The World Economic Forum Blockchain created a new working group focused on the distributed ledger with the Estonian President.
This so-called “Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology” will be met for the first time during an event held in Dubai later this week. According to the World Economic Forum Blockchain the group will be focused on the development of governance models related to the distributed ledger.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia for 10 years, will co-chair together with Jamie Smith, chief communications and marketing officer for bitcoin mining and blockchain services firm BitFury and a former official in the Obama White House.
Members of the group are: Ma Jun (chief economist for the People’s Bank of China’s research outfit) and Claire Sunderland Hay (head of the Bank of England’s fintech startup accelerator).
The group also include representatives from bitcoin-related startups such as BitPesa, Everledger, Ripple and Chain; and institutions such as Barclay’s and Deutsche Bank.
Here you can read the full list of the “World Economic Forum Blockchain” members.
“The distributed ledger or blockchain system of preserving data integrity and security is one of the most promising new technologies to emerge in the past decade. Its full potential is only now beginning to be realized. This Council will play a leading role exploring how blockchain can be used to improve security on the internet.”
The WEF counducted an internal research about the blockchain since 2015 and this new working group is part of a broader network of Global Agenda Councils, focused on problems such as climate change, AI and cybersecurity.
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America has its 45th President today and several bitcoin investors and analysts believe that with Donald Trump Bitcoin price could grow, as its presidency could provide a boost to bitcoin prices.
Analysts explained that even if Bitcoin markets would not see any significant change from Clinton’s election, instead Trump could impact worldwide investors, so traders agree that Donald Trump will be a good thing for bitcoin business.
Jacob Eliosoff commented:
“I think a Trump presidency would be great for bitcoin, much like nuclear war would be great for bitcoin. It would be an epic disaster in a bunch of respects – economic, geopolitical, democratic – and in the fear and chaos bitcoin would be a defensive asset people could turn to.”
If Hillary Clinton won, experts have suggested that she would be a boom for the blockchain markets, given her open embrace of the tech as part of her innovation platform. Previously, in fact, she suggested she would use the distributed ledger.
The Donald Trump Bitcoin Effect
Donald Trump hasn’t put bitcoin on his agenda yet, but he defined himself as a “Washington outsider”, so traders believe that he lead to uncertainty and move towards alternative assets.
This might create just a temporary increase in bitcoin prices, but it might have a little lasting effect.
In fact, ARK Invest‘s Chris Burniske underlined that bitcoin can be useful in unpredictable times like this, and the election could add evidence to this claim.
“The way in which its price movement is uncorrelated from other capital market assets may be a desirable characteristic for many investors in the face of uncertainty. Depending on how people feel about the election, they may choose to hedge themselves from the more traditional markets by using bitcoin.”
So, in a few words, if bitcoin benefits from the election result, don’t give Trump too much credit for that, any other cataclysm would have done the same.
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Switzerland Bitcoin Regulation might arrive next year.
Recently its national railway service “have jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon”, as explained by Coindesk, so now it’s time for Switzerland to start regulating fintech and digital currency.
A few days after the Swiss railway-related announcement, as SBB decided to sell bitcoin through its network of ticket kiosks – the Federal Department of Finance (FDF) announced its plans to regulate fintech with the goal of introducing a new regulation next year.
Key elements include plans for a new kind of license geared specifically toward fintech companies and a so-called regulatory “sandbox” for experimental firms. Under the proposed regime, the Financial Market Supervisory Authority would become the primary regulator of fintech firms working in Switzerland.
In a press release, the FDF explained that it will guide more researches about bitcoin and other digital currencies and it will study the distributed ledger broader applications .
The company explained:
“The FDF should conduct additional clarifications in cooperation with the interested authorities on reducing further barriers to market entry for fintech firms, also those outside financial market law (e.g. legal treatment of virtual currencies and assets).”
During a recent speech, Ueli Maurer, Swiss Finance Minister, commented that the proposed Switzerland Bitcoin regulation would help to attract more brands – even if the nation positive attitude has already attracted the attention of several blockchain-related startups to make their home in the country.
“We assume that with the steps we have prepared and the commitment we have to the overall financial services industry we can provide a solution that puts us among the top (countries) in the world that regulate this,” he explained.
Read more here about the Switzerland involvement in the fintech sector.
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MasterCard releases Blockchain API, an experiment to work on an emerging technology such as the distributed ledger.
So Visa won’t be the only credit card company to work on the blockchain.
But while Visa is releasing a B2B blockchain, MasterCard releases blockchain API with more collaborative objectives.
The MasterCard website now contains 3 APIs connected to its internal blockchain platform, including offerings based on smart contracts and payment settlement. Those APIs were created by MasterCard Labs, the innovation program of the credit card giant.
MasterCard blockchain lead Justin Pinkham explained that the company created the API platform in October to stoke interest among banks and merchants.
Pinkham explained to CoinDesk magazine:
“This is part of our initiative to publish experimental APIs from Mastercard Labs and give developers the chance to work on emerging technologies that haven’t yet been commercialized by us.”
Also, Pinkham explained that MasterCard company is continuing to work on technology use cases and it is looking for new partnerships that can be useful for the MasterCard’s business.
“We believe that there is a role of blockchain in the future of commerce. This future needs to be developed in partnership with banks, merchants and industry participants,” Pinkham commented.
This news is one of the most important for MasterCard company, who used to criticize bitcoin in the past.
But if MasterCard releases Blockchain API, this means that it is beginning to push some of the work done by its tech lab.
According to Pinkham it won’t be the last, as he said that the company is creating a new foundation for blockchain tech that will be focused on the distributed ledger use cases including inter-bank payments, trade finance, digital identity and also the exchange of know-your-customer information.
This work was possible also thanks to the new partnership between MasterCard and startups through its Start Path Global program, as well as 30 more blockchain-related patents that Pinkham explained the company submitted.
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A yacht with Bitcoin in Europe? Read this article and find out how to rent or buy it.
A few months ago you might remember about a € 100 000 Tesla sold with Bitcoin in Finland, where Auto Outlet Helsinki Oy managed this transactions for a private citizen.
Users can buy everything they want with digital currencies, thanks to platforms such as OpenBaazar, GiftOff and more.
But from now one people can also buy and rent luxury yacht with bitcoin, as NAMI integrated bitcoin as a payment option.
NAMI is a company that rents luxury yachts and its director, Miika Toivonen is the same person who works for the Auto-Outlet Helsinki and sold the Tesla I previously mentioned.
Now Toivonen is is willing to allow users to buy luxury yacht with bitcoin.
“We’ve always willing to take part on everything that is new, like selling Teslas with bitcoin, so why wouldn’t we also rent yachts as well. So far we’ve sold a nice amount of Tesla electric cars around Europe, so I believe the same thing will work with luxury yachts as well.”, explained Director of NAMI Miika Toivonen in a press release.
With over 100000 merchants worldwide that accept bitcoin as a payment option, Bitcoin is the faster growing payment option and currency in the world.
And Finland, where NAMI works, is one of the top countries on Bitcoin usage if we count the number of bitcoin currency exchanges and BTMs.
“Meanwhile when numbers and numbers financial operators are getting more and more interested about bitcoin, we’ve noticed that demand for expensive luxury brands bought with bitcoin is rising. This is simply because there is more wealthy players on board. We were launching bitcoin payments for Luxury Collection and in the future we want to help more companies to benefit from Bitcoin-teknology and phenomenom.” explained us Aleksi Vitakoski from Bitcoinkaupat.
“In my opinion selling luxury cars like Tesla with bitcoin is some remarkable sales in bitcoin space, in Finnish and in European scale. It’s nice to see that adding one payment option can lead to purchases like that and it’s also very natural move by NAMI to extend bitcoin payments to yachts as well.”, commented Prasos Oy CEO Henry Brade.
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Bitcoin Segwit was announced in December and it was one of the most awaited software versions since the beginning of the bitcoin creation.
And it is likely to happen on November 15th.
The Bitcoin Segwit, in fact, could solve the block size debate as the block size will become bigger and the bitcoin scalability could improve.
Ciphrex CEO and Bitcoin Core spokesman, Eric Lombrozo explained that users can expect an increase of capacity of 1.8 times.
However, bitcoin segwit main goal is to solve the malleability of transactions, one network aspect that has been controversial since the Mt Gox collapse back in 2014, when this “malleability” problem was used as a scapegoat.
Bitcoin segwit could solve a major part of the block debate, without a hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol. Transactions would tell miners that anyone can spend them, no signature required, while also including strings of seemingly meaningless text.
Old nodes confirm these transactions, ignoring these odd directions and gibberish.
Newer nodes would translate the extra text into instructions, telling them to collect signatures and store them in a completely new part of the transaction, called the Segregated Witness.
Lombrozo, in fact, believes that the benefits of switching to segwit are sufficient to encourage developers to adapt their own software to the new segwit solution.
“Not only they will be able to use the increased capacity offered by segwit and pay lower fees, but also they will be able to support other functions that will be enabled later by segwit with minor updates,” he said.
To better understand what the Bitcoin Segwit is, read here an insightful infographic.
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Holytransaction Trade is a new platform offered by HolyTransaction wallet for Bitcoin Euro instant conversion.
Holytransaction.trade is useful when you want to convert your bitcoin into euro, by using any ATM machine with Halcash that you can find in Spain and Poland.
Thanks to HolyTransaction Trade you can do this operation in a few minutes, without having to wait a few days as if you use traditional exchanges.
Anybody can convert his own bitcoins into euro from an ATM machine with Halcash, whether he has a wallet on HolyTransaction or not.
The Halcash service is available only in Spain and Poland at the moment.
To convert bitcoin into euro with Halcash, this platform holds a 2% fee.
Here you can read a step-by-step guide to convert your bitcoin into euro by using HolyTransaction Trade and the 10.000 HalCash ATM you can find in Spain (or Poland).
Download the HolyTransaction App here for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
How does funding for Holytransactions work?
HolyTransaction is a multi-currency wallet that allows you to store, send, receive, and exchange numerous cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. To utilize HolyTransaction, you must first fund your wallet with the cryptocurrency of your choice.
You may fund your HolyTransaction wallet in two ways:
Depositing cryptocurrency: You can deposit cryptocurrency into your HolyTransaction wallet by sending it from another wallet or exchange. To do so, go to your HolyTransaction account’s “Wallet” section and select the cryptocurrency you want to deposit. Finally, select “Deposit” to obtain the wallet address for the desired coin. Copy this address and use it to transfer funds from another wallet or exchange to your HolyTransaction wallet.
Bank Transfer: To do so, go to your HolyTransaction account’s “Deposit” section and select the currency you want to deposit. Finally, select “Bank Transfer” and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the transfer. You must give personal information such as your name, address, and bank account information.
How to convert Bitcoin into Euro using HolyTransaction:
That’s it! You’ve successfully converted your Bitcoin into Euro using HolyTransaction.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.