Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:07 AM on Monday, July 8th, 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.
New ECB Boss is “Extremely†Pro-Crypto; What Could This Mean for Bitcoin?
Christine Lagarde, who is replacing Mario Draghi as the next head of the ECB on November 1st of this year, has long shown interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and has even advocated for state-backed digital currencies that could increase the efficiency of those state’s economies.
Investors and proponents of Bitcoin and the aggregated crypto markets
have long believed that the ultimate pinnacle of adoption would be
found when governments and central banks began growing friendly towards
the nascent technologies.
Now, the nominee who is replacing the outgoing European Central Bank
(ECB) head is pro-crypto herself and has shown tremendous interest in
how the nascent tech can help shape the future’s global economy.
ECB Boss is Pro-Crypto, Will This Help Spark Adoption?
Christine Lagarde, who is replacing Mario Draghi as the next head of
the ECB on November 1st of this year, has long shown interest in Bitcoin
and cryptocurrencies, and has even advocated for state-backed digital
currencies that could increase the efficiency of those state’s
economies.
This past April, Lagarde spoke to CNBC and bullishly noted that crypto and blockchain is currently “shaking the system.â€
“I think the role of the disruptors and anything that is using
distributed ledger technology, whether you call it crypto, assets,
currencies, or whatever … that is clearly shaking the system,†she
noted, tempering this sentiment by adding that “We don’t want to shake
the system so much that we would lose the stability that is needed.â€
Although there is no way to deny that Bitcoin and crypto
are shaking up the current system – or at the very least have the
potential to do so – many critics will write off their utility, so
Lagarde’s openness to the technology is a powerful endorsement.
Will Lagarde Embrace Bitcoin, Or Focus on More Centralized Options?
Although the incoming ECB boss is certainly more open to crypto than
previous ones, it is important to note that her interest seems to be
more in centralized crypto options than in decentralized ones, like
Bitcoin.
Mati Greenspan, the senior market analyst at eToro, explained in an
email that her interest currently seems to be in JPM Coin and XRP.
“Not bitcoin, of course, but she has advocated already for
state-backed cryptocurrencies as well as settlement tokens like XRP and
JPM coin. In this video, we can see her taking notes while listening to Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse,†Greenspan explained.
Furthermore, Greenspan also explained that crypto certainly won’t be
her main focus as the head of the ECB, as her biggest challenge will be
to “bring unity and prosperity to the various EU States and QE will
probably take precedence over the digital landscape.â€
Regardless of whether or not crypto, Bitcoin, or blockchain are one
of her main focuses, her interest and openness to the technology is
certainly positive for the industry as a whole and may help incubate further adoption.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:00 PM on Sunday, July 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.
—————-
Crypto Conference Shows Bitcoin Getting Whole Lot More Fun Again
People want to see high volatility, exchange founder says
As little as six months ago, Bitcoin was moribund, with prices
languishing at a fifth of their record high, disappointing a mass of
cryptocurrency enthusiasts who had grown use to extreme — and often
upwards — moves in the virtual currency.
But this week’s Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei highlighted how
volatility is back, reviving the excitement around crypto trading.
“Bitcoin is fun, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun at 100 times
leverage,†said Arthur Hayes, the founder and chief executive officer of
the exchange BitMEX. “That’s what people want to see in crypto, they
want that high volatility,†he said. “At the end of the day, we’re all
in the entertainment business of traders.â€
The Taipei conference was the
second annual iteration of an Asia forum that brings investors together
with start-ups, financial services providers, academics and others to
engage on the blockchain technology that powers digital coins.
A person in a Bitcoin costume wanders through the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei on July 3.
Photographer: Joanna Ossinger/Bloomberg
“We’re surfing a wave here that’s very linked to the price of Bitcoin
and probably has taken a couple months to filter through,†said
attendee Vincent Alibert of ZVChain, a business-to-business blockchain
project, in an interview. “We don’t see any more of these revolutionary
ICO pitches,†he said, referring to initial coin offerings, which have
generally lost favor after many tokens lost more than 90% of their value.
A Bitcoin – or rather, someone dressed as one – wandered around the
venue. The chairs in the conference hall had covers from crypto.com:
“Get 8% p.a. on your Crypto,†they declared. Much of the conference was
spent on Facebook Inc.’s plans to launch the new Libra cryptocurrency,
which proponents say will spark more mainstream interest in virtual
currencies.
“It’ll definitely bring more people into the space,†said Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, speaking on a panel.
Tron, which bills itself as the largest decentralized ecosystem in
the world, displayed a giant poster near the registration area about CEO
Justin Sun winning the annual charity lunch with Berkshire Hathaway’s
Warren Buffett. The successful bid of $4,567,888 featured prominently.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:04 AM on Thursday, July 4th, 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.
—————-
4 crypto trends for the next 5 years
Not long ago, only a handful of accountants dealt in cryptocurrency.
Now, just a few years later, every major financial news outlet dedicates
a portion of its coverage to crypto. Times have changed quickly, so
what will the crypto accounting industry look like in five years and
beyond?
Consider the following four trends in crypto accounting and how they will affect CPAs.
1. Increased automation
As cryptocurrencies further infiltrate the public consciousness,
traditional accounting services will automate more of their work to keep
up with the increased workload. Spreadsheets work well enough for fiat
transactions, but in the volatile crypto environment, static tools can’t
effectively serve anyone with a serious investment in alternative
currencies.
Average consumers today can do their taxes online
through services like TurboTax and H&R Block. Businesses and complex
individual situations require personalized care, but standard programs
can handle the load for most people. Tax programs don’t need to offer
advanced functionality just yet — a few equations on the back end do a
fine job.
But cryptocurrencies make things more complicated.
Accountants need automated tools to track increased crypto complexity,
like cost basis. Without smarter software, experts in the financial
services industry won’t be able to keep up with higher sophistication at
scale. Tax software providers will eventually offer new and highly
automated services for crypto investors, and consumers will pay for
those services using their crypto investments.
AI accountants
Accounting experts will use smarter tools to help their corporate
clients and major investors make better decisions. But the public won’t
need real accountants for their simple crypto investments; they’ll
simply turn to artificial intelligence tools that minimize human
interaction in most accounting scenarios.
The future will see
consumers interact with intelligent AI, machine learning, and bots
capable of natural language processing. Challenging concepts like crypto
cost basis, which can confuse even the sharpest accountants, pose
little threat to intelligent software. Accountants will still have a
place in the world, but their duties will evolve drastically as crypto
demands bring widespread change in the financial industry.
Not
everyone will feel comfortable doing taxes through AI. Accountants will
need to lean on automated tools of their own to keep pace, but
enterprise clients, heavy investors, and people suspicious of advanced
tech will continue to prefer the human touch. With more money going
toward nicer tools and less money going toward human intermediaries,
accountants must specialize and adapt to stay relevant.
3. Knowledge enrichment
Schools and universities will soon offer programs and specialty courses
to educate future accountants, bookkeepers, and CPAs on the intricacies
of crypto. Few schools today offer such services, but the more prominent
cryptocurrencies become, the greater the need will be for new
accountants to understand the rules of digital currency.
Some businesses already offer services to certify accountants
as crypto tax experts, but schools will remain the top trainers in the
accounting world. By educating students before they begin their careers,
universities can prepare graduates to operate effectively in an
industry with broad new responsibilities and expectations. Businesses
and crypto organizations will need new accountants who understand their
evolving needs.
For accountants already out of school, options
for continuing education will evolve from useful to essential. More
crypto trading means more crypto investors and crypto companies. Those
entities need experts who understand the cryptocurrency landscape. If
experienced accountants fail to adapt, fresh faces will gladly take the
business.
4. Updated regulatory standards
Where crypto regulation used to be nonexistent, legislators have
actually made some limited progress. The SEC now has more oversight to
shut down illicit initial coin offerings (ICOs), and the IRS clarified
that cryptocurrencies are property, not currency — at least for now.
But
the more that crypto changes, the more regulations will change with it.
Every business that deals with cryptocurrency will encounter newer,
more robust laws in the years to come. Soon every company and project
that deals with crypto will need an accountant (or accounting service)
with crypto experience to help navigate the unknown.
As new laws
get passed, businesses will invest more heavily in smarter crypto
accounting solutions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will
do the heavy lifting while human accountants interpret that data to help
executives make smarter business decisions. More technology startups
will emerge to cater to this growing audience. Before long, crypto
accounting will become an industry unto itself.
These changes may seem like far-off concerns for another year, but crypto accounting — like cryptocurrencies themselves — moves quickly. Expectations and the tools to meet them become more complex and sophisticated each day. Accountants must stay vigilant to keep up with the times, or they risk losing ground to a new generation of crypto-savvy competitors. Â
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:53 AM on Wednesday, July 3rd, 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.
—————-
After Experimenting With Bitcoin and Ethereum, DocuSign Is Accelerating its Blockchain Ambitions
Business team two executive shaking hands after a meeting and conference to sign agreement and become partner in the office, results of their successful teamwork, contract between their firms.
Since its founding in 2003, firms of all sizes and industries have relied on the company to streamline the contract process through its best-in class security, identity authentication, user interface, and integration with leading business suites.
Famed cryptographer Nick Szabo may have coined the term “smart
contract†back in 1994, but DocuSign can make a compelling case for
being its true inventor. Since its founding in 2003, firms of all sizes
and industries have relied on the company to streamline the contract
process through its best-in class security, identity authentication,
user interface, and integration with leading business suites. Today
DocuSign has 500 thousand paying customers, and it earned over $700 million in revenue last year.
However, the company is not resting on its laurels and instead is
seeking ways to improve its service offerings, with much of this
experimentation incorporating blockchain technology. Over the last few
years this testing has included trials, demos, and partnerships on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The company also joined the Accord Project,
an open-source software initiative that was established to develop a
technology stack for smart agreements. Furthermore, last week the
company invested in a $5.5 million Series A round
for smart contract provider Clause alongside Galaxy Digital with the
goal of making contracts on their DocuSign Agreement Cloud
“self-executing†and “self-aware†in an ongoing fashion, rather than
just one moment in time.
Given the core facets of DocuSign’s business and its research into
blockchain technology and smart contracts, the San Francisco-based
company is in an unrivaled position to assess their utility and
applicability to the needs of today’s businesses. Still, the road to
blockchain adoption has not been a straight line, and the company’s
plans face many of the same hurdles that other potential adopters are
trying to clear. To better understand DocuSign’s future direction, I had
an opportunity to speak with Ron Hirson, DocuSign Chief Product
Officer, who shed additional light on these endeavors, provided context
for the company’s investment in Clause, and offered expectations for how
blockchain will impact the company moving forward.
DocuSign’s Blockchain Strategy Began in 2015
When individuals think of major enterprise users of blockchain, the
first companies that come to mind often include blue-bloods such as
Facebook, IBM, and JP Morgan. However, DocuSign has been experimenting
with the technology since 2015, when it built a “smart-contract meets smart-asset meets smart-payment†demo with Visa on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to Ron, the collaboration aimed to determine whether they
could utilize Bitcoin so that a user could “buy a car while sitting in
the carâ€, and have it start provided that the buyer’s insurance was up
to date.
Initial Forays Offered a Glimpse of Blockchain’s Potential, but Also Challenges
However, as exciting as these experiments were, neither went
mainstream for reasons that will ring familiar to active followers of
the enterprise blockchain space. According to Ron, the POC with Visa was
primarily an opportunity to learn, and the Bitcoin blockchain was
chosen because it was by far the most prominent platform in 2015
(remember Ethereum did not officially launch until July 30, 2015), even
if it was not tailor-made for this use case. Even then Bitcoin’s
limitations in functionality, data storage, and throughput were well
known to industry observers.
It is perhaps for these reasons that the company joined the EEA in
2018 and built its second project on top of Ethereum. However, despite
more functionality, the pilot did not gain widespread adoption because
customers already felt comfortable with DocuSign serving as a store of
record. Ron made it very clear in his conversations to me that most
customers did not see a need for an independent audit trail. He also
noted that education was not a problem, as he and the company “pitched
this broadly, stood on stage, screamed from the mountaintops, about that
we have this capability, and the uptake from customers who are
interested in it is fairly low because they don’t see the need.â€
Speaking more broadly about DocuSign’s global customer base and
blockchain’s shortcomings to this point, Ron underscored the massive
challenge facing technologists and blockchain enthusiasts. He provided a
hypothetical about a client trying to meet its sales goal before the
end of a quarter. Putting himself in the customer’s shoes he said “I
can’t rely on an open source system that may or may be available, may or
may not have the latency that I need, and oh my gosh it is way too
expensive to store all these files. Plus, there is no compelling UI for
me to engage in these kinds of systems.â€
Undaunted and Moving Ahead With a Clearer Vision
In spite of this feedback, Ron and the rest of the company believe in
the potential that blockchain technology has for its product lines, and
it is continuing to drive forward. However, from these initial
experiments, it became clear to the team at DocuSign that for blockchain
technology to transform their business and deliver client value, the
benefits from the technology must move far beyond “nice to haveâ€. In a
sense, the company would need to find a value proposition that was
unavailable before the invention of blockchain technology.
Rationale for the Clause Investment
It is for this reason that as reported last week it invested in smart-contract technology provider Clause.
The startup has built a promising business by leveraging its platform
to enable users to add smart clauses to documents that automate business
processes, workflows, and digital transactions. What this means in
layman’s terms is that contacts that utilize Clause’s technology can run
in the background until a specified date, time, or event and execute
when a certain condition is met. In my conversations with Ron, he
highlighted a demo that the company unveiled at its annual Momentum 2019
conference last month, whereby this new platform could be utilized to authenticate new drivers for a ride-sharing platform on an ongoing and persistent basis.
This speaks to the true potential of this collaboration. DocuSign is
in many ways the epicenter of complex business processes that take place
behind the scenes when a contract is signed. By incorporating these
“smart clauses†into future contracts a lot of this work can become
automated, removing middlemen such as title or escrow agents, offering a
more streamlined and efficient process for all involve parties to an
agreement all the way through to payment.
An Auspicious Start, but Many Challenges Ahead
It is clear that DocuSign is setting its sights much higher this
time. However, much still needs to be developed regarding this
partnership, including which platforms it will run on, the first use
cases, and an initial set of customers. Within this context it is
important to note that Clause’s code can run on top of any blockchain or
non-blockchain platform. Additionally, the collaborators will still
need to find solutions for the scalability, accessibility, and security
problems noted above, not to mention solving these challenges with the
elegant user interfaces that its customers have come to expect. Being
able to work on top of multiple blockchains should help.
Additionally, the partners will need to find and utilize oracles that
never go down and cannot be hacked or manipulated. For readers
unfamiliar with the term, oracles are data feeds that smart contracts
rely on to determine when a condition is met that would cause the
contract to self-execute. Today, there is no foolproof way to prove the
fidelity of an oracle, and it is a long-standing problem that
blockchains cannot differentiate between good and bad data being fed
into the system. For a partnership like this to truly succeed they will
need to find a solution, which is something that the partners dutifully
acknowledge.
Solving these challenges will require heavy lifting, and in
recognition of the size of this undertaking DocuSign has a product
manager and entire engineering team focused on the technology.
Therefore, it seems unlikely that lack of resources will be an issue,
boding well for the future. After all, the prize is big enough to
justify the cost, because if the collaborators succeed, this partnership
has the potential to impact every industry under the sun.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:46 AM on Tuesday, July 2nd, 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.
Is Google Chasing The 90% Potential Of Blockchain That Facebook Left Out?
Regardless of your viewpoint on Facebook’s Libra program, it’s a significant stepping stone for the adoption of cryptocurrency
Facebook has it is repertoire a bank of over two billion users who will soon be exposed to the world of tokens and cryptocurrency
Regardless of your viewpoint on Facebook’s Libra program,
it’s a significant stepping stone for the adoption of cryptocurrency.
Facebook has it is repertoire a bank of over two billion users who will
soon be exposed to the world of tokens and cryptocurrency.
However, outside of tokenomics, there is a lot more power in the blockchain, especially in regards to smart contracts. Thus, a recent partnership
between Google and Chainlink, a company that provides on ramps and off
ramps for information necessary to run smart contracts, may hint at
Google wanting a bigger slice of the pie.
So far in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, it has been tokens
that have dominated in terms of usefulness. Bitcoin, as a prime
example, is a blockchain token that has shown the most application, and
garnered the most excitement from individuals.
This tokenized economy opens massive doors in terms of the transfer
of value without the need for intermediaries, or the handbrake that
banking regulations bring in, but it is only one piece of the pie.
In this nascent space, there are tokens, and then there is the
blockchain proper with its smart contract applications offering huge
potential. For enterprises and business, smart contracts offer far more
than tokens can – but tokens are far more attractive for individuals.
Facebook, as a company serving individuals, is looking at
taking tokens forward, but Google may well be looking to the
enterprises. By honing in on smarter smart contracts, Google could well
be tapping into the other 90 percent of blockchain’s potential.
Looking to make smart contracts smarter
Google’s decision to partner with Chainlink allows for Ethereum app
builders using Google software to be able to integrate data from sources
outside the blockchain.
Chainlink offers a service called an oracle
to integrate additional data into on-chain smart contracts. This adds
another layer to the capabilities of these contracts, allowing processes
to be implemented directly on the blockchain.
Essentially, the smart contracts are being made a lot smarter as the
data used to execute can be integrated from more than just within the
blockchain. It is a small step for Google, but it could be hinting at
their general heading in the blockchain space.
Chainlink CEO, Sergey Nazarov, spoke to Forbes about the value of smart contracts in the blockchain space.
“Our space is stuck in two dimensions. One is that we are really
focused on tokens because tokens are the only real functionality
blockchains have, to date,” Nazarov said.
“It is very useful functionality, and from the amount of attention
that one simple piece of functionality has gotten, it says a lot of
really positive things about what other contracts can be viewed as.”
“Tokens are the email of our space, and I think all the other
applications require a certain amount of infrastructure. The idea is
that to build useful applications we need to be able to connect them to
what they need to consume, and what they need to generate.”
“So, for the people at Google, they are looking at the two
directions. One direction is heavy tokens, which is fine, and then the
other direction asks: ‘what else can blockchains do?’ and my sincere
opinion is that tokens are maybe 10 percent of what this stuff can do.”
“I think the difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook
may have a real interest in payment and crypto stuff, but Google may
have an interest in building these highly useful contracts by building
useful infrastructure to make that possible.”
Google catching up
Google, as one of the world’s leading technology companies, has been
viewed as somewhat behind the eightball in the blockchain space. In
comparison to IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and the likes, Google is
playing catch up.
However, Nazarov confirms that there is a growing interest from the internet giant.
“There are people in Google that are very interested in blockchain,”
he added. “The thing with Google is that it is very focused, and they
have their systems and processes that lead them to success in a focused
way. There are people in Google, and official positions, that I know of
that are related to blockchains – and I have seen an increase in that
since a year ago.”
With Google taking a more active role in the blockchain space, their
focus looks to be enterprise-based, and on what blockchain can do
besides offering tokens.
Nazarov goes on to explain that in the world of contracts, only 10 to
20 percent make up an exchange of value. It means that there is a
gaping hole of blockchain potential that needs to be realized.
“Think about how this looks from an enterprise point of view,”
Nazarov said. “Realistically, all the contracts – financial contracts –
in the world, 10 -20 percent is about ownership and transfer. That
covers tokens, which is all very useful in itself, but it also shows
that a reliable method of doing that is extremely valuable.
“Then the question becomes – ‘if all we can do today is ownership’ –
what is the other 80 percent in contracts? And the other 80 percent is
what we are talking about. What we work on is trying to get that other
80 percent to function, and for that, we need to work on more than
application, we need to build an environment for the application to
exist in.”
An efficient blockchain environment
Nazarov uses an example of Uber to express how building this
application environment can make things better for enterprises, and
again hints at why Google is interested in partnering with Chainlink.
In Uber, there is a mapping application which needed to be integrated
for the driver; there is the need for messaging between drivers and
customers; there is a payment application for both customers and to pay
drivers. All of these applications operate within the Uber app, but they
were all not created by Uber.
In other words, the Uber environment houses many applications. And,
in the blockchain space, with smart contracts that have the power to
reach data from sources outside the blockchain, an enterprise
environment is far more natural to build, and a lot more efficient.
A complex heading
Of course, there is no set roadmap from Google indicating that they
are looking to be the leaders in functional, enterprise smart contract
blockchain. However, their heading does seem to be more focused on the
other 90 percent of blockchain potential.
Chainlink is trying to make smart contracts smarter, and more useable
in common sense. If Google is looking to partner with them for their
work, they must have a desire to be a part of that potential.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:27 AM on Wednesday, June 26th, 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.
The radical idea hiding inside Facebook’s digital currency proposal
A major goal of the Libra Association, the nonprofit Facebook has created to manage the project’s development, is to use Libra to revolutionize the concept of digital identity.
Relevant passage lives near the bottom of a document meant to explain the role of the Libra Association:
“An additional goal of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard.
Last week, after months of hype and speculation, Facebook finally revealed its plan to launch a blockchain system, called Libra. Since the launch, most of the attention has focused on Libra coin, the cryptocurrency that will run on the new blockchain.
But tucked away in one of the documents Facebook published is
something that may turn out to be just as important as the coin—if not
more so. A major goal of the Libra Association, the nonprofit Facebook
has created to manage the project’s development, is to use Libra to
revolutionize the concept of digital identity.
The relevant passage lives near the bottom of a document
meant to explain the role of the Libra Association: “An additional goal
of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard.
We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a
prerequisite to financial inclusion and competition.â€
But what is a “decentralized and portable digital identity� In
theory, it provides a way to avoid having to trust a single,
centralized authority to verify and take care of our identifying
credentials. For internet users, it would mean that instead of relying
on Facebook or Google’s own log-in tool to provide our credentials to
other websites, we could own and control them ourselves. In theory, this
could better protect that information from hackers and identity
thieves, since it wouldn’t live on company servers.
The concept (sometimes called “self-sovereign identityâ€)
is something of a holy grail in the world of internet technology, and
developers have been pursuing it for years. Big companies including
Microsoft and IBM have been working on decentralized identity
applications for a while now, and so have a number of startups.
But it’s more than just an internet thing. For the roughly one billion
people around the world without any kind of identifying credentials at
all, such technology could make it possible to access financial services
that they cannot today, starting with things like bank accounts and
loans.
Helping some of those people must be part of what Facebook meant when it said in the Libra white paper
that the new system is intended to “serve as an efficient medium of
exchange for billions of people around the world†and “improve access to
financial services.†In some cases the currency itself might be able to
do that, but in others it’s likely that users will need some form of
identification to access a particular service. That’s probably why
Libra’s developers call an open, portable identity standard a
“prerequisite to financial inclusion.â€
But such a digital identity could go beyond finance, too.
Sharing many kinds of sensitive data using a blockchain—for instance,
health information—might require some form of automated ID check.
Facebook itself already has experience with digital identities.
Facebook Connect lets users log in to third party sites using their
Facebook-verified credentials (you might be using it to access
technologyreview.com right now). But Facebook Connect is risky because
it relies on a central authority, argues Christopher Allen, cochair of the credentials community group
of the World Wide Web Consortium, the most important international
standards body for the web. Trusting one entity with this responsibility
is dangerous because the site could go down or the business could fail.
And Facebook can revoke accounts at will.
But it’s hard to say how decentralized Libra’s new identity
system would be, because Facebook hasn’t revealed anything about what
it’s planning.
For example, there’s the possibility that the digital identity
will only work inside the Libra network, which requires permission to
participate in. Unlike systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum, for which
anyone with the right hardware and an internet connection can join and
help validate transactions, Libra requires its validators to be
identified and approved. Nearly 30 companies have already signed up to
run network “nodes,†and Libra’s developers want to up that to 100 by
the time the platform is supposed to launch for real next year.
Facebook’s main message with the launch of Libra and the Libra
Association appears to be a response to past criticisms of how it
handled personal data. The company appears to be saying “Hey, look,
we’re trying to be more open. We don’t want to be this honey pot of
everyone’s information,†says Wayne Vaughan, co-founder of the Decentralized Identity Foundation,
a consortium of companies all working on aspects of blockchain-based
identity. But if whatever identity standard they might come up with only
works for 100 companies, says Vaughan, “that’s not decentralizedâ€â€”it’s
just a standard for 100 companies. Facebook did not respond to a request
for comment.
Either way, it’s not clear how Facebook and the Libra
Association would overcome some big technical challenges that have held
back blockchain-based identity systems. For one, blockchains are still
hard to use for many people. A problem that is particularly difficult
for identity applications is that if you lose or forget your private
keys, which aren’t easy to manage in the first place, it’s hard to
restore them, says Allen.
Another technical challenge pertains to privacy. How will the
personal identification data be kept separate from financial
transactions? This piece is particularly concerning for privacy
advocates in the context of Libra, given Facebook’s less-than-stellar
track record. And an aversion to financial surveillance fuels much of
the cryptocurrency movement.
“Where you spend your money and who you spend it with and how
much you spend is some of the most private information for people,†says
Vaughan.
On the whole, says Allen, though the technology of
decentralized identity has advanced to the point of several serious
pilot tests, it’s “not anywhere near ready†for adoption by billions of
people around the world. And given what the company has revealed so far,
“I don’t see how Facebook can do it,†he says.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 4:36 PM on Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
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lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
What Bitcoin Breaking $11,000 Means for the Crypto Market’s Future
Bitcoin, which collapsed to a low of $3,100 in December, smashed through the $11,000 mark on Sunday after breaking through the critical $10,000 level.
Both levels were considered highly unlikely only a few weeks ago.
Bitcoin,
which collapsed to a low of $3,100 in December, smashed through the
$11,000 mark on Sunday after breaking through the critical $10,000
level. Both levels were considered highly unlikely only a few weeks ago.
At a price just under $11,000 on Monday evening, the world’s largest
digital coin by market capitalization recovered over half its historic
increase during the peak of the crypto frenzy when it neared $20,000
before crashing almost 75%.
Bitcoin’s continued rise, which is also fueling rallies in Asian
cryptocurrency stocks, illustrates the currency’s resilience in the face
of major skepticism and also cryptocurrency’s widening acceptance by
major established companies such as Facebook Inc. (FB), investment behemoth Fidelity, and others, as outlined in a detailed Bloomberg report.
Crypto Money Has Been ‘Waiting on the Sidelines’
“The bounce back of Bitcoin has been fairly extraordinary,†said
George McDonaugh, chief executive and co-founder of London-based
blockchain and cryptocurrency investment firm KR1 Plc, to Bloomberg just
after the virtual currency breached the key $10,000 level on Friday. It
was the first time that Bitcoin had reached that level in roughly 15
months. “Money didn’t leave the asset behind, it just sat on the
sidelines waiting to get back in.â€
This in part due to renewed mainstream interest in cryptocurrencies
and the distributed ledger technology that it runs on. Facebook’s Libra
is perhaps the highest profile crypto project, as the social media
pioneer partners with companies such as Visa Inc. (V) and Uber Technologies Inc. (UBER) to build the system.
Asian Crypto-Stocks Gain Momentum Alongside Bitcoin Rally
The crypto rally coincided with a rally in related stocks in Asia on
Monday, per another Bloomberg report. In Tokyo, GMO Internet Inc. jumped
7%, while Metaphs Inc. climbed 11%, Remixpoint Inc. 6.2%, and Ceres
Inc. increased 4.4%. In South Korea, Vidente Co. increased 5.4%, and
Woori Technology Investment Co. jumped 4.6%.
Supun Walpola, an analyst with LightStream, attributes gains in Asian
crypto-stocks to Bitcoin’s resurgence. “Going long on stocks that have
exposure to cryptocurrency is something that we have seen in the past
during a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency bull run — especially with those who
want to avoid the volatility of crypto but at the same time want to have
some exposure into these markets,†he said, adding that the increase in
stock prices for these crypto companies typically increase more than
the actual benefit that these firms would get during a crypto surge.
This has “always resulted in immediate corrections,†Walpola wrote in an
email to Bloomberg.
That said, investors should check themselves before investing in
crypto stocks despite their relatively lower risk, given “such
strategies have often gone wrong when crypto markets turn red — which
could happen just about at any time,†said the analyst.
While Bitcoin has eased back below $11,000 it is still dramatically
higher than the $10,000 support level. Bitcoin’s 2019 rebound – and that
of other cryptocurrencies – will be tested by the latest calls by Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin for new global regulatory standards to bring
cryptocurrency “out of the shadows” and to prevent illicit financing by
criminals, terrorists and rogue nations. Crypto bulls say these rules
would hobble the young industry, as outlined in another Bloomberg report.
Looking Ahead
Despite the growing demand for cryptocurrencies and signs that the
long “crypto winter†is over, various headwinds threaten to pull Bitcoin
back below $10,000, likely resulting in a downfall for the rest of the
nascent industry. These risks position the digital coin for continued
volatility as demonstrated in May. Alongside other downside drivers, the
fact that bitcoins are used mostly for speculation, not commerce, has
also been a main concern cited by bears.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, June 25th, 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.
——————-
TechCrunch Founder Sells $1.6 Million House on Crypto Real Estate Platform
Propy, a blockchain based real estate platform, announced the sale of a $1.6 million San Francisco property owned by the venture capital fund CrunchFund, co-founded by Michael Arrington.
Announcement follows news of Propy’s highest cost transaction to date, a $2.4 million duplex in San Francisco, completed entirely on the platform.
Propy, a blockchain
based real estate platform, announced the sale of a $1.6 million San
Francisco property owned by the venture capital fund CrunchFund,
co-founded by Michael Arrington.
The announcement follows news of Propy’s highest cost transaction to
date, a $2.4 million duplex in San Francisco, completed entirely on the
platform.
Propy is a real-estate transaction platform that empowers buyers,
sellers, their agents, and escrow agents to close a traditional real
estate deal entirely online. The purchase offer, payment and deeds are
uploaded to an immutable blockchain.
“The traditional real estate sale process is arduous and broken.
Buyers, sellers, and their professional support struggle with overly
complex interactions – it’s an opaque, dated, and unnecessarily lengthy
process, full of risks such as wire fraud,†said Arrington, founder of
TechCrunch, whose most recent venture is into blockchain capital
investments and management with his $100m firm, Arrington XRP Capital.
“When it comes to expensive property or other expensive goods, these
normally already have digital presentation of ownership, that’s why
blockchain is applicable to space,†said CEO Natalia Karayaneva.
“Blockchain’s main implications, after [virtual] money, is as a
technology that enables ownership transfers… it aligns the entire
process of any value transfer including real estate.â€
Propy completed its first deal in 2017, and its first US transaction
in Vermont 12 months ago. Worldwide, they have assisted in some form in
over 60 real estate transfers. This includes auctioning a 17th century
Italian mansion and UNESCO site on its blockchain.
The median price of a house sold on its platform is around $1.5
million, said Karayaneva, though the value of the houses is steadily
increasing. About 20 realtors have closed deals on the platform, though
3,000 have signed up.
Karayaneva believes in two or three years the majority of real estate
transactions will be entirely digitized. The company is working with
county governments to provide technology that automatically and
immediately reports the transfer of title deeds.
“We don’t want to work against them. Either we help them or will eliminate them,†she said.
The venture capital arm of the U.S. National Association of Realtors
(NAR) recently invested an undisclosed amount in Propy via its REACH
accelerator program. The company also raised $15.5 million via an
initial coin offering in 2017.
Arrington previously purchased a $60,000 apartment in Kiev through Propy, using ethereum and smart contracts to settle the deal.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 1:22 PM on Wednesday, June 19th, 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
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lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
Industry bigwigs explain ‘blockchain’ in as few words as possible
The blockchain and cryptocurrency industry is always changing.
At this year’s annual TNW conference, Hard Fork took the opportunity
to ask a number of industry experts to explain blockchain in as few
words as possible. We hoped to get a bit of insight into how the tech is
developing and what the industry currently makes of it.
Here’s what they said:
1. “Blockchain is a chain of blocks. That’s the definition, anything
else is wrong.†– João Almeida, co-founder and CTO of Opennode – the
Bitcoin payments system that recently helped Lil Pump’s merch store accept Bitcoin.
2. “Blockchain is the freedom to trade.†– Kirill Suslov, the CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency trading platform TabTrader.
3. “Blockchain is a hash-linked data format.†– Francis Pouliot, CEO of Canadian Bitcoin company Bull Bitcoin.
4. “A new technology enabling us to take the control and governance of information from the few, and to the many.†– Jessi Baker from Provenance, a firm using blockchain to make supply chains more transparent.
5. “Blockchain is simple, take a bunch of transaction, record them as
a unique block, and link all these blocks together.â€â€“ Ricardo Mendez,
the European technical director from Samsung’s emerging tech investment
arm, Samsung NEXT.
The take away?
There is some consistency in what is being described here.
Interestingly though, all the people Hard Fork asked steered clear of
the common buzzwords that tend to accompany blockchain in the media.
Blockchains are often described as being immutable, tamper-resistant, and decentralized. However, with private permissioned systems being the preferred type of blockchain for institutional use, these buzzwords aren’t always so applicable.
It seems too, that blockchain’s definition is, from this small sample
at least, broadening so that it can include all kinds of distributed
databases and applications with varying levels of decentralization.
Baker’s response also highlights the undeniable politic that’s associated with the decentralized tech too.
We’ll have to remember that when someone says blockchain, what they mean specifically, isn’t always that simple or universal.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:19 AM on Tuesday, June 4th, 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.
——————-
Apple Publishes Bitcoin Icons & ‘CryptoKit’; iPhone Crypto Wallet Coming?
The new Mac Pro is grabbing the headlines while a ‘CryptoKit’ for developers is getting crypto adopters excited. | Source: Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small
By CCN: Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is underway, and while most of the focus is on iOS3, Apple quietly revealed a new upgrade for developers called CryptoKit.
Apple also released its new icon set for designers which feature four bitcoin logo
It begs the question, what are Apple’s plans for cryptocurrency integration?
Apple’s Frederic Jacobs announced new CryptoKit for developers
Apple CryptoKit: a path to a hardware wallet?
CryptoKit provides developers with a new toolkit for cryptographic
functionality. It means app developers can integrate operations like hashing, key generation, and encryption. In particular, CryptoKit will facilitate the use of public and private key management.
“Use public-key cryptography to create and evaluate digital
signatures, and to perform key exchange. In addition to working with
keys stored in memory, you can also use private keys stored in and
managed by the Secure Enclave.â€
Viktor Radchenko, founder of TrustWallet, said CryptoKit brings Apple one step closer to full hardware wallet functionality.
“Only a few steps away before you can turn your phone into a hardware wallet.â€
TrustWallet’s Viktor Radchenko said Apple is one step closer to facilitating a hardware wallet
Apple’s Frederic Jacobs, part of the cryptographic and security
engineering team, said CryptoKit is “a fast and secure Swift API to
perform cryptographic operations.â€
Jacobs did not respond to a request for further comment at the time of publishing.
Apple bitcoin icons
The company also released the new San Francisco icon set designed for
iOS3. Among the set of 1,000 icons are four bitcoin logos. Two circular
BTC logos and two square. There are no ethereum logos or any other
cryptocurrency.
Apple releases new icon set complete with bitcoin logos
The new icon set means developers can easily integrate bitcoin icons into their apps.
Apple’s CryptoKit will allow developers to perform common cryptographic operations, such as:
“Compute and compare cryptographically secure digests†and “generate
symmetric keys, and use them in operations like message authentication
and encryption.â€
For developers, it provides a toolkit to build more secure apps and frees apps from handling raw pointers.
The tech giant will reveal more about CryptoKit in a WWDC session on Wednesday.
Still too early to predict Apple’s crypto plans
It’s too early to draw any conclusions about Apple’s cryptocurrency
plans, if there are any. But at least Apple is providing the tools for
cryptocurrency developers to build on iOS. For now, consider this the
start of a much longer story.
Ben is a journalist with a decade of experience covering financial
markets. His writing has appeared in The Huffington Post and he worked
at Block Explorer, the world’s longest-running source of Blockchain
data. Reach him at benjamin-brown.uk
