language local media Taiwan News reported on March 26.

The NDC is the policy-related agency of Taiwan’s executive branch of government, known as the Executive Yuan.

Per the report, Minister Chen Mei-ling told the Smart City Summit & Expo in Taipei that the NDC has already consulted other government departments, experts and academics in order to determine the purpose of the alliance.

Mei-ling reportedly expressed the hope that Taiwan may become an important hub in global blockchain development and use this technology to improve public governance. This declaration is in line with Taiwan’s announcement that it will establish a new fundraising mechanism based on security token offerings (STOs) at the beginning of the current month.

Taiwan News writes that the minister also lauded blockchain’s potential in improving food safety by tracking products through the supply chain.

The idea of tracing food using blockchain technology has already been utilized by many companies globally.

As Cointelegraph reported at the beginning of the current month, North America’s largest branded shelf-stable seafood firm Bumble Bee Foods has launched a blockchain platform for seafood traceability. Even more recently, the United States National Pork Board partnered with blockchain startup ripe.io to test out a blockchain platform for pork supply chains.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/taiwanese-development-council-to-form-blockchain-alliance-in-three-months

425

Scam Reports & Crypto Crime / Crypto Exchange DragonEx Hacked, Damage Still not Disclosed

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:37:19 PM »

Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange DragonEx revealed that it has been attacked by hackers.

The exchange made the news public on March 25 via its Telegram channel where it stated that the cyber attack happened on the day before. The announcement detailed that funds of its clients stored in the exchange were “transferred and stollen.”

“On March 24th, DragonEx has encountered attacks from hackers, our users’ crypto assets and Platform crypto assets were transferred and stollen,” the exchange noted.

Photo: Telegram

The exchange is also claiming that part of the stolen assets was already retrieved and is working to get the rest of it.

The exchange stated that it has already informed the authorities of several jurisdictions including Estonia, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong and is also cooperating and working with the authorities.

“We’re assisting policemen to do investigation. All platform services will be closed and the accurate assets loss recovery situation will be announced in a week. For the loss caused to our users, DragonEx will take the responsibility no matter what,” DragonEx stated.

The exchange has also made addresses for 20 cryptocurrencies public to which the stolen funds were transferred. The addresses indicate that a variety of digital assets including Bitcoin, Ethrer, Ripple, Litecoin, and EOS were siphoned by the hackers.
“We earnestly request help from all our fellow exchanges and other industry strength, please help us to investigate and traced the assets, freeze them and stop the assets flows,” a Telegram update from the exchange stated.

Will It Maintain the Transparent Approach?

The attack on DragonEx is the second attack on any crypto exchange in 2019 since a similar incident with New Zealand-based crypto exchange Cryptopia. However, unlike Cryptopia, the Singapore-based exchange has taken the responsibility for the attack which is praised by the community.

Interestingly, the attack followed a scheduled maintenance on the cryptocurrency exchange on March 24th. According to the same Telegram channel, the maintenance faced some issues which delayed the deposit and withdrawal activities from the exchange.

Source: https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/crypto-exchange-dragonex-hacked-damage-still-not-disclosed/

426

Useful Cryptocurrency Resources / 6 Most Common Blockchain & Crypto Misconceptions, According to ConsenSys

« on: March 26, 2019, 01:29:15 PM »

The management and contributors at ConsenSys, a Brooklyn, New York-based Ethereum-related development studio, have published a blog post in which they’ve addressed several misconceptions about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

According to ConsenSys’ recent post, there are many inaccurate reports about cryptocurrency mining being bad for the environment. As noted by the organization, the data compiled and the research methodology used to estimate the energy consumption of the proof-of-work (PoW)-based Bitcoin network and of other PoW blockchain, was “whittled up by an ethically suspect lone blogger.”

The ConsenSys team also stated the blogger(s) who claim that PoW networks are not eco-friendly have “overlooked fundamental aspects of the issue at hand.” ConsenSys’ blog further notes it should be fairly easy to understand why the arguments against using PoW may be flawed. The team also recommended reading carefully through Robert Sharratt’s article, “The Reports of Bitcoin Environmental Damage are Garbage.”

"Many Still Equate Blockchain With Cryptocurrency & Cryptocurrency With Bitcoin"
Moreover, the Ethereum development studio’s blog mentions that the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report in 2018 which revealed there are at least 65 different legitimate use cases for blockchain that would actually help the environment. Additionally, it points out the Ethereum network will gradually transition from PoW to proof-of-stake (PoS)-based consensus, which will ensure the problems we may currently be facing will subside.

Another common misconception about the blockchain and crypto space (from the perspective of the mainstream user) is that “many people still equate blockchain with cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency with Bitcoin,” ConsenSys’ blog notes. However, things appear to be changing as the percentage of Bitcoin’s total share of the cryptocurrency market, has dropped from about 85% around 2 years back to currently at approximately 50%.

More Use Cases For Crypto Than That of Bitcoin
As mentioned in ConsenSys’ blog:

Although the crypto craze of 2017 has clearly diminished, it has laid the foundation for a global ecosystem of tokens that proves that there’s a lot more to cryptocurrency than just Bitcoin.

Notably, there are arguably more use cases for distributed ledger technology (DLT) than just using it to implement a peer-to-peer (P2P) “electronic cash system,” which is what the Bitcoin whitepaper proposed a decade ago. As stated in ConsenSys blog post:

It’s also become evidently clear that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are just phase one in the long arc of blockchain, and technologies like Ethereum’s programmable smart contracts and decentralized apps are the future.

There have also been reports published recently that have revealed Ethereum’s “global developer base” is “more than twice” that of Bitcoin (BTC).

Howey Test Has Become Outdated
Other misconceptions about cryptocurrencies is that they are all securities and their issuance process should be regulated according to the Howey Test. However, ConsenSys’ team suggests we should formulate new regulations because standards like the Howey Test were developed a long time ago and cryptocurrencies are based on much more advanced technologies.

Prominent crypto lawyer, Jake Chervinsky, also remarked via Twitter that:

https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1110196253743345664

Scaling Through Layer 1 And Layer 2 Technology Stacks
In addition to widespread confusion about how cryptoassets should be classified, various crypto community members reportedly believe Ethereum cannot scale. ConsenSys’ team appears to suggest this might not necessarily be the case because “some of the smartest minds in the world are currently working on solving scalability through Layer 1 (e.g. sharding) and Layer 2 (e.g. state channels, plasma) solutions.”

The contributors also claim that:

Many of [the Ethereum scalability] solutions will launch into reality this year, and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin stated at his SXSW Interactive keynote this year that the Ethereum network — with layered solutions in play — will be able to handle millions of transactions per second within two years.

Reports Show Cash Is Preferred For Illegal Activities, Not Crypto
While cryptos represent a revolutionary new concept and can potentially become paradigm-changing technologies, many still believe they are only used by criminals to secretly engage in illegal activities. Despite these claims, ConsenSys’ team has revealed that Chainalysis, a leading blockchain research firm, conducted a study which shows  “Bitcoin is no longer the predominant currency for darknet transactions.” Another separate study by the Global Drug Survey (GDS) has determined that “cash is still king when it comes to purchasing drugs or exchanging value for illegal services.”

Finally, ConsenSys’ detailed blog notes that there are still many people who think that crypto-based tokens “are useless.” Although not all token projects have legitimate use cases, ConsenSys’ blog post states that MakerDAO’s stablecoin-based ecosystem, Brave Browser’s Basic Attention Token (BAT), and decentralized prediction market Augur’s REP are some good examples of viable token-based solutions.

Source: https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/03/6-most-common-misconceptions-about-blockchain-crypto-report/