Who would think that a country, roughly a quarter the size of an Indian state and the population of a suburb, adorned with quaint valleys and fairytale castles could be a booming Blockchain enabler? Well, that seems to be the case, owing to the latest advancements in the cryptocurrency arena in Liechtenstein.
Royal Stamp of Approval
The main reason behind this is the low tax rate over the year which makes it a hotspot for financial services and consequently boasts more registered businesses than actual citizens.
The , Alois, has been signaling and inviting the cryptocurrency community to base their businesses in the state, as according to him, it is “the place to be.”
, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency behind , was created with the close involvement of in 2013 in Liechtenstein.
Not one to stop, Malahov is now in the works of building another Blockchain startup, , which according to him will be more extensible and convenient for smart contracts owing to lower costs – something better than everything that’s come before.
As such, his obvious choice of building base was Liechtenstein.
The rise of ‘Bitcoinstein’
One lucky encounter and Malahov’s doors opened. After a meeting with one of the Princes of Liechtenstein at a conference, he was informed about the country’s to cryptocurrency.
After giving it a brief thought, he knew his plans had found a geographical outlet.
“They’re not putting any financial incentives in place, but they’re making it really easy to incorporate a cryptocurrency business,” he .
Alluring cryptocurrency and Blockchain businesses to touch base here, however, is only a portion of this little country’s plans.
It may be noted that Liechtenstein is a member of the European Economic Area (), but not the European Union () at large.
The beneficial part about being a member of the EEA is that all of the financial services based in Europe, including the cryptocurrency and blockchain affairs, can avoid the most dreadful of EU regulations while still trading across the continent due to favorable financial “passporting” rules.
Further, an announcement made by the Crown Prince Alois that implied the use of bitcoin as a day-to-day payment medium in the running of the Royal Family as well as the administration of the monarchy did not come as a surprise to many.
Alois has previously made mentions about diversifying his family’s assets into digital tokens too. This kind of royal support has naturally created a positive impact for the sector in the country.
Monthly Blockchain meetups in the capital of Vaduz now have hundreds of people in attendance, from newly-founded crypto startups like and Vimana – not bad for a country the size and populace of Liechtenstein.
Still, Liechtenstein has a long cryptic line to be put behind it, owing especially to the talent pool being much smaller than regional competitors. Yet, perhaps the flowery fields and majestic architecture of Liechtenstein is enough to persuade crypto companies to base their businesses there.
The post appeared first on .
James Lovejoy, the lead developer of , recently spoke at the Expo 2018, held March 18, on the subject of ’s upcoming Lightning Network and the technical challenges it may face once fully rolled out. During his presentation, he also explained how a new forthcoming hardware-based project, named Litbox, can potentially assist in the successful deployment of the network.
is an undergraduate researcher at DCI and has been the lead developer of Vertcoin cryptocurrency ever since it was code forked from in 2014. He said that with Litbox, “users can be their own banks as they can conveniently share the same wallet across multiple devices.” Litbox, expected to launch in the second half of 2018, will provide support for bitcoin, , and vertcoin.
The was touted as a potential solution to the bitcoin blockchain by its developers, Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja. The white paper proposed the setup of an off-chain decentralized system for enabling peer-to-peer transactions. An alpha version of the network was released in January 2018.
Currently, the blockchain has a block size limit of 1MB, which makes it difficult to handle the transaction rate of established payment systems. Coupled with the fact that bitcoin has recently surged in popularity and usage, this results in increased transfer time and high transaction costs.
Lightning Network Overview
The works by creating a network of micropayment channels. Any two or more nodes in the blockchain can open a bi-directional, peer-to-peer communication channel between them. The participating accounts can then make bitcoin transactions back and forth as long as the channel is active. All transactions are initially recorded off the blockchain, and once the channel is closed by either party, only the final closing balances of both the nodes are recorded.
This approach ultimately reduces the number of transactions that have to be processed on the blockchain. Lightning Labs, the company developing the network, says that with fewer transactions to validate, there will be a proportional decrease in overall transaction costs as well. Simply put, the Lightning Network helps to speed up transactions and reduce costs considerably.
Lead Vertcoin Developer Unveils Litbox
However, there are also some associated with the implementation of the Lightning Network. If the parties involved in the transaction do not ensure sufficient safeguards, they could risk losing their money. Furthermore, when a payment is made within a channel, it could result in the linking of the participants’ IP addresses, which is a potential privacy issue.
Speaking at the forum, James Lovejoy said:
“Litbox is a small plug and play hardware device that will connect to a router. It will be online and can be accessed remotely, thus allowing you to access your funds from different devices.”
At this time, Litbox’s ultimate goal appears to be resolving the security issues faced by the Lightning Network and can be used for all coins compatible with Lightning. It will also attempt to guarantee user privacy and prevent any losses that could occur due to a human’s involvement. A minimum viable product is anticipated for the end of Q2 2018.
bitcoin Core developer, Peter Todd, did not seem impressed after the Lightning Network’s testnet implementation was unveiled. He :
“Initial impressions of Lightning on testnet: c-lightning segfaults a lot, and when it’s not crashing payments fail more often than not. Writing it in C – a notoriously dangerous language – doesn’t strike me as a good idea.”
The post appeared first on .
Die Regulierung in der Wochenrückschau. Heute: die Welt zeigt sich krypto-freundlich. In der zurückliegenden Woche ist rund um den Globus mal wieder viel in Sachen Regulierung geschehen. In der Reihe “Regulierung in der Wochenrückschau” blicken wir zum Wochenausklang zurück und fassen zusammen, was wann wo und von wem gesagt, gedacht oder beschlossen wurde. UK: Regierung…Der Beitrag erschien zuerst auf .