A recent report suggests that at current prices, Bitcoin miners will consume an estimated 8.27 terawatt-hours per year. That might sound like a lot, but it’s actually less than an eighth of what U.S. data centers use, 1 and only about 0.21 percent of total U.S. consumption. It also compares favorably to the currencies and commodities that bitcoin could help replace: Global production of cash and coins consumes an estimated 11 terawatt-hours per year, while gold mining burns the equivalent of 132 terawatt-hours. And that doesn’t include armored trucks, bank vaults, security systems and such. So in the right context, bitcoin is positively green.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Bitcoin energy consumption, in context.
Interesting to read to form your opinion instead of relaying uninformed clickbait amplified by the #Kommentariat
Building a cryptocurrency miner that doubles as a heater is cool, but one inventor has taken the concept of mining to a whole new level. A creative Tesla owner managed to fit a legitimate mining rig inside the trunk of his shiny Model S.But here is the best part: all the electricity needed to keep the mining rig running is coming from Tesla’s free Superchargers – or so the inventor says. The quirky setup went viral after the inventor took to Facebook group Tesla Owners Worldwide to share images of the Model S-fitted miner.
Bitcoin is a system with many strict rules but without any rulers. This is made possible because the rules are enforced by each and every user of the system. Changing the existing rules is nearly impossible, but new rules can be added if consensus is achieved.
The enforcement of rules without rulers may perhaps be the biggest innovation behind bitcoin.
But this doesn't mean that no one is trying to become the ruler…
For this reason, the users of bitcoin must defend their position as the rule enforcing part of the ecosystem.
Rules-without-rulers is a feature that distinguishes bitcoin from all other monetary systems, and this feature alone may represent the main reason why bitcoin has obtained value in the first place.
Unfortunately, bitcoin is a bit difficult to understand and even more difficult to explain… So let’s start with a simplification of the bitcoin ecosystem:
- Miners are the supply. - Users are the demand. - Nodes specify what the users are demanding. - Miners work to fulfill that specification.
To understand how bitcoin can hold value, we must first take a step back and ask:
What gives money value?
Money is first and foremost a social construct, so let’s have a look in the dictionary:
While remembering that money is just a social construct, ask yourself the following:
Where is the value in the below illustration?
Money is a social construct
Answer:
The value is the quality of the service performed by the plumber and in the tastefulness of the bread produced by the baker.
These are values with a clear demand from the market.
The money in this illustration is not the value.
But if the money is not the value, then what is the money?
The money is just a tool that is used by the plumber and the baker:
- To communicate the value of the service and the bread.
- To exchange with each other the values they are producing
- To store (save for later) the values they have created.
- To account for the value of the service that is delivered by the plumber in comparison to the bread produced by the baker.
An interesting question would be:
If the plumber performs a service that takes one hour to finish; how many breads must the baker produce to deliver a corresponding amount of value?
Money is a tool that allows for a measurement of different values so that the above question can have a satisfying answer.
All of the above features applies to bitcoin in exactly the same way as they apply to the dollar (or to any other form of money)
(Note: for simplicity I will use the word dollar instead of “fiat currency” or “government controlled currency”)
Money is not inherently valuable but becomes valuable as a social construct (as a useful tool)
Money is given its value from the perception of its users. The act of accepting money as a medium of payment for something of actual value; gives value to the money.
Put simply:
- Users of money give money its value.
With this understanding in mind there are two very important differences between the dollar as a social constructand bitcoin as a social construct:
#1: The acceptance bitcoin is completely voluntarily, while the acceptance of dollar is not.
The dollar has the advantage of legal tender status. This means that when offered the dollar as payment, the plumber and the baker are required by law to accept this medium of payment.
In other words; they are required by law to give the dollar value
#2: The dollar has an inherent authority (the state) that enforces the rules of the dollar.
When the plumber and the baker receives the dollar in their bank accounts, they can know with a high degree of certainty; that those are valid money in compliance with the rules that is enforced by the inherent authority.
Anyone who accepts bitcoin as a medium of payment does so entirely voluntary. This means that users voluntarily choose to give bitcoin its value.
But since bitcoin does not have an inherent authority, the acceptance of bitcoin comes with a special responsibility:
It is the responsibility of the user to independently check the validity of an incoming bitcoin transaction.
To do this, the user must be connected to a fully validating node that is owned and controlled by the individual user.
This is the only way to use bitcoin in a completely trustless manner without reliance an any third party.
The rules of bitcoin are enforced by the users through their act of validating
The users are practicing enforcement because they will only accept bitcoin as valid payment if;
The bitcoin-transactions they receive: are valid transactions as specified by the personal nodes they are running.
Users are enforcing the rules of bitcoin by only giving value to the coins that are valid in the eyes of the user.
No validity = No value given
This is why the miners must comply by the rules that are enforced by the users.
If the miners don’t comply; then they will end up wasting large amounts of energy to mine coins that are worthless in the eyes of the users.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially stated that Russia will issue its own ‘CryptoRuble’ at a closed door meeting in Moscow, according to local news sources. The news broke through Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.
According to the official, the state issued cryptocurrency cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities. The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied. The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale. Nikiforov said:
“I confidently declare that we run CryptoRuble for one simple reason: if we do not, then after 2 months our neighbors in the EurAsEC will.”
Embracing and rejecting
While the announcement means that Russia will enter the cryptocurrency world, it is in no way an affirmation or legalization of Bitcoin or any other decentralized cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Putin quite recently called for a complete ban on all cryptocurrencies within Russia.
The statement from Putin seemed apparently to contradict the earlier commentsfrom other ministers who seemed pro-crypto, but only with regulations, as well as Putin’s recent meetings with Buterin and others. Now, with the issuance of the CryptoRuble, the apparent contradiction has been made clear.
We are proud to announce the first (and though we’ll try to outdo ourselves, possibly the best ever) episode of SweetTalk — the Sweetbridge show featuring leading blockchain experts and futurists…
Russia Makes U-Turn on Cryptocurrencies After Backing From PutinRussia is drawing up rules about how to conduct initial coin offerings, breaking ranks with China after President Vladimir Putin signaled his approval for digital currencies.While China slapped a blanket ban on ICOs this month, the government in Moscow plans to regulate cryptocurrencies like securities rather than outlawing them, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Friday. That marks a full reversal from his ministry’s proposal last year to punish people who use digital currencies with up to seven years in jail.Appetite for the new instruments has been growing ever since Putin met in June with the founder of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin and gave his blessing for Russia to develop blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin. A consortium of lenders including Sberbank PJSC is now seeking to use the technology to cut costs, while a presidential aide last month announced plans for an ICO.By contrast, China’s central bank has ordered all fundraising efforts related to ICOs -- which have raised at least $1.25 billion globally so far -- halted immediately, a decision that may have an impact on investors who had participated in at least 65 of the projects by mid-July. Chinese regulators have also decided to close domestic trading cryptocurrency platforms, Caixin reported, citing unidentified people close to the nation’s Internet financial risk prevention team.“The state certainly understands that cryptocurrencies are a reality, there is no point in prohibiting them,” Siluanov told reporters in Moscow. “It is possible to regulate them, so the Finance Ministry will draw up a bill by the end of the year.”Putin’s EmbraceThat reality wasn’t always apparent in Russia. Before Putin’s meeting with Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian founder of Ethereum, the legal status of cryptocurrencies was unclear.Since then, a company co-owned by the president’s internet ombudsman, Dmitry Marinichev, has announced a plan to raise $100 million in an ICO to fund a domestic digital currency-mining operation. Herman Gref, Sberbank’s Tesla-driving chief executive, has put the weight of Russia’s biggest bank behind a modified ethereum protocol dubbed Masterchain to make interbank money transfers safer and faster.Not all Russian officials are believers, however. Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina warned Friday at the same forum that there was “gold fever” surrounding digital currencies and said that they shouldn’t be used as a surrogate for money.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Russia's U-turn on cryptocurrencies shows us that 1/ it is about control 2/ it is about influence 3/ it is about geopolitics and ultimately sovereignty.Speaking of influence, it looks like Vitalîk Buterin has some on Vladimir Putin...
La Fondation Ethereum poursuit la feuille de route de développement d’Ethereum initialement établie lors du crowdfunding de 2014, à savoir un déploiement en plusieurs phases des différentes fonctionnalités du protocole. Ces phases sont appelées Frontier (l’alpha), Homestead (première version en production, c’est la version actuelle d’Ethereum), Metropolis (prochaine mise à jour majeure avec de nombreuses améliorations – pour la plupart invisibles à l’utilisateur) et enfin Serenity (implémentation de la preuve d’enjeu et de la fragmentation / sharding).Comme souvent en matière de développement de projet innovant, les dates prévues pour le déploiement de ces étapes, mais aussi l’étendue exacte des fonctionnalités, ont largement évolué pendant la vie du projet. Depuis le déploiement de Homestead en mars 2016, le petite monde au courant du développement du protocole Ethereum attendait avec impatience le déploiement de Metropolis.Làs, les différents événements ayant émaillé la vie de la blockchain Ethereum fin 2016 – The DAO, le hack, le fork, les attaques DoS, les autres forks – ont largement perturbé le travail de l’équipe de développement, occupée à éteindre des incendies plus pressantes. Ces imprévus, couplés aux habituels retards, découvertes, idées nouvelles, ont conduit à un large report de la date de lancement de Metropolis. Cette étape doit correspondre au lancement « grand public » du réseau avec tous les outils permettant d’utiliser facilement des dApps et d’en voir les avantages.Depuis début juillet le développement d’Ethereum a connu une activité particulièrement intense en vue de la sortie de Metropolis. La Fondation a annoncé le 23 août dernier que le lancement de Métropolis était proche et que plusieurs fonctionnalités étaient déjà prêtes. En conséquence, Métropolis sera implémentée en deux fois avec une première hardfork nommée Byzantium et une seconde nommée Constantinople. Un choix de nom qui se veut un clin d’œil aux noms successifs d’Istanbul, l’une des plus grandes mégalopoles du continent européen. Deux dates sont envisagées pour l’avènement de Byzantium, au meilleur cas la fork aura lieu 22 Septembre au bloc 4 300 000 et au plus tard le 27 octobre au bloc 4 400 000.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Un article très clair sur la feuille de route d'Ethereum vers Métropolis via Byzance et Constantinople.
A Bitcoin company has finally attained the "unicorn" title, an honorific bestowed upon startups valued at more than $1 billion.
Coinbase, a brokerage that established itself as one of the biggest brands in a now-booming cryptocurrency market, has raised $100 million at a private valuation of $1.6 billion that includes the capital raised, the company tells Fortune. The venture capital firm Institutional Venture Partners led the round with participation by Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32, and Draper Associates.
Coinbase had for months been rumored to be raising around $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion or more, as the Wall Street Journalreported in June. That deal, its fourth, is now final.
In previous rounds, Coinbase had raised a total of $117 million at a private valuation approaching $500 million, as Fortunereported. That sum already made it one of the most well financed Bitcoin ventures around, next to Circle and 21.
Coinbase has been riding a wave of interest in cryptocurrencies in recent months. Virtual currency prices exploded this year with the resurgence of Bitcoin—now trading at more than $3,400 per Bitcoin, well above its previous 2013 highs in the $900 range—as well as the ascent of Ethereum, a rival cryptocurrency network that, for one thing, allows people mint and sell their own digital tokens.
Overall, the total market value for cryptocurrencies and tokens combined has soared to more than $120 billion from just under $20 billion at the beginning of the year. This exuberance has led many industry watchers to warn of a possible bubble.
Founded in 2012, Coinbase started as a Bitcoin wallet service that helped customers stash their digital wealth. The company later moved into the brokerage space, opening online exchanges where traders can swap or sell crypto coins.
This year has been a banner year for Coinbase. According to the company, it has facilitated the exchange of more than $25 billion in digital currency to date, five times more than the total sum it processed from its founding through the end of last year.
On Wednesday, Fidelity Investments, the asset manager, added the ability for customers to view the cryptocurrency holdings in their Coinbase accounts on its own website.
During the recent Bitcoin blockchain fork in which a faction of the network broke off and created a new currency, Bitcoin Cash, some customers blasted Coinbase for saying it did not intend immediately to support the new money. Eventually, Coinbase reversed course and agreed to allow users to access their potential Bitcoin Cash holdings at the start of next year.
Coinbase has also been battling an IRS inquiry in recent months that seeks information about cryptocurrency buyers and sellers for tax purposes. The agency most recently said it would exempt people from the probe who transacted less than $20,000 in digital currency.
These hiccups haven't slowed the company's pace. Coinbase said it would put the newly raised money toward bolstering its engineering and customer support teams, opening a New York office for its professional trading operations, and continuing to develop Toshi, an Ethereum-based messaging and wallet app that it debuted last year.
Coinbase isn't the only recent benefactor from crypto mania that has lately gripped the world. GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, formerly known as Google Ventures, recently led a $40 million funding round for Blockchain, a cryptocurrency wallet provider based in London. Other investment firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Sequoia have been backing so-called crypto hedge funds, like Polychain Capital and Metastable, that invest in digital tokens and cryptocurrencies too.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Finally a UniBitCorn ! Congratulations to @Coinbase
Au-delà du montant, cette opération est significative de part l'identité de ses participants : Open CNP, le programme de capital-risque du premier assureur-vie français, est le plus gros contributeur au tour de table avec Otium, aux côtés de Nasdaq, première bourse électronique du monde, et de Digital Currency Group, investisseur new-yorkais très actif dans le secteur de la blockchain. Ces grands acteurs de la finance ne s'en tiennent pas à apporter de l'argent, ils nouent aussi un partenariat stratégique avec Stratumn pour l'aider à déployer concrètement sa solution dans leurs différents marchés.
Graver des informations dans le marbre à moindre coût
La start-up française créée en 2015 par l'ingénieur californien Richard Caetano aide les entreprises à sécuriser et optimiser les échanges de données entre partenaires, clients et autorités régulatrices. Elle a pour ce faire développé une technologie baptisée « Proof of Process » qui allie la technologie de registre distribué de la Blockchain, permettant de certifier des informations à moindre coût, et la cryptographie pour assurer la confidentialité de ces informations aux yeux de tiers.
« La technologie blockchain promet de fiabiliser les processus et de fluidifier l'échange d'information dans des consortiums. Nous souhaitons en développer l'utilisation avec nos partenaires et les acteurs du secteur de l'assurance grâce à la technologie Proof of Process développée par Stratumn », déclare Magali Noé, Chief Digital Officer de CNP Assurances.
Doubler la taille de ses effectifs d'ici 2018
La solution de Stratumn peut de fait s'appliquer à toute problématique de place impliquant des échanges de données entre acteurs d'un même secteur. Durant les douze derniers mois, Stratumn a mené une dizaine de projets pour tester des cas d'usages avec de grandes entreprises comme CNP Assurances et Nasdaq mais aussi Thales, Bureau Veritas ou Bouygues immobiliers, chacun présents sur un de ses quatre marchés cibles (assurance, marchés financiers, énergie, supply chain). Cette levée de fonds doit permettre à la jeune pousse de doubler la taille de ses effectifs d'ici 2018, à 30 personnes, et de s'attaquer au marché américain d'ici la fin de l'année.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Après Ledger, c'est un deuxième membre du Consortium LaBChain qui réussit une très belle levée de fonds ; l'écosystème français devient enfin visible.
There’s been a whole lot of talk about initial coin offerings (ICO), company fundraising events based around the sale of cryptocurrencies, but not much in the way of action until yesterday. That’s when web browser maker Brave, founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, raised $35 million from its ICO — and it did it in less than 30 seconds, too.ICOs operate by selling investors cryptocurrency, which can be used to store value in many ways beyond a traditional share. For its sale, Brave created its own coin — The Basic Attention Token, or BAT — and sold one billion of them. That collection of BAT cost 156,250 ETH, which is just over $35 million. A further 500 million BAT is stored for user growth and “BAT development,” according to Brave, which is not planning another token sale in the future.The ICO is the highest grossing to date, and Brave’s business itself is one of the more interesting to make use the blockchain. Eich, who created JavaScript but left Mozilla in 2014 in controversial circumstances, had raised $7 million from investors including Founders Fund for Brave. He believes the current internet advertising system is inherently broken, and his ambitious proposal uses the blockchain to make things more efficient for all parties, advertisers, publishers and users, too.Kik, a messaging service popular with young people in North America, recently announced plans for its own ‘Kin’ coin which it will use as a virtual currency to pay for related goods and services, and that’s the same approach Brave has taken. It plans to use BAT the currency for its advertising system, which it claims can reduce ad fraud and increase efficiencies for publishers and advertisers. It is also assessing the potential for micropayments and buying digital goods with BAT in the future.Brave’s pitch to consumers is faster loading times, tighter privacy controls and even the potential to earn money simply by reading content.More immediately, it said it will use the proceeds of this ICO to develop its advertising platform.One notable anecdote of the Brave ICO is how the process was dominated by a handful of individuals. Only around 130 people actually bought BAT, Coindesk noted, with one buyer scooping up $4.6 million of them (20,000 ETH worth). All in all, Coindesk reported that five buyers acquired half of the total haul, while the 20 biggest spenders bought two-thirds of the available coins.That situation runs counter to the thesis that many in Ethereum hold, which is that token sales enable anyone to take ownership of the companies they use or follow. Of course larger, organized investors — including adventurous corporations or early moving VC firms — are a key component when a company sells tens of millions of dollars of coins, but ensuring that there is space for smaller parties is going to be an ever critical challenge as ICOs become more commonplace.Aside from Kik, which hasn’t given a specific date, Asia-based payment firm Omise is gearing up to raise just under $20 million from a token sale this month as the phenomenon begins to find interest among more established (and venture-backed) tech companies.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Ethereum ICOs are an amazing and very disruptive trend unfolding in the Blockchain space, not only because of their blitz speed, but also because we just start to understand the diversity of their underlying strategy, ranging from (Ponzi like?) speculation towards alternative (and complements) to VC funding...
The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has announced that it is exploring blockchain technology for use in the development of a new mobility ecosystem that could accelerate development of autonomous driving technology.
“Hundreds of billions of miles of human driving data may be needed to develop safe and reliable autonomous vehicles,” said Chris Ballinger, director of mobility services and chief financial officer at TRI. “Blockchains and distributed ledgers may enable pooling data from vehicle owners, fleet managers, and manufacturers to shorten the time for reaching this goal, thereby bringing forward the safety, efficiency and convenience benefits of autonomous driving technology.”
Also collaborating on this initiative are: MIT Media Lab; Berlin-based BigchainDB, which is building the data exchange for sharing driving and autonomous vehicle testing data; Oaken Innovations, based in Dallas and Toronto, which is developing an application for P2P car sharing, vehicle access and payments with a newly created mobility token; Commuterz, a startup from Israel, working with TRI on a P2P carpooling solution; Gem, from Los Angeles, working with Toyota Insurance Management Solutions (TIMS), Toyota’s joint venture telematics car insurance company; and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Services, which is developing the usage-based insurance platform.
“I’m excited Toyota is spearheading this initiative that uses blockchain technology to create an open platform where users can control their driving data,” said Neha Narula, Director, Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. “Our hope is that other industry stakeholders will join this effort to bring safe and reliable autonomous vehicles one step closer to reality.”
TRI is also working with Toyota Financial Services in the United States for development of related financial tools.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Several automakers are exploring Blockchain, mostly for tracking spare parts all along the supply chain ; the Toyota way looks different and may equally be promising.
The bitcoin civil war may have gotten a forceful push toward a solution today as Barry Silbert, one of the most influential venture capitalists in the space, announced an agreement for resolving the two-and-a-half-year-long impasse.The agreement, published in a Medium post titled “Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017,” is less a technical feat than a political one. It has the support of 56 companies across 21 countries that represent 83.28% of computer power on the bitcoin network, 20.5 million wallets and $5.1 billion of monthly transaction volume on the network.Just to have some plan of action is a relief to the signers.The impasse began when developers managing the open source code for bitcoin first descended into a disagreement over how to accommodate more transactions on the network. That then developed into a full-blown civil war. Aside from the bad press, the two-and-a-half-year-long gridlock has resulted in high fees on the network, a larger-than-usual backlog of transactions and long delays in confirmation times.“We’re at a point where the average bitcoin user who is holding a few dollars can’t actually use their money because the fee is higher than the money they’re holding,” said Bill Barhydt, chief executive of Abra, a remittance company that uses the bitcoin blockchain to make transfers and that signed the agreement.Though the compromise is unlikely to make anyone in the bitcoin community change its minds — message boards showed a mix of support of the compromise and opposition for various reasons — it could finally move the network forward from the question that has stalled progress on it for so long.The agreement is to implement a software upgrade that makes the network more efficient once 80% of the network signals support for that upgrade (previously, the developers had set a threshold of 95% to trigger it). It also proposes triggering another upgrade that runs the risk of splitting the bitcoin network in two, thus creating two coins, within six months.It’s not clear how much of a success this will be until it’s pulled off. Ironically, the agreement isn’t that different from a previous agreement signed a year-and-a-half ago in Hong Kong. It is a variation on another proposal sent to the bitcoin development email list in March by Sergio Demian Lerner, of the bitcoin company Rootstock.Silbert, who declined to comment, got support from players worldwide, including leading U.S. companies such as Coinbase, Xapo, Bloq and Bitfury, as well as top companies in other countries where bitcoin is popular, such as China’s BTCC, Japan’s bitFlyer, and South Korea’s Korbit.Most notable are the support it has from Bitmain, a Chinese mining equipment manufacturer and bitcoin pool operator and the omission of DCG portfolio company Blockstream, which has several key employees on the open source developer team, which has been at odds with Bitmain. That means the agreement fails to bring together the two parties who have each been most vilified by the other side and who are the most opposed to each other.“We need a compromise that brings together the hash power, the wallets and the people running the largest nodes,” said Barhydt. “This agreement has minimal technical risk and gets us back to where we need to be so the average bitcoin user can actually use their bitcoin.”Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, which declined to sign the agreement, said in a meeting room at this week’s blockchain industry conference, Consensus, said “Everybody in bitcoin would like more scale, but we should scale in a scientific, efficient way that doesn’t stress the network.”In the same post, Silbert also announced a commitment from several startups to provide technical and engineering support to test the software upgrade and to help other companies prepare for those upgrades.The setting for the announcement couldn’t be more triumphant for Silbert.A Wall Street wunderkind who built the highly successful Second Market, he left that perch three years ago and then did something perceived as crazy — start a new empire in bitcoin.As head of Digital Currency Group, the largest venture capital firm and incubator in the space, he invested in dozens of bitcoin and blockchain companies around the world, many of whom are some of the biggest cryptocurrency players today.And his vision was vindicated: although there was a long period of doldrums, bitcoin’s price eventually began to rise steadily. It skyrocketed past $2,000 this weekend and is at $2,270 as of press time.Consensus, hosted by CoinDesk, a subsidiary of Silbert’s DCG, has drawn 2,500 attendees — 10 times the attendance two years ago — and its top sponsors are Citi and Deloitte.But for the past couple years, the question of how to scale the network has clouded bitcoin’s future. If this agreement is executed well and does not split bitcoin into two coins, it will help further the success of this industry he helped foster.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Would this explain Bitcoin's recent and steep price surge ?
A British man says he accidentally threw away over $80 million worth of bitcoin. James Howells, an IT worker from Newport, claims to have unintentionally dumped 7,500 bitcoin in mid-2013. He is now planning to find them, but isn’t sure how, as he believes the hard drive he saved them to is currently buried in a landfill site.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Adding a zero does not make a ditched hard drive story new, only more dramatic. With cryptos you are your own bank. Time for a Ledger Nano maybe ?
Professional services major Deloitte claims that over 26,000 new Blockchain technology-based projects were launched on the code repository GitHub in 2016. GitHub is a development platform that houses codes for more than 86,000 Blockchain programs, including large projects such as Bitcoin.
In its report titled “Evolution of Blockchain Technology: Insights from the GitHub Platform,” Deloitte claimed that the number of Blockchain projects by both organizations and individual users at the development platform in 2016 is the biggest so far.
By comparison, there are less than 15,000 initiatives that were launched in 2015. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2017, there were almost 25,000 projects that were recorded on the platform.
According to Deloitte, the majority of the projects, however, have become inactive in the long run and only eight percent are active so far.
"The stark reality of open-source projects is that most are abandoned or do not achieve meaningful scale. Unfortunately, Blockchain is not immune to this reality. Our analysis found that only eight percent of projects are active, which we define as being updated at least once in the last six months."
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Of 26000 Blockchain projects launched in 2016, it seems 92% have been dropped and are now dead in water.
Many will shortcut and conclude it is/was a fad. My view is that we are now realizing Blockchain is way more complex than expected, yet with a way larger potential than anticipated.
Swirlds is a software platform that has developed the hashgraph consensus algorithm: an entirely new distributed ledger technology that is much more cost-effective (no proof-of-work), 50,000 times the speed, safer (Byzantine), more efficient (no stale blocks) and mathematically fairer than the blockchain.This is the future of the internet and decentralized technology.What is Blockchain Technology?Considered the greatest technological innovation since the internet: Blockchain technology emerged in response to the collapse of several banking institutions in 2008 with the release of a whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto titled: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”“…blockchain technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediary such as a bank or governing body …” – Don TapscottBlockchain is simply a database that is public (no one owns it), distributed (no centralized server), is continuously updated, and is secured by the art of cryptography.This is why Jamie Dimon is freaking out. Banks will soon be obsolete.What is Hashgraph and Why is it Better?Hashgraph is a superior distributed ledger technology system that eliminates the need for massive computation and unsustainable energy consumption like those of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Most importantly, it is able to reach a consensus. (I’ll explain why this is so critical)50,000 Times Faster: limited only by bandwidth – 250,000+ Transactions Per Second (Pre-Sharding)As of now Bitcoin is limited to 7 transactions per second. More Fair: mathematically proven fairness (via consensus time stamping) meaning no individual can manipulate the order of the transactions. In the blockchain world, a miner can choose the order for which transactions occur in a block, can delay orders by placing them in future blocks, even stop them entirely from entering the system.Consensus time stamping prevents an individual from affecting the consensus order of transactions.Once an event occurs, everyone knows about it within a couple of minutes. Only the effects of the transaction are necessary in storing, everything else can be discarded. This shrinks the amount of storage currently needed (Bitcoin: 60GB) to a fraction of 1GB, allowing a smart phone to now act as a node. Improved Security: Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant: No member can prevent the community from reaching a consensus, nor can they change the consensus once it has been reached.With Byzantine, a consensus can be reached, whereas in the blockchain world, it is only a probability that increases over time. If no consensus is ever reached, conflicts will always occur. This is why hard forks that result in alt coins, such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are occurring. 100% Efficient: No mined block ever becomes stale. In the blockchain, transactions are put into containers (blocks) that form a single, long chain. If two miners create two blocks at the same time, the community will eventually choose one and discard the other.In hashgraph, every container is used and none are discarded.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
News of public Blockchains like Bitcoin & Ethereum being « hashbeen » have often been greatly exaggerated ...
In a remarkably frank talk at a Bank of England conference, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund has speculated that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have as much of a future as the Internet itself. It could displace central banks, conventional banking, and challenge the monopoly of national monies. Christine Lagarde–a Paris native who has held her position at the IMF since 2011–says the only substantial problems with existing cryptocurrency are fixable over time.In the long run, the technology itself can replace national monies, conventional financial intermediation, and even "puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today."In a lecture that chastised her colleagues for failing to embrace the future, she warned that "Not so long ago, some experts argued that personal computers would never be adopted, and that tablets would only be used as expensive coffee trays. So I think it may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies."
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Christine Lagarde has it all. Finally a relevant official position from a former Finance Minister ion cryptocurrencies ! #MustRead
The product, called ‘Fizzy’ is being trialled for air passengers between Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and the United States and is expected to come to the UK early next year.The insurance premium and agreements are all detailed on a smart contract and the flight is tracked in real time through global air traffic databases. Fizzy automatically pays compensation into the customer's bank account if the flight arrives more than two hours late. Compensation of a loss is not based on a customer claiming for it and insurance experts assessing the loss, but on data stored on the AXA blockchain.Laurent Benichou director of R&D at AXA GIE says: "Through Fizzy, the independent smart contract, rather than the insurer, triggers consumer indemnification. I believe this is a new element of insurance architecture that will become mainstream in future offers”
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Well done AXA, a Blockchain pioneer and early #LaBChain supporter !
Blockchain, the secure distributed ledger technology first created to track bitcoin ownership, has taken on a number of new roles in recent years tracking anything of value from diamonds to real estate deeds to contracts. The blockchain offers the promise of a trusted record that can reduce fraud. Some industry experts say that over the coming years, it could be used to control identity information in a more secure fashion.
As we have seen, just last week with the massive Equifax hack, our personal information is highly vulnerable in online databases in their current form. The fact is that whenever we have to identify ourselves, we are forced to present a variety of information to prove we are who we say we are, whether that’s to register for an online service, to cross a border or even prove you are old enough to drink at a bar.
The argument goes that if our identity were on the blockchain, it would give us more control over this information, and with proper applications allow us to present just the minimum amount of information a given party needs to identify us. That could be your date of birth at a bar, your credit score at a bank or a unique identifier to access an online service.
It’s unclear if the blockchain can be that identity panacea that some have suggested, but there are a range of opinions on the matter.
Yes, it’s happening
Of the experts we contacted, only one was fully enthusiastic about blockchain as an identity tool. Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and VP of blockchain technologies, sees blockchain already having a big impact as people demand more control of their identities. He says that we are constantly being asked to share personal information to access places or information or to do business with companies — and that each of these actions puts us at risk for identity theft. He believes the solution to this problem could lie on the blockchain.
“Imagine a world where you are in direct control of your personal information; a world where you can limit and control how much information you share while retaining the ability to transact in the world. This is self-sovereign identity, and it is already here. Blockchain is the underlying technology paving the path to self-sovereign identity through decentralized networks. It ensures privacy and trust, where transactions are secure, authenticated and verifiable and endorsed by relevant, permissioned participants,” Cuomo explained. In fact , he says that he’s already seeing businesses and governments beginning to establish and use these networks to meet citizen demand and deliver the promise of self-sovereign identity.
No, probably not
It sounds pretty good to hear Cuomo describe it, yet not everyone is enthusiastic as he is, seeing many obstacles to using the blockchain for identity purposes. Steve Wilson, an analyst at Constellation Research, who has studied the blockchain extensively has serious reservations about it as an identity management system.
“Identity is not going to move to the blockchain in any big way (not as we know it). Blockchains were designed to solve problems quite different from identity management (IDM). We need to remember that the classic blockchain is an elaborate system that allows total strangers to nevertheless exchange real value reliably. It works without identity and without trust. So it’s simply illogical to think such a mechanism could have anything to offer identity,” Wilson explained.
He adds, “The public blockchains deliberately and proudly shirk third parties, but in most cases, your identity is nothing without a third party who vouches for you in some way. Blockchain is great for some things, but it’s not magic, and it just wasn’t designed for the IDM problem space.”
Eve Maler, who works at identity management firm ForgeRock, which landed an $88 million investment last week, also finds the possibility highly unlikely for a variety of practical reasons. “Identity will not move to the blockchain if this means personal data will be put on a public permissionless blockchain (distributed ledger technology in its purest form), as this is now widely considered bad practice,” she said.
She added, “The “distributed nodes” element of the technology is valuable for architectures where trust in a central authority is difficult or undesirable to establish, but can be challenging where it is desirable to record sensitive information because of the increased attack surface (every node has a copy of everything) and resulting increased privacy considerations.”
It depends
Then there are those who fall somewhere in the middle. They aren’t ready to write it off, but they see a lot of obstacles along the way to implementing it, or see it as a part of a broader ecosystem of identity tools, rather than a full replacement to what we have now.
Charles Race, president of worldwide field operations at cloud identity firm Okta, which went public this year, thinks it’s possible blockchain will emerge. He envisions a similar set of use cases as Cuomo, but sees a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of using the blockchain to implement identity management broadly moving forward.
“A trusted entity will need to establish some legal and enforceable rules and policies for how it all works, they’ll need to make it easy for the average person to use securely, and they’ll need to convince a critical mass of people and service providers to adopt and trust the ID — all while finding an economically viable business model. Some institutions are uniquely positioned to solve all of these chicken-and-egg issues at once and bring this big idea to life — first among them are our citizen-facing government agencies,” Race explained. But he adds, “The trouble with this idea is that a universal ID poses risks to privacy and hence [could] encounter significant political opposition.”
Andre Durand, CEO at Ping Identity, an identity management firm that was sold for a reported $600 million to Vista Equity Partners last year, says it’s not likely to happen as a full replacement over the next five years, but it could begin to play a role in identity. “What is much more likely is that the things Distributed Ledger Technology is uniquely designed for, keeping accurate records in a distributed system, will become part of the identity management ecosystem and help improve aspects of it,” he says.
Ian Glazer, an identity industry expert says it really about choosing the right tool for the job, but he doesn’t necessarily see there ever being one answer that fits every identity scenario including blockchain.
“To ask if identity will move to blockchain is not the right question. Better to ask will use cases emerge that blockchain-related technologies are uniquely qualified to solve. Likely there will be some. But just like relational databases, LDAP and object databases, no one storage/retrieval mechanism has proven to be the single “right” tool for the job,” Glazer told TechCrunch.
Like any emerging technology, there are going to be a range of opinions on its viability. Using the blockchain as an identity management system is no different. It will probably begin to take on some role over the next five years because the promise is just so great, but how extensive that will be depends on how the industry solves some of the outstanding issues.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Answering the "Who did What When (with Whom) ?" question in confidence makes no sense if the "Who" question is left open.
The ‘creator’ of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is the world’s most elusive billionaire. Very few people outside of the Department of Homeland Security know Satoshi’s real name. In fact, DHS will not publicly confirm that even THEY know the billionaire’s identity. Satoshi has taken great care to keep his identity secret employing the latest encryption and obfuscation methods in his communications. Despite these efforts (according to my source at the DHS) Satoshi Nakamoto gave investigators the only tool they needed to find him — his own words.
Using stylometry one is able to compare texts to determine authorship of a particular work. Throughout the years Satoshi wrote thousands of posts and emails and most of which are publicly available. According to my source, the NSA was able to the use the ‘writer invariant’ method of stylometry to compare Satoshi’s ‘known’ writings with trillions of writing samples from people across the globe. By taking Satoshi’s texts and finding the 50 most common words, the NSA was able to break down his text into 5,000 word chunks and analyse each to find the frequency of those 50 words. This would result in a unique 50-number identifier for each chunk. The NSA then placed each of these numbers into a 50-dimensional space and flatten them into a plane using principal components analysis. The result is a ‘fingerprint’ for anything written by Satoshi that could easily be compared to any other writing.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
The NSA can actually identify anybody... with style
Nadia & myself were invited in Stuttgart for the 7th RBVC workshop that was focusing this year on Blockchain and AI. I delivered the opening keynote yesterday and recorded it in 360° thanks to a Giroptic IO camera. Here is the result, best experienced with the Youtube mobile app or any compatible VR headset.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
This is probably the first immersive 360° VR Blockchain Keynote, as well as my very last one for @CaisseDesDepots
Pre-Information Notice for the EU Blockchain Observatory / Forum
It will consist of both an Observatory and a Forum to gather opinions and to voice concerns around Blockchain and DLT. It will have the ambition to become an EU expertise hub to discuss forward-looking topics on blockchain and develop use cases of interest at EU level.
The purpose will be to inform and assist the European Commission in understanding what role – if any - European public authorities should play to encourage the development and up-take of these technologies and to formulate related policy recommendations.
To that end, the Observatory is expected to
provide an up to date overview of relevant initiatives relying on Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technologies around the world and
follow-up closely the developments of this technology and the related challenges and opportunities for European industry, citizens and governments.
develop expertise on transversal topics such as infrastructure, governance and validation mechanisms, smart contracts, regulatory and legal challenges, interoperability and standards,
build and animate a platform for the European blockchain community
explore possible use cases with a value added at EU level.
The estimated budget is 500.000€ over a period of 2 years. The call for tender will be published during Q2 2017 in TED eTendering.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Observation is an interesting first step, especially if it leads to exploration and then action ! There is an estimated need for €500 M in R&D across continental EU within the next 2-3 years, and a similar amount in Venture funding over the same time span.
Quatre plates-formes travaillent avec la Caisse des Dépôts pour dématérialiser les bons de caisse.Surtout ne leur parlez pas de « bac à sable » ! Face à l'intransigeance des régulateurs français qui refusent d'accorder aux jeunes pousses de la finance un cadre réglementaire plus souple, les plates-formes de financement participatif qui se sont rassemblées pour tester les bienfaits de l a blockchain parlent plutôt de « zone d'expérimentation ».Associées à la Caisse des Dépôts qui avait déjà lancé une initiative de place pour explorer cette technologie d'avenir, quatre plates-formes de financement participatif (Credit.fr, Enerfip, Lumo et Unilend) vont travailler à sécuriser la gestion des bons de caisse de nouvelle génération - les « minibons » - sur une « blockchain ».Ils veulent ainsi éprouver les possibilités offertes par la loi Macron : pour faciliter le développement de cet outil de financement qui permet aux PME de se prêter entre elles, via des plates-formes de financement participatif, celle-ci a ouvert la voie à une modification du régime juridique des bons de caisse permettant leur dématérialisation sur des « blockchains ».Créer un marché secondaireDans un premier temps, les plates-formes partenaires inscriront sur une « blockchain » commune les transactions de leurs clients. Leur objectif est double : rassurer leurs clients sur leurs transactions grâce à un registre infalsifiable et en temps réel et, dans un second temps, créer grâce à ce registre un marché secondaire d'échange de titres de dette entre PME.Pour cela, beaucoup d'obstacles restent encore à franchir. « Deux sujets sont particulièrement épineux. Le premier est celui du coût des transactions car les "blockchains" classiques utilisent les bitcoins : réaliser des échanges de titres sur la "blockchain" impliquerait donc des transferts de devises potentiellement coûteux et complexes pour nos clients. Le second est celui de l'identification des clients. Toutes les plates-formes n'ont pas les mêmes critères et nous ne pouvons pas nous reposer sur les vérifications faites par nos partenaires pour autoriser des échanges de titres », explique Nicolas Lesur, fondateur d'Unilend et vice-président de l'association Financement participatif France.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
La Caisse Des Depots innove dans les infrastructures de transactions !
This article features the slides shown during Consensus 2017's opening remarks on the 'State of Blockchain'.
CoinDesk Research authors a quarterly industry overview report that summarizes key trends, data and events in the public and enterprise blockchain sectors.
The full 'Q1 2017 State of Blockchain' report, which expands on much of the material presented below, will be published shortly after Consensus.
It's been an eventful 2017 so far in the blockchain space.
Public protocols have gained over $40bn in market cap, enterprise consortia have formed and flourished, and the push towards interoperability can be seen across the ecosystem.
Regulation has shifted the composition of global trading volume, the usage of the industry's own investment structure continues to gain steam, and the amount and quality of traditional financial and technology giants getting involved in blockchain has never been higher.
CoinDesk Research also recently tapped into the community to gain more intimate insights into the perception and sentiment around bitcoin and ethereum and garnered north of 1,100 responses.
Below, we highlight some of the largest takeaways from the presentation:
Bitcoin averaged 287,000 transactions per day at fees averaging $0.62 each, leading 67% of the surveyed community to say they feel 'bad' about the current state of transaction fees and confirmation times
More people now view bitcoin as a 'digital gold' than a 'digital currency' and 86% of the community believes ethereum can be used just as well as a medium exchange or payment method
47% believe we will see a contentious hard fork of bitcoin, and rather than preferring SegWit or a block-size increase, more individuals believe some combination of solutions is the best short-term scaling solution
The majority of the community believes we will see the Lightning Network live on bitcoin, and both Raiden and proof-of-stake live on ethereum in 2018
The overall state of bitcoin is nearly exactly split between positive and negative responses, while less than 5% of people responded negatively to the current state of ethereum
Despite Hyperledger's multiple open-source frameworks, live proof of concepts, 130 plus member list and backing by the Linux Foundation, 87% of people have slight to no knowledge of the group
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance launching in February was seen as the primary price driver of ether in Q1
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Beyond Bitcoin's recent and insane and bumpy rally, some deeper insights back from the Consensus 2017 Conference
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Bitcoin energy consumption, in context.
Interesting to read to form your opinion instead of relaying uninformed clickbait amplified by the #Kommentariat