ENSENADA, Mexico, Feb. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --BitBay, the cryptocurrency software suite offering unbreakable smart contractswas keeping a low profile for some time but has now resurfaced; stronger than ever. The creator and soul developer of BitHalo/BlackHalo David Zimbeck has worked effortlessly the past two years to create the most advanced and secure wallet in cryptocurrency space. The software suite is capable of supporting an entire smart contracting interface with decentralized markets and other features.

A BitBay community member comments,

"How is it that a single developer can deliver such an incredible suite when entire teams of coders have a hard time even delivering a functional wallet? How on earth has this project gone unnoticed, and why is it not in the top 10 coins in the world?"

Unbreakable Smart Contracts

Unlike many other platforms, BitBay is not vaporware. It is a feature rich platform that offersunbreakable smart contractsfor important real world applications. The BitBay contracts are far superior to other smart contracts as they are secured by collateral deposits from both parties, which makes it unbreakable. In the event of a default by one of the parties, their collateral funds will be burnt, making it illogical for them to cheat or exit the contract with the intention of defrauding the other.

The smart contracts system on BitBay eliminates arbitrators, biased third parties, escrow and even fees. Without any middlemen, it can create coins for cash contracts like a decentralized "LocalBitcoins", where cash payments are completely trustless. It can also be used to create "employment contracts", "decentralized eBay-like delivery contracts" (to ensure prompt delivery of working products), and even "barter contracts" that allows people to create a "wish list" and trade any item off that list.

The user-friendly templates on BitBay enable users to create smart contracts by just entering few details. The platform currently has a handful of templates in place, with more to be added shortly. In David Zimbeck's words, all one has to do is use their imagination to create a custom template for any deal they want. The platform's "Cash for Coins" template has already been successfully used by many to automate buying process and complete cash deals without needing escrow or middlemen. The platform will soon release a "buy/sell anything" contract template with reverse and regular auctions support. It will also include a variety of shipping choices.

Decentralized Marketplace

BitBay had a decentralized marketplace almost a year before "Open Bazaar".BitBay's completely anonymous marketis built right into the client, and it allows users to create their own public and private markets. Or they can just check different contracts already available in the main market. The BitBay software allows communication between users by supporting email with end to end encryption like Thunderbird and it also supports Bitmessage for a more decentralized option.

Other features on BitBay include "Pay to Email" which uses steganography to hide payments within photos sent to recipient's email. The feature, originally created for tipping purposes has various other applications as well. Even the wallets' two encrypted keys can be hidden within images using David's steganography based feature. These keys can then be used on two different computers to sign transactions a feature that lays the foundation for "Cold Staking", which will be utilized in both BitBay and BlackHalo. The Cold Staking feature will be almost impossible to crack because the computers used to sign your transactions can be in completely separate locations. BitBay will also make allowance for "exotic spending" such as "locktimes". In addition to the "dead man's switch", "parking of coins", "burn" and other spending types, it also supports automated joint accounts for business partners and spouses. The BitBay platform can also translate to 92 different languages.

About BitBay

BitBay has so far created a whole cryptocurrency ecosystem with its own functional market economy. All these things have turned BitBay into a powerful cryptocurrency software suite that can take on other cryptocurrencies. The platform enjoys avibrant communitythat is regularly attracting and training new users. The "contract faucet" created by one of the team members is currently giving away coins using a unilateral "Guarantor" contract to whoever accepts it.

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The Worlds Most Advanced Cryptocurrency Software, BitBay Makes Itself Visible - Yahoo Finance

Scientists at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg have developed an important mathematical algorithm called "Equihash." Equihash is a core component for the new cryptocurrency Zcash, which offers more privacy and equality than the famous Bitcoin. Zcash came into operation as an experimental technology for a community-driven digital currency in late 2016.

Bitcoin is by far the most recognized and widely used digital currency. It was introduced in January 2009 and has garnered much attention since then. But it is not the only one of its kind. Wikipedia lists nearly one hundred cryptocurrencies boasting more than 1 million US dollar market capitalisation.

One of the newest cryptocurrencies is "Zcash," which can be seen as an update to the Bitcoin protocols. In Bitcoin, the transfer of coins is recorded in a global ledger, the so-called blockchain. The validity of the latest transfers in the blockchain is verified about every ten minutes. Verifying the transfers and creating new blocks for the blockchain (the so-called mining) requires a lot of computing power, which is provided by distributed computers worldwide. The "miners" who allocate the processing power are rewarded with new coins.

Zcash is trying to resolve two main shortcomings of Bitcoin: its lack of privacy for transactions and the centralization of transaction verification into the hands of a mere dozen miners who have invested in large amounts of specialized mining hardware: Bitcoin is prone to such centralization because the computational load of the bitcoin mining algorithm can be split into many different small tasks, which can be conducted in parallel. The algorithm is easy to implement in dedicated, energy-efficient and cheap microchips, but not suited to standard hardware. Bitcoin mining today is therefore done on special-purpose supercomputers which are located in places with cheap electricity and/or cheap cooling. Such supercomputers are expensive, costing millions of euros, but provide much more mining power than if one were to use standard PC hardware of the same price.

Prof. Alex Biryukov, head of the research group "Cryptolux" and Dr. Dmitry Khovratovich at SnT have developed the algorithm "Equihash" which can resolve this problem. Equihash is a so called memory-hard problem, which can not be split up into smaller working packages. It can be more efficiently calculated on desktop-class computers with their multiple processing cores and gigabytes of memory than on special hardware chips. "If 10,000 miners with a single PC were active, in Zcash the investment to compete with them would be 10,000 times the price of a PC, while with bitcoin, the investment would be significantly smaller," says Khovratovich. This creates a more democratic digital currency by allowing more users to contribute to the mining process. Khovratovich adds: "The strength of a cryptocurrency comes from the fact that the ledger is globally distributed. Our Equihash algorithm reverses the situation back to this more ideal world."

Equihash was first presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium last year -- one of the top-5 IT security events. Prof. Biryukov comments: "Since Equihash is based on a fundamental computer science problem, advances in Equihash mining algorithms will benefit computer science in general. Equihash is so far unique among all the mining algorithms: it is memory-hard on the one hand and very easy to verify on the other." In other words, while mining new coins with Zcash/Equihash is comparatively expensive, hence posing a smaller risk of monopolization because it requires large amounts of computer memory and hard computational work, checking that the new coins are genuine is memoryless, fast and cheap.

Understanding these advantages, the creators of Zcash chose Equihash as the algorithm for mining coins and verifying transfers. Equihash itself is not limited to use in Zcash and can be used in any cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin.

"With our contribution to Zcash, the Cryptography and Security lab (CryptoLux) has shown its strength in innovative research that has immediate applications in the financial technology industry," says SnTs director, Prof. Bjrn Ottersten. "We invite students to follow us in this promising field," adds Professor Biryukov: "There are still lots of challenging research problems to solve."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Luxembourg. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Towards equal access to digital coins - Science Daily

Centurion, a new cryptocurrency, launched last week with a focus on ease-of-use and scalability in addition to promoting childrens charities. With a block size of 2 MB, Centurion can process and confirm transactions in under 6 minutes.

Ready-made merchant payment API libraries can be integrated into websites to enable the cryptocurrency to be used to buy products and services. The first adopter of Centurion is an online store which sells more than 100 e-books and 50 videos on marketing, cryptocurrencies, internet tips, tricks, businesses, etc. The partnerships will be revealed soon, with more stores to follow soon after. Centurion is already available for traders on the cryptocurrency exchange Excambiorex.

Mining pools for Centurion users do not require miners to sign up and manually withdraw their accumulated share of cryptocurrency. Instead, they will be receiving funds directly into their wallets. According to the company, this has been done to improve ease of use, but also reduce the risk of attacks on the mining pools wallets. The auto pay-outs are set to execute every few minutes. In order to cater to users who are not technology experts, simple, pre-configured files are provided that can be downloaded to start CPU and GPU mining.

Centurion4Children is donating 5 million Centurion coins to well-established charity organizations. It is also raising funds within the community and through the website. The foundation is already represented in India, as well as Africa and Europe with official charity partnerships being revealed in March, 2017. Centurion4Children is currently raising funds for: Support a Child and its Entire Family, Sponsor a Boy, Safe Water for Children in Development Countries, and Sustainable Schools. To cover promotion costs and to kick-start the donations distributed by Centurion4Children, the coin has reserved 50 Million of its tokens.

The cryptocurrency platform will soon embark on a marketing campaign in association with Cryptonetwork ltd, a Dubai-based entity which has a network of people spread across India, Germany, Italy, Spain and several other countries. They will be involved in various promotional activities, including the sale of products and services, for which they will receive rewards in centurion and bitcoin. An estimated 20 million Centurion tokens over a period of 5 years has been earmarked for these promotional purposes.

Centurion will donate 5 million of its reserved coins to charity and the remaining 50% will be used to reward early adopters, investors, related projects and talented individuals within the community who work to improve the Centurion cryptocurrency.

Specifications X11 Proof of Work (PoW) 3% Proof of Stake (PoS) RPC port: 5555 / P2P port: 5556 1 Minute Blocks Block Size 2Mb Reward Schedule: Blocks until 100 0 CNT (for fair difficulty balancing) Blocks 101 250,100 100 CNT Blocks 250,101 500,100 75 CNT Blocks 500,101 1,000,100 60 CNT Blocks 1,000,101 2,000,100 50 CNT Blocks 2,000,101 2,500,100 25 CNT Blocks 2,500,101 3,500,100 10 CNT Blocks 3,500,101 4,000,100 5 CNT Blocks 4,000,101 5,000,100 2.5 CNT Blocks 5,000,101 19,000,000 1 CNT Total Coin production 250 Million Reserve: 50 Million. SIDEBAR

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New Charity Focussed Cryptocurrency Launches - AllCoinsNews.com (blog)

Scientists at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg have developed an important mathematical algorithm called Equihash. Equihash is a core component for the new cryptocurrency Zcash, which offers more privacy and equality than the famous Bitcoin. Zcash came into operation as an experimental technology for a community-driven digital currency in late 2016. Competing cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is by far the most recognised and widely used digital currency. It was introduced in January 2009 and has garnered much attention since then. But it is not the only one of its kind. Wikipedia lists nearly one hundred cryptocurrencies boasting more than 1 million US dollar market capitalisation.

One of the newest cryptocurrencies is Zcash, which can be seen as an update to the Bitcoin protocols. In Bitcoin, the transfer of coins is recorded in a global ledger, the so-called blockchain. The validity of the latest transfers in the blockchain is verified about every ten minutes. Verifying the transfers and creating new blocks for the blockchain (the so-called mining) requires a lot of computing power, which is provided by distributed computers worldwide. The miners who allocate the processing power are rewarded with new coins.

Zcash is trying to resolve two main shortcomings of Bitcoin: its lack of privacy for transactions and the centralisation of transaction verification into the hands of a mere dozen miners who have invested in large amounts of specialised mining hardware: Bitcoin is prone to such centralisation because the computational load of the bitcoin mining algorithm can be split into many different small tasks, which can be conducted in parallel. The algorithm is easy to implement in dedicated, energy-efficient and cheap microchips, but not suited to standard hardware. Bitcoin mining today is therefore done on special-purpose supercomputers which are located in places with cheap electricity and/or cheap cooling. Such supercomputers are expensive, costing millions of euros, but provide much more mining power than if one were to use standard PC hardware of the same price.

New algorithm for cryptocurrency

Prof. Alex Biryukov, head of the research group Cryptolux and Dr. Dmitry Khovratovich at SnT have developed the algorithm Equihash which can resolve this problem. Equihash is a so called memory-hard problem, which can not be split up into smaller working packages. It can be more efficiently calculated on desktop-class computers with their multiple processing cores and gigabytes of memory than on special hardware chips. If 10.000 miners with a single PC were active, in Zcash the investment to compete with them would be 10.000 times the price of a PC, while with bitcoin, the investment would be significantly smaller, says Khovratovich. This creates a more democratic digital currency by allowing more users to contribute to the mining process. Khovratovich adds: The strength of a cryptocurrency comes from the fact that the ledger is globally distributed. Our Equihash algorithm reverses the situation back to this more ideal world.

Equihash was first presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium last year one of the top-5 IT security events. Prof. Biryukov comments: Since Equihash is based on a fundamental computer science problem, advances in Equihash mining algorithms will benefit computer science in general. Equihash is so far unique among all the mining algorithms: it is memory-hard on the one hand and very easy to verify on the other. In other words, while mining new coins with Zcash/Equihash is comparatively expensive, hence posing a smaller risk of monopolisation because it requires large amounts of computer memory and hard computational work, checking that the new coins are genuine is memoryless, fast and cheap.

Understanding these advantages, the creators of Zcash chose Equihash as the algorithm for mining coins and verifying transfers. Equihash itself is not limited to use in Zcash and can be used in any cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin.

With our contribution to Zcash, the Cryptography and Security lab (CryptoLux) has shown its strength in innovative research that has immediate applications in the financial technology industry, says SnTs director, Prof. Bjrn Ottersten. We invite students to follow us in this promising field, adds Professor Biryukov: There are still lots of challenging research problems to solve.

See original here:
Researchers at University of Luxembourg develop core component for Zcash cryptocurrency - Science Business

Above the Law

Bitcoin: Paying with the cryptocurrency | All media content | DW ... Deutsche Welle Bitcoin has long had a poor reputation. On the dark net it has been used to buy drugs and arms. Its reputation is improving, however, and it is now being used for ... BudCoin: Can Cryptocurrency Solve Marijuana's Banking Crisis ...Above the Law WeUseCoins Makes Bitcoin Adoption Easier with Its Comprehensive ...newsBTC all 6 news articles »

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Bitcoin: Paying with the cryptocurrency | All media content | DW ... - Deutsche Welle

With Bitcoin trading well over $1000 right now and its popularity higher now higher than ever, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large still have a long way to go. If one goal of cryptos is to have a wider adoption and use, then something needs to change from the current implementation and advertisement of bitcoin and altcoins.

It seems that the average user of cryptocurrenciesis a miner, a trader/investor, or a technophile. In no way am I suggesting that these users are not important pillars of coins, but it does create an environment which may be daunting for theaverage joe.Lack of guidance, lack of technical knowledge, and skepticism of others could turn away potential new crypto enthusiasts. To draw a parallel to fiat currency, the vast majority of Americans do not know how fractional reserve banking (FRB) works or what the Federal Reserve Bank is, but they use currency generated by FRB and issued by the Fed on a daily basis.

French sociologist Marcel Mauss seminal work The Gift may be able to lend some valuable insight into building the crypto community(ies). Mauss suggests that communities and interpersonal relationships are built on the foundation of reciprocity, gift giving, and social debts. This is to say that the creation of social obligation forges bonds between individuals. He argues that these gifts given usually were self interested. If you give a good or service to someone, they become indebted in some way. It mandates engagement with others.

Ive actually witnessed a similar kind of reciprocal crypto community already: Dogecoin. At the height of active users in the Dogecoin community, they were sending teams to the Olympics, funding a NASCAR sponsorship, and helping provide clean water to less fortunate communities. In addition to these large philanthropic endeavors, dogecoin remained very active among smaller time cyrpto users as well via giveaways and tipping. Since Dogecoin is relatively cheap and rather stable against fiat, members of the community will often give away small amounts of coins to other users to keep everyone excited. Theyll also tip some coins during discussions about anything ranging from the future of the coin to how an individual is feeling that day.

The creation of these social debts created opportunities and obligations to have community members return often and participate. This is where Mauss idea seems obvious to me. Obligation to participate grows a community. For a fair amount of time, Dogecoin was one of the most traded altcoins. Sadly, the same is true about less frequent participation. Dogecoins active members have seen a downtick recently, which have affected popularity and participation.

Bitcoin also used to have an easy way to tip others on the Internet via ChangeTip. This service allowed easy mircopayments between individuals across a plethora of social media and networking platforms. ChangeTip was very popular. It saw over $250,000 worth of tips sent and received with most tips hovering around $1. Despite this, the service shut down in November 2016. Maybe we need a new alternative to ChangeTip?

In no way am I suggesting that everyone start throwing large amounts of bitcoin around at each other in the same way Doge was able to. However I am suggesting that if small crypto tips are not available, that we think of Mauss and gift what we can to newcomers and veterans alike. This can be small amounts of altcoins (if the transaction fees allow), but more so knowledge and guidance. Helping individuals get started with crypto is the single easiest way to create that social obligation, to engender participation. Because participation is likely the most effective way to wider adoption and use.

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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Reciprocity is the Key to Growing Cryptocurrency Communities - The Merkle

The creators of Centurion are not just focusing on the financial aspects; they are driven by altruistic goals as well.

Centurion Lab has launched a brand-new cryptocurrency called Centurion. The digital currency, named after the key figures in the ancient Roman army offers an efficient and easy to use alternative to several altcoins currently available in the cryptocurrency market. The Centurion cryptocurrency was launched on February 9, 2017, and it aims to solve the issues faced by the Bitcoin community by offering them an alternative.

The Bitcoin network is currently struggling with increased delays in processing transactions due to confirmation backlogs. The delay in network scaling has led to increase in miner fees associated with transactions. Centurion has considered these challenges to create a cryptocurrency platform with twice the block size of Bitcoin at 2 MB, and a block time of 1 minute. The specifications of Centurion cryptocurrency are as follows:

X11 Proof of Work (PoW)

3% Proof of Stake (PoS)

RPC port: 5555 / P2P port: 5556

1 Minute Blocks

Block Size 2Mb

Reward Schedule:

Blocks until 100 0 CNT (for fair difficulty balancing)

Blocks 101 250,100 100 CNT

Blocks 250,101 500,100 75 CNT

Blocks 500,101 1,000,100 60 CNT

Blocks 1,000,101 2,000,100 50 CNT

Blocks 2,000,101 2,500,100 25 CNT

Blocks 2,500,101 3,500,100 10 CNT

Blocks 3,500,101 4,000,100 5 CNT

Blocks 4,000,101 5,000,100 2.5 CNT

Blocks 5,000,101 19,000,000 1 CNT

Total Coin production 250 Million

Reserve: 50 Million.

The creators of Centurion are not just focusing on the financial aspects, they are driven by altruistic goals as well. In the Roman saga, Centurions were considered as the protectors of the downtrodden, weak, and young. Taking a leaf out of the history, Centurion cryptocurrency also has an initiative named Centurion4Children a charity that strives to help kids across the world. Centurion cryptocurrency will be setting aside a total of 5 million Centurions to facilitate its activities. Centurion4Children will be responsible for supporting children and their families, sponsoring a child, providing safe water in developing countries and sustainable schools.

Centurion offers easy-to-use mining pools and software that save people from the complicated setup process as in the case of other cryptocurrency platforms. Centurion users can just download preconfigured files and become part of the mining community.

The creators of Centurion are also working on building a merchant network so that the community members can readily spend the crypto tokens for various goods and services. The readymade merchant API libraries make it easy for online platforms to integrate Centurion as an additional payment option. It has already partnered with one of the leading online sellers of e-books and videos on marketing, cryptocurrencies, internet tips, tricks, etc. In the coming days, Centurion will be expanding its network with the help of Cryptonetwork Ltd. Cryptonetwork will promote the use of Centurion through its marketing network in India, Germany, Italy, Spain and other nations.

More information about Centurion is available on the cryptocurrencys official website.

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New Centurion Cryptocurrency Offers an Alternative Payment Option While Supporting Its Own Children Charity - newsBTC

Dash, the rising alternative to bitcoin, has been added to cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX in the wake of its recent software updates and historic 24 hour trading volumes.

Dash Business Development Spokesman Matthew Meek said, After observing the volumes traded on BitMEX for sometime, it was obvious that BitMEX is consistently ranking amongst the top in USD/BTC volume on a daily basis. We felt that having Dash as an offering for BitMEXs users was an obvious choice and one that would also provide Dash with its first derivative based market, which we are excited about.

BitMEX gives retail investors access to the global markets using cryptocurrencies and derivatives. The exchange allows for trading using up to up to 100x leverage on bitcoin, and high leverage on altcoin futures. Since November 2014, the equivalent of over $4.5 billion USD has been traded over BitMEX. Dash joins a growing roster of popular cryptocurrencies listed on the platform, including Bitcoin, Zcash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Ripple, Augur, Litecoin and Factom.

BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes said, BitMEX aims to be the largest venue for the trading of any and all digital currency derivatives. As such, Dash belongs in our product offering. BitMEX believes financial privacy is valuable to the cryptocurrency exchange space. The first digital currency that can offer real electronic untraceable cash will be very successful. The Dash team is on the right path towards accomplishing this feat.

Dashs recent price and volume growth is driven in part by its recent software launch of Sentinel, which sets the foundation for the highly anticipated decentralized payments system Evolution. In parallel, Dash just opened its new headquarters at Arizona State Universitys SkySong Innovation Center, the first cryptocurrency in the world with dedicated offices. Dash now sits above Ethereum Classic as the 6th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.

Originally posted here:
Cryptocurrency exchange BitMex lists Dash - Finextra - Finextra

"When I looked at the dating industry, I saw it was expensive to reach a critical mass of users and open a niche dating site," says Yonatan Ben Shimon in a Skype call from Tel Aviv.

"That's why dominant sites are one-size-fits-all, but that's not what most of us look for."

Ben Shimon is founder and CEO of Matchpool, a new dating service that aims to bring couples together through the art of matchmakingand a 21st century twist, let the most successful matchmakers earn cryptocurrency rewards for their work.

The unique selling proposition (USP) of the service is to combine elements of traditional matchmaking with the transparency and enforceability of programmable smart contracts.

In short, potential matchmakers start 'pools' subsets of users united by a common interest, like Facebook groups within which all users can private message one another in the hope of finding a match.

Pool owners are able to monetize their matchmaking efforts in a variety of ways, such as by setting a membership fee to join or charging an amount per message sent.

Additionally they can try to maintain group dynamics by setting smart contract-enforced ratios between different user attributes: a 50/50 male-female split, for example, or a balanced age range. Rather than using the everyone-for-themselves, search-and-filter strategy of a site like OKCupid, you might call it a more curated approach to dating.

In a Medium post, Ben Shimon writes that matchmaking is still a common practice in many religious communities, and has been for much of history. But, it's also true that most of us don't live in these kinds of communities anymore.

"I think it does happen, but under the surface," he said. "If you ask a lot of colleagues or friends how they met their husband, they'll say through mutual friends. It's an environment that takes off your layers of protection If a trusted person makes the introduction we suddenly feel a lot more comfortable."

The idea is that pool owners will help to create this atmosphere of trust, at least to some degree, vouching for the users in the pool in a way that fosters genuine conversation instead of the frequently bland or abusive tenor of other popular sites.

Of course, even with the best intentions, trying to engineer social dynamics is pretty tricky, as is launching a dating site (or any other kind of social network) when existing competitors already have a significant network effect.

With these potential challenges ahead, why is Matchpool taking on the additional challenge of creating its own cryptocurrency token to underpin it?

Firstly, Ben Shimon said the company was attracted to the idea of using a blockchain to store data about user interactions because the records in the system are difficult to change, something he hopes will further build the trust network between users.

Secondly, as has been established in many other contexts, cryptocurrency isthought to be an attractive option if the aim is to reward users with small amounts of money on a regular basis, especially compared to conventional payment processors.

And thirdly, Matchpool's 'Guppy' token will be used to attract users, with 20% of the token supply being used to incentivize new signups with a reward which for the time being will only be given to women.

The rationale is that dating sites tend to have higher numbers of men, though its difficult to assess figures across all sites. Research from the Pew Center, though, found that more American men used dating sites than women.

"I believe that if we reward early users with real money in a way that we couldn't do with dollars then we can cheaply overcome the initial barriers that come from the [lack of] network effect," said Ben Shimon, citing PayPal as a company that had employed a similar paid sign-up strategy to rapidly acquire users.

With a token sale (sometimes called an initial coin offering or ICO) scheduled for March, and prospective launch date in May, it wont be long until the effectiveness of this strategy can be judged against results.

But one question remained at the end of the interview: what exactly isBen Shimon's motive for the site anyway?

Could it be that perhaps hes like the Mark Zuckerberg portrayed in "The Social Network", trying to connect crowds of other people as a way of getting closer to the one girl that got away?

For now, he doesn't see it the same.

"You know, thats a tricky question ... I'm not doing it to get one girl."

Love and money image via Shutterstock. App image via Matchpool

CryptocurrencyICOLifestyle

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This Blockchain Startup Will Pay You to Help Your Friends Find Love - CoinDesk

Bitcoin was the pioneer cryptocurrency as it brought us the blockchain technology that isrevolutionizing the world as we know it. There are, however, a few incredible innovative altcoins with amazing goals. Here are a few of the most innovative cryptos you need to know about.

Steem is a cryptocurrency that is generated through the creation of content in a blockchain-based social media platformcalled Steemit, in which everyone can earn simply by creating and curating content. This means the cryptocurrency may, for some, be a way earn extra cash, while for others it may be a way to monetize growth. New artists, for example, can use it as a platform that helps them support themselves.

NXT is a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, meaning all the coins were created at the beginning and that it doesnt need an incredible amount of computational power to generate blocks. Instead, it uses an algorithm based on the amount of coins already in the NXT network, and opening you wallet grants you a chance to get proof of stake rewards.

Its code is unique, and NXTs creators even call it a cryptoplatform instead of a cryptocurrency, as it supports a system that allow an infinite number of third-party applications to be created on top of NXT, creating a whole ecosystem around it.

Ripple wants to do for money what email did for communication. Ripple is both an open-source payments system that wants to help people break free from financial networks who restrict access with fees, and a digital currency used within that network. With Ripple, financial transaction fees can be reduced to almost insignificant amounts, and settlements are almost instant.

These characteristics drew in a wide variety of investors, including Google Ventures.Ripple itself, the cryptocurrency, differs from others as it is pre-mined and centralized. Nevertheless, it has already been adopted by a few major financial institutions.

Monero, a cryptocurrency under the CryptoNote platform, takes financial privacy seriously. Transactions arent traceable at all, and that means those who do value their privacy can feel safewhen using this cryptocurrency. So much so, darknet markets such as AlphaBay have already adopted Monero, which led to a surge in its popularity. Furthermore, this cryptocurrency is optimized for CPUs instead of GPUs, which makes it easier for amateur miners to get involved.

Ethereum is currently the second biggest cryptocurrency out there. Its platform is a blockchain-based decentralized virtual machine called the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), in which people can create decentralized applications (DApps), and in which Gas is used to properly allocate resources in the network.

In the platform, social networking systems that give power to users, online voting and distributed governance tools, and even fully transparent financial applications can be created. Resources in it are paid for in Ether.

The Ethereum project aims to do for human collaboration what the internet did for information, as some of the best uses it can have are still far beyond our imagination, just like Facebook and YouTube were far from peoples imagination when the internet came to be.

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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Top 5 Most Innovative Cryptocurrencies - The Merkle