Bitcoin’s Daily Transaction Fees Surpassed by Ethereum’s

Willmen Blanco
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Bitcoin’s Daily Transaction Fees Surpassed by Ethereum’s

This situation could be linked to Tether’s migration to Ethereum this year. ETH has surpassed BTC’s daily transaction fees several times during 2019.

Ethereum’s daily transaction fees are about to outperform Bitcoin’s, according to an analysis released by Coin Metrics on September 17th. According to data provided by these researchers, this may be the result of the increased use of the Ethereum platform for the issuance of the USD-pegged cryptocurrency or stablecoin Tether (USDT) recorded since early this year.

The report notes that until September 15th ETH had daily transaction fees of USD 182,899, while BTC reported USD 185,993 for the same date. It adds that Ethereum has surpassed Bitcoin’s daily transaction fees several times in the course of 2019. It should be remembered that such a situation arose, for example, on February 19th and March 18th, when ETH fees surpassed BTC’s daily fees.

Regarding this, the analysts prepared a graph showing the trend of the fees of both networks since early 2018. It shows that throughout the last year there have been short periods in which ETH had higher daily transaction fees than BTC; however, BTC has been at the top most of the time.

It is worth noting that from early April to mid-August 2018, BTC’s daily transaction fees increased before those of ETH, mostly from 5 to 10 times during the four-month period. However, the statistics show a change this year that, in the researchers’ opinion, has to do with Tether’s migration to Ethereum.

In the last month, Bitcoin’s transaction fees have collapsed while Ethereum’s have skyrocketed. There may be many factors involved, but there is one that has probably played a major role in this reversal: Tether’s migration to Ethereum.

Growth of Tether in Ethereum

USDT was initially created in the Omni protocol, based on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, since early this year it supports a version of its token in the Ethereum protocol (USDT/ETH).

From this milestone, transactions in Omni began to decline steadily. Tether users have been migrating to the Ethereum version. Those transactions began to rise since last March, when they reached almost 20%, according to previous data from Coin Metrics.

This suggests that the recent ETH/BTC fee change is a consequence of the change from USDT (Omni) to USDT/ETH. If this is the case, the fee change could continue growing as more users switch to the Ethereum version.

Although the report indicates that the USDT on Omni rose throughout most of 2019, reaching new all-time highs in April, it explains that since August USDT/ETH has skyrocketed. The Ethereum version of Tether reached a new all-time high of 187,912 daily transactions on September 9th.

The study notes that USDT/ETH recently accounted for more than 25% of all Ethereum transactions, and has consistently accounted for more than 10% of all transactions since mid-August. The growth is noticeable that month, when Tether’s total offering reached an all-time high of 4.27 billion units.

Among other data, the team adds that USDT/ETH also surpassed USDT-Omni in the adjusted daily transfer value, whilst addresses with balances of at least USD 10 show a similar pattern. Additionally, Tether has become the largest GAS spender of all Ethereum contracts in the last 30 days, while ETH fees, as a percentage of the miners’ total revenues, have begun to rise ahead of BTC.

By Willmen Blanco

Square Crypto Announces Three Hires in What It Dubs as a “Bitcoin Dream Team”

Andres Chavez
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Square Crypto Announces Three Hires in What It Dubs as a “Bitcoin Dream Team”

One of the up and coming crypto projects in the industry has killed two birds with one stone. In hiring three new people for its venture, it has acquired new talent whilst significantly downgrading the troops of crucial rivals at the same time. That is the case of Square Crypto.

The crypto department of the publicly traded payments firm that focuses solely on Bitcoin announced this week that it will welcome three new people that will contribute to the development of its open-source ecosystem.

Vast Experience in the Field

“Steve Lee. Matt Corallo. The guy who writes these tweets. If you thought we already had the bitcoin dream team, think again. Please welcome Valentine Wallace, Jeffrey Czyz, and Arik Sosman to Square Crypto,” the firm tweeted whilst @mentioning the Twitter users involved.

One of the three hires has experience with Facebook and BitGo, and recently worked with digital wallet developer Calibra, closely related with the Libra project. His name is Arik Sosman, and he told a specialized crypto news site that he is looking forward to his newest challenge.

“My personal areas of interest are privacy and [Layer 2] scalability, though we’ll see what the team ultimately ends up working on. … I’m extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to join this amazing team, and to focus on contributing to the most important cryptocurrency and ecosystem,” he said.

An Ambitious Project

“Val comes to us via Lightning Labs, Arik via Facebook Libra and BitGo, and Jeff via Google. This completes our inaugural developer team, as well as step 1 of our plan to grow the FOSS bitcoin developer base with gifted new contributors,” Square Crypto wrote.

As Square, a company that has Jack Dorsey as its CEO, announced, Valentine Wallace was previously associated with Lightning Labs and makes for a great add to a fast-growing and ambitious project.

The other high-profile addition to them is Jeffrey Czyz, a known Google alum. The firm explained via Twitter that the decision to bring them on board had to do with a desire to “grow the FOSS [free and open software] developer base.”

Further Additions to the Staff

Additionally, it was revealed that Square Crypto is still in the process of making additions to its staff, and is currently seeking a designer to join the team that former Google Product Director Steve Lee has put together.

“Speaking of the team, we are still looking for a very senior designer. This position is bigger than a single product, and will play a major role in formalizing how the world interacts with bitcoin,” the tweet read.

Sosman observed that “software engineering is far from the only realm people can make contributions to open-source projects in. Steve himself being a product manager is but one example.”

The firm also informed, via Twitter, that it still is in the process of deciding its next move, which would actually be its first project. “There’s no project we won’t consider, as long as it improves or proliferates bitcoin,” the enterprise wrote.

By Andres Chavez

The First Blockchain Smartphone Will Have a Decentralized System

Maria Rodríguez
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The First Blockchain Smartphone Will Have a Decentralized System

The device has an integrated cold storage wallet. It also offers secure communications and a decentralized application ecosystem.

As good news, and for the benefit of the blockchain community, the world’s first blockchain smartphone will work with a decentralized system, typical of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

A few days ago, it was popular the news about the creation of this mobile device that will allow cryptocurrency storage, but now the crypto-users are looking for more information about the characteristics of the wallet-type smartphone.

Finney is the name of the team that will soon be available and for sale in Bangladesh, a country located in South Asia.

According to a report from the local newspaper The Daily Star, dated September 9th, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission approved in August the importation of the smartphone in order to have them available in the technological market of that country in October.

Despite its high technical level, and being a cryptocurrency wallet more than just a smartphone, Finney debuted last year with a price of USD 999, whilst high-end phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 are available in the local market for telephony for about USD 894.

Other Features

Sirin Labs, a company based in Switzerland, developed the smartphone after one of the five largest Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) of 2017, for about USD 157.8 million.

The smartphone has an integrated cold storage wallet and offers secure communications and a decentralized application ecosystem.

Electronics giant Foxconn Technology Group was in charge of Finney’s manufacturing.

Moshe Hogeg, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Sirin Labs, said Finney includes and executes multiple functions and aspects of blockchain technology and crypts in a single device.

“Before Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this in one phone”, he explained.

Technology Demand

The launch of Finney in Bangladesh occurs at a time when there is a growing trend in users of that country to search for smartphones.

A report issued by the global research company GSMA Intelligence last year estimates that by 2025, 75 % of the population (about 138 million people) will have smartphones, whilst 41 % (73 million citizens) will count with mobile Internet.

According to GSMA, the increasingly urbanized population has been buying more smartphones as more economical devices reach the market. In this sense, the price of Finney is comparable with high-end phones available in Bangladesh, so it would have a good price if it is considered to include a wallet.

Blockchain Training

Last month, the Bangladesh government decided to use the money from its IT project fund, approximately USD 208 million, to send graduates to Japan and India to learn all about the use of blockchain technology.

The objective is that new blockchain projects can be developed in the country and that this territory has its experts in the field.

Besides, the government plans to send 100 new IT graduates abroad to improve their experience in the fields of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and cyber-security.

By María Rodríguez

Bitcoin Mining Pool BTC.com Lost Its Leadership

Willmen Blanco
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Bitcoin Mining Pool BTC.com Lost Its Leadership

The new leader reached a processing a capacity of 13,378 PH/s at a given time. With the introduction of new mining pools this year, processing has become less centralized.

On September 16th, Bitmain’s mining pool BTC.com lost the first position that it had held for years to another China-based mining pool called Poolin, whose real-time hashrate once reached 13,378 PH/s.

BTC.com, which is supported by the advantages offered by Bitmain’s mining equipment, has remained the largest mining pool for years. In the first half of 2018, the processing capacity of Bitmain’s mining pools (including BTC.com, AntPool and ViaBTC) approached the 51% threshold, which caused massive concern that Bitmain could perform a 51% attack.

However, the computing power used in Bitcoin mining has become more decentralized as smaller pools have been gaining ground since their entry in 2019. Mining pools underwent a significant change in their positioning, especially in the second half of the year, when Poolin gained the second position, and even managed to hold the first position at a certain point in time.

Although BTC.com quickly regained its dominance, the commotion shows that the computing speed in Bitcoin mining has been more widely distributed among major mining pools, and that competition between these large mining pools is becoming fiercer.

Founded in November 2017, Poolin’s rapid rise to the position as the largest mining pool leads to both fear and admiration. Since BTC mining pool came into existence in July 2018, its Bitcoin computing power has been steadily growing. In addition to its increasing Bitcoin computing speed, its LTC and ZEC computing speed have consistently positioned it as the number 1 mining pool all over the world.

Poolin made its latest disclosure when its co-founders (CEO Zhibiao Pan, COO Fa Zhu, and CTO Tianzhao Li), three former Bitmain employees who helped establish BTC.com, were sued by Bitmain for allegedly violating the non-compete agreement.

At the time of writing this article, the data show that BTC.com’s computing speed has experienced a growth of 0.37%. However, Poolin’s computing speed has declined by 2.99%, whilst the real-time reading of its computing speed is 13,069 PH/s and that of BTC.com’s computing speed is 13,560 PH/s. In regards to the distribution of processing capacity, BTC.com shows a balance of 18.0% in the last week, followed by Poolin with a share of 15.2%, while the oldest mining pool in China, F2Pool, holds the third position with a balance of 13.8%.

Since their beginning at the end of 2010, mining pools have grown and shrunk. According to incomplete statistical data, nearly 20 formerly renowned mining pools have decided to close. In the meantime, mining pools established in China continue to dominate the market with a share of over 75%.

Users seeking a Bitcoin mining pool with a higher real-time processing capacity now have Poolin. Since its birth it has proven efficient in the computing speed of BTC and some other cryptocurrencies, which has caused its competitors to fear and admire it. However, it should be remembered that mining pools rise and fall, and there are several alternatives for Bitcoin users worldwide.

By Willmen Blanco

Link between SegWit Transaction Record and VeriBlock Activity Is Debated

Willmen Blanco
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Link between SegWit Transaction Record and VeriBlock Activity Is Debated

VeriBlock announces the adoption of SegWit and says it will now occupy more space on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Core developer noted that VeriBlock abuses SegWit block size.

After the newly set record for the proportion of transactions using Segregated Witness (SegWit) technology on the Bitcoin blockchain, community members have said that the increase could be linked to VeriBlock service activity. That is the case of the CEO of the payment processor Bitrefill, Sergei Kotliar, who made the assertion on Tuesday, September 17th, through his Twitter account.

Kotliar said that after checking the network, he found that there is only one entity that sends around 50 thousand SegWit transactions daily, which happens to be VeriBlock. In his tweet he also notes that those responsible for this service boast about that record in a statement posted on Monday, September 16th.

In that release, VeriBlock announces that it added SegWit support to its protocol and that its network participants may now benefit from a reduction of 28.9% in the cost of transactions. It should be mentioned that VeriBlock is a sidechain providing a service that allows any blockchain to inherit Bitcoin’s security. To that effect, VeriBlock records its transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, thus harnessing the network’s processing power.

VeriBlock will take a larger portion of the actual Bitcoin blockchain on the disk, and the same amount of weight per block, as stated in the post, in which the alpha version of a miner based on its PoP (Proof of Proof) consensus protocol, enabled for SegWit, is launched.

Kotliar indicated that the number of SegWit bench32 transactions increased between 100% and 200%, coinciding with VeriBlock’s adoption of SegWit. Regarding this, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr referred to VeriBlock’s spam service and noted that they are abusing the increased block size provided by the use of SegWit.

Dashjr posted on his Twitter account that reducing the block size limit could rebalance the unfair advantage/bad incentive created by SegWit.

The release gave rise to several opinions against users who argue that VeriBlock’s activity does not conflict with Bitcoin’s network rules. Some consider that by paying the mining fee, users are entitled to become legitimate Bitcoin users. However, Luke Dashjr asserted that a block size of 256 kB could solve the problem of the SegWit incentive, which is about 500 kB.

Other users think that the market will take care of the situation. In other words, if users’ transactions are not valuable enough, they will not be able to compete for space on the network. Cryptographer Adam Back, inventor of Hashcash, a predecessor of Bitcoin’s Working Test, was of the same opinion.

VeriBlock miners are encouraged to compete with each other, while conducting time-stamped transactions in Bitcoin, for a share of VeriBlock’s reward. Then, a lower VeriBlock price or a higher Bitcoin price will determine a smaller number of VeriBlock transactions.

Regarding this, Back states that increases in Bitcoin pricing will make space on the chain more expensive. If this is combined with low VeriBlock prices, it could lead to a reduction in the mining of VBK, the project token, and its transaction volume.

The debate remains as to whether or not the use of the term “spam” is valid on a public network that is available to any participant who can pay transaction processing fees.

By Willmen Blanco

US Army Contracting Command of New Jersey Wants Blockchain Experts to Trace BTC

Andres Chavez
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US Army Contracting Command of New Jersey Wants Blockchain Experts to Trace BTC

Recognizing the technology’s huge potential in several of its applications, a branch of the United States (US) Army is currently pre-soliciting experts in the blockchain and in cryptocurrencies, in the form of crypto investigation service providers.

The branch in question is the United States Army Contracting Command, or ACC, of New Jersey. The intention of the pre-solicitation (posted a few weeks ago but coming to the public eye in recent hours) is to find people with enough talent and expertise to trace Bitcoin (BTC) in real-time.

Being a pre-solicitation, the notice and a hypothetical response by the ACC does not mean that there will be a contract awarded immediately.

Analytics Solutions to Fight Crypto Crime

The ACC itself explained that the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) is currently looking to implement and take advantage of analytics solutions to help in the fight against crime, for investigations and other endeavors.

According to the notice, the contractor needs to offer a cloud-based online service that does not depend on software or hardware solutions, but one that has the capability to help law enforcement agencies and other institutions spot and capture bad actors that may be engaging into illicit activities regarding cryptocurrencies.

Some of the illegal acts that are related to crypto assets, and that the US Army Contracting Command of New Jersey is looking for help to take care of are: money laundering, fraud, scams, and extortion, among others.

Analyzing Several Digital Assets

The person or entity needs to provide the source of the crypto transactions; this includes having the ability to analyze several digital assets in depth, including but not limited to Bitcoin. As it turns out, a few specific altcoins are directly sought by cybercriminals and hackers because their ecosystems may be more vulnerable.

The contractor must also provide what the ACC calls “real-time Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transaction tracing,” specifically service attribution and identification. It also needs to be capable of spotting transactions patterns that may not be evident by law enforcement, as well as identify any possible interactions with other actors.

The American Government and Its Involvement with the Blockchain

It is not the first time that the American government experiments with the blockchain in search of solutions for its everyday situations and problems. For instance, consider that in the fall of 2018, US government institutions had tripled their investment in the blockchain technology, most specifically, in blockchain intelligence companies.

Most of the blockchain intelligence deals made by the government last year were actually contracted to blockchain analytics company Chainalysis. Up to late 2018, the firm had signed pacts with the government that amounted to a total of $5.3 million.

Last month, the US Air Force was the one looking for blockchain help, signing agreements with Simba Chain, a provider of Smart Contracts, and with Constellation, a blockchain data management enterprise.

Notably, highly decorated musician and Bitcoin bull Akon stated that the value of fiat money, like the US dollar, will only be sustained by military might.

By Andres Chavez

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