Blockchain – Impact Lab

Banking, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle

November 9, 2020

Despite its centralized design, JPM Coin’s real life utilization represents a step toward the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology.

JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle.

On the heels of PayPal announcing its decision to enter the crypto sector early next year, Bitcoin (BTC) has continued its strong performance and has been hovering around the $13,500 mark for nearly a week now. In this regard, the payment giant’s foray into the crypto market has been hailed as a game changer, especially when it comes to improving the mainstream perception of the digital asset industry as a whole.

Not only that, JPMorgan Chase announced that its native digital currency offering — the JPM Coin — has finally been deployed for mainstream use by one of the firm’s technical associates. The token is designed to facilitate JPMorgan Chase’s various cross-border monetary transactions.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

How Blockchain will End Commercial Banks

October 26, 2020

Daniel Masters, CoinShares executive chairman

JP Morgan’s former global head of energy trading, Daniel Masters, was among the first traditional investors to get into bitcoin, helping craft the value proposition that many institutional investors now embrace. COINSHARES

As much as bitcoiners and crypto enthusiasts try to deny it, bringing in converts from traditional finance is the best way to legitimize and publicize the industry in the eyes of many investors.

One of the earliest executives to take the leap was CoinShares executive chairman Daniel Masters. After a long and distinguished career as a commodities trader with JP Morgan and elsewhere, he serendipitously stumbled upon bitcoin after the commodities supercycle ended following the global financial crisis. Masters immediately saw the potential of bitcoin and blockchain, and he realized that his background as a technologist and commodities trader was tailor-made to make him an ambassador for this new industry to a net set of individual and institutional investors.

At the same time, through building his crypto investment management company, he was able to look into the future of this industry and see what developments lie ahead, as well as upcoming clashes between crypto insurgents and entrenched financial incumbents. Forbes sat down with Masters to get his thoughts on the future of this industry.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, cutting edge, Internet, Science & Technology News

No internet, no problem. Venezuela gets bitcoin satellite node

October 10, 2020

Venezuela deployed its first Bitcoin satellite node.

It allows for a node on the ground to receive Bitcoin transaction details from a Blockstream satellite without internet.

Venezuela has poor internet connectivity.

Venezuela has its first Bitcoin satellite node capable of processing transactions without an internet connection.

The Venezuelan “space node” was set up in the country by Anibal Garrido and the Anibal Cripto team. It uses technology from Blockstream, which contracts satellites—in this case, EUTELSAT-113 – to broadcast data between points via offline connections. That’s huge in a country where internet infrastructure is lacking.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, China, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

MIT is helping the Boston Fed build a CBDC that can be scaled for consumer use

September 12, 2020

MIT is helping the Boston Fed build a CBDC that can be scaled for consumer use

Can MIT help the U.S. catch up to China in the CBDC race?

The MIT Digital Currency Initiative, or DCI, is helping the federal reserve bank of Boston build a digital currency with the goal of scaling for consumer use. The DCI’s director Neha Narula told Cointelegraph:

“We’re trying to build a high throughput, low latency transaction system that could be used by consumers and could handle the security and resilience required for a national currency.”

The multi-year collaboration between the two organizations is still in very early stages and not much information is being released to the public. Yet the focus is not on building a newer version of interbank digital ledger, but rather something that the consumers would be able to use. It is hard to estimate the required transactional throughput of such technology, but considering that the U.S. population is around 330 million and the fact that the dollar is the most widely used currency in the world (some nations have even officially adopted it), this number would have to be rather high.

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Banking, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Science & Technology News

Boom or bust? Welcome to the freewheeling world of crypto lending

August 31, 2020

LONDON (Reuters) – It sounds like a surefire bet. You lend money to a borrower who puts up collateral that exceeds the size of the loan, and then you earn interest of about 20%.

What could possibly go wrong?

That’s the proposition presented by “DeFi”, or decentralised finance, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platforms that allow lenders and borrowers to transact without the traditional gatekeepers of loans: banks.

And it has exploded during the COVID-19 crisis.

Loans on such platforms have risen more than seven-fold since March to $3.7 billion, according to industry site DeFi Pulse, as investors hunt returns at a time when central banks across the world have slashed interest rates to prop up economies battered by the pandemic.

Proponents say DeFi sites, which run on open-source code with algorithms that set rates in real-time based on supply and demand, represent the future of financial services, providing a cheaper, more efficient and accessible way for people and companies to access and offer credit.

But with the promise of high rewards comes high risk.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

The Future of Money: How cryptocurrency and the blockchain will change society

August 19, 2020

Anarchy reigns supreme in the future of finance, decentralizing the power of banks and, in some cases, the state. But will cryptocurrencies and the blockchains that underlie them solve our financial woes, or only worsen existing inequalities?

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2020 Predictions, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Future, Science & Technology News

9 predictions for 2020–2029

May 17, 2020

The world as we know it is about to change fast.

I like to think about the future a lot, so this year I decided to make some predictions.

My predictions for this decade

Federated Learning will unlock value from previously inaccessible sensitive data.
Deepfakes will impact democracy and bring about a need for publisher certified content.
Nationalism will rise around the world, the internet will splinter.
eSports will take a huge chunk of attention and advertising dollars from sports.
Blockchain will get adoption in enterprise. Mainstream adoption will struggle until there are key custody solutions that everyone can use.
Self-driving cars will open up new business models. Regulations will be the main barrier to adoption.
Welfare systems will get strained.
Digital currencies and negative interest rates will open Pandoras box.
Search will get reimagined.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Bitcoin’s guardian angel : Inside Coinable billionaire Brian Armstrong’s plan to make crypto safe for all

March 8, 2020

Near the foot of San Francisco’s California Street stand the august stone pillars of a bank dating to the 19th century. A few paces away sit the offices of Coinbase, the largest American exchange for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. It’s a beehive of software engineers and young marketing executives. There, the worlds of by-the-books banking and crypto-anarchism collide.

In style and philosophy, Brian Armstrong, the 37-year-old billionaire cofounder and CEO of Coinbase, is in the camp of the financial anarchists. He sits, jammed alongside lieutenants, in a row of tiny desks resembling library carrels. He wears a black T-shirt, black pants and shiny white sneakers. He talks about a brave new world in which we are liberated from the shackles of giant banks and government-controlled money supplies. During an expansive interview, this usually reserved and press-shy entrepreneur declares why he got into this business: “I wanted the world to have a global, open financial system that drove innovation and freedom.”

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Blockchain, Education, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

How Blockchain could disrupt the education industry

November 12, 2019

Blockchain is undisputedly an ingenious invention. It’s a technology that began as underpinning for virtual currencies but it is quickly becoming obvious that blockchain is more than just bitcoin.

The encrypted ledger technology that powers bitcoin is primed to reshape the future of many industries. Be it healthcare, finance, media, or the government, the blockchain technology will bring about a revolutionary change across many industries.

The technology is sure to disrupt every industry, including education. There is no denying the fact that the education system is far from where it needs to be. Using this technology, a lot of improvements can be made in the education sector.

The edtech sector is huge. It is estimated that it will reach $93.76 billion by 2020. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality are already making their way into the education sector. It’s only a matter of time before the blockchain technology becomes mainstream too.

Let’s see how this disruptive technology can revolutionize the education sector.

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2020 Predictions, Blockchain, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Gartner’s top 10 strategic predictions for 2020

November 1, 2019

Mobile-accessible cryptocurrency, AI and ML oversight, blockchain to counter deepfake technology and an Internet of Behavior are all among the predictions for the near future.

Technology is creating ever-changing expectations for people, and Gartner’s top predictions for 2020 reflect these new challenges.

The predictions were revealed at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2019 in Orlando, which runs through October 24. More than 9,000 IT leaders and CIO’s are in attendance at the conference.

“Technology is changing the notion of what it means to be human,” said Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president and Gartner Fellow. “As workers and citizens see technology as an enhancement of their abilities, the human condition changes as well. CIOs in end-user organizations must understand the effects of the change and reset expectations for what technology means.”

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, China, government, Science & Technology News

China plans to kill most of the world’s bitcoin mining operations

September 25, 2019

The price could spike again.

The Chinese government will end bitcoin mining operations in the coming months, Bloomberg reported over this January, a move that could have a massive impact on the price of the world’s biggest digital currency.

China has been a central player in the development of bitcoin in recent years, but Beijing has spent the last six months cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry — shutting down local exchanges and banning initial coin offerings.

Leaked documents suggest the Chinese government plans an “orderly exit” for bitcoin mining operations in the coming weeks and months.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

How Crypto could bring tax evasion to the masses

August 2, 2019

Loopholes in lending laws are allowing cryptocurrency users to escape taxes — and the government can’t keep up

WWealthy families and merchants first conjured up the idea of offshore banking in 19th century Europe, seeking a place to store funds away from tax-hungry governments in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Since then, it’s been a race to the bottom. Over the course of the last two centuries, deregulation and lenient financial laws have allowed the rich to tread the fine line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion.

But blockchain, which first emerged as a concept in 2008, is now offering ordinary people the same possibilities. Using cryptocurrency, anyone with a little technical know-how can open what is effectively the equivalent of an offshore bank account — albeit offshore in cyberspace.

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