Auctus, an Ethereum Project Disrupting the $36.4 Trillion Pension Market – The Merkle

Auctus, a smart contracts-based blockchain platform, is targeting the $36.4 trillion pension market using the Ethereum network and its immutable ledger.

For the vast majority of workers and lifelong professionals, pensions are a vital component of their retirement savings. Over the past decade, with record low interest rates and more regulation, pension funds have become significantly more advanced by outsourcing asset management and concentrating risk in a minor part of their investment portfolio, while otherwise aiming for low-risk and secure investments.

But, despite being a multi-trillion dollar market, the pension industry has struggled to deal with pension frauds, scams, and bankruptcy. According to the Auctus team, many pension fund operators, still work with opaque and outdated information technology (IT) systems, databases, and technologies to process large sums of money and manage trillions of dollars worth of assets.

One major issue with traditional and conventional database and data processing technologies is their centralized nature. If sensitive financial and personal information is stored within a centralized ecosystem administered by a limited group of entities, the probability of vulnerability, security breaches, and data manipulation increases.

Auctus is introducing an Ethereum-based smart contract platform, that autonomously handles pension funds in a secure and decentralized environment. Since blockchain technology is immutable and decentralized, Auctus provides a completely transparent ecosystem wherein both, pension fund operators and their clients, can easily access their investments and track their pension savings.

“With the ability to manage operations with more transparency, lower costs and easier auditing/control, the adoption of a unified platform for pension funds would be of great advantage for employers, employees, managers and regulators alike. However, it would require a transparency mechanism to prevent the platform from being controlled by an individual party for their own individual interest. This risk can be circumvented with the use of blockchain technology,” read the whitepaper of Auctus.

Through a distributed platform, the Auctus blockchain-based pension fund network solves four of the main problems within the global pension industry, which are fraud, poor governance, contribution collection, data management, and hidden costs.

Issues of the current pension fund industry and investment infrastructures offered by traditional financial service providers are demonstrated in the infographic shown below:

Ultimately, the Auctus development team emphasizes that the usage of smart contracts and a fully automated blockchain platform to pension funds “leads to massive operational cost advantages, which significantly increases the low returns that pension funds currently experience. Needless to say, better returns lead to faster achievement of pension saving targets.”

Pre-Sale with whitelist closing on September 30th

The official pre-sale of Auctus begins on October 3rd at 14:00 UTC. However, in order to participate, investors need to register for the whitelist before September 30th at auctus.org

Auctus is aligning interests with their investors by having strict vesting rules. This means tokens will not be immediately tradable for Auctus team members. However, investors will be able to transfer tokens right after the ICO (which is expected to start on November 14th, 2017).

ICObench.com rated the Auctus project and token sale with a very strong 4.7 out of 5 and low risk.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

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Government Debt Getting Downgraded, Thankfully Bitcoin Backed Only By Math

The biggest argument against cryptocurrencies is that unlike fiat currencies, they do not have the backing of any government. As multiple rating downgrades show, government support isn’t what it used to be.

Thumbs down to Britain

Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the United Kingdom from Aa1 to Aa2 on September 22, citing weakening public finances and calling into question the Government’s fiscal consolidation plans. The pound sterling, which had been slowly recovering following the Brexit debacle, promptly lost ground after the rating downgrade. Other rating agencies like S&P and Fitch had downgraded the UK to AA in 2016.

The UK suffered its first ratings downgrade, from Moody’s and Fitch, in 2013. This ended a 35 year period of being rated AAA, and it’s been a downward slide ever since.

China in a soup

A day before the UK was downgraded by Moody’s, S&P cut the sovereign rating of China, downgrading it from AA- to A+. According to S&P, China’s prolonged credit growth had increased its economic and financial risk. The rating cut brought S&P’s rating in line with other rating agencies. It is ironic that China had taken action against ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges shortly before its own rating was downgraded.

US and Japan drift downwards

Though the sovereign ratings of the United States and Japan have not been cut recently, the trend has been negative. The US was downgraded by S&P from AAA to AA+ in 2011, after being AAA rated for 70 years. Since the dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world, the rating of the United States government has great significance in the global financial markets. With the US national debt crossing $20 tln recently, the country’s creditworthiness likely isn’t  improving any time soon. Japan, which was last Aaa rated by Moody’s in 2009, has seen multiple rating cuts in the last eight years. It is currently rated A1/A+ by Moody’s / S&P.

Is government backing Important?

A fiat currency derives its value from the support of the government. While currencies were initially backed by gold, governments across the world felt that this was restricting their ability to print currency and expand their economies, and withdrew from the gold standard long ago. Today, the US dollar, like all fiat currencies, is solely backed by the “full faith and credit” of the nation’s government. Clearly, this “faith and credit” isn’t what it used to be.

Misguided government policies can result in the value of fiat currency depreciating rapidly. Thankfully, Bitcoin is backed by math and nothing else.

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Best crypto-currency exchange service – 24xbtc.com

The popularity of crypto-currency among Internet users is steadily growing, and many people need a convenient and reliable exchange of bitcoins for cash.

The sites that provide such a demanded service are in the network of the unit. And if you need to exchange crypto currency, the 24xbtc.com team is ready to help. We offer advantageous conditions and exchange rates of bitcoins in Ukraine in different directions, we provide courier delivery service of cash in any locality in the country. Cooperation with us is a guarantee of security, confidentiality and honesty of financial transactions.

How to exchange crypto-currencies.

To all users of our site we offer a simple and fast registration scheme for the service. This ensures a high level of customer security. All operations on the exchange of crypto-currency on EPS, transfers to bank cards, withdrawal of cash are carried out manually by employees of our company. To order the exchange of bitcoins in Ukraine, you need:

Pass a simple registration on the site 24xbtc.com.
Fill in the application form on the start page.
Specify the amount of crypto currency for cash.
Choose the equivalent of the currency – dollars, hryvnia, rubles, euro.
After that, our employee will contact you to clarify and agree on the terms and conditions of the financial transaction. With each client, we work individually, which guarantees high security and transparency of transactions on the exchange of crypto currency.

Courier delivery is the ideal solution

Bitcoins and other crypto-currency are in demand for users, but not all services offer currency exchange for cash. Our service is an exception, as we not only offer to exchange bitcoins in Ukraine for cash, but also arrange fast courier delivery of money to the client. Benefits of the service:

You can order courier delivery to any city in Ukraine.
Courier delivery services operate in Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, Lviv.
Available exchange, input, output of crypto-currency in Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg)
The cost of courier delivery is paid by the client, the price calculation is individual.
We have at our disposal a large reserve of cash, so exchange transactions are carried out promptly in all areas of exchange.

 

Manual exchange with our service, which guarantees fairness of transactions and the opportunity to immediately contact the company’s consultant if necessary. Important moments of conducting operations on the site:

Exchange, buy, sell can be electronic money, crypto currency, carry out wire transfer and cash transactions.
When creating an application on the site 24xbtc.com you only need to specify the direction of exchange and the desired amount of money.
On our service there is always a large reserve of title signs, so there are no difficulties with the exchange.
We cooperate with large banks, in demand payment systems, we carry out operations with crypto currency (bitcoin, lightcoin, cryptic). Partners of our exchange service are popular business, financial and news publications, multi-currency sites and forums. Therefore, users of the resource always have up-to-date information about financial market events.

Our company offers customers comfortable conditions for converting crypto currency into cash throughout Ukraine and in other countries. We work at an acceptable commission rate and offer the most favorable terms of exchange. Express delivery of cash is our significant advantage over competitors, and for you it is a convenient service for exchanging crypto currency.

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$GNT Up on Strong Volume – allcoinsnews.com

Blockchain Too Immature for Adoption

Project Stella has released its findings after a year long study of distributed ledgers. The 2016 attempt by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to adopt Blockchain technology for large banking transactions has determined that the technology is not ready to take over major institutional banking challenges.

While the reports were favorable regarding the performance of Blockchain technology for banking needs, they nevertheless concluded that the technology is not at a point of maturity to function as a solution for banking practices at this time. The report concludes:

“In conclusion, while the test series produced promising results, it should be taken into account that no direct conclusions can be drawn from the test set-up with respect to a potential usage in production. Given the relative immaturity of the technology, DLT is not a solution for large-scale applications like BOJ-NET and TARGET2 at this stage of development.”

While there has been a number of banking institutions that have adopted Blockchain technology for their transaction and document needs, this report by large scale banks indicates that the technology may not be robust enough at this time to be a viable option.

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