KTHSTATIONERY: Dogecoin

Dogecoin

Showing posts with label Dogecoin. Show all posts

Sunday, 9 October 2016

If We Can’t Use PayPal 100%, What Is the Purpose Then?” – Ronny Boesing, CEO CCEDK

13:55:00 Posted by b No Comments

Prior to the cryptocurrency revolution, Ronny Boesing worked as a sales executive and general manager within the music industry for over 25 years. The Internet disrupted his music publishing business but the silver lining was that these events inspired him to continue researching and innovating.

At the beginning of 2014, Ronny Boesing was approached by an international investment group – a member of which was a good friend of his from back in the 90’s. The group had long had its eyes on Denmark due to the liberal and open regulatory framework.

Boesing readily embraced this opportunity, creating Crypto Coins Exchange Denmark ApS (CCEDK ApS) on March 20, 2014. Boesing became the founder of the very first cryptocurrency exchange of its kind in Denmark, which went live on May 26 2014.

Choosing not to focus on Bitcoin alone, CEO Ronny Boesing researched other cryptocurrencies,selecting NXT and a handful of others to trade on his platform. In addition to the recently added Blackcoin and Nubits, Boesing plans to keep adding other promising coins, which he gauges by the level of community support, to CCEDK by the end of this year.

CCEDK is the first Danish online exchange for digital currencies such as Bitcoin as well as for altcoins including Peercoin and Litecoin and second generation crytpocurrencies such as NXT and Blackcoin.

- Ronny Boesing, CEO CCEDK ApS

“I would characterise myself as a realistic optimist. I tend to say yes, when others decline. I also believe in the good in people, but once let down, I do have a tendency not to forgive that easily,” says Boesing. “I don’t see myself as naive, as I stay away from any projects I don’t have a gut instinct about.”

We got a chance to ask Ronny about the recent launch of Nubits, his forward-thinking approach to altcoins and 2.0 cryptocurrencies, and the state of Bitcoin in one of the most prosperous and progressive countries in the world, Denmark.

CoinTelegraph: Your exchange CCEDK just introduced NuBits for trading. Could you explain what are NuBits and how did the first day of trading go?

Ronny Boesing: Nubits is a lot more than just a cryptocurrency. Provided all works out as head developer Jordan Lee is expecting, as mentioned in his interview, this currency could well turn out to be the world’s first stable digital cryptocurrency. I could explain a lot about the various possibilities Nubits offers, however, it does seem to be a lot to bring to the table in a short interview.

I guess for any of us using crypto as part of a long term business plan considering cryptocurrencies a potential alternative to real money, the simple knowledge that one Nubit equals 1 USD is all you really need to remember.

Based on this information, suddenly the whole world is open, as who doesn’t want speedy ways of transferring money at literally no cost. I am thinking [the] great possibilities for expatriates needing to send money home to their loved ones is a major breakthrough, or go down to nearest coffee house or café to buy a cup of coffee paying for this cup of coffee the same as you did yesterday, as the day before and so on… One cup of coffee would be 1.57 NBT, and only inflation might change this to 1.58 NBT the year after! What a great world that could be!

[Any further info can be found at following link: https://nubits.com/about/faqs]

My first day with Nubits trading on September 23 went beyond expectations. I had hoped for high figures, but not knowing really what to expect, it turned out to be one of those crazy days you will remember with great pleasure.

We did the equivalent to some US$200,000 within 24 hours of trading, bringing us right up among the big exchanges worldwide, and Nubits placed 7th as the best selling currency, so it was really a great first 24 hours. We have in the first 3 days done more than 500K in volume when it comes to Nubits, which as you know is equivalent to some US$500,000.

It is really an interesting start for this currency, and I would call it the first days of a baby born, and the next months [are] of great importance in terms of making sure it is growing up in the right environment!

- Screenshot first week currency pair NBT/PPC

CT: You have also recently launched Blackcoin on your exchange. In addition with other 2.0 coins such as NXT, why are you embracing next generation currencies while many other exchanges are mostly focusing on BTC? What other altcoins are you considering to add?

RB: With the addition of Blackcoin to CCEDK exchange I feel I have managed to add a complementary competitor to NXT, and I liked the way you guys wrote this previous article called Race to the Moon, which made me think it could be a great step to invite the two for another race on our exchange.

What was important to me also was the way their community is built and organized in order to make things happen, when you decide it’s time, and the fact that both currencies believe in the saying “action speaks louder than words.” I consider both of them very important players in the future cryptocurrency landscape and see them both as potential contenders to the crown of 2.0 Generation cryptocurrencies.

With Nubits and Blackcoin added this month, I have still some 4 coins to go to reach my goal of 10 currencies within the first 6 months active as an exchange, and I do have another two in the works for launch in October, and considering some 6 alternatives for the additional two for launch in November.

I have made out a criteria sheet for selecting the right currencies for my exchange; it is therefore not the necessary top 10 currencies on Coinmarketcap I am aiming at, but rather a combination of well established currencies, runner ups, newcomers with great potential as well as bubbles. What they all have in common, and what is a must if I should take them onto the exchange, is a well formed community being able to back up the efforts for constant development internally as well as externally.

“What is a must if I should take them onto the exchange, is a well formed community being able to back up the efforts for constant development internally as well as externally.”

- Ronny Boesing, CEO CCEDK

CT: Are fiat deposits already available? What currencies will be supported?

For Nubits, we have already the pairs NBT/PPC, NBT/BTC and NBT/USD available for trading, and a possible EUR pair is seriously considered as well. For Blackcoin, we offer BC ready for trading on BTC, EUR, USD and DKK. Apart from that, we offer cryptocurrencies BTC/PPC/NXT/LTC as pairs in any constellation, and all of them paired again to some 9 fiat currencies like EUR, USD, GBP, DKK, SEK, NOK, CHF, RUR and UAH.

CT: You have stated previously that you would welcome any legislation from the government. What kind of regulations, if any, would you like to see in the future? What do you expect to see?

RB: Honestly, I think it is always nice to know what the rules are to follow rather than trying to work according to what could be expected in the future. However, this is the way it is done in Denmark, and I try to work accordingly.

I can’t really say that I would like to see any regulations as such. I would prefer if our government came clean and said we will never regulate digital currencies, however, you don’t have success by being naïve, but rather by being proactive, and that is what we are trying to do.

In the end I expect Denmark to follow any final decision made by the EU, so I also feel that it is really not an issue for Denmark alone but for all EU and we will, of course, follow what is finally voted on.

CT: In March 2014, the Danish Tax Board declared that personal profits and losses from Bitcoin trading would not be taxed, although Bitcoin trading businesses would be taxed. Have you been satisfied with this stance and do you think it’s sufficient in fostering Bitcoin growth in Denmark?

RB: I think it’s okay to tax any kind of business, as long as it is clear what is being taxed and in which way, and this is something which I feel is still not really clear with that decision. Like any successful business, we will find solutions to any problem and keep up the pace towards something close to perfection.

CT: You previously noted that your exchange is exploring “many alternative ways of payment through integrated payment service providers.” Could we expect to see something like PayPal being used toward this end in light of their big announcement?

RB: Paypal has been a pain to many merchants, and impossible for exchanges due to the allowed chargebacks, and I am sure this will continue, so we will try to see if we can get Paypal for our withdrawal procedures and forget all about deposit, similar to credit cards, as they are also accepting chargebacks which is a potential killer for business. Everybody considers Paypal a big player in the market, and they are of course. It’s just that if we can’t use [it] 100%, and the fact that they have shown before that they are ready to freeze accounts if they deem it necessary, what is the purpose then?

Our hope is to make agreement with someone offering prepaid credit cards to give to users containing their withdrawals, we are planning to add Egopay, Payeer, and similar payment systems as well, as long as they provide the need we are looking for on behalf of the users of our exchange.

“It’s just that if we can’t use [Paypal] 100%, and the fact that they have shown before that they are ready to freeze accounts if they deem it necessary, what is the purpose then?”

- Ronny Boesing, CEO CCEDK

CT: CCEDK was one of the first exchanges to begin offering direct deposits from more than 1000 banks in 10 Euro-zone countries via Sofort Banking. How has the response been so far and are you planning to add more banks?

RB: We had to drop Sofort as a partner, as they did not deliver up to expectations. Partly they could not offer UK, Spain, Italy, and France anyway. We have instead in the works a partnership with Skrill Direct, which is basically working similar to Sofort.

The major differences are, however, that Skrill Direct is able to support instant payment in EUR from more than 3,600 (compared to Sofort’s 800) banks in the countries Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Austria so it’s a much better offer than what we had from Sofort, and we are very happy for this agreement to take place sometime in October.

CT: You take pride in basing your business on Danish values such as honesty, transparency and trust. How is this transparency achieved at CCEDK and do you have any plans to conduct an audit of your own in light of the recent audits conducted by several exchanges?

RB: I believe that being able to provide people with a face to go with the business and to present the exchange with passion and lots of energy would be the first step. The second step to document being registered in a stable country like Denmark and not being afraid of being out there representing the exchange just like any other business, makes me feel fully transparent.

In regards to an audit of course there will not be any problems with that. We do feel however, that we need to have some size of sales before it seems of any use really, so who knows? Maybe a good time is when we present our results for the first 6 months, expecting to prepare for future investors to join, which means end of November, start of December. A great way to make a nice Christmas present this year!

[Editor’s note: We have also received confirmation from CCEDK in regards to the expected list of cryptocurrencies to be added to the CCEDK exchange]

The cryptocurrencies that will be added include the following:

BitsharesX (BTSX)
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Reddcoin (RDD)
Monero (XMR)
Bitmark (BTM)
FimKrypto (FimK)

Meanwhile, the following coins are being seriously considered:

Exclusivecoin
Noblecoin
Vericoin
Counterparty
Mastercoin
Storjcoin

Daily Altcoin Price Analysis: Reaching New Tops

13:55:00 Posted by b No Comments

Litecoin

Litecoin continues to entertain support at the level of ~$3.60. Consequently, LTC/BTC exchange rates reached 0.081 BTC and isn't going to grow. From the point of technical analysis of the chart, we can see a "flag" with entry from above, which means that a following downward exit is more probable. Nevertheless, one more splash in the course of Bitcoin can spoil the whole game again.

DASH

DASH doesn't cease to surprise - it has grown from 0.06 till 0.07 in one single day! Now its price is 0.063, as the sharp movement up demanded future corrections. It seems that buy orders should be rearranged to the level slightly lower than 0.06. However, traders don’t want to sell their coins so cheap.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin decided to stand away from sharp movements and can be traded for 30-31 Satoshi so far. However, last night’s Dogecoin price was 29 Satoshi again, which was a great time to close orders with profit.

ETH

ETH continues to develop its movement within an uptrend. When the price goes lower than 0.02 it is worth looking for opportunities to place buy orders.

Peercoin

Peercoin is trending down. If Bitcoin falls even a little we will see the Peercoin price below the level of $0.40 due to the PPC/BTC exchange rates going lower than 0.001 (and even as low as 0.0094 - 0.0095).

It seems that traders were bothered by Peercoin, but of course when the price falls, more people consider placing buy orders, so builds interest in this cryptocurrency. Unfortunately today's level of $0.41 - $0.42 doesn't seem a good price for buyers at all.

Neucoin

Neucoin reaches all time highs as it reached $12 for 1000 Neucoin yesterday, while it was $11 for 1000 Neucoin only one day before. It might be that $10 will become a resistance level soon.

The analysis and prognosis are the personal views of the author and are not a recommendation to buy or sell Bitcoins.

Did you know that you can compare altcoins in our top of cryptocurrencies and help our readers to choose the best one? Learn more in our ratings.

History of Cryptocurrency, Part I: From Bitcoin’s Inception to the Crypto-Boom

13:47:00 Posted by b No Comments

The Internet is one of the most underestimated inventions. At the very moment when it seems it has come to a point beyond which it can offer something new, the new appears. It does not appear unexpectedly; it develops gradually. Suddenly, we realize that Wikipedia is the go-to source for information, we communicate using Skype, and without having to think about it, our computers no longer store our documents. We store them on Google Drive.

We start using a tool because it is interesting and promises something new. At some point, it becomes a part of our everyday life, and then it seems like it has always been there. I remember when I used to drive around the city using a paper map, and now I only use Google services. When did this happen?

Money started being ‘digitalized’ at some point. It evolved, drawing deeper into the net, until forms that are completely virtual appeared: cryptocurrency.

The transition from Visa and PayPal systems to cryptocurrencies, however, turned out to be more complicated than we thought. Traditional payment service providers and cryptocurrencies differ so much that some people cannot understand the essence of this new money and how it differs from the conventional fiat.

Just as with Internet services, cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more prevalent. New crypto services are created, shops and retailers start using them in their trade. It is only a matter of time until we will start taking cryptocurrencies for granted.

The Beginning

Cryptocurrencies have created a mythology of their own in the six and a half years of their existence. It includes entities like the aura of secrecy surrounding the personality of Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto; the historical pizza, which cost enough to buy out a government of a small African country; the rise and fall of bitcoin’s exchange rate; the cautionary tale of Mt.Gox; the great thefts and lost millions on discarded hard drives. Each culture consists of such stories, but these stories are not the history.

In this first part, we will have a look at history of cryptocurrencies, from the creation of Bitcoin to the crypto-boom that started in 2013.

The Birth of Bitcoin: 2009-2010

January 9, 2009 was the date when Bitcoin 0.1 was released. Bitcoin releases 0.1.0 up to 0.1.5 supported only Windows 2000, Windows NT and Windows XP. Right after the first release, Satoshi went into polishing the client. He corrected some minor network and node communication errors, and worked on improving the client’s usability with a few associates (for example, they prevented entering your own address in the address book and added some explanation text to transaction details for generated coins).

Bitcoin release 0.2.0 appeared in December 2009, nearly a year later. It supported Linux, and the community became more actively involved in the development. In addition, this release was able to use the advantage of multiple processors to generate blocks. Until then, it only started one thread. If you have a multi-core processor like a Core Duo or Quad, this will double or quadruple your production.

Another big step forward is development of JSON RPC API so third-party services could also communicate with Blockchain and network.

During this time, Bitcoin was only known to a very small group of early adopters. In November 2009, a forum that was the progenitor of Bitcointalk appeared on bitcoin.org. This led to growing popularity of the currency. New people entered the online community; new ideas were created as teams formed on the spot to implement them.

This attracted not only praise, but criticism as well. When Bitcoin’s operating principles were analyzed, a few flaws were discovered. At the same time, the idea of transaction fees appeared, and people started discussing the traceability of bitcoins.

In the summer of 2010, the Bitcoin 0.3 was released. The number of users was growing along with the mining difficulty as well. At the same time, the idea of using one’s computer for mining more efficiently emerged. Using the graphic processor’s computational powers for mining was proposed as a solution. That summer, user ArtForz established an OpenGL GPU hash farm and generated his first Bitcoin block.

On August 6, 2010, a major vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the Blockchain, which let users bypass Bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins. On August 15, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction, and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the Blockchain after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the Bitcoin protocol. This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in Bitcoin's history.

More and more miners competed for the limited supply of blocks. Individuals found that they were working for months without finding a block and receiving any reward for their mining efforts. This made mining something of a gamble. To address the variance in their income, miners started organizing themselves into pools so that they could share rewards more evenly.

On November 27, 2010, the first Bitcoin Pooled Mining (BPM), better known as Slush's Pool, appeared. It operated on a share strategy that involved an artificially low difficulty method that has since been determined to be vulnerable to cheating. The idea of pool-mining has evolved since that time, but the basis remains: mining together is more profitable than mining solo.

In December 2010, user doublec compiled bitcoind for the Nokia N900 mobile computer. The following day, user ribuck sent him 0.42 BTC in the first peer-to-peer bitcoin transaction.

The First Experiments – 2011

At the end of 2010, Satoshi released the ‘farewell’ version 0.3.9 and left the project for good. This departure of the creator was not critical for the currency, as community took over the development. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) was established to increase the efficiency of communications within the community. This is the standard way of communicating ideas since Bitcoin has no formal structure. The first BIP (BIP 0001) was submitted by Amir Taaki on August 19, 2011, describing what a BIP is.

By that time, many notions about how to improve Bitcoin appeared, but not all of them could be implemented. Thus, some people from the community started their own projects. The first idea to be implemented was the one concerning binding Bitcoin to the DNS system, which led to creation of Namecoin. After that, developers started experimenting with block time, block reward, maturity period and other parameters, and GeistGeld, iXcoin, SolidCoin and others were created as a result.

Since Bitcoin’s difficulty continued rising, people began migrating to FPGA and GPU farms. The public became concerned about the flaws of SHA256, which opened the door leading to new experiments.

The first coin to abandon SHA256 was Tenebrix, ‘cryptocurrency with solid GPU resistance.’ The proof of work (PoW) for this coin was based on а scrypt. The algorithm, which appeared in 2009, was designed as a password-gen function, but never became popular. The GPU miner for scrypt appeared very soon afterwards.

A bit later Litecoin was developed and was welcomed by the community with more enthusiasm than Tenebrix, which had pre-mine. Litecoin was mined with CPU, leaving GPU for the more expensive Bitcoin.

In summer of 2011, the Proof-of-Stake principle appeared as a reaction to unequal distribution of ‘voting power.’ Instead of your ‘vote’ on the accepted transaction history being weighted by the share of computing resources you bring to the network, it's weighted by the number of Bitcoins you can prove you own using your private keys. A year later, PPCoin (Peercoin) appeared with a hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake.

This period is also noted for the start of mobile development. In July 2011, Bitcoins Mobile, the first Bitcoin application for iPad, was released by Intervex Digital. The P2Pool, the first P2P decentralized pool emerged (in August 2011), as well as “An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System,” the beginning of the first serious research on Bitcoin’s anonymity. Mike Gogulski operated the first ‘Bitcoin Laundry.’

ASICs appeared in the summer and autumn of 2011, playing a part in destabilizing the mining process. The problem with ASICs, however, is the resulting consolidation of processing power in the hands of individuals, which is antithetical to the philosophy of Bitcoin itself.

The idea that computational powers can be used for some valuable calculations became the basis of Primecoin (2013), which sought out prime numbers during the mining process.

Ripple also appeared in 2011. Ripple was first implemented in 2004 by Ryan Fugger, a web developer from Vancouver. In 2005, Fugger began to build Ripplepay as a financial service to provide secure payment options to members of an online community via a global network. By that time some people realized that Ripple, as an idea of chain-exchanging IOUs, can both take the best from cryptocurrencies and solve some of their issues (reliance on centralized exchanges, high use of electricity, and slow transaction times). This led to the development by Jed McCaleb of a new Ripple system in 2011.

Concurrently, in May 2011, McCaleb began developing a digital currency system in which transactions were verified by consensus among members of the network, rather than by the mining process used in Bitcoin.

By the end of 2011, the BIP 0010 Multi-Sig Transaction Distribution was released by Alan Reiner. A multi-signature transaction is the one that sends funds from a multi-signature address, which is an address that is associated with more than one ECDSA private key. The simplest type is an m-of-n address, which is associated with n private keys, while the sending of bitcoins from this address requires signatures from at least m keys.

This proposal was implemented and tested in the older versions of Armory Bitcoin software for use in offline-wallet transaction signing. On March 30, 2012, multi-sigs were added to Bitcoin.

Development of Infrastructure – 2012

At this point, the Blockchain size became an issue and solutions to optimize it without losing important data were proposed.

In April 2012, Pay-to-script-hash (P2SH), as defined through BIP 0016, went live. P2SH was developed in order to transfer the responsibility for providing conditions required to redeem a transaction from sender to redeemer of the funds. The benefit lies in allowing a sender to fund any arbitrary transaction, no matter how complicated, using a fixed-length 20-byte hash that is short enough to scan from a QR code, or easily copied and pasted.

As the community grew, specialists from related fields joined the Bitcoin community, including economists, scientists and lawyers. Moreover, developers specializing in different programming languages also came onboard. This resulted in developing the BicoinJ. For Java developers, BitcoinJ was an entry point to developing applications that interact with the Bitcoin network.

By 2012, it became apparent that Bitcoin had too many principal setbacks, so some developers started working on currencies that would eliminate these issues. This was the year when theCryptoNote technology appeared. It uses ring signatures and one-time keys for conducting transactions, thus making them untraceable. Moreover, a different PoW principle made cryptocurrency ASIC-resistant. Bytecoin, the first cryptocurrency based on this new principle, also appeared in 2012. The currency initially garnered mostly academic attention due to its complex cryptography. Universities were the places where early CryptoNote forks appeared.

In August 2012, Jed McCaleb hired Chris Larsen and they approached Ryan Fugger with their digital currency idea. After discussions with McCaleb and long-standing members of the Ripple community, Fugger handed over the reins. In September 2012, Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb co-founded the corporation OpenCoin.

OpenCoin began development of the Ripple protocol (RTXP) and the Ripple payment and exchange network. Of the 100 billion units created, the creators themselves, seeders, venture capital companies, and other founders retained 20 billion XRP. The remaining 80 billion were given to Ripple Labs.

In autumn 2012, the majority of the Bitcoin community focused on developing and improving the wallets. The idea of deterministic wallets appeared as early as in 2011. On November 5, 2011,Electrum appeared – the first lightweight Bitcoin client, based on a client-server protocol. In 2012, the goal to create a convenient and secure wallet was realized. This was the period when light browser-based wallets started to appear along with cold storage (the wallet is stored offline) to simplify the process of migrating and backing up data, as well as paper wallets that allowed storing a couple of keys on a piece of paper, and even physical Bitcoins that stored the keys in a nice wrapping.

The year 2012 prepared the grounds for the subsequent altcoin boom. The following year, 2013, would be very fruitful, with all revisions of Bitcoin’s foundations, and developers constantly searching for new ways of developing the cryptocurrencies. That year, Primecoin was developed, its PoW based on discovering the prime numbers. In 2013 CryptoNote’s core, originally developed in Java, was re-written in C++ and a few forks of it appeared. Dogecoin was also developed, which got spread thanks to image-boards, with all its forks. Quark appeared, which experimented with multiple Hash-algos. As earlier mentioned, Peercoin, the first cryptocurrency with PoS, also was created in 2013, as well as its forks. Beside it appeared NXT, another PoS currency with a brand new operating algo different from that of Bitcoin. And of course Ripple development continued.

The year 2013 involved a complete revision of Bitcoin’s principles. Brand new cryptocurrency-building technologies appeared and became popular, and that lead to the rise of new leaders. Naturally, Bitcoin as a standard-bearer holds the first place by a landslide, but there are alternatives. The second part of the article will provide more information on this subject.