Bitcoin gets some bling!

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, Blockchain, cryptoLeave a comment

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I didn’t think it was possible that bitcoin might ever be described as ‘blingy’, but over the past few days I’ve seen some news items that suggest the leading cryptocurrency is having some shine put on it by the luxury goods market and political fundraising. And I have a feeling this may just be the start.

First, Franck Muller, the high-end Swiss watch designer whose work is known for being quirky, has added cold wallet bitcoin storage to his latest watch. The Encrypta watch includes its own unique public address etched on the dial and a sealed USB containing the private key. Plus, owners will be able to add Bitcoin to their wallet and monitor their balance directly through the dial. Each model includes a dial that incorporates the QR code of Satoshi’s Genesis Block address, as well as a custom-designed “B” within an emblem of circuitry.

And just so you know, the Encrypto collection of men’s and women’s watches are advertised as costing between $10,780 and $55,880. It’s a pity they didn’t quote the price in BTC as well.

Next there is an app that supposedly makes investing in bitcoin much easier. Erik Finman, who started buying bitcoin when he was 12 and is now only 20, has designed the CoinBits app that allows users to buy fractions of a Bitcoin from spare change. The amount of the purchase is rounded up to the nearest dollar and the additional change is invested into small amounts of Bitcoin.

Last, Eric Swalwell, a Democrat and presidential candidate for the 2020 elections is accepting crypto donations for his campaign. Unsurprisingly, he is the Bay Area congressman, which puts him in close proximity to Silicon Valley and to all the crypto-relatd startups based in San Francisco. So, it makes sense that he should accept crypto. Apparently he is partnering with the White Company, a blockchain firm that will facilitate the donations and make them fully compliant with Federal Election Commission regulations.

Swalwell had this to say about crypto: “Blockchain can change the world, if we let it. So much of our public life now exists online, and there’s no reason to believe we can’t extend this further into our democracy and our economy – from exercising our right to vote, to how we look at cryptocurrency.”

Perhaps the way to encouraging mass adoption is to make bitcoin more ‘trendy’, almost a fashion accessory even. Political donations aside, the app and the watch are likely to turn up in a List of 10 Things You Must Have in some glossy magazine. Expect to see it in Vogue soon!

 

Why is Litecoin Doing so Well?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, crypto, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today Litecoin is up 62% on the month, 24% on the week and a solid 200% on the year. Its price has dipped a tiny 2% at the time of writing, but it is still possible to say that Litecoin has been doing remarkably well during this latest surge in the crypto markets.

Litecoin began 2019 at around $30, representing a dramatic plunge in price during 2018. As ever, people are looking for explanations for this reversal of fortune. Billy Bambrough, writing at Forbes believes that it may in part be due to the upcoming halvening of bitcoin, which will happen in May next year. Halvenings always seem to trigger a price surge. The bitcoin event will result in he number of bitcoins awarded to miners for mining new bitcoin blocks will drop from 12.5 bitcoin to 6.25 bitcoin. “We are going to hoard bitcoin at this point in time,” Brian Kelly, a bitcoin and cryptocurrency fund manager told CNBC. “We’re not going to sell it. You generally have a rally a year into [a bitcoin halvening], and a year out of it. And so we’re just at the beginning of that stage […] a supply cut is generally bullish.”

A halving and more use of litecoin

Litecoin is due to halve its miner rewards in August of this year, and if the economic theory applied to bitcoin’s supply reduction due to the halvening are correct, it will also apply to litecoin, which will see its mining reward fall from 25 litecoin to 12.5 litecoin.

What has happened during previous bitcoin halvenings, which are fixed events that occur after every 210,000 blocks have been mined. For example, about one year after the first bitcoin halving event in November 2012, the bitcoin price reached what was then an all-time high of $1,000. And the 2016 halvening appeared to precipitate the bull run of 2017 when bitcoin touched almost $20,000.

But it isn’t just Litecoin’s upcoming halvening that has boosted its price. Over the last few months litecoin has gone through some technical improvements and it is being spent via Coinbase Visa cards at millions of locations worldwide. Coinbase users can choose which cryptocurrency is used on the card through a new app that supports all crypto assets available to buy and sell on the Coinbase platform. The app also offers instant receipts, transaction summaries, and spending categories, to help people keep track of their spending.

Litecoin has been seen as one of the most credible rivals to bitcoin for some time; perhaps this is the year when it finally asserts itself as a serious contender in the crypto market.

Facebook’s Globalcoin is coming soon

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

We have learnt in the last few days that Facebook is poised to launch its ‘Globalcoin’ in 2020. Currently, the media giant is consulting with US financial regulatory authorities, as well as those of 11 other countries about operational and regulatory issues. It is likely that the token will be tested before the end of 2019.

Apparently Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been having lengthy discussions with Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England about the opportunities and risks involved in launching the company’s cryptocurrency. So, it seems likely that the UK will be one of the countries where Globalcoin will be available.

There are also ongoing meetings between Facebook and some of the world’s payment giants, such as Western Union and Paypal, as well as online merchants, as it looks for cheaper and faster ways for people without a bank account to send and receive money.

Facebook may dominate the payments sector

Because that is Facebook’s overall aim: to move into this valuable financial sector. According to International Business Times, “Facebook wants to develop GlobalCoin into a digital currency that provides affordable and secure ways of making payments. Facebook also wants to enable people to change dollars and other international currencies into its GlobalCoin with the minimum of fuss.”

How will it achieve this goal? It would appear that Facebook is going to issue Globalcoin as a ‘stablecoin’ pegged to the US dollar. This eliminates the volatility that is a challenging factor of the crypto market, at least for merchants and payment service providers.

Will lack of consumer trust damage Globalcoin?

Still, things may not be all plain sailing for Facebook. There is the matter of consumer trust for a start. In the last two years Facebook has been named in a mnumber of scandals concerning the sharing of user data with other parties; Cambridge Analytica being the most notable one. Zuckerberg has been forced to testify in front of both the US and UK governments regarding this, and Zuckerberg’s conduct in both cases gave rise to a feeling that the company has behaved with some arrogance and belief that it is untouchable. Therefore, Facebook users may not be rushing to use the new token: instead it is entirely possible that they many will walk away from it as a form of protest. On the other hand, if the token is seen to provide a useful service, it may do well. It has billions of users so a few protesters may not make much difference to its success.

Analysts say Facebook wants to disrupt existing banking networks by breaking down financial barriers and reducing consumer costs. However, Facebook will have to partner with banks and brokers to attain this aim. Plus, GlobalCoin will need to overcome numerous technical and regulatory hurdles before it can be launched.

There are countries where it may get a warm reception and others, like India, where there be no welcome at all. Significantly, it is rumoured that Facebook is particularly interested in launching in India, which makes sense when you think of the size of the population and the fact that there are many, many unbanked Indian citizens that own a smartphone. Facebook also hopes GlobalCoin will allow Indian workers abroad to remit money back home to their families using WhatsApp, which is another big market. However, as India has been fairly hostile to cryptocurrencies to date, this may prove to be a significant challenge.

It won’t be to long before we have a better idea of Facebook’s precise strategy, but given that it is one of the biggest players in social media, it seem unlikely that it will settle for being a small fish in the crypto sector.

China moves into blockchain mode

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn BlockchainLeave a comment

For the last year or so, China has had a reputation for being anti-cryptocurrency and blockchain. However, this appears to be changing. Muyao Shen, writing at Forbes, reports that May 2019 may be the month that becomes known as the time when China did a U-turn and started to embrace blockchain technology.

According to her report, more blockchain projects in China are getting government support, including even working with government bodies to develop know-how for future blockchain platforms. This is distinctly different to the environment back in September 2017, when the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) together with several other central government agencies and financial regulators announced that it would ban initial coin offerings (ICOs).

The knock-on effect of this was that other East Asian countries closed their doors to anything related to cryptocurrency, especially the exchanges. The reasoning behind this attack on crypto was to protect people from crypto scams, but it had a dramatic effect on China’s crypto industry, with Binance, now one of the biggest exchanges globally, moving from Beijing to Tokyo.

Now, after a period during which any talk of blockchain or crypto in China was distinctly muted, things are moving forward. For example, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) recently released the first list of registered blockchain service providers. The list includes well-known names, such as Alibaba and Baidu. As they are now registered , “these blockchain-based information service providers are granted registration numbers under the Regulations on the Management of Blockchain Information Services,” Shen reports.

This ne set of regulations was reviewed and approved by the State Council Information Office earlier this year and was then implemented on 15th February, 2019. Regulators in the provinces have been working on the regulations that will hopefully grow China’s blockchain industry.

The ‘cyber police’ appear to be the officials hosting many of these meetings with tech companies, according to information from Xuemai Yu, chief executive officer of Hangzhou-based blockchain company DataQin. Yu also remarked that officials were keen to explain the nuances of the regulation: “The most important part was that they’ve divided all the blockchain projects into two categories, one is blockchain service providers, the other is blockchain technology providers.”

And the officials what they don’t like: 1. The public blockchain, where anyone can access and write and read anything they’d like to; 2. ICO-related scams.

“From the central government’s perspective, they want to make sure any information that could potentially harm the national security and stabilization wouldn’t spread on the Internet through blockchain,” Yu said.

The upshot appears to be that Chinese companies are already feeling confident about the development of blockchain in the country: Zhihao Zhang, assistant general manager of IT department at Soochow Securities Co,

said: “With the improvement of people’s acceptance and the maturity of the technology, the decentralized consensus will inevitably bring revolution in all areas of people’s lives, where things can be handled more openly and conveniently.”

Will this reversal of fortune for blockchain in China ripple out to have an effect on global attitutudes to the technology? That is an interesting question, to which I have no answer right now.