Tech giant Apple has recently submitted a new patent application that uses Blockchain within a prospective system for verifying timestamps.
Apple has recently submitted a new patent application that uses Blockchain within a prospective system for creating and verifying timestamps.
Based on the public application to US Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday where Blockchain technology was used to certify timestamps as a program combined with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) tools.
Apple's application describes three possible methods for establishing timestamps, with one of these scenarios centering on a Blockchain platform. There is a use case in question where data stored involves tying a piece of information to a particular transaction on a Blockchain, establishing the state of that data at a particular point in time.
The program would generate a block containing a timestamp, with every subsequent block being added as miners verify each transaction conducted on the chain. This system is part of what Apple is calling a "multi-check architecture," meaning that another system would confirm the timestamp after the block is generated but before it is added to the chain.
Like other established institutions, Apple believes in the power of Blockchain technology and its benefits.
Apple has seen the benefits of how the transactions are verified and approved by consensus among participants in the network, making fraud more difficult. The technology operates on a distributed rather than centralized platform, with each participant having access to exactly the same ledger records, allowing participants to enter or leave at will and providing resilience against attacks.
According to the application, using a decentralized ledger to store timestamps has two main benefits - it can propel the time to maintain permanent and can have a protected from corruption if a single node is compromised by malicious actors.
Cointelegraph caught up with IOTA to discuss the recent increase in price, partnership with Microsoft, future plans.
IOTA, the digital network designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) has recently seen a massive increase in the value of their cryptocurrency, MIOTA. According to CoinMarketCap, the company has moved from 9th to 4th in largest market cap, displacing long standing 4th place holder Ripple.
In order to understand what caused this massive explosion in value, Cointelegraph caught up with Dominik Schiener and David Sønstebø, co-founders at IOTA in order to get their take on what has precipitated recent events.
Cointelegraph: The massive rise of MIOTA over the past weeks must have been encouraging. What precipitated the price explosion, in your opinion?
IOTA: IOTA has been under intensive development for over two years and has not spent any money on marketing. In this time our focus was on making this next generation distributed ledger technology a reality. In this period we refused exchanges listing IOTA in order to ensure everything was working properly before it went to market.
This explains why IOTA is now getting a lot of attention seemingly out of nowhere. People have been following the project for a long time and then they are finally able to enter. The listing in Korea at Coinone coupled with the launch of the Data Marketplace and subsequent media coverage lead to further validation that IOTA is cementing itself as a leading cryptocurrency and distributed ledger protocol.
We believe this was the threshold breaking moment for a lot of fence sitters who have been observing IOTA from a distance.
CT: What specifically is the recent partnership with Microsoft and Fujitsu all about?
IOTA: Microsoft is one of the cloud solution providers with their Azure platform. Fujitsu, Samsung ARTIK, Accenture and many others are participants in the Data Marketplace exploring the concept of trading secure and immutable data on a decentralized ledger. These are the first steps towards an open flow of data in IoT to realize the vision of Big Data.
CT: How is your platform Tangle different than traditional Blockchain?
IOTA: The short version is that IOTA goes beyond Blockchain in getting rid of fees, scaling limitations and centralization issues. It does this by making validation an intrinsic property of using the protocol. When you issue a transaction in IOTA you also validate two previous ones, which again reference their own two respective transactions and so on, building this Directed Acyclic Graph which we call a Tangle.
This means that users are also validators, which allows us to get rid of miners, which again gets rid of the fees and centralization that occurs in Blockchain architecture. Since everyone is validating two transactions for each transaction or data transmission they broadcast to the network, it means that the amount of validations i.e. transactions per second grows together with the activity on the ledger. In short: the more activity, the more validation.
CT: How do you see trust systems changing in the future?
IOTA: Trusted systems are absolutely pivotal in an age where decisions are automated and can act globally in an instant. We believe that data integrity, which you get for free in IOTA, is a main component of this. Beyond that we are working on IDentity of Things (IDoT) which will make it easier to secure components and develop reputation systems for intrusion detection and malware protection etc.
Australian government has implemented a law mandating Bitcoin exchanges in the country to register with AUSTRAC.
The Australian government has implemented a law mandating Bitcoin exchanges operating in the country to register with the anti-money laundering agency Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC).
The move is aimed at imposing restrictions on digital currencies, particularly Bitcoin, due to their continuous growth and adoption in the mainstream financial sector.
The bill was first filed with the Australian parliament in August 2017 with an aim to fight the threat of financial crime in the country. The country’s parliamentarians felt that there was a need to do this after the discovery that one of the major banks, Commonwealth Bank, has violated laws related to money laundering.
The filing of the bill was also driven by the report of the Financial Action Task Force, which stated that the existing laws to combat money laundering have serious flaws and should be amended to eliminate loopholes.
Under the new law,the AUSTRAC is empowered to monitor the activities of all virtual currency exchanges operating in Australia’s jurisdiction. The main aim of the monitoring is to ensure that financial transactions are not related to money laundering or terrorism.
The law mandates that virtual currencies will receive the same treatment as physical cash in a bank with regards to money laundering and transactions suspected to be supportive of terrorism.
The directive also requires businesses offering cryptocurrency exchange services to verify their customers’ identities, keep a record of transactions and report any threshold transactions or suspicious deals. A threshold transaction is the transfer of virtual currencies worth AUD10,000 or more.
The new regulation also imposes both jail time and fines to any company found guilty of operating unregistered cryptocurrency exchanges. The penalty for unregistered exchanges starts with a two year jail term and/or a fine of $105,000, while violators of more serious offenses could face a fine of $2.1 mln for corporations and $420,000 for individuals.
German parcel bomber has demanded a €10 mln ransom to be paid in the form of the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
A German parcel bomber has demanded a €10 mln ransom to be paid in the form of leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin. On Dec. 8, 2017 the bomber sent a message to a pharmacy next to the Potsdam Christmas market through the global delivery company DHL to demand the ransom.
The parcel bomb, which contains a QR code for depositing the Bitcoins, as well as explosive powder from Polish fireworks, nails, and screws, allegedly made a strange hissing sound when it was opened by a pharmacist. Fortunately the bomb failed to detonate. The incident, however, forced the evacuation of the entire Christmas market.
The German police are already investigating and looking for possible witnesses in this latest case of bomb threat and extortion. They believe that the package bomb was dropped off at the local packing station in Potsdam. They’re already searching for suspects in and around Berlin, as well as in the Brandenburg state.
The entire police force across Germany is on high alert as similar cases are expected to be uncovered in the near future. The police have advised the general public to remain vigilant at all times and handle unexpected packages with utmost caution. They stressed that all suspicious packages should not be opened but rather that people notify the police immediately.
The use of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as a preferred payment method seems to be a part of the modus operandi of the blackmailers in Germany, as there have been similar incidents recorded in the past. One of the latest high profile cases is the infamous WannaCry Ransomware that affected the railway company Deutsche Bahn.
The malware encrypted data on the computers of the company and cyber criminals demanded a ransom of $300 - $600 to restore access.
IBM research lab in Zurich has developed a preprocessing building block that could speed up machine learning algorithms.
International Business Machines’ (IBM) research laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland has developed a new generic preprocessing building block that could make the speed by which machine learning algorithms can absorb new information faster.
Such development is expected to largely benefit the booming AI industry.
According to IBM Zurich mathematician Thomas Parnell, they have developed a generic solution to the AI learning process with a 10 times speedup.
“To the best of our knowledge, we are first to have generic solution with a 10x speedup. Specifically, for traditional, linear machine learning models — which are widely used for data sets that are too big for neural networks to train on — we have implemented the techniques on the best reference schemes and demonstrated a minimum of a 10x speedup.”
According to the research lab the main purpose of the invention is to enhance the speed at which AI machines can learn new information.
The block, which utilizes mathematical duality to filter vital pieces of information in a data stream and ignore the unimportant ones, is mainly designed for big data machine learning.
Despite its great potential, there is still a lot of work to be done to improve the block and before it can be ready for commercial application.
The company plans to continue developing the system in IBM’s Cloud, where it will be called the Duality-Gap-Based Heterogeneous Learning.
The company can benefit much from this discovery, considering the high current trend in the artificial intelligence industry. It remains to be seen, however, if the company will be successful in perfecting this new technology and how it will perform in the real world in the near future.
IBM, along with other technology players such as Oracle and Sony, have been investing heavily in Blockchain-related projects including partnership with banks for faster and more efficient financial transactions, and helping roll out Blockchain in the government operations.
With the daily trading volume of Bitcoin at an all-time high, the mempool of the Bitcoin Blockchain has started to expand again.
With the daily trading volume of Bitcoin at an all-time high, at around $20 bln across major regions, the mempool of the Bitcoin Blockchain has started to expand again.
In Bitcoin, the mempool operates as a holding area for unconfirmed transactions. Payments made by users await in the mempool until miners arrive to confirm the transactions. The size of the Bitcoin mempool, which remains at around 79 mln bytes at the time of reporting, represents the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
If the size of the Bitcoin mempool is high, transaction fees recommended by wallet platforms such as Blockchain, Coinbase and Trezor surge and failing to attach high fees could result in a transaction being delayed for many days, if the Bitcoin mempool does not clear.
On Dec. 7, the size of the Bitcoin mempool reached 120 mln bytes, spiking by more than two-fold within a 24-hour span. As a consequence, transaction fees of Bitcoin recommended by wallets surged up to $30, depending on the size of the transaction and the number of inputs or outputs.
Bitcoin Fees, a Bitcoin fee predicting application on Earn.com, previously known as 21 Inc, currently recommends a fee of 450 satoshis per byte for median-size transactions, resulting in a fee of 101,700 satoshis. In US dollars, the recommended fee of Bitcoin Fees for median-size transactions is $16.
Nic Carter, an experienced Bitcoin analyst and researcher, stated that the abrupt surge in the size of the Bitcoin mempool is suspicious, given that many one satoshi per byte transactions clogged up the mempool and the Bitcoin Blockchain network.
Carter suggested that a spam attack of low-fee transactions is preventing the Bitcoin Blockchain network from clearing transactions and processing payments.
Suspicious behavior in the Bitcoin mempool again. Be on your guard this weekendhttps://t.co/8MIPUW0Cxw pic.twitter.com/npMXjHP4Ma
— Nic Carter (@nic__carter) December 9, 2017
But, others also claimed that it is possible the recent performance of Bitcoin price has led to a genuine increase in the Bitcoin network’s daily transaction volume, and that the size of the mempool has expanded drastically because of the rapid growth rate of Bitcoin.
For small to medium-size transactions, the current Bitcoin transaction fees could be too high, especially for merchants. As such, Steam, one of the most popular game marketplaces, temporarily stopped accepting Bitcoin as a payment method due to increasing complaints from its users with Bitcoin’s high transaction fees.
For large-scale transactions worth at least a thousand dollars to millions of dollars, a transaction fee of over $10 is not relatively high compared to the global banking system. As Ari Paul, the co-founder of BlockTower explained in an interview with Business Insider, if Bitcoin’s current use case is a robust store of value and it is trying to compete against gold and the international offshore banking industry, high transaction fees could still be dealt with, considering the complexity and efficiency of banking services.
Still, for Bitcoin merchants, specifically the tens of thousands of Bitcoin-accepting merchants in Japan, the current Bitcoin transaction fees could be difficult to handle.
Bitcoin for gold: APMEX now accepts Bitcoin payments, gives 4% price discount on purchases.
It’s now possible to buy real gold with digital gold, should customers desire, according to an announcement from APMEX.
According to the post, the company has integrated with BitPay merchant services and is now able to receive digital currencies, with buyers receiving the 4% discount usually reserved only for cash payments. The post continues by explaining why Bitcoin is a good integration for the company, saying:
"Buyers can make purchases with Bitcoin at any time, from nearly anywhere, just as with most credit cards. International orders become significantly easier as cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is accepted worldwide without conversion. Also, many customers prefer Bitcoin payment because of the anonymity offered by a Blockchain purchase.”
While the site offers crypto holders the chance to diversify into precious metals, many in the crypto world have already seen the price of Bitcoin investments explode over the past weeks. With the price now firmly stabilizing over $15,000, many investors expect still further growth, which may keep them from making the trade.
Some traditional investors don’t understand or even fear Bitcoin, while others embrace it as the future.
Several traditional investors have issued their opinions about Bitcoin as it continues to soar to record highs. During morning trading on December 8, 2017, the currency traded above $16,000 per token and even reached more than $18,000 in one market.
Due to its phenomenal trading performance, several billionaire investors have voiced out their thoughts about the top-dog digital currency Bitcoin focusing on the idea that it lacks intrinsic value.
In his comment, legendary activist investor Carl Icahn says he cannot understand Bitcoin’s performance and he thinks that it is a bubble.
“I don’t understand it… If you read history books about all of these bubbles…this is what this is.”
Meanwhile, billionaire Warren Buffett, who is considered as the best value investor of all-time, has advised investors to stay away from the most popular virtual currency because it is just a ‘mirage’ and it is leading towards bubble territory.
”Stay away from it. It’s a mirage… the idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is a joke. It’s a way of transmitting money.”
Prominent billionaire and founder of one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, Ray Dalio, is still taking a cautious stance:
“Bitcoin is a bubble… It’s speculative people, thinking they can sell it at a higher price…and so, it’s a bubble.”
However, former Wall Street and hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz claimed that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are real and Bitcoin could be an alternative or replacement for gold. He added that the price of Bitcoin could go up to $40,000 before the year ends.
“The whole market cap of all of the cryptocurrencies is $300 billion. That’s nothing. This is global. I have a sense this can go a lot further.”
PayPal co-founder and investor in financial technology Peter Thiel, however, considers Bitcoin as having ‘great potentia.l. In his interview with CNBC, he explains that Bitcoin is more than just a cryptocurrency:
"I'm skeptical of most of them (cryptocurrencies), I do think people are a little bit … underestimating bitcoin especially because ... it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments.”
The growing skepticism towards Bitcoin did not stop Russian oligarchs from investing in it either, as traditional Russian billionaires such as Roman Abramovich, Aleksandr Frolov and Aleksandr Abramov are reportedly investing large chunks of their money into cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, through a European fund called Blackmoon Crypto.
Finally, the Winklevoss twins, the classic Bitcoin poster boys who started investing in the digital currency in 2013, remain bullish about cryptocurrencies as their holdings made them the first ever Bitcoin billionaires.
Time will tell who among these investors are right. No matter which side you’re on, keeping yourself informed and exercising due diligence will allow you to form your own judgment and investment decisions.
Internet services provider Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said digital currencies will be key in the future, compares to early days of internet.
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang claimed that the virtual currencies like Bitcoin will play a key role in the future of society. He even compared the volatility and technology of Bitcoin to the “early days of the Internet.”
In an interview at the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum held in China in late 2017, Yang said that Bitcoin and the other digital currencies like Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash are the future of the financial system, although they are not there yet.
“Bitcoin as a digital currency is not quite there yet. People are not using it to transact. People are using it as an investable asset. I personally am a believer in where digital currency can play a role in our society. Especially in, not only the front end of doing transactions but also in the back end of creating a much more efficient system and a much more verifiable system”.
Despite some criticisms and doubts against Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies, there are technology luminaries like Yang who support and believe their potential.
Among the believers is technology firm Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who claimed that he considers Bitcoin as a digital currency that is “more genuine and real” than the US dollar and better than gold as a store of value.
In an email interview with Cointelegraph, entrepreneur and investor Jonha Richman shares that she believes in the potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. In fact, like Yang, she believes that more and more traditional money will flow into Bitcoin in the coming months as cryptocurrencies are slowly starting to hit the much awaited mainstream adoption.
With these positive pronouncements on virtual tokens, the number of individuals who are attracted to the cryptocurrency market continues to grow. In fact, Bitcoin recently toppled Visa’s market cap with its latest all-time high price.
Coinbase offers customer warning about exchange’s growing pains, risks of investing in cryptocurrency.
The past week has been a huge one for Coinbase, as the exchange became the most downloaded app on the iTunes store, surpassing even YouTube. With all the demand, the site experienced unprecedented delays as well, leaving some customers frustrated. The company has since sent out a warning letter, encouraging customers to invest in responsible ways.
The letter, sent to customers via email, explains that the company is obviously excited about the prospect of massive gains in their platform and are working hard to get customer support up to speed. Further, the post makes clear that investors should expect trading delays over time, as the platform continues to experience growing pains.
The email concludes with a rather stiff warning to investors about the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrencies and an encouragement to invest responsibly. The company states:
“We also wanted to remind customers of some of the risks associated with trading digital currency. Digital currencies are volatile and the prices can go up and down. Due to the rapidly changing price of digital currencies, some customers may not have sell limits that are sufficient relative to the value of total digital currency they are storing on Coinbase. Sell limits are one of the many measures Coinbase takes to protect client accounts and assets.”
While the statement does not speak to Coinbase’s assessment of the cryptocurrency market, the company is clearly seeking to inform investors about the potential for loss in such a volatile market. Long term Bitcoin holders, however, are aware of this issue, having weathered a number of large scale price corrections already.
Digital currency has passed the tipping point where it can no longer be stopped, though questions remain over regulation and fraud.
The recent rise in Bitcoin’s value has initiated varied reactions from different quarters of the industry. While holders of the cryptocurrency are excited with the extraordinary profit generated from their investment, some merchants are becoming more reluctant to accept Bitcoin because of its high volatility.
As Bitcoin’s price (and adoption) soars, more attention is being paid to the cryptocurrency, both by enthusiasts and regulators. Of course, the two sides often are far apart in their views.
Varun Satyam, Co-Founder and CBO of almora.io thinks that more attention should be paid to how adoption will play out in developing nations. Satyam is of the opinion that Bitcoin has crossed the line where it can no longer be stopped, and the only thing left is to see how it develops going forward.
Satyam tells Cointelegraph:
“It is even more interesting to see how Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption in developing nations [will] be. A massive economic turmoil is coming ahead. Blockchain is absolutely going to bring more secure, privatised decentralised systems, almost rewriting the internet in best way. Bitcoin has grown so big that is unstoppable now and nations are in a fuss [about] how to react [to] it, the attitude will be completely uncertain and will change dynamically according to conditions.”
On Thursday, Dec. 7 2017, ORCA Alliance in conjunction with EU40 – the network of young MEPs organised a roundtable titled “How should Europe react to the new boom in cryptocurrency?" The event included industry leaders such as Sarah Compani, Legal Advisor, Bitfinex; Craig Sellars, Co-Founder & CTO, Tether; Jorn Erbguth, Legal Expert; Natan Avidan, Founder, ORCA Alliance; Jeremy Gardner, Founder, Augur, and various parliamentarians. The roundtable took place on the premises of the European Parliament.
Natan Avidan tells Cointelegraph that the need for such event arises due to the lack of unified global opinion on both Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Avidan notes that even the most innovative and open-minded societies, like the European Union, have not yet released a single legal framework on the subject. He said:
“As an organization we would like to see a coordinated and liberal approach from the global community of regulators.”
According to Avidan, the three main reasons why we should expect adoption to explode in the near future are:
Increasing numbers of Bitcoin transactions between end users
Growing scalability of Blockchain technology
Disruption of the existing financial system by significantly increasing the number of point of sale (POS) systems that accept Bitcoin and other digital currencies
During the event, one of the members of the European Parliament, MEP Sorin Moisa, pointed out his belief that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. However, he is concerned about how to eliminate the “impostors.” Moisa said:
“The revision of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive will help to kick-start the cleansing process while figuring out how to regulate ICOs should also be considered. ICOs should be made to respect the EU security-related frameworks and proper definitions need to be introduced into the system, for instance, it should be clear when a token is a token, a utility, a commodity or a security.”
Another parliamentarian who shared Moisa’s views is MEP Eva Kali. Kali notes that cryptocurrencies will lead to growing decentralization, with intermediaries becoming less relevant. However, she is of the opinion that decision makers and regulators need to wait for developers and the market to make the necessary tests.
Michael Vogel, CEO of Netcoins, tells Cointelegraph that there are a lot of misinformed opinions about Bitcoin due to the fact that actual Bitcoin and Blockchain experts are far and few between.
According to Vogel, we are seeing a combination of two reactions to these technologies worldwide: knee-jerk negative reactions, but also patience and willingness to learn about the technology. China's love-hate relationship with digital currency is probably the most interesting to watch.
Vogel notes that the recent rally of Bitcoin definitely turns heads and makes people more curious to learn more about the currency and its possibilities:
“I think the next phase of Bitcoin is simply more people actually using it; I always tell people it is easier to understand Bitcoin once you've actually used it, and once they finally use Bitcoin most people realize that it is not as mysterious or confusing to use as they originally thought. Knowledge and awareness over the next few years will continue to gather the positive momentum Bitcoin has seen in 2017.”
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have grown significantly, even beyond the expectations of many in the industry. As 2018 approaches, expectations are high. Many will be watching how governments and regulators respond to digital currency. The regulations and legal frameworks that begin to emerge will enable the mainstream adoption and implementation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
