Day: November 17, 2018

Oxfam Formally Launches Blockchain Platform for Rice Farmers in Cambodia

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Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Oxfam has launched a blockchain project for farmers dubbed BloCRice, which seeks to increase the bargaining power of farmers by digitally connecting every player in the supply chain on one platform, local Cambodian news outlet reports. Based on the report, the new platform will leverage on smart contracts to build digital agreements between organic farmers and exporters of rice in Cambodia and their buyers in the Netherlands. Solinn Lim, country director of International charity Oxfam in Cambodia, was quoted by the news outlet saying: “BlocRice promotes the…

Downtrend in Crypto Market Continues as BCH Falls

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Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Over the last 24 hours, the valuation of the crypto market has fallen from $185 billion to $181 billion, by around $4 billion. On November 15, amidst one of the worst single-day corrections in all of 2018, the crypto market saw a wipeout of more than $27 billion. The market extended losses throughout the past two days. Bitcoin Cash, even with the combined value of Bitcoin Cash SV (BCHSV) and Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC), has fallen by more than seven percent. Subsequent to the fork, the price…

A New Approach to Thwarting “Selfish” Bitcoin Miners

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Selfish mining is an attack on the Bitcoin network that has been known to be possible for several years. By propagating new blocks slowly (on purpose or by accident), a loophole is opened for miners to unfairly increase their profits in relation to other miners. However, researchers Cyril Grunspan and Ricardo Pérez-Marco claim that by broadcasting the presence of orphan blocks, selfish mining can become a thing of the past. Grunspan, a professor at Paris’ ESILV graduate school of engineering, and Pérez-Marco, the director of research at the National Center…

After the Fork: Here’s How Exchanges Are Dealing With Bitcoin Cash

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The smoke is still clearing from Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork, but exchanges have already moved in to add support for the products of the skirmish. On November 16, 2018, what was intended to be a routine hard fork upgrade of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain became a struggle for hashing power and chain dominance as Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (SV), led by Craig S. Wright, attempted to wrestle control over the Bitcoin Cash blockchain from its original client, Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin ABC (thus far) has strong-armed Bitcoin SV with its mining power…

ICO Issuers Settle Registration Charges With SEC

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has agreed to settle charges with two startups that sold tokens through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in 2017. The companies were charged by the SEC for running their ICOs after the regulator clearly defined such offerings as unlicensed securities in its DAO Report of Investigation. The startups indicted by the SEC are Boston-based Airfox, which sold $15 million worth of tokens, and Paragon Coin, which raised $12 million selling tokens.  “We have made it clear that companies that issue securities through ICOs are…

Progress Report: Lightning Network Surpasses $1M BTC Capacity, 4,000 Nodes

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The Lightning Network continues to post steady growth. According to data from 1ML, the network is now supported by roughly 4,070 nodes, which house just over 12,500 payment channels, an average of 10.91 channels per node (at time of publication). Most of this growth has come in the later half of 2018, as the average age of each node is just 137 days old. With infrastructural growth, the network is also seeing an uptick in liquidity. At the time of writing, the network’s collective capacity now stands at 223.65 BTC, which, at…

“We Did This With Gold”: Could VanEck Be Bitcoin’s Best Bet for an ETF?

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Gabor Gurbacs is confident that the approval of a bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) is inevitable. And he’s optimistic that the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Strategy will be the first to deliver one to the world. The director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck/MVIS, Gurbacs, as of late, has become a leading voice on the space’s ETF pursuit at a time when industry chatter on the topic has never been louder. If you haven’t found him extolling the benefits of a bitcoin ETF on Twitter, you may have come across his…