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Keith Teare Joins MediChain as an Advisor – a Headline-Worthy News in the Blockchain ICO Market
All eyes are on MediChain now as Keith Teare, a globally-recognized serial entrepreneur with big ideas and an impressive record of winning high returns for the investors joins the MediChain Advisory Board. The recent addition of Teare in MediChain’s team is being seen as one of the greatest achievements of the company, since the executive chairman of Accelerated Digital Ventures has previously advised on the successful ICOBox, Crypterium, FluzFluz and EnergiMine ICOs.
Stating his views about MediChain, Teare said,
“Medichain represents a bold attempt to leverage the blockchain for patient records. It has long been recognized that patient-centric records represent a goal that would make health care far more efficient and enable doctors the benefit of seeing a patient’s entire medical history. Medichain is executing on that vision. Unlike others, it is also using machine learning to allow insights that can be gleaned from aggregate data. If it reaches its potential this will be a significant contribution to humanity.”
About Keith Teare & His Successful Journey
Keith is the co-founder of Archimedes Ventures where Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch was born and incubated along with Edgeio. He and Arrington were co-founders in both companies. Teare ran Edgeio and Arrington ran TechCrunch. He was the founder and CEO of RealNames Corporation and earlier the co-founder and CTO of EasyNet – the first European ISP.
Working at RealNames, he created a multi-lingual naming system, with distinct national namespaces, sitting on top of the DNS. It used natural language keywords, mapped to URIs to allow native language navigation. Teare raised more than $130 million in venture funding and filed for an IPO in 1999. After negotiating a worldwide agreement to include RealNames in the Microsoft browser in early 2000, the company had an implied valuation of more than $1.5 billion. By 2002, it was responsible for over 1 billion keyword navigations per quarter. It had agreements in Japan, China, and Korea, and was responsible for supporting the nascent multi-lingual DNS system run by Verisign.
He was the Seed funder and chair of NetNames, the founder of Clerkswell — a leading UK systems integrator as well as the Co-founder of CYBERIA, the world’s first Internet Café. Teare also served fotopedia being its founding board member.
Keith Teare Foresees Blockchain as the Future of Most of the Industries
Being a blockchain enthusiast and a start-up expert, Keith Teare strongly believes that moments of change represent the best time to invest in tech. His prediction is based on the fact that blockchain is going to be just everywhere in near future, and that’s what the transition in his professional journey shows:
- In 1981, he was focused on networking and shared data.
- In 1994, he initiated to harness the power of the Internet (EasyNet).
- In 1997, he turned to web services (RealNames).
- In 2005, his focus was on Web 2.0 (Archimedes Ventures, Edgeio, and TechCrunch).
- In 2010, he extensively worked on mobile (Archimedes Labs, Quixey, M.Dot).
- In 2018, he is all set to exploit the Blockchain (Accelerated Digital Ventures and MediChain).
MediChain, leveraging the advisor-ship of Keith Teare, is planning ground-breaking developments on the platform in near future.
To know more about MediChain and Keith Teare being its advisor, please visit https://medichain.online/
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CryptoUK: Seven Crypto Companies Form UK Cryptocurrency Trading Body
Seven of the largest crypto companies are forming a UK cryptocurrency trade body named CryptoUK, bringing the first self-regulation to the booming industry. This news comes just days after Brian Quintenz, a commissioner with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, advised the crypto industry to form such a group to help regulate itself.
CryptoUK, with members including exchange and trading platforms such as Coinbase, eToro and CryptoCompare, said it had produced the first code of conduct for the industry to abide by. The companies said they hoped the regulations would form the first part of broader UK rules around volatile cryptocurrency trading. CryptoUK chair Iqbal Gandham said there was a risk of “rogue operators,” but the new body had been established “to promote best practice and to work with government and regulators.”
Members are expected to sign up to a code of conduct, which CryptoUK said will ensure greater due diligence against illegal activities and ensure customer funds can pay out in the event of insolvency, as well as safeguards against hacking of customer accounts. Mr. Gandham added: “We hope it [the code of conduct] can form the blueprint for what a future regulatory framework will look like.”
The group said the new body did not include Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs, which see investors buying digital tokens in startups, often with no guarantees for their investment. It is also seeking buy-in from the government and official regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority.
CryptoUK includes Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges with more than 1 million account holders worldwide. Coinbase UK chief executive Zeeshan Feroz said: “The fundamentals are engaging as a single industry with the government. Regulation is imminent and that’s a good thing.” The trade body will also include cryptocurrency companies BlockEx, CEX.IO, CoinShares, and CommerceBlock.
Both the UK government and EU regulators have threatened to crack down on cryptocurrencies, with the EU issuing stark warnings that investors are at risk of a Bitcoin bubble.
This past Monday, the European Supervising Authorities — which includes top banking, securities, insurance, and pensions watchdogs — issued a warning to cryptocurrency investors that they could lose all their money if Bitcoin enters a pricing bubble: “[Cryptocurrencies] are highly risky, generally not backed by any tangible assets and unregulated under EU law, and do not, therefore, offer any legal protection to consumers,” the agency said in a statement.
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Cryptokitties is Coming to Mobile: Will Ethereum Handle the Extra Traffic?
The blockchain-based game that caused the Ethereum network to grind to halt in December last year could be about to draw in a lot more users. This is because CryptoKitties is getting launched as a Chinese-language iOS application. The mobile edition is expected to be available on February 16 in Greater China and Singapore. The game’s production studio, Axiom Zen, are unsure how successful the new version will be, more so because they were in no way expecting the game to reach the popularity it did the first time around. Benny Giang, the game’s co-founder, spoke to Fortune about his project’s viral success last year:
“We did some models and we some made spreadsheets and had everyone take a guess at how many users we’d see. We ended up hitting every one of those numbers within the first three days.”
Since the game was so successful, the influx of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain actually clogged the network. At the height of CryptoKitty mania, digital felines accounted for close to 30% of all transactions on Ethereum. This caused delays and many transactions to remain unprocessed. This culminated in a backlog of around 30,000 pending transactions.
This time around, the damage to the Ethereum network could be even more severe. In China, mobile gaming is big business. It’s not uncommon for top mobile games to receive millions of players every day. Giang admits that Ethereum probably isn’t ready to handle that. Based on last December’s evidence, he’s almost certainly correct. Other factors that point to a further Ethereum meltdown are the estimated number of mobile gamers in China – 520 million – and the fact that the mobile version will be optimised for Chinese gamers to “pick up and play”. Previously, users would have to play in English and were required to use a VPN to get around China’s “Great Firewall”. The new iOS game will get around this by using a built-in extension.
Despite Giang being sceptical about the game’s potential to grind Ethereum to a halt in the coming weeks, the studio has taken some precautions. For one, they have decided to launch on Apple products only for now. Android devices are much more popular in the region targeted for the first mobile version of CryptoKitties so the decision was made to limit the potential market in this way.
As well as targeting new players, there has been an effort made to excite the estimated 250,000 existing players of the game. The new version, being launched at Chinese New Year, will feature a new cast of New Year-themed cats. In addition, every new feline has been given a Chinese-back story and three incredibly rare, holiday-themed “Fancy Cats” will also be included.
One of the game’s co-founders, Mack Flavelle, spoke to Fortune of the decision to launch the new mobile game in the Far East:
“We’re targeting China, Singapore and other Asian countries because to be honest, we think they’ll love the kitties. The area has a sophisticated and passionate crypto community … plus a long time appreciation for cute things.”
It’s unclear for now whether CryptoKitties will garner the same appeal the second time around and once again force the Ethereum blockchain to grind to a halt, overwhelmed by unique digital cats, or if the game will be a complete flop. Judging by the irrationality of the cryptocurrency market, we’re guessing it’ll be the former. Flavelle summed up the situation for CryptoKitties and cryptocurrency itself (albeit inadvertently):
“The future is deeply exciting and completely impossible to predict.”
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Source: https://www.newsbtc.com/