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Ethereum fees are skyrocketing — But traders have alternatives

March 6, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants Leave a Comment

With the rapid growth of decentralized finance, upcoming scaling developments on Ethereum 2.0, and increased crypto allocation in the portfolios of institutions, the price of Ether (ETH) is rapidly ascending. In fact, we’ve already seen ETH break the $2,000 barrier for the first time, marking a brand-new all-time high. All this action may be bullish for ETH holders and DeFi investors, but for smaller DApp developers and other users on the network — such as traders using ERC-20-based stablecoins — it’s quickly pricing them out.

That’s because the cost of using any stablecoin depends on the blockchain network on which it functions. And, once again, the Ethereum blockchain is finding itself plagued with network congestion and rising fees. On Feb. 23, the average transaction fee on Ethereum soared past $39 for the first time, making transacting with ERC-20 tokens like the Ethereum-based versions of Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) expensive and even prohibitive.

While Eth2 with its transition to proof-of-stake may hold the answers in the long term, traders are currently left frustrated. The good news is that there are alternatives to allow them to avoid price volatility by holding their value in stablecoins — without paying hefty network fees.

Related: DeFi users shouldn’t wait idly for Eth2 to hit its stride

USDT and USDC on the Algorand blockchain

As a public and open-source smart contract blockchain using a PoS consensus algorithm, Algorand provides the scalability and speed that Ethereum is currently lacking. By running USDT and USDC on Algorand, users can transact in their preferred U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin at a fraction of the cost and time.

The technology behind the Algorand blockchain allows for high throughput, meaning more transactions can be processed per second than on other comparable blockchains, such as Ethereum. In fact, Algorand can process more than 1,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s TPS of fewer than 15.

This means that transactions on Algorand are settled almost instantly — in less than five seconds. And, rather than having to endure a hefty $39 average, fees can be as low as $0.001 per transaction — regardless of the transaction size.

Using the Algorand Standard Asset protocol for creating new tokens, developers can launch new ASA tokens to be used in a decentralized application — or use it as a way of transferring existing assets to a faster alternative blockchain.

With a market cap now comfortably above $35 billion, Tether’s USDT is the most popular stablecoin in existence and the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. USDT is currently issued on a number of blockchains, including Bitcoin (Omni protocol), Ethereum (ERC-20 protocol), Tron (TRC-20 protocol) and Algorand (ASA protocol).

Currently, if a trader wants to transfer 100 USDT (ERC-20), it would cost them approximately $3.43 in Ethereum network gas fees. The same transaction using ASA would be 100 times cheaper, making it extremely appealing, especially to high-frequency, high-volume traders.

The continued development of the crypto space

Ethereum, with the largest developer community in the crypto space and by far the highest number of DApps running on it, understands this better than anyone. However, the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 could still be some time away. However, the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 could still be some time away, and we need alternatives to Ethereum and its rising gas fees and network congestion.

Algorand is a technically sound protocol that provides the scalability essential for further crypto adoption and the continued growth of the space. And it’s a major step in the right direction as cryptocurrency gets closer to mainstream adoption.

Healthy competition such as this incentivizes layer-one protocols like Ethereum to intensify the moats around their products and to solve issues related to their scalability, transaction costs and interoperability. And this can only be a good thing for all participants in the network.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Jay Hao is a tech veteran and seasoned industry leader. Prior to OKEx, he focused on blockchain-driven applications for live video streaming and mobile gaming. Before tapping into the blockchain industry, he had already had 21 years of solid experience in the semiconductor industry. He is also a recognized leader with successful experience in product management. As the CEO of OKEx and a firm believer in blockchain technology, Jay foresees that the technology will eliminate transaction barriers, elevate efficiency and eventually make a substantial impact on the global economy.

Ethereum fees are skyrocketing — But traders have alternatives

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Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Adoption, Algorand, article, Better, Bitcoin, blockchain, blockchains, ceo, crypto, cryptocurrency, decentralized, Decentralized Finance, DeFi, developers, Developments, economy, ETH, ether, ethereum, Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum Blockchain, Ethereum network, Fees, finance, Gaming, investment, Mainstream, Market, Mobile, news, Omni, opinions, other, product management, semiconductor, smart contract, Space, stablecoin, Stablecoins, tech, Technology, Tether, Tokens, Trading, TRON, u.s., USDT

The reformed Bitcoin Maxi who saw the light: Erik Voorhees

March 3, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

“We felt like we were doing God’s work,” explains cryptocurrency payments pioneer Erik Voorhees as he recalls trying to convert the unbelievers in the early days of Bitcoin.

The man whose gambling platform SatoshiDice was once responsible for half of all Bitcoin transactions, is now an elder statesman of crypto and the CEO of the ShapeShift exchange.

He remembers Bitcoin being written off as a joke at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas back in 2012. At the time he was working for BitInstant, one of the first Bitcoin exchanges, and they had a booth right next door to PayPal.

“I remember the PayPal people nearby kind of snickering at us. A couple of them had maybe heard of Bitcoin. If they’d even heard about it, it was a total joke — a stupid scam on the internet, or something. It was a totally unproductive conference.”

History has not been kind to the snickerers and scam-sayers, many of whom have since been converted. In 2020, eight years after the conference, Paypal finally joined the fray, enabling users to buy and sell crypto, and it will soon add it as a method of payment at 29 million merchants.

Voorhees spread the gospel of Satoshi at the conference alongside Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver. Shrem was the founder of BitInstant, viewed by some as a martyr to the cause after serving two years in prison on a case related to an exchange user reselling Bitcoin on the darknet marketplace Silk Road. Ver was perhaps the biggest believer of all, earning the nickname ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ for his charismatic promotion of the currency.

“In terms of proselytizing, Roger was the absolute best. He was a total maniac about it” Voorhees recounts with a chuckle.

“Even for Charlie and I, who were very much supportive of the general sentiment, It was pretty overwhelming and just incessant.”

“Everyone that works at a startup feels a little bit like they’re changing the world, that they have this huge mission, and certainly every company tries to amplify that,” he says, being a CEO himself. But for Bitcoiners, Voorhees clarifies, “it is really a ‘change the world’ kind of thing, and to change the world on a fundamental level. It’s to change the institution of money itself — that is a profoundly tall order.”

Vorhees explains that he sees Bitcoin as nothing less than revolutionary:

“It’s not just a better user-interface for the money that people had before. It’s a different type of money that changes government, changes culture, changes social and economic relationships on a very very deep deep level. That’s why it’s taken so long to to catch on, to get recognized, because it is trying to move into such an entrenched institution.”

It’s 2012. @ErikVoorhees @rogerkver and I decided to pool our money together for the first #Money2020 event. We told them we wanted the best booth we could afford, but we needed to be next to the @PayPal booth so we can show the world OUR financial system!

Welcome, Paypal! pic.twitter.com/5BzvQDfvFb

— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) October 21, 2020

Libertarian roots

Now 35, Voorhees spent his early ‘90’s childhood in the mountains of Colorado before moving to the University of Puget Sound near Seattle in 2003. He studied international economics and business but doesn’t really feel like he learnt either.

“In the entire major of economics, though I had courses in the history of economic thought, I never learned about the Austrians,” he says, referring to the Austrian School of economics. Often ignored by mainstream Keynesian economists, Austrians are obsessed with things like hard money and decry unbacked fiat currencies so they have been embraced by gold-bugs and the Bitcoin community, which is after all, often called ‘digital gold’.

A freshly minted graduate in 2008, Voorhees left to pursue adventure in Dubai where “anyone with a college degree could immediately get a job, because they were growing so fast.”

Working as a marketer for a real estate agency, he watched from a distance as the world he thought he knew began to buckle under the weight of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Dubai did not feel its effects until half a year later, he recounts, describing the intervening time as “this very weird period where Dubai was going through this massive economic boom, and the rest of the Western world was falling apart.”

From this desert oasis spared from the global drought, the business and economics graduate “started really understanding money on what I felt was a very fundamental level.” For Voorhees, the story of money is a simple one: “money emerges as the good that is bartered for most frequently.” That used to be gold and is currently fiat money, but it could just as well be something else, if a more useful and efficient money was embraced.

Upon this realization, Voorhees took on a “very strong aversion to fiat currency and to government control of money” because as a believer in a market economy, he felt that no government should control the price or distribution of any goods. “Money was actually the most important good of all, and thus most important to not be centrally planned. And yet it was even in, you know, allegedly capitalist economies,” he says.

“A capitalist economy that has a government-managed money system seemed completely antithetical, but I didn’t have any answers or solutions to that other than some kind of return to the gold standard, which seemed somewhat anachronistic.”

Voorhees returned to Colorado after two years abroad, soon moving to New Hampshire to join The Free State Project, an organized political migration which he describes as “a multi-decade initiative to move 20,000 radical libertarians to one small jurisdiction [New Hampshire] to hopefully have an outsized influence on the political structure.” It was there, in the company of fellow radical libertarian political activists, that Voorhees encountered Bitcoin in 2011.

“At that point I got completely hooked, and a year later ended up leaving New Hampshire and moving to New York to join Charlie Shrem at BitInstant.” There, he took the reins of marketing as employee number three.

It was around that time that Charlie Shrem, Roger Ver, and Erik Voorhees — each of whom would go on to become crypto-luminaries in their own right — pooled their money together to set up a Bitcoin booth at the Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas. “We needed to be next to the PayPal booth so we can show the world OUR financial system,” Shrem recounted. Vorhees says they failed to convert anyone to Bitcoin at the conference despite their best efforts.

Belief in false profits

Vorhees admits he used to be a Bitcoin Maximalist, a believer in the one true coin who rejected all false currencies. “I used to be a maximalist. Obviously when I got into Bitcoin, it was kind of the only coin,” he says.

“As other coins came out I dismissed them, scoffed at them, and generally didn’t like them because I felt like they were a distraction from the important project.”

Though he tried to focus on Satoshi’s vision, the new projects started gnawing at him and he realized that many of them “were doing things that Bitcoin wouldn’t do or couldn’t do.” By mid 2014, his conversion was in full swing.

“My whole mindset began changing. One of the most important things about Bitcoin is that it is decentralised. And it seemed to me antithetical to have a decentralized digital economy where there is only one chain — you know, one code base, one chain, one set of economic rules. It seemed very appropriate that you would get multiple different digital assets, and that was actually part of the decentralization, part of the virtue of Bitcoin was that Bitcoin isn’t the only thing there.”

He tempers this by adding the usual provisos — most tokens are garbage, many are scams, a majority will fail. “It’s only a minority of them that are interesting, but a minority is a lot more than one.”

ETH Folks… try not to become to Binancechain what the Bitcoin Maxis are to Ethereum 🙏

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) February 19, 2021

He still has empathy for his “shortsighted” maximalist peers, who he sees as victims of human nature’s tendency toward tribalism, which expresses itself in lots of ways, “Certainly it expresses itself in religion. And it has expressed itself in crypto, and some portion of people- their mind twists itself into complete advocacy of one flag and complete derision of all others.”

“[It’s] a group psychological phenomena and I don’t know how that stops, but I do think it is really harmful for the growth of decentralized digital finance generally.”

Gambling with Satoshi’s dice

Only a year after learning about Bitcoin, Voorhees launched Bitcoin-based gambling site SatoshiDice in 2012, which took the young crypto community by storm.

“On Reddit, this guy posted that he had created this casino-like mechanism where there’d be this dice roll, and based on the dice roll, a user would either get their coins sent back or lose them. I tried it, and there was magic in it immediately […] So I started working with him.”

This was groundbreaking because “it allowed any person in the world to place a bet by sending a Bitcoin transaction” no matter where they were from or how their local laws governed online gambling.

What’s more, the player did not need to trust SatoshiDice, because “it was provably fair,” meaning that it worked like a transparent machine where all odds and inner workings were open for anyone to inspect. Governments around the world have various commissions to regulate and audit gambling operations, but SatoshiDice’s function potentially made such organizations obsolete, powerless, or both.

“SatoshiDice showed you what the odds were. It was transparent with the odds, and you could prove that the rules were fair.”

The simple, trusted, and permissionless nature of SatoshiDice brought huge success to the platform. Within months of launch, the game was responsible for as much as half of all Bitcoin transactions.

SatoshiDice had an unofficial IPO on the MPEx exchange, a sort of Bitcoin stock market where unregistered Bitcoin companies offered shares and paid dividends denominated in BTC. These were the forerunner of the ICO boom several years later, and attracted similar attention from authorities for breaking securities laws.

Though the casino was “making a tonne of money,” it was also overwhelming as Voorhees felt his job of “running the world’s biggest Bitcoin casino” was distracting him from his greater calling of preaching the good word of Satoshi. Despite ongoing growth, he reluctantly sold the business in 2013 for 126,315 BTC which was then worth $12 million. That would be a cool $6.25 billion today.

Fighting the system

Voorhees did not enjoy calm for long, as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) soon came after him for making a public offering of unregistered securities. Voorhees considered this unfair, seeing that his investors had made exponential returns. He ended up settling for $50,000.

“That was nine months of total misery, dealing with them. If I didn’t despise the government before, I certainly did it after that. It was such bullshit.”

A core value of his is that people should be free to transact with each other voluntarily, and that no government agency has the right to come in between them. In his worldview, “institutions and government exist purely to curtail people’s power over money,” whereas “crypto gives people total economic power to make transactions in any way they wish, and no one can stop it.” As Voorhees sees it, these two forces will inevitably clash.

Voorhees’ company Shapeshift allows users to trade cryptocurrencies without identity verification. Things were not always that way — in 2018 Voorhees says his company fell under the same rules as traditional banks and therefore had to implement Know Your Customer, or KYC, identity verification procedures, making anonymous transactions impossible. “That was absolutely miserable. Our customers hated it. I hated it.”

But by 2020, decentralized exchanges (DEX’s) which allow users to trade without depositing their funds with a third party were gaining ground and made it possible for Shapeshift to reorient its business and re-align with its libertarian values. All KYC was abandoned, and the platform became a gateway for users to trade on various DEX’s. “I had learned with Satoshi Dice that an economic relationship didn’t need anything other than a public key to send in a transaction, and anything else could be based around that,” he says.

Voorhees says that his opposition to KYC is not down to ideology but his desire to protect users against things like identity theft.

“Identity theft in the US alone is something like a $30B to $40 billion a year problem. It is more costly than all forms of property theft combined. It’s this massive thing, and crypto comes along and solves that problem.”
But how committed is he to this principle? Would he class it as theft if a government accessed user data to tax a client’s unreported financial transactions. “Yeah, exactly. Taxation is absolutely theft,” he responds with blunt matter-of-factness.

The WSJ investigates

ShapeShift’s ethos has proven controversial among adherents to the rules and regulations around traditional finance. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal alleged Shapeshift users had laundered $9 million via the platform. However a third-party analysis by blockchain intelligence firm CipherBlade suggested the investigation was flawed in assuming that funds were illicit even after passing through four different hands, causing the $9 million figure to be inflated by a factor of four. It is clear that Voorhees, who is normally calm and composed, was deeply affected by this.

“Here’s The Wall Street Journal coming after us, calling us the money launderer, when their own inflated number would put us as far better [at combating money laundering] than any of the major banks that they write about all the time.”

There’s a noticeable quaver in his voice. The battle is personal.

We spend the last minutes comparing attitudes toward money in different societies. In the Nordic countries for example, all taxes are a matter of public record. Voorhees finds this disturbing, adding that “a lot of people with money feel guilty about it” whereas creating wealth in an ethical way he believes is a good thing for society.

“I would like to see people who become very wealthy, first of all be proud of that, so long as they did it in an ethical way, and to use those resources in whatever way they think is best. I think that’s how that’s how economies grow and I think there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The reformed Bitcoin Maxi who saw the light: Erik Voorhees

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Enterprise meets DeFi: Organizations work toward adopting blockchain tech

March 2, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Decentralized finance is quickly maturing. While the total value locked in DeFi is over $45 billion, financial institutions and large corporations are starting to implement DeFi concepts to automate business processes. This is known as “enterprise DeFi.”

For instance, invoices and other financial products can be tokenized to ensure that transactions are valid and should be processed for payment across multiple parties. Coke One North America is one of the first large corporations to demonstrate this.

CONA is leveraging the Baseline Protocol — a project that coordinates confidential workflows between enterprises using messaging, zero-knowledge cryptography and blockchain — to tokenize invoices. CONA aims to “baseline” its entire supply chain by giving internal bottlers and external suppliers access to a private, distributed integration network.

Through use cases like CONA, such solutions are quickly gaining traction. There are also a number of vendors entering this infrastructure market including Provide, an enterprise middleware provider, and Big Four firm Ernst & Young. Most recently, ConsenSys — one of the leading blockchain software companies — announced plans to use Baseline Protocol as a solution for its enterprise clients, further demonstrating the importance of enterprise DeFi adoption.

How ConsenSys plans to drive enterprise DeFi

Specifically, ConsenSys Codefi — ConsenSys’ fintech suite that connects financial use cases to blockchain counterparts — will soon offer a baseline-compliant solution for its enterprise clients.

Didier Le Floch, institutional products and engineering lead at ConsenSys Codefi, told Cointelegraph that while the Baseline Protocol was developed by EY, ConsenSys and Microsoft, Codefi has been taking steps to ensure that its products will eventually be fully compatible with it:

“We want to enable the use of digital assets and the financing of those assets for payment use cases. These use cases will generate maximum business value, combining automation of business processes and payments using things like stablecoins, for example.”

In order to achieve this, Floch explained that the Codefi tech stack will be combined with the Baseline Protocol to deliver an effortless user experience for cases such as financing supply chains. Floch remarked that this is a first step in the right direction, as Codefi strongly believes that the enterprise sector will soon converge with the DeFi market: “There will be ebbs and flows, and it will be a journey with various steps, but we’ve already seen the promise of this convergence in the DeFi market.”

To his point, MakerDAO — the protocol behind the stablecoin Dai — announced support in June 2020 to use non-crypto-native assets, such as invoices and music streaming royalties, as collateral for its Dai stablecoin. Maker also voted to support a protocol from blockchain startup Centrifuge to bring real-world assets on its platform. Known as “Centrifuge Chain,” this is built on Parity’s blockchain development framework, Substrate.

Asset originators can use the Centrifuge Chain to mint nonfungible tokens of real-world assets, converting them to ERC-721 tokens. These assets can then be added to Tinlake, which is Centrifuge’s Ethereum-based DeFi protocol for decentralized asset financing.

A Centrifuge spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the company is currently working with MakerDAO to bring New Silver, an online real-estate lender, on to the Maker platform as an asset originator. As such, NewSilver would be the first asset originator using Tinlake to get to the MakerDAO executive vote, ultimately allowing asset originators to generate Dai as a credit facility.

DeFi protocol Aave also introduced a diversified money market to support real-world assets back in October 2020. According to the Aave blog post, this money market would make it easy for the Aave community to onboard real-world assets into the protocol, allowing investors to lend against assets, such as invoices, real estate and inventory finance. “Right now, it’s at a small scale, but there are DeFi lending protocols already taking steps to incorporate real-world assets into their protocols,” said Floch.

Breaking down barriers hampering adoption

Many enterprise DeFi concepts are still in early development, as a number of barriers exist. For instance, there are concerns regarding publicly available sources to determine the price of collateralized assets. Furthermore, many DeFi protocols venturing into the enterprise space only allow solutions for borrowing in crypto, which may be unappealing to mainstream organizations. Moreover, paying transaction fees in cryptocurrency may also be problematic for enterprises that typically deal in fiat payments.

Floch explained that Codefi’s use of Baseline Protocol is intended to address these concerns. For example, he noted that there will be an “Infura ITX” integration that will enable corporations to pay gas fees in dollars rather than Ether (ETH) when using the Baseline Protocol. Since the platform leverages the Ethereum network as its mainnet of choice, or as a common frame of reference for complex workflows, this integration will ensure a better user experience overall.

In addition, Floch mentioned that ConsenSys’ open-source zero-knowledge proof library, known as “gnark,” will be leveraged to ensure enterprise data remains private, yet verifiable.

While notable, Codefi’s implementation of the Baseline Protocol isn’t the only solution intended to solve the challenges related to enterprise DeFi adoption.

For example, EY has been heavily involved in the blockchain space, specifically in terms of enterprise DeFi development. Paul Brody, global blockchain lead at EY, told Cointelegraph that the firm has been working on DeFi enabling solutions since 2016, with the goal of making the inputs and outputs of enterprise business processes tokenized and then transactable:

“This means purchase orders, invoices, receivables, inventory — everything in traditional business-to-business processes should be ready to integrate into a DeFi ecosystem.”

Of course, Brody is aware of the challenges regarding this vision, noting that the first element to be tackled is achieving an acceptable level of privacy for enterprise users. Once this is accomplished, Brody explained that necessary standards need to be established where bodies, such as the Enterprise Ethereum Association, can be key partners in the pursuit of these goals.

Brody further mentioned that as an industry auditor, EY will not be offering financial services involving DeFi. Rather, the firm is devoted to ensuring that enterprise clients will be able to plug their business operations into existing DeFi solutions. For example, Brody explained that EY’s Network Procurement solution is designed to manage purchase orders and fulfillment, which would allow enterprises to exchange tokens for purchase orders, contracts, invoices and inventory transfers. “As soon as we see standards we can leverage, we hope that our enterprise users will be able to take advantage of these markets,” said Brody.

Institutions show interest in DeFi?

In addition to a growing number of enterprise DeFi solutions in development, there is now interest in DeFi from large organizations and financial institutions. This was recently demonstrated by the leading digital currency asset manager, Grayscale. On Feb. 26, 2021, the firm announced consideration to offer investors access to DeFi assets, including Aave, Compound’s COMP, MakerDAO’s MKR, Reserve Rights (RSR), SushiSwap’s SUSHI, Synthetix Network Token (SNX), Uniswap’s UNI and Yearn.finance’s YFI.

Although this is separate from enterprises using DeFi protocols to find real-world assets, Floch noted that this demonstrates more institutional players are ready to invest in prominent DeFi protocols:

“For institutional customers of Grayscale to start investing in those tokens is definitely a sign that they’re getting more comfortable with Defi, while understanding the value of those protocols (asset management, collateralized lending and trading automated in smart contracts).”

Enterprise meets DeFi: Organizations work toward adopting blockchain tech

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Google Finance Adds Dedicated Data Tab on Bitcoin and Ether

March 1, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Google has finally hopped on the crypto bandwagon. With the crypto industry now worth a mouth-watering $1 trillion, it can no longer be disregarded.

Google Adds ‘Crypto’ Tab To Feed

With many institutions coming into the crypto space in the last year, and many more projected to make a move soon, Google is making the crypto transition, as many had expected.

Through its Google Finance domain, the American tech company will enable its Google Finance users to get up-to-date price movements for their favorite cryptocurrencies. The domain platform, which originally catered for stock and currency markets, will see ‘crypto’ debut in its “compare markets” finance segment.

The new addition will let users know the latest price changes for popular virtual assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.

Google had taken a stand-offish approach to the emerging blockchain technology previously. During the early years of cryptocurrencies gaining steam, the Alphabet subsidiary had banned crypto adverts on its platform. It went as far as bringing down videos on its Youtube platform that discussed cryptocurrencies.

But in a 2018 Blockchain Summit in Morocco, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Alphabet Inc., noted that the company had clearly missed it when it came to the nascent technology. Rumors are now making the rounds that the company is quietly acquiring crypto startups and investing in established crypto businesses. Ripple Labs’ is also mentioned as one of its crypto partners.

Crypto Now Gaining Global Attention

Bitcoin has played a vital role in cryptocurrencies reaching the enviable heights it is now on. With the premier digital asset owning a large share of the $1.6 trillion crypto market, global institutions and tech companies have found it hard to ignore it. 

MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm based in Virginia, United States, has been beating the crypto drums for some time now. With its remarkable investments in BTC, it now holds a sizable share of BTC available in the ecosystem.

Electric car company Tesla Inc. also moved into the crypto space with an initial $1.5 billion investment in BTC. It is also looking to use the virtual asset as a payment solution, just like Mastercard and Visa plan to do.

The increased demand is making global financial regulators jittery as the sector is largely decentralized. TUS Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Peirce have called for a dynamic regulatory framework. Peirce says this will better aid the development of the nascent technology and reduce its potential for misuse.

Google Finance Adds Dedicated Data Tab on Bitcoin and Ether

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Some Common Myths About Blockchain

March 1, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Some-Common-Myths-About-Blockchain

This article talks about some of the most common myths and misconceptions related to Blockchain technology, which will help you in gaining an in-depth understanding of the technology.

Curious? So, let’s get started!

Table of Contents 

  • Overview 
  • Most Common Blockchain Myths You Should Know 
  • The Verdict 

Overview

If you want to gain an in-depth understanding of Blockchain, it is essential to ward off all the doubts regarding it. Despite being a matured technology and its promising adoption rates and favourable feedback, Blockchain is still relatively new, and there are many misconceptions surrounding this technology. It is important to note that a lot of ‘facts’ you hear are not actually facts, rather misinformed statements or conjectures.

In this article, we will debunk a few common misconceptions about Blockchain technology in order to help you gather a more thorough understanding of the technology.

Most Common Blockchain Myths You Should Know 

Here is a list of the most common myths and misconceptions related to Blockchain technology.

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are Same 

The majority of the crowd still believes that Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies mean the same thing, and therefore they use these terms interchangeably. One of the reasons for this myth is because of the fact that they both became famous around the same time. To distinguish both these terms, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are digital assets used as a medium of exchange. In fact, you can say that cryptocurrency is one of the applications of Blockchain. Here it is important to note that not all cryptocurrencies use Blockchain. IOTA is one such exceptional case.

Blockchain is basically a decentralized distributed ledger technology that stores records of transactions, maintained throughout different computers linked to each other through a P2P network. 

All Blockchain are Public Blockchains

The majority of people assume that all Blockchains are public. But as a matter of fact, public blockchains are not the only type of Blockchain. There are various kinds, such as private and federated. The different types of Blockchain have their own applications, and there are various other modifications and differences. For example, public ones are permissionless, non-restrictive, distributed ledger systems, which means anyone who is connected to the internet can join and become a part of it. In contrast, a private Blockchain is a permissioned and restrictive one that operates in a closed network. Such Blockchain is generally used within an organization where only particular members are participants of a network. Federated blockchain, on the other hand, is best suited for organizations where there is a need for both types of blockchains, i.e., public and private, and offers better customizability and control over resources.

Technology Only Targets Finance Industry

There is a strong misconception surrounding Blockchain, and that is it focuses only on the finance domain. This assumption would have been true a decade ago, but at present, technology is being progressively used across various industries such as supply chain, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, digital marketing, cybersecurity, and many others. Additionally, government institutions are another crucial field that has been significantly impacted by Blockchain. Governments all across the globe are adopting and implementing technology to provide cybersecurity, process optimization, and integrate hyperconnected services without compromising trust and accountability.

Blockchain is a Database

Another misconception related to distributed ledger technology is that it is a database. Although Blockchain can be considered as a form of database, a database is undoubtedly not a blockchain for sure. Blockchain store records and transactions within blocks which are visible to everyone. Databases are centralized collections of data stored in the form of tables. Few compare Blockchain with cloud databases, but it is important to understand that cloud databases store digital files in formats such as word documents; Blockchain, on the other hand, store records with a Proof of Existence. 

Free and Highly Accessible 

There is no reason to believe that Blockchain is free. There is no point in having a technology that performs such massive mathematical functions and implements algorithms without any cost. Blockchain charges a fee, a cryptocurrency transaction fee, to users when performing transactions. Thus nothing comes without a cost. You have to pay the blockchain fee to ensure your cryptocurrency transfers arrive on time.

And when it comes to accessibility, Blockchain developers are still working on Blockchain’s scalability, which is one of the major concerns associated with the technology. 

The Verdict

From just being a buzzword to now being a major player, Blockchain has made a lot of efforts in a few years. At present various huge corporations such as Facebook, JP Morgan, among others, are showing their interest, which means technology is here to stay. As we have uncovered the most common myths that exist, you must have gained a clear understanding of Blockchain and its functionalities.

If you want to start your Blockchain Journey, we are here to assist you. Check out Blockchain Council now!

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online Blockchain Certifications, check out Blockchain Council. 

Some Common Myths About Blockchain

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Filed Under: blockchain, blockchain technology Tagged With: Adoption, article, Better, Bitcoin, blockchain, blockchain council, blockchain-technology, blockchains, cloud, Cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, data, database, databases, decentralized, developers, Digital, exchange, facebook, finance, government, healthcare, Internet, JP Morgan, Ledger, Logistics, manufacturing, marketing, other, p2p, supply chain, Tables, Technology

Transparent stablecoins? Conclusion of Tether vs. NYAG raises new questions

February 28, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

A long-standing legal drama finally found resolution on Feb. 23, with the New York Attorney General’s office announcing that it had come to a settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex after a 22-month inquiry into whether the company had been trying to cover up its losses — touted to be worth $850 million — by misrepresenting the degree to which its Tether (USDT) reserves were backed by fiat collateral.

According to the terms of the announced settlement, which now marks an end to the inquiry that was initiated by the NYAG back in Q1 2019, Bitfinex and Tether will pay the government body a fixed sum of $18.5 million but will not be required to admit to any wrongdoing. That being said, the settlement clearly states that henceforth, Bitfinex and Tether can no longer service customers in the state of New York.

Furthermore, over the course of the next 24 months, Bitfinex and Tether will be required to provide the NYAG with quarterly reports of their current reserve status and duly account for any transactions taking place between the two companies. Not only that, but the firms will also be required to provide public reports for the specific composition of their cash and non-cash reserves.

On the subject, NY Attorney General Letitia James said that both Bitfinex and Tether had covered up their losses and deceived their customers by overstating their reserves. When asked about this most recent development, Stuart Hoegner, general counsel at Tether, replied to Cointelegraph with a non-committal answer, stating:

“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of legal proceedings with the New York Attorney General’s Office and to have put this matter behind us. We look forward to continuing to lead our industry and serve our customers.”

Does a New York exclusive ban even make sense?

To gain a better legal perspective of the situation, Cointelegraph spoke with Josh Lawler, partner at Zuber Lawler — a law firm with expertise in crypto and blockchain technology. In his view, the lawsuit, and particularly the nature of the settlement in which Tether and Bitfinex agreed to cease actions, underscore the confusion inherent in the regulation of digital assets in the United States.

Additionally, the agreement by Bitfinex and Tether to prohibit the use of its products and services by New York persons and entities seems on paper to be nearly impossible to accomplish, with Lawler opining:

“Are they saying that no one with a New York nexus can own or trade Tether? Tether is traded on virtually every cryptocurrency exchange in existence. Even if Tether could restrict the use of Tether tokens by New Yorkers, is that really a good idea? Do we now have a world in which every state can pick off particular distributed ledger projects from functioning within their jurisdiction?”

Lastly, even though the deal between Bitfinex/Tether and the NYAG has come in the form of a settlement — i.e., it is not subject to an appeal or federal scrutiny under the commerce clause — state-centric bans may further add to the existing regulatory uncertainty.

Added transparency is always a good thing

With regulators now asking Tether and Bitfinex to be more forthcoming about their monetary dealings and issuing an arguably small fine on them, it seems as though an increasing number of firms dealing with USDT will now have to pull up their socks and get their account books in order. Joel Edgerton, chief operating officer for cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer USA, told Cointelegraph:

“The key point in this settlement is not the elimination of the lawsuit, but the increased commitment to transparency. The risk from USDT still exists, but increased transparency should cement its lead in transaction volumes.”

In a somewhat similar vein, Tim Byun, global government relations officer at OK Group — the parent company behind cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin — believes that the settlement can be looked at as a win-win scenario not only for NY OAG and Tether/Bitfinex but also for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, alluding to the fact that that the 17-page settlement revealed no mention of Bitcoin (BTC) being manipulated via the use of USDT.

Lastly, Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive officer for cryptocurrency exchange FTX, also believes that the settlement, by and large, has been a good development for the industry, especially from a transparency perspective, adding:

“Like many settlements, this one had a messy outcome, but the high-level takeaway here is that they found no evidence to support the heaviest accusations against Tether — no evidence of market manipulation or unbounded unbacked printing.”

Will scrutiny of stablecoins increase?

Even though stablecoins have been under the regulatory scanner for some time now — since they claimed to be pegged to various fiat assets in a 1-1 ratio — it stands to reason that added pressure from government agencies may be present when it comes to the transparency side of things from here on out.

Another line of thinking may be that governments all over the world will now look to curtail the use of stablecoins, such as USDT, especially as a number of central banks are coming around to the idea of creating their very own fiat-backed digital currencies. As a result, governments may want to push their citizens to use their centralized offerings instead of stablecoins.

Related: Many pieces of the Diem puzzle still missing as launch gets delayed

On the subject, Byun noted: “Stablecoin is just one type of cryptocurrency or ‘convertible virtual currency,’ and therefore, stablecoins and the stablecoin market will continue to attract scrutiny and mandated examinations from regulators.” That said, Byun believes that whether it’s Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) or Tether, crypto investors generally understand that investing in crypto remains a high-risk activity and that they “must practice caveat emptor” at all times.

Does Tether impact institutional adoption?

Another pertinent question worth exploring is whether or not the settlement may have an adverse impact on the institutional investment currently coming into this space. In Lawler’s opinion, the decision is not going to slow down adoption even in the slightest. “Institutions are not principally focused on Tether. There are other stable coins, and Bitfinex is all but irrelevant to them,” he added.

Similarly, it could even happen that the ongoing reporting requirements set by the NYAG for Bitfinex and Tether may end up bolstering institutional confidence in Tether — a sentiment that some of Tether’s most vocal and consistent critics also seem to agree with.

That being said, a lot of speculation around Tether’s fiat reserves continues to linger on; for example, Tether Ltd.’s finances are handled by Bahamas-based Deltec bank. In this regard, one anonymous report claimed that “from January 2020 to September 2020, the amount of all foreign currencies held by all domestic banks in the Bahamas increased by only $600 million,” up to $5.3 billion. Meanwhile, the total volume of issued USDT soared by a whopping $5.4 billion, up to around $10 billion.

As Tether states on its website USDT is covered by fiat and other assets, so such investigations cannot be conclusive. However, what both NYAG and the anonymous authors of the report agree upon is that Tether needs to be more forthcoming about its financial status. With that in mind, Tether’s commitment toward transparency and revealing its reserves to a regulator seems like a step in the right direction.

Transparent stablecoins? Conclusion of Tether vs. NYAG raises new questions

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Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Adoption, Bank, Banks, Better, Bitcoin, Bitfinex, blockchain, Books, Cash, chief, chief executive officer, Companies, crypto, cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency exchange, Currencies, Currency, Digital, ether, exchange, executive, fiat, government, Investing, investment, Law, lawsuit, Ledger, LINE, Market, New York, opinion, other, partner, printing, Regulation, Space, stablecoin, Stablecoins, Technology, Tether, Tokens, United States, us, USA, USDT, view, world

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