Tag: Blockchain

Bermuda is banking on the blockchain

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, FintechLeave a comment

Fintech

Something unusual has just happened in Bermuda, the Caribbean island paradise, retreat for the rich and offshore haven — the government has told the island’s banks that they are just not moving fast enough into the cryptocurrency market. It’s a rare occurrence, because most governments are taking a cautious approach to cryptocurrency and none seem to be insisting the conventional banking industry adopts a crypto-friendly approach.

A new class of bank for crypto

In fact, Bermuda is going even further. It is making amendments to its Banking Act so that it can establish a new class of bank that will be able to serve the crypto community, fintech startups and any other type of business that is blockchain based.

The local banks have only themselves to blame for this radical move. They have been denying service to crypto companies, citing fears about risk and regulatory concerns as the reason for shutting the door in potential clients’ faces.

Government supports fintech growth

The government takes a rather different view: Bermudian Premier and Minister of Finance David Burt said that the banks’ stance “cannot be allowed to frustrate the delivery on our promise of economic growth and success for Bermudians.” It appears that Bermuda wants to emulate the successes of jurisdictions like Gibraltar and Malta in becoming safe havens for blockchain explorers, and they all share the characteristic of being relatively small in terms of population, but big on financial services that serve the whole world. Of course, this is perfectly understandable: if you don’t have the environment to be a manufacturing or agricultural economy, financial services are the best way of ensuring that your economy thrives, especially if you keep introducing innovations that attract companies or individuals who can’t find a banking home elsewhere.

David Burt also said in parliament: “The fintech industry’s success globally depends on the ability of the businesses operating in this space to enjoy the necessary banking services. In other jurisdictions, banking has been the greatest challenge and for us in Bermuda, it is equally so and therefore it must be resolved.”

Bermuda welcomes Binance and Shyft

He clearly sees that Bermuda’s future must not be held hostage by the banks’ fear of the blockchain. This year Bermuda has already signed deals with Shyft network, which will reportedly provide $10 million on blockchain technology education and economic development on the island, and Binance is on Bermuda to establish funding for educational programmes related to fintech and blockchain. It has said it wants to build a “global compliance base” on the island.

It’s a smart move by the Bermuda government and is yet another step forward in opening up the banking sector worldwide to the reality that businesses operating in the crypto sector need forward-thinking banking — and that they’re going to grow in strength rather than disappear. Ignore them at your peril.

Is Trilliant offering a new form of ICO?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, ICOLeave a comment

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In a move to serve the growing consumer demand for cryptocurrency tokens, tech business Trilliant is launching 500 ‘next generation’ ATMs in Europe, which should be fully operational by the beginning of 2019. Trilliant is a Swiss-based company that started out as Crypto Capital AG, but now focuses on ATM operations, having moved away from being an investment platform.

Currently ATMs don’t have the facility to purchase cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies, but the new ATMs rectify that situation. Surely, this represents a leap forward for cryptocurrency, especially with regard to mainstream adoption.

What Trilliant is offering is a way to promote stability in the marketplace. Its goal is to have at least 500 ATMs operational by 2019 — a goal that doesn’t seem overly ambitious considering that the next generation ATMs offer more value to cryptocurrency investors than the 2,700 cryptocurrency ATMs currently in-place across the globe.

Founder and CEO, Sebastian Korbach said: “In the long run, we want our machines visible on every corner, creating greater awareness for cryptocurrencies in general.”

It is also offering investors the opportunity to purchase Fractional Ownership Units. These units cost upwards of $100 and will be sold on the Trilliant website. Essentially it means that investors will be able to purchase partial ownership of Trilliant’s operating cryptocurrency ATMs.

Is this a new type of ICO?

This is different to an ICO, the fundraising platform that is more typical for blockchain and crypto projects. A Fractional Ownership Unit is similar to a profit sharing agreement, which means investors stand to benefit from Trilliant’s profits. However, it is still holding a token sale and has a whitepaper — so isn’t it an ICO in another disguise?

This raises some interesting questions about the ICO landscape in the future. Is the basic model that emerged in 2017 simply that — a basic model? Will we see the ICO develop different formats, such as this Fractional Ownership concept. Fractional Ownership is by no means a new thing and it isn’t just connected to the cryptocurrency ecosystem — you can have fractional ownership of vineyards, racehorses and supercars. What other formats are likely to emerge and how will this test the strength of the regulatory frameworks for crypto ecosystems and token sales?

We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with ICOs — there is undoubtedly much more to come in terms of this fundraising tool.

The Enigma Code for Smart Contracts

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, Smart ContractsLeave a comment

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During the Second World War, the Enigma Code proved one of the toughest to break. Eventually, Alan Turing, one of a group of elite code breakers working at Bletchley Park in the UK devised a technique to unravel the messages being sent out by the Enigma machine and he became known as the father of modern computing. Fast -forward to 2018 and we are seeing the emergence of another Enigma, a blockchain startup that enhances the privacy of smart contracts.

Privacy and secret contracts

Enigma is working with Intel on perfecting secret contracts. These are a type of smart contract for public blockchains that use cryptographic tricks to keep transaction data hidden from view. The project started at MIT with the aim of creating a more private platform for decentralised applications. To do this it is using Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX).

A spokesperson for Enigma said: “Privacy is currently the biggest barrier to smart contract adoption. Blockchains are good at correctness, but bad at privacy by design. Smart contracts and decentralized applications will need to be able to use private and sensitive data to see global adoption.”

Trusted execution environments

It is expected that a ‘proof of concept’ product will be launched late in 2018 and that it will demonstrate the way the two technologies can work together. The team is also exploring trusted execution environments (TEEs), which are an integral part of Intel’s SGX technology that securitises data and code.

The urgent need for secret contracts

The announcement of the Enigma-Intel comes at a good time. The Bithumb hack this week and memories of past attacks, such as Mt Gox and DAO, are still quite fresh. The DAO hack in 2016 is particularly relevant, because it happened due to flaws in a smart contract.

Enigma’s CEO Guy Zyskind, has been talking up the need for secret contracts for some time and has pointed out the issues “with coin-mixing and zero-knowledge proofs, the latter of which he said are particularly vulnerable in multi-party cases where several “untrusted and pseudonymous” parties are executing computations,” as he wrote in Medium. Zyskind also said, “secret contracts provide the ‘missing piece’ by executing computations using encrypted data that stays hidden from network nodes.”

Churchill said that the work Alan Turing did shortened WWII by two years; perhaps the ‘new’ Enigma will fast-forward the crypto industry into a more secure marketplace before 2020.

Blockchain finds fake news

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn BlockchainLeave a comment

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Fake news never used to be an issue; indeed, there was little reason to think it existed. We all knew that different newspapers and news services had particular agendas, but the idea that stories were simply made up never occurred to us. Then came the last U.S. presidential election and suddenly ‘fake news’ was apparently everywhere; at least, Donald Trump seemed to think so.

Russian trolls via social media, allegedly serve most of these ‘fake’ stories, up where they perfectly target a precise readership with the help of firms like the now disgraced Cambridge Analytica. The challenge to the thinking reader has been ever since — how do we spot fake news. Various suggestions have been made, but they are for the most part time consuming, and even if you restrict your news services to those who are historically trusted, like the New York Times, there is a niggling feeling that even the elder statesmen of journalism might have succumbed to publishing the odd fake story. But, there is now another solution to separating the fake from the real — it’s blockchain.

Trusted News on Blockchain

Techcrunch reports that Adblock Plus developer eyeo GmbH is using blockchain technology for its browser extension called Trusted News. Currently this is only available for Chrome and in a beta version at the Trusted News website. It says there that “the browser add-on labels fake news media while marking trustworthy sources and stories. Once added to the browser, the extension displays a small window with a brief description of a news source containing the labels “trustworthy”, “unknown”, “clickbait” or even “satire.” Cointelegraph uses a front page story from the UK’s Daily Mail to show how it works; a good choice as this newspaper is renowned for its bias and its clickbait headlines.

The browser add-on uses data compiled by different sources, for instance with PolitiFact, Snopes, Wikipedia and Zimdars’ List, and works with the MetaCert protocol, which uses an anti-fraud URL registry to maintain the database for the project.

Eventually, Trusted News will be on the Ethereum blockchain and there are rumours that “the company also plans to issue MetaCert tokens to track rewards and to avoid the risk of bad actors manipulating or spoiling data.”

Will the emergence of Trusted News finally prompt Facebook and Google into taking action to alert readers to bias in news stories? Both promised some form of flagging back in early 2017, but we have yet to see Facebook’s ‘trust indicators’ or Google’s News Initiative platform. Until then, we’ll have to use our own judgement — that’s a concept that appears to have become out-of-date way too soon.