Day: July 10, 2018

VC Firm Lightspeed Venture Partners to Invest $1.8 Bln in New Funds, Including Crypto

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American venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has raised $1.8 billion, which it plans to invest in startups in various fields, including digital currency, Reuters reported July 10. Lightspeed told Reuters that $1.05 billion of the new funding will be allocated to invest in more mature companies. The firm is planning an expansion to Southeast Asia by contributing to companies active in fields from cryptocurrency and biotechnology to the cosmetics industry. Since startups rely on funding from venture capital rather than public markets, Lightspeed will invest in a company repeatedly…

New EU Directive Sets Stricter Transparency Rules for Digital Currencies

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The EU Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive came into force yesterday, July 9, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reports July 10. Measures within the directive will set a new legal framework for European financial watchdogs to regulate digital currencies in order to protect against money laundering and terrorist financing. As the EU Commission wrote in an accompanying press release, the new rules enact stricter transparency requirements directed at the use of “anonymous payments through prepaid cards” and  “virtual currency exchange platforms” for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing. The EU Commission…

Bancor Urges Industry Players to Collaborate After $23.5 Million Hack

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On July 9, the decentralized crypto platform Bancor was compromised. The hackers managed to drain over $23 million worth of crypto, part of which has allegedly already been converted into fiat via the instant exchange service Changelly. While the Bancor team is collaborating with other industry players to track the stolen funds, the recent security breach shows how decentralized platforms deal with security breaches, even though some community members have started to question whether Bancor can be considered a decentralized service at all. What is Bancor? Bancor was launched in…

“Experts” Fear China Losing 90% Control Over Bitcoin Market, Forgetting Gov’t Ban

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According to Express, the government of China has confirmed that the country’s control over the global bitcoin exchange market has fallen from 90 percent to 1 percent. The UK publication also noted that “experts in China fear losing control” over the cryptocurrency exchange market. Never Was 90%, Obvious Drop to 1% The absurdity of local experts expecting a different outcome than China’s cryptocurrency trading activity dropping by a significant margin has to be highlighted, because the government of China banned cryptocurrency trading as a whole in 2017. In early 2018,…

Important Steps for Crypto Exchanges, ICOs and Blockchain

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South Korea’s relationship with the cryptocurrency industry has ebbed and flowed over the years. There has been a blanket ban on ICOs, set in September 2017, as well as strong rumours in January — that were eventually dismissed — that cryptocurrencies in their entirety would be banned. However, things have warmed up in the Asian country with talk emerging that South Korea is now looking to lead the way in the fourth industrial revolution. South Korea’s government seems to have realized how much potential there is in the blockchain and…

Elon Musk Is Impressed by Ethereum Scam Bots on Twitter

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Billionaire entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk has recently called attention to scam bots that impersonate famous people on Twitter to steal Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies from their victims. Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin subsequently reacted to Musk’s tweet, suggesting on July 9 that CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey should take measures to ameliorate the situation. In his tweet, the world-famous founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX drew attention to crypto scammers on Twitter. Misspelling the name of Ethereum, Musk appeared to be impressed by the sophisticated “skillz” of the scammers:…

Crypto Exchanges, Explained

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5. You need to buy some cryptocurrency first. To start your own account on any crypto exchange, you need to transfer an initial amount of money into the account. It’s very common that crypto exchanges don’t accept USD or other fiat money as the domestic currency —  i.e., the currency you put into the account in the first place. So, you should buy some crypto on the cryptocurrency exchange — or in your crypto wallet app — and transfer them to the address that the crypto exchange provides you. Although,…

Blockchain Platform to Reward Creatives With Royalties

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Austrian startup Qravity has developed a payment method that aims to help digital entertainment producers and creatives receive royalties for their work, and improve creative collaboration and content distribution. David Brandstaetter, the CEO and founder of Qravity, explains how it works: “Using Qravity, creatives work for project stakes. Once their project is complete, the movie, video game or other digital media they helped create goes directly to market. Then, if, say, a scriptwriter has a 30 percent stake in a movie they wrote, they receive 30 percent of the revenue…

London School of Economics Introduces Online Course on Crypto

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The London School of Economics (LSE) will be offering an online course on cryptocurrency investing, starting in August 2018, Financial Times reports Monday, July 9. According to the announcement, the new course dubbed “Cryptocurrency Investment and Disruption,” will help students learn some “practical skills to interact with cryptocurrency exchanges,” including how to use cryptocurrency wallets, as well as “evaluate the analytics” of initial coin offerings (ICOs). The LSE, which is alma mater to 36 “world leaders” and 18 Nobel Prize laureates, claims it is known for its motto to “understand…

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Reveals He Is an Ethereum Miner

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Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin made the surprise revelation that he is an Ethereum (ETH) miner at the Blockchain Summit in Morocco Sunday, July 8. Brin is currently the president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company which formed as part of the tech giant’s restructuring back in 2015, but his “side hustle” is apparently mining the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, together with his 10-year old son. Brin attributed the success of Google’s search engine and email services as down to taking the possibilities of emerging technologies “seriously” – recognizing a potential…