(Page 45)

About Ethos

Ethos is one of the leading cryptocurrency service providers. It is a platform that is like a bridge between blockchain and financial institutions. Ethos provides multiple products for the crypto world. Some of them are Ethos Universal Wallet, Ethos Bedrock, and many others. The Universal Wallet provides security to its users to keep their crypto assets safe. It provides its services for free. The Wallet is on the Bedrock platform. Bedrock is the foundation that makes the blockchains more accessible. It provides security for the users and the financial institutions. Ethos has a global presence and its headquarters is in Singapore.

Bedrock – The foundation platform

Bedrock is a very sophisticated high perform platform that provides blockchain financial services. Its main aim is to make blockchains and cryptographic protocols easily accessible. With Bedrock, financial institutions will safely use the best of digital technology. The institutions could also use multiple crypto financial services. The services include custody, liquidity, brokerage, and lending. However, as mentioned earlier, the Universal Wallet works completely on Bedrock. Bedrock is up and running and supporting many customers. Till now, it supported 90,000 users across the globe. It helped to perform more than 400,000 transactions seamlessly. Above all, these transactions involve multiple blockchain networks.

Expert Opinion

The founder and CEO of Ethos are  Shingo Lavine. He provided his views on this. He said that most of the fintech firms see blockchain as the next big thing in the digital finance world. But there is a lot of things that are very complex and not accessible. They are a wide range of blockchains and crypto protocols and frameworks. So, Bedrock is the platform that combines all this. Moreover, it provides a framework that is very easily accessible. So, with Bedrock, a lot of blockchain-based products and services will be available for the users. He believed that this technology will provide enormous power to the digital economy.

Its Uses

Bedrock has a wide array of functions. It supports multiple functionalities for the financial institutions. In addition, it provides the platform for financial institutions to create their own crypto wallets. It helps to provide a lot of services like liquidity, custody, and many others. Also, it provides customized solutions. These are blockchain integration, alerts, identity, and transaction monitoring.

The technology behind it

The technology used for the bedrock platform is very complex and sophisticated. The platform uses open peer-reviewed standards like BIP32, BIP39, and BIP44. It is with the help of these standards that help users keep their digital assets safely. It also has an abstraction layer. This offers support to multiple blockchains and custom digital wallets.

The Ethos token powers up the Bedrock platform. This token provides access and utility to the complete Ethos ecosystem. So, the business partners can utilize the Ethos token to get access to the system. They can also pay fees and get discounts. Therefore, it is such a platform that created a win-win ecosystem for both its users and business partners. In conclusion, it operates seamlessly and cost-effectively delivering all the benefits to both parties.

Binance’s Burn Down for BNB

BNB is a cryptocurrency launched in 2017. It got its funding from Binance. BNB is a cryptocurrency offered as a discount token. With the use of this token, the users used to get discounts on trading fees till today. The number of tokens generated initially was 200 million. Binance promised to destroy some BNB tokens every quarter to fight against inflation. This in turn results in increasing the price of BNB tokens.

The 14th Burn of BNB

This quarter (i.e. Q4 2020) marked the 14th burndown process for BNB tokens. This time it is quite remarkable in a lot of ways. This is the first time Binance burned more tokens than actually promised. Changpeng Zhao is the CEO of Binance. He made an announcement regarding this quarter’s burn down. He mentioned that this is the first time ever that so many tokens got burnt. It is 3.6 million BNB burned this time. That is worth $166 million. He also said that this process will continue in the future. He added that to reduce the BNB’s total holding from 200 million to 100 million, it will take longer. If he goes on the promised path, it will take another 27 years to do it.

Its impact

Due to the burn program, Binance is gaining profits again. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is on the path to success. The price of BNB tokens skyrocketed after the burn program for Q4 2020. For the first time in history, BNB tokens touched the $47 mark. This is its all-time highest price. So, the burn program gave direct benefits to the BNB tokens.

A reputed analyst Larry Cermark gave his opinions on this incident. As per him, Binance increased its spot in the market by 50 percent in Q4 2020. The volumes for the future also increased to 140 percent. Binance is now trying to become the market leader for the crypto world. He estimated that Binance’s total revenue for Q4 2020 is more than $470 billion.

Binance CEO’s outlook on the crypto market

Zhao wrote that BNB and Binance are on the way to success in a very positive environment. He predicted that it would be foolish to sell Bitcoins at a lower price than $10,000. He got a lot of criticism for this comment. Recently, he said that he will go with his prediction. He told that Bitcoin might reach $100,000 and $249,000 in the future. He mentioned that the investors should also invest in altcoins. The investors should not disregard altcoins. The crypto market has a lot of room for other projects apart from Bitcoin. He added that there will be thousands of blockchains and millions of tokens in the future. So, Binance will also be in demand and will make profits as it is a crypto exchange platform.

CZ gave a forecast of a bright future for BNB tokens. BNB tokens are no longer just discount tokens. It plays an important role in Defi, DApps, and decentralized crypto exchanges. CZ didn’t provide an estimated price of BNB in the future. However, it would not be wrong to expect $100 per BNB in the future.

Howells seeking permission to dig up a landfill site

The South Wales Argus, said that James Howells has appealed again. He was appealing to the city council for digging a landfill site. The reason is to find his lost hard drive, which contains Bitcoins worth millions.

The reason

James Howells is an IT engineer and a resident of Newport. Long back in 2013, he carried out some cleaning activities. During that process, he threw the hardware that contains a lot of Bitcoins. He did this by mistake. In fact, he didn’t understand that immediately. When he finally got to know about his mistake, it was too late for him to do anything. He started taking steps to get back his hard drive. To find the lost hard drive, he has to dig the landfill site. He appealed to the Newport city council. But the landfill digging plea was rejected. As Bitcoin is trending recently, the Bitcoins he lost will be worth millions now.

City council’s past decision

The council, however, rejected the engineer’s all past appeals. The council is not giving permission to dig up the landfill site. Howells was trying to seeking counsel for a long time. He had tried multiple times. As per the city council, he was contacting them to retrieve his hard drive since 2014. The authorities mentioned the reasons also for rejecting the appeal. They said that this type of excavation task was not environmental friendly.

Howells’s offer

To move the authorities at the city council, Howells proposed an offer. He mentioned that he could donate one-fourth of his Bitcoins fortune. He reported that his missing device contains 7500 BTC. So, one-fourth of the fortune will be approximately $72 million. This is a huge amount that he is offering to the city council for the search. Howells said that these funds could help in this Covid situation. He is also aware of the environmental pollution this excavation will cause. In fact, he planned to spend part of his fortune to save this.

The IT Engineer spoke about his determination to find his lost Bitcoins. He said that there will be no guarantee the hard drive will definitely work. This is due to the environment it is in right now. He said that the device exterior might not be in good condition. But he believed that the disk inside will be in good condition. So, there is a higher possibility of recovering the coins. He still believed that there is a chance to recover his bitcoins. But he said that the longer he has to wait for it, the lesser is the chance to recover it.

Conclusion

Howells is doing almost everything to recover his Bitcoins. But the city council is reluctant to provide permission. They are concerned about the cost of this recovery process. As per the city council, it will be futile if the hard drive is not found after this exercise. Howells also mentioned that the funds will be escrowed if the mission is unsuccessful.