Australian fintech startup HCash just revealed it raised $53 million through an ICO in July
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are polarising the business world at the moment, but one Australian company has made hay while the sun shines, raising 21,000 Bitcoins worth of capital. Blockchain security startup HCash, which is developing its technology in conjunction with Melbourne’s Monash University, has revealed to Business Insider that the round closed on July 15. Based on that day’s exchange rate, the 21,000 Bitcoins were worth $53 million. ICOs are a method of raising funds where a startup sells electronic tokens or “coins” to buyers that are betting that the business will do well in the future, thereby raising the value of the token. Unlike traditional venture capital, no […]
Bitcoin is sliding after bitcoin gold goes live
Bitcoin is trading down 4.5% Wednesday following a split in the cryptocurrency’s blockchain network. Bitcoin gold, the new digital coin formed by the split Tuesday morning, follows the bitcoin-bitcoin cash fork in August. The project website for bitcoin gold is down following a DDoS attack, according to cryptocurrency watcher CoinDesk. The bitcoin community is split over whether forks are good or bad for bitcoin. Bitcoin, the red-hot digital currency up more than 400% this year, was trading down 4.42% Wednesday morning after the blockchain network underpinning the coin split again. As reported by cryptocurrency watcher CoinDesk, bitcoin gold officially split from the bitcoin network Wednesday morning. The new cryptocurrency is a clone of the original bitcoin blockchain, […]
University of Sydney’s super-fast blockchain gets even faster
World-wide tests reveal Red Belly Blockchain’s impressive speed New global trials have shown the University of Sydney’s super-fast ‘Red Belly Blockchain’ can process financial transactions 50 percent faster than first anticipated – outperforming some market leaders including VISA for world-wide payments. Blockchain technology is best known as technology that underpins Bitcoin. Blockchain is a public ledger allowing secure and almost instantaneous digital transfer of virtual currencies across the world. The ‘Red Belly Blockchain’ is being developed by researchers at the University of Sydney’s School of Information Technologies. Dr Vincent Gramoli, who heads up the Concurrent Systems Research Group developing the blockchain, said trials over the past three months showed the […]
Bitcoin: Tulip bubble or financial market revolution for young Australians?
You are in your late 20s and live in an east coast capital city. You have a stable career and a bit of spare money, but it’s unlikely you will be able to buy a house in an area where you can hold on to your job. Wages are going nowhere. Yours has been falling behind the cost of living. You’d like more money, but you don’t even have enough to start a share portfolio. You know nothing about how to start a small business, but you do understand the internet and you’ve worked out that something is making your friends rich, very quickly. Suddenly Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies like it […]
Bitcoin breaks US$100 Billion in value, soars to over US$6000 for the first time
Bitcoin, which is unarguably the world’s most prominent digital currency, just broke through one of the most important milestones ever, vaulting to over US$6000 and over US$100 billion in value. Welcome to a new kind of currency, or rather, welcome to a new kind of financial system. Today, for the first time ever, Bitcoin surpassed the $6000 barrier, proving that cryptocurrency is, in all likeliness, here to stay. Bitfinex, which has the highest volume BTC/USD exchange, broke the $6,000 barrier initially. Now, the same can be said for all of the other major exchanges. It has only been a little over a week since the price of bitcoin soared passed […]
Ethereum Founder: Central Banks far from Digital Currency
Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year-old creator of the world’s second biggest digital currency, Ethereum, isn’t worried about coming competition from the central banks of the world. Speaking in Toronto on Tuesday, Buterin downplayed the possibility of countries creating digital versions of their currencies that could rival or displace bitcoin or Ethereum. He said the advent of a national currency based on a blockchain, which is the distributed ledger technology that underpins bitcoin and Ethereum, will take years to launch. “If there is [such a launch] it will be a server and a bunch of marketing buzzwords to make it look like a blockchain,” Buterin said, suggesting central banks lack the ability […]
Are fintech companies changing the industry for the better?
FinTech is most commonly known as the abbreviation for the term “financial technology” and the name given to an emerging and rapidly growing financial services sector. Financial technology is often used to describe any technological innovations within the financial industry, ranging from banking and investments, all the way through to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With new technologies come new businesses, and so financial technology companies were born. The question is, however, whether these businesses and the technologies on offer through them are changing the industry for the better, or are they simply a disruption to an already functioning economy? How are fintech companies changing the financial industry? One of the […]
‘We’re getting between 100 and 200 new users every day’: Aussie money boosts Bitcoin’s $7000 surge
Australian money is pouring into Bitcoin, which hit another record high on Friday, swelling the market capitalisation to $US160 billion. The cryptocurrency was fetching $7044 ($US5452) on Friday afternoon, up 75 per cent in under 30 days. The extreme price recovery has emerged in the face of powerful headwinds; China recently banned Initial Coin Offerings [ICO] – a type of internet crowdfunding, Russia pledged to ban Bitcoin exchanges and there is another impending Bitcoin fork. But a key theme underpinning the extreme price action is the widespread adoption by mainstream investors, curious at the blockchain innovation and seduced by the recent price surge. Local exchanges are finding new customers are […]
