Day: July 13, 2018

Inspired by the success of the CryptoKitties game, Major League Baseball are launching their own range of digital collectables on the Ethereum blockchain. MLB Crypto Baseball will be focused on trading one-of-a-kind digital items linked to specific moments in recent games.

Digital Collectables Hoped to Help Revive Interest in MLB

Major League Baseball have announced their intention to enter the cryptocurrency space. However, unlike other companies that are moving into the realm of digital assets, they won’t be directly accepting payments in cryptocurrencies. Instead, they plan to launch a digital collectable game akin to the hugely successful CryptoKitties that debuted last year.

Yahoo Finance spoke with the league’s executive vice president of gaming and new business ventures, Kenny Gersh. He told the publication about the move, as well as the decision to not accept cryptocurrency payments for various MLB products:

“We talked a long time ago about Bitcoin and whether we should accept it as payment for MLB.tv and some of our other products, and we opted not to. At the end of the day we decided that isn’t our business, we’re not in the speculation business. We’re in the business of delivering baseball to fans. So this game is a more interesting intersection of blockchain technology and what we do.”

The new game will be titled MLB Crypto Baseball. It will involve players buying and selling digital avatars. Each of these will be inspired by various exciting moments from recent games. The decentralised application is due for release later this summer with help from developers at Lucid Sight.

According to Gersh, the previous success of CryptoKitties has directly inspired the title from the planet’s premier baseball league:

“We were already talking to Lucid Sight around the time that CryptoKitties first came out, and then CryptoKitties sort of validated it a little bit more.”

MLB aren’t the only sporting interest moving into the cryptocurrency space. Last month, NewsBTC reported on the NBA’s Sacramento Kings’ plans to create a cryptocurrency mining initiative in their stadium that will directly benefit local charities.

Gersh hopes that the digital trading game will rekindle excitement for baseball amongst a younger audience. According to Yahoo Finance, the league are currently experiencing a lull in the numbers of people attending the league’s fixtures:

“That is 100% one of the strategic goals of this initiative. Collecting items related to your team, engaging with your team in a new way. For me, say the Red Sox win the division in a couple months, I want to buy something that symbolizes that. These will be event-based things—those moments in sports that happen that you want to remember and cherish, and have a sense that you were there, even if only digitally.”

Developers at Lucid Sight are aware that using cryptocurrency to collect tradable avatars might be a bit hard to grasp for many baseball fans. Their co-founder Octavio Herrera told Yahoo that the game will be launched in stages. The first version will require knowledge of buying Ether and using MetaMask. However, subsequent versions will hopefully streamline this process making it more accessible to fans of the sport.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Museums are excellent places, and monuments to the achievements of humanity. They are filled with knowledge and attempt to preserve both cultural and historical data. Museums can be rather general in their scope of exhibits, but they can also be myopic. While I have no doubt that general technology museums will feature blockchain technology in some way, I also do not doubt that there will be blockchain-specific museums. In the digital age, museums have new opportunities and manifestations, so I wanted to start thinking through what a blockchain museum may look like – and where it would be located.

These museums could be dedicated to the various aspects of blockchain technology. They could be blockchain-inspired or generated art exhibitions, they could focus on the underlying technology, they could concentrate on the relevant people and their motivations, or they could be some amalgamation of these things.

Physical Museums

There is no shortage of museums that are focused on one specific piece of history or technology, so I do not think it would be too much of a leap to assume that we can expect the same from blockchain technology.

Physical museums could include the various physical material culture that comes with blockchain technology. I could easily imagine a thrilling exhibition on the evolution of mining rigs, showing a simple 2009-era CPU all the way up to the latest ASIC miner (or whatever comes next). Another possible exhibit could be on cryptocurrency ATMs, or one with paper wallets, physical coins, and hardware wallets. Each industry could have an exhibit dedicated to it, or they could rotate over time to keep content fresh.

Physical museums would not need to only focus on the physical material culture of blockchain and cryptocurrency, but they obviously lend themselves well to it. However, there could be excellent audio and visual exhibits, and hands-on learning stations to help unfamiliar crowds begin to grasp these concepts.

Blockchain Museums

In a way, blockchain technology is already kind of a museum, if the definition of a museum is a vehicle for storing and viewing historical (or cultural) data. If we can already have these expansive libraries of data on-chain, there is no reason that one could not build an app or just construct a sort of chain-only museum. It could hold information and provide links and texts for more reading and learning. It would be as immortal as the chain(s) that is built on itself. While they might be more stimulating to “advanced” users of blockchain, they would be excellent, decentralized institutions of knowledge and learning where all could be participants.

Hybrid Museums

In all likelihood, I imagine most blockchain-specific museums will be a hybrid of on-chain and physical (or VR) experiences. GitHub repos and material culture along with digital artifacts could provide an immersive experience in a democratic, decentralized surround.

Thanks to our readers for entertaining this idea with me at an almost dangerous level of brevity. I wanted to explore with our readers what a blockchain-specific museum might look like, and encourage everyone to not only think about this further, but perhaps take those next steps to start one. I’ll likely write a followup to this as I think about it more.

As some retail investors are leaving crypto, large institutional players are moving in, as they see value around the current price levels. Do the charts support their sentiment?

Binance in Malta is backing plans to create a blockchain-based bank with tokenized ownership, according to Crowdfund Insider.

The world’s second largest crypto exchange had already announced its move to Malta in March and has set up a bank account on the island, thus demonstrating that Malta is moving ahead with industry-friendly regulations to facilitate its plans to become a major cryptocurrency hub.

The blockchain-based financial institution which will be known as the “Founders Bank” will become the world’s first decentralized, community-owned bank, and participants will be issued with “legally binding equity tokens” in return for their investment.

The blockchain-based equity fundraising platform Neufund will issue the tokens. The German-based company which has a base in Malta but retains its HQ in Germany, is said to have raised USD 11 million from well-known investors in 2017. Binance and Neufund are also reported to be partnering with one of Europe’s main stock exchanges later this year, although no names have been thrown into the hat as yet.

Binance Tweeted on its plans for the new bank:

“Founders Bank will become the first stable high-tech banking solution, not only focused on founders but also owned by them, bridging the gap between traditional financial world and innovative crypto companies.”

The bank’s first step will be to seek a licence from Maltese regulators. Malta has already approved three DLT and crypto-related bills which pave the way for new businesses to the island. Silvio Schembri, Junior Minister for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation within the Office of the Prime Minister of Malta, stated that the island “is honoured to be chosen as the location of the first global community-owned bank”. He added:

“We welcome Founders Bank with the utmost excitement and hope that their Fintech solutions will attract even more world-class companies to our Blockchain Island.”

Schembri is known for being the leading advocate on Malta for pursuing an innovation economy build on blockchain and Fintech development.

Binance also recently opened a new crypto-fiat trading platform in Uganda, which supports the Ugandan shilling, alongside major cryptocurrencies.

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The Tezos Foundation is launching a grant program to encourage its community to participate on its platform starting next month.

Cryptocurrency and crime have been closely entwined for far too long. Bringing this connection to an end will be very challenging, for rather obvious reasons. The so-called Trump Task Force aims to address some of those concerns moving forward. Investigating cryptocurrency-related crimes will not be easy, but it is a welcome change regardless.

The Trump Task Force’s Objective

Various government agencies across the United States are looking for ways to uncover crimes involving cryptocurrency. Whether it is through Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, the number of such crimes has been on the rise for some time now. Bringing those issues to an end will be the main objective of the Trump Task Force. Although it won’t solely focus on cryptocurrency, crypto will be a critical part of its daily routine.

A new executive order was signed by President Trump earlier this week. Setting up another dedicated task force to address cryptocurrency fraud is an interesting move. Various cryptocurrency and blockchain firms can lend a helping hand in this regard, as blockchain analysis has become an integral part of the industry as of late.

Officially known as the Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud, this new venture will attract a lot of attention. Addressing consumer fraud in general is one of the bigger problems in the US to date. Despite the best efforts of various companies and service providers, it seems fraud will not be coming to an end anytime soon.

For the time being, it remains to be seen how this new task force will tackle digital currency fraud as a whole. There are many ways to go about things, although it seems cryptocurrency users will continue to be scrutinized for some time to come. That may not necessarily be a development which people will look forward to, but there is little to be done about it.

One could argue that this is another validation of the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole. Considering that this industry is still largely unregulated, there is still a lot of opposition when it comes to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. By actively addressing fraud, those problems can be avoided in the long run. Doing so can bring more legitimacy to Bitcoin and altcoins in the long run, assuming this venture proves to be successful.

It is good to see the US government focus more on getting rid of bad actors in the cryptocurrency space. While this effort may not prove to be overly successful in the short term, its long-term implications could be quite beneficial to the cryptocurrency industry. Not everyone will agree with these measures, but it is evident that more efforts like this one will launch globally in the future.

Despite worries about cryptocurrency mining — from the impact that it can have on the environment to the potential impact it can have on the rates for other local electricity consumers — the state of New York has approved a bid to provide cheaper electricity to miners.

State of Crypto Mining in New York

Yesterday, as reported by Bloomberg, state regulators approved a motion that would create a new rate structure specifically for cryptocurrency miners looking to negotiate a better deal on electricity.

Massena, a town in Upstate New York, will allow its municipal utility to review contracts on an individual basis for miners, which will serve to protect other residents from an increase in rates from grid usage.

The news is surprising as it comes after a decision in March that saw 36 state municipalities increase rates for individuals and firms mining the coins.

Because of the accessibility of cheaper hydro-electric power, New York has become something of a hot spot for mining. Other locales, from Iceland to Quebec to China, are also attracting miners, but locals in these municipalities are concerned that they will soak up low-cost hydropower supplies and raise power bills for everyone. This has left local governments — including New York’s — trying to strike a balance between attracting new business and protecting residents from rising energy costs.

“We must ensure that business customers pay a fair price for the electricity that they consume,” John Rhodes, chair of the New York State Department of Public Service, said in a statement. “However, given the abundance of low-cost electricity in Upstate New York, there is an opportunity to serve the needs of existing customers and to encourage economic development in the region.”

It’s the hydroelectric dams in Upstate New York that have made it possible for municipal utilities to supply power to customers for just pennies per kilowatt-hour. In Massena, for example, residential customers pay  about 3.9 cents a kilowatt hour. By comparison, residential electricity rates average about 13 cents nationally.

In March, Plattsburgh, another small city in Upstate New York, became the first to impose a moratorium on the power-hungry cryptocurrency mining operations there for 18 months. Plattsburgh was charging miners an average of 2.6 cents a kilowatt-hour at the time.

In relation, also earlier this year, the New York state Department of Public Service cleared an association of 36 municipal power agencies, including Plattsburgh’s, to charge miners higher rates because of the huge volumes of electricity they use.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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The Australian Financial Review has reported that the Bank of Queensland will prohibit its customers to use loan equity to purchase cryptocurrency.

The Bank of Queensland, one of Australia’s largest banks, which is publicly traded on the country’s stock exchange, has made the move as it believes recent crypto price instability has made amendments to its rules necessary. Other banks have discouraged its borrowers using real-estate mortgages for crypto purchases, but as yet haven’t officially prohibited the activity.

The bank has stated in its new rules “any loan purpose that involves the acquisition of or usage of cryptocurrency is unacceptable”.

Australian regulators are increasing scrutiny over crypto space. Austrac, the country’s financial intelligence agency, has announced new rulings which have mandated further customer scrutiny across cryptocurrency exchanges. Added to this, the Australian tax office has sought public feedback regarding crypto earnings.

Also, the ATO reported that it would be enforcing its tax requirements this year by using 100-point checks, a security checking system long favored by the Australian government and other sectors, and also call on bilateral agreements with other countries to identify users for tax payment purposes. There are currently over 40 countries who have such agreements with Australia including the US and the UK.

It’s been reported that some lenders are now monitoring borrowers accounts in order to check if such accounts are being used for cryptocurrency trading. An anonymous broker reportedly claimed, “They (banks) are concerned because the Australian Taxation Office, Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia and Austrac are crawling all over it.”

In a similar move, but in this case focusing on customer credit, banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America have suggested bans on credit being used to purchase cryptocurrency due to the volatility of the market.

Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) official Tony Richards in a speech to the Australian Business Economists recently expressed his admiration of Bitcoin but thought it would not be adopted into the country’s mainstream financial system.

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