What is blockchain technology?

For the past several weeks, you’ve likely heard some of the following terms if you’ve paid attention to the world of finance: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum. But what do they mean? And why is cryptocurrency suddenly so hot?

First, we’ll explain the blockchain basics.

As society become increasingly digital, financial services providers are looking to offer customers the same services to which they’re accustomed, but in a more efficient, secure, and cost effective way.

Enter blockchain technology.

The origins of blockchain are a bit nebulous. A person or group of people known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakomoto invented and released the tech in 2009 as a way to digitally and anonymously send payments between two parties without needing a third party to verify the transaction. It was initially designed to facilitate, authorize, and log the transfer of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

How does blockchain technology work?

Blockchain tech is actually rather easy to understand at its core. Essentially, it’s a shared database populated with entries that must be confirmed and encrypted. Think of it as a kind of highly encrypted and verified shared Google Document, in which each entry in the sheet depends on a logical relationship to all its predecessors. Blockchain tech offers a way to securely and efficiently create a tamper-proof log of sensitive activity (anything from international money transfers to shareholder records).

Blockchain’s conceptual framework and underlying code is useful for a variety of financial processes because of the potential it has to give companies a secure, digital alternative to banking processes that are typically bureaucratic, time-consuming, paper-heavy, and expensive.

What are cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrencies are essentially just digital money, digital tools of exchange that use cryptography and the aforementioned blockchain technology to facilitate secure and anonymous transactions. There had been several iterations of cryptocurrency over the years, but Bitcoin truly thrust cryptocurrencies forward in the late 2000s. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies floating out on the market now, but Bitcoin is far and away the most popular.

How do you mine cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies don’t just fall out of the sky. Like any other form of money, it takes work to produce them. And that work comes in the form of mining.

But let’s take a step back. Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, ensured that there would ever only be 21 million Bitcoins in existence. He (or they) reached that figure by calculating that people would discover, or “mine,” a certain number of blocks of transactions each day.

Every four years, the number of Bitcoins released in relation to the previous cycle gets reduced by 50%, along with the reward to miners for discovering new blocks. At the moment, that reward is 12.5 Bitcoins. Therefore, the total number of Bitcoins in circulation will approach 21 million but never actually reach that figure. This means Bitcoin will never experience inflation. The downside here is that a hack or cyberattack could be a disaster because it could erase Bitcoin wallets with little hope of getting the value back.

As for mining Bitcoins, the process requires electrical energy. Miners solve complex mathematical problems, and the reward is more Bitcoins generated and awarded to them. Miners also verify transactions and prevent fraud, so more miners equals faster, more reliable, and more secure transactions.

Thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto’s designs, Bitcoin mining becomes more difficult as more miners join the fray. In 2009, a miner could mine 200 Bitcoin in a matter of days. In 2014, it would take approximately 98 years to mine just one, according to 99Bitcoins.

Super powerful computers called Application Specific Integrated Circuit, or ASIC, were developed specifically to mine Bitcoins. But because so many miners have joined in the last few years, it remains difficult to mine loads. The solution is mining pools, groups of miners who band together and are paid relative to their share of the work.

Current & future uses of blockchain technology & cryptocurrency

Since its inception, Bitcoin has been rather volatile. But based on its recent boom — and a forecast by Snapchat’s first investor, Jeremy Liew, that it would hit $500,000 by 2030 — and the prospect of grabbing a slice of the Bitcoin pie becomes far more attractive.

Bitcoin users expect 94% of all bitcoins to be released by 2024. As the number moves toward the ceiling of 21 million, many expect the profits miners once made from the creation of new blocks to become so low that they will become negligible. But as more bitcoins enter circulation, transaction fees could rise and offset this.

As for blockchain technology itself, it has numerous applications, from banking to the Internet of Things. In the next few years, BI Intelligence expects companies to flesh out their blockchain IoT solutions. Blockchain is a promising tool that will transform parts of the IoT and enable solutions that provide greater insight into assets, operations, and supply chains. It will also transform how health records and connected medical devices store and transmit data.

Blockchain won’t be usable everywhere, but in many cases, it will be a part of the solution that makes the best use of the tools in the IoT arsenal. Blockchain can help to address particular problems, improve workflows, and reduce costs, which are the ultimate goals of any IoT project.

Written By: Andrew Meola

The market is undergoing continuous decline today after the overall market cap dropped $16 billion in 24 hours.

Bitcoin is down 8 percent and dropped from $6,700 earlier today now trading at under $6,200 with $6,000 being considered an important line of support

Meanwhile, Ethereum is down 10 percent and EOS is down over 15 percent. Litecoin has hit a 7 month low of $75, dropping 11 percent.

Market analysts and pundits have offered a variety of views on the subject, with the possibility that news from Japan has influenced the decline. Japan’s Financial Service Agency issued 6 exchanges with business improvement orders after conducting on-site inspections.

The national regulator is seen as cracking down on the exchanges by many after declaring that the exchanges needed to improve KYC regulations and work towards reducing risk. Major exchange bitFlyer responded by voluntarily announcing that they would no longer be accepting new customers pending review of their operational practices. bitFlyer will also be reviewing current identifications of existing users as part of the anti-money laundering measures.

Ryan Rabaglia, head trader of crypto-firm Octagon Strategy Limited, said:

“The market is still trading on low volumes and has yet to break out of its current downtrend, leaving itself susceptible to sell-offs. Although the market reacted negatively, I view this as a positive for the industry as a whole.”

On Monday, Blue Line Futures president Bill Baruch said that Bitcoin’s decreased volatility signaled that selling may finally be exhausted and may be bottoming out at around $6,000. He attributed the huge surge in value seen in December with the introduction of CME and CBOE Bitcoin futures allowing people to take long and short positions on the value of Bitcoin, with “tremendous speculation and the fear of missing out” seeing prices “sky-rocket too quickly.”

Baruch feels that the over-enthusiasm that caused unsustainable growth has now died down, which can now contribute to healthier and more natural market growth, saying that if the $6,000 support line holds we may see more constructive upward movement. He also pointed out, however, that the 100-day moving average was down to $4,550 at the time. Baruch outlined the $10,000 mark as a “crucial line in the sand”, and even advised selling against it.

It’s possible that the decline will continue in the short term as traders seek to preserve holdings, with eyes now on the $6,000 mark as a measurement of how far the decline will go before finding support and consolidating once again.

Written By: Conor Maloney

The cryptocurrency market has recorded a loss of over $17 billion in the past 24 hours, triggered by the loss of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and EOS.

EOS recorded the largest loss amongst major digital assets, demonstrating a loss of more than 10 percent overnight. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Stellar, and Cardano fell behind EOS, falling by just over 7 percent.

What Triggered the Sell-Off?

On previous reports, CCN noted that the cryptocurrency market is still in a bear cycle and that it had only initiated a corrective rally, not a bull rally. In mid-June, the market seemed more stable than any other period throughout the past two months. But, the unforeseen hacking attack of Bithumb, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, terminated the corrective rally of the market and led major cryptocurrencies to a short-term decline.

Prior to the Bithumb hack, the cryptocurrency market had shown significant momentum, as Bitcoin rebounded from $6,300 to $6,700. But, the breach of the most widely utilized digital asset trading platform in South Korea, the third biggest cryptocurrency market behind the US and Japan, led investors to panic, even though the outcome was not particularly detrimental.

On June 21, CCN reported that Bithumb confirmed $30 million was stolen from its hot wallet and has started to cooperate with the Korea Internet and Security Agency, a sub organization of the Ministry of Science and ICT, to minimize its losses. The Bithumb team stated that the $30 million figure could decrease in the future, as KISA and Bithumb security experts initiate various recovery efforts.

“After the incident occured on June 20, Bithumb quickly followed the procedure to immediately report [the] incident to KISA announcing that about 35 billion Korean Won worth amount of cryptocurrency was stolen. However, as we undergo recovery process on each cryptocurrency, the overall scale of damage is getting reduced. Hence, we expect that the overall damage will be less than the amount we initially expected,” the Bithumb team said.

Bithumb also confirmed that with company funds, valued around $450 million, the exchange will be able compensate its investors fully with ease, as the stolen amount only accounted for around 6 percent of company funds.

Hence, the end result of the Bithumb security breach was not detrimental to the point of triggering a 6 percent cryptocurrency market correction. Rather, it was the end of an optimistic short-term corrective rally triggered by Bithumb that led the cryptocurrency market to experience a minor correction.

Where Ethereum Goes Next

Ethereum experienced the biggest loss amongst major cryptocurrencies today alongside EOS, and given that smaller cryptocurrencies and tokens follow the trend of BTC and ETH, the short-term trend of ETH is important to observe.

Various momentum indicators indicate neutral zone for ETH. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) of ETH is at 40.5 and the MACD of ETH is demonstrating a buy signal. But, a neutral signal for ETH, in a strong downward trend, could mean that its decline could be prolonged to the higher end of the $400 region, from the current price of ETH at $503.

Written By: Joseph Young

BY MICHELLE COLMAN

Last month, New York City had its first cryptocurrency real estate closing. The next week, an owner of the Plaza floated the idea of selling a “Plaza Token” to a group of foreign investors. Now, hedge fund founder and tech investor Claudio Guazzoni de Zanett, the owner of the landmarked townhouse at 10 East 76th Street, is asking one price in US dollars and a higher value in digital currencies due to their volatility. He is willing to accept bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple. “I’m a true believer in these networks, but it’s very volatile,” Zanett told the Wall Street Journal. “They could be down 60% in two weeks.”

Mr. de Zanett, the owner of the hedge fund Zanett Asset Management, was a Blockchain seed and angel investor. He purchased the six-story Beaux-Arts townhouse back in 1994. For 24 years, the mansion served as a “family compound” for Mr. Zanett’s family, which allowed for extended family and close friends to live together under the same roof and yet, living separately with a certain amount of privacy.

Zanett and his wife Julia were fined $8,000 last March for listing rooms in the home online as rental units. The couple has listed as many as five units at a time on property websites, such as HomeAway and VRBO, for short-term stays starting at about $500. New York State law forbids short-term rentals in multiple-unit buildings for fewer than 30 days unless the owner is also living in the rented unit.

The limestone mansion boasts 12,380 interior square feet, 2,500 exterior square feet, and 13-foot majestic ceilings. The home was built in 1904 by architects Schwartz and Gross, renowned for building The Mark and The Surrey hotels. Today, it’s zoned for residential or residential with professional space on the garden floor. Beyond the reception gallery, through a private door, leads to what was formerly three professional offices.

There are 12 working wood-burning fireplaces, including two outdoor fireplaces located on the sixth floor, and roof terraces that have 360-degree views of Manhattan’s skyline.

The expansive Lower Level is built-out the full length and width of the building lot and has a laundry facility, staff room quarters, storage, mechanical storage and a vast vault under the sidewalk that partially extends underneath East 76th Street.

As 6sqft recently explained, “The digital nature of cryptocurrencies makes [real estate] transactions much faster. It can be completed in minutes or hours.” Let’s see how long this property stays on the market…

[Listing: 10 East 76th Street by Carrie Chiang of the Corcoran Group]

[Listing: 10 East 76th Street by Valerie Lettan of Douglas Elliman]

By: Michelle-Marie Heinemann