Naysan Munusamy on Cross Border Transaction, Cashless Society, and Businesses Exploiting Blockchain1/10/2017 Naysan Munusamy co-founder of MoneyMatch from Malaysia talks about how he utilises the power of blockchain on a proven business case to make it even better. While he may not be a big believer of all the unregulated ICOs in the market place today, he is however bullish about the blockchain technology and the FinTech businesses built upon it. Unfortunately, businesses that exploit the blockchain and people's ignorance is giving legit businesses a bad name. Interview and report by Eugene Tay. www.cryptocentral.net
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David Fong, President of FinTech Association of Malaysia shares his views on how we will be moving very quickly towards a cashless society, which is great for cryptocurrency adoption. FinTech businesses are on the rise, capitalising on the power of blockchain and push from government to go regional. Still, the ongoing debate on how much regulation needs to be in place will be a topic of discussion for a while as both users and authorities try to strike a nice balance. After all, David believes, that no business can flourish with trust and having the right regulations in place. Do not sell under panic. Hold your position. The market will go back up. Those who have been in crypto a little longer has seen this trend wash, rinse, repeat over and over. Just go look at the buy walls. The pros are buying up all the coins. For what? So that they can cash out again when the next waves of newbies get in the game. In fact, the 1st August BTC fork was supposedly more devastating but Bitcoin survived, unscathed. What's up with BTC prices? It was already headed for a correction around the 4.8k mark, the recent China ban on ICO coins just rattled people and 5 billion got withdrawn from the crypto pool. Let's talk about that for a bit. Word from the ground in China is that the crypto craze has produced over 4000 shitcoins there, many scams, and rich traders abusing the market. The government had to come in to enforce some regulations to protect people from themselves. Because that sort of wild west activity will only hurt the crypto market in the long run. Also I think what China wants to do is buy time to figure out how they can be the lead in the great crypto/blockchain race. Regulations by the way is a double edged sword. It protects newcomers and legit businesses but penalises the resourceful ones from profiting from a free market. So it depends on which side of the fence you are on, you are either going to enjoy the next part of the journey or hate it. I have massive love for crypto. It's a job and a hobby. And I'd be damned to see new folks get lost in this game and hating crypto because they got off on a bad start. I'm gonna start a brand new account on an exchange and guide you all the way from day 1. You follow what I do and let's see if you can figure your way around without losing money in the mean time. I starting with 1k and working my way towards 1 million. I will be posting regular updates on fb.me/CryptoCentral.net. Either you're a low budget trader, or a trader with huge capital, or someone who wants to build a mining farm, come talk to me. Leave me a comment here and get in touch with me through the links below. Join Me In Discussion Onwww.facebook.com/CryptoCentral.Net www.steemit.com/@EugeneTay www.medium.com/@eugenetay www.EugeneTay.com
 The Blockbuster Etheruem Meetup with Keynote Speaker Vitalik Buterin on the 16th of August 2017 had the largest turnout to date with an approximately 250 attendees packing the first and second level of SGInnovate, a co-working space and venue partner of the event organized by Ethereum Foundation, Singapore, and DigixGlobal. The number of interested participants however were more than the venue could accommodate. There were another 350 names on the waitlist and more than 10,000 views on the YouTube Live Stream channel. Buterin walked in around 6.40pm wearing a Hard Fork Cafe T-Shirt and in dark blue bermuda, totally going against the decorum that older, traditional folks would come to expect of keynote speakers. But this is the Founder of Ethereum and in the sphere of cryptocurrency, this eccentric genius is revered to divine levels by some, and by the way his fans rushed up on stage for a photo opportunity, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was a Kpop concert. The topics covered for this event were on the upcoming slated release of Metropolis, and the update on where Ethereum was headed with Proof of Stake. Buterin opened the session giving newbies a detailed overview about cryptocurrency, blockchain, and smart contracts, before diving into the technicalities of sharding and the impact it has on security. Midway through the speech, someone hung a makeshift banner at the back of the room with the handwritten text 'Buy $NEO', which in turn prompted Buterin to respond with: 'Don't buy NEO, sell your NEO'.  "Don't buy NEO; sell your NEO" - Vitalik Buterin Scalability has been one of the hottest issue this year and Bitcoin recently took centerstage with its forking drama in July this year. Bitcoin can handle three transactions per second; Ethereum at five. This is in stark contrast with PayPal and Visa capability in handling 190 and 1,600 transaction per second respectively. The current figures cannot hold if the volume of crypto users increase to reach mainstream adoption. The technical challenge would be to improve scalability without compromising security while still maintaining the integrity of a decentralised network. The proposed solution is 'Sharding'. Sharding splits the space of each contract into smaller subspace - 'shards' - based on the first digit of their addresses. The workload of validation is divided to handle batches of allocated shards, and since each node on the network does not have to validate all transactions, the network can effectively handle more volume without impacting transaction time. Details of Sharding can be found in this link. You can see the video recording of the event in this video link. Notable members of the crypto universe spotted at the event were Dr. Julian Hosp and Toby Hoenisch from TenX, Yusho from Coinhako, and Valentin Preobrazhenaky from LAToken. You can download the Howdy App or Meetup App and search for Ethereum Singapore to get news on the next Ethereum event.
If you have been looking at the values of cryptocurrencies, you might have encountered one strange currency which always stays at $1 USD – Tether. Well, this article explains why  Tether is a cryptocurrency which is 100% backed by fiat currencies and currently supports US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), and soon Japanese Yen (JPY). They are represented as different currencies with a ₮ behind the names - USD₮, EUR₮, and JPY₮. The value of 1 USD₮ is always equal to the price of 1 USD and the value of 1 EUR₮ is always equal to the price of 1 EUR. This is because the currency is 100% backed by the fiat currency assets the company holds. Similar to how banks used to hold gold in their vaults that money is pegged to in the pre-70s era. Purchasing Tether based currencies can be done through the Tether exchange platform and it is through this platform that Tether based currencies can be cashed-out into fiat currencies.  Tether enables businesses including exchange, wallets, and payment processors, to easily integrate fiat currencies on blockchains. Some of the largest business in the digital currency world such as ShapeShift, Poloniex, and Bitfinex, have all integrated Tether. The total supply of Tether is unlimited as it is always backed 100% by the amount of fiat currency the platform holds. For instance, if the platform holds 1 million USD, there will be a total supply of 1 million USD₮. Tether is built on top of the revolutionary and cryptographically secure open blockchain technology and adheres to strict security and global government laws and regulations. Tether is a fully transparent company which publishes a timely record of all value held (fiat currencies) and transferred in and out of their reserve account. Tether currencies can be securely stored, sent, and received across the blockchain and are exchangeable for cash. Once someone exchanges Tether currencies into fiat currencies, the Tether currency will be destroyed to ensure that the total supply of Tether currencies match the total stored amount of fiat currencies. This is the main reason why Tether is always valued at $1 USD. The currency is currently ranked at #21 in terms of its total market cap rank. For more information, visit the official website of Tether on: https://tether.to/ Join us in discussion
 Filecoin has attracted many attention even before their ICO as with their innovative promises to provide users with a comprehensive Blockchain-based data storage network.
Today, the platform accumulated over $200 million USD within 60 minutes of its initial coin offering (ICO) phase. This includes the $52 million USD raised during its pre-sale – the sale of coins before ICO to highly speculative investors. The ICO is co-managed by CoinList, a joint project between start-up investment platform AngelList and Protocol Labs, the developer of Filecoin. However, just an hour after the ICO commenced at 1p.m. PT, the sale was put on halt as with enormous traffic flocking into the website – many faced problems accessing the site. The unbearable amount of web-traffic can be much blamed at the sales model of Filecoin’s ICO in which the price of coins increases as with the increased number of investors. Many flocked into the website in a bid to purchase the coins before the price went up. Putting all the problems aside, Filecoin has set a new high record in the world of cryptocurrency. Just over 30 minutes into the ICO, the Filecoin team announced that they have accumulated a total of $252 million USD in investments. This amount of investment is the largest to date in the world of cryptocurrency ICOs – overtaking the $232 million record hit by Tezos project in mid-July. It is believed that until now, over $1.7 billion USD have been invested into all cryptocurrency ICOs. Filecoin has just pushed the total figure into the $2 billion USD mark with its record-high ICO! It just go to show that investors are highly bullish about cryptocurrencies as with their promising ideas, solutions, and technologies. It is exciting to witness new history being made in the cryptocurrency world. Many analysts say that this is still pretty much the beginning phases of cryptocurrency. Just imagine how much more investments and innovations will be coming out of the cryptocurrency industry! This is definitely something to look out for! The market has been performing exceeding well this past couple of weeks and if you've always been on the sidelines wondering how to get in on the action but don't know where to start, just drop me a message. You don't have to be a trader to make money. There are other ways to earn a little coin here and there, which over time, can accumulate to quite a tidy sum if you start now. An interview with Kristaps Vaivods and Maris Ziedonis from Hash Rush. * Hash Rush. It's a real time strategy game that's earns you money through in-game mining. For the causal gamers who don't care about cryptocurrency, all you need to know is that the lead developer behind Hash Rash is the guy who brought you the award winning The Witcher series. For crypto enthusiasts, you would be interested to know that the mining that you do in game are actually a gamified environment of an actual crypto mining process in the background. Hash Dash is the first of its kind and if this model proves to be successful we will see future games adopting this concept. But remember, you heard about it here first on CryptoCentral with me Eugene Tay. I caught up with Kristaps and Maris, the brains behind Hash Rush over Skype and asked them the questions that you wanted to know. Watch the video for the highlights from the interview. Pre-ICO starts from 6th of August 2017 to 1st September 2017. The main Token Launch will take place from 13 September to 13 October 2017 unless a cap of 64,050,000 RC tokens sold is reached earlier. Who would be interested in Hash Rush? If you are a gamer, this is revolutionary and its gonna be fun. Fans of Witcher would know that the the developers focus heavily on game play experience and storyline is extremely crucial. For miners, now instead of putting your money in Cloud Mining Services and watch grass grow, you can actually spend your time immersed in a rich storytelling environment and interact with other players. I rate this Hash Rush 4.5 Alpha Points out of 5 for its solid team lineup, unique concept, and accessibility to non-crypto community. Interview Bookmarks01:13 - 03:12 Introduction to Hash Rush Game and Team 03:12 - 03:45 Acquiring collectable cards and selling in-game items 04:35 - 04:50 Building the community to bring in more players 04:59 - 05:44 Limited Edition cards only for Pre-ICO players 06:08 - 07:15 Future of gaming and earning money from it 08:00 - 11:17 Doing away with Downloadable Content (DLC) and making games free 11:28 - 12:15 You don't need to know about cryptocurrency to play the game 13:20 - 14:20 Kristaps and Maris share their favourite factions 14:36 - 15:48 A Hash Rush edition for mobile gaming sometime in the future 15:52 - 16:37 How to get in on the pre-ICO and ICO action Some Useful Link for Further ReadingHash Rush http://www.hashrush.com/ https://medium.com/@Hash_Rush https://twitter.com/HashRushGame https://www.facebook.com/HashRushGame/ Join Me In Discussion On
Ethereum (ETH) has reached its 30-day high on National Day (9 Aug 2017), passing the $300 USD mark. But is NOW really the time to invest in Ether?  Many investors worry that this might just be another Ether bubble forming in a bubble that has yet to pop since early 2017. It has grown +3100% since January 2017 from $10 USD per 1 ETH to around $300 USD per 1 ETH (as of early August, 2017). This significant growth is related to recent success stories of Ethereum-based (ERC20) tokens including EOS, Golem Network Token, and Bancor. The token crowd-funding frenzy since January 2017 has in total accumulated more than $300 million USD – hence, the sudden growth in demands for ETH. Many are worrying that this sudden growth might simply collapse when these crowd-funded token projects/platforms decide to cash-out their accumulated Ether. Imagine over $300 million USD worth of ETH suddenly being traded back into fiat currencies. That would be the worst bear-whale nightmare in the history of all cryptocurrencies combined. However, it is highly unlikely that all these projects/platforms would cash-out their accumulated Ether all at once. Perhaps the demand for ETH will only grow as with the increased popularity of Ethereum as a token-creation platform. The developers of Ethereum are saying that the journey is only 20% complete and these token crowd-funds are merely 1% of what is to come in the next 10 years. Remember, if you had 100 USD worth of bitcoins back in 2010, you would be a millionaire today. So is NOW really the good time to invest in Ether? The answer is YES – if you are long-term investor and NO – if you are a daily trader. There has been a sharp increase in Ether’s value since January 2017. When there’s a sharp increase, there will be a sharp decrease to balance and we are not sure when that would happen. One thing is for sure though. Ethereum definitely has the potential to grow even more as a Blockchain technology platform. In fact, it is one of the only few cryptocurrency projects that is not completely based on ‘speculations’ and ‘promises’. Development is still on-going and the platform is actively being utilized by users. That’s one thing to look at! Join us in discussion on: www.facebook.com/CryptoCentral.Net www.steemit.com/@EugeneTay www.medium.com/@eugenetay www.EugeneTay.com If you would like to support me, you can send BTC to 39otZdtEjPDNVJ5wTk4oyHzfZjXxsGWXqj  Every day there are more than 200,000+ Bitcoin transactions recorded on the Blockchain. Until now, over 240,000,000 Bitcoin transactions have been recorded on the Blockchain. Amongst these transactions, there are numerous interesting and unusual transactions which have amazed the users of Bitcoin. Let’s take a look!  Mysterious Single Transaction of $149 Million Dollars Worth of Bitcoin
Apparently, there was a single transaction which contained 194,993 bitcoins in the fall of 2013. This amount was valued at over $149 million USD at the time of the transaction. Until today, this transaction is considered as the largest Bitcoin transaction ever conducted in the history of the currency. The transaction amazed many Bitcoin users and speculations around the transaction began to grow. Some say that it is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, transferring his funds whilst others say that it is more likely to be a mining company or business. No additional news or information has ever been obtained and the transaction still remains a big mystery… 2 Boxes of Pizzas for worth $25 Million Dollars Today May 22nd is known as the ‘Bitcoin Pizza Day’ between the users of Bitcoin. This date can be traced back to the year 2010, as a user on the BitcoinTalk forum named ‘Laszlo’ created a thread requesting people to order two pizzas for him. In exchange, he offered 10,000 bitcoins. The task was simple. Order the pizzas as specified, pay in advance for him, and have them delivered to his address. Within a few minutes, one user volunteered to give him the benefit of the doubt and ordered the pizzas as requested. He received 10,000 bitcoins (worth $25 USD at the time of transaction) and ever since, this incident has been celebrated by the users of Bitcoin. Today, 10,000 bitcoins are well worth over $25 million USD! Bitcoin To The Moon! One of the most renowned Bitcoin cloud mining company – Genesis Mining – successfully sent bitcoins to space. This was done by sending a 3D model of Bitcoin with a paper wallet attached on its back to the space through a weather balloon. It has set two world records of sending bitcoins to a bitcoin address which was flying at an altitude of 20km and 34km. The world of Cryptocurrency is an interesting place with something ridiculous or amazing happening on a daily basis. If you have heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and feeling curious but don't know where to begin, subscribe to my channel and follow me and my team as we bring you the most crucial news in this fascinating word of cryptocurrency. Join us in discussion on: www.facebook.com/CryptoCentral.Net www.steemit.com/@EugeneTay www.medium.com/@eugenetay www.EugeneTay.com If you would like to support me, you can send BTC to 39otZdtEjPDNVJ5wTk4oyHzfZjXxsGWXqj  Bitcoin’s hard fork has been completed successfully. Say hello to your new cryptocurrency which is very similar yet different to Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Cash. Everybody who is supporting the alternative had trouble breathing as they long waited for the currency’s first block to be mined. Six hours to be exact. They were finally able to breathe as the first block of Bitcoin Cash was mined at roughly around 2:14 p.m. (ET) today. This made it official that some miners have moved on from Bitcoin to further accomplish their mining journeys with Bitcoin Cash which has a different technical roadmap, development team, users, and community. The first block was mined by a mining company called ViaBTC and this was an event which occurred approximately six hours after Bitcoin’s block number 478,558 – the block whereby miners pushed their attempts to separate (fork). The first block of Bitcoin Cash contained over 6,900 transactions, doubled number of transactions as compared to Bitcoin’s original chain. The currency is currently ranked as the third most traded cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap with its market cap exceeding $7 billion USD. Its price initially dropped to around $210 USD but quickly recovered and is currently being traded at around $900 USD as we speak. The currency is currently available for trade on these exchanges: Bittrex, Kraken, ViaBTC, BTER, HitBTC, YoBit, Cryptopia, Novaexchange, The Rock Trading, Stocks.Exchange, CoinExchange At this point of time, it is rather meaningless to fight over which currency is better than the other. Many who thought Bitcoin Cash would crash were disappointed to see the opposite happening, though it's also important to note that the bloat in pricing could be due to more people buying into Bitcoin Cash out of fear of losing out and not enough people being able to sell their Bitcoin Cash as only selected exchanges are ready for trade. Many believe that Bitcoin Crash will see a steep decline if more exchanges allow BCC/BCH trade. However, many were also wrong about a lot of things about the fork. One simply cannot underestimate the power of greed. It doesn't matter that Bitcoin Cash was a duplication from the original blockchain stack, and that money was made out of thin air so to speak. It doesn't matter that the integrity of Bitcoin and digital currency has been, in my opinion, sullied. It doesn't matter that this whole fork smells like a not-so-elaborate ploy by miners to maintain the worth of their equipment and for some key players to profit from this. None of these matter because the prospect of getting Bitcoin Cash from merely holding Bitcoin prompted many people to buy into Bitcoin in the days leading up the 1st of August causing prices to bloat like crazy. It seems that the crowd has spoken. It's still too early for a celebration and like I always say, the cryptocurrency world is a crazy crazy place. You either love it or you hate it. As I mentioned in the previous update, I think the charts might flip over his head before the week is up. (Author's Note: The picture below is taken from a creative writing class I was teaching today. The kids wanted to write about space travel and I couldn't resist drawing the bitcoin logo on the rocket. I'm such a crypto geek, it's a wonder how my wife can stand me. It's about all I ever talk about these days.)  Join us in discussion on:
www.facebook.com/CryptoCentral.Net www.steemit.com/@EugeneTay www.medium.com/@eugenetay www.EugeneTay.com If you would like to support me, you can send BTC to 39otZdtEjPDNVJ5wTk4oyHzfZjXxsGWXqj |
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