“Barclays bank UK partners with Coinbase as it embraces cryptocurrencies
By Philip Maina @ crypto-lines.com
… Coinbase (..) has partnered with Barclays bank in the United Kingdom to provide the over 12 million Coinbase customers, many of whom are in the U.K, with an easier way to access their cryptocurrencies. (…)Continue reading
Artigo de Mariana Fonseca para a revista Exame “O plano do Mercado Bitcoin para crescer 10 vezes? Arrumar a casa”
“São Paulo – A startup de compra e venda de criptomoedas Mercado Bitcoin tinha um grande pepino em mãos em dezembro de 2017. (…)
Seus usuários viraram um exército de 700 mil pessoas no fatídico mês (no começo do mesmo ano, eram 200 mil). O negócio transacionava diariamente mais do que todo o volume financeiro de 2016…Continue reading
Private Central Banks?
Maybe sounds too revolutionary, or perhaps this is just a coin with emphasis on means of payment function. It may bring an extra interest that Bitmain’s Jihan Wu said they “are very interested in private central bank startups that are going to use blockchain technology to issue private currencies and set it as a service, in a legal way. We would like to invest in 20 to 30 startups whose efforts are focused on this unique emerging economy.”
“STABLE is a project aiming to reduce the volatility and inefficiencies existing in digital tokens markets and stabilize them, thus driving their wider acceptance”
After the ICO Stable plans to list STB toke on crypto exchanges. According to their white paper STB achieve lower volatility mostly by means of exploring market inefficiencies and a flexible token supply,
“The blockchain folk theorem”
Bruno Biais, Christophe Bisière, Matthieu Bouvard and Catherine Casamatta
Jan 25th, 2018 – Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)
Blockchain incentive dynamics explored, including forks, hash difficulty, mining pools. Equilibrium modeling including consensus, orphan blocks and integrity of transaction history.Continue reading
OmiseGO is an online payment gateway service provider
operating in Southeast Asia. OmiseGO was created to achieve two goals:
Create the OMG Money Gateway as a scaling solution for Ethereum
Develop the OMG open-source, white label digital wallet Software Development KitContinue reading
Oracles development stumbles on a key security feature: trust. Either having a descentralized network of oracles feeding a smart contract or the case of an oracle sourcing info from the web or IoT servers it is critical to be able to verify information source integrity.
Intel SGX can handle runtime encryption and proposes to allow for verification and security of data. Other products (such as AMD SEV) will compete for a similar function in the industry as well. It is likely, however, that a short list of solutions serve the oracle industry.
Maybe such concentration is unavoidable – is it desirable, though? If not concerned, developers should be aware of this feature when designing the single point of failure of entire ‘trustless’ systems.
“Does Metcalfe’s Law Explain Bitcoin Prices? A Time Series
Analysis – Jamil Civitarese∗
” Metcalfe’s Law argues the value of a network is proportional to the square of its users. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be modeled as such: if Metcalfe’s Law is true, then it is possible to forecast prices using the size of the network. I test this assertion by a cointegration test between price and an adjusted number of wallets’ connections. It is stated that the series do not cointegrate, rejecting the Metcalfe’s Law. (…)Continue reading
Verge adds an anonumity layer ona Bitcoin-inspired blockchain.
This layer rellies on TOR’s and I2p routing design to make network surveillance not able to track transactions posting.
Verge whitepaper also describes how Electrum Wallet, Integrated Portals and Wraith Protocol combine into Verge system.
” (…) CFTC (…) Proposed Interpretation sets out the CFTC’s view regarding the “actual delivery” exception that may apply to virtual currency transactions.Continue reading
Security alert — Chromium vulnerability affecting Mist Browser Beta
Posted by Everton Fraga on December 15th, 2017.
Due to a Chromium vulnerability affecting all released versions of the Mist Browser Beta v0.9.3 and below, we are issuing this alert warning users not to browse untrusted websites with Mist Browser Beta at this time. Users of “Ethereum Wallet” desktop app are not affected.
Affected configurations: Mist Browser Beta v0.9.3 and below
Likelihood: Medium
Severity: High
LegalThings One proposes a platform for contracts dubbed as ‘Live Contracts‘. Live contracts are agreed in commercial/legal terms but allows some parameters to interaction. Such parameters are formalized so that they may be interpreted by code. After interactions are made so that parties agree then each party sets a node to run contract as specified.Continue reading
Using Ethereum smart contracts to leverage community service projects
The problem
Working on local projects for community and nonprofit organizations one usually tumbles in an chicken-and-egg situation. Often enough community support seems at reach and probes show that community members would back the project financially if only it was effectively happening. Despite governmental incentives is not unusual, the initial setup of an organization present costs. From registration to basic structure some projects rely on volunteers who can’t financially fund projects themselves. And raising funds in a start-up nonprofit is particularly tricky since unviable projects not only fail to deliver service but also would not be able to refund early donors. Moreover, projects that are not yet in production usually don’t have legal determination status, jeopardizing tax benefits to donors.
When we think MT. Gox is buried in the past, it comes back haunting us. At least we can always learn from it’s debacle.
In this paper researchers from Tela Aviv University and University of Tulsa conclude that the suspicious trading activity caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013.Continue reading
Inacta and leading Swiss real estate company launched first blockchain application
“(…) Swiss Prime Site has decided to enter into a strategic partnership with the Zug-based IT consultancy firm inacta. The agreement will enable the two companies to work together on developing new applications based on Blockchain technology. (…)Continue reading
“CryptoKitties is a game centered around breedable, collectible, and oh-so-adorable creatures we call CryptoKitties! Each cat is one-of-a-kind and 100% owned by you; it cannot be replicated, taken away, or destroyed.”
First let’s brief what is the good news embedded there: those kitties are unique, and even though they can be transferred around to Eth addresses you cannot crtl-c crtl-v them. They are smart contacts, so that (unless I am mistaken) the only way to share a kitty is by sharing your private (don’t. ever.). Putting it in another way: they are software that can be sold and transferred but not copied nor shared.
I will take my time on it for sure, and I bet a lot of smart people are figuring out how to make money with this. But for the time being no live project is taking advantage of this. Maybe in the near future. Fact is these cute and expensive cats are drawing a lot of attention. And a lot of gas and processing at the EVM.
Exactly how much is a lot? Over 10%, according to ETH Gas Station
Stats over last 5,000 blocks – Last update: Block 4681231
Top 10 ETH Contracts By Tx Count Over Last 1,500 Blocks
| Address | ID | Pct Total Tx Count |
| 0x8d12a197cb00d4747a1fe03395095ce2a5cc6819 | Etherdelta | 11.02 |
| 0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d | Cryptokitties | 10.35 |
And keep in mind it ‘cannot be destroyed’ Nor should be removed from EVM in what would raise the censorship issue in Ethereum.
CryptoKitties’ success could be a sign that ethereum may thrive. And lack of censorship maybe be telling of Ethereum application-agnostic feature.
Meanwhile, Ethereum attackers are quick to point this as an early red flag of scalability issues. So the feature might be a liability.
If state channels, sharding or Casper, Vitalik’s push for scalability is being pressed hard, as crypto community hope there is more than one way to skin processing congestion,
EOS.IO Dawn 2.0 has been released along with a public test
(…).As published in our Roadmap, “Phase 2 – Minimal Viable Test Network” was to demonstrate the following by Fall 2017:
Will Cardano deliver the hype? It’s a lot to deal with. Their SL Mainnet is live, and their progress seems to be following their roadmap.
As a multi layer protocol Cardano is a bold proposition; one layer being an account, then a layer for smart contracts, and an identity/compliance layer on top. First to third generation crypto covered in one ecosystem.
Development is open source and patent free. Check out its backbone: ‘Ouroboros’ directly from the whitepaper. Spoiler: it’s PoS.
Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE), plans to offer trading in bitcoin futures beginning at 5:00 p.m. CT on Sunday, December 10, 2017
Contract Name: Cboe Bitcoin (USD) Futures
Listing: Dec 10th 2017
Ticker: XBT (XBTS settlement)
“The new contract will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME. It will be available for trading on the CME Globex electronic trading platform, and for submission for clearing via CME ClearPort, effective on Sunday, December 17, 2017 for a trade date of December 18. Continue reading