Binary Option

A binary option is a financial option in which the payoff is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The former pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the latter pays the value of the underlying security. They are also called all-or-nothing options, digital options (more common in forex/interest rate markets), and fixed return options (FROs) (on the American Stock Exchange). While binary options may be used in theoretical asset pricing, they are prone to fraud in their applications and hence banned by regulators in many jurisdictions as a form of gambling. Many binary option outlets have been exposed as fraudulent. The U.S. FBI is investigating binary option scams throughout the world, and the Israeli police have tied the industry to criminal syndicates. The European Union is publishing regulations that will ban binary options trading.

The FBI estimates that the scammers steal $10 billion annually worldwide. The use of the names of famous and respectable people such as Richard Brandon to encourage people to buy fake "investments" is frequent and increasing. Articles published in the Times of Israel newspaper explain the fraud in detail, using the experience of former insiders such as a job-seeker recruited by a fake binary options broker, who was told to "leave [his] conscience at the door". Following an investigation by the Times of Israel, Israel's cabinet approved a ban on sale of binary options in June 2017, and a law banning the products was approved by the Knesset in October 2017.On January 30, 2018, Facebook banned advertisements for binary options trading as well as for crypto-currencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Google and Twitter announced similar bans in the following weeks.

Binary options "are based on a simple 'yes' or 'no' proposition: Will an underlying asset be above a certain price at a certain time?" Traders place wagers as to whether that will or will not happen. If a customer believes the price of an underlying asset will be above a certain price at a set time, he buys the binary option. If he believes it will be below that price, he sells the option. In the U.S. exchanges, the price of a binary is always under $100.

Investopedia described the binary options trading process in the U.S. thus:

[A] binary may be trading at $42.50 (bid) and $44.50 (offer) at 1 p.m. If you buy the binary option right then you will pay $44.50, if you decide to sell right then you'll sell at $42.50.

Let's assume you decide to buy at $44.50. If at 1:30 p.m. the price of gold is above $1,250, your option expires and it becomes worth $100. You make a profit of $100 - $44.50 = $55.50 (less fees). This is called being "in the money."

But if the price of gold is below $1,250 at 1:30 p.m., the option expires at $0. Therefore you lose the $44.50 invested. This is called being "out of the money."

The bid and offer fluctuate until the option expires. You can close your position at any time before expiry to lock in a profit or a reduce a loss (compared to letting it expire out of the money).
In the U.S., every binary option settles at $100 or $0, $100 if the bet is correct, 0 if it is not.

Many binary option "brokers" have been exposed as fraudulent operations. In those cases, there is no real brokerage; the customer is betting against the broker, who is acting as a bucket shop. Manipulation of price data to cause customers to lose is common. Withdrawals are regularly stalled or refused by such operations; if a client has good reason to expect a payment, the operator will simply stop taking their phone calls. Though binary options sometimes trade on regulated exchange, they are generally unregulated, trading on the Internet, and prone to fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have issued a joint warning to American investors regarding unregulated binary options, and have forced a major operator, Banc de Binary, to cease operations in the United States and pay back all customer losses. In Israel, where a high concentration of such firms can be found, binary options trading was prohibited for Israeli customers in March 2016 on the grounds that it is a form of gambling and not a legitimate investment technique. On June 18, 2017, a ban on marketing binary options to customers outside of Israel was passed by the cabinet. It was approved by the Knesset in October, despite strong opposition from the binary options industry.

Read More

"Magento" an Open-source e-Commerce

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. The software was originally developed by Varien Inc., a US private company headquartered in Culver City, California, with assistance from volunteers. Varien published the first general-availability release of the software on March 31, 2008. Roy Rubin, former CEO of Varien, later sold a substantial share of the company to eBay, which eventually completely acquired and then spun off the company. According to the research conducted by ahead Works in May 2015, Magento's market share among the 30 most popular e-commerce platforms is about 29.8%.

On November 17, 2015, Magento 2.0 was released, with an aim to provide new ways to heighten user engagement, smooth navigation, conversion rates and overall revenue generation, it has well-organized business user tools speed up build up time and enhances productivity. Table locking issues have been considerably reduced, Improved Page Caching and also allows in streamlining Guest checkout process for existing users, Enterprise-grade sociability, improved performance and better code base are only a few benefits of new Magento version. Magento employs the MySQL/MariaDB relational database management system, the PHP programming language, and elements of the Zend Framework. It applies the conventions of object-oriented programming and model–view–controller architecture. Magento also uses the entity–attribute–value model to store data.

Magento Community Edition is an open-source eCommerce platform. Developers can implement the core files and extend its functionality by adding new plug-in modules provided by other developers. Since the first public beta version was released in 2007, Community Edition has been developed and customized in order to provide a basic eCommerce platform. The current release and each of the previous historical release versions of the 1.X and 2.X version branches of  Magento Community Edition are available on the Magento Commerce, Inc. website for download as singe-file downloads Development of the 2.X version branch of Magento CE is coordinated publicly on GitHub. The latest actively supported versions of  Magento Community Edition are CE 1.9.2.4 and 2.0.4 released on March 31, 2016.

Magento Enterprise Edition is derived from the Magento Community Edition and has the same core files. Unlike Community Edition, this is not free, but has more features and functionality. This edition is designed for large businesses that require technical support with installation, usage, configuration, and troubleshooting. Although Magento Enterprise has annual maintenance fees, neither Community nor Enterprise Editions include hosting. The Magento team develops Enterprise Edition by cooperating with users and third parties. Development on the 2.X branch of Magento EE is coordinated publicly on GitHub. The latest actively supported versions of  Magento Enterprise Edition are EE 1.14.2.4 and EE 2.0.4 released on March 31, 2016.

Magento Go was a cloud-based eCommerce solution that included web hosting by Magento Inc. It was launched in February 2011 to support small businesses by providing an option that did not require software installation. Magento Go was the least customizable platform, though it still had built-in modules and could have Magento extensions enabled for more functionality. On July 1, 2014, Magento Inc. announced that they would be shutting down the Magento Go platform on February 1, 2015.

Magento Go was a cloud-based eCommerce solution that included web hosting by Magento Inc. It was launched in February 2011 to support small businesses by providing an option that did not require software installation. Magento Go was the least customization platform, though it still had built-in modules and could have Magento extensions enabled for more functionality. On July 1, 2014, Magento Inc. announced that they would be shutting down the Magento Go platform on February 1, 2015.

There are four different Magento certifications. Three of them aim to prove developers' competency in implementing modules; one (Certified Solution Specialist) targets business users (consultants, analysts, project managers). Magento Front End Developer Certification is mainly focused on improving the user interface (UI) of built-in applications. This certification is related with templates, layouts, Java script, and CSS. Magento Developer certification is geared toward back end developers who implement the core modules. The Plus certification tests deep understanding of Magento Enterprise modules and the entire architecture.

Read More

Shopify E-commerce Site

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that develops computer software for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.Shopify was founded in 2004, and was initially based on earlier software written by its founders for their online snowboard store. The company reports that it has 200,000 merchants using its platform, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $10 billion.

Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Unsatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, a computer programmer by trade, decided to build his own. In June 2009, Shopify launched an API platform and App Store. The API allows developers to create applications for Shopify online stores and then sell them on the Shopify App Store. Several companies have developed apps that integrate with the Shopify platform.

In April 2010 Shopify launched a free mobile app on the Apple App Store in May 2010. The app lets Shopify store owners view and manage their stores from iOS mobile devices. In 2010, Shopify started its Build-A-Business competition, in which participants create a business using its commerce platform. The winners of the competition receive cash prizes and mentor-ship from entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, Eric Ries and others. Shopify was also named Ottawa’s Fastest Growing Company by the Ottawa Business Journal in 2010. The company received $7 million from an initial Series A funding round in December 2010. Its Series B funding round generated $15 million in October 2011.

In February 2012 Shopify acquired Select Start Studios Inc ("S3"), a mobile software developer, along with 20 of the company's mobile engineers and designers. On April 14, 2015, Shopify filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "SHOP" and "SH" respectively. Shopify went public on May 21, 2015, and in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, Shopify started trading at $28, more than 60% higher than its USD $17 offering price, with its IPO raising more than$131 million.

Read More

Hotmail By Outlook.com

Outlook.com is a web-based suite of email, contacts, tasks, and calendaring services from Microsoft. One of the world's first webmail services, it was founded in 1996 as Hotmail (stylized as HoTMaiL) by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in Mountain View, California, and headquartered in Sunnyvale. Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million and launched as MSN Hotmail, later re-branded to Windows Live Hotmail as part of the Windows Live suite of products.

Microsoft released the final version of Hotmail in October 2011, available in 36 languages. It was replaced by Outlook.com in 2013. By 2014, the service had 400 million active users. Outlook.com follows Microsoft's Metro design language, closely mimicking the interface of Microsoft Outlook. It also features unlimited storage, a calendar, contacts management, Ajax, and close integration with OneDrive, Office Online and Skype. In May 2015 it was announced that a preview of the new Outlook.com will move it to the Office 365 infrastructure. Microsoft concluded its preview stage in February 2016, when it began to roll out the new version to users' accounts, beginning with North America.

Hotmail was sold to Microsoft in December 1997 for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services. Hotmail quickly gained in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe, and became the world's largest webmail service with more than 30 million active members reported by February 1999. Hotmail originally ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems. A project was started to move Hotmail to Windows 2000. In June 2001, Microsoft claimed this had been completed; a few days later they retracted and admitted that the DNS functions of the Hotmail system were still reliant on FreeBSD. In 2002 Hotmail still ran its infrastructure on UNIX servers, with only the front-end converted to Windows 2000. Later development saw the service tied with Microsoft's web authentication scheme, Microsoft Passport (now Microsoft account), and integration with Microsoft's instant messaging and social networking programs, MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces (now Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, respectively).

In 1999, hackers revealed a security flaw in Hotmail that permitted anybody to log in to any Hotmail account using the password 'eh'. At the time it was called "the most widespread security incident in the history of the Web". In 2001, the Hotmail service was compromised again by computer hackers who discovered that anyone could log in to their Hotmail account and then pull messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. It was such a simple attack that by the time the patch was made, dozens of newspapers and hundreds of web sites published exact descriptions allowing tens of thousands of hackers to run rampant across Hotmail. The exploitable vulnerability exposed millions of accounts to tampering between August 7, 2001 and August 31, 2001.

Microsoft's new email system was announced on November 1, 2005, under the codename "Kahuna", and a beta version was released to a few thousand testers. Other webmail enthusiasts also wanting to try the beta version could request an invitation granting access. The new service was built from scratch and emphasized three main concepts of being "faster, simpler, and safer". New versions of the beta service were rolled out over the development period, and by the end of 2006 the number of beta testers had reached the millions. The Hotmail brand was planned to be phased-out when Microsoft announced that the new mail system would be called Windows Live Mail, but the developers soon backtracked after beta-testers were confused with the name change and preferred the already well-known Hotmail name, and decided on Windows Live Hotmail. After a period of beta testing, it was officially released to new and existing users in the Netherlands on November 9, 2006, as a pilot market. Development of the beta was finished in April 2007, Windows Live Hotmail was released to new registrations on May 7, 2007, as the 260 million MSN Hotmail accounts worldwide gained access to the new system. The old MSN Hotmail interface was accessible only by users who registered before the Windows Live Hotmail release date and had not chosen to update to the new service. The roll-out to all existing users was completed in October 2007.

Read More