Cryptospace News Digest, June 27 â€“ July 3

03.07.2016

Bitcoin is heading upwards as possible ultimatum from Chinese miners remains unconfirmed and the affair of Ethereum and The DAO continues. Those and other news are featured in ForkLog’s weekly overview.

Bitcoin Price

If someone needs to demonstrate what the proverbial volatility of Bitcoin actually is, the screenshot below would possibly suit best for that purpose.

A week ago, Bitcoin plunged to $610, however, as of July 1 the cryptocurrency started climbing up. Having surpassed $670 on Thursday, Bitcoin has consolidated there peaking at above $700 Saturday night for a short while.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s average price comprises $680. The cryptocurrency’s market cap currently stands at $10.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the most anticipatedÂ event for bitcoin is drawing nearer these days: mining reward halving is soon, and then we all will know for sure whether expert predictions in this regard had been correct.

Around Bitcoin

Last week, Ernst & Young held a closed auction in Australia to sell 24,518 BTC seized from one of Silk Road users. According to the auctoneers, they sold the entire amount, though the names of the buyers remain undisclosed. The sold cryptocurrency’s USD worth is around $16 million.

Kraken has reinforced its positions in Europe having bought Dutch platform CleverCoin for, once again, undisclosed sum. Notably, Kraken has already bought several cryptoplatforms this year, including New York-based Coinsetter and Canada-based CAVirtex.

U.S. SEC has published a document suggesting that Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust intends to buy its own shares for $65 million loan. The Winklevoss twins rejected their original idea of entering Nasdaq, and chose BATS Global Exchange instead.

New research by Citi suggests that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are no threat to existing banking system. The document’s authors find it doubtful that cryptocurrency is capable of undermining traditional finance. On the contrary, having become an additional banking service, it may only reinforce them.

MGT Capital, a company owned by McAfee’s creator John McAfee, has announced it will launch a 2 petahash mining farm by this August. The company concedes increasing the farm’s computational capacity to 10 petahashes.

The Chinese Ultimatum

On Thursday, speculations concerning possible ultimatum from Chinese miners started circulating around the web. The miners have allegedly stated they would side with Bitcoin Classic unless Hong Kong agreements fail to be implemented this autumn. The news originated from Chinese publication 8btc.com, which stated that Bitcoin Core’s possible rejection or inability to launch SegWit and a hard fork would constitute violation of the reached agreement and release all signees from any responsibility.

There is no confirmed information so far as to whether this plan is real. However, considering the role Chinese miners play in Bitcoin ecosystem, leaving such news unnoticed would have been very wrong.

China Again

Virtual property, which also covers digital currencies, may be included in the list of basic human rights in China, according to the draft amendments to the country’s Civil Code. Still, the bill doesn’t define bitcoin as a currency or anything essentially similar to real money, as Japan has recently done.

Ethereum Soft Fork

Last week, miners started voting in Ethereum soft fork’s regard. The original idea was that in case the plan is endorsed, all assets in child DAO’s will be frozen, and reimbursement would require relevant hard fork voting. The developers agreed that the move was undesired for all legal DAO’s, so Ethereum team proposed a patch for the soft fork establishing a white list of all DAO’s.

However, the plans had to be revised, as the earlier version of the soft fork dubbed DAO Wars included a new DDoS attack vector. The code had to be revised again. The amendments are available in Geth 1.4.9.

New Geth release (v1.4.9) "The Network Strikes Back". Reverts all soft fork changes. Miners, please update. https://t.co/TgFiBy69Fc

— Ethereum (@ethereum) June 29, 2016

This confusing reputation killer obviously influenced Ether price. Over the course of last seven days, it has deeply plunged, and currently costs around $12 per token (0.0177 BTC). Ether market cap also dropped, and currently stands at $979.1 million.

ForkLog editorial feature reviewed the entire situation to find out how the community could learn from this drama.

Investment, Innovation, and Technology

Germany-based Siemens corporation has announced its intent to invest in development of new technologies, including blockchain startups and projects, and created a new division for that purpose. The new project dubbed next47 will invest one billion Euros in innovative projects over the course of the next five years.

Possible U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has presented her detailed program for technologies and innovations, which incorporates statements that the U.S. policy has to include work with blockchain technology. In case Clinton becomes the president, she promises to provide wide support for blockchain applications in public services.

Meanwhile, Vadim Kalukhov, director financial technology at the Bank of Russia, conceded that development of financial technologies and relevant companies will cause the Russian bank affiliation network to shrink. The banks, he believes, will mostly focus on creating an infrastructure for fintech companies rendering various services. This trend, he said, is evident in Europe and Northern America, while in Russia the affiliation network has shrunk by 1 to 2 per cent so far.

IBM, which had launched an international network of blockchain centers dubbed IBM Garage this February, opened an accelerator in Singapore this June, and last week a similar office opened in New York. There also is an office in Tokyo.

In Belarus’s capital of Minsk, a fintech hackathon Imaguru featuring 24 teams took place on June 24 to 26. The first pitching featured three blockchain-related projects that made it to the finals: Ethereum Vending Machine, Swap that and BitOK.

India

The world’s second most populated country isn’t often mentioned in the crypto-news, however, this week has been an exception.

The Reserve Bank of India has announced its plans to create a dedicated commission to research blockchain seeking to eliminate paper money. According to the RBI, reduction of money mass would cut expenses related to issuance, transportation and maintenance, but also will facilitate tackling counterfeiting.

Meanwhile, India’s leading bitcoin exchange Coinsecure offered local merchants to accept payments in cryptocurrency. The project has been developed in association with BitPay. According to Coinsecure, the company has already partnered with several service providers and merchants.

Consortium News

The Bank of Russia is working on creating its own blockchain consortium to research the technology and its opportunities. According to Olga Skorobogatova, deputy chairwoman of the Central Bank, several banks and technological companies have confirmed their participation in the consortium.

Meanwhile, R3CEV welcomes yet another member, Banco Bradesco of Brazil. This is the second representative of Brazil and South America in the consortium, with the first being ItaĂş Unibanco.

ForkLog Exclusives

Our readers may be interested in exclusive interview with Stanislav Polozov, head of implementation department at EmerLabs. He spoke about the project’s Blockchain Engine platform and other areas of activity, as well as shared his vision of the current problems of crypto-industry.

Another interesting interview published this week featured Luis Molina, leader of initiative on creating a blockchain platform for p2p apps Fermat.org. This man is an amazing visionary, one of those who may bring astonishing changes to our world.

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