Malta has recently earned the name “Blockchain Island”, being the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt blockchain regulations - three in fact. And, the Mediterranean island has already attracted the two largest crypto exchanges, Binance and OKEx, and most recently ZBX, now opening offices in the rising crypto hub.
Brooklyn-based goTenna has launched TxTenna, a mobile app that allows users to send bitcoin without an internet connection. Built in partnership with Samourai Wallet, the mobile app will enable users to send bitcoin using a secure and private network free of censorship.
Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet will in future offer Bitcoin transactions without the internet thanks to a partnership with mesh network goTenna.
The study by Critical Future firm entitled “The Future of the Blockchain Market” also states that it will disrupt “44 different industries and eight out of ten business professionals are confident blockchain is about to move to the mainstream”.
What comes after Google and other now-monolithic internet services? One answer could be in the so-called “decentralized internet”. A loose grouping of services and protocols, its aim is to redistribute online power to users and provide the possibility for collectivized ownership and censorship resistance. Though still in the early stages of its development, the ideas being developed in this direction could change the way we experience the internet in a way similar to the jump from web 1.0 to 2.0.
Matt Liu, Josh Fraser and former PayPal head Yu Pan want to bring the blockchain to the sharing economy. The trio is devising a platform with an emphasis on inclusive, peer-to-peer service hubs designed to decentralize the same consumer cost-friendly business models that have made companies like Airbnb, Uber and Lyft so popular in recent years.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, is testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the moderation of online content. He is expected to face accusations that Twitter demonstrates political bias.
The total amount raised in the second quarter of 2018 is: $8.4 billion dollars. That doesn’t sound like a dead market to me. It’s true that half the new ICOs in the second quarter were unable to raise more than $100K in funding. But this suggests a downgrade in the quality of listings. That is no surprise to anyone who has watched this sector over several years. A market with virtually no barriers to entry for upstarts is going to attract...well, just about anyone.
Attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia asked a federal court to reinstate net neutrality, saying the Federal Communications Commission failed to properly consider the issues when removing the policy in 2017.
Despite China's ban on crypto trading, there is a ravenous appetite for crypto wealth — traders have simply started placing their bets in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. The regulatory crackdowns have done little to stifle the hundreds of scam crypto projects in China (many of them deployed overseas), while newly minted bitcoin millionaires — mostly male with no education or merits necessary — abound.
Fundamentally the homeland-as-a-service model implies it is ok to ask what your country can do for you — countries will have to begin to compete for the most qualified citizens by delivering better services and such advantages as a strong economy, a fair legal system, and robust social welfare programs. If the services are not competitive, people can shop around for alternatives. Blockchain is critical for this model to come to life, because distributed trust replaces the centralized authoritarian controls systems used by governments.
The proof of work protocol in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies allows users to verify transactions and establish trustless and distributed consensus, meaning users do not have to rely on a third party like Visa, PayPal, or banks to legitimize a transaction. Instead, the transactions are distributed, auditable and verified through miners’ work in creating and maintaining new blocks. For their efforts, miners are rewarded through the issuance of new coins in the network.
The word "gaslighting" has its origins in the in Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play "Gas Light", in which a woman is slowly driven insane by her husband who systematically lied to her about whether their gas light was dimming. By allowing abusers remote access to their victims appliances, doorbells, and yes, lights, the internet of things brings gaslighting full circle.
Jaron Lanier was at Pioneerworks in Red Hook, Brooklyn last night, playing unusual instruments and discussing his newest book "10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Account Right Now." Lanier, the computer scientist and polymath writer whom many consider to be "the father of VR" argues in the book that the incentives and protocols of social media are making people sadder, more fractious, and less able to survive the challenges confronting our species in the immediate future.
The world's most popular cryptocurrency dropped $500 in value on Sunday, June 10, when Coinrail confirmed a hack had taken place on their exchange. Bitcoin is currently valued at $6,720 at the time of this post, down from a high of $19,738 in December. Other cryptocurrencies also took a hit as a result of the hack.
Torrenting and other P2P file-sharing technologies represent a serious threat to the business models of legal distribution, or at least that's the conventional wisdom. But a study released by UK researchers indicates that this narrative may not hold water. 83 percent of torrenters reported that they tried to find content through legal means before deciding to pirate, and more torrenters subscribe to legal streaming services like Netflix than the general (non-torrenting) population.
GitHub, the hugely popular code repository service, has been acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. The service provides version-control and collaboration tools for nearly 30 million developers, but has never been profitable.