The cryptocurrency market's are off to a great start in the new year, and while there's been countless predictions saying 2019 is the year cryptocurrency has it's comeback, it's way too early to begin popping champagne bottles. Still, a good week is a good week and you won't find me complaining about it!

Let's begin by taking a look at Ethereum, as anticipation for Ethereum 2.0 seems to be drawing some buyers in to the #2 cryptocurrency, which now has gains of over 80% in the past month!

Ethereum was about $85 this time 30 days ago, at the time of publishing it's sitting at $156 with a healthy 2% gain today as well.

But the star of the show everyone's watching is Bitcoin - and it's good news there too!

Bitcoin is back above $4000, but just barely. Leaving us with the big question of 'will it hold?' and i'm not insane enough to try to answer that.

What I can say is there's no reason for it not to hold or keep going up, since one huge plus deserving of a price gain is Bitcoin's dropping transaction fees - which makes the currency more usable as... well, a currency.

At time of publishing, faster next block transactions will cost you about 4 cents, and if you're willing to wait an hour or so, as low as 2 cents.

For perspective - the last time we saw fees this low it was 2015.

Then reason behind the transaction fee drop is an important piece of good news as well - the Lightning Network has helped lower network congestion, with 5,150 nodes in operation today.

So far so good for 2019!

POZESS, a socially-curated vertical marketplace for fashion and lifestyle powered by blockchain, has announced its strategic partnership with PLAAK. Pozess recently launched its ICO and is currently in its private sale phase of fundraising open to private and institutional investors. The crowd sale will be open to the public in April 2019.

As part of this partnership, POZESS (PZS) tokens will be listed on the PLAAK exchange after the end of its ICO in July 2019. The partnership will also give the POZESS community the opportunity to adopt the POZESS (PZS) branded NFC and Bluetooth hardware wallet. The hardware wallet powered by PLAAK will allow the POZESS community to own and use the PZS token for secure purchases everywhere. The PZS hardware wallet features advanced security features including state-of-the-art biometric identification and authentication, and NFC and Bluetooth technologies, allowing seamless functionality for regular purchases including those made in brick and mortar stores.

“The branded wallet is a giant step towards making cryptocurrency mainstream,” says Kaustuva Mukherjee, the founder/CEO of POZESS. “I fervently believe that mass adoption, security, and ease of use is the way to make digital currency replace the fiat currency for financial transactions soon. The PZS wallet is a step towards that,” he added.

POZESS has been working closely with PLAAK and its co-founders Chai Shepherd and Damien Robson. The partnership with PLAAK will give the POZESS coin holders the ability to trade on PLAAK exchange with various other currencies. At its launch, the PZS coin will be paired with PLK, BTC, ETH, and USD

“This comes as great news to both the PLAAK and POZESS communities. Both teams are looking forward to developing a long-standing relationship of collaboration and to work on future projects as we continue to grow together,” says Naomi Cosman, co-founder and CMO of POZESS.

Christian Herrero who is POZESS’s co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer says, “we found many synergies and a spirit of collaboration when we first started speaking with the PLAAK team. Essentially the two companies share a common goal: to help make cryptocurrency go mainstream.”

News of this exciting partnership comes on in the heels of Pozess being featured as the “Project of the Month” in the world’s largest Crypto Investor Magazine - The Crypto Investment Times - with Kaustuva Mukherjee headlining as the CEO in Focus.


About PLAAK
PLAAK is building a digital ecosystem and is expanding the Ethereum real-world application infrastructure. The company is implementing a microcosm of different blockchain solutions to empower people within one trusted, integrated, simple and secure platform.

PLAAK’s exchange and wallets are the foundation for the ecosystem, providing a decentralized platform for both beginner and expert traders. The exchange takes the best features of other exchanges and puts them in one place. Some of these general features include fiat capability, multiple coins, fast transaction times, low fees and high security.

The ecosystem will also include an investments app, freelance app and health app which will be launched after the exchange. The PLAAK ecosystem is simple to use with authentication and authorization across all apps intrinsically woven into a single login.

For more information join PLAAK’s Telegram group and Discord channel, and visit PLAKK's website.

About POZESS
POZESS has developed a decentralized social marketplace for fashion and lifestyle products that combines social sharing, digital marketing, and e-commerce to give its community a unique user experience. POZESS hopes to enable users to discover products they have never seen before from retailers all over the world. The recently launched web and mobile application is a picture-driven marketplace built on blockchain with a user experience similar to apps like Pinterest and Instagram and dedicated to sharing photos of luxury fashion and lifestyle goods.

Unlike in traditional marketplaces where central management chooses which merchants and products will be listed, on POZESS the user community curates their own marketplace by posting the items that can be purchased and inviting the retailers to the platform via social media.

POZESS users earn crypto rewards for network building activities such as liking and sharing photos of products and commenting on items. Blockchain ensures that the rewards system is fair and secure and enables transactions to be fast, cheap, and direct with no need for a middleman. Smart contracts allow for smooth transactions between shoppers and sellers.

To join the Pozess movement and support the project join the POZESS Telegram group and Bitcointalk channel, and visit the official Pozess Website. 

Nistor Vlad Călin is the CEO of 'Coinflux' which is Romania's largest exchange. But after being arrested in Romania 3 weeks ago on a warrant from the US for money laundering, fraud, and organized crime - his business assets are frozen and he's on his way to America to face trial.

The charges stem from an investigation within the US Secret Service, which many associate only with guarding politicians - however they also participate regularly in investigations of financial crimes like counterfeit money and money laundering.

In the meantime, CoinFlux which boasted 18,000+ users has halted all activity leaving their legitimate user's funds in limbo.  Stating on a blog post:

"Due to a recently started, unexpected investigation, we are in the unpleasant situation of temporarily stopping any digital currency exchanges.

Unfortunately, our company’s bank accounts have been frozen, situation which affects the CoinFlux wallets as well. We are doing all possible efforts, along with our legal advisers, to make sure everyone who had money deposited in CoinFlux wallets gets it back."

Following the arrest of CEO Nistor Vlad Călin he stated his innocence, and that he had no way of knowing his exchange was being used for illegal activity.  It's clear the US government believes this to be false but we haven't heard their evidence to back that up, yet.

Lawyers for Călin immediately began working to stop their client from being extradited to the US, but according to Romanian news outlets those efforts failed and "the decision is final".

While the specifics haven't been released on who's money he is being accused of laundering, the rumors floating around Romanian cryptocurrency forums are that the money originates with scams and fraud being committed within the United States which are then converted to Bitcoin, then back into fiat, using Coinflux to do it.

No trial dates are set yet.

When we say “Dream Big, Win Bigger”, we really mean it. Here at BitStarz, we want to be anything but ordinary, which is why we’re not afraid to payout the big bucks to our players. This year alone our players have won millions in prizes, with big payouts including $45,000, $59,000, $148,000, $206,000, $265,000, and even a whopping $300,000 (19.2 BTC). Joining the ranks of our biggest winners, one player has scooped $80,000 by spinning the reels of Jungle Rumble.

There’s a Rumble in the Jungle

Jungle Rumble might not be our biggest slot, but it’s sure to become one of our most popular games in the weeks to come. Featuring 5 reels, 25 paylines, and some tantalizing bonus features, Jungle Rumble lets players rock the reels with ease, with there being plenty of cash up for grabs for players to win. One player has taken full advantage of Jungle Rumble and all it has to offer to the tune of $80,000 – talk about a Christmas present to remember.

A Year to Remember

This latest win proves that 2018 really has been our year, as our players have experienced one amazing ride. More than 1800 games, 10-minute cashouts, 24-hour customer service, and some of the most unique promotions around have all been served up. Trust us when we say that we’re only getting warmed up, with 2019 on the horizon now is the perfect time to join BitStarz. We’re turning up the heat with our Christmas cracker of a welcome bonus, as all new players can get up to 5 BTC in bonuses and 180 free spins.

Awards and Rewards Just Keep Coming

We take plenty of pride in being a true industry innovator, so don’t expect BitStarz to be “just another online casino.” Market leading is what we’re all about, which is exactly why we’ve been earning critical acclaim all year long. AskGamblers’ named us Best Casino of 2017, while we also earned two nominations for CRM Campaign of the Year and Innovation in Casino at the prestigious EGR Awards. As we keep bringing players the ultimate cryptocurrency casino experience, our players can expect the money to flow and – hopefully – the awards and nominations to keep coming.

Will You Be The Next Big BitStarz Winner?

Speaking on the recent BitStarz big win, Srdjan Kapor (BitStarz Marketing Manager) said:

“This year has been electric for us, as we’ve been making huge strides across the board. Big wins have been at the heart of that, as we’re happy to announce that yet another smashing prize has been paid out. One player has won $80,000 on Jungle Rumble, which is quite the early Christmas present if you ask us.”

BitStarz is powering towards to 2019 – will you ring in the New Year as our next big winner? There is only one way to find out!

www.bitstarz.eu

MIT Technology Review, a publication owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released an article today evaluating the current state of blockchain technology along with a look at what's to come next.

Summarized, they point out 2017 was filled with a lot of excitement without much to show for it. 2018 was spent catching up as several big corporations began planning major projects in the space - these plans become reality as these projects will all launch in 2019.

Highlighting industries from healthcare to automotive implementing blockchain tech, along with Walmart's blockchain powered supply tracking system that has been in development and testing for years but is finally ready for it's official launch.

On the topic of cryptocurrency specifically, some of the most influential companies from the finance & investment world launch their projects as well,  MIT Technology Review says:

"...the owner of the New York Stock Exchange and one of the most influential players on Wall Street, plans to launch its own digital asset exchange in early 2019. And Fidelity Investments recently created a new company called Fidelity Digital Assets.

The main thing Fidelity brings to the table is a so-called custody service for crypto-assets. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have argued that big investors like hedge funds, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds are itching to put billions of dollars into digital assets..."

The MIT Technology Review believes that seeing blockchain technology being used will become so common, it will 'start to become mundane'.

You can read the full publication here.

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Happy New Year everyone! January is underway and it’s time for your Crypto Outlook provided by Contentworks, an agency specialising in financial services marketing. After months of sharp declines, the price of cryptocurrencies stabilized slightly in December with Ethereum gaining by more than 20%. Bitcoin and Ripple too recovered some of their earlier losses but ended the month slightly lower. Still, the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is significantly far from where it was a year ago. According to Coin Market Cap, the currencies have a market cap of more than $130 billion.

The decline of cryptos happened because of a series negative news from all the major markets. This news included a regulatory crackdown, a ban on cryptocurrencies advertising, increasing cases of fraud, and the forking of Bitcoin Cash. It was also because many developers stopped looking to improve their platforms. Instead, focusing on the amount of money they could make from them.  On a positive note, cryptocurrencies were not the only laggards in the market. In fact, all the major stock indices declined as the trade conflict raged on. The same is true for other commodities like crude oil, soybeans, and corn that saw double digit declines. The chart below shows the performance of key global indices in 2018.

As a content marketing agency specialising in financial services and cryptos, we can say that the decline of cryptocurrencies was likely a blessing in disguise. This is because as the price of the cryptocurrencies gained in 2017, more useless cryptocurrencies were created and termed sh*tcoins in the sector. A good example was that of Useless Ethereum Coin that raised almost $50,000 despite telling investors that it had no value. Therefore, the decline will leave in place more advanced cryptocurrencies with better tokenomics and more serious advisors.

A trend that will likely continue this year will be the development of stablecoins. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to assets like a currency, a commodity, or an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Already, large companies have expressed interest in this industry. In December, it was reported that Facebook was thinking of developing its own stablecoin to help it develop money transfer capabilities for Whatsapp. An irony that hasn’t escaped us given the crypto advertising ban imposed by Facebook itself. In the fourth quarter, the famous Winklevoss brothers launched Gemini dollar, a stablecoin that is backed by the dollar. This coin enables people to send and receive US dollars through the blockchain network.

Another trend that could happen this year will be the entry of large companies in the industry. Last year, Blackrock announced that it was considering getting into the industry. This was followed by the launch of a cryptocurrencies trading platform by Fidelity. The service will offer custodial services for large investors. All this means that this could be the year of acceptance for the cryptocurrencies by large investment firms.

Events in January
This month, investors will focus on several key crypto events. On January 11, the Blockchain Connect Conference will take place in San Francisco. This event will be attended by representatives from companies like Oracle, Binance, Accenture, and Lightspeed Ventures. It will be followed by the BlockChainge event in Washington DC that will be attended by policymakers and key entrepreneurs.

Other key events that will happen this month will be Unlock Blockchain Forum in Dubai, the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Chainers Blockchain Week in South Korea, and Crypto Pro Expo in San Francisco.

At Contentworks, our team of financial professionals closely follows market movements for FX, Crypto and other tradable instruments. We are proud to serve some of the biggest crypto and fintech companies in the world by delivering high-impact articles, videos, PR and white papers.

With the new year upon us -  Bitcoin also celebrates a decade of existence!

While the concept behind Bitcoin was shared in October 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto published his whitepaper 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' - it wasn't until Jan 3rd 2009 that Bitcoin was truly born.

Referred to as the 'Genesis block' the first Bitcoin was mined on this date, along with it came the reward of the first 50 BTC tokens ever.

Of course, that transaction was recorded forever on the public ledger, just for kicks you can take a look at it for yourself here.

While I've only owned Bitcoin since 2015, between learning the history behind it, and the wild 3 (soon to be 4) years I've been a part of it - one thing i've learned is: never try to predict where it's going next.

So here's to another never-boring decade - cheers!

Said to be the largest survey of it's kind, it asked 4,200 Chinese citizens their stance on the topic of investments, including cryptocurrencies, and the results are surprising many...

● 98% say they've heard of cryptocurrency.

● 40% would like to own some.

● 14% already do own some.

The only investments scoring higher were stocks and real estate.

However, one data point stood out to me, 410 of the 598 people who currently own cryptocurrency say they bought it on exchanges - before exchanges were banned from operating in China.

But three times as many people said they would like to own some, 1665 total - except currently, they can't get any.

Earlier this year Chinese President Xi publicly praised blockchain technology.  At a conference presented by the Chinese Academy Of Sciences, Xi said the technology currently making "breakthroughs" in his opinion were "Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Blockchain" and categorized them as the driving forces behind what he says will be the a "new industrial revolution".

Currently, owning or mining cryptocurrency is legal, obtaining it on exchanges though buying or trading is not. Chinese courts cleared up a few 'grey areas' in September and ruled that Bitcoin ownership is legal, merchants can choose to accept it as a form of payment, and it should be treated legally as property of the owner.

So, it's fair to say it's been a year of steps in the right direction.

This survey shows is if China allows citizens once again participate in the cryptocurrency markets - prepare for an influx of activity - they're ready!

2018 has been one hell of a year, and while it's hard to find any upsides to the bear market, perhaps the only one is how it was a great year for the cryptocurrency world to throw out some of it's trash.

Here's some of the stand-out, absolute worst people and companies we can all be glad won't be joining us in 2019...

Bitconnect
The day this ponzi scheme came crashing down began with their token at $400 and within a matter of hours had fallen to $40.  The scam required people to initially invest using Bitcoin, but would then pay people out in their token, BCC.

So of course when the company announced they were closing and giving everyone what they were owed - they did that using their BCC token as well.

The problem is, the tokens were worthless by the time someone received them - the people behind it, who to this day were never caught, kept everyone's Bitcoin - totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars. You can read more about this here.

Bitconnect Users
Let's be honest here - the average Bitconnect user is far from an innocent victim.  Sure, they may have initially signed up ignorant to what they were getting themselves into. 

But by the time Bitconnect stole everyone's money - they all had been warned.

How did they typically respond to being warned they were promoting a scam? Everything from insisting the person warning them was actually just 'jealous they didn't get in early' like they did, or at the worst, death threats (I got some!).

Now, this pathetic group of people with no one to blame but themselves are even trying to sue YouTube. They claim they got sucked in after watching videos recommending Bitconnect.  Of course, ignore the fact that a search for Bitconnect on YouTube would also show countless videos saying it was a scam. That story here.

Savedroid's unbelievably stupid publicity stunt.
After their ICO completed the CEO tweeted that he was skipping town, and even shut down the website. 

Investors panicked as they believed they had just been robbed.

After a couple days, they posted a video saying it was just an example to show how easy it is for ICO's to scam people - but they're legit.

Ironically, a quick glance at their Twitter today shows they haven't made much progress since this - virtually every tweet has replies from angry investors saying various promises weren't kept.

But after this, could you really be that surprised to find out this is a company ran by idiots?

Read more about this here.

Twitter scammers.
Posing as everyone from Elon Musk to Vitalik Buterin, scammers on Twitter could be found responding to a variety of tweets claiming to be conducting cryptocurrency giveaways.

"Send 1 ETH and get 5 back" is the simple bait they used.

While anyone falling for this clearly isn't very bright, there's no shortage of people meeting this qualification.  One of the wallets had $14,000 sent to it from victims.

Read more on this here.

A whole lot of ICO bullshit. 
It's just too hard to name one "the worst" but i'm fine with them sharing the title.

First up is Titanium Blockchain and their CEO Michael Stollaire, and his exciting new partnerships with everyone in Silicon Valley from Apple to PayPal!  Unfortunately, these only existed in his imagination.  They ended up getting raided.  That story here.

Then there was Wind Coin, which was so sloppy grabbing random photos from the internet for their testimonials section, they featured one investor claiming he invested 4 BTC into the project. However, the photo was of England's Prince Charles.  That story here.

Blockvest possible had the most nerve - creating a non-existent government agency called "Blockchain Exchange Commission" on their website, then saying they had it's approval.  But the geniuses over there thought this wasn't enough - so they listed it at the address of the actual SEC. Then... the actual SEC shut them down.  That story here.

Lastly, there was Biitcoin - no that's not a typo, they really called it that.  With an endorsement from actor Stephan Segal, the company faced accusations they were nothing more than a pyramid scheme.  They insisted it wasn't true - but the graphic on their own website which was literally shaped like a pyramid made that a lot harder to believe.  That story here.

So 2019 is about to be upon us, and it's already filled with a lot exciting things to look forward to! But i'm sure we'll also have to deal more of these crypto-cancers popping up in the new year as well.  If you're like me, you can't help but to get angry when you see this stuff - but looking back now i'm actually feeling pretty satisfied to see most of these stories end with people getting exactly what they deserve.

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