Bitcoin in Japan: a new way to evaluate blockchain projects
While there is lack of clarity related to the regulation of Bitcoin in Japan, one of the Japanese government ministries has worked to develop a new way in order to evaluate projects related to the distributed ledger tech.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), in fact, announced a few details about this new methodology, that was created by the Information Economy Division of the ministry’s Commerce and Information Policy Bureau.
According to a presentation published a few days ago, METI will exploit this process to consider projects for a variety of use cases, by evaluating more than 30 different characteristics including project scalability, privacy and overall reliability.
People involved with the creation of this new methodology explained it was developed to impartially weigh blockchain-related projects.
The official presentation explains:
“No evaluation indices or criteria had been established to adequately assess the features of the technologies and to compare them with existing systems. This causes the public anxiety, misunderstanding, and unreasonable hopes to blockchain technologies, and leading to a potential unwillingness to introduce the technology.”
It is not a big surprise that the Japanese ministry is involved in this project, as it has already supported the blockchain technology in the past.
METI, in fact, is conducting some researches about the technology since 2015, commenting that the government should play a supporting role. Also, the Japanese ministry has sponsored a trip abroad for local bitcoin and blockchain-based startups.
Click here to read more about Bitcoin in Japan news.
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Intesa Sanpaolo Blockchain: a new trial for recordkeeping
The newest Italian Banca Intesa Sanpaolo blockchain – related project has been tested with the main goal of validating trading data.
Thanks also to a partnership with Deloitte and the Italian startup Eternity Wall, Intesa San Paolo started to test a new proof-of-concept at the end of 2016.
Heart of the project is the open-source OpenTimestamps protocol, developed by Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core contributor, that Eternity Wall moved to implement.
The Intesa Sanpaolo blockchain project uses the bitcoin distributed ledger to notarize transactions and create a publicly available database trail for future referral.
Information security officer for the bank, Carlo Brezigia explained:
“Relevant data has been hashed to produce a short unique identifier – a digest – equivalent to its digital fingerprint. This fingerprint has been associated to a blockchain transaction and hence registered on the blockchain: the blockchain immutability provides robust non-refutable timestamping that will always prove without any doubt the existence of that data in that specific status at that precise moment in time.”
According to a Deloitte statement, Intesa Sanpaolo tested this tool between October and February with tht idea of including support for other blockchains, potentially including also private ledgers.
This Italian blockchain trial shows the will of regulated financial institutions to test public blockchains.
In an official announcement, the bank’s retail innovation accelerator officer, Gianni Cavallina, explained the interest in experimenting these protocols beyond the main use case of digital currenciese:
“In particular, considering public blockchains, we are exploring the applicability of different use cases, abstracting from the value of its native digital currency. Notarization is one of the most interesting applications.”
Intesa Sanpaolo Blockchain projects– also member of the R3 distributed ledger consortium – also include tests on several blockchain use cases made during the previous years, including trade finance and digital identity.
Read more about previous Italian projects related to the Blockchain here.
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Bitcoin Japan Regulation: official recognized as method of payment
On April 1st, 2017, Bitcoin Japan regulation was officially announced as the digital currency is finally recognized as a method of payment.
This Bitcoin legal classification will set a boom in its adoption as retailers will be able to accept the most popular digital currency.
In 2016, Japanese officials ended the 8% consumption tax rate imposed on bitcoin purchasing on the digital currency exchanges.
This tax relief and the Bitcoin Japan regulation might help to foster confidence in the digital currency industry, where there are 4,200 merchants that accept bitcoin. This growth – merchants are quadrupled from 2015 – occurred in two years when Japan’s cabinet decided to recognize bitcoin and digital currencies as the equivalent of money, in March 2016.
Payment processor Coincheck estimated that 20,000 merchants will be started to accept bitcoin this year.
260,000 Bitcoin-accepting Retail Stores
According to the Asian magazine Nikkei, two Japanese retailing giants have started a few partnerships with bitcoin companies in order to accept bitcoin as a method of payment.
One of these is Recruit Lifestyle, the retail arm of conglomerate Recruit Holdings, that is partnering with Coincheck in order to introduce bitcoin payments.
Also, bitcoin will be soon included in AirRegi, a recruit-developed point-of-sale application that is used at 260,000 retail locations across the whole Japan.
Customers will be able to use tablets and smartphones for paying bills with their bitcoin wallet and Coincheck will convert the digital currency into yen in order to transfer the fiat funds to the shop.
Also, AirRegi is compatible with Alibaba’s Alipay app for payments. Bitcoin’s inclusion will be attractive for tourists who will be able to make payments in other countries without the burdens of foreign exchange.
Click here to more about Bitcoin in Japan.
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Litecoin Segwit: how it is driving the prices
Maybe because of the recent Litecoin Segwit support, this digital currency price set a new high yesterday, reaching a value of $11.42, its highest price since May 2014.
We cannot define it a cryptocurrency pump, but the market seems to answer to the technical changes in the network.
This price growth, in fact, could be explained thanks to the almost reached the 75% support level needed in order to activatate the Litecoin Segwit (Segregated Witness), or a scaling solution that will improve blocks capacity.
Right now, in fact, just over 70% of miners were giving their support for the Litecoin Segwit.
Even if at press time, Litecoin price declined of about 67%, litecoin traded as high as $11.32 today up nearly 40% in one day, according to CoinMarketCap.
On March 30th, litecoin price increased of about 70% and, always according to Coinmarketcap data, its 24-hour volume passed $250m today.
Litecoin SegWit support
These important new Litecoin highs have coincided with the almost reached support level needed for activating the Litecoin SegWit.
First designed to be used on the Bitcoin blockchain, SegWit would increase the block capacity by modifying how transaction data is stored by the blockchain itself.
Once reached, the support level will have to remain at or above the 75% threshold level for 8,064 blocks (almost two weeks) before SegWit can officially be activated.
The litecoin price reached $50 in late 2013, but it has traded below $20 since early 2014.
Click here to read more about SegWit and a new Bitcoin potential fork.
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Kim DotCom Bitcoin: video streaming with crypto payments
Kim Dotcom bitcoin -related project is a new platform where users can sell files and video streaming by using the most famous digital currency.
Dubbed “Bitcontent”, Kim Dotcom presented his new venture in a video posted on Twitter this week.
While he is fighting extradition to the United States for criminal copyright charges because of its now-defunct streaming site Megaupload, the German entrepreneur continues his bitcoin-related platform, explaining:
“You can create a payment for any content that you put on the internet. You can share that with your customers, with the interest community and, boom, you are basically in business and can sell your content.”
He added that Bitcontent would allow both private users and companies to earn money from their websites.
Unfortunately the Kim Dotcom bitcoin platform has not a launch date yet.
Also, Dotcom hasn’t provide any details on how Bitcontent would be different from existing Bitcoin platforms or how it would help magazines and companies to earn money through its subscription payment options.
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IBM Blockchain Oil trade platform: a new innovative project
IBM – together with a group of other companies – has announced the development of a new blockchain-based crude oil trade finance platform.
This group also includes Trafigura and Natixis bank that decided to join the creation of this new tool.
The platform was created by using code from the Linux Foundation-led Hyperledger project. Also, IBM’s BlueMix cloud hosting service is utilized.
Thanks to this trade finance platform, users can view transaction data on the blockchain that also hosts documentation and updates on shipments, deliveries and payments.
Natixis is also a member of the R3 distributed ledger consortium and isn’t new to blockchain-related trade finance applications because it also joined the “Digital Trade Chain” project a few months ago.
According to, Natixis’ head of global energy and commodities, Arnaud Stevens, the bank believes the technolgy as a high potential of bringing down expense and boosting procedural transparency.
These are his words:
“We want to use blockchain to optimize the antiquated arena of commodity trade finance. The current process is paper and labor intensive, we have multiple friction points with high processing costs and limited automation. Distributed ledger technology brings some much-needed innovation into our industry.”
This news is only the latest related to projects that aims at bridging of the blockchain and trade finance worlds.
Also, we have to say that this is an application that attracted much interest from a wide range of companies and governments worldwide, including Dubai.
In the meantime there are also several other worldwide banks that are continuing to push ahead with related projects focused on the blockchain and commodities trade.
A few days ago, in fact, Dutch bank ING is working on an oil trading pilot built on the Ethereum blockchain that has already conducted live transactions.
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Decred: the younger brother of Bitcoin
Decred (DCR) is a digital currency created back in 2015 by Bitcoin’s BTCSuite developers, an alternative full node bitcoin implementation written in Go.
“Decred uses a hybridized consensus system to strike a balance between miners and users to create a more robust currency”, as it was created both with proof of work (PoW) and with proof of stake (PoS).
This hybrid consensus system allows users to create a balance between proof-of-work miners and proof-of-stake users in order to have a much more robust consensus.
This relatively new cryptocurrency aims at addressing issues related to the increasing centralization of power within the bitcoin blockchain and the growing conflict of interest between the bitcoin community and those who fund the Bitcoin core project.
Also, it is important to say that Decred can be both mined and staked.
Why is another cryptocurrency needed?
When Bitcoin was originally released, it was working in a market that didn’t exist before. There were issues that could be fixed thanks to new digital currencies such as Litecoin or Dogecoin.
Of course, time is showing that Bitcoin is not a failure at all and it radically changed the idea of money.
Decred has several new features in order to combine the very best of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake chains with the main objective of utilising both systems in Decred.
Also, Decred defines itself as “self-funded and progressive” and it relies completely on a community governance and opensource features.
Decred developer Christina Jepson explained:
“The intention is not to attack what we currently have in Bitcoin. We want to recognize what has been done well, but instead, we want to take that and improve on what we think can be done better… That is the spirit that started the technology and we want to return to that to explore options to problems we cannot explore in the current system while we continue to support the Bitcoin software. Alternatives are progress and a way forward to improve the greater ecosystem.”
Decred Wallet
That said, if you want to start buying and selling Decred coins, you will need the right wallet to store them properly.
Recently, we at HolyTransaction added a new wallet on our platform in order to allow you to store your Decred right behind your bitcoin and more than other 20 digital currencies.
Within the same login, in fact, you can store all your cryptocurrencies in a safe place with low fees.
Open here your new wallet to store, buy and sell your favorite coins.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Decred Wallet: a new cryptocurrency joins HolyTransaction
We’re excited to announce that we’ve been working to provide you with a new service: a Decred wallet.
From now on, in fact, you can instantly purchase Decred through your Holytransaction wallet, transfer them to any HolyTransaction’s user for free, and make crypto-to-crypto transfers between Decred and more than 13 digital currencies.
All of our HolyTransaction users can create new addresses for Decred balances and use the simple HolyTransaction Web Wallet to send and receive transactions or to instantly convert them to any other cryptocurrency.
Just like Bitcoin and 12 other digital currencies, you can now:
- Send Decred to any address, even to addresses of other cryptocurrencies with instant conversion on the fly;
- Receive transactions;
- Exchange Decred with any supported coins;
- Make instant transactions between HT users;
- Get real time exchange rates on the website;
- Set up OTP for additional protection.
What’s Decred?
Decred (DCR) is a digital currency created back in 2015 by Bitcoin’s BTCSuite developers.
“Decred uses a hybridized consensus system to strike a balance between miners and users to create a more robust currency”, as you can read on their official website too.
This new digital currency aims to address issues related to the increasing centralization of power within the bitcoin blockchain and the growing conflict of interest between community and those who fund the Bitcoin core project.
About its technology, we have to say that Decred is a hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) digital currency that can be both mined and staked.
How to use the Decred Wallet
If you can’t see the newest Decred wallet, you just need to click on the “plus” button you find at the top right of the main page, once you have successfully entered your wallet.
You can find the “plus” button to select the wallets you want to see in the balance page, just like shown in the picture below.
Click on the image to enlarge it:
We are so glad to be part of this new community!
Open your new multicurrency wallet here. You just need 1 minute.
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Bitcoin fork: why developers keep calm
Right now the debate about a possible Bitcoin fork is very noisy and maybe it is the main factor that is driving the cryptocurrency price at the moment.
At press time, bitcoin value is less than $1000 with some traders that are liquidating their positions.
Amidst one of the more volatile period of bitcoin, developers seem not to be scared or worried about this two-year scaling debate.
Several miners are running the so-called solution “Bitcoin Unlimited“, a popular alternative bitcoin software that opened a discussion of a possible fork of the network which could generate two different digital currencies, a result similar to what happened with the recent Ethereum hard fork that lead to the creation of Ethereum Classic.
Bitcoin Core contributor Eric Lombrozo has taken a skeptical point of view, explaining that the bitcoin community is not new to this issues.
Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic, or other software alternatives that aims at changing the bitcoin blockchain- related rules, have emerged, but also declined, over the last few days.
While users who support the Bitcoin Unlimited think that is the real future for bitcoin, arguing that a bitcoin fork will bring it as the winning software, critics view it as broken.
Lombozo explained:
“The idea you can change bitcoin by lobbying one group of stakeholders against another is fundamentally flawed, as is the idea you can force controversial consensus rule changes. Bitcoin requires more tactful politics.”
On the other hand, Bitcoin Unlimited supporter Peter Rizun believes that bitcoin will see a block size increase, making bitcoin competitive with the other alternative cryptocurrencies.
“In my opinion, there’s a 75% chance we get an upgrade to larger blocks in 2017,” he commented.
So, while some people substain that only one software will be able to survive after this possible bitcoin fork, other experts suggested that most people won’t move to a new blockchain, so Bitcoin Unlimited will lead to another digital currency.
But, of course, the greatest part of the community want only one bitcoin.
Bitcoin Core contributor Luke Dashjr said to Coindesk:
“A hard fork is by definition an altcoin that the entire community decides to adopt as a replacement. Since most of the community rejects Bitcoin Unlimited, it is impossible for it to become a hard fork. Anyone can fork at any time. That people don’t speaks to the strong incentives not to.”
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Ether price set its new all time high
Ether price, or the digital currency that fuels the Ethereum blockchain network, reached today its new all-time high.
This token, that’s always been on the edge for a week, hit $32.78 according to CoinMarketCap today, growing about 15% higher than its opening price of $28.65.
At the press time, ether price is trading at $40.88, or its new all time high.
Ether price: new highs
This new achivement coincides with a general growth of the cryptocurrency market that has been rising in value even after the SEC decision to refuse the bitcoin ETF, the first bitcoin investment vehicle proposed by Winkevoss investors.
Ether price rose of about 70% from a low of $17.68 on 10th March to a high of $30.60 on 13th March.
Investors are looking for new alternatives
According to analysts, investors and traders are looking for new alternatives. First of all, bitcoin is having difficulties, for example the block size debate, its calability, the segregated witness related issue and a possibile hard fork on the way.
Bitcoin’s current challenges make the alternatives more inviting and appealing, as said by fund manager Jacob Eliosoff.
Also, Tim Enneking underlined the huge protif that traders could receive from other digital assets.
Right now, in fact, a few altcoins are experiencing new all time higshs, including Dash and Zcash.
On the other hand, however, bitcoin price has reached a new goal too, as its value is above $1000 for more than 31 days.
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