Adult Entertainment Platform SpankChain Launches Crypto Payments Processor

Ethereum-based adult entertainment platform SpankChain has launched a cryptocurrency payments processor together with two new partners.

Ethereum-based adult entertainment platform SpankChain has launched a cryptocurrency payments processor together with two new partners.

An announcement published on July 31 reveals that the new service — dubbed SpankPay — is being launched with its first two integration partners: the adult entertainment industry fan platform JustFor.Fans and SkypPrivate, an anonymity-focused service that connects models and their clients via Skype and Discord.

The Adult Entertainment Space Goes Blockchain

SpankPay will enable users to use a host of cryptocurrencies — including BTC, ETH, LTC, Zcash, Monero and others — for instant transactions and 1-click purchasing for adult products and entertainment, and offers merchants a 0.5% processing fee to use the service.

SpankChain — which focuses on building blockchain-based economic and technological infrastructure for the adult entertainment space — has already launched a camsite dubbed SPANK.live, which will soon integrate crypto payments processing via SpankPay.

Representatives from the two partners have underscored that blockchain-powered infrastructure can provide critical value for the adult entertainment space, with JustFor.Fans creator Dominic Ford noting that:

“Using SpankChain, we don’t have to worry about being shut down due to the fact we are an adult company. We’d much rather support our fellow adult solution providers than use outside solutions that are potentially not adult-friendly.”

Alex Bluck, the CEO of SkyPrivate — which also operates WhatsApp sexting service OurLittleSecret and an adult models service e-commerce platform — has said that the partnership with SpankChain will help ensure that individuals in all industries are accorded equal rights and payment for their services.

Stolen booty

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, SpankChain lost funds denominated in ETH and its native token BOOTY back in October 2018 — $9,000 of which consisted of customer holdings. The company, however, persuaded the hacker to return the stolen funds in full and pledged to reimburse affected investors.

At the start of this year, major cryptocurrency payment service provider BitPay revealed it had reported $1 billion in transactions in 2018 and had seen its B2B business grow by almost 255% since 2017.

Cointelegraph has just released a documentary — “Sex and Crypto” — devoted to the increasing use of cryptocurrency as a payment method in the adult entertainment industry.

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Tech Firm Seagate Pilots Anti-Fraud Blockchain Tracking With IBM

Data storage giant Seagate has extended its blockchain work with IBM to gauge the fake-fighting potential of the tech.

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Huobi Announces Its Wallet Be ‘Baking’ Tezos With XTZ Support Coming

The wallet provided by cryptocurrency exchange Huobi will support Tezos XTZ tokens and baking.

The wallet provided by cryptocurrency exchange Huobi will support Tezos (XTZ) native tokens and baking, the wallets official Twitter account announced on July 31.

Huobi Wallet to support Tezos

In the aforementioned tweet, Huobi Wallet announced that it will support the Tezos native token and its Proof of Stake (PoS) staking counterpart — baking — in the near future. Part of the announcement reads:

“Thrilled to announce that Huobi Wallet will be a #Tezos baker and support #XTZ soon.”

A self-amending PoS blockchain

The tweet also explains that Tezos is a so-called self-amending network, which means that it is capable of updating without going through a hard fork thanks to a complex system of on-chain mechanisms and voting. The tweet further claims that Tezos is “leading the way in POS & governance” and concludes:

“As a multi-currency wallet app, it is a no brainer to add XTZ.”

As of press time, Tezos trading at $1.25 and increased its value by 0.57% over the last 24 hours according to Coin360 data.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier this week, major cryptocurrency platform Coinbase is onboarding the cryptocurrency Tezos to its professional trading platform, Coinbase Pro.

At the beginning of the current month, it has been announced that Latin America’s biggest investment bank, BTG Pactual, plans to shift its security token offerings, a pipeline of over $1 billion in sales, onto the Tezos blockchain.

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Kraken Exchange Acquires Service Provider for Institutional Investors

Crypto exchange Kraken has acquired Interchange, an accounting and portfolio reconciliation service provider for institutional cryptocurrency investors.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has acquired Interchange, an accounting and portfolio reconciliation service provider for institutional cryptocurrency investors.

A press release published on July 31 outlines that the acquisition supports Kraken’s creation of an end-to-end crypto trading and reconciliation platform. 

An arsenal of tools for institutional clients

As the release outlines, Interchange’s co-founders and crypto veterans Dan Held and Clark Moody have evolved Interchange to serve cryptocurrency hedge funds, asset managers and fund administrators, providing them with specialized tools to monitor and report their crypto holdings and optimize their portfolios.

The 60+ institutional clients using Interchange’s software include MG Stover — reportedly the world’s largest fund administrator for digital asset funds.

Kraken — which has apparently reported a triple-digit growth rate (%) in institutional clients year-on-year since 2014 — will combine Interchange’s tools with its existing platform, Cryptowatch, a multi-exchange charting, trading and portfolio-tracking service.

The combined tools from both Interchange and Cryptowatch will thus offer institutional clients products spanning historical and real-time data, advanced charting, multi-exchange trade execution, research and market insights, accounting and portfolio reconciliation tools, and cryptocurrency index products.

The evolving crypto hedge fund space

In an interview with Kraken — published to the exchange's blog on July 31 — Dan Held and Clark Moody gave their perspective on the development of institutional crypto investment. 

Held — who has been involved in crypto for over seven years — said that in the aftermath of the 2017 initial coin offerings frenzy, crypto hedge funds have had to adjust their focus and “deepen their understanding of Bitcoin and blockchain fundamentals.”

“Many learned a hard lesson regarding diversification in an asset class that is highly correlated. The hedge funds that have survived the crypto winter are now more mature, sophisticated and process heavy,” he said.

Moody noted that funds are diversifying their strategies and allocation approaches, spurred by the need to seal a competitive edge in a 24/7 digital marketplace. He predicted that as more capital flows in from large-scale institutional players, the crypto space will see a host of new products, including advanced derivatives.

This June, fresh data from institutional crypto lender Genesis Capital revealed a major increase in cryptocurrency activity from institutional counter-parties, with volumes 2-3x higher than they were twelve months ago. Reporters argued that this institution-led momentum could well have contributed to Bitcoin’s 2019 price rally.

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Bitcoin Hater Peter Schiff: ‘I Made a Mistake’ Not Buying Bitcoin at $10

Goldbug and fierce bitcoin critic Peter Schiff is “kicking himself” for not buying bitcoin when he first heard about it around the $10 mark. In a debate with Anthony Pompliano hosted by CNBC Crypto Trader, Schiff said: “I’m already kicking myself, I had that opportunity, I could already be a billionaire if I had only […]

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Bitcoin Passes New Milestone as Network Mines 85% of Its Total Supply

7,850,000 bitcoins have now passed through the mining process, leaving just 3.15 million more.

Bitcoin (BTC) now has 85% of its supply in circulation as of August 1, leaving just 3.15 million new coins for the next 120 years. 

3.15 million bitcoins, 120 years

According to data from monitoring resource Blockchain, Thursday saw Bitcoin miners extract the 17,850,000th unit as part of the transaction validation process. 

As a result, due to the number of coins awarded to miners per block decreasing over time, the remaining supply will only be unlocked in the year 2140. Bitcoin has a total fixed supply of 21 million units. 

Bitcoins in circulation. Source: Blockchain

“Scarcity is about to kick in,” the crypto trading account known as Rhythm on Twitter commented on the event. 

The current Bitcoin supply means only a maximum of 17,850,000 people can own an entire coin. In reality, however, some of the existing mined supply is not in circulation and never will be, as users lose access to private keys. 

Estimates, such as those from blockchain research firm Chainalysis in 2017, have put the proportion of these lost coins at up to 4 million — or over 20% of the total supply. 

Bitcoin mining competition heats up

Looking forward, May 2020 will see the next reduction in miner payouts — from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block — an event which analysts consistently state will produce Bitcoin price increases. 

Among those subscribing to the theory is analyst Filb Filb, who last month forecast that BTC/USD would not dip below $6,500 again thanks to miner support. In general, in the run-up to the halving, miners will exert considerably more influence over the Bitcoin price, he said. 

Competition among miners is already fierce since Bitcoin began booming in 2019. As Cointelegraph noted, both network hash rate and difficulty continue to set new records as activity makes Bitcoin ever more secure for its users.

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EU Committee: Blockchain Must Not Be Monopolized by a ‘Digital Elite’

EESC: public measures should be taken to ensure that blockchain’s potential as a groundbreaking infrastructure for the social economy is accessible to all.

Public measures should be taken to ensure that blockchain’s potential as a groundbreaking infrastructure for the social economy is accessible to all.  

This was the advice put forward by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in its new report devoted to blockchain, an EU Reporter article published on August 1 reveals. 

Blockchain recalls Europe’s epoch-making inventions

In key remarks accompanying its new report, the EESC says it would encourage European institutions to foster the involvement of more civil society organisations in the EU Blockchain Observatory and European Blockchain Partnership. 

The successful implementation of new digital infrastructures based on blockchain, the Committee notes, is not purely a matter of technological development but “involves a fully-fledged process of disruptive social innovation.”

Looking beyond the technology’s roots in cryptocurrencies, EESC member and president of Cecop-Cicopa Europe, Giuseppe Guerini, compared the historic importance of blockchain to that of landmark inventions on the continent:

“We can draw parallels with the invention of the printing press. As we know, the first book to be printed was a bible. Now, imagine if people had equated the printing press with a means capable of printing only bibles — that would have been inaccurate because printing technology revolutionized life in Europe.”

Preventing the emergence of a “digital divide”

The EESC has recognized a broad gamut of applications for blockchain in the social enterprise sector, including donations and fundraising for NGOs; the governance of social economy organizations; digitized, verifiable qualifications and diplomas; smart contract-powered intellectual property rights management; telemedicine and agriculture — to name just a few. 

A key concern, however, in regard to the technology’s evolution, is to ensure that there are public measures in place to support its development in an equitable way. Guerini stated:

“We don’t want to see a digital divide that creates more inequality and injustice. We don’t want to see a new elite emerging, of people who are familiar with the new technologies and end up excluding others from the economy and the market.”

To this end, the EESC argues that the involvement of civil society is crucial to ensure that the democratic potential of the decentralized technology is not lost. It points to the need for coordinated EU-wide regulation for the sector, given the technology’s application across national borders.

Back in February 2018, the European Commission launched the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, heralded as a major step toward uniting the EU economy around blockchain.

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