The Protagonist in Argentine Senate Was Bitcoin

Willmen Blanco
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The Protagonist in Argentine Senate Was Bitcoin

Despite the excessive use of technical jargon, Bitcoin technology was the most prominent in all presentations. The lack of a common domain language is what makes it difficult to understand cryptocurrencies.

On Wednesday, November 20th, the Argentine Senate began the first cycle of debates on cryptocurrencies, by the hands of the economy and investment commission. Senator Silvia Elías de Pérez said that the debate aimed to help senators better understand this technology in order to determine whether it is necessary to regulate cryptocurrencies and the path to be taken for this, which indicates an unusual opening to the stage of regulating non-state currencies.

Balance, Language and Technical Jargon

The data protection specialist, Johanna Caterina Faliero, highlighted the balance that there should be between the regulation and privacy of cryptocurrency users, as well as the existing challenges to make an effective regulation that does not stifle innovation or is invasive regarding the use of technology.

She also noted the lack of a common domain language to refer to this technology. In this regard, Faliero and other speakers present in the Argentine Senate indicated that words such as “crypto assets”, “cryptocurrencies”, “digital currencies” and “virtual assets” are used interchangeably in the ecosystem, thus generating confusion.

For his part, the engineer Francisco José Faliero confused those present with explanations and comments about the operation, advantages, and disadvantages of cryptocurrencies, since his presentation was full of technical jargon and technological inaccuracies.

Among the most surprising comments, it is possible to highlight irreversible transactions and limited issuance as being disadvantages of Bitcoin, the trade of EOS cryptocurrencies in Ethereum and Ripple as being superior to Bitcoin, the complaint about the energy expenditure generated by mining and the unceasing argument of the “lack of real support”.

It is necessary to clarify that irreversible transactions are a requirement of the system to achieve decentralization, as Satoshi Nakamoto well explains in the introduction to his little-read white paper on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin to the Rescue

Cristian Bruno, Technology Director of Bitex, an Argentine company dedicated to the trade with Bitcoin, explained to the audience that Bitcoin effectively addresses three problems: ownership of money, money held in the account and money double-spending.

Bruno compared asymmetric or public-key cryptography with a vault (public key) and a key (private key), the hash function with a machine to generate fingerprints of any digital thing, and miners with scribes responsible for the integrity of accounting records (blockchain) to whom the network encourages for their work.

After explaining how the network operates without a central entity, the executive told the Senate that he does not consider Bitcoin to be equal to Libra or other cryptocurrencies, and that he does not believe that it should or may be regulated.

BCRA Follows Good Examples

Those in charge of the BCRA financial stability commission highlighted some crypto asset categorization models, such as the Swiss one, which divides them into value tokens, payment tokens and utility tokens. They also mentioned some examples of advanced regulations in Switzerland, Japan, the US and others in Europe, highlighting the fact that regulating cryptocurrencies is a challenge.

They also mentioned the alerts issued by global entities, such as the G20 or the FAFT, about the risk of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins (anchored cryptocurrencies) for global financial stability.

Danger without the Community

What happened in the Argentine Senate was a step in the right direction, but it is necessary that the entire community of users and cryptocurrency companies be involved. In line with the spirit of transparency of cryptocurrencies, the recordings of the senators’ debates should be published for anyone to see and citizens invited to participate since cryptocurrencies are the future of the national and world economy.

By Willmen Blanco

Lamborghini Manufacturing Company Will Seek to Use a Blockchain ​​System to Certify its Vehicles

Maria Rodríguez
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Lamborghini Manufacturing Company Will Seek to Use a Blockchain ​​System to Certify its Vehicles

The powerful luxury car brand will use blockchain technology to authenticate and certify the speed of their cars and their security before the sale.

Automobili Lamborghini, the Italian company responsible for manufacturing the legendary luxury cars, recently said that in the quest to improve the positive experience of their customers and increase the quality of their products, they have partnered with Salesforce Company to implement its blockchain platform in a system that helps certify data of its Lamborghini cars.

During a recent announcement issued by the Salesforce Company, it was known that now the Italian luxury car company can track, authenticate and certify cars safely and quickly through a blockchain system designed for the process.

Salesforce is a company recognized for being one of the most important Customer Relationship Management (CRM) firms, which will seek to adapt to the needs of the iconic avant-garde car brand founded in 1963, Automobili Lamborghini.

The alliance was presented to the public during the annual event Dreamforce, held in the city of San Francisco, in the United States, at the beginning of the week, so it was reviewed in local media.

Benefits of the platform

The blockchain platform of Salesforce is created and based on the Hyperledger network, which will be intertwined with a reliable system that will allow the participation of several participants to verify the certificates produced during the resale of vehicles of the Italian firm.

Talking about the reason why this tool will facilitate resale processes, it was decided to explain the steps necessary for vehicles to be in optimal conditions for resale. According to the company, these vehicles must pass an exhaustive inspection that lists more than 800 and up to 1,000 certification methods before being approved for resale. The platform launched in May this year will help facilitate these safety inspections.

In the official statement on the announcement of the alliance, the operation of what will now be a fast and safe process was detailed. This, adding that each car will be registered in an immutable system containing data such as repairs and restorations that each vehicle has had, the previous owners, inter alia.

This registration will also provide a certificate of authenticity that will avoid generating confusion about imitations of these vehicles, thus, helping to maintain the brand name for its quality and reliability in its services.

The initiative comes after a pilot test was recently conducted where the Salesforce blockchain was used to certify a Lamborghini Aventador S car, which is unique in its kind, for an event held in California this year.

About this, Paolo Gabrielli, who is the aftermarket director for Automobili Lamborghini, said: “Salesforce Blockchain will allow us to take our innovation one step further, accelerating the authenticity of our heritage vehicles faster than ever”.

More and more companies are taking advantage of blockchain technology to certify the authenticity of processes and preserve the unalterable information related to the characteristics of products. This is a form to guaratee the quality of products.

By María Rodríguez

Partnership of Telefónica and Hyperledger Allows Developing New Services with Blockchain Technology

Willmen Blanco
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0
Partnership of Telefónica and Hyperledger Allows Developing New Services with Blockchain Technology

The Spanish company Telefónica believes that blockchain technology will bring confidence to its customers. Seven other companies also established an alliance with the Linux Foundation entity.

The Spanish telecommunications corporation Telefónica joined Hyperledger, of the Linux Foundation, to develop new services with blockchain technology for its customers and business models.

This alliance formalizes a relationship that started this year and that has TrustOS as its first Telefónica blockchain product based on Hyperledger Fabric, one of Hyperledger’s solutions to implement this original Bitcoin technology as a digital system.

José Luis Núñez, head of the Telefónica Blockchain Competence Center, says that the keyword in this association is the trust that blockchain technology can offer to the industrial sector. He considers that the implementation of proposals with blockchain technology in the business sector will succeed only if it is done openly and collaboratively.

The executive posted on Twitter that they are firmly committed to building ecosystems and networks that bring confidence to the operations of companies. He said that their partnership with Hyperledger reinforces Telefónica’s strategy of creating businesses in blockchain networks by adding a layer of trust to their customers’ operations.

Development and Innovation

Telefónica’s agreement with Hyperledger confirms the tendency among large international companies to want to adopt blockchain technology to integrate it into their production processes, but with actors that are already recognized in the ecosystem and that do so collaboratively.

Besides Telefónica, Hyperledger also announced that it welcomed its community to BlocWatch, BondEvalue, Ledger Leopard, LimeChain, Tech Mahindra and Vonechain Technology. Other companies that are already collaborating in Hyperledger are IBM, Cisco, American Express, Consensys, Intel, NEC, SAP, Hitachi and J.P Morgan, among others.

It should be remembered that Telefónica also has Wayra, a project acceleration network that is developing the Blockchain Activation program. The intention is to encourage the creation of solutions with blockchain technology so that more local or international companies incorporate them and thus improve their production processes, which is where TrustOS works.

Núñez recently said that the company is committed to blockchain technology because “nobody has to validate, certify or audit what is happening on the network, since the network itself will do so through that new blockchain layer.”

Hyperledger Fabric is not the only Hyperledger enterprise solution for blockchain, but it is the best known. There are also Hyperledger Besu, Burrow, Indy, Iroha and Sawtooth, each with its own characteristics to use, such as smart contracts, test networks, consensus algorithms or interoperability with other chains.

Blockchain technology, which is also known as distributed ledger technology (DLT), is a mechanism that allows secure and reliable peer-to-peer transactions through the Internet, without the intervention of a centralized authority or intermediaries.

It is an articulation of various technologies that also include digital mining, nodes, digital wallets, and the accounting ledger, in which transactions are grouped in block form and are linearly linked to each other. Regarding Bitcoin, it is used in the area of ​​cryptocurrency finance, but what is sought in business cases is to improve processes, services or products, without the need to use cryptocurrencies.

By Willmen Blanco

Siemens Will Use Blockchain ​​System for the Energy Sector in Spain

Maria Rodríguez
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Siemens Will Use Blockchain ​​System for the Energy Sector in Spain

The project is based on a platform created by Siemens using Alastria, from Ethereum.

The blockchain platform developed by Gnera and the Gas and power group of Siemens Spain will allow the energy sector a network in which it would be able to process transactions and conduct marketing. The private platform called e-ing3ni  @ does not have the participation of the Spanish government and will work directly with the sector.

The news was published through a press release issued by Siemens last month. There, it was specified that the central idea is to link energy producers with their consumers. Directly, this platform is aimed at the use of energy-producing plants from small to large scales, to subsidiary consumers, and to energy distributors.

In a recent interview offered by a representative of the company to a news web portal, it was announced that the platform is designed using the Alastria blockchain, built basically with Quorum of the Ethereum network.

According to the company’s representative, it is necessary to update the processes in order to lighten costs and accelerate the necessary work. In addition to this, on whether it is necessary to use this technology for the energy plan, it was mentioned that these platforms “allow giving confidence and transparency to the electricity market, in addition to allowing traceability of the origin of energy”.

About this movement, it was also specified that at this moment the world of energy is in a strong change, since “due to the decarbonization, democratization and digitalization of energy”, it is causing the sector to adapt to the consumer and the new Ways to generate energy.

How Will It Work?

The platform will offer an energy traceability service for users and producers. In this way, the consumer will be able to choose the origin of the energy that he wishes to acquire, just as the producer can select the energy that he wishes to sell; all of this done in a simple and secure platform.

It is known that in the middle of the current year, the system was tested through a pilot phase that concluded in a successful process. To this, it is added that the platform is already in operation, but nevertheless, it is not fully operational for users since it is in a commercialization stage to be used later by customers.

The company clarified that they are developing processes to publicize the benefits of the new platform for energy consumption and sales at present. Siemens did not offer details of the companies that will provide a support service for E-ing3ni @ or about any service necessary for it to be networked. Despite this, they dared to recommend some ways for interested users to acquire information about the tool.

The use of these technology platforms in the energy market is becoming increasingly common due to the fact that it can determine factors that were previously unknown to the customer as the origin of the energy. In addition to this, they provide a service that can be much cheaper, safer and more effective than the traditional.

By María Rodríguez

Cryptocurrency-Stealing Malware Infiltrated in Monero’s Official Website

Willmen Blanco
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0
Cryptocurrency-Stealing Malware Infiltrated in Monero’s Official Website

The malware was found in downloadable files of the Monero CLI wallet. According to Monero developers, the attack was active for a few minutes.

The developer team of Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, issued an alert to users of the CLI wallet, after verifying that some binary files of the software on the official download site were compromised with malware. The information was disclosed on Tuesday, November 19th, in a publication of the website.

According to the statement, downloads made from getmonero.org between Monday and Tuesday may contain malicious binary files. In this sense, they requested the users of the CLI wallet that had made downloads to verify the validity of these files.

The Monero community recommends that anyone who has downloaded the CLI wallet from this website, between Monday 18th at 2:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. CUT, check the hashes of their binaries. If they do not match the official ones, the files must be deleted and downloaded again. The compromised binary files cannot be run for any reason.

In a Reddit message posted by the Monero community, users are advised to verify the authenticity of their binary files, with which they were signed by the GPG key of Fluffypony, one of the main developers of the project. A guide is also provided to complete the process without mistakes on devices with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X operating systems.

The attack was detected by a user identifying himself as nikitasius, who noted that when downloading the binaries of the Monero CLI wallet from getmonero.org, the hash of the downloaded files did not match those contained in the official GitHub repository of Monero. The main developers of the project stated that the problem was immediately solved; however, the contaminated files were available for about 35 minutes.

At least one user reported being affected by the malware, which drained his wallet of Monero (XMR) equivalent to about USD 7,000. The victim, who identifies himself as moneromanz, posted a Reddit message in which he confirms that the malicious binary is stealing coins. He said that, about 9 hours after executing the binary, a single transaction depleted his wallet of all USD 7,000.

A preliminary investigation indicated that the infected file is a Linux binary, to which illegitimate functions were added. The malware activates when opening or creating a new Monero CLI wallet and sends the seed to a server under the attacker’s control, then proceeding to empty the funds. It should be remembered that the seed is a set of mnemonic words that allow recovering the private key of the cryptocurrencies and signing transactions.

Monero investigators confirmed that, once the problem was detected, binary file downloads are used as a secure source and that they are currently conducting a detailed investigation to promptly inform about the details of the attack.

Among the recommendations, users who executed the binary files in the period indicated above were asked to immediately transfer the funds from all the wallets opened with the said executables to a secure version of the wallet.

By Willmen Blanco

China Will Use Blockchain ​​Technology to Manage Military Staff Information

Maria Rodríguez
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China Will Use Blockchain ​​Technology to Manage Military Staff Information

They will use the blockchain system to evaluate the professional performance of the Army, as well as the registration of personal information.

In a recent article published in the military newspaper of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), it was announced that a blockchain system will soon be activated to improve processes within the military agency. According to the report, the measure will take great relevance in many areas, especially in management. It was also detailed that the initiative will seek to promote the use of new technologies within administrative and management development in the Army.

According to the data issued in the publication, the Army will use the blockchain system to manage military personnel data. It will also seek to help with physical training and the performance of intelligence and action missions.

In addition to this, it is expected that tokens can also be created, used as a reward for the soldier, and also be used for the exchange of collectibles and awards. The opinion of some experts suggests that this is part of a unique strategy that they are implementing to encourage their staff and improve high-performance tasks. This could replace the previous rewards system that turned out to be a bit tedious for military personnel.

Using blockchain technology, and based on an open accounting system including a transaction log, which cannot be deleted or violated, vital information of each employee and military personnel may be archived, including personal data, completed missions, acknowledgments received, professional career, and all relevant medical data. According to the information, the system will have a security protocol that ensures that the data is reliable.

As explained in the report, since all the relevant information and data of the soldier is within the registry, it will also execute an evaluation system that will calculate and assign the token reward that each soldier will receive. In this way, the professional who has greater recognition and better performance will receive a better amount of tokens; whilst, if the performance of the professional has diminished or acted badly, a deduction of the reward will be made.

In general, the system will also evaluate the troops and classify them into performance ranges, which would also contribute to a larger reward. In this regard, during an interview conducted anonymously to a source linked to the Chinese Army, it was known that this represents an improvement in the reward systems for the staff, since previously these were not enough. In addition to being in a system that could reward almost immediately.

It is known that the reward systems used in the Army corresponded to the award granted for outstanding events and the promotion of rank that is usually classified by years of service and performance in action.

Although the distribution of the use of tokens has not been detailed, it is believed that they will not allow this to circulate as money, but rather that it is used to achieve recognition or as a score that can be exchanged for rewards that the system considers or allows granting.

The system could also benefit the Army by contributing a secure storage system. In addition to this, it could transmit information between devices without fear of being intercepted. This according to the press report published in China.

By María Rodríguez

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