Despite rumours to the contrary, the UK government have announced that they will not be following the likes of Venezuela in launching their own digital currency for now. Whilst the Bank of England are indeed studying the implications of centrally-issued electronic currency, a government minister has stated that there are no plans in the immediate future to launch their own.

Government Respond to Opposition Query

According to the Independent, the issue was raised by a Labour MP in early February. Barry Sheerman asked “whether the Government will introduce a fiat digital currency.”

John Glen, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, has since responded in the negative:

“The Bank of England does not currently plan to issue a central bank-issued digital currency… However, the Bank is undertaking research to better understand the implications of a central bank issuing a digital currency.”

As mentioned, the Bank of England is studying the area closely. It has produced its own digital currencies page. It states that they are “carrying out ongoing research” into electronic currencies and their underlying technology. On the website, they are careful to differentiate between what they strangely refer to as “private digital currencies” such as Bitcoin (the entirely permission-less, border-less cryptocurrency that has no central issuing authority and can be accessed and used by any member of the public across the globe) and “central bank-issued digital currencies”. The latter would likely require all transactions be authorised by the bank themselves and thus entirely miss the point (and therefore the revolutionary and transformative power) of truly decentralised cryptocurrencies.

The page goes on to say that the Bank of England perceives no immediate threat from digital currencies. They state:

“We have assessed private digital currencies and concluded that while they are interesting, they do not currently pose a material risk to monetary or financial stability in the UK. We continue to monitor developments in this area.”

Whilst the recent announcement from Glen clearly states that a centrally-issued electronic currency would not be launched in the UK anytime soon, the research by the central bank, along with the lack of an explicit ruling out of the possibility in the future leaves the door open for a  U-turn at a later date.

As part of the bank’s research, the institution will no doubt be carefully following the development of Venezuela’s El Petro. The South American nation recently launched their own digital currency that is backed by their oil reserves. It will provide financial institutions around the globe a useful case study for developing their own policies towards electronically-issued currency and whether or not they too will launch their own.

Meanwhile, it appears that other nations are following Venezuela’s lead. Both Turkey and Iran have been considering the possibility of creating their own national digital currencies. Meanwhile, Russia is also taking steps in a similar direction. It’s thought that the CryptoRuble will help the nation avoid various international sanctions levied against it.

The post Bank of England Researching Digital Currency, No Plans to Launch appeared first on CryptoVila.

After reaching an all-time high at $1.12, Incent sharply corrected down to $0.16, losing 85% to USD. However, price found the support at $0.25 as the weekly closing price remained above that level and this is the price where the triangle was previously rejected after the breakout.

Currently, INCNT/USD is trading around $0.25 support, that could prove to be a good entry point for investors. The growth potential for Incent remains as high as 400% in the medium term, as the upside target is seen at $1.23, where double Fibonacci formed a strong resistance.

On the downside, the support area remains between $0.25 and $0.125 and Incent could get lower once again, but only break and close below $0.08 could invalidate bullish outlook.

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The weekly Technical Analysis, published every Wednesday, is provided by Dmitriy Gurkovskiy, Chief Analyst at RoboForex.

Needless to say, all statements and views expressed below and any forecasts contained herein are based on the authors’ particular opinion.

This analysis may not be treated as trading advice. RoboForex and Trustnodes bears no responsibility for trading results based on trading recommendations and reviews contained herein.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin price managed to break out the long term descending channel resistance and went into the projection channel. This breakout enabled forming an uptrend, and, by now, the price is just a bit short of $12,000, still unable to hit it.

Currently, the short term ascending channel support is being tested, and in case this attempt is successful, the price may hit the lower projection channel target at $10,000. Then, the price may fall step by step till $9,000, which is the support.

A wild downward breakout is also possible, as well as a mid-term downtrend, and if this is the case the price may well hit the lower support at $5,000.

Ethereum

Ether is trading within the same descending channel as before, but is now experiencing a pullback upwards. The price is heading towards the resistance, which lies at the important round number of $1,000.

In the short term, the local trend may have changed, as the support of the uptrend channel has been broken out, and the price has fallen into the projection channel, heading down to $815.

After this target has been tested, the price may fall further till $700. The overall trend is still descending, its target being as low as $300.

Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash went above the long term descending channel resistance, which allowed it to enter the upper projection channel and outlined a new short term ascending trend. The target of the latter may be around $1,800, which is the mid-term channel resistance.

Speaking short term, the price is breaking out the ascending channel support, with the closest target at $1,200. This is exactly the level determining the next trend phase, with many things depending on the market’s reaction to it.

With the support at $1,200 broken, the price may well hit the low at $400, but, if this is the case, it will probably happen in around a few weeks. If, on the contrary, the price bounces off $1,200 upwards, this will mean a new bullish impulse.

Litecoin

Litecoin has probably gained more momentum than many other cryptocurrencies out there. The primary descending channel resistance has been broken out, and the price has headed into the second projection channel.

The market is currently uptrending, while the support of the new projection channel is being tested. The most likely scenario is bouncing off the support and rise to the resistance at $305. Conversely, if the local support at $208 is broken out, the projection channel at $160 may be hit.

Ripple

Like many other digital coins, Ripple has entered the ascending pullback phase by breaking out the previous descending channel resistance. The main target within the current projection channel is probably its resistance at $1.54.

The current status quo shows Ripple is likely to start trading sideways, within the support and resistance of $0.85 and $1.22, respectively.

The market expects the resistance to get broken out and the uptrend to continue, while if the support is hit, the price may well fall to $0.60 and then to $0.35.

The post The Outlook Appears Bleak According to This Week’s Crypto Technical Analysis appeared first on CryptoVila.

Electric automotive firm Tesla has reportedly become the latest victim to cryptojacking.

Cybersecurity software company RedLock announced, on Tuesday, that hackers had infiltrated Tesla’s Kubernetes console, which wasn’t password protected. As a result, access credentials were exposed to Tesla’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment, which contained an Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) bucket that had sensitive data such as telemetry.

In addition to the data exposure, hackers were able to gain access to Tesla’s computing power to mine for cryptocurrencies. According to the team, the use of more sophisticated evasive measures were employed in this malware attack. Among other things, the team noted:

“Unlike other crypto mining incidents, the hackers did not use a well known public ‘mining pool’ in this attack. Instead, they installed mining pool software and configured the malicious script to connect to an ‘unlisted’ or semi-public endpoint. This makes it difficult for standard IP/domain based threat intelligence feeds to detect the malicious activity.”

The team reported the incident to Tesla, which was rectified.

RedLock claim that they have found hundreds of Kubernetes administration consoles lacking the necessary password protection measures. Aviva, a British multinational insurance company, and Gemalto, the world’s biggest manufacturer of SIM cards, are a few organisations that didn’t have any passwords in place, according to RedLock. As a result, they determined that hackers had secretly infiltrated these companies’ public cloud environments and were using the computing power to mine cryptocurrencies.

With a rising interest in the cryptocurrency market continuing, so too is the threat from hackers. With an advance in technology criminals are shifting their focus from stealing data to stealing computing power in order to mine digital currencies. The start of the year has already shown how this nefarious activity is targeting victims.

Last week Ethereum World News reported that Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab had discovered that hackers were exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Telegram’s messaging desktop app. According to the team, the hackers were using victims’ computing power to mine for Monero, Zcash, and Fantomcoin.

Whereas, the U.K.’s data protection website, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was reported to have taken down its website after it was infected by malware earlier this month. The malware was added to website codes through Browsealoud, a plugin that aids the blind and partially sighted to access the Internet. The software, Coinhive, then used victims’ computing power to mine Monero. More than 5,000 websites were affected as a result.

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Venezuela has announced that the pre-sale of its oil-backed cryptocurrency, the petro, has attracted $735 million on the first day. The government has also published a buyer’s manual and confirmed that buyers can use “hard currencies and cryptocurrencies, but not bolivars.”

Also read: Indians Look to Buy Bitcoin Overseas as Regulations Tighten

Petro Pre-Sale Starts

The private pre-sale of Venezuela’s oil-backed cryptocurrency, the petro, was scheduled for February 20 at 8:30 am (Venezuela time 04:00 UTC), according to the petro’s whitepaper. However, at midnight local time on February 20, the government announced that the petro pre-sale had started and published a buyer’s manual as well as an anti-money laundering (AML) compliance manual.

Petro’s pre-sale launch event.

A total of 82.4 million petro tokens are offered for the pre-sale phase, the whitepaper details. The country’s vice president, Tareck El Aissami, confirmed from Miraflores Palace on Monday, “The petro cryptocurrency tokens can be purchased by Venezuelan nationals as well as other foreign nationals.”

The Superintendent of Cryptocurrencies, Carlos Vargas, was quoted by Telesur TV:

The presale and initial offer will be made in hard currencies and cryptocurrencies, but not bolivars…Our responsibility is to put (the petro) in the best hands and then a secondary market will appear.

Interested buyers can visit the Etherdelta platform to place private orders to the Ethereum address given by the Superintendent. However, at the time of this writing, no orders have been matched and no prices are displayed on the price chart. This could be due to technical glitches in the buying process such as a Javascript error which prevents users from completing their purchases.

According to the Minister for University Education, Science and Technology, Hugbel Roa, the traffic to the petro website “quintupled with the global announcement of the pre-sale of the Venezuelan cryptocurrency,” shortly after midnight local time.

Hugbel Roa’s traffic chart for the petro’s website.

Despite technical challenges, Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, claimed:

Venezuela had received $735 million in the first day of a pre-sale of the country’s “petro.”

Instructions to Buy the Petro

Maduro announcing petro’s pre-sale.

“The only thing needed for the petro is to open a digital petro wallet,” according to the petro’s website. “Once opened, your wallet will generate an email address that you can share with anyone who wants to transfer PTR to your wallet. You will be able to receive and deposit your PTRs in this email address.”

The buyer’s manual details a step-by-step process of how to register and gain access to a petro wallet, which requires prospective buyers to download a zipped, self-deleting installation file. “The data package for the creation of the digital wallet is configured to self-destruct once the installation is complete,” the instructions warn.

Alongside the steps to register and install the petro wallet, the manual goes over protecting users’ private keys but stopped short of asking users to generate a public key, which would be needed for any kind of cryptocurrency deposit. More curiously, however, was the vague announcement regarding the use of the NEM blockchain:

The Blockchain launched by the Venezuelan State has robust security mechanisms since its programming elements are related to a technological platform called: NEM blockchain.

The cryptocurrency NEM, which uses centralized servers running closed-source code, has recently been in the news frequently following the hack of one of the largest Japanese crypto exchanges, Coincheck, which lost 58 billion yen (~USD$539 million) worth of the cryptocurrency.

Do you (still) want to buy the petro? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and the Venezuelan government.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Venezuela Says Pre-Sale of Oil-Backed Petro Cryptocurrency Has Raised $735 Million appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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Blockchain technology is penetrating almost every sector of business. It is able to accomplish this adoption across the board by driving down the costs to transact while providing transparency when needed. The freelance work model is no different. Many freelance employment platforms are turning to the blockchain to provide cryptocurrencies and the ability to transact they so adamantly desired.

Current State of the Freelance Market

The United States is expected to have over 57 million freelancers raking in over $1.4 trillion yearly. The question persists what types of jobs do freelancers specialize in? Upwork is the largest freelance platform and is always a great place to start for research. Over 33 percent of freelance workers are in web, mobile and software development. Design and creative make up for approximately 18 percent, while sales and marketing make up another 15 percent. Writing is composed of roughly 11 percent of freelancers. Administration and support comprises of eight percent of freelance opportunities with the “other” category represents the remaining 15 percent. Technology is driving the freelance platforms, with technological jobs being the most sought after.

The freelance market has recently exploded in popularity. The prediction is that within ten years there will be more freelance workers than full-time employees in the United States. A driving factor for this shift in the paradigm is technological advancements. Sites like Upwork and Fiverr have found their success in hosting freelance gigs that are worth billions annually. The blockchain has the ability to penetrate this market as the same benefits that apply to most businesses also apply to the freelance economy. The blockchain can decrease transaction costs, provide better security, and have a level of transparency determined by the user. These will benefit the freelance economy because of the current issues facing it.

Problems Plaguing the Freelance Market

Freelance marketplace has dealt with major issues in recent years. One of the largest issues for freelance marketplaces is scalability as they move into new geographic regions. Prompt payments in different currencies, across the globe, for millions of individuals, provides a significant challenge. The challenge is only exacerbated when the company hosting the freelance marketplace platform has to calculate exchange rates and rate of payment. Payment protocols to deal with multiple currencies, in multiple countries, with millions of people has become an increasing issue. This issue results in delays for the freelancers who expect to be paid promptly.

Other major issues plaguing the freelance economy are the quality of work and introduction of new freelancers to a platform. A freelancer with minimal reviews will not succeed in attaining much work on a new platform. Therefore, the individual is hesitant to join resulting in fewer freelancers, who do quality work, joining new platforms. The quality of the freelancer’s work is hard to determine as generally the freelancer and employer are thousands of miles from the office of the host company. This creates an issue ensuring freelancers can complete specific tasks at a professional level. Freelancers are also worried about future employment opportunities and even as employers are driven to freelance websites getting freelancers started is another major difficulty.

In contrast to Upwork and Fiverr; TopTal is a freelance platform that specializes high-quality freelancers. This a platform is known for the rigorous screening of any freelancer who wishes to sign up. TopTal’s approach to tackling the problem of low quality work is the highest level of screening. They proudly boast that only three percent of freelance applicants are even accepted, which almost guarantees the work quality by having such sophisticated freelancers. Even with their level of freelancers, TopTal ensures each of their projects. This guarantee and rigorous screening process is desirable for corporations who want high-quality freelancers. The freelancers are also paid the highest rate on sites like this, but the problem persists that 97 percent of freelancers are not allowed on the platform.

Payment Structures on the Centralized Freelance Platforms

Upwork: 20 percent up to $500, 10 percent up to $10,000, five percent over $10,000

Fiverr: 20 percent (most jobs are $5, making this a $1 fee)

Freelancer: 13 percent (ten percent from freelancers, three percent from employers)

Toptal: Undisclosed percentage

The employee is giving up between five and 20 percent of their payment to the platform hosting the advertisement. This can be greatly reduced on the blockchain.

To the Rescue

The blockchain is one of the most revolutionary technologies of our generation, and it promises to disrupt the majority of industries willing to adopt it. The blockchain provides alternatives which create a future where both the freelancers and employers have lower transaction fees, quicker payments, and many more incentives to make the experience for both parties better.

The blockchain is a prime candidate to make waves in the freelance market, and likely have significant market adoption. Blockchain-based alternatives to Fiverr and Upwork include recent ICOs like Global Job Coin (GJC), Hirematch (HIRE) and Canya.io (CAN).

Canya.io

Canya.io is a freelance platform based on the blockchain. It claims, “Decentralized payments, decentralized governance, decentralized storage, and eventually decentralized computers.” CanYa is unique as they offer both in-home freelance work (plumber, electrician) while also providing high-quality digital opportunities. CanYa highlights their simplicity to find, book and rate a multitude of service providers. CanYa created the CAN coin with a market cap of approximately $25 million and a cryptocurrency value of $.065.

The purpose of the CAN is for employers to pay freelancers for real-world services in it. The fees are one of the best selling points for freelancers. At approximately one percent, it is minuscule compared to all the other non-blockchain based freelance platforms. Of this one percent a portion is even provided in the form of rewards to encourage user growth. Currently, CanYa claims over 10,000 users and 46,000 service providers. Their ICO was launched in November of 2017 and is only a few steps behind Hirematch and Global Job Coin.

Global Job Coin (GJC)

GJC is based out of Europe and already has thousands of users signed up for their global job freelance platform. With their new cryptocurrency employers can instantly pay freelancers around the world for completing tasks. With a market cap of approximately $4.5 million and a cryptocurrency value of $0.325, this would be considered a small cap. GJC is trading at a third of its ICO value even with a functioning platform. Look for GJC to have a strong 2018 if the blockchain can continue to penetrate the freelance market.

Hirematch (HIRE)

HIRE is taking a slightly different approach to the freelance and employment market removing the middlemen in the recruitment field. The founders of Recruiter.com created HIRE and recently completed their ICO. HIRE intends to reward the matchmaker between employer and employee with HIRE tokens for bringing a job to an individual. Having just finished their ICO HIRE is a great opportunity to pick up when it lands on exchanges.

Both GJC and HIRE intend to accomplish their entrance into the freelance and employment markets in 2018. If either is successful, they are true mooning opportunities as GJC has under a $5 million market cap, and HIRE’s is not even public as their coin has not started trading. The freelance market is ripe for early entrants from the blockchain sector to disrupt it.

How Can the Blockchain Disrupt Freelance Marketplaces

HIRE, CAN, and GJC have already started doing it at the beginning of 2018. However, it can be further interrupted by providing faster payments using cryptocurrencies, by the elimination of middleman fees, and through the use of tokens and smart contracts to provide new incentives to both employers and employees.

The benefits to freelancers are very significant. One of the most important aspects is cash in their wallet faster and at a much lower fee, which means they can increase their profit on each job or be able to reduce their rates. Either way, they place themselves in a position to be more competitively priced, or have a higher take-home pay. The unbanked population still is an enormous percentage, over 39 percent. By using cryptocurrencies on their platforms, a population measuring in the billions can start participating in the freelance market. Cryptocurrencies are not centralized; this means there is significantly less control the business wields of the employee. The income cannot be unfairly held hostage which results in many nations worldwide. The freelancer has almost no reasons to be nervous about the implantation of the blockchain.

The employer does not receive all those benefits the freelancer does. However, one of the biggest concerns for employers and freelance platforms is attracting the top talent. If fees are the lowest and the freelancer has the most benefits on the blockchain, their choice of platform will be obvious. It will be one on the blockchain. Employers benefit because the top freelancers will seek out their blockchain-based freelance platforms for all the benefits it provides the freelancer. The most significant benefit for the employer is the efficiency of the blockchain. The freelance platform will run much more efficiently by using blockchain technology and leveraging smart contracts. The combination should lead to a higher quality of freelance work associated with less hiring risk.

Conclusion: The Blockchain has Successfully Entered the Freelance Market

The blockchain’s benefits apply to the majority of businesses. The freelance market is no different. Freelance fees are incredibly high currently, with many issues plaguing the process of being hired and ensuring quality and timely payment. The blockchain solves these issues and adds the benefits of transparency and security. The inefficiencies that have yet to be solved using the current techniques available are about to be resolved using the revolutionary technology of the blockchain. It will be very interesting to see which cryptocurrency will take over the freelance hiring marketplace. It seems HIRE, GJC, and CAN all have an early start!

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Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies can be threatened in some ways. Quantum computing is perhaps of the biggest concerns as of right now. The Cardano Foundation and think-tank Z/YN recently released their findings on this potential threat to public key cryptography.

Cardano Wants to Become Quantum Computing-Resistant

Quantum computing is the next logical evolution in the world of technology. It allows for must faster calculations and unparalleled processing power. At the same time, this technology also poses concerns for public key cryptography. Most cryptocurrencies and blockchains rely on this type cryptography. As such, addressing potential future problems at an early stage is incredibly important.

Cardano is one of the cryptocurrencies focused on building quantum-resistant solutions. More specifically, the currency’s developers will support additional signature schemes in the future. Ensuring their cryptography and blockchain is quantum computing-resistant is a top priority as of right now.  This particular cryptocurrency project prioritizes security and interoperability over anything else.

One of the main reasons Cardano is so appealing is because of its intriguing design. At its core, the currency offers special extensions which allow for adding more signature schemes through a soft fork. With this focus on quantum computing, any major security layer can be added without network disruption. Thus, the only question is if and when quantum computing may become a problem for Cardano.

Conducting Research for Industry Standards

According to the recent study by the Cardano Foundation and think-tank Z/YEN, that is only a matter of time. The study concludes how large-scale quantum computing will effectively break the security of public key cryptography. This will have all kinds of different consequences for solutions built on top of this technology. It extends well beyond cryptocurrencies and blockchain as well. Most online communication services in the world rely on public key cryptography as of right now.

It is evident the Cardano Foundation wants to proactively deal with this threat whenever possible. There are some available solutions to nullify this issue, yet an industry-wide response standard will need to be established first and foremost. Cardano Foundation Chairman Michael Parsons added:

“As part of our extensive blockchain research programme with Z/Yen, we are exploring a range of issues from the technological, to regulation and governance and industry applications. The topics explored are forward-looking by their very nature, and the possible impact of quantum computing on the blockchain is a case in point.”

A future without cryptography is unthinkable as of right now. This technology forms the foundation of virtually everything we do online. With a growing interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain, public key cryptography will only become more commonly used as well. The Cardano Foundation wants to lead the charge in addressing future issues associated with quantum computing.

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