In the two years that have passed since the Ethereum Blockchain’s genesis block, numerous decentralized applications (dApps) have created Ethereum smart contracts for peer-to-peer exchange. With hundreds of tokens and services on the Blockchain, the need for an open protocol to enable liquid exchange is as critical as Internet vendors accepting credit cards. 0x will facilitate a healthy and interoperable marketplace with trustless, low friction exchange of Ethereum-based assets.
Today, rapid iteration and a lack of best practices have left the Blockchain scattered with proprietary and application-specific implementations. As a result, end users are exposed to numerous smart contracts of varying quality and security, with unique configuration processes and learning curves, all of which implement the same functionality. This approach imposes unnecessary costs on the network by fragmenting end users according to the particular dApp each user happens to be using, destroying valuable network effects around liquidity. 0x believes that smart contracts should act as modular, unopinionated building blocks that may be assembled and reconfigured.
0x is decentralized and trustless; there is no central party which can be hacked, run away with customer funds or be subjected to government regulations. Hacks of Mt. Gox, Shapeshift and Bitfinex have demonstrated that these types of systemic risks are palpable.
0x supports all Ethereum-based assets that adhere to the ERC20 token standard. Among 0x’s first partners to are Augur, MelonPort, Maker, and Aragon. 0x doesn’t just enable Interoperability between dApps, but makes the smart contract process easier and faster. Just as the growing API-economy enables the ability to order a Lyft from Facebook Messenger, a Melonport user could enter a prediction on Augur directly from the Melonport app.
0x is built on the belief that, by 2020, thousands of assets will be tokenized and moved onto the Ethereum Blockchain including traditional securities such as equities, bonds and derivatives, fiat currencies and scarce digital goods such as video game items. With hundreds or thousands of tokens on Ethereum, the 0x protocol also addresses the burden around dApp developers holding many tokens through a process called “token abstraction.” Token abstraction on 0x allows dApps to obfuscate smart contract interactions with application-specific tokens so that end users appear to only be paying transaction fees denominated in ETH (or even local fiat currency, assuming there are fiat-pegged tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain). Token abstraction works by chaining multiple orders together and executing them sequentially and synchronously in a single transaction.
Along with Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, and Pantera Capital, Chinese investment firms Jen Advisors and FBG Capital also invested in 0x.
The penthouse meeting room in Le Parker Meridien hotel in midtown Manhattan is humming with chatter on this June afternoon. About a hundred money managers are networking at the end of the day at a Sandler O’Neill & Partners investor conference as the green rectangle of Central Park stretches into the distance 42 floors below. With neckties loosened and icy drinks in hand, the attendees largely ignore the founder of a fintech startup who’s presenting a PowerPoint about his investing smartphone app. But when the next guest takes the floor, the room falls silent.
These Wall Street veterans all know who Blythe Masters is. She’s the wunderkind who made managing director at JPMorgan Chase at age 28, the financial engineer who helped develop the credit-default swap and bring to life a market that peaked at $58 trillion, in notional terms, in 2007. She’s the banker later vilified by pundits, unfairly some say, after those instruments compounded the damage wrought by the subprime mortgage crash in 2008. Now, one year after quitting JPMorgan amid another controversy, Blythe Masters is back. She isn’t pitching a newly minted derivative or trading stratagem to this room. She’s promoting something wilder: It’s called the blockchain, and it’s the digital ledger software code that powers bitcoin.
Masters is the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, a New York tech startup. She says her firm is designing software that will enable banks, investors, and other market players to use blockchain technology to change the way they trade loans, bonds, and other assets. If she’s right, she’ll be at the center of yet another whirlwind that will change the markets.
“You should be taking this technology as seriously as you should have been taking the development of the Internet in the early 1990s,” Masters, a lithe 46-year-old Englishwoman with auburn hair and the proper diction of the Home Counties, explains to the rapt audience. “It’s analogous to e-mail for money.”
That’s a bold statement, but Masters isn’t the only voice heralding the coming of the blockchain. The Bank of England, in a report earlier this year, calls it the “first attempt at an Internet of finance,” while the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis hails it as a “stroke of genius.” In a June white paper, the World Economic Forum says, “The blockchain protocol threatens to disintermediate almost every process in financial services.”
In a matter of months, this word, blockchain, has gone viral on trading floors and in the executive suites of banks and brokerages on both sides of the Atlantic. You can’t attend a finance conference these days without hearing it mentioned on a panel or at a reception or even in the loo. At a recent blockchain confab in London’s hip East End, the host asked if there were any bankers in the room. More than half the audience members, all dressed in suits, raised their hands.
Now, everyone’s trying to figure out whether the blockchain is just so much hype or if Masters’s firm and other startups are really going to change the systems that process trillions of dollars in securities trades. When investors buy and sell syndicated loans or derivatives or move money around the world, they must cope with opaque and clunky back-office processes that rely on negotiated contracts between buyers and sellers, lots of phone calls, lots of lawyers, and even the occasional fax. It still takes almost 20 days, on average, to settle syndicated loan trades.
Masters is betting that the blockchain, the breakthrough that permits people to buy and sell bitcoins without the need for an intermediary, can be used to streamline all manner of financial transactions. A June report backed by Santander InnoVentures, the Spanish bank’s fintech investment fund, estimated the blockchain could save lenders up to $20 billion annually in settlement, regulatory, and cross-border payment costs.
“You have front-end systems trading at warp speed, and nanoseconds of competitive advantage are being extracted, and yet the back end of Wall Street hasn’t been fundamentally overhauled in decades,” Masters says in an interview at her offices in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. “Firms are dealing with greater requirements for reporting, transparency, and dissemination of data. Costs have gone up and revenues have gone down. This technology really gets to the core of all those issues.”
That’s why there’s been a Cambrian explosion of blockchain startups, accelerators, and skunkworks in London, New York, and Silicon Valley. In April, UBS installed a half dozen developers in London’s Level39 accelerator to download blockchain source code from the Internet and delve into how it might revolutionize payments, cybersecurity, and other banking needs. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, and Santander are backing cryptocurrency ventures. And no surprise, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Reid Hoffman, and other denizens of Sand Hill Road are all over this space. Venture capitalists plowed $400 million into dozens of digital currency startups in the first six months of this year, a fourfold jump from all of 2013, according to industry news site CoinDesk.
Some of these ventures are building on the actual bitcoin blockchain. In June, Nasdaq teamed up with Chain, a San Francisco firm, and launched a project to use the blockchain to issue and transfer the equity shares of closely held companies on the exchange’s private marketplace. “The blockchain is going to bring levels of efficiency to the financial markets that we’ve never seen before,” says Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld. “In time, it could be as impactful on the back office as electronic trading was on open outcry.”
By contrast, Ripple Labs, another San Francisco company, runs a self-contained network for financial institutions that doesn’t rely on bitcoin at all. Masters plans to offer banks and other financial players both options: Digital Asset is creating an off-the-shelf private blockchain product and developing ways to connect its customers to the existing bitcoin system.
Whatever form it takes, the blockchain has the potential to change the very structure of the financial services industry, says Oliver Bussmann, the chief information officer at UBS. “If you brought up bitcoin with bankers 12 months ago, you’d lose their attention immediately,” Bussmann says. “Now, everyone sees this as a critical topic. I know of more than 100 firms that are trying to make the blockchain more scalable, more secure, to make the one that everybody will use. There’s a race on out there.”
Maybe so, but rewiring the market’s infrastructure is an awfully big task. So is persuading financial players to place their trust in a system embraced by cryptocurrency anarchists and other fringy characters. Even if market pros do grasp the blockchain’s potential, will they buy in?
“Look, the technology is potentially great, but you’re going to have to bring along all the regulators and the banks to change the ecosystem,” says Hank Uberoi, the former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s global technology operations and now the CEO of Earthport, a London-based payments venture. “Change comes very slowly in that world. That’s going to be the hardest part.”
When it comes to adopting innovation, the financial services industry doesn’t exactly have a stellar record. For example, the global interbank payments system, which Uberoi’s Earthport is trying to shake up, is managed by a consortium of more than 10,000 institutions. It’s so antiquated that it still takes days to send transactions from one part of the world to another. Jon Matonis, a founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation, a Washington group that promotes the cryptocurrency, says a private blockchain run by banks could end up as just “another cartel” and function as poorly as the payments consortium.
Blockstack is a new ecosystem of decentralized applications (dapps), which allow users to store their own data locally and connect with one another in a direct, encrypted manner. On the latest episode of “The Bitcoin Game,” Blockstack Co-founder Ryan Shea explained how this new ecosystem of dapps works and why it’s important.
“We’re taking a look at how the internet has become so consolidated,” said Shea. “We’re so reliant upon a very small set of companies, and there are so many external dependencies. We essentially are reliant upon Facebook, Google and Amazon just to use the internet. In a sense, they are the internet.
“They are the lords, and we are the serfs,” Shea added.
According to Shea, the original vision of the internet was much more decentralized than how it is structured today. Instead of everyone hosting their own servers, merchants sell their products on Amazon and individuals post their social updates to Facebook. According to some polls, many Facebook users don’t even realize they’re using the internet.
With so much internet traffic going through a few major portals, Shea said there are a number of concerns related to security, monopoly power and innovation that can arise. In his view, it is important for everyone to control their own safety and freedom on the internet.
“At the end of the day, each of us want to be able to control our own experiences, we want to know that we’re safe and in control and free — whether it’s on the internet or any aspect of our lives,” said Shea.
Blockstack’s ecosystem of dapps is an attempt to redecentralize the internet and bring it back to its roots.
The Concept of Decentralized Applications
Dapps built on top of Blockstack essentially put users in control of their own data and force them to take responsibility for their own security instead of outsourcing it to a third party.
“[Applications run] locally,” said Shea. “If you do that, I do that, and we’re friends with each other on this application, then I can send you a message and it will get sent directly to you and won’t require any other third parties for the message to go through.”
Blockstack uses a new domain name system (DNS) built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain as the basis for these dapps. The DNS allows users to attach information to identities stored on the blockchain. The decentralized DNS allows users to communicate and connect with one another in a direct, secure and encrypted manner.
The heavy reliance on this new, decentralized DNS means users will need to be able to protect their own private keys. According to Shea, Blockstack is working on a variety of user-friendly key management solutions involving multifactor authentication and hardware wallets.
In addition to storing data locally, Blockstack users can also back up their encrypted application data on any cloud storage provider, from traditional solutions like Dropbox to new alternatives such as Storj.
Specifics Examples of Decentralized Applications
According to Shea, developers are building a variety of applications on top of Blockstack right now, including a decentralized alternative to Twitter.
“A P2P social network can exist, and the key to that is allowing each user to control their experience on their own local device and then helping users connect to one another so they can discover each other’s content,” said Shea.
Shea also had high praise for OpenBazaar, which is a decentralized e-commerce platform that uses Blockstack’s DNS for user names and bitcoin for payments.
“They are the future of commerce,” Shea said of OpenBazaar.
Shea is also of the belief that some method of indexing and parsing data on Blockstack’s new, decentralized version of the internet will emerge, which would be similar to what Google has done on the traditional internet.
“Some decentralized network will grow to compete in some way with Google; that’s my prediction,” said Shea.
Thoughts on Ethereum
Right now, the dapps that are gaining the most attention are the ones launching initial coin offerings (ICOs) on top of Ethereum rather than building on top of Blockstack.
Shea claimed he is “really intrigued” by Ethereum and thinks “very interesting things are being built on top of it,” but he’s also concerned with some of the issues they’ll face over the long term. “I’m concerned about remote code execution,” he said. “I’m concerned about the general philosophy of putting a large amount of logic on the chain, but I think it’s been a great platform where there’s been a lot of prototyping going on.”
In contrast to most dapps built on Ethereum, Blockstack dapps only utilize a blockchain for the naming layer. “Everything else is off the blockchain,” said Shea.
“Blockstack is blockchain agnostic,” Shea clarified. “Our philosophy is to operate on as many blockchains as possible but, whenever we can, rely upon the most secure and stable blockchain platform. Right now, that’s the Bitcoin blockchain.”
With the successful conclusion of a Global Blockchain Summit on April 28, the city of Hangzhou in China has established itself as a rising center of blockchain technology. The conference opened with remarks from Canada’s Don Tapscott, known in China as the godfather of digital economy, who beamed into the conference via video. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, also gave his insights on why blockchain technology is disrupting the world.
The Hangzhou government recently announced that Hangzhou will build China’s first Blockchain Industrial Park with preferential policy support for the companies operating within — an innovative move deserving of the world’s attention.
Why Hangzhou?
The capital of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou was a fitting choice to hold a conference, not only because it is a core city that together with Shanghai forms the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone, China’s most dynamic and innovative city clusters, but also because the Hangzhou government is known to be open to creative companies and talents, as evidenced by the success of Alibaba, the world’s e-commerce behemoth.
Just 124 miles away from Shanghai — or one hour by bullet train — Hangzhou was also the host city to the G20 summit in 2016, an event which brought Hangzhou to the world stage of politics and economics. Now, this latest Global Blockchain Summit seems to tell the world that along with Shanghai and Beijing, Hangzhou is another city in China that has proven itself to be dynamic and open enough to pioneer the innovative and even transformative industry.
Bitcoin Magazine interviewed He Bin, the CEO and founder of imToken, a Hangzhou-based startup focusing on an Ethereum wallet for digital assets management, about his company’s new home city.
“We have decided to move our team to the Blockchain Industrial Park. The government of Hangzhou has promised companies moving into the park subsidies for office and talent recruitment, tax deductions and government funding support. However, the supportive attitude of the government matter[s] more to us than that of subsidies. I believe this active approach from the government will enable Hangzhou to stand out as a fintech city.”
Direction from China’s Banking Industry
Blockchain technology has the potential to overhaul the banking industry and greatly impacts the current monetary mechanism; therefore, central banks around the world are stepping up efforts to implement blockchain technology. People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has actually revealed several times through Chinese media that it has completed a successful trial run of its own version of digital currency and is moving closer toward being the first central bank to issue a digital currency. Interestingly enough, the Bank of Hangzhou, as a local commercial bank and China’s A-share listed company, also attended the summit.
Hu Feihua, the head of e-banking at the Bank of Hangzhou, told Bitcoin Magazine, “Bank of Hangzhou is always trying to keep abreast of the most updated technologies beneficial to banks. For blockchain [technology], not only will we try to support the blockchain industry by providing an easy access of loans to startups, but we ourselves have a special team focusing on the research and development of blockchain [technology]. As a matter of fact, Bank of Hangzhou is one the members of a banking think tank that has contributed to PBOC’s digital currency.”
Regarding concerns that advancement in blockchain technology could lead to possible layoffs, Hu suggested that Bank of Hangzhou is not particularly concerned about the issue.
“This is an interesting question. Job cuts seem inevitable when it comes to technology innovation. But for Bank of Hangzhou, we actually expect our staff to update themselves in their thinking and skills so that they can offset the risks of being sacked. On the other hand, banks will still be important and there are always rooms for us to use our workforce to increase our standard of service. Therefore, layoffs will not impede us in developing blockchain technology.”
China’s Top-to-Bottom Strategy: Take a Conspicuous Role in Blockchain Technology
Hangzhou now boasts 12 blockchain startups, a number only surpassed by Beijing and Shanghai, according to a report released by the financial office of the Hangzhou government. The willingness of a local government to promote a new and disruptive industry in China is not only a reflection of its own economic development but also of the tone set by China’s central government. The fact that users of China’s big three bitcoin exchanges, Huobi, OKCoin and BTCC, are still not allowed to withdraw bitcoins is merely a reflection of China’s determination that financial and social stability should never fall prey to new market behaviors featuring too much speculation, and has nothing to do with China’s attitude toward the blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin.
According to China’s Premier Li Keqiang last year, in China’s Information Technology Application of the 13th Five-Year Plan for the social and economic development of China, blockchain technology has been listed as an important direction for Chinese endeavors. The five-year plan is the most important national strategic guideline for China’s social and economic development. The 13th Five-Year Plan sets the tone for China’s development for the period from 2016 to 2020.
Now China’s top-level strategy is being implemented well down to the local level as shown in Hangzhou’s blockchain summit. It is natural to predict that more capital, in terms of funding, talents and wisdom, will congregate in China. Cities like Hangzhou and even western cities like Chengdu, which will hold another high-level blockchain summit in the middle of June, are drawing attention from around the world the globe by competing with Beijing and Shanghai. Thus, unlike in the third industrial revolution of the 1970s, China as a whole now seems to be poised and ready to seize the opportunities brought by this next technological revolution, which, as many have believed, will become the driving force of the fifth industrial revolution.
As part of their 2016–2017 budget, the Republic of Mauritius, which is an island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa, included regulatory sandbox legislation that can be used by blockchain technology companies to develop and commercialize their applications in the country with access to the African and Indian markets.
In an effort to learn more about the opportunities for blockchain startups in Mauritius, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to James Duchenne, who is the co-founder of Volt Markets and an honorary representative of the Republic of Mauritius’s Board of Investment, the national investment promotion agency.
Current Stage of Blockchain Development in Mauritius
According to Duchenne, Mauritius is in the early stages of engaging the blockchain community and wants to design a roadmap for making the country a hub of global blockchain innovation.
“It is expected that the recent Regulatory Sandbox Licensing scheme implemented in Mauritius [will] be used to address some of the roadblocks faced by ventures in launching and commercializing disruptive applications,” said Duchenne.
Although Duchenne is keeping Mauritius’s current dealings with the blockchain industry under wraps, he did say that representatives from Mauritius have been in regular contact with those who are developing applications on top of Ethereum, Bitcoin and other blockchain-inspired systems.
“It is, however, important to state that we would like to hear from a broad spectrum of people in the field so that we can prepare synergistic solutions whereby new technology complements the regulatory framework,” Duchenne added.
In addition to the new regulatory structure, Duchenne also pointed out that the political stability found in Mauritius makes it an attractive base for startups that want access to the African and Indian markets. Duchenne added that Mauritius will have free Wi-Fi available across most of the country by the end of the year.
“[Mauritius] proposes to leverage the aspects of a tropical lifestyle, modern living, innovation and incentives to attract an innovative and practical blockchain culture,” said Duchenne. “The vision is to focus all aspects of blockchain innovation and commercial applications in a geographical area, then expand the same to other areas of Mauritius and Africa.”
How Blockchain Technology Can Help in Africa and Asia
Like many others who are excited by blockchain-based platforms, Duchenne believes that this new technology will impact virtually every industry. “In the long-term this means that useful applications are not restricted to geographic locations,” he added.
According to Duchenne, there is a chance that some of the lesser-known regions around the world will be able to leapfrog traditional centers of innovation due to the level playing field created by this new technology.
“Short-term, however, applications that unlock and advertise the productive potential of the unbanked on global financial markets with adequate protections, [such as identity and Know Your Customer], with little friction or intermediaries are ideal,” said Duchenne in terms of the types of applications that could become popular in Africa and Asia. “Others are crowdfunding renewable energy projects and microcredit. To achieve this, it is important that local stakeholders acquire an appreciation of the disruptive potential we’re dealing with and how to take advantage of it.”
Permissioned Ledgers vs. Public Blockchains
In terms of whether specific types of blockchains will be preferred over others in the future, Duchenne claimed that permissioned ledgers may have some usefulness, but he added, “While we don’t know the future, my guess is that ultimately, public blockchains, much like the internet, will be more valuable than a consortium-type intranet (permissioned ledgers), but that both will coexist.”
Duchenne claimed that bridges will inevitably be built between the permissioned ledger and public blockchain ecosystems.
According to Duchenne, there are also reasons to remain skeptical at times when it comes to companies touting their use of blockchain technology. “It is important to separate hype from reality,” he said. “For example, I heard of a company winning a contract because it mentioned the word ‘blockchain,’ without understanding, truly understanding, [what] that meant!”
Duchenne is also of the opinion that Ethereum will be the main platform for blockchain-related innovation in the future.
“Ethereum is where I believe most of the growth and explosion of practical innovation will be,” said Duchenne. “The mindshare and traction that it has (example, ConsenSys) is phenomenal. For this reason, I think that you must have a very good reason to not choose Ethereum as the blockchain for commercial applications today.”
Although Duchenne is bullish on Ethereum, he also referred to Bitcoin as “the mother of all blockchains” with “a network effect that’s hard to dislodge.”
Bitcoin, the world’s leading digital currency, has started the new month by surpassing $1,500 per coin to reach a new all-time high. Bitcoin managed to keep its positive momentum after rallying in April to peak at $1,441.39following the news that Japan has officially recognized bitcoin as a legal payment method and that Russia’s lawmakers are planning to do the same.
However, the tremendous rally in altcoins has also really stood out in the past few weeks.
Ether
The second largest digital currency, Ethereum’s ether, has also hit a new all-time high in the past week as it surpassed the $80 mark. Only two months prior, ether was trading at around $15 per token. The wave of positive news surrounding the testing and future adoption of the Ethereum blockchain by commercial industries, combined with a wide range of new crypto projects built on the top of the Ethereum blockchain that have been fundraising through initial coin offerings, have given the currency a massive boost in recent weeks.
Ripple
Like Ethereum, the Ripple network is experiencing adoption by a large number of financial institutions to process domestic and cross-border payments. This, in turn, has sparked interest in Ripple’s digital currency, which has had an impressive rally in the last two months, increasing from $0.0054 on March 1 to $0.054 on May 1, peaking at $0.0714 on April 2.
Litecoin
Litecoin, which has traditionally been considered the digital “silver” to bitcoin’s “gold,” has experienced an impressive rally since talks of SegWit implementation started. In the last 30 days, the price of Litecoin increased from $6.74 to surpass the $15 mark on April 25.
Charlie Lee, the inventor of Litecoin and director of engineering at Coinbase, has been an outspoken supporter of SegWit implementation for “his” altcoin and managed to convince the majority of litecoin miners to follow suit. Litecoin reached the SegWit activation signaling threshold of 75 percent on April 26, and the changes to the network will take effect within the next two weeks.
Anonymity-Focused Altcoins
With new ways of identifying bitcoin users having been made public, and the call for more bitcoin regulation coming out of regions such as the European Union, anonymity-focused digital currencies are seeing a surge in demand.
Leading these digital currencies, DASH, Monero, Zcash and the relatively new PIVX have all rallied substantially in the last two months.
From March 1 to May 1, DASH rallied from $33 to hit its all-time high of $117.78 on March 18, according to CoinMarketCap. Currently, DASH is trading at around $87.
Monero (XMR) also gained in value, rallying from around $13 to reach its all-time high of $25.99 on March 17. Now Monero is trading in the $22–$23 range.
Zcash (XEC) also managed to reemerge after a quiet period within its community following its high-profile ICO, rallying from $40 to surpass the $100 mark on May 1. Now Zcash is trading at around $93.
The newest member of the privacy-centered digital currency club, PIVX, rallied from $0.045 on March 1 to surpass the $2 mark, peaking at $2.11 on April 16. The new community-focused currency is currently trading at around $1.60, and its market capitalization is coming close to that of Zcash.
Interestingly, all of the 15 largest altcoins in terms of market capitalization have rallied in the month of April, indicating strong investor interest in bitcoin’s alternatives. This can also be seen when looking at the drop in bitcoin’s market share of the global digital currency market.
On April 30, the Bitcoin Dominance Index dropped below 60 percent for the first time ever, suggesting that investor interest in altcoins is growing and that the size of the altcoin market may soon outgrow the market capitalization of bitcoin.
The surge in demand for altcoins and the increase of their market share can be attributed to investors’ desire to earn higher returns by investing in less mature digital currencies, which have the potential to generate better returns than bitcoin, as well as the increase in ICO activities that have been catching the attention of yield-hungry investors.
While the impressive rally in altcoins is drawing more investor attention toward bitcoin’s alternatives, it is important to note that they are also substantially riskier investments than bitcoin — after all, these altcoins are largely untested and relatively unstable — and that their prices can often drop faster than they rallied. Generally speaking, when an asset class spikes at a very fast pace within a short period of time, a correction is just around the corner. Something to be mindful of when making your next altcoin investment in the current market climate.
Indian police are continuing their efforts to recoup funds from promoters of OneCoin, a digital currency investment scheme widely believed to be fraudulent.
Localreports indicate that investigators in Mumbai continue holding more than 18 individuals in custody for further questioning after they were arrested last week by undercover officers.
OneCoin is a purported digital currency sold through investment packages that are often pitched as sure-fire ways of making lots of money. Long accused of being a pyramid scheme, those solicited are often encouraged to purchase large packages of “tokens” (which can then be redeemed for OneCoins) and find other buyers to increase the size of their network.
The scheme has caught the attention of law enforcement and regulatory officials in a number of countries, including India. Speaking to The Hindu, a police official said that a new investigative team had been established to focus specifically on complaints tied to OneCoin.
“We need police custody for investigating the case and to get all details of the scam. We have got custody of the accused till May 3,” the official said.
That Indian police are shifting resources and seeking additional information from those held indicates that officials in that country are continuing to step up their fight against OneCoin. Recent reports show that other countries, including most notably Germany, are taking aim against the scheme in other ways as well.
As reported last week by CoinDesk, BaFin, Germany’s top finance regulator, issued cease-and-desist letters to major elements of OneCoin’s global operations, effectively ordering it to stop operating in the country.
Reports from last month also indicate that Kazakhstan’s government has also taken steps, ordering a OneCoin advocate under house arrest pending further investigation, according to a report from regional news service Tengri News.
Netherlands power utility TenneT is taking part in a pair of blockchain trials over the coming months focused on distributed energy transfer.
TenneT – which is owned by the Dutch government and is a major utility provider in Germany – is working with companies in both of those regions to test applications of the tech. Underlying the tests is software from IBM, which is a member of the Linux Foundation-backed Hyperledger blockchain project.
The first test, in conjunction with renewable energy marketplace operator Vandebron in the Netherlands, will focus on electric cars, with blockchain acting as a distributed signal network for cars that plug into recharge. In Germany, a separate trial conducted alongside blockchain startup Sonnen eServices will see the two firms use blockchain to create a record of electrical contributions from a series of connected batteries.
For now, the trials showcase a potential avenue for “enabling decentralized flexible energy sources to play a role in the management of the electricity grid, according to TenneT.
“These pilot projects are part of TenneT’s broader strategy of preparing the electricity system to accommodate the growing volume of renewable energy.”
The trial is the latest sign that utility operators are looking at blockchain as a possible backbone for next-generation power systems, particularly ones that offer real-time data updates and mechanisms for more efficient distribution.
Other utilities are looking at uses in this area, and a number of blockchain startups have since emerged and developed possible applications.
Bitcoin price has outperformed every reserve and fiat currency across the world year to date, yet again. By outperforming the US dollar by over 30 percent, Bitcoin surpassed the growth of the Mexican Peso, Silver, Gold and Russian Ruble to become the best performing currency so far in 2017.
Fiat, gold, silver behind
According to a chart provided by Bitcoin data analyst SG Kinsmann, Bitcoin price outpaced other currencies and safe haven assets such as gold and silver with significantly wide margins, with the Mexican Peso and Silver, the third and fourth best performing currencies and assets year to date barely achieving a 12 percent change against the US dollar.
Altcoins, Ethereum fairy tale
Thus far, 2017 has been a successful year for both Bitcoin investors and alternative cryptocurrency (altcoin) traders, with leading altcoins or crypto assets such as Ethereum achieving a $5 bln market cap in early April.
In January, the market cap of Ethereum fell short of $1 bln. Within four months, Ether price, the native token of Ethereum, increased by over five times.
The growth of Ethereum can be attributed to the formation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and its growing development community participated by large-scale corporations, organizations and businesses.
Bitcoin moves
The Bitcoin market, however, experienced some major changes in its ecosystem earlier this year.
To begin with, the Philippines and Japan legalized Bitcoin and its businesses in their respective regions. The Indian government announced the likelihood of a regulatory framework for Bitcoin being implemented by as early as May. Some of Japan’s largest retail giants including Bic Camera, which hold a massive influence over the Japanese technology and consumer markets, began to accept Bitcoin payments at their locations.
The major driving force of Bitcoin price in 2017 is suspected to be the resolution of the Bitcoin network’s current scalability problems. The Bitcoin network’s one MB cap on block size is causing Blockchain congestion, a drastic increase in fees at times and long confirmation times.
If Bitcoin scalability issues are addressed within this year, with innovative solutions such as Bitcoin Core’s Segregated Witness (SegWit), Andrew Lee’s Extension Blocks or other potential emerging solutions, Bitcoin price will most likely demonstrate an exponential mid and long-term increase.
On April 26, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin officially surpassed $1,300, breaking its previous all-time high price established at the $1,277 margin. However, Cointelegraph reported that most analysts see a high level of instability in the current Bitcoin price trend due to the banking issues of leading Bitcoin exchanges such as Bitfinex and OKCoin.
If the conflict between banks and Bitcoin exchanges are addressed, Bitcoin scalability issue is solved and mainstream adoption in Japan, India and Philippines continue, Bitcoin price will likely demonstrate an exponential mid and long-term growth.
The price of bitcoin continued recent gains to start today’s trading session, rising $60 in just hours to top $1,460.
Overall, the price of bitcoin has gained nearly 5% across global exchanges, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, to reach its highest value ever recorded. The gains mark the third consecutive day that bitcoin’s price has set a new all-time high, and the fourth time it has done so over the last five days.
According to data from CoinDesk, the development also follows a period in which volume has shifted to new markets, namely Japan, where newly enacted regulations appear to have set the stage for a period of more robust trade in the market.
Over the last 24 hours, more than 50% of trading has taken place in Japanese yen, according to data service CryptoCompare.
Notably, the majority of US trading has also seen a migration to Gemini – long one of the lesser traded exchanges and perhaps the one that has most targeted the institutional investor demographic.
Still, it’s difficult to tell exactly what is driving the market.
Not only has the market seen its largest US dollar exchange fall victim to banking issues in recent weeks, but bitcoin’s price gains are coinciding with the appreciation of a range of other blockchain-based assets, providing evidence that speculation in other markets may be a rising tide lifting all boats.
In recent sessions, both ether (the cryptocurrency that powers the ethereum blockchain) and litecoin (an alternative payment-focused cryptocurrency) have also hit all-time or multi-year highs.
The price of bitcoin continued recent gains to start today’s trading session, rising $60 in just hours to top $1,460.