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Tuesday, 6 July 2021

ByteDance Begins Selling TikTok AI To Other Companies


ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of video sharing app TikTok, has reportedly begun selling the app’s AI algorithm to other companies through a new division called BytePlus. According to the company’s website, BytePlus’ client list already includes companies from the US (Goat), Singapore (WeGo), Indonesia (Chilibeli), and India (GamesApp).

The recommendation algorithm that drives TikTok’s popularity is a big part of it; your use of the app directly affects the videos that are recommended to you. In a recent blog post, the company outlined how the ForYou feed chooses which videos to serve each individual user. The app’s recommendations are based on your interactions with videos, such as clicking the like button, sharing, or creating video

Video data, such as the caption and hashtags, is also taken into consideration. Additionally, your device and account settings, such as what device you’re using, language preferences, and your location, are further incorporated.


This report claims that customers have the opportunity to utilise the recommendation algorithm, as well as personalise it for their applications and customers. Among other things, BytePlus’s website claims that the company offers automatic speech and text translation, real-time video effects, and data analysis tools.

A number of executive orders passed by former US President Donald Trump had attempted to prevent China-based apps from using American app stores, with TikTok among them. The ban almost led to Microsoft buying TikTok from ByteDance but the deal never went through and the Biden administration revoked the bans in June. Despite the pressure from Trump, though, TikTok reached more than 100 million monthly US users last year.

8,000 BTC Belonging to Mirror Trading International Traced, Investors Urged to Lodge Claims


A total of 8,000 bitcoins belonging to Mirror Trading International (MTI) have been traced while an additional 29,000 bitcoins could soon meet a similar fate. The traced coins, which are valued at over $280 million (4 billion rand), represent a potential breakthrough for beleaguered MTI investors.

Liquidators Want Court to Declare MTI a Ponzi Scheme

The latest revelations came shortly after the granting of a final liquidation order against MTI by a South African court. Before this announcement, liquidators of the Ponzi scheme had only recovered 1,281 bitcoins that were surrendered to liquidators by MTI’s previous broker, FX Choice. As previously reported by Bitcoin.com News, the 1,281 bitcoins were ultimately sold and more than $70 million was raised from the sale.

However, as a Moneyweb report explains, liquidators intend to argue in favour of having MTI declared a Ponzi Scheme on their return to court on September 8. This declaration, according to the report, makes it “easier to chase down funds the liquidators believe rightfully belong to the insolvent estate.” The report also notes that those opposed to the declaration have until August 31 to file their replying affidavits.

Meanwhile, the report quotes Riaan van Rooyen, who is one of the liquidators, explaining why it is important for investors to lodge their claims against MTI. Rooyen said:

We obviously want to recover as much money as possible for members, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable. It’s important for members to know that they will not be required to pay into the estate just because they benefitted from withdrawals. It merely means that their claims will be reduced by the amount that they have already received in terms of withdrawals. If they paid in for example, R30 000 and withdrew R10 000, this means their claim against MTI would be reduced from R30 000 to R20 000.

Roadshow for MTI Investors Planned

Before its collapse in December 2020, MTI repeatedly claimed it had over 280,000 accounts and a majority of these belonged to investors based in South Africa. However, liquidators insist this number will be reduced to between 150,000 and 180,000 “once accounts opened in the name of family pets and other bogus accounts are stripped out.”

In the meantime, the report reveals that liquidators are also planning to launch a national roadshow to assist MTI investors. This initiative is expected to help liquidators contact as “many members of MTI as possible and to assist them in lodging their claims.”

Do you think MTI liquidators will succeed in recovering all the missing bitcoins? Tell us what you think in the comments section below

Unicrypt, a Multi Service Provider for DeFi Projects


PRESS RELEASE. Unicrypt is a robust crypto service provider that has been turning heads in the crypto world with its broad range of useful applications. Primarily focused on decentralised services, the platform is a conducive base for new DeFi projects aiming to make a launch.

The service provider offers an ever-changing and fast-evolving DeFi project launch platform with new services being offered and upgraded. Unicrypt is touted as the original liquidity locker for uniswap pools, pioneering the Proof-of-Lock (POL) consensus. The article shall give a comprehensive review of the platform, outlining its services, roadmap and plans.

Services offered

The platform offers three key services; liquidity locking, yield farming, and a base for issuing Initial Liquidity Offerings (ILO).

  • Liquidity Locking

Unicrypt offers liquidity locking for pools based on the Uniswap liquidity provider, as well as on other Automated Money Makers (AMM). By liquidity locking, it issues to investors a guarantee that developers of a DeFi project won’t make large withdrawals within the locked up period.

  • Yield Farming

The platform allows investors to carry out yield farming on any token thanks to its farm-as-a-service (Faas) protocol. The process is simplified by complete automation of the process. A user, therefore, doesn’t need to have any prior knowledge in coding to be able to farm.

  • ILO Launchpad

As an ILO launchpad, Unicrypt enables DeFi project developers to enjoy project launches without having to conduct listings. The launchpad is directly connected to the liquidity lockers, allowing the locking of liquidity on Uniswap or any supported AMMs. The entire process is fully automated and decentralized, giving a good presale platform for DeFi projects

The Journey Towards Further Adoption

The platform’s journey towards increased public adoption can be illustrated by several indicators. The indicators include;

Wider AMM Support Diversity for More Accessibility

Unicrypt was launched in June 2020. It became the first liquidity locker on Uniswap pools, generating the POL consensus. The consensus attracted more investors to Uniswap since it could guarantee the continued availability of pool liquidity for new DeFi projects..

It has since extended its services to 5 other different AMMs namely; PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, JulSwap, QuickSwap and HoneySwap. The higher accessibility on multiple platforms has served to boost its usage.

Increased Demand Pushing Up Prices

The platform’s native token is the UNCX. During its release in August 2020, its price was $17.7. The price now hovers at around $440, which is somewhere close to 25 times the initial asset prices. Given that the asset’s prices are dictated by demand and supply, such growth is a good performance indicator of robust adoption levels.

The current prices are however about half of the mid-May all-time high of $934. While the drop is significant, it highlights an overall bearish market sentiment across the entire blockchain world. The medium to long term predictions show a recovery of prices as markets get back to bullish conditions and demand expands

Impressive Growth in Monthly Visits

The platform has also been receiving a consistently growing number of site visitors. The number of monthly visits as per a similarweb research shows that monthly visits have grown to almost 8 times the figures from the start of the year. January visits totalled to 120k people. May’s visits stand at an outstanding 953k visitors.

Direct visits top this figure with over 58.95% of total visits, which shows more repeat revisits by previous users as well as from users with knowledge of the platform. Second, in generating the visits, referrals stand at 26.76%, a good growth indicator of more than ¼ of all visits.

The Future

Unicrypt has a clear roadmap for a brighter future with more usability and interoperability. The upgrades are expected to not only give the increased traffic of recent months a better experience but also drive further adoption. They can be categorized into two groupings;

Going Public with More Services

A recent announcement by the platform’s stakeholders has highlighted the fact that Unicrypt is going public with new services. Token vesting and token minting options have been deployed recently. Token vesting enables new crypto projects to lock their tokens and set periodic release strategies for the tokens with their team and partners. It avoids incidences of market manipulation when working alongside liquidity lockers. The token minter allows new projects to create new tokens within seconds while not requiring coding skills or additional audits.

Future Integration With Elrond and Solana Chains

Unicrypt plans to be compatible with new chains to add on it’s current range and increase its interoperability levels. It currently operates in four chains namely; Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon and the xDaiChain.

The service plans to be integrated with the chains Elrond and Solana as hinted by the platform’s developers. Accessibility shall increase, driving more adoption with this initiative.

Conclusion

Unicrypt’s performance in the last few months has been phenomenal. The adoption rates have gone through the roof, thanks to the amazing calibre and diverse range of services it offers.

To maintain its position at the front of the pack, it plans new services and more integration to help drive adoption rates even further. The platform is indeed one of the great indicators of the untapped use case potentials of blockchain technology.

 

AscendEX Lists Radix - a DeFi Protocol With Developer Incentives


PRESS RELEASE. AscendEX (formerly BitMax), a global cryptocurrency financial platform with a comprehensive product suite, is thrilled to announce the listing of the Radix tokens (EXRD and XRD) under the pairs USDT/XRD and USDT/EXRD on June 29 at 1 p.m. UTC.

Radix intends to remove the technology barriers limiting the expansion of DeFi by building a layer-1 protocol that directly addresses the technology needs of DeFi, both for today’s applications and the future of general financial services worldwide. The platform leverages a full-stack approach, re-engineering consensus, distributed virtual machines, executable on-ledger code, DeFi component building, DeFi application building, and developer incentives.

Radix is the first layer 1 protocol specifically built to serve the DeFi ecosystem. Radix aims to significantly improve the developer experience by reducing DeFi hacks, bugs, and exploits by restricting output states using an FSM runtime environment instead of Turing complete. It offers an on-ledger component catalog where developers can easily chain together DeFi “money legos” to create dApps. Radix features an on-ledger incentivization scheme whereby components generate royalties for developers based on usage.

Its goal is to make access to DeFi projects mainstream and as frictionless as possible by not being limited by scale – Radix scales linearly and indefinitely by adding more nodes. In addition, Radix aims to maintain atomic composability – transactions, when needed, settlement atomically across the global ledger. This is a vital feature for any DeFi ecosystem because key DeFi features, such as flash loans are impossible without it.

Some major upcoming milestones for Radix include its mainnet launch in July 2021, which will demonstrate the core foundation of the project. Additionally, Radix will launch radix engine V2 in December 2021, which will then enable developers to build safely on the Radix Ecosystem.

 

About AscendEX

AscendEX (formerly BitMax) is a global cryptocurrency financial platform with a comprehensive product suite including spotmargin, and futures trading, wallet services, and staking support for over 150 blockchain projects such as bitcoin, ether, and ripple. Launched in 2018, AscendEX services over 1 million retail and institutional clients globally with a highly liquid trading platform and secure custody solutions.

AscendEX has emerged as a leading platform by ROI on its “initial exchange offerings” by supporting some of the industry’s most innovative projects from the DeFi ecosystem such as Thorchain, xDai Stake, and Serum. AscendEX users receive exclusive access to token airdrops and the ability to purchase tokens at the earliest possible stage.

To learn more about how AscendEX is leveraging best practices from both Wall Street and the cryptocurrency ecosystem to bring the best altcoins to its users, please visit www.AscendEX.com.

 

For more information and updates, please visit:

Website: https://ascendex.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AscendEX_Global

Telegram: https://t.me/AscendEXEnglish

Medium: https://medium.com/ascendex

 

About Radix

Radix intends to remove the technology barriers limiting the expansion of DeFi by building a layer-1 protocol that directly addresses the technology needs of DeFi, both for today’s applications and the future of general financial services worldwide. They leverage a full-stack approach, re-engineering consensus, distributed virtual machines, executable on-ledger code, DeFi component building, DeFi application building, and developer incentives.

 

For more information and updates, please visit:

Website: https://www.radixdlt.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RadixDLT

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/WkB2USt

Telegram: https://t.me/radix_dlt

 


This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

Coinbase Actively Building Crypto Hub in India, Looking to Hire 'Hundreds' of People


The Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is actively building a cryptocurrency hub in India. The company says it has “ambitious plans” for the South Asian crypto hub and is looking to hire for many positions, including hundreds of engineers.

Coinbase Has ‘Ambitious Plans’ for Its Indian Crypto Hub

Coinbase published a blog post on Friday, authored by Pankaj Gupta, the company’s VP of Engineering and Site Lead in India. Gupta joined Coinbase about two months ago “to establish and lead a new tech hub for Coinbase in India,” he explained, elaborating:

There’s never been a more exciting time for builders working in crypto. This is true worldwide, but especially in India which is seeing a boom in crypto-native talent and in creating and growing important crypto projects.

“It is early days for our India tech hub but it has already taken off with an incredible amount of interest in our open roles from across India,” Gupta emphasized. He added that Coinbase is “also exploring startup acquisitions and acquihires.”

The Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange is currently hiring senior and junior roles “across product management, user experience, design and program management.” Gupta noted that the company is also “creating a core support team — in areas such as in HR and recruiting — to provide well-rounded support for our India hub.”

The VP of Engineering further shared:

We have ambitious plans for this hub in the near future — we want to hire hundreds of world class engineers in the near term.

“As a product-led company, it’s important that our new hires in India truly understand the products and services that they are helping to deliver,” he detailed. “That’s why we’re introducing a new program called CIkka — short for ‘Coinbase India Sikka’ — offering each new employee in India a one-time $1,000 in crypto when they start.”

Coinbase officially announced its expansion into India in March. The exchange recently unveiled its plan to launch an Apple-like app store.

What do you think about Coinbase’s efforts to build a crypto hub in India? Let us know in the comments section below.