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HEALING A RIFT: Backed by some of the biggest cryptocurrency companies such as Coinbase, Square and BitGo, a new initiative called Bitcoin Optech seeks to help firms that rely on bitcoin software adopt scaling technologies, including those that will push the transaction fees lower.
John Newbery, a Bitcoin Core contributor who is leading the effort, said it has also been "bringing people together," no small feat in the wake of last year's bitter, divisive block size debate, which pitted businesses against devs. Full Story
SEIZED: A county police force in UK became the first in the country to seize and exchange bitcoins that were discovered during a criminal investigation.
The Surrey police obtained 295 bitcoins last October after arresting a person who has since been convicted for money laundering and sentenced to nine years in prison.
A local court ruled on Thursday that the police department was entitled to confiscate these bitcoins and can further keep 18.8 percent of the proceeds (an estimated £273,000) as part of its operating budget. Full Story
THE SUN KING: It only took one day for Justin Sun, the founder of tron, to win his own blockchain’s election.
Currently ranked at No.11 on CoinMarketCap, tron launched the election in June to select its “super representatives,” nodes elected by token holders to validate transactions, create blocks and compete for rewards.
Sun announced Wednesday that he would run in the election and by Thursday he had won over 120 million votes, which guaranteed him a spot to run one of the 27 notes validating the $2.5 billion tron network. Full Story
RESEARCH BLAST
Hashrate (i.e. computing power spent making it costly to reverse transactions) is used to measure the security of a blockchain. It was a very effective way to gauge the growth of the bitcoin blockchain. However, cryptocurrencies with different mining mechanisms have emerged that make hashrate less precise when measuring across cryptos.
Miner revenue is a better apples-to-apples metric for comparative purposes. It is the USD sum of block rewards and transaction fees per day paid to miners.
Learn more insights in the CoinDesk Q2 State of Blockchain report next week. More research |
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SPONSOR SECTION
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BEST OF THE BEST
QUARTZ: In this 7-minute-long video, Quartz reporter Preeti Varathan takes a look at how the Maduro regime in Venezuela is using its own cryptocurrency to stay in power.
While decentralized currency usually is associated with freedom and the devolution of power, the video seeks to answer a perplexing question: why do oppressive rulers love cryptocurrency?
THE REST
BLOOMBERG: George Sax, a former special agent and senior official of the U.S. Secret Service, is joining Blockchain Ltd., the crypto wallet provider, as its global head of security.
The news wire said the company is now managing more than 26 million digital wallets across 140 countries. Hence the need for security expertise.
FORTUNE: This year’s 40 Under 40 list by Fortune contains some of the usual names such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, but at the same time, cryptocurrency is also gaining in stature, with Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, ranked at No.20.
Notably, Armstrong is one spot ahead of singer Rihanna on the list. Immediately following Rihanna at No. 22 is the creator of ethereum, Vitalik Buterin. Make of that what you will. |
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WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER  |
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