South Korea’s Biggest Power Provider Will Use Blockchain to Develop “Green” Micro Grid

Andres Chavez
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South Korea’s Biggest Power Provider Will Use Blockchain to Develop “Green” Micro Grid

Applications of the blockchain technology to the benefit of societies and communities have been, fortunately, growing in number in recent times. This time, the power generation industry is the one reaping the benefits of the model.

KEPCO, which is South Korea’s biggest and most prominent power providing company, will make use of the blockchain model, as well as other possible solutions and approaches, to develop its next-generation MG, or microgrid. The piece of news was made public thanks to a press release by the company on Monday.

For reference, a microgrid represents a network of electricity users, usually of a small size. It has a local source of supply that is often attached to a centralized national grid but with the ability to perform its operations independently.

The Introduction of Open MG

The resulting product will be called “Open MG,” and it will make use of some of the main features of the blockchain, as well as other technologies, with the intention of optimizing and improving energy infrastructure for the South Korean hydrogen economy.

The enterprise will focus its attention to three elements, primarily: decentralization, decarbonization, and digitalization; identified in the press release as the three crucial “trends” that will mark the future of energy in the planet.

The Open MG initiative will make use of additional fuel cell as a power source to remain sustainable and maintain efficiency while relying in the system itself for energy. One of the primary intentions is lowering the emission of greenhouse gases, according to a company representative. The MG will get the best of international standard technology to avoid system bottlenecks and remain interoperable.

Previous microgrids have struggled in their quest to provide stable energy because they are mostly made of small PhotoVoltaics (elements implemented to create solar power), energy storage systems (ESS) and Wind turbines (WTs.)

The plan is for the company to produce and develop the Open MG platform at a national scale. The firm intends to make the country’s first mega-wattage (MW)-scale microgrid, an ambitious proposal that will feed some of the benefits of blockchain technology.

To try to follow its outlined objectives, KEPCO has formed several strategic alliances: among them are the Mitsubishi UFJ Bank from Japan, IT company Nihon Unisys, and the University of Tokyo. The latter partnership’s goal is to complete a research project about implementations and uses of the blockchain technology for “distributed electricity supply.”

The development comes as no surprise since South Korea has shown to be one of the most open-minded nations when it comes to blockchain implementations. Such is the position of the model in the country’s priority list that government officials recently announced that the budget for 2019 would triple that of 2018 to hone the blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) industry next year.

A Little more about KEPCO

KEPCO (Korea Power Electric Corporation) is an electric utility company headquartered in South Korea. It generates, transmits, and distributes energy while also developing electric power projects. The enterprise generates more than 90 percent of the nation’s energy.

By Andres Chavez

Decentraland’s Second Auction Will Start at mid-December

Maria Rodríguez
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Decentraland’s Second Auction Will Start at mid-December

The community of this platform voted for the auction to start the second week of December, in order to get virtual lands

About 9,331 virtual plots do not have owners. Decentraland, the virtual reality platform created on Ethereum, will start its second land auction by the middle of December. The company made the announcement on November 13th, through a publication in their official blog.

The Decentraland team explained that in the second auction of land plots both new and existing users can participate. It means the opportunity to acquire a plot without an owner “at a reasonable price”. This happens because plots in that virtual city have been sold for up to USD9,000.

According to an official release, it was the community who, by voting, chose the start date of the auction, which they estimate will last for two weeks.

Knowing the Process

The team clarified that this Decentraland second offer will be Dutch auction type. Initially, there will be a fixed price (high) for all land packages and, as the auction develops, the price will go down, until one of the Decentraland users decides to buy. In the worst case, it will go down to the reservation price or minimum accepted.

To participate in the auction, it will only be necessary to have sufficient funds in the token of the platform; Mana, which is managed in purses such as Mist, Trezor, Ledger or Metamask.

The Decentraland team explained that to make parcel orders there are no offers. What the participants have to do is to place an order for the parcel or the estate they want, once they reach the desired price.

About Decentraland

Decentraland employs blockchain technology as a support for its registration, maintenance, and management. Its main attraction is that it is not centralized. “This digital real estate property was initially implemented as a pixel in an infinite 2D grid, where each pixel contained metadata that identified the owner”, explains Esteban Ordano, Decentraland’s Founder.

The first virtual land auction started on December 15th, 2017, and ended in January 2018. It sold more than 34,000 land packages or virtual plots, for an amount of more than 161 million Mana tokens. This activity is known as the “Terraform Event”. Its objective is to distribute the plots in Decentraland to get “more space” in the virtual world.

When the first auction was announced the price of the Mana token began to increase, registering an increase of 788% in just two days after the announcement. This year this has not happened so far.

Recently it was learned that the Mana token is already available in the Mexican market through the Bitso exchange house. In addition, the Decentraland team partnered with Ripio to offer virtual land mortgages through a smart contract.

After the announcement of this second auction, the price of Mana was affected by the fall of the entire cryptoactive market, closing at USD 0.103372 and USD 0.087212 on November 13th and 14th, respectively, which means a decrease of 15.63%.

Some cryptocurrencies step Quicksand. Bitcoin has lost 71% of its value, compared with the historic high of US 18,674 reached in December last year. The latest losses are due to investors being sold to enter the alternative called Bitcoin Cash. This happens just at the moment when the launch of this new software will take place.

But the use of virtual reality will be consolidated sooner or later. Existing developments will have to exist “somewhere”. This would allow the creation of stores and virtual shopping centers that buyers can visit using helmets. In the virtual offices, it would allow interacting collaboratively in cyberspace. These are the reasons why virtual lands are being so demanded.

By María Rodríguez

Universities Will Include Classes about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

Maria Rodríguez
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Universities Will Include Classes about Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

Institutes from Colombia, Spain, and Korea decided to teach courses to train professionals in blockchain technology. The idea is to break the technological barrier

The National University of Colombia and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), leading university technology institute in South Korea, work in including in their curriculum of studies some content related to blockchain technology. For this, KAIST works with Theta Labs.

Students are going to have subjects like History of Bitcoin, Operation and uses of blockchain technology, Introduction, and characteristics of the cryptocurrency markets and Blockchain applications for the financial economy.

Mitch Liu, general manager at Theta Labs, says: “We are starting things off with a seminar at the school of electrical engineering, where we will offer a high-level overview of blockchain technology and current trends in development”.

Around the world, many institutes decided to include courses to train professionals in blockchain technology, such as the University of Edinburgh and the Autonomous University of Madrid, in Spain, which recently announced its association with Grant Thornton to impart knowledge within the programming of a Master of Blockchain and Cryptoeconomics.

In Colombia, Latin America, an introductory training course will be directed by representatives of the Financial Blockchain Center group. It is held until November 21st. The intention is to provide basic knowledge to people who are interested in that topic and reside in Bogotá city.

The program is organized in 10 sessions, which will be taught in the Faculty of Economic Sciences, at the National University of Colombia. The content includes theoretical and practical aspects linked to the use of digital currencies and blockchain technology to be applied in real use cases.

Juan Esteban Cepeda, Founder of Financial Blockchain Center and student of business administration says: “Among the activities that the working group carries out there are researches in blockchain (applications in the real and financial sector), free courses about blockchain and cryptocurrencies for the academic community, informative talks about the situation, applications and future of these kind of technology, as well as workshops for the development of this decentralized technology”.

Cepeda also commented that the university teachers will also start a student club focused on the Theta project, where they will work with students to start building applications in the open source Theta blockchain, along with their engineering team. “In the first quarter of 2019, our team will give a one-week course at K-School in KAIST, which is the program focused on the university entrepreneurship. This will be a powerful course to build a successful startup, from establishing a team and raising funds to marketing strategies”, added the student.

Theta Labs seeks to expand the reach of its decentralized broadcast services of the video.  For this reason, it will partner with two of the leading media companies in South Korea, called: Maekyung Media Group and CJ Hello. According to Liu, both companies understand the benefits of including new technologies for actual business and have been very receptive about them.

Providing education about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies means integrating a greater number of people who have doubts about it. Among the contents contemplated in the National University of Colombia there are: Operation and uses of blockchain technology, Mining in the cloud, Initial offers for new currencies (ICO), Specialized development in blockchain (Issuance of new active crypto, constitution of decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized crowdfunding, among others) and Regulation and future of cryptocurrencies.

By María  Rodríguez

Bitcoin Keeps Struggling, Falling below the $5,000 Threshold

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin Keeps Struggling, Falling below the $5,000 Threshold

The new week did not give Bitcoin and altcoins a warm welcome. After falling below $6,000 last Wednesday and struggling to regain ground ever since, the market took another step backwards on Monday, raising concern among investors and the industry as a whole.

Bitcoin dropped below the $5,000 mark for the first time in more than a year; thirteen (13) months to be precise. According to data managed by the specialized site CoinDesk, the world’s premier digital asset reached $4,981 after 16:30 UTC on Monday, November 19th, continuing a steep decline phase that has been taking place for five days now.

Steady Decline and Market Concerns

The $4,981 figure represents an over $500 decline in the last 24 hours. It is the lowest number attached to Bitcoin (BTC) value since October 12th, 2017. At the time of writing this piece, the value had somewhat recovered to surpass the $5,000 threshold and reach $5,048, which would be 9 percent decline in the last day.

The industry seems to be entering a new level of collapse, as its total market capitalization fell another $15 billion in the last day. Investors are growing rapidly concerning, with some of them getting rid of their crypto assets in a hurry: The continued recent price drop has brought the total value of all Bitcoin in circulation to less than $87 billion.

Altcoins are not Faring Any Better

Many people talk and focus on Bitcoin’s recent struggles, but reality indicates that altcoins (other cryptocurrencies not named BTC) are not really faring any better than their so-called “father.” In fact, most of them are in red on Monday.

Ethereum (ETH) has been one of the most affected cryptocurrencies since the bloodbath that last Wednesday left behind. At the time of this writing, each ETH token was worth $153, a 14.81 percent drop in the last 24 hours.

ETH has a mountain to climb back to what it was trading at less than a week ago. Before Wednesday, each ETH was hovering between $200 and $210, and now it is struggling to keep itself above $150. It started the day in the $180 range, but it keeps losing ground and its future is bleak, at best. Ethereum, in January, was worth more than $600, and Bitcoin nearly reached $20,000.

Red Numbers all over the Place

Other prominent altcoins in the top 20 according to their market cap are in red. Such it is the case of Litecoin (LTC) and EOS, with 24-hour losses of at least 10 percent. Only Ripple could somewhat keep its price, and it still lost 3.14 percent of value. Coins such as LBRY Credits, ZClassic, Tezos, and Aragon lost more than 20 percent in what is shaping to be a nightmarish end of the year for cryptocurrencies.

Experts seem to agree on the notion that the main culprit of the industry-wide collapse has been the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash and the “hash war” between Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC, the two resulting blockchains of the division.

By Andres Chavez

Thirty-six Blockchain Projects Compete in the B4h Awards

Maria Rodríguez
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Thirty-six Blockchain Projects Compete in the B4h Awards

The winner will receive the impulse necessary to become real. The event will be held from December 5th to 8th in Santiago de Chile

Social impact plans that seek to provide efficient solutions through blockchain technology will be recognized in the second edition of the Blockchain4Humanity (b4H) awards, an organization that will provide the opportunity to make the award-winning project real.

During the last few months, different companies have applied for blockchain patents to use distributed accounting technology in order to guarantee payments to charities, and even more recently, research funding has been sought, based on this technology, to help find a response to fearsome diseases as cancer.

The blockchain technology, beyond its use to support the security of transactions with cryptocurrencies, has great appeal precisely because of the method it uses: simply save parts of a message or information in different blocks or “nodes” so that in this way the message is not altered, violated or intercepted in any way.

For these reasons, in addition to the increase in proposals for blockchain technology new uses, b4H decided, in 2017, to launch a contest in which the main incentive is to win the recognition of the winning project and obtain support to make it a reality in a minor lapse of time.

Everything is almost ready. Until November 15th the organization received a total of 36 projects that will be evaluated in the framework of Labitconf 2018 next edition. According to Alex Casas, co-founder and main collaborator of Blockchain4Humanity, the winner would be an entrepreneur who has seen a way to achieve positive changes in the world, thanks to the use of blockchain technology.

Blockchain4Goodrocks, Bitcoin Argentina and RSK Labs were some of the institutions that supported the b4H initiative. The first edition took place in Bogotá, Colombia.

This year, the results of the awards will be announced during the Labitconf conference, which will be held from December 5th to 8th, in Santiago, Chile. According to Casas, the jury selects four winners in two different categories, for a total of eight award-winning projects.

“We consider projects that have already had funding, have a functional product and are already generating social impact for the award we call Social Hackers Award. There is another category of projects in a more initial phase that we call Dreamers Award and in which b4H concentrates its efforts to move from the idea phase to MVP (minimum viable product)”, he said.

In the case of the Dreamers Award category, the projects selected by the jury are incorporated into the Decentralized Altruistic Community (DAC) b4H built on the Giveth platform. Through this channel, financial contributions are channeled based on the achievement of different milestones of the projects.

The teams will also receive guidance and advice from business, legal and technical mentors from b4H DAC in order to guarantee an optimal final product. Regarding the category Social Hackers Award, the award is an acknowledgment to the job of the teams, although they can receive timely support from the organization.

The 2017 Blockchain4Humanity Awards highlighted the job of the EthicHub platform, which was one of the Dreamer category winners. The objective of this startup is to offer a decentralized P2P (peer to peer) loan service to small coffee producers in Mexico.

Through the EthicHub project, thousands of Mexican farmers can access financing for their activity. “EthicHub is a clear example of the type of projects that b4H wants to accelerate and support its massive adoption”, says Casas.

It is expected that this year another eight projects will be chosen from the group of 36 to receive the boost they need, although there is not much detail about the nominees. The result will be, surely, another pleasant surprise.

By María Victoria Rodríguez

Crypto Project Aims to Help Incarcerated Immigrants by Donating Monero

Andres Chavez
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Crypto Project Aims to Help Incarcerated Immigrants by Donating Monero

Humanitarian projects are also part of the blockchain technology agenda. Each day, more ventures try to take advantage of the versatility and adaptability of the approach to all fields and sectors to help those in need.

That is the case of Bail Bloc, an initiative that aims to help people held in custody by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE,) by mining Monero and exchanging the resulting amount for dollars at the end of each month.

ICE is a law enforcement agency in charge of controlling cross-border crime and illegal movements, including immigration. The US ICE performs pretrial incarceration to many of the subjects in question, and Bail Bloc, according to a tweet published by the company this week, intends to do something about it. The crypto money is raised through charity.

By the Numbers

The ICE arrested almost 145,000 people in 2017, and over 90% of those cases derived in a criminal conviction or are currently awaiting a charge. To achieve their immediate-term release, people need to pay an immigration bond, and naturally, there are lots of people without the means to provide such payment.

People that are not granted the bond or that cannot afford to pay them to need to await trial or charge (or court hearing, in most cases) while incarcerated. The process is known to take months, and sometimes, months turn into years.

Mining for Freedom

Bail Bloc observed the situation and found it unfair, so it mapped the objective of helping incarcerated immigrants to pay their bail thanks to funds raised through cryptocurrency mining. Bail Bloc, therefore, developed an app to perform such task: it consumes between 10 and 50 percent of the processing power of a computer to mine Monero (XMR.)

The donations exchanged at the end of each month from XMR to US dollars, are provided to the Immigrant Bail Fund in New Haven, in the State of Connecticut. According to statistics shown in Bail Bloc’s online page, it has managed to “bail out” 12 people, or at least that is the equivalent of what it has donated so far: 44.34 XMR, which amounts to a total of $7,356.36 US dollars.

Why Monero over other Cryptocurrencies?

According to Bail Bloc’s team, they chose Monero over other cryptocurrencies because it is an ASIC-resistant one, which means that particulars and regular, consumer-level devices are able to mine the coin in a sustainable and viable manner.

Monero is slightly down today, precisely at $87 at the moment of writing this piece, which would represent a 0.82 percent in the last day, reports CoinMarketCap. Trading volume was nearly $19 million, and the total market capitalization of XMR is hovering around $1.4 billion.

Naturally, Bail Bloc’s objectives and modus operandi have raised controversy among specific sectors of the American society, but so have ICE’s practices towards immigration and the policies they implement. Authorities reported back in May that the ICE separated hundreds of children from their parents as they were charged with criminal activity.

By Andres Chavez

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