BEST OF THE BEST BLOOMBERG: Early bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik – who joined the first cryptocurrency project as far back as July 2010 –
is proud of bitcoin, even if it didn’t quite go in the direction originally planned, according to a feature by Bloomberg.
“It hasn’t evolved in the direction of high-volume payments, which is something we thought about in the very early days ... But on the store-of-value side it’s unquestionably a success," he said in the piece.
Once on the team, Garzik quickly became the third-biggest contributor to bitcoin's code after its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and fellow dev Gavin Andresen. In the years following, he claims he gave away bitcoin worth over $100 million at today's prices, in order to encourage other developers to help with the work.
Notably, Garzik also suggests that Nakamoto may have been a man called Dave Kleiman – a U.S. sheriff’s officer turned computer forensics expert. “It matches his coding style, this gentleman was self taught. And the bitcoin coder was someone who was very, very smart, but not a classically trained software engineer,” he said.
THE REST FINANCIAL TIMES: The Bank of Canada's blockchain-based securities settlement project, Project Jasper, is facing delays – not because of issues with the tech, but due to regulatory hurdles, suggests an article from the FT.
The central bank has already completed three phases of the project, but its leaders say that there are many more questions to answer before practical benefits can arrive.
“It’s less and less about the technology. ... It’s
more about the regulatory, the legal, the monetary policy issues,” Andrew McCormack, vice-president of payments and technology at Payments Canada, was quoted as saying.
For example, brokers needed digital cash in order to pay for securities within the blockchain pilot, and the most straightforward option was to give them access to funds issued by the central bank. However, doing that, said McCormack, would have “crossed the chasm and literally broke our own bylaws and, in actual fact, laws.”
Even so, the Bank of Canada isn’t yet considering making regulatory changes in order to smooth the path to DLT, the article says.
VENTUREBEAT: Universities shouldn’t rush to offer blockchain-related courses without finding out how to
avoid the pitfalls first, says a piece from VentureBeat.
With student demand for blockchain training rocketing, educational institutions are rushing to offer courses and big-name partnerships. But without thorough preparation, universities could end up teaching teaching something that is likely to go obsolete very quickly and, in the meantime, “saddle students with debt,” the author says.
With the field full of misinformation, a lack of established texts and protocols that are evolving at a rapid space, credible data is sparse. As such, the author suggests three pillars to help universities avoid the possible pitfalls in blockchain education: focus on core concepts, determine actual industry needs and enforce expiration dates for curricula.
