Blockchain News

St. Julian’s will host the event for all those interested in blockchain and cryptocurrencies in terms of business - Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Malta. (December 7, 2017). Its participants include entrepreneurs, investors, consultants and IT specialists working with blockchain and digital currencies. The event will be attended by representatives of the Government of Malta. At the beginning of the event, they will make a welcoming speech. Speakers of the conference are analysts of the cryptocurrency markets; financial and legal experts; blockchain developers; representatives of startups and large companies that use blockchain technology; cryptocurrency and venture investors.

Crypto Affiliate Conference 2017 will be a crucial stepping stone for the whole digital marketing community in the presently changing environment. The participants will have a chance to introduce their Crypto products to a wide array of affiliates and advertisers in order to work out the best marketing strategies on the spot and engage in long-lasting beneficial partnerships. There will also be a plethora of speakers raising important crypto related questions to listen to.

Bitcoin and crypto-currency researcher Willy Woo, who is highly respected in the community, announced that the number of Bitcoin users is about doubled every 12 months. Using as one of the main indicators of the increase in the number of Bitcoin users of the Google Trends app, Wu formed an infographic showing the exponential growth rate of the bitcoin user base. You stressed that against the backdrop of a stable growth rate and periodic surges, which usually depend on the movement of the price of the crypto currency, in the long term the bitcoin network will continue to demonstrate a steady increase in the user base.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, "thanked" in his Twitter for the US government and financial institutions for the persecution of Wikileaks, which forced the organization to switch to bitcoin in 2010. In his publication Assange notes that the accumulation of Wikileaks in the crypto currency grew by more than 50 000%. On October 14, Julian Assange expressed his "deepest gratitude to the US government, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman for forcing Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, AmEx, Moneybookers and other payment systems to organize the illegal banking blockade of Wikileaks in 2010." Assange said that the financial embargo "forced Wikileaks to invest in bitcoin, due to which the organization increased its investments by more than 50 000%."

Business consultant, member of the board of directors of the block-startup CopPay Itzhak Adizes, shared his thoughts about the future of the crypt. According to Adizes, the crypto-currencies transform the financial market in the same way that Amazon transformed retail trade. Despite the fact that nowadays crypto-currencies are mostly a speculative instrument and they have not yet become a part of the world economy, this line will gradually fade away.
Like Amazon, which allowed to make purchases without leaving home, bitcoin and other crypto-currencies will allow it to do without the participation of fiat money. For the crypto currency, the future and very many people understand this.

Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned that central banks and financial services should pay attention to crypto-currencies. In an interview with CNBC at the annual IMF meetings in Washington, DC, Lagarde said: "I think that we will see massive shifts". According to Lagarde, the Crypto-currencies can play a future role in the renewal of the IMF's own domestic currency, the reserve asset of which is called Special Drawing Right (SDR). What we will learn is how this currency, special drawing rights, can actually use this technology to be more efficient and less expensive.

Bitcoin is a "class of assets that are not subject to censorship," but it's also not quite money, analysts at Bernstein, based in New York, say. According to Business Insider, in a message that was sent to the company's customers on Wednesday, Bernstein analysts conducted a study of this issue, ultimately suggesting that although bitcoin possesses some characteristics of money, it does not comply with the definition that is currently applied to money. Fee money is still the main form of financial regulation - governments still collect taxes in fiat money, and salaries are still paid in fiat money, "the report explains." Thus, today bitcoin emerged only as a class of assets that "are not subject to censorship."

The Financial Services Authority of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, made public recommendations concerning virtual currencies and ICO. These instructions have been published to clarify the regulatory approach of the Abu Dhabi government for ICO and crypto currency both for the organizers and for users of digital currencies. After discussion, the Financial Services Authority (FSRA), the financial market regulator in Abu Dhabi, decided that the one-size-fits-all approach to virtual tokens, be it ICO tokens or digital currencies, or any other implementation of block-based solutions based on cryptographic tokens, is "inappropriate".

The largest in Japan bitcoin-exchange Coincheck received "hundreds of requests" from Chinese startups to add to the listing their tokens after the ban of ICO in China. In an interview with the Chinese edition of the Global Times, the head of the Coincheck department for international development, Kagayaki Kawabata, said: "We receive hundreds of requests from Chinese start-ups and start-ups around the world to add their tokens after the Chinese government banned the ICO".

Adena Friedman, general manager of the global stock market operator Nasdaq, said that its company is going to avoid the proposals of ICO. Speaking at a conference on the quality of financial markets at Georgetown University this week, the CEO of Nasdaq criticized the lack of standards for investor protection and disclosure of information about the organizers who use this investment model to finance block-start-ups. This is reported by CoinDesk. Although this type of financing is used by many well-known companies that have public confidence, there are many cases of dishonest ICO and fraud that attract regulators from around the world. It is for these reasons that Friedman said that the Nasdaq will stay away from this.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia expressed his opinion on the modern financing of business projects using ICO, calling such methods "fraudulent." In an interview with the American CNBC television channel, he said that he believes that many projects that use ICO to finance their projects by selling their tokens are "absolute fraud". There are quite a few of these primary placements of coins, which, in my opinion, are absolute fraud, and people should be very cautious about things happening in this area, said Jimmy Wells.

One of the participants in the hip-hop group Wu-tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, seems to be connected to a venture crypto-cash company that wants to raise $ 30 million with its Cream token to finance a network of crypto-ATM ATM terminals. Ghostface Killah will assume the role of the chief branding specialist within ICO Cream, which seeks to raise $ 30 million. In a recent interview, Brett Westbrook, CEO of Cream Capital, said: Its efficiency will create a structure, thanks to which crypto-currencies will become closer to ordinary people. Both met at Reddit during a special session during which users can ask questions and communicate with a certain person, in this case it was Ghostface Killah.

Representatives of the Swedish government for the first time settled the repayment of debts with the help of bitcoin. This is the first time when law enforcement bodies officially accepted bitcoin as payment of arrears to the state.
One of the employees of Kronofogden (Swedish Bailiff Service) noted that bitcoin is a new asset that provides his organization more opportunities to resolve various issues and problems. Bitcoin is an alternative method of payment for citizens.

The position of China against public crypto-currencies is becoming more aggressive. But perhaps it has strategic rationale? For example, "clearing" the market for the introduction of state crypto currency, controlled by the People's Bank? Director of the Digital Currency Research Institute, created under the People's Bank of China, Yao Qian, very clearly outlined his vision of this issue in his statement at a meeting organized by the International Telecommunication Union.

The Ethereum Foundation confirms that the planned hardfork will be activated on the block 4 370 000, which will be produced, roughly, on Monday October 16, between 12:00 and 13:00 UTC (16:00 to 17:00 Moscow time). The same hardfork was activated in the test network Ropsten on September 19 on the block 1,700,000. The countdown timer can be viewed here. To date, in the Etherium, there have already been four hardfork, and only one of them led to the creation of an alternative blocker Ethereum Classic. Given that Byzantium is included in the development plan of the Etherium since 2015, it is unlikely that there will be problems with the update. Byzantium can be considered as a conservative update, which will include 9 proposals for changes (EIP - analog BIP) in the platform. The essence of the change is that they need to make the platform easier and faster, improving the speed of transactions, the security of smart contracts and, possibly, confidentiality.

Air France KLM, a holding company that owns one of the largest airlines in the world, intends to test the technology of blockade and decentralized applications to automate the chain of aviation supplies.
The webinar, which was attended by Microsoft and the software company Ramco Aviation, the head of the innovation department of Air France KLM James Kornberg (James Kornberg) spoke about the company's plans to explore the potential of blockade technology, as well as options for the use of decentralized technology for the chain of aviation supplies.

Today's growth of bitcoins above $ 5,000 again returned the world's first crypto currency to the dominance of capitalization in the crypto currency market, which in the course of 2017 was seriously shaken. In the summer months, due to the sharp increase in the popularity of ICO, the capitalization of the Ethereum and other major altokones has grown significantly, and the rate of their growth is much more than the growth of bitcoin. Therefore, in May, the Index of Bitcoin's dominance by the Coinmarketcap version fell below 50%, and in June briefly even fell below 40%.

ICO Etherparty briefly became a victim of a cyber attack, as a result of which some investors sent their funds to the attacker's address. The blocking startup Etherparty launched its ICO campaign to raise funds for the implementation of the platform for the development of smart contracts on October 1. According to a blog post, the attacker successfully entered a fraudulent purse address on the Etherparty website about 45 minutes after the start of the ICO. The team noticed the violations almost immediately, and within 15 minutes the site was disconnected. Offline site was about 90 minutes, during this time the team rebuilt it and transferred to a new server.

In the United States, tokens issued under the ICO were equated to release of ordinary shares. Now, issuers will need to register for the issue of virtual shares. The decision of the regulator will make it difficult for investors in the US market to invest in the crypto currency, but the organizers of ICO will have to seriously assess the risks that can reduce the number of fraud cases.

The tenth part of the Ethereum crypto currency invested in the ICO was stolen by fraudsters who used phishing sites and social network accounts for this. The amount of cyber-theft is already approaching the amount of funds stolen by the usual way. Participation in the initial placement of the tokens (Initial Coin Offering - ICO) on the Ethereum blockbuster platform (crypto currency ether) assumes that in one of ten cases a participant will become a victim of fraud. This is reported by Bloomberg.