In the era of active urbanization, the issue of finding the most feasible and efficient sources of energy is remaining among the most pressing ones. While it is predicted that by 2050 approximately 60% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas, some cities are already working on the development of future green energy delivery solutions based on “smart grid” technology.
It is also expected that just in two years global spending on digital city technology will reach a mark of $400 billion, though in 2016 they amounted to $80 billion. Authorities from different corners of the world are joining forces with huge companies and growing startups to find the most appropriate solutions. One of such startups that are actively working with cities on this issue is Lition.
Lition Energy Market
Lition has been launched only this year but it has already managed to become a licensed energy supplier in Germany. Lition’s clients in 12 major cities, including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich have an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of its decentralized energy market.
The startup’s energy market is developed on the top of blockchain. It is aimed at ensuring direct connection between consumers and energy producers of different sizes and offering its clients a possibility to find cheaper energy.
According to the data provided by the company, over 700 households from different cities of Germany are currently utilizing the decentralized Ethereum-based platform with a view to buy energy.
Lition’s Mission
While environmental sustainability and energy efficiency are viewed as the key priorities for smart cities, Lition is moving towards revolutionizing the global energy market. Following the main principle of blockchain, the project is trying to eliminate middlemen in the process of purchasing energy which also helps to save consumers expenses on power.
In the traditional market, households have an opportunity to buy energy only from intermediaries that in their turn have bought it from suppliers. It is believed that Lition’s scheme will help to save up to 20% of users’ expenses on energy and to increase suppliers’ income by one third.
According to the company’s CEO Richard , the energy market is suffering from too intensive influence of these multinational intermediaries. As a result, consumers practically do not have any choice which type of energy to use.
Commenting this issue, he also :
“Green energy buyers never really know what they’re purchasing, because the systems are too complex and lack transparency. Even dirty coal-generated energy can be packaged as ‘green’ to a consumer, who never knows the provenance of their energy supply. Blockchain technology deals with all these issues, allowing consumers to buy energy from suppliers they trust. Just as important, smart meter technology allows consumers to take advantage of cheaper energy during off-peak times. These benefits put a consumer in the driver’s seat when it comes to energy consumption.”
Currently, the platform can be used only by consumers from Germany where it is licensed. Moreover, the company has faced with some problems caused by the peculiarities of Ethereum protocol but it is already actively working on improving the situation. Lition is also going to hold its own ICO to launch its private-public blockchain with enhanced capacities.
The first derivative (BCH) is on a steep upward journey in the last three days. As the cryptocurrency is approaching its scheduled fork on November 15th, the BCH valuation has jumped 25% from Nov. 2 until now. The recent price-surge in BCH is because of the support for hard fork extended by two big crypto exchanges – and .
bitcoin Cash is currently trading at $560.21 with a market cap of $9.7 billion. In the last 24 hours, the cryptocurrency has gained over 4% with its trading volumes crossing $1 billion, according to .
In its official for extending the support for bitcoin Cash hard fork, crypto exchange Binance wrote:
“Binance would like to confirm support for the upcoming hard fork. We will take a snapshot of all bitcoin Cash balances at UNIX time 1542300000, 2018/11/15 4:40:00 PM (UTC). Deposits and withdrawals of bitcoin Cash will be suspended starting from 2018/11/15 3:00:00 PM (UTC). Please leave sufficient time for deposits to be processed in full prior to this time. We will handle all technical requirements involved for all users holding bitcoin Cash in their Binance accounts.”
Coinbase and Ledger Join Binance to Extend Support for the BCH Hard Fork
After the Binance announcement, another popular crypto exchange Coinbase jumped-in to extend support for the BCH hard fork. The Coinbase team :
“Twice a year, the bitcoin Cash (BCH) network hard forks as part of scheduled protocol upgrades. The next BCH hard fork is scheduled for Nov 15, 2018, and Coinbase is prepared to support the published roadmap from bitcoincash.org”.
Coinbase further wrote that during the upgrade period it will monitor the bitcoin Cash network. The exchange also notes that it cannot predict the duration of this network upgrade. Soon as the upgrade process is complete, Coinbase will take the succeeding steps to re-enable the sends and receives.
“We will update our customers throughout the upgrade process and about the outcome of the fork once the network reaches consensus. In the unlikely event that multiple viable chains persist after the fork, Coinbase will ensure that customers have access to their funds on each chain,” said Coinbase.
Crypto startup Ledger providing asset storage solutions has said that it will protect BCH users through the fork. Moreover, it also claims that as per the requirement, ti will support the most dominant chain i.e. the fork with the highest stability and most hashing power.
The Cause of the Hard Fork
Blockchain group NChain led by the controversial Craig Wright has gone to lock horns with BCH-centric developer consortium bitcoin ABC. Hence, they will cause a hard fork in the bitcoin Cash blockchain network resulting in two chains for the cryptocurrency. As part of the hard fork, the BCH holders will get an equivalent amount of the newly created BCH chain tokens.
In the last six months, most of the BCH volumes comes from the Asian subcontinent and majority from crypto exchanges like OKEx, Binance, and Huobi.
As the undisputed world leader in mining, China currently controls over 70 percent of bitcoin’s hashing-power and now CCID has updated its ranking of 33 crypto projects, evaluated in three separate categories as well as overall. bitcoin has been downgraded further since the previous update from the Center, while and are standing firmly on the top of the overall ranking.
This is the sixth update that the Center made and the number of crypto projects evaluated remains 33, that is, unchanged from the previous ranking.First on the list is again EOS that is then followed by Ethereum and Bitshares.
In August bitcoin held 10th place and then felt to 16th in September. In October, the number of points decreased to 92.5, which led to a reduction in the rating table of the credibility of the bitcoin blockchain until the 19th place.
The analysts at the CCID tried to explain the real reason for the dominance of these two blockchains which are used to deploy decentralized apps (DApps) and smart contracts.
They :
“At present, EOS and Ethereum are undoubtedly the preferred platforms for Dapp development worldwide, and EOS is showing a stronger momentum. The data shows that EOS Dapp is highly active and user increments are large.”
Nevertheless, public blockchain digital currency relies on the decision of third parties to solve the problem of ranking. Regarding this, bitcoin became less attractive payment tool compared to competitors, which transactions are confirmed much faster.Just for comparison, bitcoin transactions take 10 minutes to process, and Ethereum only features 15 second transaction resolution at best.
Neither guarantees a transaction will be in the next block, so it might be hours with bitcoin if there is a high transaction load for a transaction to clear. And smart contracts will typically feature multiple transactions of various sorts.
bitcoin’s forked version bitcoin Cash also found its place but much lower, down at the 31st place. Given that a major fork for the bitcoin Cash network is approaching on the 15th of November, it would be interesting to see if the seventh such index sees bitcoin Cash soaring in the list.
Thanks to their launch of x-Rapid payment product, made it to the top 10 spots on the CCID crypto ranking. XRP was therefore ranked 7th on the list with a total index score of 103.4. It scored big on basic technology, 72.0 while getting 13.1 and 18.3 respectively for application and creativity.
In one of the the last interviews, Ripple’s senior VP of marketing and communications Monica Long said the current speed of cross-border payments is pushing the adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.
She :
“Moving money from one country to another can be extremely costly and time-consuming. Your money can be in limbo for up to five days, which is absurd when a business could be putting that capital to work.
This friction in cross-border payments has driven enterprises to be some of the biggest champions of blockchain technology and digital assets. For example, these individuals are asking their banks to look into this realm as a solution to their problems. This is beneficial for smaller businesses who pay suppliers in other countries and have tight margins. By utilizing this technology, these mom and pop stores can help to reduce their costs and speed up the time it takes to move money.”
EOS, Ethereum Dominate
EOS and Ethereum continued to go bullish on the CCID index for the fourth time. The dapp and smart contract platforms this time scored 150.5 and 136.3 points, respectively, mainly excelling in terms of basic technology and applicability, which bitcoin lacked. In June this year, EOS has been according to a CCID ranking then. Ethereum ranked 2nd.
EOSIO is a software – powered by EOS tokens – that enables quick and easy decentralized application development, as well as cloud storage, authentication, hosting and a wide range of other applications. According to the company, this blockchain architecture has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second and virtually eliminate user fees.
Ranked at no.2 in market cap, Ethereum has brought a lot to the masses in recent years. Being a decentralized platform where developers can create smart contracts, Ethereum is a blockchain with huge reach that can add value and represent the ownership of items, property & dApp development.
In May however, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China released its public blockchain ranking, where the world second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum the top spot leaving its top rival bitcoin far behind. Even then, bitcoin did not manage to get even in the top-five or the top-ten spots, but instead was at the thirteenth position.
In today’s edition of The Daily, we look at a successful funding round for a developer of a popular cryptocurrency-powered game. We also report on a famous early entrepreneur in the bitcoin space who has been accused of stealing money to buy Maserati cars, big powerboats and luxury real estate.
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Google and Samsung Invest
in Crypto Kitties Developer
Dapper Labs — the developer behind Crypto Kitties, the game that famously clogged up the Ethereum network — has announced that it has raised $15 million in a financing round led by Venrock. The investment arms of Google and Samsung also participated, bringing the total funds raised by the Canadian company to $27.85 million. Additional investors in the round included Coin Fund, Animoca Brands, June Fund, HOF Capital, GBIC, John Pfeffer, and Matt Bellamy, the lead singer of the rock band Muse. Previous investors in Dapper Labs also participated, including Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, SV Angel, Digital Currency Group, William Mougayar, Hex Capital, and Rising Tide Fund.
Dapper Labs will use the funds to expand both locally and globally, and has already revealed plans to establish a U.S. subsidiary. In addition, the investment will help the Vancouver-based company to accelerate the build-out of its technology.
“This round of financing was about getting the right partners around the table to bring compelling content to the blockchain — and make sure usability and infrastructure allow for adoption by mainstream consumers,” explained Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs.
Charlie Shrem Accused of Stealing Funds
Charlie Shrem, who is known for running the company Bitinstant during the early days of bitcoin, has only been for a little over two years, but is already facing new legal issues again. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of the Gemini exchange, have accused Shrem of stealing about 5,000 BTC from them. The crypto-pioneer was hired by the two entrepreneurs in 2012 to acquire a large amount of coins.
The twins have also claimed that Shrem used the funds he allegedly stole to go on a recent luxury spending spree, which included purchases of two Maserati cars, two boats, and multiple homes. This was enough for a federal court to order the freezing of Shrem’s accounts on Coinbase and Xapo, which a private investigator hired by the Winklevoss twins linked to the allegedly stolen BTC.
“The lawsuit erroneously alleges that about six years ago Charlie essentially misappropriated thousands of Bitcoins,” Shrem’s lawyer Brian Klein told the . “Nothing could be further from the truth. Charlie plans to vigorously defend himself and quickly clear his name.”
Google CEO’s Son Is a Miner
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, revealed at a recent conference that his son has been mining cryptocurrency on the family’s home computer. If this sounds familiar it’s because back in July, Google co-founder Sergey Brin to improve his son’s knowledge of cryptocurrency. He then got hooked himself.
“Last week I was at dinner with my son, and I was talking about something about bitcoin, and my son clarified what I was talking about was Ethereum, which is slightly different. He’s 11 years old. And he told me he’s mining it,” Pichai said, as quoted by . “I realized he understood Ethereum better than how paper money works. I had to talk to him about the banking system, the importance of it. It was a good conversation.”
What do you think about today’s news tidbits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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