Europe Getting Serious About Distributed Ledger Technology
On April 10, 2018, 21 EU member states and Norway signed up to create the European Blockchain Partnership. By bringing distributed ledger technology (DLT) to European infrastructure, the Partnership hopes to make cross-border services safer and more efficient. The Partnership’s membership is currently at the very early stage of negotiating just what kind of blockchain-based public services to develop. According to Finland’s representative to the Partnership, Kimmo Mäkinen, a senior advisor at the Department of Public Sector Digitalization, the most recent meeting took place on September 17. The main topic was to discuss about the most prominent cross-border blockchain use-cases that had been proposed by member states and by the commission.” the Partnership’s 27 member nations have effectively declared that they believe DLT is here to stay and that it has genuine applicability to a range of areas. If the Partnership implements blockchain-based cross-border infrastructure, this will only have positive ramifications and knock-on effects for wider blockchain adoption elsewhere. All of which means that the future of blockchain adoption in Europe looks increasingly bright.
Bitcoin Markets Comprise Imminent Alternative to Foreign Exchange
A report authored by researchers from the Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics has found that Bitcoin is maturing. The report, courtesy of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, concludes that Bitcoin carries “concrete potential of imminently becoming a regular market” and “an alternative to the foreign exchange.” According to Professor Stanisław Drożdż, one of the researchers who worked on the study, the most important statistical parameters of the Bitcoin market indicate very clearly that for many months now it has met all the important criteria of financial maturity. In the case of other cryptocurrencies, it will be possible to expect a similar transformation. If this happens, the world’s largest market, the Forex market, can look forward to very real competition.
Hacker Livestreams 51% Attack on Bitcoin Private
On Oct. 13, ethical hacker “Geocold” promised he would 51 percent attack an altcoin to prove how easy it was, and he did, but the attempt did not run as smoothly as he might have hoped. Over 750 viewers were tuned in, and the likes of Jackson Palmer live-tweeting the spectacle, when Twitch suddenly pulled the plug. Despite the ethical hacker having no intention of attempting to double spend coins, such as by depositing them into an exchange wallet and swapping them for BTC, the streaming provider pulled the plug, presumably in response to members of the Bitcoin Private community reporting his channel. When Geocold returned on Stream.me half an hour later, he lasted a little over 15 minutes before the same thing happened. At the second attempt, Geocold dominated BTCP’s hashrate, producing a steady 10 MSol/s versus the rest of the network’s 6 MSol/s. The evening started as an exercise on the ease of controlling low hashrate PoW coins and ended as a demonstration of the need for censorship-resistant platforms.