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Nick Szabo: Central Banks May Turn to Cryptocurrency Reserves Over Gold

Nick szabo: central banks may turn to cryptocurrency reserves over gold

Nick Szabo: Central Banks May Turn to Cryptocurrency Reserves Over Gold

Nick szabo: central banks may turn to cryptocurrency reserves over gold

At the Israel Crypto $BTC Summit at Tel Aviv University on Jan. 8, veteran cryptographer Nick Szabo explained that the use of censorship-resistant cryptocurrencies will rise in countries sanctioned from trade and economies suffering from failed monetary planning. Szabo also argued that the world’s central banks might turn to cryptocurrency reserves in the future in order to supplement national gold reserves.

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Nick Szabo Strongly Believes Distraught Economies and Sanctioned Countries Will Seek Refuge In Cryptocurrencies

Nick szabo: central banks may turn to cryptocurrency reserves over gold
Veteran cryptographer Nick Szabo.

Cryptographer Nick Szabo is an interesting character and a well known figure in the cryptocurrency community. Long before Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Crypto $BTC, Szabo designed the Bitgold concept back in 1998. Two years before that, Szabo’s writings forecasted the use of smart contract technology and autonomous organizations. On Jan. 8, Szabo spoke at the Israel Crypto $BTC Summit at Tel Aviv University and gave the crowd a history lesson on the use of currencies worldwide. During the talk, Szabo explained to attendees that he believes countries blacklisted from trade and regions dealing with hyperinflation will turn to digital assets. Over the last two years, cryptocurrencies like BTC and BCH have been gaining traction in areas like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Iran.

According to attendees at Tel Aviv University’s cryptocurrency event, Szabo’s keynote was in response to comments made by Avi Simhon, senior economic policy advisor and Israel’s head of the National Economic Council. Simhon remarked at the summit that Crypto $BTC technology is “intrinsically inefficient” and “will disappear.” Moreover, the economic policy advisor for the prime minister explained that using the technology on a global scale would waste “trillions of dollars of actual cost in energy.”

Nick szabo: central banks may turn to cryptocurrency reserves over gold
Szabo on stage with the renowned cryptographer David Chaum.

Even Central Banks May Attempt to Hoard Crypto $BTC Reserves Over Gold

Of course, Szabo wholeheartedly believes in cryptocurrencies and his talk explained the many benefits of the digital revolution. Additionally, Szabo asserted that it is possible in the future some of the world’s central banks will turn to cryptocurrencies rather than gold.

“There’s going to be some situations where a central bank can’t trust a foreign central bank or government with their bonds for example,” Szabo emphasized during his talk. “One solution that’s been developed is to have the Swiss government hold it for you – that’s not a trust minimized solution. The Swiss government itself is subject to political pressures and so a more trust minimized solution is cryptocurrency.”

Szabo continued:  

The other problem with gold reserves is that they’re physically vulnerable. When the Nazis conquered countries in Europe, the first place they went to was a central bank’s gold reserves.

Over the last few weeks, a number of top market makers and economists have asserted that the world is facing tumultuous times. Traditional investment vehicles like equities and stocks have been extremely volatile, but precious metals markets have recently seen significant gains. In contrast, this past Monday the spot price of gold touched a six-month high at $1,288.03 per ounce and gold futures settled at $1,289.90 per ounce. Meanwhile, because of increased demand and worldwide shortages, palladium hit an all-time peak in value this week.

Nick szabo: central banks may turn to cryptocurrency reserves over gold

During the speech in Israel, Szabo seemed to be far more confident about the future of digital assets over precious metals. Many cryptocurrency proponents over the years take the cryptographer’s predictions seriously because of his early forecasts about the future of smart contracts. An audience member at the Tel Aviv summit even quoted Szabo for saying “bitcoin could survive a nuclear war.”

What do you think about Szabo’s statements about cryptocurrencies? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. 


Image credits: Twitter, Steph Vaughan, Shutterstock, and Pixabay. 


At Crypto $BTC.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

The post Nick Szabo: Central Banks May Turn to Cryptocurrency Reserves Over Gold appeared first on Bitcoin News.

source: https://news.bitcoin.com/nick-szabo-central-banks-may-turn-to-cryptocurrency-reserves-over-gold/

Published at Thu, 10 Jan 2019 04:20:54 +0000

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Microsoft Office Can Now Verify Docs on the Bitcoin Blockchain

Microsoft is continuing its Blockchain journey by integrating Stampery into Microsoft Office Outlook with cross-compatibility.


Office Applications Verify Docs On bitcoin, Ethereum

Stampery, which provides verification of documents against both the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, will be accessible for verifying emails without users leaving Outlook itself.

“Stampery provides this functionality today by creating hashes of documents submitted through the web and storing them on the Ethereum and bitcoin public blockchains. To enable this capability, Stampery provides a RESTful API that is accessible from applications,” a dedicated release about the integration from Microsoft explains.

In this project, we leveraged this secure API to create a convenient add-in to Microsoft Outlook that performs like a near-native feature to stamp/certify an email without leaving Outlook or even the specific email that you are viewing.

Removing Centralized Trust

Microsoft adds that while various solutions already exist for document certification online, these involve signature storage via a centralized entity, thus placing trust at a weak point.

“An alternative to relying on a single entity (commercial, public, government, etc.) to keep such proof of identity safe is to create a hash of the document and send that hash to the publicly accessible blockchain, such as bitcoin,” the release continues.

“Once the hash data is present on the public blockchain, the document can’t be changed without invalidating the hash. This approach guarantees both the document’s privacy and the data’s availability for future validation purposes.”

The solution is compatible with products across the Office suite. “In a more general sense, anyone wanting to certify and verify any digital asset could reuse and build upon this knowledge, too,” Microsoft adds, noting the code for the Office implementation is open source and available on GitHub.

Microsoft ‘Will Signal UASF’

The move comes as a source claims Microsoft would “by default” support a user-activated soft fork (UASF) on the bitcoin network.

In a tweet Tuesday, Daniel Buchner, the corporation’s head of decentralized identity, said that such signalling would occur across “all (bitcoin) full nodes and clients used in Microsoft’s open source decentralized identity implementations.”

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Asked whether this would mean following a minority chain, Buchner said in a response that it would be “any chain’s version (it’s a cross-chain system) that best preserves/enhances the decentralized state of IDs rooted on it.”

Will Microsoft’s Stampery integration and UASF support boost bitcoin adoption? Let us know in the comments below!


Images courtesy of Microsoft.com, Shutterstock, Twitter

The post Microsoft Office Can Now Verify Docs on the Bitcoin Blockchain appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.