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News posted to Blocktonite’s Blockchain Archive
- 8.1.17: Irving Wladawsky-Berger has an insightful column out today. He draws the distinction between foundational and disruptive technologies – and offers the thought that blockchain is the former. He lays out a parallel between the internet and blockchain in terms of evolution – and spells out the 3 things blockchain will need for widespread adoption: a) standards (example in internet world: TCP/IP), b) applications (example in internet: e-mail) and c) governance (internet example: ICANN).
- 7.30.17: Patently True: Cointelegraph reports that the number of blockchain-related patents filed with the USPTO continues to rise at an accelerated rate: in 2012, there were 71 such patent filings, in 2016: 469, and in the first half of 2017: 390 (which is up 90% over the same period in 2016). USPTO is also granting these patents at a growing rate.
- 7.27.17: The SEC issued guidance yesterday on Initial Coin Offerings and simply noted that at least under some circumstances the tokens issued under ICO’s meet the legal requirement of stock. That’s not necessarily a good thing for start-ups, and probably is an indication of more SEC involvement in ICO’s. But it probably is a good thing for novice investors.
- 7.20.17: The London Stock Exchange and IBM are piloting the listing of small businesses in Italy on a blockchain. The idea is to make the ownership and capital structures of small businesses more transparent. We’re not talking about trading stocks here – but hold that idea. Imagine down the road blockchain technology allowing smaller firms to basically go public for less expense and labor than today. That’s disruptive stuff.
- 7.13.17: Here’s an intriguing idea: start-up Bowhead Health is developing a consumer device for self-administered tests that the user can then park on a blockchain, and allow others (with consumer authorization) to access that data.
- 7.4.17: What did Della Wear? The Delaware Legislature recently passed a law making it legal for companies incorporated in Delaware to issue stock in their company on a blockchain.
- 7.1.17: WTF is the Blockchain? – a new and nicely facilitated 10-15 minute read from Mohit Mamoria, explaining the way a public blockchain works
- 6.29.17: ChromaWay has an interesting idea: instead of a “flat file” distributed ledgers – have blockchain records stored in shared relational databases (ChromaWay’s product is called PostChain). Among other things, this allows a more easier way for companies to integrate a “PostChain” blockchain with their own relational databases (e.g. Oracle, Microsoft). ChromaWay refers to this as a “consortium database“.
- 6.28.17: Here’s a new (and free) online course on Blockchain by a lady who has written a pretty solid book on the technology.
- 6.23.17: Market Awareness of Blockchain: HSBC (the large UK based multi-national bank) released results of a poll they conducted among 12,000 people in 11 countries – to see how many folks in the general public have any familiarity at all with the term “blockchain”. According to the survey, published in May, 59% of consumers polled said they’d never heard of blockchain technology and 80% of those who have heard of blockchain said they don’t understand what that is. Frankly, Blocktonite is surprised that this many respondents had heard of blockchain.
- 6.21.17: Using Blockchain to Control Diabetes: here’s an interesting idea: “healthcoin” proposes a blockchain where people with diabetes can input their “bio-markers” (in this case their blood sugar levels) and earn healthcoin incentives (redeemable for rewards depending on their incentive plan.
- 6.11.17: Mr. Blockchain Goes to Washington: Two US House of Representative Committees held hearings on blockchain and BitCoin on June 8th. The Terrorism & Illicit Finance Committee heard from Jerry Brito of Coin Center (along with others) to urge Congress to get ahead of potential use of blockchain by bad actors. The Financial Services Committee heard from Peter Van Valkenberg (also from Coin Center) on the need for “safe harbor” legislation to protect blockchain developers from users who exploit the technology for illegal activities – and he drew the analogy to similar statutory safeguards put in place in the early days of the world wide web.
- 6.5.17: The Financial Times reports today that job advertisements for blockchain talent on Linked In have tripled in the past year, with 1,000 such postings on the site now, and with 10,000 people on Linked In saying they have blockchain expertise of one sort or another. Top blockchain positions can garner $250K/year, according to IBM. Separately, FT reports: “… there are more than 850 different cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalisation above $92bn — more than Goldman Sachs, Ford or Nike — according to coinmarketcap.com.”
- 6.4.17: A few projects and companies are working on blockchains that would allow anyone to contribute the excess computing power in their PC (in return for payment). A start-up called Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining is one example. The general term to describe an approach like this is “fog computing“. Whereas “cloud computing” offers a centralized hub of computing and data storage usually controlled by one organization, “fog computing” is a distributed system of cooperating computers with perhaps many different owners. It is hard to tell how solid some of these projects like SONM are – but the general approach holds promise.
- 6.1.17: Not really “news” per se, but this is a nice short article on the difference between public and private blockchains. Simply put, a ‘public blockchain’ (such as Bitcoin) allows literally any machine/user to participate in that blockchain, and in a ‘private blockchain’ users must be granted permission to participate. The advantages of private blockchain are additional security and higher performance (especially because achieving consensus is not as resource intense). Supply chains or healthcare networks would be some good examples. Public blockchains offer the much more egalitarian view, allowing any participant – which is why currency is such a good application of a public blockchain.
- 5.31.17: Attention shoppers: Walmart has filed a patent application for a logistics system where drones would deliver packages to secured delivery staging boxes. These smart boxes would sense an authorized drone approaching it, open automatically, and accept the package from the drone. Item tracking would be done via blockchain. Walmart has been piloting blockchain for other “supply chain” applications as well for some time.
- 5.30.17: Developers in Russia have announced they have developed technology to make blockchains safe from hacking by quantum computers. The backstory: there are growing concerns in the IT security and US government communities that in 5 to 10 years there will be commercially viable quantum computers with the brute strength to be able to hack modern encryption & hashing safeguards.
- 5.26.17: The International Organization of Standards (ISO <- don’t ask me why the abbreviation is ISO) met in April and set up a committee and five work groups to come up with ISO standards for blockchain. The USA is participating via the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The fact that ISO is getting into the blockchain mix is further evidence of the jaw-dropping activity across almost all industries and all continents.
- 5.22.17: Today is National Bitcoin Pizza day! On this day 7 years ago, we had the first purchasing use of Bitcoin. On 5/22/10, a programmer bought 2 Papa John Pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin. Those coins are now worth over $5 million. Must have gotten extra cheese.
- 5.13.17: Bitcoin is surpassing a milestone: the average fee for processing a Bitcoin transaction is just about one US dollar. More specifically, given a typical Bitcoin transaction size, the average fee is now ~54,000 Satsoshis (a Satsoshi is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin that can be transacted on the Bitcoin blockchain). You can take this “dollar milestone” several ways, but we think this points to continuing demand for Bitcoin usage and market acceptance.
- 5.8.17: Blockchain start-up Votem powered the 2017 fan voting for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Largest known use of blockchain for voting – tallying over 1.8 million votes.
- 5.7.17: We’ve added a new resource to the Library. Now you can access our catalogued set of Blockchain references. Click here.
- 5.3.17: The Linux Foundation announced the availability of Hyperledger Composer today. This sounds nerdy, I know – but it is a sign of blockchain’s steady, but growing maturity. Broadly speaking, today we have four large ‘categories’ of blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Hyperledger. Blockchains as they exist today are largely still ‘raw’ technology – but as tools (like Composer) emerge, we’ll see an incredibly rapid proliferation of blockchain applications.
- 4.30.17: Bitcoin ATMs: there are over 100 such machines in the USA. Coinsource BTM seems to be the biggest player, with 14 in the NY City area alone.
- 4/28/17: Blockchain for Dummies is out today. You know blockchain has arrived when it gets its first official Dummies book (available on Amazon here). The author is a co-founder of blockchain solutions company Factom. Blocktonite will clue you in with a review in a future blog post.
- 4/27/17: Spotify (the popular music streaming service) is buying MediaChain, the blockchain developer. For background on Music and Blockchain, see our blog entry.