Developer Proposes Decentralized Bitcoin Hashrate Derivatives

There’s a new concept called Powswap that lets people speculate on hashrate in order to hedge against price volatility. Powswap was developed by the software engineer Jeremy Rubin who believes hashrate derivatives products allow people to leverage new trading strategies. Also read: Regulatory Roundup: EU-Wide Crypto Regulations, New Rules in Europe, US, Asia Powswap Where Miners and Holders Can Speculate On Hashrate Software developer Jeremy Rubin recently announced the launch of a new project he developed called Powswap. It lets people speculate on hashrate to offer “mining derivatives with no…

CME Open Interest for Bitcoin Futures Up 100% Since Start of 2020

Open interest in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) have doubled in the first few days of the year, as noted by data analytics firm Skew. About $235 million worth of positions (5,329 contracts) were open on the CME on Jan. 17 compared to $110 million seen in early December. Open interest is the sum of all contracts that have not expired, been exercised or physically delivered. Open interest has spiked alongside price, confirming an upward trend. Bitcoin bottomed out near $6,430 in mid-December and rose to…

EIDOS Transaction Volumes Skew 2019 DApp Market Report

The transaction volume going through the EIDOS decentralized application (dApp) has massively skewed the results of the 2019 dApp Market Report, published Jan. 20. The token airdrop dApp on the EOS blockchain, saw almost three times as many transactions in 2019 as all of the other dApps on nine leading platforms combined. Perhaps the most notable aspect about this statistic is that EIDOS did not launch until 1st November 2019. In the two months of 2019 that it was active, EIDOS racked up almost 2.4 billion transactions. For the whole…

Adam Back on Satoshi Emails, Privacy Concerns and Bitcoin’s Early Days

Eleven years after Bitcoin’s release, Cointelegraph caught up with Adam Back to discuss the early years of Bitcoin, his emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, privacy and much more.  The Blockstream CEO, who spoke to Cointelegraph at the Latin American crypto event LaBitconf in Uruguay, is a developer and cryptographer known for inventing Hashcash, a predecessor of the proof-of-work system used by Bitcoin.  Back also dismissed the idea that he is the father of Bitcoin and said he didn’t help Satoshi create the world’s first cryptocurrency, despite confirming he was probably the…

Adam Back on Satoshi Emails, Privacy Concerns and Bitcoin’s Early Days

Eleven years after Bitcoin’s release, Cointelegraph caught up with Adam Back to discuss the early years of Bitcoin, his emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, privacy and much more.  The Blockstream CEO, who spoke to Cointelegraph at the Latin American crypto event LaBitconf in Uruguay, is a developer and cryptographer known for inventing Hashcash, a predecessor of the proof-of-work system used by Bitcoin.  Back also dismissed the idea that he is the father of Bitcoin and said he didn’t help Satoshi create the world’s first cryptocurrency, despite confirming he was probably the…

Vinnik’s Children File a Complaint About Rights Violation to Greek Court

The lawyers for Alexander Vinnik, the alleged operator of defunct crypto exchange BTC-e, have filed a complaint alleging violation of Vinnik’s rights. Written on behalf of Vinnik’s young children, the complaint has been filed with a Greek court to prevent the allegedly approaching criminal’s extradition to France and the United States. Vinnik’s extradition from Greece was allegedly scheduled for last weekend Timofey Musatov, the head of Vinnik’s legal representation alleges that Vinnik’s extradition had been scheduled for last weekend, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Jan. 17. Musatov suggested that…

We Anticipate a Hard Fork in Mid-February

Charles Hoskinson, co-founder and CEO of IOHK, the blockchain firm behind Cardano (ADA), said that he expects the coin to see a hard fork in mid-February. During a livestream on Jan. 17, Hoskinson noted that he expects Cardano’s consensus algorithm to be upgraded with a hard fork next month. He said that he has “pretty high certainty” that the Ouroboros Bizantine Fault-Tolerant Consensus Protocol (OBFT) will be implemented in mid-February: “Looks like February — at pretty high certainty —  we’re going to have the OBFT hard fork occur. We’re still…

How the Crypto World Is Preparing for Quantum Computing, Explained

There are two main approaches to address the potential quantum threats: whether to create a quantum-resistant layer to an existing blockchain protocol to increase its security or create a quantum-resistant blockchain from scratch. There are projects that have already implemented the second approach. The best example is the Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL), which is operated by the Swiss-based nonprofit QRL Foundation. With its suggestive name, QRL has created a blockchain protocol from zero. QRL is designed to resist any threats from quantum computers. The QRL blockchain, whose proof-of-work mainnet went live…

South Korea Considers 20% Crypto Income Tax

The South Korean government is said to be considering imposing a 20 percent tax on income generated from cryptocurrency transactions. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s income tax office had been reviewing a new proposal that could see the country adopt a clearer regime for how it taxes cryptocurrencies. An anonymous official speaking to Yonhap suggested South Korea is considering re-classifying returns made on cryptocurrencies as a type of “other income,” placing it in the same category as money earned…

South Korea Considers 20% Crypto Tax

The South Korean government is said to be considering imposing a 20 percent tax on all cryptocurrency transactions. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s income tax office had been reviewing a new proposal that could see the country adopt a clearer regime for how it taxes cryptocurrencies. An anonymous official speaking to Yonhap suggested South Korea is considering re-classifying returns made on cryptocurrencies as a type of “other income,” placing it in the same category as money earned from lotteries,…