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Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 Bets on Segwit Adoption and Hints at Offline Tx Signing

Bitcoin core 0. 18. 0 bets on segwit adoption and hints at offline tx signing

Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 Bets on Segwit Adoption and Hints at Offline Tx Signing

Bitcoin core 0. 18. 0 bets on segwit adoption and hints at offline tx signing

After several months of development, the Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 client was successfully launched with some modifications aimed at improving the efficiency of BTC mining and including some changes that in some way favor Segwit’s adoption.

One of the fundamental tweaks of this new update is that it
expects users to configure their software to be Segwit compatible. If this compatibility is not
supported, “getblocktemplate” command calls will fail, generating a lower
reward for the miners.

“Calls to `getblocktemplate` will fail if the segwit rule is not specified. Calling `getblocktemplate` without segwit specified is almost certainly a misconfiguration since doing so results in lower rewards for the miner. Failed calls will produce an error message describing how to enable the segwit rule.”

In this way, not only is the implementation of Segwit promoted, but they expect miners to achieve greater freedom and independence from their mining pools. The team also encourage miners to adopt this standard as a measure of increasing their profits.

bitcoin Core: Focusing on Scalability and Convenience?

Another of the most important changes introduced with this update is the addition of an RPC known as joinpsbts. This allows to link several Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions into a single common transaction. PSBTs also would be able to support offline txs.

This
client’s development team is determined to push for the adoption of Segwit.
They explain that according to their expectations, in one year the Segwit
standard should be globally adopted.

“Starting with Bitcoin Core 0.20 (expected about a year after 0.18), Bitcoin Core will default to native segwit addresses (bech32) that provide additional fee savings and other benefits. Currently, many wallets and services already support sending to bech32 addresses, and if the Bitcoin Core project sees enough additional adoption, it will instead default to bech32 receiving addresses in Bitcoin Core 0.19 (approximately November 2019).”

Not Everyone is Pro-Segwit

Segwit -or segregated witness- is an implementation that separates the tx signature from the transaction itself. In this way, miners can process more transactions in the same block, aiding the blockchain’s scalability.

With Segwit, signatures are outside the blockchain

This solution has been strongly criticized by BTC forks such as BCH and BSV, which state that the use of Segwit and other technological strategies reduce the transparency and credibility of the blockchain. Many skeptics believe Segwit makes on-chain scaling harder, and are convinced that increasing the block size is the best possible solution

Published at Fri, 03 May 2019 17:27:44 +0000

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China’s Central Bank Will Soon Regulate ICO’s

The People’s Bank of China is turning its attention Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), seeking to regulate the new form of crowdfunding.


China to Regulate ICOs

Although cryptocurrency withdrawals are back on the big three Chinese exchanges, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) isn’t quite through with the cryptoworld. Now it seems like it’s going after Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), seeking to regulate the new phenomena in the crowdfunding world.

Chinese publication Weixin reports that Yao Qian, head of Digital Currency Research Institute at PBoC, has stated that the PBoC will soon regulate ICOs.

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Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs are a way to fund projects or companies crowdfunding methods. This typically includes selling project tokens for fiat currency, bitcoin, Ethereum, and other popular cryptocurrencies. These tokens are usually required in order to use the platform or they can also represent equity through a dividend or buy-back program.

Current ICO Landscape

The news comes at a time where ICOs are extremely popular, gathering millions of dollars every week and amassing higher and higher market caps.

Most recently, the Basic Attention Token (BAT) ICO, gathered $30million in a matter of seconds, while the Aragon project gathered $20million in roughly 15 minutes. The MobileGo ICO gathered over $53 million in the course of its month-long ICO.

Poloniex

While most ICOs currently take place through the use of the Ethereum network, other projects are also getting in on the action, as is the case of the Waves Platform, Wings DAO, and Ethereum Classic.

Although some of these crowdfunding campaigns have had exorbitant returns for investors, many members of the community are also raising questions about the validity of some of these projects and if they are really worth tens of millions of dollars before having even built their project/platform or an MVP (minimum viable product).

Regulatory Clarity Could Boost Industry

Although the moratorium on cryptocurrency withdrawals has come to an end, the PBoC has stated that they are not yet done with bitcoin exchanges.  Now, bitcoin miners in the country are starting to shut down their operations in fear of future regulatory pressure like the one applied to exchanges.

Some bitcoin miners in the Szechuan province, a place with cheaper electricity prices due to abundant hydropower resources, have decided to shut down in fear of regulation. One miner told YiCai Global:

The price is so high at the moment. Shutting down costs mine owners hundreds of thousands of yuan every day.

In China, the pressure from the PBoC has resulted in a weakened bitcoin market, strict KYC policies and may now also affect mining and ICOs as well. However, regulation can also be helpful. In Japan, the new regulatory framework built around cryptocurrencies has allowed their popularity to grow in the country.

Can the new stance on Initial Coin Offerings by the PBoC change the ICO landscape? 


Images courtesy of CryptoCompare, Twitter, Shutterstock

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