Day: February 3, 2020

Minecraft Players Can Win Bitcoin on New Treasure Hunt Server

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A new Minecraft server allows players in the blocky universe to compete against one another to find hidden treasure and receive a bitcoin reward. Known as SatoshiQuest, the challenge is to find the hidden loot within “vast Minecraft landscapes.” Users pay $1 in bitcoin for an in-game life. Entry fees are collected and most will go towards a specific treasure wallet address, which is awarded to the player who finds the loot first. In order to participate, users set up their own in-game wallet which they can use to pay…

Mastercard CEO Reveals Why The Company Left Libra

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Mastercard Chief Executive Officer Ajay Banga explained his concerns about Libra in a Feb. 3 interview with the Financial Times. He bashed Libra for its lack of transparency while arguing that national payment systems are “really stupid.” Mastercard was one of the founding members of the Libra association, along with Visa, PayPal and Stripe. All four left in Oct. 2019 with no proper explanation, though rumors indicated fear of running afoul of regulators. Stepping on governmental toes Compliance appears to have been the primary cause for the sudden decision. The…

Prof. Michael Sung Talks About the Rise of the Digital Yuan

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Michael Sung, a professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, spoke to CoinDesk’s Michael Casey on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The topic? The intertwined growth of digital currency and blockchain projects in China. How big a deal is it? And what are they actually doing? Sung had some surprising answers. “So I think the world kind of noticed on Oct. 24 when [Chinese President] Xi Jinping stood up and basically announced two major things for that week,” said Sung. “First, there was something called the fourth…

PoolTogether DeFi App Announces $1M Investment After No-Loss Lottery Payout Tops $1K

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One lucky DAI holder won over $1,400 on PoolTogether Friday, reaching a new order of magnitude in prize payouts for risk-averse gamblers. A so-called “no-loss lottery,” deposits to the decentralized finance (DeFi) project have been growing fast since its September 2019 launch. PoolTogether’s DAI pool also hit $1 million in locked-in crypto for the first time Friday.  Reflecting that success, the company is announcing a $1.05 million investment round under a simple agreement for future equity. IDEO CoLab Ventures led the round; ConsenSys and DTC Capital also invested. “Our goal…

Bitcoin Could Fall Hard, This Textbook Indicator Shows

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Bitcoin’s dreamy price rally in 2020 could hit a dead end in the coming sessions, according to a bullish reversal indicator. The benchmark cryptocurrency is forming a Rising Wedge pattern as confirmed by its price consolidating between upward sloping resistance and support. More data that confirms the Wedge formation is a faster establishment of lower highs than higher highs – and a drop in volume during the pattern’s formation. Rising Wedge confirmed as bitcoin uptrend start contracting between two rising trendlines | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase The Rising Wedge pattern is…

Bitcoin Price Is Around $9,300 while Bitcoin Halving Is Just 98 Days Away

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It is most likely that Bitcoin will gain from a rapid drop in Asian stock markets due to the coronavirus menace. Crypto analysts believe that the flagship token will gain soon. Apart from that, the halving event is fast-approaching. Bitcoin is less than 99 days away from its halving event. Most of the market commentators are bullish on its impact. Bitcoin price smashed the $9,600 hurdle for the first time since November 2019. Nonetheless, the weekend session was also dominated by significant consolidation between $9,200 and $9,600. Bitcoin currently has…

Insolar Launches Mainnet, Swaps Ethereum-Based Token for Native Coin

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Enterprise blockchain platform Insolar is launching its own mainnet, debuting its native Insolar Coin (XNS) to replace its formerly used Ethereum-based token INS. After successfully piloting the testnet in 2019, Insolar will be rolling out the commercial launch of Insolar MainNet on Feb. 3, the firm said in a press release shared with Cointelegraph. INS/XNS token swap is immediately available According to the firm, holders of the Ethereum-based ERC-20 token INS will be able to swap their tokens for XNS on the first day of the mainnet launch. Insolar users…

MIT Develops ‘Spider’ Tech to Enable More Efficient Off-Chain Crypto Transactions

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have co-developed technology that they say can help avoid congestion on off-chain cryptocurrency payments networks. The “Spider” crypto routing scheme, according to its developers – including Vibhaalakshmi Sivaraman, a graduate student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) – offers a more efficient type of payment channel network, or PCN. Used on “layer 2” scaling solutions like bitcoin’s lightning network, PCN’s allow users to charge accounts with a chosen amount of cryptocurrency. Payments are made across a network of such…

MIT Develops ‘Spider’ Tech to Enable More Efficient Off-Chain Crypto Transactions

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have co-developed technology that they say can help avoid congestion on off-chain cryptocurrency payments networks. The “Spider” crypto routing scheme, according to its developers – including Vibhaalakshmi Sivaraman, a graduate student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) – offers a more efficient type of payment channel network, or PCN. Used on “layer 2” scaling solutions like bitcoin’s lightning network, PCN’s allow users to charge accounts with a chosen amount of cryptocurrency. Payments are made across a network of such…

Why Ethereum is Beating Bitcoin So Far in 2020, And Why It May Continue

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Bitcoin got a Twitter emoji but it is Ethereum that is doing better as the market enters February 2020. The second-largest blockchain asset by market valuation was up by 51.75 percent on a year-to-date basis as of 0100 UTC, Tuesday. In comparison, leading cryptocurrency bitcoin underperformed by rising a dwarfed 34.81 percent, according to data provided by BitStamp exchange. Ethereum running ahead of Bitcoin in 2020 | Source: TradingView.com, BitStamp Pitted against each other, the ETH/BTC pair surged by circa 14 percent against bitcoin – from 0.017 BTC to 0.020…