Mark Cuban wants in on the cryptocurrency boom even if it turns out hes right that bitcoin is in a bubble.

Cuban is investing in 1confirmation, a fund that plans to raise $20 million to invest in blockchain-based companies, the tech billionaire said in an interview. Venture capital firm Runa Capital is among other investors, and its technical advisors include Andreessen Horowitz board partner Balaji S. Srinivasan and programming language JavaScript founder Brendan Eich.

I have always looked at blockchain as a foundation platform from which great applications can be built, Cuban said in an Aug. 19 email response to questions. Hopefully we can find a few.

Runa Capital principal Nick Tomaino was an early employee at digital currency exchange Coinbase Inc. and runs the cryptocurrency-focused blog The Control. They plan to differentiate 1confirmation from the slew of digital currency hedge funds that have sprung up recently by taking a page from the venture-capital play book.

Rather than investing in digital tokens through initial coin offerings or in the secondary market,1confirmation plans to invest from $100,000 to $500,000 in early stage companies before their ICO, and help those companies develop their product. Once the startup is ready to issue an ICO, the fund hopes to negotiate a discounted price.

Its a more cautious approach to the frenzy that has consumed the space this year, with startups raising hundreds of millions of dollars in days, or even minutes, with little real business applications besides a white paper and a website. Startups had raised $1.8 billion in ICOs as of last week, according to Coindesk.

The fund will focus investments in projects that help developers build decentralized applications, rather than those aimed at end users, on the belief that the sector isnt mature enough for blockchain applications to be adopted on a mass scale.

A number of funds focused on blockchain companies and their tokens have opened in the past year as bitcoins price more than tripled and cryptocurrencies market capitalization surpassed $100 billion. Polychain Capital, founded by another Coinbase alum, Blockchain Capital and Pantera Capital are some examples.

Cuban, who is a majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and star of startup investing theme show Shark Tank, tweeted in June that bitcoin was in a bubble, causing the cryptocurrency to drop in price. Cuban says thats beside the point given the developing underlying technology.

1Confirmation would be Cubans second foray into cryptocurrencies as he also plans to invest in tokens sold by his portfolio company Unikrn. Cuban says he plans to invest on a third crypto-related project in the future, as well as potentially buying crypto currencies, which he doesnt currently own.

Its hard to establish any intrinsic value for bitcoin or any of the the cryptocurrencies. Ifeveryone continues to tell their grandparents, cousins and co-workers to buy,the price can go a lot higher as there is a definable, finite amount, but if the number of buyers dry up or there are a few massive sellers we could see under $1,000 again, Cuban said. None of this has anything to do with the applications that can be built with blockchain. The question is whether great companies can be financed and built and I think the answer is yes.

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Bitcoin Skeptic Mark Cuban to Invest in Cryptocurrency Fund

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August 23, 2017, 10:32 PM EDT August 24, 2017, 12:04 AM EDT

Heres another reason to be leery of the initial coin offerings being done at a staggering pace in the cryptocurrency world: theres a one-in-10 chance youll end up a victim of theft.

Phishing scams have helped push up criminal losses to about $225 million this year, according to Chainalysis, a New York-based firm that analyzes transactions and provides anti-money laundering software. In such scams, investors are tricked into sending money to internet addresses pretending to be funding sites for digital token offerings related to the ethereum blockchain technology.

More than 30,000 people have fallen prey to ethereum-related cyber crime, losing an average of $7,500 each, with ICOs amassing about $1.6 billion in proceeds this year, Chainalysis estimates.

Its a huge amount of money to generate in such a short period of time, said Jonathan Levin, co-founder of Chainalysis, whose software and database are used by some of the largest bitcoin companies and U.S. law enforcement agencies. The cryptocurrency phishers are doing pretty good against all the other types of criminals that are out there.

Indeed, the huge amount of wealth that has fallen prey to cyber criminals is approaching the losses incurred by robberies in the U.S. for the entire year of 2015, which stood at $390 million, according to statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

ICOs are digital token sales typically that raise ether, with users transferring the funds to addresses provided by startups. Investors, sometimes eager to get early access to new token offerings have been tricked into providing their credentials to fake websites through targeted email campaigns, twitter posts and Slack messages, said Levin.

Read more about an Ethereum co-founders views on ICOs

Ether rose 0.1 percent to $324.17 on Thursday, according to data from coindesk, while bitcoin rose 0.2 percent to $4,201.

Most attacks involve creating websites or social media accounts that sound similar to the real ICO project. Levin gave the fictional example of a project named "illuminate," which an imposter might fake by spelling it as "iIIuminate." Using the fake account, they would solicit potential investors to send money to the criminals address.

His firm compiled the data by identifying so-called digital wallets used by scam artists. That information is usually public because criminals widely circulate it, hoping to fool investors into sending them money.

Other common forms of crime involve tapping into project loopholes. The DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is a smart contract project built on top of ethereum that was intended to democratize how ethereum projects are funded. A bug in the system was exploited and that led to the theft of $55 million worth of ether at the time.

Read more on how tech startups are ditching venture capital for ICOs

Levin didnt provide data for bitcoin-related cybercrime, and not because it is any safer. He said such data is harder to track as scams are usually specific attacks on individual holders, rather than ICO-related campaigns which try to dupe many people at once.

The overall figures mean there are infrastructure that we need to build to help prevent people from getting abused, said Levin.

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Cryptocurrency Cyber Crime Has Cost Victims Millions This Year ... - Bloomberg

Weve officially hit peak ICO. Estonia, a small country in Northern Europe, just floated the idea of potentially raising money by issuing a token called estcoins.

So why Estonia?

The countryis pretty forward thinking when it comes to technology they are the first nation to offer an e-Residency program. The program is almost like a digital citizenship, and lets participants take advantage of a host of government services, including start a European Union-based company without actually setting foot in the country.

In amedium post today, Kaspar Korjus, the director of Estonias e-Residency program, floated the idea of issuing crypto tokens via an initial coin offering (ICO) to raise money for the nation. Without committing to anything just yet, Korjus outlined what he sees a potential ICO looking like, and said the next step may be a white paper outlining the value of the tokens and what the investment would be used for.

The government already is asking for feedback from the technology world, and Ethereum founderVitalik Buterin is an advisor to the project.

Korjus said that the money raised in the offering could be used for a fund jointly managed by the government and outside private companies. This fund would be used to invest in new technologies for the public sector as well as invest venture capital into Estonian companies founded by both natives and e-Residents. Eventually Korjus sees the tokens holding value and being used as a payment method for public and private services both within the country and globally, which would provide a return on investment to ICO participants.

Sois this a legitimate idea or just the latest example of an entity trying to make a quick buck by slapping together an ICO? To be clear theres no doubt that this idea wouldnt have been proposed if not for the insane money (and corresponding attention) now surrounding ICOs.

That being said its not necessarily a bad thing. Eventually governments will adopt digital cryptocurrencies. Its just a matter of when, and in what form. Will the United States ever replace the dollar with bitcoin? Absolutely not. But will they supplement their gold reserves with bitcoin or another cryptocurrency? Much more likely, especially if Bitcoin becomes a major part of the U.S financial system.

Estonia experimenting with their own cryptocurrency could just make them an early adopter. Sure, doing it via an ICO may not be best image considering all the fraud and get rich quick schemes happening in the space recently. But who can blame them for trying, especially with all the money being thrown around these days?

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This European country may hold an ICO and issue its own ... - TechCrunch

Via CoinMarketCap

The combined value of all publicly traded cryptocurrencies has set a new record, surpassing $150 billion for the first time today.

At press time, the value of ether, bitcoin and more than 800 other blockchain-based assets had reached a high of around $154 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Overall, the figure indicates that the cryptocurrency market continues to grow at a steady pace. At $154 billion, the market is up 13 percent over the last seven days, 67 percentover the last month and an astounding 1,240 percent year-over-year.

What might be most notable, however, is that the new high came during a trading session in which there were no individual all-time highs for major cryptocurrencies.

At $4,275 and $324, bitcoin and ether were edging up at press time,though still short of their highs above $4,500 and $400, respectively. Further, the new combined recordcame in spite of the fact there were no big gains in litecoin, monero or dash, some of the more popular alternative cryptocurrencies among traders.

The lone breakout, in fact, was Ripple's XRP token a cryptographic asset issued by a San Francisco startup seeking to build enterprise blockchain solutions. On the day's trading, XRP was up more than 50% to $0.28, a movement that built on impressive gains yesterday as well.

Disclosure:CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Ripple.

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$150 Billion: Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap Hits New All-Time ... - CoinDesk

JOHANNESBURG Our article this week on answering readers burning questions on Bitcoin attracted a lot of interest and more questions which will be posted in a future article. But one readers letter to me particularly caught my attention. While my Dummies guide to Bitcoin article covered a lot of areas, I danced over the mining of crypto. However, this is a world where you can make money if youre willing to invest the capital in powerful cryptocurrency mining hardware. Andrew Crawford, in the below mailbox piece, outlines how he is on course to earn R50,000 this month from mining a cryptocurrency called Dash. Among the over 900 estimated cryptocurrencies in the world today, Dash like Bitcoin also works on a blockchain, but it touts havingadvanced capabilities such as instant and private transactions and decentralised governance. As Andrew outlines below, the price of Dash has shot up from around $94 to $300, dramatically reducing the period on his expected return on investment on a $5,800 Baikal 1.2 Gh Dash mining kit much shorter. So, fast is the pace of development in this space that this particular Baikal kit is now selling for $2,200 amid upgraded models. But this gives one an idea of whats involved. Gareth van Zyl

By Andrew Crawford

Hi Gareth,I enjoyed your article today.

Read more:Dummies guide to Bitcoin: BizNews readers burning questions answered

I first became aware of Bitcoin at a CFA investment conference in 2015. I then learnt its more about decentralised blockchain technology and Bitcoin is just the oldest and most significant currency used in blockchains (open source ledgers).

You glossed over mining as a way to get a toe in the water? Mining is just providing processing capacity to blockchain networks when you strip out the crypto lingo of mining. After researching the topic, I thought it was the least risky approach. What am I missing?

This year I decided to initially buy a Baikal 1.2 Gh Dash mine(price is now $2 200 but it previously cost $5 800). Cryptocurrency Dash was at $94 and the Rand exchange rate $13. Dash hit $300 in the last week so my 6 month projected Return on Investment (RoI) is now considerably shorter. At 300 watts the electricity is less than R300 pm for this Baikal processor. In a world where a share with a PE of 14 and dividend yield of 4% is good this RoI seems too good to be true. However, its working?!? Last week I also took delivery of 5 Antminer L3+ mines. Again the projected payouts are beating projections and these should earn me $3,780 this month (R50,000). My costs are R5,250 pm. Im earning in $ and paying costs in Rands.

Of course the price you pay to import these processors and their efficiency with regard toelectricity is key. I found the guys at Browntoast.co.za to be the most cost effective and efficient suppliers, and they help pick the most efficient processors. Setting up a mine / processor is beyond the average person but I think this was the least risky way for me to get into the unstoppable blockchain technology developments.

Crypto currency prices are highly volatile with all the signs of a bubble. Who knows? Getting into the game by providing processing power to blockchain networks seems to be a more substantial way to earn your crypto currency rather than speculating on the price going up? It also avoids the risk of the various cloud mining pyramid schemes being sold.

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Mailbox: 'How I earn R50k per month by mining cryptocurrency' - BizNews

A senior official forSouth Africa's central bank has saidit's "too risky" for the institution to launch its own cryptocurrency.

Speaking during theStrate GIBS FinTech Innovation Conference 2017 on Monday, the deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Francois Groepe, commented on developments in the fintech space, taking a particular focuson blockchain and distributed ledgers.

According to regional news sourceITWeb, Groepe suggested that the central bank has an open mind on the question of issuing its own digital currency. That said, he struck a cautious note about the short-term prospects of doing so.

"Virtual currencies have the potential of becoming widely adopted," he told attendees, going on to say:

"However, for the central bank to issue virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies in an open system will be too risky for us. This is something we really need to think about."

Groepe's comments come almost a year to the day after the South African Reserve Bank indicated that it would adopt an open perspective on the tech even leaving the door open to applications of its own.

"We are willing to consider the merits and risks of blockchain technology and other distributed ledgers," the bank's governor, Lesetja Kganyago, said at the time.

Other major financial players in the country, including its central securities depository, have also moved to investigate possible uses of blockchain.

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South Africa's Central Bank: It's 'Too Risky' to Launch a Cryptocurrency - CoinDesk

Onetime bitcoin skeptic Mark Cuban is warming to the digital currency world.

The billionaire is backing a new venture capital fund for cryptocurrency-related investments called 1confirmation. Founded by Nick Tomaino, former business development manager at Coinbase, the fund plans to raise $20 million, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"It's an interesting space that I [want] to get involved with and learn more" about, Cuban said in an email to CNBC Tuesday. He did not specify the size of his investment.

Cuban's opinion on digital currencies has changed fairly recently. In an Aug. 14 tweet, the Dallas Mavericks owner admitted he "might have to finally buy some" bitcoin, contrasting with a June tweet that said he thought bitcoin was in a "bubble."

"Bias should be up because of finite supply. Until crypto or US politics intrude, and they will," he added in another tweet on Aug. 14.

In late June, Cuban said he planned to participate in an initial coin offering by Unikrn, an online esports betting site in which he holds a stake.

Earlier that month, Cuban tweeted that he didn't know when or by how much the price of bitcoin, which has soared in value this year, would correct. He did acknowledge then that the blockchain technology backing bitcoin had value and that it "will be at the core of most transactions in the future. Healthcare, finance etc all will use it."

IBM announced Tuesday that it will work with major food companies such as Wal-Mart, Unilever, Tyson Foods, Dole and Kroger to "identify new areas where the global supply chain can benefit from blockchain."

However, bitcoin's surge and a rush of funds into initial coin offerings have attracted more investment attention.

Bitcoin has quadrupled in value this year and hit a record last Thursday of $4,522.13 with a market capitalization of about $74 billion, according to CoinDesk. Initial coin offerings, which are fundraising events used by cryptocurrency-related start-ups, have raised $1.37 billion so far this year, CoinDesk data showed.

Source: CoinDesk

The launch of the 1confirmation fund comes amid increased fundraising for cryptocurrency-related businesses.

On Aug. 10, digital currency storage and exchange company Coinbase announced it raised $100 million in private equity funding led by Dropbox investor IVP. That marks the largest single traditional funding round for a public blockchain or cryptocurrency start-up, according to CoinDesk.

Other participants in 1confirmation include Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript computer programming language; Balaji Srinivasan, board partner at technology venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and David Vorick, who is building a blockchain-based cloud storage system called Sia. The fund's founder, Tomaino, is also a principal at venture fund Runa Capital.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to "Shark Tank," which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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Mark Cuban backs new $20 million cryptocurrency venture fund - CNBC

Computer hardware maker Asus hasrevealed a new motherboard with features geared specifically toward cryptocurrency miners.

Dubbed the B250 Mining Expert, the board was debuted over the weekend by Asus'Republic of Gamers, the Taiwan-based manufacturer's high-end gaming brand.

And while the product'srelease date and price aren't known yet, it nonetheless represents the latest signal that the mainstream hardware industry is expanding its cryptocurrency footprint.Further, theannouncement comes months after Asusbegan rolling outGPUsdesigned specifically with crypto-miners in mind aimed to take full advantage of the digital "gold rush" now taking place.

The B250 Mining Expert motherboard itself boasts a total of 19 PCI-Express expansion slots, compared to the 12, eight or six slots featured oncompetitors' products.

The idea is that cryptocurrency miners who use computing power (and lots of electricity) toadd new transactions to a blockchain, receivingnewly minted coins as a reward want to run as a many graphics cards as possible. The forthcoming board, according to the specs that are circulating, has roughly the capacity of two to three regular-sized motherboards.

The 19 expansion slots are split into threegroups, each containing 24 dedicated pins. This allows the mining rig to be connected to three power supply units at once, stabilizing the rig for multi-GPU usage. The board also boasts a variety of features likely toappeal to miners, such as live visual statistics.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, other major GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD have moved in recent months to capitalize on the spike indemand for products that can be used for mining.

Earlier this month,Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang issued bullish statements on the prospects for his firm's entry into the mining space, suggesting that it could be a long-term revenue driver.

"Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay," he said.

ProductimageviaAsus

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Asus Debuts Specialized Motherboard for Cryptocurrency Miners - CoinDesk

The digital financial services developer Enigma prides itself on ultra-secure products . The company's Catalyst platform protects financial info with a cutting-edge combination of blockchain-inspired privacy technology and cryptography. So it comes as no small surprise that on Monday, scammers took over the company's website, mailing lists, and Slack accounts by exploiting some extremely basic security mistakes Enigma had made. The blunders also facilitated a scam that ultimately cost Enigma supporters almost $500,000.

Enigma has planned an Initial Coin Offering for September 11an unregulated cryptocurrency fund-raising campaign that startups use when they want to raise capital for their company without going through the process of working with an established financial institution or venture capital fund. (The SEC has promised to clamp down on these ICOs , but so far is in the exploratory phase.)

Tom Simonite

Regulators Warn Cryptocurrency Startup Fundraisers to Play By the Rules

Gabriel Nicholas

Ethereum Is Coding's New Wild West

Brian Barrett

Security News This Week: Two Huge Cryptocurrency Heists Cost Investors Millions

With the ICO in mind, scammers compromised official Enigma channels to create a sense of legitimacy and urgency. The plot proved easy to pull off. At least one of the passwords protecting the Enigma accounts, which included a Slack account with administrative privileges, had previously leaked, and reports indicate that the accounts weren't protected by two-factor authentication.

The hackers began defacing the company's main site and Slack accounts, and pushed a special "pre-sale" ahead of the ICO, directing money toward their own cryptocurrency wallet. They also went rogue on the company's mailing lists. Many users realized that the push was a scam, but the hustle did tempt some interested backers into sending 1,492 coins in the cryptocurrency Ethereum, which converts to almost $495,000.

Enigma said in a statement on Monday that its community fund-raiser, also called a crowd sale, was always set definitively for September 11, and emphasized that its secure servers had not been hacked. But a spokesperson confirmed that the scammers compromised account passwords using various methods. And in response to the incident, the company says it is adding strong, random passwords and two-factor authentication for each account, plus implementing robust password changing and better system compartmentalization. "Weve moved up a number of critical security steps and taken additional measures to protect the community going forward," says Tor Bair, Enigma's head of marketing and growth. "Were now very well aware of the potential threats and are taking no chances."

Though honest mistakes can happen at any growing organization, the Enigma community grappled with the implications of the incident on Monday, wondering how a specialized cryptography company could only now be realizing the need for stringent account hygiene. "This will go down in crypto history as one of the stupidest moments ever. We need a meme," one Reddit user wrote. Some Redditors even claimed that they used the breached credential repository Have I Been Pwned to determine that the Enigma accounts scammers accessed reused a previously exposed account password from CEO Guy Zyskind. But Zyskind told WIRED that none of the breached Enigma accounts relied on reused passwords.

While the Enigma team worked to restore secure Slack service, the community's discussion moved to secure messaging app Telegram. "No word on honoring those who were scammed b/c of y'all negligence and poor security? Speaks volumes," a user called Jay wrote in the open chatroom. Many users indicated support for Enigma, though, and seemed satisfied with the company's remediation efforts.

"Hacking accounts that do not have dual-factor authentication enabled and other best in class security measures is a trivial hack for most dedicated attackers," says Chris Pierson, the general counsel and chief security officer of the payment platform Viewpost. "To the public it looks as if the company has been hacked, and provides a significant amount of negative press about the companys security and privacy responsibilities."

Enigma said on Monday evening that it is working to mitigate the damage. We're actively investigating the scam attempt and the parties involved with multiple partners, including vigilant members of our community, other companies in our space, and exchanges, Bair says.

Since they are unregulated by the governmentfor now, anywayICOs have perks that make them appealing to cryptocurrency companies, but by their nature they are also less predictable than standard fund-raising avenues. In mid July, scammers stole roughly $7 million from supporters during the ICO of the cryptocurrency management platform CoinDash. A few days later, hackers stole $32 million in Ethereum (though much of it was later recovered) by exploiting a vulnerability in a crypto product called Parity Wallet.

"The news of the attack is certainly not surprising," says Eric Klonowski, a senior advanced threat research analyst at the internet security firm Webroot. "Investors were ready to part with their money at a moments notice, and the attacker was prepared to capitalize.... That said, recent core cryptocurrency heists are all a result of third-party vulnerabilities and their handling of investments, and not in the cryptography or implementation itself."

With the September 11 ICO still rapidly approaching, at least Enigma has some time to get its first-line security right.

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A Very Dumb Mistake Costs Cryptocurrency Investors Big Time - WIRED

The central bank of the Philippines has granted licenses to two local bitcoin exchanges, according to reports.

Daily newspaper The Philippine Starreportedthe developments on Sunday, citing statements from central bank chief Nestor Espenilla Jr.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas firstreleased its rules for domestic exchanges in February, seeking to lay down a foundation for the country's nascent cryptocurrency space. Yet the central bank has seen relatively little interest from prospective applicants, according to one official who commented to local media in late July.

That said, Espenilla, who spoke during a financial technology event over theweekend, indicated that the central bank is being proactive about bringing exchanges under its regulatory auspices.

"We see a rapid increase in the trajectory. It is coming from a small base but increasing that is why we decided to require them to register," he told attendees.

Espenilla also offered some figures on the local bitcoin trade, according to the news source, saying that exchanges are seeing as much as $6 million in volume a month a figure that represents three times the $2 million per month seen last year.

"We are moving to regulate them," Espenilla emphasized.

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The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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