“One of the great challenges for protocol teams and product companies in crypto today is the poor UX in dApps, specifically onboarding, transactions, and sign-in/password recovery,” says co-founder and CEO Donnie Dinch. “We interviewed a ton of dApp developers. The minute they used a wallet, there was a huge drop-off of folks. Bitski’s vision is to solve user onboarding and wallet usability for developers, so that they can in-turn focus on creating unique and useful dapps.”

The scrappy Bitski team raised $1.5 million in pre-seed capital from Steve Jang’s Kindred Ventures, Signia, Founders Fund, Village Global and Social Capital. They were betting on Dinch, a designer-as-CEO who’d built concert discovery app WillCall that he sold to Ticketfly, which was eventually bought by Pandora. After 18 months of rebranding Ticketfly and overhauling its consumer experience, Dinch left and eventually recruited engineer Julian Tescher to come with him to found Bitski.

After Riff failed to hit scale, the team hung up its social ambitions in late 2017 and “started kicking around ideas for dApps. We mocked up a Venmo one, a remittance app…but found the hurdle to get someone to use one of these products is enormous,” Dinch recalls. “Onboarding was a dealbreaker for anyone building dApps. Even if we made the best crypto Venmo, to get normal people on it would be extremely difficult. It’s already hard enough to get people to install apps from the App Store.” They came up with Bitski to let any developer ski jump over that hurdle.

Looking across the crypto industry, the companies like Coinbase and Binance with their own hosted wallets that permitted smooth UX were the ones winning. Bitski would bring that same experience to any app. “Our hosted wallet SDK lets developers drop the Bitski wallet into their apps and onboard users with standards web 2.0 users have grown to know and love,” Dinch explains.

Imagine an iOS game wants to reward users with a digital sword or token. Users would have to set up a whole new wallet, struggle with their credentials or use another clumsy solution. They’d have to own Ethereum already to pay the Ethereum “gas” price to power the transaction, and the developer would have to manually approve sending the gift. With Bitski, users can approve receiving tokens from a developer from then on, and developers can pay the gas on users’ behalf while triggering transactions programmatically.

Magik is an AR content platform that’s one of Bitski’s first developers. Magik’s founders tell me, “We’re building towards reaching millions of mainstream consumers, and Bitski is the only wallet solution that understands what we need to reach users at that scale. They provide a dead-simple, secure and familiar interface that addresses every pain point along the user-onboarding journey.”

Bitski will offer a free tier, priced tiers based on transaction volume or a monthly fee and an enterprise version. In the future, the company is considering doubling-down on premium developer services to help them build more on top of the blockchain. “We will never, ever monetize user data. We’ve never had any intent at looking at it,” Dinch vows. The startup hopes developers will seize on the network effects of a cross-app wallet, as once someone sets up Bitski to use one product, all future sign-ins just require a few clicks.

In August, Coinbase acquired a startup called Distributed Systems that was building a similar crypto identity platform called the Clear Protocol. A “login with Coinbase” feature could be popular if launched, but the company’s focus is to spread a ton of blockchain projects. “If [login with Coinbase] launched tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to support games or anything with a unique token. We’re a lockbox, they’re a bank,” Dinch claims.

The spectre of single sign-on’s biggest player, Facebook, looms, as well. In May it announced the formation of a blockchain team we suspect might be working on a crypto login platform or other ways to make the decentralized world more accessible for mom and pop. Dinch suspects that fears about how Facebook uses data would dissuade developers and users from adopting such a product. Still, Bitski’s haste in getting its developer platform into beta just a year after forming shows it’s eager to beat them to market.

Building a centralized wallet in a decentralized ecosystem comes with its own security risks. But Dinch assures me Bitski is using all its own hardware with air-gapped computers that have been stripped of their Wi-Fi cards, and it’s taking other secret precautions to prevent anyone from snatching its wallets. He believes cross-app wallets will also deliver a future where users actually own their virtual goods instead of just relying on the good will of developers not to pull them away or shut them down.” The idea of we’ve never been able to provably own unique digital assets is crazy to me,” Dinch notes. “Whether it’s a skin in Fortnite or a movie on iTunes that you purchase, you don’t have liquidity to resell those things. We think we’ll look back in 5 to 10 years and think it’s nuts that no one owned their digital items.”

While the crypto prices might be cratering and dApps like Cryptokitties have cooled off, Dinch is convinced the blockchain startups won’t fade away. “There is a thriving developer ecosystem hellbent on bringing the decentralized web to reality; regardless of token price. It’s a safe assumption that prices will dip a bit more, but will eventually rise whenever we see real use cases for a lot of these tokens. Most will die. The ones that succeed will be outcome-oriented, building useful products that people want.” Bitski’s a big step in that direction.

Warnick

Amazon say that Cyber Monday smashed the company's records to become the biggest shopping day in history.

The company did not release hard figures but said 2018 was "the single biggest shopping day in the company's history with the most products ordered worldwide," a company press release said on Tuesday.

Amazon also said that the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — known as the Turkey-five — also broke the company record for the most sales worldwide, selling "millions" more products than the same period in 2017.

Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer said: "Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to break records on Amazon year over year, which tells us that customers love shopping for deals to kick off the holiday shopping season."

2018's Cyber Monday was tipped to be the biggest-ever by experts, who predicted that $7.8 billion would be pulled in from sales, which would be 18% more than 2017, according to a report from Adobe Analytics.

The whole holiday weekend could confirm that people are changing the way they shop, according to Ray Wimer, an assistant professor of retail practice at Syracuse University. He told Business Insider that Black Friday and Cyber Monday had merged as shoppers' habits shifted online.

"Black Friday is really no longer a one-day shopping extravaganza, it really signals a kickoff to a four-day promotional period that concludes on Cyber Monday," he said.

Though Cyber Monday looks to have broken records, it is eclipsed by Singles Day, a Chinese shopping event that attracts almost four times the sales volume.

With $30.8 billion made in sales over 24 hours this month from a single company — the e-commerce platform Alibaba — Singles Day celebration is easily the biggest shopping event on earth.

US President Donald Trump's threats about slapping tariffs on iPhones sent Apple's stock tumbling, while his barbs about Brexit sent the pound lower.

In a chat wth the Wall Street Journal, Trump threatened to escalate the trade war further, saying it is "highly unlikely" that the US and China will reach a deal to prevent the 10% tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from increasing to 25% on January 1.

He also said that if weekend talks with Xi at the G20 summit in Argentina do not go well, more tariffs could be on the way. Global stock markets posted minimal up and down moves, despite the comments.

"If we don't make a deal, then I'm going to put the $267 billion additional on," Trump said.

Read more: Trump is ready to go all-out in the trade war with China, and even the iPhone may not be spared

Trump's comments came towards the end of a strong day for US stocks, with companies boosted by what was expected to be the biggest online shopping day in US history, Cyber Monday.

The day saw all three major US indexes close more than 1% higher, while European stocks also rallied, shored up by waning tensions over both the Italian budget crisis and Brexit.

That optimism might be tested on Tuesday, with minor declines in tech stocks and US futures.

Apple shares fell 1.4% in early morning trading before markets opened on Tuesday, after the president signalled a willingness to place tariffs on items such as Apple's iPhone and laptops imported from China. Apple had previously been spared from the tariffs after lobbying the administration, but Trump may have changed his mind.

Also falling: The British pound, after Trump made a series of less than reassuring comments about any possible future trade deal between the UK and US after Brexit.

"We have to take a look at seriously whether or not the UK is allowed to trade, because you know, right now if you look at the deal they may not be able to trade with us, and that wouldn't be a good thing," he told reporters on Monday evening.

Those remarks sent the pound lower by about 0.5%, trading at 1.27 against the dollar.

British and Dutch regulators on Tuesday fined ride-hailing service Uber for failing to protect customers' personal information during a 2016 cyber attack involving millions of users.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in Britain slapped a £385,000 ($490,759.50) fine on the firm, while the Dutch Data Protection Authority imposed a fine of €600,000 ($678,780.00) on Uber. The combined total is around $1.17 million.

Uber revealed last year that around 2.7 million people in the UK were affected by the 2016 data breach that it kept secret until 2017. The records of almost 82,000 drivers based in the UK were also taken, the ICO said.

Read more: Uber has estimated 2.7 million people in the UK were affected by its massive data breach

In total, hackers stole details belonging to 50 million riders and seven million drivers, as well as customer information.

"This was not only a serious failure of data security on Uber's part, but a complete disregard for the customers and drivers whose personal information was stolen," said the ICO's Director of Investigations Steve Eckersley.

"At the time, no steps were taken to inform anyone affected by the breach, or to offer help and support. That left them vulnerable."

Earlier this year, Uber paid $148 million to settle the hack in the US after failing to disclose it properly. The company reached the agreement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Business Insider has contacted Uber for comment.

While online shoppers celebrated Cyber Monday deals, NASA researchers cheered the successful landing of a new probe on Mars.

The roughly $830 million mission is called InSight— short for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport."

NASA rocketed its 789-pound robot toward Mars on May 5, along with two briefcase-size satellites called MarsCubeOne that trailed the spacecraft to help record and relay crucial landing data.

InSight completed a treacherous 14-minute-long descent to the Martian surface around 2:54 p.m. ET on Monday, then confirmed its safe arrival with a beep — a moment that sent scientists and engineers jumping and screaming for joy in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Today's Mars landing was the first since the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover reached the red planet's surface more than six years ago.

Read more: 13 incredible facts you probably didn't know about Mars

Now that NASA has a new high-tech robot on the Martian surface, planetary scientists are eager to put InSight to work. But they'll have to wait until Monday night to know for sure that InSight is healthy.

"We're going to kick up a lot of dust when we land, and we need to let that dust settle before we want to unfurl our solar arrays," Tom Hoffman, the InSight mission's payload manager, said during a live broadcast by NASA. "We're 100% solar-powered, so it's very important that we get those out."

NASA expects to confirm the solar panels are deployed around 8:30 p.m. EST. Assuming all goes well, the spacecraft will be poised to probe Mars over the next two Earth years in ways researchers had only dreamed about.

"InSight's a very different mission in the sense that it is peering into the past by studying, really, the interior of Mars," Robert Braun, NASA's former chief technologist and a technical consultant for National Geographic's "Mars" series, previously told Business Insider. "In doing so, we're going to learn about Mars, but also about the early history of the Earth."

Here's what NASA hopes to discover with InSight now that the probe has arrived safely.

Why NASA landed InSight on a flat Martian plain

A simulation of Elysium Planitia on Mars.NASA/JPL-Caltech

InSight landed on Mars at a place known as Elysium Planitia. It's a relatively flat region that's free of boulders, craters, and other potentially mission-ending obstacles.

The location might seem boring — certainly compared to the ancient mountain that Curiosity is now climbing — but researchers say InSight is well positioned to pull off an unprecedented scientific mission.

Elysium Planitia sits just north of Martian equator, where the sun's rays are relatively strong year-round. Using two circular solar panels to capture that free energy, InSight could operate for two Earth years (or one Martian year).

NASA landed its InSight robot at Elysium Planitia near the Martian equator.NASA; Business Insider

That's a huge difference from InSight's nearly identical predecessor mission, the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Phoenix landed in 2008 and dug for water ice near Mars' north pole. But the robot died after a few months because sunlight was too feeble to warm its electronics.

InSight is equipped with different scientific instruments from Phoenix, though, and researchers think the soil at Elysium Planitia will be loose enough to allow the robot to pound a heat probe deep into the ground.

This will help InSight perform the first-ever "checkup" of the 4.6-billion-year-old planet.

"InSight's goal is to study the interior of Mars and take the planet's vital signs, its pulse, and temperature," NASA says on its mission website. "To look deep into Mars, the lander must be at a place where it can stay still and quiet for its entire mission. That's why scientists chose Elysium Planitia as InSight's home."

Probing the ancient secrets of Mars — and Earth, too

A cutaway illustration showing what scientists think the interior of Mars might look like.NASA/JPL

The InSight mission's ultimate goal is to figure out how Mars formed and what happened to the planet since then. Scientists know that Mars once generated an atmosphere-protecting magnetic dynamo, as Earth still does today. But the Martian core's dynamo eventually shut down and the planet's protective shield faded, which allowed the sun to blow away Mars' atmosphere and oceans of water.

Now that InSight is powered up and in touch with Earth, it will use its robotic arm to pluck a dome-shaped instrument off of its landing platform and gently place it on the Martian surface. The dome contains six sensitive vibration-detection devices called seismometers.

Seismometers on Earth and the moon (Apollo astronauts deployed some on the lunar surface) have recorded earthquakes and moon quakes, which have helped scientists figure out the internal structure of those rocky worlds. On Mars, NASA researchers hope to accomplish a similar feat: listening for Mars quakes.

Whenever a meteorite strikes Mars, or there's a landslide, or a big blob of magma suddenly shifts, or there's tectonic movement, InSight's seismometer should detect such vibrations. The devices can even record seismic activity from all the way across the planet.

Over time, data about Mars quakes could reveal hitherto unknown information about the internal structure of the planet.

The other device InSight will deploy is a mole-like heat probe. The 6.5-lb probe will hammer itself into the soil, stopping every so often to heat up. An onboard sensor will then detect how long it takes that warmth to dissipate.

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The probe is expected to dig 16 feet down — far deeper than any previous Mars mission has ever reached with scoops, shovels, or drills.

"When we get down that deep, we'll get away from all of the temperature variations of the surface," Suzanne Smrekar, the mission's deputy principle investigator, said during a press briefing in October. "That tells us about the heat coming out of the planet — that energy that's available for driving geologic activity."

The data will help Smrekar and others calculate how quickly energy in Mars' core can escape — the equivalent of taking the planet's temperature.

Such warmth is left over from Mars' formation some 4.6 billion years ago, though it also comes from the decay of radioactive elements. These measurements are critical for decoding the red planet's past, as well as that of Earth's and other rocky planets. That's because heat flow from the core can help drive plate tectonics, a factor believed to separate habitable worlds from dead ones.

Researchers can also use the data to figure out whether underground pools of warm water could exist on Mars. Such pools, if present, may support microbial alien life (and provide rich targets for future astronaut missions).

Back on the surface, InSight will also use a sensitive radio science experiment to see how subtly Mars wobbles during its orbit around the sun, which takes about two Earth years. This data should tell researchers what is going on in the deepest parts of the planet's core.

The lead scientist on the InSight mission to Mars, Bruce Banerdt, speaks during a press conference on October 31, 2018.NASA/Bill Ingalls

In probing Mars' history, scientists think we're bound to learn about our own planet's origins.

"Earth ... is a big planet that holds a lot of heat, a lot of energy, and it's been very geologically active over its entire history. So most of the record of the early processes that formed the Earth have been erased," Tom Hoffman, the InSight mission's payload manager, said during NASA's October press briefing. "We'd like to have a planet that's just a little bit calmer and that can retain that that evidence."

This makes sedate Mars, which is similar to Earth but has remained almost frozen in time, the perfect place to go looking.

He Jiankui, largely unknown until yesterday, is an associate professor at Shenzhen's Southern University of Science and Technology of China (南方科技大学 or SUSTC).

The Guangdong province-based researcher said he used gene-editing tool CRISPR on embryos of seven different couples during IVF treatment, resulting in the birth of twin girls this month.

CRISPR is a molecular tool that allows scientists to edit sections of DNA. Many researchers are interested in using the technology to eliminate or treat genetic diseases, as Business Insider has previously reported.

The result He claims, was newborn twin girls, who have been bestowed with immunity to HIV through CRISPR edited DNA.

According to an Associated Press report, He Jiankui said the father had the disease and the mother did not. He said his ultimate goal was to alter the babies' genes in a way that would protect them from future HIV infection.

The Shenzhen university distanced itself from He in a statement Monday that said the researcher had been on unpaid leave from February 1, 2018 and was not expected to return until January 2021.

He's academic board said He had "seriously violated academic ethics and norms."

"Our school will immediately hire authoritative experts to set up an independent committee to conduct in-depth investigations and publish relevant information after investigation," SUSTC said in the statement.

Read more: A Chinese researcher claims that the first gene-edited babies have been born, and scientists are disturbed

Caixin reports that He also heads six companies in China, mostly in the genetics sector.

When contacted by the Chinese magazine, a representative of Shenzhen Hanhai Genetic Biology Technology Co. Ltd. — one of the companies He runs — refused to say if they were aware of the project, but told Caixin the experiment was not conducted on their premises.

The experiment has in no way been verified or published in any academic journal.

China's state-run People's Daily published an online article about it on Monday but later removed the story.

There has been a follow up article in the English language version of the Communist Party mouthpiece, distancing itself from the controversy.

If it is true, the experiment is deeply controversial.

Gene-editing of this nature is illegal in many countries including the United States and according to Caixin, such experimentation is also banned by a Chinese regulators.

More than 120 Chinese scientists signed a letter condemning the claim by He.

"The project completely ignored the principles of biomedical ethics, conducting experiments on humans without proving it's safe," said Qiu Zilong, a neuroscience researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学) in Shanghai who wrote the letter.

"We can only describe such behaviour as crazy."

According to the South China Morning Post, the letter was published on social media on late Monday and was signed by scientists at some of China's leading research universities, such as Peking University and Tsinghua, as well as overseas institutions, including Stanford in the US and Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

Like most shopping holidays at Amazon, Cyber Monday is intense. There are thousands of deals spanning virtually every shopping category, and new discounts drop and expire every minute.

To make Cyber Week on Amazon less overwhelming and more impactful for you, we're logging the best deals below for easy reference: Amazon devices, robot vacuums, Instant Pots, HDTVs, and pretty much anything else you could need — and actually want — all in one scrollable place.

Below are the deals currently active to shop. We'll be updating this article as more deals become available. Bookmark this page and check back in if you want to be kept up-to-date.

If you have limited time, we've curated a list of the current 23 best Cyber Monday deals of 2018 you'll find on Amazon below. Otherwise, keep scrolling to see all the Cyber Monday deals that are going on now.

Looking for more deals? We've rounded up the best Cyber Monday deals on the internet.

To potentially save more on Cyber Monday, you can visit Business Insider Coupons to find up-to-date promo codes for a range of online stores.

Jack Ma, creator of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and the country's wealthiest person alive, has been outed by state media as a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Speculation about Ma's ties to the Chinese government has long been discussed, though he has often kept his distance from Beijing in his public comments.

And while his e-commerce company has previously raised money by selling shares to firms linked to the CPC, Ma has described his relationship with the government as: "Love them, but don't marry them."

But on Monday, state-run People's Daily wrote that the CPC would be honoring 100 people, including Ma and two other internet-tech moguls, for their contributions to China's economy.

The publication specifically referred to Ma as a "CPC member" and said that Ma had been listed as a "huge driving force for domestic demand" as head of Alibaba Group.

"Under his leadership, Alibaba ranks among the top 10 global companies in terms of market value, making China a leading player in the international e-commerce industry, internet finance and cloud computing, spawning a large number of entrepreneurs and start-ups," People's Daily wrote, citing a government statement discussing the award.

The article also lists Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, China's top search engine, and Pony Ma, chairman of internet giant Tencent Holdings, as recipients of the honor. The article specifically refers to Li and Ma as "non-partisan."

Bill Bishop, publisher of China newsletter Sinocism, says the revelation about Ma isn't surprising to many who have followed Alibaba's successful catapult into the global market.

"No one doubted that Alibaba had to be close to the CPC to survive," Bishop told Business Insider, though he noted that other Chinese tech moguls have been able to build successful companies without pledging their support.

Bishop added that while Ma decided to step down as chairman of the e-commerce giant in September 2019, the revelation of Ma's close ties to the Chinese government will likely continue through Alibaba.

"It's just another reminder that Alibaba has to be close to the CPC, and given how President Xi Jinping is pushing the party back into every aspect of business and life," Bishop continued, "it will only give ammunition to regulators who are already worried about Chinese firms."

Cyber Monday is here, and we've combed through thousands of deals from several stores to make sure you see the very best ones before they sell out.

But some deals deserve special attention, and right now you can save $60 on a bundle that includes an Amazon Echo and a Sengled Smart Bulb Starter Kit. Unlike some Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, this one is only available today.

The Echo is our pick for the best voice-controller smart-home hub. Its built in Alexa assistant lets you control smart-home accessories, get answers to your questions, and increase the Echo's functionality through free third-party skills.

The second-generation Echo included in this bundle has an improved speaker, which is more than good enough for listening to music casually in a living room or kitchen.

Sengled's Smart Bulb Kit includes two smart light bulbs that can be screwed into any full-sized light fixture, and a hub that you connect to your Wi-Fi router over Ethernet. Once Sengled's hub is plugged in, you can control the bulbs through an app on your phone, or a smart-home hub like the Echo.

You can turn the bulbs on and off, dim or brighten them, or set them on a particular schedule, so they're always on when you get home. Being able to control your lights via an app is convenient, but doing it with your voice is even more simple.

If you're shopping for someone who's been dying to start their smart home, and has been particularly interested in smart lighting, this is a deal you shouldn't pass up. The entire bundle costs $79, while the Echo normally costs $99.99 on its own, which should give you a sense of how good it is.

But remember, because it's a deal of the day, you'll only have about 12 more hours before it disappears. It could also sell out beforehand, so your best bet is to act sooner than later.

Amazon Echo With 2 Smart Bulb Starter Kit by Sengled, $79 (originally $139.98) [You save $60.98]

In the last few years, a lot of online mattress startups have popped up. They've taken out the middlemen and the accompanying costs of showrooms. As a result, the same or superior mattresses are offered for less money and hassle than the brick-and-mortar store.

Of the many startups out there, Casper may be king.

The company has become synonymous with successful online startups, and has expanded from its first mattress sale in 2014 to begin selling sheets (which we reviewed here), pillows (find our review here), and even dog beds. (you bet we had one of our dogs try the bed). It also doesn't hurt that every mattress comes with a 100-night money-back guarantee and a 10-year warranty, which is pretty much par for the course in the industry.

In other words, Casper is a grown-up cult-favorite, and the company owes a lot of that success to a really great mattress, the convenience of no-hassle home delivery, and pretty awesome prices.

On a regular day, you can get the company's best-seller, The Casper, from $595 for a twin size, and the streamlined Essential mattress from as low as $350. The upgraded high-end mattress, The Wave, comes in at $1,250 to start.

For Cyber Monday, Business Insider readers can get an exclusive 15% mattresses when they apply the code "BICM15" at checkout. So, for example, if you add a queen-size Casper Wave Mattress ($2,250) to your cart, you'll save $337.50 on your purchase.

If you've been meaning to get a new mattress — or bedding of any kind — now is a great time to act. Casper's prices are already low to remain competitive, and sales don't happen often.

Get 15% off Casper mattresses with the code "BICM15"

If you're interested in learning more before committing to a Casper mattress, these guides will help you out:

Looking for more deals? We've rounded up the best Cyber Monday deals on the internet.

Shayanne Gal / Business Insider

The best deal roundups

The best individual deals