Day: December 6, 2017

Tadej Slapnik, the State Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, is one of the developers of the national blockchain strategy. He is convinced that soon blockchain will be introduced everywhere in Europe; that it will have a positive impact on its social sector, resulting in the strengthening of the European and global economy as a whole. That is why Slovenia, according to the expert, seeks to master the new technology as soon as possible. In an interview to the press office of Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Slovenia, the politician spoke about the changes that the blockchain implementation could bring to Europe, and the specific steps that are being taken in Slovenia to study and implement blockchain.

Interviewer: Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Slovenia (BCS)

Speaker: Tadej Slapnik (T.S.)

BCS: The discussion topic is “Blockchain Regulation in Slovenia”. Being a Slovenian representative of GECES, could you tell us which documents regulate blockchain development in Europe now, and which changes legislation can face in this field in the future? 

T.S.: Blockchain development is not yet regulated in Europe (on European level) as there are certain areas that are identified as necessary to be modified to the extent that would enable to use blockchain technology and the distributed economy model in horizontal and vertical pillars, as well. There are some cases of regulated certain areas in some countries, but there is no regulation for The Single European Market. To find the regulatory solutions, European Commission is establishing The Blockchain Observatory and Slovenia will be coordinating the preparation of “case law” for blockchain within expert working groups.

To ensure legality and legal certainty of the implementation of blockchain technology and distributed economy, there are identified four most important areas relevant for the development of blockchain technology and its use in the distributed economy system or model: taxation regulation (and the treatment of initial investment as investment or as revenue and define the taxation of different issues); data protection regulation (in the light of the fact that GDPR is coming into force in May 2018), money anti-laundry regulation (to ensure the compliance with European directive coming into force in 2018) and regulation of securitization (to enable an issuance of tokens, that should not be treated like securities) and national central bank policy (especially in the European member states, using Euro as currency).

GECES prepared The GECES Report with the subtitle “Call for Action” in 2016, in which sharing and circular economy are two of four future development areas. Implementing blockchain technology as a tool, it can enable positive social impact using blockchain technology and positive social impact derived from distributed economy model or system, bringing higher efficiency and wealth for the European and world economy as a whole.

BCS: Recently, the Prime Minister Miro Cerar has stated that Slovenia intends to become a European leader in the field of blockchain technologies and that a relevant infrastructure is being developed now. Which specific actions are taken to develop blockchain in Slovenia? 

T.S.: First, the Blockchain ecosystem has been established. It has three main pillars: legal/policy pillar, supporting environment for development of blockchain and business pillar with the developed blockchain companies and blockchain startup companies in it. Three main pillars are implemented through Blockchain Think Tank initiative on the national level (as a part of Digital Slovenia Initiative, through the cooperation of the Government, Academia and research institutes, businesses and projects), Noordung Blockchain Hub EU (the blockchain hub to support the development of business ideas and projects to the market or for the market and to support the government in the policy creation through business cases for businesses and projects based on blockchain), the business pillar is represented by the strongest blockchain companies on the world level , together with the blockchain startups and initiatives to become startups with well-developed business models.

Next steps would be oriented into strengthening the business – legal and financial environment together with the development of strong community based on blockchain technology and distributed economy, having in mind positive social and economic impacts that the use of this technology can have on the society as a whole.

BCS: To what extent does the all-European blockchain development program influence Slovenia? Is the growth of blockchain in the country a part of the joint project of the EU countries or a local initiative? 

T.S.: European Blockchain development program has strong influence on Slovenia, but it is better to say that the influence is mutual. Slovenia as one of the most advanced countries in developing blockchain based government and businesses will through the cooperation in the EU Blockchain observatory and through the establishment of Noordung Blockchain Hub EU actively participate in co-creation of the European blockchain and policy environment, first through the consultancy and advisory activities on legal and other matters, and then through the case law also in implementation of that regulation and policy on EU level.

BCS: The Prime Minister Miro Cerar also promised that the government would organize events where participants would compete to implement and regulate blockchain in the country. Which prospects will it open for development companies? 

T.S.: The Government will organize the different events promoting blockchain technology and distributed economy and wider and better use and implementation of it in certain number of verticals, including the government level. There will be meet-ups organized in various regions in Slovenia, EU and other parts of Europe (Western Balkans, Turkey), but also outside Europe (in USA, Asia, UAE, etc.). There will be Academies, supported by the government to increase and share knowledge of blockchain technology and its use in efficient and transparent manner, there will also be hackathons supported by the government which can open additional prospects for the regulation of certain areas relevant for blockchain in the legislation, regulation and implementation of blockchain technology and distributed economy model in Slovenia and abroad.

BCS: From the standpoint of social economy, which benefits can the growth of blockchain technologies bring to the country at the state level? 

T.S.: From the standpoint of social economy there can be many important benefits of blockchain technology. First, transparency and democracy are the principles, followed by blockchain technology and social economy as well. Optimization of the processes and business models will enable the creation of additional assets for the future development as well as the decreasing of inequality inherent in the existing economic system. The blockchain system will eliminate negative externalities (especially the asymmetry of information) which can decrease or eliminate the existing costs connected to the asymmetries and together with the introduction ofpeer-to-peerr and community based approach it will also decrease the costs of intermediaries. Those are very important horizontal positive social impacts for the whole society, bringing the wealth of local communities, regions and the state as a whole. Legal certainty will increase savings and transparency will minimize the possibilities of abuse and elimination of positive social and economic impact.

On the other hand, it will increase the visibility and the importance of social economy in many verticals of the national economy. Energy efficiency with the use of blockchain technology can be increased with the business models using blockchain technology for direct communication and access to more clean and cheaper energy in the communities, local food production and supply will be increased with the use of blockchain technology and with higher level of certainty there will be positive social impact on health of the citizens (as clear and transparent track record will be provided with blockchain technology, food surpluses can be minimized and efficient food supply together with the minimization of transport and logistic costs can be provided), with the perspective of circular economy, the existing end products can be better used as raw materials or inputs within the same business process or in the value chain of certain industries which will enable the whole economy to have better end more efficient use of input materials and services and optimization of business processes for whole economy, and together with additional and new jobs creation it will enable the transformation of the economy to be prepared for the new industrial era).The same is expected for sharing economy, which is another important perspective for social economy. As the trust grows using blockchain technology, more and more private blockchain based models can be developed, following the principles of social economy. The government ledger will enable more efficient government services and inclusion of social economy enterprises and organizations implementing the services based on deinstitutionalized principles which will enable positive social impacts on the horizontal level.

BCS: Are there blockchain projects that are already fully functional in Slovenia at the state level?

T.S.: There are blockchain projects in Slovenia, that have a perspective to be fully functional (not yet) on the state level, but with the strong potential of certainty that can contribute to the functionality of blockchain projects on the state level. One of them is Data Fund project, recently launched by Cofound.it, project which proves that it is possible to start the blockchain based business in Europe, within the possibilities provided by existing regulation, on very sensitive area which is data protection.

Read the latest news of the cryptocurrency and blockchain world on the website of  Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Slovenia.

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The price of bitcoin has broken to yet another all-time high today, crossing the $13,000 line for the first time.

Huobi is on board with SBI Group in Japan ahead of a Japanese exchange launch.

Most people will readily agree that cryptocurrencies are quite exciting. They can yield good profits, allow for global transactions, and let anyone control his or her own money without too many issues. However, these currencies are not perfect either, as scalability is typically a big problem. This is where Raiblocks comes into the picture, as it is a pretty intriguing concept.

Raiblocks Focuses on Scaling and Zero Fees

If there is one thing the cryptocurrency ecosystem direly needs, it is a proper scaling solution. More specifically, there is no currency which can successfully process the number of transactions needed to compete with more traditional solutions. That situation will not change anytime soon, although there are some interesting developments taking place across various blockchains as we speak. Whether or not any of those solutions will actually improve matters remains to be seen, though.

Moreover, there is no guarantee that Raiblocks will succeed either. While the project is pretty intriguing, it is still something entirely new and has everything to prove. Claiming to provide scalable, instant transactions with zero fees is one thing, but proving it can be done is something else entirely. With most of its announcements and developments still to come, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for this project.

As one would expect, Raiblocks has a native token. This means the technology will not necessarily be implemented in any of the other cryptocurrencies that exist today. Its code is available on GitHub, though, and things may certainly evolve in an interesting direction. It would be better if such solutions were developed for existing cryptocurrencies instead of for another token no one has asked for.

So far, the XRB token is valued at US$0.38, which is quite a steep value for something few people had even heard of until a few months ago. It is evident there is a demand for such scaling solutions, and the concept of zero fees is certainly attractive. However, solutions like this one would never work for Bitcoin or Ethereum so long as they rely on proof-of-work to keep the blockchain moving. In the case of Ethereum, that may eventually come to change, though, but nothing has been set in stone just yet.

As is always the case with new protocols, it will be interesting to see whether people actually pay attention to Raiblocks. While it certainly has some merits, it is still another token no one really needs right now. Scalability and zero fees are alluring, but they don’t really matter unless a solution actually gets used in the real world. So far, this has not been the case for Raiblocks, nor will that change in the near future, by the look of things.

The roadmap for this project looks interesting, but there is nothing spectacular about it either. The main focus is on getting listed on additional exchanges, but there is no mention of merchant adoption whatsoever. At the same time, we may see other cryptocurrencies embrace this scaling solution in the future. 

We are closing in on the end of the European session and it is time to take a look at how action in the bitcoin price today is setting up to provide us with a strategy that we can use heading into the primary US session this evening.

As we noted this morning, the overarching momentum seems to be with the bulls right now and, aside from a couple of short-term corrections, the bitcoin price looks like it’s set to break and maintain its level above $13,000.

Just how long this level can serve as support post-break remains to be seen but, if action over the last couple of days is anything to go by, we could well be looking at $14,000 before $13,000 becomes a focal point.

So, with all this said, let’s get some levels in place that we can use for our strategy going forward and try to figure out some entry and exit points that fall in line with our risk management tools.

As ever, take a quick look at the chart below before we get started so as to get an idea where things stand where we are looking to jump in and out of the markets according to the rules of our intraday strategy.

The chart is a one-minute candlestick chart and it has our range overlaid in green.

As the chart shows, the range we’re looking at for the session this evening comes in as defined by support to the downside at 12701 and resistance to the upside 12788.

If we see price close above resistance, we will enter long towards an immediate upside target of 12830. Conversely, a close below support will have us in short towards a downside target of 12640.

Stop losses on both positions will ensure we are taken out of the trades in the event that things turn against us.

Let’s see what happens.

Chart courtesy of Trading View

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Tens of millions of dollars spent on studying the psychology of gamer motivation have drawn the same conclusion. Game players are motivated by instant gratification. Winnings, rewards and incentives drive gameplay. It only follows, then, game platforms with the fastest game delivery times, biggest winnings and rewards, and most rapid release of monies will attract the most players.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

Instant winnings

Welcome to gaming on the Blockchain! All gaming transactions in the FLUX ecosystem—uploading games, playing games and trading in-game items—are facilitated by smart contracts. By replacing the intermediary with self-executing contracts between the game players, transactions are speedier, securer and more accurate. These transparent contracts provide an unchangeable audit trail of all game actions, ensuring gaming is secure and fair. All actions can be automated. In a game between two opponents, for example, escrow is secured, the game played and an arbiter ruling made automatically, enabling funds to be released immediately after the arbiter decision is made.

Larger earnings

FLUX is an investor-owned gaming platform, an innovative model emerging on the Blockchain. Through investment in the FLUX token, all players on the FLUX ecosystem are united in the goal of promoting the platform. Game developers can also launch their own crowdfunded ICOs. More tokens can be earned through gameplay, trading in-game items, streaming and tournaments. As part of the self-perpetuating marketing model, players can earn additional commissions on the revenues of new players they introduce to the FLUX platform. As the entire ecosystem earns income through game creation and play, part of the income is distributed to investors.  

Higher revenue sharing

This allows the gaming platform to share more of the revenues with developers and players. Commissions no longer go solely to a handful of powerful game developers and owners.  The FLUX matchmaking system takes a commission of one to seven percent; 50 percent goes directly to the game developers and 10 percent towards rewards and referral payouts, while the rest is distributed across marketing and administration expenses.  One percent of the token amount will be distributed through a bounty program. Investors also receive part of the commission on Matchmaking platform transaction fees from games they invest in on the FLUX crowdfunding platform.

By facilitating revenue sharing and trust building, the smart contract strengthens the bond between players. In addition to instant gratification, social interaction has been shown to motivate game play. While a benefit of the smart contract is the ability to anonymously transact, the shared ownership in the success of the platform creates a win-win situation.  Naturally, more players will be incentivized to play and play more.

Included among the many incentives across the gaming, trading and streaming platform, players can earn commission on the future revenue of referred players and earn rewards from developing game skins.  Social interaction can double player retention rates, a factor that has led to a boom in in-game trading. Virtual assets traded in the FLUX store include in-game items, digital skins, in-game currencies and digital game packages. Virtual goods to VGs trading is free, while a two percent commission is charged on other trading. Accounts can be topped up using cryptocurrency (BTC, ETH,  LTC) or EUR or Visa/MasterCard while all withdrawals are made in the FLUX Token, ensuring a steady supply of the token.

Standing still in the world of cryptocurrency will eventually lead to sudden demise. This is why the Monero developers are working on a new solution to reduce the network’s transaction size. If this effort is successful, transactions will become 80% smaller than they are now. The goal is to implement this change by September 2018 at the latest, although that date is subject to change.

Monero Transaction Size Needs to be Addressed

In the world of cryptocurrency, very few people actually wonder how large their individual transactions are on the network. The answer would surprise a lot of people, as one would think there isn’t much data involved in sending money across a blockchain. As it happens, the reality is very different. That’s especially true in the world of Monero, where the anonymity and privacy offered by the network come at the cost of larger transaction sizes.

To put this into perspective, a single output transaction on the Monero blockchain is 6 kilobytes in size. That may not seem like much, but one has to keep in mind the average Bitcoin transaction size is around 250 bytes, give or take. This means every transaction conducted in XMR is over 20 times the size of a Bitcoin transfer. From a long-term perspective, this vast size difference is not manageable, and something will need to change sooner or later.

While it is true the Monero ecosystem has a dynamic block size to ensure this doesn’t become a big problem anytime soon, the developers are actively looking for ways to improve upon things before the situation gets out of hand. The new solution goes by the name of multi-output bulletproofs. It is a solution currently being researched and developed by the Monero Research Lab, and it currently exists in a Java version only. There will be a C++ version as well, but it will only support single output BulletProof transactions at first.

What makes this concept so interesting is that it can effectively reduce the size of a single output transaction to 704 bytes. Compared to the current 6 kilobytes, that is a reduction of over 80%. For double output transactions, the size would be reduced from 12 kilobytes to under 800 bytes. No one can deny this would certainly make things a lot more convenient for all Monero users, as the current massive transaction size will hinder the growth of this ecosystem moving forward.

When exactly this BulletProof implementation will come to Monero remains to be seen. For now, it is tentatively scheduled for the September 2018 hard fork, but the team wants to ensure this concept goes through rigorous testing first. There is little point in releasing a half-baked solution, especially when it is one that is vital to the Monero ecosystem. 

There is more exciting news to report in the Monero world. Monero’s multisignature implementation is still being tested, and Surae Noether is reviewing this technology as we speak. Guides have surfaced for setting up 2-of-2 and 2-of-3 Monero multisignature accounts already, but it will be good to see the results of this peer review. It will be an interesting year for Monero in 2018, as a lot of good features and projects will be finalized in the next twelve months.

Following last week’s news that IOTA is launching an IoT (Internet of Things) based data sharing marketplace in partnership with some big companies including Microsoft, its price has jumped considerably. Crypto investors and traders have been clamoring to get their hands on the vastly undervalued asset which has shot up from around $0.8-$1.2 at the time of the announcement to over $4.7 today.

The surge in interest and investment has pushed IOTA into the big league of crypto currencies where it is now positioned at number four with a market cap of $12.4 billion. It has surpassed Ripple which has a $9.5 billion market cap and is way ahead of Litecoin with $5.6 billion.

News filters slowly around the world and IOTA investors are still piling into the coin this week causing the price to soar. The MIOTA token has jumped roughly 350% in a week and it continues to spike. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is likely to be a factor influencing the price hike as more people hit the exchanges to trade their Bitcoin for Miota.

Touted as the next generation of blockchain, IOTA works slightly differently to regular distributed ledger assets such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. The new architecture is referred to as a Directed Acyclic Graph, or ‘Tangle’, and it works without blocks or a chain. It is more like a web of nodes that can get verified at high speed so that it does not need miners and there are no slow transaction delays or associated expenses.

The only problem with a crypto like IOTA is that many major exchanges including Bittrex, Kraken, and Cex.io do not list it. It is available on Taiwanese based Bitfinex, but not to US citizens, so the only option is Hong Kong based Binance for many. Limited to just one exchange has limited its uptake, and this applies to any altcoin that is not listed on all exchanges. To get in on the action for a wide scope of altcoins traders must open accounts on all exchanges which can be arduous and will rack up fees and commissions. This alone has probably caused a lot of traders’ FOMO to be realized with the latest surge in IOTA.

The hope is that a blockchain solution such as BitShares or the one in development by OmiseGO will soon be available and widely adopted to facilitate high speed, low cost exchanges across all crypto currencies without the use of centralized and sluggish exchange companies. Until then we will have to find our own ways of getting on the next crypto gravy train.

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During Token Summit II, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant waved off talk of a bubble, saying cryptocurrency solves many people’s money problems.

The post Developers Release Lightning Protocol 1.0; Perform Successful Interoperability Tests appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This Gold Roll-Royce is for sale – but the owner wants Bitcoin, not cash.