Brasil will Use Blockchain Technology in The Registry Control of Companies

Maria Rodríguez
-
0
Brasil will Use Blockchain Technology in The Registry Control of Companies

The date on which legal entities will be able to register their companies in the Federal Revenue of Brazil (RFB) will be announced soon

Brazil will use a blockchain platform to take care of the information and registration of all its companies, as reported by some web portals in the country, last Thursday, January 17th.

The Brazilian government, through the national institution in charge of keeping track of taxes collection and fiscal matters, the Federal Revenue of Brazil (RFB), plans to move all its records to digital platforms, so it works in the development of a tool that will use blockchain technology to record and store information about different companies, offer better collection methods; as well as adapt their registration and control platforms.

The RFB is developing a great national day to inform legal entities about the new method that will be used for the registration of their information. In this way, it will be able to complete the adaptation of the platform. The objective is to keep a better record of the companies, institutions and associations which “make life” in the country, update specific data, among other pieces of information of value for the fiscal entity.

Currently, the system is active for the natural person’s registration, those who were able to enter the tax registration system since last November, and set July 31st as the deadline to end the process.

On the other hand, the registration for legal entities had not been conducted until the system had been adjusted on how this procedure would be conducted.

The RFB issued a call to public opinion about the so-called National Registry of Legal Entities, in order to carry out the business registration process. The institution said, in the same way, that there is not yet a specific date to fulfill this process, but it is preparing a timetable which will be announced in the coming days. It is estimated that the process will take place by the end of the first half of the year.

About the platform developed for the government entity, it is known that it was created by the company Dataprev, an associate, and dependent company of the Ministry of Finance of Brazil, which used blockchain technology to develop the appropriate software for the new system.

This blockchain platform was programmed as a G2G (Goverment to Goverment) system supported by open source software and will allow it to connect with other authorized governmental institutions, in order to be able to send specific information easily, quickly and safely.

In another sense, the official press release reported that the project contains a plan for the preparation and training of personnel, this in order to instruct the Ministry of Finance’s staff in the management of this new system and explain them the tools that will be implemented in the near future.

At the end of last year, Dataprev organized a series of workshops in order to teach its staff about the basic criteria and concepts of cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, Bitcoins, foreseeing the work they planned to do with respect to this type of technology.

In addition, the institution seeks to approve a series of measures that oblige companies to periodically report their transactions made with cryptocurrencies, since there are mechanisms which could hide such financial movements. It is studied how to impose a series of fines to those who perform these operations to evade taxes.

By María Rodríguez

“Crypto Assets Lack Value and aren’t Great Units of Exchange”: BOE Advisor

Andres Chavez
-
0
“Crypto Assets Lack Value and aren’t Great Units of Exchange”: BOE Advisor

Numerous countries are currently hosting a hot debate: should cryptocurrencies be considered as securities? Or should they fall in a wholly different category? Do they have financial validity? How to effectively (and fairly) regulate them?

The category in which these assets fall will dictate how (or what) they are considered, paving the way for a proper regulatory framework. But since they are relative newcomers in the financial landscape, coming up with answers is not always a simple task.

Cryptocurrencies “Fail Basic Financial Tests”

The Bank of England (BOE,) through Huw van Steenis, has taken part in the debate. Mr. van Steenis currently acts as the senior adviser to BOE’s Governor Mark Carney. This week, he told a widely recognized financial news site that cryptocurrencies mostly fail the most fundamental and basic financial tests.

The adviser, an expert in financial matters, was emphatic in his opinion when asked whether these assets had the potential in them to turn into a threat to economic stability. “I’m not so worried about cryptocurrencies. They fail the basic tests of financial services. They’re not a great unit of exchange, they don’t hold value, and they’re slower,” were his exact words, letting the world know some of the most notorious shortcomings of digital assets.

Mr. van Steenis has had an extensive working experience in financial institutions and organizations, having provided his knowledge and services at Morgan Stanley and Schroders, among others. At the moment, he is heading a piece regarding the future of finance.

Challenges Ahead

Speaking about the specific case of the Bank of England, the institution for which he serves as a special advisor, van Steenis observes that the process for registering new entrants into the banking systems represents a significant obstacle to overcome, especially when these entries are technology companies.

This, along with the fact that, according to van Steenis, conventional banks are not quick to adjust to new technologies and adopt them, is a problem. “What I love when meeting with fintechs is their obsession with customers. The challenge is will they get customers before the traditional banks can innovate,” he stated.

The Quest for the Right Regulatory Framework

The United Kingdom has taken its time to develop a relevant regulatory framework when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Last year, in March, the country’s Treasury delegated the legal task of coming up with proper regulations to the Cryptoassets Taskforce, which encompasses the Financial Conduct Authority and the BOE.

The organization, according to UK’s Finance Minister Philip Hammond, will have a huge responsibility at its hands: developing industry standards for enabling and fostering collaborations between fintech and banks and supporting innovation in the field.

In the month of October, the Cryptoassets Taskforce published a detailed report on how to handle cryptocurrencies and related assets. It proposed a system in which they are defined into three types: exchange tokens, security tokens, and utility tokens. The risks related to the industry were also discussed at length in the report.

By Andres Chavez

ICOs Can Boost Small and Medium Enterprises

Maria Rodríguez
-
0
ICOs Can Boost Small and Medium Enterprises

These digital assets can become the alternative for SMEs that find it difficult to get access to traditional loans or financing

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) considers that the initial currency offering (ICO) can be used for the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which represent up to 70% of jobs in different countries.

To achieve its purpose, global regulators must work together to regulate these assets appropriately, according to what the company explained.

“Although ICOs are considered as a solution to the financing gaps of SMEs, ICOs are not, by nature, the right solution for each project, a differentiation must be made between projects, products or services enabled with blockchain, and businesses, products or services not built on DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology)”, explained the agency which indicates that, in the first case, products enabled with blockchain are the ones which have greater potential to benefit from ICOs.

Through a report, published on the OECD’s website, this institution analyzed the initial currency offering’s potential as a financing mechanism for SMEs.

In this way, and according to OECD, ICOs are one of the most outstanding resource collection methods within the blockchain technology ecosystem, even when companies and individuals wishing to invest in these assets must analyze the situation according to each case and forecast the volatility and risks involved in operating with assets that lack of regulation in several countries.

Clear Advantages

The international agency also considers that ICOs, duly supervised, would offer to projects that work with Distributed Ledger Technology a new form to raise capital, allowing them to benefit from the efficiency, cost savings, and speed of execution ICO offer.

“They can be a more inclusive financing vehicle by allowing small retail investors to participate in the financing of companies and startups”. Depending on the type of rights assigned to ICO cards, companies can increase venture capital without sharing ownership, thus addressing one of the main impediments to the use of public capital financing”, detailed the entity.

The organization reminds it is important that those responsible for formulating policies generate the necessary conditions to facilitate the development of ICOs in a safe manner, so that this facilitates the use of the tokens that these offers issue, taking into account that ICO can contribute to the ventures quickly.

The OECD publication reminds that, in order to apply the relevant regulation, balanced measures must be sought in order not to deprive ICOs of their speed and benefits, especially when dealing with smaller bids.

Among the recommendations of the group of experts are to take advantage of the global nature of the initial currency offering and establish appropriate cross-border regulatory policies.

As an additional measure, standardized disclosure requirements should be established and investors who participate in these schemes should be given greater protection, including policies against money laundering and against the financing of terrorism, crimes that take some people away from the world of cryptocurrency, by not knowing how they can protect themselves from acts of this type.

By María Rodríguez

Bitcoin Needs to Walk Away From the “Proof of Work” System, According to BIS

Andres Chavez
-
0
Bitcoin Needs to Walk Away From the “Proof of Work” System, According to BIS

Bitcoin’s issues with price have been well documented. For a variety of reasons, people started to lose faith in the world’s premier cryptocurrency last year, and the value of each BTC fell dramatically on two different occasions. Long story short, the digital asset was trading at nearly $20,000 in January and now, it is exchanging hands at around $3,500, still struggling to regain its feet and surpass $4,000.

Amid concerns about further volatility in the market, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) offered its view of the current crypto market crisis and what needs to be done for Bitcoin to get out of it once and for all.

A Slow and Almost Unusable Platform

According to a report from BIS, published this week, Bitcoin’s issues can only be solved if it walks away the proof of work (PoW) system. The paper states that if future BTC’s block rewards were to fall to zero (because few blocks of new Bitcoin will ever be created if that would be the case) the mining expenses would be too much to handle with only transaction fees to cover for them. Under that scenario, the Bitcoin network would turn into a slow, virtually unusable platform.

“Simple calculations suggest that once block rewards are zero, it could take months before a Bitcoin payment is final, unless new technologies are deployed to speed up payment finality,” the paper reasons.

Social Coordination or Institutionalization Is Needed

That is why, while the paper observes that some methods could in fact be helpful, such as second-layer solutions (the Lightning Network is an example,) the only reasonable remedy would be walking away from the proof of work system. If that were to happen, the organization noted that it would “probably require some form of social coordination or institutionalization.”

The text concludes by saying that, according to the researchers, “in the digital age too, good money is likely to remain a social construct rather than a purely technological one.” For reference, the proof of work system (PoW) is a requirement to define an expensive computer calculation (often known around the industry as mining.) The first miner that solves each block’s problem gets a prize, or a reward. The PoW protocol has the objective of deterring cyber-attacks.

A little bit more about the Bank for International Settlement (BIS)

BIS is a Swiss organization which consists of 60 central banks. It accounts for almost the entire GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the planet: most precisely, 95 percent of it. The BIS “fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks”.

One of BIS’ reports at the start of the year (on January 8th) concluded that 70% of the world’s central banks are currently investigating and researching on the matter, most precisely central bank digital currency issuance.

Last September, the BIS also reported that there was a strong and evident relationship between the prices of cryptocurrencies and news about regulatory intervention around the world.

By Andres Chavez

Sapphire Technology Makes GPU Miner Dedicated to the New GRIN Cryptocurrency

Andres Chavez
-
0
Sapphire Technology Makes GPU Miner Dedicated to the New GRIN Cryptocurrency

Although cryptocurrency mining has taken a considerable hit due to the market crash that has carried over since 2018, it is still a very common activity these days, performed by millions of people around the world that are continually looking for the right pieces of equipment to achieve better and faster results.

That is why the Hong Kong-based graphics card manufacturer Sapphire Technology, one of the most widely known alternatives in the market, has revealed its newest “toys:” the company is about to launch a whole new line of miners with a very specific target in mind.

The GRIN coin: a Privacy-Focused Project

Privacy has evolved from being a preference to being a need these days. That is why the offering has been transferred to the cryptocurrency world, in the form of the Grin (GRIN) asset: a privacy-focused coin that is only a few days old, having seen the daylight on January 14, 2019.

Sapphire Tech’s new GPU miner targets the GRIN cryptocurrency. The announcement of the launch of the RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card was made on Tuesday, January 22. According to the company, the piece of hardware would be “the first of a new family” of products designed to mine Grin, as well as other cryptocurrencies.

Although the announcement has been made official, the RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card is not on sale as of now. However, the graphics card producer made it clear that it will be available “very soon.”

Perfect Compatibility

The tech company states that the RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card is “one of the few solutions” made specifically for the Cuckatoo 31+ proof-of-work algorithm, the network behind the Grin cryptocurrency. Sapphire Technology’s new card, therefore, promises to lead to “higher rewards for early miners.”

As for tech specifications, the Sapphire Radeon RX 570 HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card comes with a memory of 16 GB / 256 bit GDDR5, Active Cooling system, and 224 GB of memory bandwidth. The display output is 1 x HDMI, and it has a PCI-Express 8 pin x 1 external power connector. It has a Graphics Card Holder.

Impressions

The Hong-Kong based firm has demonstrated its happiness with the launch of its newest product to the market. According to its global Vice President of marketing Adrian Thompson, everybody in the company is “thrilled” with the launch of blockchain-related products, making a reference to the Sapphire Radeon RX 570 HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card and future offerings.

“The launch of the RX 570 16GB HDMI Card presents an exciting opportunity not just for SAPPHIRE but for early Grin Coin miners and the cryptocurrency market as a whole. Future products will include new 16GB Graphics additions’ to SAPPHIRE’s line of INCA and MGI Series of dedicated blockchain systems,” he stated.

Despite a sizable loss in value the day after it went live, Grin has some promise as a project. It is built around the mimble wimble privacy technology, and it spent a couple of years in development stages. The crypto asset has captivated both cypherpunks and investment companies because it is seen as a similar alternative to Bitcoin and it is GPU miner compatible.

By Andres Chavez

Ethereum Classic will Have a Tool to Protect Its Platform from Attacks

Maria Rodríguez
-
0
Ethereum Classic will Have a Tool to Protect Its Platform from Attacks

The objective is to provide an effective warning system to prevent violations such as the 51% attack occurred in early January

The ETC Cooperative development team, created to financially support the growth and development of Ethereum Classic (ETC), announced a new tool called etcstatus.live, which will allow monitoring the behavior of ETC’s blockchain. This was reported by the team through a tweet published in its official account, this Thursday, January 17th.

With this function, users will be able to know when the system may be being violated, according to the colors the page shows. Among which are yellow and red, depending on the severity or risk.

The publication by ETC Cooperative explains that the new tool for the ETC network represents an immediate warning system for the community of users and developers that will alert about any anomaly in it. This follows the attack of 51% suffered by the chain at the beginning of January this year.

Software developer GitHub described this tool as “a rudimentary collection of bash scripts to collect and analyze blockchain client metrics, providing basic warning mechanisms for anomalous situations and events”.

The Procedure

The ETC Cooperative team explained that etcstatus.live works in a similar way to rudimentary warning systems, as in email: “The focus is on its ability to activate rudimentary alert systems, such as email, based on heuristics for the anomalous or erroneous behavior in the chain. Its design aims to minimize specialized dependencies and focus on providing simple and generic text-based datasets and analyzes”.

In this way, when there is an anomalous pattern in the chain’s block generation, the colors shown on the page are transformed into yellow, orange or red according to the severity of the anomaly in the record.

Among the consequences of the attack on the Ethereum Classic network, on January 7th, the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange stopped its Ethereum transactions as a result of an abnormal activity in the chain of blocks, which detected that 88,500 ETC (about US $ 460,000) had been spent twice.

The fact generated reactions among the members of the community, who feared for the security of their investments. A few days later it was announced that the attacker of 51 percent returned US $ 100,000 in cryptocurrencies to Gate.io.

Because this money was returned, many considered this attack “non-profit”. According to some users, the intention would be to remind community members of the vulnerability that exists so far in the platform and the need to improve security in the network or improve protection mechanisms, so as not to affect to those who make transactions.

There are other similar services to follow the state of the network as well as the mining power of the mining participants. In fact, during the attack suffered by the network, GasTracker became the main source of data to track the performance of the malicious that attacked ETC.

In this way, the network’s members were able to monitor the mining power concentrated by the attackers as well as the amount of mined blocks and the rewards obtained. The etcstatus.live platform allows knowing the current state of the mined blocks, making a study of the last 300 blocks and offering a report on the network’s state and the diversity of mining origins of these blocks.

ETCC published a tweet about the tool this January 17th, where it assure the project is already operational, and “tracking the status of the ETC network and pointing out anomalies”.

By María Rodríguez

1...1,5831,5841,585...1,654Page 1,584 of 1,654