Bitcoin is at Severe Risk of Reporting its First Ever Year to Year Loss

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin is at Severe Risk of Reporting its First Ever Year to Year Loss

People can argue whether Bitcoin (BTC) has the power and projectability to slowly trend up or if it will stay down, or at least hovering around its current price, for the long term. Whatever the majority’s point of view is, there is no argument that the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency has certainly seen better days.

After surpassing $19,000 last December in a record-breaking surge that most investors are still remembering with joy (or sadness, depending on each case,) the digital asset was trading, at the time of the present writing, at precisely $6,337.90, which would represent a fall of 2.26 percent in the last 24 hours.

For the 10th straight day, the prices of Bitcoin were moving sideways with no clear upward or downward trend to speak of. The average value was once again $6,400, a number that is much more meaningful than the average investors realize.

Why? Because if the coin does not see its value grow significantly in the next 24 hours, it risks failure to surpass $6,400, which would represent the first time in the history of Bitcoin (founded back in 2008; it will turn 10 this week) that the cryptocurrency reports a yearly loss.

Concerns Grow As Market Remains Volatile

Bitcoin has not cleared the $6,500 threshold since last October 19th and, sadly, the numbers are not on the rise: volatility still dominates the crypto market and, barring a surprise surge, the digital token will be 10 tomorrow under the sour news.

BTC was trading at more than $6,400 on last year’s October 31st, so the annual performance would be negative for the first time – as shocking as it may sound following 2017’s end of the year price spike that carried over the first days of January – if its value does not pick up as soon as possible.

If the price of Bitcoin somehow find its way up in the next day and avoids the first annual value dropoff, it will have a tougher time doing the same in November, a time in which, last year, the most influential token was trading at more than $8,000, after rumors about the launch of the first BTC futures would attract investors worldwide. As a matter of fact, two Chicago exchanges launched future contracts, but institutional funds are, as of now, waiting.

What Does the Future Hold?

Last year events showed the world that Bitcoin prices have the potential to trend up in a hurry in the event of any related news or developments within the industry. However, months have passed and the cryptocurrency has gone from being valued at nearly $20,000 in January to barely scratching $6,400 these days.

Numerous experts think that BTC has charted a “base” value of something near $6,000, with a high of $7,400 in September. What will the future hold for Bitcoin, investors, and the industry?

Right now, Bitcoin comfortably remains the leader in market capitalization, with $109,955,101,668 and a trading volume of $4,201,180,207 in the last 24 hours, topping all of its competition with ease.

By Andres Chavez

Petro is Officially Available for Purchase

Andres Chavez
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Petro is Officially Available for Purchase

It’s official! Venezuela’s oil-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, is already available for purchase (for fiat currency or other digital tokens,) according to a tweet from the Economy Department of the country on October 29th.

The tweet was published along with an infographic, explaining that Petro is now eligible for purchase via six crypto exchanges that have received governmental authorization, or directly from the State through the Treasury, using the official website of the Petro.

Six Exchanges Will Host Petro

Bancar, Cave Blockchain, Amberes Coin, Afx Trade, Criptolago, and Cryptia are the six platforms in which the Petro will be available in addition to the official page of the digital asset. They received authorization from the Venezuelan authorities on October 16th. None of them are currently in the top 100 of crypto exchanges, according to the specialized site Coin Market Cap.

People holding fiat currency, specifically Yuan, US Dollars, and Euros, will be able to purchase the Petro coin. Investors can also make use of other cryptocurrencies to acquire Petro, but everyone needs to be registered in the system and pass the validation process indicated on the site of Petro.

Petro can be bought with Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Dash (DASH,) according to the information published on the official Twitter account of Petro this week. It is noteworthy, however, that the coin is available only for Bitcoin and Litecoin as of now.

Joselit Ramirez is the man assigned by President Nicolas Maduro and the rest of Venezuelan officials to manage customers’ service issues of Petro. He will act as the superintendent of cryptoassets and related activities.

A Week Earlier

Maduro made public several weeks ago that November 5th  would be the date in which the public sale of Petro would start, almost a year after he first talked about the creation of a state-backed digital token. However, the process started a week earlier than anticipated.

The president explained at the time that Petro would be available on six cryptocurrency exchanges, although he refused to identify them by name. The Petro wallet was also launched on that same day on the Google Play Store, but it was soon deleted.

Although we have more information about Petro now and the crypto exchanges that will serve as trade platforms for the Venezuelan oil-related asset, uncertainty remains about the coin’s ability to be sustainable. The country economy is still struggling with high inflation rates just over two months removed from the transition from the Bolivar Fuerte to the Bolivar Soberano.

According to Venezuelan news site El Universal, the Petro sales to individual people got off to a slow start, which Ramirez attributed to people’s “natural resistance to changes.”

Ramirez explained to the publication that the Venezuelan government has a plan to attack the so-called “unwillingness to change,” saying that authorities are working in establishing an ecosystem integrated by businesses, public and private institutions, airlines, travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, and other sectors where the use of crypto assets will be a common occurrence.”

“The world’s economic future is on the hands of cryptocurrencies, and now Venezuela is part of this future,” according to the government’s news hub AVN.

By Andres Chavez

SBI, India’s Biggest Government-owned Bank, Will Join Forces with Hitachi to Develop a Digital Payments System

Andres Chavez
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SBI, India’s Biggest Government-owned Bank, Will Join Forces with Hitachi to Develop a Digital Payments System

A new partnership that promises to take the crypto industry by storm has been announced at the start of this week, one that will serve the digital payments field as a major blockchain-based solution.

A tech giant company with worldwide reach, Hitachi, will delegate to the Hitachi Payments section the task of establishing a nationwide digital payments ecosystem that can cover the entire Indian market. To achieve that, the firm has announced a partnership with the most prominent government-owned financial services provider in the country, the State Bank of India (SBI.)

Complying with a More “Digital India”

The announcement of the pact was made public by Hitachi via a press release on October 29th, as the government’s “Digital India” campaign gets underway. Hitachi Payments will help the SBI with the “Lumada” technology, which is a IoT (Internet of Things) platform that was applied to power the supply chain management of Mizuho, a Japanese financial group, last year. “Lumada” makes use of the Proof of Concept (PoC) system.

Executives of both companies have expressed their desire to enhance the rythm of the digitalization process that India is currently enduring. To do that, Lumada and other financial services or products are needed as people within the industry continue to look for expansion. The two businesses have been working together – Hitachi Payments offers its services to power SBI’s digital payment acceptance system – since 2011.

Details of the Deal

As per the terms of the deal, Hitachi Payments will make an investment of a little over 25% in SBI Payments, a subsidiary company of the State Bank of India. SBI Payments is recognized as the most prominent merchant acquirer when it comes to [POS] terminals in India.

The SBI has been working on establishing a blockchain model for quite some time now. The financial institution started developing a blockchain solution to successfully manage KYC (know your customer) protocols nearly a year ago, in November. The firm also co-founded BankChain, the blockchain for banking research consortium.

As for Hitachi, they have been looking for partnerships in the blockchain field with the intention of keeping up with recent times. In the summer, the firm established an alliance with KDDI, a prominent telecommunication company, with the goal of testing a retail coupon settlement system. In addition, the project would bundle biometrics with Hitachi’s Hyperledger Fabric-powered blockchain system. Hitachi’s partnership with Tech Bureau is also noteworthy because it will allow the former to implement “PointInfinity”, a NEM platform that functions on the point management system for merchants that Hitachi implements.

The POS software for loyalty programs is being widely used in Japan, surpassing 150 million members in total.

A Little Bit More about Hitachi Payments

Hitachi is a multinational conglomerate that focuses on the technology department. It manages several fully-owned subsidiaries, one of them being Hitachi Payments. The latter is in charge of providing the market with technology-led payment solutions for financial institutions.

Hitachi Payments has more than 55,000 ATMd in India and, according to reports, it also suspasses 850,000 point of sale (POS) devices (including mobile POS) currently under management in the nation.

A Little Bit More about the State Bank of India

The most influential financial institution in a country that have shown accelerated growth, the State Bank of India is owned and managed by the government. It holds a 23% market share when it comes to assets in India, a high enough number to be considered the largest commercial bank in the nation.

The SBI is also responsible for 25% of the total deposits and loan market in India. More than 420 million customers are attended, with over 6, 00,000 POS terminals.

By Andres Chavez

Monterrey Institute of Technology Uses Blockchain to Issue University Degrees

Maria Rodríguez
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Monterrey Institute of Technology Uses Blockchain to Issue University Degrees

This is the first institute in Latin America that uses blockchain technology to support electronic certificates. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge also use this tool

For the first time in Latin America, a university institute uses this tool to issue digital certificates and guarantee their authenticity. Blockchain technology continues to make its way widely in the international education sector.

Organizations such as the University of Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Manchester, the School of Economics and Political Science of London and the University of Melbourne offer digital certifications backed with blockchain, thanks to its transparency, precision and the security that this platform offers when protecting information.

The Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education team considers that traditional titles are insufficient. For this reason, in 2015 it began to issue the digital badges.

The objective is also to give a better service and a different result to those who study from a distance. Since June of this year, this Mexican institution grants to those who perform workshops, seminars and any type of courses, a paper diploma, and a digital one. “Everything is supported in blockchain”, said Claudia Arellano, coordinator of internal processes in that institute.

“It’s a very ambitious project. We plan to deliver between 5,000 and 10,000 certifications each year. So far, in Mexico and Latin America, we are the only ones in the education sector using blockchain in digital certifications”, added Paulina Campuzano, leader of customer-oriented processes.

Additionally, Local news reports this program is already present in all the headquarters of the institution, in the national ones and in some of those that are abroad, including the ones in Colombia and Peru.

The advantages

The main feature of this initiative is that it opens the door to new employment opportunities. The digital format can be easily added to a digital curriculum, to social networks such as LinkedIn, and can also be shared with any person or organization anywhere in the world, regardless of physical barriers and, better still, ensuring the accuracy of the document.

Regarding the functionality of the document, an advantage is that the person interested in hiring the professional graduated from this institution can verify the authenticity of the college degree through a web portal that uses blockchain as a notary, locating the transaction ID to verify nothing has been altered after blockchain registered the certificate.

Blockchain technology can work practically in any operation that involves value, or properties. It can also be applied to generate voting systems and even video games and other connected objects.

According to Gartner information technologies, a consulting and research firm, the importance of blockchain is such that by 2026 its commercial added value will exceed 360,000 million dollars and then it will grow to more than 3.1 billion by 2030. Meanwhile, the data structure continues to allow the transfer of digital data and conquering land in the organization of the activities devised by society.

By María Rodríguez

Excel users could receive and send Bitcoin with Lightning Network

Maria Rodríguez
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Excel users could receive and send Bitcoin with Lightning Network

Neutrino technology allows those who are not in a complete node to execute payments through the network

Last Wednesday, Pierre Rochard, Software Engineer at Bitcoin Advisory, presented a complement he is developing, based on Microsoft Excel program, to receive and send payments through Lightning Network (LN) channels. In this way, Excel users will be able to make and receive invoices of LN payments with just a few clicks.

“The Lightning Network Daemon (LND) node software now runs on the Excel plugin. With neutrino, which means that a Windows + Excel user can make and receive LN payments with a few clicks”, Rochard said on his Twitter account.

The expert explained that this would be possible through Neutrino; Lightning Network technology for thin clients that allows those who do not run a complete node to make payments through it.

The day of the announcement, Rochard interacted with other Twitter’s users so he revealed more details about the operation. He said Neutrino technology allows those who are not in a complete node to execute payments through the network. In the same conversation thread, Rochard clarified that the source code of the add-on will be freely accessible.

Why Excel

Excel users only could send a payment by pasting the request in a cell and clicking on the “Send” option. The second step is when the Bitcoin’s blockchain records all the information generated in Excel. Then, it shares this information between the different nodes. The intention is to obtain a reliable record of the transactions conducted.

Bitcoin Advisors software engineer pointed out that 99.99% of the people who work with accounting and finance have Microsoft Excel on their computer. This new application is for those users who are interested in using Lightning Network payment channels.

The universe of Lightning Network applications expands more and more. Now, there are different applications that have adopted this Lightning Network. The payment channels of the Lightning network could pay a set of services like Super Mario and Pokémon games, bets and drinks like coffee and Coca Cola.

Recently, a German-born hacker developed an intelligent bicycle, which even is in proof of concept. Clients pay the routes with bitcoins through the Lightning Network.

Microsoft has been one of the biggest technology companies that have expressed its support towards Bitcoin joining it within its platforms as a payment currency for products and services since 2014.

The adoption of payments in the digital currency by the company was possible thanks to the BitPay services, with which people could download games and applications in Windows and Xbox online stores.

By María Rodríguez

Giant Investment Firm Acquires Bitstamp Crypto Exchange

Andres Chavez
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Giant Investment Firm Acquires Bitstamp Crypto Exchange

Bitstamp and NXMH have shocked the crypto market by reaching an agreement that has made headlines worldwide because of its possible implications. According to the news agency Reuters, the latter acquired the former today, Monday October 29th, in a deal described as “all cash.”

NXMH is known as one of the most prominent family investment holding companies in the world. It manages more than 2 billion euros worth of assets in its business of investing in consumer and tech-related items and services, focusing on majority buy-outs.

The company is a subsidiary of NXC Corp., which is a media international firm based in South Korea. NXC Corp. has shown interest in the crypto industry for quite some time now, as it acquired more than 65 percent of a local exchange named Korbit.

A Deal Had Been Negotiated for Months

The deal had been “cooking” for a while now, as Nexon Korea, a video game company managed by the NXC Corp., shot down rumors of a possible down back in April.

The agreement between the two companies was closed on October 25th, according to Nejc Kodric, who acts as the CEO of Bitstamp. However, the executive of the exchange registered under the jurisdiction of Luxembourg did not provide the terms of the agreement.

Kodric also explained to Reuters that the exchange was valued at $60 million two years ago, a $21 million increase of what it was worth in 2014, evidencing the continuous growth of Bitstamp within the industry.

Both Companies Will Keep Working Independently

Despite the acquisition of Bitstamp, both companies will remain working independently, as they will be managed as such. After the pact, the South Korean business owns 80 percent of Bitstamp. Kodric holds another 10 percent and will retain his duties as the CEO of the firm. In the same operation, it was also reported that NXMH bought a portion of crypto hedge fund Pantera’s Capital stake valued at $10 million.

Damian Merlak, who co-founded Bitstamp with the help of Kodric “out of a garage in Slovenia,” sold his 30% stake in the deal. According to the latter, Merlak has not been ‘active’ for three years now. The two only had a couple of laptops, one thousand euros, and one server at the time, precisely 2011.

Kodric explained to Reuters that Bitstamp was not planning on selling. However, and since the industry peaked last year and woke up continued interest from several flanks, they started fielding approaches in the middle of 2017, but there was not an active desire or subsequent actions to request meetings with potential buyers.

Holding its Own in the Market

Bitstamp has mostly held its own despite the current market crash in the crypto industry. Trading volumes have decreased by more than 60 percent in 2018, but overall, the value of tokens has been higher on average than the numbers they showed for the majority of 2017. Bitstamp, which occupies the 47th place in the cryptocurrency exchange ranking according to the specialized site CoinMarketCap, had a trading volume of almost $22 million in the last day at the time of this writing.

By Andres Chavez

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