About Richard Kastelein

Founder, Publisher and Editor in Chief of industry leading online publication, Blockchain News and co-founder and director at Blockchain Partners in London/Amsterdam/NYC. Kastelein is also an advisor with a number Blockchain startups doing ICOs including Humaniq.co where hs is interim CMO, DECENT.ch, Inchain, Chronobank, eGaas and others. He is regarded as one of the top journalists by the Blockchain and fintech communities as is evident by his entry in the Top 150 Fintech journalists online and in the top 10 of the Blockchain Top 100 List.

As a prominent keynote presenter, he has spoken on Blockchain at events in Gdansk, Amsterdam, Minsk, Dubai, Antwerp, Eindhoven, Bucharest, Nairobi, Tel Aviv, Manchester, Brussels, Barcelona etc, where he helped spread the cause for Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and, consequently, has built a notable network in the scene.

Hes also a director of a Dutch foundation called The Hackitarians and has run innovation events in London, San Francisco, Berlin, Amsterdam and other cities around the world on topics such Blockchain, Health, Energy, Internet of Things, AI etc.

In 2013, the European Commission appointed him as an expert for overseeing financing for emerging startups as a part of the European Commissions 90 billion euro Horizon 2020 project, created in Brussels to promote innovation as a driving force of job creation and business ventures across Europe. He has also worked as an external expert for Innovate UK since 2012, judging startups for the UK government.

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Livecoin, the Fourth Largest Altcoin Exchange Is Now Available in Eight Languages - Blockchain News

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Q: What can you tell us about your currency?

Karbowanec is Ukrainian local altcoin, based on CryptoNote technology. In Ukrainian language its called Karbovanets but to make it easier to read and pronounce for worldwide users we use shortened name Karbo and are shifting to this brand. Karbovanets was Ukrainian historical currency, now its obsolete, so we resurrected it in digital form, which is quite typical for many national cryptocurrencies. Karbovanets is very well know word, with very strong associations with money in Ukraine, also well known in Russia and other neighbouring countries. It sounds familiar to people, which makes it more easy to adopt.

Besides, the economical situation in Ukraine is catastrophic, given the huge inflation of official national currency Karbo might be an escape for citizens looking for a stable and growing decentralized alternative. Thats why we described ourselves as an altcoin an alternative to official currency be it paper money or official cryptocurrency launched by government.

Q: What type of services exist or can we expect in the future?

As a proof of capability and demo we made top up service, where people can top up their mobile phones for Karbo. Its limited to Ukrainian networks at the moment, but we might enlarge its geography.

Were making services for merchants which will enable them to accept Karbo as much easily and hassle free as we could do. We have significant progress, but these services are not ready yet to be revealed. We will announce and open them when they are ready.

Q: Are you targeting the consumer or Business Market? If so, how does the business model work?

Primarily consumer market. As I said, we are developing payment gateways, and are going to engage as many merchants as possible to accept Karbo. We also put a lot of efforts to make wallets software easy to use, especially for general public unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies. We hope to make paying and accepting payments in Karbo easy and fun. Karbo is designated to be local currency for the benefits of local vendors and customers. We want to create an ecosystem around it. However, its not strictly geographical. Localism and national flavor doesnt mean it cant be used worldwide. Concerning business market, being private cryptocurrency, Karbo might be interesting for businesses if it will have active users and enough liquidity. It is because I dont imagine making business using transparent blockchain to make payments for obvious reasons. Where people dont care that someones tracking their payments, business wouldnt want their competition to do so, for example.

Q: What are the details around the most important project youre working on currently?

We made decent desktop wallet and constantly improve its functionality. We are going to make Karbo wallets even more easy to use, convenient and intuitive. The CryptoNote tech gave us advantage in increased privacy but also problems and growing pains, other altcoins doesnt have, for CryptoNote theres not much ready to use goodies available. We even had to make wallet software compatible with cyrillic ourselves it even wasnt working with non-latin letters, which was necessary for us, because in Ukraine cyrillic is used. Now our wallet is the only CryptoNote wallet fully compatible with cyrillic. As an example, where other altcoin based on Bitcoin gets mobile wallet as a heritage ready to use, we dont have it and have to make it ourselves. This is one of our priorities too.

But now the most important for us is to get merchants on board. Without merchants that will accept Karbo, it will be just another coin for speculation on exchanges. Now we are focused on this easy shopping with Karbo for both, customers and merchants.

Q: How does the competition compare?

Karbo was started right before the rise of interest in privacy oriented currencies. What makes us different from other national altcoins is CryptoNote technology, that makes Karbo an anonymous coin. But anonymity in fact is a side effect. We decided to use this tech because we believe that privacy is a must for a currency which is targeted to be used as money. Thanks to CryptoNote, Karbo transactions are unlincable and untraceable, that gives Karbo very important feature that cash has, namely, fungibility. It means that every Karbo coin has equal value and are interchangeable. This gives us advantages over other national cryptocurrencies and over Bitcoin. Moreover, Karbo can also be more familiar looking alternative to foreign and unknown Bitcoin in its target area. Especially comparing low fees, speed of transactions, and, most important, fungibility and privacy.

Q: The market has many players, what differentiates you?

The above mentiond, and the fact that Karbo was launched with zero premine, no worthless giveaways and airdrops, no ICO. And by now it has small but strong and developing community and userbase. And if we succeed it will be thanks to our users. We are local currency, being actually used by people, not just by investors and day traders for speculative purposes. And were going to go further in this direction. Also Kabo has strictly monetary function, no any additional features, we dont want it to be sonic screwdriver.

Q: Could you tell us more about your achievements in this?

People top up phones for Karbo already.

Q: Could you tell us more about where you see Blockchain technology in the future?

Its disruptive technology, and can quickly and insensibly change our lives just like Internet did. We want to be part of this. We hope that open and transparent Blockchain used in government will change our country for better, in the same time, we believe that people have right to retain their privacy, including financial privacy, thats why we hope that Karbo will be used for this purpose. We dont like where so called cashless society is heading with digital money, thats why we propose an alternative with opaque blockchain. Digital, fungible, and private. And its not aboud buying drugs or tax evasion. Privacy and financial confidentiality just has to be provided by a cryptocurrency that aims to be actually used.

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Karbowanec a Ukrainian local altcoin used with mobile top ups - TechAnnouncer (press release) (registration) (blog)

The general way in which rule changes have been made to Bitcoin so far is through the use of soft forks, specifically the process outlined in BIP 9 (at least these days). Soft forks are backward compatible users are not required to upgrade their software clients in order to stay on the network with the new rules.

In recent years, there have also been multiple attempts at building support for hard forking changes to the Bitcoin network, mainly for the purpose of increasing the block size limit. A hard fork requires that everyone abandons the current Bitcoin consensus rules and moves over to a new network with a different set of rules; a process not too dissimilar from the creation of an altcoin.

So what is the difference between a hard fork and an altcoin?

Before getting into the explicit differences between these two terms, both of them should be clearly defined.

Bitcoin.org defines a hard fork as follows:

A permanent divergence in the block chain, commonly occurs when non-upgraded nodes cant validate blocks created by upgraded nodes that follow newer consensus rules.

Its a bit more difficult to find anything close to an acceptable definition for altcoins. Investopedia describes them as alternative cryptocurrencies launched after the success of Bitcoin.

Although there are similarities between Bitcoin hard forks and altcoins, there is also at least one major difference that is common, although not a requirement.

A hard fork of Bitcoin will preserve the distribution of bitcoins from the point at which the fork takes place. This means that anyone who had 10 bitcoins on the original network will also have 10 coins on the new network.

While new altcoins can also be created in this manner, there is almost always a new, initial distribution of tokens via a crowdsale, mining, or some other mechanism.

In the past, Bitcoin Unlimited Chief Scientist Peter Rizun, the Augur team, and others have also promoted the concept of launching new altcoins with the initial distribution based on the distribution of bitcoins at a certain block height. This is kind of a way to help bootstrap the network effect of a new token by piggybacking on top of bitcoins network effect. Having said that, there is much more to a cryptocurrencys network effect than its token distribution perhaps most notably, how users value those tokens.

If everyone moves from the original Bitcoin network to a new, hard-forked network, then it is fair to call the new network Bitcoin and dismiss the original network completely. If everyone does not move over to the new network, then the altcoin moniker may be more accurate.

Some would say that the difference between an altcoin and a hard fork is simple because the true version of Bitcoin will have the most SHA-256 hashing power behind it. However, an attempted hard forking change to Bitcoins proof-of-work algorithm (currently SHA-256) could potentially lead to the existence of two blockchains people are calling Bitcoin for a long period of time. The version of Bitcoin with an alternative proof-of-work could be much more popular than the chain that uses SHA-256.

The differences between altcoins and hard forks get a bit blurry when a contentious hard fork takes place. If Bitcoin is hard forked and only half of the network moves over, then what has really happened? Is the hard fork an altcoin? Which network deserves to be called Bitcoin? Are either of them really Bitcoin?

A less severe version of this issue occured with Ethereum. When Ethereum hard forked to allow those who lost funds due to buggy code in The DAOs smart contract to get their ether back, some 85 to 90 percent of the users moved to the new chain. This left roughly 10 to 15 percent of the users on the old chain, now referred to as Ethereum Classic.

So which Ethereum is the real Ethereum and which is an altcoin?

Right now, the general social consensus is that the hard-forked version of Ethereum is Ethereum. Many of the most prominent Ethereum figures, including the platforms creator, have thrown their support behind the new network, and nearly everyone refers to the new chain as the true version of Ethereum.

Of course, it begs the question: What would happen if Ethereum Classic gained a larger market cap and general level of activity than what is currently referred to as Ethereum? Would everyone then start referring to Ethereum Classic as Ethereum or would everyone keep calling it Ethereum Classic?

One caveat to the above scenario is that the Ethereum Foundation owns the trademark to Ethereum in the United States and the European Union. Its unclear what action the Ethereum Foundation would take (or could take) if everyone started to refer to Ethereum Classic as Ethereum again. Having said that, this issue does not exist in Bitcoin.

This issue may be about to play out in the real world as Grayscale Investments, who is behind the Bitcoin Investment Trust, plan to release an Ethereum Classic investment vehicle and call it the Ethereum (ETC) Investment Trust.

Things can get rather confusing as sometimes you cant be sure if youre hard-forking the network, creating an altcoin, or both. What looked like a hard fork at first could turn into an altcoin a year later under the right (or perhaps wrong) circumstances even if it appears that the hard fork has the vast majority of support before it happens.

From the examples provided by the Ethereum community up to this point, it would appear that hard forks that fix an issue at the protocol level that is negatively affecting everyone on the network generally do not lead to the creation of an altcoin. Anything else can get weird.

Thank you to Aaron van Wirdum for providing feedback for this article.

Read the rest here:
Opinion: What's the Difference Between a Bitcoin Hard Fork and an Altcoin? - CoinJournal (blog)

While so-called altcoins enjoyed a notable rally early this week, this run appears to be over.

The market for alternative cryptocurrencies, acollection of digital tokens with different blockchain networks and value propositions than the bitcoin protocol, received significant tailwinds earlier this week as bitcoin traders sat on the sidelines waiting to hear the latest news from China.

As bitcoin trading volumes fell at many exchanges, many of the top cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap (ranked by market capitalization) enjoyed notable price gains, forming what could be referred to as a smaller altcoin rally.

Today, however, we saw a sharp reversal of this trend.

The ether markets provided a perfect example.

Ether, the digital currency that powers the smart contract-based blockchain platform ethereum,surged nearly 20% to $13.33 on CoinMarketCap on 14th February, reaching their highest value so far this year.

Analysts pointed to robust trading volume, a highly leveraged market and signs of rising adoption as helping fuel this price rise.

However, the digital currency has fallen back, dropping to $12.64 today. At the time of report, ether was trading at $12.71.

Monero, a privacy-oriented digital currency that leverages ring signatures to conceal user identities, also provided strong evidence that the rally enjoyed by altcoins earlier this week is now over.

The privacy oriented digital currency rose roughly 12% from $12.20 on 14th February to $13.74 on 15th February, its highest price in more than a month, CoinMarketCap figures reveal.

However, monero lost much of its recent gains when it dropped to $13.26 later in the 15th February session, and failed to mount any notable recoveries since that time.

Instead, the digital currency has moved largely within a reasonably tight range between $13.30 and $13.60.

Elsewhere, dash, a digital currency that offers users privacy and instant transactions, rose 8.6% to $19.66 on 15th February, but fell back to $18.75 later that session, CoinMarketCap figures show.

As for what caused the altcoin rally to end, one simple explanation is that cryptocurrency traders have once again become interested in bitcoin.

Far and away the market's largest asset, bitcoin has seen its price climb more than 5% since falling to $1,001 early in the 15th February session, CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data shows.

At the time of report, bitcoin was trading at $1,056.92, 2.2% higher for the data, BPI figures reveal.

This recent uptick in price has coincided with a notable increase in volume, as market participants traded 16,000 bitcoins worth of transactions through Bitfinex in the 24 hours through 21:30 UTC.

This compares to an average of 9,700 bitcoins per session over the last seven days, Bitcoinity data shows.

Tim Enneking, chairman ofthe digital asset hedge fund Crypto Asset Management, explained in this way:

"Since bitcoin jumped up again, the alts have cooled off."

Melting snowman image via Shutterstock

AltcoinsPrices

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Altcoin Uptick Ends as Bitcoin Prices Pass $1050 - CoinDesk

What are altcoins?

When we refer to altcoins we meanalternative cryptocurrencies. Most of these altcoins (99%), utilize the blockchain and are a mere fork of the bitcoin code in one form or another. You do not need to be an expert programmer in order to launch an altcoin to dominate the cryptoland. In this article we will briefly show you how to makeyour own altcoin inunder an hour

Step 1: find a coin you like that you would like to clone and base your altcoin on, in this case we will clone therecently talked about cryptocurrency: PaycoinIf you didnt know Paycoin is a clone of Peercoin so we could also fork the Peercoin code and we will achieve the same result.

Step 2: Navigate to Paycoins github and clone the repo.

git clone https://github.com/GAWMiners/paycoin

Step 3: Choose a name for your coin, we will use PaycoinDark

Step 4: Find and Replace. Now you will use a program like fnr(find and replace) and find all instances of Paycoin in the code and replace it with PaycoinDark. You should also search for XPC and replaces that with a symbol of your choice, in our case we will use XPCD.

Step 5: Customize it! Navigate to main.h in the src folder and start changing the values for the variables. Here is some relevant code from main.h:

static const int64 MIN_TX_FEE = 0.1 * CENT; static const int64 MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE = 0.1 * CENT; static const int64 MAX_MONEY = 2000000000 * COIN; static const int64 MAX_MINT_PROOF_OF_WORK = 9999 * COIN; static const int64 MIN_TXOUT_AMOUNT = MIN_TX_FEE; static const int STAKE_TARGET_SPACING = 1 * 60; // 1-minute block static const int STAKE_MIN_AGE = 60 * 60; // minimum age for coin age static const int STAKE_MAX_AGE = 60 * 60 * 24 * 5; // stake age of full weight static const int STAKE_START_TIME = 1418470264; // Sat 13 Dec 2014 06:31:04 AM EST static const unsigned int POW_START_TIME = 1418403600; // Fri 12 Dec 2014 12:00:00 PM EST static const unsigned int POW_END_TIME = 1419181200; // Sun 21 Dec 2014 12:00:00 PM EST static const unsigned int MODIFIER_INTERVAL = 10 * 60; static const int64 NUMBER_OF_PRIMENODE = 50; static const int64 MINIMUM_FOR_ORION = 50 * COIN; static const int64 MINIMUM_FOR_PRIMENODE = 125000 * COIN;

You can modify theMAX_MONEY variable to choose the max amount of coins, modify the stake age requirement and the stake %, modify the length of a block (30 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes), and modify the reward per blog for which the code is found in main.cpp. This article is not going to go into every single detail in creating a coin but will give a general overview ofthe process.

Step 6: Create a new genesis block. After modifying the code for the altcoin you must reset the code in order to generate the genesis block which is the first block in the chain. In order to do so you must set a few variables, the merkle hash, the genesis block, and the nOnce. Once set it will look something like this:

static const uint256 hashGenesisBlockOfficial("0x0"); block.nNonce = 0; assert(block.hashMerkleRoot == uint256("0x0"));

Once you reset the chain in the source code you will need to compile the code and run the coin daemon. At the initial start it will crash but will generate a new hash for the genesis block, which will be the nOnce. In other words, it will create a unique hash which will mark the beginning of a new blockchain programatically attached to your new altcoin. Thats it, once you have your genesis block you would need to put its hash in the hashGenesisBlockOfficial variable, recompile, and your altcoin is ready to be mined! Remember that you need atleast 2 nodes running the same blockchain in order for the mining process to happen. A single entity cannot mine the cryptocurrency in its current state.

As you can see, you do not need to be an expert programmer in order to launch your own cryptocurrency. Yes you do need some system administration skills and basic understanding of C++ but in no way do you need to write new code from scratch. The reason altcoins are dying is because more and more people are finding out how easy it is to create a new coin and try to profit from it. That results in a plethoraof altcoins, there are dozens of coins coming out daily on bitcointalk.org.

Furthermore, altcoinland is dominated by get rich quick scams, pumps and dumps, lies and deception. As more people get scammed by investing in a scamcoin the liquidity of the cryptocurrencymarket decreases as traders are left with an empty wallet. When liquidity decreases so do the prices and marketcaps. Lets look at a comparison of altcoin marketcaps back in 2014 compared to altcoin market caps today, courtesy of coinmarketcap:

Here we can see that 2014 has been a sad yearfor altcoins, sinceall the market caps have declined a considerable amount. More importantly we can see clear evidence that altcoins live a short lifespan, out of the top 10 altcoins only 3 kept their position at the top, the rest got replaced with newly hyped coins, Peercoin being the only exception. Thus, we conclude that investments in altcoins arevery high risk, with a decreasing reward. With the start of 2015 and the drama with GawMiners and Paycoin, this year does not look good for any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.

Over 70% of people still do not know what bitcoin is. While some altcoins mightoffer improved features, better anonymity, a cleaner code,Bitcoins network is so robust and is on its way to mass adoption. If after 5 years over 70% of people are still not familiar with Bitcoin imagine how hard it would be to persuade someone to use an altcoin and explain to him the numerous improvements it has over Bitcoin. Society is just not ready for altcoins yet. Us crypto enthusiasts might see a clear advantage of a certain coin over Bitcoin but most of the time that coin will not be used in any way other than trading. In addition, once the hype dies with a new feature, or a new coin, it is left to die in an ocean of altcoin chains.

In 2014, Bitcoins marketcap was at around 12 billion, right behind it stood Ripples with a 2.7 billion marketcap. That means that in 2014 Bitcoin was worth around 5 times more than Ripples. Fast forward to 2015 and we can see that now Bitcoins market cap has decreased to 3.9 billion and Ripples to 0.6 billion. That means that now Bitcoin is worth 6 times more than Ripple. In other words, even though the overall marketcap for bitcoin and altcoins has decreased. Meaning that relatively to altcoins, Bitcoin is still doing better in 2015 than it did in 2014.

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The rest is here:
Why altcoins are dying and how to make one in under an hour ...