The New York Times thinks a blockchain could help stamp out fake news. The technology is at the core of a new research project the newspaper has launched, aimed at making "the origins of journalistic content clearer to [its] audience." The Times has launched what it calls The News Provenance Project, which will experiment with ways to combat misinformation in the news media. The first project will focus on using a blockchain—specifically a platform designed by IBM—to prove that photos are authentic.
Rumors and speculation swirled in March, after CoinDesk reported that the New York Times was looking for someone to help it develop a "blockchain-based proof-of-concept for news publishers." Though the newspaper removed the job posting after the article came out, apparently it was serious. In a new blog post, project lead Sasha Koren explains that by using a blockchain, "we might in theory provide audiences with a way to determine the source of a photo, or whether it had been edited after it was published."
Using a blockchain to prove the authenticity of journalistic content has long been considered a potential application of the technology, but attempts to do it so far haven't gotten much traction. If the New York Times can get develop a compelling application, it has enough influence to change that.
India might ban cryptocurrency and give users jail time. A government panel's recommendation is only the latest in a series of developments suggesting that India will not be a friendly place for the technology—at least private versions of it.
This week, a panel the government created to study cryptocurrency released its report, which expressed "serious concern" over the "mushrooming of cryptocurrencies almost invariably issued abroad and numerous people in India investing in the cryptocurrencies." The panel called for a ban on private cryptocurrencies, and said those who use cryptocurrencies should face fines and up to 10 years in jail.
India has one of the world's largest populations of citizens who don't have bank accounts. Enthusiasts would say that these are people who could benefit from blockchain-based money and financial services. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has repeatedly made it clear that while it is enthused about blockchain technology, it is no fan of cryptocurrency, at least in its current form. In 2017, after coin prices surged and sparked a wave of global interest, another panel recommended choking out the trading platforms in the country, according to Quartz. The government never fully implemented that proposal, instead setting up another panel to do further analysis. That's the group that has just published its much-anticipated recommendations.
The critical government panel's problem isn't with cryptocurrency generally, but with "non-sovereign" currencies specifically, which it called "inconsistent with the essential functions of money/currency." Hence the conclusion that "all private cryptocurrencies, except any cryptocurrency issued by the State, be banned in India." No final decision has been made, but it seems unlikely that India will be a welcoming place for entrepreneurial cryptocurrency development any time soon.
What if private currencies actually start competing with government ones? It turns out we've seen a scenario like that before, and it was chaotic. In the 1830s, 90 percent of US money came in the form of private banknotes. People didn't like this system, says James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Bullard, one of 12 regional presidents who run central bank branches across the country, said at an academic conference for central bankers in New York last week that the rise of cryptocurrencies is causing a "drift" toward a system of "non-uniform currencies."
Having looked into the topic as a researcher himself, he predicted that people aren't going to be happy with it, because competition between currencies tends to introduce volatility into the system. Back in the 1830s, that meant the notes didn't trade one-for-one, often for reasons that were tough to pin down. Today, we can see this "exchange rate chaos" in foreign currency exchange marketplace, he said. And attempts by nations to peg the value of their currency to that of another—an approach Bullard said is essentially the idea behind stablecoins—have often failed. Might there be a lesson there for Facebook and Libra? Read more here.
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Loose Change
Fill your pockets with these newsy tidbits.
- A coalition of consumer advocacy groups has sent an open letter to the members of the Libra Association asking them to leave the project. (CoinDesk)
- The CertiK Foundation, a smart contract auditing firm, is launching a new blockchain it hopes will be "the security infrastructure to all other blockchains." (The Block)
- South Koreans have lost around $2.8 billion in cryptocurrency-related frauds since July 2017, according to a new government estimate. (Finance Magnates)
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Norwegian Air, a leading budget airline in Europe, will now let people buy tickets using Bitcoin, and is opening its own cryptocurrency exchange. (Decrypt)
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US financial regulators are investigating whether the popular cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX illegally allowed Americans to trade on the platform. (Bloomberg)
