Cryptocurrency Africa News

Fake money is boring. At least, that's the contention of many micropayment enthusiasts, whose impatience for the Lightning Network has led to an influx of real bitcoin being transacted over the network, even though developers caution people against doing so since it's still in the testing phase. "The testnet just doesn't have the same adrenaline rush," representatives of VPN service TorGuard told CoinDesk, after announcing it would be accepting Lightning payments. And they're not the only ones –  Blockstream launched a Lightning-only merchandise store using its own Lightning implementation, c-lightning, and a  Lightning main net explorer  suggests more than $33,000 in bitcoin has been transacted via Lightning Networks. The excitement is not hard to explain – the off-chain technology promises near-instant transaction speeds with vastly reduced fees – and many enthusiasts believe using the network on the bitcoin mainnet, as opposed to on the t...

Ethereum is getting closer to deploying new technology that would allow the network to scale, its founder said. "It seems like part one of phase one is getting something like being already done," Vitalik Buterin said in a developer meeting. The technology, known as sharding, attempts to split the ethereum blockchain's data into more manageable parts. Pointing to an initial spec  posted on Github, Buterin said: "It's theoretically a good spec of what minimal sharding is going to look like." Ethereum is under pressure to keep up with the rising popularity of the platform, which has led to slower transaction times and high processing fees. The congestion has already led some token-based projects to build atop other blockchains such as Stellar . Buterin went to state that the next phase of the four-stage scaling proposal will be completed in "a month and a bit," adding that development work will likely circulate on stateless clients,...

Sitting at his desk at Credit Suisse, Sina Nader watched the bottom fall out of the global economy. As a junior associate helping manage a $100 million portfolio of equities, he had a first-hand view of the 2007-2008 collapse from the Swiss bank's Los Angeles offices and recalls frantically taking screenshots of the price as Lehman Brothers' stock collapsed to "essentially zero." "My first thought was, 'Holy shit, some traders just took out Lehman,'" Nader told CoinDesk. "My next thought was, 'Holy shit, if the fifth-largest investment bank in America can be taken out like this, is the banking system actually safe?'" Likening it to the feeling kids get when they learn Santa Claus isn't real, Nader says that the day changed him forever – and eventually sent him into the wild world of cryptocurrency. After going down the crypto rabbit hole, Nader, who's also worked for Morgan Stanley, teamed up with a forme...

Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck has confirmed that it has suffered what appears to be the biggest hack in the history of the technology. In a press conference at 23:30 JST (14:30 UST), the exchange's president Wakata Koichi Yoshihiro and chief operating officer Yusuke Otsuka estimated its loss at 58 billion yen (approx. $533 million). According to Bloomberg , which attended the conference, 500 million NEM tokens were taken from Coincheck's digital wallets. Tweets by Nikkei appeared to indicate that the precise amount stolen may not be fully known until further checks have been carried out into the intrusion. But though the exact dollar figure for the incident is hard to pin down (given the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies and the company's lack of information), data suggests the figure is now at least over $400 million, factoring for a decline in the value of XEM, the NEM protocol's token, following the incident. At press time, the ...

Team of the Birdchain is not a start-up. It is part of a parent company named Vertex. Vertex is a profitable company with a team of experienced professionals whose profesionalism and skills were tested in action. The founding team has successfully co-launched several different businesses. Birdchain is a decentralized application (Dapp), similar to instant messenger. The big diference is that Birdchain will allow its users to make a monthly passive income. Simultaneously Birdchain will provide companies with higher quality and better-priced services: A2P SMS distribution, content engagement, personal data marketplace and others. The main goal of Birdchain app is to create internal economics, where its users will be able to earn, transfer (to exchanges) or spend their BIRD tokens without leaving the app. All features of the Birdchain are designed to create strong BIRD token. It stands out with low initial cost and token flexibility, as a unique currency with favorable ...

The bitcoin price has increased by more than 10 percent over the past 24 hours, as the majority of cryptocurrencies in the global market have recovered from the recent correction. Whales Sell Off Previously, CCN reported that the major correction which occurred earlier this week was likely triggered by the sell off of bitcoin by whales and institutional investors within the traditional finance market. Some analysts speculated that large-scale traders sold off massive amounts of bitcoin to cash out short contracts on the Cboe and CME bitcoin futures exchanges. The theory that the sell off of whales triggering a domino effect across all major cryptocurrency exchanges and leading to a decline in the value of the cryptocurrency market is far more likely and realistic than the FUD in the Chinese and South Korean cryptocurrency markets. Many reports, especially by mainstream media outlets, suggested that the cryptocurrency trading ban FUD coming from the Chinese and Sou...

Kodak's stock has more than tripled this week , since the once-giant of photography announced a pivot into blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Part of their move is a Kodak-branded mining rig called the KashMiner, which was showcased at this year's CES. It's created and run by a company called Spotlite, and has licensed the Kodak name. Here's how it works: Users pay $3,400 to rent the mining machine for two years. Kodak claims the KashMiner will produce about $375 worth of new bitcoins every month, which would lead to estimated revenues roughly $9,000 over those two years. But here's the catch: You have to give back half your profits. ...

A new wave was added to the never-ending Bitcoin mania when the Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE) became the first major derivative exchange to launch Bitcoin futures on December 10 . Such was the euphoria among early investors that trading was halted twice due to CBOE speed breakers, which slow or pause trading when price movements are excessive. The launch of Bitcoin futures at CBOE is set to be followed by its cross-town rival, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group, which plans to launch its own version of Bitcoin futures trading on December 18. And Nasdaq is preparing for a similar launch in the second-half of 2018 . Bitcoin futures allows traders to speculate on what the Bitcoin price will be at a later date. For instance, at the time of writing this article, the January contract for Bitcoin was trading around US$18,300, up from an opening price of US$15,000 . Traders bet on this and profit accordingly. Such was the excitement at the launch of futures that...

Businesses within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) could save up to $450 million in clearance documentation once the bloc adopts blockchain technology for clearing imports. Comesa is looking to roll out a digital free trade area - the first in Africa - modelled along the Malaysian Free Trade Zone, where parties to a transaction are connected in real time through a web of ledgers that are secure. The application also supports generation of an electronic certificate of origin whose authenticity can be verified using national information technology systems. This will be a marked break from the current practice which involves manual applications and physical presentation of documents to tax bodies and other government agencies that cause businesses delays. Trade financiers could be the biggest losers once the system is in place. "We are rolling out the Digital FTA in 2018, beginning with willing member states on the basis of the principle of variable geometr...

Here is a list of the Top 13 altcoins and cryptocurrencies in 2017/2018 according to market cap, future scope, demand, and value investment asset. Ethereum Ethereum is a true outlier and it is the only crypto-currency believed by experts to be able to overtake Bitcoin Market cap in the near future. Ethereum started in 2013 and had 40x growth rate over the last two years. Its platform allows creating a smart contract that runs on a decentralized network and runs exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, fraud, censorship or any third party interface. The team behind Ethereum is really exceptional. They are doing an amazing job to show the real potential of the Ethereum. Also, the degree of adoption of Ethereum is phenomenal at the moment. Many developers are working on apps that use the potential of smart contracts. If one cryptocurrency can make it big, it’s Ethereum. If already went over 1000% over the course of couple of months and it could go 1000% more over t...