Bitcoin in Russia: regulation will take place in 2019
Russia’s Ministry of Communications (Minkomsvyaz) has revealed it is looking for legalizing Bitcoin in Russia and the blockchain technology by 2019.
The local news agency called TASS talks about a document about the Russia’s Digital Economy of the Russian Federation project, which lays out a timeframe for creating and passing the blockchain regulation.
The document quoted the following:
“bringing into effect regulatory acts governing the possible use of technology for decentralized registers and legal certificates.”
Back in March, prime minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed Minkomsvyaz and its counterpart Ministry of Economic Growth (Minekonomrazvitie) to “study to what extent Blockchain would be applicable to our system of government.”
During the last year, Bitcoin in Russia has solidified from a rhetoric point of view also because the Russian Central Bank decided not to ban digital currencies including Bitcoin and this news was useful to calm businesses and users’ after a few years of uncertainty when Russia stated it would ban cryptocurrencies within the country.
Then, back in April, 2017, Russia announced it would recognize Bitcoin by 2018, but monitoring each transaction.
Read more about Bitcoin in Russia here.
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Oracle Blockchain to improve delivery pipelines
A new Oracle blockchain – related project suggests that the database giant wants to use the distributed ledger in order to improve its internal workflows.
On April 27th, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published an application titled “Managing Highly Scaling Continuous Delivery Pipelines”.
First filed in September, 2016, this application explains the use of a “pipeline blockchain” to be used as distributed information points for product delivery processes.
The only inventor quoted on the application is Duncan Mills, a software architect for Oracle.
As detailed in the application, this project is focused on exploiting the distributed ledger ability to provide transparency in order to keep data related to each employee who is contributing to a specific work process.
This would include how they work and what their next tasks; everything happens in real time.
“By its nature, the pipeline blockchain approach provides a self-correcting mechanism for recording and reconciling the state of a pipeline after a system failure. For example, if the record store becomes unavailable, pipelines can continue to process in a fail-safe mode using peer-to-peer reconciliation of the pipeline blockchain, thus maintaining the state of the transactions for the duration of the outage.”
Oracle Blockchain security
Oracle blockchain pipeline’s concept has security system too.
For example, one project may deal with sensitive or private info.
According to the application you can read above, the use of this Oracle blockchain pipeline could allow a user to see what task he/she needs to complete “without having to return control to a central dispatcher”, potentially making their devices vulnerable to external influences.
“This is particularly important where the worker is not in a position to check back with a central dispatcher because of security constraints,” the application states.
The use of the blockchain to facilitate the secure exchange of information is anidea that Oracle has already explained in the past, including in an article wrote last year by Subramanian Iyer, or one of the firm’s senior directors.
“Clearly, blockchain has the ability to increase secure data exchange in other industries as well. It also has the ability to make that data transfer simpler and easier between entities,” he commented.
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Bitcoin block size: UASF updates its proposal
A controversial Bitcoin block size proposal has been upgraded.
UASF, in fact, is a new idea proposed by a pseudonymous contributor called Shaolingfry.
She/he wants to solve the bitcoin block size debate with a user activated soft fork (UASF), a possible method arount the actual deadlock over the Segregated Witness (Segwit) solution.
Right now, the need for a majority consensus in order to make a decision means that any mining pool with enough hashing power has the veto power over any proposal; this might be the reason why SegWit is tardy to arrive.
Conversely, UASF wants to bypass the veto power and put the decision only into the hands of bitcoin’s users.
After a first general UASF proposal, Shaolinfry suggested a change – BIP148 – in order to moving the power out of the miners’ decision and give it to the “economic majority”.
Gregory Maxwell and other bitcoin developers refused this proposal because it could undermine the bitcoin blockchain stability.
“We should use the least disruptive mechanisms available and the BIP148 proposal does not meet that test,” he wrote
For this reason, Shaolinfry announced he/she is working on a redraft of the proposal to address some of the concerns suggested by Maxwell and other developers.
Shaolinfry published an announcement post saying that the reason for this changes is related to technical criticisms of how UASF would upgrade the network.
“BIP 148 is certainly not what a normal UASF would or should look like. While support for BIP 148 is surprisingly high, there are definitely important players who support UASF in general but do not like BIP148 approach.”
This revised proposal suggests the use of BIP8, but this concerns how soft forks are implemented.
Segwit and BIP8
Right now, if the 95% hashrate support for the Segregated Witness option is not reached by November 15th, the proposal will be discarded by default.
Anyway, the technical changes made in a proposal (BIP8) would be automatically locked in at the end of the time period, even if they could be adopted sooner.
Shaolinfry’s idea is that after the November 15th, a UASF SegWit proposal will be edited according to the BIP8 changes.
This means that the bitcoin community would have 1 year to prepare the upgrading of a UASF, removing the possible destabilizing effect of a short-term.
“I believe this approach would satisfy the more measured approach expected for bitcoin and does not have the issues Maxwell brought up about BIP148.”
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Nasdaq Blockchain: new investments in more startups
Nasdaq Blockchain – related venture initiatives include new investment in distributed ledger based startups.
Today Nasdaq Ventures announced it has decided to invest in startups and companies that work with blockchains and/or artificial intelligence, next-generation data analysis and machine learning.
Nasdaq Blockchain budget is $10m to be awarded to deserving startups that are focused on both seed-stage and late-stage placements.
This Nasdaq Blockchain effort is a natural extension of the firm’s work in the blockchain field.
Back in 2015, Nasdaq started a partnership with Chain, an enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure that enables organizations to build better financial services from the ground up.
This effort saw the two companies develop a distributed ledger market focused on pre-IPO offerings.
President and CEO of Nasdaq, Adena Friedman, explained in a statement:
“With the launch of our new venture investment program, we are reinforcing our focus on driving growth and innovation by evaluating, distributing, licensing and integrating disruptive technologies for the long-term benefit of our global clients.”
Nasdaq has been testing the blockchain even in other areas.
In fact, back in February 2016, Nasdaq announced its blockchain tests on e-voting prototypes with Estonia’s sole securities exchange.
Also, in January, Nasdaq published a report arguing that the distributed ledger is also useful beyond transaction settlement.
Read more about Nasdaq Blockchain – related projects by clicking here.
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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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Porsche to explore the Blockchain technology
German automobile manufacturer Porsche wants to explore the blockchain technology.
According to a press release, Porsche announced a new startup competition last week with the main goal of attracting companies that work in the blockchain industry as part of a bid to test potential applications.
This is the first time Porsche has talked about its interest in the distributed ledger tech.
Porsche is offering €25,000 in prize money and a three-month stint at SpinLab, an accelerator based in Leipzig that the automobile company supports.
Applications for this contest are due by May 15th.
Below you can read a statement published by the German company:
“Porsche aims to obtain external input on the disruptive potential of the blockchain transaction system by collaborating with the start-up scene. The central question is to what extent the application of this technology in the value creation chain of the company makes sense. Moreover, other forms of potential long-term collaboration will be investigated.”
Porsche is not the first automobile company to reveal its interest in exploring the blockchain for possible use cases.
In February, in fact, Daimler AG announced that it was joining the Hyperledger project, explaining how the blockchain is “a promising technology, not fully mature yet, but continuously growing”.
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Bitcoin Sweden regulation: the blockchain to record property deals
A new project for Bitcoin Sweden regulation has moved to its second phase. In fact, the Sweden’s land registry authority, the so- called Lantmäteriet, wants to use the distributed ledger tech with the main goal of recording property deals.
This project was conducted by the blockchain startup called ChromaWay and the consultancy group Kairos Future, that are also working in partnership with two banks: SBAB and Landshypotek.
Talking about the project’s potential, ChromaWay CEO Henrik Hjelte commented:
“It could be a great benefit for economic growth”.
Also, he said that Sweden is the ideal country to test a distributed ledger system for land titles, because trust in public authorities is higher than elsewhere and it could influence other countries to do the same in the next future.
Thanks to this system, a buyer and seller would open a contract where banks and the land registry can view the workflow of the deal, such as due dates for payments.
“In the blockchain confirmation of each step in the workflow is made with a hash, like the blockchain normally. Everyone has the same information and you can check it yourself,” said Magnus Kempe of Kairos Future.
Another use case for this project is the potential verification of an IOU issued by the bank to its property buyer.
“That part is going to be hidden for the others in the contract. You will only have the hash confirming from the bank that the IOU has been signed,” commented Kempe.
That said, SBAB Bank explaind it has no imminent plans to implement the blockchain:
“Our reason to participate in the project has not been to actually implement the solution in our current processes. But rather an opportunity for us to get a better understanding of the blockchain technology and how it might possibly fit in our future products/offerings.”
Bitcoin Sweden regulation: what is the EU doing?
Recently, the EU passed a directive that puts more weight behind digital signatures; a similar bill has been proposed in Arizona too.
Click here to read more about EU regulation related to bitcoin and blockchain.
A the moment, this land registry project is looking at new ways for working at this issue.
“Actually, the land registry today, they don’t receive much physical paper, they get PDFs of the contracts which are signed electronically so they don’t store the physical contracts. What we are thinking of is, you can actually sign the contract digitally in the blockchain to the land registry, they can award the land titles and then you can throw away the paper so you’re not dependent on the physical archive.”
According to ChromaWay’s Henrik Hjelte, the use of blockchain could be disruprive in order to manage ownership of property and improving transparency in real estate sales.
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Blockchain regulation: Arizona recognizes it under state law
Another move has been made in Arizona in order to make Blockchain regulation more effective.
In fact, a legislature has creared a bill that would recognize the distributed ledger signature and smart contracts under state law.
At the moment the bill has been sent to the governor’s desk for a final approval.
As previously reported, this bill would make data tied to a blockchain “considered to be in an electronic format and to be an electronic record” in the US State of Arizona.
Also, the bill quotes specifically the Ethereum smart contracts, so there is a specific effort with the main goal of capturing new kinds of delivering information – the distributed ledger– under existing laws.
The bill explains:
“‘Smart contract’ means an event-driven program, with state, that runs on a distributed, decentralized, shared and replicated ledger and that can take custody over and instruct transfer of assets on that ledger.”
This bill was sent to sent to Governator Doug Ducey’s office on March 27th, after clearing the Senate by a 28-1 vote on the 23rd.
Even if it’s not so clear if or when the governor will sign the bill, its support suggests that this measure will see the light soon.
A few members of the legislature’s lower chamber, in fact, approved this bill unanimously previously this year.
This Arizona bill is similar to a legislation passed and signed in Vermont last year. There, lawmakers proposed to allow data embedded on a blockchain to be used in a court of law.
Click here to read more about Blockchain regulation worldwide.
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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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