Hyder Jaffrey, head of strategic funding and fintech innovation at UBS, stated: “We have been in discussions with central banks and regulators and we will continue that over the next 12 months with the aim of a limited ‘go live’ at the back end of 2018.”
‘Utility settlement coin’ aims to launch next year for blockchain settlements.
Set on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island, the third annual Blockchain Summit, hosted by BitFury, a leading full service Blockchain company, and Bill Tai, a venture investor and technologist, has come to a close. This event was an intimate, if perfectly balanced, gathering of technology, policy, investment and business leaders from around the world and across sectors. Topics ranged from the public policy implications of what is being heralded as a foundational technology, to new emerging business models that can ride on the very rails that enabled the global bonanza of digital currencies like Bitcoin. A key question that underpinned the Summit is if Blockchain could not have existed without the Internet, what could not exist without Blockchain?
Blockchain technology can undoubtedly change industries, especially those that labor under often byzantine, opaque and friction-laden business models. While many of the early pioneers are focusing on finance and insurance, the opportunities for this radical technology may very well reorder society as we know it. The remarkable case of Estonia, for example, shows a country reinventing itself into a future-proof digital state, where citizen services are rendered nearly instantaneously and to people all over the world. Similarly, promising work inspired by the famed Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, on improving land registries is being carried out by BitFury in a host of countries. With land and property being the two largest assets people will own — and the principal vehicle of value creation and wealth transfer — an unalterable, secure and transparent registration process should give the world comfort and elected leaders longevity.
What drives this unique technology is the power of distributed singularity, from which Blockchain’s identity pioneers like Dr. Mariana Dahan, who launched the World Identity Network on Necker Island, and Vinny Lingham of Civic, draw their inspiration. Blockchain operates on the basis of a distributed ledger (or database) system, inexorably marching forward recording and time-stamping transactions or records. While some may herald Bitcoin as Blockchain’s “killer app,” it is easy to maintain that the killer app is not the digital currencies that ride on Blockchain’s rails, but rather the rail system altogether. Two trains can ride on rails. But a high-speed maglev train is a decidedly faster mode of transport than a steam engine. Just as the maglev makes little or no contact with the rails enabling low-friction transport, the Blockchain can greatly reduce the friction in how the world transfers and records value.
With Russia looking to cure its economy of a hydrocarbon addiction, a consortium of the country’s biggest banks is proposing that it explores a different kind of gas for the answer.
The lenders, including Sberbank PJSC and VTB Group, aren’t developing gas of the natural variety. It’s also the name of a virtual unit based on the blockchain of ethereum, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency after bitcoin. The banks are hoping that by adopting the technology they will make payments safer and faster, while thrusting Russia to the forefront of a trend that’s transforming the financial industry.
Yesterday was D-Day in the Bitcoin world: On Tuesday, Aug 1st 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked off of Bitcoin (BTC). For anyone with control over their wallet and private keys, they now have an equal amount of BTC and BCH.
I have a Bitcoin wallet. Yet, I don’t have any new Bitcoin Cash—and I have no one to blame but myself. Will I ever get the BCH associated with my pre-fork coins? I think that it is likely, though certainly not assured. If not, it will still be my fault. After all, I had fair warning from the company that I trust as custodian of my assets.
A Cryptocurrency Mantra:
“Woe be the person who trusts decentralized cash to a custodian”
I trust Coinbase for good reason. I left my BTC in my Coinbase wallet and vault throughout the fork. Let me tell you how I view the risks of failing to remove my coins before August 1…
2. Coinbase warned 
they had no plan to support BCH—not even for withdrawal after a fork.
I accepted this 2nd warning, even though their reasoning and motives were terribly weak. But, today, I feel very sore. I need a morning after pill! Bitcoin still trades at the level of the past week—about $2700 US/BTC. But my non-existent BCH holdings have significant value! It was briefly as high as $750 per coin, and is now trading at $475. This means that even if I have no desire to save or spend the new coin, I no longer have the option to liquidate my forked asset. I lost a slam-dunk opportunity to capture 17½%.
We’re not talking about a theoretical gain or a gain that assumes liquidation at a momentary spike. We’re talking about right now—a missed opportunity to pocket thousands of dollars!
Am I angry? Not really. I am disappointed at my lack of initiative. I have only myself to blame. For the record—I don’t believe that I have a reasonable legal claim against Coinbase. After all, they warned me! But, 
I believe that they will give me my forked coins—eventually. They have already acknowledged to conspiracy theorists that they will not keep the forked BCH, in the event that they create a conversion mechanism. In that case, they will allow withdrawal by the owner of the associated BTC. Now that they see dramatic fractional value, how could they not complete the fork?!
Where Does This Leave Me?
I’m not poorer today than I was yesterday, and I still have the same value in Bitcoin. But, I missed a zero-risk opportunity to gain 17½% overnight. It was staring me in the face and I passed it up. At least I draw comfort in my confidence that Coinbase will complete the fork. Please, Coinbase: Complete the fork!
Philip Raymond owns Bitcoin, but has no Bitcoin Cash. He co-chairs CRYPSA and Bitcoin Event, is columnist & board member at Lifeboat Foundation, editor at WildDuck, and keynote speaker at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg. He is a leading author at Quora.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-giant-fang-valuations-bi…ett-gallie on @LinkedIn
Investopedia defines the FANG stocks as : “FANG is the acronym for four high performing technology stocks in the market as of 2017 – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (now Alphabet, Inc.).” http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fang-stocks-fb-amzn.asp
After this week’s FANG selloff and Bitcoin’s drop from $3,000 we scanned the media for the reasons for the drop.
Does the price of Bitcoin move in correlation to the FANG stocks?
Lifeboat Foundation readers are aware that the world has become progressively more chaotic. Part of the danger comes from centralized points of failure. While large institutions can bear great stress, they also cause more harm when they fail. Because there are so few pillars, if one collapses, the whole system is destroyed.
For instance, prior to the federal reserve system, bank runs we extremely common. However, since the financial system consisted of small, competing institutions, failure was confined to deficient banks. So while failure was frequent, it was less impactful and systemic. In contrast, after the establishment of the federal reserve, banks became fewer and larger. Failures, while more infrequent, were large scale catastrophes when they occurred. They affected the whole economy and had longer impact.
This is even more important in political systems, which are the foundation of how a society operates. In order to have a more robust, antifragile social order, systems must be decentralized. Rather than a monopolistic, static political order, there must be a series of decentralized experiments. While failures are inevitable, it can be localized to these small experiments rather than the whole structure.
We call these small, experimental governments “startup societies”. Examples include smart cities, seasteading, eco-villages, special economic zones, intentional communities, microstates, private cities, Ect. The Startup Societies Foundation studies these experiments, promotes them to the public, and hold conferences.
The Startup Societies Foundation is partnering with D10e to host our biggest conference yet. The Startup Societies Summit is a trade show that unites 300–500 engineers, policy experts, technologists, urban planners, economists, entrepreneurs, and investors interested in building new societies. Attendees with startups related to new societies can engage with investors to push their ideas to fruition. By networking together and sharing valuable information, our guests will be at the forefront starting new societies. The Summit will take place in City College San Francisco on August 11th-12th. If you are interested in buying tickets or becoming a sponsor, here is a link to our crowdfunding campaign.
Like a startup, a startup society begins small and scales when it produces a better service through technology. 65% of the earth’s population will live in cities by 2040. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for entrepreneurs. They can become innovators of the greatest wealth creation tool: cities. Join us and gain an edge in the growing, exciting field of innovative governance.
The International Economic Forum, which just wrapped up in St. Petersburg, reportedly resulted in more than €30 bln of investments. The final and the most important result, however, is measured not in numbers, but in the mood and attitude of those who attended the Forum and who was keeping an eye on the events and meetings held in the North “capital” of Russia.
The cryptocurrency community is for sure left stunned by the recent meeting between Russian President Putin and the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin.
As commented by Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, during the meeting, Putin and Buterin discussed the application of technologies in the country. Reportedly, the president supported the idea of establishing new business relationships following the road paved by Blockchain technology.
3½ years ago, I wrote a Bitcoin wallet safety primer for Naked Security, a newsletter by Sophos, the European antivirus lab. Articles are limited to just 500 hundred words, and so my primer barely conveyed a mindset—It outlined broad steps for protecting a Bitcoin wallet.
In retrospect, that article may have been a disservice to digital currency novices. For example, did you know that a mobile text message is not a good form of two-factor authentication? Relying on SMS can get your life savings wiped out. Who knew?!
With a tip of the hat to Cody Brown, here is an online wallet security narrative that beats my article by a mile. Actually, it is more of a warning than a tutorial. But, read it closely. Learn from Cody’s misfortune. Practice safe storage. If you glean anything from the article, at least do this:
Exchange and cloud users want instant response. They want to purchase things without delay and they want quick settlement of currency exchange. But online wallets come with great risk. They can be emptied in an instant. It is not as difficult to spoof your identity as you may think (Again: Read Cody’s article below!)
Some privacy and security advocates insist on taking possession and control of their wallet. They want wealth printed out and tucked under the mattress. Personally, I think this ‘total-control’ methodology 
yields greater risk than a trusted, audited custodial relationship with constant updates and best practice reviews.
In case you want just the basics, here is my original wallet security primer. It won’t give you everything that you need, but it sets a tone for discipline, safety and a healthy dollop of fear.
Philip Raymond co-chairs Crypsa & Bitcoin Event, columnist & board member at Lifeboat, editor
at WildDuck and will deliver the keynote address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.