A rare pear-shaped diamond that is expected to fetch up to $15 million can be bought at auction next month using cryptocurrencies, Sotheby’s announced on Monday.

Sotheby’s said it would be first time a diamond of such size has been offered for public purchase with cryptocurrency. No other physical object of such high value has previously been available for sale with cryptocurrency, the auction house added.

The 101.38-carat pear shaped flawless diamond, dubbed The Key 10138, is one of just 10 diamonds of more than 100 carats ever to come to auction, only two of which were pear-shaped.

It carries a pre-sale estimate of $10 million – $15 million and will be sold on July 9 in Hong Kong. Bitcoin or ether, along with traditional money, will be accepted as payment.

“This is a truly symbolic moment. The most ancient and emblematic denominator of value can now, for the first time, be purchased using humanity’s newest universal currency,” Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, said in a statement.

Cryptocurrencies have had a volatile year, with explosive growth and major tumbles. In the US, the National Republican Congressional Committee last week said it will accept donations in cryptocurrency; El Salvador this month became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

Sotheby’s in May sold a Banksy for $12.9 million in the first instance of a work of physical art sold by a major auction house that was bought with cryptocurrency.

Sotheby’s said that the past year has seen strong demand for white diamonds, jewels and other luxury items, particularly from younger people, including those in Asia.

The name of the colorless diamond — Key 10138 — is intended to reflect the integral role that keys occupy in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Pear-shaped diamonds are among the most sought after. The 530-carat Cullinan 1 diamond, which forms part of Britain’s Crown Jewels, is the most famous example.

The top price paid for a colorless diamond at auction was a 118.28 carat oval that went for $30.8 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2013, with a record price per carat of $260,252.

A rare 101.38-carat pear-shaped diamond will be auctioned on July 9 in Hong Kong and is expected to get bids in the neighborhood of $15 million.

The shape and size are not the only rare elements of this gem. For the first time, a high-value luxury item will accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment.

Famed auction house Sotheby's announced Monday that the auction will be a part of its inaugural “Luxury Edit” sale series and will be the first time that a diamond of this size would accept a cryptocurrency as payment. 

Ether and traditional cash will also be accepted as payment.

The move helps cryptocurrency become a more familiar form for transactions. El Salvador recently became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, while residents in Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba are also reportedly turning more towards cryptocurrencies.

The live single-lot auction starts on July 9, but Sotheby’s will be using its hybrid online and live bidding process, as well. The online bidding will open on June 25.

“This is a truly symbolic moment. The most ancient and emblematic denominator of value can now, for the first time, be purchased using humanity’s newest universal currency," Asia Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s, said in a statement. 

This diamond will be one of 10 diamonds ever to be auctioned containing more than 100 carats, with only two of them ever being pear-shaped. Pear-shaped diamonds are among the most desired, part of Britain’s Crown Jewels includes a 530 carat Cullinan diamond in the shape of a pear.

The sparkly colorless diamond is named Key 10138 which goes in hand with the importance of “keys” in cryptocurrency. When using your cryptocurrency “wallet,” your account has an address that is seen as a public “key,” while the user also owns a private “key” only known to them to sign transactions.

“Diamonds are keys to understanding the history of the Earth, reminding us of our human condition and the transcendental power of beauty, with the name ‘The Key 10138,’ we wanted to celebrate this enlightening virtue, while also alluding to the crucial function of digital keys in the world of NFTs and cryptocurrency,” said Wenhao Yu, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Jewelry in Asia.

Sotheby’s stated that the sale of this diamond comes at a time when there is increased demand for white diamonds, particularly of this quality. Diamonds are attracting more young and new buyers.

The top price paid for a colorless diamond was $30.8 million. The bid took place in 2013 at another Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong for a 118.28-carat diamond.

TL;DR Competent, organised, compliant – the best combination the crypto world has to offer So far we’ve covered Waves, a massive, well-funded and highly-organised crypto project; and TurtleCoin, a tiny grassroots coin with an extremely active following. This time, we’re looking at a unique crypto initiative that sits somewhere between the two: Crown Coin. Crown is a regular, mined crypto with an established track record (founded 2014), a small but active community, and some competent devs who are passionate about bringing a new approach to decentralised applications. The fact that it’s a Masternode coin that pays out regularly if you make the investment and effort to set up a node really doesn’t hurt either. Crypto investment is risky and the markets can be highly volatile. Do your own due diligence before buying. No responsibility is accepted for investment decisions made on the basis of this analysis. At first, Crown is a little hard to get your head around without some help, but it’s essentially about connecting regular applications with blockchain technology. Whilst Ethereum allows you to build decentralised applications (dapps) entirely on the blockchain, Crown aims to take a smarter and more scalable approach to this by allowing ordinary applications to hook into the blockchain. Businesses will be able to register identities and run applications, plus use an instant payment API, all on the blockchain. It’s a smart approach and the team has already signed up its first real-world businesses. Compliance is a huge concern for the Crown team, who are committed to doing things in a way that is sustainable in a climate of evolving regulation. It’s a mined coin – there was no ICO, avoiding future issues that may arise around securities legislation – and because it’s merge-mined with bitcoin the hashrate is huge, making it an extremely secure blockchain. There’s a firm emphasis on working tech over hype, so ‘marketing’ is not something large amounts of money are being thrown at until all the pieces are in place. The community is relatively small but active, and there are frequent meetups in various locations around the world. Masternodes and System Nodes are critical to the Crown ecosystem. Originally a DASH fork, the team has created a model where there are layers to the network: the miners, who receive part of the block rewards, and then the Masternodes (10,000 CRW requirement) and System Nodes (500 CRW requirement) who will process transactions and support the payment and business APIs. The price of CRW (around $2.40) means that these are currently a very attractive price, and although a Masternode will be out of reach for many investors, System Nodes are much cheaper and have a better ROI from staking income. At current prices, a Masternode costs about $24,000 and nets the holder about $540 per month. There’s a handy calculator at https://crowncentral.net. A slice of block rewards is reserved for bounties, and Masternodes can be used to vote on proposals which automatically pay out a respectable chunk of CRW for these at regular intervals. This is an excellent way to fund development and avoids the need for either a controversial ICO or donation campaign. Crown is one of those jewels in crypto: an overlooked project that looks like it’s doing everything right and has a firm vision for the long term – in terms of tech, compliance, marketing and strategy. If the team succeed in delivering that vision (and there is every indication they will) then there is no reason to doubt that Crown will be integrated in a wide range of business applications. It’s one that rewards holders in the short-term via Masternode staking, but also has amazing potential beyond that. Assessment: Already profitable due to Masternode and System Node payouts; significant room for additional growth on the basis of comparable projects. Approach: Acquire an initial stake (possibly over time to average costs) sufficient for a Masternode or one or more System Nodes; sell revenues to de-risk or hold them to compound in new System Nodes. For more information, visit https://crown.tech. Red hot news, scorching wit and searing opinion pieces from Crypto Inferno. Join us on Telegram: https://t.me/crypto_inferno Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoInferno/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptoInferno_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CryptoInferno/

Adding to the number of false schemes and scams in the cryptocurrency space, a scheme reportedly run from Argentina and Ukraine has been outed for falsely claiming their investment product was endorsed by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, guarantAdding to the number of false schemes and scams in the cryptocurrency space, a scheme reportedly run from Argentina and Ukraine has been outed for falsely claiming their investment product was endorsed by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, guaranteeing to make you rich in seven days, as reported by The National, June 30, 2019.. The post by Ashwath Balakrishnan appeared first on , Bitcoin, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency News\

Since the impressive Bullish market across many of the cryptocurrencies we have seen two outliers really set themselves apart from the rest. Though I doubt anyone was surprised by this, Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (XBT) saw some truly staggering growth and resilience during this time. While Bitcoin’s price is about ten times that of Ethereum, Ethereum’s pace of growth could leave Bitcoin in the dust. Bitcoin is king. We all know this. However, the security of its reign may not be as untouchable as it once appeared. In the past, no one thought that Bitcoin may ever be anything but top dog among cryptocurrencies. One of the reasons for this is that it was first to market with the idea of the Blockchain. In fact, many of the first altcoins were either direct clones of the coin or heavily inspired by the technology backing up Bitcoin. It was the original, it is the most widely accepted of the cryptocurrencies, and it has the most brand recognition associated with it. But even all of this may not secure Bitcoin’s crown as the king -or queen- of crypto forever. Coins need to fight and stay competitive to not only stay in power, but also to stay relevant. While Bitcoin is the originator of the Blockchain and thus it has already left an impression of its innovation for the foreseeable future, some users and traders feel that it is not keeping pace innovation wise with some of its main competitors. Most will cite Ethereum as the main threat to Bitcoin’s hegemony. This is because Ethereum is one of the most innovative Blockchain solutions that is available to the market right now. Ethereum made a name for itself in innovation from the start. Since then, many ICOs have tokens that are associated with Ethereum and its smart contract system means it can do more that Bitcoin currently can. Many investors and traders have taken notice of this and have begun buying into Ethereum. This, coupled with its track record of innovation have given Ethereum the gas for a truly staggering bull run. At the time of writing this article, it is closing in on $400 a token. While Bitcoin is innovative and has incredible potential to expand that innovation, it currently is not competing as well against Ethereum in that regard. I believe that a lot of this has to do with the in-fighting that exists in the Bitcoin community. As many of you are well aware, there is an extremely divisive debate raging in the Bitcoin community now. And it is raging, as the dialogue between the two sides has devolved into making the other evil. All of the community agrees that something needs to be done about the crippling speed and transaction fee issues, but no one can seem to agree with how to address this. While I think it is important to have well rounded discussions and challenging discourse in communities, what we have now in the Bitcoin community seems counter productive. I enjoy holding both ETH and XBT so I want to see both of them do well, but I worry that Bitcoin may be blinding itself to its competition by lack of compromise -on both sides- in this argument. Bitcoin may be entering the phase where it needs to decide which is more important, being right or staying King. Disclaimer: This is not trading or investing advice, but rather an op/ed. If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news. Dariusz is a Digital Anthropologist who has been closely following the world of cryptocurrencies since 2014. He has been somewhat of a crypto-evangelist, trying to educate more people on the exciting realm of cryptocurrency. During his time at University College London, his Master's dissertation focused on how communities inhabit, modify, and create virtual places via social media.

Thinking about purchasing a Ledger Nano Hardware Wallet? Browse their official website: https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/67efWant to join coinbase to begin your crypto journey? Here’s a link to get free $10: https://www.coinbase.com/join/558828d... Find me on Steemit: www.steemit.com/@heiditravelsTwitter: @blockchainchickInstagram: @hheidiannIf you’re looking for an app that tracks the price of BTC & ETH and many other coins, check out the CoinView App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...Donation Addresses:Bitcoin (BTC): 16gwMprXw5ss8Nk23CU8Jc6XtVf7KYF621Ethereum (ETH): 0xac5223209791820b4c37f6f6b4b5d249d25d55acDash: XuvS5TzRSRGbNZM2va9KXYxF6QBqQ4tVQpLINKS FOR ADDITIONAL READING FOR THIS VIDEO & ALL INFO IN TEXT DOWN BELOWLet’s talk about master nodes. Master nodes are more than just another way to invest in an alt coin. They allow you to be an integral part of the improvement and advancement of that coin. By holding a master node you have the ability to vote on proposals meant to improve the coin. You also are taking an amount of that coin out of circulation, this helps to increase demand by reducing the supply.The very concept of masternodes has long term value in its core. The investors who have masternodes are the investors who have put their money where their mouth is and have chosen to commit to that coin for the long term. Holding a master node benefits the investors also. In addition to seeing capital gains by just holding the coins, you will also be paid in that coin. Payouts can occur anywhere from multiple times a day, to weekly or bi-weekly payouts. If you invested in a master node before the coin really starts to take off then your profits can increase exponentially.I should note that there are some potential downsides with masternodes that you should be aware of before taking part in one.They are vulnerable to DoS attacks if they are hosted on weak hosting accounts.If you invest in a master node at the peak price, the chance you’ll get a decent return of investment can be bleak if the price drops.The more masternodes that are created means a reduced revenue. However, more masternodes also means a better spread of the servers, which increases the security of the coin. More master node holders also means an increase in votes for proposals that can benefit the coin.There are only a handful of coins that offer masternodes, I suggest looking into Dash, PIVX, and Crown.The price of dash increased roughly 300% in the past month and has been holding steady just around $100 per coin. But it’s PIVX and Crown coin that have been making huge positive moves most recently. So if you’re looking for a coin that offers a master node and is starting to gain traction, I suggest checking out PIVX and Crown on your own and decide for yourself.Investin.com Article: https://www.investitin.com/masternode/DIY Dash Masternode: https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/di... More About Dash Masternodes: https://www.investitin.com/invest-das...PIVX PIVX Masternode Explained: https://pivxmasternode.org/what-is-a-...PIVX Masternode Setup: https://pivxmasternode.org/masternode... PIVX Masternode Payouts:http://178.254.23.111/~pub/DN/DN_mast...PIVX Masternode Philosophy: https://pivx.org/2017/03/21/why-shoul...)Crown Coin Info: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/...Crown Coin website: http://crown.tech/

2016 held many pivotal moments for the crypto community and industry. The Bitcoin scaling debate enjoyed periods of exposure and collective anguish, retreated into the background, then opened a new chapter by integrating Segregated Witness into Bitcoin core. The block reward halved again, but the hashrate continued to grow. Early in the year, the price of Ethereum jumped an order of magnitude, ushering in a period of enthusiasm and optimism for smart contracts and a distributed world computer. The now infamous DAO Wars followed in spring and summer; Ethereum hard forked; and then a series of attacks and upgrades dogged the protocol, coinciding with a drop in price near the end of the year. Several foundational protocols launched to much acclaim, including Lisk and Waves. ICOs and app tokens raised millions from investors around the world. Large banks moved forward with private blockchain pilots. It was undoubtedly a big year for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. It was also a big year for Smith + Crown. Smithandcrown.com Our company finally launched our website early in the year. Care, sweat, and tears went into the design and all the elements we wanted to provide. Our vision was a research and data focused group that brought sober analysis and commentary to the cryptocurrency community. We see immense potential in this technology, with implications across business, social institutions, and governments. We also see immense hype and a disturbing tendency for discussion to devolve into irrational, vindictive, and manipulative word slinging. This environment of complex topics and prevalent misinformation raises the barrier to entry for anyone interested in this technology. We wanted a place where some of the best third-party analysis could take place and people who wanted to learn about these technologies could do so. The website is our vehicle for that experience. Markets and the Smith + Crown Index Serving up market data from across multiple exchanges in real time is not trivial. We have worked hard to build one of the few public systems that provides market insight from first-party data across all the major exchanges and all currency pair for both fiat and cryptocurrencies. We are rolling out additional features to our markets page and our index. Stay tuned in 2017 for more! Initial Coin Offerings: Tracking Whats Important One thing that struck us early this year was a lack of intelligent objective coverage of the many initial coin offerings (ICOs) and crowdsales. We provided the first summary of the rapid Lisk ICO, and the first English-language overview of the Antshares ICO. When we started looking into these sales, several things struck us. Learning about them was difficult but rewarding. There was nowhere to find in-depth third-party analysis of existing ICOs. The signal-to-noise ratio is very low, and many projects are doomed to not get off the ground. We provide an overview of major ongoing and upcoming ICOs. We are selective in what we list, objective and data driven in what we say, and research every ICO that comes across our radar. We also go deep on certain ICOs we see as pivotal in the emerging industrythey are proving a new model, have significant hype around them, or stacked with an impressive team. We dont take projects at their word and we are critical in how we approach them as technologies, businesses, and sale structures. We have covered a variety of ICOs and maintain a database of the major ICOs in cryptocurrency history. Milestones, Partners, Accomplishments 2016 held many twists and turns for us. We will have a similar post that will forecast 2017. In the interim, wed like to highlight some other notable developments that make us proud of the past year. Worked with Reuters to provide data from our research on ICOs and crowdsales. Collaboration with CoinDash, winner of the hack.ether.camp global hackathon. Following CoinFund, which has organized a smart, insightful community around a wide range of topics. Independent analysis of several major ICOs, including Golem, ChronoBank, and BitGirls. Expect more of this work in 2016. Summarizing the tumultuous split of the core Synereo team. This was a difficult task but we realized no one was providing a third-party summary of the controversy. We look forward to updating you with a roadmap for 2017!

Question: How can a cryptocurrency you may have never heard of, Crypton (CRP), be considered a “king”, let alone wear 2 crowns?

Answer: In early 2010 you may have never heard of Bitcoin, but that didn’t mean its dominance as the king of decentralized digital currency was any less inevitable in the coming years. Its first-mover advantage and resulting network effect secured its future.

In the world of cryptocurrency today, where half a dozen new copycat digital currencies are being released every day, “mindshare”, or the attention a project receives, is at an absolute premium. While mindshare can help drive demand in the short term, it is no substitute for actual value in the long term.

Without real substance, attention will only carry a project so far. Ultimately, it is a genuine, differentiated, and exclusive utility that will drive adoption and long term demand for a cryptocurrency–it is this utility that secures the future of Crypton (CRP).

One year before releasing the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi Nakamoto observed in a cryptography mailing list in November of 2008, “Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure [Peer-to-Peer] networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.” Five years later in 2013, Edward Snowden uncovered the global scale of U.S. government surveillance and harvesting of our personal information on the internet.

That same year, the anonymous 1984 Group began the development of the most ambitious Peer-to-Peer project ever attempted, the Utopia P2P Ecosystem. It combined instant messaging, encrypted e-mail, file sharing, group chats and channels, gaming, website hosting, and digital currency, all protected by ultra-secure Curve25519 elliptic curve cryptography and sustained by a peer-to-peer network of nodes without any reliance on central servers.

After six years of secret development and 4 months of public beta testing, on November 18, 2019 the Utopia P2P network went live and Crypton (CRP) was born with 100% of newly mined coins going to miners and holders through PoS monthly disbursements–no ICO, no IEO, no team fund, no advisor fund, no foundation fund, no marketing find, no fund of any kind–a purely fair launch.

Beyond this, the 1984 Group not only self-funded the entire development and public beta testing of Utopia, but continues to fund the enhancement and promotion of the project through the support and promotion portal. To understand the scope of Utopia P2P, just imagine if Signal Messenger, ProtonMail, Tor Network, Torrents, P2P Gaming, Telegram channels, and Monero (XMR) were all rolled into one integrated ecosystem.

Except, the single, private, and exclusive cryptocurrency that facilitates trade and value exchange in the Utopia P2P Ecosystem is in fact Crypton (CRP). Utopia offers payment APIs for self-hosted, unstoppable, uncensorable websites exclusively in Crypton (CRP). Utopia offers NFTs in the form of aliases or DNS-equivalents as uNS records, available for registration exclusively in Crypton (CRP).

Utopia offers charge requests that may be used for invoicing and crypto cards that can permit monthly debits from authorized accounts with established limits exclusively in Crypton (CRP). Now you have a much better appreciation of the kind of genuine, differentiated, and exclusive utility Crypton (CRP) offers, all courtesy of Utopia.

Most cryptocurrency projects which consider themselves to be privacy coins, whether we are discussing Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), GRIN or BEAM, suffer from one or multiple areas of weakness. These include the absence of default privacy, the presence of metadata, or the use of obfuscation techniques which can be undermined through sophisticated transaction seeding and tracing methods. Crypton (CRP) was designed from the beginning to eliminate these weaknesses altogether. All transactions are private by default, have no metadata associated with them, and cannot be traced or made less private by any known method, as the blockchain is completely opaque.

Crypton (CRP) mining uses a unique combination of Proof-of-Memory (PoM) and Proof-of-Routing (PoR) which supports the data caching and encrypted packet routing needs of the Utopia P2P network. The mining of new Cryptons (CRP) is done exclusively using the newly developed UAM bot, built from scratch with speed, performance, and stability in mind for the peer-to-peer data transmission of Utopia.

The most successful cryptocurrencies have spawned countless forks and copycat projects over the years that have splintered communities divided developers and undermined accumulated mindshare, thereby constricting overall project potential. Utopia P2P and Crypton (CRP) were designed to avoid such a fate and cannot be forked or copied in anyway.

The self-funded, cutting edge development and refinements over the past 7 years that have built the revolutionary Peer-to-Peer technology supporting Utopia and Crypton (CRP) cannot be exploited by another team with selfish motives. There can only ever be one Utopia P2P Ecosystem and its exclusive, fully integrated, cryptocurrency is Crypton (CRP).

A recent local report in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) describes a new cryptocurrency fraud on Facebook that pretended to be nothing less than the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. The scammers did not just stop there, but went further to claim that they will be helping investors to gain large profits from trading Bitcoin.Apparently, the scam did succeed in tricking many unsuspecting users by using the crown prince name as well as his multiple titles such as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and claiming that he had earlier invited people to invest in a crypto scheme (whose cost is Dh1,000 or about $270) that would make them rich within seven days of investment.An endorsement by the crown prince himself was more than enough for thousands of people to immediately get lured into the Bitcoin scheme whilst interested participants did not mind sharing their phone numbers as well as email addresses with these criminals.Accordingly to the report, Facebook ultimately decided to act after many submitted complaints by deleting the crypto scams page that was operating from both Argentina and Ukraine. The page had operated freely for weeks, and apparently as a Facebook ad as well, before it was finally shut down.While all the investigation is still ongoing, finding out all the details about this fraudulent activity, citizens have been advised to check the genuineness of any campaign they come across. These kind of shady campaigns usually ask for either donations or pledges, while they usually operate online and on social media platforms without an actual physical location.How the Crypto Fraudsters Operated As expected, first of all they made use of a promotional post (advertisement) that aided in directing people to the fake story which was clearly unsolicited in the news feed of UAE residents.This post had the crown princes picture and was marked as being sponsored. Also, it included a fake quote which was surely not real, yet it claimed to be made by the crown prince saying that the Bitcoin scheme was actually his way of giving back to his beloved people. The scam also directed users via links to other scams, which unsuspecting victims did not only like or comment on, but they also went further to share the post on Facebook, increasing the scope of the fraud.After Facebook brought the page down, the government of Abu Dhabi made its own responsible move to educate and remind its citizens that they will need to be much more cautious of fraud, especially those that take place on the web. Residents were also urged to verify whatever information that comes their way by checking with some official channels before responding and investing in such schemes.A digital marketing expert based in Dubai said he was surprised at the way people responded to the scam without suspecting a thing. He has been residing in Dubai for roughly two years, and he also made mention of Facebook stepping up in being more vigilant with every content the social network promotes.Everything about the scheme was fake, including the name of the author that told readers his success story of making Dh26,000 within three days. Instead of the picture of Michael Alvarado (the person who claims to be the writer), the picture he used was that of a United States based freelance journalist known as Timothy Seppala.This is not the first time that crypto fraudsters use the name of celebrities and known figures to entice users. Previously, the name and photos of renowned actor William Shatner , famous tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and even New Zealands Prime Minister were exploited to promote similar cryptocurrency scams.Sharing Is Caring:Related Posts: Abu Dhabi Ports Explores Blockchain-Based System for CargoAlternative Data Explains Why Bitcoin SuddenlySony and Fujitsu to Combat Fake Japanese ProficiencyMultiple Fake Twitter Accounts of Elon Musk PushBrazilian Presidential Candidate Haddad Puts

"If criminals believe they can hide their ill-gotten assets online they are very much mistaken." That was the warning from Nick Price, head of the UK Crown Prosecution Service's proceeds of crime unit, who told The Register the agency had "already secured" a confiscation order for digital currency assets and "would expect more to follow". Yep, crims' cryptocurrency can now be seized by the fuzz. A CPS spokesperson told The Reg it defines digital currencies as intangible virtual currencies whose ownership can be transferred instantaneously, including old-school E-gold or Liberty Reserve and the modern Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero. The Evening Standard reported in 2016 that the CPS was calling for new legislation specifically for seizing digital currencies. Now it turns out that the CPS has in total gleaned five restraint orders for assets including digital currency. In those cases, it has received permission from the Crown Court to require suspects to disclose the digital currency particulars and repatriate any assets held abroad to the UK. The CPS also has permission for the digital currency assets to be converted into pound sterling. One of those cases is a confiscation order for £2.2m. About £26,000 of it is held in Bitcoin, but the order has to be paid up in pounds. Risk advisory firm Camdor Global's Bob Swarup, author of Money Mania, told The Reg: "Technically speaking, they can seize any assets – the main thing is liquidating and converting back to pound sterling." He said he was "not surprised" about the "growing interest in digital currency". "Many countries are suspicious of digital currencies and almost certainly, there is no [know your customer] involved in their purchase, which automatically makes them suspect in the eyes of most policymakers when it comes to money laundering." David Wall, a criminology professor at Leeds University who studies cybercrime, told El Reg the CPS would "have to prove it is money that is illegally obtained or the proceeds of crime. I would assume that this could be done via the Bitcoin wallets and the transaction codes on the blockchain." He added: "It is interesting because it is more evidence of the trend that criminals are increasingly using cryptocurrencies." However, based on the evidence he's seen: "Much of criminal use of Bitcoin is related to investment type scams, rather than its use in actual everyday transactions – with of course the exception of use as a payment method in dark markets and ransom payments to ransomware and data hackers." A National Crime Agency report (PDF) on money laundering and terrorist financing published in October said: "The NCA has assessed the risk of digital currency use for money laundering to be relatively low; although NCA deems it likely that digital currencies are being used to launder low amounts at high volume, there is little evidence of them being used to launder large amounts of money. "By contrast, from a cyber crime perspective, the threat posed by digital currencies is higher, owing to their role in directly enabling cyber-dependent crime." A spokesperson for the Serious Fraud Office told The Reg: "The SFO has not obtained any confiscation orders for funds in a digital currency or decentralised virtual cryptocurrency." ® Minds Mastering Machines - Call for papers now open 'Continuous Lifecycle London 2018 - Early Bird Tickets Now Available', 'Minds Mastering Machines - Call for papers now open'

About Me (from this idiot with the crown to entrepreneurship)prosirius (56) in introduction 10 months agoHello, I am Tom. I was born on 3th January in Austria, exactly 20 years before BTC Genesis Block. The year should not be 1989 - it should be 20 BBTC (BeforeBTC) :-) I had a bad childhood, i was the clever but fat kid every cool kids laughing at and my father drunk much alcohol since he lost his job and got often angry and hit my mum. After that i kicked him out of our home. So i started drinking and taking drugs to forget about this shit, but that was not the best idea. I quit programmers high school after 3 years (repeated 1 year just for fun) and started apprenticeship. Since then my life was only about working, drinking with friends and having sex with older women. OMG i cant believe i was that fat drunken idiot with the crown At the age of 22 i woke up and realized that my life is bullshit. I started to live different, healthier and reduced the alcohol consumation. With the new energy i started a second job as salesman, selling telecommunication hardware and contracts. I earned some money with that and it was very funny at the beginning. But like every other job in the 21st century it changed into a modern slavery - if you dont fullfill the quote - you wont earn any money and the quote will get higher every year. Beside this i started Network Marketing and learned from one of the best guys. Eric Worre So i quit the job as a salesman and started in Network Marketing and earned exactly nothing - because i had more expenses than income and i really wanted to get my drunken friends and my family into this business - I failed multiple times trying it In my main job i changed from maintenance to mining and one year after that i heard the first time in my life (2 and a half years ago) from cryptocurrency. It sounds very interesting so i asked my mum for 4000$ (that was most of her lifetime savings at that moment and i was broke) and bought about 19 BTC with that. The real big mistake was i put them all into Mining Pools at BCN. I had no idea at that moment how mining works and just got greedy from the promises my upline made to me like "you will get 5 times more BTC out of the mining in 3 years" Now its 2 years and 3 months and i got out about 4 BTC from 19 BTC i invested. So i took me 3 months to realize thats not the big deal and i started studying cryptocurrency, made mistakes again, lost money in trading and continued studying and practice this things every day for 6 - 8 hours beside my job since 2 years. I stopped drinking in January and started to make some workshops for other people to help them get into cryptocurrency. Since this moment i am really on fire and i made more than 120 000 $ out of 3000 $ at the beginning of this year. Last Friday i quit my job, now i have to stay another 8 weeks and then i start spreading out to the world my knowlege and give courses in cryptocurrency, wallets, trading and Mining (yes i found a contract where you get more coins out that you put in in 2 years) That was my first big stage event in front of 200 people, teaching the benefits of cryptocurrency against banking system At that moment i found my passion in teaching cryptocurrency I love my life Tom Elias introduction cryptocurrency teaching mining freedom 10 months ago by prosirius (56)$0.14Past Payouts $0.14 - Author $0.13 - Curators $0.0215 votes+ theroliyogi+ linardis+ rulesforrebels+ mitchyb+ prosirius+ rawresearchlabs+ blisscom+ robinmathew+ ubg+ clemdane+ gbonikz+ kayleigh-alesta+ bridget17+ bvbowhunters+ ascheurenReply 9

In 2012, Coinbase consisted of two guys in a San Francisco apartment. Today, it’s a colossus that dominates the crypto retail business in the U.S. while also boasting a thriving exchange for professional traders.

Coinbase has also acquired or invested in dozens of other crypto firms and, thanks to one of those acquisitions, now stores around 5% of all bitcoin in the world. So it’s no wonder that, if you ask average people to name a crypto company, they’ll say Coinbase.

This dominance is why I titled my new book about Coinbase “Kings of Crypto.” Like Apple is to cell phones or Nike is to shoes, Coinbase is to cryptocurrency. The company’s story – full of drama and infighting – is a gripping startup yarn, but also shows how one firm can change an industry. It is thanks, in part, to Coinbase that bitcoin entered the mainstream, and why crypto is becoming such a force in the larger financial world.

Coinbase’s ascendance to the pinnacle of the crypto world is no coincidence. Since its modest beginnings, founder Brian Armstrong has focused relentlessly on two things: Making its products easy to use and staying on the right side of regulators. This ensured Coinbase became the first stop for millions of novice bitcoin buyers, while also avoiding the legal scrapes that sidelined competitors.

After being slow to add other cryptocurrencies – a situation that triggered a civil war between former top Coinbase executives Asiff Hirji and Balaji Srinivasan – the company now offers nearly two dozen coins. And when it adds a coin, its influence is such that it still generates a brief price pop known as the “Coinbase effect.” Meanwhile, Coinbase last month rolled out a crypto debit card in the U.S. that lets users earn bitcoin rewards with no fee when paying with a stablecoin – finally providing a practical reason to use one.

Coinbase still has formidable rivals, of course. It also has no shortage of haters. Right from the start, critics mocked Coinbase with taunts of “not your keys, not your coins” – a knock on Coinbase’s practice of holding its customers’ funds, which Bitcoin purists regard as a betrayal of Satoshi’s ideals. Today, certain crypto cliques mock the company as stodgy and corporate compared to more free-wheeling competitors like Kraken and Binance.

For Coinbase, all of this is just noise. The company is valued north of $12 billion and, backed by blue-chip investors, is poised to be the first crypto firm to go public – a process that could bring blockchain tokens to the public securities markets for the first time. 

See also: 5% of Coinbase Employees Take Severance Offer Over ‘Apolitical’ Stance

Meanwhile, the company is quietly expanding its ties with the Wall Street banking world. Those ties include a relationship with JPMorgan, which came about after a secret meeting in 2019 between Armstrong and the bank’s powerful CEO, Jamie Dimon, who was once Bitcoin’s most prominent critic.

In short, Coinbase is on top. The question is whether it will stay there and, for now, there are three obstacles that could thwart that.

The first is regulation. While Coinbase has done a better job than any other at playing by Washington’s rules, many in the federal government still have an implacable – and often irrational – hostility to crypto. This could lead Coinbase to become embroiled in expensive and distracting investigations, which could hurt its focus and open the door to competitors. 

And while the company is learning to play the lobbying game it’s no match for the big banks, which have had their tentacles in lawmakers for decades and could push for rules that rig crypto regulation in favor of financial incumbents. There’s no sign this is happening yet but, as crypto baron Barry Silbert of CoinDesk parent DCG told me, “In the long term, it’s not Coinbase versus Binance. It’s Coinbase versus JPMorgan.” If that’s the case, Coinbase’s current alliance with the big bank could turn to a strategic rivalry where the latter has the edge working the regulators.

The second thing that could dethrone Coinbase is big, well-funded opponents. While industry giant Binance is seen as Coinbase’s main rival, its fast-and-loose style has made it radioactive to regulators and unlikely to last in the long term. Crypo OG Wences Casares told me Binance is likely to go the way of one-time giants Mt. Gox and Poloniex. Instead, the more dangerous competitors for Coinbase are likely to be banks or fintech giants like Square and PayPal, which are moving into the crypto realm with the force of a freight train. Then there is Facebook, which is already standing up a global crypto offering, and Apple, whose huge user base and privacy-conscious values make it a likely candidate to offer crypto wallets of its own. If these tech titans power into crypto, Coinbase could clean up by offering its expertise to them – or it could simply get eaten.

See also: Emily Parker – Coinbase’s ‘Mission’ Violates the Spirit of Bitcoin

Regulation and competition are external threats. The third and possibly biggest threat to Coinbase’s long-term dominance is an internal one: its culture. That culture was on display this summer when Armstrong published a blog post declaring Coinbase to be an apolitical company – a decision that led numerous employees to quit and the media to pillory the CEO as insensitive. While some praised Armstrong for speaking truths other CEOs would not say, more people saw his blog post as reflecting the narrow worldview of crypto believers – a worldview that sees itself as apolitical but is in fact a siloed ideology shared by a handful of wealthy, mostly white men. This ideology is a problem for the crypto industry as a whole, which has done a poor job of welcoming women and people concerned about diversity, but especially for Coinbase. 

Great companies create cultures where people of all backgrounds can belong – even those led by ruthless, combative leaders like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Armstrong has long displayed the same sort of original thinking as Jobs and Musk, but he has yet to show he can attract the same sort of unswerving loyalty. To do so, and for Coinbase to succeed in the long term, he’ll have to improve the company’s corporate culture.

These three obstacles – regulation, competition and corporate culture – pose serious long-term challenges to Coinbase’s current dominance. But for now at least, no one is poised to take Coinbase’s crypto crown.

Smith + Crown previously and informally advised CoinDash. We do not currently have a financial relationship with CoinDash, and are not official or unofficial advisors in any capacity. Smith + Crown is excited to announce a collaboration with CoinDash, which is developing portfolio tracking tools and is currently a leader in hack.ethercamps virtual accelerator. Both companies see a future of more investors in cryptocurrency, a more diverse crypto-token market, and more capital overall. Making crypto-finance more user friendly helps the entire industry. Realizing this future requires tackling a couple challenges that face existing and would-be investors in cryptocurrency. Smith + Crown: Understanding the Market A couple important things distinguish crypto-assets from traditional financial assets. They vary widely in what they do: stocks, bonds, deposits, and currencies follow familiar formats, but crypto-assets vary widely in what they provide to their holders. Some give certain access rights in a distributed protocol, some are means of payment, some function like shares in a distributed autonomous organization, and others are difficult to categorize. Holders need unbiased, in-depth information on the crypto-assets in their portfolio. Regulation is ambiguous and there are no reporting standards: crypto-assets have different legal designations in different countries, and despite growing regulatory awareness, there is significant and justified confusion about who regulates what and how. Tracking developments in regulation is important, but its also critical to get unbiased, third-party information about what these projects really are. Unfortunately, information is distributed across various forums, slack channels, and subreddits, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low. Smith + Crown addresses these issues by providing insights into existing and emerging crypto-asset projects, original market data, and a unique market index tracking the development of the entire crypto-asset market.Smith + Crown also currently provides in-depth coverage of existing crowdsales/initial coin offerings (ICOs). Such events have raised over $270 million to date, and many have offered order-of-magnitude returns. We publishthird-party assessments of these projects, so potential participants can understand the types and sizes of risk involved. Smith + Crown is starting to launch a series of offerings that involves frequent analysis of different cryptocurrency projects. CoinDash: ASocial Network for Crypto Investors There are precious few tools for tracking ones cryptocurrency holdings currently. Many investors today resort to spreadsheets, sometimes augmented by scripts to grab current price information. CoinDashs measuring tools help compare the portfolios performance against the market, calculate risk scores and measure diversification. Users simply connect their trading accounts (bitcoin, ethereum, and exchanges) to CoinDash, which will automatically track portfolio performance. Screenshot of CoinDash: portfolio performance (tan) relative to Bitcoin as a benchmark (green) A strong performance-measuring engine coupled with a powerful social engine will enable traders to compare themselves to other trades, discover new opportunities, find superstart investors, get automated trading signals from them, and even copy-trade them. The cryptocommunity currently shares information across a variety of channels, ranging from bitcointalk.org forums, subreddits, twitter, and myriad slack channels. To complete the social graph, CoinDash wants to create one place for people to discover other enthusiasts and interact with them. Our Collaboration: Information + Insights In this collaboration, Smith + Crown will make research available to users of Coindashs platform. CoinDash users can watch their portfolios alongside selections of relevant Smith + Crown research. User can weigh whether to change positions based on new insights into the crypto-token projects. They can acquire new tokens in ambitious and disruptive protocols. They can follow when some projects experience near-death challenges, like Synereo did recently. Stay tuned for Smith + Crowns upcoming pilot project and demos from CoinDash. For now, go show support for CoinDash in the global Ethereum-focused hackathon.

TechJuice > Cryptocurrency > Bitcoin will pass cryptocurrency crown to Ethereum in 2018If you were thinking that Bitcoin will continue to rule for a long time, you might be wrong. The cryptocurrencies have just begun their journey and the competition is going to be a lot much harder in coming years. The year 2017 was Bitcoins year and the next one could be Ethereums.Jez San, CEO of FunFair Technologies, an Ethereum backed casino platform, wrote in a blog post for Coin Desk. He explained that platforms like Ethereum are an operating system for decentralized finance and commerce. They are widely used for powering up applications. He also draws a critical comparison between Bitcoin and Ethereum.Read Also: How to buy Ethereum?San points towards Ethereum as a better, more flexible and more advanced alternative for Bitcoin. As he says,While theres no shortage of old and new believers to keep the party going, along with plenty of developers working to create better, forked versions of bitcoin, Im betting my chips on a more flexible alternative.San portrays Bitcoin as DOS, and theres nothing wrong with it, as it was the base of the computers success. And he calls Ethereum as Windows or Mac OS which is the advanced form of that foundation.Although Bitcoins developers worked un-tiringly to acquire the crown of cryptocurrencies, yet Bitcoin appears to be a product for elitist few with high transaction fees and far from the common mans reach. This may result in a technical dead end.Also Check: Buy Bitcoin in PakistanRecently held Ethereum developers conference further affirms the fact that Ethereum is the future. Around 2,000 developers were there, arrived after bearing expenses of over $1,000 aiming to deliver a more innovative blockchain future in the face of Ethereum.In coming years, Ethereum will be the main platform for blockchain application development. Meanwhile, a mistake on user end is always expected in every advanced platform. Back in November, $280 million worth of Ethereum locked up due to a users mistake.Bitcoin Crown Cryptocurrency Ethereum News

Key facts:

Crypton transactions are private, have no associated metadata, and cannot be traced

In November 2019 the P2P network Utopia went live and Crypton (CRP), its native currency, was born.

He might not have heard of Bitcoin in early 2010 yet, but that doesn’t mean his dominance as king of decentralized digital currencies was any less inevitable in the years to come. Its advantage of being the first to act and the resulting network effect secured its future.

In today’s world of cryptocurrencies, where half a dozen new copycat digital currencies are released every day, “brand recognition,” or the attention a project receives, is absolutely paramount.

While brand recognition can help drive demand in the short term, it is not a substitute for real value in the long term. Without a real substance, attention will only carry a project up to a point. Ultimately, it is genuine, differentiated, and unique utility that will drive long-term adoption and demand for a cryptocurrency; it is this utility that secures the future of Crypton (CRP).

A year before publishing the Bitcoin white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto observed on a crypto mailing list in November 2008: ‘Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure networks [Peer-to-Peer] as Gnutella and Tor seem to be resisting. ” Five years later, in 2013, Edward Snowden uncovered the global scale of the US government’s surveillance and collection of our personal information on the Internet.

That same year, the anonymous 1984 Group began developing the most ambitious Peer-to-Peer project ever attempted, the Utopia P2P Ecosystem. It combines instant messaging, encrypted email, file sharing, group chats and channels, gaming, website hosting, and digital currencies, all protected by ultra-secure Curve25519 elliptical curve cryptography and supported by a network of P2P nodes without dependence on central servers.

After 6 years of secret development and 4 months of public beta testing, on November 18, 2019 the P2P network Utopia went live and Crypton (CRP) was born with 100% of the newly created coins destined for miners (already holders through monthly PoS rewards); no ICO, no IEO, no team fund, no advisor fund, no foundation fund, no marketing fund, no funds of any kind… a purely fair launch. Beyond this, the 1984 Group not only self-financed all development and public beta testing of Utopia, but continues to fund the improvement and promotion of the project through the support and promotion portal.

To understand the scope of Utopia P2P, just imagine that Signal Messenger, ProtonMail, Tor Network, Torrents, P2P Gaming, Telegram channels, and Monero (XMR) were all integrated into a single ecosystem. Except that the unique, private, and exclusive cryptocurrency that facilitates the transfer of value and trading in the Utopia P2P Ecosystem is, in fact, Crypton (CRP). Utopia offers self-hosted, unstoppable and uncensored paid APIs for websites exclusively at Crypton (CRP). Utopia offers NFTs in the form of aliases or DNS equivalents as uNS records, available for registration exclusively at Crypton (CRP).

Encrypted private messenger from the Utopia Ecosystem.

Utopia offers charge requests that can be used for billing and crypto cards that can allow monthly debits from authorized accounts with limits set exclusively at Crypton (CRP). You now have a much better appreciation of the kind of genuine, differentiated and unique utility that Crypton (CRP) offers, all courtesy of Utopia.

Most cryptocurrency projects that consider themselves privacy coins whether we are talking about Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), GRIN or BEAM, suffer from one or multiple areas of vulnerability. Among them are the absence of privacy by default, the presence of metadata or the use of obfuscation techniques that can be mined through sophisticated methods of seeding and tracking transactions. Crypton (CRP) was designed from the ground up to completely eliminate these weaknesses. All transactions are private by default, have no metadata associated with them, and cannot be tracked or their privacy reduced by any known method, as the blockchain is completely opaque.

Crypton Mining (CRP) uses a unique combination of Proof-of-Memory (PoM) and Proof-of-Routing (PoR) that supports the data caching and encrypted packet routing needs of the Utopia P2P network. New Cryptons (CRP) mining is done exclusively using the newly developed UAM bot, built from the ground up with speed, performance and stability in mind for Utopia’s peer-to-peer data transmission.

The most successful cryptocurrencies have spawned countless forks and copycat projects over the years that have divided communities, divided developers, and undermined the pent-up mindset, thereby reducing the overall potential of the project. Utopia P2P and Crypton (CRP) were designed to avoid that fate and cannot be forked or copied in any way. The state-of-the-art, self-funded development and enhancements of the last 7 years that have built the revolutionary Peer-to-Peer technology that underpins Utopia and Crypton (CRP) cannot be exploited by another team with selfish motives. There can be only one P2P Ecosystem of Utopia and its unique and fully integrated cryptocurrency is Crypton (CRP).