Ex-Gemini Lawyer: SEC 'Unlikely' to Approve a Bitcoin ETF

Dog Eat Dog: Bitcoin ATM Bandits Threaten Rivals With Death

Bitcoin Price Nears $900 Days Before Trump’s Swear-In; Monero, Dash, Steem Grow Too

Ahead of the Friday, Jan. 20 swear-in of US President-Elect Donald Trump, the price of Bitcoin has started picking up from its recent slump.

For the first time since the drop or correction in price following the People’s Bank of China’s onsite inspection of key Bitcoin exchanges in the country - taking a dip as low as $755 - the price has followed an upward trend that has seen it rise to the $895 range according to coinmarketcap.com (though it now sits at $883 at the time of writing).

Whether this is connected to the Asian stocks and the pound that sagged on Tuesday, as investors await Theresa May’s speech in which she is expected to lay out plans for Brexit from the European Union and potentially the single market, is still unknown.

Certainly, however, the ascension into office of Mr. Trump has been predicted to have an impact on the price of the digital currency. A Saxo Bank “Outrageous Prediction For 2017” predicted that the spending binge of a Trump presidency could create ideal conditions for the price of Bitcoin to test $2,000 this year as the possibility of the US dollar skyrocketing could force emerging markets to seek alternatives.

For now, reports say there is growing uncertainty over the policies of Trump which have hurt equities as speculation is rife that the US president-elect would enact bold stimulus and reflationary measures once in office. As a result, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 0.1 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei brushed a five-week low and was down 0.4 percent at one point, reports The Guardian.

Kim Dotcom factor

Kim Dotcom’s trumpeted launch of his Megaupload 2.0 and its potential Bitcoin wallet Bitcache system in January has also been cited as a likely factor to affect the price of the currency. However, the launch date is yet to be confirmed.

In another vein, the global weekly trading volume record on LocalBitcoins was broken in the week ending Dec. 31. This is an indication which shows that P2P trading is getting stronger in some countries including those in South America and Europe, with more people using Bitcoin for real.

Where the current rise will lead to is indeterminate at the moment but Tuur Demeester of Adamant Research suggests that the next resistance could be at $920.

Other top currencies that recorded a push in their prices include Monero, Dash and Steem.

Using Ethereum, ChronoBank Aims to Become Uber of Recruitment

The recruitment market model is broken, slowed down by intermediaries and recruiters who in many cases are not adding much value. It is time-consuming and costly for organizations to identify and hire short-term talent. Is it a market ready for disruption?

Cointelegraph caught up with Sergei Sergienko, CEO at ChronoBank, who is launching a next generation labor exchange platform (LaborX) built on Ethereum using smart contracts.

CT: So how will it work?

Sergei Sergienko: We are seeking to disrupt the short-term labour-hire sector, creating an exchange on which buyers and sellers can trade skills for time and money. 

The recruitment industry is broken, with intermediaries charging high fees to introduce suitable employees to businesses seeking to fill vacancies. Whilst this is generally accepted as the price of doing business for long-term appointments, it can be prohibitively expensive for contract or freelance work.

Organizations can spend more time and money securing an employee than they do on the work itself.

The LaborX exchange is built on Ethereum’s smart contracts platform, enabling workers and businesses to connect on a peer-to-peer basis. ChronoBank is a Blockchain initiative backed by Australian labor hire company Edway. We are seeking to revolutionize the short-term recruitment sector by creating decentralized mechanisms for employers to access and rank prospective employees. 

By using LaborX, organizations can buy labor and acquire the skills they need directly – in much the same way that Uber connects drivers with those looking for a taxi, or the way Upwork works to allows freelancers to access work directly.

LaborX will include a decentralized reputation system that will enable workers to be rewarded in line with their talent and experience, instead of on a one-size-fits-all basis. 

CT:  How are things progressing towards launch?

SS: The LaborX exchange platform is built on Ethereum’s ground-breaking smart contracts capabilities. Although ChronoBank’s crowdfunding is still under way, a significant proportion of the critical development work has already been completed.

The rewards contract, which handles automatic payment of dividends for token-holders, has been created, as has the exchange contract that will allow trading between different token types on LaborX.

The ChronoWallet allows users to view offered rates and make trades quickly and easily. It is also possible to view amounts of Labour Hour (LH) tokens to be transferred in fiat equivalents and to switch between different currencies. 

It looks like ChronoBank crowdfunding is going well. We have already raised large amounts of Bitcoins (around 1,200 Bitcoins), and quantities of other cryptocurrencies (LTC, ETH, ETC, WAVES and NEM).

The project has also received $1.1 mln in venture capital funding from AXL Strategic Partners and has the backing of Edway, a major labor-hire organization based in Australia.