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No Fork In The Road For Bitcoin Expansion
Cointelegraph reports that the developer behind Bitcoin’s protocol has found a way to expand for upscaling the Bitcoin network without a hard fork. Bitcoin’s expansion has been underway for some time, and the protocol developer Mark Friedenbach believes a soft fork Proof-of-Work solution will be a better alternative. If successful, the move could mean a 3584x increase in transaction volume for the Bitcoin network. Friedenbach has also announced that he will introduce the concept of “sharding” to cull any censorship attempts. Sharding is the practice of dividing the workload of on-chain transactions between several different computers on the network. Bitcoin is not the first network to introduce sharding, however. Ethereum announced their intention to engage in the practice back in April this year. If the attempt to scale Bitcoin’s system is successful, it would mean taking another step towards competing with the big credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard.
BitMEX Hires Industry Watchdog To Help Regulate Bitcoin Exchange
SCMP reports that BitMEX has hired a Hong Kong watchdog to assist with Bitcoin regulations. One of the big scare stories of 2018 has been that of cryptocurrency exchanges falling victim to hackers. The incidents have made many people apprehensive of trading and investing in digital assets for fear of falling prey to criminals. Now, however, BitMEX, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, has launched a brand new partnership with a regulatory watchdog to combat any future attempts at hacking. The new COO Angela Kwan is a certified accountant and has worked for the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing as well as the Securities and Futures Commission. Kwan cites the lack of a regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry in Hong Kong as one of the main issues she aims to tackle in her new role. The appointment of Kwan is good news, not only for traders in Hong Kong but the international cryptocurrency community. The more countries that take preemptive steps to regulate their businesses, the faster we will see a reduction in hacking scandals and other criminal activities.
Most Bitcoin Investors Are Young, Rich, and Male
CNN Business recently published the results of a survey that examined the social demographics of the American Bitcoin industry. The study, conducted by Clovr, asked 1,000 American cryptocurrency owners and traders about their background. The results showed that the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin enthusiasts are young men who live in suburban areas and are relatively well off. The average income of the respondents was $75,000 per year, which could indicate that the industry is most attractive to those with money saved for a rainy day. One of the co-founders of Clovr, Mike Cribari, had a few suggestions as to why that might be the case. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is still a relatively new concept to most people, which leads to a lot of uncertainty around investing. Secondly, the frequents peaks and valleys of the market poses a risk to those who cannot afford to lose money. However, once Bitcoin becomes more mainstream and can be used to buy groceries and other products, then this trend is predicted to change.
More Bitcoin ATMs Spotted in Utah
Bitcoin ATMs have been around for a while, but they are nowhere near the level of regular ATMs. That could very well change soon, as the state of Utah ramps up the number of ATMs available to Bitcoin users.
The U.S. is currently leading the way when it comes to Bitcoin ATMs — 2259 of the world’s 3824 Bitcoin ATMs are in the United States. Canada is the country with the next-largest number of Bitcoin ATMs (669), followed by Austria (241), and the U.K. (204).
Utah only has 12 Bitcoin ATMs in the state, and a company by the name of CoinCloud owns 11 of them. CoinCloud’s CEO Christ McAlary launched his first Bitcoin ATM in Utah back in 2015, and it has been a success ever since. McAlary cites the many Millennials and startup companies in Salt Lake City as one of the driving factors.
But Utah is by no means CoinCloud’s only site of operations. The Las Vegas-based company is active in 22 states and has big plans to expand. Although the United States is the stronghold for Bitcoin ATMs, a recent report revealed that Greece is also growing its number of Bitcoin ATMs.
Bitcoin ATMs Rising In London
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, an entrepreneur by the name of Landry Ntahe also has big plans to expand his Bitcoin ATM empire. Like CoinCloud, Ntahe set up his first Bitcoin ATM in 2015. It required him to learn how to program the machine, and then convince someone to have it on their business premises.
Ntahe made friends with the owner of a convenience store in Enfield, London. Coincidentally, Enfield is also the place the first ATM opened in London back in 1967. Today Ntahe’s company BCB ATM has 60 Bitcoin ATMs spread across London, Manchester, Brighton, Liverpool, and other major U.K. cities. The plan is to open 3,000 Bitcoin ATMs across Europe by the year 2023.
Part of the success BCB ATM has experienced is due to the versatility of Ntahe’s machines. His ATMs are the only ones currently allowing users to buy, sell and trade tokens, as well as allowing shop owners to accept Bitcoin payments.
Chinese Tech Magazine Accepts Bitcoin Payments
The government of China has been anything but gentle when it comes to ICOs, cryptocurrency, and blockchain projects in general. Crypto-mining is strictly prohibited, as is crowdfunding with ICOs, and trading on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Although the Chinese government is not hostile to the idea of blockchain technology, it has expressed interest in keeping the popular phenomenon on a tight leash by effectively imposing a state monopoly on blockchain projects.
Now, however, the oldest media outlet in China has decided to accept Bitcoin payments as a social experiment to demonstrate how practical cryptocurrency is. Subscribers to the Beijing Sci-Tech Report are now able to pay for their subscription by sending Bitcoin tokens to a wallet address provided to them by the publication.
An annual subscription to their ‘Tech Life’ magazine comes out to 0.01 BTC or $65. Owning and investing in cryptocurrency is not explicitly illegal in China, and moves like the one made by Beijing Sci-Tech Report will contribute to the continued popularity of Bitcoin.
More big companies adopt blockchain technology
While there is a lot of speculation about which direction Bitcoin will go in, more big companies are taking to blockchain technology. The premise of the technology has too much potential for them to ignore.
Amazon, for example, is working in migrating their cloud services as well as their supply chain management to the blockchain.
Walmart is working on a food safety blockchain project, and will already be implemented in less than a year — September 2019.
Microsoft is working on similarly providing BaaS (Blockchain-as-a-Service) to their SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). They are no strangers to blockchain technology, however. Microsoft was already in 2015 utilizing the Ethereum network for its Azure cloud solution.
Like Microsoft, both IBM and Oracle are considering blockchain solutions to complement their existing portfolio. IBM has already entered a five-year contract with the Australian government, which will see the tech giant provide blockchain-based security and automation solutions.
Regardless of whether or not Bitcoin holders are entering a bull or a bear market, there is no sign of blockchain technology going away anytime soon. Quite the opposite.
The Lightning Network could speed up Bitcoin transactions
One of the reasons that companies like Visa and Mastercard are not yet considering adopting blockchain technology is the low transaction volumes. Bitcoin and other favorite cryptocurrency tokens are not however at the level of the major credit card companies.
The Lightning Network has emerged as a potential solution to this problem. The concept is to create a pre-blockchain on top of Bitcoin’s actual blockchain, which will facilitate much faster transactions. This means that purchases made through the Lightning Network are not registered on Bitcoin’s blockchain until the channel has been closed.
So what is a channel? To make a payment through the Lightning Network, two people can use a common Bitcoin address to make unlimited transactions between each other. This address is referred to as a channel and can be used to make small regular payments to each other. When no more trades are needed, the channel can be closed, and the transactions will be recorded on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
Bitcoin could see more mainstream use with CoinGate
The project has received backing from Jack Dorset, the founder of Twitter and Square. It has also received support from a payment processing company called CoinGate, which will now help facilitate Lightning Network transactions. This means users will have the option to pay with Bitcoin when using sites like Mmoga.com, Bitlaunch, Livejasmin, and Manyvids.
A Spanish hardware hacker by the name of Ricardo Reis has also demonstrated how the Lightning Network can enable vending machines to accept Bitcoin payments. In a video released by Reis, he shows how he purchases a bottle of Coke from a modified vending machine.
This is great news for Bitcoin. The more everyday uses there are for Bitcoin, the more it will increase in popularity. It’s difficult to see how Bitcoin will lose its value as long as these developments are happening all around us.
Cryptocurrency calendar – Evidence-based & community-driven
Thanks to growth of cryptocurrency industry, event organizers have being scheduling events such as conferences and summits in various cities across the globe to discuss blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, most of these events are not captured by the mainstream media and so most people don’t get information about them. By the way CoinMarketCal content does not expose only conferences and summits, those ones are only a small part of their events list, including releases, community events, forks, airdrops, exchange listings, ecc.
Coinmarketcal.com is determined to solve this problem by creating a community driven platform where details of upcoming and ended events can be listed.
Apart from conferences and summits, information related to blockchain projects and new coin launches is also published on the site on a daily basis. Unlike other similar sites, CoinMarketCal is fully community based, with not only people who can add events that are yet to be listed, but also their team reviewing each and every submitted event to ensure the best quality of information.
This feature greatly helps to ensure that details of all events relevant to the industry are published. The developers have also gone an extra mile to incorporate a voting system that is designed to help separate the real events from the fake ones. Events that accrue the lowest votes are eventually delisted from the website.
Another aspect that gives CoinMarketCal an upper hand is that there is an option for persons who upload details of upcoming events to be paid by other website users using Bitcoin. All one has to do is leave his/her BTC address in the post. Never miss anything that happens in the crypto market, visit coinmarketcal.com for accurate information about all upcoming conferences and summits.
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