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STRANDED: How to get firms to work together as a team, when one of those rivals owns the team? That's a problem faced by shipping giant Maersk and tech provider IBM with their blockchain platform for supply chains, TradeLens.
Since launch around 10 months ago, while it's had plenty of success drawing other types of companies, the project has enticed only one other carrier onto the platform. And the firms admit, that's not enough.
Marvin Erdly, head of TradeLens at IBM Blockchain, told CoinDesk: "I won't mince words here – we do need to get the other carriers on the platform. Without that network, we don't have a product."
The firms hope new governance solutions could make a difference and say work is ongoing to promote equality on the platform. But will that be enough? Full story
FASTER, LIGHTER: Zcash’s upcoming Sapling hard fork is expected to improve the privacy token’s transaction time and size significantly by reducing the weight of its shielded transactions. The hard fork's activation is planned for October 29.
Among the technical changes in Sapling: a change to the protocol responsible for shielded transactions, which gives zcash its unique privacy focus, by allowing transfers to occur with roughly 100 times less memory.
This, in turn, will likely speed transactions up by a factor of six, and may even allow users to transfer funds directly from mobile wallets – a feature not presently available. Full story
BITCOIN PEG: A new project is launching yet another stablecoin – only this ethereum-based token is pegged to bitcoin, not a fiat currency.
Called Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), the project – slated for a January launch – is the result of a joint effort by BitGo, Kyber Network and Republic Protocol, and aims to let users leverage the ethereum network to develop new applications for the bitcoin protocol.
It combines bitcoin’s liquidity and ethereum’s smart contract ecosystem to let developers create such applications, which could range from faster payments to loans, Kyber Network CEO and co-founder Loi Luu told CoinDesk. Full story |
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 CoinDesk Research tracks many different metrics in the crypto economy. Network interest is important in determining the activity occurring on actual blockchains. We observed miner revenue sourced from coinmetrics.io for cryptocurrencies that incorporate mining for Thursday, Oct. 24. The mining process involves compiling recent transactions into blocks and trying to solve a computationally difficult puzzle for a reward. Mining revenue is the total global revenue earned by blockchain miners per day, and is the combination of rewards earned from mining and fees charged. BTC has the highest mining revenue at $9.26 million, followed by ETH at $4.26 million and ZEC at $860,000. While BTC and ETH's rankings resemble their market cap rankings, ZEC comes up third in mining revenue while being ranked 19th by market cap. There was a general negative trend in month-on-month growth, ranging from -26 percent to -6 percent across most of the cryptos. Only BTG, a lesser known bitcoin fork, entered positive territory, with 20 percent growth. It's important to note that total mining revenue might not adequately convey the diversity of mining systems, difficulty of mining and number of miners relative to market cap. Also, other cryptocurrencies are being developed to diminish and eliminate the conventional role of miners. This measure should be used to judge the merits of cryptocurrencies operating within proof-of-work mining parameters. For more research insights, check out the CoinDesk Research section here and follow the author of this Blast, @_peterryan, on Twitter. |
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Consensus: Invest Keynotes |
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|  Jay Clayton Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission |
|  Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz |
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| WAIT AND SEE? The bitcoin market remains listless, with daily volatility reading below $100 for the eighth straight day. This marks its longest period of low-volatility since early May 2017, when the daily trading range averaged about $33 – meaning a $100 daily volatility reading was normal. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST FORBES: While most argue blockchain’s “killer app” is likely to be found in finance and in the guise of a cryptocurrency, perhaps the truth lies elsewhere, suggests Forbes. While the technology is also seeing pickup in areas such as supply chain management and e-voting, mass adoption has been elusive. So, the piece asks, could gaming be the breakthrough area that takes blockchain to the masses? Gaming is already similar to blockchain, the author argues – it’s new, global, growing rapidly and has lots of future potential. Plus it’s largely run by young, tech-savvy people who are more likely to understand blockchain. THE REST ZDNET: The Australian Securities Exchange has moved the roll-out of a blockchain-based system to replace its 25-year-old CHESS securities settlement platform to 2021. According to ZDNet, ASX executive Cliff Richards announced the pushed-back integration date (it was previously set to launch in 2020) at the Sibos banking conference Thursday. He also spoke about how the exchange decided on the new system’s technological development, what the envisioned blockchain platform (built with tech from Digital Asset) will look like, and what it means for participants in the current system when the actual switch occurs. CNBC: If you had invested $1,000 in bitcoin five years ago, how much would you have now? That’s the question answered in a short piece by CNBC, that (citing CoinDesk) says that if you’d bought 1 BTC when its price was around $1,000 in December 2013, the value of your investment would be about $6,400 today (excluding fees and other costs) – yielding over $5,000 in profit. So despite the downturn from December 2017 highs around $20,000, it's proven a good investment for those who got in early. |
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