Spanish Banks Would Make Payments Using a Private Blockchain

Maria Rodríguez
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Spanish Banks Would Make Payments Using a Private Blockchain

The most important Spanish banks announced they have the initiative to make payments and transfers using a blockchain platform.

The initiative was announced recently by Spanish banks, which seek to use blockchain technology for the advancement of their payments and efforts. Bankia, BBVA, CaixaBank and the Santander group advanced to take the first proofs of concept soon, in order to finish with the assembly of a related platform to connect them.

In this way, they classified the project as the “smart payments” tool, whose objective will be to allow the use of a private blockchain platform for the improvement of transactions carried out between its platforms.

In addition, it was known that this project that is being developed has the participation of Grant Thornton, who made possible the blockchain laboratory. Grant Thornton also serves as an advisor regarding the technology that will be implemented in collaboration with Iberpay, which is the Spanish company, specialized in compensation, liquidation, and exchange of operations between financial institutions in Spain, and also is responsible for mobilizing the entire National Payment System (SNCE).

On the official website of Iberpay, there is a graphic that indicates the project and classified it as the function that controls the transfers are immediate through the use of smart contracts, which will be executed and programmed automatically. This promises to provide a rapid improvement to security systems, as well as their traceability. In this way, users will be able to comply with all current regulations and regularization in the European country.

Although the proofs of concept began last October, it is expected that they will not end until mid-March 2020. These tests include a pilot that will pretend an operation with the use of the network, using the capacity of about “six nodes distributed and managed for each participating entity”.

The so-called Proof of Concepts (PoC) are examples of simulation that help determine the best use for the application of technology or the application of new methods. This helps to measure the correct potential for acceptance in the market to which it is aimed. This test will help to implement in the “smart payments”, a whole range of services that banks can implement in the future. Some of them include letters of credit, export insurance, shipping insurance, credit protection, among others.

Although these services are currently offered by some banking institutions, they are expensive and difficult to execute or manage. With the implementation of a complex system that allows the automatic and efficient application of these services, a wider massification of these services could be generated and the entire known interbank network would be improved.

Visualizing the role that these banking institutions seek to play in the future, it can be determined that these services, which were previously only offered between some banks, can be enabled for their clients, which would generate a new ecosystem in which banks will be part of a set of possibilities that will help customers carry out their operations with greater safety and efficiency.

Currently, some obstacles are known that would prevent the full development of these systems in local and global banks. Among them, the high number of regulations against the use of cryptocurrencies and tokens stands out.

This would greatly help international payments and avoid the use of clearinghouses. But another strong obstacle is related to security since digitalization has made this terrain something vulnerable to maintain, and the creation of new tools can prevent threats that may arise in the future so this would be a great solution and a new option for the community.

By María Rodríguez

Argentines that Contribute to Community Kitchens Will Be Given Tokens

Willmen Blanco
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Argentines that Contribute to Community Kitchens Will Be Given Tokens

The NGO Bitcoin Argentina is advancing the Community Kitchen Project to give visibility to volunteer hours. The first implementation is expected in early 2020 in Buenos Aires.

A proposal with a social impact to make visible the work of volunteers in Argentina, using a blockchain, was made by the NGO Bitcoin Argentina in order to encourage collaboration among neighbors and promote aid to the neediest in community kitchens.

The plan, called “Community Kitchen Project,” aims to give value to the volunteer hours that hundreds of people dedicate to helping the most vulnerable through the tokenization of their effort. Bitcoin Argentina indicated that the number of tokens received by participants will depend on the time that they devote to the work in the community kitchens.

The NGO explained that the initiative seeks to recognize the effort through the delivery of points (tokens) for the voluntary work done by neighbors, which can then be exchanged for food within the stores located in the neighborhood, and highlighted its intention to promote neighborhood collaboration and boost the local economy.

The organization stressed that the first implementation will occur in early 2020 in the community kitchen and the “Casa Cambalache” cultural spaces in Buenos Aires. This space initially cared only for boys and girls, but currently serves food to over 300 people daily. It should be noted that the volunteers that have dedicated more than 15 years will now benefit from their efforts.

Technical Aspect and Tests

Regarding the technical aspect, the project involves TokkenIt, an application developed by Koibanx on RSK technology. The latter is a platform for the development of smart contracts as a side chain on Bitcoin. TokkenIt is an application based on blockchain technology to develop loyalty programs.

Preliminary tests have been recently conducted in the aforementioned community kitchen in which the participants found the application easy to use, according to Bitcoin Argentina. This opens the doors to a smooth implementation at this first stop and those that might arise in the future.

Ivania Luyo, a member of the Community Kitchen Project team, considers that the objective is to replicate the idea in other Argentine vulnerable neighborhoods.

The project participant said that the intention is to give greater visibility to the great effort made by people in community work, and thus generate more support among all the actors involved, donors, businesses and volunteers.

Blockchain with a Social Impact

The use of blockchain technology in projects with a social impact is increasing worldwide. A growing number of non-profit organizations or public and private sector institutions look more closely at this tool as a mechanism to help those who need it most.

In July 2018, the spokeswoman for the Digital Single Market of the European Commission, Nathalie Vandystadt, stated that blockchains “have the potential to benefit society.” She cited that the World Program for Food (WFP) in Jordan uses this technology to distribute supplies to serve more than 10,000 people in refugee camps, while in Finland a blockchain has been used since 2015 to provide accounts and debit cards to newly arrived refugees.

The Blockchain for Humanity awards were also established in the crypto-ecosystem, as an initiative to award projects with a social impact, which already reached its third edition in 2019.

By Willmen Blanco

ICO Will Be Launched by Russian Dark Web Market to Finance Its Worldwide Expansion

Willmen Blanco
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ICO Will Be Launched by Russian Dark Web Market to Finance Its Worldwide Expansion

Hydra plans to issue 1,470,000 tokens, each of which will cost USD 100. Hydra promises participation in project earnings and dividends of USD 500 per month.

Hydra, which is reported as the largest black market in the dark web serving Russia and neighboring countries, says that it is seeking to raise USD 146 million through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to finance its worldwide expansion.

According to an investment memorandum from the website, which is difficult to access without an especially anonymized search engine, the sale of the tokens has been established to occur on December 16th.

The tokens offered at the ICO will have a price of USD 100 each and will be available for purchase on the Bitcoin platform. A “package” of 100 tokens will provide the buyer with 0.00333333% of Hydra’s participation in earnings, according to the memorandum.

Given its illicit nature, Hydra’s token offering could be the most blatant in history, even compared to the ICOs triggering the requirements of registries in the United States in 2017. A Russian online magazine warned that this sale could be an exit scam, something common in dark web markets.

The announcements in the memorandum of the Hydra offering are nothing but daring. By boasting of its capabilities for security and resistance to attacks, Hydra’s team is saying that they want to make public their “contact-free” contraband trade method, in which the buyer, seller and courier never meet.

The ICO of Hydra tokens would finance the development of a new service called Eternos, which is described as a global dark web market combined with an encrypted messaging service, an anonymous search engine similar to Tor, a resolution system for disputes based on Artificial Intelligence, and an over-the-counter (OTC) market.

The announcement explains that, without having to undergo a Know Your Customer (KYC) process, everything will be handled anonymously and at the highest level. They warn that they are not TON, at a point towards the blockchain project of the Telegram messaging application, which requires that buyers of their token go through a KYC review.

Hydra is planning to issue 1,470,000 tokens, which would represent 49% of the new project, and is promising monthly dividends of USD 500 in Bitcoin per token if buyers acquire more than 100.

This implies that Hydra’s operators expect Eternos to generate more than USD 15 million per month. According to the announcement, the estimate is based on Hydra’s growth metrics.

ICO Would Reach Thousands of Users

Hydra opened in 2015, providing a market for illegal goods such as drugs and their ingredients, counterfeit documents and money, and piracy services. According to a Russian research medium, Hydra’s user base exceeds 2.5 million accounts, of which 393,000 have made at least one purchase.

According to Hydra, the number of users exceeds three million, and they make more than 100,000 deals per day, trading cocaine from Colombia, home-grown cannabis, fake passports, stolen official databases, and cash in exchange for BTC.

Purchases in Hydra are made in Bitcoin or through electronic money transfers, similarly to the now-deceased illegal market Silk Road, whose founder Ross Ulbricht is serving a life sentence in the United States. However, unlike Silk Road, Hydra’s buyers do not receive prohibited goods by mail, but in secret places near the cities where they live.

After paying, buyers receive directions on how to arrive at an exact point in a park, a mailbox or another place where the “delivery” would be waiting. The plots are delivered by paid contractors, and the three participants in the transaction do not meet any person.

By Willmen Blanco

Users Will Be Able to Operate with Local Fiat Money in Latin America with New Binance Platform

Willmen Blanco
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0
Users Will Be Able to Operate with Local Fiat Money in Latin America with New Binance Platform

Latamex and Paxful will serve as the payment channels for platform users. The Binance Fiat Gateway service is especially aimed at users in Brazil and Argentina.

The global cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced last Thursday, December 12th, the launch of its new platform, called Latamex, through which it will offer the service of buying and selling cryptocurrencies using local fiat money in the Latin American market. In the first place, the service will be available for users of the Brazilian real (BRL) and the Argentine peso (ARS). Meanwhile, in Colombia and Mexico, local currencies can be used to acquire Bitcoin through the Paxful kiosk.

Binance posted a statement on its official blog revealing its plans with the Latamex platform, which is part of the Binance Fiat Gateway service and is joining its other fiduciary gateway partners: Simplex, Koinal, TrustToken, Paxos and Paxful, in addition to being the result of an association of the exchange house with the network of digital assets of Settle Network.

The exchange announced in the statement that users can now have access to the new Binance service by directly entering the platform, in order to buy or sell Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin (BNB), and Ether (ETH). It should be noted that the Binance dollar-anchored cryptocurrency or stablecoin BUSD, which was approved by the New York Department of Financial Services, is also included among the cryptocurrencies traded.

The CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao said that there is a great need for cryptocurrencies in Latin America, especially for financial access. The executive observed that about 50% of Latin Americans do not have banking services, and Latamex is a response to the demands of their users and the current market climate. He also stated that working with Settle Network allows them to instantly close the gap between fiat and crypto for Latin American traders.

More Open Doors in Latin America

Binance and the P2P Bitcoin exchange platform Paxful officially announced their partnership, whose purpose is to add new ways to trade cryptocurrencies. Therefore, the Paxful virtual kiosk will serve Binance as an additional “fiat access ramp” to cryptocurrencies for its users in Latin America and countries on other continents.

The partnership between Paxful and Binance promises to simplify fiat payments, which provides an excellent opportunity to traders in more than 167 currencies. First of all, the users of the platform will have access to the Colombian peso (COP), the Argentine peso (ARS), the Mexican peso (MXN) and the Russian ruble (RUB), in addition to the Vietnamese dong (VND), the Indonesian rupee (IDR), the Nigerian naira (NGN), also including the British pound (GBP), the Canadian dollar (CAD) and the euro (EUR).

It should be added that this new Binance platform offers traders from Latin American countries another option to buy cryptocurrencies as a method to safeguard value. Besides, given that they have access to a diversity of fiat and crypto assets, they will be able to buy and sell them according to their particular needs.

By Willmen Blanco

Political Party in Argentina Will Use a DAO in its Decision-making and Internal Processes

Maria Rodríguez
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Political Party in Argentina Will Use a DAO in its Decision-making and Internal Processes

The project will be compatible with the decentralized autonomous organization MolochDAO, based on the Ethereum network.

In a recent press release published by the Argentine political party “Mejora”, it was announced that they will conduct some tests to establish a new system that uses a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

With this method, they seek to optimize transparency, improve predictive processes in decision-making, counteract and avoid fraud, and preserve the destiny of the resources allocated and, thus, fight against corruption.

Although the information related to this project did not detail the times in which the tests will begin or their possible completion date, it was known that they will use Sovereign 0.7, which is known to be a solution belonging to the Democracy Earth Foundation.

This is compatible with the MolochDAO, a smart contract network developed and based on Ethereum. The intention is to create a system that works as a method of digital governance for the near future.

According to statements issued by the political party via Twitter, the objective of this system is to support adoption as a form of digital governance, capable of improving the fate of movements within the party.

“We made an agreement with @DemocracyEarth to perform the first field test of the tool in our party with the commitment to adopt digital governance mechanisms for decision-making”, the political party said.

Also, in the same way, the party assured that this mechanism will be reliable and that it will avoid, in every sense, a fraud, especially when allocating funds.

“This will allow us to have a 100 % transparent decision-making structure, which makes fraud impossible and will allow us to make the internal decision-making process increasingly more participatory for both political decision-making and allocation of $$ $”, the political body concluded.

Technical Aspects of the System

The Sovereign 0.7 system is an updated and optimized version of a software that seeks to create a digital governance system, this is based on a MolochDAO code.

With this code, it is possible to visualize results in real-time, see activities of each participant who interacts in the DAO, as well as assemble proposals that help to improve the entire ecosystem.

The Democracy Earth organization is co-founded by the developer Santiago Siri, who imagined this project to improve internal processes within political parties and seek more efficient and transparent governance methods.

The organization notes that MolochDAO is becoming the most widely used smart contract to use in DAO, an Ethereum blockchain. It is known that MolochDAO was launched since the first quarter of this year, and according to its data, it is designed to “finance and promote the development of ETH 2.0 public infrastructure”.

The Political Parties and The Cryptocurrencies

This adoption of a blockchain system for decision-making by political parties puts on the table new methods of using this type of technology in politics. Previously, the ecosystem was used as a simple system for receiving taxpayer funds. But it can change if the system succeeds.

By María Rodríguez

After Announcing Its Dissolution, DigixDAO Increases Its Market Capitalization by 73%

Willmen Blanco
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After Announcing Its Dissolution, DigixDAO Increases Its Market Capitalization by 73%

DigixDAO proposes a quarterly vote to decide the dissolution of the project or continue moving ahead. The price of DGD tokens has increased by 73% in less than two weeks.

The oldest Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have funds in their treasury that are worth more than the market capitalizations of their tokens. DigixDAO wondered whether these projects should return some of that money. At the same time, it offered its DGD token holders an all-or-nothing option: to completely dissolve its treasury or to continue granting subsidies to improve the ecosystem.

Kai Cheng Chng, CEO of Digix, noted on the DigixDAO blog that Digix has been receiving a lot of feedback since its ICO in early 2106. The executive said that there were recurring comments in favor of a DigixDAO dissolution mechanism by dissatisfied DGD token holders.

In the publication, the approach that the organization would adopt from now on is described: token holders can now vote to keep the ETH funds in the DAO intact. In response, the token price almost doubled since the announcement was published on November 29th. The price, which was around USD 13 before, now exceeds USD 19 since Chng’s publication.

The project Digix maintains physical gold and represents it with tokens in the Ethereum blockchain through its DGX token. However, the relevant governance token is DGD, and its current market capitalization of USD 39.1 million is significantly below the 386,000 ETH that DigixDAO has in its treasury.

DigixDAO raised 466,648 ETH in the sale of DGD tokens in March 2016, according to Smith + Crown. At that time, the amount collected was equivalent to a value between USD 6 million and USD 7 million. Since then, the value of ETH has increased significantly.

Wider Implications

The DigixDAO decision has triggered industry-wide discussion about whether more projects should do the same. Ryan Zurrer, investor and founder of the crypto asset firm Dialectic, stated that space needs someone like Carl Icahn to spread a culture in which it is not right to keep tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in investment capital.

Zurrer said that many well-known ICOs making sales before the peak of the bullish market in 2017 now have vast resources since the value of the cryptocurrencies associated with the projects has significantly appreciated. The investor also notes that he would like to see a world with projects in which detailed roadmaps with clear budgets are drawn.

Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, said that he had long been waiting for ICOs with a big balance sheet to do this. He considers that this was quite a mature decision by Digix.

However, the co-founder of token trading firm Altonomy, Ricky Li, said that the ICOs are not really interested in repurchasing the tokens with their treasury holdings as they raise money to develop, not to speculate on the token price.

In fact, this matches the observations of Zurrer, who noted that it is not really an all-or-nothing option. He explained that a company could redistribute part of its treasury if it has more than it really needs, and still continue doing its job.

Others are not so sure that the DigixDAO movement is widely replicable. The CEO of Avantgarde Finance Mona El-Isa considers that it is difficult to generalize whether this would be a good or bad thing for space, since each situation has its own unique characteristics.

El-Isa’s previous company developed the Melonport protocol and then delivered it to their community in the form of DAO. She believes that some of those tokens would “become very interesting opportunities for token enthusiasts.”

By Willmen Blanco

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