bitcoin ABC
will undergo a protocol upgrade on 15 May to bring a 32MB max blocksize and reactivate OP_CODES.
Contact your exchanges, wallet providers, and other participants to ensure they're ready for the change.
— bitcoin Cash Fans (@BitcoinCashFans)
Potential Benefits and Impacts
1. I consider BCH a legitimate contender for the bitcoin name. I consider bitcoin's *failure* to raise block sizes to keep fees reasonable to be a large (non-consensual) change to the "original plan", morally tantamount to a hard fork.
2. Theymos's censorship.
— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin)
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Anticipating the growth of both the number of available digital coins as well as users’ uptake, the exchange ShapeShift and VC fund are jointly funding a project designed to create the pinnacle open source, universal wallet for cryptocurrencies, announced on April 25, 2018.
The companies who produces the best solution, which is to have users enabled and secured facility that provides the best possible UX for digital coin enthusiasts within a single-source wallet facility regardless of which they employ.
Thinking Ahead to a Crypto World
Blockstack is providing their authentication, encryption and storage protocols while ShapeShift brings their token exchange API to the project. The top developer or development team will walk away with the prize.
Blockstack is participating through their VC fund, the Blockstack Signature Fund, and the companies are hoping a sleek solution to the need for a truly universal wallet will emerge from their generosity.
Contestants are tied into the useful ShapeShift and Blockstack protocols and need to produce a wallet solution that can accommodate any native tokens, their storage, transaction and the overall application of cryptocurrency on a global basis. A part of the build needs to be the anticipation of inclusion of new tokens that have yet to be released, maintaining the wallet’s universal application. The offer is pegged to a deadline of June 29, 2018.
A spokesperson for Blockstack, Xan Ditkoff, “We’re super early in this space. There are undoubtedly winners that have yet to even appear yet. It’s important that a wallet can support digital assets that have yet to be created.”
All available wallets support only a limited number of currencies, a dissatisfying state of affairs that sees users holding multiple wallets or, worse, storing their funds on exchanges where may or may not be targeted and compromised.
Although Jaxx wallet incorporated ShapeShift support circa 2016, security concerns around the wallet remain, and it is a far cry from a universal wallet app, also supporting only a limited number of tokens.
Ease of Wallet Use to Get Much Better Overall
The partnership between the two companies stems from Blockstack’s concerns around missing out on developments and overall forward motion by a lack of support for various coins. Ditkoff confirmed:
“You shouldn’t be deterred from building on Blockstack just because your community’s atomic unit of use, or wealth, or whatever, your token, isn’t represented on our platform. As soon as we came up with that idea.”
He continued, “ShapeShift was an obvious partner. They’ve probably done the most of any project … for users to hold, exchange and add new tokens.”
ShapeShift’s stands to benefit users employ their API to convert currencies, revenue for the company is generated. A company spokesperson explained that “Much like you don’t have a website that serves all of the needs of an individual, you won’t have a single wallet or decentralized application that serves all of the needs of an individual as well.”
Ditkoff sees the sometimes as limiting, whereas cooperation of the kind they are engaged in with ShapeShift can enhance users’ prospects, catering for all, and generating much greater ease of use. “We’d love to see other developers use this going forward,” Ditkoff added, saying that “This space, in general, is going to succeed, or it’s not. It’s not going to be a winner take-all-type thing.”
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Data from that the 17 millionth bitcoin is likely to be mined over the next 24 hours, leaving just four million until the cryptocurrency’s maximum supply is reached, anticipated to be sometime in 2140.
Another Milestone for bitcoin
After reaching 16 million units in circulation , the 17 millionth unit to be mined is another landmark for .
bitcoin’s design means that there will only ever be 21 million in existence. The code makes sure that only a certain number of new bitcoin can be introduced at set intervals. Miners are rewarded with this scarce data every time they add new entries to the official record.
There tend to be around 1,800 new bitcoins created every day. However, the process is difficult to pin down, and it can not be predicted precisely when the 17 millionth bitcoin will be mined.
Tiny variances are created in keeping the common bitcoin software in sync, making exact predictions very difficult to make. In fact, some data indicate that the number of bitcoin mined might be entirely off.
Some alleged that, in fact, the 17 million mark is a slight way off. Data from Statoshi indicates that there are still around 70 bitcoins to be mined before it is reached.
Today I've learned that a lot of data sources are incorrectly reporting the total bitcoin supply. We haven't actually hit 17M BTC yet; you can follow along in realtime at
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp)
Source:
Different ways of calculating the block rewards make different outcomes possible, as Statoshi’s creator Jameson Lopp explained:
And that's exactly why folks get it wrong – assuming that every block reward has been fully claimed.
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp)
What does the Milestone mean?
Reaching the arbitrary number of 17 million may not be particularly significant, but some see it as a prompt to appreciate the achievements of the technology to date.
Tim Draper, the venture capitalist and vocal supporter of bitcoin who recently it would hit $250,000 in 2018, , “I would bet the founders wouldn’t have imagined how important bitcoin would become in their wildest dreams.”
The bitcoin Supply Cap
After Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first bitcoin block and created the first 50 units of the cryptocurrency, the same reward stayed in place for the next 209,999 blocks. After which the first “halvening” took place and the reward were reduced. The reduction in the block reward has happened every 210,000 blocks since. When this interval is reached the network reduces the block reward by 50 percent. The most occurred in July 2016, and the instant reward is 12.5 bitcoins.
Although it has taken nine years to get this far, and there is only four million bitcoin left to mine. It will take much longer to reach the final supply cap because as the block rewards reduce, the rate of monetary inflation slows. The next block reward halving is to take place May 29, 2020.
As long as the protocol is not adjusted, the last, whole bitcoin will not be mined until , and by some estimates, it would take approximately 34 years to mine:
Fun fact: to fully mine the very last whole bitcoin it will take approximately the same time of mining the first 20,943,044 bitcoins (i.e. about 34 years)
— Federico Tenga (@FedericoTenga)
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