Payments firm Ripple has given MoneyGram, a remittance firm, over $11 million dollars in the past half year, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The funds are broken up between two quarters, $2.4 million in Q3 and an additional $8.9 million in Q4, for a total of $11.3 million.

The Q4 "financial benefit" as MoneyGram calls the sum, was not included in its Q4 revenue, reported as $323.7 million.

Previously, MoneyGram has disclosed that it utilizes various Ripple products, including its On-Demand Liquidity product, which runs on XRP.

The firm behind XRP owns over 10 percent of MoneyGram common stock, acquired through investments adding up to $50 m…

We’d seen press releases about an “official partnership” between the Germany-based IOTA Foundation and Microsoft, which the incumbent tech company later denied, as well as various universities.

Wall described this as the founding team, which launched the IOTA token in 2015, being “very effective at pushing out news about ‘partnerships.’”Among technologists, the IOTA Foundation became known for scandalous emails in 2018 between IOTA Foundation co-founder David Sønstebø and Neha Narula of MIT's Digital Currency Initiative.

The website and social media accounts for the token project are still up, but her personal social media accounts haven’t been active since the fall of 2019.

Schiener referr…

The Bank of Canada has no plans to issue its own digital currency – at least, not at the moment.

The central bank does not see a real need to issue its own cryptocurrency unless a competitor to cash takes off, said Deputy Governor Timothy Lane.

His speech, titled "Money and Payments in the Digital Age," addressed how the central bank is approaching the idea of central bank digital currencies; in his view, cash works.

To be sure, Bank of Canada was one of the most active students of the CBDC concept, and it ran a pilot project on R3's distributed ledger tech solution Corda.

But it is a good example of a transformative technology that affects how the bank needs to respond to the future of mon…

We're concerned about coronavirus, but why?

Or are we just Chicken Little prophets of doom?

The spread of Coronavirus has dominated the news cycle across industries, but the discussion has been particularly fierce in both the finance and tech worlds, with crypto right in the lead.

For a month or more, prominent crypto voices have been discussing the event in terms of skepticism of reported government cases, questions of market impact, and plans for personal preparation.

NLW surveyed more than 1500 people on Crypto Twitter to ask why crypto was so interested in the Coronavirus.

Disclosure Read MoreThe leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Revolut, the London-based bank that allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies on its app, has raised more than $500 million in a Series D funding round.

Revolut announced Tuesday the round, led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm TCV, means the bank is now valued at over $5.5 billion.

Launched in 2015, Revolut provides its 10 million users with easy access to a host of financial services.

Revolut added bitcoin (BTC) to its platform in July 2017, soon after its $66 million Series B.

Ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC) followed later that year, with bitcoin cash (BCH) and XRP (XRP) support coming in May 2018.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has proposed a rule change to a benchmark survey that would require all U.S. financial services companies to identify if they engaged in cross-border services related to cryptocurrency.

The survey will be posed to brokerages, private equity funds, custody services, financial advisories and the many others included in BEA’s sweeping definition of "financial services."

That question, however, will not gather individual transaction information, said BEA Services and Surveys Branch Chief Christopher Stein.

"It's a new and evolving area in the financial services market, and the benchmark is an opportunity to ask more information an…

Securities are one of the most crucial components to the operation of our global economy.

For large companies, this is typically handled by trusted third parties like DTCC, which provides clearing and depository services.

Some in crypto think they can just build to violate these laws; it doesn’t work that way.

For example, Coinbase’s Crypto Ratings Council makes a case for why certain instruments are not securities, instead of doing the harder work to become licensed to deal in legal securities.

On the technical side, there many projects promising robust potential improvements in the way securities move.

A "short bitcoin" exchange-traded product (ETP), which inversely tracks the value of the top cryptocurrency by market cap, is now available to investors throughout Europe.

Swiss crypto product provider 21Shares, formerly known as Amun, said Tuesday its new "SBTC" tracker product would be available to both institutional and retail investors on Boerse Stuttgart, the second-largest stock exchange in Germany.

The new Boerse Stuttgart listing means retail investors are no longer "lumbered with fees and some pretty wide FX rates" from their brokerages, he said.

Fully hedged against the underlying bitcoin (BTC) at a 1:1 ratio, 21Shares launched its SBTC tracker on the Swiss stock exchange (SIX) in…

"Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network," Polkadot announced Monday.

Polkadot is a network for connecting and launching blockchain applications, with its “parachain” technology acting as a bridge between different blockchains.

Until Polkadot launches, Chainlink’s pricing feeds will first service Polkadot’s experimental Kusama network.

However, the parachain between Chainlink’s decentralized pricing oracles and Kusama remains under construction, Polkadot said.

"The integration of Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network on a dedicated parachain can unlock multiple use cases on Polkadot," Polka…

Derivatives exchange FTX is hosting a public sale for tokenized equity in the hopes it can attain a billion-dollar valuation.

The Binance-backed platform, famed for creating the Shitcoin Index of low-market coins, announced Tuesday its FTX_Equity token sale would welcome investors willing to allocate a minimum $250,000 each.

Each FTX_Equity token, valued at $2 each, represents an ownership stake in the FTX Trading Ltd., the holding company that owns the derivatives exchange.

It isn't clear what the exchange rate is between normal and tokenized FTX equity.

Although the number of tokens up for sale has not been disclosed, the token equity sale will take FTX's value into line with its billion-…

New Zealand's tax authority is considering changes to its treatment of cryptocurrencies that would drop the current and controversial application of goods and services tax (GST).

Calling the situation "unfavorable," the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has now suggested doing away with the GST liability for cryptocurrencies in many cases, but keeping the treatment for income tax.

An issue being considered by the IRD is whether different types of token should have different tax treatments depending on how they are used.

"An advantage of this approach is that it should provide a neutral tax treatment for those crypto-assets which are close substitutes for existing financial product…

Blockchain services firm Diginex is closer to listing on Nasdaq after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved its bid to merge with publicly traded 8i Enterprises Acquisition Corp. on Friday.

If accepted, the merger will allow Diginex, a private company based in Hong Kong, to bypass many of the usual regulatory barriers associated with launching an initial public offering and be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market in what's known as a backdoor listing.

Diginex shareholders would receive 20 million ordinary shares in 8i, valued at $10 each, according to a previous report.

Diginex develops tools for institutions with a focus on digital assets, as well as a trading and custody plat…

ViewBitcoin has formed a bearish head-and-shoulders (H+S) pattern with neckline support at $9,400.

The top cryptocurrency by market value is currently trading around $9,560, representing a nearly 2 percent drop on the day, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.

With Monday’s drop, bitcoin has also formed a head-and-shoulders pattern on technical charts, as seen below.

12-hour chartThe head-and-shoulders pattern is a sign of a bearish reversal.

Seasoned traders would argue that head-and-shoulders breakdown often traps sellers on the wrong side of the market.

Nornickel, the Russian mining and smelting giant, has taken another step toward the issuance of tokens backed by metals on Atomyze, a Hyperledger-based blockchain platform.

Later, a wider circle of institutional players will have access to the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, according to Atomyze.

It's expected to serve the companies from Switzerland and the U.S., as Nornickel CEO Vladimir Potanin told Bloomberg Tuesday morning.

Nornickel has been working on tokenizing its metals for a while, aiming to turn them into more liquid assets and make the sales process easier and more flexible, Nornickel CEO Vladimir Potanin said in October.

Nornickel has been testing the solution ins…

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Coinbase has shared its preparation plans for various outcomes of the fast-spreading coronavirus. The virus, which has origins in China’s Wuhan region, has dominated news coverage since its emergence. The latest reports focused on the soaring number of infected people in Italy and Iran. While the World Health Organization has yet to deem the infection […]

The post Coinbase shares its four-tier coronavirus plan for employees appeared first on The Block.

Crypto exchange BTSE's initial exchange offering (IEO) is set to go live on March 5th, the company said Tuesday. The post Crypto exchange BTSE to launch public token sale next week after completing private offering appeared first on The Block.

Nexus Mutual, the London-based decentralized finance (DeFi) crypto coverage company, has resolved two vulnerabilities on its platform following disclosures.

The post DeFi startup Nexus Mutual resolves two vulnerabilities, will pay $7,000 in bug bounties appeared first on The Block.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is working with its regulators to support trading of Filecoin, the firm said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The post Crypto exchange Gemini is working with regulators to list Filecoin appeared first on The Block.

UFC, the popular mixed martial arts promotion company, has struck a licensing partnership with CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs.

The post CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs strikes licensing deal with UFC appeared first on The Block.

Quick Take The return of ProgPoW

Synthetix bails out honest stakers

Crypto market maker B2C2, which sued crypto exchange operator Quoine in 2017 over bitcoin trades worth millions that were reversed, has just won the case.

The post Crypto market maker B2C2 wins case against Quoine over multimillion-dollar bitcoin trade reversal appeared first on The Block.

Crypto-friendly investing app provider Revolut has raised $500 million in a Series D round that values it at $5.5 billion.

The post Crypto-friendly fintech firm Revolut raises $500M at a $5.5B valuation appeared first on The Block.

Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has launched its equity token today. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told The Block that the equity token helps small investors to get a stake in the company as the minimum purchase size via the standard route is $2.5 million.

The post Crypto derivatives exchange FTX is selling its equity for bitcoin and other payment methods appeared first on The Block.

"Cryptocurrencies basically have no value and they don't produce anything," Buffett told CNBC in an interview on Monday. "I don't have any cryptocurrency and I never will," Buffett added.

The post Warren Buffett says he will ‘never’ own any cryptocurrency appeared first on The Block.

Asian blockchain security startup CoolBitX has raised $16.75 million in a Series B funding round, which was led by Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings.

The post CoolBitX raises $16.75M Series B to help crypto exchanges comply with FATF’s ‘travel rule’ appeared first on The Block.

Financial software company Intuit has agreed to acquire consumer technology platform Credit Karma for $7.1 billion in cash and stock.

The post Fintech company Intuit acquires Credit Karma for $7.1B in cash and stock appeared first on The Block.

Decentralized storage network Filecoin has pushed ahead its expected mainnet launch window amid further delays in its development timeline.

The post Launch window for decentralized storage network Filecoin pushed back amid more testnet work, coronavirus concerns appeared first on The Block.

More than 3.1 billion transactions have been made across two dozen cryptocurrency networks over the past ten years, a company that tracks the Ethereum transaction mempool found.

The post Over 3.1 billion transactions have been processed across 24 crypto networks in the past decade: researchers appeared first on The Block.

In brief Gemini Custody plans to add support for Filecoin once the network is live.

And it's unclear how much of a market there is for blockchain-based data storage.

Gemini Custody announced today that it would allow customers to store Filecoin when the network is ready.

Whereas IPFS is a voluntary open-source system for data storage, Filecoin is meant to incentivize storage.

As part of Gemini's announcement, it said Filecoin ICO participants could get their FIL straight into their Gemini custody account as soon as the network goes live.

In brief Racing game F1 Delta Time has started an NFT crate sale.

Each crate contains in-game items of varying rarity levels.

The game has sold more than 900 ETH of rare cars to date.

Ethereum-powered blockchain game F1 Delta Time is gearing up for release, and game publisher Animoca Brands and Formula One hope to rev up some early excitement with the sale of in-game item crates.

F1 Delta Time is set to release its racing component sometime early this year, with officially-licensed F1 teams, drivers, and cars represented in the game.

In brief Taiwanese startup CoolBitX has raised $16.75 million in a Series B round.

The Travel Rule now requires crypto exchanges to collect more information about their customers.

Since then, crypto exchanges have scrambled to provide a solution, and invested millions in the space in the hopes of finding one.

The National Development of Taiwan, the Korean cryptocurrency exchange BitSonic, and Japanese financial group Monex also participated.

All of the exchanges CoolBitX listed were in Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.

The bitcoin tycoon recently took to Weibo (Twitter's equivalent in China) to opine about his prediction of bitcoin’s next halving.

As the date of the third bitcoin halving draws near, debates regarding when the halving effects kick in and how it will influence price have been intensifying.

The next halving event is estimated to fall on May 12 this year, when mining rewards will get cut in half, to 6.25 BTC per block.

In terms of bitcoin price performance, the two previous halvings have projected bullish momentum a year before and after the event.

BITCOIN’S MARKET SHARE CONTINUES TO DECLINE, AND THE CRYPTO MARKET WILL BECOME SIMILAR TO ASSETS LIKE REAL ESTATE AND US STOCKS."

In brief The recent DeFi attacks could be considered illegal in terms of traditional finance.

A trader exploited various DeFi protocols to take home $1 million and everybody wanted to know how it was done.

Thanks to a clever set of instructions—all executed in two big transactions—the trader leveraged current weaknesses in the DeFi ecosystem for their own gain.

The DeFi attacks were illegalKoticha argued that the attacks were illegal—but not necessarily unethical.

He pointed out that manipulating oracles for price gains in traditional markets is illegal, referring to the LIBOR scandal.

In brief Homeland Security is focusing on illicit crypto transactions.

The Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program will look at illegal movement of money.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a method to pry on unlicensed crypto businesses operating on the darknet and peer-to-peer (P2P) sites.

“Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are the preferred payment method in darknet markets.

It is common for unlicensed P2P exchangers to obtain their Bitcoin from selling illicit goods and services on darknet markets,” ICE explains in an investigative report from 2017.

Amid much fanfare, Binance moved its base to Malta in March 2018 to take advantage of the Mediterranean island’s trailblazing cryptocurrency regulations.

At the same time, Martin Albert, a regulatory and anti-money laundering expert, told us that Binance does not even need a European license to operate within the EU.

(Image: Times of Malta)The source further said that the statement was an attempt to clarify that Malta was not the headquarters of Binance, and that Binance does not have any licensable activity in Malta.

The authorities had not anticipated the furore the MFSA statement would unleash, according to Decrypt’s source.

"Malta offered Binance two years refuge from international regu…

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has partnered with Dapper Labs, a company that builds digital collectibles on the blockchain to help bring the technology to the sport.

Dapper Labs is most famous for building CryptoKitties, a blockchain game where you trade digital cats.

According to a statement, the UFC and Dapper Labs will create digital collectibles under the UFC brand.

These will be tradeable on the Dapper Labs Flow blockchain platform, and allow fans to buy, sell and trade assets associated with the sport.

UFC fighter Ben Askren has also been a big fan of cryptocurrency, but perhaps less of the UFC—in his last fight, he was knocked out in five seconds.

In brief South Korean bank Nonghyup is trialling Distributed ID, a blockchain-powered ID system for employees.

Nonghyup, the fifth largest commercial bank in South Korea, is now using blockchain technology to verify the identity of its employees.

The bank has deployed Distributed ID, a blockchain-powered ID card system co-created by Nonghyup Bank and SK Telecom.

It was the only South Korean bank to sign a contract with Bithumb—one of the country’s largest crypto exchanges—to process withdrawals and deposits.

In South Korea, crypto exchanges use virtual bank accounts, a service offered by major banks that enables users to make instant deposits and withdrawals of South Korean won.

In brief A blockchain fratority will pay its next member around $3000 if they get a tattoo representing Kusama.

Kusama is an experimental version of blockchain network Polkadot.

The tattoo must be of the Kusama network’s canary symbol; its typography; the full logo; or the Kusama genesis hash.

With the Kusama Fratority, the pledge is skin-space and dignity, and the reward is membership, and, for the next member, money.

He’d been itching to get a tattoo for years, he said, and he found his excuse in the fratority.

France and Austria join forces to combat crypto crime by building tracing and AML compliance toolsFrench blockchain security company NIGMA Conseil, and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), signed an agreement to track crypto crime.

The organizations will trace and chart blockchain connections and transactions, which addresses strict KYC rules, which also require tracking coin origins.

CEO of NIGMA Conseil, Fabien Tabarly, stated, The synergy between a leading European academic research institute and our team of developers has been instrumental in implementing the most innovative tools to fight financial crime in virtual currencies.

Germany’s 2nd largest stock exchange Boerse Stuttgart lists inverse Bitcoin ETPTraders seeking to short Bitcoin have a brand new choice in Germany.

On Feb. 25th, Boerse Stuttgart — the nation’s second-largest stock exchange — introduced an ETP that’s inversely correlated to Bitcoin swings.

The inverse ETP is issued by crypto fund supervisor 21Shares, previously generally known as Amun.

The product gives buyers a optimistic return each time Bitcoin’s worth falls — minus a daily administrative charge.

Already listed on Switzerland’s principal inventory change SIX Swiss Exchange, the 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC) will attain a wider investor base through Boerse Stuttgart, which reported bu…

Local Bitcoin sellers demand 50% premium in Lebanon amid strict capital control limitsThe Bitcoin price premium in Lebanon is on the rise, with sellers demanding as much as $15,000 per BTC.

With the global average spot price in the $9,500 region, it appears the Lebanese BTC price premium is over 50%.

Back in January 2020, the Bitcoin price premium in the country was at 25% as the worsening cash crunch has seen more people moving towards the crypto market.

The severe cash crunch in Lebanon has seen the emergence of strict capital control measures with domestic forex withdrawals and cross-border remittance capped at $50 a month and $50,000 a year respectively.

Rather than taking a 40% haircut…

US government unveils ‘Crypto Intelligence Program’ for tracking unlicensed Bitcoin businessesThe US department of Homeland Security is focusing on illicit crypto transactions, unveiling its CIP (Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program) which looks at illegal movements of money.

Other US departments are also looking into crypto payments.

The CIP seeks out unlicensed crypto businesses operating on the darknet and P2P sites, the CIP will scrutinize areas that pose “a significant challenge to law enforcement.”Within its budget summary for the fiscal year 2021, released last week, the US government detailed its Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP)—a cryptocurrency-centric initiative to trail u…

Crypto-friendly fintech firm Revolut raises $500M with a $5.5B valuationCrypto-friendly investing app provider Revolut raised $500 million in a funding round that values it at $5.5 billion.

With the fresh capital in place, London-based Revolut plans to improve its product and revenue.

Singapore’s Court rules against Quione for reversing BTC trades, it sold 3,000 BTC 250x below marketSingapore's Court of Appeals ruled against digital currency exchange Quoine in a landmark case relating to a breach of contract that saw the platform unlawfully reverse seven trades.

Quoine, parent company of Japanese trading platform Liquid, now faces settlement proceedings.

B2C2 reversed trades claiming those transactions were a “mistake.”Quoine had argued that the parties knew the trades were incorrectly priced.

A day after the trades took place, Quoine reversed seven trades, which prompted the lawsuit.

The court said there was no mistake in the terms of the trading contract.

Seoul's blockchain-based voting system to launch March 1stSeoul’s blockchain-based voting system launches March 1st.

The system provides a way for citizens to suggest issues for the city government to take up.

The blockchain system will fix the voter fraud that has been plaguing the current national online voting system.

WikiLeaks Bitcoin donations have been rising ever since Assange arrest & extradition last yearWikiLeaks has accepted over 4,000 Bitcoin in donations, through its old address, worth a significant sum today, $39 million.

After the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in April 2019, when Assange was taken from his hiding in the Ecuador embassy and handed over to British authorities, Bitcoin has consistently flowed into the organization’s donation address.

Last week, WikiLeaks changed its chief Bitcoin address, already accruing significant donations.

A message signed with the old private key pointed to the new donation address.

WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is head…

US Congress to host hearing on digital currencies next monthUS Congress, specifically the House of Representatives that control National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy will be hosting a hearing next month.

The name given to label the hearing is "A Review of Domestic and International Approaches to Digital Currencies."

The date and time is March 24th at 2 pm ET, and the subcommittee is chaired by Representative Emanuel.

The US may soon get its first dedicated bank for digital assets.

A Wyoming corporation founded by blockchain legislative champion and Wall Street veteran Caitlin Long is preparing to apply for a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter with the state’s division of banking.

The future bank is called Avanti, meaning “forward” in Italian, and will be focused solely on providing regulated services for digital assets Caitlin Long announced today.

Avanti will provide payment, custody, securities and commodities activities for institutional customers using digital assets.

The firm will custody digital assets without any change in the ownership of those assets, like a valet takes care …

YouTube silences Ivan on Tech channel until after Bitcoin halvingThe YouTube channel of Ivan on Tech, an influential voice in the crypto space, has been banned from creating many types of Bitcoin related videos for which he has consistently been creating for years on YouTube.

The suspension will also block one of his popular daily live streams, it will last through the Bitcoin halving.

Evidently, censorship is a problem for crypto vloggers.

The video in question was a price prediction for Bitcoin titled “Bitcoin’s price is going vertical.” Also, it’s worth noting that YouTube recently ran a promotional video related to a OneCoin event, which is still live.

China’s Central Bank now quarantining older bank notes to curb Corona-virusCoronavirus has reduced the demand for restaurants, flights, hotels, and retail services in China, as using one of these could expose someone to Coronavirus.

Many of these businesses have low cash reserves and are not receiving meaningful help from the government or bank lenders.

Notably, last week, a high-ranking official of the People’s Bank of China revealed that China is quarantining old bank notes to curb the spread of Coronavirus, making bank runs a real threat in China.

Direct contact with physical cash, unlike Bitcoin, is presumed to spread the virus which has afflicted 79,360 people worldwide with 77,150 cas…

G20 urges all countries to enforce FATF crypto standardsG-20 finance chiefs urged all countries to implement crypto standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international money-laundering watchdog, this past weekend in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The current FATF crypto guidelines are supported by the G20 and require exchanges to collect and send customer information for all transactions, including both the originator’s and beneficiary’s name & account number, as well as the originator’s location.

The G20 financial chiefs also said “We recognize the need to enhance global cross-border payment arrangements to facilitate lower-cost and swifter transfers, including for remittances…

UK cell service provider Vodafone includes Bitcoin in new ad, after exiting Libra project last monthUK-based cellular provider Vodafone recently showcased Bitcoin in their German advertisement on Feb 17th, and the ad debuted on the company’s Facebook page.

It’s worth noting, Vodafone left the Libra Association earlier this year, and was once willing to pay $10 million to run a Libra node.

After Libra's regulatory entanglement, Vodafone and other companies walked away.

Considering the debut of a Bitcoin-centric Vodafone ad on the company’s Facebook profile, and that Vodafone said it’s trying to focus on: creating financial inclusion in developing economies, it's possible that it sees BTC’s o…

US Fed bank Governor to G20 finance meeting: Work quickly to keep up with rapid change brought by BitcoinUS Federal Reserve banks governor Randal Quarles, who is also the Chair of the US Financial Stability Board, reportedly wrote a letter that was read at the meeting of G20 finance ministers, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Quarles wrote that top finance ministers and central bankers around the world need to work quickly to keep up with the "rapid" changes brought about by Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

He also wrote "Technology is changing the nature of traditional finance, bringing innovations that create both potential benefits and risks… rapid progress may bring about new challenges.

Financial…

Министр цифровых технологий и политики Каталонии Хорди Пуйнеро (Jordi Puignero) считает, что блокчейн поможет региону обрести политическую независимость от испанского правительства.

По мнению Пуйнеро, с помощью технологии распределенного реестра (DLT) Каталония может создать систему для взаимодействия обычных граждан с местными органами власти, проведения финансовых транзакций, а также создания отдельного хранилища данных, которое будет недоступно центральному правительству Испании.

«Блокчейн может внести кардинальные изменения в административное управление, финансовую систему и общество, а именно – поможет каталонцам обрести еще большую свободу и независимость.

Ранее власти региона даже не…

Инвестор и крипто-скептик Уоррен Баффетт заявил, что встреча с основателем TRON Джастином Саном никак не повлияла на его отношение к криптовалютам.

«Криптовалюты не имеют никакой ценности и ничего не производят, — в очередной раз заявил Баффетт.

«У меня никогда не было и не будет никаких криптовалют», — заявил он в разговоре с CNBC.

«Джастин и его друзья стойко отстаивали позицию, в которую они верят.

Мы в довольно доброжелательной форме обменялись мнениями», — сказал он, добавив, что ни он, ни Сан не поменяли свое мнение относительно криптовалют.

Сооснователь Википедии Джимми Уэльс не видит ни одного практического варианта использования криптовалют, который убедил бы его добавить криптоактивы на платформу.

Он полагает, что добавление криптовалют на сайт нанесет ущерб его концепции и в конечном итоге изменит уникальный способ работы платформы.

«Создание механизма, при котором вы будете поощрять этот тип поведения… вовсе не сыграет на пользу качеству Википедии», — сказал Уэльс.

Хотя Уэльс возражает против создания стимулов для редакторов Википедии, он сказал, что не против приема пожертвований в различных криптоактивах.

Кроме того, во время ралли криптовалют в конце 2017 года страница о биткойне в Википедии два дня входила в топ-3 поп…

Представители нескольких центральных банков встретились на однодневной конференции в Киеве, организованной Национальным банком Украины (НБУ), для обсуждения концепции государственных криптовалют.

На конференции выступили представители центральных банков Канады, Швеции, Японии, Литвы, Финляндии, Нидерландов, Беларуси, Уругвая и ЮАР.

Как стало известно на конференции, НБУ приостановил эксперимент с собственной криптовалютой.

На конференции представители центральных банков Нидерландов и Канады достаточно скептически отзывались о технологии распределенного реестра.

Сегендорф сказал, что ЦБ Швеции будет тестировать технологию не потому, что организация настроена на использование решения на базе …

Американская криптовалютная биржа Coinbase предупредила о задержке при отправке и получении EOS в связи со снижением производительности сети EOS.

Производители блоков EOS отрицают наличие проблем.

Такая ситуация длится уже на протяжении четырех дней, однако торговые операции с монетами EOS осуществляются в обычном режиме.

Производитель блоков EOS Nation сообщил, что 20 февраля в сети возникли проблемы из-за нескольких микрофорков – речь идет об отсутствии 192 блоков.

Вместо того чтобы обратиться за бесплатной помощью к производителям блоков, Coinbase заявляет о проблемах с EOS, не предоставляя точной информации», — прокомментировал ситуацию в Reddit другой крупный производитель блоков EOS N…

Один из последних эпизодов «Симпсонов» вышел в эфир с участием Джима Парсонса из «Теории большого взрыва» в роли приглашенной звезды для объяснения концепции криптовалют и того, как работает блокчейн.

В эпизоде герой Парсонса исполняет танец и песню, в которой говорится, что криптовалюта – это будущие деньги.

Я не в твоем кошельке, я в твоем компьютере!».

В конце выступления Парсонса на экране появляется сообщение, в котором объясняется как работают криптовалюты:«Существует множество криптовалют.

В этой системе есть определенные правила для выпуска дополнительных единиц криптовалюты.

Предприниматель и энтузиаст биткойна Андреас Антонопулос (Andread Antonopoulos) считает, что проект Libra не сможет обеспечить людей, не имеющих доступа к банковским услугам, такими сервисами.

Как подчеркнул Антонопулос в интервью, проект Libra, разрабатываемый социальной сетью Facebook, станет первой корпоративной криптовалютой.

Он подчеркнул, что Libra не соответствует ни одному из этих параметров.

Он заключил, что стейблкойн Libra не может быть запущен в том виде, в каком его представляли создатели Белой Книги.

Однако он может стать заметным успехом социальной сети в том смысле, что предоставит инструмент финансового надзора за тратами пользователей.

Бывший председатель Комиссии по торговле товарными фьючерсами (CFTC) Кристофер Джанкарло (Christopher Giancarlo) в очередной раз высказался в поддержку создания национальной криптовалюты США.

Джанкарло считает, что выпуск национальной криптовалюты США будет способствовать росту онлайн-торговли в стране, поскольку позволит избавиться от промежуточных систем, таких как кредитные или дебетовые карты.

При этом бывший председатель CFTC подчеркнул, что создание национальной криптовалюты не станет препятствием для развития сторонних криптовалют, таких как Libra.

Инструмент вроде Биткойна может выступать как эквивалент цифрового доллара, либо же быть эквивалентом цифрового золота», – считает Джанка…

Банк JPMorgan выпустил ежегодный отчет JPMorgan Perspectives, в котором заявил, что хотя использование блокчейна увеличивается, массовое принятие технологии произойдет лишь через несколько лет.

Аналитики одного из крупнейших финансовых конгломератов мира подчеркнули, что использование блокчейна становится популярным среди финансовых компаний, таких как биржи ценных бумаг, однако всеобщее принятие технологии распределенного реестра произойдет лишь через несколько лет.

«Мы видим потенциал блокчейна в трансформировании банковских бизнес-моделей.

При этом аналитики подчеркивают, что массовое принятие блокчейна сильно зависит от отношения регуляторов.

Отчет также коснулся перспектив стейблкойнов…

Временное предпочтение — это тенденция человека предпочитать свое текущее благосостояние или текущее потребление будущему благосостоянию или потреблению.

В дальнейшем исследовании 1988 года дети с низким временным предпочтением показывали более высокие академические результаты и не имели проблем с зависимостью или весом.

Временное предпочтение и БиткойнПрежде чем перейти к связи между временным предпочтением и Биткойном, необходимо понять, что такое устойчивые или твердые деньги.

В своей книге Аммус утверждает: «Теоретически, идеальные деньги — это деньги с фиксированной массой, которую никто не может увеличить».

Как и золото, эта цифровая валюта представляет из себя устойчивые деньги и пор…

Управление по финансовым услугам Мальты (MFSA) сообщило, что биржа Binance не регулируется местными органами и не имеет лицензии на Мальте.

В ответ на сообщения СМИ о том, что Binance является «мальтийской криптовалютной биржей», регулятор заявил, что Binance не получала разрешение от MFSA на осуществление криптовалютной деятельности, поэтому биржа не подлежит регуляторному контролю со стороны этого органа.

У Binance нет главного офиса на Мальте, поэтому биржа не управляется из этого государства.

У Binance есть несколько регулируемых организаций по всему миру, которые управляются нашими партнерами или напрямую Binance.

Возможно, именно из-за этого биржу стали называть мальтийской, даже несм…

Проект Libra социальной сети Facebook не планирует использовать существующие языки для разработки смарт-контрактов.

«Move – это новый язык программирования смарт-контрактов, который войдет в основу проекта Libra.

Проект Libra предоставит единую платформу для переводов, которой смогут воспользоваться люди по всему миру.

Интересно, что, по словам Маурера, при создании Libra разработчики ориентировались на уже существующие децентрализованные проекты – Биткойн и Эфириум.

«Мы строим свой проект для финансового применения, для создания финансовой экосистемы для людей, которые не имели доступа к банковской системе.

Украинская криптовалютная биржа Kuna выпустила стейблкойн UAX, привязанный к украинской гривне в соотношении 1:1.

Новый стейблкойн создан на базе блокчейна Эфириума, поэтому UAX будет поддерживать основные стандарты ERC-20 и ERC-865.

Для привязки к украинской государственной валюте Kuna планирует внедрить метод аудита Proof-of-Reserve (доказательство резерва), который используется многими крупными криптовалютными биржами, в том числе биржей Kraken.

Стейблкойн будет публично представлен учредителем биржи Kuna Михаилом Чобаняном на конференции BlockchainUa 2020, которая состоится в марте.

По словам Чобаняна, Kuna станет первой биржей, которая выпустит стейблкойн, привязанный к гривне.

Один из законодателей штата Нью-Джерси представил законопроект, предполагающий получение лицензии криптовалютными компаниями.

Согласно документу под названием «Акт о блокчейне и цифровых активах», если компания планирует предоставлять в штате Нью-Джерси услуги, связанные с криптовалютами, то она должна будет получить соответствующую лицензию.

Для этого компании нужно предоставить свое название, зарегистрированное в соответствующих службах, торговые и рекламные марки, историю лицензирования и работы в других штаты, а также регламенты по противодействию отмыванию доходов и финансированию терроризма.

Также компании, работающие в Нью-Джерси, должны опубликовать свои внутренние документы, включа…

Сергей Майзус: биткоин-биржа BTC-e отмывала криптовалюту через счета в московском «Альфа-банке»В числе организаторов и участников схемы по отмыванию средств через криптовалютную биржу BTC-e были покерные игроки, которые использовали банковские счета в московском отделении «Альфа-Банка».

После открытия Винником счета в компании MFS ему была присвоена риск-категория medium-to-high, которая предусматривает сбор дополнительной документации: безусловная идентификация конечного бенефициара либо по видео, либо при личной встрече.

«Винник предоставил идентифицирующие документы и на своем ноутбуке продемонстрировал, что именно он является человеком, который управляет криптобиржей BTC-e, что он не но…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноPolkadot использует децентрализованных оракулов Chainlink в своей экосистемеChainlink завершила начальную интеграцию с блокчейном на базе платформы Substrate.

Разработчики Polkadot назвали это важной вехой во внедрении сети децентрализованных оракулов Chainlink в экосистему протокола.

«Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all @ParityTech #Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network.» –– @chainlink Read more: https://t.co/9AmTikNjEC — Polkadot (@polkadotnetwork) February 25, 2020«Chainlink становится первым и основным поставщиком оракулов для цепей на основе Substrate и в коне…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноBörse Stuttgart включила в листинг биткоин-ETP для торговли на понижениеВторая по величине фондовая биржа Германии Börse Stuttgart добавила в листинг инверсный торгуемый биржевой продукт (ETP) на базе блокчейна.

Börse Stuttgart стала второй крупной площадкой в Европе, открывшей торговлю продуктом 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC).

Первой инверсный биткоин-ETP от фирмы, ранее известной как Amun AG, включила в листинг крупнейшая фондовая биржа Швейцарии SIX.

На Börse Stuttgart продукт торгуется в паре с евро.

Подписывайтесь на новости ForkLog в Telegram: ForkLog Feed — вся лента новостей, ForkLog — самые важные новости и опросы.

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноУкраинцев предупредили о скам-проекте, продающем свои акции за биткоиныНациональная комиссия по ценным бумагам и фондовому рынку Украины (НКЦБФР) предупредила граждан о предположительно мошенническом проекте под названием «Украинский народный банк», акции которого организаторы предлагают приобрести за биткоины.

Помимо криптовалют акции «Украинского народного банка» якобы можно купить через сервисы Money Storage и Perfect Money.

В Нацкомиссии подчеркнули, что «Украинский народный банк» не включен в государственный реестр банков и реестр выпусков ценных бумаг.

На сайте проекта также не содержится никакой информации о юрлице и осно…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноМосковский ФК «Спартак» выпустит блокчейн-карточки со своими игрокамиМосковский футбольный клуб «Спартак» объявил о выпуске цифровых карточек с изображением своих игроков, обмениваться которыми фанаты смогут на блокчейн-платформе Sorare.

🔥 Рады сообщить, что «Спартак» присоединился к игре в фэнтези-футбол будущего @SorareHQ!

🤩⠀Побробнее на https://t.co/CuWjnBfM6M и на нашем сайте!

pic.twitter.com/MuGxaJ7lRl — FC Spartak Moscow (@fcsm_official) February 25, 2020Помимо обмена и торговли «блокчейн-изображениями», пользователи смогут задействовать их для игры в так называемый фэнтези-футбол.

Подписывайтесь на новости ForkLog в Teleg…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноМиллиардер Тим Дрейпер рассказал, за счет чего увеличил инвестиции в биткоинБиткоин-максималист венчурный инвестор Тим Дрейпер полгода назад вывел капитал с рынков ценных бумаг и увеличил криптовалютные активы.

Значительная часть его состояния теперь вложена в биткоин, сообщил он в интервью CNBC.

Комментируя последние критические высказывания Уоррена Баффета о биткоине, Дрейпер предупредил, что в ближайшие годы прибыльность инвестиций в такие сектора, как банковский и страховой, резко изменится в худшую сторону.

Дрейпер впервые инвестировал в биткоин в 2011 году.

Инвестор также убежден, что в ближайшие годы криптовалюты полность…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноВ Житомире задержали киберполицейского, вымогавшего взятку в биткоинахСлужба безопасности Украины (СБУ) задержала сотрудника киберполиции в Житомире, подозреваемого в вымогательстве взятки вначале в криптовалютах, а затем в фиате.

Как утверждают правоохранители, подозреваемый вымогал от местного жителя взятку в размере $5 тысяч за закрытие дела о распространении порнографии.

Подозреваемого задержали сразу после перевода части суммы на банковскую карту.

Напомним, в прошлом году четверых харьковских киберполицейских заподозрили в краже биткоинов после обыска.

Подписывайтесь на новости ForkLog в Telegram: ForkLog Feed — вся лента н…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноВ Банке Англии заявили о гонке центробанков и частных компаний в цифровизации платежейЦентральные банки должны ускорить разработку и выпуск цифровых валют (CBDC), чтобы не проиграть гонку с частными компаниями, считает главный кассир и директор по банкнотам Банка Англии Сара Джон.

Бездействие приведет к тому, что регуляторам придется догонять частный сектор в сфере цифровых платежей, добавила Сара Джон.

«Абсолютно правильно, что центральные банки думают о том, государственный или частный сектор будут лучшими провайдерами цифровой валюты в будущем», — подчеркнула представитель Банка Англии.

Центральные банки все активнее включают…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноКапитализация финтех-стартапа Revolut достигла $5,5 млрдБританский финтех-стартап Revolut с российскими корнями привлек $500 млн в рамках раунда финансирования.

Теперь компания оценивается в $5,5 млрд, что делает ее одной из самых крупных по капитализации европейских финтех-компаний.

https://t.co/5ATiS15NHE — Revolut (@RevolutApp) February 25, 2020Полученные инвестиции стартап направит на дальнейшую разработку продукта и расширение банковских операций в Европе.

В ноябре прошлого года глава Revolut Николай Сторонский отметил, что полученное финансирование стартап направит на расширение штата в рамках масштабирования бизнеса.

Подп…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноYouTube начал блокировать «сенсационные» трансляции на криптовалютную тематикуВидеоблогеры Ivan on Tech, Chico Crypto и CryptoWendyO были заблокированы администрацией хостинга YouTube после публикации очередных роликов о биткоине.

Это бессмысленно, ничего опасного или вредного в этом потоке не было», — написал Ivan on Tech, на которого подписано более 215 тысяч человек.

Примечательно, что Ivan on Tech получил страйк с пометкой «вредный и опасный контент» за видео с заголовком BITCOIN GOING VERTICAL!!!

BITCOIN GOING VERTICAL – это крайне безответственное заявление; его призывы перейти по спонсорским ссылкам на некоторые криптобир…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноМиллиардер Потанин расширит возможности собственного токенаРоссийский бизнесмен Владимир Потанин планирует расширить функциональность токенов, выпускаемых его блокчейн-платформой Atomyze.

Как пишет Bloomberg, помимо токенизации металлов актив можно будет использовать для покупки авиабилетов Nordstar и ски-пассов на курорте Роза Хутор в Сочи.

Платформа Atomyze также будет доступна для компаний в США и Швейцарии.

Ранее Банк России по результатам четырехмесячного тестирования блокчейн-платформы Atomyze одобрил проект и подготовил поправки к законопроекту «О цифровых финансовых активах».

Подписывайтесь на новости ForkLog в Telegram:…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноЧеченский спецназ обнаружил незаконную майнинг-ферму на 1,2 млн рублейВ Грозном отряд спецназначения выявил ферму для добычи криптовалют, незаконно подключенную к энергосети.

В результате около 20 силовиков изъяли оборудование для майнинга стоимостью 1,2 млн рублей.

По словам вице-премьера Чеченской республики по силовому блоку Абузайда Висмурадова, власти продолжат выявление незаконных ферм для добычи криптовалют и подобная деятельность «будет жестко пресекаться рамках законов РФ».

Ранее в Чечне заявили о начале «бескомпромиссной работы» по обнаружению незаконных майнинг-ферм.

Подписывайтесь на новости ForkLog в Telegram: ForkL…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноПроизводитель аппаратных кошельков CoolBitX привлек $16,75 млн инвестицийТайваньский стартап CoolBitX, производящий аппаратные криптовалютные кошельки CoolWallet, привлек в раунде финансирования Series B $16,75 млн.

Группу инвесторов возглавила японская финансовая компания SBI Holdings, в нее также вошли Monex Group, корейская биткоин-биржа BitSonic и Национальный фонд развития Тайваня.

Всякий раз, когда мы совершаем транзакцию для наших клиентов, мы делимся информацией о них в частном и безопасном канале», — заявил CEO CoolBitX Майкл Оу.

Примечательно, что японские компании SBI Holdings и Monex Group, инвестировавшие в стартап,…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноНацбанк Украины отчитался перед центробанками о тестировании е-гривныПредставители десяти центробанков совместно с Нацбанком Украины (НБУ) обсудили перспективы развития цифровых валют ЦБ (CBDC) и ознакомились с результатами тестирования е-гривны.

«Видение НБУ заключается в том, что е-гривна — это фиатная валюта в электронном виде, которая должна обмениваться на наличные или безналичные средства в соотношении 1:1», — подчеркнули в Нацбанке.

В свою очередь НБУ исследовал возможности технологии блокчейн для выпуска CBDC, а также правовые аспекты выпуска е-гривны.

Тем не менее в НБУ все еще не исключают использование блокчейна для в…

Страх и ненависть в реестре: блокчейн в индустрии онлайн-казиноБиткоин-биржа Coincheck анонсировала листинг QtumЯпонская криптовалютная биржа Coincheck объявила о планах поддержки монеты Qtum (QTUM).

Кроме того, Qtum будет включена в кредитный сервис Coincheck.

Однако точную дату добавления поддержки монеты в Coincheck не назвали.

Блокчейн Qtum поддерживает смарт-контракты и служит платформой для децентрализованных приложений и осуществления платежей.

Напомним, Coincheck в январе 2018 года подверглась одному из крупнейших взломов в истории индустрии.

Перевод первой главы книги Яна Прицкера “Изобретаем Биткоин” подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿Биткоин — это одноранговая электронная валюта, новая форма цифровых денег, которой люди или компьютеры могут обмениваться без какого-либо доверенного посредника (например банка), выпуск которой не контролируется ни одной определенной стороной.Подумайте о бумажном долларе или физической металлической монете. Когда вы передаете эти деньги другому человеку, ему не нужно знать, кто вы. Ему просто нужно верить, что деньги, которые он получает от вас, не являются подделкой. Обычно люди проверяют деньги визуально, тактильно или используют специальное оборудование для больших количеств.Поскольку мы живем в ци…

Перевод статьи Bitcoin Obsoletes All Other Money Паркера Льюиса от 24 января 2020 г. в рамках серии “Постепенно, затем внезапно”, подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿Когда дело доходит до распространения Биткоина, как правило, имеют место следующие два неизменных сценария. Все думают, что “подходящее” время для покупки уже прошло и всякий раз сожалеют, что не купили больше биткоинов. Из каждого правила есть исключения, но Биткоин обладает сверхъестественной способностью играть с человеческой психикой. Оказывается, 21 миллион — это очень малая цифра, и она, на самом деле, постепенно уменьшается благодаря фиксированной эмиссии биткоинов, в результате чего все больше и больше участников понимают, чт…

Данный обзор подготовлен основателем проекта bitcoin-only.com, 6102 и переведен биткоинером Tony ₿. Оригинал статьи можно найти здесь.СправкаТранзакции в сети Биткоин являются публичными по своей природе; они демонстрируют связь входных (неизрасходованные utxo) и выходных данных (новые неизрасходованные utxo) таким образом, чтобы каждый, у кого есть доступ к Биткоин-блокчейну (история транзакций) мог их проследить. Тем не менее, в силу того, что Биткоин-транзакции — не то же самое, что и биткоин-платежи, интерпретация этих транзакций и блокчейна является нетривиальной задачей.ПроблемаТак как каждый желающий может просмотреть связи между входными и выходными данными транзакций, кто угодно мо…

Становление БиткоинаЧасть 7: Недостающие части головоломкиПеревод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿Оригинал серии статей опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineИ, наконец, перед тобой — седьмой и заключительный выпуск серии статей Джакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением, первой частью “О времени”, второй частью “О людях”, третьей частью “Знакомьтесь: деньги”, четвертой частью “Поворот не туда (в поисках нового плана)”, пятой частью “Цифровая редкость” и шестой частью “Цифровые контракты”.В завершение серии “Становление Биткоина”, мы будем опираться на использование цифровых подп…

Статья подготовлена биткоинером Tony ₿К написанию этой статьи меня подтолкнул спор на данную тему, но результатом ее прочтения, я надеюсь, станет понимание и принятие читателем следующего:гибкость восприятия лингвистических метаморфоз и уважение диалектических особенностей не могут быть переоценены;способность смотреть на проблемы сквозь широкую линзу, не зацикливаясь на мелочах, является одним из ключевых факторов в нахождении общего языка.Мир не стоит на местеНе поймите меня неправильно, мелочи важны, но часто “чем хуже, тем лучше” является выигрышным подходом к возведению глобальных конструкций. Будь то программное обеспечение, как основа взаимоотношений человека и компьютера или языки в…

Становление Биткоина Часть 6.Цифровые контрактыПеревод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоин-энтузиастом Tony ₿Оригинал серии статей опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineЭто — шестой выпуск серии статей Джакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением, первой частью “О времени”, второй частью “О людях”, третьей частью “Знакомьтесь: деньги”, четвертой частью “Поворот не туда (в поисках нового плана)” и пятой частью “Цифровая редкость”.В шестой части серии статей “Становление Биткоина” мы будем опираться на идею использования цифровых головоломок как способа воспроизведения редкости и на важность механ…

Становление Биткоина Часть 5.Цифровая редкостьПеревод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоин-энтузиастом Tony ₿Оригинал серии статей опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineЭто — пятый выпуск серии статей Джиакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением, первой частью “О времени”, второй частью “О людях”, третьей частью “Знакомьтесь: деньги” и четвертой частью “Поворот не туда (в поисках нового плана)”.Далее в серии “Становление Биткоина” мы будем опираться на виртуализацию денег, создание опасных монополий и возникающую потребность в децентрализации, описанные ранее. Это поможет нам исследовать такие к…

Становление Биткоина Часть 4.Поворот не туда (в поисках нового плана)!Перевод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿.Оригинал опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineЭто — четвертый выпуск серии статей Джиакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением, первой частью “О времени”, второй частью “О людях” и третьей частью “Знакомьтесь: деньги”.В данном выпуске серии “Становление Биткоина” мы будем опираться на ранее приобретенные знания о стратегиях оптимизации “твердости”, “масштабности” и “секретности” для изучения концепций виртуализации и децентрализации денег.Путь к виртуализацииВопрос “Где?…

Становление Биткоина Часть 3.Знакомьтесь: деньгиПеревод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿Оригинал серии статей опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineЭто — третий выпуск серии статей Джакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением, первой частью “О времени” и второй частью “О людях”.В этом выпуске серии “Становление Биткоина” мы будем опираться на ранее приобретенные знания о стратегиях обмена. С целью изучения концепции редкости, ликвидности и социальной твердости товара мы сконцентрируемся на производственном разделении труда и на товарах с приемлемой физической твердостью, масштабнос…

Становление Биткоина Часть 2.О людяхПеревод серии статей Джакомо Зукко подготовлен биткоинером Tony ₿.Оригинал серии статей опубликован журналом Bitcoin MagazineА вот и вторая часть серии статей биткоинера Джакомо Зукко “Становление Биткоина: Краткий обзор истории от пещерных людей до сети lightning”. Не забудь ознакомиться с введением и первой частью “О времени”.В этой части мы будем опираться на ранее приобретенные стратегии хранения сбережений, их инвестирования и повышения производительности; мы также не оставим без внимания товары с приемлемой физической “твердостью” и “масштабностью”, что поможет нам изучить концепции обмена, специализации и “секретности”.От обособленного потребления …

You’ll probably get lost from time to time, but if I'm doing my job, you’ll still get the gist of it.

Now I'm a partner at a crypto venture capital firm called Dragonfly Capital—meaning in my day job I read a lot of white papers, evaluate technical crypto projects, and decide which ones to invest in.

Those are just APIs, specifications, and libraries—so long as you understand the core ideas behind how they work, you'll be able to figure out the details on your own.

Each lesson will have self-serve assignments tied to the course, both coding assignments and multiple choice questions to test your comprehension.

The term project will be to create your own fully-fledged cryptocurrency.

By analogy, we are currently experiencing a Cambrian Explosion in the field of cryptographic proofs of computational integrity (CI), a subset of which include zero knowledge proofs.

The purpose of this post is to identify the common denominators of all CI systems implemented in code and discuss a few differentiating factors.

Takeaway: symmetric CI systems can arithmetize over any field, leading to greater efficiency.

¹ The term ZKP is often misused to refer to all CI systems, even ones that are not, formally, ZKPs.

To avoid this confusion we use the loosely defined terms of “crypto proofs” and “computational integrity (CI) proofs”.

In addition to scalability, I think we’ll also see privacy integrated into one of the dominant chains in the 2020s.

These crypto startups will have the challenge that all startups have: making something people want.

In the 2020’s, I think we will see cryptocurrency adoption in emerging markets scale to hundreds of millions of users, with at least one country “tipping” so that the majority of transactions in their economy happen in cryptocurrency.

During the 2020’s I think we’ll see the cryptocurrency market structure evolve to more closely resemble the traditional financial world, with these functions being separated out from a legal and regulatory point of view.

By shifting cryptocurrency …

As such, it will become widely recognized as the flag of technology over the course of the 2020s.

To understand this claim, we need to define what "technology" is, what a "flag" would mean in this context, and why Bitcoin would be chosen as that flag.

Bitcoin: an ideological flag and a Schelling pointRecall that not every flag represents a geographical entity.

Bitcoin also becomes a flag in another sense: a rallying point, a Schelling point for an entrepreneurial community.

Bitcoin encodes the values of TechnologyBut when the global tech community rallies around the flag of Bitcoin, what exactly is it getting behind?

Bitcoin is a system that automates the continual discovery of consensus amongst its participants.

Bitcoin seeks to address the root problem with conventional currency: all the trust that’s required to make it work .

There are, unfortunately, many known threats to the privacy of Bitcoin users and as a result, Bitcoin in its current state is far from perfectly fungible.

ConvergenceAny two Bitcoin clients, if they connect to a single honest peer, should eventually converge on the same chain tip.

As an example, Bitcoin ABC broke this principle by instituting a 10 block maximum chain reorganization rule.

And that principle is this: when building mechanisms that decide high-stakes outcomes, it’s very important for those mechanisms to be credibly neutral.

Note that it is not just neutrality that is required here, it is credible neutrality.

Hence, the principle of credible neutrality, must also be augmented with another idea, the principle of efficacy.

Sometimes, this even means that if a credibly neutral mechanism to solve some problem has not yet been found, an imperfectly neutral mechanism should be adopted in the short term.

Credibly neutral mechanisms for solving many kinds of problems do exist in theory, and need to be developed and improved in practice.

States cannot be trusted with absolute power, and power over money is their best weapon in controlling people and spreading misery.

And when we get going about sound money, and the idea that fiat money = misery, therefore cryptocurrencies = freedom and happiness, it just sounds insane to them.

We are not interested in it.”It took smart people years to understand the power of the Internet, and it will take smart people years to understand the power of crypto currencies.

Or any of thousands of other experiments being conducted by smart people trying to do their own thing.

Like the Internet, crypto currencies and other blockchain experiments can be used for good or evil.

In this beginner’s guide to decentralized finance (“DeFi”) we review the following:Stablecoins.

Decentralized lending.

And these smart contract lego pieces can even create completely new concepts that haven’t been explored in the traditional world.

Another potential issue is that the interest rate volatility on many DeFi platforms could make it impractical for someone to participate.

With that said, these hedging methods themselves are in their infancy, and add smart contract risk of their own.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of crypto outsiders (including many people, banks, and governments), anything concerning crypto is scary—no one controls it!—and decidedly not pragmatic.

First, we offered secure and simple crypto storage, which amounted to centrally storing decentralized currency.

Second, we allowed people to purchase Bitcoin and Ether, which meant buying crypto with fiat currency.

And you definitely created more crypto users overall by providing storage capabilities than by offloading that to the user.

Indeed, some advanced crypto users were quick to point out that self-custody is “simple” to do.

The solution then was an encrypted web-browsing protocol for the public internet called HTTPS.

We've developed a conceptually similar solution today for encrypted transactions on a public blockchain, called Zcash.

In a fully shielded Zcash transaction, the timestamp is public, but no information about sender, receiver, or amount is public.

Like HTTPS, fully shielded Zcash transactions prevent eavesdropping and protect financial privacy.

Just as HTTPS became standard on the public internet to protect credit card transactions, we believe strong encryption will in time become standard on public blockchains to protect cryptocurrency transactions.

EncryptionTo understand public-key cryptography, we have to start with what we mean by encryption.

Public keys as identityIn public-key cryptography, a crude but useful analogy is to think of your public key like a username.

This is precisely what makes public-key cryptography feasible as a form of identity.

If those assumptions turn out to be false, it would imply that all of our public-key cryptography were fundamentally broken.

Most of your interactions with public-key cryptography you'll be outsourcing to libraries, so there's no need to get deep in the weeds quite yet.

Okay, so how difficult is it to generate a hashcash PoW with a difficulty level of \(N\) bits?

The first is limiting each hashcash token to a specific email address, so they're not reusable for different recipients.

You can see some Hashcash tokens Adam Back generated on the Hashcash website, such as this one:from hashlib import sha1 sha1(b"0:030626:adam@cypherspace.org:6470e06d773e05a8").hexdigest() # '00000000c70db7389f241b8f441fcf068aead3f0'This hashcash digest has 8 leading zeros in hex, equivalent to 32 leading zeros in binary.

To mitigate this, Hashcash requires the email server to remember any Hashcash tokens received in the last day.

The assignment has two parts: first, you'll be wr…

Merkle trees were invented by Ralph Merkle, one of the forefathers of modern cryptography.

Merkle trees are used widely in many applications, including Git, BitTorrent, ZFS, the Certificate Transparency framework, and of course, pretty much every cryptocurrency.

Merkle trees are also known as hash trees, because they hash data upwards in a tree.

Merkle trees in BitcoinInclusion proofs are a powerful primitive enabled by Merkle trees.

There are many more innovations on Merkle trees that are worth exploring, including proofs of non-inclusion, online updates, and n-ary Merkle trees.

But if you need stronger security (like Bitcoin does), you should use a more robust subset of hash functions known as cryptographic hash functions.

You would not use a cryptographic hash function in a hash map, since cryptographic hash functions pay for their security with worse performance.

Cryptographic hash functionsCryptographic hash functions come with three additional requirements over normal hash functions.

Thus, we know that all hash functions must have collisions—after all, all hash functions have finite output sizes, yet infinitely many possible inputs.

This is why robust cryptographic hash functions are harder to build than normal hash functions.

We don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto was.

Satoshi Nakamoto began coding the first implementation of Bitcoin in C++ in May of 2007.

But mostly, early on, Satoshi Nakamoto himself was the only person running the software and mining coins.

Having slowly distanced himself from the day-to-day of Bitcoin, Satoshi eventually faded away from the project permanently.

There has never been any proof that any individual is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is continuing on its remarkable path to the broad adoption of permissionless financial services. While many people celebrated passing $1 billion locked in DeFi products at the start of February 2020, only a week later, an additional $200 million had entered the ecosystem.DeFi products thus far have proven useful to early adopters with the resilience and knowhow required to navigate the often clunky user experience of Web 3.0. Companies like Argent are building the interface and user experience essential for the masses, with a vision to bring a billion people into the future of finance. Itamar Lesuisse, Co-founder and CEO of Argent, joins us to discuss his vision…

While recent blockchain launches seem to leverage various Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms, some believe Satoshi’s consensus mechanism is optimal for distributed protocols. As decentralized ledgers jockey to become the chain of choice for enterprises looking to leverage blockchain technology, projects are looking to offer a solution that maximizes security, decentralization, and transaction throughput. Kevin Wang, a Co-founder of Nervos, joins us to discuss why Proof of Work was implemented as the consensus mechanism for the network. To enable greater flexibility for application developers, Nervos created a Common Knowledge Base (CKB) to focus on the security of assets, enabling a comple…

Like previous crypto winters, those actually building the ecosystem have been working diligently to create applications with industry-changing potential. The year 2020 may prove to be the year of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), with many exciting projects re-creating financial products common to the world of traditional finance, in the open and permissionless blockchain space. Synthetic assets enable exposure to the price action of an asset without actually holding the underlying asset. Kain Warick is the Founder of Synthetix, a company creating synthetic assets for DeFi, enabling exposure to fiat currencies, commodities (gold and silver), and cryptocurrencies. They have large aspirations to …

Many within the cryptofinance industry have been patiently waiting for regulatory oversight to deliver the clarity required for institutional adoption. Recent updates by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which issues guidelines for 200 countries and territories, attempts to apply the same rules and regulations required of traditional finance to the world of virtual currencies. Yaya Fanusie's background as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, and research on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies, provide valuable insight into the necessity of regulation in the space to mitigate the risk of bad actors. Yaya discusses the history and evolution of “Know Your Customer” and …

The blockchain trilemma is the generally accepted concept that it's not possible to scale public and permissionless blockchains without compromising on security, decentralization, or both. While the industry seems focused on building Layer 2 solutions to scale the transaction capacity of public networks, Algorand believes it has solved the trilemma, offering a network that scales without compromise to security or decentralization. Silvio Micali, Algorand's Founder and Head of Research, as well as the company's CEO, Steven Kokinos, discuss the project's background, recent protocol upgrades, and how Algorand will create a great ecosystem for developers.Topics covered in this episode:Silvio’s …

Governance within any community has been a work in progress for humanity's history. The blockchain ecosystem continues to develop and offer an alternative to today's centralized powers. With this, distributed projects and technologies will need to enact clear governance to ensure viable competition with the streamlined decision-making processes present in today's institutions. The absence of codified governance in Bitcoin may be one of its most significant traits, signaling to the world its predictability due to its inability to change drastically. New projects like Edgeware, however, hope to encode the rules of governance on-chain and ensure a transparent process for stakeholders wishing t…

Charlie Shrem became fascinated with Bitcoin in 2011 but grew frustrated with the hassle of buying it from the leading exchange at the time, Mt. Gox. To make the process faster and more convenient, Charlie created BitInstant in 2012. BitInstant quickly grew and by 2013 became responsible for processing a third of all Bitcoin transactions. This was with the help of Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins, who were his seed investors, and Erik Voorhees, who led their marketing efforts. The success of BitInstant was short-lived. In a time where Bitcoin's primary applications were price speculation and buying things on the Silk Road, Charlie spent time in prison after a lack of customer due-diligenc…

With global commerce and finance continuing to digitize, the world’s borders are seemingly becoming more fluid, even as physical walls are built. How does this globalization affect the sovereignty of nation-states and their ability to democratically direct their own economic future? In a panel moderated by Epicenter host, Sunny Aggarwal, we explore the interpretation of monetary policy from a global context, discuss the morality of impacting other nations, and the potential for new technologies to offer alternatives in a dollar-dominated world. The conversation includes Jae Kwon, CEO of Tendermint; John P Conley, Professor at Vanderbilt University; Steve Randy Waldman, Author of Interfluidi…

Managing crypto-assets can be an anxiety-inducing experience for a lot of people. While it's quite empowering to “be your own bank,” it's also scary for a lot of people who understand the risks associated with self-custody. Although cryptocurrency wallets have made tremendous progress since the days when a full-sync of the blockchain was required, there are still significant hurdles that limit broad adoption. This conversation on the future of wallets at SF Blockchain Week Epicenter conference includes Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto, David Gold of FIO Protocol, Dan Finlay of MetaMask, and Ouriel Ohayon of ZenGo. They discuss design, app store policies, and the evolution necessary to enable more…

Much of the digital world now operates in the cloud. A handful of companies are responsible for the massive market, and the centralization makes many people worry about censorship, privacy, and network resilience. David Vorick’s passion for distributed file storage had him start Sia in 2014. He’s been working fervently ever since to develop a viable competitor to the centralized solutions that are responsible for much of the content on the internet today. David aim’s to create a more private, resilient, and secure alternative to Amazon Web Services while also outperforming it.Topics covered in this episode:Why David started Sia rather than taking a job in big-techThe Sia launch in 2015Why S…

Many people find that the crypto-finance space is quite difficult for non-technical people to understand and interact with the technologies. Some projects and people have made tremendous progress in creating tools and interfaces that allow a broader audience to participate, speculate, and learn.Taylor Monahan started MyEtherWallet as a side project in 2015, only for it to grow into one of the significant pieces of software people used to participate in the 2017 ICO boom. She has since "design-forked" the codebase and created MyCrypto, an open-source tool for generating ether wallets, handling ERC-20 tokens, and interacting with the blockchain with a clean and intuitive design.Topics covered…

We were joined by Luka Mueller, who played a key role in establishing Switzerland as a cryptocurrency center and in laying the legal groundwork for the ICO boom. In 2014, his law firm MME worked with the Ethereum team to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run its public fundraiser. A model that was later copied by countless other projects and led MME to work with many other leading protocols like Cosmos and Tezos. We also discussed his new project Sygnum, a cryptocurrency-focused bank. Nearly every company that works in the cryptocurrency space has had problems with its banking partner. Legal uncertainty, lack of knowledge, or simple unwillingness to work with cryptocurrency companies has m…

As the crypto ecosystem continues to grow, wallets and exchanges are quickly evolving to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. Viktor Radchenko, CEO and founder of Trust Wallet, joins us this week to talk about why he created a noncustodial wallet solution, what makes Trust Wallet unique, and how the acquisition by Binance has allowed his team to focus on a long term vision. Viktor helps us understand what it means to be part of the Binance Ecosystem, and what he believes the future holds for wallets, key storage and custody. Topics covered in this episode:Victor's bio and how he ended up moving from the Ukraine to the USHow hacking games got Victor into cryptocurrencyWhat Trus…

Bitmain is one of the most well known, and one of the most polarizing companies in the blockchain space. The largest ASIC manufacturer and operator of several mining pools, Bitmain is the center of many controversies and discussions around centralization in the space. But not only is it the subject of discussion, Bitmain breaks out of the “passive miner” stereotype and is very active in many of the discussions in the community, most notably the Great Scaling Debates. In this episode, we sit down with Nishant Sharma, Head of Community Relations, who is responsible for acting as a bridge between the Bitmain company and the many communities it interacts with through its mining and ASIC operati…

Click to download audio versionOn Today's Show...With the price of bitcoin headed up again, the idea of blockchains and digital currencies has never been more palatable to the mainstream.

Episode Credits:This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Email [email protected]Have any questions or comments?

Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Link - Yang 2020Later on, we'll dig into the "why" of scams as we begin a longer conversation on the topic.

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Email [email protected] Have any questions or comments?

On Today's Show...Andreas answers the burning question' Has he tried haggis? Just kidding' He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook.This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by http://Brave.com/ltb and http://eToro.ltbshow.comYears of jokes about 'œFaceCoin' and 'œZuckBucks' have finally come to life '" sort of. In a previous episode, he talked about how some venture capitalists are monkeying around by downplaying the killer applications of open blockchains in favor of' bananas. Now he makes us wonder whether Libra will even survive to become a production network. Is Silicon Valley coming fo…

Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

But if a user is brand new to the Lightning network, how do they go about receiving their first payment?

- This question has been answered by both ZAP wallet and Phoenix wallet, using different techniques.

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Credits for LTB#423This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Original Photo by Ubaidhulla Adam on UnsplashThis episode featured Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan MohanMusic for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and general fuzz, with editing by Jonas.

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Do you have any questions or comments?

Email [email protected]

Click to download audio versionOn Today's Episode...

show enlisted CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen and early cypherpunk Zooko Wilcox for a conversation on the history, challenges and long term development path of early, formative technologies.

This episode featured CoinDesk Reporter Leigh Cuen and Zooko Wilcox.

Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and general fuzz, with editing by Jonas.

Email [email protected]Views: 2,025

Click to download audio versionOn Today's Show...We're listening to echoes of the past.

In the midst of the biggest bubble yet, finding ourselves in the "then they laugh at you" phase, and with the china narrative rising for the first time as trade volumes overtook the rest of the world, I was joined by Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos in early 2014 for a conversation that is very different, yet somehow the same as we reacted in real time to all-time high prices of $220,But first, In the nearly seven years since we started talking Bitcoin, my favorite segment from my favorite writer is without question, the island of stone bitcoins by then-LTB managing editor George Ettinger.

Bi…

Click to download audio versionOn today's show, we discuss the idea of true privacy on public, transparent blockchains and some of the ways it's working (or not) in Bitcoin or related projects right now.

How can public blockchains have privacy?

Researchers, cryptographers and state level actorsand more...Let’s Talk Bitcoin!

Visit LTBShow.com for all 419 of our past episodes or to subscribe directly to the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Episode 420 (How can public blockchains have privacy) Credits:Sponsors - Brave.com & eToro.comHosts:Other StaffViews: 2,336

Let’s Talk Bitcoin!

is a long-running independent podcast on the ideas, people and projects powering the cryptocurrency narrative.

Let’s Talk Bitcoin!

is a long-running independent podcast on the ideas, people and projects powering the cryptocurrency narrative.

On this show, we basically talk about everything other than the price.

Have a question?

Want to advertise?

Something else?

Contact us: [email protected]

Click to download audio versionOn today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!, we’re jumping back into the deep end with a wide-ranging conversation on Mass Adoption, Cargo Cults, Synthetic Shorts and more...

Subscribe to the LTB Show Only feed using your favorite serviceCreditsThis episode was sponsored by Purse.io, Brave.com and eToro.comThanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Today's episode featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, and Adam B. Levine, with music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.

Any questions or comments?

Email [email protected]Views: 2,541

Click to download audio versionAdam B. Levine provides a brief update on the Let's Talk Bitcoin!

showSummary:Adam is building out a new Podcasts division at CoindeskThe LTB Show is still 100% independent and will remain so, although we may distribute the show in additional waysYour existing RSS feeds will still work, and you don't need to do anything different to keep hearing new episodes of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

when we return next week.

New episode will return next week with a group discussion on Statechains with creator Ruben SomsenThanks for listening, please send questions or comments to [email protected]Views: 2,331

Click to download audio version“It just keeps getting kicked up to the next level and at some point it'll be the dollar.

That's the last thing that got us out of the last emergency and then people will finally realize they got nothing left.” Dr. Robert Murphy, LTB#416On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan are joined by [Dr. Robert Murphy]() for an in-depth conversation about reserve currency transitions, statistics, economics, and why things are the way they are.

Selected Excerpts from episode 416 provided courtesy of @ProfessorMeo_wSubscribe to the LTB Show Only feed using your favorite serviceCreditsImage Credits: https://upload.wikimed…

Click to download audio versionOn Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Adam B. Levine sits down with William K. Santiago to discuss Blockchains, Reserve Assets, Regional Central Banks and more.

Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite serviceCreditsImage by David Mark from PixabayThanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!

Today's episode featured William K. Santiago and Adam B. Levine, with music by Jared Rubens.

Email [email protected]Tune in next week for our conversation about reserve currency transitions with a special guest.

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 21: Bitcoin’s Origins and the Genesis BlockadeAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Bitcoin’s Origins and the Genesis Blockade,” Andreas recounts the origins of Bitcoin and the meaning of the message that was embedded forever in its genesis block.

Now he focuses on the financial blockade against WikiLeaks and who the banks truly serve, while trying to leave us none the wiser and with no other choices.

This talk took place on August 6th 2018 at ‘The Internet of Money Tour’ at the Hilton Denver Inverness in Colorad…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 20: Investing in Education Instead of SpeculationAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Investing in Education Instead of Speculation,” Andreas explains how education and training in the Bitcoin and open blockchain space can enrich your life in a sustainable way.

Unlike speculating on a basket of crypto-assets and tokens, investing in skills is permanent, transferable across chains, and empowering.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

Monthly…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 19: Bubble Boy and the Sewer RatAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Bubble Boy and the Sewer Rat,”Andreas delivers a whimsical security analysis of the open, public and decentralized Bitcoin system, compared to the closed, proprietary and centralized alternatives.

He argues that the strategy of security by isolation has consequences for the ability of any computer system to build immunity.

While it may not be pretty, being constantly exposed and attacked in the wild open internet will help Bitcoin achieve censo…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 18: Bitcoin and the Banks – Five Stages of GriefAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Bitcoin and the Banks: Five Stages of Grief,”Andreas examines the rise of “Blockchain” as an attempt by the banking status quo to dilute the disruptive potential of Bitcoin by removing its most interesting features.

He argues that this is one symptom of a multi-stage grief process that banks will inevitably transition through as they try to come to terms with Bitcoin and the new open blockchain ecosystem.

This talk was delivered…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 17: Bitcoin, Payment Security, and Consumer ProtectionAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Bitcoin, Payment Security, and Consumer Protection,” Andreas advocates that regulators adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ approach towards Bitcoin, so as to not hamper the potential of its most innovative features.

He also criticises the insanity of the current fragmented systems of payment, breaks down why they fail at consumer protection, and how with Bitcoin we can expect better.

This talk was delivered on November 24th 2014 at the…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 16: One of a Kind – Why Bitcoin is ‘The Next Bitcoin’Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

He also tells the story about how he bought bitcoin for the first time, why it is not the get-rich-quick scheme you may think it is, and the ways they could fail.

This talk took place on July 12th 2019 at the Athens Bitcoin and Blockchain Tech meetup in Athens, Greece.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/aantonopBOOKS:MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://amzn.to/2xcdsY…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 15: Outside the Golden Cage of BankingAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Outside the Golden Cage of Banking,” Andreas covers the history of financial regulation in the United States, and how banks became the cop of last resort in countries around the world.

In the last episode, he prompted you to think about combating the politics of fear.

Finally, he argues that Bitcoin will thrive outside the golden cage of the banking cartel.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are perform…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 14: Bitcoin – A Swiss Bank In Everyone’s PocketAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Bitcoin: A Swiss Bank in Everyone’s Pocket,” Andreas examines the morality of technology and the politics of fear, including former President Barack Obama’s infamous statement that broad adoption of cryptography and cryptocurrencies would be like having “a Swiss bank account your pocket.” In the last episode, he questioned the viability of Facebook’s Libra project.

Once we equip more people around the world with the equivalent of…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 13: Libre Not Libra – Facebook’s Blockchain ProjectAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project,” Andreas answers the burning question… Has he tried haggis?

Just kidding… He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook.

Now he makes us wonder whether Libra will even survive to become a production network.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 12: The Killer App – Bananas on the Blockchain?

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “The Killer App: Bananas on the Blockchain?” Andreas focuses on the two main killer apps in the open blockchain ecosystem: sound money and governance.

He argues that their failure to consider the broader needs of the other six billion people.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 11: Universal Access to Basic FinanceAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Universal Access to Basic Finance,” Andreas advocates for protecting and expanding access to universal basic finance.

He also declares that those who develop surveillance infrastructure have exhibited moral bankruptcy and should face a period of scrutiny over their ethical integrity.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

iTUNES: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/un…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 10: Another Brick in the FirewallAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Another Brick in the Firewall,” Andreas discusses the new security architecture that we have developed within globally-connected societies and open networks of the information economy.

This talk took place on June 7th 2019 at the We Are Developers conference in Berlin, Germany.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

Monthly live Q&As with Andreas?

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 9: Picking the Right Blockchain for the JobAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Picking the Right Blockchain for the Job,” Andreas asks which blockchain is the best blockchain, and then shows why that question falls short.

He argues that we should choose tools that are best designed for the applications we want to build.

We must also understand that what we create may be used by the market in unanticipated ways, and that function can change over time.

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andre…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 8: Worse Than UselessAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Worse Than Useless: Financial Surveillance,” Andreas draws a connection between medical pseudoscience and the financial totalitarian surveillance, as practiced by modern banks and state intelligence agencies.

He urges that, before we try to “fix” the financial system, we should first be sure we are not making it worse.

This talk took place November 25th 2017 at the Riga Art Space for the Baltic Honeybadger conference in Riga, Latvia.

This series is called…

UN SCRYPTEDEpisode 7: Money as a System of ControlAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonopWebsite: https://aantonop.com/In “Money as a System of Control,”Andreas reviews the three functions of money that you may remember from your first introduction to economics: store of value (SoV), medium of Exchange (MoE), and unit of Account (UoA).

But what if there is actually a fourth use of money which subordinates all the other functions?

This series is called ‘Unscrypted’ for a reason: all of Andreas’ talks are performed without slides or notes.

Become a patron: https://www…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin educator, entrepreneur and developer) and Alex Gladstein (CSO of Human Rights Foundation) join me in this episode to talk about their fantastic new book, The Little Bitcoin Book.

This is the perfect short book to give your precoiner friends!

It has succinct explanations on why bitcoin is important.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how this book came together, what the authors are hoping to achieve, and if you like it - then make sure you buy copies of the book to give to your friends and family.

Links: The Little Bitcoin Book website: http://littlebitcoinbook.com/ The Little Bitcoin Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Little-Bitcoin-Book-Matters-Finances-…

Santiago Siri, the cofounder and president of Democracy Earth, reads from his essay on how governance and identity change in the age of cryptography.

In the same way the welfare state prevented structural revolutionary change, Libra (or some other kind of fake cryptocurrency) will try to prevent the spectre that is haunting the world today – cryptography.

The lack of a reliable human identity protocol is the missing element preventing democracy from happening on the internet today.

The consensus was that any relevant attempt to formalize human identity will inevitably be attacked by powerful actors, while lacking formal human identity risks leaving the whole crypto-economy under tyrannical …

Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, reads his essay, A World Without Bitcoin.

In the Bitcoin world, however, it’s much more difficult for bankers to steal your money and for governments to devalue your savings.

In most major urban areas on earth, there is some mixture of Bitcoin ATMs, peer-to-peer marketplaces, Bitcoin brokers, and brick-and-mortar exchange points.

Fourth, consider the growing number of people who are falling under intense daily financial surveillance.

In the progression of the global banking elite first ignoring Bitcoin, then laughing at Bitcoin, then fighting Bitcoin, and then giving up, we are nearing the end of the laughing phase.

Linda Xie, cofounder at Scalar Capital, reads her essay on how the crypto community can successfully uses memes to help people understand the technology. Thank you to our sponsors! CipherTrace:[...]

The post How Memes Can Help Crypto Go Mainstream appeared first on Unchained Podcast.

Jonathan Levin, co-founder and CSO of Chainalysis, and Kim Grauer, head of research, discuss the company’s 2020 Crypto Crime Report, which explores how cryptocurrency criminals, who perpetrate hacks and scams[...]

The post The Rogue 100: How Cryptocurrency Criminals Cash Out appeared first on Unchained Podcast.

Brendan Eich, CEO and president of Brave, discusses his history in tech prior to crypto, including working at Netscape, how he created Javascript in 10 days and his short stint as CEO of Mozilla, what problems with ads that Brave is trying to solve, and why Brave needs the Basic Attention Token.

Laura Shin:Today’s guest is Brendan Eich, CEO and president of Brave.

I don’t know, the term’s not original to her.

You don’t know, when you go to a page without protection, like Brave Shields offers, where your data’s going.

Every time you say, you know what, get a Bitcoin wallet that optimizes fees, you’ll be great, a lot of users don’t know what to do.

You know, that’s really where we saw the need, and Binance has done a wonderful job of facilitating global economies to help this out.

You’ve also got, you know, that’s where you’re going to be leaving market orders.

And so, that’s really one of the components that was early on that we factored in.

So, you know, start your day off with really, really low trading fees.

That’s a huge progression from where we’ve been, and I think that’s something that is smart for the world to take awareness of.

They explain what they think will happen in the smart contract platform race, why Ethereum is so far in the lead and whether anything will become an Ethereum killer.

All that stuff I think has been really, really valuable in not just evaluating crypto projects but in becoming a good investor.

We fundamentally believe that there’s going to be…Bitcoin isn’t the only thing that’s going to succeed in the space.

Haseeb Qureshi:So, I think Bitcoin, it’s been pretty hard…as investors when we look at Bitcoin there are two questions you need to ask yourself.

Is that in the category of DAOs, or do you think Moloch Dow, or do you think things like Nexus Mutual?

In this Best of 2019 episode, I selected the clips that seemed most representative of what crypto was about this year, which I call, The Year Things Got Geopolitical.

My only regret is that none of the clips about DAOs lent themselves well to this episode.

However, years from now, after we’ve got global stablecoins pinging around the world at a high transactions-per-second rate, the crypto community has made peace with U.S. regulators, and more of our lives seems to take place in the borderless digital world, perhaps we’ll find it ironic that DAOs were burbling up right around the same time.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Kraken: https://www.kraken.comCrypto.com: http://crypto.com/CipherTrace: …

I cover basic explanations of Bitcoin, blockchain and Ethereum, plus we go into questions around mining and electricity usage, and why anyone would use cryptocurrency.

That, in a nutshell, is how the Bitcoin software works, but instead of people in a village shouting, it uses computers running the Bitcoin software that are spread across the globe.

Miners are any computers that run the Bitcoin software and add transactions to the ledger.

For about the first four years the Bitcoin software ran, it dispensed 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes.

Because bitcoin transactions are shared on a public ledger, it is theoretically possible to trace bitcoin transactions.

About this EpisodeIn this week's episode of the podcast, we catch up with Alex Glukowski of Matter Labs to hear about zkSync, the latest iteration of their zkRollup implementation build to be a scaling and privacy engine for Ethereum.

We also touch on the Redshift protocol, a new transparent zkSNARK system that emerged as a result of work on this system.

Here are a few links that we mention:Previous episode on Matter LabsZkSync and RedshiftREDSHIFT: Transparent SNARKs from List Polynomial Commitment IOPsHotstuff paperGive the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you!

Please share your feedback with us here:…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we catch up with Christopher Goes, IBC Lead at Tendermint.

We learn a bit more about the Cosmos Network ecosystem and his work on IBC.

We then focus in on how he is thinking about zero knowledge proofs in the context of IBC like-interoperability constructions.

We explore some of the ways in which zkps could be incorporated into different schemes for interoperability - including bridging, lightclient constructions, validity proofs and more.

We mention the following episodes on Cosmos:Light Clients and ZKPs with CeloDiving into Cosmos with SunnyGive the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

This week, we explore the Fractal transparent SNARK construction with its authors Dev Ojha (https://twitter.com/valardragon) and Nick Spooner (https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~spooner/) - both students of Alessandro Chiesa (https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~alexch/) at UC Berkeley. We explore how Fractal works, how it improves on some of the earlier work on Sonic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTRAg6Km1os) and Marlin, how it borrows from but differentiates itself from STARKs, as well as what they discovered while working on this paper about recursive SNARKs and what makes that property possible. Here is some of the material we touch on: Fractal Paper (https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1076.pd…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we catch up with Izaak Meckler from 0(1) Labs to talk about launching a recursive snark based incentivised test net, a recap of recursive SNARKs, updates on the working SNARKitecture, and a look at what's next for the project.

We also touch on some new use-cases and ideas for how zkps may be a component in making computer programmes potentially more accountable to their users.

Please listen to our earlier episode with Izaak and Evan to get a full picture of 0(1)Labs and the Coda projectHere are a few of the other projects we mentioned!

ZEXEMarlinFractalNotes from the SNARKoconomicon at the zkSummitGive the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Wheth…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we learn more about Plonk with Ariel Gabizon and Zac Williamson from Aztec.

PLONK is a recent highly efficient, universal SNARK construction.

We explore what distinguishes Plonk from some other other new constructions including their focus on Lagrange-bases to deconstruct complex problem statements into simple polynomial identities.

This episode goes very deep and so we do recommend you check out a few of previous episodes to help you follow along!

If you like what we do:Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here:ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1c…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we chat with the Roman Storm and Roman Semanov from Tornado.cash all about mixers.

We explore what they are used for and how they work, how Zero Knowledge can be incorporated to provide more privacy, what the challenges are and what the future holds for the Tornado.Cash project.

Here are some episodes or resources we mention:https://tornado.cash/https://medium.com/@tornado.cash/tornado-cash-version-2-has-been-released-8c739d3706dfhttps://github.com/tornadocashhttps://www.zeroknowledge.fm/50 (Episode with Zooko)Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you!

Pleas…

About this EpisodeIn this end of year episode, we chat about what we've learned in 2019, some of our favourite episodes, this year's explosion in ZK research and what we are looking forward to in 2020!

Thanks to Henrik José for updated jingle!

We mention a number of episodes from this past year, have a look through our episodes here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/For the Zk Specific episodes have a look here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseriesGive the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you!

Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7If you like what we do:Follow us on Tw…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Daniel Benarroch and Aviv Zohar from QEDIT - a privacy software startup focused on bringing Zero Knowledge to enterprise customers.

We chat about the power of zero knowledge proof systems, some of the emerging use cases using zk systems and The Zero Knowledge Standardization Effort.

Here are some links we mention:Aviv's websiteHilbert's problems - twenty-three unsolved problems in mathematics presented in 1900Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you!

Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7If you like …

About this EpisodeThis week we catch up with Zaki Manian, Director at Tendermint, the company building Cosmos architecture, and co-founder of Iqlusion Validator.

We chat about the blockchain in Silicon Valley, why SF loves DeFi, the challenge of balancing pragmatism and regulation with a decentralised ideology, the nuances of PoS systems, the wins of 2019 and what is on the horizon.

Here are links to a few things we discuss:-Tarun Chitra's paper on how the existance of derivatives can undermine the security of a PoS system-Blog post summarizing Tarun's paper here-ZKValidatorGive the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback.

Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love …

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we catch-up our friend Lucas Vogelsang from Centrifuge.

Centrifuge is an open, decentralized platform to connect the global financial supply chain.

We chat about the journey Lucas took to co-founding this company, how privacy plays a role in his thinking and we discover what it means to be a project building with zkSNARKs today.

Nucypher is currently looking for an engineering lead to work on a new open-source cryptosystem for privacy-preserving smart contracts.

This is a new product and so you will get to work on some cool primitives like fully homomorphic encryption and zero knowledge proofs.

About this EpisodeIn this week's episode, we chat with Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs, about IPFS, Libp2p, and the much anticipated incentivised decentralised storage protocol Filecoin.

We dig into the history of the Filecoin project, the gap in the “market” they are trying to fill, the challenges they have found in the development of the Filecoin protocol and the latest tech they are exploring.

Here are some helpful links:https://ipfs.io/https://libp2p.io/https://filecoin.io/https://protocol.ai/https://protocol.ai/projects/#IPFSDecentralised storage pt 1OrientDecentralised storage pt 2Arweave Decentralised Storage episodeYou can see some of the constraints and parameters for filecoin…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we catchup with Alan Szepieniec, a researchers at Nervos and co-author of the Supersonics paper & the Marvellous family of Hash Functions (which specify the Vision/Rescue cyphers).

We chat about his past work in cryptography, how the Supersonics paper came to be, and dive into the new generation of hash functions emerging, including the Marvelous universe.

For more info, please have a look at these resources and past episodes!

And here are some of the previous ZKP episodes that we mention:If you like what we do:Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here:ETH: 0xC0FFEE…

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, Anna chats with Fredrik and Nicole Zhu, Developer at Parity Technologies, about the experimental Polkadot Canary Network they call Kusama.

We cover how Kusama was developed, the goals of this format and what launching a Chaos Canary Network is all about.

Here is a few more links:https://twitter.com/kusamanetworkhttps://kusama.network/Zero Knowledge Podcast is also looking for some feedback!

Whether you are a long-time listener of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, or new to the show, we would love to hear from you!

Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7If you like what we do:Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin …

About this EpisodeIn this week’s episode, we sit down with Joseph Bonneau, Assistant Professor at NYU and co-author on the Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) paper.

We discuss VDFs, what they are, how they were developed and what they can be used for.

Safe browsing claims to protect users by providing them with something called k-anonymity.

Recent security news suggests that the k-anonymity has failed at protecting user privacy in certain circumstances.

This is the topic that Trail of Bits explores in the blog post.

Базовый БлокРусскоязычный подкаст о блокчейн-технологиях.

Разбираемся в сути, курс не обсуждаем.

Авторы: Сергей Тихомиров, Иван Иваницкий, Сергей Павлин, Александр Селезнев

Базовый БлокРусскоязычный подкаст о блокчейн-технологиях.

Разбираемся в сути, курс не обсуждаем.

Авторы: Сергей Тихомиров, Иван Иваницкий, Сергей Павлин, Александр Селезнев

Игорь Корсаков – создатель мобильного Bitcoin/Lightning-кошелька Bluewallet. Говорим об истории проекта, особенностях разработки кошельков и будущем Lightning-экосистемы. 01:38 откуда взялось название Bluewallet? 02:43 как Игорь пришел в блокчейн-индустрию 06:14 задачи для разработчика биткоин-кошелька: источник энтропии 10:28 сложности с бэкапами 11:37 правильно ли заставлять пользователя записывать мнемонику? 13:44 о форматах биткоин-адресов 18:43 как рассчитываются комиссии в разных кошельках? 20:22 как работают механизмы замены транзакций в мемпуле? 22:15 чем отличается replace-by-fee от child-pays-for-parent? 23:50 как в Bluewallet пришла поддержка Lightning 25:14 что такое кастодиальн…

Алина Асеева – co-founder UniDAO и специальный корреспондент ББ в Давосе, где в январе прошел всемирный экономический форум. О чем говорят high net worth individuals в кулуарах форума, зачем центральным банкам токены, запустится ли Libra и многое другое – в бонусном выпуске: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bb-107b-alina-ob-33520479 Станьте патроном подкаста и получите доступ к эксклюзивным материалам!

Майкл Росс-Джонсон и Владислав Булочников – CEO и Co-Founder в Chatex, биткойн-обменнике на базе мессенджеров. Они рассказали Базовому Блоку о преимуществах обменника в мессенджере, какую принципиальную инновацию несёт Chatex и как он помогает людям в Африке использовать Биткойн. 0:00 – цитаты из выпуска 0:53 – вступление, о чём этот выпуск 2:20 – как гости попали в криптоиндустрию 7:37 – какие существуют и существовали способы обмена криптовалют, в чём их отличие 23:00 – почему Chatex есть только в мессенджерах 28:15 – отличие Chatex от других чатботов 40:34 – как Chatex устроен изнутри 50:22 – в каких странах присутствует компания + кейсы использования криптовалют в различных странах 1:18…

Иван Богатый — исследователь в инвестиционной компании Dragonfly Capital и гость ББ-106.

Иван также известен как автор нашумевшего поста об уязвимости в протоколе Mimblewimble, которая, по расчетам автора, позволяет деанонимизировать большинство транзакций в анонимной криптовалюте Grin.

Этот пост вызвал жаркие дискуссии и в нашем ББ-чате.

В бонусном эпизоде подробно разбираем сетевой уровень Grin и атаку, позволяющую связать получателя и отправителя 96% транзакций:https://www.patreon.com/posts/patrons-only-ob-33274744Станьте патроном подкаста и получите доступ к эксклюзивным материалам!

Иван Богатый — исследователь в инвестиционной компании Dragonfly Capital, специализирующейся на блокчейн-проектах.

После работы в Google Research и создания успешного проекта стейблкоина для крупной американской биржи Иван исследует блокчейн-рынок с точки зрения инвестора с техническим бэкграундом.

Иван также известен как автор нашумевшего поста об уязвимости в протоколе Mimblewimble, которая, по расчетам автора, позволяет деанонимизировать 96% транзакций в анонимной криптовалюте Grin.

Этот пост вызвал жаркие дискуссии и в нашем ББ-чате.

49:03 о важности личных знакомств в VC52:01 social impact в венчурном инвестировании54:38 особенности криптовалютных венчурных фондов57:03 примеры успешных…

Открываем 2020 год обзором доклада Messari Research о трендах в блокчейн-индустрии.

01:28 кто такие Messari и Райан Селкис03:12 общие впечатления и оглавление05:10 десять людей, за которыми нужно следить в 2020: CZ, Zooko и другие18:43 нарративы: гипербиткоинизация против цифрового золота, эфир это деньги?

1:07:37 необечпеченные долги и проблема identity1:12:30 Web3: всё, что не вошло в другие главы1:18:03 децентрализованную социальную сеть сделает Facebook?

Semux не проводил токенсейла или ICO, а развивается силами комьюнити и за счет самофинансирования.

Или чтобы поэкспериментировать со своими смарт-контрактами в тестнете или даже в основной сети (сейчас стоимость транзакций ~ 2-3 коп.).

Аудио-версия доклада Туура Демеестера «Биткоин-реформация».

Автор проводит параллели между тенденциями в мире биткоина и историей Нидерландов XVI-XVII веков и показывает, что биткоин может стать началом масштабного социально-экономического тренда, сравнимого с протестантской реформацией.

Текстовая версия с таблицами, иллюстрациями и источниками:https://basicblockradio.com/bitcoin-reformation/00:00 вступление, благодарности патроном и спонсору — Waves01:00 как мы решили перевести The Bitcoin Reformation03:35 наши впечатления от доклада08:15 Биткоин-реформация.

Монополист в погоне за рентой14:23 Раздел 2.

Новый экономический класс: люди, которым есть за что бороться18:13 Раздел 4.

Обсуждаем, как работают главные DeFi-проекты (Maker DAO, Compound, Uniswap), как развивается проект Zerion, как крипто-стартапу получить инвестиции и какое будущее ждет децентрализованные финансы.

02:00 что случилось в жизни гостя с прошлого выпуска с ним ( ББ-03303:58 что такое DeFi?

ликбез по децентрализованным финансам05:38 как DeFi решает проблему оракулов?

33:48 регуляторные риски DeFi37:09 что такое Compound и как это работает42:50 как соотносятся Maker и Compound48:23 Uniswap и децентрализованные биржи55:18 системные риски DeFi57:16 Zerion: что такое «интерфейс к DeFi»?

1:14:11 Zerion как компания, как получить инвестиции1:19:25 обязательно ли ехать за инвестициями в США?

В августе этого года на конференции Web3 Summit 2019 мы повстречали человека, который оказал огромное влияние на систему ценностей любого, кто работает в современном блокчейн-мире.

Это был Ричард Столлман, создатель GNU и основатель движения за свободное ПО.

К сожалению, Ричард не говорит по-русски.

Но это фигура такого масштаба, что мы все же решили взять у него интервью для наших дорогих слушателей.

Так как убеждения Ричарда отрицают JavaScript, он согласился поговорить с нами только на условии, что это интервью можно будет посмотреть в браузере с отключенным JS.

Обсуждаем технологии zero knowledge и их применение для масштабирования Ethereum, в частности, разработку Matter Labs – проект ZK Sync.

00:30 как гость пришел в блокчейн-индустрию03:20 почему именно zero knowledge поможет решить проблему масштабируемости?

42:45 как происходит делегирование, токены ZK Sync43:53 в чем пользователи платят комиссию в ZK Sync?

48:50 требования ZK Sync к L150:34 пейзаж zero knowledge и различия ZK-протоколов58:52 сравнение ZK Sync с Raiden и платежными каналами1:05:08 кому нужны транзакции на L1, если L2 на ZK так хорош?

1:07:23 история компании Matter Labs1:08:33 грант от Ethereum Foundation и инвестиции от VC1:10:45 виртуальная машина Zinc, отличия от zkVM1:13:…

Сергей Любич – генеральный директор компании NEO SPCC, Станислав Богатырёв – директор по IT.

Компания NEO SPCC с 2018 года занимается исследованиями и разработкой распределённого хранения файлов для блокчейна NEO и другими проектами в этой экосистеме, являясь одним из основных контрибьютеров коммьюнити.

В первой части выпуска мы поговорили об экосистеме NEO в целом, во второй погрузились в техническую реализацию и экономическую мотивацию системы NEO File Storage (NEO FS).

0:00 о выпуске и гостях, благодарность спонсору – компании Waves, а также патронам1:41 как гости оказались в криптоиндустрии и почему выбрали NEO, коротко о компании NEO SPCC и о её разработках8:41 что из себя представляет…

В юбилейном выпуске ведущие ББ рассказывают об истории и будущем подкаста, а также общаются с гостями и слушателями!

Рассказывай, что такое рекурсивные старки, человеческим языком!»49:26 Глеб Науменко (ББ-095) о конференции CCS и Schnorr review53:22 Глеб в Лондоне или в Нью-Йорке?

56:44 Анатолий Рессин (ББ-065) о новостях Parsiq и разработке центрального репозитория (для неназванной страны)1:09:45 Максим Кейдун (ББ-067) о планах HodlHodl и Baltic Honeybadger 20201:15:31 Инал Карданов (ББ-070) о Waves и жестоких блокчейн-неделях1:25:38 Евгений Юртаев (ББ-033) о раунде Zerion (?)

и развитии DeFi1:35:11 Алекс Скиданов (ББ-082) о NEAR и его конкурентах1:41:23 Запустится ли Ethereum 2.0 в следую…

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Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today.

Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app.

If you need liquidity but don't want to sell your bitcoin, they offer easy access to loans using bitcoin as collateral.

Collateral is always stored on-chain in dedicated multisig addresses with the option for you to hold a key, and your bitcoin is never rehypotheticated.

Canadian freaks need to check out Bull Bitcoin (https://bullbitcoin.com/).

Bitcoin Core version 0.19.0 is now available for download containing multiple improvements and bug fixes For a complete list of changes in this maintenance release, please see the release notes.

Due to an issue that only came to light just after the rc process, the download is for 0.19.0.1 instead of 0.19.0.

If have any questions, please stop by the #bitcoin IRC chatroom (IRC, web) and we’ll do our best to help you.

Disclosure of the details of CVE-2017-18350, a fix for which was released on November 6th, 2017 in Bitcoin Core version 0.15.1.

The vulnerability was introduced in 60a87bce873 (SOCKS5 support) and first released in Bitcoin Core v0.7.0rc1 in 2012 Aug 27.

To be vulnerable, the node must be configured to use such a malicious proxy in the first place.

Upon a connection request from the node, the malicious proxy would respond with an acknowledgement of a different target domain name than the one requested.

To fix this vulnerability, the dummy buffer was changed to an explicitly unsigned data type, avoiding the conversion to/from a negative number.

Bitcoin Core version 0.18.1 is now available for download containing several bug fixes and other improvements.

For a complete list of changes in this maintenance release, please see the release notes.

If have any questions, please stop by the #bitcoin IRC chatroom (IRC, web) and we’ll do our best to help you.

Bitcoin Core version 0.18.0 is now available for download containing several bug fixes and minor improvements.

For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

If have any questions, please stop by the #bitcoin IRC chatroom (IRC, web) and we’ll do our best to help you.

Bitcoin Core version 0.17.1 is now available for download containing several bug fixes and minor improvements.

For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

Bitcoin Core version 0.17.0 is now available for download containing many new features as well as bug fixes and other improvements.

For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

This release is not vulnerable to the CVE-2018-17144 duplicate inputs bug.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

Full disclosureCVE-2018-17144, a fix for which was released on September 18th in Bitcoin Core versions 0.16.3 and 0.17.0rc4, includes both a Denial of Service component and a critical inflation vulnerability.

Thus, in Bitcoin Core 0.14.X, any attempts to double-spend a transaction output within a single transaction inside of a block will result in an assertion failure and a crash, as was originally reported.

In Bitcoin Core 0.15, as a part of a larger redesign to simplify unspent transaction output tracking and correct a resource exhaustion attack the assertion was changed subtly.

Instead of asserting that the output being marked spent was previously unspent, it only asserts that it exists.…

Bitcoin Core version 0.16.3 is now available for download with a fix for a denial-of-service vulnerability introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 and affecting all subsequent versions though to 0.16.2.

We highly recommend users of all affected versions immediately upgrade to 0.16.3.

Security issue CVE-2018-17144: it was discovered that older versions of Bitcoin Core will crash if they try to process a block containing a transaction that attempts to spend the same input twice.

This release eliminates the crash, allowing the software to quietly reject such invalid blocks.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

Bitcoin Core version 0.16.2 is now available for download.

The attack was considered unlikely given that much cheaper attacks of roughly equal effectiveness are well known.

Similarly, the getblock RPC also now returns extra information that can be used to defeat this attack even if the requested block has been pruned.

As before, you can call this RPC when you no longer want your wallet to re-broadcast an old unconfirmed transaction.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

Bitcoin Core version 0.16.1 is now available for download.

Fixing a bug that could’ve potentially caused miners to lose revenue if they produced two blocks in very rapid succession.

The presence of this opcode makes it difficult for nodes to estimate how much computational work will be required to validate a legacy signature script.

Because of that, it blocks the deployment of solutions to prevent attackers from creating blocks that require a long time to validate.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

We are pleased to announce the release of Bitcoin Core 0.16.0, the first version of Bitcoin Core to include default wallet support for segregated witness (segwit).

This means that downgrading after recovering from a backup that includes a segwit address will workNote that some RPCs do not yet support segwit addresses.

Note that this only applies to new wallets; wallets made with previous versions will not be upgraded to be HD.

Wallets directory configurationBitcoin Core now has more flexibility in where the wallets directory can be located.

Specifically: * A new field iswitness is True for P2WPKH and P2WSH addresses (“bc1…” addresses), but not for P2SH-wrapped segwit addresses (see be…

We are pleased to announce the release of Bitcoin Core 0.15.1.

Notable changesNetwork fork safety enhancementsA number of changes to the way Bitcoin Core deals with peer connections and invalid blocks have been made, as a safety precaution against blockchain forks and misbehaving peers.

This ensures that everything that descends from an invalid block is marked as such.

Miner block size limiting deprecatedThough blockmaxweight has been preferred for limiting the size of blocks returned by getblocktemplate since 0.13.0, blockmaxsize remained as an option for those who wished to limit their block size directly.

Further, the blockmaxsize option is now used only to calculate an implied blockmaxw…

Overview Hashes for verificationBitcoin Core 0.15.0.1 has been released with a fix for a minor bug in 0.15.0, which caused the GUI client to crash for some users after upgrading to 0.15.0.

After upgrade to 0.15.0, some clients would crash at startup because a custom fee setting was configured that no longer exists in the GUI.

To download, please visit the download page.

If have any questions, please stop by our IRC chatroom and we’ll do our best to help you.

Hashes for verification

In Bitcoin Core 0.15.0, this option is no longer just for experts.

MultiwalletIn Bitcoin Core 0.15.0, a single running Bitcoin Core program can now manage multiple wallets with ease.

The future: P2SH-wrapped segwit addressesAs final preparations are being made to release Bitcoin Core 0.15.0, segregated witness has activated on the Bitcoin network and is now ready to use.

ConclusionFor details on all the changes made in Bitcoin Core 0.15.0, please read the release notes.

If you are interested in contributing to Bitcoin Core, please see our contributing page and the document How to contribute code to Bitcoin Core.

There have been attempts to mislead people into believing that the btc1 project, the implementation of the Segwit2x proposal, is a necessary update to existing software—it is not.

bitcoincore.org is the official website and @bitcoincoreorg is the official Twitter account of the Bitcoin Core project.

The latest version of Bitcoin Core at the time of writing is 0.14.2.btc1 is not connected to Bitcoin Core in any way.

While it is difficult to determine what the broader Bitcoin community supports, be wary of claims suggesting the large and diverse Bitcoin community is moving entirely to one fork or another, without independent verification.

Concerns raised by Bitcoin Core contributors and Bit…

Thanks to a new integration with the “Wyre Widget,” Liquid users in the US can now quickly and easily pick up small amounts of Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) on Liquid.net using Apple Pay or their debit cards.

Great For Fees and TestingThe Liquid.net Wyre Widget is particularly useful for people who need a small amount of L-BTC to cover network fees for Liquid transactions (e.g.

The Wyre Widget should also be handy for users who are interested in testing the Liquid Network before integrating it into their trading strategies or applications.

Download the Blockstream Green wallet app and set up a Liquid wallet.

For a Liquid wallet, download Blockstream Green from the App Store, Google Play, and F…

Blockstream Mining RevealedOne of our biggest product releases to date, Blockstream Mining offers purpose-built facilities for mining hardware colocation.

In addition to Blockstream Mining, we also unveiled Blockstream Pool; a next-generation mining pool based on the BetterHash mining protocol, which is designed to optimise miner payouts while improving Bitcoin mining decentralization.

Blockstream Satellite Enhanced & ExpandedUsers Can Now Be Broadcasters TooIn January, we opened up our Blockstream Satellite service to developers and users, so that they could send their own messages over the satellite network.

All Meshed UpThe mesh networking startup goTenna launched an integration with the…

We’re excited to announce that BTCPay Server has integrated the Liquid Network into its software suite.

This means confidential and fast settlement in Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) and other assets issued on Liquid such as stablecoins like Liquid Tether (USDt).

With BTCPay Server, merchants can self-host and have complete control over the funds they receive without paying extra fees to middlemen or payment processors.

BTCPay Server is one of the most popular options for merchants looking to accept Bitcoin payments, with tens of thousands of stores supporting it.

BTCPay Server’s integration of Liquid also means customers have the option to spend tokenized fiat like USDt instead of precious L-BT…

Today we’re launching Liquid.net, a one-stop-shop for Liquid Network information and statistics.

Liquid.net is designed to provide detailed metrics and statistics for those using the Liquid Network, as well as new parties interested in joining.

GovernanceIn October 2019, we hosted the inaugural Liquid Federation Meeting in Tokyo with over 40 Liquid member representatives attending.

Get InvolvedAnyone can get started with the Liquid Network by downloading a Liquid wallet Blockstream Green, or a Liquid full node Elements Core.

Blockstream is still very much invested in the success of the Liquid Network, and we look forward to working with the Liquid board members to keep on growing the netw…

Blockstream Mining provides mining equipment colocation in our purpose-built data centers designed to meet the needs of institutional and enterprise customers.

Blockstream Mining addresses these issues by providing a turnkey, enterprise-class colocation service enabling the customer to monitor and control their mining equipment with complete transparency.

Started in 2017We began our Bitcoin mining operations back in 2017 motivated by widespread concern that mining decentralization was declining.

Blockstream PoolAlongside the Blockstream Mining colocation service, we’re excited to reveal Blockstream Pool, the world’s first production mining pool utilizing the BetterHash protocol.

The Blo…

Now users can take advantage of early Lightning support for instant Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) micropayments; with support for other Liquid assets coming soon.

The addition of Lightning support serves as an example of how easy it is to port an existing Bitcoin application of any complexity to Liquid, and Lightning is relatively complex, trust me on that!

This allows any user to build gateways into and out of the Liquid network considerably speeding up onboarding users into the Liquid network, as well as providing users with a seamless experience to move their funds off of the Liquid network, without going through lengthy peg-in and peg-out processes.

This allows any user to build gateways into …

The Liquid Network received a major boost to its ecosystem today with the launch of Tether (USDt) on Liquid.

In addition to the launch, Liquid USDt is now available for deposit and withdrawal at Bitfinex, with more venues opening soon.

In addition to Bitfinex, a number of other Liquid members are working on enabling Liquid USDt, including BTSE, BTCTrader/BtcTurk, OKEx, OKCoin, RenrenBit, and Sideshift AI.

Liquid USDt can be easily added to existing Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) integrations, and even more support for Tether on Liquid is expected later in the year.

Atomic Swaps for Enhanced OTCTether’s launch on Liquid coincides nicely with the recent surge of interest in the Liquid Swap Tool.

The Liquid Network is now accessible from an easy to use mobile app thanks to the addition of a Liquid option on Blockstream Green.

Supported across both iOS and Android (and coming to desktop soon), Blockstream Green users can now store, send, and receive Liquid Bitcoin and Issued Assets on the Liquid sidechain.

Liquid is optimized for exchange traders, and with the new Liquid option on Blockstream Green, bitcoin moved to the network (known as Liquid Bitcoin, or L-BTC) can be securely settled within a reliable two minutes.

2-of-2 MultisigLike with Blockstream Green’s Bitcoin wallet feature, all assets on Liquid are protected by Blockstream Green’s unique multisig security model.

If you…

By moving bitcoin to Liquid through a process known as a “peg-in,” users can settle Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) much faster and more reliably than on the mainchain, as well as take advantage of Liquid’s cutting-edge privacy features.

Liquid is based on Bitcoin’s codebase, so developers with experience of working on Bitcoin will feel right at home working with any of the assets on Liquid.

Applications that allow users to perform trust-minimized atomic swaps between BTC on the Bitcoin mainchain and L-BTC on the Liquid sidechain, or between any of the other assets issued on Liquid.

Bitcoin-backed loans: Loans backed by L-BTC, using Issued Assets to generate individual bond coupons.

Come fin…

Today at Consensus 2019, Blockstream revealed the upcoming release of its new Liquid Securities platform, a user-friendly solution for businesses issuing security tokens on the Liquid Network.

API Available for IntegrationsFor token issuance platforms that would like to offer Liquid as an option to their users, Blockstream offers a fully-featured Liquid Securities API.

Launch PartnersThe Liquid Securities platform is initially launching with a limited set of partners, who are pioneering many new tokenized securities use-cases on Liquid:BnkToTheFuture: the highly successful online investment platform plans to issue tokenized equity in the largest companies in crypto on Liquid.

TokenSoft: a m…

by Alex BosworthWe’re excited to announce the release of the Lightning Loop Beta.

Loop Beta is the start of a roadmap to evolve the technology of Lightning bridging to take a permanent place in the Lightning ecosystem.

Like our earlier Alpha release, Loop Beta is still a command-line and API level project that is designed for integration by Lightning-connected services, wallets, and developers.

But in Beta, Lightning Loop will start to offer a new method of accessing the API that is based on the LSAT project for light-weight authenticated access of APIs.

In Beta, Lightning Loop will pre-check Loop In requests to help confirm that a swap can be completed before a transaction is sent-on cha…

We’re working to do our part to kick off the new decade right with the release of lnd v0.9-beta !

In lnd v0.9-beta , we’re making a significant step in this direction with the ability to receive “multi-path payments” (MPPs) (the non-spontaneous variant).

“Single-shot” MPP payments are essentially an updated, safer form of “normal,” unsplit Lightning payments.

RoutingAs discussed in the Routing Node Guide blog post series, we expect that over time, routing nodes will become more selective about the quality of nodes they connect to.

CompatibilityThere were a number of compatibility changes made in lnd v0.9-beta that will primarily be useful to developers of other Lightning imp…

If you just want to run Lightning on your phone, check out some of the wallets already using lnd 0.8, such as Breez, Zap and tippin.me.

To expose the lnd RPC as mobile APIs, we use falafel to translate the lnrpc protobuf definitions to gomobile compatible APIs at build time.

{ print("lnd started") } } LndmobileStart("--bitcoin.active --bitcoin.testnet --no-macaroons --bitcoin.node=neutrino", StartCallback())You could also bundle a config file with your app and give it to lnd using --configfile= .

getInfo.serializedData() LndmobileGetInfo(msg, GetInfoCallback())Integration with AndroidIn the Android world, Java is still king, and the lnd APIs will be Java compatible.

Check out the source for…

by Bryan VuIn the first post in this series, we discussed some of the requirements for becoming a routing node operator as well as some of the basic mechanics of setting up a routing node.

This section will further provide suggestions for how a routing node operator can configure their node so as to become more attractive to Lightning routing algorithms.

Channel acceptance policiesAs the Lightning routing network evolves, we envision that routing nodes will become more selective about the channel requests they accept.

As the routing node operator adds capital, another thing to keep in mind is increasing security commensurate with the additional funds stored.

Importantly, because source rout…

The Lightning Conference in Berlin is just around the corner, and to make things a little more exciting for conference attendees (and for everyone else, really), today we’re announcing the release of lnd v0.8.0-beta !

Note that SAFU commitments are only used for new channels that are created between parties support SAFU Commitments (which is now default in lnd v0.8.0-beta ).

Another safety improvement in lnd v0.8.0-beta is the addition of Per-HTLC Invoice Tracking.

RoutingOne of the biggest improvements in lnd v0.8.0-beta is the introduction of a much improved “Mission Control”, which is the payment routing subsystem in lnd .

(The system is also flexible enough to allow for specific a…

We have created tools one can use to check if your lnd node was targeted.

The exploit was fully patched in lnd version v0.7.1 (released July 30th 2019) and partially patched in version v0.7.0 (released July 2nd 2019).

Of the two checks, failure to check the scriptpubkey (#1) is more disastrous, since an attacker can costlessly open thousands of invalid channels per block.

If you’re running lnd version v0.7.1-beta and above, then you’re safe.

Channel LimitsThe Lightning Network specification currently requires a hard funding limit of 16.7M satoshis, and a payment limit of 4.2M satoshis.

by Bryan VuAs the Lightning Network has grown and we’ve worked with many community members who have been running Lightning routing nodes, we’ve been wanting to provide more information about our ideas and experiences running routing nodes.

Subsequent posts will discuss some of the underlying principles of Lightning routing, creating and managing channels, securing nodes, and monitoring nodes.

A Lightning Network routing node is a node that is configured and capitalized (with bitcoin) so as to facilitate the routing of Lightning Network payments.

Recommended capitalIn addition to hardware, time and skills, the final requirement to run an effective Lightning Network routing node is capita…

by Valentine WallaceToday we’re excited to announce the first alpha release of lndmon : a drop-in, dockerized monitoring solution for lnd .

Besides preventing network trouble, lndmon is a flexible monitoring tool for routing node operators and other users who want to track how their channels change over time.

Prometheus scrapes metrics from lndmon, and Grafana presents the data in eye-catching graphs.

Nginx is an optional component of lndmon which adds the ability for users to access their dashboards remotely over TLS.

If anyone using this project creates a graph they find useful, they’re encouraged to submit a pull request to the lndmon project so others can benefit from it as well.

The first half of 2019 has been an exciting time for Lightning and for Bitcoin, and in those first six months, we at Lightning Labs are excited to have released Lightning Loop, lnd v0.6-beta , our desktop Lightning App for Linux, OSX and Windows, our mobile Lightning App for Android and iOS, as well as Loop In!

To begin the second half of 2019, today we’re announcing the release of lnd v0.7-beta .

lnd v0.7-beta provides for running lnd in “altruist” watchtower mode, in which an operator can provide watchtower services without requiring payment.

In order to make the lifecycle of Lightning Payments more explicit to developers, we’ve added a new set of RPCs to be used for sending and t…

by Alex BosworthIn March, we at Lightning Labs announced Lightning Loop, which provides an on-demand non-custodial service to help manage Lightning channels.

Today, we’re making Lightning Loop bi-directional with the addition of Loop In.

At that point, Lightning users can close the empty channel and open a new channel (“channel churn”), or they keep their channel open and use Loop In!

Like our previous Loop Out release, this early command line release of Loop In is primarily intended for experimentation by more advanced Lightning users.

Integrate Loop TodayIn addition to providing benefits for end users and our Lightning App users as described above, Lightning Loop is designed to empo…

We recently launched our Lightning App on desktop and with this new release our Lightning App is now available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Powered by Neutrino and AutopilotThe mobile apps also include the same two core technologies that power the desktop app.

Instead, app users only need to download and verify tens of megabytes worth of filter and block headers in a matter of minutes.

You can read more about these two technologies in the desktop release blog post.

State of the Art Mobile SecuritySecurity is an integral part of Bitcoin and our Lightning App is no exception.

by Tankred Hase and Valentine WallaceToday we’re excited to announce the first alpha release of the Lightning App for desktop on Bitcoin mainnet.

For everyone to truly explore what is possible with the Lightning Network, we needed to build a wallet that knocks down these barriers-to-entry and demonstrates what is possible when technology fights for the user.

Unified Homescreen BalanceWe have also updated the home screen with a unified balance that includes on-chain as well as Lightning funds.

Selecting a set of initial channels is an important part of bootstrapping new users to the Lightning Network, and with this new system, we’ll ensure that our users’ very first channels act as rel…

Today, we’re excited to announce the latest release of lnd , v0.6-beta !

This is also the first release of lnd that supports Lightning Loop out of the box!

For light client users, we’ve also made a few Neutrino enhancements.

Developer friendlinessWe’ve been excited to see the activity around the creation of Lightning applications based on lnd as well as merchant services and Lightning wallets that use lnd .

lnd v0.6-beta includes a number of changes to the RPC interface that are designed to make lnd easier for developers to work with.

You are effectively looping the payment back to yourself, hence the name Lightning Loop.

The user sends a payment tied to this hash to the Lightning Loop server.

To prevent this the server requires a second Lightning payment called the prepayment to be made along with the swap payment.

From that point onwards, the preimage is to be considered public knowledge and the user should expect their Lightning payment to be settled at any time.

With the received on-chain funds another channel can be opened and this channel can be Looped out too.

by Alex Bosworth and Bryan VuToday we’re excited to announce the initial release of Lightning Loop, a non-custodial service that makes it easier for people to receive funds on Lightning.

Loop Out: A Tale of Lightning PizzaOne day, a new company launches that’s selling pizza on the Lightning Network called Backgammon’s.

The vision for Lightning Loop is to allow users to securely move funds in and out of the Lightning Network using non-custodial Bitcoin contracts.

Try Loop Out TodayThis developer-focused alpha we’re releasing is intended to be used via command line interface or via the Lightning Loop gRPC API.

Any feedback from the Lightning community is always very much appreciated 

The next Stateless Ethereum research call is coming up in less than a week!

If you are coming in fresh, I recommend reading The Stateless Ethereum Tech Tree for a more thorough context.

Instead, stateless nodes rely on a “witness” produced by a full state node in order to execute new blocks.

[source]Finally, a first draft witness specification has been submitted to the Stateless Ethereum specs repository, and is now under review.

Stateless Ethereum call #4The next call is scheduled for Tuesday, February 25th.

Safety is the idea that decisions cannot be unmade whereas liveness captures the notion that new things can be decided.

When these assumption don’t hold, FLP Impossibility is the proof that at least one of: safety, liveness, or full asynchrony must be compromised.

In particular, eth2 uses a variation of GHOST which has been adapted to a PoS context called Latest Message Driven GHOST (LMD-GHOST).

GHOST’s favourable liveness properties allow new blocks to quickly and efficiently be added to the chain, while FFG follows behind to provide safety by finalising epochs.

By construction, the last finalised block is always a part of the chain which means GHOST doesn’t need to consider earlier blocks.

Keep it coming tldr; Audit and formal verification of deposit contract bytecode completed by Runtime Verification The word of the month is “optimization” Ongoing Phase 2 research driven by Quilt and eWASM. Welcome TXRX to the table Whiteblock releases gossipsub testing results Stacked spring! Conferences, hackathons, bounties, and more Runtime...

The try/catch syntax introduced in 0.6.0 is arguably the biggest leap in error handling capabilities in Solidity, since reason strings for revert and require were released in v0.4.22. Both try and catch have been reserved keywords since v0.5.9 and now we can use them to handle failures in external function...

I started to write a post that detailed a “roadmap” for Ethereum 1.x research and the path to stateless Ethereum, and realized that it’s not actually a roadmap at all —— at least not in the sense we’re used to seeing from something like a product or company. The 1.x...

Binary Trie size savingsTransitioning to a binary trie structure (instead of the current hexary trie structure) should in theory reduce the size of witnesses by something like 3.75x, but in practice that reduction might only be about half, depending on how you look at it..

Hashes within the trie are reduced by 3x, but code is not improved with a binary trie, since it always needs to be included in the witness.

So switching to a binary trie format will bring witness sizes to ~300-1400kB, down from ~800-3,400kB in the hexary trie.

Making the switchEnacting the actual transition to a binary trie is another matter, with a few questions that need to be fleshed out.

This is still very early resea…

Welcome to the first eth2 quick update of 2020!

For some time, these new spec changes disrupted the smooth development cycle of the eth2 client teams and postponed the release of testnets that were imminent.

If you are looking to better understand the eth2 Phase 0 specs, you should definitely give these a look!

Operating a stable testnet with this configuration and 10s of thousands of validators is an important milestone that Prysmatic is currently working through.

Phase 1.5 as it currently stands largely relies upon the success of two independent components – Phase 1 of eth2 and Stateless Ethereum on eth1.

More specifically, we look at the incentives effecting eth2 and how they are realised in the form of rewards, penalties, and slashings.

Slashing a validator is to destroy (a portion of) the validator’s stake if they act in a provably destructive manner.

To minimise the pain of such errors, the amount of stake destroyed is proportional to the number of other validators slashed around the same time.

Proposer rewards ⬜️⛓⬛️⛓⬜️Validators are randomly assigned the duty of producing a block; the chosen validator is called the proposer.

In the fixed reward model, validators are paid a fixed amount for doing their jobs, and the inflation rate then depends on how many validators sign up.

The idea behind the Vyper Project was to develop something that was designed at the language level to naturally exhibit a high degree of safety.

This fall, a preliminary security audit was performed by the Consensys Diligence team on the Python-based Vyper compiler.

There are multiple serious bugs in the Vyper compiler.

Exploring RustEarlier this year in August, we explored producing a version of the Vyper compiler built on fundamentally different architecture.

We were sufficiently far along with our Rust based Vyper compiler when the Python Vyper audit was released, and were confident in the directionl.

The State of Stateless EthereumTo see where we’re going, we must first understand where we are with the concept of ‘state’.

It’s a way of packing the totality of Ethereum state into one unified structure.

We can ballpark the current state of Ethereum at around 400 million nodes in the state trie.

Staying in sync with the Ethereum blockchain is, effectively, constantly building a new version of the state trie over and over again.

Or, it might involve working out an alternative implementation of the state trie more amenable to witness generation.

The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade at block number 9,200,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, January 1, 2020.

Please upgrade your node before Wednesday, December 30, 2019 to account for the variable block times.

Ethernodes.org has kindly provided Istanbul node statistics and a countdown timer located at https://ethernodes.org/muir_glacier.

You can monitor the network upgrade in real time at http://forkmon.ethdevops.io/ (it will be updated shortly before the fork).

Muir Glacier is the name given to this network upgrade.

Because Stateless Ethereum introduces a variety of new node types, these incentives (especially ones affecting miners) must be carefully considered.

Block witnesses and their propogation are essential for moving towards the stateless client concept.

In the more near-term, trinity’s beam sync implements a limited version of state witnesses, and is a good first step toward witnesses on mainnet.

Currently Besu is experimenting with their own prototype of beam sync.

As it stands, beam sync is planned to be ready for prime-time (reliably passing around witnesses) in Q2 next year.

Welcome to this week’s eth2 quick update!

A handful of new eth2 testnets have come online and last week I had them all running on my laptop.

tldr;Comprehensive Phase 0 audit to be conducted by Least AuthorityWe are excited to announce an upcoming eth2 spec audit to be conducted by Least Authority.

This implementation was to be integrated into the nimbus eth2 client as well as to become a p2p networking option for resource restricted devices.

Eth2 spec release scheduleWe released eth2 spec verson v0.9.3 – rm signing_root and have v0.9.4 with a testing fix and network update in the queue.

Block size and transaction throughputA different aspect of growth is the size of individual blocks, and their relationship to total transaction throughput.

There is a trade-off between the block gas limit and the ability of miners to reach consensus on new blocks.

Stateless clients have many major technical hurdles to overcome, all of which will be elucidated in subsequent updates as research continues.

We’ll leave a deeper dive into stateless clients for another post.

Join us at ethresear.ch, or stay tuned here for the next edition of ‘the 1.x files’ :)

Welcome to this week’s eth2 quick update!

tldr;Shasper joins Prysmatic’s testnetParity’s eth2 client, Shasper, successfully joined Prysmatic’s Sapphire Testnet marking the first public multi-client eth2 testnet.

Eth2 block explorers launchNot one but two (!)

eth2 block explorers recently launched.

We’re excited to see more and more user/developer tooling being built around eth2 clients and testnets :)First eth2 networking callUp until this point, we’ve relied upon github issues/pull-requests, adhoc chats, the main eth2 call, and in person meetings to organize the networking components of the eth2 spec.

Round 4 of Gitcoin Grants quadratic funding has just completed, and here are the results: The main distinction between round 3 and round 4 was that while round 3 had only one category, with mostly tech projects and a few outliers such as EthHub, in round 4 there were two separate categories, one with a $125,000 matching pool for tech projects, and the other with a $75,000 matching pool for "media" projects. Media could include documentation, translation, community activities, news reporting, theoretically pretty much anything in that category. And while the tech section went about largely without incident, in the new media section the results proved to be much more interesting than I could …

a one-time set of serious breaking changes to prevent the base protocol's cryptography from falling to quantum computers would be okay).

Once a layer 1 protocol has achieved a certain level of functionality, which I will term "functionality escape velocity", then yes, you can do everything else on top without further changing the base.

This post will talk about some of what this minimal functionality that constitutes "functionality escape velocity" is.

The problem is this: there needs to be some way to move coins from a "normal" state to an "awaiting withdrawal" state.

The block time of the base layer sets the latency for anything whose confirmation depends things being included in the base…

The other 37 squares should be covered up by checkers or Go pieces or anything else to denote that they are inaccessible.

The rules are the same as chess, with a few exceptions:White pawns move up, black pawns move left.

White pawns take going left-and-up or right-and-up, black pawns take going left-and-down or left-and-up.

To break ties between equal maximum-length sequences, count the number of distinct length-three sequences they have; the hand with more distinct length-three sequences wins.

This hand has four length-three sequences: K 2 4, K 4 8, 2 3 4, 3 8 K. This is rare.

Special thanks to Karl Floersch and Jinglan Wang for feedbackIf you follow applied mechanism design or decentralized governance at all, you may have recently heard one of a few buzzwords: quadratic voting, quadratic funding and quadratic attention purchase.

... Public goods, public marketsPrivate goods (eg.

Quadratic VotingSee also the original paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5fid=2003531Let us begin by exploring the first "flavor" of quadratic payments: quadratic voting.

With a bright mirror image of quadratic funding: quadratic fees!

Quadratic payments are an idea that has only become popular in the last few years; we still have not seen more than small-scale trial…

In this post, I'll go through the 16 problems from 2014 one by one, and see just where we are today on each one.

At the end, I’ll include my new picks for hard problems of 2019.

Cryptographic problemsBlockchain Scalability One of the largest problems facing the cryptocurrency space today is the issue of scalability ...

About six months after the "hard problems" list was posted, Ethereum settled on its ASIC-resistant proof of work algorithm: Ethash.

New problemsIf I were to write the hard problems list again in 2019, some would be a continuation of the above problems, but there would be significant changes in emphasis, as well as significant new problems.

Special thanks to the Gitcoin team and especially Frank Chen for working with me through these numbersThe next round of Gitcoin Grants quadratic funding has just finished, and we the numbers for how much each project has received were just released.

But what matters more here are not the raw donations, but rather the subsidies that the quadratic funding mechanism applied.

Pairwise-bounded quadratic funding vs traditional quadratic fundingRound 3 differs from previous rounds in that it uses a new flavor of quadratic funding, which limits the subsidy per pair of participants.

ConclusionsOn the whole, this was by far the largest and the most data-rich Gitcoin funding round to date.

The experim…

"Yes," Alice, Bob, Charlie and David exclaim in unison.

Bob, Charlie, David and Evan crowd around the books together, and each open up an app on their phone and press a few buttons.

Bob, Charlie, David and Evan glance down at their smartphone apps one more time, and each tap a few buttons.

"Congratulations, Alice," Bob says.

"Only a 75% probability this would have actually caught me if I didn't actually have all four parts of the key," Alice thought to herself.

How PLONK worksLet us start with an explanation of how PLONK works, in a somewhat abstracted format that focuses on polynomial equations without immediately explaining how those equations are verified.

We will need to create a structured system of equations, which will ultimately reduce to a very small number of polynomial equations, to represent both.

To make the problem actually challenging (and actually represent the problem encoded in the original circuit), we need to add an equation that verifies "copy constraints": constraints such as \(a(5) = c(7)\), \(c(10) = c(12)\), etc.

The only remaining polynomial in the above equations is \(Z(x) = (x - 1) \cdot (x - \omega) \cdot ... \cdot (x …

A more recent proposal, ZK Rollup, does the same thing without challenge periods, by using ZK-SNARKs to verify blocks' validity.

This technique is thus not a jaw-droppingly huge scalability gain, because the on-chain data overhead eventually presents a bottleneck, but it is nevertheless a very significant one.

With BLS aggregate signatures a similar throughput can be achieved in shadow chains (more recently called "optimistic rollup" to highlight its similarities to ZK Rollup).

So what is the benefit of data on-chain techniques such as ZK/optimistic rollup versus data off-chain techniques such as Plasma?

Then there is a large middle ground between data-on-chain layer 2 and data-off-chain la…

Plasma chains are sidechains that have a non-custodial property: if there is any error in the Plasma chain, then the error can be detected, and users can safely exit the Plasma chain and prevent the attacker from doing any lasting damage.

That is, a child chain block that specifies an invalid main chain block as a dependency is by definition invalid, and more importantly a main chain block that includes an invalid child chain block is by definition invalid.

However, the consequences of a single Plasma chain failing are localized to within that Plasma chain.

Second, there are better strategies to handling data availability than fishermen: data availability proofs.

A Plasma chain can always b…

Discussion about taproot versus alternatives: a group of developers who prefers to remain anonymous (so we’ll call them Anon) wrote a criticism of taproot in comparison to alternative approaches for enabling MAST and schnorr signatures in Bitcoin.

Anon asks, “Is taproot actually more private than bare MAST and schnorr separately?

MAST could also be used for single-sig spends but it would require larger transactions and more fees than a pure single-sig construction, so single-sig users would probably not use MAST.

That would create a clear divide for chain analysis between spends that use MAST and spends that don’t.

This creates a larger anonymity set than doing MAST and schnorr separately a…

Discussion about taproot versus alternatives: a group of developers who prefers to remain anonymous (so we’ll call them Anon) wrote a criticism of taproot in comparison to alternative approaches for enabling MAST and schnorr signatures in Bitcoin.

Anon asks, “Is taproot actually more private than bare MAST and schnorr separately?

MAST could also be used for single-sig spends but it would require larger transactions and more fees than a pure single-sig construction, so single-sig users would probably not use MAST.

That would create a clear divide for chain analysis between spends that use MAST and spends that don’t.

This creates a larger anonymity set than doing MAST and schnorr separately a…

OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) Workshop: video (morning, afternoon) and a transcript are available from a recent workshop about BIP119 CTV.

If this proposed soft fork is adopted, users would be able to use a new CTV opcode to create covenants with less interaction than would be required using current consensus rules.

A final discussion covered how and when to attempt to get BIP119 activated, including when a PR for it should be opened to the Bitcoin Core repository, what activation mechanism it should use (e.g.

BIP9 versionbits), and what range of activation dates would be appropriate if it uses a miner-activated soft fork mechanism such as BIP9.

Subsequent to the workshop, CTV proposer Jerem…

OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) Workshop: video (morning, afternoon) and a transcript are available from a recent workshop about BIP119 CTV.

If this proposed soft fork is adopted, users would be able to use a new CTV opcode to create covenants with less interaction than would be required using current consensus rules.

A final discussion covered how and when to attempt to get BIP119 activated, including when a PR for it should be opened to the Bitcoin Core repository, what activation mechanism it should use (e.g.

BIP9 versionbits), and what range of activation dates would be appropriate if it uses a miner-activated soft fork mechanism such as BIP9.

Subsequent to the workshop, CTV proposer Jerem…

Safety concerns related to precomputed public keys used with schnorr signatures: libsecp256k1 PR #558 proposes adding BIP340-compatible schnorr signature creation and verification to the libsecp256k1 library used by Bitcoin Core and several other Bitcoin programs.

Since BIP340 requires signatures to commit to the public key that will be used to validate the signature, the current proposed signature function uses the private key to derive the necessary public key.

Gregory Maxwell noted that programs generating signatures will usually already know the appropriate public key, so the function can save CPU time by accepting the public key as a parameter.

Jonas Nick replied that the approach was …

Safety concerns related to precomputed public keys used with schnorr signatures: libsecp256k1 PR #558 proposes adding BIP340-compatible schnorr signature creation and verification to the libsecp256k1 library used by Bitcoin Core and several other Bitcoin programs.

Since BIP340 requires signatures to commit to the public key that will be used to validate the signature, the current proposed signature function uses the private key to derive the necessary public key.

Gregory Maxwell noted that programs generating signatures will usually already know the appropriate public key, so the function can save CPU time by accepting the public key as a parameter.

Jonas Nick replied that the approach was …

Breaking the link between UTXOs and unannounced channels: Bastien Teinturier posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about changing what data is added to a BOLT11 invoice for payments sent to unannounced channels—channels that aren’t advertised to the LN network and which usually don’t route payments for other users.

This would require special support from both the spender and the peer who’s able to route to the unannounced channel, but other nodes along the routing path would not need to change their implementation.

Teinturier requested feedback on the proposal, including any suggestions for how to eliminate the need to include an encrypted secret in the payment.

Layered commitments with …

Breaking the link between UTXOs and unannounced channels: Bastien Teinturier posted to the Lightning-Dev mailing list about changing what data is added to a BOLT11 invoice for payments sent to unannounced channels—channels that aren’t advertised to the LN network and which usually don’t route payments for other users.

This would require special support from both the spender and the peer who’s able to route to the unannounced channel, but other nodes along the routing path would not need to change their implementation.

Teinturier requested feedback on the proposal, including any suggestions for how to eliminate the need to include an encrypted secret in the payment.

Layered commitments with …

The protocol prevents even the spender from learning the receiver’s Bitcoin address (within the limits of the anonymity set).

Developer ZmnSCPxj notes that the technique is similar to tumblebit , which provides a trustless chaumian payment service.

The oracle doesn’t need to know the terms of the contract (or even that there is a contract).

The contract can look like either the onchain part of an LN transaction or it can be executed within an LN channel.

Anyone interested in DLCs may also wish to review the scriptless scripts repository that documents other clever applications of digital signature schemes to contract protocols.

Discussion of soft fork activation mechanisms: Matt Corallo started a discussion on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list about what attributes are desirable in a soft fork activation method and submitted a proposal for a mechanism that contains those attributes.

Alternatively, a BIP8 flag-day soft fork fulfills the fifth criteria but encounters challenges fulfilling the other four criteria.

Corallo also worries that using BIP8 from the start of a soft fork deployment gives the impression that the developers of node software get to decide the rules of the system.

Jeremy Rubin provides a quick analysis of his previous spork proposal (see Newsletter #32) in the context of the five goals.

No clear conc…

Bitcoin Optech is planning to hold a third Schnorr and Taproot seminar workshop in London on February 5th 2020.

This will cover the same material as the previous two Schnorr/Taproot workshops, which is available on this website for home study.

Member companies who would like to send engineers to the workshop should email Optech.

This special edition of the Optech Newsletter summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2019.

Roose would go on to produce a tool based on Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) for creating reserve proofs and would follow through to see the specification published as BIP127.

HWI makes it easy for hardware wallets and software wallets to interact using a combination of output script descriptors and Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs).

In addition to miniscript, Wuille, Andrew Poelstra, and Sanket Kanjalkar also provided a composable policy language that compiles down to miniscript (which itself converts to Bitcoin Script).

The proposing user signs their part …

Also included are our regular sections about notable changes to popular Bitcoin infrastructure projects, changes to services and client software, and popular Bitcoin StackExchange questions and answers.

LN implementations add multipath payment support: after a significant amount of discussion and development, all three LN implementations tracked by Optech have now added basic support for multipath payments (merges: C-Lightning, Eclair, LND).

A multipath payment consists of multiple LN payments routed over different paths which may all be claimed at the same time by the receiver.

Proposed changes to bip-ctv: Jeremy Rubin suggested several changes to the proposed soft fork addition of an OP_C…

Watchtowers for eltoo payment channels: eltoo is a proposed alternative payment channel layer for LN that doesn’t require participants be able to generate penalty transactions.

Conner Fromknecht started a thread asking what data watchtowers would need to store for eltoo and how that would affect the scalability of watchtowers or the privacy of their clients.

This is highly scalabale because it only requires a constant amount of storage per channel, and it’s secure because only the final settlement transaction can spend from the final update transaction.

The offline node can broadcast the settlement transaction whenever it next comes online, even if that is months or years later.

An alternat…

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Twitter adds Bitcoin emoji, Eclair v0.3.3, and LND Pathfindingzebedee.ioTwitter Adds Bitcoin Emojihttps://twitter.com/jack/status/1223841364711854080This week Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter/Square announced support for the Bitcoin emoji on Twitter — just use it with the hashtag (#bitcoin) and the emoji will appear automatically. In the tweet Jack also mentions Unicode which is the Twitter account for the body that standardizes the system for the “interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of the diverse languages of the modern world”. While Bitcoin is already part of the Unicode standard (got added in 2017 in Unicode 10.0), it does not specify support for an Emoji, only a charac…

Custom Data Records in LND Payments, Square Crypto Announces LDK Plans and ZEBEDEE Lightning Nodezebedee.ioHi there, this is Lightning This Week — the latest updates in the world of Lightning Network development. Let’s get to it.Custom Data Records Support on LNDLND recently introduced the ability to send and receive custom data records in payment HTLCs. With this feature, users can imagine a scenario where text messages are actually being sent between the two nodes involved in the payment (sender to receiver). This is the idea behind WhatSat (covered in LTW 602,888), and it’s an interesting thought experiment — truly encrypted peer-to-peer messaging over Lightning. Another use-case that ma…

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The outpouring of support for EthHub was amazing and I can’t thank you all enough for the kind words.

I’ll be discussing a bit more of my experience at ETHDenver on our weekly recap podcast (which will go out a day later this week).

Investment banking giant JPMorgan is reportedly in discussions to merge its blockchain unit Quorum with Ethereum development studio ConsenSys.

This week, they went live on the Ethereum mainnet so you can check them out now.

The Enjin all-in-one blockchain development platform went live on the Ethereum mainnet this week.

Eric and I will be covering it in more detail on our weekly recap podcast.

Have a great week everyone!

Community Member SpotlightThis week we’re highlighting the great work of Chaz Schmidt!

Chaz has also been a core contributor of EthHub since the very beginning (even before we went live)!

Keep up the great work Chaz!

Swiss company to launch IPO on Ethereum, Aztec protocol live on Ethereum, ENS getting an upgrade and much more!

The automated CDP ratio management is made possible with use of Boost and Repay which are applied at user-configured thresholds.

On a lighter note, we have 3 new EthHub pages for you to check out.

The platform will be used to verify the provenance of athletic collectibles, with auctions running during and after NBA games.

Optimism is a Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to scaling Ethereum in a way that enshrines fair access to public goods.

A large update from the PryLabs team going over their work on their recently launched mainnet-capable testnet, merged code and upcoming work.

🐝 A Busy Week for EthHubNow that the holiday period is over we wanted to start revving up our efforts to update the EthHub documentation site.

At time of writing, a 1 DAI donation to EthHub is matched with 145 DAI as part of the CLR program - a 145x multiplier!

Aave protocol has launched on the Ethereum mainnet and users can now take out flash loans using the platform.

The first product they’ve released enables users to buy and configure ENS domains in one single click.

Ryan is an extremely active Ethereum community member who currently publishes a newsletter called Bankless which aims to be the ultimate guide to crypto finance (DeFi).

Thank you everyone for your continued support - here’s to another great year of EthHub!

Time to open your wallets Ethereum community :)Have a great week everyone!

"We are very pleased the district judge sided with us and ordered Virgil to be released pending trial," Griffith's attorney, Brian Klein, of Baker Marquart LLP said.

Community Member SpotlightThis week we’re highlighting the great work of Megan Knab!

Keep up the great work Megan!

Also, obviously this is bad timing, but the Ethereum network will be undergoing its Muir Glacier network upgrade on January 2nd.

The only change in this upgrade is an update to the difficulty bomb (ice age) which pushes it back by roughly 2 years.

Please head here for detailed information about the upgrade and instructions on how to update your node.

Reports suggest the new Tencent unit will work on developing the government's pilot digital currency plan in the city of Shenzhen.

InstaDApp had a big year in 2019 and in this post the team goes through everything they shipped this year.

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)🎄 Merry Christmas from EthHub!

A quick note regarding the next Ethereum network upgrade - it’s scheduled to go live on January 1st 2020.

It's expected Dragonfly and Paradigm, who already have a strong presence in the region, will advise on the expansion.

The Maker team also published an update on how the control of the MKR token contract will be transferred to the Maker governance system.

Everything you need to know about the coming Ethereum network upgrade that will delay the ice age (difficulty bomb) by 2 years.

- AnthonyNews of the WeekIf the client demand is there, then Fidelity Digital Assets could support Ethereum in 2020.

Launched at the beginning of 2019, Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS) offers cryptocurrency custody and trading tools for institutional investors and traders.

Through a subsidiary called solaris Digital Assets, the Berlin-based bank will offer a white-labeled custody product, the company recently announced.

“We believe that all tradable assets will be tokenized in the future,” said Alexis Hamel, managing director of solaris Digital Assets.

Set Protocol introduced the first Set that contains a cToken this week - the ETH RSI 60/40 Yield Set.

Have a great week everyone!

In the “Imagine 2030” research report, Germany-headquartered Deutsche Bank said cryptocurrencies may have been “additions” rather than “substitutes” in the finance world thus far, but the next decade could change that as regulatory hurdles get past.

A packed update this week from the PryLabs team covering testnet updates, bug squashes, merged code, upcomign work and more.

Lots of updates in this edition including phase 0 testnet news, the latest on the deposit contract, BLS signatures & networking, a bunch of info about phase 2, research updates and more.

Web3 permissions rolling out, a recap of recent blockchain weeks/hackathons, development updates and more in …

We’ll probably dive a bit deeper into this topic on our weekly recap podcast if anyone reading is interested in our more nuanced views.

South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has lost cryptocurrency worth $49 million.

This update includes details on the public testnet work, network updates, security updates and more.

Maker’s monthly update covering the historic Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) launch, governance updates, community highlights, interviews and more.

Liam from the team goes over the last few months of work including engineering updates, research updates and what’s coming next.

ETHWaterloo was an Ethereum hackathon put on by ETHGlobal that took place in Waterloo, Canada from November 8-10, 2019.

Eric was at the event and in Part 2 talks with the five winning teams from the event.

We talk through what they built, why they built it and future plans for the products.

The teams include Sheetcoin, Wallet Notify, Eth P2P VOIP, DeFi Custody Wallet and Connexion.

Guy Zyskind, CEO and co-founder of Enigma joins the podcast to talk about the privacy solution his team is building for Ethereum.

Guy explains how Enigma can bring privacy to Ethereum via a layer 2 solution.

He talks about the testnet coming in the coming weeks and what that means for people looking to participate in the network.

Their Salad coin-mixing tool will also be going live at that time.

Aztec uses a much more complex architecture to achieve this confidentiality, starting with the use of zero knowledge proofs.

Link Another example of how gas considerations impact Aztec's architecture comes in the choice of zero knowledge proof chosen.

LinkzkDai And BeyondIn the current version of Aztec, zero knowledge proofs enable you to transfer funds between accounts without revealing the amount transferred in each instance.

The addresses involved in the transaction are still visible, though the Aztec team claims future versions will shield even these details.

The Aztec team has already announced their intention to create zk-versions of Ether and wrapped Bitcoin.

PoolTogether is one of several new projects in the Decentralized Finance ecosystem I affectionately refer to as "weird DeFi."

But they're real, and they're working...at least for the moment.In this edition of Build Blockchain, we'll look at three of the most interesting of these odd-but-compelling new projects: PoolTogether, Aave Protocol flash loans, and Sablier streaming money.

PoolTogether: A No Loss LotteryUp first is PoolTogether, the aforementioned smart contract lottery which recently crossed $1 Million in funds held.

Specifically, the pool is earning interest using Compound, another DeFi smart contract protocol that enables collateralized, peer-to-peer loans.

Sablier Streaming Money…

This week, in tech news outside the cryptocurrency world, Reuters reported that Apple scrapped plans for end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups under pressure from the FBI.

This week, The Plasma Group announced they are pivoting away from their state channel based layer 2 scaling solution, choosing instead to pursue a scaling solution using Optimistic Rollups. The public benefit company has also rebranded under the name "Optimism.”

Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0If the Bitcoin network is at risk of stagnating, one could argue the Ethereum network risks being too aggressive about upgrades.

This is exemplified by the striking plans for Ethereum 2.0.

Link Ethereum 2.0 will launch in three phases, and after many previous timelines have been pushed back, Phase 0 is looking like it will finally roll out this year.

PolkadotSpeaking of Ethereum competitors, I suspect one of the reasons for a sense of urgency around Ethereum 2.0 is the impression that competitors could start playing catch up this year.

For any one of these projects, failure to ship would leave their respective network in a precarious position.

As 2019 comes to a close, plenty of outlets will be recapping the biggest stories of the year. From DeFi to Libra, the most obvious stories have been thoroughly discussed. In this year's final edition of this newsletter, I'd like to do something different. What were the most underrated and under-covered stories in crypto this year, relative to their potential importance and impact?

📰NewsThis week, the Zcash network — known for using a mind bending form of cryptography called zero knowledge proofs to enable privacy preserving transactions — successfully executed an upgrade hardfork.

The money from the rewards was also use to fund the Zcash Foundation— a separate non-profit entity tasked with supporting the Zcash community.

To start, the process has occurred largely on the Zcash community forums, where thirteen distinct proposals were made.

Finally, it lays out a striking plan to scale the Zcash blockchain horizontally by leveraging bleeding edge technique called Halo Proofs.

( Link ).Halo proofs are a new zero knowledge construction discovered this year by Zcash resear…

By the time this newsletter reaches your inbox, the Ethereum network's "Istanbul" hardfork will be several hours in the past. If all goes smoothly, the upgrade will bring a number of low level improvements to the network, including two changes that can be leveraged by developers to enhance privacy.

Lord knows there's plenty to be dismayed by in the crypto world right now. In the spirit of the season, though, I'd like to spend a little time engendering a sense of gratitude for decentralized cryptonetworks, and for the whole community of enthusiasts, technologists, and early adopters that has coalesced around them.

This week saw the successful launch of Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD), the upgraded version of the decentralized, dollar-pegged Dai stablecoin built with smart contracts on Ethereum.

Two years after "The DAO" was hacked, leading to a hardfork that recovered the stolen funds but split the Ethereum community, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are undergoing a renaissance.

In the coming weeks, two new blockchain networks will launch, and both are positioning themselves as practical alternatives that combine and improve upon the best parts of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

On October 10th of this year, the team behind the MetaMask browser wallet announced an upcoming change which may prove pivotal for the advancement of the Ethereum ecosystem.

For one, Zuckerberg affirmed that Facebook would not launch Libra unless given the green light by regulators.

He also pushed the narrative that the U.S. would be "out innovated" by China if regulators killed his company's project.

Link On Friday, Xi Jinping, the leader of China, said his country must "seize the opportunity" in adopting blockchain.

They don't.Why, then, do both men insist that they're interested in pushing "blockchain technology" forward.

Simply put, they're looking to co-opt and exploit a movement that threatens to subvert their own power.

Issue #45Paper of the Week:Paper Title: Smart Contract Derivatives.

TLDR: Smart contracts on blockchain platforms have limited capabilities even when developed in Turing Complete languages such as Solidity.

Paper Title: Efficient Fair Multiparty Protocols using Blockchain and Trusted Hardware.

Paper Title: Blockchain Governance: What We Can Learn From the Economics of Corporate Governance.

Paper Title: Smart Contracts for Securities Transactions on the DLT Platform (Blockchain): Legal Obstacles and Regulatory Challenges.

Issue #44Paper of the Week:Paper Title: Ant Routing scalability for the Lightning Network.

Ant Routing is a completely decentralized routing algorithm which does not require beacon nodes nor routing tables.

The goal of this article is to estimate the performance of Ant Routing, and propose more precise and efficient implementation.

The conservative estimates presented show that Ant Routing can sustain more than 10,000 transactions per second.

Paper Title: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) as Subjects of Law – the Recognition of DAOs in the Swiss Legal Order.

Issue #43

Next, it constructs three graphs, namely user-to-user graph (UUG), contract-to- contract graph (CCG) and user-contract graph (UCG).

In most of time windows, the number of smart contracts created by EOAs is of the same magnitude as that created by other contracts, and the smart contracts are usually invoked by EoAs.

Paper Title: Segment blockchain: A size reduced storage mechanism for blockchain.

Authors: Deepak Puthal*, Saraju P. Mohanty†, Venkata P. Yanambaka‡, and Elias Kougianos†,Affiliations: * Newcastle University, † University of North Texas, and ‡ Central Michigan University.

Paper Title: Blockchain and the Inevitability of Disputes: The Role for Online Dispute Resolution.

Paper Title: SkyEye: A Traceable Scheme for Blockchain.

Summary: aA traceable scheme for blockchain that can be applied to the blockchain applications that satisfy the following conditions: (i) The users have public and private information, where the public information is generated by the private information and (ii) The users’ public information is disclosed in the blockchain data.

Paper Title: Simulated Blockchains for Machine Learning Traceability and Transaction Values in the Monero Network.

Paper Title: Stake Shift in Major Cryptocurrencies: An Empirical Study.

Paper Title: Too Big to Cheat: Mining Pools' Incentives to Double Spend in Blockchain Based Cryptocurrencies.

A new operation for RSA accumulators, called MultiSwap, that provides a precise sequential semantics for batched verifiable state updates is then defined.

Paper Title: Short Selling Attack: A Self-Destructive But Profitable 51% Attack On PoS Blockchains.

Paper Title: User Acceptance of Usable Blockchain-Based Research Data Sharing System: An Extended TAM- Based Study.

Paper Title: Is Blockchain the Next Step in the Evolution Chain of [Market] Intermediaries?

Paper Title: The EU Response to Criminal Misuse of Cryptocurrencies: The Young, Already Outdated 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

This paper shows attacks that these BFT protocols are insecure in all types of partial synchronous networks.

Thus these BFT protocols are not secure in type II partial synchronous networks.

A BFT finality gadget protocol is proposed that is based on DLS BFT consensus protocol in partial synchronous networks.

Paper Title: Blockchain Intelligence: When Blockchain Meets Artificial Intelligence.

Summary: The paper proposes an analytical model for characterizing de/centralization in digital networks and maps this onto blockchain networks.

Paper Title: Selfish Behavior in the Tezos Proof-of-Stake Protocol.

Paper Title: Confidential Assets on MimbleWimble.

Paper Title: Designing for Privacy and Confidentiality on Distributed Ledgers for Enterprise (Industry Track).

Paper Title: Winkle: Foiling Long-Range Attacks in Proof-of-Stake Systems.

Paper Title: Cryptodemocratic Governance of Special Economic Zones.

Issue #37Paper of the Week:Paper Title: SquirRL: Automating Attack Discovery on Blockchain Incentive Mechanisms with Deep Reinforcement Learning.

TLDR: Today, attacks on blockchain incentive mechanisms are typically discovered through a lengthy process of modeling and theoretical analysis.

This work proposes a framework for discovering attacks on blockchain incentive mechanisms using deep reinforcement learning.

It is intended as a general-purpose methodology for blockchain developers to test incentive mechanisms for vulnerabilities and it does not provide theoretical guarantees.

Paper Title: Blockchain Governance for Technologists.

Issue #36Paper of the Week:Paper Title: ContractGuard: Defend Ethereum Smart Contracts with Embedded Intrusion Detection.

TLDR: There is currently no security tools to protect smart contracts after deployment - once being deployed on Ethereum, smart contract programs are completely exposed to the intruders.

Paper Title: Consensus on Clock in Universally Composable Timing Model Clock Syncronization Protocol for Full Nodes of a Blockchain.

Paper Title: The combinatorics of the longest-chain rule: Linear consistency for proof-of-stake blockchains.

Paper Title: Anarchy, State, and Blockchain Utopia: Rule of Law versus Lex Cryptographia.

Issue #35Paper of the Week:Paper Title: MicroCash: Practical Concurrent Processing of Micropayments.

Paper Title: Refresh When You Wake Up: Proactive Threshold Wallets with Offline Devices.

Paper Title: What are the Actual Flaws in Important Smart Contracts (and How Can We Find Them)?

Paper Title: A Blockchain Consensus Protocol Based on Dedicated Time-Memory-Data Trade-Off.

Paper Title: Blockchain Disruption and Decentralized Finance: The Rise of Decentralized Business Models.

In other words, is the current Algorand reward distribution approach incentive-compatible?

Paper Title: MatRiCT: Efficient, Scalable and Post-Quantum Blockchain Confidential Transactions Protocol.

Summary: An efficient RingCT protocol for blockchain confidential transactions, whose security is based on “post-quantum” (module) lattice assumptions.

Paper Title: GRuB: Gas-Efficient Blockchain Storage via Workload-Adaptive Data ReplicationSummary: A security protocol and middleware system for Gas-aware data Replication with Blockchains.

Paper Title: Fin vs. Tech: Determinants of Fintech Start-Up Emergence and Innovation in the Financial Services Incumbent Sector.

Issue #33Paper of the Week:Paper Title: Game-Theoretic Analysis of Mining Strategy in Bitcoin-NG Blockchain Protocol.

Paper Title: SAVER: Snark-friendly, Additively-homomorphic, and Verifiable Encryption and decryption with Rerandomization.

Paper Title: WaterCarver: Anonymous Confidential Blockchain System based on Account Model.

Paper Title: XBlock-ETH: Extracting and Exploring Blockchain Data From Etherem.

Paper Title: MPro: Combining Static and Symbolic Analysis for Scalable Testing of Smart Contract.

TLDR: Despite practitioners’ enthusiasm, the economic trade-offs in managing platform tokens remain unclear.

How token prices are determined by user activities (trading and usage) and platforms’ token supply?

The model also provides insights on various questions surrounding platform tokens and links the token-based platform to the broader economic conditions.

Paper Title: User Data Sharing Frameworks: A Blockchain- Based Incentive Solution.

Paper Title: The Other Side of the Coin: Risks of the Libra Blockchain.

🕵️‍♂️Crypto trading is the best growth marketing strategy to bootstrap / grow an audience in the B2C Fintech investing ecosystemIf you want to build a successful Fintech company you basically have two choices.

Their growth strategy was very smart: (i) Build something complicated and a must-have for any Fintech stock trading company, i.e.

They all offer crypto / digital assets information and trading execution .

In other words, crypto is the best growth marketing strategy to bootstrap / grow an audience in the B2C Fintech investing ecosystem .

They are the poster child of ‘crypto driven growth user acquisition strategy’ with 30m+ usersIn summary: If you have a neo-bank company and don’t offe…

#27:AiX, UK (an artificial intelligence broker)Hi, you founded AiX in 2017 as an artificial intelligence broker, using the power of AI and blockchain technology to give traders unprecedented insight and control.

Around 2016 I realized the tech now existed to enable automating the inefficient voice IDB market and so I started AiX.

Giant telecommunications companies say they would particularly benefit from using this technology, likely due to frequent high volume transactions.

Note, The new and fully integrated smartTrade solution captures and sends post-trade data to a private and permissioned Distributed Ledger.

Previously, he was part of the founding team at the largest Capital Markets Ven…

NovitasFTCL, Ledger, Bitpanda, new hires at Gemini and Binance, Localcryptos.com, Julius Baer, Protonmail banned and much more

Hi Everyone, Thank you for supporting the European crypto ecosystem 🇪🇺.

🕵️‍♂️2020 The Year of Consolidation for Europe.

Coinbase acquiring Xapo to strengthen its custody function) (ii) Consolidation of prime broker activities: The good people at Blockchain Capital added the below slide in their latest 2020 predictions.

At the cross-road of capital markets and digital assets, the digital assets capital markets ecosystem remains difficult to navigate for most investors and startups.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you are an entrepreneur or investor interested to discussed fundraising or M&A in the European ecosystem!

At the cross-road of capital markets and digital assets, the digital assets capital markets ecosystem remains difficult to navigate for most investors and startups.

I am joining as an advisor to NovitasFTCL to share my insights, network and knowledge in the European digital assets capital markets ecosystem.

There has been lot of noise about central bank digital currency (CBDC) following announcements by China, Bank of England, Australia and more recently from Giancarlo, fmr top American regulator.

In addition to Banking-sector disintermediation, there are other number of challenges including run risk, Central bank balance sheet and credit allocation, International implications and Costs and…

Hi Everyone,Paul, founder of Coinscrum, and myself would like to invite you to Coinscrum_institutional :: Feb 11th, 2020 :: LondonThe event is a curated seminar connecting the leading digital assets market participants.

Our aim is to foster discussions and to strengthen the European ecosystem.

Please apply below.

If you want to sponsor.

Email me back or apply hereBest regards,Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)Apply To AttendApply to sponsor

This week I look into InTrade (prediction market), Tardis (historical crypto data) and the usual curated EU news.

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)ps: don’t hesitate to send me an email if you enjoy this newsletter, Always great to have feedback :)🕵️ InTrade, the first prediction market with 50m users and $200m+ wagers.

For many InTrade users, the 2012 election was a challenging experience as many US users were not able to retrieve their funds due to the CFTC enforcement.

: Ask anyone who had done any sort of crypto trading and they will tell you that connecting to any crypto exchanges is a nightmare.

Bitcoin nodes are still operational there despite Middle East tensions [Source]💰Fu…

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)ps: don’t hesitate to send me an email if you enjoy this newsletter, Always great to have feedback :)🕵️ How should Central Bank launch their digital currencies?

The European Central Bank (ECB) recently published a working paper called (Tiered Central Bank Digital Currencies) CBDC and the financial system [Link].

Below a short summaryCBDC could be considered a third form of base money next to (i) overnight deposits with the central bank (available only to banks, specific non FIs) and (ii) banknotes, universally accessible.

“any nascent increase in the demand for CBDC can be eliminated by a drop in the interest rate on CBDC.

But there are potential lim…

Hi Everyone,Thank you for supporting the European crypto ecosystem 🇪🇺.

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)ps: don’t hesitate to send me an email if you enjoy this newsletter, Always great to have feedback :)🕵️ (Not another) Crypto 2020 PredictionsIt feels like everyone shared their predictions regarding the crypto ecosystem for next year.

The team at Token Daily had also a good list, have a look, it’s basically the who’s who of crypto.

It will allow other services such as wallets and different types of aggregators to include Hodl Hodl in their offering.

Obviously, this will increase our popularity,” Hodl Hodl CEO Max KeidunThomson Reuters Taps Verady for Cryptocurrency Tax Tool.

While everyone is asking ‘What will be the blockbuster game for crypto?’ I think we already have it: Crypto trading.

The ease of use and access of crypto exchanges has created an entire new industry combining trading, betting and gaming.

It’s because crypto trading is the biggest trading market since the ‘00The industry is professionalising super fast and in few years, most of these small trading shops will be outcompeted by large funds.

Crypto trading is one of the biggest games in the world in terms of dollar value and user number.

So what’s beyond crypto trading?

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)🕵️ Cash is not disappearing.

The proliferation of mobile phones, contactless technology used in many debit and credit cards and services storing payment card digitally (e.g.

All of these drivers should make it clear that cash (ie notes and coins) are disappearing.

Based on the “Red Book” statistics, cash in circulation and card payments (a proxy for e-payments) have both increased between 2007 and 2016 .

Meanwhile, 75% of the population prefer digital payments thanks to mobile wallet and QR code.

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)🕵️ Q3 Report Galaxy DigitalThe team at Galaxy Digital released their Q3 report, here are some (high level) notes (Source + Press)Galaxy promoted Ashwin as CFO formerly chief accounting officerTrading : The number of on-boarding increased in Q3 vs Q2 despite lower trading volume.

Cash : Galaxy had $78m of cash as of September 2019 and about $124m of digital assets (BTC, ETH, FTX and WAX)Burn : Total Opex for Q3 ‘19 was $22m vs $29m in Q3 ‘18.

Business line: The table below highlights the different business lines as of September ‘19 for Q3 ‘19.

More info🏦Regulations / UniversitiesA proposed change to legislation in Germany could allow banks to facilita…

Hi Everyone,Thank you for supporting the European crypto ecosystem 🇪🇺.

Etienne ( Twitter, etienne@blockwyre.com)Thank you Ledger Vault for supporting the crypto European ecosystem 🇪🇺This section aims to give the opportunity to introduce some of the best 🇪🇺 founders.

Whilst working in finance I was an active investor in technology startups, and an LP in some outstanding early-stage tech funds like Hoxton Ventures and Entrepreneur First.

When I met my partners Yuri and Stuart they had some very compelling technology — an invention for Data Security — that they had developed and were looking to commercialise it.

Well, I wanted to shed light on Europe and show how exciting the ecosystem is.

Hi Wiktor, you serve as the CEO of Quedex, which in July 2019 became the first globally regulated crypto futures and options exchange; can you share a bit about your background?

But as lending is one of the best business model after being an exchange in crypto, it is likely to continue.

More info on the move hereEx-Cinnober Blockchain Lead Joins Nordic Crypto Fund to Bet Big on Bitcoin.

I am big fan of fund investing in fighting the misuse of people’s personal data.

Meanwhile, the Privacy-centric coin Grin received an anonymous 50 Bitcoin (BTC) donation to its General Fund on Nov. 11, sparking a bizarre rumor that the generous soul behind it was Satoshi.

The theory goes that if you can detect or prevent the transition from compliant to non-compliant, you can reduce unacceptable outcomes, and therefore you can reduce the likelihood of failure.

There are a stunning number of examples in this space where a robot simply following a checklist would reduce a number of unacceptable outcomes.

For the purposes of this piece, I will be defining the environment vs systems vs organization thusly:Environment : the world that the Ethereum network and smart contracts on the Ethereum network affects.

We also constantly extend our knowledge to better understand the acceptable and unacceptable outcomes, and to better understand how our behavior is encouragin…

Since MCD launched 3 months ago, MakerDAO has generated 719k DAI in net fees (calculated by the sum of stability fees and penalty fees minus DSR costs).

This translates into a 3.9% annual net margin on average debt issued, which is well above the 0.5% average DSR spread that MakerDAO had in that same period.

This higher margin is explained by both lower DSR utilization and extra income from 95k in DAI penalty fees.

(Note: that the actual net fee margin is always higher than DSR spread if the DSR has sub-100% utilization.)

This can be explained by the low DSR spread and also low rates in general from the launch of MCD in order to incentivize CDP migration.

Notably, ~45% of the total network hashrate is currently represented by one mining pool: 6Block.

However, the network has been getting more decentralized over time as more miners come online, because initially, 100% of the network was being mined by 6Block.

(source)Difficulty: The initial network target contained 40 leading zero bits, which required roughly 2^40 rounds of hashing to find a block.

CA/Naming Corporations and Other Blockchain Projects: 7.5% ICANN, ENS, Namecoin, Blockstack, Cloudflare, Keybase, Verisign, Public Internet Registry, Afilias, Brave, and IdenTrust.

Our Network is a weekly newsletter where top blockchain projects and their communities share data-driven insights.

Our Network is a weekly newsletter edited by Spencer Noon where top blockchain projects and their communities share data-driven insights.

Network Updates📌 Nexus MutualContributor: Richard Chen, Partner at 1confirmation$1.6M worth of smart contract insurance is currently taken out on Nexus Mutual.

Market makers seek to profit from a spread above the market price.

This, in turn, should make market makers more comfortable offering tighter spreads, since they accrue some of the arbitrage gains if their orders become mispriced.

Subscribe now to receive a crash course in on-chain metrics and crypto fundamentals, and never miss an issue.

Updates on Tezos, Ethereum, Decred, Zcash, and Bitcoin.

DAI locked in the DSR has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the migration period.

The most notable increases were in the third week of December when Compound implemented the DSR for its unutilized DAI and during the second week of December when the DSR rate increased from 2% to 4%.

The recent rate increase of the DSR from 4% to 6% continued the linear pace of DAI being locked in DSR until last week when DSR utilization fell to previous levels seen before the rate increase.

This happened due to one large withdrawal of DAI from the DSR and can be also partially explained by an increase in DAI minting in 2020 that has outpaced the amount of DAI locked in the DSR.

Welcome to Issue #4 of Our Network, a weekly newsletter where top blockchain projects and their communities share data-driven insights about their networks.

74.13% of the entire token supply of the network is currently bonded or locked up (~185M out of a total 250M ATOMs in circulation).

📌 PolkadotContributor: Bill Laboon, Technical Education Lead at Web3 FoundationAlthough the Polkadot mainnet has not yet launched, the Kusama "canary network" is running strong with at least 324 known nodes currently running.

Validators on the network have now produced and finalized over 650,000 blocks, containing over 104,000 transactions and over 118,000 module events (source).

Here is a visualization of …

Welcome to Issue #3 of Our Network, a weekly newsletter where top blockchain projects and their communities share data-driven insights about their networks.

And if you’re interested in seeing the full list, you can check it out here:See the full listNetwork UpdatesMoving on to network updates.

Starting with trade volume - since the launch of dYdX’s V2 protocol in May 2019, quarterly trade volume has grown significantly from <$5M in Q1 (pre-launch) to $78.5M in Q4.

In the graph below, you can visualize the shift from Omni to Ethereum as USDT_OMNI on-chain volume declined as the year progressed while USDT_ERC20 on-chain volume picked up considerably.

Subscribe now to receive a crash course in…

Welcome to Issue #2 of Our Network, a weekly newsletter where top blockchain projects and their communities share data-driven insights about their networks.

As of mid-December, we have seen a steep rise in Ethereum network growth, with the highest frequency of new addresses added to the network since June 2019.

Overall though, the total number of new addresses created on the Ethereum network is down 29% this year — from 28m in 2018 to 19.9m in 2019.

There’s been a noticeable drop-off in total value transmitted on the Ethereum network in 2019.

Subscribe now to receive a crash course in on-chain metrics and crypto fundamentals, and never miss an issue.