The Bitcoin mining hardware race is on
The ASIC mining hardware manufacturing industry has so far largely been dominated by Chinese manufacturer Bitmain, which has sold equipment equivalent to about 60% of the current hashrate. However, several reputable companies have made promising announcements lately about entering the ASIC mining hardware industry with cutting-edge new equipment.
Starships and Tokens; A Path to Human Self-Actualization
Many humans don’t settle for just barely scraping by; they improve themselves towards self-actualization. Could we do the same at the level of civilization? Rather than merely avoiding disasters, let’s truly reach for the stars. In this essay, I describe a decentralized system for humanity to collectively graph the steps towards self-actualization, from conquering malaria and a shared planetary database, to universal basic income and even asteroid mining.
A rational take on cryptocurrencies
Here at Coin Sciences, we’re best known for MultiChain, a popular platform for creating and deploying permissioned blockchains. But we began life in March 2014 in the cryptocurrency space, with the goal of developing a “bitcoin 2.0″ protocol called CoinSpark. CoinSpark leverages transaction metadata to add external assets (now called tokens) and notarized messaging to bitcoin. Our underlying thinking was this: If a blockchain is a secure decentralized record, surely that record has applications beyond managing its native cryptocurrency.
Blockchain Industry Report Q1 2017
Blockchain funding is higher than ever, and despite being a smaller market, Europe has a strong focus on the technology, according to a new industry report from Funderbeam.
Digital payments – Analysing the cyber landscape
In this thought leadership, the authors examine the digital payments ecosystem from a lens of readiness of framework for adopting the technology, emergence of new industry (Fintech), security and preventive measures that an Indian citizen needs to take before taking a leap of faith in the digital world, and measures to avoid frauds.
Three pre-blockchain planetary networks: Visa, DNS, and Sabre/Amadeus
“Blockchain technology could change the world!” But how? If an industry gets a single shared source of truth, what happens? If you’re in the blockchain space, you may be working hard to paint a possible picture to answer that. You may be using logic and extrapolation, but wishing that you had something more tangible.
Draft Report on FinTech: The influence of technology on the future of the financial sector
A draft report on FinTech: the influence of technology on the future of the financial sector reported by: Cora van Nieuwenhuizen from the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Applications of Blockchain Technology: To Banking And Financial Sector In India
In this White Paper, we explore Blockchain similarly â as an abstract data structure and development platform to solve generic problems in FinTech.
Microsoft adds advanced support for bitcoin to Excel spreadsheets
Microsoft’s latest upgrade roadmap for MS Office, includes four entries for bitcoin support into the four different platform version of their popular Excel spreadsheet software. The changes allow for Bitcoin data to be used in their spreadsheets and calculations, making the task of doing budgeting with bitcoins far easier.
Blockchain wallet adding bitcoin buying option
Blockchain will soon provide users of their ever popular wallet with the option to buy bitcoin. After eight months of development, the service launches in the UK on Monday for a short period of testing. The company plans to push it out across the entire Eurozone by December, and across the US and some parts of Latin America early next year.
A Decentralized Content Registry for the Decentralized Web
Bitcoin inspired many of us in various ways. For me, it was an inspiration that you could have a global shared database for the planet, especially for creative works and for self-sovereign personal data.
Bitcoin scaling solution, Segwit, released
A new version of Bitcoin’s Core code was released on Thursday, Bitcoin version 0.13.1 Final. The contentious alternative contains a patch known as Segregated Witness (Segwit).
Six Blockchain application verticals, opportunities for your next project
We see six key verticals where blockchains are being applied. Each of these has many business opportunities. We’re still in the early days of blockchain and the broader decentralization movement, which means there is still plenty of opportunity in each vertical.
Big numbers don’t mean big money
Last week we discussed [problems with using really big numbers in cryptocurrencies](news/problems-with-big-numbers-in-crypto-how-bitcoin-dodged-a-bullet/). This week I'd like to talk about misconceptions surrounding cryptocurrencies with big coin supplies, as well as the wider topic of inflation. Both this and the previous article were inspired by the [OneLife Mastermind event](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6l4N4MQaE), during which the people on stage were gushing about [how many coins their system will have and can mine, ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6l4N4MQaE&t=11089)"The new blockchain will mine 50'000 coins per minute. [...] I think we are mining about 2'000'000'000 coins now."
Three blockchain benefits, above and beyond traditional databases
If you’re thinking about business opportunities for blockchain technology, it’s useful to avoid getting over-excited about an idea that a traditional centralized database could do just as well. How do you parse which is which?
Core bank systems should have built-in obsolescence
From controlled to marketplace and from internal to external focus, another key change is the very nature of technology itself. It’s quite clear that a start-up today could launch with just a few thousand dollars, Amazon Web Services and a bright idea. There is no need to build complex infrastructure and spend months with hundreds of coders creating something.
