Swissquote announces the extension of the crypto service for its customers from 21st March. While previously only the trade with the Top 5 was possible, customers should be able to safe deposit crypto assets with Swissquote and transfer them to wallets as of the end of March. The service is aimed at both institutional and private investors.

The Swiss bank Swissquote is not an empty hand in terms of Bitcoin & Co. Finally, the financial house based in Gland has been offering a trading platform since mid-2017. Since then, the finance company has been working continuously on expanding the service.

As the online bank announces, Swissquote is now going one step further. According to a press release, as of March 21, customers can withdraw crypto assets from the bank’s depositary at will and deposit them on their own wallet – and vice versa.
Security infrastructure improved

Crypto asset custody is considered tricky. Because as an owner, only the one who has the private keys to Bitcoin & Co. can be defined. So should customers choose to put their digital assets in the hands of Swissquote, they should be able to rely on their deposits being secured. For this purpose, the bank cooperates with Crypto Storage AG.

OneCoin is considered one of the best-known and most successful fraud schemes in the world by Bitcoin & Co. Now, US authorities have arrested alleged mastermind Konstantin Ignatov. His sister Ruja Ignatova, however, remains at large. The authorities are looking for more wire-pullers.

One Coin to Rule them all: 3.8 billion US dollars is the proud sum, the mastermind behind OneCoin between the years 2014 (Q4) and 2016 (Q3) had captured. However, the OneCoin price rose dramatically, the authors pretended to have three million users worldwide. The Problem: It was one of the many useless coins that the crypto-hype and hope for the big money brought with it, the practical value was zero.

OneCoin mastermind Konstantin Ignatov arrested

As can now be seen from a statement by the Department of Justice of the State of New York, the authorities have now arrested the alleged mastermind Constantin Ignatov. That happened on March 6 at Los Angeles International Airport. Now he has to answer to the court over the alleged pyramid scheme. Together with his sister Ruja Ignatova and other masterminds, he is said to have brought false investors into believing investors worldwide for their money.

George S. Berman, attorney in Manhattan, summarized the allegations as follows:

Commerzbank and Deutsche Börse carried out a legally binding securities settlement via distributed ledger technology. The repo transaction was conducted as part of a proof of concept, demonstrating the security and transparency of block-based delivery-by-payment.

It is proof of Blockchain’s possibilities for legally binding securities transactions: In the course of a Proof of Concept (PoC) of Deutsche Börse in cooperation with Commerzbank, the partners successfully concluded a repo transaction using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), such as Deutsche Stock Exchange announced on March 6.

Combination of cash tokens and security tokens for simultaneous exchange

In a repo transaction, which is also called repurchase agreement, a financial transaction combines the simultaneous sale and subsequent repurchase of a security. Banks can use these money market instruments to secure their liquidity needs in the short term.

Total market capitalization rose to $ 133 billion this week. Apart from Binance Coin, Litecoin and Stellar, the other crypto currencies moved primarily sideways.

The Bitcoin price rose by almost two percent. Marginale course changes can be said to almost all crypto currencies. However, there are exceptions again: Binance Coin improved its price by 25 percent, Stellar at least over 16 percent and Litecoin posted 15 percent price gains. Talking about “losers” this week is not easy: Tron, Bitcoin Cash and XRP have not had to deal with one percent loss this week.

Market capitalization increased from $ 126 billion to $ 133 billion as a result of these increases.

The sideways position leads to neutral assessments for a large part of the crypto currencies. The three top scorers Binance Coin, Stellar and Litecoin (and smear Bitcoin) are positive exceptions, while Tron comes on rather bearish price prospects. For the majority, therefore, it is important to wait for a real change in mood, as the courses behave on the support and resistances. For the bullish courses, the support and resistances can be used as stop loss and first targets.

Best Performance: Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance still knows only one direction and that means upwards. The target proposed last week was not only achieved but even outbid. With a spirited pump on March 5, course levels were reached, which saw the Binance Coin course for the last time in the summer of 2018.

Announced at last year’s Wolfram Technology Conference, Wolfram Blockchain Labs has now become real. Stephen Wolfram’s battleship, Mathematica, will also have access to blockchains as a focal point. Finally, Stephen Wolfram is still an advisor to NKN, a blockchain-based network.

Natural scientists, engineers and mathematicians should be a term for Mathematica. The software package is known by the possibilities in terms of symbolic math and literate programming. The Wolfram Language is correspondingly widely used in the academic field.

The high price and the much more active community around the two other programming languages ​​will have contributed to the fact that Mathematica had to give a lot to Python and R just in terms of statistical analysis.

Mathematica 12: A bridge to Ethereum

In addition to free use of the Wolfram Development Platform or integration with Raspian, Wolfram seeks to maintain a competitive edge in other areas. One of these areas is the Blockchain. Just over a year ago, that Mathematica’s version 11.3 allowed users to store data on a tungsten-owned blockchain. As shown in the linked article, such a solution could be helpful in the context of Open Science and Open Data.

For Mathematica version 12 this blockchain focus will be further elaborated. One goal seems to be less the use of a tungsten-own block chain than the analysis of existing networks. There is also a special focus on smart contracts and the exchange between on-chain and off-chain information. Details can be found in a video:

The non-profit organization UNICEF is talking to the government of Kyrgyzstan about internet access for schools among others. Blockchain technology should help.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, is a high-profile advocate of blockchain technology. The Project Connect initiative has enabled the organization to map more than 150,000 schools worldwide. It’s not just about knowing where the schools are. Rather, it is about ensuring the networking of schools and the provision of information on education and health.

Kyrgyzstan has some catching up to do

A comparatively blind spot on the resulting map is Kyrgyzstan. Of the 1,560 listed schools, almost half either do not have access to the Internet or they simply lack the survey data. Because part of the initiative is to set up a blockchainbasierte solution for improving and monitoring the Internet connection.

Accessec GmbH, a security strategy company, launched an IOTA Tangle Wallet for Motor Vehicles on February 28th. The automatic refueling and payment should be so easy and safe. In addition, the integrated wallet supports the development of various compatible technologies.

One of the promising fields of application for IOTA is intelligent mobility. Currently, there is an ideas competition on Smart City initiated by IOTA, which also deals with the networking of vehicles. The German tech security company Accessec is taking the integrated car wallet another step in the direction of smart mobility.

Two messages from Facebook voted this week thoughtfully. First, Mark Zuckerberg said he sees the future in messenger services rather than social media. On the other hand, the plans for a separate cryptocurrency were specified. For example, the WhatsApp messenger service, which belongs to Facebook, is to issue its own cryptocurrency this summer. What these steps have to do with the Big Picture from Facebook and a new global finance.

In addition to Facebook and the associated services WhatsApp and Instagram, other service providers have already issued tokens or are currently working on it. Whether it’s the messenger service Telegram with its gigantic ICO of $ 1.7 billion, or the Signal or Kik services. But why? What motivates all major messenger services to issue their own tokens?