Thursday, June 25, 2015
Nasdaq Picks Chain for its Blockchain ‘Private Market’
JUN 25 DIGEST: Ascribe Raises $2 Million in Seed Capital, Onename Releases API to the World
Iceland’s Pirate Party Tops Opinion Polls, Leader Seeks to Create ‘Switzerland of Bits’
Xotika.TV: Bitcoin Turns Adult Entertainment on its Head
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
New Bitreserve CEO to MSN Money: ‘957 People Own 50%’ of Bitcoin Value
Bitcoin Now Accepted at Established Cloud Hosting Company Cloudways For All Web Hosting Services
Bitcoin Press Release: Cloudways, a leading managed cloud hosting platform established in 2012, is pleased to announce it is now accepting the P2P currency Bitcoin for all customer transactions. Web apps and stores hosted on Cloudways load on average 100% faster due to special optimizations, utilizing the latest in server load balancing technology.
Based on the open source peer to peer internet protocol, Bitcoin has gradually become the most preferred alternate currency in the world. The integration of Bitcoin payment gateway further demonstrates Cloudways’ innovative approach and love for their customers: giving users the payment flexibility they desire. Cloudways now supports MasterCard, PayPal, VISA, and American Express along with the newest addition of Bitcoin for all managed cloud hosting products.
“Cloudways have always believed in innovation and bringing the best to the cloud hosting community. We are proud to introduce Bitcoin as one of our payment options,” Pere Hospital, Co-Founder of Cloudways said. “We, here at Cloudways, always strive on being the people’s favorite and it is hard to deny the popularity that Bitcoin, a ‘free and open’ currency model, has been able to garner so far. This is what makes this integration a perfect fit for Cloudways and Bitcoin.”
Cloudways always ensures that its platform is secure and up to date with the latest OS patches thanks to the auto-update feature of the state-of-the-art cloud console. The console also enables the users to access over 15+ performance-related metrics with a single click. Cloudways’ console has an integrated monitoring mechanism system which generates pictorial reports for the metrics that help users determine how well their web applications are performing.
Web apps and stores hosted on Cloudways load 100% faster because of the special optimization formula that utilizes the powers of Varnish, Memcached, Apache and Nginx.
After the introduction of Bitcoin, Cloudways continues to show its commitment to serve the needs of its customers and embrace emerging technologies.
To learn more please go to: http://cloudways.com
About Cloudways
Cloudways is a Europe-based managed cloud hosting provider founded in 2012 by CTO Pere Hospital. With over 1500+ clients under the umbrella, Cloudways is one of the leading cloud-hosting providers in the world that offers a completely flexible, hassle-free hosting solution on the most trusted Cloud Infrastructure providers. Find out more by visiting us at Cloudways.
Media Contact:
Name: Muhammad Saad Khan
Email: pr@cloudways.com
Phone: 443300010338
About Bitcoin PR Buzz:
Bitcoin PR Buzz has been proudly serving the PR and marketing needs of Bitcoin and digital currency tech start-ups for over 2 years. Get your own professional Bitcoin and digital currency Press Release. Click here for more information.
The Blockchain Meets Big Data and Realtime Analysis
Analysis by Steven McKie.
Big Data. It’s a popular buzzword that you’ve seen all over the Net the past few years. It’s a very serious billion-dollar industry now — with frontrunners from all different niche avenues of data collection and analytics. With the number of unique data sources available to these data-focused companies, the possibilities for analytics and selling that service to others seems exponential. And, with the rise of worldwide ledger-based systems like that of Bitcoin and other blockchain-based technologies, the lines are blurring between what’s kosher in extrapolating data from the public domain and what isn’t.
There are plenty of reasons to gather large amounts of information, especially in realtime. The ability to identify trends, track data from its source to its endpoint, and making inferred correlations between data points is highly sought after – especially the storing of that data for future analyses and historics, primarily in the business/financial world.
But, what about the data on the most private things we do in our everyday lives? For instance, buying things online and in stores, filling prescriptions, sending money to friends. Surely there exist financial institutions and businesses that monitor that information for security/reporting purposes? And surely they report any suspicious activities to the appropriate authorities for matters of national security (see KYC/AML).
Many regulations already exist that require this level of oversight for financial institutions, especially those in the United States. These data analytics help the government and other agencies have more oversight into a hyper-connected populous.
Fair enough.
But what about when all that information is already in the public domain, and not private? Bitcoin and its distributed public ledger system allows for the entirety of all transactions on the network a certain modicum of “pseudo-anonymity.” Every transaction you make on the network is publicly available, but your particular “wallet address” and identity is uniquely known only to you and whomever else you transact with – or the custodial wallet service you may be using, i.e. Circle or Bitreserve. But if you’re using a newly generated address from your personal home wallet to send funds, or using stealth addresses (learn more here), you are more masked from analytics-based systems that would seek to interpret and make inter-correlations in regard to your transactions.
But who’s working on those types of systems? Bitcoin Magazine had a chance to speak with Bill Gleim, CEO of Coinalytics, who took the time to describe Coinalytic’s realtime analytics platform in his own words:
“I realized, as an early victim of bitcoin thefts, there needed to be a better way to understand blockchain activity,” he said. “My original motivation is a mental framework where participants justifiably trust the blockchain and other cryptoledgers with which they interact, particularly in terms of privacy and security.”
What does “understand blockchain activity” mean, though? Gleim went on to explain his plans for the long-term:
“We want to continue providing actionable insights for customers with widely-varying requirements,” he said. “Currently, our data intelligence layer is focused on financial transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, and we are excited to expand this data intelligence layer to areas like the Internet of Things and smart contracts in the future.”
Hmm. Sounds, interesting, definitely. But, let’s go a bit deeper.
One of the key components of Coinalytics is a system they are calling “Jarvis”. Jarvis, is described on the Coinalytics site as: “A visual and analytical workspace to perform in-depth investigations across the Bitcoin blockchain. Built on top of the Coinalytics back-end, the user interface allows you to visually interact with an enriched version of the blockchain and focus on transactions and entities of interest to analyze relationships and uncover hidden patterns.”
Now it’s starting to make sense. Coinalytics plans to data-mine the Bitcoin blockchain in order to “uncover hidden patterns,” aka monetize the act of making sure you and businesses are not transacting with bad actors or known criminals. Or by helping larger financial institutions better adhere to differing regulations passed at a state and national level as they transition into adopting digital currencies such as bitcoin, blackcoin, and litecoin.
This solution would ultimately allow banks to better trust the individuals they might be interacting with on the blockchain, or aid a governmental body tracking down a series of “bad” transactions to a particular e-criminal.
To be fair, the data is, in fact, publicly open to interpretation. Surely someone was bound to come along and analyze it on an enterprise level. We asked Gleim specifically whether he planned to work with any governmental agencies with his platform.
“Yes,” he said. “We provide data intelligence software to all kinds of companies and organizations.”
Surely there will be individuals who will be wary and suspicious of such a service, bad actors or not. However, people always find a way to circumvent potential privacy busters such as these.
Luckily, with the current release of BlockStream’s open source project, “Sidechain Elements”; the ability to use bitcoin as anonymously as cash will still be possible via sidechains. As well as many other current services that seek to improve the anonymity of bitcoin transactions, such as Dark Wallet, coin mixers, etc. Rest assured, there will always be a solution cropping up that further protects your privacy; that’s the power of open source.
We asked Gleim what his personal views were on Bitcoin anonymity and services as whole.
“As a proponent of personal privacy, I believe anonymity is desirable in many circumstances, and in other circumstances privacy, traceability and reputation is more important,” he said. “I would like to see the market needs for Proof of Identity, Proof of Privacy and even Proof of Anonymity fulfilled by Bitcoin.”
Gleim’s position as Technical Lead at Coinalytics is no surprise. He also has held positions at companies including Google, Motorola, and bitcoin alternative Ripple Labs. It’s great to see that someone who’s developed a system like Coinalytics/Jarvis also understands the importance of anonymity, and how that will play part in its growth, as businesses are built on providing services the blockchain itself cannot fulfill.
The bitcoin transactional flow is shaping up to look like this: major financial institutions transacting openly and transparently via the public ledgers to be regulated accordingly in real-time. And individuals transacting publicly or anonymously via sidechains, stealth addresses or whatever anon-related service they’re privy to.
This contrast is similar to that of current debit/credit card purchases and cash. You give up privacy for mainstream purchases with debit/credit card providers, and then anything private or sketchy can be done via cold, hard cash.
The whole idea of Bitcoin becoming a global financial system is slowly starting to seem a lot more feasible.
It’s great to see the services and systems built around the bitcoin blockchain mature and grow to not only work alongside regulators, but to also see other services/systems emerging to equally subvert them at the same time. And, for those gripping to the eternal libertarian roots of Bitcoin, this is not a fond farewell to the anti-government/privacy-centric ethos you all know and love. This is just a technological compromise.
For now.
Images courtesy of Coinalytics.co
Ripple Discontinues Smart Contract Platform Codius, Citing Small Market
Ripple Labs, maintainer of the digital currency Ripple, has announced it will not continue the development of its smart contract project nearly a year after it was announced, saying the “small and nascent decentralization market” is too immature.
In a blog post, Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas wrote that the company, which recently raised a $28 million funding round, has no plans to work on Codius, a platform that allows people to build distributed applications, and will instead build its own decentralized apps “manually.” He cited a lack of demand as the biggest reason why the project was closed.
“Codius is just a way to make decentralization easier,” Thomas wrote, “it’s an optimization, you don’t need it,” but “If there is demand and corresponding supply there is an obvious incentive for somebody to capitalize on this opportunity.”
Codius’ source code can be found on its Github and is free for anyone to tinker or build with.
Not as decentralized, not as costly
Announced in July, 2014, Codius set out to build a platform that smart contract-distributed apps could be built on top of. Unlike decentralized Bitcoin apps, this platform would use hosting providers, like the ones that run many websites, to host the decentralized applications — not a decentralized network. The Codius project was devised to make the process of setting up your smart contract app in a hosting provider automated and streamlined.
While relying on centralized entities that require trust may not bode well with many bitcoin advocates – unlike Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system – Codius is much cheaper both in terms of computing power and electricity. (Both systems have advantages and disadvantages).
When Ripple announced the project, it said an industry like the one that was created around digital currencies would emerge around smart contracts. That vision hasn’t materialized yet, although there has been recent interest in the space with two smart contract startups having just raised multiple-million dollar funding rounds.
It did get inquiries from a “significant” number of developers and companies, but ultimately, Ripple Labs saw the low demand as not enough to justify continuing the project.
The future
Although Codius 1.0 was released earlier this year, much remains in the way of the advancement of the smart contract platform. In order to make the process further automated and secure, hosting providers will need to verify the programs being run by these smart contracts by certifying cryptographically what code they are running.
Other challenges remain in the highly fragmented world of online standards. Codius relies on being able to automatically pay hosting providers, but without a clear Web payment standard (like Bitcoin), that is a continued challenge. Ripple Labs did say it was looking forward to completion of the work by the World Wide Web Consortium on this front. The other challenge cited by the company was differences in hosting providers’ APIs, causing problems for Codius.
Ripple Labs seems optimistic that a lot of the problems will be solved as the industry matures. The company said it will continue working on its own distributed applications (possibly for all those banks it has been partnering with recently) and advised others doing the same, or interested in doing so, to join the Codius mailing list.
'I Am Lyn Ulbricht': A Mother ‘Doubles Down’ for Her Son Against the ‘Failed Drug War’
Barclays to Explore Financial Applications of Blockchain, Signs Deal with Bitcoin Company Safello
Of the 10 firms to take part in Barclays’ 13-week fintech accelerator program in London, seven are now “exploring opportunities” with the bank, Finextra reports.
The Barclays Accelerator program, offered in partnership with the Techstars global networks, includes mentorship and opportunities for financial technology startups to access industry experts, influencers and potential clients. The program, which will soon open also in New York, covers all areas of fintech, from cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to wealth management, investment banking, big data and cryptocurrencies.
“At Barclays, we’re embracing the digital revolution, exploring innovations early on so that we can help to shape their development and co-create the future of financial services with these startups,” said Barclays’ chief design and digital officer Derek White. “We’re leading the industry with new pioneering technologies, which will be paramount to helping us achieve our ambition of becoming the ‘Go-To’ bank.”
Some of the fintech startups that signed deals with Barclays operate in the emerging sector of blockchain-based fintech. Banks are interested in blockchain technology for many reasons, but the principal reasons are the speed, low cost and traceability of transactions.
A recent report co-authored by Santander Innoventures, the venture capital arm of the Spanish bank, estimated that blockchain technology could reduce banks’ infrastructure costs by up to $20 billion a year and argued that banks, financial institutions and fintech startups should work together to undertake a fundamental “reboot” of the core processes, systems and infrastructure of the banking industry.
In March, speaking at the Morgan Stanley European Financials Conference in London, Barclays’ CEO Antony Jenkins warned that the “banking sector has not yet felt the ‘full disruptive force’ of technology – but it will.” He elaborated on the growing concern among financial institutions that faster, cheaper payment systems will start to seduce their consumer and business customers in the coming years.
After the fintech accelerator program, Barclays has signed a deal with Safello, a Swedish company that participated in the fintech accelerator program in London, to explore how the blockchain could be used in traditional finance.
Marketing Magazine reports that a Barclays spokeswoman declined to reveal any detail at this stage, saying that the bank and Safello are still in confidential talks. But she added that the bank was making a “statement of intent” and said Barclays was generally interested in exploring what Bitcoin technologies could do for financial services.
“Safello and Barclays will be working together on creating a new payment platform that will support bitcoins,” Safello CEO and co-founder Frank Schuil said, as reported by NewsBTC. Schuil added that the partnership would begin with a test of a payment system for allowing donations to be sent to charities using bitcoin. CoinDesk reported that Schuil said the partnership with Safello could help the bank reach an important demographic.
Founded in 2013, Safello set out to bring greater compliance and security to the Bitcoin industry. According to the company’s website, Safello’s user-friendly approach has since attracted tens of thousands of customers throughout Europe with an easy way to get into Bitcoin. Today, Safello supports 32 countries in Europe with direct payments and other payments such as SEPA, Faster Payments, Bankgiro, Swish and International Wire, and processes tens of millions of SEK, Euro and GBP in and out of Bitcoin.
Photo Mtaylor848 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Case Raises the Stakes in the Hardware Wallet Marketplace with $1.5M Funding Round and New CTO
Bitcoin hardware wallet provider Case Wallet Inc. has raised USD $1.5 million in an equity seed funding round led by FuturePerfect Ventures, participated in by RRE Ventures, High Line Venture Partners and the Rochester Institute of Technology Fund.
The company launched its hardware wallet at TechCrunch NY on May 4, and has been receiving preorders for the first batch of the multisig, multi-factor and credit-card-size hardware bitcoin wallets set to be shipped this summer.
With the new financing, the company aims to search for other possible usages for its secure signing device that utilizes biometric data. According to the company, Case already has gained the interest of well-established financial institutions that hope to implement the system to handle sensitive user data.
The Case hardware wallet has several features and functionalities that complete a biometric data security and authorization system. Specifically, by using three main components of the device – a fingerprint scanner, a camera and a GSM chip in the hardware wallet – transactions are authorized or sent with fingerprint information, which are then processed on Case’s servers. Once the verification in its servers is complete, the transactions are signed by the Case servers and propagated to the Bitcoin network.
The Case wallet uses a multisig solution with three different private keys to ensure the security of bitcoin in case of a hacking attack or a data breach. One private key is kept by the user, the second is held by the company, and the third backup is controlled by a cryptographic key management solutions provider, Third Key Solutions, founded by Andreas Antonopoulos and Pamela Morgan.
According to the Case team, the same system that is used by Case bitcoin hardware wallet could be implemented to grant access to data and verify transactions in platforms of financial institutions, banks and organizations. The company is currently in the process of seeking partnerships with financial organizations to increase consumer adoption of its multi-layered biometric data security devices and system.
“As more important assets move to the blockchain (contracts, property and identity), having a completely secure way to store and transfer those assets becomes even more paramount,” Case CEO Melanie Shapiro told Bitcoin Magazine.
“We’re interested in not only servicing the consumer holding bitcoin, but also providing the banks using blockchain technology the power to manage who has the authority to execute transactions,” she said. “We’ve built something far more robust and institution-friendly than traditional 2FA tokens.”
As global financial organizations, banks and stock markets have begun to show interests in using the blockchain technology to optimize their systems, Case plans to continue searching for ways to integrate its biometric security system to settle transactions in many applications.
“The recent announcement that the Nasdaq is piloting blockchain technologies for different use cases underscores the promise of the technology, and Case is poised to provide trusted, decentralized and biometrically secure signing of those and similar transactions,” Shapiro said in a statement.
“We’re looking forward to providing uncompromised security and ease-of-use for bitcoin buyers, sellers and users, to unlock the potential of bitcoin and blockchain technologies,” Shapiro said. “Making highly secure signing and authentication available across a variety of applications is just the beginning.”
Case enters a market currently led by two popular hardware wallets commercially available, Ledger wallet and Trezor, both of which recently released multisig updates earlier this year. However, Case wallet is unique in the marketplace because of its simplicity and features that do not require users to link the wallet to another device, such as a smartphone or computer, in order to set up a secure multisig wallet.
The company has also appointed Stephen Schultz as CTO as part of the plans for the new investment and to increase market adoption of its bitcoin hardware wallets. With over 20 years of experience in different technological platforms, Schultz is set to oversee the development of the company’s biometric data based security system and solutions.
Elizabeth Ploshay: ‘The Majority of the Financially Excluded Happen to Be Women’
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)