From yesterday’s Irish Times – a decade on in the recession – however, I was much more upbeat about my future. I have turned the corner, I am proud of my achievements, and the future is looking very rosy! Irish Times Jillian Godsil lost her home in the recession and was one of the the first women to go bankrupt under Ireland’s new bankruptcy regulations. “Until 2008, life was very good. I was happily married, or so I thought, running my own PR and marketing company, living in a big house we’d bought in 1996. “Then two things went wrong. I discovered to my horror that I wasn’t happily married, and we started separation proceedings. The second thing was that my ex had got into property. The house had been worth €1.6 million at one stage, and it seemed to make sense to release some equity. So we had huge debts that we couldn’t pay. “It happened so quickly. My husband went back to the UK and declared bankruptcy. I made a video to try to sell the house on YouTube. The video was quirky and it went viral. I got a cash offer of €500,00 in 2011, and I put […]
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Why Binance Is The Number One Cryptocurrency Exchange, Exclusive Interview With Changpeng Zhao, Aka CZ
CCN Binance has exceeded all expectations, including those of the CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, or CZ as he is known, to reach the number one cryptocurrency exchange in just six months. Binance is arguably also the fastest ever Unicorn reaching double the valuation required (hitting $2billion) and is moreover profitable. ‘If you had asked me a month ago when we would hit the number one spot,’ says CZ from Tokyo where he had not stopped working all over the holidays, ‘I might have answered six to nine months. If you had asked me about unicorn status, I might have thought the same period. This growth has surprised even me.’ Binance may be an overnight success but CZ has certainly put in the time and there is very little left to chance in this booming exchange. With three lines of business: trading, incubation labs and Binance’s ICO Launchpad, things are moving very quickly. Two ICOs have already been rolled out on the Launchpad; GIFTO and Bread. The two ICOs raised $3million and $3.5million respectfully in a matter of minutes. ‘We are building a community of trust,’ says CZ. ‘Part of that is the release of ICO funds.’ In an exclusive […]
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The Pineapple Fund, Using Bitcoin Profits For Crypto Good
CCN When Bitcoin hit the $20,000 high in late 2017 there was endless talk of how much money people holding coins had made. It was reminiscent of Dublin during the Celtic Tiger where dinner party conversations were dominated by the rising price of houses. On the face of it, these Bitcoin conversations were all about greed. However there are exceptions. While there are many people making money from Bitcoin, there are also do-gooders who are donating Bitcoin to charities and causes. We have covered some of these people and organisations here (Paxful) and here (CharityStars). One of the largest donators to hit the press ever in the history of Bitcoin is an unknown man or woman who goes by the name ‘Pine’ and has set up ‘The Pineapple Fund’. The name The Pineapple Fund comes from the fact that if you eat too much pineapple your mouth can become sore and you can develop a temporary intolerance to them. While anonymous, he or she quoted on their website: “I’ve always liked Pineapple but since it contains bromelain [an enzyme that digests protein] your mouth becomes tender if you eat too much of it. Then, like now, is a good time […]
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Did You Realise Coinhive Has Been Using Your CPU Power For Altcoin Mining?
CCN Coinhive mining – a victimless crime? Coinhive delivered a clever piece of software in September with very little fanfare. Website owners were asked to create an account with Coinhive and then run their application on their websites. The software was an in-browser java script app that allowed the host website use the visiting people’s CPU’power to mine for alt coin Monero. Visitors were unaware of this CPU filtering, or stealing, and may only have spotted that their machine had slowed down or their fans suddenly revved up. Typically the additional electrical costs per stolen CPU ran in the region of a few dollars per month, but it all adds up of course for the website miner if they can get multiple visitors ‘donating’ their CPU. Sophos Senior Technologies Paul Ducklin is calling out the practice. ‘Here at Sophos we don’t agree with the subterfuge,’ he says. ‘We are calling it parasite-ware. The donating CPU may not be actually damaged and the energy costs next to minimal in most cases, but it is permission-less and therefore unacceptable.’ Ducklin compared it to an employee driving to a restaurant for lunch and the loaning the company car to a stranger to run […]
Continue readingAndy Tian Interview, CEO Of The Fastest Selling ICO In Asia, $30 Million Raised In 1 Minute!
CCN GIFTO – Enter the blockchain Andy Tian has been labelled a ‘traditional’ entertainment man coming as he does from the world of online, mobile, gamified entertainment. ‘That was before I moved into the blockchain arena,’ he says, ‘it is funny to think that pre-blockchain is considered traditional.’ He has the last laugh, however, with the ICO for GIFTO, the virtual gifting protocol, closing out in one minute to the tune of $30million. ‘Two third were institutional investors and the last $10million came in one minute.’ GIFTO was the fastest selling ICO in Asia. It was four times over-subscribed and it will be the largest non-crypto adoption of blockchain technology by a mile. Tian expects a minimum of 5million users and 100,000 content creators when the product launches in Q1 of next year. How can he be so confident? As CEO of AIG, Asia Innovations Group, Tian brings a wealth of ‘traditional’ gaming experience to the table. Previously he was head of Zynga China and there he learnt the business of gaming. ‘The millions made in the gaming industry are from virtual purchases and assets.’ He explains. ‘Gamers buy virtual swords, armour, tools – all […]
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Trying To Bring Order And Analysis To The World Of ICOs, Dmitry Machikhin, Cofounder Of ICObench
CCN ICObench, trying to become the Forbes of the ICO world. Only formed in August 2017, already ICObench is cornering the market as the ratings agency for the ICO world. With more than 1500 ICOs listed on their pages, 100 waiting for review per day and 1000 more in the pipeline, the platform is growing faster than it can almost cope. ‘We are looking to automate much of the qualifications of the ICOs,’ says CEO and co-founder Dmitry Machikhin from St Petersburg. ‘We have six editors working full time but we have our hands full.’ It might be argued indeed that the burgeoning ICO industry needed a ratings system or platform to try and manage the difficult task of measuring the numerous offerings. While most companies use uniform website layouts, similar white papers and often share advisers, there was no formal rating system to offer a quick and easy guide for investors and industry watchers. Machikhin’s background is maths and linguistics. He worked for Cointelegraph and used coinmarketcap.com as a ready reference but felt there was something missing – something that would bridge the gap. ‘We wanted to provide a platform where we could inform interested parties of the quality […]
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CharityStars, Aiming For The Stars
CCN ‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Oscar Wilde Four years ago Francesco Nazari Fusetti set up CharityStars, a fund raising platform for charities. It linked celebrities with charitable causes, delivering funds to charities in a transparent, online manner. Initially Fusetti approached celebrities, looking to get them to donate their time, possessions or support for charity. Over time, this has changed and charities began instead to approach the CharityStars platform to post their projects with their own celebrity ambassadors; CharityStars having proven an ability to deliver – matching causes, celebrities and donors – the latter now numbering 40,000 active people. Fusetti is very proud of his organisation pointing to the $10 million raised since the formation of the company with mainstream charities benefitting such as WWF, UNICEF and Save the Children. With the original office located in his native Italy and still accounting for more than 30% of all income generated, new offices have been opened in the UK and US. This is important as while the donors and bidders are worldwide, many of the celebrity experiences on offer are geographically based – such as lunch with a star or a […]
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Cryptocurrencies Bring Greater Freedom To Individuals, David Drake, Global ICO Expert
CCN “The beauty of Cryptocurrencies is that they offer the same freedom to the individual as that traditionally enjoyed by large corporates” It must be the Swedish nature of David Drake that lends him to want individuals to enjoy the same tax and privacy privileges of large corporations. ‘Isn’t that the beauty of owning Bitcoin,’ he says on the line from New York. ‘Anyone can enjoy the lack of intrusion or censorship operated by countries – it’s all about freedom.’ Drake is the CEO and founder of LDJ Capital, a Multi-Family Office that looks after the wealth of UHNW (ultra high net worth) individuals and families. An independent financial institution, LDJ Capitals claims to offer its clients financial advice that is uncomplicated by franchises or connections. And recently Drake has been chatting about the benefits of cryptocurrencies on public platforms and in interviews. ‘Although I do not give trading advice,’ he emphasis, ‘I am not a trader.’ Having said that Drake scored highly on the ICObench people list – at a cool 51.6 – topping the poll of ICO bench people where he is also linked to more than 10 ICOs, both as investor and adviser – including Ambrosus (November […]
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Wall Street Comes To Crypto Street, Bringing Financial Technologies To Cryptocurrency Markets, Alexander Kravets
CCN It was late Spring 2016 that Alexander Kravets first stumbled over cryptocurrency. Driving around looking for a real estate deal, a news item flashed up on his phone. It said that Ether had jumped from $80 to $130 in a matter of weeks. Intrigued Kravets had no idea what Ether was and so he rang around his friends, his trading friends, he even rang Deutsche bank but no one knew there either. ‘It was a seminal moment,’ recounts Kravets. ‘I started trading cryptocurrency the following week but it was painful. I mean it took a whole week to even open up a trading account.’ Why is this important? Well, Kravets’ early career reads a bit like The Wolf of Wall Street. While at college he got a part time job as a day trader. He got up at 6am, travelling ninety minutes to Flushing Queens outside New York and worked from 9am until 4pm, at which point he went to college not finishing until 10pm at night. This went on for some seven months with little or no success. He was threatened with firing, which as a student, did not bother him overmuch, until he got the hang of it and […]
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Why Hashgraph Could Replace The Blockchain – Dublin Meetup Sparks Interest
The first meetup for hashgraph enthusiasts in Dublin happened last night in the Bank of Ireland Workbench in Montrose. Ably fortified by pizza and coffee, approximately 20 people showed up to listen to Conor O’Higgins, content manager in Ireland for hashgraph. A show of hands at the start showed the audience was already aware of the technology with over half hailing from an engineering background. There were some cryptocurrency traders attending as well. Conor stepped through the interesting aspects of the technology, talking though the consensus algorithms, Byzantine Emperors and the gossip about gossip protocols. For more information on the technology visit this article. (November 29). Questions from the meetup concentrated on how hashgraph charged per transactions – looking at the mining approach from Blockchain. O’Higgins pointed out that currently, hashgraph is only deployed in private, permissioned-based networks. ‘Real use examples included CULedger,’ he explained, ‘which is a credit union consortium supported by the efforts of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the Mountain West Credit Union Association (MWCUA).’ Other engineers present were familiar with the Credit Unions example. ‘It’s a situation where individual Credit Unions don’t know or trust each other but they need to transact,’ said one engineer. ‘Hashgraph offers the […]
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