Recently, there has been a growing interest in the crypto space with more individuals and corporate brands hopping on the moving train.

The non-fungible token (NFT) sector is going ballistic, and everybody wants a piece of the pie. While far away from its heyday in August last year, when it was carrying out trade of over $1.7 billion each day, the NFT industry is nevertheless booming at the moment. It crossed $500 million in daily sales earlier […]

INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine Recognizes the iboss Cloud Platform for Enabling Users to Securely Connect to Any App, from Anywhere

(PRWeb January 21, 2022)

Read the full story at https://www.prweb.com/releases/zero_trust_leader_iboss_wins_2021_cybersecurity_excellence_award/prweb18450945.htm

Bitcoin’s public and immutable nature necessitates the return of mixnets to achieve true network-level privacy.

Ariva’s presence is creating a huge turnaround in the global-local tourism and travel network. Ariva Finance offers online users, buyers, and sellers a better payment experience using the blockchain. Ariva is a popular cryptocurrency of the future that aims to provide a secure tourism currency that can be used worldwide with its crypto wallets. The […]

Where it came from and where it is going.

The Karura Project has a lot to live up to. Winning Kusama’s first Parachain Auction in style (somewhat predictably, some might say), brings high expectations. Rather than shy away from the inevitable scrutiny such a victory evokes, Karura boldly self-proclaim as “THE all-in-one DeFi hub of Kusama”. This article explores just how deserving this mantle […]

The post Karura: THE all-in-one DeFi hub of Kusama appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Benefits Of Crypto Payments And DeFi Projects For SMEs And Bitpace Customers

It's been over 10 years and it is safe to say that cryptocurrency is here to stay. Since the launch of the first cryptocurrency, the Bitcoin, the crypto market has witnessed a proliferation of digital currencies. It is estimated that there are currently over 9,000 cryptocurrencies today. The crypto space has been met with resistance from governments and corporations but one can say that it is gradually winning the hearts of some governments and corporations. With the global dominance of the crypto market, the benefits of DeFi projects and crypto payments are becoming more apparent and everyone seems to be gradually catching the buzz. This article talks about what Bitpace customers and SMEs stand to benefit from crypto payments and the various DeFi projects in the crypto space. 

Understanding Crypto Payments and DeFi Projects

Governments and corporations alike are becoming more receptive to the idea of digital currencies and accepting them as a form of payment for their products and services. For example, the Venezuelan government partnered with Litecoin to be used as a means of payment in Venezuela's mainstream international payments system. The Australian government does not tax cryptocurrency transactions. In the business world, corporations such as Microsoft, which started accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment as far back as 2014 for its games and apps have been receptive to crypto payments. PayPal, Starbucks, Etsy, and Overstock all accept Bitcoin as a form of payment for their products and services.

Crypto payments simply mean the act of using any cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services as against the conventional fiat currencies. Because of the digital nature of cryptocurrencies, crypto payments can only be done online via cryptocurrency payment gateways such as Bitpace. Payment gateways provide a platform for businesses to accept crypto payments from customers in exchange for their products and services. The payment gateway sector is gradually becoming a booming space and Bitpace has established itself as a reliable gateway for merchants and customers to exchange cryptocurrencies for products and services.

For investors, cryptocurrencies can also be used as a means of payment for other cryptocurrencies. For example, someone that has Litecoin and wants to exchange it for Bitcoin can use crypto payment platforms to do this. Depending on the terms and conditions of the exchange you're using, you can exchange Litecoin for Bitcoin for the value on the crypto exchange platform. You can also use crypto to pay for fiat currency. This is also a form of crypto payment. In this case, you will be using your crypto as a form of payment for fiat currency. Most crypto exchanges like Bitpace offer these crypto payment services. With Bitpace, you can make payments with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, TRON, IOTA, and so many others. 

DeFi projects, on the other hand, are decentralized finance projects that are based on blockchain technology. DeFi platforms use smart contracts on blockchains to offer financial instruments. A good example is Ethereum. This is different from the central financial intermediaries such as banks, brokerages, or exchanges that offer conventional financial instruments. In other words, users of DeFi platforms can trade cryptocurrencies, borrow or lend funds, speculate on the price movement of different assets using derivatives, earn interest in savings like accounts and insure against risk. All these transactions are done directly between the users of a DeFi platform. It eliminates the need for intermediaries. As of October 2020, it was estimated that a total of $11 billion in cryptocurrency had been deposited in various DeFi protocols. This figure rose to $20.5 in January 2021. 

What SMEs Stand To Gain With Crypto Payments And DeFi

With the big corporations already driving up their interests in crypto payments and DeFi projects, there is no better time for SMEs to join in. They have a lot to gain in adopting the same for their businesses. Here are some benefits of crypto payments for SMEs:

1. More Option For International Payment - If your business involves receiving payment from across the border, you will agree that it is usually fraught with issues like limited payment options and lag in transaction approval. Checks are sometimes inefficient, payment may take days sometimes, and online payment platforms are not accepted in every country. Crypto payments by nature are peer-to-peer payment systems that allow your customers to make payments without any intermediary determining the transaction. With a crypto payment platform like Bitpace, you can receive payments within minutes. 

2. No Issue Of Chargebacks - Business owners are at a risk of credit card chargebacks when payment is reversed by the intermediary. With crypto payments, you do not have to worry about third-party intermediaries reversing payment because of the peer-to-peer technology.  

3. Lower Transaction Fees - The different payment methods available to businesses have high transaction fees. Most payment merchants have set up fees, flat transaction fees, and a percentage of the payment made. Cumulatively, this will be on the high side and affect your business. With crypto payments, peer-to-peer transactions do not charge any transaction fee.

4. Penetration Of Younger Market - Cryptocurrency is most popular among the younger generation. They also have a better hang of it. They will be disposed to patronize a business that offers a crypto payment option as against the one that offers only fiat currency payment. Therefore, your business gains a wider market penetration in the youth demography. 

5. Secured Transactions - The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency guarantees a secured crypto transaction. Blockchain technology protects you from fraudsters. Blockchain technology also stops customers with insufficient funds to make payments. This prevents unnecessary time-wasting and chargebacks. 

Bitpace Crypto Payment Gateway

Bitpace is a crypto platform that offers crypto-based financial services for individuals and businesses. This crypto payment platform provides businesses with a platform that has multi-payment acceptance features and cryptocurrency trading. You also get fixed and dynamic deposit options that allow businesses to accept cryptocurrencies for their products and services from customers. You can also install Bitpace plug-in on your website and use the platform directly to receive crypto payments from your customers. In addition to serving as a payment gateway, businesses can also trade cryptocurrencies on Bitpace.  

Bitpace offers excellent crypto payment services that will ensure the smooth running of your business. Some of these services include:

1. Fixed Deposit - This service enables you to receive crypto payments from your customers in a wide range of cryptocurrencies. It also gives you the option to withdraw the value of these crypto payments in Fiat currency. Your transactions are guaranteed to be quick and secure.

2. Dynamic Deposit Process - This service ensures that your customer can make their crypto payment anywhere and anytime without any hassle. There are complex payment processes. There is a dedicated payment address between you and your customer.

3. Withdraw - Bitpace allows your customers to get their balance in coins without using another platform. All transactions are done on Bitpace. 

4. Trading - Bitpace is not only for business merchants to receive crypto payments. Individuals can also do their crypto trading on the platform. They offer the best crypto rates for traders and investors alike.

Bitpace is a reliable crypto payment gateway that guarantees easy, risk-free, secure, and convenient transactions for businesses and their customers. Once you install the Bitpace API and enter your secure login, you can begin to get paid in Bitcoin or other supported cryptocurrencies. You can choose to deposit your Fiat money in your bank account or have your crypto payment transferred into your crypto wallet.  

Benefits Of Using Bitpace For Crypto Payments

1. Multiple Cryptocurrencies - For business owners, Bitpace allows you to receive a variety of cryptocurrencies as payment for your products and services. There is a wide range of digital coins you can receive as payment. From Bitcoin to Algorand. All you need to do is register as a merchant on the Bitpace platform and you can start receiving crypto payments for your business. 

2. Easy and Fast Payment Processing - Bitpace offers instant payment processing services when you use the platform. You will not have to worry about delays in transaction glitches. Your customer pays you in crypto and you receive the payment instantly. You also do not need coding knowledge to be able to integrate Bitpace crypto payment on your website.

3. No Chargeback Fraud - Chargebacks are a major issue on payment platforms, be it fiat currency or cryptocurrency. Bitpace platform ensures you do not experience chargeback frauds on the crypto payment for your business. 

4. Affordable - The Bitpace crypto payment platform is very affordable for businesses to use. Bit Pace does not charge unnecessary fees such as commitment fees, monthly fees, or any other form of upfront charges. 

5. Global Presence - Bitpace has a worldwide reach that is an obvious advantage for businesses using the platform. Businesses that have customers all over the world can receive their crypto payments without any hassle.

6. Refund Process - When you have issues with your payment transactions, Bitpace offers a fast and reliable refund payment system. Whether you're underpaid or overpaid, you can initiate a refund process that will ensure you get what is due to you.

7. Partial Payment - This feature helps build your business, especially if you're just starting. It gives your customers enough time to fully pay for your products and services. 

Conclusion

It is hard to deny that the world is becoming more and more digital each day; the introduction of the Metaverse, cryptocurrency getting adopted by not only businesses but also by countries, and so on. Cryptocurrency is sitting right in the middle of all these developments and the next phase of life. It is still not late to integrate cryptocurrency into your businesses, take advantage of the countless benefits the crypto payments offer and take your businesses to the next level.

Injective, the first universal DeFi protocol for cross-chain derivatives trading, has announced the successful public launch of its main network alongside a $120 million protocol incentive program named Astro for traders, market makers and DeFi projects.

A newly minted unicorn, Injective streamlines fully decentralized trading with a fast and secure layer-2 exchange that allows individuals to create unlimited financial markets for assets such as crypto, commodities, NFTs, forex, and much more. Injective enables 24/7 trading and allows its users to trade with zero gas fees. All transactions are entirely transparent and secured by Tendermint-based proof-of-stake consensus with instant finality. Recently, major institutions such as Siam Commercial Bank and Binance have put their institutional weight behind Injective as well as they act as validators for the protocol.

Injective is a Cosmos SDK based chain that enables decentralized trading for a diverse array of financial instruments such as perpetual swaps, expiry futures, and traditional spot markets. Unlike its counterparts such as FTX and dYdX, every component of the Injective is built to be fully trustless, censorship-resistant, publicly verifiable, and interoperable while providing an intuitive user experience comparable to centralized exchanges. 

Injective has already seen substantial levels of adoption with over one billion dollars in daily trading volume across more than 25,000 unique monthly users. Renowned market makers and funds such as Cumberland, QCP Capital, CMS, and Bitlink are all early backers of the project and helped provide advice on the initial design and development of the protocol itself. Injective rose to prominence last year as they became one of the first protocols to list commodities such as gold on the exchange.

To accompany the mainnet launch, Injective is also releasing a $120 Million incentive program named Injective Astro to help promote liquidity and trading on the protocol. To help put this number into perspective, $120 Million will make Injective's Astro program one of the largest liquidity incentive programs within the orderbook DEX space and by far the largest within the entire Cosmos ecosystem.

The program will begin by allocating the funds specifically to market makers and traders who utilize the protocol. Through the Trade & Earn program, traders will be able to earn a rebate for every trade that they place on the exchange rather than having to pay a fee as is the case on all other platforms today. To further encourage user loyalty, Injective has introduced a decentralized VIP system to progressively reward users as they increase participation and volume. This is the first time an exchange VIP system has been implemented fully on-chain with zero intermediaries.

Injective Astro will extend far beyond the trading incentives to further catalyze ecosystem growth through a multi-stage process. Injective Labs also plans on assigning more funds toward incentivizing new projects to build on Injective. So far Injective Labs has publicly backed NFT auction house Burnt Finance which famously worked with Injective to burn Banksy painting and minted an NFT after the act. The news was covered across all major media and the video itself has garnered over ten million views in China alone.

The frontend interface created by Injective Labs called Injective Pro was released last month. Injective Pro restricts all US users in order to properly comply with guidelines set forth by governing bodies such as the CFTC. Uniquely however, developers can build new exchange interfaces on top of Injective which allows individuals to rapidly create region or asset specific exchanges while being able to leverage the powerful backend protocol. For instance, a developer can deploy a decentralized exchange that only focuses on futures trading.

Over the past few months, Injective has taken steps to ensure complete decentralization of the protocol itself. Every transaction on Injective is verified by a decentralized group of validators that currently secure some of the fastest growing projects in the industry today such as Cosmos and Terra. Users can view all trades on-chain via the Injective Explorer regardless of whether the trade was placed via a frontend interface or the institutional grade Injective API. All markets launched on Injective must be approved by a DAO vote from which Injective Labs abstains. All of these aspects empower the global community to dictate the future of Injective.

The launch of Injective mainnet and the Astro incentive program follows the release of the Injective Bridge – an IBC-enabled cross-chain bridge that supports seamless Cosmos and Ethereum-based token transfers. Injective also touts its fast withdrawal times back to Ethereum which currently stands at less than 10 minutes which is far lower than other layer-2 solutions where withdrawals can take up to a week to process.

“Our mission at Injective has always been to build the most powerful cross-chain protocol for completely decentralized derivatives trading. As Injective interconnects new chains, the ecosystem will continue to serve as a DeFi gateway for trading across the multi-chain universe. Injective's Ethereum-native tooling allows users to simply create and trade new cross-chain markets without the typical roadblocks associated with making transactions across distinct blockchain networks,” said Eric Chen, the 23-year-old computer science dropout co-founder and CEO of Injective Labs.

The team at Injective Labs has been building it since 2018 and validated the product  with the largest funds, market makers, and institutional traders. Injective was one of the first projects to be incubated by Binance Labs and recently raised a $10 million round from the likes of Pantera Capital and Mark Cuban.

About Injective

Injective is the first cross-chain protocol built for decentralized finance applications. On the Injective exchange, anyone can access, create, and trade unlimited DeFi markets such as futures and perpetuals. Developers can also build cross-chain Ethereum-compatible projects that are lightning fast and achieve instant transaction finality. Injective is backed by a prominent group of stakeholders including Binance, Pantera Capital and Mark Cuban. For more information please visit https://injectiveprotocol.com/ 

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been around for some time now. However, following a few big press stories earlier this year, one being digital artist Beeple selling an NFT for $69 million, it's only in recent months that we've seen some big players in the art world, such as Damien Hirst and Sotheby's auction house, join in the NFT party.

Currently, most websites presenting NFTs in the form of visual artworks allow artists to upload their own digital files, GIFs, photos or animations and present them for sale for users to buy with cryptocurrency.  However, with so many artists creating digital artwork, the whole space has become cluttered, and even some of the leading NFT websites such as Nifty Gateway still have thousands of works in their marketplace, many by predominantly unknown artists.

This is where RedKite comes in to cut the noise. With a founding team built heavily of contemporary art professionals - one being renowned street artist and pioneer in the exploration of graffiti letter forms Ben Eine - the RedKite platform is fully curated, with a focus on artists who already have a big following and are widely collected in the physical art world. The team's deep ties to current practicing artists and their ability to bring in valuable contemporary names creates a one stop shop for premium digital art collecting.

“In 2001, [American art dealer and curator] Jeffrey Deitch said the Street Art Movement was the biggest art movement in the world. I agreed with him at the time.  We're now in 2021 and although it blows my mind, I believe digital art is the future. RedKite's set up, where artists get to create physical pieces that relate to the digital works, makes more sense to me.” Ben Eine, street artist

With all of the artwork on the platform being carefully selected by RedKite's in-house curatorial team, who between them have many years experience in running galleries, publishing limited editioned art and shaping artists' careers, a close partnership that helps facilitate this lies with Ourtypes, an international art studio managing some of the most leading street artists and graffiti writers in the world. 

Ourtypes' impressive projects include a mural on the London Eye and the production of one of the largest paintings ever created in partnership with Zippo. The cumulative following of Ourtypes and its artists currently sits at around 3 million and the volume of interest in the group is expected to significantly grow as their artists gain further exposure and continue to create ground-breaking work.

As an active studio that's constantly working on new projects and embracing new technology, Ourtypes like the concept of the NFT space, and many of their artists, including Eine, whose work was once gifted to President Obama by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, have been dipping their toes in the digital medium for some time, but it wasn't until they spoke to RedKite that it the idea resonated.

Juan Topping of Ourtypes said: “We'd been approached by a lot of NFT spaces in the past, with everyone wanting to work with our artists, however, it wasn't until we heard about RedKite's idea of the artists producing physical works to create asset backed NFTs that it all seemed to make sense”.

Cementing this new relationship, Eine and other artists from the Ourtypes family are likely to be the first in line for RedKite's debut NFT drops, paving the way for other leading artists to jump on board.

On top of all this RedKite is looking to utilise some of the best tech in the space as well as bringing innovative solutions to the table. They will also be introducing some of the first asset-backed NFTs into the space. This means that each NFT bought and sold is associated with an original piece of work, such as a painting, that physically exists and will be publicly exhibited. By doing this, not only does a collector get to own part of a piece of art that exists in the real world, but it also means the value of the associated NFTs will not fall below a certain point. This is, due to them representing a fraction of a physical artwork that will hold its value or, more likely, increase in value as time goes on.

Environmental issues are often addressed when talking about NFTs and RedKite takes this seriously, offering carbon-neutral transactions. They aim to make this possible by offsetting their energy usage that is used on the Layer 2 of the Ethereum Network that they run on.

With this new platform, Redkite is looking to continue the development of the growing contemporary art market by bringing art collecting into the current digital climate.

Powered by blockchain technology to break down ownership of high-value pieces, their aim is to ultimately increase accessibility and utility for all.

Alongside the platform, RedKite will also be launching the KITE token, with its main utility deriving from running a Collectors Club. Avid investors can sign up to find out more information about how a public sale will be run via the RedKite website, Twitter and Telegram. Those that want premium NFTs can expect first drops to happen in December, with visual content appearing via instagram.

RedKite will be running a competition in order to excite and strengthen the community. Prices will include an original work of art by Ben Eine, five prints provided by Ourtypes, NFTs and Token Prizes. In order to find out more head over to the RedKite website and subscribe.

If you wish to learn more about the team's extensive background and technicalities of the project visit RedKite and read through their whitepaper.

Links:

https://www.redkitenft.com

https://twitter.com/RedKiteNFT

https://t.me/RedKiteNFT

https://www.instagram.com/redkitenft/

Reading Time: 4 minutesToday, organizations are constantly at risk from cyber-attacks. This is a major issue not only because of the traditional...

Reading Time: 3 minutesThe proliferation of ransomware in recent times has made many companies sit up and assess their existing IT infrastructure,...