Bitcoin difficulty and hash rate are two important factors that determine network health and also the state of miners. According to CoinMetric’s estimates, the difficulty will hit a new all-time high of 15 trillion in four days. In a recent tweet, CoinMetrics mentioned that there would be an ~8% increase in Bitcoin’s difficulty making it...Read More
Ethereum Classic’s network update Agharta has been scheduled to take place on 12 January and it has been receiving support from various exchanges, clients, mining pools, etc. Binance announced its support for Agharta on 10 January 2020. The exchange announced: “Binance will support the upcoming ETC Agharta Network Upgrade. Deposits and withdrawals of ETC will...Read More
Thailand‘s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) recently partnered with RippleNet to create ‘SCB Easy’, a mobile application that facilitates instant, low-cost cross-border payment solutions, according to a blog post. With this, the 112-year-old bank became Thailand’s first domestic bank that is willing to push forward with Fintech partnerships. At Ripple‘s annual Swell conference, Arthit Sriumporn, SCB’s...Read More
Bitcoin is known by many names. According to the white paper it’s called the “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” to its adherents it’s hailed as the “tool for financial freedom,” to the bankers it’s “fool’s gold.” One definition that most can agree on is that Bitcoin is a “decentralized currency” The first of its kind. But,...Read More
Voice, the social media app developed by Block.one appointed Salah Zalatimo as its new CEO, who formerly served as the global Chief Digital Officer with Forbes, according to a blog post. Commenting on this new addition to the team, Block.one’s CEO Brendan Blumer said that Zalatimo’s experience in content tool creation would be a valuable asset...Read More
Bitcoin [BTC] has always been the topic of discussion when anyone talks about cryptocurrencies. It has gained a relevant position in the tech and financial sector, even though many are still skeptical about investing in Bitcoin. 2020 may turn out to be an important year for Bitcoin due to its third halving event, an event...Read More
From taking over the entire market at the beginning of 2019 with its Lightning Torch to amassing support from various exchanges and wallets, Bitcoin‘s Lightning Network stood out in the market this last year. The latest platform to announce support for the second-layer payment protocol was River Financial, a financial firm based in San Fransico....Read More
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Liquid Network have been making headlines for quite a while now. The latter being a sidechain-based settlement network and the former being a second-layer payment protocol, both have grabbed the attention of several exchanges in the cryptocurrency market. Both subjects were recently touched upon by Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex and...Read More
Jihan Wu, former CEO and Co-founder of Beijing-based mining chip manufacturing giant, Bitmain Technologies, has reportedly opposed the layoffs of a significant portion of the working staff at the firm. In an open letter to all Bitmain employees, the ousted exec’s Weibo post dated 6 January, read, “To all employees of Bitmain: I am firmly opposed...Read More
Large pools are causing centralization. Cardano’s largest pools are currently over-staked. Though the exact statistics change over time, the issue has been observed for several weeks. AdaPools.org indicates that 18 of Cardano’s 249 active staking pools are saturated as of Jan. 4. In terms of value, 33% of all staked ADA has been allocated to...Read More
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is undoubtedly one of the most fast-paced entities in the crypto-space. Over the past few years, the exchange has recorded tremendous growth in terms of the number of people availing the platform’s services, as well as with respect to the list of services provided by the exchange...Read More
Yesterday I recapped the last decade in crypto. Today, let’s look ahead to the future and what I think will happen in the 2020s. Of course, no one can predict the future with much accuracy, but one way to predict it more accurately is to invent it! In short, I think over the next decade...Read More
If you are looking to borrow or lend BTC, here are some of the best Bitcoin lending sites and P2P platforms that you can use for this particular financial service. What Is Bitcoin Lending? Bitcoin lending is similar to your regular bank loan, the difference being that you do not need to involve banks and...Read More
Litecoin, the Vegeta to Bitcoin‘s Goku, has been rolling out updates for its Mimblewimble project since the Foundation’s plan to implement the protocol was announced last year. The new protocol would be making its debut on the silver coin via extension blocks, and while the idea has been applauded by several people, it did also...Read More
The Guangdong government in China is in the news after it launched a blockchain-based financing platform on January 2, 2020, to help small companies receive loans at a faster pace from commercial banks, according to a local report. This would be China‘s first blockchain loan issuance platform for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) financing. This...Read More
Messaging applications are commonly used in this day and age. The US Army is no longer allowed to make use of TikTok on government-owned devices. There are some serious concerns regarding TikTok and the data it collects. TikTok is a no-go for the US Army Chinese social media applications do not have the best reputation. ...Read More
It was December of 2010 when I first read the Bitcoin whitepaper, while at home visiting my parents for the holidays. As we wrap up the decade, here are my quick thoughts on how things have progressed. Note: this post is inspired by Fred Wilson’s post for tech more broadly. Tomorrow I’ll post a follow...Read More
Cryptocurrency miner Argo Blockchain recently installed 3,616 new Bitmain machines, each of which was aimed at increasing its mining capacity by 75%. According to an official announcement, the London Stock Exchange-listed firm stated, “The new machines represent 159 petahash (PH), an increase of 75% from the Company’s existing installed base of mining machines.” Agro Blockchain...Read More
The Ethereum Muir Glacier hard fork was successfully completed, once again delaying the mining “difficulty bomb” that threatens to freeze the network. Defusing the Bomb? Muir Glacier (EIP-2387) was initially proposed because of an underestimation in the onset of the difficulty bomb. As said by Tim Beiko, a product manager working at Ethereum: We thought...Read More
New Year’s Eve attack nearly wreaks havoc. Ethereum experienced an attack this week that threatened to cause significant downtime. Beginning on Dec. 30, an attacker sent invalid blocks to the network, causing node operators using the Parity client to lose sync with the network. Sergio Demian Lerner, a cryptocurrency security consultant, explained on Twitter: The...Read More
Very interesting developments will be made in the scientific industry. Chinese scientists successfully bred pig-monkey chimera offspring, albeit the success was short-lived. This species is often referred to as the pig-monkey chimera. Pig-monkey Chimera Experimentation Continues While previous experiments have been conducted, the animals usually die within a few days. In this particular case, the...Read More
“Today we know that centralization and big bureaucracies have not, as promised, been the answer for promoting better opportunities for society” ~ Carlos Salinas de Gortari To ASIC or not to ASIC has been the dilemma for years now. For some, the distinction is very easy; it comes down to choosing between centralization and decentralization....Read More
Private transactions are closer than ever. Litecoin’s Mimblewimble-based privacy efforts are finally underway. David Burkett, the developer behind the subproject, has announced that he has completed the first month of development. “After months of planning, development of the Mimblewimble extension block has officially started,” Burkett posted to Litecointalk on Dec. 29. This project has been...Read More
During the course of 2019, the most used BTC-based OP_Return protocol, Veriblock, outshined Omni Layer outputs. According to statistics, Veriblock captured 57% of BTC’s OP_Return outputs in 2019. Ever since the protocol’s opcodes started dominating, a number of BTC influencers called the outputs “abuse” and “spam.” Also Read: Central Bank Gold Hoarding Hits 50-Year High...Read More
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino sees cross-chain value transfers as the most critical issue facing the cryptocurrency sector for 2020. With over 4,000 digital assets in circulation and many of them confined to their own ecosystems, a lack of liquidity and interoperability plagues many tokens. Blockchain ecosystem diversity is harming the industry — locking value inside...Read More
Any development in technology, science, and space deserves to be highlighted. Russian engineers are confident they have put together a working hypersonic missile. Rumors of such a missile have persisted for some time now. The Hypersonic Missile Appears Real According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the hypersonic missile is now in service. This missile...Read More
IOTA was unable to process transactions for 15 hours due to a bug with its “Coordinator,” a centralized node which determines which transactions are confirmed. Bug Stops IOTA Transactions On Dec. 29 around 11 a.m. the IOTA Tangle stopped processing transactions. The bug was identified and fixed 15 hours after the stoppage, as first reported...Read More
How regulators see Bitcoin is more important than how the market sees it. With Bitcoin surging by over 250 percent this year, 2019 has been a busy year for the cryptocurrency market. One of the busiest parties in the market were the regulators, particularly the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. Unlike the previous year where...Read More
On one hand, the Ethereum community has been gearing up for the transition of the network from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to Proof-of-Stake [PoS] with Ethereum 2.0, the members of the Ethereum Classic community, on the other hand, have leaned toward the Proof-of-Work algorithm. The founder of ETC Labs, James Wo previously expressed that ETC wasn’t looking...Read More
When Bitcoin was introduced to cypherpunks in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto as a peer-to-peer payment system, it was immediately labeled as a revolution as great as that of the Internet. However, as the cryptocurrency started to garner more attention with each passing day, the shortcomings of the blockchain technology have become more and more evident. ...Read More
