May 15, 2020

Visa Patent Filing Would Allow Central Banks to Mint Digital Fiat Currencies Using Blockchain

May 15, 2020 boss

Visa looks to be laying the groundwork for a future in which fiat currencies, like the U.S. dollar, could be easily turned into a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The California-based payments giant, which processes upwards of 100 million transactions every day on average, has filed a patent application for a process for turning physical fiat currency into a newly digitized version. The filing, which was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in November and made public on Thursday, says the system would be able to mint new…

New Blockchain Marketplace Aims to Tackle Morality Issues of Deepfake Media

May 15, 2020 boss

A blockchain-based marketplace is today launching for creators of “synthetic media,” a term used to describe video, image or voice material generated through artificial intelligence algorithms. On May 15, Cointelegraph interviewed Arif Khan, CEO of Alethea AI, the firm behind the project, about the legal and moral quagmire that “deepfakes” and other AI-generated content have created for online media consumption. Khan’s wager is that blockchain can play a role in ensuring that this content is circulated responsibly by providing infrastructure for licensing, circulating and monetizing legal and permissioned creations, as…

Visa Files Blockchain-Based Digital Currency Patent to Potentially Remove Physical Currency

May 15, 2020 boss

Visa has filed a patent application to create a blockchain-based digital currency on a centralized computer, according to a publication by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patent was originally filed in November 2019, and was described as “Digital Fiat Currency.” The US dollar was mentioned as one of the fiat currencies to be used potentially, although the patent could also apply to other central bank digital currencies including the pound, yen, and the euro. Filed by Simon J. Hurry and Alexander Pierre with the…

CoinDesk 50: Bakkt – Financializing Bitcoin

May 15, 2020 boss

Bakkt’s debut last September was one of the most eagerly awaited launches in crypto because it promised something groundbreaking and potentially momentous for the industry: institutional access to actual bitcoin. The crypto-first subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange wouldn’t exactly buy or sell bitcoin for you, but its ambitious goal of offering the first physically settled futures contracts in the U.S. using a daily expiration structure almost promised to do just that. More important, this financialization of bitcoin could open the market to more types of traders (and speculators),…

Realistic Ethereum 2.0 Multi-Client Testnet ‘Targeting for June’

May 15, 2020 boss

Work on Ethereum 2.0 is now almost entirely directed toward fixing bugs, with the team trying to synchronize all existing clients into one single version of the blockchain. An after-action report of the Ethereum 2.0 implementers call, held on May 14, reveals that the majority of the work is devoted to fixing code bugs and improving ways of detecting them. For the latter, Mehdi Zerouali of Sigma Prime reported major progress in designing “fuzzing” techniques, which feed bogus data to the program in order to find where it breaks. Sigma…

First Mover: Bitcoin’s Hot Again and Crypto Miners Are Hoarding – Or Are They?

May 15, 2020 boss

Bitcoin is rallying again, and some analysts are looking at a potential driver of even higher prices: new data showing that mining pools are hanging onto the cryptocurrency rather than sending it to exchanges for a quick sale. But as with a lot of bitcoin analysis, the interpretation isn’t always clear-cut; the data might be seen differently as a sign of a weak market. You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets,…

Open Interest on CME Bitcoin Options Is Up 1000% So Far This Month

May 15, 2020 boss

Open interest on Chicago Mercantile Exchange Bitcoin options has skyrocketed over the past few days, to hit $142 million as of May 15. According to data from market analytics company, Skew, this represents a gain of over 1000% from just $12 million of open interest at the end of April. Bitcoin halving sees massive interest in options trading CME saw an initial spike in options volume on May 5 and May 6, with both days pushing towards $10 million. However this dropped off to a more usual $1 million on…

Hackers Sell Data of 129 Million Russian Car Owners for Bitcoin

May 15, 2020 boss

The major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), continues to be actively used for illicit activity. Anonymous hackers have taken the data of over 129 million Russian car owners to expose it on the darknet in exchange for cryptocurrency. The leaked information includes the full names, addresses, passport numbers and other data belonging to millions of Russian car drivers, Russian news agency RBC reported May 15. The stolen data is claimed to be leaked from the registry of Russia’s patrol jurisdiction, the General Administration for Traffic Safety of the Ministry of Internal Affairs…