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Many of us can recall the days when only a handful of digital payment methods were offered by major online retailers such as Amazon and eBay. Some options include wire transfers, e-wallets and credit cards. Of course, there are now dozens of alternatives at the disposal of the average buyer. This is great news for sellers who have been hoping to target a larger demographic while simultaneously embracing a greater degree of flexibility. Still, there are a number of other features that have begun to emerge and these are signaling the undeniable fact that payment systems are much more adaptable when compared to the past. The ability to accept cryptocurrencies is one important feature to highlight.

Advanced Plugins to Cater to Unique Seller Requirements

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum once existed solely within the domain of online trading and investing. However, a growing number of consumers are now becoming aware of their benefits in regards to secure and anonymous payments. As data theft and hacking both become more relevant concerns, it stands to reason that payment platforms that are able to accept cryptocurrencies will provide a leading-edge over competitors.

The good news is that the average seller does not need to possess much experience in order to leverage the power of cryptocurrencies. These can be included as another form of payment thanks to simple plugins that may be installed in a matter of seconds. Those who are dealing with a larger audience or who are looking to address the needs of international clients will often employ these alternatives, as they tend to instill a greater sense of confidence across the buying community.

Sophisticated Discounts and Incentive Programmes

While the emerging presence of cryptocurrencies is certainly interesting, this is not the only advancement. A number of unique APIs are also being offered to sellers; providing them with the ability to offer additional incentive programs in order to maintain brand loyalty over time. For example, the Shopify Price Comparison feature allows sellers to:

• Offer fixed percentage discounts.
• Provide free shipping to customers.
• Create unique discount and promotional codes.
• Include multiple products within a specific bargain package when purchased together.

These possibilities are important for several reasons. Not only will they enable a seller to rise head and shoulders above the masses, but they represent a passive means to attract new buyers.

Now, it needs to be mentioned that even the most advanced payment APIs and the ability to accept cryptocurrencies will not ultimately determine the success or failure of an online marketing campaign. Other metrics such as high-definition images, the use of relevant keywords and structured content with clear bullet points will also come into play. The main purpose of any payment API is to augment a sense of flexibility that should already be present. Still, there is no doubt that a growing number of platforms will begin accepting cryptocurrencies as the need for alternative forms of payment continues to increase.

A lot of people are excited about the blockchain today, especially after realizing that there is a lot more to the blockchain than the currency approach that many people associate with it. For the most part, when you mention the blockchain, many people think about Bitcoin in its capacity as an alternative currency to fiat currency. However, there is so much more to the blockchain than the monetary value.

Travel enthusiasts, in particular, will appreciate Kokorobakari. What is Kokorobakari about? It is a decentralized app on the blockchain that allows you to relive your travel experiences in different destinations all over the world on the blockchain. You do this in the form of graffiti. Each time you travel to a destination, you can see graffiti that other travelers like yourself left behind, and you can also go further and translate their graffiti, as they would yours.

Kokorobakari is the brainchild of Profound Design Technology Co., Ltd, a company with business interests in designing semiconductors and developing blockchain apps. This app creates virtual graffiti that you can use to save memories from different travel destinations you visit all over the world. For all the amazing memories of the trips, you can also make donations as a form of gratitude.

Using Kokorobakari

One of the best things about using this app is that it is available on handheld devices. You can download and install the smartphone app, which means that you will come across a lot of other people who have used the app before. Other than memories from your travel destinations, Kokorobakari also stores information about the specific locations on the blockchain. Using Kokorobakari, you can decide to make a donation to specific individuals from a list of recipients using the virtual currency.

When using Kokorobakari, you can see different graffiti that have been saved by other users on the map. Since the memories are saved on the blockchain, they are stored semi-permanently, so there is no need for you to keep making backup copies of the graffiti. Considering that everyone has unique needs about their privacy, you can choose to disclose your graffiti to other users or keep them private.

If other users make their graffiti public, you can view them each time you check out a location you would love to visit, that they have visited before. All graffitis are displayed on a map, so from the comfort of your phone, you can see all the destinations on the world map where graffitis have been used before.

Of course, as you can imagine, with people using this app all over the world, everyone creates their virtual graffiti in a language that they understand best. To make work easier for all users, Kokorobakari can translate local graffiti content into your predetermined language.

Troubleshooting your Kokorobakari

While Kokorobakari is an interesting app for travel enthusiasts, there are a few issues that users have reported in the past that might be a challenge for you. Below, we will address some of them so that you have an easier experience using the app.

• Inability to See the Grafitti

When you translate the graffiti, in some cases you might not be able to see it. This usually happens when there are many translation requests being processed. As a result, you might not be able to see your translated graffiti for some time. 

To avoid this problem when checking out graffiti, you can choose Don’t Translate so that you can access the graffiti in the original language that the owner created it. Take note that this problem should not persist for a long time. In many cases, you should be able to translate and see the graffiti in a day.

• Invisible Graffiti 

There are instances where you might not be able to see the graffiti you create. This problem happens not just with Kokorobakari but the entire blockchain. Remember that at any point in time, there are many people using the blockchain and processing bits of information. Because of this reason, it might be a while before you can write on the blockchain again, so if you create graffiti but you cannot see it, you can check again after some time.

• How to Register for the Donation List

Earlier on we mentioned that you can donate to specific recipients in a predefined list. To have your details uploaded to this list, you have to register with Profound Design Technology Co., Ltd.

Graffiti is an incredible way to express yourself, and also an amazing form of art. It is also possible that some people might take advantage of this and abuse the privileges. When this happens, inappropriate graffiti are pushed to a blacklist, such that they will no longer be visible to other users.

Getting Started with Kokorobakari

While Kokorobakari is available as a decentralized app that you can install on your smartphone, you can also run it on your desktop PC. However, it is always advisable to run it on your smartphone because you need access to location information to process and write graffiti. In case you are running the test version of Kokorobakari, you must be aware that it runs on a test network. For this reason, therefore, the ethereum used in the test version is not monetary ethereum.

Before you get started, you must install the Metamask app. This app is available as a browser extension for PC users and also an app version for smartphone users. The PC version works best with Google Chrome and Firefox. However, we can expect version updates in the future to support many other browsers too.

When you run the app on your smartphone, allow permission to access your location because this will enable the app to provide graffiti information specific to the location you want to access. Besides, remember that graffiti on the app is written depending on the location associated with the information. For this reason, once you create graffiti, you cannot change or modify the location. The kind of data that is obtained and stored in the blockchain includes the graffiti in character strings, information about the location to help in displaying graffiti, the date and time the graffiti was created and the ethereum account address. 

Each time we talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning, there is a lot of controversies, especially from those who have probably watched one too many movies and believe that computers are taking over. You really need to leave Terminator themes to Hollywood if you are of this school of thought. There are so many reasons why computers will not take over, but that’s a discussion for another day. However, we will explain something interesting behind computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence – Data!

Data is the heartbeat of artificial intelligence. Without data, machine learning and AI as we know it is dead. These systems are built to learn and operate autonomously, but if you feed in the wrong training and testing data, your model will return the wrong results. Therefore, computers can learn all they want, but one thing is certain, they don’t just need data, they need the right kind of data. There really is no way computers are taking over. Now, let’s stretch a bit and bring in Bitcoin and the crypto world in general. How does AI come in? What impact does AI have? More importantly, since we are building AI to help make our work easier by automating mundane tasks, how is AI helping investors in the cryptocurrency market? Of course, we are looking at a profit angle here. So, let’s dig in!

Automating the Blockchain

When we mention AI, the first image that comes to the mind of a lot of people is robotics. There is so much more to AI than that. Financial service providers currently use AI models to detect and prevent fraud, and in many cases, geniuses who try to manipulate the market. This is something you will notice so much if you are keen on hedge funds and their operations. Everyone seems to be taking advantage of tech in one way or the other. What are you doing about it?

Cryptocurrency has been around for years. However, many people got with the flow after 2017. This was the year you either made a killing selling your Bitcoin or you sat back and watched a real-life movie of people making millions overnight. Since then, interest in the blockchain has peaked, and a lot more people are learning to invest using automated systems, or trading bots. As simple as that, AI is already in play.

There are many people who have made millions in the cryptocurrency world, but they hardly know the workings of the market. Other than that, they probably don’t even have the slightest knowledge of tech. So how are they doing it? It’s simple really, they’re tapping into the potential of AI. There’s so much we have learned about AI over the years and its potential in cryptocurrency that we, at CoinCheckup do believe it is wise for any investor to consider learning about the influence AI has on their crypto investments. Here are some of the benefits investors enjoy from AI.

Prediction and Forecasting

The crypto market is a highly volatile market. The market can be calm the whole day and turn into a chaotic environment in a few minutes before calm is restored. Therefore, as an investor, you need innovative tools and techniques to navigate through this environment. This is where AI comes in. 

Using neural networks, there are many tools in the market at the moment that can help you make accurate predictions regarding your investment. These tools monitor the market on a 24/7 basis. They make predictions and use data analytics for decision making almost every minute.

Intense Trading

AI models can trade faster and better than you can. There is no doubt about this. These models are designed to identify and exploit price surges in the market. To do this, they have to look at technical indicators in different markets wherein your portfolio is spread. At the same time, they must also use that knowledge to execute trades in different exchanges so that you can take advantage of your position instantly. When working with these models, you feed them instructions based on your investment goals, and they act on them if the market indicators are in your favor.

In-depth Analytics

However good you believe you are, you cannot analyze the entire financial market with the same speed and precision that AI models can. You need the appropriate cryptocurrency software to help with this. Take sentiment analysis, for example. This is purely about opinions. AI models scour the internet for sentiments on different assets, then make decisions based on that. At the same time, they also monitor search engine trends. This is not something you can do on your own.

While still on sentiment analysis, it is only human that you get swayed by your personal opinion. If you do this on your own, chances are high that you might not act accordingly, given your biased opinion based on the assessed sentiments. This alone is enough to make you delay on executing a move in the market, which will either cost you a fortune or prevent you from taking advantage of a good position.

From videos to discussion forums, social media posts, blogs and so on, AI models do all the donkey work for you. They do all this without emotional attachment, personal or personality bias and anything else that might impede your clear judgment. From here, they make a simple decision, whether to buy or sell, how much and when.

As an investor in cryptocurrency, one of the most important things you can do is embrace change. Change is indeed inevitable, and at times you have to be the change you want to experience. You might not have an inkling for AI or machine learning, but as long as you are interested in cryptocurrency investments, you have to open up to the possibility of learning. Besides, you don’t really have to learn everything about AI. You are not building one. All you need to know is the basics of how they operate, the strategies they use and anything else that affects your investment.

Trends! Everyone talks about or is affected by trends today. Think about it for a moment, what really are trends about, and how do they affect you? A trend is no more than a pattern that persists over a given period of time. We know about fashion trends already. Everyone wants to have the latest or the best.

Wherever trends are discussed, there is always the prospect of a herd-like mentality, call it the fear of missing out, or in popular slang, FOMO. In the financial markets, trends tell a lot more than they do in the fashion industry. Trends in the financial markets are helpful in that you can use them to predict the movement in asset prices over time. For an investor, the ability to correctly predict asset values gives you an edge over the market, hence a good profit outlook.

So, what about the cryptocurrency market? Are there trends and how do they affect your investment? It’s been a few years since the supposed Bitcoin bubble burst, and many investors have learned several lessons since then. At CoinCheckup we believe that if you can monitor trends, you have a better chance of making wise investment decisions and growing your portfolio over time. But, what trends are there in the crypto world? How do you identify them and what can you learn from them?

The cryptocurrency market had for a very long time been the preserve of tech geniuses, especially when you talk about mining coins and forking. For the average netizen, mining is about precious minerals while forking is probably about something delicious. Today, the cryptocurrency world has become more welcoming than before. More information has proliferated to basic users to a point where it is easy to research and understand a lot more about the market and assets before investing. 

We mentioned earlier that trends persist for a while. In the financial markets, when you study trends you notice a pattern of events for a number of years. The same applies to the cryptocurrency world. There are a few things that we can already see in action today that will continue influencing the market in general over the years. Let’s look at some of the possible patterns you could have recognized already:

Persistent Automation

Not long ago, you had to stay up long hours researching the internet to learn more about cryptocurrency so that you had enough knowledge to invest in the market, and earn some good profits. Today a lot of people don’t do that. They have trading bots and brokerage firms that handle all that for them. Tech is such a beautiful thing, right? This is one of the patterns we notice already.

There is a lot of automation in the cryptocurrency world today. As time goes, we can only expect more automation over the years. Automation is indeed a good thing. It saves you a lot of time and allows you to do other things on the side, while your cryptocurrency portfolio grows passively. Besides, a lot of people are becoming receptive to cryptocurrency, so we can only expect that as the uptake increases, there will be more interest in the services, which means that the demand for automation will only increase.

Look at it this way, for most of the fiat transactions, all you need is an Excel spreadsheet and you have your accounts managed accordingly. However, an Excel spreadsheet is already becoming mundane even for that industry. We come across and interact with a lot of data on a daily basis that Excel spreadsheets become insufficient. This is why many financial organizations are heavily invested in machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The future of the world of finance has artificial intelligence written all over it, and you can be certain the same applies to cryptocurrency too.

Machine Learning and Blockchain

We are building computers that are smarter by the day so that they can ease the workload we have to perform especially on mundane tasks. When it comes to cryptocurrency, we can expect individual investors, account managers, and other interested parties will further the need for automation by integrating machine learning into the blockchain. Why should you invest in machine learning or crypto organizations that have invested in machine learning? Like we mentioned earlier, machine learning is the future. Who wouldn’t want to invest in the future?

It is also worth mentioning at this juncture that we are fast embracing the Internet of Things, such that many organizations prefer to use business models as a service instead of having to use the physical products. This is why we see a lot of XaaS business models out there today. Your guess is as good as mine, the proliferation of the XaaS model will not leave the cryptocurrency world behind. In fact, we already have Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) model in place, with the likes of Microsoft and IBM championing this cause.

School of Cryptocurrency

It was not long ago that cryptocurrency was assumed by many to be one of the biggest scams of the century. Many people could not fathom the idea of a global currency that is not backed by gold or any central government. However, today people realize that cryptocurrency is real, even with all the controversies around it. Some of the top tech companies in the world are investing in the blockchain and even coming up with their own coins. 

We expect Facebook’s Libra Coin, for example, whose release is currently expected in 2020, to be a game-changer. Look at it this way, many people shy away from Bitcoin because they don’t understand it. However, people will easily invest in Libra Coin because even though they don’t understand it, they know Facebook, and that’s the kind of confidence boost that money cannot buy.

Building on this, we can expect to have cryptocurrency and the blockchain, in general, to show up in study curriculums all over the world. If this is to be the alternative currency that frees the world from the gatekeepers in the world of finance, we must certainly learn about it, right? What better way to learn than to introduce the blockchain and cryptocurrency in the curriculum?

Investing in financial instruments is a decision that many people make today, for different reasons. A lot of people are looking for passive income, such that they can earn some money on the side, some are looking for financial security as they grow older and so many other reasons. For years, most of the investment vehicles that people used were limited to traditional financial investment assets, like the stock market, REITs, the forex market and so on. Today, however, there is a lot more that you can do towards this end. Many people are looking at cryptocurrency to enable them to achieve their financial investment goals. 

Indeed, at CoinCheckup we recognize this need and encourage those who are interested in cryptocurrency to learn as much as possible so that they can take advantage of the market and reap good returns. Unlike other investment instruments that are loaded with red tape and many other constraints for investors, the crypto market is open to any and all investors. You have a lot of investment opportunities that you can take advantage of, you just need to ensure you have the right resources.

Trading in Bitcoin

You are already aware of some of the benefits and features of digital currency. Bitcoin is one of these currencies. A lot of the transactional features of cryptocurrency are similar to the features of fiat currency like the Euro and Dollar. However, cryptocurrencies exist in a decentralized environment. The idea of decentralization means that there is no control from a government or a central bank. Therefore, this is a market that is driven by the demand and supply needs of the community involved.

When you are trading in Bitcoin, in essence, you are performing a forex transaction. You are exchanging a certain currency for Bitcoin. If you have an investment portfolio of real estate, foreign currency, and any other financial instruments, you can add cryptocurrency to your portfolio. While other markets are operated within a specific time schedule, the cryptocurrency market is open 24/7. This means that you can tap into its potential and earn some good returns whenever you can.

Naturally, most of us cannot stay awake 24/7 to invest in the cryptocurrency market, and it is because of this reason that it makes sense for you to consider trading bots that perform all the transactions on your behalf. There is a lot of potential for you if you learn how to trade cryptocurrency the right way. 

Cryptocurrency Investment

Investing in cryptocurrency is a process where you trade in assets that are protected through cryptography. The beauty of such transactions is that the transacting parties can engage one another without the need for a third party. Third parties like central banks often drive up the cost of transactions. This is one of the challenges that the cryptocurrency market is trying to tackle.

Without a central body monitoring the transactions, so how do the participants ensure they are protected? All cryptocurrency transactions are recorded in a public ledger. This gives both users an element of security as they go about their business. This is perhaps one of the things you need to be aware of when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry, all transactions are recorded in a public ledger, meaning that they are open and transparent to anyone who chooses to verify or confirm. That being said, however, these transactions are encrypted such that the nature of the transactions remains anonymous, for the safety and security of both parties involved.

The Nature of the Cryptocurrency Market

When we talk about cryptocurrency or the blockchain, a lot of people limit their discussions to Bitcoin. This makes sense because it was the first widely known cryptocurrency on the blockchain, and has since been synonymous with developments and advancements in the market. However, there are many other cryptocurrencies available. In fact, there are thousands of currencies in the crypto world that you can invest in. Some of the popular ones include Stellar, Ripple, Ethereum, Caradon, Libra and so on. Some cryptocurrencies even exist as forks of the major currencies.

This market works in the same way that the normal forex market works. You buy and sell different cryptocurrencies in exchange for other currencies. You can exchange your crypto assets for fiat currency, or exchange them in kind for other crypto assets. For example, you can exchange Bitcoin for some dollars or Bitcoin for Ethereum and vice versa as long as you are making your profits, you should be good to go.

While this is one of the most volatile markets in the world of business, it can also be the most rewarding investment market ever. For example, those who adopted the Bitcoin business model in the early stages purchased Bitcoins for a few cents for every Bitcoin. The investors who held onto their Bitcoins for a few years ended up selling them for thousands of dollars a coin at the time when Bitcoin was at its peak.

The secret is to try and monitor the market well enough such that you can tell when the trends are in your favor. In this market, things change so fast and for that reason, you have to be proactive.

You need to be armed with credible information all the time. From speculation on social media to trends on Google, knowing what’s going on in the world of cryptocurrency makes a big difference. By default, as an investor, your aim is to buy the cryptocurrency when their values are low, and sell them when the value increases. This is how you make your profit.

Traditionally, you have to purchase cryptocurrency through an exchange. To do this, you would have to buy the coins and store them in an offline storage facility or a digital wallet. However, this can be quite a challenge, hence a lot of investors these days prefer to trade through contracts for difference, also known as CFDs. This is done through brokerage firms, such that you do not purchase the cryptocurrency itself, but instead, you invest in the possibility of the price changing, without necessarily owning the currency.