Cryptospace News Digest, July 4 â€“ 10

10.07.2016

The eagerly anticipated halving, new investments in the industry and new plans unveiled by Litecoin, Mycelium and Waves platforms, new horizons for blockchain technology on state level and more important events in ForkLog weekly overview.

The halving

On Saturday Bitcoin experienced a major milestone in its short little lifespan. The reward for mining a block was cut in half from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. F2Pool has mined the 420,000th block, signaling the first reduction in the bitcoin mining reward since 2012. The block included 1,257 transactions with an estimated value of 1,688.69817054 BTC. The 420,001th block was discovered by BTCC Pool about 14 seconds later.

The event, which happens roughly every four years, represents a major shift in the mining landscape, and speculation has swirled about what impact the reward drop will have on the bitcoin ecosystem. Thus, assuming a price of $650 per coin, going forward miners will make roughly $8,125 per block they mine, compared to $16,250 before the halving.

The reward halving has sparked numerous celebrations in the Bitcoin community around the world, as enthusiasts celebrated the major network change. 21 Inc CEO Balaji Srinivasan perhaps put it best when he described it as a kind of New Year’s Eve celebration.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/751609271406649344

Meanwhile, despite the highly anticipated event, Bitcoin maintained stable exchange rates with the major currencies. As the halving got underway, Bitcoin’s price fell 5% to $631per Bitcoin from about $664. Right after the halving the value of the cryptocurrency appeared to be recovering from the initial drop hovering at $645, and staying at these levels at the press time.

What life could be after the halving, read in the ForkLog editorial.

Bitcoin development

This week Bitcoin Core development team announced the CSV softfork, which includes BIP68, BIP113, and BIP112, has been activated. The softfork is included in block #419328. BIP68 allows miners to set transaction processing time. In other words, miners won’t be able to start processing a transaction before a certain time. This addition will also enable two-direction channels for HTLC (Hashed Timelock Contracts).

Bitfury Group, in collaboration with the open-source Lightning Network community, has released the Flare proposal, a white paper that explores how the in-development micropayments protocol could more effectively route bitcoin payments between users when launched. The paper presents a new way for how Lightning Networks could map routing paths, as well as execute routing on-demand. In more simplistic terms, the Flare moves Lightning Network away from the earlier hub-and-spoke routing models that were critiqued by members of the community as likely to lead to a more centralized node network.

Meanwhile, results of a new study carried out by Juniper Research show that the total value of Bitcoin transactions is expected to exceed $92bn this year, an increase of around $66bn when compared to 2015. The new research found that transaction volumes continued to be concentrated overwhelmingly on the exchanges, with Bitcoin now trading at values almost 50% higher than at the beginning of the year. The rise in values, according to the research, could be attributed to three key factors: economic and political turmoil, continued weakness of the Chinese economy, and, finally,Â reduction in the currency supply due to the â€?halving’.

Cryptocurrencies

The Litecoin Association in cooperation with the Litecoin Core development team has put forward the 2016 Litecoin Road Map, which outlines recent developments and lays out future plan. Among other things, the document says that the Litecoin Association has drafted organization bylaws, which provide the governance in which the association operates. It further said that Litecoin Core v0.13.x will be a major release, which will feature several protocol level improvements, code optimizations, the ability to roll out several soft forks at once, and the much anticipated segregated witness innovation. Developers aim to have this version released by September or October. The document also stated that following the hack of LitecoinTalk.org, a replacement for the platform has been in the works and a number of alternative platforms have been considered.

Meanwhile, Mycelium and Waves Platform announced the shared roadmap for the implementation of custom assets circulation over blockchain. Mycelium and Waves share a vision of blockchain-enabled fiat transfers actively supporting national currencies as a primary value transfer medium. The blockchain-based approach will enable a less expensive cross-border remittance, convenient handling of everyday bills and other simple consumer benefits. But the potential marketing geography of token usage is an impressive one. Besides using tokens backed by financial institutions and other third parties, Mycelium Wallet holders will be able to create their individual proprietary tokens of any kind. They will assign various values and senses to those digital assets, transfer them to fellow users, and even trade them against government supported fiat currencies.

Investments and trading

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has raised $10.5m in new funding from investors including Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and Silicon Valley VC firm Sozo Ventures. In statements, Coinbase said that the partnership will help it bridge the gap between blockchains and the traditional financial industry. Coinbase, which was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, has expanded operations to 32 countries currently from 19 in January 2015. The company raised $75 million last year from investors including the New York Stock Exchange and several banks, and the company’s all-time funding total now stands at $116.7m, a figure that puts it behind bitcoin payment services provider Circle, which has raised $136m in four public funding rounds.

Blockchain wallet and identity innovators Netki has raised a $3.5 million seed funding round led by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV). Netki’s Wallet Name Service makes blockchain-based applications easier to use thanks to automatically generated wallet names like “yourname.company.com”, as opposed to long bitcoin addresses.

This is the first investment for O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures in the blockchain industry, unlike all other investors that are already actively involved in this space. The funding round also drew support from Donuts, Colle Capital, Husseini Group, Digital Currency Group, Tom Turney, Bitfinex, Plug and Play.

Finally, Zurich-headquartered global private banking firm Vontobel has now become the first Swiss issuer to offer a tracker certificate on bitcoin allowing investors to trade on the price of bitcoin (BTC/USD). The Vontobel certificate on bitcoin in USD is a classic tracker certificate (SSPA: 1300), traded transparently on the SIX Swiss Exchange. With this investment certificate, investors in Switzerland will thus for the first time be able to participate in BTC/USD trading without buying the actual underlying asset.

Blockchain and fintech

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine, Oleksandr Danilyuk, was a speaker at the sold-out Blockchain Incredible Party conference (#BIP001) which took place Thursday in Odessa. In his speech broadcasted via Skype, Danilyuk gave his vision for Ukraine as the leading nation in blockchain technology use, showcasing it for public service management and improving government efficiency and transparency. Â Mr Danilyuk also announced the Ministry’s plans to use the blockchain-based â€śAuction 3.0â€ť for selling government property.

A blockchain â€ścampusâ€ť will be unveiled in the Netherlands in September wherein banks and financial companies will work together for the development of blockchain applications for payments and the wider financial industry. The initiative is led by Willem Vermeend, the former Secretary of Finance and Minister of Social Affairs in the Netherlands. Under the single roof, banks, financial and fintech companies will jointly work toward the development of blockchain applications and solutions.

OpenBazaar 2.0

The first version of the OpenBazaar software launched April of this year, but the concept behind the projectâ€Šâ€”â€Šmaking trade free by moving it from closed platforms to a peer-to-peer (p2p) networkâ€Šâ€”â€Šhas only taken its first steps. Now OpenBazaar 2.0 has been announced, and it offers some exciting improvements that will excite cryptocurrency enthusiasts all over the world.

Right now, the client hosts user’s store data locally, preventing censorship for the store listings. One of the biggest drawbacks of this solution is how users would need to keep their computer or device running at all times to make their store accessible. With the change to IPFS, store data can be kept safe in a distributed manner, similar to how nodes run the same blockchain on different devices. This will also remove the need for third-party OpenBazaar hosting solutions, which is positive news for most users.

After receiving lots of helpful feedback on the current user interface (UI) Openbazaar team will also be introducing a new design in 2.0, as well as building a Bitcoin wallet directly into the app itself.

Xapo saves Uber in Argentina

The ride-sharing service Uber and bitcoin startup Xapo have joined together to give consumers in Buenos Aires a new way to pay for rides after banks in Argentina’s capital began blocking debit-card charges for the company. Xapo cards can be used with Uber from now on, giving Bitcoin users indirect access to the ride-hailing service. Moreover, Uber’s use of Xapo could eventually expand beyond Argentina, into other countries where the company is having trouble gaining government’s approvals.

Events

On Thursday, July 7, Odessa, Ukraine, hosted the sold-out Blockchain Incredible Party conference (BIP001). The event gathered a host of top names in bitcoin and blockchain industry as well in finance and banking, and proved to be a huge success. ForkLog attended the event, and the detailed report is on its way.

Stay tuned.

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