Cryptocoin Spy

Yesterday Verge announced that “the biggest deal in cryptocurrency history” had been struck: a partnership with online pornography company MindGeek.

Heavyweights from the world of cryptocurrency immediately weighed in on the deal.

Riccardo Spagni of fellow privacy coin Monero was unimpressed. He suggested that at this point no one is paying for pornography, so the deal will do little for XVG adoption.

I think it’s pretty sad if you’re paying for porn in 2018.

— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) 18 April 2018

In contrast to Verge, the price of Monero’s XMR currency rose considerably yesterday. When asked why, Spagni could only suggest that it was because they hadn’t just announced a partnership with Pornhub.

Because we didn’t announce a partnership with @PornHub

— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) 18 April 2018

Podcaster and crypto-trader Peter McCormack was also unimpressed, pointing out that accepting Verge was one thing, but the complexities involved in acquiring and spending it would get in the way of its widespread use.

Pornhub adding support for $XVG is not a game changer:

Of the small % who pay for porn:
– How many understand Crypto?
– Of those understand it enough to know what XVG is?
– Who know where to buy VXG from?
– Who can be bothered to use it instead of a Debit/Credit card?

Fractions

— Peter McCormack (@whatbitcoindid) 17 April 2018

Doug Polk, an unpopular figure among the VergeFam since his “VERGE: Do NOT Buy Into the Hype” video, posted a new video yesterday parodying lead developer Justin and the reaction of the fiercely loyal VergeFam.

At least one person didn’t get the joke.

I THINK I HAVE MADE MYSELF CLEAR!

— Doug Polk (@DougPolkPoker) 17 April 2018

However, not everyone was so cynical about the deal. Litecoin’s Charlie Lee walked back his initial cynicism and congratulated the Verge team on the news, a move welcomed by Verge’s PhanTi who called Lee “fair and smart”.

Fair and smart. That’s how I always regarded you, except in the latest convos with fluffpony 😉 Thanks for your kind words. We got one common goal. We will all have our markets and niches to have success. #xvg $xvg #btc #ltc

— PhanTi (@PhanTi_91) 17 April 2018

Lee had earlier been trolled by the official PornHub twitter account. After suggesting to Pornhub that they should also accept Litecoin, he was asked hadn’t he sold all his?

I thought you sold all your LTC?

— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) 17 April 2018

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The award-winning, global fintech and systems integration provider, Novatti Group, has officially partnered with the Stellar Network (XLM) to enable blockchain-powered international payments through its proprietary payment platform.

As global market pressure from the blockchain industry pushes the need for low-cost, high-speed and accountable payments, Stellar Networks seems to tick all the boxes necessary for adoption by traditional payment services providers such as Novatti.

Not only does XLM have the power to connect various cryptocurrencies together in one efficient umbrella payment system, it also has the potential to manage fiat currencies, which may mark the potential difference that has led to partnerships such as these.

Afterall, Novatti’s payment platform shares stark similarities with some cryptocurrency features that blockchain enthusiasts have come to appreciate as standard: they offer digital wallets for consumers, funds integration with mobile devices, branchless banking and instant and digital bill and remittance services.

Peter Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Novatti Group, had this to say of their new relationship with Stellar:

Completing the integration of Novatti’s Payments Platform into Stellar’s network lays the foundations to build future high-growth revenue streams driven by transactions across the blockchain network,”

While the first XLM-powered transactions won’t be until next month (May 2018), Novatti’s shares grew a whopping 17%, hitting almost 0.35 a share after news of their blockchain integration broke.

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After weeks of waiting and speculation Verge have finally announced their long-trailed “biggest partnership in cryptocurrency history”, teaming up with MindGeek, parent company of PornHub and other pornography websites such as Brazzers.  

Brazzers has even released a marketing video promoting the partnership, starring Stormy Daniels, a former porn star best known for her alleged affair with US President Donald Trump.

As reported earlier today, MindGeek was one of the leading candidates predicted by the VergeFam, Verge’s passionate community.

The announcement came late, lead to a big dump in the price as jittery investors feared they were caught in an exit scam. A Twitter outage at the same time did little do calm their nerves. Prices have recovered somewhat but are at time of writing are essentially unchanged on yesterday, suggesting that the news had already been priced in.

The news was broken by Pornhub ahead of the scheduled 10am EST announcement. On their site they announced that the “future has come” and that due to their efforts “keep current with our community’s privacy and payment preferences, Pornhub will now be accepting Verge”.

Payment in XVG will be accepted for Pornhub Premium as well as other services. Pornhub cited Verge’s “core values of security, anonymity and practicality” as behind the decision to partner with the privacy-focused cryptocurrency.

Pornhub have also made a glossy promotional video of their own. Set in the future it suggests that the introduction of a Verge payment option for online pornography was the tipping point leading to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee suggested to Pornhub that the Verge deal was “foreplay” and that it was “time to accept the real cryptocurrencies like BTC, LTC, and XMR”.

Turns out Verge’s super expensive partnership was PornHub. “we think it has gained enough steam for us to penetrate the market.” penetrate. @Pornhub, enough with the foreplay. Time to accept the real cryptocurrencies like BTC, LTC, and XMR.
https://t.co/9IboL6LnNn

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) 17 April 2018

Later he admitted that the partnership “definitely is a big deal” but that he felt sorry for another token.

No, just feel bad for FuckToken.

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) 17 April 2018

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V-Day is finally upon us.

Update: Recent reports suggest that the partnership is with Pornhub – view the promotional youtube video here. 

The long-trailed partnership which will “forever change” crypto is just hours away from being announced and speculation is boiling over as to who might be the mystery partner, previously described as “a household name”.

Some had worried that the announcement, already delayed from the 26th March, might be pushed back again, but according to Verge everything is on track.

Lead developer Justin “Sunerok” said in an interview this week that the partner is “a multi billion dollar company, international”, that “they have offices everywhere” and are in “the top tier of a 100bill a year market”.

Stan Faas, a core team member at Verge Currency, outlined the situation in a blog post. He says that at the beginning of March Verge were “approached by our new partners with the prospects of them adopting us to their business”. The partner is described as owning “one of the largest payment processors on the internet with several hundreds of businesses routing their payment traffic through them”.  

As to the controversial crowdfunding campaign launched by Verge to realise the partnership, Faas says the funds were needed to cover the costs of marketing and integrating Verge into the partner’s payment processors as well as the development of a hardware wallet.

This new information has reignited speculation as to the partner’s identity. At the moment there are two front-runners. First up, Adyen.

Adyen is a Netherlands-based payment processing company which hit the news in January when it was chosen by eBay as its primary partner for processing payments. As pointed out on Reddit, though Adyen is not a household name, the companies it works with certainly are.

The other big option appears to be MindGeek, a Luxembourg-registered company specialising in internet pornography. Though MindGeek itself may not be well known, many of its brands are famous… though most households would be too shy to name them outloud.

Of course, not everyone is convinced that the partnership will turn out to be so impressive. There remains the possibility that the purpose of the hype is simply to increase the price of XVG.

We’ll know later today. The announcement of the partnership is expected at 10am EST.

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One of the most established peer-to-peer cryptocurrency projects, Litecoin, has announced today that it will be listed on Korbit.

Korbit is one of Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a mission statement to “enable the free flow of value by utilizing new technologies such as Bitcoin and the Blockchain”.

Founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, announced the listing today on Twitter and joked that he remembers the times when he was asking Korbit to list Litecoin in the project’s early stage.

This announcement undoubtedly gave Litecoin boost in volume and price. The cryptocurrency has recorded a 6% growth in the past 24h hours and is currently trading at $135 USD.

In March, Litecoin was shaken by the fallout with LitePay which did not deliver the required results after the start-up was sold by its founder, Kenneth Asare. As a result, the price of LTC saw a withdrawal to $110 USD levels.

In the last couple of weeks, LTC has preserved its positions in terms of Bitcoin prices, entering another stage of stability without major spikes or lows mainly due to its functioning Lightning Network providing it with relatively cheap on-chain settlement.

In addition, this recent listing, combined with previously reported news that trading application Abra will be adding Litecoin as a funding option, will certainly help the cryptocurrency regain some of its popularity among investors.

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Prices have surged for Waltonchain (WTC) following their listing as an Internet of Things industry partner with Alibaba’s IoT Connectivity Alliance (ICA).

Recently, Alibaba held an industrial summit to determine outstanding developments in Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies in Xiamen, China.

In a great outcome for the manufacturing and distribution focused blockchain, Xiamen Zhongchuan Internet of Things Industrial Research Institute Co., Ltd. has been officially listed as a member of the ICA.

Xiamen Zhongchuan Internet of Things Industrial Research Institute Co., Ltd. is the English translation for the research department responsible for the development of Waltonchain.

The IoT Connectivity Alliance is a co-operative group established by a collective of Alibaba.com Internet of Things industry partners. They have a primary focus of ‘jointly develop[ing] and improv[ing] IoT-related technologies, built relevant alliance standards, and promote national and international standards.

Waltonchain is perhaps the most notable blockchain of its type to receive membership to the ICA. Speculations that an official partnership with Alibaba.com may arise from such a strong showing at the summit have begun circulating, caused a spike in prices for WTC which currently sits at just over US$12.

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