- Satellite for globalization of the BTC Blockchain!
- Consortium brings IoT and Blockchain together!
- The VanEck Vectors Bitcoin strategy ETF!
- Po.et saving journalism with Blockchain!
Through the Blockstream satellite, Bitcoin is now to be made accessible to people who otherwise have no Internet access.
An Internet access has been a must for a Bitcoin node. In order to have the current version of the Bitcoin blockchain, at least the current block must be queried. Also in the year 2017 an Internet access is not a matter of course and depending on the data rate also costs.
Through a satellite of the Bitcoin development company Blockstream, the whole globe will now be covered with a Bitcoin satellite connection in three steps. The equipment for reception consists of the software Defined Radio (SDR) open source software and smaller parts such as a USB receiver.
Via GitHub you can already see the software and the required hardware. According to Blockstream, the satellite is currently covering 2/3 of the earth. An Interactive Map shows which areas are.
The Blockstream satellite uses so-called "teleports" to send blocks to the geostationary satellites. These "teleports" are simple ground stations.
At an altitude of 35.786 km, the satellite receives the signal from the ground stations, which in turn it spreads to a large part of the earth. On the ground, anyone with a small satellite dish and a USB receiver can then receive blocks and ensure that the node is always synchronized. The picture below shows how that can look.
Other ground stations will also receive other information from other satellites, thus ensuring that they are synchronous.
With sufficient satellites, a ring of continuous bitcoin blockchain reception is formed.
On Twitter it is also discussed whether this step may be the reason why the Bitcoin Core developers are against increasing the block size. The communication rate would be disturbed by the increased block size, so the project would be difficult to implement.
The City University of London cooperates with the Indian Tech Institute to develop blockchain solutions to protect IoT network structures.
The universities are joining forces with other participants to form a consortium to investigate strategies against cyberattacks such as WannyCry. In addition to the internet of things (IoT), the focus is mainly on health care facilities. Finally, the UK National Health Service was one of the main victims of the WannyCry attack.
According to Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, the professor of network infrastructure at City University:
After the WannyCry attack, some weaknesses in the IT infrastructure of some nations were made public and thus also the demand to repair them. The fact that more and more devices have interfaces to the Internet greatly increases the risk of a cyber attack. Finally, the attackers always look for the simplest way into the respective IT infrastructure. So why attack a well-protected computer when the fridge or car is also connected to the Internet?
For this reason, new IT security concepts are important. The blockchain technology can certainly contribute its part here, provided a corresponding scaling is given.
New York-based financial services provider VanEck is planning to launch a new Bitcoin ETF. Under the name of VanEck Vectors Bitcoin Strategy ETF, the exchange traded fund is to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange according to the application.
According to the first application published on 11 August, the fund is not to be invested directly in digital currencies, but rather in financial products whose performance is dependent on Bitcoin's market development, unlike previous Bitcoin ETFs.
The SEC's application states:
The ETF will also be limited to Bitcoin-related investment products. US government bonds and money market funds are also to be included in the portfolio.
Just last month, the US Derivatives Supervision LedgerX has issued the official permission for trading Bitcoin warrants. The company is the first platform for derivatives trading with Bitcoin. Already in autumn, investors in the US will be able to buy warrants on Bitcoin.
Whether the SEC will approve the ETF remains to be seen. In the past, the stock market supervision was very restrained and rejected such requests, The Winkelvoss Bitcoin ETF rigorously.
Po.et builds a platform to register and trade intellectual property such as texts, images or graphics. As an infrastructure, a time-stamping on the Bitcoin blockchain is to be used.Cooperation with magazines and wallets are already there, and an ICO has recently flown 10 million dollars into the budget.
The Internet has changed the rules of intellectual property. While journalists used to publish an article in a paper newspaper for which the readers had to pay, their works are now digitized, put on the web, and consumed by everyone free of charge.
However, the Internet revolution has not only had consequences for the income models of magazines and magazines. It is also a challenge for freelance journalists, which forces everyone in this industry to adapt. Anyone who wants to publish texts on the Internet is faced with two problems: he has to make sure that the texts are found, that is, they are bought - and he must be sure that the texts remain protected by copyright.
Po.et announces that this problem is solved at least partially using the blockchain. Blockchain should not be understood as a wonderful general purpose weapon. No blockchain technology in the world can prevent files from being copied and modified. What a blockchain can do, however, is to establish a proof of the authorship. Using a universal, open, and unchangeable database, such as the blockchain, it is possible to make a hard and hard proof of existence In the blockchain.
What can it bring for freelancers? I think it helps many freelancers, if they can offer their texts without hesitation to the media, without fear that the media these simply as own content spend and one can not defend themselves. With the help of a proof of the authorship as Po.et would like to provide, the negotiating position of authors can improve, since they can offer their works more editorial offices without increasing the risk of theft in the copyright.
In the long term, Po.et is also planning to build a marketplace in which the freelancers can offer their works protected by Timestamps magazines and other content providers. Also eBooks, videos and pictures should be saved via Po.et. The goal is to become a universal database and trading platform for digital content.
The idea for the project came from some of Bitcoin's staff. From the idea became a plan, from the plan a whitepaper and from the whitepaper a roadmap. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin and blockchain medias Let's Talk Bitcoin, The Merkle, Crypto Insider, Coin Speaker, and ChainB from China have joined. Particularly noteworthy is the cooperation with Blink.la, a content network that connects more than 1000 media companies and 20,000 media makers around the world.
What exactly does Po.et do? The platform is supposed to store the copyright of intellectual works like articles in the Bitcoin blockchain. To this end, the authors can first form a certificate linking work and copyrights to a file. This file is then hashed, and the hash is stored in the Bitcoin blockchain by the OP_Return function (OP_Return allows to attach up to 40 bytes of data to a transaction). In this way, anyone can understand whether this file actually existed at that time with a certain content.
In the first development era, which is called "Rosetta", online authors are to be attracted. They get a platform with Po.et to secure their values and translate their texts into digital assets. The following era, after the inventor of the letterpress Gutenberg baptized, will bring further features and the connection to further networks search. In the following period, Alexandria, films and images are also integrated, an open marketplace is formed and more.
The recently launched ICO has sold native Po.et token worth 10 million dollars. Unlike the time stamping of Po.et itself, these tokens are on the Ethereum blockchain, where they have been generated as ERC20 standard tokens. They are supposed to help start Po.et by creating a dedicated group of stakeholders and editors. In addition, they are to promote the long-term development of Po.et. Maybe the token will also be a role in the Po.et network that is still to be developed, but that is still unclear.
Overall, the value of tokens is therefore rather symbolic: support that can be traded on exchange markets. However, the multi coin wallet Jaxx has already announced to integrate the Po.et token into the wallet.
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