Switzerland sets legal foundations for blockchain industry

Blockchain and crypto tokens have the potential to bring efficiencies

and cost savings to a range of industries.

The Swiss government has announced a wide-ranging blockchain strategy that aims to create a legal foundation for the new technology. The reports suggests amending existing laws, rather than creating new legislation, in a bid to enhance Switzerland’s status as a blockchain-friendly country. The main focus of the strategy is to incorporate decentralised digital tokens into the Swiss business infrastructure, particularly the financial sector. One proposal is to clear away regulatory hurdles for trading securities (such as shares, bonds or real estate) on blockchain platforms. This would create a new regulatory category along the lines of recent fintech laws, which allow certain financial activities to be carried out by tech start-ups without a banking license.

Switzerland has rapidly established itself as one of the world’s leading blockchain hubs, attracting both start-ups and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. The technology, which started off as a means to replace the existing financial infrastructure, is now being adopted and adapted by banks, stock exchanges and other industries.

Blockchain/DLT

Blockchain is one example of distributed ledger technology (DLT), a recent digital innovation that allows people to take direct control of their own assets and trade them peer-to-peer without the need for centralised third parties, such as banks or other entities. Asset ownership and transactions are recorded on encrypted digital ledgers that are open for all participants to both view and validate. The complete history of asset ownership is included on these ledgers. To protect privacy, participants are assigned “private keys” – a series of randomly generated letters and numbers that act as IDs.

Blockchain was originally designed to be totally decentralised and open to the general public. But this is not suitable for many businesses that instead opt for restricted DLT platforms that require special permission to access.

End of infobox

The Swiss government reportexternal link released on Friday describes the innovation as “among the remarkable and potentially promising developments in digitalisation. It is predicted that these developments have considerable potential for innovation and enhanced efficiency, both in the financial sector and in other sectors of the economy.”

Digital assets

It also acknowledges that the true potential of blockchain – a form of distributed ledger technology (DLT) – “cannot yet be conclusively estimated” as it has yet to be tested on an industrial scale. Another caveat in the report talks about the risk of cryptocurrencies being used for criminal purposes, including the financing of terrorism. The government said it would remain vigilant but was waiting for the creation of international guidelines before deciding if it needed to take further action.

While current Swiss regulations cover many forms of digitalisation, such as e-banking, some aspects of blockchain/DLT technology fall between the cracks in the legal code. There are two notable challenges to incorporating blockchain into the law. New forms of encrypted digital tokens are not backed by physical assets, such as government issued money or paper certificates. The law needs to be amended to recognise digital-only assets, the report suggests.

Secondly, blockchain is designed to bypass middlemen who keep records of transactions and play a recognised role in protecting consumers from fraud. They are replaced in blockchain by decentralised digital ledgers and smart contract code that automatically processes transactions. The government wants financial transactions that are performed without physical intermediaries to have a place in the legal code.

Positive reaction

The report also proposes giving the financial regulator discretion to apply a lighter touch for decentralised blockchain/DLT securities trading platforms, provided their activities are not likely to harm investors. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) currently has these powers when assessing fintech start-ups that offer limited banking services.

The creation of such discretionary powers circumvents recent Swiss legislation that was inacted to align the Swiss financial centre with the European Union, says Luzius Meisser of the Bitcoin Association Switzerland. The law created three categories of stock exchange – none of which are suitable for decentralised token platforms, “making it necessary to create a new type in order to allow such exchanges to exist in Switzerland,” Meisser says.

“This shows once again how the traditional Swiss approach of having principle-based laws that give a lot of discretion to citizens and regulatory agencies are much more innovation-friendly than overly detailed European-style laws,” he said in a written statement. Blockchain financial start-ups will soon be able to take advantage of new fintech-friendly regulations allowing firms to take up to CHF100 million in client deposits without needing a banking license. Fintechs that qualify under this new regulatory category could also take custody of clients’ crypto tokens up to this value.

Unlike neighbouring Liechtenstein, that is in the process of creating a new set of laws aimed specifically at blockchain, Switzerland has chosen the route of adapting current legislation to incorporate the new technology. This approach was welcomed by the Crypto Valley Association (CVA), which it sees a solid legal base as an essential pillar of Switzerland’s blockchain strategy.

“We feel that this approach best represents the principle of technological neutrality and is in line with the position taken by the CVA in the consultation process,” Mattia Rattaggi, CVA spokesman for regulatory matters, said in an emailed statement to swissinfo.ch. “Crucially, this approach ensures maximum consistency within the current legal framework while keeping it principle-based and flexible, while allowing changes to be adopted on a ‘need-to-regulate’ basis.” The issue of how to tax digital tokens has been put off until a review is complete at some stage next year. The federal communications ministry has also been tasked next year with determining how blockchain can be reconciled with data protection laws.

Proposed law changes

Amend company bankruptcy laws to recognise data as an asset. This would allow courts to handle purely digital assets, and make sure they go to the right creditor, when sorting out insolvent firms. Amend the Banking Act along the same lines as above in the case of a financial institution going bankrupt. Amend the scope of the Anti-Money Laundering Act to cover decentralised exchanges with the power to dispose of third-party assets.

Create a “new authorisation category” for blockchain securities traders and exchanges to give FINMA discretion to apply a lighter touch when assessing the activities of such entities. Amend the Financial Market Infrastructure law and the Financial Institutions Act to “create more flexibility” for blockchain/DLT applications.

The finance ministry is already looking into a Collective Investment Schemes Act amendment to include a new category of funds (limited qualified investment funds L-QIFs) so that “new innovative products could be placed on the market more quickly and cost-effectively in the future”. No immediate changes to financial laws for the insurance industry are immediately foreseen as blockhain/DLT is in its “infancy” in this sector. The report also sees no reason to change any legislation with regards to cryptocurrencies.

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Zurich bureau chief| English Department

Profile

When not covering fintech, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, banks, trade and the World Economic Forum, swissinfo.ch's business correspondent can be found playing cricket on various grounds in Switzerland – including the frozen lake of St Moritz. Initials: mga

Expertise

Business, Finance, Economics

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/dlt-report_switzerland-sets-legal-foundations-for-blockchain-industry/44617654

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Swiss government announces legal foundation for blockchain technology

Following the Swiss government’s release

of an official report (see English report here) on Friday, advocating for decentralised financial transactions to have a place in the Swiss legal code, could this new strategy strengthen Switzerland’s status as a blockchain friendly country?

Several experts in the blockchain space provide their insight on the importance of adapting current legislation to incorporate new technological developments and the implications of Switzerland allowing changes to be adopted on a ‘need-to-regulate’ basis. Brent Jaciow, Head of Blockchain Affairs at Utopia Music, the cutting-edge, blockchain-powered music tracking and attribution platform based in Zug, Switzerland,

said:

In order for any new technology to gain mass adoption, people must know what regulatory framework they are operating under. While for early adopters a loose understanding may be all that is necessary, for institutions and the population en masse, it is crucial to understand the regulatory implications of owning, transacting and working with new technologies especially as it relates to securities.

Switzerland allowing changes to be adopted on a ‘need-to-regulate’ basis is not a large shift from the current situation, where governments must direct their focus to the most pressing needs of their citizens. Though, this is also positive as it means that governments and their regulatory bodies will be more proactive in providing guidance to new technologies. By being proactive, it will speed up the adoption cycle as new entrants do not need to be concerned with dealing with future or retroactive regulation and can just move forward with using and innovating with these new technologies.”

Chair of the Crypto Valley Association (CVA) Policy and Regulatory Working Group, Dr Mattia Rattaggi,

said:

The CVA welcomes the release of the Federal Council’s report, and is entirely in tune with its goal to create the best possible framework conditions for “Crypto Nation Switzerland,” while underlining the country’s integrity and reputation as a financial centre and business location.

It is positive that this is to be achieved through targeted adjustments to the existing legal framework – instead of issuing completely new laws. We feel that this approach best represents the principle of technological neutrality and is in line with the position taken by the CVA in the consultation process. Crucially, this approach ensures maximum consistency within the current legal framework while keeping it principle-based and flexible, while allowing changes to be adopted on a ‘need-to-regulate’ basis.

To a large extent, the report also confirms what we, in the Crypto Valley community, have known for some time — that Switzerland’s regulatory system is already open and relatively flexible. These are attributes that have been fundamental in the Crypto Valley’s emergence as a global hub of blockchain innovation.

With the CVA Policy and Regulatory Working Group, we look forward to analysing the details of the report, communicating its contents and implications to our Membership and to continued cooperation with government stakeholders to keep building the wider Crypto Valley ecosystem.”

Angel Versetti, Co-Founder & CEO of Ambrosus the world’s leading blockchain and IoT platform for quality assurance in food and

pharmaceutical supply chains, said:

The most recent Swiss Government report concerning the regulatory approach to blockchain technologies is an important step in moving the entire blockchain industry towards formal recognition and industrial adoption, and provides increased legal clarity. Notably, the report is keen to emphasize the innovative value of blockchain-based ecosystems, while also reminding the public of the infancy of the industry as a whole. For the broader cryptocurrency community, this report puts forward a cautious approach to regulating digital currencies and tokens. Within the context of innovation and the impending digital revolution, the report is significant insofar as it indicates a larger social and political shift in favour of decentralisation, transparency, and increased efficiency via blockchain technology.

At the same time, it is important to not simply apply securities, banking, and money transmission laws to cryptocurrencies and Blockchain, as has been done frequently in Switzerland over the past year. It is important not to stifle innovation and decentralisation with excessive regulations, red tape and bureaucracy, because this will reduce the democratic value proposition that blockchain offers and will only favour bankers, compliance lawyers, and financial intermediaries, which is already happening in most jurisdictions that are taking too strong an approach to regulation. As entrepreneurs in general —and crypto enthusiasts in particular — treasure privacy, decentralisation, and freedom from censorship, these values should likewise be reflected in the rules and regulations.

In addition, Switzerland should consider only regulating companies that do business with retail customers, and instead treat decentralized protocols as a common good, rather than trying to excessively regulate and impose rules on companies working on building decentralised protocols. In a nutshell, they should take a laissez-faire approach, whereby there are general freedoms and rights guaranteed, and companies are regulated reactively and not proactively. Those are fundamentally different approaches. One permits innovation while eradicating fraud, while the other will only benefit the banks and intermediaries that blockchain was supposed to replace in the first place. Right now, Switzerland seems to favour the digital asset management industry, which almost exclusively consists of the same old financial elites from the largest corporate banks and investment banks. They tend to recreate the same barriers that currently exist in the financial sector, which is worrying.

Mandating FINMA to be more relaxed and use more discretion towards crypto companies is a very welcome step indeed. However, reaffirming protection of rights and interests of crypto companies would be even better.”

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https://bit-media.org/blockchain/swiss-government-announces-legal-foundation-for-blockchain-technology/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

The Five Steps To Startup Success – Markethive

The First Social/Market Network Built On Blockchain Technology

5 steps to Startup Success

Spread the Word

Listed Under

Tag:
• Marketnetwork

Industry:
• Marketing

Location:
• Shell – Wyoming – US

Subject:
• Projects

SHELL, Wyo. – Jan. 2, 2019 – PRLog — CEO of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast announces:

"We are now ready and on the verge of launching the first ultimate Market Network with a social media interface. This has never been done before. Markethive is well versed in identifying its market being and we now offer our experience and expertise to everyone aspiring to build a business online.

We have purposely integrated blockchain Technology for your security, privacy and give you the ability to create a universal income all on one platform. What this means is you cannot be shadowbanned giving you freedom of speech. Your data is your data and cannot be used by the company or anyone else. You can work safely in an autonomous environment with everything you need to achieve your goals "

The Next Generation – The Next Level
You will now be able to sharpen your entrepreneurial skills with state of the art inbound marketing tools in a collaborative fluid culture achieving the five steps to startup success with Markethive. Even if you have just a slight entrepreneurial itch, you will be able to learn and grow with the system positioned to be the next generation of social/market media. And you get paid to learn!

CEO and Co-founder of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast says:

"Markethive has built and adopted a proven strategy over the last 20 years. The foundation has been laid which makes us in the top 1%. We already have the 3 pillars of Viability being Community, Technology, and Liquidity which need to be equal portions of to have the viability in the digital money sphere."

The early vertical market networks are
1. A Marketplace – Transactions among multiple buyers and sellers
2. A Network – Identity and Communications
3. Work Flow – SAAS, Software as a service

The CEO states:
".As predicted by the visionaries of Silicon Valley, the Market Network is the next logical replacement of the Social Networks. They spoke about the Market Network being the next unicorn trillion dollar companies over the next ten years. They were talking about Markethive. We are a Marketplace, a Network and we have all the Inbound Marketing tools for workflow.

We are the ultimate Market Network. Markethive is rising up to be the next generation Social (Market) Network bringing sanity to privacy and Universal Income to the Entrepreneur"Markethive an outstanding platform with huge upend potential in both the markets and revenue generation is solid and are already generating income revenue as well as funding revenue.

CTO and Co-founder of Markethive Douglas Yates quoted:
"It's fully operational as a beta platform, the coin has been created, the blockchain is in place, and every milestone in the white paper has been met on time."

One of the many veteran Associates, Tim Moseley says:
"Markethive represents the future to me. It offers me the most significant opportunity of my lifetime. One of which I am totally confident, that because of the vision and hard work relentlessly performed by the CEO Thomas Prendergast and his team, will launch Markethive forward into the future to become the premier Inbound Marketing Networks of our time. I can envision Markethive becoming the standard by which other Market Networks will be judged by"

Another satisfied Associate, Mike Sheehan states:
"Having had the opportunity to meet and speak with Tom provided me with the vision that this platform is going to be unique and beneficial. With limited tech knowledge Markethive gives me a platform where I can learn from both members and the training videos. And finally given the option to have free access to 75% of the platform or for only $100 monthly having access to 100% of the platform gives me comfort that everything is available for me to use without surprises of 'up-sells'."

All five steps to startup success have now been executed by Markethive. Now it's your turn. Join Markethive and be ready to receive the first of many infinity Airdrops of 500 MHV coins just for subscribing. And it gets better.

To find out more about Markethive, please visit our Blog https://markethive.com

Contact

Thomas Prendergast CEO
219 Main St, Shell WY 82441
Office: (307) 254-9329
ceo@markethive.net
Markethive: https://markethive.com

Contact
Deborah Williams Market Manager
***@markethive.net

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

YouGov Crypto Survey shows 50% of millennials interested in Cryptocurrency

The recently published YouGov survey found

under 50% of millennials were interested in using cryptocurrencies as a primary form of payment as opposed to using the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin adoption has been growing year on year and here is commentary from a number of spokespeople on the topic of mainstream awareness and acceptance of the crypto and blockchain industry.

The commentary comes from those who have already launched blockchain education initiatives or are directly involved in the academic space, including Lisk; Orvium; the Social Alpha Foundation; Brave New Coin and the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX).

Nick Cowan, CEO of the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX), which aims to position itself as a world-leading institutional-grade token sale platform and digital asset exchange that is a subsidiary of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, a European Union (EU) regulated stock exchange says:

Overall, the results from the YouGov poll provide a positive indicator for the future of cryptocurrency. The fact that 48% of millennials would be interested in using a digital currency is a sign of things to come. This is important because, ultimately, the future of the global economy lies with the millennials, not the baby-boomers.

The fact that over three-quarters of Americans would be interested in using cryptocurrency as a primary means of exchange is a positive for the industry. It speaks to the future prospect of cryptocurrency going mainstream. What is required is private sector actors offering real-world services to unlock institutional investment opportunities so that the market can become truly viable.”

Manuel Martin, Co-founder and CEO of Orvium, an open source platform for managing scholarly publications’ lifecycles, says:

This survey clearly indicates cryptocurrencies are the future! Mass adoption of cryptocurrency is the next logical step for modern societies, they exemplify the next step for the payment layer of the internet. As a peer-to-peer way of transferring value, the functionality of cryptocurrency is attractive to a person who grew up in a digital age with a tablet to hand at all times, this goes some way to explaining why 48% of millennials would be interested in using it.

A striking advantage of cryptocurrencies is that they negate the need for the involvement of third-party actors or central authorities in the transaction process. This reduces barriers to entry, transaction times, security concerns and even privacy issues – all factors which will invariably lead to increasingly widespread adoption.

The survey found that 79% of Americans are familiar with the cryptocurrency concept, this is a striking finding. However, upon delving deeper this makes sense as the cryptocurrency space is a massive marketplace that evolves at a very fast pace and is disrupting every single industry we know. It is important to note that cryptocurrencies represent more than meets the eye, they are flourishing ecosystems which have matured massively since Bitcoin’s inception in early 2009.”

Thomas Schouten, Head of Marketing at Lisk, the blockchain applications platform which allows users to code and build in JavaScript, says:

The stand out feature of this YouGov survey is the heightened awareness and openness to cryptocurrencies by millennials – acceptance by this core demographic is key to ensuring global adoption in the future. The survey shows us that the global leaders of tomorrow are aware and open to cryptocurrency but, saying that, there may still be some way to go in improving understanding of the real future utility of the underlying technology.

Generally, most people seem unaware of the massive potential in this space and don’t realise that Bitcoin and Ethereum are only the tip of the iceberg. It is safe to assume that these cryptocurrencies are noted in the survey more for their price spikes than their assumed future potential. Alongside investment in research and development, the blockchain industry needs to continue investing in education, as this will help move the discussion on from profitability, to the more important talking points around the potential of the technology.”

Rafael Delfin, Head of Research at Brave New Coin, a leading data and research company focused on the Blockchain and Cryptographic Assets industry, says:

YouGov’s survey findings are a reflection of a number of trends among 20-40 year old adults. Mainly of the high barriers to entry to both capital markets that produce returns and the public institutions controlling their legal tender. Together with the lack of trust in traditional financial institutions, the importance of an apolitical, borderless, and censorship resistance form of cash is becoming increasingly clear to a mostly global generation. This applies not only to urban dwellers but also to rural-based millennials who traditionally have lacked access to competitive banking services.

The main takeaway of this survey is that as baby boomers captured the gains of the stock market during the past 30+ years and now will start to cash out for retirement, young adults are turning to a new paradigm, that both resonates with their values and has a significant upside potential, for performance gains.”

Nydia Zhang, Co-founder and Chairman of Social Alpha Foundation, a not-for-profit grant making platform supporting blockchain technology for social good, says:

The survey findings from YouGov are reflective of current trends among millennials within the blockchain and crypto space. The report touches on the issue of mainstream awareness, with 79% of Americans saying they are familiar with at least one kind of cryptocurrency. Broader reputational issues in the industry are also raised in the survey, with a quarter of respondents stating that they think cryptocurrencies are used more for illegal purchases rather than legal ones. This statistic is not surprising, and while cryptocurrencies continue to defy the odds, blockchain adoption remains a challenge. For this to change in the future, we must demonstrate the functions of the technology to the public through major application or adoption.

Almost half (48%) of millennials say they would be interested in using cryptocurrency primarily. This is interesting and reinforces how the crypto community and culture has a bigger impact on the younger generation. Despite this, there is still a misperception surrounding cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, and this is evident by the 34% of people who think crypto will not become widely accepted in the near future.”

What is Bitcoin

This e-book on Amazon explains what Bitcoin is, it explains that Bitcoin (BTC) is a virtual currency, digital, not physical, and independent of banks. Useful links and resources for the newbie and advanced Bitcoiner or cryptocurrency enthusiast.

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https://bit-media.org/cryptocurrency/yougov-crypto-survey-shows-50-of-millennials-interested-in-cryptocurrency/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

PR management firm Cision is acquiring Falcon.io to expand into social media marketing

Social media has become a primary conduit for getting the word out,

in some cases proving to be an even stronger force for publicity than more traditional media outlets and paid advertising, and so today, a company that has grown its business around public relations services has acquired a social media management company to make sure it has a foothold in the medium. Cision, which provides press release distribution, media monitoring and other PR services to businesses and the media industry, has acquired Falcon.io, a startup founded in Denmark that lets companies post, manage and analyse their presence on social media platforms.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, the companies tell me, but the whole of the Falcon team, including CEO/founder Ulrik Bo Larsen, are joining the company, where they will continue to operate its existing product set as well as integrate it into Cision’s wider business. The last valuation noted in April 2017 at the Danish Companies House was about $52 million (€45 million), but they have been growing very rapidly, and one source tells us that the price paid was around $200-$225 million, while Danish publication Borsen says it’s 800 million Danish kroner, or around $122 million. I’m still trying to get more detail.

Falcon had raised around $25 million according to PitchBook, and it has never disclosed its valuation. Cision — well-known to many journalists — is publicly traded and currently has a market cap of just under $1.6 billion. For some context, two other prominent social media management firms that compete with Falcon, Sprout Social and Hootsuite, are respectively valued at $800 million and anywhere between $750 million and $1 billion (depending on who you ask).

The latter two are bigger firms — Falcon has around 1,500 businesses as customers that use it to manage their social profiles and read social sentiment across platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, while Sprout says it has around 25,000 and Hootsuite counts millions of individual users — and both have raised significantly more capital, but their valuations underscore the demand that we’re seeing for platforms and user-friendly tools to target the world’s social media users — estimated to number at upwards of 2.5 billion people globally.

Kevin Akeroyd, who came on as Cision’s CEO after long stints at both Oracle and Salesforce, among other places, describes Falcon as a “top five” social media marketing and analytics firm, and in an interview he said that the new acquisition will form a key part of the “communications cloud” that Cision has been building. As with Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe (which also use similar cloud-themed terminology to describe their product suites), Cision’s strategy is to build a one-stop shop for customers to manage all their communications needs from one platform. Falcon itself may be smaller than its competitors, but the idea is that it will be cross-sold to Cision’s customers, which currently number 75,000 businesses.

“We’re seeing too many of our customers using one application for content, another for something else, and so on. There are too many apps,” Akeroyd said. “We have always believed in earned media” — that is, media mentions that are not in the form of paid advertising — “and the role of influencers alongside paid and owned marketing. We believe we could provide the first solution for businesses across earned, communications services and public relations, helping to build a better data stack to measure and attribute what you are doing in comms.”

As social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter build more of their own tools in-house to serve the social media needs of organizations that want to better manage their profiles and interactions on these platforms, this has led to some consolidation and shifts among social media management companies. Some are merging or getting acquired, and some are shopping themselves around.

And in that wider trend, it’s not too surprising to see public relations firms get in on the action. Social media has completely changed the landscape for how information is disseminated today, sometimes complementing what traditional media organizations do — there are many examples of how newspapers and other news outlets leverage, for example, Facebook to grow and communicate with their audiences — and often replacing traditional media altogether. (Pew last month said that social media outpaced newspapers for the first time as a news source in the U.S., although TV and radio are still bigger than social… for now.)

Given that public relations management has long been the connecting link between organisations and media outlets, they have had to take a bigger step into social media in order to provide to their clients a more complete picture of the media landscape. Cision is not the first to have done this: Last year, Meltwater, another media monitoring firm, acquired DataSift to add social signals and traffic to its platform mix. “This consolidation has to come because there is just too much value for the user,” Akeroyd said. “CMOs and CCOs do not want their own islands, they want something bigger.”

Article Produced By
Ingrid Lunden

Writer

Ingrid is a writer and editor for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. Before TechCrunch, Ingrid worked at paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most comfortable speaking in English but can also speak Russian, Spanish and French (in descending order of competence).

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/03/pr-management-firm-cision-is-acquiring-falcon-io-to-expand-into-social-media-marketing/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Startup Nation’s SEC Turns To DLT To Battle Cyberterrorism

The Israeli Securities Authority,

the equivalent of the American SEC, is incorporating blockchain technology into its information systems, in an effort to improve the cybersecurity of its nation-level critical systems against cyberterrorism attacks.

Why It Matters

A public embrace of blockchain technology from any government agency signals a very positive move towards wide adoption, especially when coming from the innovative startup nation’s cybersecurity specialists. The ISA has already embedded the technology into their existing communication system used to deliver messages to entities supervised by the government regulator. It is also planning to use blockchain technology to develop two additional systems: one is an online voting system for investors to cast their vote on decisions taken in ISA assemblies and the other will be a system for tracking financial reports submitted by supervised entities.

BLOCKTV spoke to Eran Ovadia, the project lead from Taldor, who implemented the infrastructure for the ISA, in order to understand why they chose blockchain, and what blockchain technology does for the project that other technologies do not.

Cyberterrorists Never Sleep

The ISA’s systems are constantly being targeted by cyberterrorism attacks and hacking attempts originating from hackers backed by foreign governments and hostile actors around the globe. Specialized teams monitor incidents 24/7. But the availability of the ISA's systems is highly critical, since if any hacker could manage to take it down, it would practically paralyze the stock exchange and the entire nation's economy. That is simply something the ISA cannot afford to let happen.

Enter Blockchain

The innate decentralized nature of blockchains make them resilient to hacker’s attempts to take them down, compared to taking down one central server. Another critical factor of the ISA’s systems is the integrity of financial reports submitted. The ISA cannot allow hackers to tamper with reports' data stored on central databases. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) helps make its systems more resilient to attempts of fraud or tampering with messages. It validates the immutability of the entire data within their system, similar to the way the Bitcoin consensus would not allow tampering with currency transactions. A hacker could not manipulate any part of the system without it being immediately detected. They even implemented smart contracts to automatically revert to the system's last valid state in any case of inconsistency.

In the vote casting system, Taldor said it’s using multi-factor authentication to verify voters’ identities, and is performing consensus validation by using a hybrid public and private ledger. They initially based their system on the Ethereum platform, but eventually chose to use a lighter validation method, since the algorithms used to validate cryptocurrency transactions were too heavy to process. The ISA’s new blockchain-based system is an attempt to keep up with the fintech industry’s global trend to apply innovative technologies, and according to Natan Hershkovitz, director of ISA’s Information Systems department, puts it ahead of the race as one of the leading government authorities in the world in implementing information

cybersecurity and authenticity.

"We are witnessing a growing trend toward incorporating of innovative and pathbreaking technologies in the financial industry. The implementation of blockchain technology in the ISA's information systems positions it as one of the leading government authorities worldwide in the security and reliability of information."

With the current step, the ISA is joining the growing trend of governments and official establishments adopting blockchain technology as a viable and useful technology. As the Israeli entity in charge of regulating the financial investment market, the equivalent of the American SEC, the ISA members are much quicker in expressing a more accepting approach towards blockchain technology, compared to their American colleagues, who are known for taking their time with the infamous Bitcoin ETFs submissions.

Article Produced By
Ofer Sharon

Reporter

Currently, I am researching, dissecting and creating high-caliber content for BLOCKTV. I focus mainly on the new Financial Technology, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, AI and ML developments, as well as IoT. With the media and technology fields both competing for my attention, I was a software developer for the larger portion of my career, and recently decided to start investing myself full-time in a field I always kept close to my heart. I am now a researcher, tech journalist and content writer for BLOCKTV.

https://blocktv.com/article/2018-12-26/5c2481a694c54-startup-nation-s-sec-turns-to-dlt-to-battle-cyberterrorism

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Crypto Startups Forked Out $878,000 To White Hats In 2018

Bitcoin may have been dubbed the
“world’s most secure transaction settlement layer”

by Anthony Pompliano, but the industry surrounding the protocol may not be all too secure. Case in point, crypto startups have forked out over $878,000 in bounty to white hat hackers in 2018, specifically for solving bugs that slipped under the radar.

Crypto Startups Awarded $878,000 To “Goody Two Shoes” Hackers

The Next Web’s Hard Fork column recently reported that over the course of 2018, blockchain firms awarded $878,504 to goody too shoes hackers for rectifying bugs. Block.one, the company behind the crypto juggernaut in EOS, forked out upwards of 60% of the aforementioned sum. Considering that the startup raked in an approximated $4 billion for its EOS token offering, one of the most hyped cryptocurrencies of all-time, it makes sense why Block.one awarded $534,500 to white hats.

Interestingly Coinbase, the seemingly unhackable $8 billion upstart, comes in behind Block.one with $290,381 in paid bounties. But, HackerOne, the cybersecurity platform that compiled the data, didn’t divulge how much of that sum was a result of 2018 bugs, as Coinbase purportedly began its disclosure program in 2014. Justin Sun-headed Tron, which recently surpassed a number of pertinent milestones, has found itself behind Coinbase, allowing white hats to score $76,200. Yet these quintuple and sextuple figures are edge cases, as a HackerOne spokesperson told Hard Fork that “the average bounty [paid] for blockchain companies in 2018 was $1,490, that is higher than the Q4 platform average of around $900.”

Still Vulnerable

While many crypto projects talk a big game, the bottom line is that many blockchains and cryptocurrency-friendly startups remain vulnerable. As reported by NewsBTC in early-August, Altex, a lesser-known crypto asset exchange, saw its ARQ stash get looted. The platform claimed that it “lost a big amount,” specifically due to a bug that hails from the Monero codebase.

Just two months later, Pigeoncoin (PGN) fell victim to an odd inflation bug, CVE-2018-17144, that allowed a bad actor to whip up 235 million PGN within a day’s time. Interestingly, the bugged line of code comes from the Bitcoin protocol. The issue has since been patched by Bitcoin Core (the software) developers, but this event still shocked consumers en-masse.

Ground-breaking bugs aren’t limited to the small-cap cryptocurrencies. In July, SlowMist, a Chinese cybersecurity firm, claimed that an anonymous user managed to double spend 694 Tether (USDT). According to SlowMist, a transactor was able to gain credit for 694 USDT on an exchange without sending the funds. Upon digging, it was discovered that the issue was the fault of the victimized exchange. Dacoinminister, a founder of the Omni Protocol, which Tether is based on,

wrote:

“It appears that what happened here is that an exchange wasn’t checking the valid flag on transactions. They accepted a transaction with valid=false (which they should not have), and then the second “double spend” transaction had valid=true, which they also accepted.”

Regardless of where this problem originated from, the three aforementioned cases only accentuate the fact that this industry remains nascent. So, this industry’s developers still have a ways to go until crypto is spick and span, and ready for worldwide consumption.

Article Produced By
Nick Chong

https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/12/30/crypto-startups-white-hats-2018/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Nearly 1,000 Cryptocurrency Projects ‘Died’ During This Year’s Bear Market

Nearly 1,000 Cryptocurrency Projects 'Died' During This Year's Bear Market

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Coinopsy and DeadCoins have identified nearly 1,000 crypto projects which have "died."
Dead projects are those that were scams, never delivered a product, or have very low trading volumes and adoption rates.

Approximately 1,000 different cryptocurrency-related projects failed in 2018,

according to data from DeadCoins and Coinopsy. Some of them were relatively well-known bear market victims. Many of the dead crypto projects were outright scams which were orchestrated under the guise of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Included in DeadCoins and Coinpsy’s long list of abandoned and/or fraudulent digital currency schemes is BitConnect, which is considered one of the largest crypto-related Ponzi scheme scams in history.

Coinopsy: 483 Inactive Digital Currency Projects

Deadcoins, which has compiled one of the most comprehensive information sources on inactive cryptos, revealed there are at least 934 digital currencies that are now dead. In July 2018, DeadCoins reported about 800 abandoned crypto tokens. Meanwhile, Coinopsy has found 483 digital currency projects that are no longer active.

According to Coinopsy, a crypto may be considered dead if its token or coin has been abandoned by its founders, was a scam, and/or its website is dead. A crypto project may also be considered dead if its coin has no trading volume or transaction validating nodes to support it, Coinopsy noted. If there are unresolved technical issues with software supporting the cryptocurrency such as problems with wallets used to store it, then the crypto may be considered inactive.

Notably, Coinopsy has categorized dead coins as: ICO Dead Coins, Joke Dead Coins, Abandoned Dead Coins, and Scam Dead Coins. There are currently 113 ICO Dead Coins identified by Coinopsy, meaning these projects launched an ICO but never seemed to have delivered a product or updates regarding their platform’s ongoing development. Crypto tokens may also be classified as dead ICO coins (by Coinopsy) if they were used to carry out pump-and-dump schemes or other types of market manipulation, while not seeing any real adoption.

Wall Street Journal Finds Plagiarized Whitepapers

A Joke dead coin, according to Coinopsy, is any crypto launched with the intention of just being a joke and no serious plans of becoming a useful digital asset. There are presently 17 coins listed as joke cryptos on Coinopsy. Additionally, Coinopsy found at least 40 cryptocurrency projects that were scams and 313 abandoned coins. Coinopsy explains that a token may be considered dead if it ranks below 1000 in terms of market capitalization for 3 consecutive months. A token whose trading volume is below $1,000 for 3 months is also dead, Coinopsy noted.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) looked into inactive crypto projects as well. WSJ’s latest research findings showed that more than 15% of crypto projects that raised funds via ICOs during 2017 and 2018 had plagiarized whitepapers or just copied ideas from other cryptos. There were also a fairly large number of ICO projects that had promised “improbable returns” and then failed to deliver, the WSJ revealed.

Article Produced By
Omar Faridi

I enjoy writing about all topics related to Bitcoin, Blockchain, and other cryptocurrencies. The topics that interest me most are crypto regulations, quantum resistant blockchains, Ethereum and Bitcoin Core development, and scams orchestrated under the guise of ICOs. My academic background includes an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I also possess a Master of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Phoenix.

While completing my coursework, I engaged in independent study programs focused on public-key cryptography and quantum computing. My professional work experience includes working as an application developer for the University of Houston, data storage specialist at Dell EMC, and as Teacher of Mathematics in the United States, China, Kuwait, and Pakistan.

https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2018/12/nearly-1000-dead-cryptocurrency-projects-identified-by-coinopsy-deadcoins/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Bank of America Files for Blockchain âATM as a Service’ Patent

Bank of America Files for Blockchain ‘ATM as a Service’ Patent

Bank of America may be eyeing shared networks of ATMs

powered by blockchain tech, according to a newly revealed patent application. The filing, published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Tuesday, outlines a system via which a cash-handling devices could utilize blockchain technology to “accelerate transaction speed and/or facilitate other types of transactions in addition to ATM transactions like cash withdrawals and deposits, such as gift registry transactions.”

Blockchain could also help such devices “handle a relatively larger amount of transaction volume while reducing its physical cash transportation needs,” the document reads. Currently, most ATMs are dedicated to their respective banks and those institutions’ operating systems, Bank of America said in the filing, yet support for multi-purpose, “multi-tenant” – different stakeholders that share access to a single software system – functions is needed to offer various micro-services related to brand and marketing opportunities.

The bank is effectively looking to implement “ATM as a Service” to enable customers without existing relationship with a participating financial institution to transfer money across the same ATM network or even access point-to-point video communication using the ATM. As the patent explains that, to do this, the system would implement an “open and robust” data transport layer with “full” encryption and security.

It goes on:

“The data transport supporting ATM management, signaling, and non-financial institution and financial institution transactions may be strictly communicated to a cloud platform … and subsequent hosting of web and application services may allow secure and scalable operations. “

The patent filing is just the latest to emerge from Bank of America, which has filed more than 50 blockchain-related patents as of August 2018, according to a research report by iPR Daily, a media outlet specializing in intellectual property. Last month, the bank was awarded a patent for a novel method for storing cryptocurrencies.

Article Produced By

Yogita Khatri

https://www.coindesk.com/bank-of-america-files-for-blockchain-atm-as-a-service-patent

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Survey Finds 14% of Chinese Citizens Have Invested in Cryptocurrencies

Survey Finds 14% of Chinese Citizens Have Invested in Cryptocurrencies

A survey conducted by Panews has found that 14% of Chinese citizens

have invested in cryptocurrencies. The survey also found that 98% of respondents indicated familiarity with the concepts of cryptocurrency and bitcoin – 3% more than those who stated that they had heard of blockchain technology.

Panews has published the findings of a survey that queried 4,200 Chinese citizens on their familiarity and opinions regarding Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The survey found that just 75 respondents had not heard of cryptocurrency or blockchain technology, equating to roughly 2% of the survey’s sample. The survey also found that 40% of respondents expressed a willingness to invest in cryptocurrencies in the future, despite nearly 83% of the sample describing cryptocurrency investment as a new trend.

14% of the sample, or 598 respondents, stated that they have invested in cryptocurrencies, nearly 70% of whom purchased their crypto via an exchange platform. 266 respondents came to possess their crypto through airdrops, followed by mining, with 263. The sample indicated that social media is the dominant means through which Chinese citizens have become exposed to cryptocurrencies, with 38% of respondents claiming familiarity with crypto stating that they became exposed to such through social media, followed by “relatives and friends” with 26%. Panews also noted that the majority of respondents associated cryptocurrencies with investment products primarily, and not as a medium of exchange.

Cryptocurrency Moving Towards Becoming Household Concept in China

While 4,125 respondents indicated familiarity with the concepts of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and blockchain technology, only 372 individuals described themselves as possessing a strong understanding of pertinent topics, amounting to roughly 9% of all respondents. Only 17 respondents claimed not to have heard of cryptocurrency, while 103 stated that they were unfamiliar with Bitcoin. 60% of respondents described common perceptions regarding the complexity of exchanging and storing cryptocurrency as the primary barrier to greater crypto adoption.

Overall, the study found that bitcoin and cryptocurrency have made significant strides toward penetrating mainstream economic discourse in China, asserting that “the cryptocurrency industry has made considerable progress in the public’s cognitive level” since “the early days.”

Article Produced By
Samuel Haig

Samuel Haig is a journalist and entrepreneur who has been completely obsessed with bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012. Samuel lives in Tasmania, Australia, where he attended the University of Tasmania and majored in Political Science, and Journalism, Media & Communications. Samuel has written about the dialectics of decentralization, and is also a musician and kangaroo riding enthusiast.

https://news.bitcoin.com/1-7-chinese-invested-cryptocurrency/

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David https://markethive.com/david-ogden