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TRY TRY AGAIN: Ethereum's system-wide upgrade Constantinople is now tentatively planned for late February. During a core developers call Friday, participants – including ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and developers Hudson Jameson, Lane Rettig, Afri Schoedon and Péter Szilágyi, among others – agreed to aim for block 7,280,000 as their new target.
The upgrade was delayed due to a last-minute security vulnerability discovered by blockchain audit firm ChainSecurity in one of five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) included within the hard fork.
To mitigate the impact this EIP might have on the network, Szilágyi suggested activating two upgrades on the same block: Constantinople as-is, and a second upgrade to specifically remove EIP 1283, thereby ensuring test networks and private blockchains which have already executed the hard fork do not need to roll back months’ worth of transactions. Full Story
CASH CONVERTER: The crypto curious will soon be able to dip their toes into bitcoin while grocery shopping.
Bitcoin ATM company Coinme is partnering with coins-to-cash converter Coinstar to allow bitcoin purchases through Coinstar kiosks in a number of U.S. states, the companies announced Thursday.
At launch, only customers at certain Safeway or Albertsons stores in California, Texas and Washington state will be able to purchase bitcoin through the service, though there are “plans to extend this offering to additional U.S. markets and retailers following a successful launch,” a press release said.
Although Coinstar kiosks are primarily known for converting coins into notes, gift cards or other equivalents, at present, customers can’t use metal money to pay for bitcoin. The kiosks will only accept U.S. dollar bills, with a $2,500 maximum. Full Story
STILL SPENDING: Despite recent belt-tightening at Brooklyn-based ethereum venture studio ConsenSys, the company’s investment arm announced two new investments on Thursday: $1 million in the Paris-based crypto wallet and trading platform Coinhouse and an undisclosed amount in the encryption-centric web browser Tenta.
ConsenSys managing partner Kavita Gupta told CoinDesk these startups distinguish themselves with teams that include bitcoin veterans serving established user-bases. According to Coinhouse, the platform has over 150,000 user accounts. Plus, the startup’s CEO, Nicolas Louvet, was an early investor in the hardware wallet startup Ledger.
“A settlement custody solution [Ledger] working with the exchange [Coinhouse] … is very relevant to how at ConsenSys Ventures we think about investing,” Gupta said.
As for Tenta, which features a built-in VPN, an ad blocker and full data encryption, Crunchbase lists the browser as having at least 61,489 downloads. The ConsenSys-incubated wallet startup MetaMask is already in talks with Tenta regarding how the latter’s mobile browser could include built-in crypto wallets. Full Story |
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 CoinDesk’s Crypto-Economics Explorer aggregates data points across the industry to measure the size and opportunity of crypto markets. In addition to price and market cap, CoinDesk’s explorer provides users with a comprehensive way to view the crypto-economic forces that shape an asset’s market maturity, growth and potential. Social interest is important in determining the engagement of various coin communities. We observed Reddit post volume on each cryptocurrency's unique subpage for Friday, Jan. 18. The top five cryptocurrencies by Reddit post volume are: Check out the CoinDesk Crypto-Economic Explorer to learn more.
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 The Oxford Fintech Programme gives you the tools you need to build the future of transactions and commerce. In this online fintech programme, you'll explore emerging technologies that will disrupt marketplaces and financial services, and examine the state of the industry and plan disruptive intra- or entre-preneurial interventions. Find out more. |
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| FIGHTBACK BUILDING? Bitcoin is defending $3,500 for the eighth day straight, despite the sharp bearish reversal witnessed on Jan. 10. As a result, a drop to December lows near $3,100 now looks less likely, and a bull move may even be on the cards. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST DELOITTE: Professional services giant Deloitte recently released its 2018 global blockchain survey, offering insight into global enterprises’ attitudes and actions around blockchain technology. The Big Four firm surveyed 1,000 "blockchain-savvy" execs from nine industries and seven countries for the research, finding 74 percent of respondents reported that their organizations see a "compelling business case" for the use of blockchain. About 34 percent said their firm already has some blockchain system in production, while another 41 percent expected a blockchain application would be deployed within the next year. Almost 40 percent of execs said their organization will invest $5 million or more in blockchain technology in the coming year. While 78 percent of respondents feel they would lose competitive advantage if they do not implement blockchain, a third said they believe their return on investment in blockchain technology is “uncertain.” “While blockchain is not quite ready for primetime, it is getting closer to its breakout moment every day,” Deloitte says in the report. “Momentum is shifting from a focus on learning and exploring the potential of the technology to identifying and building practical business applications.” THE REST COMPUTER WORLD: A new public blockchain protocol called Devv was on show at CES in Las Vegas last week that its creators claim handle up to 8 million transactions per second, Computer World reports. Developed by a firm called Devvio, the public network allows third-party developers to create blockchain-as-a-service offerings and uses smart contracts, as well as offering a token called Devcash. Devv is being touted as competition for traditional finance networks due to its scalability, low cost and privacy aspects. The blockchain uses a fee-free consensus mechanism called proof of validation and uses sharding to make it less computationally intensive. An expert quoted in the piece said, however that similar features are already on offer via offerings such as Hyperledger and added that the business world would likely not take to a public blockchain. FORBES: Publicly traded stocks are worth around $300 trillion, and that's not to mention bonds and private stocks. The nascent trend of putting tokenized stocks on blockchains, therefore, has the potential to be a big earner. But how does the tech actually bring benefits, asks Forbes, especially with the space known for its "libertarian ideas about eliminating central banks." The piece, penned by author and educator Devin Thorpe, argues that the key advantage is to make the securities markets more self-regulating. Blockchain-based smart contracts, he writes, can restrict the purchase of securitized tokens to only qualified investors, while compliance with know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering regulations can be built in. As such, the very technology that seems to have “befuddled” securities watchdogs can now actually help them do their job, he says. Over and above that, according to an industry expert cited in the article, blockchain-based stocks could slash costs by automating systems and free up global liquidity as a further boon for the industry. |
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