Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:15 AM on Friday, September 6th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
A Top Apple Executive Reveals the Company Thinks Crypto Has ‘interesting
long-term potential’ – Bodes Well For ThreeD’s Vast Crypto Holdings
Vice president of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey told CNN Business during a private event in San Francisco that Apple is “watching cryptocurrency,” adding the company thinks “it has interesting long-term potential.”
The comments follow Apple’s latest push into consumer
finance products, with its Apple Card credit card releasing in August in
collaboration with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard.
Apple’s potential move into digital coins would serve as “a
major shot in the arm for crypto,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives
told CNN Business.
By: Ben Winck
An Apple
executive said the tech giant is keeping an eye on cryptocurrencies
during a private event in San Francisco, saying digital coins have
“interesting long-term potential.”
“We’re watching cryptocurrency. We think it’s interesting,” vice president of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey told CNN at the event. “We think it has interesting long-term potential.”
She addressed the new asset class as part of a talk on the future of digital payments and the company’s push into the sector.
Bailey’s comments follow the August release of the Apple Card, a credit card made in collaboration with Mastercard and Goldman Sachs. The card served as the first major expansion of Apple’s consumer finance products since Apple Pay launched in October 2014.
Apple’s potential move into digital coins would serve as “a major
shot in the arm for crypto,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told
CNN Business. He added that the interest in crypto “could make sense
given its sights on further monetizing its consumers.”
The introduction of finance products would fall in line with Apple’s
continued push into service revenue growth. Its Services business now
contribute to more than one-fifth of the company’s quarterly income, and upcoming offerings like Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade could further boost its earnings.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 5:18 PM on Wednesday, August 28th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
Why Some Executives See Crypto As A New Business Tool
Executives are leveraging blockchain-driven currency to axe business process friction or fuel innovative products and services.
Signals are building that more organizations recognize its alluring features as fuel for innovative products and services, or useful for axing friction in the business process behind a transaction.
By: Jason Abdilla, Unsplash
Many executives see blockchain-driven digital currency as a terribly clunky payment vehicle or speculative investment. But signals are building that more organizations recognize its alluring features as fuel for innovative products and services, or useful for axing friction in the business process behind a transaction.
Unlikely Bedfellows Align Around Feature-Rich Token Projects
For example, a group of 14 financial firms
led by UBS Group AG and including Barclays PLC, Nasdaq Inc., Credit
Suisse Group AG , Bank of New York Mellon Corp., and State Street Bank
& Trust Co have created a new company, Fnality International, to
control development of a bitcoin-like token that the firms plan to use
to settle cross-border trades. The token, called utility settlement coin
(USC), is designed so banks can settle transactions directly with each
other without having to involve a third-party intermediary, removing
layers of costs and inefficiency. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is taking a
similar approach, creating a network of more than 250 members that is
working on a token called JPM Coin. Twenty eight brands, led by Facebook
and including Mastercard, Visa, Uber, Spotify, PayPal, and eBay have
created the Libra Association
to develop a token, which is named Libra. In so doing, unlikely
bedfellows are coming together to take on the extremely difficult work
of forging a new financial infrastructure, pioneering challenging
territory in joint governance, and navigating regulatory uncertainty.
What Is So Compelling?
Blockchain-driven digital tokens have very attractive attributes that
make it possible to do something totally new: merge business and
operational activity with the movement of money. All of a sudden, money
can be programmable—terms and conditions could be directly
embedded into how money moves from one party to another. While this is
certainly possible in today’s financial world, the potential to reduce
the cost of doing so to writing a few lines of code is tantalizing.
For example, the USC token serves as a messenger that includes the
data needed to complete a trade along with payment, which could cut
transaction cost and time. A key feature of Facebook’s Libra is a
programming language called Move that can be used to customize
transaction logic and create “smart contracts†that dictate the
conditions under which value is moved—an element which could fuel a
range of financial innovations. Imagine a world in which a few lines of
code ensure a transaction doesn’t take place until certain other
conditions are met—an asset couldn’t be spent until a certain time in
the future, or until a certain number of parties have registered their
approval. While moving this logic to code comes with a new set of
challenges (including the possibility of bugs and the open question of
legal enforceability), pioneers imagine digital tokens flexibly embedded
into existing products, used to create innovative bundling, or develop
completely new financial products.
Digital tokens carry other attractive attributes as well. They are
designed to be interoperable (they are more useful the more widely
accepted they are, and so token development is a race to get the
flywheel turning on network effects). They are typically traceable, so
they provide clear auditability, and hold the potential to settle on a
near-immediate basis.
By cutting out intermediaries, they also offer the prospect of a
low-transaction cost global currency. According to Bloomberg, retailers
are paying $90 billion in swipe fees on credit and debit cards every year. On August 14, supermarket giant Kroger stopped accepting Visa at 21 supermarkets and five gas stations because of what the company called “excessive feesâ€.
Digital tokens could eventually also serve as an efficient way to
shape and align consumer or partner behavior, functioning as a high value rewards system,
like a supercharged loyalty point. This has the potential to exert
influence across a wide range of organizations and business objectives.
Regulators Are Taking These Signals Seriously
UNITED STATES – JULY 16: David Marcus, head of Facebook’s Calibra
digital wallet service, prepares to testify during the Senate Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on “Examining Facebook’s
Proposed Digital Currency and Data Privacy
CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
Momentum has been met with a heightened response from regulators and
lawmakers. Facebook’s announcement of Libra led to heated U.S. Senate
Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held
hearings. At the hearings, Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho
painted the complexity ahead, “Libra is based on a relatively new and
continually evolving technology in which it is not entirely clear how
existing laws and regulations apply.†The Financial Stability Oversight
Council, an umbrella group of regulators that includes the Fed, has
formed a working group to discuss oversight of digital assets. The Group
of Seven (G7) industrialized nations have elevated cryptocurrencies to a
priority issue, with finance ministers debating how global
cryptocurrency could impact financial markets. Bank of England Governor
Mark Carney even suggested central banks should consider joining forces to create a virtual currency
(based on a network of digital central-bank currencies) that could ease
the global economy’s reliance on the dollar and be used to facilitate
cross-border trade and international payments.
Suddenly, the prospect of whether this new form of money could
undermine the role of central banks or become a viable alternate to
national currencies had become serious debate. This acknowledges the
power and influence of the players exploring these new currencies as
well as the complexity of projecting how they would operate in the wild.
Canary In The Coal Mine?
Will these initial projects succeed or fail? It is too early to
project the outcome of such early work in the space, much less how it
could evolve as momentum builds. However, we are seeing clear signals
that there is hunger for the features and functionality
blockchain-driven digital tokens and currency make possible. And many in
the space are taking the position that it’s inevitable that something
like these early projects will ultimately come to market, even if the
initial attempts fail to make it through the regulatory gauntlet. It is
likely we will see a race for innovation in this space, one that could
blur the lines between the financial services industry and other
sectors, and even the role of nation-states versus corporations.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:37 AM on Thursday, August 15th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE)
Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a
Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed
small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More
than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest
small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
How Blockchain can further the cause of electric vehicles
According to researchers, EV charging infrastructure could get a further boost if blockchain is integrated into energy systems
Countries such as India and those in the European Union are pulling out all the steps to strengthen the EV ecosystem
Bengaluru: Charged up with the idea that electric
vehicles (EVs) hold the future of energy and transportation, many
countries such as India and those in the European Union are pulling out
all the steps to strengthen the EV ecosystem with battery storage
manufacturing plants, besides offering a host of financial and tax
incentives.
While all these initiatives are steps in the right direction, many
researchers believe the EV charging infrastructure could get a further
boost if blockchain is integrated into energy systems.
A new study by researchers at the University of Waterloo, for
instance, reveals that there is a lack of trust among charging service
providers, property owners and owners of EVs. With an open blockchain
platform, all parties will have access to the data and can see if it has
been tampered with, researchers insist. Their reasoning is that using a
blockchain-oriented charging system will allow EV owners to see if they
are being overcharged while property owners will know if they are being
underpaid.
Blockchain, primarily known for powering cryptocurrencies like
bitcoins, is a form of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that promises
to reduce costs and establish trust, but faces challenges like the
speed of processing transactions. Its popularity lies in the fact that
participants have a copy of the ledger’s data that contains the most
recent transactions or changes, thus reducing the need to establish trust using traditional methods.
“Energy services are increasingly being provided by entities that do
not have well-established trust relationships with their customers and
partners,” said Christian Gorenflo, a PhD candidate in Waterloo’s David
R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, in a 14 August press statement.
“In this context, blockchains are a promising approach for replacing a
central trusted party, for example, making it possible to implement
direct peer-to-peer energy trading,” he added.
In undertaking the study (recently published in the ‘Proceedings of
the Tenth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems’),
Gorenflo, his supervisor, professor Srinivasan Keshav of the Cheriton
School of Computer Science, and Lukasz Golab, professor of Management
Science, collaborated with an unnamed EV-charging service provider who
works with property owners to install EV supply equipment that is used
by EV owners for a fee.
The revenue stream from these charging stations is then shared
between the charging service provider and each property owner. The EV
supply equipment is operated by the charging service provider, so the
property owners must trust the provider to compensate them fairly for
the electricity used.
From the case study, the researchers deduced that to incorporate
blockchain technology into an energy system, the involved parties must
first establish trust between themselves. Second, the parties concerned
should design a minimal blockchain system including smart contracts that
resolves the trust issues identified in the first step. Finally, with
the trust-mitigating blockchain in place, the rest of the system can be
migrated iteratively over time. This allows the business model to
eventually grow from a legacy/blockchain hybrid into a truly
decentralized solution, the researchers said.
According to Gorenflo, “In the end, we could even have a system where
there is machine-to-machine communication rather than
people-to-machine. If an autonomous vehicle needs power, it could detect
that and drive to the nearest charging station and communicate on a
platform with that charging station for the power.”
While blockchain implementations in India especially have centred
mostly around the banking, financial and insurance services sector
(BFSI), Jio recently announced it will install one of the largest global blockchain networks in India, comprising “tens of thousands of nodes operational on day one”, over the next 12 months.
That said, integration of blockchain technology into energy trading is now being touted as a promising area of research, and many studies have made efforts in this regard.
Switzerland-based The Share&Charge Foundation, for instance, is
building a decentralized blockchain system for EV charging, to support
payment and contracts. It uses the Open Charge Point Interface protocol
(OCPI) protocol for the peer-to-peer (P2P) connections between service
providers and charge point operators. According to Share&Charge, the
combination of OCPI with blockchain technology can result in secured
contract and connections between parties and improved payment and
settlement.
During the ‘Global Blockchain Congress–Consensus 2018’, organised by
the Department of Information Technology and Electronics, Government of
West Bengal in December 2018, researchers from New-Delhi based The
Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) made a presentation on the
‘Application of Blockchain in Modern Day Power Systems: Trendsetting a
New Paradigm’. Teri’s proposal, made by Alekhya Datta, Fellow, and
Shashank Vyas, Associate Fellow, covered use cases for EVs, distributed
battery storage, grid-connected microgrids, and rooftop solar PV project
financing using blockchain.
As an example, the Teri researchers pointed out that privately-owned
EV charging stations could be used to charge some vehicles passing near
the station and the transaction of bids of charging station owners,
power/energy flow, billing and real-time settlement of payments could be
managed over a blockchain.
Similarly, IIT-Kanpur researchers have proposed that since current billing systems
lack transparency, enabling the service provider to overcharge the
customer, blockchain could be used to develop a “verifiable billing”
system.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:53 PM on Wednesday, August 14th, 2019
SPONSOR:ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
Large Enterprises Are Betting On Blockchain In 2019
First half of this year was full of blockchain developments led by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade finance.
2019 is the year when the blockchain ecosystem and the crypto
industry as a whole had to get sober. After a wild 2017 and a bear 2018,
the blockchain space is back on an upwards trajectory with new developments.
There are no more Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to distract the crypto
ecosystem and the building mentality is back on. This post-ICO and
post-useless-PR-partnerships age urges the blockchain community to be
less focused on the current price of bitcoin and more focused on
producing meaningful services and advancements. Big projects from
established enterprises like Facebook Libra are taking all the media space now and this is net positive for the enterprise blockchain space as well.
The first half of this year was full of blockchain developments led
by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including
insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade
finance.
There is a huge benefit in joining a specialized industry-focused
blockchain consortium because you sit at the same table with your main
competitors but at the same time you work toward the same goal. You are
not alone in figuring out the benefits, implementations and roll-out of
distributed ledger technologies. There is also a financial benefit when
commonly building applications as sometimes the membership fee is lower
than the cost of hiring and training blockchain developers. Some of the
big names in leading blockchain consortia networks that have made
significant progress so far in 2019 are:
B3i, a blockchain consortium focused on the insurance
industry, recently launched its first live product on R3’s Corda
platform. Their members include big insurance and reinsurers companies
like Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Tokio Marine, XL Catlin and Zurich.
Energy Web Foundation (EWF) launched their
enterprise-grade public blockchain with 17 applications already on it.
That network consists of 100 affiliate members like Total, Shell, GE,
Siemens, Duke Energy and PG&E.
Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) was created by
five of the ten largest container carriers: CMA CGM, COSCO SHIPPING
Lines, Evergreen Marine, OOCL, and Yang Ming.
Two of the largest health insurance companies in
the United States, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, have teamed up to
tackle the massive datasets of provider demographic data from hospitals
and medical partners.
Health Utility Network
was formed by Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corporation, PNC Bank
and IBM to drive digital transformation and blockchain enabled-solutions
within the healthcare industry.
The owners of the famous Louis Vuitton label, LMVH, launched a special blockchain that will help prove the authenticity of expensive goods. It is built on Ethereum with the help of Microsoft.
Samsung launched a consortium including six major South
Korean companies, focused on launching a blockchain-based mobile ID
system. The company is already pretty advanced in their blockchain and
crypto developments with the release of the Galaxy S10 phone with
designated crypto wallet and Blockchain Keystore online app marketplace.
Moreover, Samsung released a developer-friendly Blockchain SDK.
The IBM Food Trust network launched. Built on
Hyperledger Fabric, the network aims to create a traceable audit log for
time-sensitive foods and when an issue occurs, the network participants
will be able to pinpoint exactly where the damaged items shipped and
won’t have to empty all their shelves. The consortium consists of
companies like the European giant Carrefour, Walmart, Nestle, Dole Food,
Tyson Foods, Kroger and Unilever.
Walmart, similarly to Samsung, is involved on several
different tracks with blockchain. They have joined MediLedger, a private
consortium that aims to create a drug supply chain. Apart from that
they are also partnering with KPMG, Merck and IBM as part of the FDA’s
program to evaluate the use of blockchain to protect pharmaceutical
product integrity. Recently it become public that Walmart also filed a patent for issuing a digital currency on a blockchain, or stablecoin, as they are known in the industry.
The whole private consortia ecosystem is still in early development
but the right mentality is there. We will see how the technology
develops over time to support those formations. A popular approach might
be a hybrid infrastructure, where consortium members interact with each
other in a permissioned environment or a shard but eventually anchor to
some public blockchain for audit and reference purposes.
From the enterprise blockchain technology perspective, this first
half of 2019 was pretty interesting and the major blockchain platforms
made progress in not only improving and maturing their services but
releasing new products. The general sentiment has been to focus on
privacy, consensus options and digital asset standardization in
anticipation of the tokenization revolution.
Digital Asset is another of the big names that made
great progress in 2019. While work with the Australian Stock Exchange
(ASX) is still going as planned, they have completely open-sourced their
modeling language, called DAML. That
move was very well accepted by the blockchain developer community as
DAML is a great language to code smart contracts with.
The Hyperledger family got bigger with a new tool called Transact,
which should provide advanced transaction execution and state
management. The long-awaited version of Fabric 2.0 is still in the shop
but once released it will provide performance improvements in many
areas, such as data storage, privacy and consensus layer, over the
current 1.4.2 version.
Pantheon,
the open source enterprise Ethereum client from PegaSys, launched
version 1.2 with extensive privacy features like on-chain smart contract
node and account rules, whitelisting nodes and others.
Microsoft was very active during H1 2019 and launched a decentralized online identity platform on top of the bitcoin blockchain called ION.
More than that, they continued to expand on their Azure Blockchain
development kit, which is very helpful from a developer perspective.
R3 achieved a large milestone this year by releasing
version 4 of their Enterprise Corda protocol. Now their well-rounded
team is perfectly capable of publishing regular releases on both the
open source and the enterprise versions of Corda. Another great
achievement was releasing the Token SDK;
now it is easier to implement and work with tokens on the Corda
network. Recently also R3 announced a large expansion of their London
office and growing of IT team.
Ernst & Young released their project Nightfall,
which uses zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology to enable transfers of
Ethereum-based tokens with complete privacy. There are a few things
that E&Y are doing here that deserve acknowledgment. They are using
the permissionless public Ethereum network, which is the complete
opposite of the permissioned and siloed approach adopted by similar
enterprises. Then they rely on privacy and implement ZKP to achieve
that. It remains to be seen what they will decide to support when
Ethereum 2.0 becomes a thing and the current chain might split as not
nodes will migrate.
2019 has proven to be a year when blockchain technology has gotten
down to business. Going further from the wild early days of bitcoin and
cryptocurrencies, blockchain is making large steps in nearly every
industry, from insurance to pharmaceuticals to luxury goods. Backed by
large enterprises, we saw the maturing of the underlying protocols and
improvements in security and privacy aspects. There is still a lot to be
done as the core blockchain infrastructure needs to mature enough to be
prime-time ready, and like Q1 and Q2, the second half of 2019 is
certain to be filled with new developments.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:23 PM on Monday, August 12th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
Goldman Sachs Analysts Say that It’s Time to Buy Bitcoin
In short – the experts are quite bullish for Bitcoin to go up.
Basically, they have set up a short-term price target of $13,971 – yes, specifically this one.
Recently, Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu has shared the Goldman Sachs
note which was sent out to investors. In the note, Goldman Sachs
analysts suggest that buying this Bitcoin dip is a prime opportunity.
The note itself consisted of a Bitcoin CMI futures chart and a comment from the analysts.
First of all, the fact that Goldman Sachs is sending out crypto, in
this particular case, Bitcoin advice to their investors is mind-blowing.
Also, the fact that they are seeing it as a bullish pattern and they
are using the Elliot Wave Theory indicators on their Bitcoin chart is
also a big surprise.
Experts point out that the fact that the Bitcoin CMI futures chart is
used means that this note is being sent out only to institutional
investors. You can see this by the little gaps in the chart which are
weekends. That is the time when CMI Bitcoin Futures markets are closed.
What does the Note Say?
In short – the experts are quite bullish for Bitcoin to go up.
Basically, they have set up a short-term price target of $13,971 – yes,
specifically this one.
In detail – they believe that Bitcoin will find a support level near
$11,094 and $10,791. Once it does that, the analysts say that the chart
has plenty of room to break out at least to $12,916, and possibly to a
new 2019 ATH – $13,971.
“Reaching these levels could mean completing a v wave count from
July. Bottom line, watch for a short-term top/consolidation once
satisfied,†says the note.
But this is a short-term prediction. What about long-term? Well,
according to Goldman Sachs analysts, anything below $13,000 is an
indication to accumulate. They believe that we are in for a similar
run-up like we saw recently this year when Bitcoin went from $7,600 to
around $11,900 in a matter of a couple of weeks.
“In the bigger scheme of things, this might still be the first leg of
another 5-wave count similar to the trend that lasted from Dec ‘18
through Jun ’19,†reads the note.
Also, another thing which recently was highlighted – Bitcoin loves
30% pullbacks. Some experts and analysts have noticed that after a
healthy 30% pullback, Bitcoin always have recovered and this is even
considered as a normal investment strategy. Hence, it is 100% sure that
Bitcoin will have a run-up if it has fallen by approx. 30%.
So in short – Goldman Sachs says that we all need to buy Bitcoin.
But, as usual, only the time will show whether this advice was
definitely the one that investors should have followed.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:56 AM on Wednesday, August 7th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
IDK: CSE
Facebook’s Libra: It’s not the ‘crypto’ that’s the issue, it’s the organisation behind it
Libra is not a cryptocurrency—at least, not as they have been put into practice so far, where a distributed, decentralised community participates in transaction verification via a competitive process.
Libra is essentially a prepaid digital token, backed one-to-one with a basket of reserve currencies. It is “minted” when people put up state-issued currencies to buy it.
In all the hype that has surrounded its Libra currency, Facebook has been able to distract attention away from an important issue. Libra is being hyped as Facebook’s bitcoin but it’s really a proposal for a global payments system. And that system will be controlled by a small and exclusive club of private firms.
Since it was announced in June, politicians and regulators have attacked Libra, citing concerns about its being a cryptocurrency.
Libra is not a cryptocurrency—at least, not as they have been put into
practice so far, where a distributed, decentralised community
participates in transaction verification via a competitive process.
Libra is essentially a prepaid digital token, backed one-to-one with a
basket of reserve currencies. It is “minted” when people put up
state-issued currencies to buy it.
What’s important here is not the technological innovation. Facebook
is proposing, in Libra, a new form of organisation. We already have
payment systems controlled by private companies—Visa,
MasterCard, Venmo or PayPal, which provide the infrastructure or
“rails” for transferring value—and Libra might turn into another such
rail. But its promoters have greater ambitions for it.
Based on our research on the history and technology of payment infrastructures,
we see similarities between Libra and Visa. But it’s the differences
with the Visa network that raise the biggest warning flags.
Learning from Visa
Libra will be controlled and maintained by the Libra Association,
a membership-based group. Libra’s developers have voiced a commitment
to letting anyone become a member of the association, including users
like you and me. The Libra white paper
trumpets the importance of decentralisation. But it also admits that,
“as of today we do not believe that there is a proven solution that can
deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of
people and transactions across the globe” through a truly open,
decentralised system.
We believe Libra’s founders got the idea from the work of Visa’s founder, Dee Hock.
Hock was heralded as a visionary in his day, like Steve Jobs or Mark
Zuckerberg today. He realised that the problem facing payments between
banks was not technological, but organisational.
When setting up Visa, it was important for Hock that Visa would not
be owned by self-interested shareholders. Instead, it was the users,
banks and credit unions, who “owned” Visa as a cooperative membership
organisation. Ownership here did not entail the right to sell shares,
but an irrevocable right of participation—to jointly decide on the rules
of the game and Visa’s future.
The incentive was to create a malleable but durable payment
infrastructure from which all members would benefit in the long term. To
work, everyone had to give something up—including their own branding on
credit cards, subordinating their marks to Visa. This was a really big
deal. But Hock convinced the network’s initial members that the payoff
would come from the new market in payment services they would create. He
was right.
For most of its existence, until it went public in 2016, Visa was an
anomalous creature: a for-profit, non-stock corporation based on the
principle of self-organisation, embodying both chaos and order. Hock
even coined a term for it: “chaordic”.
Libra envisions a similar collaborative organisation among the
founding members of its Libra Association. But it turns Hock’s
principles upside down. The Libra Association is all about ownership and
control by its members as a club.
Big barriers to entry
And the Libra Association is a club with very high barriers to entry.
An entity has to invest at least US$10m in Libra or have more than US$1
billion in market value, among other criteria. The initial list of founding members tilts toward groups that have shown strong opposition to government interference
and oversight. Tellingly, there are no regulated financial
entities—like banks and fund managers—in the mix. The membership
represents a self-selecting crème de la crème of global tech and vulture capitalism.
Association membership guarantees a share of future profits
proportionate to a member’s stake in the system. Unlike Visa, members do
not compete with one another for market share. Instead, they will
passively collect rent from interest made on investing in the Libra
reserve basket. Plus, profits are not shared with users, and no interest
is paid on the balance held by individuals.
Being a club member also affords the right to vote—again, a lot like
Visa. But, unlike Visa, Libra gives voting right power based on
investment level, not participation. This is not democratic; it is a
plutocracy, where the wealthiest rule. And, as profits are linked solely
to interest on the association’s reserve funds, those managing it may
well become riskier and more speculative over time.
Libra’s white paper
outlines an organisation that could become a decentralised,
participatory system like Hock envisioned Visa would become. But Libra,
if it is successful, will likely become an undemocratic behemoth. Alarm
bells ring about a global currency’s de facto governance by a private,
exclusive club serving the purposes of its investor-owners, not the
public good.
Governments have long been suspicious of private currencies for good
reasons, and Libra is no exception. We must not be distracted by its
proposed technical complexity, and instead, focus on how this technology
is organised, put to work, and how its rewards are distributed. The
good news is that Facebook’s play for money may at last prompt
politicians to regulate tech giants to curb their impact on and
influence over society.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:45 AM on Friday, August 2nd, 2019
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Bitcoin Suddenly Back Above $10,000 As Crypto Markets Gain Billions
The bitcoin price is up 10% over the last three days, with traders and investors pointing to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first rate cut in bitcoin’s ten-year history as one of the prime catalysts for the sudden recovery.
Bitcoin had been trading under the psychological $10,000 mark since
the end of last week but the bitcoin price has now bounced back.
Getty Images
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the
first time in more than a decade and signaled its readiness to provide
more support as growth slows in the world’s largest economy.
The bitcoin price climbed to highs of $10,500 on the Luxembourg-based
Bitstamp exchange last night, while the wider bitcoin and
cryptocurrency market has added around $10 billion to its overall value
over the last few days.
“Given the connection that crypto influencers have been making
between economic stimulus and crypto lately, we will probably see a much
swifter reaction in bitcoin’s price than we usually do,” Mati
Greenspan, senior market analyst at brokerage eToro, wrote in a note
clients.
“We can see that bitcoin did have a nice run-up the entire morning
ahead of the [Fed’s decision]. At the exact time of the cut, there was a
notable step down, which was quite in line with what happened in the
stock market.”
Just after the Fed revealed it was to reduce the cost of borrowing,
bitcoin investors learned supplies of the digital token are almost
exhausted, despite new coins still due to come into the market for the
next 120 years.
Bitcoin now has 85% of its supply in circulation as of August 1,
leaving just 3.15 million to be mined, according to data from monitoring
resource Blockchain.
The bitcoin price fell sharply at the end of last week, sparking fears the latest bitcoin bull run could be over.
CoinDesk
Meanwhile, the markets were further emboldened by news Jack Dorsey’s
payments company Square revealed it made $125 million in bitcoin sales
through its Cash App, nearly doubling a record first quarter.
“During the quarter, bitcoin revenue benefited from increased volume
as a result of the increase in the price of bitcoin, and generated $2
million of gross profit,” the company wrote in its second quarter earnings report.
Elsewhere, the chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE),
the parent company of the closely-watched bitcoin futures platform
Bakkt, yesterday said the bitcoin and cryptocurrency platform will be
launching soon, without fixing a firm date.
“Subject to final regulatory approvals, we plan to launch our
physically settled bitcoin futures in the very near future,” ICE CEO
Jeffrey Sprecher said during a quarterly earnings call.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:40 PM on Thursday, August 1st, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
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NBA is going crypto, launching blockchain souvenirs from the maker of CryptoKitties
To put this product in context: The whole value proposition of blockchain, the decentralized peer-to-peer technology that came about with bitcoin in 2009, is as a place to record transactions on a public, immutable, tamper-proof ledger.
Bitcoin runs on its own blockchain; ether, a rival cryptocurrency, runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
NBA Top Shot will run on a blockchain.
Dapper Labs and the NBA aren’t saying yet exactly which blockchain, but it’s likely to be Ethereum, the home of CryptoKitties.
The NBA is putting its biggest dunks on a blockchain.
The league, along with the NBA Players Association, announced on
Wednesday the coming launch of NBA Top Shot, a home for blockchain-based
digital collectibles.
The idea is for fans to buy and trade unique digital video clips that
commemorate “in-game moments from the NBA season, such as a Kevin
Durant 3-point shot or Joel Embiid dunk,†the NBA says in a press
release.
To put this product in context: The whole value proposition of blockchain,
the decentralized peer-to-peer technology that came about with bitcoin
in 2009, is as a place to record transactions on a public, immutable,
tamper-proof ledger. Bitcoin runs on its own blockchain; ether, a rival
cryptocurrency, runs on the Ethereum blockchain. NBA Top Shot will run
on a blockchain. Dapper Labs and the NBA aren’t saying yet exactly which
blockchain, but it’s likely to be Ethereum, the home of CryptoKitties.
Each video clip will be labeled with a number to mark it as distinct,
much like when you purchase a print or signed piece of art and it is
labeled with how many there are in supply.
Top Shot also promises a gamification element, where fans can compete
head-to-head by building a roster and pitting their digital collections
against each other, fantasy-style.
Much has been made about the uses of blockchain for sports
memorabilia, since souvenirs or autographed items must be authenticated.
As CoinDesk research director Nolan Bauerle put it at Yahoo Finance’s crypto summit last year,
blockchain-based collectibles are “the extension of that
anti-counterfeit quality of all of these coins. So this is really the
beginning of what we’re going to see—I think, anyway—for sports
memorabilia, for the authentication of game-worn jerseys, and cards, and
all kinds of other stuff.â€
But success here is hardly guaranteed—participation isn’t even guaranteed.
Major League Baseball launched a blockchain collectibles game last year with
game developer Lucid Sight called MLB Crypto Baseball. It has not, so
far, been an obvious hit. If you search Twitter for mentions of the
product, most are complaints. It is also far from easy to use, since
participants have to first buy the cryptocurrency ether.
The NBA’s product comes from Dapper Labs, maker of the mega-popular Ethereum game CryptoKitties. At its peak,
the digital kittens in CryptoKitties were so popular they were selling
for tens of thousands of dollars, and trading activity was clogging the
entire Ethereum network.
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou acknowledges the possible pitfalls.
“We want to give basketball fans something that they’ve never seen
before, but also something that is immediately familiar and they want to
actually play with… You might want that play because you love LeBron,
you might love the team he’s currently on, or you might need that
moment to play in the Top Shot game.â€
Gharegozlou also points to the NBA’s huge social media following as
something that can boost awareness of the game. “They’re going to be
very engaged with us in helping make sure that this experience is
authentic to the fan, and not just a crypto experience.â€
Although this is the NBA’s first league-wide foray into blockchain, the Sacramento Kings last year launched an Ethereum mining operation to
donate crypto to a local community charity. “We know blockchain is
going to revolutionize the world,†Kings CTO Ryan Montoya told Yahoo
Finance last June.
Now, one year later, the league office appears to agree. Adrienne
O’Keeffe, NBA’s head of consumer products and gaming, says, “We are
always exploring new ways to engage with fans around the world. We saw
this partnership with Dapper Labs as an opportunity to expand our gaming
presence while also creating a new and innovative platform that will
allow fans to collect and own specific in-game moments.â€
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:05 AM on Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
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lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
Crypto Markets See Second Day of Green, Bitcoin Above $9,700
crypto markets are seeing widespread green, with Bitcoin (BTC) breaking back above $9,700 and many large market cap altcoins seeing solid gains of between 3 and 9% on the day.
Wednesday, July 31 — crypto markets are seeing widespread green, with Bitcoin (BTC) breaking back above $9,700 and many large market cap altcoins seeing solid gains of between 3 and 9% on the day.
Despite trading in a lower price range since dropping back to a four-figure price point in a recent corrections, BTC is today up a solid 2.4%, bringing it to $9,717 by press time.
This mild uptick nonetheless stops short of bringing the coin back
into the green on its 7-day chart, where Bitcoin is still reporting a
fractional 0.7% loss. On the month, losses are starker, topping 8%.
Yesterday, Peter Tchir — a former Executive Director at German multinational investment bank Deutsche Bank — argued
that Bitcoin is an indicator of hidden geopolitical tensions, pointing
to the coin’s momentous performance this May at a time of fraught trade
talks between the United States and China.
Also this week, erstwhile Bitcoin bear and CNBC host Joe Kernen predicted that the top coin could hit $55,000 — a 500%+ price surge — by the time of its next halving in May 2020.
Top altcoin Ether (ETH) — which celebrated its fourth birthday
yesterday — has posted a 1.9% to trade around $212 by press time. In
corrections earlier this week, the coin had circled perilously close to
the round $200 mark, but has since recovered ground and is just slightly
in the red, at 2.2%, on its 7-day chart. On the month, however, Ether
is down over 18%.
XRP is
reporting a 2.7% gain on the day, while among the remaining top ten
coins several alts are seeing stronger upward momentum: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is posting a 7.5% gain on the day, Litecoin (LTC) is up 3.6% and Binance Coin (BNB) is up 4.1%.
In the context of top twenty coins, Tezos (XTZ) is outstripping all
other assets, seeing a 24% gain on the day following news of the token’s
listing on major United States crypto exchange Coinbase. At press time, XTZ is trading at $1.24
Still among the top twenty, strong gains are being reported by Chainlink (LINK) — up over 9% — as well as by NEO (NEO), IOTA (MIOTA) and Cosmos (ATOM), all of which are up by 4-5%.
Total market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies is at $261,434,827,781 at press time, according to Coin360 data.
Dominating the crypto headlines this week is the hearing devoted to
examining regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies and blockchain held
at the United States Senate Banking Committee. Cointelegraph reported live on the most important developments during the hearing as it unfolded.
Yesterday’s Committee hearing notably follows upon earlier hearings in mid-July that had examined the regulatory hurdles surrounding Facebook’s Libra.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 3:36 PM on Tuesday, July 30th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
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Branson-backed cryptocurrency firm launches a super-fast exchange to take on Coinbase
Blockchain’s exchange is the result of work led by a team of former trading industry executives.
The exchange can execute orders in a matter of “microseconds,†according to CEO Peter Smith.
The firm has raised $70 million from investors including Richard Branson, Alphabet and Lakestar.
Blockchain CEO Peter Smith.
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Blockchain, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency wallet
platforms, says it’s launched a digital currency exchange aimed at
delivering “lightning-fast†trades.
The company’s exchange, called The PIT, is the result of a
behind-the-scenes effort led by a team of former executives from the New
York Stock Exchange, TD Ameritrade, Google and Goldman Sachs.
According to Blockchain CEO Peter Smith, the new exchange’s matching
engine Mercury can execute buy or sell orders in “40 to 50
microseconds,†an “order of magnitude faster than other market playersâ€
like Coinbase and Binance.
Founded in 2011, Blockchain initially started out with what’s known
as a block explorer — kind of like an internet browser for
cryptocurrency data — and then built digital wallets for users to store
and exchange their crypto. It derives its name from the eponymous
blockchain network that records bitcoin transactions.
Having enjoyed popularity with bitcoin enthusiasts — Blockchain
claims to account for about 25% of daily activity on the bitcoin network
— the company is hoping its exchange platform will help lure in the
uninitiated.
“There’s a huge audience of people who have not yet placed their
first bitcoin trade,†Nicole Sherrod, head of trading products at
Blockchain, told CNBC in an interview. Sherrod previously led the active
trading product team at online stock broker TD Ameritrade before
joining Blockchain.
Sherrod said the new trading platform would give investors a degree of liquidity not seen in competitor exchanges.
“In volatile markets in particular, speed is of utmost importance,â€
she said. “I would not feel comfortable delivering a platform to retail
investors that puts them in a position where they couldn’t get in and
out of a trade with lightning-fast speed.â€
Blockchain CEO Peter Smith says the cryptocurrency firm’s new exchange can executive order in a matter of “microseconds.â€
Blockchain
Cryptocurrencies have gained a reputation for their volatile price
swings. Bitcoin in late 2017 skyrocketed to a near-$20,000 record high,
before plummeting the following year to as low as $3,122. The world’s
best-known digital currency has been on the rise this year, however,
last trading at $9,502.
Bitcoin’s rise in 2019 was attributed in part to Facebook’s plans to
create a cryptocurrency, with analysts saying it brings some much-needed
credibility to cryptocurrencies. Facebook’s Libra project has been
panned by regulators, however, concerned by the risks it may pose to
consumers.
One big hurdle for the industry to overcome is bringing institutional
investors with deep pockets on board. That may be slowly starting to
happen, with financial services giant Fidelity signaling it’s warming to the space. Sherrod said that Blockchain’s crypto exchange is providing liquidity through “institutional-level market makers.â€
Blockchain said its exchange will be available in more than 200
countries, starting with 26 trading pairs. Users will be able to link
their bank account with Blockchain and use U.S. dollars, euros and
sterling to trade cryptocurrencies.
The company has raised over $70 million from investors including
British billionaire Richard Branson, Alphabet venture arm GV and early
Spotify backer Lakestar. It has also accrued over 40 million users,
Blockchain said, who will be able to transfer crypto from their wallets
to the exchange.
