Few new technologies have raised as much discussion as blockchain. One reason is the controversy, concern, and perceived opportunity around blockchain-based cryptocurrencies (such as bitcoin and ether) and crowdfunding via initial coin offerings (ICOs). But what is blockchain’s role in the enterprise?
This article gives some ideas to think about. Take those trends with grain of salt. There will be a crash ans bubble burst on blockchains in few years.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tivi.fi/blogit/lohkoketjuja-ajetaan-maan-alle-6748042
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yllättävä tieto kryptovaluutoista: louhiminen kuluttaa enemmän energiaa kuin kaivostoiminta tuottoon nähden
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/yllattava-tieto-kryptovaluutoista-louhiminen-kuluttaa-enemman-energiaa-kuin-kaivostoiminta-tuottoon-nahden-6748024
Mining Cryptocurrencies Is More Energy Intensive Than Actual Mining, Researchers Say
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/mining-cryptocurrencies-energy-mining-metals
During the past two years, researchers estimate cryptocurrencies generated between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon emissions.
The digital mining of cryptocurrencies required more energy per US dollar generated than the mining of physical metals between January 2016 and June 2018, according to a new study published in the British journal Nature Sustainability.
Digital currency and physical metals aren’t “functional substitutes,” said author Max Krause to BuzzFeed News. The primary aim of the study is to create awareness: “Just because something is digitally processed does not mean it does not consume a considerable amount of energy.”
Cryptocurrency is a form of electronic cash that’s managed by a decentralized network of computers, rather than a government or bank. Over the past two years, cryptocurrency networks have experienced a kind of frenzy, with wildly fluctuating prices that triggered a boom in giant “mines” full of computer processors, alongside bitcoin scammers and multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes.
Krause and coauthor Thabet Tolaymat found that it takes more energy to produce $1 worth of bitcoin or the cryptocurrency Monero than $1 worth of copper or gold. Also, mining $1 of bitcoin and Monero consumed more energy (17 and 14 megajoules, or MJ, respectively), compared to Ethereum and Litecoin (both 7 MJ on average). Meanwhile, the conventional mining of $1 worth various physical metals required less energy — rare earth metals (9 MJ), precious metals (7 MJ), gold (5 MJ), and copper (4 MJ). The only exception is aluminum, which required 122 MJ.
Krause and Tolaymat also estimated that, during the 2.5-year period, the four cryptocurrency networks (bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero) generated between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon emissions (1 metric ton is equivalent to 1.1 US tons).
The carbon footprint of any cryptocurrency depends hugely on where the coins are generated. Digital mining in China, where a significant percentage of mining occurs, created four times more CO2 than Canada, where 60% of electricity is generated by hydropower.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yllättävä tieto kryptovaluutoista: louhiminen kuluttaa enemmän energiaa kuin kaivostoiminta tuottoon nähden
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/yllattava-tieto-kryptovaluutoista-louhiminen-kuluttaa-enemman-energiaa-kuin-kaivostoiminta-tuottoon-nahden-6748024
Mining Cryptocurrencies Is More Energy Intensive Than Actual Mining, Researchers Say
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/mining-cryptocurrencies-energy-mining-metals
During the past two years, researchers estimate cryptocurrencies generated between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon emissions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fake Elon Musk Twitter Bitcoin Scam Earned 180K in One Day
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fake-elon-musk-twitter-bitcoin-scam-earned-180k-in-one-day/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supply-chain attack on cryptocurrency exchange gate.io
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/11/06/supply-chain-attack-cryptocurrency-exchange-gate-io/
Latest ESET research shows just how far attackers will go in order to steal bitcoin from customers of one specific virtual currency exchange
On November 3, attackers successfully breached StatCounter, a leading web analytics platform. This service is used by many webmasters to gather statistics on their visitors – a service very similar to Google Analytics.
by compromising the StatCounter platform, attackers can inject JavaScript code in all websites that use StatCounter.
Attackers modified the script at http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js by adding a piece of malicious code
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware Unveils New Blockchain Service
https://www.securityweek.com/vmware-unveils-new-blockchain-service
One of the new technologies announced on Tuesday by VMware at its VMworld 2018 Europe conference is VMware Blockchain, which aims to provide enterprises a decentralized trust infrastructure based on permissioned blockchain.
The blockchain is a distributed database consisting of blocks that are linked and protected against unauthorized modifications using cryptography. Transactions are only written to a block after they are verified by a majority of nodes.
While blockchain is mainly known for its role as the public transaction ledger for cryptocurrencies, companies have been increasingly using blockchain for other purposes, including for identity verification and securing data and devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Initiative Q: an elementary pyramid scheme with grandiose ideas [Update]
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/10/26/1540526405000/Initiative-Q–an-elementary-pyramid-scheme-with-grandiose-ideas/
The crypto market is in many ways a classic pyramid scheme: early adopters are incentivised to recruit other “HODLers” by telling them a particular cryptocurrency is going “to the moon”. Those others rush to buy, driving the value up
As we saw happening to a frightening degree in late 2017 and early 2018
Those flogging a token, of course, say it’s different from all the others and normally claim that it can be actually useful for something. But really, most of the people who were buying these tokens couldn’t care less about the purported “use-case”. They just wanted make to make some money. Fast.
Initiative Q is actually different though. For a start, “Q” is not actually a cryptocurrency. Instead, it’s a private currency that won’t even use the blockchain technology which is supposedly the point of most tokens. Guess what it it will use instead? A regular old centralised database! Remarkable.
(the invitation-only model helps build the hype)
The combination of a need for recruitment and the riches which flow from it is a classic sign of a pyramidical structure.
It is always worth remembering that if you’re not paying for it, you are the product
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dollar for dollar, crafting cryptocurrency sucks up ‘more energy’ than mining gold, copper, etc
Maybe time to put down that Bitcoin-mining rig and pick up that spade?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/07/cryptocurrency_mining_energy/
Cryptocurrencies require as much, if not more, energy to mine as precious metals like copper, gold or platinum, according to some latest calculations.
The pair attempted to estimated the average amount of energy consumed to generate one dollar’s worth of stuff, and the bottom line is: crafting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero consumes at least the same amount of energy as mining copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides, apparently.
“From 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2018, we estimate that mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero consumed an average of 17, 7, 7 and 14 MJ (MegaJoules) to generate $1, respectively,” according to the duo’s paper, published in Nature this week.
“Comparatively, conventional mining of aluminium, copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides consumed 122, 4, 5, 7 and 9 MJ to generate $1,
Gold rush is over
Crypto-coin mining consumes energy because it involves rigs of software and hardware competing against each other to add blocks to a currency’s blockchain, which is a digital ledger that publicly lists all the transactions for that particular funbux.
These blocks store the details of transactions, which is why they are heavily sought after. Miners are rewarded with digital currency every time they calculate a valid block for the blockchain to use.
Potential blockchain transactions are first held in a transaction pool. Miners grab a bunch of these proposed transactions, and try to pack them into a candidate block for the currency’s blockchain.
Voila! All of this block hashing business consumes a lot of energy as it is, basically, a guessing game. Miners race to produce as many as possible per second to raise the likelihood they can create an accepted block. The aim is to make more money from crafting blocks than it costs, in energy and hardware, to mine them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cryptojacking isn’t a path to riches – payout is a lousy $5.80 a day
Hackers shouldn’t quit their day scams if they want to eat
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/30/cryptojacking_pays_poorly/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Blockchain wallet plans a $125M airdrop of Stellar crypto to drive mainstream adoption
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/06/the-blockchain-wallet-plans-a-125m-air-drop-of-stellar-crypto-to-drive-mainstream-adoption/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The key to separating uses with promise from bullsh*t projects is asking what can only be done with the specific features blockchains provide.”
Why Most Blockchain Projects Are Bullsh*t
And How to Spot the Ones That Aren’t
https://medium.com/helloitsmagic/why-most-blockchain-projects-are-bullshit-2e3918439270
CTO told me about a secret blockchain project the team had been working on. When I found out, I nearly quit.
Bitcoin is Worthless and Bad
My skepticism came from watching hype around the first and biggest blockchain project: Bitcoin, billed as a decentralized virtual currency that took off as the payment channel of choice for dark web drug dealers and malware extortionists. There’s a finite total supply of Bitcoins defined in the code, and coins are distributed as rewards to computers that power the network, but they’re not for anything—they only have value because people think they do, like beanie babies or tulip bulbs.
That means the proper value for Bitcoin is $0
It’s an objectively terrible mode of payment, and the store of value use case is a transparently post-hoc justification for a solution in search of a problem.
Bitcoin is a genuinely novel and interesting piece of technology — a little bundle of economic incentives that add up to a kind of perpetual motion machine.
The Ethereum blockchain is a very dumb kind of database, controlled by a very expensive version of AWS Lambda. Ethereum DApps store the database as a javascript Map and make changes by loading the entire object into memory. You can spend cryptocurrency to run functions on the machines maintaining the network, but it has to run on every one of those machines, not just the cheapest or the fastest. You need to have a very good reason to run an app that way.
The Irresistible Attraction of Dumb Money
Much of the tech sector looked on enviously at the incredible run-up in prices of this obviously worthless asset and asked themselves, how can we get in on that action?
So the most natural way to have a blockchain startup was to take an existing business and staple on selling your own cryptocurrency to the general public as a kind of unlicensed security.
Some Things Might Not Be Bullshit
Non-bullshit blockchain projects will be ones that could not be built without distinctive features smart contracts provide. Otherwise, it would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to build the same business on more conventional platforms. I refer to this as the MySQL Test—if your project can be implemented in MySQL it’s probably a bullshit blockchain project.
Ethereum provides does get you two distinctive properties: database records are immutable and can be checked publicly, and you can guarantee that the environment runs specific open-source code.
You can use a blockchain (like the Ethereum network) to bootstrap a network effect by giving early participants an incentive to seed the network before it’s big enough to be useful on its own terms.
Why not just store the records of who owns what tokens in a regular database? In principle you could, but the danger with such a setup is the token-issuing authority could embezzle or over-inflate the supply of scrip to deny early adopters of their just reward. In a friendly neighborhood co-op, social relations and local laws can help tamp down on shenanigans, but for a new startup on the internet, there are no such protections.
blockchain is the ability to credibly pre-commit to running the token economy and managing the project a certain way. Those commitments aren’t bulletproof.
The promise of blockchain technology is as a spiritual successor to Groupon and Kickstarter: as a novel technology to solve collective action problems. That’s potentially a very big deal
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chinese headmaster fired over secret coin mining at school
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46150107
A Chinese headmaster has been fired after a secret stack of crypto-currency mining machines was found connected to his school’s electricity supply.
The computer network in the building became overloaded as a result of the mining activity, according to reports, and this “interfered” with teaching.
Surreptitious crypto-currency mining has been discovered elsewhere. In February, several scientists at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility were arrested for allegedly mining Bitcoin with the facility’s supercomputers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CoinDesk:
A look at the heated debate raging in the Bitcoin Cash community ahead of the contentious hard fork that may split the cryptocurrency’s blockchain on Nov. 15 — “Do not come crying when you are bankrupt.” — Lobbed at those bitcoin cash enthusiasts supporting Bitcoin ABC …
Bitcoin Cash Declares War: Why Coming Hard Fork Could Mean Another Split
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-cash-declares-war-why-this-could-mean-another-split/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Colin Harper / Bitcoin Magazine:
Bitcoin evangelist and educator Andreas Antonopoulos reflects on the first 10 years of blockchain
Revolutions and Counter Revolutions: Andreas Antonopoulos Reflects on 10 Years of Bitcoin
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-andreas-antonopoulos-reflects-10-years-bitcoin/#1541609767
As Bitcoin approaches its 10th anniversary, its community, old and new, has begun taking stock of how a decade has come to alter or define the cryptocurrency — and what Bitcoin has done to alter or define the decade.
Ten years has invited room for undeniable change. Bitcoin has seen roughly half a dozen market cycles, spawned a secondary market of more than 2,000 altcoins and laid the foundations for a surging blockchain industry. It has evolved from the obscure interest of cypherpunks and crypto anarchists to a viable, private currency that has provided a financial lifeline to underbanked, underprivileged populations in floundering economies.
To play on these dualities you’ve been talking about: It’s fighting a two-front war, in some regards. It’s fighting against a front of outsiders and it’s kind of fighting a war against itself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Demystifying: Cryptocurrency Mining Threats
https://blogs.cisco.com/security/demystifying-cryptocurrency-mining-threats
How to protect your endpoints from “creepy crypto miners”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Bitcoin dropped to $5,650, its lowest level in over a year, as other major cryptocurrencies fell 10%+; total crypto market has dropped by $15B in 24 hours
Bitcoin plummets under $6,000 to a new low for the year after months of stability
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/14/bitcoin-plummets-under-6000-to-a-low-of-the-year-after-months-of-stability.html
Bitcoin fell more than 7 percent Wednesday, a new low for the year, after a relatively calm few months.
The cryptocurrency dropped to $5,640.36, hitting a new low for the year.
Ethereum and XRP, the second and third largest cryptocurrencies behind bitcoin, dropped 13 percent and 15 percent respectively.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitcoin and the crypto market is once again crashing hard
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/15/bitcoin-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
It’s not been a pretty year for anyone who owns Bitcoin, but the last 24 hours has been a period to forget as the cryptocurrency dropped below $100 billion in market cap for the first time in more than a year.
The dip follows a decline that took Bitcoin’s price below the mark $6,000 for the first time this year — it has since plunged below $5,600. That, in turn, caused havoc in the altcoin market with valuations plummeting double-digit percentages nearly across nearly all of the top 100 valued tokens.
The changing prices also saw Ripple’s XRP token rise above Ethereum to become the second most valued cryptocurrency behind only Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash, which is about to undergo a hard fork, looks to be the most likely cause.
two different chains — Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC) and Bitcoin Cash SV (BCHSV)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scammers launch toll free ‘customer support’ numbers posing as Binance, Coinbase and others – stealing the crypto of those who call…
http://www.globalcryptopress.com/2018/11/scammers-launch-toll-free-customer.html?m=1
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia Hit by ‘Crypto Hangover’
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333986
SAN FRANCISCO — The end of the cryptocurrency mining boom that boosted Nvidia’s revenue for more than a year hit the graphics chip vendor hard in the third quarter, dragging sales below Wall Street’s expectations.
Nvidia also issued a fourth quarter forecast that came in below analysts’ targets, citing excess inventory of GPUs based on its Pascal architecture in the sales channel.
Nvidia had warned after its second quarter results that its revenue boost from cryptocurrency mining had essentially dried up as cryptocurrency values declined. But Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said in a conference call with analysts following the third quarter financial report Thursday that the magnitude of the inventory glut in the channel — caused by slower sales of the Pascal GPUs used for cryptocurrency mining — caught the company largely by surprise until near the end of the quarter.
“We were as surprised by it as anybody else,” Huang said. “The crypto hangover lasted longer than we expected.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trustnodes:
Crypto startup Amun says it has been given the green light to list the first crypto Exchange Traded Product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange
Switzerland Green Lights World’s First Crypto ETF to be Listed Next Week
https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/11/17/switzerland-green-lights-worlds-first-crypto-etf-to-be-listed-next-week
The world’s first crypto Exchange Traded Product (ETP) is to start trading next week on Europe’s fourth biggest exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange, with a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion.
A crypto startup, Amun AG, has been given the green-light to list an index fund on a traditional stock exchange with Hany Rashwan, co-founder and chief executive of Amun, stating
The fund tracks the biggest cryptos by market share and accordingly allocates assets. Currently they have about half on bitcoin and nearly 30% on Ripple which has recently overtaken ethereum to second position.
“We believe Switzerland to be the best jurisdiction for our base and intend”
The fund automatically allocates crypto distributions based on their performance in market cap rankings. When you buy the stock, market makers buy the equivalent amount of cryptos – according to the distribution – and send it to a custodian for safe keeping.
Making this the third crypto related product to be listed on a stock exchange after Coinshares bitcoin and eth trackers and Grayscale’s pink sheet products.
Coinshares’ Exchange Trading Notes (ETN) are technically an unsecured debt by the issuer, but they collateralize them with cryptos. While Grayscale’s products have sort of exploited a loophole that has some burdensome requirements like inability to sell for a year.
Most of these different structures are described under the umbrella term of ETPs. ETFs are the most popular of those because you’re basically buying the underlying asset without having to secure it
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ripple Overtakes Ethereum as Bitcoin’s Market Cap Falls Below $100 Billion
https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/11/16/ripple-overtakes-ethereum-as-bitcoins-market-cap-falls-below-100-billion
Ripple has suddenly taken second position with a market cap of $19 billion while ethereum has fallen to $18.4 billion on increased global crypto trading volumes of nearly $20 billion.
No one is celebrating, however, because this isn’t due to any gains by ripple but due to a brutal sell off across the crypto market that has sent bitcoin’s market cap below $100 billion for the first time in 2018.
The reason for this sell-off isn’t very clear. It might be related to uncertainty regarding Brexit or it might be related to the BCH fork.
The fork however turned out to be uneventful, as predicted
The fork might have affected the wider market by some going into fiat to see what happens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitcoin at a $100 Premium Against Brexit Pound
https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/11/17/bitcoin-at-a-100-premium-against-brexit-pound
Bitcoin is currently about $100 more expensive to buy with Great British Pound (GBP) than with the dollar or euros.
Likewise other cryptos are at a slight premium against the pound
Tomi Engdahl says:
BSV, The Worst Fork Ever
https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/11/16/bsv-the-worst-fork-ever
Don’t fork in a bear market and don’t support a “fake” fork might be good advice moving forward seeing how the BSV fork has so far unfolded.
BSV and BCH were meant to trade at a higher combined price than pre-split BCH under the assumption that the coins on their own would satisfy more people than the unspilt coin.
That has been the case for the previous two big splits, but not here.
the price which is now down nearly 50%.
Other coins, moreover, were not really meant to be affected
Instead, all top cryptos have kind of crashed, with BCH crashing the most, making this the worst fork ever for it appears to have destroyed value rather than create it.
The real reason is probably because the market, perhaps rightly, thinks that BSV is just not good for the crypto space.
There is no reason for this coin to exist, at all. For the BTC-BCH split there were genuine disagreements on how to tackle scalability
For the ETH and ETC split, likewise, there was a genuine disagreement over whether there should be a network wide coordination to change past events
As these splits kind of created different “realities” in an A/B test of sorts, with no right or wrong answer except for what experience will eventually say, the market welcomed them and rewarded both split cryptos as well as all cryptos in general.
Here instead the market has punished all cryptos and has punished most severely the cryptos in question: BCH and BSV.
The question is what happens next. Well, first, exchanges need to open BCH and BSV deposits and withdrawals.
BCH here hasn’t played their cards very well. That may be because their community is pretty small compared to BTC or ETH
non-genuine splits can be bad
making up excuses to split doesn’t necessarily end well as the market clearly can’t quite be fooled
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal:
SEC settles with Paragon Coin and CarrierEQ, which agree to start filing audited financial reports and refund investors of 2017 ICOs who want their money back
SEC Settles Enforcement Actions Over Two Initial Coin Offerings
Agreements require startups to comply with investor-protection rules
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-settles-enforcement-actions-over-two-initial-coin-offerings-1542382957
Two startups that raised money last year through cryptocurrency sales agreed to comply with investor-protection rules and offer money back to thousands of people who bought their digital tokens, marking a new stage in the government’s clash with initial coin offerings.
Paragon and CarrierEQ, which conducted unregistered coin offerings, each agreed to pay $250,000 in civil penalties and to notify investors they are eligible for refunds if they still own the token or can show they sold it at a loss.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Bitcoin hit its lowest level in more than a year on Monday, falling under $5,000, with the entire cryptocurrency market cap losing roughly $40B in the past week
Bitcoin drops 12% to below $5,000
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/bitcoin-skids-to-a-13-month-low-nearing-5000.html
The world’s largest cryptocurrency is now down 22 percent in the past week, falling as much as 12 percent Monday to its lowest level in more than a year.
Other major cryptocurrencies ethereum and XRP dropped 13 and 5 percent respectively.
Bitcoin is now down more than 30 percent since last Thanksgiving, when it gained household-name status and became a common topic around dinner tables.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
Sources: US DOJ probe into cryptocurrency manipulation has homed in on Bitcoin, Tether, and Bitfinex, and whether traders artificially inflated Bitcoin’s price
Bitcoin-Rigging Criminal Probe Focused on Tie to Tether
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/bitcoin-rigging-criminal-probe-is-said-to-focus-on-tie-to-tether
As Bitcoin plunges, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether last year’s epic rally was fueled in part by manipulation, with traders driving it up with Tether — a popular but controversial digital token.
While federal prosecutors opened a broad criminal probe into cryptocurrencies months ago, they’ve recently homed in on suspicions that a tangled web involving Bitcoin, Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex might have been used to illegally move prices, said three people familiar with the matter.
Bitfinex has the same management team as Tether Ltd.
Some traders — as well as academics — have alleged that these Tethers are used to buy Bitcoin at crucial moments when the value of the more ubiquitous digital token dips.
Cryptocurrencies captured investors’ attention in 2017 with Bitcoin surging to a record high of about $20,000 last December. But it’s been a different story this year as many on Wall Street have concluded the market was a fad. Another factor in Bitcoin falling below $4,225 Tuesday: Scrutiny by government officials, who’ve repeatedly warned that the mostly unregulated industry is likely rife with fraud.
While not as well known as Bitcoin, Tether is widely used by traders to bet on price moves for other cryptocurrencies.
Tether’s stability, and it’s name, comes from the fact that its value is supposed to be tethered to the U.S. dollar. Tether Ltd. even says that for each digital coin issued, it has $1 in the bank. Some investors have questioned that claim.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Crypto hype moves the market far more than it has any right to, and this is a huge problem
WTF is happening to crypto?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/wtf-is-happening-to-crypto/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Four days ago the crypto markets were crashing hard. Now they’re crashing harder.
What is happening? There are a number of theories, and I’ll lay out a few of them here. Ultimately, sentiment is bleak in the crypto world, with bull runs being seen as a thing of a distant past. As regulators clamp down, pie-in-the-sky ideas crash and shady dealers take their shady dealings elsewhere, the things that made cryptocurrencies so much fun — and so dangerous — are slowly draining away. What’s left is anyone’s guess, but at least it will make things less interesting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The challenge for democratizing technologies is that they must take on and overcome existing power structures
Can Bitcoin find its practical use case as a currency in Latin America?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/can-bitcoin-find-its-practical-use-case-as-a-currency-in-latin-america/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
While blockchain appears to be fulfilling its promise, many wonder if Bitcoin will ever get around to acting as a viable currency rather than just a store of value or speculative asset.
While Bitcoin can be credited with spawning a new industry of cryptocurrency, in 2018 we still seem to be a ways away from purchasing ice cream or hourly parking with Bitcoin — or any other cryptocurrency for that matter.
If Bitcoin is to become a viable means of exchange, Latin America would appear to be the currency’s first point of entry on its journey toward ubiquity. Indeed, the region’s long history of economic mismanagement makes Bitcoin adoption as much a necessity as a luxury.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blockchain Technology Overview
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitcoin sinks below $4,000 as the crypto market takes another hefty beating
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/24/bitcoin-sinks-below-4000-as-the-crypto-market-takes-another-hefty-beating/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Today, we saw another hit to the market. All but 8 of the top 100 cryptocurrency tokens are down for the 24-hour period with most losses averaging around 13 or 14 percent.
Notably, Bitcoin has now fallen beneath the $4,000 threshold, a number it reached in August of last year as its trajectory pointed sharply upward. Ethereum is trading just over $111, while Litecoin has fallen below $30, far cries from their former glory.
The cryptocurrency space is a volatile one but the year-long downward trend has been consistent and unrelenting leaving many to wonder where and when some of these top tokens settle down.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is happening to crypto?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/wtf-is-happening-to-crypto/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Dudas / The Block:
How Ripple has distanced itself from previous statements that it created XRP “within the Ripple network”, amid a pending lawsuit and looming SEC scrutiny
Ripple’s changing narrative around the creation of $XRP
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/tiny/ripples-changing-narrative-around-the-creation-of-xrp/
$XRP is currently the second largest cryptocurrency with a $14.2 billion market cap as of 10am ET today. As a result, its provenance and development are closely watched by those both inside and outside of the crypto ecosystem. During the current downturn in crypto market prices, $XRP has been the best-performing large cap (> $500 million) cryptocurrency with a 30-day return of -23.9% and a 90-day return of +5.8% as of the time of writing.
As a result, the narrative of $XRP and of Ripple, the private company that is closely associated with the cryptocurrency and XRP protocol, is closely watched. That narrative has evolved significantly through the years. In 2013, Ripple claimed that “Ripple Labs created 100 billion XRP within the Ripple network, and that amount will never increase.” In 2018, however, Ripple claimed that “Ripple the company didn’t create XRP; 100 billion XRP was created before the company was formed.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/ala-usko-valeuutista-iltalehti-ei-kehoita-bitcoin-sijoituksiin-6750431
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ohio becomes the first state to accept bitcoin for tax payments
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/25/ohio-becomes-the-first-state-to-accept-bitcoin-for-tax-payments/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Starting Monday, businesses in Ohio will be able to pay their taxes in bitcoin — making the state that’s high in the middle and round on both ends the first in the nation to accept cryptocurrency officially.
Companies who want to take part in the program simply need to go to OhioCrypto.com and register to pay whatever taxes their corporate hearts desire in crypto.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 Best Cryptocurrency Mining Tools for Linux
https://www.fossmint.com/best-cryptocurrency-mining-tools-for-linux/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/bitcoinin-raju-syoksy-jatkuu-kaikki-jotka-uskovat-yha-6750446
Bitcoin’s haven claim is destroyed amid broad pummeling of riskier assets
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoins-haven-claim-is-destroyed-amid-broad-pummeling-of-riskier-assets-2018-11-24
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 100 Cryptocurrencies by Market Capitalization
https://coinmarketcap.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three challenges facing blockchain technology
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/08/three-challenges-facing-blockchain-technology/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Searching for Bitcoins in GitHub repositories with Google BigQuery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xml4Gx3huag
People leak stuff on github all the time. ssh private keys, national ID scans, … Maybe we can find some Bitcoin private keys and get rich!?
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Blockchain-Enabled Intelligent IoT Economy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/10/04/the-blockchain-enabled-intelligent-iot-economy/#57cf45192a59
II. How Blockchain is changing IoT
Blockchain as a technology is basically providing the IoT stack with a secure data infrastructure to capture and validate data. As simple as that. At least it is a simple statement that contains three different nuances:
Securing data better: The first one is indeed the concept of storing data securely. We know that blockchain protocols are not designed to heavily store data (they are indeed ledgers, not databases), but they can provide “control points” to monitor data access (Outlier Ventures, 2018).
Creating the right incentive structure: A blockchain can create the right incentive structure to share IoT data, which is something we are currently missing. Cross-sectional data have been proved to have the most disruptive impact when applied across different industries, but the problem of how and why sharing data in the first place remains. Blockchain (and tokenization) can be used to solve this economic dilemma, and once data are shared can be more easily validated, authenticated and secured.
Creating a network of computers: Distributing the workload and implementing parallel computing tasks is something it is usually attributed to new AI or High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications, but a blockchain would be essential in this development for authenticating and validating the single nodes of those networks. Some companies that are working on this problem are Golem, iExec, Onai, Hadron, Hypernet, DeepBrain Chain, etc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Leigh Cuen / CoinDesk:
Current and former employees of news orgs sponsored by the blockchain startup Civil say they haven’t received the compensation they were promised when hired
Employees Say Startup Civil Hyped Crypto Returns, But Failed to Pay
https://www.coindesk.com/civil-startup-token-crypto-ethereum
Civil was supposed to create a more transparent and democratic model for journalism. But so far, journalists working on its platform have yet to receive all of the compensation they say they were promised when hired.
According to several current and former employees of news organizations sponsored by the blockchain startup, Civil told journalists in its 18 newsrooms around the U.S. that the CVL cryptocurrency – which, when issued, was supposed to comprise part of their pay – would probably end up being worth several times more than the estimated valuations mentioned in meetings and reported in tax forms.
Yet lackluster demand caused Civil to cancel a public sale of the tokens last month. Now, the reporters have no idea if or when they’ll be paid the tokens that were supposed to be part of their compensation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steemit cites ““the weakness of the cryptocurrency market” as the reason behind its mass layoff
Steemit, a decentralized sharing system, lays of 70% of staff
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/steemit-a-decentralized-sharing-system-lays-of-70-of-staff/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon gets into the blockchain with Quantum Ledger Database & Managed Blockchain
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/amazon-gets-into-the-blockchain-with-quantum-ledger-database-managed-blockchain/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Amazon last year dismissed the idea of getting into the blockchain with AWS, but today that’s changed. The company announced a new service called Amazon Quantum Ledger Database, or QLDB, which is a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority. The service, which is launching into preview today, offers an append-only, immutable journal that tracks the history of all changes, Amazon said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boris Hristov:
As Bitcoin bulls cite past recoveries, the amount of money lost in the last bubble raises the question of where funds for another BTC surge may come from
Corrections and recoveries
http://medium.com/@hristovbz/corrections-and-recoveries-1d8222379780
The crypto market correction turned winter will soon mark its first year. Over the last months, many folks have posted tables of previous BTC corrections ranging from 30–90% with the logic that we’ve been there and have always recovered.
True, BTC has endured multiple 80%+ corrections and recovered massively after that, which is impressive. There is a good chance it will do the same this time as well.
But. It gets harder and harder with every new correction.
However, volume is not a very good indicator. We need some measure of the fresh fiat that is needed to fuel a recovery. One way would be to come up with a fiat-volume velocity, i.e. how many times does every new $ get traded.
If we take 100x, that means that anywhere between $20bn–$90bn of new money will be needed just to get back to the 20k high.
To get back to the previous high, BTC needs to regain ca. $285bn in market cap. Using a broad range for the amplifier, anywhere from $6bn-$140bn of fresh fiat will be required.
But given how many retail investors lost money, I would doubt they will put a lot of new cash in crypto anytime soon.
That leaves institutions.
Finally, the numbers above are only about BTC. It is still the only cryptoasset which has successfully recovered from multiple severe corrections.
Tomi Engdahl says:
So crypto didn’t kill venture capital after all
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/so-crypto-didnt-kill-venture-capital-after-all/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coinbase abandons its cautious approach with plan to list up to 30 new cryptocurrencies
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/coinbase-dabbles-in-shitcoins/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
Tomi Engdahl says:
World Energy Councilin innovaatiojohtaja Marzia Zafar kiteytti energia-alan kansainvälisten yritysten ajatukset lohkoketjuista kolmeen toteamukseen: ”Liian varhaista, liian hypetettyä ja liikaa potentiaalia”.
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2018/12/10/keinoaly-5g-ja-lohkoketjut-tulevat-energia-alalle/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Roy Katsiri / Globes Online:
Sources: cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain is closing down its Israel-based R&D center and laying off its 23 employees, amid the cryptocurrency bear market
Bitmain closing Israeli development center
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-bitmain-closing-israeli-development-center-1001264083
Bitmaintech Israel, headed by Gadi Glikberg, is a victim of the steep decline in the cryptocurrency market.
The development center of Bitmain set up in Ra’anana two years ago under Gadi Glikberg will close this week and its 23 employees will be laid off, “Globes” learned this morning. Glikberg, who is a VP at Bitmain, will also leave. The Israeli activity of one of the largest companies in the global blockchain industry thus comes to an end. The background is the sharp fall in the price of Bitcoin and the general decline in the digital currencies market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackers ramp up attacks on mining rigs before Ethereum price crashes into the gutter
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-ramp-up-attacks-on-mining-rigs-before-ethereum-price-crashes-into-the-gutter/
Attackers scan for Ethereum wallets and mining rigs that have carelessly exposed port 8545 on the Internet.
Hackers have set off in motion a massive campaign that scans for Internet-exposed Ethereum wallets and mining equipment, ZDNet has learned today.
The mass-scan campaign has been raging for at least a week, since December 3, Troy Mursch, co-founder of Bad Packets LLC told ZDNet.
Attackers are scanning for devices with port 8545 exposed online. This is the standard port for the JSON-RPC interface of many Ethereum wallets and mining equipment. This interface is a programmatic API that locally-installed apps and services can query for mining and funds-related information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Blockchain Needs to Answer Four Major Questions
An expert panel at Automobility LA outlined the major challenges for Blockchain going forward in the automotive industry and in enterprise as a whole.
https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/blockchain-needs-answer-four-major-questions/40164144659881?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=6740&elq_cid=876648
Speaking as part of a panel, “Blockchain: The Connectivity Cure” during the Automobility LA conference and expo, Naghmana Majed, Automotive and A&D Solutions Leader at IBM, offered some sobering commentary on the state of Blockchain.
“I see a lot of hype with Blockchain,” Majed said. “[But] we have to make some conscious decisions and ask, is this a good use case.”
Majed’s comments went to the core of what Blockchain technology as a whole has been grappling with—even beyond the automotive space. With the value of Bitcoin no longer skyrocketing, Blockchain is still looking for a killer use case.
What’s the Business Model?
At the end of the day, companies have to make a profit, and any new technology needs to facilitate this in some way.
“What’s the business model?” Majed asked. “If you can do the same thing in a more expensive way, does that make sense? Is there a clear business model in the domain of new businesses and opportunities?…We do a lot of work in supply chain. But that’s cost cutting. We have to look at automotive and ask if we can provide a real business model and new revenue opportunities. Technology for the sake of technology does nothing.”