There is no shortage in the world of cryptocurrencies, as new coins are seemingly being created every single day. This massive influx of new cryptocurrencies only floods the ecosystem, though, as the number of currencies having any intrinsic value is fairly limited. It is also much harder to come up with a valuable and creative idea, rather than copying code and hoping to raise a lot of money during an ICO.

Ever since alternative cryptocurrencies became a thing, there has been a growing number of new coins. Unfortunately, very few of these currencies offer something new. In fact, most of them copy existing code from a different currency and change a few of the variables. We even have a tutorial on how to create an altcoin in under an hour. A lot of developers create multiple coins along the way, hoping for some people to invest bitcoin into their worthless project. With over 7,000 altcoins in existence today, it is evident the market is oversaturated and running out of ideas.

An often heard sentiment among altcointraders is how there are particular times of the year when alternative cryptocurrencies seem to do well. The phrase alts are back is uttered quite often, even though this statement has no meaning whatsoever. While it is true one can make a good profit from a new altcoin once it hits its first exchange, the successes are short-lived every single time.

This is also one of the biggest dangers when investing in altcoins. Every time a new coin hits an exchange, there will be pump-and-dump cycles which will catch newcomer somewhere. Rest assured the vast majority of outcomes offers no value and only serve to make a select group of people richer every time a new coin is listed on an exchange.

One of the things a lot of people have problems with is just how every new altcoin has to provide some sort of financial benefit to the developers. Either a fixed amount of coins is controlled by the developers, or they organize an ICO to raise money. Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin without any financial incentive whatsoever, as running an initial coin offering or creating a pre-mine was never the objective in the first place.

Even though there are projects with a legitimate ICO in the cryptocurrency world, the whole concept of raising money before even showing what the code can do has gotten somewhat of a bad reputation. Investing in an idea is very difficult in the cryptocurrency world, as most of these ideas exist in other currencies already. Moreover, with a growing number of ICOs, there is a bigger chance investors will buy an altcoin that is abandoned by the developer once the money changes hands.

There is no way to ignore the obvious elephant in the room here. Most altcoins, with the exception of maybe two dozen, are scams. Anyone who invests money into these projects will lose funds over time. One could even argue there is no need for additional cryptocurrencies at this point, as even Bitcoin hasnt caught mainstream attention quite yet. Developers are more than welcome to submit their idea for features, privacy, and anonymity to existing branches of cryptocurrency development. Not every new idea warrants the creation of yet another altcoin.

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4 Reasons New Cryptocurrencies Keep Getting Worse The Merkle - The Merkle

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Will Cryptocurrency Abuse be an Enforcement Focus for the IRS this Tax Season? - JD Supra (press release)

ChronoBank, a blockchain-based initiative aimed at disrupting the short-term recruitment sector, has already raised just over $4 million in cryptocurrency with itscrowdfund which will end in only one week. It recently reached two new partnerships both in the employment and cryptocurrency spaces.

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ChronoBank has established a strategic partnership with Instahire, a team that is launching an app to expedite the recruitment process. Instahire is associated with the Clifford Wallace Agency, which supplies hospitality staffing to corporate events and restaurants and receives around 1,000 job applications per month. ChronoBanks team met with representatives from Instahire last week to discuss the possibility of a partnership between the two organisations. They say that both immediately saw the potential opportunities.

Instahire will launch in February 2017, first locally in Sydney and then to Australia in its entirety. The app is currently in the final stages of testing, ahead of first release, and hospitality businesses are actively being sought and added to the list. The immediate synergy for ChronoBank is to help grow the number of pre-registrations for both jobseekers and businesses.

Once the Instahire app is up and running with sufficient numbers of employers and employees, it will make sense to introduce the LH currency used on the ChronoBank platform. As an added incentive, the team are discussing the possibility of offering a free ChronoBank debit card with $20 credit for every new registered user, charging a 2% wage transfer fee.

ChronoBank has also partnered with theNEM cryptocurrency platform to create a separate wallet for the NEM ecosystem. ChronoBank will also issue Labour Hour (LH) tokens on the NEM network and use on-chain multi-sig, one of NEMs flagship security features.

NEM (New Economy Movement) was originally conceived as a clone of the Nxt blockchain, but rapidly developed into a completely new project with its own codebase. Its ecosystem has since grown with a market cap of around $60 million now, placing it in the top 10 of all cryptocurrencies.

It is important for us to deploy tokens on several blockchains, comments Sergei Sergienko, CEO of ChronoBank.This builds in redundancy and broadens our appeal across many initiatives and communities.

LH will leverage NEMs token asset facility that enables businesses to create blockchain tokens with specific properties and identifiers. The flexibility and ease of use of this system is highly appealing to us, continues Sergienko. NEMs developers have designed a powerful but nevertheless intuitive approach to token operations.

Aside from issuing tokens on the NEM network, ChronoBank is creating a dedicated wallet for the NEM blockchain. This will incorporate another powerful feature of the NEM blockchain: on-chain multi-signature transactions. Up to 32 signatories can be required to sign a transaction and, uniquely to NEM, signatures are propagated across the blockchain as soon as they are created. The developers explain that this means further signatories do not have to worry about an aggregating server going offline there is no single point of failure.

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ChronoBank Raised $4m in Cryptocurrency with a Week Left for the Crowdsale - Finance Magnates

Tax filing season began January 23rd, and with its arrival the IRS began rolling out its annual list of the so-called Dirty Dozen. The Dirty Dozen list is an educational effort to inform the public about scams, but it also offers insight into the tax enforcement issues on the IRSs radar.

Particular tax schemes often stay on the Dirty Dozen list for years until the IRS devises an effective strategy for combatting them (if it ever does). Changes on the list reveal new schemes or enforcement priorities that have caught the IRSs attention.

Of particular interest this year: whether cryptocurrency abuse will make the list. Cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is the most well-known, are digital currencies not backed by any government. They trade on public markets called exchanges, and their use has grown rapidly in recent years. The IRS taxes cryptocurrency like property, not foreign currency.

The IRS is presently litigating a summons case against Coinbase Inc., a prominent U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, in the Northern District of California. The IRS uses John Doe summons procedure when it believes some type of transaction is being used for tax avoidance, and it wants to find out the identities of currently-unknown taxpayers who have participated in those transactions. John Doe summonses have used to sniff out the identities of, for example, taxpayers using debit cards linked offshore, or holding accounts at certain banks suspected of abuse.

The IRSs resort to John Doe procedure suggests it views cryptocurrency dealing as a widespread tax evasion strategy. But its evidence to date proves only isolated abuse, not pervasive tax evasion. The IRSs summons is supported by interviews with 3 taxpayers who admitted to using cryptocurrency to avoid or evade taxes. But its demand for records is far broader: all cryptocurrency transactions with a U.S. jurisdictional hook at a large cryptocurrency exchange over a 3 year period.

Based in part on this mismatch of the IRSs evidence and the information it demands, some cryptocurrency users and Coinbase itself are litigating to fight the summons. But such efforts seldom succeed at blocking disclosure.

If the IRS viewed cryptocurrency as a common tool for tax abuse, one might expect it to serve John Doe summonses on other US-based cryptocurrency exchanges or payment applications. But it has not done so, probably for lack of evidence they have been abused. Of course, such evidence could emerge from new interviews or from Coinbase records, once produced and digested.

The IRSs disclosures to date create real questions about just how widespread cryptocurrency-based tax fraud really is. If the IRS includes cryptocurrency abuse on its dirty dozen list, it will be sending a signal that it views the Coinbase litigation not as a one-off skirmish, but the first front in a lengthy war to come.

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Will Cryptocurrency Abuse be an Enforcement Focus for the IRS this Tax Season? Blog Subject to Inquiry - Lexology (registration)

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 6:18 AM UTC

KeepKey, a Washington-based bitcoin hardware wallet provider, announced that Dash cryptocurrency is now in public beta on its wallet.

With this addition, KeepKey users can safely store Dash on the device and also can do that with KeepKey client itself. Dash will be joining the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dogecoin and the cryptocurrency stands in the seventh position among blockchain assets by market cap.

KeepKeys support for Dash also extends to ShapeShift. With the addition of Dash, users can now exchange 20 unique currency pairs in the KeepKey client, the announcement stated.

The KeepKey client will open a new stand-alone window that offers more accessible and user-friendly interface. Unlike the drop-down window, this window can be moved or resized.

Users can download Dash public beta from their chrome web store and must make sure to uninstall or disable any existing KeepKey Chrome Apps or Extensions prior to installing.

The bitcoin hardware wallet stated that it will be continuing to expand its first-class security platform to the digital assets based on the users' demand.

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Cryptocurrency wallet KeepKey adds Dash to roster - EconoTimes

To most people especially those not familiar with other altcoins when they come across the word cryptocurrency, they only think of Bitcoin. Well, this is understandable because Bitcoin is the most popular and the most commonly used cryptocurrency. Since its introduction eight years ago, Bitcoin has been growing at a rapid rate and iswidely referred to as the father of all cryptocurrencies. Other cryptocurrencies have been developed since then, though most of them are not well known. They are really providing real competition for Bitcoin. All these altcoins want a share of the market and, just like Bitcoin, use the blockchain platform.

There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies out there, so its almost impossible to know them all, but there are those that cant be ignored due to their increased number of users and their increased growth in value. Bitcoin has been doing fine so far this month (February 2017) with its price currently above $1,000. In January, however, things were not so good. At one time in January, its price dropped from $1,200, to about $987, in a matter of hours. According to this article, Bitcoin was able to pick itself up because it started the month at $963 and ended at $970 and has continued to grow in February.

Bithubprepared a list of the 20 best performing cryptocurrencies in the month of January 2017. As you can see on the list, Bitcoin performed okay. Looking at the best performers, starting with CounterParty (XCP); its an asset issuing platform. It announced last year that all the functionality of Ethereum will be available on the Bitcoin blockchain. This extended Bitcoins capabilities to include smart contracts. This cryptocurrency gained 70 percent in a month. Moving on to the second best Cryptocurrency performer in January Bitcrystals (BCY). This cryptocurrency acts as the currency in EverdreamSofts free-to-play game mobile game Spells of Genesis. This is an arcade-style game that embraces the blockchain technology in its story line and its economy. Bitcrystals gained 65 percent in January.

MaidSafeCoin (MAID) is the currency behind the MaidSafe network. In this network users can do a lot of things through a decentralized mesh network of computers, which includes creating and hosting websites and also storing private data. MaidSafeCoin grew by 47 percent in January. There are other Cryptocurrencies that were left off thislistdue to their smaller market share, but rose significantly on small volumes hece are worth mentioning. Pascal Coin (PASC) which grew by 10,765 percent, Byteball (GBYTE) grew by 244 percent and Golem (GNT) which grew by 192 percent.

Looking at how the fiat currency, in this case the USD, performed that month; as we have seen in recent years since the introduction of cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies cant match the cryptocurrencies in terms of growth. This is because, unlike digital currencies, they are affected by factors such as inflation and political developments. The US Dollar is reportedto have dropped by 2.6 percent in the month of January.

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Cryptocurrencies: Who Outperformed Bitcoin in January? - Eastern Daily News

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 4:35 AM UTC

Ireland-based cryptocurrency exchange platform Bitsane has added the support of AdvCash, DASH and Iconomi transactions. Bitsane users can now trade DASH and Iconomi (ICN) for Dollars and Euro and can also make deposits and withdrawals in AdvCash.

With the addition of more cryptocurrency, Bitsane aims to continue being a fast-growing, easy to use and a reliable solution for trading blockchain assets. Full trading functionalities are open for DASH and ICN and cross-pairs are also enabled.

After evaluating a number of crypto currencies for inclusion on our exchange platform, it soon became clear that customer demand for DASH and ICONOMI was particularly strong. That is why we are excited to be able to respond to our customers requests in this way, Aidas Rupsys, CEO at Bitsane, stated in a release.

Being an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, DASH provides instant transactions (InstantSend), private untraceable transactions (PrivateSend) as well as token fungibility. On the other hand, ICN, a new cryptocurrency, enables investors to invest in the early stages of a project, making it possible for big profits.

Bitsane bitcoin exchange has also introduced the integration of AdvCash, a popular e-wallet service by Advanced Cash company. With this integration, users can deposit and withdraw money to/from their Bitsane account using AdvCash wallet.

The digital currency exchange platform stated that in the coming months, it aims to add more crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto trading pairs in a move to cater to their users needs.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane adds AdvCash, DASH and ICN support - EconoTimes

In the world of cryptocurrency, there is a lot of focus on bitcoin and other major currencies. However, there are quite a few altcoins who take the concept of creating a scarce supply to extreme measures. Although scarcity alone does not give a cryptocurrency intrinsic value by any means, it goes to show it can create an illusion of value over time.

The current cryptocurrency with the absolute lowest supply of coins to be recorded so far is bitGold. Its supply only has 10.2299 coins right now, all of which are quite valuable. In fact, the market cap of US$14,473 may look small, but it does mean every BTGOLD is worth over US$1,400. Unfortunately, bitGold only had less than US$100 worth of trading volume in the past 24 hours, making this cryptocurrency less than attractive to investors.

Rather than trying to create an altcoin with a fancy name, 42-coin simply illustrates the available coin supply. All 41.9999 coins have been brought into circulation, establishing a market cap of US$32,019. Not necessarily a favorite altcoin either, as its volume is even lower than bitGold right now.

Quite a few altcoins have tried to piggyback on the Bitcoin name, including bitBTC. With a supply of 43,8132 it is almost as scarce as 42-coin and generates slightly higher trading volumes. The market cap of US$46,854 is not bad, considering bitBTC has no real world use yet.

Not every altcoin with a smaller supply is worth next to nothing. Jinn is one of the few currencies bucking the trend as every one of the available 56,703 coins is worth US$6.56 each. This puts its market cap at well above the US$280,000 mark right now. Dont be surprised if you have never heard of Jinn, though, as its use cases are virtually non-existent.

One of the surprise entrants on the list of low-supply yet valuable alternative cryptocurrencies goes by the name Byteball. Under the GBYTE ticket, a total supply of 100,000 coins has been made available. With every coin surpassing the US$87.24 value, the market cap is on its way to surpass US$9m. Byteball also generated nearly US$120,000 in trading volume over the past 24 hours, making it quite successful in its own right.

When ZCash launched not too long ago, it became clear the supply of this currency would remain somewhat limited for quite some time. With just over half a million coins in circulation right now, the price per ZEC found a new home around the U$38.82 mark. It is intriguing to see this privacy-centric currency reach a market cap of nearly US$23m in such a short amount of time, though. ZCash continues to generate a fair amount of daily trading volume as well, making it quite a popular cryptocurrency.

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Top 6 Rare Cryptocurrencies - The Merkle

SibCoin is developed on a fork of Dash cryptocurrency platform. Dash is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.

The cryptocurrency industry is flooded with hundreds of altcoins. The open source nature of many cryptocurrency platforms offers an easy way to create and deploy new altcoins. However, unless these altcoins serve a specific purpose or solve a particular problem, they will eventually fade into oblivion.

SibCoin, short for Siberian Chervonets is one such altcoin which is out there on a specific mission meeting the blockchain needs of the Russian community. SibCoin is developed on a fork of Dash cryptocurrency platform. Dash is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. The highly successful SibCoin recently broke the record after its masternode network volume surpassed that of its parent coin. With increasing adoption, the gap between Dash and SibCoin continues to widen.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, SibCoin has a unique advantage. The digital currency is created by a group of Russian developers, for the Russian community. In a country where the Western concepts are taken with a pinch of salt due to decades of mistrust, a home-grown cryptocurrency is much easier to accept.

Also, in Siberia and many other Russian cities, people feel that their contributions to the countrys economy are underappreciated. They are also fed up with corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies plaguing the system. They believe that blockchain, with its transparency, can be a solution to all these issues.

SibCoin has broken the barrier which Bitcoin was unable to surpass since its inception. The creators of SibCoin have made further improvements to the Dash protocol by employing additional encryption algorithms to make it much better and more adaptable among the Russian population. At the same time, the SibCoin team is also involved in active promotion and awareness campaigns across Russia to familiarize the population to SibCoin and blockchain technology in general.

As the SibCoin community grows, the cryptocurrency could turn out to be the driving force behind the countrys blockchain revolution.

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SibCoin Meets the Needs of Russian Cryptocurrency Community ... - newsBTC

While some countries are busy trying to come up with laws to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies, others are busy coming up with laws to legalize digital currencies. In light of the events by the European Commission, member countries of the European Union are coming up with laws to regulate Bitcoin. Russia has however not made such steps, instead its doing the opposite. Last year Russia announced that it considers Bitcoin transactions and exchanges as legitimate in the eyes of the law. This was good news to the Cryptocurrency world considering that Russia is a country where laws relating to capital control are more strict than in most countries.

Dmitry Marinichev, Russias internet ombudsman, has made suggestions to bringthe use of cryptocurrencies to residents of Crimea. With Crimea in need of investors, Mr. Marinichev believes that opening of Cryptocurrency exchanges will help to attract new investors to this region. For this to be successful, a free economic zone will have to be created within the peninsula. Mr. Marinichev also had this to say on regulation of Cryptocurrencies in Russia: Today Crimea is an exclusive economic zone, which makes it possible to start with the opening of Cryptocurrency exchanges operating there absolutely legally. As a result we will see the actual legalization of Cryptocurrencies.

The head of the Working Group For the Assessment of Risks of Cryptocurrencies in the state of Duma of the Russian Federation, Elina Sidorenko highlighted that using Cryptocurrency instruments for international transactions would improve the banking climate on the peninsula. There is truth to that sentiment because major players in the banking industry do believe that the blockchain technology, which is the technology behind cryptocurrency, is the future of global financial system.

There is a significant number of regions in Crimea, which are unbanked. Residents of these unbanked regions of Crimea now have good news because transactions involving digital currencies do not need banks to be validated. Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralized and the blockchain technology ensures that transactions are validated, hence detecting any fraudulent or unauthorized transactions. Alex Fork, CEO of Humaniq had this opinion on the unbanked regions: Unbanked regions usually consist of a financially poor population. the most important thing is to provide them with a new technology available absolutely free of charge.

There have been countries, mostly in the European union, that in recent times are trying to regulate digital currencies because of criminals using them to commitillegal operations. These unbanked regions provide a chance to experiment and finally make a sound decision regarding digital currencies. The residents of these unbanked regions also get a chance to enjoy the exciting advantages of cryptocurrencies. This move by Russia provides a win-win situation for both the regulator and the residents. Its always good news in the cryptocurrency world when a new country joins.

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Cryptocurrency: Now in Crimea - Eastern Daily News