New York is the first state to offer COVID-19 vaccination passports with blockchain technology. This new tool will allow citizens to prove that can return to normality.

In recent days, New York launched the US “COVID-19 passport”, which uses blockchain technology. Now the citizens of the state can prove that they have received the vaccine or got negative test results.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said that the state is the first in the country to implement this technology. Before this, they had conducted two successful pilot demonstrations.

First COVID-19 Passport Using Blockchain Technology

The COVID-19 passport is based on IBM’s Blockchain-based Digital Health Pass. It allows verifying and sharing the identity of users, their vaccination history, and their test results. This is possible without revealing any independent personal information.

Cuomo announced the launch of Excelsior Pass, a COVID-19 passport using blockchain technology, for use across the state. The governor said that “New Yorkers have shown that they can follow public health guidance to roll back COVID-19. Therefore, the innovative passport is just one more tool to fight the virus.”

It is important to know that the state of New York has fully subsidized the COVID-19 passport. For that reason, the companies that participate voluntarily receive it for free use.

In this sense, Cuomo said that “large spaces will begin to use the COVID-19 passport in the coming weeks. Among them are Madison Square and the Times Union Center.”

Vaccination Passport Will Allow Returning to Normality

The public needs new tools to gradually and safely return to normality. The development of this passport is one of those promising tools.

Steve LaFleche, CEO of IBM Public and Federal Market, commented that “New York is a model for the rest of the country.” He believes that they prove “how new technological approaches can help to make economies safely. At the same time, they strive to protect public health.”

The executive predicts that the open standards of blockchain technology will allow other states to join the effort. He believes that it will allow the economy to reopen across the country.

Operation of the COVID-19 Passport

Excelsior Pass is a free and voluntary platform that New York State developed jointly with IBM. It uses blockchain technology to protect the data of its users.

This passport is an app based on blockchain technology. It will allow proving that a citizen has received the vaccine against COVID-19 or has gotten negative test results.

Users will be able to download the app, submit their basic details, and answer a few questions that demonstrate that they are registering themselves. People receive a digital pass with a secure QR code, which they can print or store on their smartphones.

Participating businesses and venues can scan the customer’s QR code. That way, they can check if the people who buy there are COVID-19 free.

The app will be in art spaces, private or community events, and entertainment centers. This initiative can help make New York once again the epicenter of large-scale social and cultural events.

By Alexander Salazar

YouTuber Stacksmashing said that it would take “a couple of quadrillion years to mine a Bitcoin.”

A computer security researcher created an adaptation for Nintendo’s first large portable console to mine cryptocurrencies. User Stacksmashing employed a Nintendo Game Boy’s hardware, which came to light back in 1989 as a starting point to mine Bitcoin (BTC) since the game console has no built-in wireless capabilities.

The YouTuber said it used a Raspberry Pi microcontroller board plugged into the console’s Link Cable port and a USB flashcard to connect with a BTC node running from your computer.

Stacksmashing wrote his mining code for the Game Boy’s read-only memory, integrated the mining software (modified for the game console), and unleashed a BTC node on his computer. The result was that the nonces increased on the console’s green screen, showing that the team was attempting to mine BTC.

“The hash rate is awe-inspiring, roughly 0.8 hashes per second,” Stacksmashing said:

“If you get to compare it to a current ASIC miner, going at about 100 terahashes per second, you can see that we have almost the same speed, only by a factor of about 125 trillion. At this rate, it should take a couple of quadrillion years to mine a Bitcoin “.

A Quest to Use Gaming Consoles to Mine BTC or Other Cryptocurrencies

Many crypto enthusiasts have been on a quest to use gaming consoles to mine BTC or other cryptocurrencies for some time. Still, the systems do not support such a technology to serve as miners.

Stacksmashing’s attempts to use an 8-bit game console to mine cryptocurrency may have been just for the experience, but he said on Twitter that it wouldn’t happen at the moment.

The computer security researcher claims to have used the Nintendo Super Game Boy (an adapter released in 1994 that allows the original Game Boy games to work on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) to mine BTC in much the same way.

Initially, Bitcoin’s creator intended for Bitcoin mining to happen on CPUs (your laptop or desktop computer). However, Bitcoin miners then found out the possibility of getting more hashing power from graphic cards. Graphic cards then found displacement by ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits).

Today every severe Bitcoin mining occurs on dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware ASICs, usually in thermally-regulated data-centers and with low-cost electricity.

How Would Users Know Which is The Best Bitcoin Miner

There are some essential factors to look at when determining which Bitcoin mining ASIC to buy. The amount of hashes per second is a significant factor. More hashes cost more, which is why an efficient tool is so vital.

Users also take into consideration the most efficient bitcoin mining hardware possible. Miners use a large amount of electricity. Users need to buy one that converts the most amount of electricity into bitcoins.

By: Jenson Nuñez

The first cryptocurrency has appreciated almost 600% in the last 12 months. Bitcoin can transition from a reserve asset to an asset without risk, says Bloomberg.

The expiration of USD 6,000 million in options in the bitcoin derivatives market (BTC) this Friday, March 26, caused uncertainty in the market since the beginning of the week. This uncertainty led to a 10% drop in the price of BTC.

The possible collapse on Bitcoin’sprice this past Friday by some analysts did not occur, and the price got back to the first levels of the week, above USD 55,000.

Almost ending the first quarter of 2021, bitcoin is close to increasing its price twice at the beginning of the year (+ 92%), while during March, it exhibited an appreciation of 18%. Thanks to this boom, market watchers stopped seeing the top of this bull cycle with more detail.

This thought is what analyst Willy Woo affirms in his most recent bulletin, based on the pattern of accumulation of BTC by investors, Woo anticipates that “much of the year is missing” before the market top of this cycle, with a probable local maximum of USD 74,000 in the coming weeks.

The price drop a year ago looks minuscule in the current bull cycle, and the price of BTC has risen almost 600% in the last 12 months. The previous two quarters have been particularly encouraging for the first cryptocurrency, especially the fourth quarter of 2020, with a 176% appreciation.

According to statements given to CNBC, the co-founder of the BTCC exchange, Bobby Lee, sees the cycle stop for the end of this year and anticipates that BTC will reach USD 300,000. However, Lee predicts that a “long winter” will affect the bull cycle.

Also, the analyst and influencer Juan Rodríguez – @ juanbiter—, sees a possible 30% increase in the price of BTC after the expiration of options this Friday.

Bitcoin and its Relationship with Regulators

The SEC member, Hester Peirce, advocated for the approval of a bitcoin ETF and criticized that commission’s strategy in 2020, denying numerous requests for a said financial instrument. This resolution shows a new signal in favor of the approval of applications already entered, which would most likely become a significant driver of the price of BTC.

For his part, the US Federal Reserve president, Jerome Powell, while criticizing cryptocurrencies in their role as money, slipped what could serve as a compliment: he affirmed last Tuesday that bitcoin is more similar to the gold than the dollar.

The director of growth of Kraken, Dan Held, published this Saturday the 27th a thread on Twitter dedicated to bitcoin’s institutional adoption. Held places the beginnings of this institutional approach to bitcoin in the first months of 2018.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Now, the Polkadot ecosystem keeps progressing with the DeFi Acala Community platform turning into the first to get a parachain slot on the Rococó test purple.

Acala, the self-explanatory decentralized financial center that works for Polkadot, announced that it had secured the job on March 26. Acala launched in January 2020, along with the DeFi, to create an open cross-chain finance infrastructure for the Polkadot ecosystem.

In February, Acala also launched an Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) based on Polkadot’s Substrate Scope, making interoperability way easier with Ethereum-based assets.

The official parachain extension impulses the platform one step higher to reach its goal of providing cross-chain interoperability in the quickly expanding Polkadot environment.

Polkadot’s multi-chain “parachain” ecosystem will work with fragmented sidechains to process transactions in parallel. Parachutes’ acquisition will happen in an auction process in which projects try to outbid each other through the slot.

Polkadot also released Rococo as a parachain testnet in August 2020 to test its inter-shard communication protocols as the projects move forward and are face deployment on Polkadot’s purple sister Kusama and Polkadot’s mainnet.

Acala maintains its plans to release a dollar-pegged stablecoin which will help any Polkadot-based program. A new Polkadot DAO Alliance’s announcement came to life on March 26 to promote the growth of decentralized governance in the Polkadot ecosystem.

The Alliance was a target of Origin members, including the main projects of Polkadot SubDAO, Plasm, Phala, Stafi, Bifrost, Darwina, Zenlink, and DeepDAO. The Alliance is still deferring establishing a growth fund for Polkadot-based startups, with the announcement stating:

“The Alliance will establish a multi-million dollar DAO Ecosystem Improvement Fund to provide financial support for DAO and World wide web three early-stage projects.”

Polkadot’s rapid growth has propelled its native DOT token up the cryptocurrency market capitalization charts in 2021, as it has hit 250% since the beginning of the year and is currently trading at $ 32.70

 What is Acala?

Acala is a high-performance decentralized finance platform that serves as a Polkadot parachain. Members of two Polkadot ecosystem teams founded it.

Acala brings a butchery of decentralized financial services to Polkadot, including a decentralized exchange (DEX), staking liquidity (Liquid DOT (LDOT)), and even an algorithmic stablecoin, aUSD. Acala is both a parachain platform on which other teams can build and an application layer that plays the role of provider of a suite of applications offering every mentioned financial product.

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Current DeFi applications face many problems concerning adoption from a mainstream audience, and much of these issues stem from the platform. Unlike Ethereum, which is always in need of gas fees to be part of ETH, Acala allows any blockchain platform to take part and pay for computation in any currency.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Activation would take place after the London and Berlin updates. The programmers are still reaching a consensus about when Shanghai would hit the mainnet.

An intelligent contract network is a place of drastic and continuous changes, Ethereum (ETH). Lead developers are now leading a discussion about implementing the Shanghai hard fork, the third on the agenda for 2021 after the announced Berlin and London updates.

The fork bearing the German capital’s name will face its activation on April 14, while the project identified with the English capital will happen between July or August. There is still no activation date in the leading network for the hard fork baptized as the Chinese city.

The community and programmers are seeking the best procedures to take in the case of Shanghai. On the one hand, the update could concentrate on applying a package of improvements (EIP) that don’t appear in London.

“With the scope of London being deliberately kept small, developers have already started high-level planning for Shanghai,” explained programmer Tim Beiko in an article published on HackMD on Saturday, March 27.

If the community inclines to give the green light to the improvements, they could add EIP-3074, which allows sponsored transactions, and EIP-2537, making communications between both networks way easier. Beiko said that if they didn’t enter London, “EIP-2327, which would be an advantage to the Solidity and Optimism teams, and EIP-2935would help with stateless and thin clients, and would also go to Shanghai.”

Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0: Let the Merging Get Started

The option to focus on the merger of both networks is also acquiring popularity. The programmer stressed that the technical deployment would not be that complicated, but those other engineering problems would have to be solved. The biggest hurdles apply for layer clients to use the Beacon Chain (validator registry) as their consensus engine.

Customer teams have yet to digest these specifications better and start building prototypes before we can decide if we are ready to shift our entire focus to fusion,” Beiko stressed.

For years, the Ethereum community has been concentrating its efforts on migrating its Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, based on computing power and electrical energy, to Proof of Stake (PoS) based on capital and software. The 2.0 reconfiguration of the entire platform started to become a reality in December last year with the Beacon Chain network’s activation.

The adaptation process would take at least another two years until the mechanism works smoothly. Among the advantages of ETH version, 2.0 is the reduction in electricity consumption, the decrease in commissions, and the decongestion of the network, an aspect marked in recent times by the boom that DeFi has gained.

By: Jenson Nuñez

USDC settlement was successful on the Ethereum blockchain. The company is setting a series of updates to its platform to streamline payments with cryptocurrencies.

The international financial services corporation, Visa, announced that it had settled its first transaction with the stablecoin USDC. The operation is part of a pilot plan in which its partners Crypto.com and digital asset bank Anchorage also took the protagonist part.

Visa received the funds at an address owned by it on the Ethereum (ETH) network from Crypto.com. Anchorage played the role of custodian of the cryptocurrencies, although without disclosing the transferred amount.

The tests are under development to update Visa’s settlement system, aiming for greater integration with the bitcoin ecosystem. The company is taking these first steps with entities with which it has already established alliances before. One of them is Crypto.com, a company that issues a debit card for users of its exchange.

Visa Wants to Roll out this Capability to Other Partners in the Coming Year

“It is a small step forward for Visa’s settlement platform, a giant step for the integration of traditional cryptocurrencies and fiat. Following further testing and additional discussions with customers, partners, and members of the regulatory community, we expect to roll out this capability to other partners in the coming year,” Visa noted in the document.

Visa’s vision focuses, for the moment, on stablecoins such as USDC, a crypto asset that it will use as “raw material” for the improvements it intends to make to its system. However, it is still unclear that shortly, they will get involved with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies since they brought a vote of confidence to public networks for the transfer of value.

What a company like VISA did make clear that the tests also have another purpose? To measure the implications for adjusting to central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in the future. Visa also highlighted that the company embraced the commitment to be supporting these initiatives to integrate them into the existing payments environment.

Visa is Embracing Cryptocurrencies, but there is Still a Long Path to Walk

The multinational company, VISA, is one of the biggest entities in the finance world that has gradually approached Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. Visa has a curious approach to stablecoins as a way to avoid market volatility.

The corporation is seeing stablecoins as one of the best payment innovations. Visa also revealed the seven points that would define its strategy with Bitcoin and other crypto-assets.

In December 2020, Visa also allied with Circle, the issuer of USDC. The intention is for the cryptocurrency to have exposure on the payment processor’s network, seeking consolidation with today’s announcement.

Visa assumes its business model, in which the company gains the ability to complete the integration of new alternatives such as cryptocurrencies. VISA’s primary goal is to bring value to blockchains through alliances and integrate efficient payment solutions to their merchants.

By: Jenson Nuñez