Square Cash Has A Beautiful Landing Page But Fails To Provide Real Bitcoin Services

Square Cash Has A Beautiful Landing Page But Fails To Provide Real Bitcoin Services

Square Cash, also known as “Cash” or Square, Inc. has recently added Bitcoin investing to their list of services.  Square Cash allows users to transfer money using a phone app. The platform now boasts over 7 million users, as of 2018.

Why Square Cash Fails To Provide Real Bitcoin Services

With their new found interest in Bitcoin and blockchain technology, Square, Inc. is now allowing users to purchase and hold Bitcoin in their app. The catch is, they hold the blockchain asset, not you. We explored their new service offering and were completely let down. It turns out you can’t send or receive Bitcoin from the Square app. There are no bitcoin addresses to be seen. Bitcoin and blockchain are all about transparency and the Square Cash app gives users the opposite. They tell you that you now hold Bitcoin in the app but how do you know? You simply can’t verify the information. We doubt they are lying about any of the info displayed, but how would you know otherwise?

If Square Cash wants acceptance from Bitcoin investors, they will have to update their app and make it more transparent. There needs to be proof of purchase on the Bitcoin blockchain. Verifiability is paramount in the blockchain space.

What we liked was their beautiful landing page and informative information about Bitcoin and it’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Check out some screenshots from https://cash.me/bitcoin :

 

New US Congress Report Praises Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology

New US Congress Report Praises Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology

The report is generally positive on the matter of cryptocurrency, which is surprising. They want “policymakers” to be more educated about blockchain and its potential.

It seems the US government is warming up to crypto and accepting the fact that blockchains are not going away.

Excerpts From The Cryptocurrency Report:

Blockchain Looks Like the New Internet

“The buzz surrounding digital currencies resembles the internet excitement in the late 1990s when people recognized technology companies could change the world. Many internet companies launched and their valuations took off in short order. Many failed, but a few succeeded spectacularly and challenged the conventional ways of doing business.”

 

Cryptocurrencies Could Outshine Government Fiat

“Some critics of currencies controlled by government fiat welcome cryptocurrencies because their supply is preprogrammed and perceived as unchangeable. For example, only 21 million bitcoins will ever be issued and the last fraction of a bitcoin will be issued in approximately 2140. Additionally, the creator of Ethereum designed its mining reward to decline exponentially as more miners create blocks, and according to his calculations the supply will be just over 100 million ether.”

 

Blockchain Is Secure and Efficient

“Cryptocurrencies and ICOs create headlines, and the pace of financial innovation in the blockchain space amazes skeptics. Yet, with all the headlines focusing on the financial applications, people may miss the digital revolution now happening with other blockchain applications. Even worse, people could be frightened about new developments with the technology as they associate blockchains with the negative headlines. Blockchain technology offers a decentralized, secure, and efficient way to store almost any form of data across multiple platforms.”

 

The Conclusion

“Technology presents evolving challenges and generates new solutions. Blockchain technology essentially stores and transmits data securely, in large volume, and at high speeds. So far, the technology has proved largely resistant to hacking, and given this feature, developers first applied it to digital currencies. Yet blockchain has many more potential applications, such as portable medical records and securing the critical financial and energy infrastructure that the Report identified.”

Source

John Oliver Covers Bitcoin And Cryptocurrencies On Last Week Tonight

John Oliver Covers Bitcoin And Cryptocurrencies On Last Week Tonight

John Oliver is an English comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor and television host. He is most known for is work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and now he is making a name for himself on his very own show on HBO called Last Week Tonight.

Quite recently he released an entire episode covering Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Oliver does a great job aggregating information to explain Bitcoin:

“I’m a virtual currency, worldwide, that you can send for little to no fees, open source, not controlled by any government, corporation or individual. It’s financial freedom BRO!”

He even brought on Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World, who spoke on the security of blockchain technology:

“A blockchain is a very highly processed thing like a chicken mcnugget and if you wanted to hack it it would be like turning a chicken mcnugget back into a chicken. Now someday someone will be able to do that but for now it’s going to be tough.”

We commend John Oliver for covering Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which we believe are the future of finance and data recording.

For much of the episode Oliver focuses on responsibility when investing in cryptocurrencies telling viewers to not invest any more than they could afford to lose, which is a pretty standard phrase in any financial market. But still good advice.

John Oliver also hones in on the EOS project, which he clearly does not understand. He reads off the initial coin offering numbers scoffing at how much value the EOS team has raised. Oliver also doesn’t understand Block.one’s obscure mission statement and relationship to the EOS blockchain. Launching a cryptocurrency that competes against state created fiat currencies is highly illegal according to governments. Block.one does not want to be held directly responsible for the launch of the decentralized network. If governments could find out who Satoshi Nakamoto is, you had better believe they would kill him.

Watch the episode below:

Dear John Oliver – By eosio On Medium

Block.one’s CTO Daniel Larimer has previously built and deployed two of the most used (and “usable”) decentralized applications to date. Having originally worked on the development of Bitcoin and feeling it would not adequately perform, Dan developed a scalable high performance Blockchain architecture, now widely known as Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS); today DPOS processes the majority of all blockchain transactions globally.

EOSIO is designed to leverage DPOS and familiar scripting languages to enable developers and businesses to more easily take advantage of high performance blockchain capabilities, and deploy open source community driven business models.

Block.one believes Blockchain technologies have the potential to become the next mainstream infrastructure for communication and commerce, and can introduce new freedoms while streamlining compliance and universal interoperability. The company is committed to the technological and regulatory innovation required to push forward on common ground for developers, users, businesses, and regulatory agencies around the world.

Block.one and community contributors make continual progress on the development of the EOSIO platform that can be viewed on the EOSIO Github, a fully transparent hub where the real time progress of feature creation through to completion can be viewed and contributed to.

They then discussed Brock Pierce, who is now moving on to independent community building and investment activities. In short the Block.one crew has no hard feelings and is thankful for his contributions.

They went on to say:

As a growing company building value through an open source community as opposed to traditional avenues of proprietary software ownership, we are conscious of the importance of robust corporate communications. We take professional standards seriously and are always focused on raising the bar as our company transitions from startup to aggressive growth. We value acknowledgment of room for continued improvement and remain confident in our mission to further the impact of Blockchain as a foundational technology.

Thanks again for the entertaining reminder to stay informed when it comes to new industries, concepts, and people.

Your fans at Block.one

P.S. If you’re interested in blockchain based Beanie Babies, we recommend exploring #Cryptokitties

Coinbase Will Add More Altcoins In 2018

Coinbase Will Add More Altcoins In 2018

Coinbase is one of the most popular websites to buy cryptocurrency. We are now hearing that Coinbase will add more Altcoins in 2018.

from ethereumworldnews.com

“In an interview with CNBC, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong discusses how bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are becoming Stock Market 2.0. Armstrong also notes that Coinbase will be adding several new cryptocurrencies in 2018 to go along with the three they currently offer — Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong:

“The ones that are the most exciting to us that we have on the platform today are bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin, but there’s many more that are going to be added to the platform in 2018 and I think this is going to be a really exciting space for all kinds of institutional investors to make money.”

Which Altcoins Will Coinbase Add?

We are not certain, but if we had to guess we would say that the best contenders are Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Iota, Dash, and Monero. (in that order).

We are huge fans and supporters of all these altcoins except Ripple. Ripple (XRP) is a token on a centralized blockchain and for supporters of central banks.

Here are their prices as of 12/27/17

 

Start Using Bitcoin With Coinbase Today!

Buy Gift Cards With Bitcoin For Your Favorite Store Or Restaurant

Buy Gift Cards With Bitcoin For Your Favorite Store Or Restaurant

Did you know that you can buy Gift Cards with Bitcoin for a plethora of stores and eateries? eGifter.com sells eGift Cards from over 250 national brands in the US.

“eGifter is a web and mobile app that lets you buy eGift cards for yourself or give them to your friends via email or your favorite social network. You can add an animated eGreeting card, personal message and video. You can even invite others to chip in, making it a group gift!”

You can always “cash out” of your Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on exchanges like Coinbase or get a Bitcoin debit card. But sometimes it is just as convenient to get a gift card for your favorite store.

Did we mention they have a rewards program for customers? 100 eGifter points is equal to $1. You can get 1 eGifter Point for every $1 spent with a credit card or PayPal. BUT for every $1 spent with Bitcoin you get 2 eGifter Points!

 

Card Options:

“eGifter uses BitPay to process bitcoin transactions. All bitcoin transactions are secure. Transactions may take up to 30 minutes to process*.”

We purchased some eGift cards from eGifter to see how easy it would be to pay with Bitcoin. We were very pleased with our results.

Get Ready! Hardware Wallets Are Coming To Exodus – The Full Exodus Wallet Roadmap

Get Ready! Hardware Wallets Are Coming To Exodus – The Full Exodus Wallet Roadmap

Exodus is easily one of our favorite Bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallets. The UI is amazing, you can store a multitude of different blockchain tokens and there is a built in exchange tool.

AND EXODUS LETS YOU CONTROL YOUR PRIVATE KEYS 👍

Currently Exodus supports Aragon, Augur, BAT, Bitcoin, Civic, Decred, Dash, EOS, Ethereum, Gnosis, Golem, Litecoin, OmiseGo, Qtum and SALT.

And now It has been confirmed! Hardware wallets will be available for Exodus!

“The Exodus team is very keen to add hardware wallet support (e.g. Trezor, KeepKey, Ledger Nano). I can also tell you that personally JP and I both want hardware wallet support ASAP… We also have heard from a number of high-net worth investors this is the ideal platform with the added hardware auth.

We can likely expect support for hardware wallets on Exodus sometime in 2018. The roadmap below has all the details on what Exodus plans to work on.

From woobull.com:

 

The Full EXODUS Roadmap

Feature Standard Release Eden[1]Release Details
Bitcoin 2015.12.09
Litecoin 2015.12.09
Dogecoin Removed Available in the initial 0.4.0 public release (2015.12.09), but removed for users with zero balances in 1.31.0 (2017.08.03) and fully removed from 1.34.0 onwards (2017.09.14) see Reddit post for more details.
Ethereum 2016.02.12 ERC20 asset support in v1.23.0 (2017.04.14)
Dash 2016.04.08 Excludes InstantX and PrivateSend features.
Golem 2017.04.14 Golem is the first ERC20 token to be supported by Exodus.
Augur 2017.04.27
Decred 2017.06.22 Excludes support for staking, but this is under evaluation for a future release.
EOS 2017.07.06
Aragon 2017.07.06
Gnosis 2017.07.20
OmiseGo 2017.08.25
Basic Attention Token 2017.08.31 2017.08.25
Civic 2017.09.14
Qtum 2017.08.31 2017.08.25
0x 2017.08.25
Bancor 2017.08.25
Bitcoin Cash 2017.08.25
DigixDAO 2017.08.25
District0x 2017.08.25
FirstBlood 2017.08.25
FunFair 2017.08.25
Metal 2017.08.25
Status 2017.08.25
Storj 2017.08.25
Wings 2017.08.25
Factom 2017.08.31 Private beta released 2017.02.10
SALT 2017.09.20
Ethereum Classic 2017.09.23

Exodus Eden Updates

  • 2017.08.25 : v1.32.0
  • 2017.08.31 : v1.33.1 : FCT
  • 2017.09.20 : v1.34.2 : SALT
  • 2017.09.23 : v1.34.3 : ETC

Future Roadmap

Feature Status Details
SEGWIT developing Support for Bitcoin SegWit transactions, currently under development, will reduce transaction fees.
Ripple developing
NEO developing
Monero 2017 Monero remains on the Exodus roadmap and we are excited to include this asset. Unfortunately, the UI/UX of Monero remains difficult and is still not ideal. Today novice users continue have difficulty with transaction notifications from the current beta GUI wallet from the Monero core team. Because Exodus does personal one-on-one support for each Exodus user we feel including Monero too early would cause a massive support burdon and confuse casual digital asset enthusiasts. Good news is we are getting closer and we do expect Monero to be included in 2017. Although pros and technical users may like bleeding edge technology, until Monero is rock solid, tested and “dog-fooded” internally Exodus will not release Monero until it is ready for “normal” (non-technical) digital asset consumers. Exodus posted an update on Reddit regarding the history and details on XMR integration (Jan 31, 2017).
ICONOMI 2017 Iconomi is an ERC20 token and expected to be released in 2017
Omni 2018 Likely in 2018. Omni, Maid, Tether all fall in the same body of work for Exodus
Maidsafe 2018 Maid is an Omni token and was expected to be released in 2017, but now delayed until 2018. These assets are built on the Bitcoin blockchain and will be contingent on the hard fork outcome in Q4 2017.
Tether 2018 Tether is an Omni token was expected to be released in 2017, but now delayed until 2018. These assets are built on the Bitcoin blockchain and will be contingent on the hard fork outcome in Q4 2017. We are most excited about Tether because of the ability to have a stable peg inside of the Exodus environment.
2FA planned 2-factor authentication support is on the roadmap, this is likely to precede Hardware Wallet Support
HARDWARE WALLET planned The Exodus team is very keen to add hardware wallet support (e.g. Trezor, KeepKey, Ledger Nano). I can also tell you that personally JP and I both want hardware wallet support ASAP… We also have heard from a number of high-net worth investors this is the ideal platform with the added hardware auth.
. .
Siacoin evaluating Exodus is intrigued with Sia but have not looked the tech to see what the options are.
SingularDTV evaluating SingularDTV is an ERC20 token.
TenX evaluating
Zcash evaluating If the Zcash network remains stable and has continual upgrades it is likely we will support this asset in 2017.
. .
Blackcoin excluded Exodus will have more interest in integrating staking protocols once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake with Casper
Bytecoin excluded
Counterparty excluded
GameCredits excluded
IOTA excluded
Lisk excluded
NEM excluded
NXT excluded
Peercoin excluded Exodus will have more interest in integrating staking protocols once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake with Casper
Steem excluded
Stellar excluded
Synereo excluded
Waves excluded

UPDATE HISTORY:

  • 2016-09-19: Storj, Siacoin, Blackcoin, Peercoin, Synereo, Bytecoin
  • 2016-09-23: Zcash
  • 2016-09-30: Monero, Omni, Tether
  • 2016-10-07: ICONOMI, Augur, SingularDTV, DigixDAO
  • 2016-10-17: Ethereum Classic
  • 2016-10-25: Waves
  • 2016-11-05: Maidsafe, Omni, Tether
  • 2016-11-13: Monero
  • 2017-01-15: Updates to status of most coins
  • 2017-02-13: Factom
  • 2017-03-07: Factom ETA updated
  • 2017-04-02: Factom ETA updated
  • 2017-04-06: ERC20, Golem
  • 2017-04-17: ERC20, Golem
  • 2017-04-22: Decred, Storj
  • 2017-05-01: Augur
  • 2017-06-05: Ethereum Classic
  • 2017-06-07: Factom
  • 2017-06-22: Decred
  • 2017-07-10: EOS, Aragon
  • 2017-07-20: Gnosis, Dogecoin, 2FA support
  • 2017-08-17: OmiseGo
  • 2017-08-27: Exodus Eden Assets: 0x, Basic Attention Token, Bitcoin Cash, Bancor, Civic, DigixDAO, District0x, FirstBlood, FunFair, Metal, Qtum, Status, Storj
  • 2017-08-27: Roadmap updates: OMNI, Tether, Ripple, NEO, IOTA, SALT, SegWit Txs
  • 2017-09-18: Basic Attention Token, Civic, Qtum
  • 2017-09-21: Factom, SALT
  • 2017-09-24: Ethereum Classic