(Page 124)

After only five months, Facebook has begun to backtrack on its cryptocurrency advertisement ban which was put into effect back in January. The move by Facebook was quickly followed by similar bans imposed by Google and Twitter on their respective platforms. Now, however. it would seem that the social media giant is slowly but surely opening the doors back up to certain cryptocurrency advertisers.

The ban was never easy to enforce

Facebook had trouble enforcing the ban for quite a while after it was initially put in place. Mere days after the ban, cryptocurrency advertisements were still being seen on the social network. The method of enforcement was perhaps slightly naive on Facebook’s part. The idea was to put a blanket ban on ads making any mentions of terms like ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘ICOs’, ‘initial coin offerings’, and ‘blockchain’.

Clever crypto-enthusiasts simply reworded their ads in order to bypass the filter put in place. All they had to do was use the term ‘c-currencies’ and ‘c-trading’ instead of ‘cryptocurrencies’ and ‘crypto-trading’. As such, Facebook had to widen the scope of words their filters would catch, and thus began a long back-and-forth between the platform and the advertisers.

The reversal of the ban is only partial

One of the main reasons for the ban in the first place was the fact that so many ICOs turned out to be scams. For this reason, the ban imposed on advertisers still holds for ICOs and binary options. When it comes to cryptocurrencies themselves, and other related products and services, the ban has effectively been lifted. A spokesperson for Facebook has however mentioned that all advertisers will have to go through a vetting process before they’re allowed to place an ad.

This vetting process involves advertisers having to submit an application along with their ad. Along with the application, the advertisers need to let Facebook know of any licenses they hold, if they have a presence on public stock exchanges, as well as provide details of their official business information. These restrictions will greatly reduce the number of advertisers who are eligible to place an ad on Facebook.

Facebook calls on the community to help out

The ban was initially put in place to protect the Facebook community from fraudulent activity. This activity can still be seen occasionally, with the odd ‘Bitc0in’ ad having passed through the filter. Some scammers have even claimed that cryptocurrencies are now an official currency in Sweden, in order to lend legitimacy to their ad.

Because Facebook’s filter will never be able to catch 100% of scammers, the spokesperson has called on the wider Facebook community to help police the space and report any dodgy advertisements they come across.

Meanwhile, Facebook is working on their own cryptocurrency. If and when this is launched, the ban might be completely reversed and the restrictions lifted. It could, however, also go in the completely opposite direction. Why would Facebook not ban all other cryptocurrencies than their own? The temptation to eliminate competition in this way would be irresistible to most companies.

Those of us who have been following the progress of blockchain technology since the launch of Bitcoin back in 2009 have spent a lot of time discussing the money side of things. But blockchain technology is so much more than simply a gateway to a new form of currency.

The technology that underpins cryptocurrency is much more potent than that. It has the potential to transform several aspects of our everyday lives. Fortunately, people in the know are working relentlessly on bringing about the realisation of blockchain technology’s full potential. Verification is a huge part of our society, as it helps ensure that trust is not only built, but also maintained. with this in mind, let’s have a look at some of the kinds of verification the blockchain can help us improve.

From coffee supply chains to land ownership

The prosperity of a country relies heavily on its ability to trade with other countries by exporting goods and services. Ethiopia is a country that relies on its export of coffee beans. Cardano is a blockchain platform that is being developed to help Ethiopia track the comings and going of their valued export. Input Output HK is the company behind Cardano, and they have ambitions that stretch much further than the tracking of coffee beans. Their vision includes the tracking of land ownership on the African continent.

From beef to university diplomas

Similar to Ethiopia, Cambodia and Vietnam are relying on their individual exports to prosper. In this case, the goods are not coffee, but beef. Here, Cardano is also being used to track the progress of the beef supply chain. The company applying Cardano in Cambodia and Vietnam is another blockchain startup called Emerge Hong Kong. Although they are not seeking to use the Cardano platform for tracking land ownership in Asia, they do have other uses for it in mind. Their plans include using the platform to issue digital university certificates. In a world of fake news and scam artists, this is a much welcomed addition to the verification of official documents such as university diplomas.

How does it all work?

Trading with cryptocurrency involves the recording of transactions on the blockchain. The decentralised nature of these transactions is what makes them so safe compared to traditional forms of transactions. Because the records are not kept in one particular place at any given time, but rather spread across many devices at all times, they are never lost. Furthermore, once a transaction is recorded, it cannot be deleted or modified in any way. Finally, because the records are kept on a collective network, there are much lower costs associated with maintaining the database. This is what is so attractive about the blockchain model, particularly for developing countries, and which is why it is applicable to supply chains.

What does the future look like?

Input Output HK are working closely together with the Ministry of Science and Technology of Ethiopia, which indicates that the governments can see the potential in blockchain technology. Input Output HK have also started offering free classes to aspiring developers, so they can contribute to the project with their talents. Back in Cambodia, the government is also interested in the ability of Cardano to prevent the smuggling of beef to China, which has banned the import of Japanese beef.

Strykz ICO Review

With the World Cup raging on, there is no doubt that football is the most popular sport in the world. Fans are not content with simply being spectators, however, they want to be part of the game. This has been made possible with the emergence of fantasy football, which football fans across the world have participated in for many years. Now, however, fantasy football is about to be ‘blockchainized’. Let us have a look at the Strykz project and their Football-Stars platform.

What is Strykz?

Strykz is an ICO that aims to tokenize all fantasy sports, starting with football. The team behind the ICO already has an existing platform for this in place, called Football-Stars. The platform has won numerous awards, and the Strykz ICO is intended to take it to the next level. It is an attractive platform for people passionate about football, as many of them have a deep knowledge of the game that they want to put to the test.

Football-Stars is a platform where they can take on the role of coach and manager, create their own team of real-life football players, and compete with their friends and family. The outcome of the games is calculated based on the real-life players’ performance statistics. However, the team behind Strykz have plans on allowing users to generate their own games so that they are not bound by traditional rules. This will allow the community to define the criteria for winning a particular game, as well as the costs of participating in it.

How does Strykz work?

The aim is to develop Football-Stars into a community-driven platform, where users generate the majority of the content. No longer will they be constrained by the leagues and games set up by platform administrators, users can put together their own leagues and games that others can enjoy. In return for contributing with the content of their own, they will be rewarded with cryptocurrency tokens.

These tokens can, in turn, be redeemed for additional platform features or real-life football merchandise. It is also possible to spend the tokens on participating in other user-generated challenges on the platform. The advantage of doing this is that users will be rewarded with more tokens for doing so. In essence, they can continue to play indefinitely. Being monetarily incentivized to play fantasy football and receiving merchandise in return for it is a dream come true for any football fan.

What are the key features of Strykz?

One of the main attractive features of the Football-Stars platform is that the developers offer is as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). This means that other companies can launch it internationally, and thus spread it to other markets in other languages than English. The team behind the platform offers this as a way for businesses to save 70% on development costs, in exchange for purchasing a license. As mentioned earlier, users will also be able to monetize their contributions to the platform and be rewarded with tokens that can be exchanged for merchandise. A win-win situation for everyone involved.

bitcointalk Username: Ico Friends

My ETH adress:
0xcD3347Bd7595750473b2dC8d2F32f28a32C868b7

Cotrader ICO Review

If you are in the game of trading assets or currency, you will know that there is a lot of red tape involved. All trades usually have to go through a number of intermediaries before it can be finalised. Would it not be nice if there was a way to avoid all the hassle involved with trading, so you could you get on with business?

Fortunately, the cryptocurrency space has spawned a solution to this problem. As always, blockchain technology makes the process of getting real work done much easier than legacy technology. Cotrader is one of the ICOs that are designed to make life as a trader much easier than ever imagined before.

How does Cotrader work?

By utilising blockchain technology, the team behind Cotrader has cleverly circumvented many of the obstacles slowing down the process of trading. The platform aims to give traders much-needed control over their assets, whilst also securing them on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, this eliminates the chain of middlemen that is usually involved in the trading process. The peer-to-peer system integrated into the platform puts traders in direct contact with each other, which also reduces the costs associated with transactions. The exchanges that are built in to the platform also allows traders to do their business using multiple kinds of cryptocurrency tokens. In short, Cotrader is looking to revolutionize the $16 trillion asset management industry in the United States.

What is a Smart Fund?

Because Cotrader is using the Ethereum network, smart contracts are bound to pop up. In this instance, a Smart Fund is a smart contract that has several people attached to it, including fund managers and investors. The smart contract also has shares, which can be traded for cryptocurrency. These shares are allocated to the investors of the Smart Fund. The fund manager of the Smart Fund can in turn use the investors’ money to make a profit. The advantage here is that investors are able to withdraw their investment at any time, much like depositing money into a bank.

What is a Fund Manager?

In order to become a Fund Manager on the Cotrader platform, you have to pay a small one-time fee for each transaction that is connected to any given Smart Fund. This fee is deducted from any profit that a Fund Manager makes from an investment in any given Smart Fund.

What is a Calculating Fund?

The investors will deposit their investments into Smart Funds. When using Cotrader, these investments will automatically be converted into the native cryptocurrency, which is COT tokens. When an investment is made, the value of the Smart Fund is calculated. Based on this calculation, the number of shared allocated to the investor is then worked out. If the Smart Fund is only based on COT tokens, this process is simple. However, if there are several different kinds of cryptocurrencies involved, each with their own value, it becomes slightly more complicated. Fortunately, the algorithms used by Cotrader are very sophisticated.

bitcointalk Username: Ico Friends