Month: December 2018

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– When it comes to crypto, everyone loves to talk about “community.” Every cryptocurrency has one, we’re led to believe, but often as not the community is just a Telegram channel peppered with demands of “@admin wen airdrop.” There is one cryptocurrency, however, for which the word is anything but a cliche. I’m talking of course about XRP, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which is closely – if contentiously – associated with the San Francisco-based startup Ripple. “It Read more …

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A former academic, Elizabeth Stark likes to play devil’s advocate. Take, for instance, her appearance at the Crypto Springs conference in October 2018. It’s a sunny morning in Palm Springs, California, and most attendees are lounging by the pool; onstage, however, Stark is busy describing some of the darker potential scenarios for the cryptocurrency industry, ones in which it could fall short of its potential. But if the words of warning aren’t drawing a response, it’s perhaps because the Read more …

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Brenna Sparks wills herself to try new things. Equal parts adult star and crypto evangelist, she’s not the kind of Las Vegas denizen who never hits the strip. But when asked if she wants to take the High Roller, the city’s 550-foot tall Ferris wheel with a serious view, the thought clearly petrifies her. Still, she insists we go. It’s fitting, as Sparks embraces the highs and lows – both in life and in crypto. In an email following Read more …

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Dr. Glen Weyl speaks with the calm of a man who has history on the mind. With an unbroken gaze and an unambiguous delivery, the author, economist and Microsoft researcher calmly espouses a clear and revolutionary vision: that the world’s hierarchies can be challenged and reconceived with the power of markets. But if his theories were trapped before in the pages of academia, in 2018, Weyl has captured the imagination and devotion of the leading minds in ethereum, and, Read more …

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Cameras, flashlights, tweets – when Changpeng Zhao takes the stage these days, a kind of mania seems to ensue. Of course, that’s perhaps to be expected when you’re known to the world over by just two letters, but “CZ” has arguably achieved something greater in 2018 — a celebrity status that’s equaled by his clout as an entrepreneur. On a sweltering December day in Singapore, Zhao is quick to show why — he has a surprise that’s not so Read more …

Bakkt has raised $182.5 million to build out its global digital assets platform and bitcoin futures product. The round, which is Bakkt’s first, included 12 partners, according to a Medium post by CEO Kelly Loeffler. The crypto startup is owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which is best known as the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Investors in the funding round included Boston Consulting Group, Galaxy Digital, Goldfinch Partners, ICE, M12 (Microsoft’s VC fund), Pantera Capital and Protocol Ventures. Read more …

Yet another tool is being added to Bitcoin’s growing number of privacy solutions. Thought up at a brainstorming event attended by Bitcoin developers and privacy researchers last summer, Pay to Endpoint (P2EP) is a relatively new trick that utilizes the well-known CoinJoin mixing technique to make blockchain analysis much harder. An early version of it, called “Bustapay,” was quickly implemented by independent Bitcoin developer Ryan Havar and is being tested as of now. Meanwhile, the privacy-focused Samourai Wallet as well Read more …

This year Bitcoin’s (BTC) average daily price change was the lowest value reported in the past nine years, self-proclaimed professional cypherpunk Jameson Lopp tweeted Dec. 30. This year, the average daily value change for Bitcoin was -0.33 percent, according to Lopp’s tweet. In second place for lowest average daily price change was 2014 at -0.25 percent. The year with the highest average daily change was 2010, when Bitcoin saw an average 0.82 percent price change daily — followed by 2017, Read more …

In a demonstration titled “Wallet.fail,” a team of security researchers hacked into the Trezor One, Ledger Blue and Ledger Nano S. Unfortunately, it appears as if their findings were first put on display at the 35th Chaos Communication Congress (35C3) in Leipzig, Germany, rather than through accepted Responsible Disclosure practices, which would have allowed the manufacturers to patch the vulnerabilities and protect their customers from any potential attack. Fortunately, the vulnerabilities appear to be very difficult for attackers to actually Read more …

Regardless of bitcoin’s price volatility, 2018 saw an explosion of activity among African users. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful increased its transaction volume by 130 percent since January 2018 with an average of $21 million a week, compared to $8.5 million in 2017. The growth was driven in part by Paxful’s user base almost tripling in Ghana, with 41,243 accounts, and more than doubling in Nigeria to 321,476 accounts. According to Paxful CEO Ray Youssef, African Read more …

Latest Tron News Justin and Vitalik often throw shade at each other. It is normal, and as long as the two platforms are competing for developers, jabs will continue. The center of contention between these two maverick founders seems to be throughput and cost of transaction. On numerous occasions, Justin has been insisting that his platform is the best, can scale and is cheap to transact on. Besides, it has worked around the corner allowing dApp developers and other users Read more …