Litecoin Sponsors the UFC 232 Event

Andres Chavez
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Litecoin Sponsors the UFC 232 Event

Global adoption of cryptocurrencies depends on numerous factors: the market overall behavior, the utility of each coin, social media penetration, and the support of the community are some of them. Exposure, on the other hand, is still somewhat lacking, at least in the case of the top altcoins.

Thanks to a recent agreement with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC,) the Litecoin Foundation has taken a step forward and decided to have its name visible in one of sports’ most prominent and influential events in the mixed martial arts (MMA) discipline.

Right in the Middle of the Canvas

The partnership between Litecoin and the UFC, announced this week, has the intention of promoting the crypto asset to a brand new target field. The terms of the deal express that Litecoin (LTC) logo is going to be on full display for audiences in several countries, as it will be in the middle of the fighting octagon in the UFC 232 event.

The UFC 232 will host nothing less than a rematch between Jon Jones, an ex UFC light heavyweight champion, and Alexander Gustafsson, one of the top fighters in the division. The combat will take place in the State of California, the United States of America, on December 29th.

According to the Litecoin Foundation, the digital asset will be the first cryptocurrency that has ever sponsored a UFC bout. Such an occurrence will only help Litecoin spread its name among newer audiences, raising awareness and driving interest in LTC.

“Another Sign towards the Mainstream”

“With brands and institutions continuing to push into cryptocurrency and blockchain, this is yet another signal of this technology moving closer towards the mainstream,” the Foundation stated in a release. According to the Litecoin Foundation, the plan and the intentions are that it can sponsor more UFC events in the future.

Whilst Litecoin is the first crypto asset to sponsor the UFC, it is not the first one to be linked with professional mixed martial arts, as Canadian fighter Rory MacDonald wore equipment branded with the Dash cryptocurrency in Bellator’s 192 bout around this time in 2017, whilst a former champion in the lightweight division, Michael Chandler, signed a similar sponsorship deal with the CoinLion platform at the start of the current year.

A little bit more about Litecoin

Litecoin, abbreviated LTC, is the eight cryptocurrency according to the total market cap ranking. At the moment of writing this piece, it is worth $28.42, down 7.49 percent in the last 24 hours. Its total market cap is $1.698.581.704, and the trading volume in the last 24 hours is $435.830.337. There is an amount of 59.759.984 LTC currently in circulation.

A little bit more about the UFC

UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship. It is an American MMA (mixed martial arts) promotion company, arguably the largest and most widely recognized in the planet. It features the best fighters and hosts events all over the world. To this date, it has organized more than 400 events. Dana White is its President.

By Andres Chavez

Six Cryptocurrency Machines Were Installed Every Day During 2018

Maria Rodríguez
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Six Cryptocurrency Machines Were Installed Every Day During 2018

About 4,051 cryptocurrency ATMs exist in the world. Almost all offer Bitcoin, Litecoin is in 2,421 devices and Ethereum in almost half of the machines

Although it has been a difficult year for cryptoactives, due to the strong fluctuations in their prices, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs around the world increased to more than 4,000. Regardless of their prices falling and then rising again to more than USD 4,000, the adoption of this decentralized digital money seems to be increasing.

Data Light, a crypto-analysis firm, is the entity that handles this data and revealed figures that show an upward trend in the installation of cryptocurrency ATMs during 2018, in different countries.

During the 365 days of the year that is almost over, each day an average of six cryptocurrency ATMs were installed in some part of the world. One of the main ingredients for the integration and adoption of cryptocurrencies is that they can be available in large quantities and more with the installation of this equipment.

One of the most interesting statistics offered by Data Light indicates that of the 4,051 cryptocurrency ATMs in the world, almost all them offer Bitcoin, whilst Litecoin is available in 2,421 and Ethereum is available in almost the half of the machines. Dash is found on at least 729 devices.

The Numbers

Other cryptocurrencies such as Zcash are in 67 ATM, Dogecoin in 79 and Monero in 128. All this shows that a higher adoption of cryptocurrencies does not only turn around the two or three main cryptocurrencies.

Most ATMs were installed in the first months of the year, when Bitcoin prices remained relatively high after the price rise in December 2017.

CoinATMRadar, another great source of information, shows on its map of cryptographic ATMs that it has listed 4,085 ATMs in 76 countries.

It details that there are 1,258 Bitcoin ATMs in the United States. More than 1,000 of them admit Bitcoin Cash. According to this website, there are 3,157 machines in North America. The United Kingdom has more than 200 machines, Central Europe reaches 750, South America 65 machines and Australia slightly behind South America with a total of 64 machines.

Buenos Aires is one of the Latin American capitals with the largest presence of Bitcoin ATMs (BATM). Only in 2018 this city received seven new devices.

Argentina is the fifth country in the South American region to have the largest number of ATMs. The BATM allows buying and selling from 100 to 37,000 Argentine pesos in exchange for bitcoins.

In case of buying BTC, the team prints a paper wallet, which contains the private key to access the purchased amount. Other machines offer the option to send the purchase code through text message or email.

Colombia, for its part, has a total of 27 BATM, Mexico and Panama have their respective 11 active BATMs and the Dominican Republic has eight of these devices in operation.

The installation of these ATMs for the purchase and sale of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies increased 9.6% globally from June to August 5th, 2018. This increase or demand proves, according to analysts of the issue, that more and more people are seeing cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiduciary currency, which undoubtedly transforms and impacts the financial world known until now.

By María Rodríguez

Court acquits Bithumb Exchange in Lawsuit Filed by Disgruntled Investor over $355,000

Andres Chavez
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Court acquits Bithumb Exchange in Lawsuit Filed by Disgruntled Investor over $355,000

After a recent hacking scandal took place in June, the subsequent weeks were not easy for South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb. Not only did the platform suffer a reputation hit that is to be expected after the actions that took place, but there were also lawsuits from investors that lost substantial assets.

Little by little, Bithumb has been regaining its grounding after a few turbulent weeks. In late August, it renewed its deal with Nonghyup Bank, one of the largest in the Asian country, to accept new account signups. Prior to that moment, the service had been suspended since July 31st because of an “improvement process,” but the reality is that Nonghyup insisted on enhanced safety measures after the hacking scandal of June.

A Moral Victory

Now, the Korean platform has earned another moral (and financial) victory after it won a lawsuit in which a disgruntled investor sued the exchange for his loss following the hacking attack. The report, which came from a Korean newspaper, stated that the sued amount was nearly $355,000, which is about what the person lost.

Bithumb is constantly in the middle of scandals regarding security of their investors’ assets. The June attack was not the first time that people have allegedly lost digital currencies: there were safety breaches in 2017, too.

Ahn Park is the name of the investor and the person prosecuting legal actions against Bithumb. He is a 30-year old civil servant. He defended that he suffered a hacking attack on his Bithumb account on November 30th, 2017, in which he lost about $355,000, or 400 million Korean won.

Only hours after depositing the assets in won, the man states that a hacker had entered his account and exchanged the funds for ETH, and the same day, those assets were transferred out of his wallet in four transactions. The cybercriminal, according to reports, was left with only 121 won (or just over 10 cents) worth of ETH.

The mentioned act was not part of a massive hacking scandal because around that time, it was an isolated incident, unlike the June 2018 breach that involved the digital “robbery” of more than $30 million worth of crypto.

Park’s Case

Park’s case was built on Bithumb’s failure to offer an adequate security safeguard that is commonly associated with the use of crypto exchanges. The investor explained that Bithumb’s responsibilities were similar than those of a bank, and as such, it needed to comply with security requirements in the financial sector applying to electronic commerce transaction brokers.

The judge did not favor him, saying that “in general, virtual currencies cannot be used to buy goods and it is difficult to guarantee their exchange for cash because their value is very volatile. [Cryptocurrencies] are mainly used for speculative means, [and it] is not reasonable to apply [Korea’s] Electronic Financial Transactions Act to a defendant who brokers virtual currency transactions without the permission of [South Korean regulator] the Financial Services Commission.”

By Andres Chavez

Bitcoin’s Value Has Further Room to Fall, according to Morgan Creek’s Pompiliano

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin’s Value Has Further Room to Fall, according to Morgan Creek’s Pompiliano

Since starting a downward trend on November 14th, Bitcoin (BTC) has been on a rollercoaster ride that just a couple of days ago saw itself surpass the $4,000 barrier after hovering in the $3,200-$3,300 range in the past few days. Before the middle of that month, the world’s premier crypto asset was firmly over $6,200, with talks of a possible surge a la last year.

However, the collapse began, and since it took place, there have not been any signs of an imminent turnaround, other than it being briefly worth more than $4,000 not too long ago. In fact, just when it broke the $4,000 threshold last week, it began to slowly lose value again and it now trading at $3,803.14 at the moment of writing this piece.

A substantial part of the industry has been speculating on what the future may hold for the price of Bitcoin. Some claim that it will go up next year following a series of critical events (such as Chinese New Year, Yahoo Japan plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange in the country, or the launch of the Bakkt cryptocurrency platform for trading bitcoin futures,) while others, like Calvin Ayre, predict that it will be nearly worthless.

Bitcoin Has “Lower to Go”

The latest public figure to weigh in on the debate is Anthony Pompliano, who is the founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, expressed that he thinks BTC has lower to go, despite the recent mini-surge that saw it surpass $4,000. He offered his thoughts about the matter to an American news network on December 26th.

During the interview, Pompliano (an active social media commentator on crypto matters) made clear that he belongs to the group that thinks Bitcoin’s value will not revive from its ashes in the short term.

To be precise, he thinks that the Bitcoin markets will hit rock bottom only when the price goes as low as $3,000 or even further down. “Short term, I actually think we have lower to go,” he said in the interview.

Not too long ago, back in November, Pompliano forecasted that Bitcoin would fall to the $3,000 range, a thing that actually took place just a few days later to the surprise of the crypto industry as a whole.

Industry-Wide Collapse

Not only has Bitcoin fallen down in the last few weeks, but also the top 20 altcoins in the industry by market cap have suffered a severe hit as the year winds down. For example, Ripple (XRP) lost more than 6 percent of its value in the last 24 hours (it is exchanging hands at $0.36,) and Ethereum is down 8.86 percent, being worth $124.

Pompliano made it clear that the Bitcoin price is not correlated with traditional or FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.) Those have also suffered from a bear-ish market in 2018.

 “I definitely agree there are some psychological components at play as the stock market pulls down,” he said.

By Andres Chavez

Bank of America Adds another Blockchain Patent to an Already Long List

Andres Chavez
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Bank of America Adds another Blockchain Patent to an Already Long List

With each passing day, more companies realize that the benefits they could enjoy by applying the renowned blockchain technology far outweigh the potential risks. Most of the enterprises looking to optimize their processes with the approach are, to no one’s surprise, financial institutions and banks.

The latest case is the one of Bank of America. In fact, the bank has proven to be one of the most blockchain-involved companies in the planet, but in the last few days, the American institution filed a patent for blockchain-enabled cash handlers, according to a press release of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.)

Blockchain is known as the distributed ledger technology, the one that powers not only the most cutting-edge systems in the planet, but also that of Bitcoin and some of the other top altcoins. BoA, as the bank is frequently abbreviated, stated that it would implement the approach with the intention of handling some cash handling devices.

Improving the Cash Deposit and Withdrawal Protocol

The patent’s title is “Banking Systems Controlled by Data Bearing Records,” and it makes use of the word “blockchain” 58 times whilst making it clear that the DLT (Digital Ledger Technology) can optimize and improve the usual cash deposit and withdrawal process.

Traditional cash handling devices are tools that help financial institutions to dispense, count, and track cash flow with the intention of preventing thefts and other things such as lower the management time for oversight of cash drawer. BoA’s patent has an objective: to use what they call a “blockchain distributed database” to maintain a record of transaction made in cash between two parties.

According to the USPTO’s document, the blockchain distributed database is defined as a go-to system to identify deposit items that were received from the previous cash handling machine.

The patent document thinks that blockchain integration is the primary factor behind the cash handling devices’ ability to approve withdrawals and determine cash transportation requirements of other machines in the distributed network.

The document reads that in some embodiments, sending the first transaction information encoded for the blockchain distributed database to the cash handling device support server, may result in the latter generating and sending one or more alerts based on identifying the one or more cash transportation needs of the cash handling machine.

Optimizing the Use of ATMs

Bank of America hopes that, thanks to blockchain technology, they could improve the way that ATMs work. According to the bank, via a statement, “an ATM operator may be responsible for restocking the automated teller machine rather than a particular financial institution. Blockchain technology may be used by automated teller machine to accelerate transaction speed and/or facilitate other types of transactions in addition to ATM transactions like cash withdrawals and deposits, such as gift registry transactions.”

Thanks to blockchain prowess, the bank is also hopeful that their patent can help ATMs to track transactions. Bank of America now has filed over 53 patents involving the use of the technology, but it still lags behind tech giants IBM and e-commerce monster Alibaba.

By Andres Chavez

New Indian Government Committee Backs the Legalization of Cryptocurrencies

Andres Chavez
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New Indian Government Committee Backs the Legalization of Cryptocurrencies

According to an English-speaking local publication, a new governmental committee in India is in favor of legalizing cryptocurrency assets in the country. The report is from Wednesday, December 26th, and has statements from a senior official that preferred to remain under anonymity.

“There is a general consensus that cryptocurrency cannot be dismissed as completely illegal. It needs to be legalized with strong riders,” he stated during a panel meeting this week, possibly paving the way for digital assets to be officially included in the country’s economic landscape.

Said piece of news comes in the middle of an industry-wide collapse that has seen Bitcoin going from the $6,200-$6,500 range at the beginning of November to $3,800 at the time of this writing, although it hovered in the $3,200 range in recent days.

A Change in Course?

Just a couple of weeks ago, in early December, there was another Indian government panel meeting in which the use and legality of cryptocurrencies were condemned, even suggesting a complete ban. “Any kind of dealing in such currencies should be treated as illegal,” officials stated at the time.

Governmental authorities set a second meeting up following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to ban banks from dealing with crypto businesses and persons back in April. Subhash Chandra Garg, of the Department of Economic Affairs secretary, leads the inter-ministerial committee.

The most recent committee is trying to implement a change in course in the Asian nation after a previous one had opted to support the decision to recommend a full-fledge ban of cryptocurrencies last year, most specifically in March.

A New Committee is set Up for January

Amid the conflict of interests in Asia’s nation, the next committee is, reportedly, going to take place in January. Two gatherings have already occurred; People from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the RBI, Securities, and Exchange Board of India and the revenue secretary form the committee.

The unnamed staffer also stated that members of the committee “have also taken inputs from cryptocurrency exchanges and experts,” and added that they would work on the legal framework with the country’s law ministry.

The discussion about the legalization of crypto assets is taking place in several locations of the world. For instance, G20 nations recently defended the taxation of cryptocurrencies and expanded on the importance of finding common ground regarding regulatory frameworks, in an effort to avoid their use for illicit purposes such as money laundering.

Gathering Insights for the Next Committee

Indian authorities such as the RBI Executive Director Ganesh Kumar and Ministry of Finance officials took part in the G20 gathering. They are expected to “include insights they gained from the global deliberations in their report,” according to the press publication.

The country has not escaped the performance of illicit activity with crypto assets. For instance, the people that developed the first Indian Bitcoin ATM were taken into custody on criminal charges, such as forgery and cheating.

By Andres Chavez

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