Tag: Technology

Cities on the blockchain

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn BlockchainLeave a comment

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Is it possible to run an entire city using blockchain technology?

Dubai seems to think so. The business and airline hub of the Middle East has set itself the challenging task of being the “first blockchain-powered government in the world by 2020.”

It might sound outrageous right now, but the concept of ‘smart cities’ running on the blockchain is actually not as outlandish, nor as difficult to achieve as you may think. The question really is; where do we start? There are so many millions of possible uses for blockchain in a city, but there are undoubtedly some bigger areas where it will have the most dramatic effect.

IoT devices

Already a number of cities are using IoT devices to do a number of jobs, like monitoring traffic and air quality. Thos IoT devices can be connected to the blockchain. That also applies to any city system that collects data — it can all go on the blockchain. In fact, by putting it all on the blockchain, it will provide an upgrade to the system, and make the information easier to manage and access. Basically it will get rid of all kinds of inefficiencies where officials, such as the police, have to go through X number of other organisations to get a vital piece of information.

Better public safety

Data sharing can have a positive impact on public safety. The blockchain can provide a secure system for sharing sensitive data. One example is working on preventative measures, such as analyzing crime statistics and planning police patrols around that information. Yes, there are issues to be ironed out regarding citizen’s rights to privacy and how much information a government can track, but people are at least having a conversation about it.

Efficient transport

Public transport is vital in most major cities and they don’t work without it. The blockchain offers a lot of potential here, especially for the way passengers pay for their transport. If commuters have a blockchain wallet on their smartphone, they could pay for any transport pass, loyalty programme, or purchase tickets without a card.

Citizen incentives

If you put the public transport payment system on the blockchain, you can also offer customers some incentives. For example, if a city wants its residents to use transport rather than drive, there is a way to incentivise that. When the smartphone wallet shows a citizen has been using public transport for a specific period of time, it is possible to offer them a ‘free ride’ or a discount on an electricity bill. In a smart city, an incentive should push people toward more ethical and sustainable living choices.

And that is what a smart city should be — sustainable and more habitable with fewer issues and inefficiencies. If Dubai achieves its goal, it will have created a blueprint for others to follow.

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.

Is the crypto market history repeating itself?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum, ICO, Initial Coin OfferingsLeave a comment

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At the turn of the twentieth century, Jesse Livermore wrote a book titled “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.” It’s about his life as a trader. One of the things he said back in 1900 was this:

 “When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators to-day differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature.”

And he also wrote: “I used to think that people were more gullible in the l860’s and ’70’s than in the 1900’s. But I was sure to read in the newspapers that very day or the next something about the latest Ponzi or the bust-up of some bucketing broker and about the millions of sucker money gone to join the silent majority of vanished savings.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar? It does to me. It’s pretty much what people are writing about the cryptocurrency market. It’s a bubble, it’s a Ponzi scheme, it’s another boom and bust.

But the most important point he makes is this: that the game doesn’t change and neither does human nature.

The derivatives market provides us with a good example of the sameness between what is happening in crypto now and markets of the past. A derivative is “an arrangement or product (such as a future, option, or warrant) whose value derives from and is dependent on the value of an underlying asset, such as a commodity, currency, or security.” Derivatives trading has been around since ancient Mesopotamia. For example, a tablet from 1809 BC documents a Mesopotamian merchant borrowing silver, promising to replay it with sesame seeds “according to the going rate” after six months.

The Briitish South Sea Company of 1711 led to a wave of new joint-stock companies with dubious business plans that created one of the first bubbles, alongside the Dutch tulip fever.

What emerged from this was the realisation that derivatives, and now the crypto market, need governance and regulation. Self-policing must be encouraged, and work in tandem with government-enforced rules. Bad actors must be kicked out of the market, just as they were in early days of the London Stock Exchange.

 

 

 

BTC thieves stealing in the streets

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Bitcoin, BlockchainLeave a comment

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The whole point of cryptocurrencies is that they only exist online; they’re never going to jangle like small change in your pocket. All of us involved in the crypto world know that online theft is a risk, albeit one that can be mitigated by storing crypto assets in cold storage. Now, with more people taking crypto security more seriously, and better security tools available, we find that the crypto thieves are taking their activities offline. How can they do that?

The answer is: they are targeting those wise investors who store cryptocurrency offline and, in addition to this, they are finding out the identity of these crypto investors and actually attacking them in the street. As Darryn Pollock in Cointelegraph writes: “A number of cases have been reported where Bitcoin owners are being attacked face-to-face by thieves and being forced to deposit huge amounts of digital currency into anonymous wallets.”

He also cites the case of a Russian businessman who was held hostage on the Thai island of Phuket and forced to log in to his BTC account and pay $100,000 for his release.

This is a shocking development, but there are some steps crypto owners can take to avoid a face-to-face mugging. For a start, never brag about your Bitcoin account balance. Don’t post online about how much you have made in an amazingly short period of time. Would you normally tell people how much you have in your bank account? No, we don’t discuss those things, even with close friends. So, why do it with a crypto account?

Another Russian (they seem to be particularly unlucky) called Pavel Rashin was attacked and robbed in his home. They took about $425,000. They didn’t come for his BTC, but he had publicised online that he had recently become a millionaire thanks to his crypto investments. That was enough to make thieves take an interest in him and as he has an online blog, he wasn’t that hard to find.

Of course, if you’re a famous crypto investor, it is impossible to stay out of the news and there have been some high profile kidnappings, including that of the director of a currency exchange in the Ukraine.

Staying safer

So, don’t talk about your crypto assets publicly. Then take a technical step by setting up a multisignatory wallet. Wallets that require confirmation from multiple addresses to make a transaction permit allow the controlling keys to be spread out to different deposit boxes, banks, safes, and other locations. Therefore, even if one key is compromised, you still have control over your funds.

And finally, if you are faced with theft – give them the crypto. Your life is always worth far more.