Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Moris Beracha .-  The company led by Tim Cook beat Wall Street Bull’s expectations and showed that, despite the negative forecasts, maintains its market technology dominance. When everyone believed that Apple’s leadership in the technology market was overtaken by other companies such as Samsung and Huawei, this giant thumped on the table to report its financial results for the fiscal year. The company led by Tim Cook beat Wall Street Bull’s expectations and showed that, despite the negative forecasts, maintains its market technology dominance. Apple posted a net profit of 11.5 billion dollars for the second quarter, or a 32% increase over last year. This helped the company’s shares to rise 3% in a single day and created moments of surprise when it pushed its market cap to $1 trillion, becoming the first company hitting this milestone on Wall Street, as reported by the media. The answer lies in the company’s business strategy In short, Apple...

By Moris Beracha .-  Technology helps human beings every day; however, some people become obsessed with it and seek to be the pioneers when transforming some type of previously established procedure. Argentines Santiago Siri and Pia Mancini can be a clear example of a couple who lives and dreams of technology, since they are the parents of the first blockchain baby. Roma Siri was born on November 8, 2015, and now is 2 years and 10 months, but she is still considered the first human whose birth was registered in the decentralized database. The girl’s parents have been working for several years to develop blockchain-related projects, including democracy.earth and are partners of Bitex, one of the largest exchanges in the region. In November 2015, Siri made the decision to register his daughter’s birth in the Bitcoin blockchain. “Roma became the first human being to be registered in the decentralized database, even before in any other registry...

By Moris Beracha .-  Although many investors are still skeptical about bitcoins, cryptocurrencies around the world continue to gain ground. Digital currency, as it is also known, has been traded by soccer players, concert companies, bicycles, among others. In this sense, the latest news that has caused a commotion in the digital domain is the inclusion of the terms bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain, among others, to the Merriam-Webster Scrabble dictionary, an official publication used as arsenal by the players of the world’s most popular board game. Who has not had fun playing scrabble with friends and family? It should be recalled that Scrabble is a board game, in which each player tries to score more points as they place words on a board with a 15-by-15 grid. Words can be placed in a straight line horizontally or vertically and can be crossed as long as they appear in the aforementioned dictionary. Hasbro owns the property rights in t...

Eustace Cryptus Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead believes a Bitcoin-ETF approval is insignificant in comparison to Bakkt and Fidelity launching cryptocurrency trading platforms for institutional investors. Too Early for a Bitcoin ETF, Says Pantera Capital CEO Yesterday, Pantera Capital founder and CEO, Dan Morehead spoke with Messari director of business development and panel moderator Katherine Wu at Bloomberg’s Institutional Crypto Conference.  Pantera Capital has made media waves lately as the firm is one of the first blockchain investment firms and a recent statement to investors floating around Twitter showed the firm’s investment portfolio down 73% on their cryptocurrency investments.  While speaking about the future of cryptocurrency Morehead downplayed the urgency and importance of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by Bitcoin $6473.15 +0.11% . When asked about whether the approval of a Bitcoin ETF and the belief that this would b...

By William Suberg The research arm of Japanese technology giant Sony announced it had created a contactless cryptocurrency hardware wallet in a press release Tuesday, Oct. 23. The as yet unnamed device utilizes IC smart card technology popular in Japan to communicate with the Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrency network. The advantages, according to developers from Sony Computer Science Labs (SCSL), lie in dispensing with the need to attach the wallet to a host device via USB, as is the current standard for the industry. “In addition, it is possible to securely generate and store a private key with a highly reliable tamper-proof module within the IC card,” the release explains. Sony has joined many multinationals in experimenting with blockchain technology in recent years, releasing several solutions and applying for patents related to blockchain hardware. Beyond sending and receiving cryptocurrency, the latest hardware wallet offering is...

By Moris Beracha.- Argentines Santiago and Pia can be a clear example of a couple who lives and dreams of technology, since they are the parents of the first blockchain baby. Technology helps human beings every day; however, some people become obsessed with it and seek to be the pioneers when transforming some type of previously established procedure. Argentines Santiago Siri and Pia Mancini can be a clear example of a couple who lives and dreams of technology, since they are the parents of the first blockchain baby. Roma Siri was born on November 8, 2015, and now is 2 years and 10 months, but she is still considered the first human whose birth was registered in the decentralized database. The girl’s parents have been working for several years to develop blockchain-related projects, including democracy.earth and are partners of Bitex, one of the largest exchanges in the region. In November 2015, Siri made the decision to register his daughter’s bir...

  By Bitcoin Exchange Guide News Team Innovative Samsung Chips Could Be Beneficial for Cryptocurrency Mining Activities Samsung started to produce a new 7nm chip known as Low Power Plus (7LPP) process node. According to the company, the new chip is able to reduce energy consumption by up to 50 per cent. The information has been released in an official press release on October the 18. The chip will be produced by Samsung Foundry, and it will allow a 40% increase in area efficiency, with a 20% higher performance of 50% power reduction. The new process is based on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. That means that the chips are denser and energy efficient. During the last months, cryptocurrency miners in the industry have experienced a reduction in profitability. With the current cryptocurrency prices, electricity bills cannot be paid. In some cases, miners operate losing money. With Samsung’s latest innovation, energy costs could be reduced ...

By Ana Alexandre A recent study by recruiting site Glassdoor published Oct. 18 found that crypto and blockchain-related job opportunities significantly increased in the U.S. this year, despite the slump in cryptocurrency prices. In the course of its analysis, Glassdoor examined a large number of online U.S. job postings on their site containing keywords related to blockchain, Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency. To ensure more accuracy, the company also included more general blockchain-related terms, while excluding jobs from third-party recruiting firms. To estimate salaries, Glassdoor used its “Know Your Worth” instrument. Per the report, as of August 2018 there were 1,775 unique blockchain-related job openings in the U.S., while at this time last year there were 446 similar job ads, which represents a 300 percent year-over-year increase. The highest proportion of job openings is concentrated in 15 cities, including New York City and San Francisco, wit...

By William Suberg   Cryptocurrency markets could increase ten times over from 2020, blockchain investment firm and hedge fund Pantera Capital’s co-CIO told Bloomberg Tuesday, Oct. 16. Speaking in an interview, co-CIO Joey Krug said that scalability improvements for Bitcoin (BTC) were essential to spark a shift in the deflated prices seen throughout this year. He told the network: “These are all markets, and so if you don’t have scalability, you don’t have market makers.” The comments came days after new developments on the institutional trading side of Bitcoin markets, with Fidelity Investments revealing it was testing a regulated custody solution for investors and hedge funds. While reactions from finance figures such as Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz were positive, the news failed to shift market sentiment or prices in Bitcoin. For Krug, this is because sentiment requires signs of adoption of Bitcoin in the current climate, which in turn depends on capacity...

Featured image from Youtube/Bloomberg. By William Suberg Investor and cryptocurrency bull Mike Novogratz has fine-tuned his Bitcoin price outlook, repeating to Bloomberg Monday, October 15, that it would not break $10,000 in 2018. The Galaxy Investment Partners creator, who is known for his optimism about Bitcoin’s future, had previously called a “bottom” in the market in mid-September. Now, he thinks more time is required for momentum to build to take prices higher, and the long-anticipated wave of institutional investors piling into the cryptocurrency space will only occur next year. “...I think Q1 [or] Q2 [2019] if the institutions start coming in, we’ll put in new highs,” he told the network. Novogratz was speaking the day Fidelity Investments announced it would release a custody solution tailored to such institutional investors looking for security when interacting with cryptoassets. While this was a boon for Bitcoin, Novogratz said, the solut...

By Molly Jane Zuckerman U.S. investment firm Fidelity, which administers over $7.2 trillion in client assets, has announced the launch of a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, according to an Oct. 15 press release. The new company will offer custody and trade execution services for digital assets, targeting institutional investors like “hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries,” and will not for now be open to retail investors. According to the press release, Fidelity Digital Assets will focus on providing a “secure, compliant, and institutional-grade omnibus storage solution for bitcoin, ether and other digital assets.” Tom Jessop, head of the newly-created business, is quoted in as saying that Fidelity began exploring blockchain and crypto “several years ago,” telling CNBC in an interview today that the idea of commercializing a “standalone” crypto firm began in mid-2017. Fidelity cites research from Greenwich Associates that found t...

The SEC this year has kept up a steady stream of actions against private-equity firms By Chris Cumming Evidence is building that the Securities and Exchange Commission has moved on from the era of trying to reform private equity through enforcement actions. The SEC last week released its strategic plan for the next four years, which offers an important window into how the commission views the markets and its role as regulator and enforcer. The plan is heavy on efforts to protect retail investors and adapt to changing technology, including issues like improving cybersecurity and tracing initial coin offerings. But it dedicates almost no time to private markets, institutional investors, or fee and expense abuses, areas that were often highlighted as priorities under the previous SEC regime. Instead, the SEC is focused on ways to protect retail investors, a point Jay Clayton has repeatedly emphasized since taking over as the regulator’s chairman last year. Goals in the ne...

Political uncertainty has made investors pause By Joice Alves Fundraising for European buyouts has hit its worst quarter since 2010 as the divorce between the UK and European Union has fuelled a sharp decline in investors’ appetite for UK-dedicated funds. Fund managers have struggled to keep pace with the record volumes of cash raised for the asset class last year, writes FN ’s sister publication  Private Equity News.  Both capital-raising and the number of fund closings fell in the third quarter, according to LP Source, a data provider owned by FN and  PEN ’s publisher Dow Jones. Buyout fundraising dropped 68% to $7.9bn across 33 funds in the third quarter, down from $24.6bn raised by 46 funds during the same period last year. Fundraising also declined one-fifth during the first half of this year to $46.6bn, down from $67.8bn in the corresponding part of 2017. The figures represents the worst third quarter for European buyout fundraising sinc...

By Helen Partz   Ethereum-based adult entertainment platform SpankChain has suffered a smart contract security breach that led to loss of around $38,000, the firm reported on its Medium page Oct. 9. The hack, which purportedly took place Oct. 6, was detected by SpankChain a day after, and was announced today in a post entitled “We Got Spanked: What We Know So Far.” Anonymous attackers managed to steal 165.38 Ethereum (ETH) or around $38,000 from the platform’s payment channel smart contract. Additionally, the security breach caused the immobilization of $4,000 worth of the SpankChain’s internal token called BOOTY. While most of lost or immobilized funds belong to SpankChain itself, the platform claimed that client reimbursements are of “immediate priority.” The company will shortly repay $9,300 worth of Ethereum and Booty coins directly to users’ SpankPay accounts via Ethereum airdrop. The SpankChain team has subsequently halted its camservice Spank...

By Molly Jane Zuckerman | cointelegraph The Liquid Network sidechain for the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain went live on Sept. 27, according to an Oct. 10 post from Blockstream. Blockstream is a blockchain development company founded in 2014, with Samson Mow as its CSO. The Liquid Network project, first announced in 2015, was then launched by Mow and Joseph Weinberg of Paycase in 2017 in order to allow for better liquidity between Bitcoin exchanges and brokers. According to Blockstream’s blog post, the Liquid blockchain generated its first block on Sept. 27, 2018 at 1:29 UTC with participation from 23 crypto industry members including Bitfinex, OKCoin, BitMEX, and the SIX Digital Exchange. The blog post explains that Liquid aims to allow for faster transactions with Bitcoin between businesses and individuals with the use of its features. These include a native Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) asset backed by a “two-way peg” to Bitcoin, Issued Assets bringing “bitcoin-...

By William Suberg/ Cointelegraph The CEO of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance said he “hoped others would follow” his decision to donate all listing fees to charity after a sudden announcement Monday, October 8. According to the announcement, beginning “immediately” meanwhile, Binance will not only donate all such fees to charitable causes for the “greater good,” but also allow developers themselves to name the amount they pay, without demanding a minimum fee. “Binance will continue to use the same high standard for the listing review process,” the announcement continues. “A large donation does not guarantee or in any way influence the outcome of our listing review process.” Confirming the news on Twitter, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao capped a period of controversy surrounding Binance, during which industry sources and users alike criticized the platform for the allegedly exorbitant fees it charges developers to list altcoins. In August, Christoph...

By Pawel Kuskowski During the summer, an agent at the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration, Lilita Infante, said the ratio of legal to illegal activity in bitcoin has inverted. Talking to Bloomberg , she said illegal activity is now a problem in about 10 percent of transactions - not the 90 percent she saw five years ago.  Lilita thinks that it is speculation driving the cleaning up of transactions. We’ve also seen, over that five-year period, regulation coming into force, the professionalisation of exchanges and increasing numbers of individuals trading and investing paying attention to the anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) aspects of doing so.  But, even if regulations are in place, there are - as is the way with illegal activity in any industry - things to look out for that will be hidden. Whether you’re making payments in crypto, are involved in initial coin offerings (ICOs) or using any blockchain-based payment processes...

By Ana Berman Venezuelan state-owned cryptocurrency Petro has apparently plagiarized parts of its white paper from the GitHub repository of Dash. Core developer of Ethereum Joey Zhou pointed this out in a tweet posted Tuesday, Oct. 2. Zhou has tweeted that Petro, which has just been officially launched by president Nicolas Maduro, is "a blatant Dash clone." To illustrate this, he posted a link to the Venezuelan coin’s white paper, which had an exact copy of an image from Dash's repository on Github. The "clone" image is not the only thing that Petro apparently borrowed from Dash. The technical description of the coin says that it will use the X11 Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining algorithm, the same that is used by Dash. While many cryptocurrencies use common cryptographic algorithms – such as Bitcoin’s SHA-256 – Petro also uses "nodos maestros," or masternodes – a well-known mechanism used by Dash to regulate its ecosystem. ...

By Moris Beracha .-  For several months, different companies in China have been recruiting Blockchain experts, due to the significant restoration of the lost confidence of users and financial institutions in these technological processes. It should be noted that Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that securely and immediately processes economic transactions, making intermediaries unnecessary. According to some human and labor resources organizations, the annual wage for this type of professional profiles is 223,000 euros. The Blockchain, together with the developers of Clouds and Artificial Intelligence, are the sectors of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with a greater future and a growth outlook for the next 10 years. In this regard, it should be noted that Hong Kong seeks to attract skilled professionals, and thanks to the country’s particular immigration policy, talented workers with experience in Blockchain techn...

Crypt Crypto Economy This week, the CEO of Visa Inc. expressed his opinion on the utility of the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies for the credit card company. During a social meetup with members of the Boston College Executive Club, Alfred F. Kelly Jr , Chief Executive Officer for the credit card giant Visa, commented that the blockchain and digital currencies do not represent a profitable factor for the company, at least in the short-term. Kelly – who is also the former president of American Express – explained that the blockchain was designed to work the opposite way of Visa, that is, handling low-volume, high-value transactions , adding that it is currently unable to process 65,000 transactions per second; something that the credit card company can do without any problem. However, he acknowledge that it has something appealing, “It’s an interesting technology,” Kelly said . “It isn’t really at its core, for us, a good technology.” Visa ...