Vitalik vs. freeloaders

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Sponsored by   September 4, 2018 THE RUNNER UP: Tron founder Justin Sun's acquisition of BitTorrent made big news this summer, but he was not the only suitor.  CoinDesk reveals today that Neo offered to buy the company for $170 million, $50 million more than Sun's bid, which nevertheless prevailed. Full Story  QUIT MOOCHING: A paper co-authored by ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggests a different approach to funding crypto and other public projects designed to prevent free riding (e.g. businesses benefiting from open-source software development without paying for it). The current models have failed, both in the blockchain space and society at large, Buterin and his co-authors (a Microsoft researcher and a Harvard economist and poet) argue, and now it's the time for what they call "liberal radicalism." Full story GOING LIVE: IBM's blockchain-based payment system Blockchain World Wire is out of beta testing. The new system is said to "simultaneously clear and settle cross-border payments in near real-time." Full Story Bitcoin cash (BCH) on-chain transaction counts grew by 3,054 percent on September 1, compared to the average daily total for August. This was caused by what is known as a stress test. Stress tests are when a few large players artificially induce massive transaction throughput in a blockchain. The goal is to test and advertise the potential of a blockchain to scale for more user adoption. While the average block size for BCH was around 4-8 megabytes, the largest block ever was mined at 15.2 megabytes. The coin's price also rallied 13 percent on September 2, indicating a possible positive market reaction. For more research insights check out the CoinDesk Research section here. SPONSOR SECTION   Join us in Singapore on September 19-20 for two days of content focused on blockchain development in the APAC region. Beyond just Consensus, there are five other technology events that you can attend with your TechXLR8 ticket. Save 40% by using the code CONSENSUS40. ​Register Here   BUY SIGNAL? For the first time since January, a key price indicator for bitcoin has turned bullish. Full Story BEST OF THE BEST FINANCIAL TIMES: EQUI, a startup launched by the Scottish lingerie entrepreneur Michelle Mone and her boyfriend Doug Barrowman, "has ended in a fiasco," FT's Alphaville reports. After declaring a goal to raise $80 million through an ICO, the project got stuck at $7 million and raised some questions about the ICO model instead, the news outlet says.  THE REST BLOOMBERG: Ocean Falls, a tiny town in British Columbia with some 100 residents, repeatedly failed to attract business. Severe winds made the place far from a desirable spot, but then came the bitcoin miners.  TECHCRUNCH: In an op-ed, Jeremy Rubin, a technical advisor to Stellar and a Bitcoin Core Contributor, argues that even if ethereum wildly succeeds as a platform in the near future, ETH's value will go to zero. See also the counterarguments in the feisty comment thread.    We've launched our new podcast, Late Confirmation, which are the top stories in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk, sponsored by the Oxford Blockchain Programme.  Listen to Latest Episode and Subscribe   WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER   ConsenSys Jobs Blockchain Jobs Circle Jobs BitGo Jobs Copyright © 2018 CoinDesk. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: 636 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY, 10011, US Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list