Expansion of Blockchain Technology in Africa Is Evident

Willmen Blanco
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Expansion of Blockchain Technology in Africa Is Evident

On several occasions, there has been talked about the rise of blockchain technology around the world, its use to develop platforms and the impact that it has on different societies. When dealing with the subject, people usually think of the United States or countries in the Asian continent. However, not much has been said about its impact in such a complex region for the world as Africa.

Context of the Continent

It should be noted that the entire African continent is considered a complete region that is under development. This implies that it lags considerably behind other countries in terms of the use of blockchains. This issue covers social organization, its economic systems, and innovation, which makes the application and development of this technology complex.

However, there have been organizations that seek to support Africa to reduce the gap between different countries for several years. For this reason, there are projects that help train the society, including the use of innovative technologies such as blockchain.

This leads to the birth of the African Institute of Blockchain (ABI), which seeks to expand training on this technology for developers in the entire region. To achieve success in this task, several courses and workshops on this subject have been designed.

School in Rwanda

The aim is to expand the scope of training in the use of blockchain technology in a stable and constant way. For this reason, it is planned to found a training institute in Rwanda by the year 2020. This announcement was made by the ABI Executive Director Kayode Babarinde in an interview in recent days.

Babarinde explains that this school aims to impact various areas of Rwandan society. He also revealed that the new school has five key courses on the way: an essential course in blockchain certification, a course for blockchain developers, a course in business blockchain, blockchain for lawyers and blockchain for impact.

Babarinde said that the ABI laid the foundation for its work in Rwanda by running a pilot phase for the school in Ghana, where it launched the inaugural class for a course in blockchain certification.

While the five areas of the course were extensively outlined prior to the pilot in Ghana, the school’s curriculum has already been reviewed and updated in terms of the responses and experiences of its participants.

Babarinde said that the support and cooperation from the association Blockchain DLT Rwanda and its president, Norbert Haguma, have been a key factor in his decision to launch the school in the country.

More generally, he characterized the local context as highly conducive to investments in new technologies. In this regard, he explained that all technology companies seek an environment conducive to serving the continent. This implies support policies, resource management and visibility to the market, all of which make Rwanda the most prominent in Africa.

With respect to the rest of the world, Africa is a continent that is hardly venturing into the use of blockchain technology. However, training in its use and development would be well worth the effort in the not too distant future.

By Willmen Blanco

Bitcoin Received Christmas with Increase in Price

Willmen Blanco
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Bitcoin Received Christmas with Increase in Price

The halving of 2021 is said to be a possible cause of the Bitcoin boom. The cryptocurrency has registered a bearish market for several months.

As the world was preparing for Christmas Eve, the Bitcoin market (BTC) regained its green numbers after a difficult week. The cryptocurrency recorded a price of USD 7,408 per unit at the time of writing this article, appreciating 5% in the last 24 hours.

According to the Messari platform, Bitcoin went from trading at USD 7,147 on December 22nd to trading at USD 7,408 per unit on December 23rd. The cryptocurrency managed to recover 7% of its value after having registered last December 18th its lowest price since May. Bitcoin’s price had remained at an average of USD 7,000 per unit since last week, this being the last steep rise before Christmas.

Initially, the rise in Bitcoin also affected the altcoin market, which rose in green numbers by the morning of December 23rd. However, its price fluctuated around the decline with the passing of the hours while the main cryptocurrencies (among which are ETH, LTC, BCH, and XRP) registered a devaluation of 1 and 2.

Reason for Increase in Bitcoin’s Price

The December dates have been characterized by bearish Bitcoin markets. After the great collapse in the price of this cryptocurrency occurred in December 2017, it was said that Christmas was not the best date for Bitcoin. However, all forecasts for red numbers were broken and a question arose: What could be happening in the Bitcoin market?

Although the cause for the last increase registered by Bitcoin is still not clear, several possibilities that have contributed to a market appreciation could be envisioned. For example, it might have been a correction in Bitcoin’s price. In recent months, after Bitcoin registered more than USD 10,000 per unit, its market entered a bearish season. However, the fall recorded on December 18th was very steep and pronounced even for a cryptocurrency that has oscillated between red numbers.

Market analysts, such as David Puell, note that aggressive market variations “are corrected aggressively.” In this way, the market seems to be stabilizing to find an average price after two periods with marked upward and downward trends. Puell also notes that Bitcoin is in the process of establishing a flat price, so when the price of the cryptocurrency falls too low compared to supply and demand it tends to increase volatility seeking to return to its real value.

Another event that could have contributed to the rise in the price of Bitcoin is the increasingly close date of its halving. Every 210,000 blocks, Bitcoin activates an automated process that reduces the amount of reward that miners receive for their activities to control the issuance of bitcoins.

The halving generates expectations among community members, especially during the months before this phenomenon occurs. For example, in 2016 the price of Bitcoin went from USD 400 to USD 700 before and after the reward reduction. As the next halving occurrence is increasingly close, the Bitcoin market could already be reacting to its users’ predictions.

By Willmen Blanco

Videos on Bitcoin Were Deleted by Mistake, According to YouTube

Willmen Blanco
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Videos on Bitcoin Were Deleted by Mistake, According to YouTube

The company indicated that the restriction occurred because of a failure during their review processes. Youtubers complain that the banned videos have not yet been re-enabled.

Google’s own subsidiary admitted that the sudden removal of YouTube videos related to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies was due to an internal error. The platform dedicated to distributing multimedia content replied to dozens of users, who complained through Twitter about the disappearance of their videos.

YouTube did not clarify the kind of error, so it is still not known if it was something human, technical, voluntary or involuntary that caused the removal of the content. They only noted that it occurred during its review processes.

It was reported on Thursday, December 26th, that YouTube had sent a message to user @themooncarl, explaining that it had been a mistake on their part during the review process. They promised to restore this user’s video and solve the problem and requested that he let them know if the opposite happened.

Even though they admitted the error and offered to resolve the problem gradually, the company has not yet reversed the situation, at least not completely. On Friday, December 27th, they told the user @dobcrypto1 that they were “actively working to solve it” and asked him to be patient.

A review of the @TeamYouTube account’s tweet and reply history shows that the company continues replying to more requests for information about deleted videos, evidence that the problem remains.

Other YouTubers, such as @boxmining, noted that their channels were operational with their videos again. A similar situation was reported by @ChrisDunnTV, albeit only partially, with some videos restored but with dozens of others still missing.

Beginning of Crisis

The disappearance of videos related to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general raised alarm among hundreds of YouTube users, who received on Christmas Eve e-mails telling them that the videos had been deleted as being material with harmful or dangerous content and that they were violating community guidelines.  The messages were then shared by those affected on social networks, notifying YouTube of what had happened.

An unidentified YouTube spokesperson told digital media on Thursday that the company, due to the large number of videos that it processes every day, sometimes makes mistakes like this.

The person, who claimed that YouTube’s policy on Bitcoin has not changed and that the channels involved will not be penalized, said that the large volume of videos on their site sometimes leads them to make the wrong call.  He also explained that whenever they are told that a video was deleted by mistake, they act quickly to restore it.

These events provoked reactions in the crypto ecosystem among well-known personalities requesting the creation of an independent platform to protect the contents of centralized entities. Two of them were the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, and the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin.

It should be remembered that Google reported in March last year that it would ban any advertising related to cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) from its platform, a decision that was partially reversed six months later.

By Willmen Blanco

Another Update of the Ethereum Network Announced by Its Developers for New Year’s Day

Willmen Blanco
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Another Update of the Ethereum Network Announced by Its Developers for New Year’s Day

“Muir Glacier” only contemplates the proposal to delay the difficulty bomb. The next evolution of the network, Serenity, is not expected until 2021.

Approximately on January 1st, 2020, the Ethereum network is expected to activate a new update called “Muir Glacier”. It will occur at the height of block 9.2 million to delay the “difficulty bomb”. The announcement responds to some agreements reached at a meeting that was held on November 29th.

A publication on the official blog of the Ethereum Foundation indicates that the “Muir Glacier” update only contemplates a proposal for improvement, EIP 2384, unlike the Istanbul fork that was successfully activated in early December and that implemented six of the eleven proposals for Ethereal improvements (EIP) planned for the fork.

The announcement also brought with it some statements on Twitter of people linked to the ecosystem, who turned their observations around the cumbersome process of conducting an update of the network, in festive dates. As can be seen on Ethernet most of the nodes are still not ready to be updated and, likely, that most will not do so until after the Christmas holidays.

For its part, the user @thibauld expressed his disagreement with two separate updates, one behind the other, clearly referring to the fact that less than a month has elapsed since the implementation of the Istanbul fork.

EIP 2384 focuses on delaying the “difficulty bomb,” which is an integrated mechanism in the Ethereum Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm that increases the value of mining every 100,000 removed blocks. With the new update, the “difficulty bomb” will be delayed by another 4 million blocks or approximately 611 days. The developers of Ethereum agreed to postpone the mechanism to avoid complications in the transition phase from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Participation (PoP).

Whilst the developers planned the Istanbul update, they initially estimated that the “difficulty bomb” would not be noticeable until mid-2020. This implied that it could be safely delayed with the update. However, these estimates were erroneous as the bomb began to be noticeable again on October 5th, 2019, at the height of block 8,600,000. The average block time was increased. According to data from Etherscan at the time of writing this article, the difficulty value is 17.15 seconds, which makes transactions take too long to process.

With the implementation of EIP 2384, this would be the third time since 2015 that the “difficulty bomb” has been delayed. It was first for 3 million blocks during the Byzantium fork in 2018 and then for another 2 million blocks during the Constantinople fork in February 2019.

In the face of the “Muir Glacier” update, the developers urged node and mining operators to update their software; however, it also clarifies that the fork will not affect cryptocurrency owners or traders. At the moment, there is no other update expected until phase 2 of the next evolution of the network, Serenity, which is unlikely to occur before 2021.

By Willmen Blanco

Blockchain for Traceability of Minerals in Peru Will Be Tested by Google

Willmen Blanco
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Blockchain for Traceability of Minerals in Peru Will Be Tested by Google

It is estimated that the tin extracted from the main mine in Peru represents 6% of the world’s supply. Google aims to develop a system that can be adopted by large industries worldwide.

A development department of Google aims to improve how data from a supply chain are registered with a blockchain. The first step to achieve this objective has been to create a program for the traceability of minerals such as tin in the main mine of this valuable metal, located in Peru. This was announced by the American multi-national company through a publication of the program “Responsible Supply Chain Projects.”

This initiative will include the participation of Minsur, the company that manages the San Rafael tin mine, located in the Antauta district, Melgar Province, in the Puno region. It is worth noting that the mine is more than 4,500 meters above sea level and is the third most important tin mine all over the world since it produces between 6% and 12% of this metal. Tin is known to be used in electronic equipment such as cell phones, laptop computers, and electric cars.

However, due to the importance of this resource, numerous mines that have not been supervised and activities related to the tin market have emerged in recent years, such as the practice of diving into deep waters in the Indian Sea, in Indonesia, to extract the metal from the cell phones deposited in underwater waste landfills.

Analia Calmell del Solar, corporate affairs manager at Minsur, originally met with Google to discuss the certification of materials. However, given the volume of requests for that information, the idea of ​​registering data from the supply chain on a blockchain emerged. Calmell said that Google’s proposal aims to help reduce the number of requests and responses.

According to Google, trademarks and companies consider it urgent to improve processes, since audits to meet the demands of consumers and regulators are increasing as more responsible sourcing policies are being projected. Among these are those promoted by the Dodd-Frank Law in the United States and the European Union Conflict Minerals Regulations.

Responsibility in Supply of Materials

Since 2018 Google has been working jointly with Volkswagen, Cisco, SGS, and Minsur to strengthen resources dedicated to responsible mineral supply.

The project includes the participation of Minespider, a Berlin-based startup, which is partly responsible for the development of the protocol, focused on tracking minerals at each point of contact in a supply chain while protecting the privacy of participants.

It is relevant to know that Minespider offers open source solutions to prevent a single actor with a private blockchain from creating a monopoly of the entire registry of the mineral supply chain industry.

Information about the modernization of processes in the supply chain of Ecopetrol, the state-owned oil company of Colombia, was recently disseminated. It is said that the project requires an investment of USD 120 million to implement Big Data and IoT (Internet of Things) solutions, and records on a blockchain.

By Willmen Blanco

It Is Confirmed that the Cryptocurrency of the People’s Bank of China Will Be Different from Bitcoin

Willmen Blanco
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It Is Confirmed that the Cryptocurrency of the People’s Bank of China Will Be Different from Bitcoin

It was announced that all would be ready to go to the launch of pilot programs. Mu Changchun said that the digital yuan cannot be used to speculate.

A senior official of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said that they will launch a “digital form” of the national fiat currency, the yuan. Mu Changchun warned that the digital yuan cannot be used to speculate and announced that all would be ready for the launch of pilot programs.

It was explained that the cryptocurrency planned by the People’s Bank of China will not be subject to financial speculation mechanisms nor will it have support anchored to any currency basket. This was stated on the weekend of December 21st and 22nd by Mu Changchun, head of the digital currency research division of the Central Bank of the Asian country.

Changchun considers that the digital currency that the Chinese government plans to launch is not like Bitcoin or other decentralized cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, which can be used to speculate or require the support of a basket of currencies. This was reported by the Hong Kong English-language newspaper South China Morning Post.

In the same way, the official said that they are already advanced in the design, a phase of functional tests and even tests of the process of payments with a digital currency. Only the implementation of pilot programs for the launch of the digital currency would be left to do, as highlighted by the same source.

Background

The Asian country has been advancing in the plans for the launch of its  cryptocurrency throughout the year 2019. Among those advances, the most prominent is the adoption of the law for the use of cryptography at the end of October.

It should be noted that this legal instrument aims to lay the foundations for the launch of the Chinese digital currency, without this implying the flexibility of trading with decentralized cryptocurrencies in the Asian country.

It is relevant to mention that the launch of this legal instrument came after President Xi Jinping raised the need for the Asian country to lead the development of blockchains. In a speech to the Communist Party of China (CPC), the president emphasized the potential of blockchains as an emerging industry.

Other Important Facts

Many critics have expressed concern that China could use its digital yuan to increase surveillance on its citizens. However, Changchun said that the People’s Bank of China will guarantee cash-like levels of privacy for its transactions, while still being able to trace what it suspects to be illegal activity.

It was also reported that China’s central bank is accelerating its efforts to launch the digital token to challenge the US dollar. The People’s Bank of China stated that it plans to conduct the first real-world test of its digital currency before the end of 2019. Besides, four major banks and some major economic participants such as China Telecom would test digital currency payments under its supervision.

By Willmen Blanco

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