Newsletter: 2
In the news
DARPA funded study analyzed the speed and scale of discussions related to bitcoin, ethereum and monero on Reddit for a 3 year span from Jan 2015 to Jan 2018 with bitcoin discussion generated about 3600 comments per day. More info.
Line Pay (payments business of Japanese messaging app Line) and Visa are partnering up to provide new fintech solution using blockchain to deliver new experiences in B2B and cross-border payments and “alternative currency”. More info.
Facebook is set to reveal details about it’s own cryptocurrency on June 18th with a release of a white paper. It would be pegged to a basket of currencies rather than relying on just the US dollar to prevent price fluctuations. It is also likely that Facebook might setup an independent foundation to oversee this project to encourage trust and provide assurance to the regulators. More info.
Opacity Storage, online data privacy and security company, has announced a new product release Opacity v1.0, which provides anonymous online file storage. It accepts payments in OPQ tokens and no personal data is ever required or stored. More info.
City of Vancouver, Canada is considering banning bitcoin ATMs to prevent money laundering. Experts and local businesses have instead called for regulations to include bitcoin ATMs. One police report claimed criminals could simply purchase a Bitcoin ATM themselves for a few thousand dollars. They would then deposit all their cash into that ATM “as many times as required” to either profit from or eliminate the transaction fees — effectively washing money for free. More info.
Walmart has joined a consortium, MediLedger, that is building a decentralized network using ethereum blockchain to track pharmaceutical supply chains. It is to be noted this is Walmart’s second announcement in the blockchain space as they are also part of IBM’s Food Trust, (supply chain for food) built on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. More info.
ZenGo, an Israeli startup, launches the first ever keyless crypto wallet. The security seems to be distributed between the device and the ZenGo servers so even if there was a breach at either end, they say that the assets will always be safe. More info.
Hacking / Data Breach
Hackers have reportedly stolen $10M worth of Ripple from their XRP ledger wallets. It seems like all of them had their wallets managed by GateHub. Among other services, the attackers relied on Binance, Changelly, KuCoin, Huobi, and HitBTC to convert the funds. More info.
Reading
What happens to bitcoin miners when all coins are mined? More info.
The Rise of Digital Dollars. More info.
Microsoft seems very proud of its smart contract auditing tools for blockchain. More info.
Stats / Numbers / Metrics
90% of enterprise level blockchain platforms will need to be replaced by 2021, according to Gartner. More info.
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Disclaimer: My posts, articles and opinions expressed here are strictly my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer or others.
