McAfee Reiterates Intention of Running for President to “Promote Crypto” but doesn’t Want to Occupy the Position

Andres Chavez
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McAfee Reiterates Intention of Running for President to “Promote Crypto” but doesn’t Want to Occupy the Position

John McAffee, the widely known programmer, entrepreneur, and businessman reiterated this last Thursday that he will use his “right to run” for the United States of America presidency with the intention of promoting cryptocurrencies to a bigger audience, but that under no circumstances he wants to actually occupy the position.

In an interview with specialized site Cointelegraph from the Malta Blockchain Summit, the visionary made clear that he wants to use a broader platform to promote the crypto and blockchain universes, but that “no one” in his/her right mind would elect him to be The United States of America’s leader.

The next US presidential elections are currently scheduled for Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020, and McAfee wants to promote permissionless cryptocurrencies, running a “libertarian platform” and take advantage of enhanced exposure and discuss digital assets, knowing that no one would actually elect him to be Donald Trump’s successor.

McAfee, who achieved worldwide fame for founding the McAfee Antivirus Software, has long been one of the crypto’s most fervent defenders. He states that cryptocurrencies will help people achieve personal freedom.

“I couldn’t be President!”

His full quote about wanting to run for the presidency, but not to win, reads the following: “Crypto is all I’m going to talk about. See, I don’t want to be president. I couldn’t be…no one’s going to elect me president, please God. However, I’ve got the right to run.”

The crypto enthusiast has been talking about his intentions since June 2018, so his remarks come as no surprise. In the same vein, when consulted about the prediction he made last year that Bitcoin would reach $1 million by the time the 2020 elections come.

It is noteworthy; however, that McAffee adds that the aforementioned $1 million will not be the same of today, since following his logic, fiat currencies will migrate to crypto platforms. In fact, he said in Malta that fiat will be “on its last legs” by 2023.

It is also important to note that the 2020 elections will not be the first ones that McAfee participates in, keeping in mind that he already sought the Libertarian Party nomination in the 2016 process, losing to New Mexico’s Governor Gary Johnson. At the time, the businessman confessed to not being too connected with the crypto community, but now, the scenario is different.

McAfee’s presence in the Malta Blockchain Summit was not expected until tomorrow, the day for which his conference was scheduled. The controversial crypto personality criticized the Maltese government’s plans to introduce facial recognition for public safety.

The innovator told Lovin Malta that facial recognition is a very positive feature, so long as it is implemented with the intention of “empower individuals. But if it’s used to follow people wherever they go, that’s not cool with me, and that has nothing to do with Blockchain”.

A Little More About John McAfee

John McAfee, born in Scotland 73 years ago, is a computer programmer and businessman known for playing a major role in the foundation of the software company McAfee Associates in 1987. He presented his resignation in 1994.

He is a political activist with interests in smartphone apps, cryptocurrency, yoga, and all-natural antibiotics.

By Andres Chavez

Hong Kong Proposes New Measures to Regulate Cryptoactives

Maria Rodríguez
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Hong Kong Proposes New Measures to Regulate Cryptoactives

The funds that enter the crypto market would also be under review by the authorities. Only professional investors could manage cryptoactive portfolios

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Republic of China announced some proposals, this Thursday, with the objective of “protecting” investors and formalizing the control of cryptocurrency’s financial sector.

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) spread the suggestion, which is aimed at some of the operations conducted by cryptocurrency exchange houses and the investment portfolio managers.

According to the document, exchange houses will have rules similar to those that are applied to automated trading services, which allow investors to copy or reproduce the operations of others.

Another possible regulation is that only professional investors could manage cryptoactive portfolios in that Asian territory. To explain it better, SFC made a “declaration on the regulatory framework for virtual asset portfolios managers, fund distributors, and trading platform operators”, in which it clarifies that, although virtual assets do not represent a risk for financial stability, regulators of securities prefer to avoid any risk and protect investors.

The funds that enter the crypto market would also be under review by the authorities. Ashley Alder, SFC’s Executive Director, talked about the proposal: “The measures announced today allow us to regulate the administration or distribution of virtual asset funds, in one way or another, so that the interests of investors are protected at the level of the administration of the funds and at the level of their distribution, or both”, he said.

Despite the publication of these proposals, it stills the possibility of not applying any regulation to the cryptoactive sector. Alder also commented: “It is possible that, due to the inherent characteristics of the technology or to the business models of the operators, it is concluded that the risks involved cannot be handled properly according to the standards that would be expected and that the protection of the investors cannot be guaranteed”.

Cryptoactives in Hong Kong is not directly linked to SFC regulations unless they are classified as securities or futures contracts. The statement details SFC considers that all administrators of licensed portfolios who intend to invest in virtual assets must meet certain requirements, even if they invest a lot or partially in virtual assets and regardless of whether these assets are equivalent to values.

Startups that manage funds, and that invest exclusively or partially in cryptoactives, will require a license or registry for the trading of securities, known as a regulated activity number 1. Additionally, SFC explains that these companies must comply with certain obligations when distributing the funds.

Other Control Attempts

In the Asian continent, some countries have tried to apply other regulations to the market of cryptoactives, which have been discussed during the last years, without any results so far. Last April, Taiwan announced it would take regulatory measures for cryptocurrencies on November, what has not happened yet.

The Japanese Government has manifested similar intentions. The Cryptobag Association of that country received a certification to regulate the market. At the beginning of this year, Japan’s Finance Minister, Taro Aso, announced that some regulations could be implemented to the cryptocurrency exchange houses, in order to increase their security standards.

Although Hong Kong is officially a special administrative region in China, both operate as a single country when dealing with cases about the management of cryptoactives. The reason is that there is a restriction on the commercialization of cryptocurrencies and Initial Currency Offers (ICO) in Mainland China, which is very different from what happens in Hong Kong.

Despite these attempts at control, the business sector increasingly accepts more cryptoactives and generates an increasing use of distributed accounting technology. In this way, Japan continues to be at the forefront of blockchain’s ecosystem.

 By María Rodríguez

Tokenville Will Combine the Best of Comics and Blockchain in “The Crypto Treasures”

Andres Chavez
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Tokenville Will Combine the Best of Comics and Blockchain in “The Crypto Treasures”

Comics have a unique way of telling a story. Drama, heroics, adventures, thrill, and excitement are all spicy ingredients that create a fantastic, virtual world that millions of people have enjoyed for decades.

Now, Tokenville aims to combine comics with the blockchain technology in an ambitious macro plan that intends to provide an immersive experience for fans all over the world with the addition of collectibles, among other assets.

Tokenville will offer crypto investors and enthusiasts an innovative way to learn more about the craft thanks to its creative format, promoting interactivity and a new approach in which characters, front covers of issues, and strips can become tokenized.

The Crypto Treasures of Mann O’Taur

The actual project that intends to merge the best of the blockchain world with comics is called the Crypto Treasures of Mann O’Taur, and it is designed by Vitaly Terletsky, a widely well-known comic book author. The “Myths of Crypto” will be the central theme.

In the same vein, in an industry that has advanced leaps and bounds since the start of 2017, but that has not quite taken the step towards everyday and widespread acceptance, using an exciting, creative tool to attract new people seems like an excellent idea.

The Crypto Treasures has portrayed reality in its storytelling despite selling itself as a comic book. It is set in ancient times, and it covers battles between the Good and the Evil in their quest to pursue “Mass Adoption,” painted as a mythical beast.

Tokenville is approaching the date of releasing the first issue of the Crypto Treasures, and both the comic book community and the blockchain one are eagerly waiting. The group states that crypto universe has “established its own mythology” in the last 10 years, which is the time of existence of the approach.

The team is quoted as saying, according to Cointelegraph, that an “own genesis with Satoshi as a creator” exists, and that the comic book will be full of tales of ups and downs, betrayal, heroes and villains.

Another exciting piece of news for collectors and investors alike will be the chance of acquiring mystic artifacts, a form of non-fungible ERC-721 tokens, and trading them at a marketplace. Earning these artifacts will enhance their probabilities to win the jackpot. The utility in the tokens is found on the fact that people need to pay for a subscription if they want to access the comic.

Tokenville is already thinking in similar products, as well, establishing a partnership with CryptoKitties to produce a show called Crypto Detective. The project has defended that since the time of its inception, the crypto community has had strong ties with the geek cultural manifestations.

A Little More About Tokenville

Tokenville is known within the industry as a decentralized entertainment platform. It powers original blockchain-based shows designed and developed for people who want to own a part of them.

The ecosystem implements its own native coin: the TV token, which is the one that provides access to comics for users. It is available on the HitBTC exchange. Tokenville is selling TV tokens to produce and distribute their content and shows.

By Andres Chavez

Bitcoin is on Birthday! The Most Popular Cryptocurrency was Born 10 Years Ago

Maria Rodríguez
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Bitcoin is on Birthday! The Most Popular Cryptocurrency was Born 10 Years Ago

The first transaction with bitcoin cost $42. Today, the same transaction would cost 64.2 million dollars

Ten years ago, on October 31st, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the White Paper of what would be the first decentralized virtual currency in the world; a financial system that revolutionized financial dynamics worldwide.

Despite the success of this cryptocurrency, Nakomoto’s identity remains a mystery. Behind that pseudonym, it could be a person, even a group of people, who created bitcoin’s protocol and its reference software, Bitcoin Core.

In 2008, Nakamoto published an article on the cryptography mailing list metzdowd.com, which described a digital money P2P (person to person) system. In 2009, it launched bitcoin’s software, creating a network with the same name and the first cryptocurrency: Bitcoin.

The first idea has a political vision, but when Bitcoin was born it was worth only $ 0.00076. It appeared in a white paper published online by Satoshi Nakamoto, with the aim of “making online payments directly from one person to another without going through a financial institution”.

Additionally, Nakamoto collaborated with other programmers who joined the project until mid-2010. By that time, he transferred the related domains to prominent members of the network: the bitcoin community. Then, he “left the project” to stay in anonymity. The transaction log shows that Nakamoto’s known addresses contain approximately one million bitcoins.

Bitcoin’s First Steps

In 2008 the mortgage crisis in the United States began, which would then spread to the rest of the countries and lead to a global financial crisis. This fact encouraged more distrust in banking institutions and formed a favorable ground for the adoption of Bitcoin, the decentralized alternative to financial institutions.

The first transaction between two accounts was on January 12th, 2009 and the first one in real life was on May 22nd, 2010. That day, a Florida programmer paid a surfer 10,000 bitcoins to deliver two pizzas. The transaction is equivalent to 42 dollars and marks the birth of “Bitcoin Pizza Day”. Currently, it would be equivalent to 64.2 million dollars.

In 2013, this cryptocurrency already exceeds $ 1,000 and begins to attract the attention of financial institutions.

In the abstract of the White Paper, Bitcoin is described as “an entirely person-to-person version of electronic money that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one part to another without the burden of going through a financial institution”.

Bitcoin Now

Currently, more and more people and institutions are joining the blockchain’s ecosystem. In the entire world, a large number of exchange houses have currencies integrated into the system.

Moreover, Blockchain technology and Bitcoin have been translated into a large number of languages and the first edition in Braille is currently in the process of being transcribed.

Despite the mystery, Satoshi Nakamoto’s project has revolutionized the financial world and the everyday life.

 

By María Rodríguez

Trust Machine, the Movie that Tells the Beginnings of Blockchain Technology

Maria Rodríguez
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Trust Machine, the Movie that Tells the Beginnings of Blockchain Technology

The documentary film is like a manual for those who want to learn more about blockchain technology and bitcoin. A co-founder of Ethereum is one of its producers

The history of current accounting technology is summarized in an 84-minute film. With Trust Machine, the British Director Alex Winter narrates the rise reached by cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the global financial sector.

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of blockchain software technology firm ConsenSys, is one of the executive producers. The film was premiered on October 26th in New York. It is about the history of Bitcoin and the promising use cases of distributed accounting technology.

As detailed by the creators of the film, Trust Machine seeks to illustrate how blockchain technology is being used to “change the world, combat income inequality, world hunger and refugee crises”.

The film has its own website, where fans of cinema and the ones who love technological world can find trailers, a synopsis, screenings, a photo gallery and even a glossary to understand all the terms related to blockchain technology.

Talking about the history of bitcoin, the film recognizes the 2008 global financial crisis as the reason why the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto developed an open and decentralized book for transactions. However, not everything turned out perfectly, so the documentary laments that BTC initially became famous for its use in illicit Internet businesses and alleges that, unfortunately, this earned the flagship cryptocurrency a perception and reputation that it stills trying to get rid.

A Movie for All

Critics have pointed out that the documentary serves as a useful handbook for anyone unfamiliar with blockchain technology. The New York Times film critic, Ben Kenigsberg, says the film serves as a solid aid for teaching: “A mix of leftover arguments for the technology of blockchain, ‘Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain’, directed by Alex Winter, is not always a model of clarity, but it does a decent job explaining the basic concept”. According to the documentary film, some of the contributions that the technology of blockchain can make to the world include combating identity theft and transforming energy distribution through the empowerment of micro-producers of energy, such as households that can generate solar energy and sell the excess to the network. But, despite all the revolutionary potential of blockchain technology, Winter’s film admits that what attracts most people to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is the desire to get rich. “Still, for most people in the world at the moment, the most exciting thing about blockchain is the possibility of making a fortune overnight. In its final scenes, the narration of the film recognizes how attractive this field is to scammers and speculators”, The Hollywood Reporter says. It is not the first documentary directed by Alex Winter about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Three years ago, the director made a 90-minute film, Deep Web, which documented the arrest of Silk Road’s webmaster, Ross Ulbricht. The film was narrated by Keanu Reeves. Winter, also an actor in films such as Bill and Ted, directed other films about technologies such as Napster.

Also, in October 2014, another short documentary called “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” was published, while Alex J. Mann created another documentary called “Crypto” in September of this year, a Kurt Russell movie that promises to be an action thriller set in the world of illicit business with cryptocurrencies.

The big screen may act as a multiplier agent that helps bring this type of technology to the public and, consequently, encourage the massive adoption of digital assets and distributed accounting technologies in everyday life.

By María Rodríguez

Top Altcoins Erase their Yearly Gains in Latest Sign of Collapse

Andres Chavez
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Top Altcoins Erase their Yearly Gains in Latest Sign of Collapse

In another clear sign of a crypto collapse, most of the world’s most prominent altcoins erased their 2018 value gains in the latest breakdown within the industry this Tuesday. Ethereum (ETH,) Litecoin (LTC,) Dash (DASH,) and NEO are, at the moment of writing this article, priced below of where they were a year ago.

A similar scenario is undermining Bitcoin’s name in the last few hours. Despite a slight gain in price in the last 24 hours (0.24 percent, to be precise,) the most influential cryptocurrency of the planet will most likely fail to continue its run of years with price gains, an occurrence that had become common since its birth in 2008. BTC is currently trading at $6,335.40, whereas it was closer to $6,400 at this time in 2017.

A hefty drop in Price of Cryptocurrencies

In fact, Bitcoin has endured a tough start to the week, as have all top 20 coins in market capitalization. All of them have seen their price decrease by 3-10 percent, a development that has put a halt to a 12-day consolidation window that appeared, at least momentarily, to spark a revival in what has been 2018 to forget.

Now, Dash (DASH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH) and NEO (NEO) have all erased the gains that the struggled so much to earn in the year, always according to data found on the specialized site CoinMarketCap.

DASH is currently trading at $154, a marked decline on the $284 that it showed by this date last year. The $130 difference is one of the broadest within the industry. Another affected cryptocurrency is Ethereum: on October 30th, 2017, it was changing hands at $305, but right now, it is doing it at a base value of $197, not even reaching the $200 mark and showing a-$108 difference.

Bitcoin Cash has not managed to escape the crisis, either, trading at $419 right now and paling in comparison with that of last year’s digits: it was changing hands at $472 by this time in 2017, a -$53 balance. Litecoin and NEO are also down, $6.66 and $12.55, respectively, failing to reverse the downward trend that has affected Bitcoin and most of the top altcoins since the start of the year.

What are the Most Common Trends?

The surge that started at the end of last year activated the ICO proliferation, which in turn was the ignition to the fire that started to catapult the price of Bitcoin, which surpassed $19,000 in late December, a record-breaking number. As a side effect, most of the top numbers of altcoin in value were inflated, and the total market cap surpassed $815 billion in early January.

However, the nightmarish year for crypto investments started off in March, the first time that BTC fell under a key indicator. That caused numerous investors to back out of their assets, and the industry began experiencing a domino effect that is still underway.

Despite the problems of the industry, Bitcoin has increased its margin as the top cryptocurrency by market cap by 0.44 percent; extending, at least, its dominance in the market. Some people are expecting BTC to start making a run towards an increased price, just as it happened last year, and they have been shifting away from altcoins in preparation for that possible scenario.

By Andres Chavez

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