Blockchain-Based Foreign Trade Register Is Developed in Brazil

Willmen Blanco
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Blockchain-Based Foreign Trade Register Is Developed in Brazil

The tool is being built by Hyperledger Fabric, and the project expects to establish the first Smart Contract between Brazil and Uruguay

Hyperledger Fabric, a Blockchain implementation by Linux, is intended for developing applications or solutions.  It uses container technology to introduce smart contracts that include the application logic of the system.

Brazil is planning to use a register based on Blockchain technology in order to manage the foreign trade with its partners from “Mercosul” or South Common Market (called “Mercosur” in Spanish-American countries). This information was made public last week through a statement issued by the startup that is responsible for the technological development of the project.

The Federal Revenue Service (RFB are its initials in Portuguese) is in charge of the plan with the support of the local startup Servicio de Procesamiento de Datos or Data Processing Service (Serpro), says the statement. The tool is designed to create immutable registers that guarantee the integrity of the data exchanged in the commercial operations between Brazil and its partners abroad.

According to the information, the application, provisionally called bCONNECT, is in its testing phase. The prototype of the system was presented at a “Mercosur” meeting held from April 22nd to 23rd this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

bCONNECT allows a network to share registration information of companies certified by the Federal Revenue Service as an Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) and enjoy benefits such as facilitation of customs procedures, in both Brazil and abroad.

It is should be noted that “Mercosur” is an organization for the regional integration that is comprised by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. However, it exerts influence over all South America, since Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana and Surinam also participate within the bloc under the category of Associated States.

The new system will allow sending data from Brazilian companies certified by the RFB as Authorized Economic Operator (AEO). Similarly, it will allow the revenue-collecting entity to consult the certification or foreign companies. The auditor or the Brazilian revenue-collecting entity, Sérgio Alencar, says that, in the current phase, Brazilian data are being fed into the register.

The RFB Fiscal Auditor, Ronald Thompson, considers that Blockchain technology has allowed the system to provide a federative model of collaboration between nations. This makes people think that the last goal of Brazil would be to transform a project into a regional standard.

In this sense, the statement indicates that data from certified companies (OEA) would be fed into the tools developed by Hyperledger Fabric, in each of the countries that are part of the network. The rules for the access and visibility of information will be programed in a Smart Contract, in accordance with bilateral agreements established between the parties. In the same vein, the data would be replicated within a federated Blockchain, comprised by the nodes of “Mercosur” member countries.

Although no tentative dates are specified, it is expected that the development of the network and the establishment of Smart Contracts between Brazil and Uruguay will occur, once the testing phase is completed. According to the information, the results of this stage will give way to the introduction of the application to the rest of the countries of the regional bloc.

By Willmen Blanco

Record in LocalBitcoin Transactions with National Currencies in South America

Willmen Blanco
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Record in LocalBitcoin Transactions with National Currencies in South America

Venezuelans are the ones who continue buying the largest amount of Bitcoins in the whole region. They spent an equivalent to US $1 million per day during last week

Last week both Latin America and the whole world were very active within the cryptocurrency market. The rise in the prices of Bitcoin led hundreds of people to turn to make transactions but, in some countries in the Spanish-American region, this adds to another local phenomenon: the inflation that makes local currencies increasingly worthless. The situation is that this week there was a record in the number of transactions in LocalBitcoins calculated vis-à-vis local currencies. The specific cases referred to are shown below:

Argentina

During May 5th-11th, Argentina had its highest volume of operations in history with Argentine pesos through the peer-to-peer (P2P) platform. For a week, there were transactions for 12.8 million Argentine pesos (equivalent to about US $281,000), the largest amount in that currency ever exchanged. All this represents 30% more pesos than the previous week.

Although the amount of Bitcoins exchanged was not so high (44 Bitcoins), the previous week it had only been 37. However, it is important to note that the value of Bitcoin increased during last week, which is reflected in the amount of dollars paid and, therefore, of the local currency.

Colombia

The case of Colombia is similar, since there was also an increase, especially in terms of the amount of Bitcoins and the value of each one.  Last week there were transactions in this country for more than 10 thousand million Colombian pesos, equivalent to a little more than US $3 million. The previous week, in contrast, transactions reached $8 thousand million Colombian pesos.

During May 5th-11th Colombians bought 560 Bitcoins, that is, 12 times the amount traded by Argentines. What is striking is that in February this year they bought many more Bitcoins per week (over 760); however, they spent much fewer pesos than now. Logically, the price of Bitcoin was much lower than now.

Venezuela

The case of Venezuela is the most peculiar and complex of all, as the rise of Bitcoin adds to the country’s hyperinflation. Every week, Venezuela seems to be breaking its own record in the value of the transactions made with the local currency and this is not the exception. This time, there were transactions for 40 thousand million sovereign bolivars (equivalent to about US $7 million), that is, more than twice that of Colombia. For that amount Venezuelans acquired 1,175 Bitcoins, which are much fewer than half the sale/purchase of Bitcoins that occurred on February 9th this year, when 2,487 Bitcoins were exchanged in this country. On that occasion, Venezuelan invested twice as many Bitcoins as now, that is, 14 thousand million sovereign bolivars (equivalent to about one third part of the amount invested at this moment). Of course, this happened as a consequence of the rise of the price of Bitcoin in dollars and the galloping hyperinflation in the country.

By Willmen Blanco

Dunamu Reveals that it Invested $46 Million Last Year to Support Blockchain Startups

Andres Chavez
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Dunamu Reveals that it Invested $46 Million Last Year to Support Blockchain Startups

With each passing day, more blockchain and crypto-related enterprises are starting to realize about the vast potential that investing in the technology can have. The number of dollars (and other currencies) invested in blockchain startups continues growing, and it will not stop increasing anytime soon.

Such is the case of South Korean fintech company Dunamu. It is known around the industry for being the operator of Upbit, as well for managing the Kakao Stock trading app, which is one of the nation’s most famous crypto exchanges. Dunamu is releasing the news after the announcement about its investment around $46 million dollars (most precisely, 55 billion won) last year to support 26 blockchain startups.

A Three-Year Investment Plan

The firm stated this week that the contributions were performed through its primary subsidiary, Dunamu & Partners, which is actually a little over a year old. When it saw daylight, Dunamu announced its intentions of making a three-year investment plan to reach over 100 billion won (around $84 million) in the up-and-coming industry.

Dunamu has been identifying firms that focus on developing core blockchain solutions, and those are the ones in which it has been investing into. However, it has also been contributing financially with businesses related to games and fintech.

Some of the Lucky Companies

Some of the firms that have seen investments from the South Korean giants are Terra (a payments network tied to a stablecoin,) Rainist (a fintech company,) Dalcom Soft (a gaming software,) Honest Fund (a peer to peer lending environment,) Tide Square (an Internet-based travel agency,) and Finhaven (a blockchain-based investment service.)

The South Korean fintech firm’s subsidiary, per its CEO Ryan Lee, plans on keeping the investments coming for the foreseeable future. The executive stated that there will be no shortage of options to invest, and that the companies’ size, stage, and region will not matter.

“Dunamu and Dunamu & Partners’ strategy of identifying and investing in innovative tech and finance startups, regardless of size, stage, and region, will continue in 2019,” Lee observed whilst making the announcement.

“Our goal is to contribute to the healthy growth of the blockchain ecosystem by actively investing in startups with world class technology and services with potential for real-life implementation,” said Lee.

Promoting Mainstream Blockchain Adoption Worldwide

The company is said to be prioritizing companies that can help drive the mainstream adoption of blockchain-related products and services, as well as mobile fintech offerings.

Additionally, personal branding business opportunities, in the form of individual content producers, also tend to receive attention from Dunamu, as evidenced by the $3 million seed round for Band Protocol, a startup that promotes the actions of reliable content producers with their own token and ecosystem.

Dunamu is the parent company of Upbit, the only South Korean cryptocurrency exchange of the country’s “big 4” (along with Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit) that did not report losses in the volatile 2018.

By Andres Chavez

Why Ethereum will continue Growing

Willmen Blanco
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Why Ethereum will continue Growing

The essential metrics indicate a greater use of the Ethereum network by its users. This cryptocurrency seems to have an interesting growth potential for the coming months

In view of the increase of the capitalization of cryptocurrency, with a 49% so far this year, some reasons were considered to explain why Ethereum has a potential expansion as one of the most solid smart contract platforms within the industry.

Increasing Number of Active Addresses

After a year’s sustained decline, the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) has been rising during the last three months, reaching a significant increase. It was among the 284,000 active addresses per day in late April, with an increase of 65% after its annual minimums of 170,000 registered users on February 10th.

Similarly, the number of unique ETH addresses continues growing at a rapid pace and now there are more than 60 million, with an average of 65,000 new addresses per day during the last month. Although addresses cannot be eliminated, this metric indicates a greater demand and a growing use of the Ethereum Blockcahin.

Faster Block Generation and Reduced Inflation

The time for generating new blocks is currently about 13.36 seconds, close to the fastest in Ethereum’s history. Therefore, the block counting per day has grown considerably, to almost 6,500 blocks on May 7th.

The creation of a larger number of blocks originates an increase in circulating supply. However, the rate of issuance (inflation) has remained relatively low, close to 4.72% per year, notably lower than the 26.82% and 5.2% accumulated by Ripple and Litecoin.

Market with Attractive Rates and Gas Prices at Record Levels

The second currency regarding market capitalization works within the second public Blockchain, after Bitcoin in terms of the market around tariffs and commissions. Messari says that ETH tariffs recently reached US $66,345.50, lower than US $567,041.32 of Bitcoin (BTC) and 62 times higher than Litecoin (LTC), which is in the third position with US $1,068.03 per day as a way of tariffs.

In the same vein, the internal tariffs per Gas token transaction and execution of contracts within the Ethereum network have reached their highest point, with 49,103 million Gas tokens used on May 7th, which indicates an increase in the Blockchain’s usability.

Decentralized Applications within Ethereum

Despite the reduction in the number of DApps that integrate Ethereum’s Blockchain, the prevailing ones still move high volumes of tokens. In April, a total of 776,000 ETH in DApps were moved, which surpassed last December’s maximum of 765,500 ETH.

Besides, the average daily value per transaction in US dollars has been falling since May 2018 to be around US $600 per day, much lower than its maximums of US $20,000 in June 2017. A reduction in the average transaction value can be interpreted as a greater use of decentralized applications, since DApp-related transactions generally have a low value but a high quality, which tends to reduce the general average of transactions.

These are some of the reasons why Ethereum can be considered one of the most attractive and reliable Blockchains within the ecosystem. The growing number of daily users, the little time required to generate new blocks, the low levels of inflation, the attractive rates, the low cost per transaction and the high volume of tokens are definitely key factors for choosing Ethereum over other crypto assets.

By Willmen Blanco

More other Reasons for Ethereum’s Growth

Willmen Blanco
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More other Reasons for Ethereum’s Growth

Some important applications, companies, and institutions prefer Ethereum’s features. Its capacity of recovery after abrupt falls also makes it one of the most robust crypto assets within the ecosystem

In the article “Why Ethereum will continue Growing” four reasons were described about why this cryptocurrency would continue growing. Now three (3) more factors are presented for both current and potential users to consider the future benefits that this Blockchain may offer them.

Loans with Low Cryptographic Guarantee still Prefer Ethereum

According to Defi, there is a total value of US $411 million Ether blocked within financial applications and, although the levels have decreased, the number of options for this business model has been growing continuously since early 2018. Besides, applications like Dharma, compound and MarketDAO accumulate about US $100,000 million guaranteed loans, very impressive figures for relatively new solutions.

Nevertheless, the amount of blocked DAI has also undergone a considerable growth. Despite some hard weeks for the environment of the stablecoin or cryptocurrency anchored as a result of an adjustment in its rates, the rate of DAI retention has not been affected, substantially growing during the last months.

DAI is a token anchored to the US dollar that subsists within the MarketDAO ecosystem and is supported by Ether within its accounts. Through the implementation of a smart contract, DAI stabilizes its value with respect to the US dollar. Therefore, this asset is closely related to the events that involve the Ethereum platform.

ETH Targeted by Companies and Institutions

Microsoft says that the development of a private Blockchain within the Ethereum network will allow the asset to show its robustness in front of big technological companies. This should motivate other big companies to join the growing environment with the support of platforms like ETH.

Similarly, an internal source reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for basic products would be interested to consider the approval of futures of Ether with cash liquidation (like those offered by Bitcoin’s CME), as long as all standards are complied with. Ethereum would become the first smart contracts platform to be approved by an American regulator for futures in traditional markets, thus giving the cryptocurrency more coverage and exposure in front of institutional capitals.

Medium-Term Optimism in the Market

Ethereum has fallen 88% since its historical maximum in January 2018; however, since mid-February the price gained terrain, obtaining an appreciation of 46%.

As an effect of the possibility of the approval of Ethereum futures by the CFTC, its price rose 11.5% on April 2nd, passing from US $162.22 to US $181.12.

Its rupture on April 2nd, after a 135-day consolidation, seems to indicate that Ethereum is ready to start a new bullish tendency. However, it would be necessary to wait for a quote higher than the 200-day moving average accompanied by Golden Cross, or the crossing of 50-day moving averages (EMA) over the 200-day EMA, which still has not occurred.

The decrease from 0.92% to 0.73% in the ETH and BTC correlation ratio during the last month may indicate that the relationship between the price movements of both may be moderating.

In bearish markets the different trading peers tend to have high correlation levels as institutional investors shrink for trading, but in bullish markets these levels tend to fall, resulting in more independent movements between cryptocurrencies.

To conclude, accumulation degrees are also relevant in the study of a potential investment. ViewBase, a platform in charge of tracking the flow of cryptocurrencies from exchange houses, says that ETH is in the 12th position as one of the currencies with the most outflows from an exchange house to a wallet during the last month, in front of other 119 ERC-20 tokens. These withdrawals may suggest a high degree of accumulation by heavy actors in the market, which indicates that the future of Ethereum may be changing positively.

By Willmen Blanco

Binance Relaunches its Commercial Services after Suffering a Hack

Maria Rodríguez
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Binance Relaunches its Commercial Services after Suffering a Hack

As the exchange informed, deposits and withdrawals are already enabled. Users must now comply with a list of 14 precautions to protect their accounts

Binance left its $40 million hack behind it. After suffering an attack earlier this month and losing 7,000 bitcoins due to a hack, the exchange house Binance confirmed that it completed a major update to its system and that it relaunched its trading platform at 13:00 UTC this May 15th.

A group of hackers eluded the security controls of the exchange and withdraw from the accounts of some users 7.000 bitcoins (BTC), the equivalent to USD 40.7 million. According to the company’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, the theft was caused by a coordinated attack, which took advantage of a “large-scale” vulnerability to access the system through API keys, two-factor authentication codes, and other data types.

The flaw seems to be resolved for the time being and the exchange company took new measures to protect its users. After the attack that stopped the habitual withdrawals, Binance announced an “important” update to its system.

According to the latest communication from the development team of the exchange, deposits and the exchange process will be available first, and then the operations will be resumed, enabling withdrawals again.

The work was completed as scheduled. Binance relaunched all of its commercial services, including deposits and withdrawals for all its users. “Binance has completed its system update and we will resume all commercial activity. From now until the start of trading, users can cancel open orders, process deposits and use other functions related to the account. The withdrawal function will be available shortly after resuming operations”, says part of the statement.

After the attack, the developers of the platform decided to stop the operations to deploy a massive update of the system. The rest of the details about this update are not known. Zhao posted several tweets about the update process to confirm the relaunch.

The attack against Binance surprised the crypto community. In response to this, the exchange office admitted its responsibility, last Tuesday, and urged users to read and comply with a list of 14 security precautions to protect their funds in the exchange.

As a form of compensation for users who cannot use their accounts as usual, Binance also announced a gift scheme that involves their internal token, the Binance currency (BNB).

During a promotional period scheduled until May 18th, users who exchange more than 1 BTC of funds will share a prize of 50,000 BNB (equivalent to USD 1.26 million), which will be accredited two weeks later.

Another plan is that the exchange will allow users who have a Binance “VIP level” to participate in a free promotion to enjoy the VIP level above their current phase, which will be obtained depending on the standard trade volume and the calculation of BNB funds.

The Cryptopia exchange, which lost around USD 17 million in January, also stopped trading this week when its executives called the liquidators.

Cryptopia, a New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange, also suffered a serious hack in January. This robbery caused the suspension of its operations and the liquidation of the exchange, according to a statement published on its official website.

Whilst these platforms suffered violations in their security systems, the security measures of different exchanges are reinforced to avoid having new failures and losing the reliability of their users.

By María Rodríguez

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