Manuel Flores considers that the Fintech Law does not provide clarity to undertake projects in Mexico. The Fintech Law provides some security, but it has not been enough to stop scams.

According to Manuel Flores, head of the Mexican chapter of the Blockchain Alliance, the Fintech Law in force in Mexico represents a new obstacle to the development of blockchain and cryptocurrency projects.

Flores says that the regulations of the Fintech Law do not provide greater clarity about the possibilities of projects focused on blockchains or cryptocurrencies.

In the specialist’s opinion, this type of project continues to be very unclear concerning the current regulatory framework. He added that, far from facilitating the procedures to launch ventures focused on these technologies, the Fintech Law “has been an obstacle in many respects.”

Among other problems, Flores highlights that the institutions responsible for ensuring compliance with this law are “very closed.” In other words, they hinder processes rather than make them more understandable.

For this reason, many companies desist from their efforts to align with the Law. In Flores’ experience, this has happened with national and foreign companies. The latter, seeing the difficulties in adapting to the current legal framework, “are taking a step backwards.”

Another aspect that entrepreneurs in Mexico tend to consider is how expensive it is to fully adapt to the Fintech Law. This agrees with the view of Emilio Rivero, an analyst at the exchange Bitso, who stated that adapting to the law would be very expensive for some companies in the sector.

Is there anything to rescue from the Fintech Law in Mexico?

“We aren’t doing as well as people sometimes say,” said Flores about the blockchain and cryptocurrency landscape in Mexico.

In his opinion, the Fintech Law has not substantially improved the outlook. However, Flores considered that the existence of this legal framework helps stop possible scams or, at least, slightly reduces the risks, concerning users.

The existence of a law that regulates projects “gives a little more security to end users who want to invest in the world of cryptocurrencies and can avoid scams,” according to Flores. In this respect, he added that it is important to hear that people “can take legal action on any problem.”

However, the CEO and founder of the Bitcoin Community in Monterrey acknowledged that scams continue to take their toll on the country. The adaptation difficulties that the Fintech Law causes for companies benefit actors who seek to defraud in the name of blockchain platforms.

The specialist explained that many companies do not adapt to the law and take advantage of it to scam. “They say ‘it is a slow process, I am adapting to the Fintech Law’, but in the meantime they are making millions.”

The development of this law received a lot of support from the community of companies dedicated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies in Mexico. Many of those involved hoped that this legal framework would help the ecosystem advance in the country.

Flores was one of those who supported this initiative but now considers that the Fintech Law, far from promoting this development of new projects, discourages these advances. Analysts and members of the cryptocurrency community in Mexico have previously warned of this situation.

By Alexander Salazar

Among the top 30 cryptocurrencies in the market, only two are in the red. In contrast, traditional markets have been on the decline in recent days.

After very calm days, the cryptocurrency market has once again shown a general increase. In this period, the proximity of Bitcoin (BTC) to USD 9,600 is prominent, the same as the rise in the price of Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), which is around 12%.

In the case of Bitcoin, a possible cause for the rise is the recent statement by the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), in which they allow banks to offer cryptocurrency custody services.

Last July 22^nd and 23^rd, the price of the first cryptocurrency in the market had an increase of 2.5%. Its current price is USD 9,624, according to data from CoinMarketCap. BTC had not been above USD 9,600 since June, according to a chart from the same source.

The 12% increase that ETH had in recent days coincides with new advances on the path to launch the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. The native cryptocurrency of this network is worth USD 286 at the time of writing this article.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Founder, posted information on those advances in recent days. The price of the cryptocurrency ETH is now at levels that it had not been possible to see since mid-February this year, before the start of the COVID-19 quarantine in much of the world.

This is what has happened with the price of the two cryptocurrencies with the largest market capitalization in the market. Among the top thirty, the vast majority of them have had an increase in price in recent days. Only NEM and Ontology (ONT) currently have red numbers.

Among the winning cryptocurrencies, the most prominent is MakerDAO’s MKR token. The increase in the price of this cryptocurrency has been the second-highest in percentage terms in recent days, with more than 10% upwards.

Another prominent cryptocurrency is Tezos (XTZ), with an over 7% increase. On their part, Chainlink (LINK), Monero (XMR) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) prices have increased more than 5% each.

Traditional Markets on the Decline

In contrast to the cryptocurrency market, traditional markets recently show red figures. At the time of writing this article, indexes like the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) and the Dow Jones have fallen by 1%.

Oil indexes such as Brent or West Texas Intermediate (the main index for US crude oil) are also on the decline, as are the shares of large companies such as Tesla, Apple, Google, and Amazon.

A few months ago, the correlation of Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency market with traditional markets reached a high point. This especially happened with the S&P500 last March.

The behavior of the market in recent days seems to indicate a gap in that correlation. At the moment, the cryptocurrency market and traditional indexes have taken opposite paths.

By Alexander Salazar

The company itself is the owner of almost 30% of the remaining nodes. There has been prior conflict between ETC developers over the defense of immutability.

OpenEthereum, a client that runs 300 Ethereum Classic (ETC) nodes, has voted to stop maintaining its software and focus on other projects. The reason for making this decision was the concern about the loss of the immutability of the ETC network, the main feature that distinguished it from Ethereum. The update Phoenix, which occurred in June of this year, may have affected the immutability.

The last hard fork of the ETC network, Phoenix, introduced changes to the internal structure of the tokens of the ETC blockchain. These changes broke some smart contracts, thus damaging the “immutability” of the ETC network, according to the OpenEthereum GitHub, a project that Gnosis developers advanced.

In this way, OpenEthereum joins Multi-Geth, a client that runs 129 ETC nodes. When they joined, they stopped updating 429 of the 622 nodes that the ETC network currently has. In other words, the network would lose support for the clients of 68.9% of its nodes.

This is not an immediate problem as there is still no network update incompatible with previous versions. However, if a strong fork occurs in the future, those nodes that have not upgraded to other Ethereum Classic clients, such as Besu or Core Geth, would keep a different version from that of the forked. That could lead the chains to separate.

ETC Labs, developer project of CoreGeth, the client that currently supports 189 of the remaining 193 nodes, has stated that “dogmatism does not help”. With this, they refer to the immutability of the network. Its CEO Terry Culver suggested that Ethereum Classic developers should be more open to innovation and balance the immutability with the need for innovation that Phoenix introduced.

Bob Summerwill, CEO of the ETC Cooperative, told the ETC community that both Core-Geth and Hyperledger Besu are viable options for end-users. For that reason, some nodes may migrate to these clients in the coming months.

This is not the first time that Ethereum Classic has had such disagreements. In the year 2016, Ethereum Classic was born after attackers exploited vulnerability on the Ethereum mainnet, which allowed them to steal the equivalent of USD 60 million. At that time, Vitalik Buterin and his team decided to perform a rollback of the main Ethereum blockchain to a previous state. In this way, they sought to recover the funds that they lost in that hack.

Some members of the community did not agree with that decision and organized themselves to keep the network the way it was. In other words, they decided to keep the immutability of the original blockchain. In this way, the hard fork that led to the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC) occurred in parallel with that of Ethereum (ETH).

By Alexander Salazar

The Supreme Court proposes to accelerate the socialist market economy “in the new era”. The Chinese central bank issued a blockchain standard for the world of finance.

China could soften the tone on Bitcoin after the Supreme Court and the main economic planning office issued guidelines on the legalization of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. The rules highlight that it is necessary to protect new types of virtual properties, which include “digital currencies”.

Agencies may be seeking to integrate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin into strategies to improve the socialist market economy “in the new era.” A statement dated July 22^nd mentions that the standards of judgment on property rights require clarification and unification.

The document highlights, without directly mentioning Bitcoin, that “new rights and interests such as digital currencies, online virtual property, and data” must receive stronger protection. Both the court and the planning office emphasized the deep application of so-called distributed ledger technology (DLT) or blockchain technology.

The Chinese Supreme Court does not state its opinion through a judgment or judicial instrument involving its enforcement. It is rather a particular point of view of two public organizations in the country.

The points of view of the court and the economic planning agency contrast with the decisions of the Chinese authorities, which restrict cryptocurrency trading and its promotion at all levels. However, both agree with the executive power regarding the use of blockchain technology, since the country is closely observing it as State policy.

Blockchain Technology in Finance

While the Supreme Court ruled on cryptocurrencies, the Central Bank of China released a new standard related to blockchain technology to promote its application in the local financial sphere. The protocol would apply to all financial institutions that conduct tests with distributed ledger technology.

The parameters indicate that it is necessary to comply with safety, performance, and technical guidelines. The standard includes assessments on privacy protection, smart contracts, software application, and hardware.

The new set of actions applies, among other organizations, to banks, securities, or asset brokers, payment processing firms, and companies for the management of investment funds.

China’s push towards adopting blockchain technology is much more apparent, compared to that of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Regarding the first case, President Xi Jinping himself has been in favor of it. In October last year, the head of state announced that his country should take the lead in developing blockchain technology.

Regarding the second case, the actions taken by China seek to restrict the use of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. In November 2019, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) in Shanghai published new rules to ban their use in that city. Even in September 2017, the Central Bank of China banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) as a financing mechanism for new projects.

The picture paradoxically contrasts with the processing power for Bitcoin mining. This is because multiple private pools in China accumulate around 65% of the total network hash rate.

By Alexander Salazar

Can the elliptic curve of a Bitcoin be compromised? It is a major question that some experts ask themselves, the creation of a Bitcoin public key happens after the use of elliptic-curve cryptography to the private key but there’s a mystery surrounding this formula.

Recently, one of the world’s leading cryptographers, the well-known Tatsuaki Okamoto explained a bit about this phenomenon.

Vulnerability insight

 Two explanations for this choice are actually in discussion; Satoshi offers a bigger efficiency, or there is something offering vulnerability, a great chance of a secret backdoor. These two statements are used as a mere hypothesis and not a tangible reality.

 He says that The Koblitz curve is designed for faster scalar multiplications. The operations on Secp256k1 are faster than those on Secp256r1. Although the Secp256r1 curve was intended to be selected in a very random way, it opened the theory that a backdoor might exist and be placed and set up secretly in the curve parameters.

What impresses the most is the amazing way Satoshi mixed such complex cryptographic like elliptic curves or hash chains to create this amazing currency. This coin is changing the world in so many ways that we just run out of enough words to describe it.

That Curve Was the Best Choice

Even if Secp256r1 had any weak point, no one in the entire world has been brave enough and stepped forward yet to say it or take action in advance.

But what if thieves discovered a real potential vulnerability? It might reside in the sole way the encryption works; the global network of nodes that seek the bitcoin itself. This is a backdoor, a crypto everyone in the world is particularly ignoring.

How could the system get defensive responses against such weaknesses? Well, experts claim that the protocols may change if a threat appears, the nodes will respond in a very defensive way and change to a different protocol.

No coin will be stolen in the process; offering a big sense of security in the currency. An earlier version of the blockchain is also a very juicy theory, giving Bitcoin a chance to step back its protocols before any intent of robbery. Hence, the chances of finding a backdoor in this amazing elliptic curve are pretty reduced due to this fast response protocols.

 The last of the problems to worry about when talking about a network collapse is Bitcoin. There is a lot at stake, way more worthy than a cryptocurrency. Also, there is a massive-cosmic amount of dollars at stake in case the internet happens to become chaotic. To put an end to this, networks protected with encryption will last and prevail; there are minimum chances for Bitcoin to get crashed or hacked.

By Jenson Nuñez.

This has been a work for years, tons of experts and researchers have been lurking in the shadows of the fortune of the Bitcoin creators, putting in theory how many bitcoins Nakamoto owns and how his mining patterns work.

Lerner, one of his most advocated followers has set up data studies from his blockchain analysis and has tracked the extranonce fields that reside within the coinbase field steeming from the same coinbase transactions; this gives light to the possibility of a billion BTC under Nakamoto’s control.

There is skepticism about it

Other experts have conducted studies that reveal that Satoshi’s so-called big fortune is considerably lower. These experts have concluded that Bitcoin’s creator may have only mined 600,000 to 700,000 BTC or $6.5 billion worth of coins, so the theory of a billion BTC disappears completely.

The blockchain tracking firm Whale Alert said, with a new estimate and the researchers that the fortune in question is pretty accurate, a billion BTC is in Nakamoto’s power.

The real reason behind the mining: to defend the network

The study found a way to estimate very certain numbers mined and bitcoins already owned by Satoshi, in today’s market the numbers are high, also, the real purpose of patoshi miner: is to create a defensive shield against attacks, the mission is to protect the young network.

Whale Alert also discussed how Sergio Demián Lerner produced data sets from his blockchain analysis that exclusively tracked the extranonce fields, and a whole new set of amazing details got surprisingly enlightened.

“Between blocks 21,467 and 25,777 the range [0–9] was only used at the start of each Patoshi chain, each chain as a single run of the miner, and the number 39 got unusual few uses. Between blocks 25,811 and 54,316, the number 29 is absent from most of the chains” said the latest report.

This delicate study also claims that the primary goal of it resides in the questions, why Satoshi started mining, and why he did it this way?

 This entire phenomenon gave tracks to Whale Alert to conclude that Satoshi’s main plan is to create a defensive barrier through the network to protect it, how? The answer is by mining the bitcoins. Protecting the network’s been always the plan, so the mining is the fortress to protect the encryption from the inside.

There is a lot of questions in the air, what else could Satoshi do to protect the network? We do not know, but there is at least one pattern that belongs to him.

Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to be a team but until today it remains very shady. There are a lot of people following every step the coder makes but the only thing left in the air is speculations and theories. Today the bitcoin is stronger than ever; once the global emergency is over the peaks of sudden rises in prices will saturate the market.

By Jenson Nuñez