Your Crypto News on Steemit January 23, 2018

• Scammers abusing Hype of Telegram ICO!
• DAICO – making ICOs decentralized again!
• CannaSOS aims to solve Problems in the Cannabis Industry!
• IOTA: Be careful with the Seed. Already 4 Million Dollars have been stolen!
• Spain: Get your own Home with Bitcoin!
• IMF calls for International Cooperation for Cryptocurrencies!
• Brazil: Build with the BuildCoin!
• Bitcoin: World's first Transaction conducted on Lightning Network!

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Up to two billion US dollars should bring the planned ICO of the app Telegram. No wonder that many scammers jump on the hype train and rip off investors.

The encrypted Russian messaging service Telegram wants to set up the largest ICO (Initial Coin Offering) to date. Instead of 1.2 billion previously assumed, the token sale in two rounds to flush up to two billion dollars in the coffers of the company, as Bloomberg reports. The interest in the ICO, in which Telegram wants to bring his Gram baptized tokens for the planned Telegram Open Network (TON) to the people, is enormous. No wonder the hype attracts a lot of scammers.

The Mega-Telegram-ICO attracts scammers, like the scammers behind the page Gramtoken.io. (Screenshot: Cafebitcoin.vn)

The scams have become possible because English and Russian versions of the whitepaper and prospectuses for investors have been leaked online, writes Techcrunch, a US tech site. Equipped with this information, about project schedule and members, launched several scammer fake sites, where allegedly the Gram tokens were offered in advance.

The most popular of these scam sites, Gramtoken.io, is already offline again. The site is said to have taken within a few days, according to its own tracker more than five million dollars. Telegram CEO Pawel Durow has confirmed that his company has nothing to do with the site. The no-longer-accessible Tongram.io site, according to Techcrunch, was able to convince over 70 people to transfer more than $ 30,000 to a scammer Ethereum wallet.

However, some potential fake sites are still online, including grampreico.com and tgram.cc. Also by e-mail, the scammers are trying to advertise alleged investment opportunities for the pending Telegram ICO and exempt bona fide investors. Of course, the scammer benefits from the hype, but also the sometimes very good results in the search results. Experts therefore advise to look very closely at ICOs and get information from various sources. Tax authorities explicitly warn of a participation.

By the way, Telegram wants to launch an anonymous and encrypted payment function with the ICO. Thanks to a combination of centralized and decentralized network, a sufficient speed of transactions should be ensured. An API should also enable third-party and app developers to use the payment features. Already Telegram is considered the most popular chat app in the crypto scene.

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At the beginning of January, Vitalik Buterin proposed a new concept for Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which takes advantage of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAICOs are supposed to combine decentralization with the stability of ICOs. Vitalik's suggestion can be seen in the context of the effort to find a fair ICO.

Ethereum without ICOs is currently hardly conceivable. Initial Coin Offerings are initiatives by projects that sell tokens built on a particular blockchain against cryptocurrencies. More specifically, for example, ERC20 tokens are sold on the Ethereum blockchain against Ethereum.

The people behind the project can thus finance their project, while the buyer of the tokens thus perform some special functions, or at least these tokens can often sell on various exchanges profitably.

ICOs funded several projects, indirectly leading to the current Ethereum course. But many criticize that the current token-sale models are extremely centralized and somewhat contradict the decentralized ideology behind Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. Of course, any visionary can in principle (ignoring regulatory constraints) solicit money for his project, thanks to ICOs, but after the token sale, the capital he has acquired is completely left to the control of the project team.

One financing model based on ICOs was the decentralized autonomous organization or DAO for short. Crypto enthusiasts who were on the scene before the bullish year of 2017 will remember The DAO: at the time, it was the biggest crowd-investing action in history. Unfortunately, one of the biggest thefts in history and the first Ethereum Chain Split followed. Although the concept of the DAO has never been forgotten, ICOs have meanwhile taken the place that the DAO originally held.

Despite the longing for decentralization, this is understandable: The code that has to be written for an ICO or for the associated token is comparatively simple. Simplicity also means security: The simpler the smart contract that underlies the token, the less chance of an exploit exists.

Still, the idea that investors still have some power over their funds after the investment would also make many people happy with a single project.

DAICO - the best of two worlds

Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, has come up with a concept called DAICO to complement this dilemma, combining the benefits of both systems. Decentralized autonomous Initial Coin Offerings should run like a normal ICO in the first step: money is raised. However, when this is complete, Vitalik suggests implementing a smart contract like the following:

The funds are distributed to the project in a controlled manner. First, the definition of tap sets an amount of Wei (the smallest unit of ether) that is released to the project team per second.

The funds are therefore still stored in a smart contract and passed on in a controlled manner. Another special feature is that investors continue to have limited control over the project through the modify_tap function: they can change the funds' issuance rate in an election process, controlling the cash flow to the project.

But in extreme cases, investors can do even more: if the project develops to the dissatisfaction of the investors, with the function withdraw the remaining capital can be paid out to the investors. These features can be chosen by investors, so that even after the token sale investors keep some control over their funds.

These functions would be a small extension of the previous token-sale model and remain project-related, but the decentralized idea of ​​the blockchain will be fair and thus combine the best of the concepts ICO and DAO.

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While the federal government may be preparing to legalize the sale and use of cannabis across the country, pharmacies around the world are still facing challenges when conducting day-to-day business practices such as advertising for their products, banking or credit card payments.

Due to divergent regulations in different jurisdictions, POS (point-of-sale) transactions remain a problem for the industry. CannaSOS of Canada is ready to end these obstacles with her PerksCoin (PCT) ICO, which is now running until the end of February.

The company's founder, Daniel Cheine, argues that the security of blockchain technology will solve the practical issues facing today's cannabis transactions. "Imagine being in Brazil doing business with a guy from Uruguay. This guy can scam you, take your money, and just not give you the product, "says Cheine. "But with Secure Sale, you pay the supplier the money and the PerksCoin Transaction Platform keeps it up until the supplier sends the product to you. After two days, when you have confirmed receipt of the product and everything is OK, the cryptocurrency goes to that supplier. If not, return the package and get back your cryptocurrency (or fiat currency). "

CannaSOS, PCT will also enable company statements, be used as a means of payment to facilitate advertising for companies in the cannabis industry, and serve as a means of payment in online stores, while avoiding transaction fees. "Think of it as Bitcoin, but with less volatility. The transactions are said to be similar and even safer than similar sale service providers. Transaction processing will only take a few seconds with the Universal Wallet and will support all major crypto and fiat currencies. "Cheine says.

The cannabis-oriented CannaSOS platform was launched in 2014 with the goal of being the world's leading peer-to-peer cannabis resource and social space, connecting experts, physicians, pharmacies, researchers and supporters worldwide. CannaSOS has 1,020 business pages and over 317,000 registered buyers. It should not be forgotten that 2.5 million people visit the website regularly every year.

The well-established platform already uses their PerksCoins as part of their loyalty program, rewarding subscribers who produce quality content for sharing among users. The founders were quick to realize that offering the public sale tokens would allow them to work outside of the CannaSOS platform for external use.

The company even aspires to enter into strategic partnerships with organizations outside the cannabis industry, and Daniel Cheine has great ambitions. "We see PerksCoin in the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the next five years," he says. Achieving this goal, of course, depends on the number of strategic partnerships that CannaSOS can make with companies with large customer bases. Cheine believes her goals are achievable. "One of our partners plans to use 200,000 locations at its POS by 2020, which is around 100 million users.

So that's 100 million potential PerksCoin users, "he says. He also points out that partner companies will be able to offer PerksCoin as a reward to their own customers, further expanding PCT usage. Cheine believes the PCT could become so popular that it could even be used in restaurants, gas stations, cafes and possibly large retailers.

Launched last November, the PCT ICO has sold more than 16.4 million tokens to date, and is currently estimated at $ 20,616,116.26. The company's ICO is supported and advised by ICOBox, the leading provider of SaaS ICO solutions. ICOBox co-founder Nick Evdokimov says, "CannaSOS has recognized how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies can solve the unique barriers of their industry. Furthermore, they have developed a very extraordinary project that will enhance the experience of their customers and the community. "

The PerksCoin token sale expires on February 28, 2018 and the PCT is offered at a nominal price of $ 0.80. Discounts of up to 15% off are available through the website until February 19th. For more information, visit the Crowdsale CannaSOS website at http://www.cannasos.com/crowdsale-ico

Disclaimer:

The information presented in this post is not a recommendation for purchase or sale. It is only an opinion of me the author. They serve merely to describe the project and are not to be understood as an investment analysis.

The participation in an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) naturally entails a very high risk of loss for your invested capital. Therefore, even in the worst case, you should allow for a total loss. It is therefore more than advisable to use only financial means whose partial or total loss can be dealt with without any problems. Furthermore, we recommend you to be very well informed before buying or participating in an ICO and to be aware of the risks.

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False web pages for seed production have cost IOTA users millions. The error is not really in IOTA itself, but in a questionable implementation of the Wallet. Nevertheless, it should be annoying for many.

Actually, everything is currently running smoothly at IOTA. The new version of the client has significantly reduced the high resource consumption and is more resistant to DoS attacks and spam attacks, while the IOTA Foundation is constantly reporting new members. An article in Der Spiegel, announcing that VW's Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Johann Jungwirth will soon be joining the foundation as a member of the supervisory board, provides further anticipation.

Unfortunately, some bad news in this positive environment. And indeed, many users report that they have lost their IOTA tokens. Someone seems to have succeeded in stealing them directly from the wallet. According to a report, tokens worth around $ 4 million have been lost.

Ralf Rottmann explains on his blog how this could happen. It started with users creating a new IOTA wallet. Anyone who has tried this before knows that you open the IOTA wallet by entering a seed. The seed is an 81-character string consisting of capital letters and a 9. Conceiving such a sequence is cumbersome, and whoever takes real words or a sentence runs the risk of having an insecure seed. So many users asked Google how to get a seed and ended up on several websites that made the seeds for them.

There are some things you should never do in the crypt world. NO WAY. One is to make a seed online and to trust that it is safe. You can make the seed for IOTA with the commandline, you can dice it and more. A website gives tips on this. If you are already building it using a website, you should make the page offline, run it offline, and then empty the cache before plugging in the network cable again.

The result of all this was as expected that users have lost money. Someone put the seeds in wallets, and if he found IOTA tokens on them, he cleared out the wallets. At the same time the hackers drove a DoS attack on the well-known public nodes. This allowed them to prevent users from saving their credit. There were hours when you could not find a single public node to send transactions with your Light Wallet.

Although Rottmann explains that the attackers did not exploit IOTA-specific weakness, and that this is super important. This is true - but it is without a hint of doubt the fault of the Wallet developers, that it has come to that. Who makes it a condition to open a wallet that the user provides the entropy? Bitcoin stopped recommending Brainwallets years ago. The 81-digit seed the IOTA wallet demands combines the two worst features that a password-like mechanism can have: it's insanely awkward and hard to remember - but also unsafe.

The correct way would have been that the Wallet collects entropy on the running computer that Seed created itself and allows the user to secure it with a password. That would have been both more convenient and safer and has long been standard on all wallets. Why the IOTA developers did not do that is a mystery.

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Mister Piso, a real estate company based in Barcelona, has sold the first property in Spain for Bitcoin. The company hopes that increased use of cryptocurrencies could accelerate sales and revitalize the real estate sector.

The basic advantage of cryptocurrencies is the circumvention of middlemen such as banks and other regulators. Thus, they also offer themselves in the real estate sector as a simplistic means of payment: Both buyers and sellers can trade directly with each other without the influence of banks and the additional payment claims they collect.

Home sweet home for 40 Bitcoin

The apartment in the province of Tarragona in southern Catalonia was sold for 40 Bitcoin. At the current price of 9,711.95 EUR (as of 19 January), the price would therefore be 388,478 EUR. In mid-December, the buyer would have had to dig deeper into his pocket: almost 600,000 EUR would have gone in the course of the last all-time highs on the table. Mr. Piso is aware of the risk he takes by accepting crypto payments. The price of a property can fluctuate significantly in a short time. It should be remembered, however, that in the past year just in Bitcoin an incredible increase in value of 1,500% has taken place.

After the property had been on the market for five years, the real estate agent suggested accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment. This should allow the apartment to hold a high value in relation to its original price and to sell quickly.

Gerard Platero, Managing Director of the Tarragona subsidiary, explained the decision:

According to regional media Mister Piso is already offering a second property for Bitcoin. Despite all the crypto-euphoria at the real estate company, the payment with Bitcoin is not yet mentioned on the otherwise very informative website.

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a specialized agency of the United Nations whose main task is to lend to countries without adequate foreign reserves, is now calling for international cooperation in relation to cryptocurrencies.

As Bloomberg reported last week, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said "international negotiations and cooperation" are needed.

He also added:

Furthermore, Rice pointed out that cryptocurrencies would also pose other dangers besides losing trades. He cited money laundering, the financing of terrorism, fraud and tax evasion as examples.

First of all, the International Monetary Fund, which also seeks to ensure monetary cooperation and financial stability, called for a balanced approach. In September of last year, however, Christine Legarde advised authorities not to ignore cryptocurrencies. "Massive disturbances" would be in front of the central banks. These should therefore not disregard the technology.

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The most populous Brazilian state of São Paulo wants to improve its infrastructure. The engineers who hire them want to pay with their own cryptocurrency, the BuildCoin.

With an area of 248,222 km² and an estimated 45 million inhabitants, São Paulo is a densely packed state - after all, it is home to the capital of the South American country, which in turn boasts 11 million inhabitants. That there are infrastructural problems is obvious.

To solve these problems, the government has commissioned, among others, engineers from abroad to conduct studies. The engineers are to develop projects that optimize the development of the state, paying particular attention to its feasibility. The special feature: the engineers receive part of their payment in cryptocurrencies.

BuildCoin is designed to create incentives

They are currently developing the BuildCoin with a US company, CG / LA Infrastructure. To test the project, São Paulo first wants to crowdfund studies for a lighting concept. If the project is successful, the initiators hope to attract international investors with the planned BuildCoin. The hope for value creation is a sales incentive. In addition, by using the BuildCoin, they want to create more effective and transparent payment options within the construction industry.

The blockchain technology should also help to improve the communication and review of the respective studies. Proposals for studies can be sent to the BuildCoin Foundation via blockchain. Approved and verified applications will then be forwarded to the CG / LA Infrastructure.

The BuildCoin, which should run on the Ethereum blockchain, will then be distributed to the individuals who contributed the requests. Other participants in the respective projects should then decide by vote on the amount of coins.

The BuildCoins should then be usable for other services within the BuildCoins ecosystem. These include, for example, market research or cooperation with other companies - whether this incentive offers incentives for engineers about the uncertain development of the coins remains to be seen.

In the spirit of decentralization, the BuildCoin Foundation will not be headquartered in Brazil but in the Swiss city of Zug.

Brazil is not unfamiliar with blockchain technology. So one had already thought about organizing petitions on the Ethereum blockchain. In the construction industry, however, with Bitrent was a possibility to organize real estate investments through the technology, thought.

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For the first time, a Bitcoin transaction has been executed via the Lightning Network. For example, the technology made possible by SegWit has been used to pay for a TorGuard VPN router. The service provider TorGuard had already announced some time ago to accept payments via the Lightning Network.

The Lightning Network is considered - at least in part of the Bitcoin community - as a promise that allows for quick and cheaper transactions, providing an appropriate solution to the scaling problem that has been on the rise for years. Critics, on the other hand, criticize the tendency towards centralization, which includes the technological gimmick of the Lightning Network. This removes Bitcoin too much from its basic idea of a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system.

As the opinions on the Lightning Network diverge, its adaptation continues to advance. TorGuard, the provider of anonymous VPN services, is one of the first companies to openly accept payments through the Mainnet Lightning Network. This announced the company some time ago via Twitter. Accordingly, it should now be possible for all Bitcoin users to make transactions via the Lightning Network. The transaction costs, which result from it, tend to zero, also the transaction duration is shortened considerably.

Apparently this possibility has already been used. According to own data, a Reddit user has used the Lightning Network to purchase a TorGuard AR300M VPN router. He saw the offer on Twitter and immediately contacted TorGuard to make the transaction. The entire process was fast, easy and above all immediate and free of charge expired. This dispels doubts that TorGuard had previously registered itself. In another TorGuard tweet, they said that one could not guarantee the function of the Lightning Network, but compensate for possible losses.

The Lightning Network can be thought of as a peer-to-peer application that is "put on" a blockchain to simplify transactions. The trick is that payments are made through many separate micropayment channels that make it possible to make bookings almost at the blockchain. Instead, two users can make as many transactions as they like without informing all the participants in the block chain about the cash flow. Only the final amount of their transaction will be noted afterwards in the blockchain transparent for all. Smart contracts, fixed deadlines and time frames create mutual trust as well as collective trust in the technology.

So far, the Lightning Network has been used only in various testnets. For example, in November the Lightning Network was used to perform so-called atomic swaps, ie transactions between different blockchains, between the Bitcoin and the Litecoin testnet. At the time, this test was considered a test run for the functionality of the Lightning Network.

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