Blockchain Association Supports Telegram in Legal Battle With SEC

The Blockchain Association has filed an amicus curiae brief in response to litigation against Telegram initiated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Blockchain Association, a collective of advocates involved with the blockchain industry, filed an amicus curiae brief with the court of the Southern District of New York on Jan. 21. An amicus curiae is an entity that does not participate in specific litigation, but has a right to advise the court regarding some matter of law directly concerning the lawsuit. Need for more clarity from…

Bitcoin Price to Reach $400,000 after Halving If History Taken into Account

Bitcoin price is always largely influenced by the halving. Bitcoinโ€™s halving is easily the most anticipated event in the crypto industry today. The next halving is expected sometime in May 2020 and many believe it will spark the next Bitcoin rally. Since late last year, there have been many forecasts about what the halving will do for the king coin. A new report has now suggested what is probably the most bullish forecast for the worldโ€™s number one asset. According toย Beincrypto, Bitcoin will hit $400,000 after the halving. Bitcoin Halvingย …

Hacker Noon Is Storing Content on a Blockchain After Ditching Medium

Hacker Noon is putting its money where its pen is, embedding blockchain features into its new publishing platform.ย  Annotations on Hacker Noonโ€™s blog-styled content, with some 4 million monthly readers, will now be locally hosted on users’ spare storage space, said Hacker Noon CEO David Smooke in a press release. These annotations and in-line comments will be powered by ERA Inc.โ€™s GUN, a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) database system. By utilizing local storage on Hacker Noon readerโ€™s free CPU space, the cost of maintaining the domain drops on GUN specifically, ERA…

Bitcoin Indicator that Crashed Price to $3.1K Returns: The Dreaded Death Cross

Bitcoin is looking to repeat a technical pattern that crashed its price to $3,120 in late 2018. The leading cryptocurrency by valuation made a rebound from levels near $13,920 during June 2019. It plunged by more than 53 percent in the later sessions, falling to establish a local bottom towards $6,410. Entering January 2020, an upside recovery pushed bitcoinโ€™s rate to a swing top of $9,190. $BTC bulls always have the last laugh https://t.co/it38weJaHz โ€” The Crypto Dog๐Ÿ“ˆ (@TheCryptoDog) January 22, 2020 The latest move uphill improved the cryptocurrencyโ€™s interim…

Notes From the WEF: The Coming Battle Between Surveilled and Private Money

DAVOS โ€”ย When the worldโ€™s leading bankers and policymakers gathered this week at the 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, their interest in blockchain technology was resoundingly clear. โ€œThe number one use case of blockchain technology promoted by the government is data sharing,โ€ Zhang Jiachen, CEO of the startup Guangzhishu Technology, said on the sidelines of the WEF. Jiachen said her firm works with several Chinese government agencies.ย  Representatives from some nations are watching the Peopleโ€™s Bank of China (PBoC) central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiment…

Hong Kong and Thailand Pilot DLT-Based Project for Cross-Border Payments

Hong Kong and Thailandโ€™s central banks have stepped closer to implementing a joint central bank digital currency (CBDC) for cross-border payments. On Jan. 22, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) officially announced the outcomes of a joint CBDC research project called Project Inthanon-LionRock. Alongside publishing a joint press release, the banks have issued a detailed 90-page report providing an exhaustive analysis of the potential risks and benefits of CBDCs for real-time money transfers, liquidity management, regulatory compliance, and other aspects of finance. Inthanon-LionRock project…

Ray Dalio Calls for Investment Diversification, But Not in Bitcoin

Ray Dalio, multi-billionaire and founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, said investors should not miss out on traditional markets, CNBC reported on Jan. 21. Dalio warned from holding Bitcoin, saying that itโ€™s neither a medium of exchange nor a store of value. Dalio was interviewed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he advised investors to hold a global and diversified portfolio in this market, while increasing their stake in stock markets. While Dalio acknowledged recession concerns, he argued that โ€œcash is trashโ€ due to the governmentโ€™s ability…

Hyperledger Fabric Sees More Dev Activity Than Corda in Q3 2019: Report

In the last quarter of 2019, Hyperledgerโ€™s Fabric open source blockchain software saw more developer activity than R3โ€™s Corda platform. Blockchain service firm Chainstack recently published a report about developer activity on six major enterprise blockchains, showing that Fabric has overtaken Corda in regard to dev activity on its repository. A chart included in the report shows that Fabric developer activity exceeded Cordaโ€™s in Q4 2019. Total GitHub activity per-protocol. Source: Chainstack Fabricโ€™s growth after the switch to GitHub The surge in Fabric developer activity closely followed the projectโ€™s transition…

Sports Live-Streamer Will Reward Viewers With Its Own Crypto

Sports live-streaming provider SportsCastr is launching its own cryptocurrency to reward viewers and encourage interactions. The company โ€“ which is backed by the NFL Players Association โ€“ announced Wednesday that it has teamed up with the FanWide platform for the effort. The new FanChain (FANZ) token will be made available on FanWide, which helps people locate local game watch parties, and given out to people checking in to listed events. SportsCastr says the tokens can be earned at the “thousands of sports bars” on FanWide’s U.S. network and will be…

Hyperledger to Explore How Blockchain Can Help World Meet Climate Goals

Hyperledger has announced a new working group at Davos that will explore how blockchain can help the world meet climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The enterprise blockchain consortium launched the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (SIG) during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting. Said to be the first of its kind, the Climate SIG will enable participants to share ideas and findings on how distributed ledgers can help governments and companies coordinate on reducing global emissions. “DLTs are central to the creation of…