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Cryptocurrency Whitepaper – Read, Write, and Understand!

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Cryptocurrencies whitepapers can be confusing for the average Joe. How companies in the blockchain/crypto space raise millions in no time unfolds as we delve deeper into the finer details. Terms like ICOs and whitepapers that act as fundraising modes for cryptocurrency agencies are discussed hereunder. To begin with, cryptocurrency projects like an Initial coin offering (ICO) require a potential valuation and a white paper is the chosen instrument for examination. A whitepaper is part of the initial coin offering, where the entire project is explained in detail.

The product’s technology, problems, solutions, digital token, and the founding team are all detailed within a white paper. Bitcoin’s whitepaper is named “Bitcoin – A peer-to-peer electronic cash payment system,” published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies — or investing in ICOs — you need to understand what whitepapers are and why they are essential. They’re vital to learning about the tech behind an ICO, its benefits, and risk factors. You can search cryptocurrency whitepapers on Google, but I found they can be quite challenging to understand without some background knowledge in the space. That’s why we created this guide.

Bitcoin Whitepaper
Bitcoin Whitepaper

Importance of reading a whitepaper

Not one but three reasons together make whitepaper a critical part of an initial coin offering. The purpose behind issuing the whitepaper is to understand the project and discover if it shall tackle and solve problems it aims to. In other words, the whitepaper’s blockchain solution, particularly its intricacies and design, justifies the digital token investment behind a cryptocurrency project. If you look at a whitepaper, it has different segments, thereby listing and defining the purpose of the offering. The official whitepaper has the following sections:

  • abstract
  • introduction
  • problem definition
  • product description
  • technical details
  • digital token
  • crowdsale details
  • team presentation
  • conclusion

Please note that the segments of the whitepaper detailed above are not exclusive but inclusive. Whitepaper segments vary accordingly.

What should be included in an ICO whitepaper

A blockchain project constituting the technology’s uses and risks has all of its details in an ICO whitepaper. The whitepaper consists of a technical portion, legal portion, and marketing material. A successful whitepaper will not fail if further technical, legal, and marketing material is available in equal measure. All scrutinized to an extent where both the law and investors cannot deny the facts stated. Token generation events whereby an investor is issued security tokens have an ICO white paper as the most critical document. The whitepaper should have the following under any circumstances:

  • description of the system architecture
  • plans for the future (roadmap)
  • partnership or any existing partnership
  • terms and conditions of using the token
  • user interaction with the system
  • overview of the company in terms of market penetration
  • the ethoses that underpin the company

As you can realize, a lot of company information comes under all the above topics. If a whitepaper is incomplete, it damages the reputation of the company. The earliest use of whitepaper back in 1922 was considered a less extensive version of a blue book. Slowly the whitepaper evolved. Crypto business owners became best friends with whitepaper. Cryptocurrency investors are looking for problems that blockchain and crypto developers can resolve.

How does an initial coin offering work

Tokens play a significant role in the initial coin offer. The developer of the ICO begins by issuing a small number of tokens. A limited number of tokens ensure value and the motive of the ICO. The tokens either have a price fixed prior to the ICO or the cost of the token varies depending upon the sale. What are the tokens?

They are native currencies, for example, arcade coins that have value and give the owner multiple rights in a native environment. By token, the transaction becomes simple. The crowd sale address of the initial coin offer is a direct link to purchase. The sum is paid, and a number of tokens are registered in the name of the person paying the amount. A separate contract acknowledging the transaction when done runs parallel to the assigning of tokens. However, most initial coin offers fail because the three most imperative ICO segments are not countered equally – security, utility, and crypto-economics.

How to write a whitepaper

If you doubt your skills, make sure you hire someone to do this job. It is no scrapbook coloring when it comes to writing white paper. Before you begin, make sure you have gathered enough information to win the battle before firing a bullet. All you need is to go through rigorous research, more research, and more research. Every area you cover in a white paper needs to have all the pointers explained in layman terms. If you are curious about a topic, make sure you do not leave the curiosity within the whitepaper, given that the acceptance of your content might backfire. 

Whitepaper scanning

CryptoCurrency Whitepaper
Many business documents. Use for background or texture

Investors looking at several projects often prefer to get a quick overall impression. Whitepaper details provide these quick impressions. Instead of digging deeper, you can conduct whitepaper scanning to read the most central questions regarding a project. For example, you can check the legitimacy of a project, the team running behind the ICO, and their efficiency. Apart from such factors, the market research for a product or service, its competitors, a token’s function, and any existing replacement of a digital token taking part in an initial coin offer can be analyzed in a whitepaper. These factors are considered to cover all essential aspects of a cryptocurrency project.

For investors making sizable deals and investments, it’s best to have gone through these details carefully and then invest. Other platforms such as bitcoin talk forums scrutinize details from whitepapers and publish them on the official website. These forums actively invite cryptocurrency community members to produce independent reviews of initial coin offers. All these valuable insights put together can help an investor invest better.

Smartcoins – Key Features, Advantages And Usage

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Simple Miner Administration Through Remote Terminals is the acronym for a smartcoin. Additional assets, such as gold for the US dollar, are linked to smartcoins. It is also a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, but is instead used as collateral for an ‘Underlying Asset’. Bitshare (BTS) cryptocurrency supports Smartcoins. 

Smart coin exchanges, in a significant departure from traditional cryptocurrencies, are carried out at a fixed rate. The intrinsic value of smartcoins adds up during extreme market volatility. Often the face value of the asset at minimum stands out to be the inherent value of the smartcoins. 

Just like any other cryptocurrency, smartcoins are decentralized, fungible, and divisible. In other words, smartcoin is also a stable decentralized mode of currency which has advantages in terms of stable assets. Some of the smartcoins include Bit USD, Bit BTC and Gold. 

How are smartcoins different from bitcoin?

Digital currency Bitcoin has similarities with smartcoins. Smartcoins do not have a central authority like banks. They are an independent open-source of p2p cryptocurrency that can operate without governance. They conduct instant payments from anywhere in the world. Smartcoin is the current need for a smarter planet. Smartcoin’s unique features make it even faster than bitcoin. It has a speed of 30-second confirmations for a particular transaction. 

They continuously work towards global enrichment which means the coins can be sent, rather transacted from any device everywhere at any point in time. Smartcoin has better encryption than bitcoin. They can share 56 wallet encryption which stores smartcoins on the hardware. The term “paper wallet” is used to print out your smartcoins if needed. 

All public databases reflect transaction details; therefore, the uncertainty of payment transfers are reduced to less or nothing. Reflecting database transactions for smartcoins is present in all client software. Distribution of smartcoins involves global participation.

Screenshot 2020 11 06 at 1.00.12 PM
SmartCoin Android App

Advantages of smartcoins

Stable assets like gold and the Dollar can be linked to smartcoins. It enhances the stability of the asset, as well as the currencies securing it. Smartcoins can even be connected with cryptocurrencies for double encryption security. This way, investors get to have a diverse portfolio. Investors get exposure to a variety of commodities and multiple cryptocurrency transactions. 

Smartcoins are backed by market rates. This, in turn, helps stock investors develop an interest in trading smartcoins. Not only this, but Bitcoin’s currency rates also benefit as markets start pegging smartcoins with cryptocurrencies. Investors also get the benefits of applying for a paperless loan with smartcoins.

A device capable of transactions with internet connectivity is more than enough to drive a hundred per cent paperless loan on smartcoins. Loan applications take a minute to 5. Make sure the documents authentically support all the details. The credit on the loan amount will take place within a couple of hours once all the details are verified. The eligibility check is done based on the features and documents submitted on the application portal. 

Smartcoins have been invented with the mission to include financial stability with technology. Smartcoin operators primarily focus on providing financial aid to consumer lending startups. Business-targeted segments with smartcoins include middle- or lower-income parts. Smartcoins has also created mobile applications that act as lending platforms. When a person applies for a loan in smartcoins, the underwritten algorithm checks for the risk associated with the profile of the borrower. It is done with the use of real-time analysis, data science and machine learning. The loan range varies from 1000 to 25000 rupees. The amount so credited comes with a tenure of 91 to 120 days. Smartcoin is a way to get quick cash with no collateral. 

Smartcoins linked to volatility

Smartcoins are considered less competitive. This is because the floating exchange rate of the currency in the international market is kept as low as possible. When a currency is pegged with another currency, it often creates imbalances between the countries involved in the link. The volatility of the currency causes significant fluctuation. Although smartphone investment has now made the currency subjective, it has grown and evolved to become an individual responsibility. Apart from a loan and an investment platform, smartcoins have developed observation and knowledge sharing of the market. When comparing smartcoins with bitcoin, superior is a relative term. Bitcoin has the largest and most secure network. Investors often consider Bitcoin to be the gold standard cryptocurrency. For smartcoins to become as legitimate as Bitcoin, there is much evolution left to it. 

The updated smartcoins system helps keep your local copy safe. It also comprises of a full failover system. This means pools linked to your profile will be autoloaded. If it goes down, the next line automatically loads. If a high priority profile gets into the system, the remaining low priority ones automatically shut themselves down. Your worker information is more than enough to create your automatic profile. System parameters can be auto-detected with the simple installer of the smartcoin system. The entire crypto smartcoin is database driven. SSH secure connection guides remote administration. The SQL language makes the whole process smooth, leveraging very complex operations. 

Final thoughts

The smartcoin system runs on Linux. The invention of smartcoin was with the motive to administer mining machines remotely over SSH. It does not have a fancy user interface, but it is effortless to operate. Smartcoins have an integrated update system. For a person interested in using smartcoins, prior knowledge of GNU screen is required. A few functions, for example, ctrl + a 2, ctrl + a n, are linked with the GNU screen. The command-line parameters of smartcoins make it a little learning platform, and therefore it’s best to have some research done before trying to become a smartcoin administrator. 

Smartcoins already know they are running. As per your advice, refrain from running the SVN update in the smartcoin folder. The smartcoin database automatically syncs with every minute change because of the database patching system. Running a cryptocurrency makes it highly essential to keep your database up to date. 

ICO vs IPO: Key Differences

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As we already know that IPO or Initial Public Offering is termed to the process in which a private corporation offers shares to the public in a new stock issuance. IPOs have been used as a way by the companies to raise funds or from public investors through the publication of public share ownership. The ICO or Initial Coin Offering, has become a popular term these days and is brought to us by the world of cryptocurrency.

ICO vs IPO

In similar fashion to IPO, ICOs are a way of raising funds for startup companies, which involves creating and selling coins or tokens to cater to the development of a project. Therefore, they are a way for companies to raise funds and develop projects around decentralized applications. ICOs being directly related to Blockchain technology, they are highly shareable and can go viral, and hence, widely funded.

Like in the case of IPOs, ICO’s developers release a share of their total supply to reward contributors for helping them get funded.

What differentiates ICO from IPO?

IPO is carried out at a later stage when a company is financially stable and wishes to expand and develop to the public. The raised capital is put to use for the future growth projects of a company. IPO’s publication is a big step for a company. On the other hand, Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is generally initialised by startup companies to collect funds for implementation into their projects and developments.

DOCUMENTATION

A legal document known as prospectus is prepared by a company while issuing an IPO. The prospectus includes vital information about the company and must adhere to some standards of transparency.

Initial Coin Offerings do not involve any legal documentation. They include a white paper, an informal document which explains everything about the project and its purpose. But, unlike IPO, they are not obligated to create that white paper. Some of the companies participating in ICO don’t even have a product to present to the investing public. They just move forward by showing proof of concept or with a proof of stake.

REQUIREMENTS & REGULATIONS

To list its shares via an IPO, the company has to complete some pre-requisites including to have a track record of earnings, and a professional accountancy company must approve that. Finally, they need to get authorized by the concerned legal administration. There are no central authorities which regulate an ICO.

RETURNS : ICO vs IPO

In the case of ICO, companies do not have a track record or any regulatory framework. They offer tokens at a price that will rise with the trust put into the project. It is a promise that is done by the team, but still, the future is uncertain.

And in the case of IPO, they offer dividends from the company profit to their investors. It is the choice of the company whether to release dividends or not.

Duration

The IPO implementation is a tedious process because of the requirement of legal procedures and may take as long as six months. ICO ‘s duration depends on the company project’s nature and whether or not it issues documentary features such as white paper and smart contract. This duration may extend up to a month.

The Key Differences Between ICO & IPO Summed Up

ICOs offer international accessibility and operate on decentralized platforms which impacts the overall regulatory environment. Offering IPO is not allowed for every company or business. Only the ones which have been there for a while, are private and well-established are permitted to offer IPO. ICO provides new hope for emerging startup companies to undergo projects and new developments by raising funds from people holding coins, in the hope of receiving higher value than invested.

What is Raiden Network for Ethereum?

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It’s no secret that an Ethereum transaction can be quite slow and time-taking. The Raiden Network aims to solve the issue at hand. The underlying problem of this is Ethereum’s scalability. Currently, Ethereum can only process 15 transactions per second. Even though the hypothetical possibility for the transaction of a single Ethereum node is over 1000 transactions, the existing gas limits lower the figures significantly. Raiden seems to be the solution for Ethereum’s low scalability.

As of now, Ethereum is the second most used cryptocurrency in the world, which why it is likely there will be a future where we might use Ether to purchase commodities like chocolate bars to expensive cars. But, for this to become a reality, Ethereum has to shorten the transaction time exponentially. The synthesis of Ethereum and Raiden will make Ethereum blockchain astonishingly fast.

Understanding Raiden:

The basic idea of the Raiden network is to avoid the bottleneck of blockchain consensus. This is done by leveraging a network of payment channels that allows it to securely transfer value off-chain; without involving blockchain for every transaction.

Raiden will aim to solve these problems:

  • Raiden will use a mix of meshed payment channels, deposits for secure token transfers, but these transfers will be off-chain.
  • Instead of utilizing blockchain as a global notary for all transfers, the blockchain will only be used as a system for settling netted claims, which resulted from off-chain transfer activity. This approach will allow Raiden to scale with the numbers of users and their transfers daily exponentially.
  • Transfer’s will be extremely cheap, fast, and private.
  • The Raiden Network will complement Ethereum blockchain such that it can become a global scale payment infrastructure for everyday purchases.
Raiden-Ethereum-Network

Ethereum-Raiden-Networking:

Ethereum’s Raiden is a payment network that is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain network. Raiden comes intending to provide an easy to use conduit for off-chain (outside the Ethereum’s blockchain) payments without relying on the trust of two or more parties involved.

The idea is to broadcast transactions on the blockchain only during settlements, and not waste time broadcasting individual transactions of each party. To make it easier, think about this as a ‘bar tab’ where you pay at the end of the day instead of paying every time for each drink you order.


So, by using this off-chain payment network in place to settle blockchain for each transaction, an individual can instantly send fiat currency or cryptocurrency in high volume and settle the deal on Ethereum Blockchain when the parties decide to close their trade.

The European Union Plans on Crypto Regulations by 2024

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The EU aims for the core processes of the European Union to include crypto and blockchain technology by 2024.

European Union Crypto

The European Union plans to create new regulations over the next four years, according to internal documents published on Fridays by Reuters, to facilitate the use of blockchain and digital assets for foreign money transfers.

Details of the documents:
Reuters clarified that the European Commission, the governing body of the union, aims to increase the frequency of digital payments while striving for immediate transaction times since almost 80 per cent of its population is employed in paper currency.

The Commission’s stated objectives include an attempt to improve access to data, the availability of financial operations, to improve performance. “In all areas where there is a strong potential for digital finance, the principle of passports and a one-stop-shop licence shall apply until 2024,” specified the documents.

Reuters added that in the next year, avenues for quick transactions should take over. While the COVID-19 pandemic may have intensified the demand for digital payments worldwide, the regulatory city has spoken about blockchain and crypto assets, with a significant number of countries looking to central banks to streamline their payment infrastructure.

A new 51% attack on Ethereum Classic

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The Ethereum Classic (ETC) network was recently affected by 51% attack on August 29. This resulted in alteration of approximately 7,000 blocks immediately after security upgrades were proposed.

Ethereum Classic approved the attack and assured that they are taking care of the issue and finding solutions.

51 ethereum

Although ETC is striving for progress for developing solutions, we possess an idea of the present risk to the network at such low hash rate levels. It is recommended for exchanges, miners and other service providers to keep confirmation requirements more than 7k.

The attack occurs a few weeks after the developers proposed alterations to the network over the upcoming three to six months in the hope of avoiding any more incursions. The urgent reaction involves defensive mining collaboration with mining pools to sustain steady and even elevate the hash rates, advanced monitoring of network, whitelisting addresses and a proper system to restrain chain reorganization.
ETC expressed through a tweet that it is presently at about 3% of the overall hashrate of network and is acquainted with the possibility of facing repeated attacks while the testing of the changes is still in progress. Ethereum Classic had already faced a minimum of two 51% attacks before this new one came into the picture.

Federal Agencies lean towards Blockchain for its merits

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Blockchain sure does offer many advantages including security, efficiency, flexibility and transparency. This has attracted the federal agencies towards its adoption.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found to be using blockchain. Various executives in the US FDA were striving to find a way effective in terms of assisting them to analyze and track data on the H1N1 swine flu virus that again began to spread in 2017. It seems that the Food and Drug Administration found the adoption of blockchain technology as one of the best strategies to move forward. The Department of Treasury was also reported to make use of blockchain technology.

federal blockchain

The Associate Director of Data Mining and informatics evaluation and research named Henry Francis and FDA’s department for Drug Evaluation and Research had developed an application based on blockchain that allows them to acquire encrypted data in real-time from multiple sources. It was elaborated that the real-time application for portable interactive devices (RAPID) program is regarded as one of the first prominent implementations of blockchain in the federal government.

Management and Blockchain

The Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) od the Department of Treasury also inclined towards blockchain. The two of its known applications were related to software licenses management and the other related to tracking of mobile devices. FIT was also reported testing blockchain for improvisation in the grant payment processes in association with the National Science Foundation.

Also, the distributed ledger technology is being used by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to increase its bulk purchasing potential, lower the reporting burden, reduce costs for industry partners and enhance record-keeping for vendor transactions.

The FDA is also inspecting how they could employ blockchain to track and manage threats to food safety across the country’s broad and decentralized food system and ensure transparency in the pharmaceutical supply chain. BeefChain is another blockchain firm that traces the supply chain of beef and is certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Is Polkadot going to be the first Ethereum bridge?

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The Polkadot over a couple of weeks has been attracting a lot of attraction in the crypto world. Spartan Black, a major Asian based fund believes Polkadot has the potential to be the next big thing in DeFi, and think they are headed towards the very top of the digital market. After being listed on Binance the price of Polkadot token(DOT) has surged massively, and currently have a market cap over $5 Billion.

If you follow the cryptocurrency world right now, you would be familiar with the hype associated with the word “interoperability”. It’s a blockchain sector that allows multiple blockchains to interact with each other or another outside source of information, and Polkadot plans to capitalize this by creating a ‘trustless, general-purpose bridge’ to Ethereum.

A group of developers of Snowfork is working day and night to bring this technology to masses by creating an application that can appeal to a wider audience. In a recent blog, they have outlined their idea for the future, “We’re excited to become part of the Polkadot ecosystem and build atop its fancy new parachain technology, helping improve interoperability within and across its ecosystem,” the group proclaimed.

According to developers of Snowfork, they firmly believe that Snowfork’s phase 3 plan is on track and they expect it to be ready in mid-September of this year. They expect Phase 3 to be completed with a delivery of an all-encompassing trustless, general-purpose product by March of 2021. 

Polkadot

Upcoming Film Festival of South Korea will be Blockchain-powered

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film festival

Gyeonggi Film School would host a film festival from 25 September to 4 October. They have partnered with a Blockchain-oriented media distribution platform known as MovieBloc to conduct the festival.

The audience of the film festival would be able to rank every movie in real-time in exchange for various tokens. Some additional token-based rewards have been set for attendees if they volunteer in some other ways, such as proving foreign language subtitles for the films.

The festival, being online and uniquely designed, is in accordance with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation. It may prove to be first of its kind event and could set an example for the festivals and celebrations in the post-COVID period. MovieBloc’s CEO, Kang Yeon-Kyung conveys that this new idea can coexist with domestic and international film fairs and the film industry.

In July, a collaborative performance art which comprised of about 15 short movies was infused and devised into a non-fungible token on the Ethereum blockchain. That event employed an operation which rewarded the volunteers of the project whenever a credit was sold. The Gyeonggi Film School has planned to apply the same concept in their upcoming festival.

Two Pathways Ahead of Bitcoin

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In the past three days, the Bitcoin price has declined by more than 6%. Since Bitcoin is now in a correction phase, there could be two scenarios playing out over the short term. According to an expert, it could either rise to $16,000 or drop to $9,600. BTC’s chances of reaching $16k if its weekly chart closes above $11.5 k and dropping to $9.6 k if the price remains below $10.5k.

Another reason for expecting figures around $9600 is due to a CME gap. These gaps form on the future market chart because the regulated market closes during the weekend. A CME gap is generally closed within a short period.

Bitcoin-price-analysis

BTC briefly rose to $11,600 mark following the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s speech on inflation. During the speech, many traders expected gold and Bitcoin to benefit, but shortly after the speech, the price dropped to $11,125.The sell-the-news drop in the Bitcoin and gold markets further intensified the downtrend, causing Bitcoin to retrace to early August levels.

These have resulted in breaking the short term bullish trend of Bitcoin, and it remains to be seen whether this will cause BTC to sway towards a bearish trend.