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Watch Out, Amazon: Google Eyes the Cloud as its Next Frontier – PC Magazine

March 9, 2017 | Author: admin

Google is a relative newcomer to enterprise cloud offerings, and it is using the success of its other products to win over companies that may be considering Amazon or Microsoft.

The cloud, to hear Google tell it, is all about attacking the corporate bureaucracy of Fortune 500 companies. Oh, and also improving internet security, going carbon neutral, creating magical creatures, catching Pokemon, and even automatically generating news stories.

In fact, at its Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Google made a case for why pretty much any company connected to the internet should use its cloud computing offerings, which estimates suggest are significantly smaller than competitive services from Amazon and Microsoft, and dwarfed by the revenue of Google's own advertising business.

Perhaps Google's most convincing sales pitch is that its cloud offerings have already attracted many companies: marquee customers who have started using Google's cloud offerings over the past year include Verizon, HSBC, and eBay, which showed off a new cloud-powered Google Home app that can tell you how much money you can expect when you sell an old electronic gadget.

But Google's ability to move a bunch of data from a company's existing servers into the cloud isn't revolutionary: Microsoft and Amazon have been doing it for years, and Google really only started in earnest last September, when it created the new Google Cloud division. So its sales pitch also focuses on associating the company's traditional areas of expertiseespecially the popularity of its consumer products among millennialswith the cloud.

"It's Google's time to bring what we have to the enterprise," Diane Greene, senior vice president and head of Google Cloud, said at Cloud Next. "The young people so rejoice when G Suite gets rolled out," she said, referring to versions of Gmail and Google Docs for the enterprise, so why not move the rest of the IT department to Google's servers, too?

If companies decide to do that, they'll be able to access a slew of new tools that Greene and her colleagues announced today. Businesses that already run SAP applications will now be able to access them directly from the cloud platform. There's also a new engineering division that can provide round-the-clock support for challenges. (Google began to implement dedicated support last summer, when its teams helped Pokemon Go creator Niantic achieve "painless scaling," according to Greene).

Finally, there are a few new nifty mission-specific tools that some Cloud customers will find useful, including the ability to use Google's artificial intelligence to identify animals and objects in videos hosted on Google Cloud servers. That tool, called the Video Intelligence API, is essentially the same as the vision-recognition models that let you find cat videos on YouTube.

So why is Google building up its cloud business to compete with Amazon Web Services (which, as we know from its high-profile failure last week, hosts the images of a huge number of popular websites)? Google CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured above) pointed to the cloud as a natural fit given the company's focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

"Machine learning finds previously hidden patterns in data," Pichai said. Greene, meanwhile, pointed to the untapped potential of data that's trapped in old fashioned databases and servers. "Ninety-five percent of the world's data is not in the cloud," she told the Wall Street Journal.

But Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, offered a simpler explanation. He suggested at Cloud Next that Google is embarking on a journey to the cloud simply because it can. "We have the means, commitment, and money" to pull off a new cloud platform for everyone who needs it, he said.

Tom is PCMag's San Francisco-based news reporter. He got his start in technology journalism by reviewing the latest hard drives, keyboards, and much more for PCMag's sister site, Computer Shopper. As a freelancer, he's written on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and big data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, Tom also has a master's journalism degree from New York University. Follow him on Twitter @branttom. More

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SkyLink protects servers and cloud and web presences for businesses – Naples Daily News

March 9, 2017 | Author: admin

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Jacob Ackerman, chief technology officer of SkyLink Data Centers, stands surrounded by the company's main data center Thursday, March 2, 2017, in Naples. SkyLink offers storage, maintenance and security for its clients' networking equipment.(Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)Buy Photo

When SkyLink Data Centers offered a tour of its Naples headquarters to members of a Southwest Florida technology trade group, Jacob Ackerman the company's chief technology officer didn't expect much of a turnout.

Ackerman thought a fewpeople would show up and that there would be "a bunch of crickets in the background" at the nighttime event,organized by the nonprofit Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership last month.

He was surprised to see dozens of IT workersand other professionalswalkthrough the doors to find out more about the company and to get a close-uplook at its state-of-the-art data center onOrchid Drive, off U.S. 41 near Coastland Center mall.

"We wouldhave been happy to have 15 or 20 people show up. It was over 50," Ackerman said.

The data center, opened a little overtwo years ago, offers leased storage to other companies needing a safe spot to house their data and data equipment (think servers and networking devices).

"Think of it like leasing a car," Ackerman said. "In this instance they are leasing server space for a set amount of time, then they can continue the lease or give it back."

The buildingis highly secured. Getting to thesecond floor, where data and equipment is stored, requires entering a pass code andswiping an employee badge near the elevator door.

"Only four employees in our company can come up here unescorted," Ackerman said. "We take security very, very seriously."

All of the IT systems Skylink manages also require a second level of authentication to gain access.

Cameras are everywhere, monitoring what's going on 24/7. Sophisticated detection systemsare designed to alert employees as soon as possible about hazards,such as smoke or water, before they become majorproblems.

"There's very little we don't know about," Ackerman said. "We can detect fire before there's an open flame."

He pointed to the windows, saying they can handle winds of more than 200 mph.

"Themajority of buildings here in Collierand Lee countiescan't survive a Category 5 storm," Ackerman said. "This facility can survive that and be operational during the event."

The data center is a "building within a building," with a roof that's 18 inches thick and walls that are solid concretereinforced with steel.

A glimpse into SkyLink's main data center Thursday, March 2, 2017, in Naples. SkyLink offers storage, maintenance and security for its clients' networking equipment.(Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)

One man onthe tour joked the center had a "force field" to protect it from danger. Not quite, but Ackerman boasted: "It's the safestplace in the county. So safe FPL keeps some of its gear here."

The data center sits on anatural ridge and is outside a flood zone. It has backup power, a generator designed to keep the buildingand its equipment operating without fail through storms big and small.The generator iscapable of producing up to 1 megawatt.

"This is Florida," Ackerman said. "We get a lot of lightning."

During the tour Ackerman showed off the backup generator, in a building outside, saying there'senough fuel on site to run it for14 days. SkyLinkhas contracts to top off the fuel as needed in emergencies.

The temperature in the data center is kept at 72, although it feels even more frigid because of thelowhumidity.

It's so cold itcan give visitors, who aren't used to it,goosebumps, andthe breezeinsome spots is so strong Ackerman hadto warn anyone with skirts or dresses to be prepared to hold them down on the upstairs tour.

All of the cabling is labeled,making it a snap tosee their origin and destination. Most of the cabling is alsocolor-coded, making problems with equipment easier to find and resolve.

There are 29 cabinets for storage. The center can house up to65 so there's room to more than double the storage.

Some clients lease multiple cabinets. Depending on a customer'sneeds, monthly costs can range from $49 tomore than $5,000.

SkyLink's local customers include commercial construction firm DeAngelis Diamond, land developersCollier Enterprisesand nonprofit health care provider Avow Hospice.

"The single biggest customeris the U.S. military, by far," Ackerman said. "We have more resourcesdedicated to them than we do anybody else."

SkyLink has clients from as far away as Okinawa, Japan, and Beijing. "International-wise we have the most customers in Australia," Ackerman said.

SkyLink provides state-of-the-art infrastructure, facilities management and security for companies searching for a home for their networking equipment.(Photo: Luke Franke/Naples Daily News)

The data center doesn't just offer storage. Clients can use its network switches, internet, firewalls, and other computing equipment and its software and desktop services, paying additional feesfor whatever they need.

Marc Farron, president of the Southwest Regional Technology Partnership, described SkyLink as the only hardened data center of its kindin the five-county region. That's why, he said, the offer for a tour generated so much interest amongthe partnership'smembers.

"No questionit definitelystands out," Farron said. "Idon't know of any other data center that offers such complete data center services, infrastructure as a service, with the professionalism that SkyLink does."

Since opening the data center, SkyLink has added more than 10 employees.The company isrunning out of parking for more employees.

"We started to look at adding remote workers just because we have grown tremendously," Ackerman said.

To keep up with its growth, SkyLinkhas hired software developers, sales and technical support staff, network operators and administrative personnel.

SkyLink isn't growing justin Naples. It has locations in Orlando and Ashburn, Virginia. Another one planned in Tampa is expected to open later this year. More data centers are expected to sprout up as the company continues to look for opportunities to fill demand around the country.

SkyLink is an outgrowth of Naples-based Horizon Business Services Inc., the developer of custom catering and event management software called Caterease.

The data center also hosts Horizon'scloud-based product, which is one of the reasons Horizon launched SkyLink (because it was struggling to find a safe storage spot big enough for its data and equipment).

At last count Skyline had more than 30,000clients, including the ones usingCaterease.

Skylink and Horizon share key employees, including upper level management. The companies are both owned by Greg Kopriva.

"I've been with this company since '99, so if they have an issue on the Catereaseside, it's all hands ondeck, and vice versa," Ackerman said.

SkyLink doesn't have a dedicated sales staff. Instead, its technicians design and sell its products and services.

Customer service isn't the job of just a few employees, either.

"We're all engineers, from myself all the way down," Ackerman said. "We all talk to customers. I still answer the phone, and all of our other employees do, too. That's how we ensure we are providingthat high level of service."

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Microsoft, Facebook Build Dualing Open Standard GPU Servers for Cloud – TOP500 News

March 9, 2017 | Author: admin

It was only a matter of time until someone came up with an Open Compute Project (OCP) design for a GPU-only accelerator box for the datacenter. That time has come.

In this case though, it was two someones: Microsoft and Facebook. This week at the Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara, California, both hyperscalers announced different OCP designs for putting eight of NVIDIAs Tesla P100 GPUs into a single chassis. Both fill the role of a GPU expansion box that can be paired with CPU-based servers in need of compute acceleration. The idea is to disaggregate the GPUs and CPUs in cloud environments so that users may flexibly mix these processors in different ratios, depending upon the demands of the particular workload.

The principle application target is machine learning, one of the P100s major areas of expertise. An eight-GPU configuration of these devices will yield over 80 teraflops at single precision and over 160 teraflops at half precision.

Source: Microsoft

Microsofts OCP contribution is known as HGX-1. Its principle innovation is that it can dynamically serve up as many GPUs to a CPU-based host as it may need well, up to eight, at least. It does this via four PCIe switches, an internal NVLink mesh network, plus a fabric manager to route the data through the appropriate connections. Up to four of the HGX-1 expansion boxes can be glued together for a total of 32 GPUs. Ingrasys, a Foxconn subsidiary will be the initial manufacturer of the HGX-1 chassis.

The Facebook version, which is called Big Basin, looks quite similar. Again, P100 devices are glued together vial an internal mesh, which they describe as similar to the design of the DGX-1, NVIDIAs in-house server designed for AI research. A CPU server can be connected to the Big Basin chassis via one or more PCIe cable. Quanta Cloud Technology will initially manufacture the Big Basin servers.

Source: Facebook

Facebook said they were able to achieve a 100 percent performance improvement on ResNet50, an image classification model, using Big Basin, compared to its older Big Sur server, which uses the Maxwell-generation Tesla M40 GPUs. Besides image classification, Facebook will use the new boxes for other sorts deep learning training, such as text translation, speech recognition, and video classification, to name a few.

In Microsofts case, the HGX-1 appears to be the first of multiple OCP designs that will fall under its Project Olympus initiative, which the company unveiled last October. Essentially, Project Olympus is a related set of OCP hardware building blocks for cloud hardware. Although HGX-1 is suitable for many compute-intensive workloads, Microsoft is promoting it for artificial intelligence work, calling it the Project Olympus hyperscale GPU accelerator chassis for AI, according to a blog posted by Azure Hardware Infrastructure GM Kushagra Vaid.

Vaid also set the stage for what will probably become other Project Olympus OCP designs, hinting at future platforms that will include the upcoming Intel Skylake Xeon and AMD Naples processors. He also left open the possibility that Intel FPGAs or Nervana accelerators could work their way into some of these designs.

In addition, Vail brought up the possibility of a ARM-based OCP server via the companys engagement with chipmaker Cavium. The software maker has already announced its using Qualcomms new ARM chip, the Centriq 2400, in Azure instances. Clearly, Microsoft is keeping its cloud options open.

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Analytics and Data Storage Will Dominate Cloud Hosting Adoption in 2017, Says Study – TG Daily (blog)

March 9, 2017 | Author: admin

Organisations based in the US are gearing to spend up to $1.77 M in cloud computing in 2017, while organizations in the rest of world are planning a combined budget of $1.30 M for the same purpose.

Also, 10% of businesses employing more than 1000 workers are estimating to spend at least $10 M on cloud computing apps and platforms in the coming year. The breakdown shows 62% of these organizations are private enterprises, 60% public agencies and 26% are mixed.

Also by 2018, 40% of the typical IT departments will have some of the apps and platforms hosted in on-premise systems. These are the summary of insights a 2016 IDG cloud computing surveyed.

Modern businesses and organisations are adopting multiple cloud models to satisfy their business needs, and turning to web companies for fast and secure website hosting. Hosting and Domain Specialists - Freeparking.co.nz

Google too is getting more aggressive in the Cloud with heavier investments, according to a related study by Deutsche Bank Markets Research. The report, published in November, stated that between 2015 and 2016 alone, Google has made a total financial commitment of over $1 bn in acquisition, including the Apigee deal, as part of its Cloud development drive.

Here are other major insights that will lead the trends in 2017, according to the IDG cloud computing study.

Already, more than a third of businesses have more than 1000 host or two apps or platforms in the cloud today. This figure is set to explode in 2017 with different forms and categories of cloud use. 9 out of 10 organisations either have apps running in the cloud or planning to adopt one in the next 1 to 3 years.

The Cloud has become an integral component of modern and versatile businesses and 2017 is set to see an expanded number and varieties of apps among new and old organisations.

Top on the wanted list of cloud apps by organisations and businesses in 2017, will be business analytics and data management. The survey says that 22% of firms and agencies consider data storage analytics and storage, a priority for their organisations migration plan next year.

In 2017, organisations will invest a total of $1.62 M on cloud computing, while organisations with more than 1000 workers are estimated to spend about $3.03 M. Saas is expected to take up to 45% of this budget, 30% allocated to IaaS and 19% to PaaS.

Total investments in cloud computing by organisations over a period of three years has remained constant, with a spending of $1.62 M in 2014, $1.56 M in 2015 and $1.62 M in 2016.

10% of businesses with more than 1000 employees say that theyre looking to invest more than 10 M or more on cloud computing apps and platforms all through 2017.

The survey found that in less than 2 years from now, more than 28% or one third of respondents, will rely on private clouds as part of their IT infrastructure. Only 22% or a fifth of the organisations will continue on public cloud, while 10% will adopt for a mixed solution. Also, by 2018, 40% of apps and platforms in the average IT department of organisations will reside in on-premise systems.

These in-house IT specialists will take charge of budget and investment decisions, and become more influential, in contrast to the current practice where CEOs and CFOs control investment plans in cloud computing.

The worries, however, will not be limited to companies using public cloud; as even private and hybrid cloud adopters also face the challenges of cloud and vendor security as well as guarantee vendor data protection systems. One major slowdown of private and hybrid cloud users will be a lack of the technical skills to manage and maximize value on cloud investments.

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Rackspace to sell customer support for Google’s cloud offering – San Antonio Business Journal

March 9, 2017 | Author: admin

Madison.com
Rackspace to sell customer support for Google's cloud offering
San Antonio Business Journal
Rackspace Hosting Inc. got the green light to start selling managed cloud service support for enterprise customers of Google's cloud engine, the company announced today. The San Antonio area company has been selling its Fanatical Support to businesses ...
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Bitcoin Doesn’t Need Your Stinkin’ Rules – Dealbreaker

March 8, 2017 | Author: admin

One of the recurring themes in the socio-political experiment that is bitcoin is how the cryptocurrency community has slowly accepted norms and strictures that govern the fiat money system bitcoin was invented to supersede. As traders slowly grasp the scope of manipulation and grift that accompanies such an anarchic, anything-goes market, some have clamored for rules that might make the world of bitcoin as fair as it is free, from anti-money laundering safeguards to deposit insurance. Innovation recapitulates regulation.

FT Alphavilles Izabella Kaminska highlights the most recent such episodeof this sagain the travails of Daniel Masters, founder of the Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Program. In Masterslatest investor bulletin, he recounts how his fund got knocked ten percent from its benchmark by a competitor practicing textbook price manipulation. He writes:

The matters set out above highlighted another issue with bitcoin trading, which up until this point we had not considered. After the price drop, one player emerged as totally dominant in the open interest of the futures contract. It seemed pretty clear to us as a result that this event was not just a normal version of a large liquidation, with which we are familiar, but was a premeditated attack. When the dust settled, one unidentified player was short well over half the open interest.

In a typicallyregulated market like, say, lean hog futures, position limits established voluntarily by exchanges (and later mandated by Dodd-Frank) would keep a market participant from amassing such a dominant, price-shifting position. But the techno-utopia of bitcoin trading refuses to shackle its citizens with these kinds of outdated contrivances. And for Masters, thats kind of a bummer:

We would therefore class this episode as clear market manipulation, and in fact it was not just momentary: for many days thereafter the basis was so weak that it seemed that the one attack was being followed up by periodic smaller attacks. As such we approached the exchange. They confirmed to us that there were no position limits whatsoever and that people were free to do whatever they wanted in their happy trading environment (yes, they used those actual words). We made it very clear that such activity, whether in a regulated environment or not, might amount to criminality in Hong Kong and would certainly do so in many other jurisdictions. Following a number of discussions, the exchange encouraged the rogue player to withdraw and things have now normalized.

Clearly, one mans happy trading environment is another mans viper pit, which is the ultimate tradeoff with bitcoin investing. You get all the excitement and arbitrage opportunity of a relativelyprehistoric market without the safeguards of the current one.

Of course, were talking bitcoin exchanges here, not bitcoins central coding community. Though exchange operators seem to have some of the same libertarian leanings as the currencys diehard core (see above), they also have incentives like making money and staying out of jail. Regulators tend to treat bitcoin trading as a commodity, which subjects it to a basic set of rules and safeguards that exchanges must follow. But regulatory pressures are less interesting that those stemming fromthe bitcoin community itself.

When OTC markets backfire, bitcoin edition [FT Alphaville]

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Wall Street Journal: Bitcoin as Terrorist Money is Exaggeration – CryptoCoinsNews

March 8, 2017 | Author: admin

In the Morning Risk Report, the Wall Street Journal emphasized that law enforcement agencies and financial organizations that are describing bitcoin as a terrorism financing tool are exaggerating the risks involved in digital currencies including bitcoin.

Since the beginning of 2016, law enforcement agencies including the FBI and Europol have begun to describe bitcoin as a terrorism financing tool due to its use case in the dark web. However, these law enforcement agencies were harshly criticized for misleading the public, as fiat money or cash, which serves the global financial ecosystem as the base monetary system, accounts for nearly 97% of all criminal activities due to its complete anonymity.

Analysts and supporters of bitcoin expressed their concerns over governments and law enforcement agencies attribution of bitcoin to criminal activities, mostly because bitcoin is not completely anonymous as anyone can track down the flow of transactions using the public blockchain. When a criminal tries to sell bitcoin in a regulated bitcoin exchange, with KYC and AML systems in place, government agencies will be able to unravel the identity of the bitcoin user with ease.

More to that, criminals are always in search for better technologies and alternatives. Criminals utilize automobiles, cash, phones, and other technologies to supplement their operations. However, this shouldnt necessarily lead to the struggle of the general public. In other words, government agencies shouldnt attempt to ban every technology utilized by criminals across the world. If so, no one will be able to utilize the internet, bitcoin, banking system, cars, amongst many other technologies.

International defense and security think-tank Royal United Services Institute consultant and former US Department of the Treasurys Office of Terrorism and Financial intelligence official David Carlisle stated:

Treating cryptocurrencies as an exceptional threat creates the misleading impression that more conventional financial products are not already equally, or more, vulnerable to terrorist exploitation.

Essentially, bitcoin is a decentralized protocol built to facilitate payments between two parties with the absence of moderators or third party service providers. Everyone within the network has equal authority over each other and there exists no administrators who can manipulate, alter or delete transactions from the public blockchain.

This decentralized architecture of bitcoin prevents exploitation and manipulation of funds, unlike conventional banking. Over the past decade or so, banks have been exposed for leading fraudulent operations that have led to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. In fact, it was revealed last week by Bloomberg that the worlds largest banks were fined US$321 billion in total since the 2008 financial crisis.

In consideration of this staggering number, it is dishonest and deceitful of governments to attribute bitcoin as criminal and terrorist money, when their most trusted partners have deluded the public for decades before being fined billions of dollars for their actions.

Carlisle also noted that terrorist groups including the ISIS have their own forms of money such as their unique minted gold coins as the unified currency. Thus, bitcoin or other digital currencies will not be a priority for terrorist groups especially if bitcoin is difficult to obtain without forfeiting user identity due to KYC and AML regulations implemented across the world.

Image from Shutterstock.

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Bitcoin Price Falls to March Low, Rebounds Above $1200 – CryptoCoinsNews

March 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Bitcoin prices fell below $1,200 for the first time in March, on Wednesday. The dent represents the sharpest drop to the bullish rally that began last month wherein the cryptocurrency scaled to new all-time highs for the first time in over three years.

Bitcoin dropped by nearly $100 compared to yesterdays prices when it struck a low of $1,160 today, losing about 7% in value on the Bitstamp Price Index (BPI).

Having started the day above $1,230, bitcoin peaked to the days high of $1,244 around 01:30 UTC. The decline came soon after.

Bitcoin price fell from $1,240 at 02:30 to $1,219 in an hour. The sharpest drop of the day occurred when price slumped from $1,222 at 04:00 to $1,190, losing over $30 in value in a 20-minute trading period. Although price recovered briefly to $1,217 a steady decline resulted in price sinking falling to the low of $1,160 at 07:00.

A resurgence has since followed with bitcoin resurfacing above $1,200 at 08:00 and staying on top of the milestone throughout the day.

At the time of publishing, bitcoin is trading to the dollar at $1,203 on the BPI, with brief respite above $1,225 near midday.

The downturn comes in the lead-up to the much-publicized ETF decision to be taken by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with the deadline this Friday. One theory is that traders are selling off their bitcoin to avoid losses in the event of a negatory decision by the SEC.

Todays sharp fall coincides with the big three Chinese exchanges extending the month-long bitcoin withdrawal freeze indefinitely. In identical statements, OkCoin, Huobi and BTCC confirmed that bitcoin withdrawals will only be processed after approval by regulatory authorities. There are no details of a time-frame provided.

Bitcoin prices dropped sharply this time a month ago after the exchanges halted withdrawals, the last significant price influencer from China.

Image from Shutterstock.

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Tax Coalition Forms to Address Uncertainty in US Cryptocurrency Market – Finance Magnates

March 8, 2017 | Author: admin

The legal status, and especially the tax classification, of cryptocurrency in the US is a burning issue at the moment following IRS (Internal Revenue Service) demands that the Coinbase Bitcoin and Ethereum exchangesurrender all US client data.

To help fix the situation, the Chamber of Digital Commerce and Steptoe & Johnson LLP today announced the formation of the Digital Assets Tax Policy Coalition, a Washington DC-based coalition created to help develop effective and efficient tax policies for the market. Participants include exchanges, wallet providers, and transaction processing companies withSteptoe as counsel.

They explain that developing these policies will allow the IRS to implement the recent recommendations by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that the IRS develop a strategic plan for its virtual currency program and create third-party tools to allow for greater compliance, while minimizing the need for aggressive and burdensome enforcement actions.

Clear tax treatment for digital assets is essential to ensure robust growth of this important sector, said Perianne Boring, President and founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

We are proud to be working with the industrys leading companies to engage with policymakers on an issue of vital importance to the sector. Tax solutions that allow the IRS to do its job without resorting to actions such as a John Doe summons will be of benefit to all, said Jason Weinstein, partner at Steptoe and co-chair of Steptoes Blockchain and Digital Currency practice.

Blockchain and digital asset technologies pose unique challenges to tax administration. We look forward to working with the Coalition to develop policies that minimize compliance burdens for the industry while also providing the IRS the tools it needs to administer the tax code effectively and efficiently, said Cameron Arterton, counsel at Steptoe.

Like a number of other regulators around the world, since 2014 the IRS has considered cryptocurrencies to be property, not currency, for tax purposes.

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Top 5 Cryptocurrencies That Can’t be Mined – The Merkle

March 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Everyone involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem is well aware of how bitcoin uses a proof-of-work algorithm. New coins are generated through the mining process, which becomes more difficult over time. However, not all cryptocurrencies in existence can be mined. Below are some of the more popular altcoins that offer no mining incentive, yet are still quite valuable.

The Ripple network works in a rather different manner compared to Bitcoin or even Ethereum. Positioning itself as the global settlement network, Ripple is not your average cryptocurrency by any means. Obtaining Ripple can only be done by buying the currency from various exchanges, as there is no option to generate XRP by mining. A total of 100 billion XRP has been created once the project launched. A few coins are destroyed every time a transaction takes place.

NXT is a popular altcoin that cannot be mined in the traditional sense. It is possible for users to forge new coins, but it doesnt require dedicated hardware to do so. Instead, users need to leave their wallet open assuming it contains a balance and they will earn small amounts of interest in the process. NXT runs a proof-of-stake algorithm, which makes mining in the traditional way obsolete.

Mining WAVES is entirely out of the question as well, since the project makes use of a delegated and leased proof-of-stake algorithm. The entire supply of WAVES tokens was premined, although users will be able to mine tokens in the future using a computer or mobile device. However, the entire token supply will never surpass the 100 million mark. All of the available tokens were issued during the WAVES pre-sale and the teams bounty program.

When Factom was first launched, there was a lot of excitement regarding this project. Considering how the project runs on top of the bitcoin blockchain, it cannot be labeled as an altcoin per se. Factom is something entirely different, although the projects currency called factoids cant be mined directly. One could call this system proof of usage, as users who hold factoids can convert them into Entry Credits to be used within applications using the Factom blockchain.

The network does not support mining, as a Factoid Software Sale was organized once the project was announced. Investors who bought Factoids can either sell them on an exchangeor keep them as a tool to buy Entry Credits. It is also possible to earn Factoids, by sharing computing power and resources with the network. It is quite an intriguing project that anchors data into the bitcoin blockchain. In fact, Bitcoins proof-of-work algorithm ensures all of the data processed by Factom is safe from tampering.

MaidSafe is another one of these projects that does not allow users to mine the native currency. All of the available tokens were issued two years ago, and no more tokens will be generated moving forward. This also makes it somewhat impossible to generate Safecoin right now, although it will be possible to mine the currency in the future. Investors hold 10% of the total supply, with 90% waiting to be rewarded to miners providing resources to secure the system. However, Safecoin is not mined with graphic cards, but rather by users dedicating hard drive space to the project.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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