Category: Blockchain

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Bitcoin Blockchain Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin.org Rebuffs Craig Wright, States That They Have No Intention Of Complying With His Demands

As a project published under the free and permissive MIT license granted by whoever is the one behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto, the whitepaper hosted on Bitcoin.org has a right to remain up, according to Bitcoin.org.

We will continue hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper and won’t be silenced or intimidated. Others hosting the whitepaper should follow our lead in resisting these false allegations.

Cøbra, domain owner of Bitcoin.org

The nChain chief researcher – who goes by the name of Craig Wright – claims to be the one behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto, and has had his lawyers send takedown notices to various websites hosting the Bitcoin.org website.

He claims the hosting to be theft of his intellectual property – a view of the subject quite different from the ethos of the top cryptocurrency’s creator. Mr. Wight also appears to be an ardent supporter of Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV), a cryptocurrency whose legitimacy has been hotly debated in certain circles.

Verifiable Claims Unverified

Although Bitcoin.org refused to take down the whitepaper, calling the claims without merit, others – such as Bitcoincore – have done so. In addition, the team at Bitcoin Core have also deleted references to it and merged the changes on Github.

Bitcoin.org commented on the decision by Bitcoin Core, stating that their decision may hurt them in the long run.

We believe these claims are without merit, and refuse to [take it down]. By surrendering in this way, the Bitcoin Core project has lent ammunition to Bitcoin’s enemies, engaged in self-censorship, and compromised its integrity.

Cøbra, domain owner of Bitcoin.org

Furthermore, Bitcoin.org stated that Satoshi Nakamoto has a public PGP key that is widely known. Therefore, if Craig Wright wanted to reveal himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto without a shadow of a doubt, he could simply verify his claims using this key – and not doing so does nothing but cast even more doubts on his claim.

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Australia Blockchain Education

Australians Can Now Become Blockchain Consultants Through TAFE Queensland

The demand for skilled and qualified personnel in the Blockchain space grew exponentially in Australia in recent months. Now Blockchain Collective, an educational body for blockchain learning, plans to meet those demands by partnering with TAFE Queensland — one of the largest course and training providers with 50 locations across Australia.

TAFE Queensland will now provide Queensland students, including Brisbane and Gold Coast with an official advanced diploma in Applied Blockchain. The state will become the first in Australia to provide Aussies with training in the blockchain sector.

Featured on Nine News recently, Nathan Burns, Co-founder at Blockchain Collective, together with Richard Barret, TAFE QLD Director of Faculty, both spoke about the necessity of bringing qualified professionals into the innovative blockchain sector, with a potential skills shortage leading into the anticipated blockchain boom in Australia.

It’s a big opportunity for us and it also allows a lot more people to see and get involved in the blockchain space.

Nathan Burns, Co-founder at Blockchain Collective on Nine News

The Blockchain Courses

Students can become Blockchain Consultants through accredited courses consisting of up to 10 modules, exploring complex areas like preparing organisations to operate on the network and avoid cyber-crimes, and applying and anaylising blockchain frameworks for businesses.

The courses will focus heavily on tech application and strategy rather than blockchain coding. Students will receive all the essential skills to implement blockchain business models and frameworks.

The Jobs of the Future

The courses will be essential for Australians seeking to explore blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And as the general awareness of digital assets arises, so does the growing interest to get involved in this exciting new space.

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News

HashCash to Help Aussie Enterprise Settle Cross-border Payments on Blockchain

HashCash to Help Aussie Enterprise Settle Cross-border Payments on Blockchain

A blockchain consultant company, HashCash, has reportedly partnered with an Australian enterprise to assist them in settling cross-border transactions in real-time.

The information from Yahoo Finance didn’t specify the Australian company. However, the enterprise will reportedly leverage the HashCash blockchain network as part of the partnership, to process such transactions.

Blockchain, which is the technology behind cryptocurrencies, has been proven useful in settlement of cross-border payments. This can be seen as another important use case for blockchain in play.

Cross-border Payments on Blockchain

Per the report, the ultimate objective for the partnership is to enable the Australian enterprise to transfer funds to other enterprises or individuals globally and also in a seamless manner. Additionally, HashCash did mention that customers from the Australian enterprise will receive its native digital currency – known as HCX – for making transactions to other parties across the border.

This will enable the company to meet its customer’s needs and requirements in real-time.

“HashCash’s HC NET helps empower the enterprise by bringing all of their important operations on a single distribution platform through this partnership. Other than that, our products and services help create a competitive edge over others for customers all around Australia,” said Raj Chowdhury, the CEO of HashCash Consultants.

Australia Gaming Sector Embraces Blockchain

HashCash is one of the leading blockchain development companies with an office in Australia.

Lately, the blockchain company partnered with an undisclosed game development company in Australia to debut a white-label digital currency exchange, as well as a tokenization platform targeted at the gaming sector.

The development was viewed as an innovative step for the gaming sector, as it will allow game developers to monetize their services by creating blockchain-based micropayment channels for streamers, viewers, as well as content producers.

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Australia Blockchain Cardano

Australian Investment Bank Notes Central Banks Close To Losing The Crypto Race

Aussie investment bank Macquarie recently stated in a research note that the slow and cautious approach to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could end up costing central banks in the long run.

Potential Foothold By Cryptocurrencies May Soon Become Insurmountable

Although the European Central Bank, (ECB), the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), and China are all in various stages of researching and even testing CBDCs, Macquarie fears that by the time any of these institutions actually get around to launching a CBDC, the market share in eCommerce occupied by well-known private cryptocurrencies may prove an insurmountable obstacle for central banks.

“The central bank digital currency landscape in free markets is lagging the pace of crypto adoption – it is still unclear how entrenched private cryptos will become before CBDCs become a viable alternative for more efficient transactions. We think the use cases for private crypto could come to fruition if commerce becomes too accustomed to private crypto use prior to a CBDC alternative launching as a stable, legitimate alternative. And fiat debasing could also in fact help demand stick.”

Indeed, cryptocurrencies geared towards electronic commerce – such as Cardano (ADA) are only getting stronger, despite the uncertainty of the market in recent times. Not only that, but even many retailers and even small-time shops worldwide now accept BTC and ETH as payment, along with regular old cash.

However, the report also stated that with the right amount of expediency in development, government-backed cryptocurrencies could eventually overtake private cryptocurrencies. The report goes on to say that this could help prevent speculation – although whether buying certain cryptocurrencies known to pump randomly counts as speculation is a matter up for debate.

Whatever the outcome of the CBDC debate will be, it’s worth watching what the Federal Reserve will do – since US economic institutions still wield a significant amount of power in the crypto space, as recently seen with Ripple.

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Australia Blockchain Industries

GoChain Partnerships Increasing Following Success of Australian Experiment

A new pilot project involving GoChain with Pronatura Noroeste is going well – and helping ensure consumers that they are buying from a truly eco-friendly company.

Another company – Enviva – also stated in December that they specifically chose GoChain due to their ecologically friendly stance.

True Blue Lobsters

Back in May, GoChain started being used by Two Hands to ascertain the fact that lobsters shipped to China from Australia really were Australian.

The interest for Australian quality on the Chinese market is nothing new – and previously blockchain has been discussed (and used) in the Aussie food and drink industry, notably for wine, beef and cereals.

With GoChain, Two Hands gave each lobster a tamperproof smart tag that allowed the guests at the wedding reception that the lobsters were served up for to ascertain the quality of their special meal.

According to Henry Ines – the CEO of GoChain – his company is doing all they can to help make the world a better place, whether by sustaining the environment or just reassuring consumers worldwide.

“2020 was an incredibly challenging year with the resiliency of businesses and supply chains tested. As the pandemic continues into the new year, businesses are responding to this new reality with technology-driven solutions. GoChain is proud to support these leading enterprises with blockchain-based applications that enable real-time traceability and auditability of supply chains. We anticipate the demand for such solutions will continue to rise as businesses respond to evolving consumer preferences and regulations globally.”

The tracing-oriented blockchain company is also partners with leading academic institutions such as Penn State – and together, the pair look to further the impact of quality and cruelty-free product on the global market.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic will hopefully be coming to an end soon, GoChain and yet another partner – Gentag – are proposing a blockchain-based NFC and optical scanning system for COVID tests to ensure their accuracy – and the coming return to normal.

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Binance Blockchain DeFi

Binance and Orbs To Boost New DeFi Projects

Binance has partnered up with Orbs in order to launch a new DeFi accelerator named DeFi.org.

Orbs is an Israeli company that is building blockchain infrastructure for the general public – and Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges out there, well-known for an extensive list of trading pairs.

Supporting Open-Source Software

The project will focus on singling out DeFi projects interested in the research and development of open-source software that can benefit the crypto space at large. The accelerator will offer mentorship, networking opportunities, and even funding for companies involved.

“We’ve assembled a group of world-class mentors, each an industry expert, in these key fields: Product/UX to help pull your concept into a shippable product. Crypto economics to discuss theory and help finetune your model. Solidity to help review and improve your contract code. Frontend/dev to help engineer a fullstack dapp and actually deliver it. Community/marketing to help level up your meme game and create a kick-ass brand.”

All mentorship and collaboration will be done remotely.

The first mentors will come from Orbs – however, Binance crypto experts will be joining the team shortly.

Following the onboarding of the Binance experts, more mentors will be recruited from various sources.

Although the accelerator program will not focus exclusively on Blockchain-based projects, special attention will be given to companies interested in either the Orbs grant program or Binance’s “Bridging CeFi and DeFi” program.

Orbs themselves were originally looking for a future outside of the DeFi space – but after in-house blockchain development led by Tal Kol – the technical co-founder of Orbs – the team has made the transition from focusing on enterprises to focusing on DeFi. Orbs have developed a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm on the Ethereum blockchain that aims to make DeFi integrations effortless.

Tal Kol will be one of the mentors in the upcoming program.

DeFi.org is already taking applications – there’s no time like the present.

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Blockchain DeFi Investing

AAVE Looking Into A Security Module Rehaul

The 8th of January marks a full year since AAVE has been on the Ethereum mainnet. The team behind AAVE hosted an anniversary zoom call to mark the occasion – an AAVEversary, if you will.

Better Insurance Against Shortfall Events

Among other small updates on the state of affairs at AAVE, the team also announced that they are in talks with Delphi Digital, who are offering to completely rework AAVE’s safety model and build a new insurance product from the ground up.

The current procedure in place at AAVE is to allow AAVE holders to stake their tokens in the Safety Module – which is a liquidity pool that aims to safeguard the tokens from smart contract exploits and other “shortfall events”. The safety module currently holds the largest decentralized insurance fund, worth about $375 million.

However, there are some pitfalls – such as the fact that the safety module covers the whole platform, which means investors who deposit funds in the safety module are covering all projects in the AAVE network – even if some projects bring with them a considerably higher risk level than others.

According to Jose Maria Macedo – a founding member of Delphi Digital and Jonathan Ehrlich – an analyst at the company, the insurance product they offered would come as a separate product for users, instead of being bundled in with all deposits, allowing a better prediction of risk factors for potential investors.

“With existing insurance solutions users have to purchase cover upfront which entitles them to insurance on a given protocol for a set amount of time (generally at least 6 months). With the current state of DeFi, most users don’t know where their capital will be next week let alone 6 months from now […] With our architecture, users only pay for insurance while they use it and the process of buying/selling is abstracted away entirely.”

Although nothing has been decided yet, the new insurance product may help AAVE attract more cautious investors, who may want to stick with safer projects – making it a proposal worth seriously considering.

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Australia Blockchain DeFi

Blockchain Australia Solutions Partners Up With Algorand

Almost 3 months ago, Ralph Kalsi – an Australian blockchain enthusiast and investor became one of Algorand’s brand ambassadors.

Since then, his company Blockchain Australia Solutions has also become an official member of Algorand’s global partner program.

Only Regional Partner

For now, Blockchain Australia Solutions (BAS) is the only official partner of Algorand in the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) region. BAS was brought into the partnership by Ralph Kalsi himself and Nadeem Shaikh (CTO) and Mohammed Naquib (CIO).

The Algorand blockchain — and it’s cryptocurrency, named Algo —  ensures true decentralization by using a Byzantine Agreement Protocol – also known in this case as a Pure-Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The Algorand blockchain is also immune to forking.

Byzantine fault-tolerant protocols are algorithms that are immune to arbitrary types of failures in distributed algorithms. Due to the omnipresence of the Internet, there has been a need to develop decentralized algorithms that are immune to malfunctions.

Algo provides immediate blockchain transaction assurance by using high-speed block finalization. This quality alone makes Algorand highly useful to any business that was  — up until now — heavily dependent on the chain of intermediaries that support and secure transactions to a wide array of customers and employees.  

Algo’s ultra-rapid transaction delivery makes it scalable to billions of users, making it a potentially valuable tool in the banking industry. Expect to see the use of Algorand’s blockchain used by banks both decentralized and traditional within the following years. No matter how many Algo users there will be, the transaction speed will never fall below 4.5 seconds.

Blockchain Australia Solutions brings to the table a strong focus on research into blockchain technology and its applications — such as quality assurance, eco-friendly housing, and much more.

BAS is also a partner of Fintech Australia — which may provide the Algorand Foundation with plenty of networking power in Australia and New Zealand.

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Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Dash

Bittrex Will Delist Three Privacy Coins

The asymmetrical push-back against privacy coins has been going on for a while now.

Although many crypto enthusiasts happily use them for legitimate reasons, the risk assessment measures, Know Your Customer (KYC), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures that must be put in place in order to allow trading them have pushed many smaller exchanges to delist them.

Pressure By Traditional Banks 

On the 15th of January, trading Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Dash (DASH) will be disabled for trading on Bittrex.

An official statement made last Tuesday notified Bittrex users that trading in these privacy coins will end on their website on the 15th of January — however, the tokens in users’ wallets will be kept around for 30 more days in order to allow users to withdraw their coins.

“After the markets are removed, Bittrex generally seeks to provide users up to 30 days to withdraw any delisted tokens, but in certain instances the withdrawal period may be shortened. Users should withdraw any tokens before the posted withdrawal deadline.”

As Bittrex is a company with a strong focus on the American market, it’s possible that the sudden announcement comes in the wake of the US Congress potentially looking into measures aimed at privacy coins, coupled with pressure from traditional banking institutions. 

The announcement caused the going rate of the tokens to drop abruptly —  namely by 14.44% for XMR, and by 12.28% for ZEC at the time this article was written.

In response, Dash has stated that they consider the privacy coin label a misnomer and that they would be happy to meet with the Bittrex Compliance team in an effort to avoid being delisted.

Although the risk of keeping privacy coin trading up and running may prove to be too high for smaller exchanges, the tentative meeting between Dash and Bittrex might be a watershed moment in establishing the regulatory status of privacy coins going forward.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Cryptocurrencies Melbourne Trading

Blockchain Australia Solutions To Expand Crypto-trading By Partnering With FinTech Startup Mudrex

Blockchain Australia Solutions, a leading agency in blockchain application in Melbourne, recently announced its partnership with Mudrex — a trading strategy builder in an attempt to expand cryptocurrency trading to a larger audience.

Automated Trading System

According to a press release, Mudrex will implement automated trading programs for people with less knowledge on the topic. The plan is to bring more people to crypto-trading is by allowing experienced traders to build their trading algorithms and adding them into Mudrex Invest. Likewise, traders can test their algorithms based on historical data, then integrate them into crypto exchanges.

This way, people will only need to pay a monthly subscription for a strategy already developed. Traders can exchange directly without having to expend money through an API key-based integration with Bitmex and Binance.

“There are millions of traders who are trading manually just because, for individual traders or small prop shops it is super difficult to build the whole automated trading infrastructure as it requires coding skills in multiple programming languages, a good understanding of databases and building scalable systems as it is computational heavy. This itself can cost an individual trader or prop shops up to $100,000 and 6 months of efforts to build the system from scratch.”

Stated Rohit Goyal, CEO of Mudrex.

Blockchain Australia Solution has developed its blockchain services and covering several aspects in the fintech area, like smart contracts, automated billing systems, and blockchain POC (proof of concept) systems.

Now the Melbourne-based blockchain agency aims to bring a broader audience to the crypto-trading space by simplifying many of the aspects seen as complex for non-programmers.

Using cryptocurrencies has been requiring too much knowledge about the coding that goes behind it, making it unavailable for the common masses who are not programmers. Moreover, building a reliable infrastructure for trading has also been extremely expensive and time-consuming, which cannot be afforded by everybody. 

Stated the company in a press release.

Both companies expect greater growth with this new alliance. Mudrex has several partners in the fintech area — and has more than 5000 investors who have traded over $200 Million.

This is the main motivation for Blockchain Australia Solutions is partnering with this trading platform, Mudrex. With its various partners in other fintech and software firms, the company will bring a unique value to the trading platform, which will only help both of them to grow further.