Building an ‘Internet of Value’. Interview with Chris Larsen, CEO of Ripple

Building an ‘Internet of Value’

Originally by ABA Banking Journal, by Monica C. Meinert.

In the 1900s, the international shipping industry was drastically different than what we know today. It was labor intensive, inefficient and lacked a universal standard—shipping methods and product packaging varied widely by country. Shipping anything around the world was a costly and time-consuming process. That is, until entrepreneur Malcolm P. McLean invented the shipping container in 1956.

McLean’s idea was to create a standard-sized shipping trailer that could be easily loaded and unloaded from cargo ships and transported on land via truck. The invention revolutionized the industry—in the 20 years after the shipping container was introduced, global trade exploded by more than 700 percent.

“Right now, we live in a ‘pre-shipping container’ global financial system,” explains Chris Larsen, CEO of Ripple, a global financial settlement solutions company. “We have a series of silo networks that don’t talk to each other. Correspondent banking tries to create interoperability, but it’s a clunky and antiquated system that doesn’t solve the problems we have today.”

If global payments go the way of the shipping industry, it would follow that some innovation would come along that could standardize and modernize the payments process. And if you’ve opened any financial newspaper recently, you’re likely to find people asking that very question about blockchain technology.

So is blockchain the “shipping container” for global financial transactions?

Not quite, Larsen says. In his view, blockchain is just one part of a much bigger picture: a whole “internet of value” that connects multiple blockchains, distributed ledgers and core systems with a simple, standardized “intra-ledger” protocol to allow for instant exchange of value across countries and time zones. Within the context of the internet of value, he adds, blockchain functions more as a new, innovative shipping company than the revolutionary shipping container itself.

Larsen—a longtime fintech player who previously co-founded and served as CEO of Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace and E-LOAN, a publicly traded online lender prior to founding Ripple—shared his vision for the internet of value and how Ripple is working to achieve it.

Q: How have payment demands changed for consumers and businesses over time?

The need for high volume, low value, real time global payments has never been greater. There are new types of corporations emerging that are becoming very big very quickly, and they’re everywhere, so we’ve got to reach everywhere. They’ve got to make small value payments, which is difficult given the way the current cross-border payments system works.

And then behind that, there is a “second wave” of things that we can’t even predict at this point—like the “internet of things”—where it’s not just devices exchanging data, but likely devices exchanging value. These are just two things that are pushing the world into having a more efficient infrastructure.

Those are good dynamics for banks. Banks with new infrastructure can serve more customers, they can serve their customers better, they can lower their costs. I think that’s why this is a good time to be looking particularly at this “internet of value” idea.

Q: What is the “internet of value” and how does Ripple work to achieve it?

Broadly, that is the big thing happening here. “Internet of value” simply means that we’re moving into a world where value—money, payments, etc.—moves like information moves today because of the internet. We used to live in a world where data did not move quickly—it was incredibly expensive to make a phone call between countries, you couldn’t reach people. That’s exactly what we have today in payments. And I think that that’s ending because of the technology breakthrough happened about seven years ago—starting with bitcoin—which simply meant that you didn’t need a central operator to exchange value.

Q: What do you see as the disruptive impact of the internet of value? What about banking will change as a result of this? What will stay the same?

Banks are actually really well-positioned because they are probably the best organizations in the world at reconciling the three domains of the internet of value: tech, compliance and risk. A lot of that compliance and risk is not going to change, and a lot of the tech is not going to change. Banks are pretty tech-heavy already, so most of what they do is not going to change.

What’s changing here is real-time settlement and how liquidity moves around the world. You now can have a network where value can move to parties you might not have a direct connection with. And that’s a big breakthrough. It should lower reconciliation costs for banks and it should make low value payments profitable. It should also allow for new services we haven’t even thought of yet. Once they get that low-cost structure [in place], this could open up a huge opportunity for banks and for fintech companies to develop things that just weren’t possible until now.

Q: How is Ripple different from other blockchain technology?

We’re trying to be a payments company that uses blockchain, rather than a blockchain company that’s trying to find a use case. We’re trying to address the time, the cost and the fail rates of cross-border payments, and also offer access to all kinds of banks and their customers.

Our belief is that this notion that the whole world is going to adopt a single distributed ledger is not realistic or possible, and doesn’t really solve the issue. We believe in the trend of distributed financial technology as a broader movement; our protocol is a way of connecting existing core systems—we think that’s a better approach.

Q: How does Ripple seek to partner with banks?

Banks are not looking for cool technology, they’re looking for solutions. We think Ripple should be way at the bottom of the payments stack—so that means that partnering with banks is essential. Banks are the core custodians of value, so they’ll be the heart of the internet of value. We’re only going to do a little bit, which is good for us as a company, because then we can focus all of our people on what’s really changing. Banks can piggyback on that and improve their market position.

Q: It seems like there are a number of different companies all working on different blockchain solutions. How do you see it all coming together?

There are going to be private blockchains that will coexist with centralized systems, so you might see things like that emerging. The big thing is having that interoperability between all the existing ledgers and all the new ones that are going to pop up for various use cases, such as securities settlement, loans, etc. It’s critical that you have a standard for inter-operability, which we think will look like an international ledger protocol. Without that “glue,” those systems just become more silo networks. We don’t necessarily think a bank has to change their core system or replicate their core system on some distributed ledger—we don’t think that’s the right approach.

Q: When you talk about developing a global standard, how does regulation play into it?

It’s really important that we don’t conflate the technology with rules and risk. Rules and risk are going to be handled in each jurisdiction by the regulators. The idea that tech can change that gets back to the idea of disruption—this idea that “fintech is just going to change everything.” I think when the fintech industry first came on board, that was the pitch. It was incredibly alarming to regulators, and kind of a setback, frankly. But I think now, regulators understand that when we’re just talking about the tech piece, it actually solves a problem, and as long as we’re talking low-level, that’s something everyone can get around.

For example, in China, you can’t get to Google or Facebook—that violates that country’s rules governing data. But IPs (the underlying technology that allows for internet connectivity) are everywhere because the tech is low-level enough. That’s how this has to be. The technology has to just focus on what is actually changing. That shouldn’t be rules or risk—the regulators should maintain that.

Q: What is the timeline for all this interconnectivity happening?

I think it’s happening now. I think 2016 is the year that we’ve seen the commercial productions now coming into play. My sense is that it’s going to be an avalanche effect: you’re going to see a cost advantage for the banks that create commercial products. They’re going to see new opportunities for new revenue, and at the same time, the integrations [for other banks] will get easier and easier. That’s a good dynamic now for adoption—and I think that has already started.

Q:How should bank CEOs be approaching the internet of value?

The really good news is that banks don’t have to worry about committing to a single application or single provider. The big thing happening here is really the idea of an open protocol. It’s just like the emergence of the internet. Think back to 1995, where companies might have hired U.S. Web or another company to build their first website. But [building the website] didn’t lock them into [that provider]—that was simply their on-ramp to the web. And then when that company went away, or they didn’t like them or it was too expensive, there was a whole industry there that they could turn to.

Q: Looking 10 years into the future, what will the international payments landscape look like?

I think we really will all take for granted that we have an internet of value, and we’ll look back and think, “Wait, you couldn’t send $1 to another country?” It just won’t compute. That will be really good for banks, and really good for growth globally.

Nav’s New White Paper: The Cheat Sheet

Originally by Sophia Lockhart

On the 26th of September Nav Coin released the Navtech Whitepaper for the re-release of their anonymous network. The 23-page document was written in impressive detail and explained the design, technology, and math, behind the simple tick-box anonymous send system. The groundbreaking design uses double blockchain technology and coin sending methods together to form an advanced anonymous sending system not before seen in the Cryptocurrency world.

Want to know the scoop and don’t have time?

Here’s my cheat sheet for the busy crypto cereal muncher…

For ease I’ve divided the white paper into 5 parts:

The white paper consists of five parts. The first being an introduction describing the core values and perspectives of the development team behind the anonymous sending system. Part two provides us with a high-level overview of anonymity within the realm of cryptocurrencies. Discussed are current methods used for anonymous transactions and their associated problems. Part Three gives us an overview of Nav Coins solution to these problems. In Part Four we get down to the real technical stuff. Broken down into 11 subsections are details of every aspect of Nav Coin’s system right down to error handling. Part Five outlines the key benefits of the system and gives us valuable insight into the future growth and uses cases of the anonymous system. This section concludes with a summary.

5 minute summary of parts

1. Introduction:

The Nav Coin team firmly believe that financial privacy is a democratic right, and aim to provide a way for everyone to have this economic freedom. They cite the example of journalists working in an oppressive country who can be persecuted for publishing dissenting views.

2. The problem: Trust vs Anonymity

In this section, the paper talks about the need to create truly anonymous transactions whilst retaining the decentralised values that cryptocurrencies are built on. This is no easy task. Blockchain technology is by nature a public ledger. This poses a problem for those who want financial privacy, and that should be all of us. The blockchain is a piece of autonomous financial technology. Furthermore, it’s a peer-reviewed publicly available transaction record.

‘All transactions on the Nav Coin network are recorded on the public blockchain so the network can validate them as being correct.’

The white paper goes on to examine current anonymising solutions. These include Tor, which Nav Coin offers as an added layer of security. Coin mixing and coin joining solutions are also discussed alongside other more complicated methods of obfuscating the sender’s details. The white paper describes how methods are vulnerable to attack and do not completely solves the problem of anonymous cryptocurrency transactions

‘The main issue with most of these methods is that they are either eventually traceable through the public blockchain (if you have enough computing power), or they rely on insecure and unreliable means (like a database) to keep track of who is supposed to end up with the coins, or both!’ – Nav Coin white paper

Highlighted are the two main dangers associated with a central database. I’ve put them under 1 & 2.

1. ‘When a database is introduced to the system, it means that someone can fake transactions and extract money by simply adding a row to the database table which keeps track of who to send money out to.’

1. ‘Secondly the system becomes vulnerable to data loss. If the database were somehow corrupted, destroyed or otherwise disabled, the whole system has to roll back to the last backup point which can mean thousands of dollars of missing transactions.’  

A centralised database is of course at odds with the decentralised nature of the blockchain.

3. The high-level solution: Navtech

This section of the white paper involves some pretty complicated theoretical concepts. I’ll try to break them down into chunks. The Nav Coin anonymous send system or ‘Navtech’ as it’s dubbed in the whitepaper uses a unique technique to disconnect the sender and receiver. The essence of Nav’s anonymous system is the use of a secondary blockchain or ‘Subchain’. In simple terms, your Nav Coins are sent to the Subchain rather than straight to the receiver. You could think of this like exchanging currencies. You hand coins of one currency over to a teller and receive completely random new coins of a different currency from a large pool. It is through this process that the link between the sent and received coins is broken.

Here are the three most important paragraphs from the white paper if you want to understand how Navtech processes anonymous transactions

‘Instead of sending NAV directly to the receiver, the wallet encrypts the receiver’s address and sends the transaction to one of the addresses provided by the randomly selected processing server. When this server receives this transaction, it creates a transaction of arbitrary size on the Subchain which it sends to a randomly selected outgoing server.

This Subchain transaction has the receiver’s address and the amount of NAV to send encrypted and attached to it. When the outgoing server receives the Subchain transaction, it decrypts the data, randomizes the transaction amounts and sends the NAV to their intended recipient from a preloaded pool of NAV that is waiting on the outgoing server.

After the outgoing server has sent out the randomized NAV to the intended recipient, the incoming server will join together any NAV which has been processed and on the next transaction cycle send it to the outgoing server to replenish the preloaded pool of NAV for future transactions.’

Any questions before we keeping going?

What’s encryption?

Encryption is a way of encoding data so that only the intended recipient can use it. Navtech uses RSA encryption which is extremely secure and is a favored method for making sure data is secure.

What are these random servers?

The Nav Coin team offer multiple incoming and outgoing servers which are picked at random to make the trail even harder to follow. Once the system is decentralized, other people will be able to set up their own processing groups to increase choice and higher levels of redundancy.

Why does it create a transaction of arbitrary size?

This is to prevent an outsider watching the blockchain. Drawing circumstantial evidence by matching sent and received amounts.

So there’s two random servers?

Yes the random incoming server is selected when your wallet creates the transaction. The random outgoing server is selected when the incoming server processes the transactions.

The traveling coins carry a secret bag of info?

Yup, that’s how the right amount of Nav eventually ends up in the right address. Encryption information attached the transaction that the subchain let’s the Nav pool know about. Even with the most powerful supercomputer in the world cannot crack this encryption.

So the Nav they receive isn’t the same Nav I send?

Correct! The receiver of the anonymous transaction will be paid out of a large pool of coins on the Subchain before that pool even receives the sender’s Nav coins. This means speed and security.

Are multiple transactions lumped together and sent at the same time?

Yes. Again this prevents circumstantial inference. All transactions sent within one transaction cycle will be lumped together and travel across the Subchain as one sum to replenish the Nav pool.

What’s a transaction cycle and how’s it relevant?

A transaction cycle is simply how often the servers check for and process the waiting transactions. Currently, the transactions are processed every 2 minutes on each server, giving the whole system a round trip time of approximately 5 minutes.

So what happens at the end?

Harry potter wins. Sorry for the spoiler.

4. The techie stuff

Don’t worry if you get overwhelmed here. Some parts are just troubleshooting. The Nav Coin Developers have a very thorough process of safeguarding their work. They start with the high-level problems then work their way down to ‘what if ant crawls into a server?’ etc. This section is definitely for the kids that want to do further reading. I’ve given a brief description and clarified a few terms. I’d highly recommend checking out the diagrams if nothing else as it gives clarifying visuals of the system outlined above. Let’s look at the main points from the Solution Details section below.

Technologies used

For the coders among us. This section lists the languages, frameworks and platforms used to create Navtech.

System Overview &  Navtech set up

These two sections are largely relevant for people wishing to be part of this awesome technology and set up a Navtech processing server group.

Note: The d in ‘navcoind’ and ‘subchaind’. Navcoind is the command line version of the Nav Coin wallet, it is what the processing scripts give instructions to when reading and sending transactions.

Wallet Config

From this section, it is important to note that users wanting to send Nav Coins anonymously must set up the addresses of the anonymous servers they want to use. This choice will be a selection from the pool of Navtech servers offered by the Nav Coin team. Navtech API

The important thing to note here is that each server runs its own API, so there is no single Navtech API and hence no single point of failure.

Step by step through the transaction process

We will group with following sections together. Creating the Wallet Transaction; Receiving and Processing the NAV on the Incoming Server; Sending the SUB to the Outgoing Server; Receiving and Processing the SUB on the Outgoing Server; Sending the NAV to the Receiver; Returning the SUB and Replenishing the NAV Pool; Error Handling.

These sections explain with great depth and detail the entire transaction processing system. As mentioned above the diagrams are of immense value to help understand how the transaction system works. I’ve pulled out the last diagram in the series of five. Although the arrows are illustrating the replenishing of the Nav Coin pool, you can see a layout of the whole subchain system, the sender, and receiver.

Figure 1.5 Returning the SUB and Replenishing the NAV Pool

The SUB are returned to the incoming server they originated from and the NAV are sent from the to the Outgoing Server which requires refilling.

5. Technical benefits, business benefits and future growth

The technical benefits sections talks about the advantages of using this new cutting edge technology vs the old or ‘legacy’ technology. The genius of the blockchain, which Nav Coin itself is built on as are all cryptocurrencies is elegant indeed for many reasons. But mainly the reasons we’ve always loved it. It’s trustless and reliable. Notice the term ‘trustless’ is used in the context of the blockchain; this does not mean cannot be trusted but in fact that you do not need to trust it because it verifiably works.

‘there is no need to trust a third party because the rules are impossible to break’

As for the business benefits and growth:

‘All of the technical benefits add up to a system which is fast, redundant (as in easily restorable), resilient, trustless and completely anonymous. This will lead to higher user confidence and wider adoption.’

There are a few interesting things to note here.  One being that Navtech servers contributing to the anonymous system will gain a small payment from each transaction fee. This could add up to significant volumes if a lot of transactions are processed. Secondly, that Navtech can be adapted to be used by other cryptocurrencies.

What does this mean? (Investors skip to the end)

The real summary

Nav coin will release a new world class uncrackable anonymous system within the next few weeks. The anonymous sending feature will be compatible with decentralisation, meaning there is no central server (single point of failure). Nav Coin having rebuilt their anonymous send service with this development in mind will likely decentralise it in the weeks following its release.

It will be the first cryptocurrency in the world to create a decentralised fully anonymous sending system running purely on blockchains. The white paper shows as that Navtech is utterly real and actionable. Also, other developers have the opportunity for peer review. From a technology point of view, it is exciting. From an investment point of view it portends an increase in value.

Be aware of hype when ZCash (ZEC) trading starts.

Today, October 28th, opening of ZCash (ZEC) trading starts. One of the biggest exchanges, Poloniex, announced yesterday that ZCash market goes live today. However, I would like to warn everyone of you about the coming hype when ZEC market goes live.

There are a few issues you should be aware of:

1. In the first 4 years in every 10 minutes 50 ZEC coins are created. 20% of them goes to the network creators and 80% to the miners. It means, that in one year ZCash team will earn 525 600 of 2 628 000 annually created ZEC.

2. ZCash team are lying do not telling crypto community on their site that 20% of all created ZEC coins go to the team. Only in 2030 the percent will change to 10%.

Have in mind above mentioned issues before making decision to buy ZCash.

SYSCOIN CORE 2.1 OCTOBER 2016 TECHNICAL UPDATE

New Feature: Multisignature Identities and Services

Sia have just released their most stable version yet: Sia v1.0.3

Read more about it here.

The Nav Coin team are aiming to decentralize the anon system early December. Anonymous send system on November 1st

The NAV Coin Foundation announced that they would release their new anonymous send system on November 1st. The decentralization of anonymous system is planned to launch early December. 

Previously, it was stated that system of anonymous send is rock solid. It gives some strength that NAV Coin could get more attention from crypto users and investors.  

Ripple and R3 Team up With 12 Banks to Trial XRP for Cross-Border Payments

Ripple is proud to work with R3 andits member banks to institutionalize XRP as a bridge asset.

The future of fintech is bringing together like-mindedcompanies, like @R3CEV and @Ripple.

More details to come soon, stay tuned!

Verge - standard of privacy and anonymity in crypto

Verge (XVG) is a standard of privacy in crypto world. It is a multi algorithm, secure, private and evolving cryptocurrency offering a ton of privacy tools. Verge since is one of the most anonymous coins you can find today. Price of XVG is hugely undervalued trading in the teritorry of 0.00000004-0.00000005 BTC today. There are a lot of room to rise in the future as development team is working hard and everyone interested can track their work. 

How it was started?

Story of Verge traces back to October 2014 when the developer (known on Bitcointalk forum as "Dogedarkdev") decided to create a coin that focuses on anonimity and decentralization. The original coin was named DogecoinDark. However, developers decided to rebrand the coin and chaged its name to Verge. After rebranding price of Verge jumped from 6 satoshi to 20.   

Privacy tools

As it was mentioned above Verge offers ton of privacy tools. XVG absolutely doesn't share IPs of people or nodes. Verge developed perfect i2P and TOR implementations and they further working to bring the best results in privacy and anonymity. 

Wallets

Currently you can use Windows, Linux and Mac wallets, Paper wallet, Electrum and Web wallets. You can safely access your wallet via i2P & TOR. 

Verge also has elegant Android wallet currently working on i2P & TOR Android wallets. 

Trading  and price

Verge is currently trading on minimum as you can buy a lot of coins ranging from 4 to 6 satoshi. There are good reasons for the price to go up in the future as development team is very devoted and working hard on various features. You can buy with your XVG various products via Cointopay service.

Exchanges

STRATIS - bringing blockchain to business

The Stratis Platform is dedicated to advanced blockchain solutions. During the ICO Stratis in total raised 915 BTC (561 BTC in just last two days). According to the whitepaper:

Stratis is a powerful and flexible blockchain Development Platform designed for the needs of real-world financial services businesses and other organisations that want to develop, test and deploy applications on the blockchain. Stratis blockchain apps can be developed in pure C# and can also utilize the Microsoft .NET framework, while also taking advantage of the powerful Stratis APIs and framework. Stratis significantly simplifies the development process for creating Blockchain applications and accelerates the development lifecycle for blockchain development projects. Stratis private chains allow businesses to deploy their own customised blockchains without the overheads inherent in running their own blockchain network infrastructure. Stratis’s turnkey solution enables developers and businesses to create, test and deploy blockchain-based applications quickly and easily, all without the costs and security concerns that would otherwise arise from an in-house implementation. 

Stratis Platform is developing a flexible Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) that allows companies to create their private or public custom blockchains. Advantage of Stratis is that it will be built on NBitcoin platform using pure C#. It also utilizes the Microsoft.NET framework, which is easier to maintain and develop in comparison with the traditional C++ Bitcoin Core source code. 

What is very important, C# is considered to be safer language and is one of the dominant languages in business application development. The C# Stratis Bitcoin full node is developed on top of the NBitcoin library which is being worked by Nicolas Dorier since May 2014. 

Stratis platform is the first to offer for companies and businesses to build private blockchains. It has evident advantages over public blockchains as allows to customize the performance of particular application. 

Fiat gateways integration is another important feature of Stratis platforms and has a lot of advantages over traditional bockchains:  

Although blockchains allow for the transfer of value in the form of their native tokens, these have numerous problems from the perspective of a commercial enterprise, including compliance issues and the fluctuation in price that is a result of normal market supply and demand.

Stratis is designed with the integration of fiat gateways in mind from the outset. It allows financial organisations to use the blockchain for the transfer of existing currencies that are both readily accepted by mainstream consumers and are not subject to damaging volatility: tokens of value that are simply digital equivalents of regular money. This ‘best of both worlds’ approach means that businesses can maintain compliance in whatever way they see fit, according to jurisdiction and organisational policy, whilst simultaneously using the blockchain as a store of value – with all the advantages for speed, cost, transparency and stability of currency such a dual strategy allows. 

Stratis Platform will allow developers to combine features from multiple blockchains (Ethereum, Lisk, Waves) themselves and  also with Stratis own mainchain. This would allow companies to test newly created blockchain features that will best fit the needs of the company. 

To help businesses on which blockchain features to concentrate and how to do it, Stratis Consultancy agency will be launched approximately in January 2017. 

 For more information about Stratis platform their vision and how it will help for value of STRAT I recommend you to watch Q&A videos:

Price and predictions

As you can see from the very start of trading Stratis is showing stability and slow rise in price. Before major updates this trend should continue. My personal opinion is that till the end of this year Stratis could hit 0.0001 BTC mark. The most important features related to the price of STRAT are development stages and partnerships with companies and businesses. Still and all, Stratis is a bargain in crypto market today to traders and investors. I have chosen long term investment expecting STRAT to reach $0.50 mark in 2017.  

Where to buy

You can buy Stratis tokens via Bittrex and RAWX exchanges or using CoinVault, Changelly and Bittylicious services.  

News and discussions

For recent news you can always check Stratis blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Discussions could be found on bitcointalk and Reddit. 

Two projects deserving more attention: Verge and Hunter

I would like to share with you information about two legit undervalued projects in crypto world. Have you heard about Verge and Hunter coins? Both very interesting and promising projects with great teams of developers and communities behind them. A lot of work should be done but you can make your bid today and hold for long term. XVG price today is 0.00000004 BTC ($0.000026) and HUC 0.00003849 BTC ($0.024634). Find out more about Verge and Huntercoin.

Important Message from the Gulden development team

We have unfortunately been threatened by a user who claims to have had his coins hacked and is trying to extort us, by claiming he will be making it public "apparently" in all the crypto channels and news sites. With the rise in price we will see an increase in these types of people and the dev team wants to make it clear that these sorts of claims have no basis in reality, and further that we will not be intimidated by mafia style extortion tactics, we are not a piggy bank for shady characters to withdraw from at will. Anyone with legitimate issues will continue to be assisted wherever possible but ultimately you are responsible for your own wallets, please take care and make sure to have adequate safely protected backups.

Project “Syscoin Elite”

Important news from Syscoin: Building a Better Experience- Project “Syscoin Elite”

Taxi Noord - pay with Gulden (NLG)

Taxi Noord innovates first using Nocks Checkout

What is ZCash?

The Zcash (ZEC) genesis block will be launched on October 28th 2016. The new cryptocurrency will be the first to use a decentralized network to employ zero-knowledge security on an independent blockchain, as previous versions Zerocoin and Zerocash were limited to providing anonymity for other independent coins. It will be the truly anonymous ledger that has so far eluded many other cryptocurrencies.

ShadowCash is a bargain

In the previous post about Monero price drop I said that some people could switch to the other privacy coin and ShadowCash is an option. First of all, the release of decentralized marketplace is coming of over 90% work done. It means that no one could shut down this marketplace as it was with Oasis. Secondly, ShadowCash has only 6.5 million and the price could go up 10x easily. Click here to read more.

WINGS Platform: Making DAOs Smarter

The WINGS Platform is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) launchpad. It allows anyone with or without coding experience and technical knowledge to easily create their own DAO. The platform itself is community-managed by the WINGS DAO token holders. According to the success of the backing campaign, WINGS plans to introduce a decentralized forecast markets governance models in which users reward for forecasting the best developments for the platform.

The WINGS backing campaign

MaidSafe: How Bulk Interception Works

How Bulk Interception Works Please also check: An introductory overview of the Secure Access For Everyone (SAFE) Network

Gulden is going to the new highs!

Monero Loses Darknet Market in Apparent Exit Scam. Reason to switch to SDC.

Monero appears to have lost its darknet market integrations, and very well may have fallen victim to an exit scam. Darknet market Oasis, the first to accept Monero, has abruptly gone offline in an apparent exit scam, making off with customer funds. An estimated 150 Bitcoins were lost, as well as an indeterminate amount of Monero. Several users report that attempts to withdraw XMR from AlphaBay, the darknet market whose integration was closely correlated with the currency’s meteoric rise, were unresponsive as well.

It is the reason why we should track development of fully private peer-2-peer decentralized marketplace for users to advertise their products by ShadowProject. Today is the best moment to buy some SDC and keep it for long time as platform is coherently developed.

Waiting for Z-Cash

I'm sure that those of us, who are interested in privacy and decentralization know such a names as Shadowcash (Umbra), Monero, NAVcoin. New player is ready to enter the market. Z-Cash is promising project with great team and a lot of new features for privacy. It is necessary to get ready and take your part in this platform. Follow this blog to get all news about Z-Cash. zcash — PRE LAUNCH UPDATES. Privacy technology for blockchains. Demand for Zcash Mining Grows as Blockchain Launch Approaches.

An Investor’s Guide To Cryptocurrencies

An Investor’s Guide To Cryptocurrencies: Picking The Winners & Avoiding The Losers. Interesting piece to read for everyone crypto investor/trader.

Gulden Seeks To Gain Adoption By The General Public

A Netherlands-based cryptocurrency, Gulden took the opposite approach of major coins and focused on usability for the average person. Named after the Dutch currency before the euro took over, Gulden has a number of features to make its adoption more attractive to merchants and customers, including a PRIME zero-confirmation function. By partnering with the Nocks app, Gulden can be easily transferred into euros. In addition, the app has a mechanism for instantly exchanging to Bitcoin, allowing it to be used at Bitcoin-accepting merchants as quickly as if the user had never held Gulden to begin with. According to Plasman, the point of Gulden is in building mass adoption, not providing a direct alternative to Bitcoin: “At the moment I don’t think there is one. What we are building will definitely attract the general public, but probably not the current Bitcoin community. And that’s fine, because we are focusing on the 99%, the people that just want something easy to use with the benefits of blockchain. But it takes time to build something like that.”

Syscoin October Development Update

We’ve been hard at work on Syscoin 2.1 and Blockmarket M1, we wanted to provide the community with an update since there is a lot going on internally but it may seem quiet from the outside. So here are some updates since our last blog post:

"People's Bitcoin" Gulden Makes Significant Gains Without Hype

While Bitcoin seems content to remain the plaything of speculators and the tech sector, Gulden,a Netherlands-based cryptocurrency, is taking digital currency to the people. Rijk Plasman, founder of Gulden, tells Cointelegraph about the currency’s rise: “We make stuff that people can and want to use. At the moment word-of-mouth is what gets us new users”. Read more:

Syscoin

Our second pick up for long term investment is Syscoin.

Syscoin is a revolutionary cryptocurrency that offers near-zero financial transactions like Bitcoin and provides businesses the infrastructure to trade goods, assets, digital certificates and data securely. Syscoin isn’t just about money and trading, it has the ability to attract all business types thanks to its native set of features geared towards the financial sector. From eBay traders and High Street shops to selling that one last item that you couldn’t even give away at your garage sale, Syscoin’s decentralized network benefits everyone! Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Syscoin’s intrinsic value is derived from the decentralized services it provides directly on the blockchain. The blockchain powers all Syscoin services. It is a decentralized system of record hosted by a series of “nodes” on the Syscoin network. Syscoin trades under the symbol SYS in virtual currency exchanges.

“Syscoin is like eBay stores or "Buy it Now" listings, except with a payment and escrow system built-in”, explains Dan Wasyluk. Syscoin is official partner of Microsoft Azure. Why to invest in Syscoin? Current price of syscoin is $0.008288 or 0.00001352 BTC. The rise of the price of Syscoin was in September in anticipation of 2.1 release and further development of Blockmarket. As team of Syscoin is hardly working to deliver neat product the release of 2.1 is still underway. It is an opportunity for everyone to buy Syscoin for the best price now. 2.1 release and blockmarket will cause sharp rise of the price, certainly. Syscoin is working in collaboration of Blockchain Foundry. Blockmarket is the world's first blockchain based e-commerce platform. Coming in late 2016, Blockmarket represents Blockchain Foundry's first public product offering and will be immediately available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace upon launch. Blockmarket is a browser-based experience that allows users to leverage the power of Syscoin's blockchain-based marketplace without having to know anything about blockchain technology. Blockmarket leverages the innovations in Blockchain Foundry's Syscoin project to remove the middlemen from the buying and selling process giving buyers and sellers a true peer to peer marketplace, resulting in substantially lower costs with 100% uptime, redundancy, and security built-in. Sneak peak of Blockmarket M1 were recently released.

Syscoin is long term investment. Target price of our investment is 1 SYS = $0.10 in 1,5-2 years. You can buy Syscoin on major exchanges: Poloniex, Bittrex, Livecoin, BTC38.