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BITCOIN RAT: Following in the footsteps of noted luminaries such as pizza rat and flood rat, the latest New York icon is the Bitcoin Rat. Installed on Tuesday in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the familiar protest rat took on a new look covered in lines of code.
Nelson Saiers, the artist and ex-hedge fund manager who created the art installation, hopes to engage people to learn more about both the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, and bitcoin.
Saiers told CoinDesk that he deliberately left the question of whether the Fed or bitcoin is the rat, though he did say that "Warren Buffett called bitcoin 'rat poison squared' but if the Fed's a rat, then maybe rat poison is a good thing." Full Story
MAJORITY NO MORE: Cryptocurrency project Horizen, formerly zencash, claims to have found a solution to deter those who seek to execute a 51 percent attack on a network.
The team at Horizen witnessed such an attack on the zencash network earlier this year. This attack occurs when a single malicious actor controls more than 50 percent of the computing power of a network, and can use that to generate spurious blocks on the chain or rewrite the transaction history entirely.
The solution, according to Horizen, is to introduce a time penalty if a miner wishes to approve a block that is more than 5 blocks behind the current chain, forcing the bad actor to create even more false blocks.
Keeping true to the blockchain ethos of making cheating the chain costly, these penalties will make it exponentially harder to execute a 51 percent attack. Full Story
CONFIDENCE IS KEY: Despite the rough year that Japan-based crypto companies have had with multiple hacks, a senior executive at Coinbase is confident that the U.S.-based platform will receive an operating license next year.
Coinbase's experience in strictly abiding by regulatory standards means Japanese authorities' focus on safety is welcome, said chief policy officer Mike Lempres, who explained that, "the Japanese government is more focused on security. That is good for us."
The challenge that lies ahead for the crypto exchange if it receives the license is how it might duplicate its entire U.S. system in Japan. Full Story |
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EOS appears to be on a bit of a comeback concerning its network activity. After seeing a drastic increase in activity after the launch of its blockchain earlier this summer, it fell into a lull.
Over the past few weeks, however, active addresses have increased to north of 7 million with a very steep slope. In addition, the number of transactions on-chain have increased at a slower rate.
For more research insights check out the CoinDesk Research section here. You can also follow CoinDesk's research analyst Peter Ryan on Twitter for the latest insights. |
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| | GET A MOVE ON: Bitcoin disappoints again, after failing to clear the 10-week exponential moving average of $6,698. The cryptocurrency had brought up hopes of a rally on Monday after clocking a weekly high. However, there has been no directed movement towards either the bears or the bulls yet. Full Story |
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BEST OF THE BEST
BLOOMBERG: Digital Asset Holdings CEO Blythe Masters remarked at a recent London Metal Exchange dinner that blockchain is set to conquer the commodity markets.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Masters stressed the use of decentralized technology in the supply chain process.
She reportedly said that, "blockchain facilitates the exchange of critical trade documents, bills of lading, letters of credit between connected users securely and confidentially," adding that "clearly the indications for metals mining, shipping, storage, and logistics industries are nontrivial."
THE REST
FORTUNE: The crypto community can take solace in the fact that "whales" are likely not actively manipulating the markets, according to a new report.
Chainalysis researched the 32 "biggest whales," finding they hold more than 1 million of the 17 million existing bitcoin, but their impact on the market is small.
According to the study, at least one subgroup of whales – those who made their money in 2017, called "trader whales" – actually prefer to buy bitcoin when the price falls, contrary to popular belief. The piece concludes that the role of whales may be overstated.
GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY: Days after taking its Food Trust program live, IBM is partnering with Intel to launch a blockchain research lab at UC San Diego.
James Short, lead scientist and co-founder of the Center for Large Scale Data Systems at the San Diego Supercomputer Center believes that, "one of the oldest lessons we know of new technology is that the thing introduced is rarely the thing eventually adopted."
As a result, he launched the facility – dubbed BlockLAB – to find how the technology can be used.
MOTHERBOARD: In a humorous turn of events, well-known cryptocurrency skeptic Warren Buffet is (sort of) being identified as the CEO of bitcoin – at least, according to Google.
As Motherboard explained, there is no bitcoin company, meaning there cannot be a CEO, but a basic Google search of "Bitcoin CEO" returns the names of prominent skeptics who have criticized bitcoin.
Jamie Dimon and Ajay Banga are also featured in the list. After being informed, Google stated it is working to fix the issue. |
We've launched our first-ever podcast, "Late Confirmation," a digest of top stories in the blockchain world, delivered daily from the team at CoinDesk. |
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