Federal Agents Raid Home of Arizona Bitcoin Trader

A bitcoin advocate and trader based in Arizona was arrested last week by federal authorities, according to local reports.

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Reports from websites include Freedom’s Phoenix and Phoenix New Times indicate that Thomas Costanzo was arrested on 20th April for unlawful possession of ammunition stemming from a prior conviction. The arrest resulted from a home raid led by the US Department of Homeland Security.
Yet warrant documents obtained by Freedom’s Phoenix suggest that authorities are investigating other aspects of Costanzo’s activities, including his use or sale of digital currencies including bitcoin, ethereum and dash.
Costanzo, who uses the moniker "Morpheus Titania" online, operates a bitcoin-centered website that was updated as of 3rd April. According to the site, Costanzo has been a full-time bitcoin trader for the past three years, while also selling bitcoin miners and ATMs.
One of the warrant documents approves the search for "digital currency including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, or other digital coin 'altcoin', or any other financial instrument believed to be proceeds of money laundering or drug sales".
Further along, the warrant identifies records for "digital Bitcoin transactions" and devices capable of retaining "virtual currency applications [and] crypto-currency wallet applications" as other items for seizure.
A complaint and subsequent indictment filed in the US District Court for the District of Arizona, however, only account for the allegedly unlawful possession of ammunition. New Times suggested in its report that additional charges could be filed, but its unclear at this time whether that will happen.
According to Freedom's Phoenix, Costanzo is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing on 27th April.

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ONECOIN GERMAN REGULATORS ORDER ONECOIN TO "DISMANTLE TRADING SYSTEM"

German Regulators Order OneCoin to 'Dismantle Trading System'

Germany is stepping up its ongoing crackdown on OneCoin, a digital currency investment scheme widely believed to be fraudulent.

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The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has issued new cease-and-desist orders to two holding companies connected to OneCoin – Onecoin Ltd, Dubai and OneLife Network Ltd – ordering them to "dismantle their internet based 'OneCoins' trading system" and to "end all sales promotion activities" in Germany effective immediately.
OneCoin is an investment scheme centered around a purported digital currency, for which packages of "tokens" are sold that can later be exchanged. The operation has long been accused of operating a pyramid scheme, as participants are encouraged by advocates to find other buyers.
Notably, the regulator suggested that OneCoin promoters in Germany hadn't sought permission prior to conducting their activities, a determination that BaFin said spurred the latest cease-and-desist notices.
BaFin said it had issued a cease-and-desist notice to a third entity connected to OneCoin, One Network Services, for supporting the unauthorized sale of OneCoin in Germany.
The move indicates that Germany is accelerating its efforts to keep OneCoin out of the country. It comes just over a week after BaFin moved to halt the operations of a OneCoin-tied payment processor in Germany, freezing €29m in connected bank accounts.
But Germany isn’t the only country to crack down on OneCoin. Reports surfaced this week that authorities in India had arrested at least 18 individuals connected to the scheme.
A number of central banks have also issued warnings, including Thailand's, according to reports.

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HUMANIQ BLOCKCHAIN FINANCIAL PLATFORM FOR THE UNBANKED

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Apr 12, 2017) -

 Humaniq (https://humaniq.co/), the blockchain financial platform offering financial inclusion solutions for the unbanked, today announced its executive leadership and advisory board, helping guide the company through its current token sale and the development of its mobile banking app that will support Humaniq's humanitarian initiative.

"Humaniq is a disruptive tech platform innovation for good. We are a solution to a global problem," said Alex Fork, President and co-Founder of Humaniq. "More than half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day and more than 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. Humaniq will help reverse these trends and bring people out of poverty by giving them banking tools that are easy to understand. Humaniq will provide liquidity for entrepreneurial ventures via loans, online work and crypto-financing as well as helping to create new opportunities in the digital economy, locally, nationally and internationally. With the appointment of our new CEO we are ready to capitalize on these opportunities immediately."

Dinis Guarda has been appointed as CEO of Humaniq. Guarda is an entrepreneur and author with a strong background in international management, blockchain and financial inclusion, who has previously founded the successful ventures Ztudium, intelligenthq.com and Tradingfloor.com.

Alex Fork, who founded Humaniq in 2016 to help lift the unbanked out of poverty in emerging economies, now serves as President and Leading Visionary of Humaniq. Fork previously founded the Future Fintech Accelerator and authored the book "Bitcoin: More than money."

"We strongly believe that the heart, humanity and experience represented on this team will be the driving force behind Humaniq's success," said Dinis Guarda, CEO of Humaniq.

"We have already raised over $3M for our token sale in just three days," added Guarda.

"With our strong team and advisory board as our foundation, we look forward to building the new world of financial inclusion, industry 4.0 and education together with Humaniq," Guarda explained.

The Humaniq executive leadership team consists of:

• Alex Fork, President and Co-Founder of Humaniq and Leading Visionary, Luxembourg.
• Dinis Guarda, CEO of Humaniq, UK.
• Dmitry Kaminskiy, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Humaniq, UK.
• Richard Kastelein, Chief Marketing Officer, Netherlands.

The Humaniq advisory board consists of twenty leaders from around the world with diverse backgrounds in global policy, public affairs, technology, science, blockchain and education:

• Nick Ayton, Technology Advisory Board / 21 Million Project, UK
• Karl Hoods, Policy and Legal Advisor, Save the Children, London, UK
• Pavel Kravchenko, Technology/Blockchain Advisor, Ukraine
• Michael Terpin, Technology Advisor/Transform Group, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• Chami Akmeemana, Technology Advisor/Policy and Legal advisory board / ‎Advisor for regulator, Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Australia
• Matt McKibbin, Technology Advisor/Crypto Economy, US 
• Ron Morris, Scientific Advisor/Education/Universities Advisor, Director Groupe INSEEC San Francisco, US
• Derin Cag, Advisor Chief Influencer Officer, Founder of Richtopia.com, UK
• Tim Campbell MBE, Public Affairs and Global Policy advisory, UK
• Alex Bausch, Technology Advisory Board / Co-Chairman of the Blockchain Ecosystem Network, Netherlands
• Matthias Klees, Technology Advisor / Bitcoinsulting, Szenekonzept, Germany
• Iggy Bassy, Policy and Legal advisory board / Social Impact and AI, Data expert, Founder Cervest UK
• Paul Mears, Policy and Financial Risk advisory board / Currency International Payments advisor, Monaco
• Vishai Mishra, Technology advisory board / Big Data and Security, Rightrelevance.com, US
• David Applefield, Public Affairs and Global Policy Advisor/Communications and PR Advisor, FT Special Rep for Africa, France.
• Jochen Heussner, Chief Financial Officer / Legal and Financial Investment Advisor EU, Founder Planetcompliance.com, Italy
• Alexander Perkins, Legal and Financial Investment Advisor, USA
• Alakanani Itireleng, Africa [leading] Ambassador, Botswana
• Dickson Nsofor, Technology and Policy advisor, New York branch lead, United Nations relations, US
• Maria Fonseca, Evangelist and Thought Leader, Editor Intelligenthq.com, UK.

Humaniq is currently hosting a public Token Sale to fund its Blockchain banking app for financial inclusion. The ICO reached 1706 Bitcoin, 2,030,037.64 US Dollars in its first day.

"This project is much beyond crypto-currencies. This is a social good movement gathering the best people in the world focused on converting the most advanced tech for sustainable development in the undeveloped world. Now, with this enhanced advisory board, the Humaniq project will be able to address governments and global non-profit organizations. The technological tool to tackle down the main challenges facing the 2 billion unbanked people has arrived. Humaniq will create deep impact for social good on a global scale," said Dmitry Kaminskiy, co-founder of Humaniq and managing partner of Deep Knowledge Ventures.

To learn more and to participate, visit: https://my.humaniq.co/?roistat_visit=103423.

About Humaniq:
Humaniq is an Ethereum-based blockchain banking app building the next generation model for financial services. Launched in 2016, Humaniq aims to provide mobile finance to the 2 billion unbanked population through its mobile app that uses biometric authentication to replace traditional methods of ID and security. Humaniq's open source stack and API will be available for startups and other businesses to build services on its core technology, making it easy to adapt their service and plug it into Humaniq's network to reach a huge, untapped audience. For more information, visit https://humaniq.co/.

Ethereum Developers Eye Proof-of-Stake Shift with New Geth Update

The team behind ethereum’s most popular user client have released a new update that includes support for alternative consensus systems.
Late last week, the developers behind Geth unveiled version 1.6, featuring support for a "plugable consensus model" in anticipation of ethereum’s shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.

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In the past year and a half, the project has been laying the groundwork to move away from proof-of-work – also utilized in other public blockchains like bitcoin – as part of a broader evolution of ethereum. In recent days, developers have also hinted at momentum towards Metropolis, the next version of ethereum.
The goal, according to the post, is to create the conditions for developers who are looking to stand up ethereum networks that utilize different consensus models, such as proof-of-stake.
The team explained:

"The result is that Geth 1.6 features a plugable consensus model where developers, wanting to roll their own fork of ethereum with wildly different ways of agreeing on block validity, can now do so by implementing a simple Go consensus engine interface. The current ethash backed proof-of-work consensus model is also “just” another implementation of this interface."

The release also notably includes a tool called 'Puppeth', which, according to the post, allowing a more streamlined processes for standing up new ethereum networks. While not applicable in every instance, the team said the tool can help take out some of the heavier lifting involved.
"Puppeth is not a magic bullet. If you have large in-house ethereum deployments based on your own orchestration tools, it’s always better to use existing infrastructure," the blog post explained, concluding:

"However, if you need to create your own ethereum network without the fuss, Puppeth might actually help you do that… fast."

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Intesa Sanpaolo Trials Data Recordkeeping on the Blockchain

Italian banking conglomerate Banca Intesa Sanpaolo has tested a bitcoin blockchain-based tool as part of a bid to validate trading data.

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The bank, along with Deloitte and startup Eternity Wall, began testing the new proof-of-concept late last year.
At the heart of the project is the open-source OpenTimestamps protocol, developed by Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd, which Eternity Wall later moved to implement. It uses the bitcoin blockchain as means to notarize transactions, creating a publicly available record trail for later referral.
Carlo Brezigia, information security officer for the bank, explained:

"Relevant data has been hashed to produce a short unique identifier – a digest – equivalent to its digital fingerprint. This fingerprint has been associated to a blockchain transaction and hence registered on the blockchain: the blockchain immutability provides robust non-refutable timestamping that will always prove without any doubt the existence of that data in that specific status at that precise moment in time."

The bank tested the tool between October and February, according to Deloitte, and the firm said that future plans include support for multiple blockchains, potentially including private ones.
The trial notably showcases a willingness on the part of a regulated financial institution to experiment with a public blockchain. In a statement, Gianni Cavallina, the bank's retail innovation accelerator officer, spoke to both the interest in testing such protocols beyond the use case of digital currency.
"In particular, considering public blockchains, we are exploring the applicability of different use cases, abstracting from the value of its native digital currency. Notarization is one of the most interesting application[s]," Cavallina said.
Intesa Sanpaolo – a member of the R3 distributed ledger consortium – has tested a number of blockchain use cases in the past, including trade finance and digital identity.

Litecoin Price Nears Two-Year High As SegWit Hopes Rise

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Litecoin prices continued a recent rally today, pushing the digital currency to its highest value in more than one year.
Far from a standard cryptocurrency pump, however, the market appears to be responding strongly to its technical roadmap. Namely, the increase comes as the network nears the key 75% support level needed to activate Segregated Witness, a scaling solution that will boost block capacity.
While signaling had declined slightly to 67% at press time, litecoin traded as high as $11.32 today, up nearly 40% in the space of 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Late yesterday, the digital currency even reached $11.42, its highest price since May 2014.
These recent price increases have built on the gains the cryptocurrency began experiencing roughly one week ago, when the digital asset surged nearly 70% on 30th March.
As a result of these continued upward price movements, litecoin's value surged more than 100% in a week. According to Coinmarketcap.com, 24-hour volume surpassed $250m today, a drastic increase from the $10m recorded during the 30th March rally.

SegWit support builds

The major development that has coincided with litecoin's continued rise is progress toward obtaining the support levels needed for activating SegWit.
First designed for use on the bitcoin blockchain, SegWit would nonetheless increase litecoin's block capacity by altering how transaction date is stored by the network.
Once breached, the level of support will need to remain at or above the 75% threshold level for 8,064 blocks (roughly two weeks) before it can officially be implemented.
The recent rally in litecoin prices compares to a long period when the digital currency's price experienced little volatility.
The price of litecoin rose to more than $50 in late 2013 but has traded below $20 since early 2014.

Ethereum's Difficulty Bomb: All Smoke, No Fire?

Sometime in the future (we can't be certain when), ethereum will likely switch from its proof-of-work consensus algorithm to Casper, a proof-of-stake system its developers are now in the throes of completing. While this may sound like a slight change to those who are unfamiliar, altering this one parameter will have an outsized effect. When the protocol change happens, the ethereum blockchain will hard fork, meaning that, for a short period of time, two networks – the old and new – will exist simultaneously.

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At that point, the goal for ethereum will be to persuade the majority of its users to upgrade to the new proof-of-stake-powered blockchain. Otherwise, ethereum risks winding up creating another blockchain, as it did when a past technical update created ethereum classic.
On the surface of things, getting the companies that use the ethereum network to switch should not be a problem. After all, proof of stake promises to be faster and more scalable, and to consume far less energy than proof of work.
To most of the ethereum community, Casper sounds like a great deal. Unless, of course, you are a miner.
That's because proof of stake doesn’t rely on mining. Rather, it gives the job of creating the next block to those who own tokens on a blockchain – a move that essentially puts miners out of a job.

Time bomb

But, two things could go wrong with ethereum's big switch.
One would be if Casper does not work as planned. In this case, ethereum could simply delay the switchover. The second is if miners continue mining the old chain. But ethereum has always had a plan for that – something called the 'difficulty bomb'.
Baked into ethereum shortly after the network launched, the difficulty bomb was created to make mining a block increasingly difficult over time. The slowdown is set to happen gradually at first, but will spike upward after the launch of Casper.
When mining requires more work, miners are not able to produce as many blocks. The block time gets longer and, as a result, miners earn less and less revenue. Eventually, the network just becomes unusable.
That is the plan, at least.

Miner concerns

As ominous as all that sounds, however, miners don't appear too concerned.
Jonathan Toomim is co-founder of Toomim Brothers, a cloud mining company that has a high percentage of its business invested in ethereum.
Toomim told CoinDesk that, right now, the difficult bomb mainly effects his purchasing decisions. Any hardware he buys has to pay for itself before ethereum updates to Casper.
Toomim also pointed out that, if and when mining ethereum does become unprofitable, he will simply switch to mining other coins, like Zcash or ethereum classic, that use a similar mining mechanism.
But that right there could be a problem for ethereum.
If enough miners leave the network before ethereum switches to proof of stake, that could impact the security of the main ethereum blockchain – the one that most of its users are still active on at the time.
Toomim though made it clear he intends to mine altruistically, saying:

"We will switch to mining more profitable coins as long as the survival of ethereum is not threatened. That is, assuming that a hard fork is performed as planned either to enable proof of stake or, worst case, to delay the bomb, we will mine something else."

History of the big freeze

Ethereum's difficulty algorithm started with this core commit in August 2015 in the 'Frontier' patch, the first release of the ethereum network.
At that time, ethereum's then-CCO Stephan Taul wrote in a blog post that, starting from block 200,000, mining would become progressively more difficult. So much so, that by the end of 2016, an 'Ice Age' would occur, meaning a point when the network freezes up.
But less than a year later, in June 2017, that Ice Age got delayed, partly to allow more time for the development of Casper.

“Why would you stick with the network that is increasing block times?”

Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin wrote on Reddit: "With the change in the difficulty adjustment algorithm brought about in the last hard fork, the Ice Age will come very slowly indeed."
How slow? The difficulty adjustment happens every 1,000 blocks.
Currently, block time is averaging 14 seconds, but for the last year, it has been inching up to 15 seconds. And, according to calculations made by Buterin three months ago, that number will double to 30 seconds by mid-August of this year.
Block times could be as high as 14 minutes by 2025.
A block time of 30 seconds may not sound like a lot to some, especially when compared to bitcoin's block time of 10 minutes, but to clients running apps on ethereum, that slowdown could get annoying.

Chill attitudes

 

 

 

Still, some ethereum users say the temporary slowdown is worth putting up with, because proof of stake will ultimately be much faster.
Zack Coburn, the lead developer at FirstBlood, a gaming platform that runs on ethereum, said he's not fussed.
He told CoinDesk: "We don't rely on extremely high frequency transactions, so a brief period of 30-second block times wouldn't be a major concern."
Some have a different opinion, though.
Rick Dudley, a blockchain developer who contributed to Casper, thinks any change in block time is a huge deal. And if the block time climbs to 2 minutes, the difficulty bomb will seriously impact businesses.
"Yeah, I think that is pretty crippling. Two minutes from 15 seconds is extremely painful. I think it is easy to misinterpret how bad that really is," he said.
He points out, though, that the bomb is only going to hit when there is already a viable alternative: proof of stake.
In this light, Dudley he said he feels ethereum won't have a problem getting users to upgrade, concluding:

"If the choice is between the proof-of-stake network that is lowering time and the proof-of-work network that is increasing block times, why would you stick with the network that is increasing block times?”

10 Insurance Firms Test Blockchain for Insurance in China

A group of insurance companies has completed a new blockchain trial in China.

In a Sina Finance report, the news agency revealed that the Shanghai Insurance Exchange had initiated a blockchain trial centered on insurance businesses in the country. For the project, nine insurance companies partnered with the exchange, including Cathay Life Insurance, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance, AIA Group, China Continent Property & Casualty Insurance and Minsheng Life Insurance.

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Founded in 2016, the Shanghai Insurance Exchange is the country's first insurance asset trading platform.
The test was reportedly aiming at making use of the security and traceability features of blockchain, and to solve the credibility issues facing insurance firms.
In statements, Wang He, vice president of People's Insurance Company of China, noted that he believes insurance is a natural fit for blockchain given the sector's reliance on disparate systems that include many participants with the need to share information.
The VP further addressed that those seeking to leverage blockchain need to work with other technologies such as big data, biological recognition and artificial intelligence as it moves toward commercialization.
The report further referenced the growing interest among China's domestic insurance companies in blockchain, noting past tests by Sunshine Insurance, Ping An Group, Zhong An online property insurance and Taikang Life.

CENTURION NEW COIN

Centurion is a unique cryptocurrency launching today on February 9, 2017. The new cryptocurrency draws lessons from Bitcoin and other altcoins to offer an efficient and easy-to-use option for the cryptocurrency community.

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Centurion can process and confirm transactions in under 6 minutes. Also, the cryptocurrency protocol has a block size of 2 MB, which is twice the Bitcoin block size.


                                                          Specifications 
 Algorithm: X11 Minting:
 Proof of Work (PoW) / 3% Proof of Stake (PoS) RPC port: 5555 P2P port: 5556 Block Time: 1 minute Block Size: 2 MB Source Code: https://github.com/centurioncoin/centurion Official Pool: http://CNTpool.org Reward Schedule Blocks until 100 - 0 CNT (for fair difficulty balancing) 

                            Blocks 101 - 250,100 - 100 CNT 
                            Blocks 250,101 - 500,100 - 75 CNT
                            Blocks 500,101 - 1,000,100 - 60 CNT 
                            Blocks 2,000,101 - 2,500,100 - 25 CNT                             Blocks 2,500,101 - 3,500,100 - 10 CNT 
                            Blocks 3,500,101 - 4,000,100 - 5 CNT 
                            Blocks 4,000,101 - 5,000,100 - 2.5 CNT
                            Blocks 5,000,101 - 19,000,000 - 1 CNT 

Total Coin production 250 Million Reserve: 50 Million. 

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