Ethereum Sharding and Anonymity under Attack: This week in Crypto

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Make sure you check out last weeks post here, now let’s go over what happened in crypto this week.

Price Watch:

Bitcoin is up 5% again this week to $9,990. The price was all over the place this week dropping to $9,200 and losing support at that level before brieflydipping below the $9,000 level. The price made a quick recovery to the $9,300 level on Thursday before surging up to $9,900. Technical analysts now watch closely as bitcoin seeks again to retest the critical $10,000 level. Heavyweight analysts remain bullish, especially in the short term.
Ethereum is up 16% this week meaning Ethereum has made double-digit gains for 3 out of the last 4 weeks. After successfully retesting the critical $800 level this week Ethereum’s gains were able to pull the cryptocurrency market cap over $450 billion once again. These key technical factors combined with newprojects/uses, praise by technology leaders, very strongprojections, and project improvements have led to the price surge. Another key factor will be the SEC ruling on whether or not Ethereum is a security, set to come out next week. Many expect Ethereum will not be deemed a security, and this is at least partially reflected in the price.
The entire crypto market gained 8% this week after a strong gain of 10% last week and double-digit gains in the two preceding weeks.

Regulation:

Japan pressures exchanges to de-list “anonymous” cryptocurrencies: Sources close to the FSA (Financial Services Agency), Japan’s regulatory agency, have reported this week that the FSA is “taking all available steps” to pressure domestic trading platforms to drop support for altcoins that promote anonymity. Some say the move was motivated by CoinCheck’s record-breaking hack which Japan hopes to prevent in the future.
Federal Reserve: bitcoin is like”Regular Currency” – In a blog post published this week to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ blog the Federal Reserve attempted to compare cryptocurrencies to regular currencies and prove they are more “boring” than people think.
Indian Law Protects Cryptocurrency Investors – The RBI (Reserve Bank of India) continues to face legal challenges this week over its ban on buying cryptocurrencies.
Iran bans Telegram: Iran’s judiciary banned Telegram on Monday accusing the popular messenger app of allowing armed opposition groups to fuel unrest. Domestic ISP’s have been forced to comply and will face prosecution for disobeying the order.

Startups:

Coinbase valued at $8 billion in the equity package presented as part of the exchanges acquisition of earn.com. This $8 billion marks a huge increase from it’s $1.6 billion valuations last August when the exchange concluded it’s Series D round. The change in valuation is likely due to it’s new, institutional investor facing, product line.
Comcast Ventures bullish on blockchain: The managing director of the fund, providing an analysis of the current market said the pullback was to figure out the “real applications” of blockchain technology and that investors are likely to see a huge surge in the short term. Despite their optimism, the exchange is still waiting for blockchain’s “killer app”.

Scaling:

Mastercard files scalable blockchain patent: Mastercard International has applied for a patent for fast-tracking data processing on blockchain systems to increase transaction volume. The move comes as a surprise to some considering Mastercard has referred to cryptocurrencies in the past as “anonymous crap”.
Ethereum announces sharding: Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has announced that Sharding, a much-awaited scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain protocol, is coming. Sharding is said to be an important part of the 100-fold increase in scalability experts claim is needed to support large-scale decentralized applications.

Miscellaneous:

Buffet still hates crypto: Warren Buffet, speaking to Yahoo Finance from Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting again compared buying bitcoin to “gambling”. Buffet’s main issue with cryptocurrencies is they are not “value-producing assets”. Only time will tell who is right.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Published at Sun, 06 May 2018 14:24:18 +0000

bitcoin News in Review

September 8, 2017

Japanese Company Jumping into Bitcoin Mining Could Start Digital Arms Race

A Japanese company, GMO Internet Group, is looking to jump into bitcoin mining with new chips that could start a digital arms race.

One thing you can say about the subject of bitcoin mining is that it’s never dull. New players and technologies continue to rise up to keep everything interesting. The newest player to venture into bitcoin mining is GMO Internet Group, which is based in Tokyo, Japan. The company has long been associated with hosting web services and registering domain names, but it now plans on jumping into bitcoin mining with a sizeable monetary investment.

Joining the Modern Gold Rush of bitcoin Mining

GMO Internet Group has worked with cryptocurrency through its regular internet-based business activities by accepting digital currencies as payment as well as starting an exchange and trading service. Now it seeks to join the modern gold rush of bitcoin mining by creating a new entity called GMO Coin, Inc. The Japanese company believes that cryptocurrencies will become “new universal currencies” that will be available for use by anyone in the world and eventually create a “new, borderless economic zone.”

GMO Internet Group is following the template of other major players in bitcoin mining, such as Bitmain from China. GMO will operate their own mines, rent mines to others, create and sell mining rigs, and develop their own chips to facilitate bitcoin mining in a cheaper and more efficient manner. It is the development of new chips by GMO that is of major interest. The chips they are developing will use 7 nanometer modes that will be four times more energy efficient than the 16 nm nodes that are the current standard.

The Start of an Arms Race?

There is speculation that the proposed 7 nm node chips from GMO could start an arms race. Diego Guiterrez of RSK Labs says,

The other [mining chip makers] will surely follow and create their own 7 nm chips if they are not already doing it. As [chip fabricators] get the new technology, everybody can access it.

Guiterrez also points out that current bitcoin mining operators could find their rigs obsolete once the new chips hit the market. Of course. proposing new and innovative chips is a far cry from actually releasing said chips. Yet GMO Internet Group is putting their money where their mouth is. They are planning on spending more than 10% of their consolidated noncurrent assets, which was at $32,379,001, on this endeavor.

The new chips would be a major shakeup for bitcoin mining and mark another chapter in the back-and-forth over which entities (and countries) will come out on top. Right now, China has a major hold with Bitmain as its mining pools, BTC.com and Antpool, account for over 25% of all the processing power on the global bitcoin network. Russia is challenging China as Putin aims to raise $100 million through an ICO, and Russian power companies are looking to give bitcoin miners a massive boost by selling off excess energy to them at greatly reduced rates. Now it appears that the Land of the Rising Sun has entered the fray.

What do you think about GMO Internet Group entering bitcoin mining? Will their proposed chips start a digital arms race? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, and GMO Internet Group.

The post Japanese Company Jumping into Bitcoin Mining Could Start Digital Arms Race appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

Ethereum Sharding and Anonymity under Attack: This week in Crypto

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