Tag: Blockchain

Major U.S. Science Museum Now Accepting Payments in Bitcoin

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Bitcoin has made yet another step in the right direction towards mass adoption thanks to a museum located in Cleveland, Ohio that will be taking payments in crypto as from November 13. Great Lakes Science Center, the museum in question plans to use BitPay to process the BTC payments that it will be receiving from the visitors who will want to pay in BTC.

According to the Kirsten Ellenbogen, the museums chief executive, by accepting payments in BTC this early on, the institution hopes to facilitate the growth of the blockchain ecosystem. Moreover, there is much more optimism with regards to blockchain technology thanks to a number of promising developments. For instance, a Swiss luxury watchmaker known as Hublot successfully integrated the bitcoin and the blockchain to sell 210 pieces of its limited edition BTC-themed sports watch – the company made a whopping $5.25 million in revenue from the sales that were conducted solely through BTC with each piece fetching no less than $25,000.

The adoption of the digital currency as a means of payment comes ahead of the museum and education center’s inaugural Blockland Solutions Conference which is a four-day event scheduled for December 2018. One of the core agenda of the conference will be to explore and educate the attendees about the future of blockchain technology.

“There is a lot of excitement around the conference. Accepting bitcoin is just a small part of the momentum to grow a blockchain ecosystem in Cleveland,” Ellenbogen said.

Tried and Tested

Fortunately, the Great Lakes Science Center will not be venturing into unknown grounds since two other casinos in the United States – Museum of the Coastal Bend in Texas and St. Petersburg Museum of History in Florida – have succeeded in integrating bitcoin as a payment system. When it kicked off the initiative in 2013, the Museum of the Coastal Bend’s officials were quite skeptical about anyone visiting and using BTC but they went ahead with it because there really wasn’t as much risk.

Five years down the line and bitcoin has become quite a big deal and is worth upwards of $110 billion. The digital currency is also considered to be a proper asset by mainstream institutions such as Nasdaq, Fidelity, ICE and even the New York Stock Exchange. The Great Lakes Science Center hopes to also tap into the ecosystem with its own set of unique offerings that will include the ability to purchase admission tickets to visit NASA’s Glenn Visitor Center.

All this will be possible through an app that the museum launched a year ago. The app utilizes augmented reality and virtual reality to allow visitors to experiment with various elements of space phenomena such as flames and space-craft designs when they visit the Glenn Visitor Center.

Such developments are clear proof that the integration of trusted or major digital currencies like bitcoin is the new trend in the global market.

Revolutionary BTC Sidechain, The Liquid Network, Goes Live

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For a while now there has been a lot of buzz regarding such developments as the Lightning Network, which scales up the bitcoin network so that it can keep up with digital currencies like Ripple and Tron. The Lightning Network, for instance, has shown a lot of promise and is expected to take off on a large scale pretty soon. In the meantime, Blockstream, a company that majors in blockchain development projects, is hell-bent on completely revolutionizing how the world’s oldest and most popular digital currency works.

On October 10, the company officially announced the launch of the Liquid Network, a project they are touting as an inter-exchange settlement network that connects digital currency exchanges, financial institutions, market makers and brokers from all around the globe. This comes in a little less than a year after Blockstream introduced the concept of the Lightning Network during the Blockchain Association of Canada’s Government Forum that was held in Ottawa.

What It Does and How It Does It

Well, unlike the famous Lightning Network which has also been all the buzz lately, the Liquid Network is a secondary layer that was built as a sidechain of bitcoin – the sidechain essentially qualifies to be referred to as an extension of the bitcoin blockchain. However, it is not exclusive to the bitcoin blockchain. This sidechain allows its users to swap coins from the main blockchain to its sidechain in a 1-to-1 parity, something that is usually aimed at tapping in certain features that the main network may be lacking.

In the case of the Liquid Network, the feature that is tapped in is incredibly fast transactions with the main focus being on enhancing the exchange of large sums between the crypto exchanges, market makers and the financers. As it turns out, the members of the Liquid Network will be the ones providing the liquidity because they will be the people responsible for keeping a balance of L-BTC which they would then allow their users to trade.

“The members of Liquid secure the network by running functionary servers that run the Liquid blockchain as well as maintaining the two-way peg to the Bitcoin blockchain,” Blockstream’s CSO Samson Mow said in a recent interview. “When someone wants to move BTC to the Liquid sidechain, they send it to a unique peg-in address. When someone is ready to move their money back to the Bitcoin blockchain, they can make a peg-out transaction that will tell the [Liquid members] to send Bitcoin to the desired address.”

What Next?

At launch, the Liquid Network project had a total of 23 partners who are now the so-called Liquid members. Blockstream hopes to expand Liquid’s membership moving forward and at the same time build out its services to include such things as Issued Assets (IA) which would include tokenized commodities, tokens, and even Ethereum.

In the meantime, the company will be focusing on extending the features of the Lightning Network to specifically ease its introduction and adoption in the global cryptocurrency community.

The State of Crypto in the World of Soccer

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The World Cup season is gone but the tears, anticipation, and disappointment are still fresh in the minds of football enthusiasts from every part of the globe. It was an exciting time and everyone can attest to this fact regardless of how everything turned out. This time though, there were so many wins that came with the FIFA 2018 World Cup that went down in Russia.

Business was good in so many fronts but crypto turned out to be the main highlight. People were not only able to place bets using various cryptocurrencies but also pay for flights, hotels, food and even alcohol during the World Cup season. This was a huge milestone for the crypto ecosystem as it set the stage for even greater developments.

The World Cup aside, it is becoming clearer that the idea of cryptocurrency is beginning to become more acceptable in several different sectors. Even more interesting is the fact that more and more celebrities are backing cryptocurrencies – these include sports figures and athletes. Clearly, something is being done right and if things continue along the same path, then we should have another revolution in our hands pretty soon.

Didier Drogba Becomes a Crypto Ambassador

The iconic former Ivory Coast player is the latest entrant into the long list of celebrity athletes who have endorsed cryptocurrencies. Russian news outlet, RT reports that Drogba has recently signed up to the official ambassador for a new digital currency-based social networking platform known as all.me. In an interview with RT, Drogba expressed his strong faith in the project saying that he believed in it “a lot”. He even wore an all.me branded t-shirt during the interview to stress how firm his support for the project is.

Founded in 2015 by Artak Tovmasyan, an Armenian businessman, all.me reportedly raised $30 million when the website was launched and is planning to conduct an initial coin offering (ICO) in the fourth quarter of 2018. The platform is quite unique especially because it promises to share half of its advertising revenue with users based on factors that include activity, content, and popularity.

Ronaldinho Launches His Own Cryptocurrency

Brazilian football legend and 2005 Ballon d’Or award winner, Ronaldinho has also recently announced the launch of his own digital currency – Ronaldinho Soccer Coin (RSC) – which is also part of wider ambitions to venture into the global Esports industry, another emerging and rapidly growing market.

The Ronaldinho Soccer Coin project is aimed at developing, among other things, a football academy, and a betting platform and marketplace. In addition to this, the project will invest in hosting amateur and global league matches as well as in the development of virtual reality stadiums which will be used to compile blockchain database to assist in the analysis of player skill and subsequent creation of new teams.

These two are not the only athletes that have shown interest in crypto and as the year progresses we should see even more endorsements and partnerships.

More Universities Providing Courses on Crypto

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It has been a little less than a year since crypto exploded into mainstream awareness but it is already becoming the focus of a growing number of university courses and educational programs. A few of these courses are based on the actual coding, computer science, and cryptography that lie behind cryptocurrencies. However, more and more courses are being tailored with the idea of providing a detailed introduction to crypto in mind – the intention is to allow the more business-focused audiences to have a basis for deciding whether or not to adopt crypto and to what extent they should do this.

While this may seem like a profit-oriented venture by universities that have found ways to capitalize on the cryptocurrency frenzy, the students themselves have reported considerable satisfaction with the teaching that they have received so. Even though the courses simply focus on teaching how to conceptualize blockchain instead of how the technology is coded and created, the knowledge that is imparted is still vital enough to be a major driving force for crypto if it is to be adopted on a global scale.

In the United States, crypto is mostly taught in the context of business-related programs, with very few universities offering specific degrees in crypto or blockchain technology. As it stands, a decent number of high – profile MBA programs in the country have already included or are including crypto-based courses that enable the students to have a grasp on crypto.

Russian Universities Join the Bandwagon

Just like the United States and a few other parts of the world, more academic institutions in Russia are beginning to offer educational courses as well as postgraduate programs focused on crypto and blockchain.

The most recent entrants are three Russian universities who have recently announced new courses and majors all related to cryptocurrencies and associated crypto technologies. These programs will be offered immediately the next academic year kicks off this fall and they will cover a wide array of subjects that include digital economy, cryptography, blockchain, distributed ledger technologies and alternative payment systems among others.

The Voronezh State University (VSU), one of the three universities, has already formulated a bachelor’s degree program that is all about studying digital economy and blockchain technology. Referred to as the “Models and methods for analyzing the digital economy”, the new major will be offered by the university’s Department of Information Technologies and Mathematical Methods in Economics.

The Don State Technical University (DTSU), on the other hand, will be offering two master’s programs in blockchain technologies – these will be “Intellectual systems based on blockchain technologies” and “Digital accounting and management.”

“We offer graduate students [the opportunity] to study in depth the distributed ledger technology. Blockchain is a promising technology that is rapidly introduced in many areas of life. Demand for specialists in this field is growing every day,” said DSTU’s Vice-Rector Alexey Belskopilniy.

First All-Crypto Poker Tournament Headed for Atlantic City

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Atlantic City has been a haven for a number of big events in the past few months and it is about to get even better. The next big event will be the Blockchain World Conference (BWC) which will is scheduled for Harrah’s Resort between July 11 and July 13, but this is certainly not the biggest highlight of the event. The BWC also announced that it will be concluding the three-day conference with a bang by hosting the very first casino sanctioned all-crypto poker tournament.

The Blockchain World Conference is an event where blockchain and crypto experts meet to discuss the latest developments in the sector. Already, this year’s event is expected to be largest blockchain event in history with attendees ranging from celebrities to startups, ICOs, entrepreneurs, social media influencers, accredited investors, exchange facilitators, and developers. While these are certainly interesting aspects of the conference the crypto-poker tournament has been stealing the show ever since it was announced.

The 100-player event scheduled for July 14 will start at 11.00 AM is being hosted in conjunction with Blockparty, a blockchain-powered live event ticketing platform – the platform will be used by interested participants to buy-into games, betting as well as cashing out in digital currencies.

“What better way to end a three-day conference in Atlantic City than the world’s first crypto poker tournament? After three days of discussions about blockchain and cryptocurrency, this is a fun and unique way to bring our event to a close– highlighting a compelling real-world application of this technology, in true Atlantic City fashion. The Blockparty team are incredible leaders in blockchain-based live event ticketing and they were the perfect partners for us to work with for an event of this caliber,” Alex Falcone, the Blockchain World Conference COO said.

To guarantee a seat at the all-crypto poker tournament, the interested individuals must already be attendees of the Blockchain World Conference. They will also need to pay a $250 buy-in in cryptocurrency on Blockparty’s ticketing platform.

“As one of the first true real-world applications of blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re excited to add another event category, like poker, to our ticketing repertoire. It’s a great testament to what we’ve built that the mainstream music scene and crypto enthusiasts alike are recognizing the ease and convenience of our platform and this is a great taste of what the future holds as mainstream adoption of blockchain only continues,” Blockparty CEO, Shiv Madan commented on the company’s partnership with BWC for the tournament.

The winner of the all crypto poker tournament will receive two VIP to the BWC South that is scheduled to take place in Hollywood, Florida, between December 3 and December 5. In addition to this, the winner will also be awarded a three-night stay at the Diplomat Beach Resort as well as a $10,000 cash prize. Blockparty has also promised to award any player that manages to knock out a pro, in addition to the competition it will be holding in order to find 10 people whose buy-in for the crypto poker tournament they will pay.

Indian Supreme Court Upholds RBI’s Cryptocurrency Ban

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On April 5, India’ central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a circular that was addressed to all regulated financial institutions including banks prohibiting them from offering their services to crypto-related business. The policy further mandated the financial institutions to stop allowing their own retail clients from purchasing cryptocurrencies through their banking accounts. A three-month deadline was set for the policy and therefore the ban should effectively take effect as from Thursday, July 5.

As expected, the move by the RBI to ban cryptocurrencies has caused quite a stir across India’s nascent but rapidly growing cryptocurrency community with a number of crypto exchanges opting to take up the issue through the courts. The Supreme Court just happens to be one of the many courts where petitions challenging the ban were filed – most of the petitions cited the RBI’s policies as being “arbitrary, unfair and unconstitutional.”

The move was led by the Internet and Mobile Association of India which counts cryptocurrency exchanges as its members. The organization fast-tracked the legal challenge against the RBI ban and they finally got to be heard on the morning of June 3.

Unfortunately, the Indian Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra chose to side with the arguments of the RBI and therefore the cryptocurrency ban is still in effect and so is the July 5 deadline.

“This a win for the RBI and a big blow to virtual currency exchanges and traders. In our earlier request to the RBI as well, we had asked it to extend the deadline by a month after the July 20 hearing. However, now that the ban will continue, the banking route for the exchanges and its users will be completely choked,” said Rashmi Deshpande, an associate from legal firm Khaitan & Co who are involved in the petition.

Is This the End for Crypto Exchanges in India?

If you have been following the crypto industry in India, you may have noticed that it is quite likely that this might truly be the end of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country. There is all talk of total control of crypto being eventually handed to the RBI, something that, if goes through, will lead to the digital currencies being declared as completely illegal assets.

Furthermore, some top government officials have hinted at a number of regulatory or legal developments that are currently in the works and have the potential of turning everything around.

“We have prepared a draft (on virtual currencies) that entails what parts of this businesses should be banned and what should be preserved. This should be discussed by the first week of July and we should wrap this up within in the first fortnight of July,” Subnash Chandra Garg, the Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs said.

While we cannot be certain about what the future truly holds for crypto, the Supreme Court’s decision is most certainly bad news for the Indian crypto market especially considering how deep-rooted blockchain technology is in India.

Akon Launches Cryptocurrency to Power Youth Entrepreneurship

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Senegal-born platinum-selling singer and philanthropist Akon has recently announced plans to build his own city in Senegal with his recently launched digital currency, Akoin, being the main form of exchange. Cryptocurrencies have had their fair share of celebrity backers but most of the support has been at face value, that is, most of them are just ambassadors for digital currency outfits. As such, the move by Akon to venture into the crypto space is not only bold but also game-changing.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on June 18 on a panel titled “Branding Africa: Blockchain, Entrepreneurship and Empowering the Future,” the Grammy-nominated performer said blockchain technology and cryptocurrency could be “the savior for Africa in many ways” especially because of its high-security factor.

“I think that blockchain and crypto could be the savior for Africa in many ways because it brings the power back to the people and brings the security back into the currency system and also allows the people to utilize it in ways where they can advance themselves and not allow government to do those things that are keeping them down,” Akon said during the panel event, according to Page Six.

A Crypto City?

According to an initial blurb posted by ICO Impact Group, Akon and his team have a more ambitious plan in the works and it involves a 100 percent crypto-based city. As mentioned earlier at the beginning of this post, Akoin will be the center of the transactional life of the city that has been dubbed “Akon Crypto City.”

As it turns out, the development of the Akon Crypto City is already underway and it began with the 2,000 acres of land that the singer was gifted by the President of Senegal. The city is located within 5 minutes on Senegal’s new international airport, and a short drive from Dakar, Senegal’s capital city. It is also close to the coast, which in addition to all the factors make it a strategic location for such a venture.

At the moment, there are so many reasons to be skeptical about the plan especially because of the blithe overuse of “blockchain” as a buzzword and panacea to existing financial problems. To make it worse, Akon’s responses to the technical questions during the panel were not exactly heartening either – PageSix reports him saying, “I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out.” This is not exactly reassuring especially considering how shaky the crypto space is.

However, if we consider Akon’s Akon Lighting Africa charity project and how it effectively helped 17 countries in Africa to arrange for financing for solar panels and small-scale lighting projects, then this ambitious endeavor might just pay off, eventually.

BlitzPredict Debuts App to Predict World Cup Match Results

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BlitzPredict, a blockchain-based application that aims to help sports betting fans receive “reliable and transparent” betting advice has recently launched its main platform just a few days after the FIFA World Cup kicked off in Russia. The platform aims to provide these revolutionary solutions to some of the most daunting issues that have plagued the sports betting industry by recording predictions on the outcome of sporting events on an immutable blockchain.

The Las Vegas-based company will be responsible for time-stamping against true market odds in order to create what the BlitzPredict team refers to as a “verifiable, public record of everyone’s predictions.” Hopefully, the technology will make it harder for experts to hide their record, lie about the prices they receive and delete their losses altogether thus giving the users the opportunity to make informed decisions on the betting strategies they choose to back.

The blockchain would, in essence, provide the public with the transparent figures of any expert’s return on investment which is a great indicator of the expert’s past performance. Usually, due to the lack of such insight, the bettors usually end up risking their money by following bad advice from “experts” whose prediction histories and return on investment are not verifiable.

BlitzPredict will also allow users to purchase World Cup betting advice using its XBP bitcoin which is built on the Ethereum network and is ERC-20 compliant. In addition to this, the platform will be offering blogging functionality and a Major League Baseball (MLB) model to complement its current offer, that is, soccer. The company believes that the MLB model has had a 25-8 start which has, in turn, resulted in a 76 percent win percentage – in fact, the BlitzPredict has confirmed that it has already “recommended plenty of underdogs that have come through.”

BlitzPredict’s XBP token is also doing quite well as it is already being listed on a number of exchanges that include Bancor, HitBTC, Idex, and Bankor. This means that for users of the platform it will be very easy to make deposits, trades, and withdrawals.

Taking Advantage of the Changing US Market

Since the United States Supreme Court ruled to allow the states to decide on whether or not to legalize sports betting, there has been a lot of buzz with many companies moving to take advantage of the new opportunity and the emerging market that comes with it. BlitzPredict has not been left behind and they even go further ahead to admit that they had been eagerly waiting for the judgment.

BlitzPredict says that the rejuvenated demand for legal sports betting offerings will be accompanied by an aggressive appetite for high-quality content as well as tools that can help enhance the bettor’s chances of winning the bets they place. As far as the company is concerned, blockchain-driven tools are the way to go.

Alibaba to Venture into Blockchain, Not Bitcoin

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According to Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, blockchain technology is not a bubble, but bitcoin is. Speaking at the 2nd World Intelligence Conference in Tianjin on Wednesday, May 16, the leader of the Chinese e-commerce giant said that he has been researching blockchain for years and as a result, he strongly believes that the technology has the potential to address issues of data privacy and security in a vast number of different fields.

The company’s interest in blockchain technology does not come as surprise especially due to its prioritization of security. Jack Ma’s stance on bitcoin albeit understandable is rather surprising especially because it would offer a fresh approach to the company’s trading volume that sums up to trillions of transactions. Ma, however, clarified that he thought that the emerging blockchain technology was being overlooked in favor of bitcoin by speculators who view the decentralized digital currency as a “huge gold mine.” Again, understandable.

“Honestly, I know very little about it, and I am totally confused: and even if it works, the whole international rules and laws on trade on finance is going to completely change. I don’t think we are ready for that. So I think I’m focusing on the Alipay and focused on RMB, U.S. Dollars and Euros, and that’s fair … We have a team specifically to study that and also we have a team blockchain technology. We’ve spent a lot of efforts on blockchain technology at Alibaba, but Bitcoin, I say not for me. I don’t know,” Ma said during the conference. “But now that the blockchain is hot, there are people buying and selling blockchains … There is no bubble for blockchain, but there’s a bitcoin bubble … Personally, I’m quite bullish about blockchain.”

Alibaba seems to be quite serious about investing in blockchain technology – last year, for instance, the New York-listed Alibaba ranked first in the world for blockchain patent applications as revealed by data compiled by IPRdaily. Alibaba had 43 published blockchain patent applications in 2017. Blockchain has been lauded by a number of businessmen and if anything is to go by it should be a clear indication of the direction it will eventually take.

Blockchain Could Redefine the Sports Betting Experience

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Since 2017, a plethora of sports betting sites and apps have been shifting towards offering bettors the opportunity to place bets discretely from anywhere using their smartphones. The convenience that this provides has been a great marketing move that has paid off handsomely by attracting a staggering number of new users to online sports betting. However, there have been challenges when it comes to payment systems especially when it comes to traditional payment services and digital wallets who have always been circumspect about supporting online gambling. While this would have represented a dead end of sorts in the past, the utilization of specialized payment gateways in facilitating bankroll funding and payouts in online casinos took over.

Even though these services can be thought of as saviors to the online gambling scene, their involvement has in many ways amplified the risks of failure and fraud. The aforementioned payment gateways and services are always under threat from hackers and other cyber-criminals. Even handicapper sites and services that usually offer paid analyses to less savvy bettors do not always produce the wins that they promise to gamblers.

To address these issues, stakeholders in the online gambling industry are looking into blockchain technology. Several efforts are already being made in order to create better online betting experiences. Just to mention a few, HEROcoin is an effort that aims to decentralize sports betting, BlitzPredict through its aggregation service intends to provide gamblers with trustworthy insights and Electroneum’s token is designed to be used a digital currency in online gambling sites.

Facilitation of Easier Funding and Payouts

Unlike traditional means, payments made using blockchain are much faster as the tokens do not need to be routed through several financial institutions or clearing houses. In essence, this gives the users ultimate power over how and when they use their money. Furthermore, Electroneum which is a relatively new cryptocurrency has set a pace for allowing easy estimation of digital currencies and fiat currency by limiting its token to two decimal places.

Transparency

Blockchain powered platforms such as HEROcoin are offering great ways of achieving transparency and fairness by making betting a peer-to-peer and decentralized activity. Not only do users get to trace the flow of money and the terms but they also are allowed to define the conditions of wagers through smart contracts.

Trustworthy Insights

Services like BlitzPredict promote quality insights by allowing analytic enthusiasts to share their prediction models with other users. High performing models in BlitzPredict’s framework are rewarded with the platform’s own token which can then be used to place bets using the platform. This kind of rewards mechanism encourages gamblers to make data-driven decisions rather than relying on bad advice or hunches.