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Blockchain-based Media Startup Civil Shut Down

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Civil, a decentralized blockchain-based media startup, has closed its shop today, and its official website is now been replaced by the company CEO Matthew Iles’ message on this move. The crew and technology behind the media startup were all absorbed by ConsenSys.

ConsenSys is an Ethereum incubator based in New York, funded by Civil. In the meantime, employees and tech used by Civil have been assimilated to an Ethereum-based provider of identification solutions that is going forward.

The blockchain-based media startup was founded back in 2016 as one of the pioneering companies to explore the potential of blockchain technology and crypto in the media industry. In addition, the objective of Civil was to enable publishers to set up a credible media outlet by staking its native CVL tokens.

“Although the journey for Civil is over, our new team continues to develop cutting-edge technology that I believe will contribute to building a better internet. This isn’t the outcome we had envisioned, but nevertheless, we’re proud of what we accomplished,” writes IIes.

Additionally, users could also use the CVL tokens to reward publishers or even stake them to participate in decision making on the platform. Unfortunately, Civil’s initial coin offering (ICO) back in 2018 did not turn out as anticipated, forcing the startup to rework its strategy, and gave it another shot in March 2019 by offering membership to its users.

Blockchain-based media startup has been on the closing track for six months

Furthermore, as per the startup’s post mortem interview, it has been on the way to shut down for about six months now. Civil has had major employees leave and on top of this; the firm lost its basic funding from ConsenSys, and it was impossible to replace the funding.

Early into the year, the blockchain-based media startup ceased financing newsrooms; while future collaborations with established media outlets didn’t work out. As a result of all these shortcomings, the Civil’s magnificent exercise of a decentralized; self-regulated media marketplace, unfortunately, came to a stop.

Jack Dorsey’s Upcoming Decentralized Social Network Project Receives Huge Request

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Recently unveiled by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter is on a mission to build a new decentralized social media protocol called “Bluesky.” This new initiative on Twitter reportedly received several hiring applications within a couple of hours of the announcement.

Essentially, Jack Dorsey has always been an adherent of Bitcoin and the decentralized ecosystem. This time, Jack is funding a small team of researchers with a vision to build an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” By doing so, he intends to make Twitter as a client for that standard. This process isn’t undoubtedly quick and easy. Instead, it could take years to get into the process. As tweeted by Jack, the project is called “Bluesky,” and currently, the project is simply a name. However, Twitter CTO Parag Agarwal is tasked to spearhead the hiring process for the project.

As per the series of tweets, Parag Agarwal will initially hire the lead for the project, who will then be responsible for building a team of five people. Consequently, Bluesky tweeted that there are several DMs they’ve received, which require some time to get through them all. The tweet reads as follows;

Thanks all for the warm welcome! Overwhelmed with the number of DMs we’ve received! Going to take us some time to get through them all. Our first goal is to find a lead for the project who will then build the team and set the strategy. It will likely take a few months.

Twitter CEO further asserts that it was their call to make Twitter increasingly centralized for several reasons. Still, for many other reasons, it is now required to take a new path to make Twitter a decentralized social media. He elaborated a few reasons behind his vision to build a new standard for new decentralized social media protocol;

  • Centralized enforcement of the global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people.

  • Second, the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one’s attention.

  • Third, existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than a conversation that informs and promotes health.

  • Finally, new technologies (Blockchain) have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable.

Over the past few years, twitter conversation has become a centre point for people to familiar with what’s happening around the world. Besides, few media publications prefer tweets as the base for their further research, which eventually engaged their audience with the conversation happening around that particular tweet.

More so, Jack mentioned that his idea to transform social media from a centralized version to a more decentralized version was partly inspired by Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt. Notably, Mike believed in protocols, not platforms for the internet.

As for now, Twitter’s new open-source, decentralized protocol, Bluesky, is still an idea and is unique to the world. Moreover, it has yet to announce the head and other team members who will be managing it.

Stay tuned with Tron Weekly Journal to know more…

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market conditions and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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Japan’s most-used messaging app Line to launch its cryptocurrency exchange

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Tokyo-based free chat and messaging mobile app, Line, is gearing up to debut its cryptocurrency exchange, a few days after fellow social media giant, Facebook, took the airwaves with the news of launching the Libra cryptocurrency.

Libra virtual currency is Facebook’s cryptocurrency brainchild that threatens to change banking operations with its user-friendly requirements. Libra is a virtual currency that is under construction by Facebook, powered by a new blockchain type of platform developed by the social giant. Facebook’s blockchain technology shares similarities with the encrypted technology other virtual currencies use such as Bitcoin.

Libra is set to allow its users to buy products, send and receive funds at near zero transaction costs. Facebook will use its Calibra wallet to store the Libra virtual tokens that will be accessible on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

Line is putting in place measures that are going to allow it to have a grip on its massive customer base by introducing several crypto-related attributes within its application.

Japan’s Largest Messaging Application Pretty Close to Offer Crypto Exchange Services

Japan’s giant internet company and popular messaging application, Line that has more than 200 million active users took to the media to report its intentions of launching their cryptocurrency exchange.

According to media reports, that quote people close to the issue, Line’s cryptocurrency exchange could be in operation within a few weeks, with the relevant authorities expected to issue them their much-awaited license to give them the green light.

The cryptocurrency exchange will be known as BitMax. Crypto followers should note the name and not confuse it with long-serving exchange BitMex. BitMax will allow 80 million Japanese users of the messaging app to buy and trade virtual assets such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Tron, and Link; the companies default virtual currency.

As the home of the now non-operational Mt Gox which was once praised in the crypto space for handling more than 70 percent of Bitcoin’s transactions in the world, Japan’s walk with virtual currencies and blockchain technologies have been nothing but tumultuous.

Despite being the most infamous, Mt Gox is not the only cryptocurrency exchange from Japan to disappear with customers’ assets with more recently, Coincheck suffering a 530 million USD hack early this year. Initially, the hack was believed to have been conducted by North Korea, but emerging reports are showing Russia might be the culprits behind the heinous act.

Japan’s Efforts to Govern Cryptocurrency Technologies

After toiling to come up with a decision on how to approach and regulate cryptocurrencies, the Japanese Financial Service Agency (FSA) has thrown in the towel and given the crypto industry the green light to govern itself since October 2018.

Following this decision, research shows that the country has undergone about 7,000 money launder situations that involve the participation of virtual currencies in the first few months of the directive.

The situation in Japan in regards to cryptocurrencies continues to be not-so-pleasing, forcing FSA officials to conduct impromptu raids to 2 cryptocurrencies exchanges to enforce anti-money laundering guidelines.

According to crypto experts, if Line is serious about servicing the Japanese market, it will need to cut a niche of trust for itself, an activity that promises not to be easy considering the country’s problematic past with cryptocurrency.

Line’s BitMax Exchange

Reports indicate that the crypto exchange, BitMax, will utilize the same back-end technology as Line’s previous Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, BitBox. Launched in 2018, BitBox was tailor-made for global users according to some crypto analysts as it is off limits to Japanese users due to licensing and regulation issues. At the time of writing, BitBox’s transaction volume for the day is about 2 million USD according to their website.

The growing demand and adoption of virtual currencies by large corporations is contributing to crypto prices performing positively, with Bitcoin recording price appreciation of more than double figures over the past 3-months. Line’s default virtual currency, Link has also appreciated by double digits in June alone, driving its market valuation to about 30 million USD.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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Facebook relaxes its stance on cryptocurrency ads

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We saw an interesting announcement come out of Facebook a couple of days ago (Wednesday). The world’s premier social network is going to loosen up a little its famous ban on ads about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. So businesses who offer services based on digital assets or related to blockchain technology will now be able to tap into those 2.38 billion of Facebook users.

Facebook went against the blockchain industry in January 2018, as it started to block publicity related to cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings. The company’s rationale was to protect users from possible scams (as that plethora of ICO’s was deemed to be by many observers). Then, in June it started to run ads from companies that had previous approval (on writing). The new policy will allow many other companies to be publicized on Facebook without special permission.

Facebook explained its position thus:

“We’ve listened to feedback and assessed the policy’s effectiveness. […] While we will still require people to apply to run ads promoting cryptocurrency, starting today, we will narrow this policy to no longer require pre-approval for ads related to blockchain technology, industry news, education or events related to cryptocurrency.”

Over the last year, the company has had to face examination regarding its policies because they reach so widely.

CNBC reported in last October about Facebook’s ban’s harmful impact on Bloom. It’s a start-up based in San Francisco. It aims to use blockchain technology in helping its customers to keep their online personal data under control.

Bloom spent a lot of money buying Facebook ads to promote its platform (we’re talking six figures), only to be suddenly banned in October. Mind you, this is a blockchain company, but it’s not a cryptocurrency trading platform.

“It’s good to see them (hopefully) evolve their stance on new technology that puts users in control of their data,” said a statement from Bloom.

Facebook, blockchains and the future

And it’s possible that Facebook is just trying to clear the environment as it gets ready to get involved with blockchain technology itself.

It’s been known that Facebook has been developing a blockchain project of some kind for months. The firm has been very reticent about the project’s particulars. It announced very publicly that it was putting together a team of key people to explore the possibilities that blockchains could offer to Facebook.

Bloomberg is on the record reporting that Zuckerberg’s company is trying to come up with a stablecoin (a cryptocurrency backed by a physical asset). It would be incorporated into WhatsApp so that the messaging app users can exchange value within the network.

Apart from rumors, it’s known that Facebook has been recruiting help from many financial firms, e-trading companies, and other financial institutions to support its still unknown blockchain project.

So maybe Facebook is trying to be fairer. Perhaps it’s realized the amount of money it’s losing by denying ads to the cryptocurrency industry. Or maybe it just wants to soften its own position on crypto so that it won’t be too severely criticized when it finally releases its own cryptocurrency or blockchain project of any kind. And it could be a little bit of all three factors. Time what’s behind Facebook actions.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Facebook touches major payment players to invest $1B in its proprietary crypto project

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According to the recent news initially published at The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Facebook, the giant social with an active user-base of almost 2.32 Billion globally and accumulating more than $40 Billion annual revenue, has called up a bunch of digital merchants and financial institutions to raise monetary support. Efforts of such kind are being made to create its own crypto-based payment platform that could correspond its arch-rival Apple’s native payment system.

This news is the continuation of the Bloomberg‘s revelation made last year (in December) that tech-giant is working on developing its very own digital currency pegged to the USD to facilitate the consumers with an opportunity of transferring money via WhatsApp messaging app. WSJ claims that Facebook has been in talks with considerably major payment institutions, the likes of Visa, MasterCard, First Data Corp, to acquire their potential support to launch the system.

Although the company’s authorities have been tight-lipped about the project, WSJ asserts that by talking to the sources familiar with the matter, Facebook has been working to build a blockchain division within the company with a secret project dubbed as “Libra” for over a year.

The purpose of the project is to design the system in such a way that it does not only allow the users to do transaction within the platform but also on other e-commerce networks. Citing another source, WSJ notes that Facebook is looking to accumulate as much as $1 Billion (initially) for the project from VC firms. The WSJ reported:

“Facebook is also talking to e-commerce companies and apps about accepting the coin, and would seek smaller financial investments from those partners, one of the people said.”

It is not just that, once launched, Facebook plans to reward its grand user-base with portions of its proprietary coin to entice them to check out the ads or shop on the platform – the WSJ maintains.

” Facebook reportedly plans to reward users with fractions of a coin when they view ads or shop on its platform, most likely in an effort to entice people to give it a shot. If the company plays its cards right, it could have a huge userbase in no time, seeing as it has over 2 billion monthly active users.”

Although it is not clear yet that when will we see the launch of Facebook’s native cryptocurrency but according to the Barclays analyst, Ross Sandler’s estimation (made earlier this year), if every card is played correctly by the giant-social media firm, it could profit anywhere between “$3 Billion to $19Billion” in its annual revenue on the back of the crypto project.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Skype asks users to vote to bring XRP to the platform for micropayments

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Even if you are an expert in cryptocurrencies, you probably can’t use the words “XRP” and “micropayments” in a single sentence. Well, no… you could always write “Ripple’s XRP use cases have never once included micropayments.” That would be a true statement and the reason why that’s the only sentence that could probably fit those two words. There are reasons for that, but they’re changing. In this article, we give you context on what those reasons are and explain to you how they’re changing.

Crypto and purpose

These days there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies in the market, and most of them have very little to offer to investors or users because they’re little more than pet projects for its creators and as such, they issue tokens with no competitive advantage. But some blockchain projects (very few indeed) were born with a purpose from the beginning.

For instance, Ethereum created the second generation blockchain which brought programmable crypto platforms to the world that could support decentralized applications and smart contracts; Litecoin was designed so it could give you all the goodness in Bitcoin without the insane amounts of energy it takes to create new blocks for BTC; Tron wants to decentralize the web by means of blockchain technology; Electroneum wants to turn crypto into an all about mobile and micropayments thing. And then there’s XRP.

XRP is the cryptocurrency created by Ripple and Ripple is the private company behind the Ripple Net. It’s had a definite purpose every bit as much as the blockchain projects mentioned in the previous paragraph. Ripple’s aims to use its software, blockchain network and cryptocurrency to eliminate all the friction inherent to the settling of international money transfers.

That kind of financial operation is currently done using the SWIFT system (interesting name since there’s nothing “swift” about that system which is slow, expensive and unreliable). Ripple’s tech can do the same job in minutes instead of days, for fractions of a penny instead of percentages of the operation or fees ar high as USD 25,00. It’s also safer and more reliable.

Ripple’s use case of choice implies that micropayments have never been in the cards for the project. It never wanted to be a retail currency, that’s been Bitcoin’s domain since the beginning (although Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash are pressing hard in that market). It’s never been a cryptocurrency for you and me to use to pay for, say, cigarettes or beer. But that is changing. The idea was (and still remains) for banks and remittance services to adopt the token and bounce it amongst them so international transfers can be settled.

Ripple’s new priorities

But Ripple has recently understood the advantages in allowing (even promoting) its coin for micropayments. It facilitates mass adoption, it creates demand, and it increases trading volumes. In other words, it improves the project’s fundamentals which, in turn, raises the currency’s market capitalization and token value.

That’s why in recent times, Ripple has been partnering up with several companies all over the world so that XRP becomes, yes, the banking industry cryptocurrency of choice, but also a currency that is as useful for you and me as Bitcoin can be.

And Ripple is succeeding. In Europe, there are several debit cards available as you read this that allows you to use XRP tokens available in your digital wallet to pay for anything you want in the street or the web as if you were using your usual debit or credit card. Through other partnerships, XRP is now accepted in thousands of online businesses on the internet too.

So what would be the next step? Well, it could be Skype. It’s pretty much up to you, believe it or not.

Right now there’s a request at Skype’s official forums to add cryptocurrency micropayments to Skype. And the request is explicitly formulated to include XRP as means to send and receive digital money using Skype. One thousand four hundred twelve votes have been cast as we write this and, if you want to vote as well, you can do it here.

The world belongs to those who adapt, and the crypto-world won’t be any different. XRP is on the right track.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.