energy

What Would the Re-Election of Alexander Lukashenko Mean for Crypto?

Protests have erupted in Belarus following the country’s presidential election on Sunday, but the possible continued presidency of Alexander Lukashenko may be good news for crypto.Lukashenko reportedly won re-election against opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in a landslide victory with more than 80% of the vote on Aug. 9. However, officials from many nations and within Belarus are condemning the election results as flawed, with reports of falsified ballots. ‘Europe's last dictator’The president of the eastern European nation has served since 1994, during which time he has made a number of statements

UAS: The First Government to Bring Blockchain Development to The Masses

What constitutes development? Would one know it when they saw it? More importantly, why should it matter whether or not a nation attains it? Answers to these seemingly simple questions are as varied as people are. However, simply put, development is the expansion of a nation’s economy, complemented with a significant rise in its citizens’ living standards. From this, it is apparent that development is visible—additionally, its attainment matters. Africa, compared to other regions, is underdeveloped, albeit resource-rich. Ironically, incomes continue to rise across the continent while a majority of

Chinese State Grid Launches Blockchain-Based Blackout Insurance Policy

A branch of China’s state-backed grid released its first blockchain-powered blackout insurance policy issued to the chairman of a local company that needed to compensate for a power outage loss suffered recently.According to Shupeidian, Zhejiang Ningbo Power Supply Company, in partnership with Yingda Taihe Property Insurance Co., Ltd., released the policy to a sprinkler manufacturing company in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.Both companies believe that the process of issuing insurance via a blockchain network provides a commercial solution to compensate for the loss caused by an electric outage in a faster and

Stocks Fly and Precious Metals Fly, Bitcoin Remains Firm

Even though we said in yesterday’s update that we weren’t going to cover the Microsoft TikTok talks, it seems things have now escalated to the point where it seems difficult to ignore, especially in light of unprecedented intervention from the president. Shortly after we hit the send button, President Donald Trump stated that TikTok now has a deadline of September 15 to sell off all its U.S. operations to an American company, be it Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else. In addition, the president has stated that the U.S. Department of

3 Reasons Why Bitcoin Transactions Are Slow

Aug 01, 2020 at 08:27 // News Despite Bitcoin offering unprecedented decentralization and security, its network has one significant flow, namely, the transaction speed. A single transaction processing can take up to 10 minutes. But why is this happening? To understand why bitcoin transactions sometimes take so much time to confirm, it is essential to first understand how they are verified. Delving into the essence Once a transaction is created, a transaction message is sent to the Bitcoin blockchain and passed around all the nodes available on the network. This

Secure, Controllable, Decentralized Data Sharing: An Interview With bitYoga CEO Antorweep Chakravorty

Beyond its primary use case of powering cryptocurrencies, there’s no denying the priceless possibilities embedded in the underlying blockchain technology.  Coinfomania recently spoke to bitYoga CEO Antorweep Chakravorty. The Norway-based startup is a member of the EU-H2020 ARTICONF project and is piloting the adoption of blockchain technology for decentralized and secure data file sharing for the next generation of internet applications. He first spoke to us about how bitYoga got started. Antorweep was an associate professor of the University of Stavanger, Norway along with co-founder, Chunming Rong who was also

Africa Using Blockchain to Drive Change, Part Two: Southern Solutions

With pundits like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey predicting that Africa “will define” the future of Bitcoin (BTC), cryptocurrency and blockchain technology continue to attract interest from both public and private establishments across the continent. Many of these adoption cases have been moving beyond finance, developing solutions targeted at issues like unemployment, identity management, health care and supply chain, among others.Amid the growing enthusiasm for crypto and blockchain technology in Africa, industry stakeholders interviewed by Cointelegraph identify a lack of education as one of the major hurdles standing in the way of more

Staking, Consensus and the Pursuit of Decentralization

Oh, the wonders of decentralized consensus — that dream of permissionless blockchains to be censorship-resistant, trustless, collaborative and egalitarian for a potentially global community of users. While lofty in ideals, consensus is foundational for each crypto network, which must agree upon that most basic question of who decides what on the network.Decentralized consensus in the form of a proof-of-work mechanism was at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation when creating Bitcoin — all additional protocol elements stem from PoW’s ability to reach consensus regarding the digital ledger through the computational work

Talking Digital Future: Smart Cities

My journey into smart cities and their future development was a really big surprise, as the way I arrived there was not something that I had planned. I was working as the chief information officer for a company in Northern California called O'Reilly Media when I got a call from a headhunter who asked if I would consider being the chief information office for the City of Palo Alto. I can vividly remember — it was only about eight years ago — my feeling when she asked the question. The

Coronavirus & Bitcoin Price: Is China Losing Its BTC Mining Monopoly?

This week the price of Bitcoin (BTC) surged more than 15%, reaching a high at $7,200 before pulling back into the $6,800 range. Despite the recovery, Bitcoin still has a way to go in order to reach the $8,000 level seen before the coronavirus-triggered selloff on March 12.Cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360The drop had several consequences on the Bitcoin network. Having reached the $3,800 price range, the accentuated drop forced some Bitcoin miners to throw in the towel and shut down their operations due to mining becoming unprofitable.As miners have