Category Archive: bitcoin network

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Lightning Network in El Salvador and Lugano

Uncovering the Widespread Adoption and the Advent of the Lightning Network in El Salvador and Lugano

Acknowledging the unprecedented potential of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, El Salvador and Lugano are two of the most significant adopters of this remarkable technological breakthrough.

El Salvador & Lugano Propel the Bitcoin Adoption

As a cornerstone moment for the Bitcoin economy, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed on 28 October 2022 between the nation of El Salvador and the city of Lugano in Switzerland. Moving forward, the goal of the MOU is to increase the use of Bitcoin not only in their respective areas but also in the states and nations that are nearby.

Overall, the anticipated aims of the partnership include bolstering cooperation in education and research for both El Salvador and Lugano, assisting initiatives to promote the adoption of Bitcoin and other digital tokens in their respective regions, and encouraging the exchange of students and talent between the two countries.

Exploring the Innovation Brought by the Lightning Network

So far, the scalability of the Blockchain has been a significant barrier to the widespread acceptance of cryptocurrencies from their inception. The Lightning Network’s second layer introduces a cutting-edge solution to this matter, as it intervenes by processing transactions outside the first-layer blockchain mainnet while retaining the mainnet’s robust decentralized security model. By bypassing the official Bitcoin blockchain, the Lightning Network can grow Bitcoin transactions per second (TPS), charge reduced fees, and allow new use cases like micropayments.

In addition, the Lightning Network has the potential to bring financial inclusion and freedom to the developing nations involved, in part because it is a trusted and private network that does not require the participation of third parties or intermediaries. Moreover, it could also lessen the likelihood of governments enacting policies restricting the free flow of capital. It also helps people who do not have access to bank accounts by facilitating transactions in a manner that is almost instantaneous and free of charge, thereby making Bitcoin usable not only as a means of payment but also as a means of exchange.

How Lugano is Leading Crypto Adoption in Europe

Lugano appears to have the same goal as El Salvador: to have all local businesses routinely accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. However, Lugano does not appear to have the same goal as El Salvador of making Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency legal tender. Although Lugano does not hold such a position in Switzerland, the city of 70,000 people did launch its Plan B programme approximately seven months ago to increase the use of Bitcoin.

In March of 2022, Lugano announced that it would be implementing the Plan ₿ Initiative. Additionally, the technology company Polygon joined as a critical infrastructure partner. Plan ₿ Foundation, a partnership between the City of Lugano and Tether, the technology company behind the public blockchain that supports the largest stablecoin by market capitalization (USDT), has been announced today. This partnership will allow Bitcoin, Tether, and LVGA payments to be accepted in the city of Lugano.

Tether and the city of Lugano have collaborated to create a Plan ₿ aiming to increase the use of Bitcoin and stablecoins throughout the city. This, in turn, is expected to have a beneficial effect on all aspects of inhabitants’ everyday lives. As a result, the city’s financial system will be revolutionized faster than ever, thanks to the widespread use of Bitcoin.

El Salvador – the Pioneering Nation in the Cryptocurrency

In 2021, El Salvador was the first country to acknowledge Bitcoin as a legal tender. Through this avenue, El Salvador became a pioneer in demonstrating how technologies such as Bitcoin, decentralized ledgers, and peer-to-peer networks can accelerate financial literacy and inclusion

Furthermore, Latin America appears to follow El Salvador’s lead and powering Bitcoin mining farms with natural resources (such as energy generated by geothermal activity). Countries of Costa Rica in Central America and Paraguay in South America are also heading in this direction.

Bottom Line

Since most people in Europe are not yet familiar with this idea, a closer relationship between El Salvador and a nation located in Europe could usher in uncharted territory.

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Satoshi
patoshi bitcoin mining holytransaction

What Early Mining Patterns Tell Us About The Motives Of Bitcoin’s Inventor

Patoshi Bitcoin Mining

The debate about Bitcoin’s inventor, known as Satoshi Nakamoto but otherwise shrouded in mystery, has raged for years. As Bitcoin continues to rise in value, this unknown inventor is presumed to have become a very rich individual indeed. When Satoshi invented Bitcoin, was he driven to profit, mining and hoarding early Bitcoin aiming to accumulate great wealth?

In 2013 first Sergio Demian Lerner presented his research on the early mining patterns Satoshi is presumed to have taken, it revealed around 1 million BTC (now worth around $10bn) hoarded by the creator. For many who see Bitcoin as an anti-establishment currency with an equalizing power, to attribute such vast wealth to Bitcoin’s creator is anathema, undermining the main narrative around Bitcoin and Nakamoto’s original motives. If Nakamoto is as driven by capitalist economics as the nearest banker, is Bitcoin fundamentally different from traditional currencies after all?

Nakamoto’s defenders argued that these 1 million missing Bitcoin were simply forgotten by early miners, and the inventor himself had no such hoard. Indeed, even researching these Bitcoin was taboo. Yet Lerner was unsatisfied with this answer. That’s why he has spent the last seven years unravelling the mining techniques used to unearth these early Bitcoin. What these techniques reveal is that Satoshi (if that is who mined them, Lerner refers to this individual as “Patoshi” to emphasize that we can’t truly know) seems to have been protecting the security of the network rather than pursuing profit after all. The reputation of Bitcoin, and its mysterious inventor, remains intact.

Early Mining Techniques

In order to learn more about the missing Bitcoin – and the individual who mined them – Lerner decided to remine the first 18,000 Bitcoin blocks to see what it revealed. He assumed that these blocks would have been mined with software that was similar, if not identical, to that which came with the first Bitcoin release. This public code was how early miners set about Bitcoins first blocks. The “Patoshi” pattern of how these Bitcoin were mined could ultimately reveal something about the motives of Bitcoin’s inventor, assuming Nakamoto and Patoshi are one and the same.

Through remining these early blocks, Lerner came to a startling discovery. Patoshi’s software was in fact nothing like the software being used by other early Bitcoin miners. Was this Nakamoto giving himself a leg up in the early gold rush of Bitcoin mining? The difference in the mining patterns of the public software and Patoshi’s processes became the keystone of Lerner’s research. Two theories stood out. Firstly, that Patoshi was using an early version of today’s pooled mining processes by combining multiple CPUs. The second theory – seemingly borne out in Lerner’s research – is that Patoshi was multi-threading.

Patoshi’s Multi-Threading

Multi-threading is a hashing technique using intensive computer processing to sweep for multiple nonces (the cryptographic element that Bitcoin miners are searching for) at once, rather than on an individual basis. By rescanning the early blocks, Lerner was able to assess which nonces Patoshi discovered, thus revealing the patterns by which Bitcoin’s inventor was mining blocks. Ultimately, Lerner has demonstrated that Patoshi/Nakamoto was generally finding higher-value nonces thanks to the multi-threading technique, and not because they had superior processing power, but because they had a better process for using their CPU.

Ideology Before Profit

Lerner’s meticulous analysis of the early mining patterns attributed to Bitcoin’s founder reveal that each time Patoshi mined a new block, his miner was turned off for a short interval. If Nakamoto was driven by profit, this is contradictory behaviour as it gives the rest of the community an opportunity to unearth new blocks. Lerner posits that Nakamoto wanted to see fair competition amongst early miners, and distribute Bitcoin equally at the start of the network.

At the same time, Patoshi’s multi-threading would have allowed them to uncover new blocks when they were not being mined by other early users, thus enabling the network to continue ticking over. These patterns have led Lerner to argue forcefully that the security of the network – and not profit – was Nakamoto’s motivation for their early mining patterns.

Still Unknown

It remains an assumption that Patoshi and Nakamoto are one and the same, and the identity of this individual is still unknown. But Lerner’s research strongly indicates that profit was not an early motivator of the Patoshi pattern.


Kristin Herman is a tech enthusiast and a project manager at
Essayroo.com and Boomessays.com online writing services. When she takes a break from the screen she likes to curl up with a good book, albeit one about cryptotrends and digital landscapes!

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Satoshi
Schermata 2018 02 09 alle 16.39.47

Ten Years Of The World With Bitcoin Living in a crazy-crazy crypto world.

Bitcoin rose from unknown to mainstream recognition largely thanks the incredulous surge in value it saw in 2017. But then the price went down, sparking yet another heated discussion about the volatile unpredictability of the bitcoin.

Nowadays, discussions are all at their all time hype, but worth just as long as the participants know what they are talking about; and the audience has at least some grasp of the matter. But it rarely happens, as the vast majority of experts are as clueless about the intricacies of the crypto markets as is the general audience.

The infographic below, provided by our friends at BitcoinPlay, will not make us all marketing gurus but will give you a much better understanding about the driving forces behind the world’s first cryptocurrency, how it came to be, who embraced it first and how countries are handling it.
Here’s a selection of our favourite ones:

  • On May 22 2010 two Pizzas cost 10k bitcoins.
  • In 2013 FBI made $48 million by selling on auction one seized 144,000 Bitcoins.
  • 100$ invested in July 2010 is now 18.8 million.
  • Since april 2017 Bitcoin is legal payment method in Japan.
  • Blockchain ledger technology when used by top10 investment bank could save $8-$12 billions.
  • Chinese Mining Pool control approximately 81% of the Bitcoin network’s collective hashrate.
  • Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish and Microsoft accept Bitcoin payments.
  • University of Nicosia, Cyprus was the first University to accept tuition to be paid in Bitcoin.
  • Bitcoin is vat free in Switzerland.

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Jack

AirBnB wants to use the blockchain

Some months ago Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution book, explained how blockchain technology could replace services like Uber and AirBnB.
airbnb, blockchain, blecharczyk, city am,
In fact, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Switzerland, Tapscott suggested:

 

“Why do you need a 60 billion dollar corporation called Uber? You can have a real sharing economy which it would be a distributed application on the Blockchain […] and the same is for AirBnb”.

 

AirBnB replies…

 

Well, even if might not be because of Tapscott’s suggestions, AirBnb is now interested in using the blockchain technology for its service.
During a recent interview conducted by City A.M., in fact, Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk annonunced the possible blockchain application among the company plans for this year.
These were Blecharczyk words:

 

“I think that, within the context of Airbnb, your reputation is everything, and I can see it being even more so in the future, whereby you might need a certain reputation order to have access to certain types of homes. But then the question is whether there’s a way to export that and allow access elsewhere to help other sharing economy models really flourish. We’re looking for all different kinds of signals to tell us whether someone is reputable, and I could certainly see some of these more novel types of signals being plugged into our engine”.

 

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Amelia Tomasicchio
CarChargingviaEthereum

Ethereum used for Car Charging in Germany

A German power company, RWE, started a partnership with the Ethereum-based startup Slock.it, to develop proofs-of-concepts (POCs) using the Eth blockchain.

 

Germany supports green power

On May 2011 the German Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen announced the government’s decision to close all the nuclear power plants within 2022.
During an interview conducted by the BBC, in fact, Mr Rottgen commented:
 
It’s definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision.”
So, RWE, company who provides coal and nuclear energy infrastructures in Germany, has now decided to invest money in a new sustainable energy and in an Ethereum project to reduce expenses.
To do so, RWE created a working team to test the blockchain technology to aim at trim costs by lowering expenses related to energy transmission.

Car Charging with Smart Contracts

 

In a recent interview conducted by CoinDesk, RWE Carsten Stöcker commented on a possible application of the blockchain: electric car charging stations that use smart contracts to authenticate users and manage the billing process.
“We would like to solve the problems and really push electric vehicle deployment forward by looking into establishing a seamless and affordable electrical charging infrastructure.”
This project debuted at the Lift 2016 conference in Geneva, Switzerland and it will play out within 2017.
According the RWE project, customers will use charging stations by accepting a smart contract programmed on the Ethereum blockchain.
Through this system users will save money thanks to a payment that is connected to the consuption of electricity during the charging, instead of paying according to the time connected to the station.

 

 

“What’s really exciting here is that people are going to be able to use smart contracts to contract with a machine directly, rather than contracting with a human being or a corporation,” he said to CoinDesk.

 

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Amelia Tomasicchio
credit card 2 1510272

Visa is working on a secure and scalable Blockchain

The American multinational financial services corporation Visa annonuced its “secure and scalable” blockchain project.
To do so, Visa opened a position for software engineers who have to “explore and develop technologies that are critical to the payments industry in the future”, as stated in the job advertisement.
visa, blockchain, job, job position, scalable blockchain

Job Description

The researches will cover three key areas: data analytics, security and future of payments, so the team will work on develop a sort of proof-of-concept for the Visa blockchain network.

 

“Working on Future of Payment research at Visa is a unique opportunity at a time when the payments industry is undergoing a digital transformation with data as a critical differentiator. We offer you the opportunity to be at the center of innovation in the payments industry and unleash the power Visa technologies and massive data in innovating the future of payment concept.”

 

The perfect candidates must have programming experience, cryptography and “competency in data structures, algorithms and software design optimized for building highly distributed and parallelized systems”. 

 

Visa partners with Chain

Some months ago, Chain raised $30 million in a new venture funding, drawing funds from some financial companies including Visa.
Chain is a a blockchain developer platform that serves an enterprise market.

The blockchain is no longer a choice

Previously, on December 2015, Visa Europe stated that “the blockchain is no longer a choice”.
In an interesting blog post entitled “Why 2015 was the year of payments”, in fact, they commented on financial technologies including the subject of digital currencies, by saying:

 

“2015 has turned blockchain into something the industry has to live with. It is no longer a choice anymore. Recent news speculating about the identity of its creator and the formalisation of virtual money as a commodity just makes it more real than ever before.”

 

To know more about Visa perspective on the blockchain, you can read the full post here.

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Amelia Tomasicchio
421937471 11937 7505646248895711253

Helperbit wins the Blockchain startup competition in Amsterdam

On February 18th Helperbit won the blockchain startup competition held at the d10e in Amsterdam.
Helperbit is a “natural disaster management platform” that aims at helping stricken people with a simple peer-to-peer donation system.

Blockchain + GIS

Obviously this is possible thanks to the blockchain technology that allows a smart and fast transfer of values. Also, thanks to the interaction between the blockchain and the geographic information system (GIS) Helperbit can store all the information concerning the effects of the natural disasters.
The platform will be active in case of earthquakes, but also it will be extended to all the different natural disasters, such as hurricanes, fires and floods.

Blockchain Space

Again on February 18th, it was held the inauguration of the Blockchain Space, a “focused startup accelerator for talented visionaries creating disruptive solutions to real-world problems using blockchain technology”.
Among their selected startups, obviously there is Helperbit, who presented its project during the event held in Barcelona.
Helperbit team members are: Vincenzo Agui, Davide Menegaldo, Guido Baroncini Turricchia, Davide Gessa, Roberto Tudini, Gianluca Carbone and Luigi Angotzi.

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Amelia Tomasicchio
AussieBitcoin

How the blockchain can improve the Australian voting system

Flux Party is a new Australian political party that wants to renovate the voting system by using the blockchain.

In fact, they have proposed a new token-based political system based on the Bitcoin technology.
The Flux Party has more than 500 members and its objective is to have six senators on ballots during the next election that Australia will hold in September/October.

How it works

A special feature of this party is that its members are free of its own policies and they can vote for or against a legislation at the bidding of token holders.
“If they didn’t have to be senators, if they could just be software or robots they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do”, commented the Flux Party co-founder Max Kaye.
So the bitcoin token could be used by the Flux members for voting but also for trading with other people.

Too old for the Internet era

Australian Flux party is clearly suggesting that the current democratic system is too old for the Internet age and for this reason they want to redistribute the political power by using Bitcoin.
Their own website states: “Our current system doesn’t work well enough; politics gets in the way of policy. Flux is an incremental upgrade to democracy designed to redistribute political power, maximise participation, remove bad policy, and empower voters.”
The Flux Party system will allow voters to be able to set their votes to experts on these issues.

A revolutionary but not so new idea

The idea of a blockchain-based voting system is very revolutionary and it is not developed only by the Fluxa Party.
In fact, Nasdaq and the Bitcoin Foundation have worked both on their own voting systems throught the blockchain technology.
About the author: Amelia Tomasicchio is a writer and a journalist of Bitcoin-related news and articles. She started writing about Bitcoin in 2014 and she graduated in Rome with an essay about movie industry related to Bitcoin.

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Amelia Tomasicchio
Segregated Witness HolyTransaction Infographic

Infographic: What is Segregated Witness?

What is segregated witness infographic HolyTransaction

 

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jorge
Bitcoin World Infographic HolyTransaction

Infographic: Bitcoin Popularity Worldwide

Bitcoin Popularity Worldwide infographic HolyTransaction

 

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jorge