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Sure, you could fund-raise via VCs and angel investors. But how about an initial coin offering, instead, a strategy that is new and super-cool?




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An Exciting Option for Startups to Raise Money: Ever Hear of an ICO?



Andrew Medal • Contributor

Startups are always on the lookout for good opportunities. For many, this means raising money through an initial coin offering (ICO), as opposed to the more traditional venture capital route. In the simplest terms, an ICO is a fund-raising means in which a company releases its own digital currency in exchange, typically, for ethereum or bitcoin.


The point is to attract investors looking for the next big cryptocurrency score.


Related: An Exciting Option for Startups to Raise Money: Ever Hear of an ICO?With this trend picking up steam, your startup might be wise to investigate whether an ICO would be right for you.


Some considerations are in order One is that individual investors are growing tired of initial public offerings (IPOs). Sure, there's plenty of opportunity to make money that way, but it's nothing like the excitement surrounding a hyped-up ICO.


With hundreds of millions of dollars spent on ICOs over the past few months, there is no slowdown in sight. In fact, because more startups are considering the benefits of an ICO, don't be surprised if 2018 is even bigger in this area than 2017 was (and that's saying a lot).


Here is what your startup needs to know about ICOs.

1. They represent a different approach (so get in the right frame of mind).
In the past, raising funds was all about pitching your idea to venture capitalists. This opportunity still exists, but it's no longer the only game in town.As a different approach, wrap your head around the idea that an ICO could be the best way to obtain the cash you need to realize your goals. Maybe you're the founder of a technology startup that develops super-cool iPhone apps.


Once you realize that you need to raise funds, to hire new talent or kick-start your marketing efforts, you'll realize that it's time to consider your options.VC firms and angel investors are worth a shot, of course, but an ICO may be you best strategy.


 However, I'm not here to tell you that it's easy to succeed with an ICO, which can be every bit as challenging as securing venture capital; but you do have more control over the process.Tip: 


A variety of tools, such as DropDeck, are available, to aggregate and rate funding opportunities, whether you're an investor, ICO or SME. DropDeck, in particular, uses artificial intelligence to rate companies for investors choosing where to invest.


"Everyone wants to fund promising companies," DropDeck's CEO Alon Vo said in a press release published on Bitcoin.com.


Related: 4 Pros and Cons of Investing in a New Cryptocurrencies


"DropDeck wants to remove the barriers that keep average funders away from the greatest opportunities," Vo continued. "There are a lot of existing platforms for you to do that, but we want to build your favorite one.


" The difference between DropDeck and its competitors, the CEO claimed, is that his company is using sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence to sort through the companies for you.

2. Competition is fierce.
Remember: There's more to success with an ICO than meets the eye. You can't assume that investors will flock to your ICO. Instead, your success (or failure) is directly tied to your marketing.


Still, some ICOs have been quite successful: The total amount of money raised via ICOs each month, according to a CNBC.com special report, is in excess of $100 million. This means two things: Individuals are willing to invest, and investors have options.While this surge means that ICOs are receiving more media attention, it also means that competition for investor support will only increase.


Companies that want to distinguish themselves among the saturated ICO playing field have to educate themselves on best practices and execute at a level that is as mature as that of companies vying for IPOs.


Matt McGraw is founder and CEO of Dispatch Labs, a blockchain protocol (blockchain being the technology that underlies cryptocurrencies); his company set to initiate its own ICO in early 2018.


In a call to me, McGraw said he believes that professional execution will be the key to ICO success going forward."Going into 2018, we have larger enterprises jumping on the ICO train, so the market for mindshare is oversubscribed -- at least in relation to the sophistication of ICO execution," McGraw said. "Up to now, many ICO projects simply haven't been very professionally executed.


We see more sophisticated and professional ICO advisory firms, PR firms and financial firms as the key differentiator for a successful ICO going forward."I also recently chatted with Nadav Dakner, founder and CEO of InboundJunction, a marketing firm for startups and blockchain projects, for my podcast (In The Trenches with Andrew Medal).


Dakner said he believes that because the competition is tough, and the market is getting extremely saturated, companies contemplating an ICO need a lot of budget to stand out; they also need to employ growth-hacking tactics and a lot of creativity.


"We have advised and helped the marketing and business development of many ICOs in 2017, and one thing we've noticed about projects that succeed is the integrated marketing approach," Dakner said.Because there are literally hundreds or even thousands of ICOs that launch every month, you will hear only of the good ones.


A combination of PR, ICO listing websites, YouTube reviews and perhaps a TV interview or two is a good start, but not enough. A solid advisory team and some entrepreneurial background among your founders are the elements that will truly convey to investors a sense of trust that you can build a company. Apart from that, there are no shortcuts.


ICOs need to first grow a huge Telegram community (a social-chat tool that most crypto companies use to communicate) over several months, invest in a great-looking website and video and understand that there are no shortcuts.


The easy days of just putting out a white paper explaining your project's technical aspects and the composition of your team are over. You must now establish a real use case for the token you intend to promote and the blockchain technology that will fuel it.

3. Communication is key.
No two companies or investors are the same, and an ICO is no exception. This is what makes effective communication just as important as your marketing strategy. The way you communicate with investors is essential to your success. Have you outlined the details of your ICO, such as the technical information that investors are sure to mull over before making a final decision?


How about your vision for the future, including where you see your company moving to in the next year?


"We communicate with hundreds of ICOs that want to list themselves on our website and community," Alex Buelau CEO of CoinSchedule told me. "Based on what we see, teams that have a very clear and well-defined road map and a not-too-heavy marketing white paper do well. It's also extremely important to have an attractive one pager [description] and website, because people buy with their eyes."


A clear marketing message puts you in a good light with investors. They want to see a clearly defined company strategy, and possibly a serious lock-up on token bonus for the founders, to create ithe sense that the company is in it for the long haul.


Alternately, a cloudy message can lead to your business (and ICO) being overlooked, in favor of the (heavy) competition.

Related: Watch Out for These Cryptocurrency Scams


The upshot? If your startup has hopes of raising funds without following the "same old" traditional path, an initial coin offering is an idea to consider.


This is a new way of funding a company, with many entrepreneurs taking notice. This year, 2018, is set up to be the year of cryptocurrency and ICOs, so now's the time to learn as much as you can.

If you have enjoyed reading and learning from this article, find even more on Entrepreneur here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307147


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you need to start participating today and be part of it!

• A number of alternative cryptocurrencies have rallied substantially in recent weeks as investors look beyond the most prominent cryptocurrency bitcoin.
• Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson raised concern about "unrealistic" cryptocurrency projects entering the space.
• 
  

By:
Ryan Browne | @Ryan_Browne_

The cryptocurrency market will strengthen after bitcoin alternatives that lack substance have failed, a former chief executive and co-founder of Ethereum said."My personal opinion is that we're going to see a consolidation after a crash," Charles Hoskinson told CNBC in an interview Friday.


 Hoskinson now runs blockchain research firm IOHK, but was previously in charge of Ethereum, which develops the underlying technology for the cryptocurrency ether (also known as ethereum). A number of alternative cryptocurrencies — including Cardano, a cryptocurrency overseen by Hoskinson's company — have rallied substantially in recent weeks as investors look beyond the most prominent cryptocurrency bitcoin.


Ripple's XRP, for instance, temporarily overtook ether as the second-largest cryptocurrency in December.


Blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies, records all transactions of a digital currency on a dispersed network instead of one centralized server. Meanwhile, a slew of lesser-known digital tokens have surged to unprecedented levels over the last few weeks, sending the total market capitalization of all virtual currencies up to three quarters of $1 trillion.


But Hoskinson raised concern about "unrealistic" cryptocurrency projects entering the space."What's going to occur is a lot of these ventures that don't have strong fundamentals, don't have good tech, or just unrealistic projects, they will eventually run into some major wall they can't quite overcome. They will fracture up and you will see a lot of them are certain to fail.


"But the entrepreneur added that many of these cryptocurrency projects might not fail any time soon as they have enough funding behind them to sustain themselves. "The problem is a lot of them have a lot of money," Hoskinson said. "It's really hard to fail when your burn rate is $5 million or $10 million a year, and you have $1 billion of capital.


"On Sunday, dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency that was introduced as a joke in 2013, saw its market value increase to $2 billionjust days after hitting $1 billion. Meanwhile, dentacoin, a dental care-focused digital currency that dubs itself "the blockchain solution for the global dental industry," briefly surpassed $2 billion in market capitalization on Sunday, according to Coinmarketcap data.


Dogecoin's founder Jackson Palmer said Friday that it was concerning that the virtual coin he helped create had reached such a high valuation despite the fact that the project hasn't released a software update in more than two years.


"I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over two years has $1 billion market," he said on Twitter.

Discover more from CNBC here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/cryptocurrency-market-crash-consolidation-ethereum-co-founder.html


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JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has admitted that he “regrets” calling the cryptocurrency a fraud in September last year.In an interview with Fox Business, Mr Dimon said that he believes blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, is “real”.


“The bitcoin to me was always what the governments are gonna feel about bitcoin as it gets really big, and I just have a different opinion than other people”, he said.

• READ MORE

North Korea earning monero by hijacking computers, researchers suggest

The high-profile chief executive added that he is “not interested that much in the subject at all”.In September, Mr Dimon said that he would sack JPMorgan workers if he found them trading in the cryptocurrency.


Mr Dimon has long been an ardent critic of bitcoin, having previously called it “worse than tulips bulbs,” referring to the Dutch Tulip craze of the 1600s which is widely seen as the world’s first speculative bubble.



Bitcoin’s spectacular rise has forced banks to consider their clients’ demands to speculate on the cryptocurrency.Barclays revealed in July last year that it had opened up discussions with UK regulators about using digital currencies like bitcoin, and several other banks including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Societe Generale have set up a consortium to build a blockchain platform of their own.


Bitcoin’s value is up more than six per cent from last month and more than 1,565 per cent over the last twelve months.

• More about: 
• bitcoin
• JPMorgan

By Chris Foxx & Leo Kelion

Technology reporters

Kodak is to rent out Bitcoin mining rigs to the public 


Shares in photo firm Eastman Kodak soared nearly 120% after it revealed plans to mint its own crypto-currency, the KodakCoin.The US firm said it was teaming up with London-based Wenn Media Group to carry out the initial coin offering (ICO).


It is part of a blockchain-based initiative to help photographers control their image rights. Kodak also detailed plans to install rows of Bitcoin mining rigs at its headquarters in Rochester, New York.Details of this second scheme - which is being branded the Kodak KashMiner - were outlined at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.Customers will pay up-front to rent mining capacity.


Kodak is the latest in a series of companies to see its value jump after revealing plans for blockchain-related activity. "This is a phenomenon we saw back during the dot com days in the late 1990s where traditional companies would mention some kind of internet strategy and their stock price would jump up," commented Garrick Hileman from the University of Cambridge.

"When you see stock prices moving like this it does appear to be troubling - it's hard to say if there's a bubble but it certainly is indicative of a frothy investment market."

Coin creation

Kodak was famously slow to join the digital revolution, and its hesitation to leave behind its film heritage cost the company its market.





Image copyright
GETTY IMAGES 


Kodak now embraces digital photography but was initially wary of the formatSince its collapse in 2012, Kodak has licensed its brand to a variety of manufacturers, with the mark appearing on batteries, printers, drones, tablet computers and digital cameras.The KashMiner operation will be run by Spotlite, a licensee that had previously teamed up with Kodak to use its brand to market LED lights.


Mining involves carrying out processor-intensive tasks to solve complicated mathematical problems in order to verify crypto-currency transactions.Any Bitcoins generated by Kodak KashMiner will be shared between the customer and the business.


Each of the mining rig boxes - which include computer processors and fans to keep them cool - will use about the same amount of electricity as running a hairdryer around the clock.But the scheme will be able to take advantage of Kodak's on-site power generating plant, which has had spare capacity since Kodak's heyday.





Image copyright
GETTY IMAGES


Kodak's Bitcoin mining operation will be based at its Rochester headquartersThe company says it can power each rig for four cents per kilowatt hour, which is significantly cheaper than running a rig at home.At Bitcoin's current value, an up-front investment of $4,000 (£2,954) for 24 months of mining could earn a profit of $500 a month, Spotlite's Halston Mikail told the BBC.


But anybody hoping to join the gamble would have to wait, as capacity is already sold out, Mr Mikail added.


"At this time we have 80 miners, and we expect another 300 to arrive shortly. There is a big pile-up of demand," he said.


Bitcoin is notoriously volatile and some analysts fear its value could crash, resulting in a loss for those who had paid up-front for mining capacity.


But Mr Mikail said the rigs could be put to work on other tasks if Bitcoin faltered."Bitcoin could be a bubble. But the blockchain industry is not a bubble," he said."It's a solid platform built on mathematics and it will survive."

Kodak currency

Kodak's other initiative, the KodakCoin, is being created as part of an effort to build a global ledger of picture rights ownership that photographers can add their work to.


Associated KodakOne software will be used to crawl the web and find pictures that have been used without permission.The company said it would then "manage the licensing process," so the photographer can be paid, in KodakCoin.


"Kodak has always sought to democratise photography and make licensing fair to artists," said Kodak chief executive Jeff Clarke."These technologies give the photography community an innovative and easy way to do just that."The company's shares traded more than 130% above their opening price after the announcement before closing the day 119.4% higher.


But one expert had doubts."Storing the information in a blockchain doesn't protect your copyright any more than copyright law already does," commented David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50ft Blockchain.


"Notice how they're marketing it: they state a problem, then say the blockchain can solve it. But there's no mechanism by which the blockchain could do that."This doesn't do anything that signing up for Shutterstock or Getty Images wouldn't.


"Even so, some think Kodak will not be the last household name to associate itself with an ICO."I expect we are going to see more major brands releasing their own tokens and currencies to support various products and services," commented Mr Hileman.

"It's something many big companies are thinking very hard about."


Follow the BBC team at CES via this Twitter list


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Or Click " Create Account " above in the upper right corner. Instructions how to curate your blockchain page from information you discover on BC, is sent in your email after you sign up, so read it. It takes only a few minutes to curate your blockchain page. You can then track and share all the content you love or care about to enhance your knowledge of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies in general.

You can send message over our network, invite friends, your employer and colleagues to follow your Blockchain Page too! You might still be able to capture your ' first name " as a unique url for your blockchain page too! Like : http://www.blockchaincompany.info/robert We recommend you do this sooner as easy memorable BC urls will get snapped up quickly.

Going forward, you may also be entitled to free cryptocurrency tokens through airdrops with our partners and our own utility tokens. You may also get unique offers and discounts at any time in the future, once you are a user on our BC platform. 

Blockchain is the Internet of Value... 
you need to start participating today and be part of it!

 By Steve Slavin

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. —- Herbert Stein, President Richard Nixon’s chief economic advisorOne of the hottest financial investment questions today is whether to invest in virtual currencies. Early investors in Bitcoin, Ripple, and other investment vehicles doubled and tripled their money in just weeks. Indeed, by the end of 2017, bitcoins were 40 times as valuable as they had been at the beginning of the year.

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world regret not having already gotten in on this modern-day gold rush. Is it now too late to make huge profits in virtual currencies, or is there enough time to jump in – and still get out safely?

We know that the speculative frenzy of the roaring twenties led to the stock market crash of 1929, and that the out-of-control real estate speculation in the early years of the new millennium led to the financial crisis of 2007-08.Are we now seeing history once again repeating itself? 

Or has Bitcoin and its competitors built in enough safety features to prevent that from happening?Despite the best intentions, there are two insurmountable barriers to the continued rapid climb in the value of virtual currencies. The first is the relatively slow annual rate of growth of the world’s output of goods and services. 

The second is the psychological element, which we’ll get to later.Very likely, the nearly 40 virtual currencies will reach of total value of $1 trillion later this month. That is less than one percent of the total value of world output of goods and services. 

That output is growing at an annual rate of 3 ½ percent. If it continues growing at that pace, it would double in 20 years.If the value of bitcoins were to sustain its rapid rise, they alone might reach a quarter of the value of world goods and services output by year’s end.

So, possibly within just a couple of years, we will have far too much money chasing too few goods, resulting in a classic case of run-away inflation. Even though the prices of virtual currencies might continue their rapid rise, their actual purchasing power will be declining.

But even before that happens, the psychological element will come into play. Initially, when a speculative frenzy takes hold, more and more investors want to get in on the action. They’re still thinking of all the money they could have made if they had only made if they had gotten in just a few weeks earlier.

As long as the price of virtual currencies keep rising rapidly, buyers will probably continue to bid them up still further. But what if price increases begin to level off? Or even worse, what if prices begin to fall?We know from bitter experience what happens when a panic sets in, as more and people sell. 

Will that happen within the next two or three years to virtual currencies? Will they manage a soft landing, so most investors can take their profits and only the most recent ones lose any money?

There is a ceiling on the value of virtual currencies. That ceiling is the world’s output of goods and services. After all, the ultimate value of any currency is what you can buy with it. A trillion-dollar bitcoin would not be worth what a bitcoin is worth today.

It may be that in the next year or so, the rise in the value of virtual currencies will substantially slow, and we will avert a financial disaster. But right now, I wouldn’t bet on it.

About the Author Steve Slavin has a PhD in economics from NYU, and taught for over thirty years at Brooklyn College, New York Institute of Technology, and New Jersey’s Union County College. 

He has written sixteen math and economics books including a widely used introductory economics textbook now in its eleventh edition (McGraw-Hill) and The Great American Economy (Prometheus Books) which was published in August.

See More from Valuewalk here: http://www.valuewalk.com/2018/01/ripple-bitcoin-price-crash-2018/

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The United Kingdom has seen an investment slowdown over the drawn-out Brexit process, but one crypto expert says UK firms could use ICOs to overcome this circumstance.


Way back in June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a move called Brexit. A newly formed government invoked Article 50 to leave the EU eight months later.


While the island nation hasn’t sunk into the sea over Brexit, there has been a slowdown in investments made into UK companies over the lingering confusion and doubt of how, or even if, the actual process will carry out.


This has had significant impact, but a crypto expert has come forward and suggested that UK firms could start their own ICOs to overcome this investment slowdown.

UNCERTAINTY CLOUDS THE ISSUE

If there’s one thing that businesspeople hate, it’s uncertainty. Companies want to make decisions based on hard data, and plans are laid out in advance that take in every possible criteria that could have an impact. (At least the smart companies operate in this fashion.)


The lingering malaise over Brexit is having a chilling effect on investments made into UK companies. After all, who wants to pour their money into a company when the rules could suddenly change a few months down the road?Przemek Skwirczynski, an associate at ICO Rocket, has a solution to this dilemma.


He believes UK companies should tap into the wealth created by the Bitcoin boom by having ICOs of their own. He says:

Cryptocurrencies offer companies a chance to overcome the uncertainty surrounding the Brexit deal and continue to receive investment. Currently this is small scale but as you see the interest in ICOs picking up I am hoping this will become a very mainstream way of financing.

ARE ICOS THE ANSWER?

It should be pointed out that Skwirczynski has a vested interest in promoting ICOs. The company he’s attached to, ICO Rocket, specializes in helping businesses that are not well-versed in the crypto world to prepare and run an ICO.He goes on to say:

Effectively a company will be issuing their own coin and then people will be investing in that and typically this kind of coin will have a higher rate of growth in terms of its value than the more established ones, like Bitcoin or Ethereum … It is effectively spreading the wealth that has been created by the appreciation of Bitcoin or Ethereum … This is a very positive outcome of this kind of this whole boom.

Skwirczynski says ICOs could allow consumers to back individual projects that they support. An example of such support is helping a movie get financed, where he then goes to add:

I don’t see why this could not be applied to the film industry where you can create a coin for a movie production and then have a film being financed in that way and that will be very useful for the industry and the viewers … At the moment film production is really dominated by an oligopoly on a worldwide scale … Doing this kind of disruptive activity where you are breaking up the oligopoly that have got to have a positive effect for pretty much everyone.

There are some pros and cons to UK companies launching ICOs to drum up investment funds. On the pro side, ICOs can be quite successful. SingularityNET raised $36 million during their ICO, which lasted all of a single minute before the capped amount was reached.


Allowing ICOs within a country is an investment lure, which is something that the country of Belarus fully understands. Belarus recently signed into law that revenue and profits gained from crypto-based activities will be tax-free until 2023.


The cons to UK firms launching ICOs include ongoing regulatory attempts and shareholders. Most companies that have an ICO are firmly entrenched into the crypto world. Their platforms are designed from the ground up to take advantage of the blockchain and the ability to use tokens.


However, most standard companies are not. Will current shareholders be enthused about a bunch of crypto enthusiasts coming on board? What structure would be put into place to offer rewards to token holders and to shareholders? Would token holders get a vote?


A dual system would emerge, shares and cryptocurrency, that may or may not work well together.  Plus, the UK is still working on how best to regulate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The government is concerned people are using crypto to launder money or evade paying taxes. Again, this is more uncertainty.


Overall, the idea of using ICOs to counteract Brexit investment slowdown is an intriguing one, and it could work. The trick is figuring out all the details in implementing them for existing businesses and making sure shareholders are appeased.


Do you think having UK companies launching ICOs are an effective means to counteract the investment slowdown caused by Brexit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Checkout more of our stories on Bitcoinist here: http://bitcoinist.com/uk-companies-could-use-icos-to-overcome-brexit-investment-slowdown/

As the digital horse race for the Next Big Thing in blockchain heats up, more and more companies are getting on the bandwagon to launch their revolutionary concepts and ICOs.


SingularityNET is a decentralized marketplace for artificial intelligence, and it may well have the record for the fastest selling ICO ever.


According to reports, the ICO was sold out within 60 seconds of going public, raising $36 million for the company behind the ambitious project. The team at Singularity reports that the crowdfunding was capped after receiving $361 million in investor interest on its whitelist from more than 20,000 previous investors.

FUTURE PLANS

The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) tokens will power the SingularityNET framework that will allow companies, organizations, and developers to buy and sell AI, lowering costs and increasing output. According to their website:

Experts estimate that AI market will increase from the $200 billion it is valued today to $3.1 trillion by 2025, but serious roadblocks remain. Today, AI functionality is expensive, time-consuming, and hard to use.

Dr. Ben Goertzel, the CEO, said in response to the ICO:

Today’s results are powerful evidence that SingularityNET is an idea whose time has come. In discussing the SingularityNET project all around the world, I’ve found that it resonates remarkably with people from all walks of life, and the enthusiasm we’ve seen in our community is awe-inspiring.

The overall vision is to combine AI and blockchain to create a decentralized marketplace for different types of AI, and the aim is to become the key open-source protocol for networking AI on the internet.

COMPANY VISION

In an interview with TechCrunch, Goertzel went on to state:

Proprietary marketplaces exist, like the Amazon Web Services for instance. What we’re creating here is a decentralized marketplace, more like BitTorrent. There’s no central dictator deciding what gets in there. Anyone can put an AI online, wrap it in our API, and announce it to the network and any business that needs AI as a service can request it.

He went on to add that the company wants to make the system so that the AI layer is independent of what blockchain they are using. The prototype uses Ethereum, but it is too slow, and they want to be able to swap out the blockchain technology easily.


The overwhelming response to the ICO is a clear indicator that investors are taking blockchain technology seriously, and there will be more to come.


What do you think about the SingularityNET selling out in 60 seconds? Were you fast enough to be a part of it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on Bitcoinist here: http://bitcoinist.com/gone-60-seconds-singularitynet-ico/

The other night, my nine-year-old daughter (who is, of course, the most tech-savvy person in the house), introduced me to a new Amazon Alexa skill.


“Alexa, start a conversation,” she said.We were immediately drawn into an experience with new bot, or, as the technologists would say, “conversational user interface” (CUI).  It was, we were told, the recent winner in an Amazon AI competition from the University of Washington.


At first, the experience was fun, but when we chose to explore a technology topic, the bot responded, “have you heard of Net Neutrality?” What we experienced thereafter was slightly discomforting. The bot seemingly innocuously cited a number of articles that she “had read on the web” about the FCC, Ajit Pai, and the issue of net neutrality.


But here’s the thing: All four articles she recommended had a distinct and clear anti-Ajit Pai bias.Now, the topic of Net Neutrality is a heated one and many smart people make valid points on both sides, including Fred Wilson and Ben Thompson. That is how it should be.


But the experience of the Alexa CUI should give you pause, as it did me. To someone with limited familiarity with the topic of net neutrality, the voice seemed soothing and the information unbiased.


But if you have a familiarity with the topic, you might start to wonder, “wait … am I being manipulated on this topic by an Amazon-owned AI engine to help the company achieve its own policy objectives?


”The experience highlights some of the risks of the AI-powered future into which we are hurtling at warp speed.It’s a reminder that big companies, such as Amazon, have traditionally had big advantages when it comes to big data and AI.

The trust problem with centralized big data

According to Trent McConaghy, CTO of BigChainDB, AI took a huge evolutionary step forward in 2001. This was when two Microsoft researchers named Banko and Brill discovered something that now seems obvious to all of us:


The bigger the data set you’re analyzing by orders of magnitude, the lower the error rates you get. The era of Big Data was officially upon us and the race was on.But if the race is about gathering, storing, and analyzing as much data as possible, then who is in the pole position to win?


That’s right, the FANGs in the U.S. (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google), the BATs in China (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), and the wealthy Fortune 1000 or so multinational corporations.


They are the only ones with the reach and capital to get more data, store it, analyze it, and build AI models on top of it. What’s more, they are the only ones who can offer starting salaries in the $300,000 to $500,000 range and top-tier salaries that extend into to seven and eight digits.


Your son or daughter may not make it to the NBA or NFL, but become a top AI scientist and you’re doing great. The net effect of all of this is that the rich become even richer and more powerful and the barriers to innovation become even higher.It is not only innovation that suffers, however.


The closed nature of big-company AI means society must put its trust in “black boxes.”Let’s look at how AI works to help make this clear. There are three layers that are essential

• The data repository
• The algorithm/machine learning engine
• The AI interface.

If you are going to trust your decision-making to a centralized AI source, you need to have 100 percent confidence in:

• The integrity and security of the data (are the inputs accurate and reliable, and can they be manipulated or stolen?)
• The machine learning algorithms that inform the AI (are they prone to excessive error or bias, and can they be inspected?)
• The AI’s interface (does it reliably represent the output of the AI and effectively capture new data?)

In a centralized, closed model of AI, you are asked to implicitly trust in each layer without knowing what is going on behind the curtains.For a simple conversation with a nine-year-old, this may not be the end of the world.


But for certain African-American criminal defendants, the implications can be life-altering: According to both the New York Times and Wired, the use of a proprietary machine-learning system called COMPAS, which is used by courts in many parts of the U.S., actually recommends longer prison sentences for blacks than whites, with all other data points being equal.In effect, the AI makes racially-biased decisions, but no one can inspect it, and the company that makes it will not explain it.


It’s closed, it is hidden, and models like these are in the hands of big, powerful companies have no incentive to share them or reveal how they work.

How blockchains level the playing field and add trust

Over time, more and more data will flow into blockchains, and that will reduce the big data advantage that the FANGs, BATs, and Fortune 1000 have over the little guys.As Deepak Dutt, CEO of AI-based identity proofing company Zighra says, “When data is commoditized, AI algorithms become the most valuable part of the ecosystem.” In other words, we’ll see a power shift from those who own big sets of data to those who build smart, useful algorithms.

That’s great, but if we’re moving data to blockchains, some big, thorny questions still exist. For example:

• Where does the data go?
• How is it discovered and utilized?
• Why would people put their data in there?
• And don’t the “big guys” still have a huge advantage in terms of building powerful AI?
• 
  

Welcome to the world of Blockchain+AI.

3 blockchain projects tackling decentralized data and AI

A number of projects have popped up to reward people through cryptographic tokens for making their data available through a decentralized marketplace.

The result could be ever-more accurate AI models and the ability to create valuable conversational user interfaces, all with the trust and transparency that blockchains offer.We are going to look at three of them.

1. Ocean Protocol. On the repository level, the Ocean Protocol aims to create a “decentralized data exchange protocol and network that incentivizes the publishing of data for use in the training of artificial intelligence models.” Put more simply, if you upload valuable data to the Ocean network and your data is used by someone else to train an AI model, you are compensated.


Let’s take one of my favorite examples, my Nest thermostat. Right now, data is uploaded constantly from my thermostat to Google. With data from me and all other Nest owners, Google has a really strong data set against which it can build AI services that could, for example, know when someone should send an offer of insulation or new windows to my house.


That data, which is mine (and yours), has value, but Google currently gets it for free.What if, however, an enterprising home automation AI scientist (let’s call her Alice) believes she can build a better model than Google can?In the Ocean model, Alice would license your data (and the millions of other data points out there) and compensate you with some amount of Ocean tokens.


Now think even bigger …All of that data you are giving away for free (Nest, Fitbit, Hue lights, Ring doorbell, and every other IOT device out there) now has

• data integrity (everyone knows the source of the data)
• clear ownership (you)
• and thanks to cryptocurrencies and blockchains, a cost-effective way to buy and/or lease it.

You’re happy, since you’ll be getting compensated for something you’re currently giving away for free. Alice is happy, since she (eventually) will have access to the same dataset that Google has. Boom — playing field leveled, thanks to an open data marketplace.


And we’re all safer from bias and error because the AI built on this data comes with more transparency, since the data sets that inform the models are known.Another notable player in this space is IOTA, which already launched its marketplace.


2. SingularityNet. Now, let’s say Alice has really cracked the code on a powerful AI algorithm that could help marketers, government officials, or environmentalists understand how weather patterns affect energy consumption. That’s where SingularityNet comes in, focusing on the AI level.


SingularityNet, which just closed its hotly anticipated ICO and has a strong leadership team, including AI pioneers Ben Goertzel and David Hanson, aims to be the first AI-as-a-service (AIaaS) blcockhain-based marketplace. In their world, Alice offers up her model (for sale or rent) to others for use against their own dataset.


Thanks to a standardized AI taxonomy, a search engine helps users discover and rapidly integrate Alice’s model with complementary models, creating even more powerful and better trained models.


Coming back to our Nest example, let’s say that Alice’s model is built to study the home energy market in New York City. Combine that with models for Newark, Stamford, and Long Island, and you can start getting even better insights about tri-state area consumption.


Since ownership of the model is clear (it belongs to Alice), her intellectual property is protected. Every time her model is used, she is compensated in SingularityNet’s AGI tokens (AGI being the acronym for Artificial General Intelligence). Now you have the data sets that the big guys have AND access to the AI models they have as well.


For those of you familiar with the crypto space, the project will sound a lot like Numerai, albeit with a more broad focus than the hedge-fund disintermediation objective Numerai has.The implications of a successful rollout of the more broadly focused SingularityNet on every industry could be quite dramatic. It should lead to an arms race in terms of AI models among industry competitors and will likely impact the required skill sets for jobs of the future.


3. SEED. Finally, at the interface level comes SEED, a project that is looking to give us all confidence that we can actually trust the bots in our lives.According to SEED, “The bot market is estimated to grow from $3 billion to $20 billion by 2021,” a projection that means interactions like the one my daughter and I had with Alexa will become much more common and potentially more risky.


After all, even if you completely trust Amazon, there’s still the possibility the bot you are interfacing with has been hijacked.The solution for this is the combination of the SEED Network, the SEED Network Marketplace, and the Seed Token.


The SEED Network is an open-source, decentralized network where any and all bot interactions can be managed, viewed, and verified. It is also the framework for ensuring that the data fed into the AI via the conversational user interface aka “bot” can be assigned a data owner who can be compensated for it.


The Marketplace is the way aspiring bot creators, like AI model creators, can sell and license the various components they have built to others who need the services.


While the University of Washington students who built the winning AI for Amazon were probably thrilled with their $500,000 check, they would probably be more thrilled to get a small royalty on every interaction their CUI has with Alexa’s users in perpetuity.


Finally, the SEED token is the mechanism through which bot creators and data owners (you and I) are compensated for the value created inside the network.


To round it out, let’s come back to Alice. She has not only built an AI for home energy use, she has built a bot that will periodically ask you, “Hey, are you feeling hot or cold in your house right now?


” When you answer, you are feeding data into the AI and into the AI repository. That’s your data. Why shouldn’t you be compensated for it? After all, it makes the AI better and enriches the data repository.


SEED says you should, and it secures your asset rights in the blockchain.When all is said and done, SEED will offer you better protection for the data you offer and greater confidence in the authenticity and reputation of the bot with which you are interacting.

The promise of blockchain-based AI

Blockchain-based AI projects are still in very early development, and the big data kings have a huge advantage, but so did the Atlanta Falcons at halftime of last year’s Super Bowl.


As blockchains drive into the mainstream, we will see more and more data hitting decentralized marketplaces and exchanges.


As people realize the value their personal data has, along with the opportunities to monetize it, and as networks like SEED, SingularityNet, and Ocean mature, we will see a tipping point in the evolution of big data, moving from a closed, siloed phenomenon to open systems where the creators of data are more fairly rewarded for their contributions.


It is too early to tell which protocols will be the winners and whether these three first movers I’ve pointed to will remain in the lead or lose out to the next wave of fast-followers.

The only clear thing is that the winners will be the developers and consumers whose data and intellectual property will be rewarded and whose experiences will be protected from bad or manipulating actors by open, transparent systems.


Jeremy Epstein is CEO of Never Stop Marketing and author of The CMO Primer for the Blockchain World. He currently works with startups in the blockchain and decentralization space, including OpenBazaar, IOTA, and Zcash.

See even more reports from Venturebeat here:

Bitcoin’s value isn’t the only thing topping the charts: New data by BitInfoCharts shows that people are currently paying $28 on average to make transactions using the digital currency.


CNBC reported that users of cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Coinbase, incur such transaction fees when transferring money to external bitcoin addresses, which are like virtual bank account numbers where users can store their tokens.Last week, a journalist said on Twitter that he paid $15 to send $100 worth of bitcoin from a digital wallet to a hardware wallet.


And earlier this month, another person on Twitter claimed that he had to pay a $16 fee to send $25 worth of bitcoin from one bitcoin address to another.


Bitcoin transaction fees are proving to be profitable for bitcoin “miners,” who work out complex cryptographic puzzles to add transactions to the blockchain and are paid in bitcoin for their services.


On Monday, the total value of all transaction fees paid to miners exceeded $11 million for just that one day. These fees have put more emphasis on the debate surrounding bitcoin transaction times and fees. Currently, it takes an average of 78 minutes to confirm a bitcoin transaction. On Sunday, however, the average time was as high as 1,188 minutes.


Slow transaction speeds and fees have led to a number of splits in the original blockchain. In August, the blockchain was forced to split in two, which led to the creation of a spinoff called bitcoin cash. Then in October, another split resulted in another digital asset called bitcoin gold.


With this in mind, the CEO of blockchain firm Ripple is skeptical about the use of bitcoin for payments and transfers. “I don’t think bitcoin is well-positioned to solve the payments problem,” said Brad Garlinghouse, who added that his firm’s cryptocurrency was “enabling transactions in seconds,” and that the cost of transactions was “a fraction of pennie.”


“Two years ago, people thought bitcoin would solve all transactions, and I think what we’re seeing is that’s not the way it’s going to play out,” he said.

Find more stories from PYMNTS here: https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/bitcoin/2017/bitcoin-transaction-fees-blockchain-cryptocurrency/

Every successful new technology undergoes a Cambrian Era-style explosion of growth in which we try to use it for everything. Email, search, social networking—each passed through its “this will solve all our problems!” phase before we figured out what its best applications and limitations were.


With the Bitcoin bubble testing astronomical prices every day, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that drives them are now taking their turn in this one-tech-fits-all role.


Scott Rosenberg is a journalist, editor, blogger, and non-fiction author, as well as a cofounder of Salon Media Group and Salon.com.———Sign up to get Backchannel's weekly newsletter, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A blockchain is a cryptographically protected distributed ledger—it’s what protects you or anyone else from making a copy of that Bitcoin you just bought. You’ve probably heard about the popularity of blockchain tech in the financial business. In fact, anything that you can make a list of, you can manage with blockchains.


Ambitious developers and entrepreneurs are aiming to use them to rework everything from how we track land ownership to how we distribute medicine and how we grant diplomas.Some of these ideas are brilliant, while others are ridiculous.


Do we really need a blockchain to run an online encyclopediaor pay for news? Whether we do or not, in 2018, we’re probably going to see it tried. That’s partly because of a glut of venture capital and the salivation of investors thrilled by Bitcoin’s wild ride.


But it’s also because this is the exuberant but wasteful process by which the tech industry determines what each new platform is actually good for. And it’s a process that will play out whether the Bitcoin bubble keeps soaring or finally pops.In the coming year, the motto of financial-tech developers is going to be “cryptocoins for everything!


” Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which introduce new cryptocurrencies to the world, have raised $4 billion so far, mostly in the last year—and that has turned them into a craze of their own. A future in which each of us has our own personal currencyremains improbable.


But one in which each big tech platform issues a token as the coin of its realm is probably not far off.Before that can happen, here are three issues that the industry will need to resolve: Are ICO tokens primarily investments, or tools?

Can we give up the idea that cryptocurrencies are a new species of traditional cash? And can developers end the plague of technical problems surrounding Bitcoin and every other cryptocoin?


The continued rise of cryptocurrencies in 2018 will depend on how much progress the crypto world can make on these questions.

What Is a Token?
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) started out as an alternative means for funding new protocols and infrastructure in the crypto universe. Through this process, companies create and sell tokens; the tokens can be hoarded as investments, or used to accomplish tasks on their platform.


Some projects, hoping to reassure skeptics and qualify for more institutional capital, explicitly model their cryptocoin projects on traditional investment vehicles. The startup incubator Science, for instance, raised $12 million in an ICO aimed at taking advantage of ICO-mania to kickstart a whole venture fund’s worth of investments in blockchain-related companies.


Science structured its ICO to meet Securities and Exchange Commission rules, and buying into the Science ICO was not that different from buying into any other seed investment round.


Others take a more complex view of the role of tokens: Sure, they can fluctuate in value and serve as investments, but we’re creating them because they have a job to perform in making a new technology work.


Engineers building new protocols and platforms don’t just take the cash raised in the ICO; the tokens they sell also create incentives and perform basic functions in the systems they’re building, so the tokens won’t just sit in investment accounts.


That’s the approach that lay behind the recent $50 million ICO by Blockstack, a startup that envisions a decentralized, blockchain-based web in which your direct interactions with businesses, organizations, and other individuals are powered by its tokens.


Blockstack’s system uses its own browser and plans prototype apps from independent developers for data storage, Airbnb-style home rental, music publishing, and personal health records. Right now, the ICO world happily embraces both these models.


A year from now, we should have more evidence to show which one makes more sense. The investment model offers more assurance that any particular ICO won’t be an outright scam; the “put tokens to work” approach opens up more revolutionary technical possibilities.

The Future is Cash-Free
Bitcoin was first explained to the public as a form of digital money, and that is how its successors and competitors—like Litecoin, Filecoin, and Ether—have been framed as well. Each of these “currencies” resembles traditional money in certain ways—they’re abstractions of economic value; they can be traded; they each use unique symbols.


But none of them is suited to playing the most basic role of currency, as a relatively stable medium of exchange—that is, as a simple way to buy and sell stuff. There’s too much friction involved. Each transaction takes too long, uses too much energy, and involves too many risks. (Bitcoin, for instance, is shockingly easy to lose—one misplaced password and you’re in trouble.)


Nearly a year ago—back when Bitcoin was trading for a mere $1000 and people rolled their eyes!—Cade Metz was arguingin Wired that “Bitcoin will never be a currency.” But that idea isn’t dying gently. Here, for instance, is the latest sad tale of a Bitcoin owner who tried to sell some of his holding and found himself in a labyrinth of troubl.


As he lamented on Twitter, “It’s still either super complex to use, either woefully insecure and/or unsafe. but now you also have ridiculous high fees, long confirmation times, super impractical exchanges with zero privacy.” (His Twitter ID says he’s a Google engineer, so he’s likely neither a rube nor a technophobe.)


In 2018, the smartest move on the part of companies making ICOs and Bitcoin-related products will be to wean the public and the media off the “digital cash” concept. It’s a metaphor that no longer makes sense, and it’s getting in the way of our properly understanding a new technology that’s looks like money but really isn’t.

Still Working Out the Bugs
The biggest problems with Bitcoin have emerged because the mechanics of buying and holding bitcoins are so inscrutable that nearly everyone pays third parties to handle them.


Those wallet-service middlemen become points of failure for the whole system. They get hacked; their systems go down; they get ordered by governments and regulators to report transactions that users thought would be anonymous.


 
In 2018 you can expect to see an escalating competition among providers of these wallet services to earn users’ trust. It won’t be easy, since the inflation in Bitcoin’s price has driven a frenzy of participation that strains these companies’ capacities. But if the Bitcoin world doesn’t solve this problem, it will sour the entire industry’s prospects, as it crops up for each new coin or token that catches fire. 


Each of these three challenges that cryptocurrencies face comes down to a question of trust. Ironically, the libertarian dreamers who conceived of Bitcoin and its brethren imagined a world of “trustlessness,” in which you didn’t have to assess the reputation of the counterparty in any transaction, or any middleman institution, because the whole process was guaranteed by the blockchain’s irrefutable, crypto-secured record.


But nothing that’s happening in the world of ICOs and Bitcoin today has moved us any closer to such a trustless state. People are still making gut-driven bets based on faith: Is my wallet company the most reliable? Which token is most likely to last and appreciate? Which developers are moving in the smartest direction?


Those bets will continue as long as the market keeps rising. The cryptocurrency boom has been built on abundance—both in capital (because interest rates have been so low for so long) and in technical resources (because there were lots of idle CPUs before the cryptocurrency frenzy commenced).


As BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen says, “Bitcoin does a very good job of wasting every available resource it can get its hands on.” The technical resources have begun to dwindle, which is why gamers have to pay more for their graphic cards—the Bitcoin miners have bought up all the hardware.

The slightest whiff of a financial crisis will tighten the available financial resources, too. The real test for cryptocurrencies, next year and beyond, will be whether they can evolve to be more efficient.

Remember: The Cambrian Era ended in mass extinction.

Discover even more reports like this on Wired here: https://www.wired.com/story/future-of-bitcoin-blockchain-2018/

A new patent application from Intel suggests that the tech giant is looking at ways to utilize the energy expended during cryptocurrency mining for the sequencing of genetic data.


In the patent application, first filed June 2016 and released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, inventors Ned Smith and Rajesh Poornachandran describe a type of computer called a sequence mining platform (SMP) which would identify the order or nucleobases in a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or ribonucleic acid (RNA).


Nucleobases are the molecules that make up DNA and RNA, which contain the genetic information within every living organism on the planet. The order of these bases determines what physical traits a person, plant or animal features.


The patent application notes that the SMP would use a nucleobase sequencing unit to actually establish the order of nucleobases in a given sample, which would then be verified by the blockchain before being permanently recorded on it.As the filing explains:

"The present disclosure introduces methods and apparatuses for accomplishing additional useful work in conjunction with blockchain mining. In particular, as described in greater detail below, the present disclosure introduces methods and apparatuses for using data processing power of a data processing system to determine a sequence of nucleobases in a nucleic acid, and for then using the determined sequence of nucleobases as the basis for a [proof-of-work] for a new block for a blockchain."

The combination of blockchain tech and genetic sequencing isn't exactly new, and cryptocurrency projects like genecoin have highlighted how the energy-intensive mining process (by which new transactions are added to a blockchain with new coins being minted as a reward) can be applied for scientific purposes.


According to Intel's application, proof-of-work algorithms "make it impractical for an attacker or group of attackers to corrupt or hijack the blockchain.


"However, unlike POW systems used by the bitcoin and ethereum blockchains, the one mentioned in Intel’s proposed design would be multipurpose, as it would result in new blocks while simultaneously determining the genetic sequence from the data provided.


The POW algorithm would, therefore, be used to both identify the sequence and subsequently verify it, according to the application, and the sequence recorded on one block would be used as a base for the POW problems in the next block.

Discover even more stories from Coindesk here: https://www.coindesk.com/intel-proposes-genetic-sequencing-system-on-a-blockchain/

There can be a lot of hype around how disruptive blockchain technology will be where some trumpet how it will change everything in our world today and every industry is primed for disruption.


While I am excited about blockchain technology, I do not believe it’s a cure-all technology. The most common industries cited as ripe for disruption by blockchain are banking and finance, healthcare, cybersecurity, and any space where a lack of transparency or a lack of tracking and inefficiencies abound, such as creative works and supply chain management.


The potential of blockchain’s disruptive nature across consumer and enterprise markets can seem like a sea captain sailing in the middle of the ocean during a foggy night. You know you are looking into vast and distant waters, but visibility is limited and the future is uncertain.


Enterprise is keyWhen I consider the potential application of blockchain on consumer-facing products and new companies that can launch from it, I get excited.  When I think about the enterprise side, I get a little sleepy-eyed. At its core, blockchain technology is pretty boring. It makes backend processes more efficient, more secure or transparent as a new solution or as a middleware product.


Middleware for legacy systems? Bringing large enterprises out of the IT Stone Age to the future of decentralized, distributed systems? Please stick a fork in my leg and pour a gallon of Red Bull down my throat.But boring is good and highlights a huge potential of blockchain enterprise companies.


A good industry benchmark for these up and coming enterprise blockchain startups are companies such as SAP and Oracle, which are traditional enterprise database companies.


I see today's enterprise blockchain startups and those in the coming years as the next generation of enterprise database companies. SAP has a market cap of over $135 billion with over $23 billion in revenues last year, and Oracle has a market cap of over $209 billion with over $37 billion in revenues.


Oracle positions itself as the world’s #1 enterprise database company with dozens of core products from middleware solutions to servers to databases.Eye on AsiaA little-known fact is that the core technology behind SAP’s flagship product, HANA database, came from a South Korea company they acquired in 2005 called Transact In Memory.


Transact In Memory was founded by Dr. Sang Cha, who is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University.The next generation of global enterprise database companies might not just be based on technologies acquired from the region, but wholly originated from Asia. 


For example, Blocko, which went through our accelerator in Seoul in 2015, has become the leading enterprise blockchain company in South Korea with over 90% marketshare.  Their blockchain-as-a-service platform, Coinstack, has been implemented at Samsung, LG CNS, Hyundai and many other multi-billion corporations. 


For the Korea Exchange, they created a blockchain-based OTC trading market decreased transaction time from 2-3 days to 1 day. This resulted in cost savings of $73 million this past year.


For one of South Korea's largest credit card companies, Lotte Card, Blocko set up a blockchain-based biometric log-in and payment authorization system which decreased authentication time from 7-10 minutes to 2-3 minutes. 


This simple solution reduced Lotte Card's annual security solution expenditures to $50,000 per year from over $500,000 per year while exponentially increasing its level of security.






Blocko, Inc.

Blocko improving Lotte Card's customer authentication process

More on Forbes: How Blockchain Could Allow China's Netizens To Reclaim Online Publishing


Another company in China, SunlightDB (a member of SparkLabs Beijing's inaugural class this year), is trying to create a whole new database based on blockchain technology. 


They are building a database that is highly secure where information cannot be tampered with, but also completely open.  Contrary to some misconceptions of blockchain technologies, their database queries have been at least 10x faster than traditional databases.


Joining the blockchainOutside of Asia and the startup world, blockchain implementations are occurring throughout the globe. In Dubai, DNATA (Dubai National Air Transport Association), one of the world's largest air service providers, is working with IBM to improve the cargo delivery processes through blockchain technology.


The potential cost-savings will be in the hundreds of millions.Many U.S. corporations are piloting blockchain solutions, but I believe this coming year there will be a shift from U.S. companies dipping their toes into the water to more of them jumping into the decentralized waters of blockchain technology.


2018 will be a breakout year for enterprise startups and large companies (i.e. IBM, Accenture, Bank of America) playing in this space, and U.S. companies within the space might quickly catch up to the innovations occurring in Asia.


The weakness of startups in Asia is the inability to become global companies and make a big impact beyond the region.


You only have to look at the development of Tencent, Alibaba, Kakao, or Rakuten to question the viability of a true global player coming from Asia, but maybe this new generation of entrepreneurs in Asia will prove us wrong.


Whether from Asia, Europe, or the U.S., this coming year could well pave the way for the beginnings of the first $100 billion blockchain company in the world.

See more from Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sparklabs/2017/12/15/the-first-100-billion-dollar-blockchain-company-co...

In the wild, wild west of cryptocurrency, anything goes and volatility prevails. It is what makes things so thrilling. Yet even the most venturesome of cowboys crave stability from time to time.


Without some semblance of it, any initial excitement quickly turns into a lurking fear, a constant looking over the shoulders. Enter stablecoins, or coins that have value stable in fiat or other real-world assets.


One attempt is Tether, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, but it was compromised recently. DAI, an asset backed by a basket of digital currencies, is another try but it is not yet ready for public utility due to its complex structure -- even though it has been under development for three years.


As regulation struggles to keep up in the blockchain space, state-issued stablecoins have become an increasingly important means of curbing some of this volatility. Curbing the volatility A state-issued stablecoin is an encrypted digital asset whose value is pegged 1:1 to a country’s fiat currency.


Such an asset would be able to withstand the unrestrained volatility of cryptocurrencies today. Bitcoin, whose value has been on the inexorable rise, is still subject to large price fluctuations and this unpredictability makes it an unreliable store of value. Tokenizing local currency on the blockchain will fill this gap and restore market confidence, all while providing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies time to mature and stabilize.


A stablecoin will also expedite the process of blockchain adoption, since it allows traders, merchants and consumers to complete transactions using a currency that is strong, steady and familiar to them.


A national stablecoin will also enable a government to monitor transactions, thereby curbing tax evasion and money laundering activities.


More on Forbes: Why Blockchain Is Real And Bitcoin Is A Mirage


Is this antithetical to the initial ideals of cryptocurrency and trustless decentralization? Perhaps. But it is one thing to have small, private payments using virtual currencies, and another to eliminate central-bank-issued money altogether and have corporation-scale transactions that are fully anonymous. The social costs of financial crimes would be too high and the global economy as we know it might go into meltdown.


Moreover, even if those issues can be addressed, full decentralization takes time; it is probably naïve to expect a fiat world to transform into a crypto one overnight. State-issued digital dollars would serve as the bridge for the fiat and crypto world, allowing for harmonious co-existence and mutual infrastructural support in the interim.


Whether we can transition fully to a new world economy with just cryptocurrency remains to be seen. Whether that is desirable, remains to be fought over.


State efforts to issue digital dollars are already underway: Russia is hoping to launch its very own CryptoRuble; Kyrgyzstan plans to create its own cryptocurrency backed with gold; the Swedish central bank has proposed an e-Krona; and China is arguably ahead of the pack with its tests to build a domestic cryptocurrency that will exist alongside the yuan.


Singapore might have the most to gain




A tourist boat travels past the city skyline in Singapore, on Wednesday, July 12, 2017. (Photographer: Nicky Loh/Bloomberg)

Singapore is also in the race. In 2016, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the launch of Project Ubin, a payment system prototype on the Ethereum platform aimed at enabling local inter-bank transactions using a tokenized Singaporean dollar.


Major financial institutions including DBS Bank, UOB Bank, OCBC Bank and technology companies participated in the project. Project Ubin has since concluded two successful phases and launched software prototypes that transfer funds efficiently, protect transaction privacy, and mitigate the risks of a single point of failure.


The insights gained from these two phases will pave the way for further development of the digital SGD (e.g. scaling and cross-border payments).


More on Forbes: Putting Singapore's Dollar On Blockchain May Prove It's The Most Crypto Friendly Place On Earth


One can only speculate where Singapore currently stands relative to other countries in the scramble to launch a national stablecoin, but the larger point is this: It must emerge as the victor in this race to become the smart financial center it wants to be.


It must channel more resources into creating a roaring blockchain hub, one that will deliver economies of scale and attract even more developer talent, creating a positive feedback loop of growth.


Successfully launching its own stablecoin will allow the nation-state to sustain its first-mover advantage, enhance financial security, and develop the infrastructure for a thriving blockchain ecosystem, all of which will lead to greater adoption, fintech dominance and economic prosperity.

Discover more from Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/luuloi/2017/12/17/a-state-issued-coin-could-unleash-untapped-potential-...

Blockchain technology that was developed to reinforce digital currency bitcoin,  is picking up pace in India. A recent effort in this area is the setting up of The Blockchain Foundation of India (BFI) is a community effort to promote the growth of blockchain-based initiatives in India.


While relatively nascent in India, it is considered the most efficient technology against cyber fraud that allows financial transactions to be verified electronically over a network of computers.


BFI was launched formally on Wednesday, December 6, 2017 in New Delhi, India. The aim of BFI is to connect all blockchain-based startups and their CXOs, government bodies, blockchain enthusiasts at one single platform to inspire, participate and collaborate in each other’s success in this growing industry.


The executive members of BFI are Velix.ID, a blockchain startup working with the mission to build a global platform for frictionless identity verification, CoinSecure, a leading Bitcoin exchange in Indiaand OneCo.


Work, a startup working to promote startup culture in India by solving basic startup problems.Manav Singhal from Velix.ID  said, “Blockchain is the future of technology itself. We have a lot of talent working with blockchain in India; what we truly needed was a platform to collaborate and encourage.


Through the BFI platform, we will be able to accelerate the growth of blockchain technology in India remarkably. ”Already several banks in India have started experimenting with the new tech. ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, YES Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank are using it in areas such as international trade finance and vendor financing.


In India, 56 percent of companies surveyed by research firm PwC said blockchain is part of innovation strategy, though not many may have implemented it. The PwC Survey counts the most common uses as those for fund transfers, digital identity and payments infrastructure.


The Mission of BFI is to spread awareness in the technology and related practices. Even though blockchain technology has been around for a while globally, the technology has not quite caught up in India.


One of the goals of BFI is to dispense information about the blockchain technology in a more Indian context.Secondly, this can help in building a Community: At present, the Blockchain Community in India is divided into motley groups with no uniformity.


By bringing the community together, BFI aims to advocate for improved blockchain reception in India.


BFI is also expected to accelerate Blockchain Growth. Blockchain, as a technology, is still in its nascent stage in India.


There is a remarkable leeway to make innovations in the blockchain sphere; by promoting promising startups, BFI shall help accelerate the growth of the technology.