Your Crypto News on Steemit January 12, 2018

• Brazil: Petitions on the Ethereum Blockchain!
• Auction of Bitcoins by USA!
• Ripple: Partnership with MoneyGram!
• Goldman Sachs classifies Bitcoin as Money!
• Bitcoin and Co. bring Swissquote more Profit!
• Warren Buffett: "Cryptocurrencies will end badly"!
• The Protection of Privacy - Part 2 (Monero)

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blockchain technology is always breaking new ground in a wide variety of areas. Now Brazil wants to organize its petitions, which allow the population to vote in Parliament, decentralized through the Ethereum blockchain.

Academic degrees in Greece, data from the health sector or property rights to photographs - there are many plans for the use of blockchain. The decentralized technology convinces in many areas and always finds new application areas. Especially for the topic of secure data collection, it is predestined. This has also recognized Brazil and now wants to trade paper chaos against blockchain

The Brazilian government allows the population to launch petitions on topics to be discussed in Parliament. If the petition is signed by 1% of the country's population, it will be submitted to Congress and the government will be required to review it.

However, the regular collection and verification of such paper-based signatures is understandably time-consuming and ineffective. Therefore, sometimes even petitions that have received the required number of signatures are not reviewed by the authorities due to the confusion caused by the many papers.

Eliminate paper chaos, verify signatures, avoid fraud

The programmer Ricardo Fernandes Paixão and political advisor Everton Fraga seem to have found an innovative solution to this problem by capturing and storing signatures on the Ethereum blockchain. Your system would make it possible to avoid a lot of paperwork, simplify the verification process and eliminate counterfeiting.

The Brazilian government supported the initiative and has started to develop a mobile app that will allow them to sign up for the system online and to sign signatures for petitions to be supported or to petition them. These signatures are hashed and recorded daily on the Ethereum blockchain. Such a system ensures that no signature is lost or forged. Due to the decentralized structure of the system, anyone will be able to see the actual number of signatures for a particular petition, eliminating the possibility of manipulating or falsifying the voting results.

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The United States Marshall Services have apparently expanded their planned Bitcoin auction. The United States Department of Justice agency is auctioning off 3,813 Bitcoins seized from 10 different cases on January 22. Interested parties can contact us from 11.1. until 19.1. to register.

As I reported earlier, the authorities want to auction the 513 Bitcoin confiscated by Aaron Michael Shamo, who was arrested in November 2016. As you can see from an official announcement, the US representatives are now expanding this already considerable number of cryptos to a total of about 7.5 times the amount.

A selection of cases

The seized cryptos are therefore composed of cases of criminal, civil and administrative violations. In addition to the case of Shamiro, who enriched himself with counterfeit drugs in the opioid epidemic in the land of limitless possibilities, there is also the case of Daniel Summerfield. This has in conversation with Undercover agents admitted to have sold in the Darkweb for the 100 kilograms of marijuana. He then sold the proceeds on exchanges, such as LocalBitcoins, to exchange the money back into Fiat currencies.

Another case was that of Alexander Konstantinovich Tverdokhlebov, who is said to have infected a total of half a million computers with malware via a botnet. He is said to have stolen most of the credit card information and so have captured sums between 9.5 and 25 million US dollars. The authoritative alcohol, marijuana and cocaine consumers are said to have scavenged some of his prey with Bitcoin.

Other seized coins come from unspecified wallets, which fall under the category "administrative forfeiture" according to statemet. These offenses are those where the authorities seize property without a court order. This may not exceed a respective total value of half a million US dollars.

The auction of the confiscated cryptocurrencies consists of three different blocks. There are 5 blocks each of 500 and 100 bitcoins and one block for the remaining 813 bitcoins. Anyone who signs up for the auction, however, must first deposit a security of $ 200,000.

The conditions for registration

Who wants to take the US government Bitcoin, must make four arrangements. Interested parties must first complete a registration form. Subsequently, the bidders must submit a copy of a badge document and the $ 200,000. In order to complete the registration for auction, they will ultimately need a confirmation of this transfer, which must come from a US based bank. All these conditions must be sent to the authorities by e-mail to the authorities for verification. The pre-extension of the $ 200,000 ultimately serves to protect the authorities - who fails to pay the Bitcoin forfeits the right to his money. However, if you are successful, the money will be credited as a down payment.

Conditions for participants

The winners will be notified at the end of the auction on January 22nd. Unless they are on the Special Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, members of selected nationalities may participate in the auction. Excluded persons, groups of people and entities include US-sanctioned countries, traffickers of prohibited substances and members of terrorist groups. (If you, what we do not hope, belongs, you will learn here and here).

However, it is not absolutely necessary to buy 500, 50 or 813 Bitcoin directly as an individual in one fell swoop. Interested parties can join together in groups and then offer together on the respective blocks.

Thus, despite all concerns and warnings, the United States will capitalize on the volatile cryptocurrencies. In that case, she will probably get far more profit out of less Bitcoin than last time in 2015. Let's only hope that the cryptos will not get into the wrong hands afterwards.

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MoneyGram, the international payments service provider, enters into a strategic partnership with Ripple. Together, both companies want to revolutionize the international flow of money. The course responds to it.

Ripple remains the presumably hottest cryptocurrency currently on the market. At the start of the year, the course rallied insane and at times managed to outstrip Ethereum and settle for second place. However, earlier this week Ripple had to put a damper on Coinmarketcap's volume of cryptocurrency trading in South Korea. The ripple course continued to break in the following days.

Now Ripple delivers again positive headlines. As a recent press release reveals, payment service provider MoneyGram is partnering with Ripple. The aim of the cooperation is to modernize international money transfers. The integration of MoneyGrams into the ripple ecosystem will be tested. The ripple token XRP should also be part of the cooperation and should be used for cross-border payments.

Now Ripple delivers again positive headlines. As a recent press release reveals, payment service provider MoneyGram is partnering with Ripple. The aim of the cooperation is to modernize international money transfers. The integration of MoneyGrams into the Ripple ecosystem will be tested. The ripple token XRP should also be part of the cooperation and should be used for cross-border payments.

As a special advantage of XRP, the low transaction costs and the short transaction duration are highlighted, making the coin ideal for payments and cash flows. For Money Gram, the second largest money transfer service provider in the world, the opportunity to explore the blockchain as part of the collaboration is also a charming element of the partnership.

MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes says:

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple says:

Ripple is thus fulfilling its promise to focus more on partnerships with money transfer companies in 2018. Also, the course responded promptly to the announcement: Had he been down since the Korean shock and had crashed to 1.60 US dollars, he jumped yesterday again to more than 2 US dollars and seems to have currently consolidated.

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Just the day before yesterday, JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon said he would regret his Bitcoin review. Now, economists of the famous Goldman Sachs Bank also commented on the potential of the cryptocurrency. In their opinion Bitcoin could act as worldwide money in the future. 2018 could be the year when Bitcoin becomes more mainstream than ever.

Goldman Sachs recognizes Bitcoin's potential

An a proprietary research paper published internally indicates that Goldman Sachs is "theoretically" open to the idea of Bitcoin as a means of payment similar to money. "Our assumption is that cryptocurrency returns should be the same (or less) in the long term as global economic output - a single-digit number." In the future, digital currencies should be similar to low or zero return or hedge fund-like assets, similar to gold or other metals ", it says in the results.

The American bank has been around for 150 years. Employees of the bank are also represented in the highest offices of the US government. When the bank comments on a topic, the market stops. Therefore, the results of the report are also relevant to the world market.

Economists Zach Pandl and Charles Himmelberg explained the situation as follows: "In the past few decades, the dollar has served its purpose. (...) In countries and locations of the financial system where traditional money services are not adequately available, Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies in general) can provide a good alternative. "Use cases can be found everywhere from Zimbabwe to Venezuela.

"The widespread benefit of the dollar," they continue, "outside the US - and the dollarization of some countries - suggests that there is already a demand for an internationally accepted medium as an exchange value and investment."

Their prediction for the future is that the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies will lead to new laws and guidelines for their handling. These laws will in turn drive the adoption of Bitcoin and Co. Bitcoin must ultimately be able to keep up with the transaction costs of the dollar.

The authors of the report recognize Bitcoin's potential for populations for whom banks are inaccessible. In countries like China and India, where domestic currency dissatisfaction is growing, Bitcoin may become more popular. Nevertheless, Pandl and Himmelberg point out that Bitcoin is currently showing the signs of a "classic speculative bubble". However, this does not seem to prevent their employer from entering the crypto trade in the future.

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Swissquote was the first European online bank to launch trading in cryptocurrencies in July. The demand for digital money is huge.

The online bank Swissquote is making more profit than expected - also thanks to the boom in crypto currencies. The demand for account openings for Bitcoin and Co. is so great that Swissquote can handle the applications only with some delays.

The total income for the financial year will be about 186 million francs above expectations, said Swissquote on Friday. The pre-tax profit was around 45 million Swiss francs.

Thus, the expected numbers surpass the already high expectations. Swissquote posted total income of CHF 90.5 million for the first half of last August, an increase of 16.5 percent.

For the second half of the year, Swissquote had expected a doubling of the already good business figures. This expectation has now been surpassed. For 2016 as a whole, the online bank generated total income of CHF 150.2 million. As a result, the expected revenue for 2017 will increase by almost 24 percent.

Thousands of applications per week

The traditional business of Swissquote already improved significantly. The second reason for the higher profit is the strong interest in cryptocurrency trading. Swissquote is currently receiving several thousand applications for account openings every week. The standard bank audit takes time. That is why delays in the opening of digital currency accounts are causing some delays, writes the online bank.

Swissquote was the first European online bank to launch trading in cryptocurrencies last July. It now offers trading in five digital currencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Litecoin and Ripple.

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The US large investor Warren Buffett took advantage of Wednesday's appearance on the CNBC channel to vigorously warn of any cryptocurrency. The current hype will not end well, he believes.

Billionaire Warren Buffett was questioned yesterday on the occasion of the change of management of his investment firm Berkshire Hathaway at CNBC. He did not know when the Bubble of Bitcoin & Co. would burst. It could be for a few hours or for a longer period. Buffett does not speculate with his investment firm on falling prices. Also, the question of whether he currently betting with bitcoin futures against cryptocurrencies, he denied in yesterday's interview.

If it were possible, however, he would like to use long-term option transactions over a period of at least five years to set price declines no matter what cryptocurrencies. But that can not be done because there are no crypto funds yet. Despite his gloomy prognosis, the investor admitted that he did not know anything about cryptocurrencies. What is happening right now, but will definitely end up bad, he prophesied yesterday.

Buffett's views are volatile too

The investor's assessment is not always set in stone. For many years, he refused to invest in stocks of technology companies. In 2016, he then joined with a share package at Apple. Buffet estimates 134 million Apple shares worth nearly 20 billion euros. Privately, he uses a smartphone of the competitor Samsung. Apple CEO Tim Cook again unsuccessfully tried to sell him an iPhone at Christmas.

It will be seen if Buffett's skepticism about digital currency currencies will persist or one day he will invest in it. There is still a little time left. He turns 88 in August and enjoys the best of health, as he proudly told yesterday.

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About the column

In this column I take a closer look at one aspect of cryptocurrencies: the protection of privacy. In each issue, I'll take a closer look at a cryptocurrency and see how the privacy of the user is protected.

Introduction

Monero (XMR) is a misfit among the cryptocurrencies. For one, it's an open source project that does not invest money in marketing. On the other hand, the Monero Community insists on being the only truly anonymous cryptocurrency. Let's see what's up and what kind of weaknesses Monero is struggling with.

Particularities

A fundamental feature of Monero is its own code base. Unlike many other cryptocurrencies, Monero is not a fork of Bitcoin. There are also differences in bitcoin in block time, block size, proof-of-work algorithm, inflation, and the way transactions are sent. In addition, there is a hard fork every six months, with which the software is updated. The regular hard forks allow a relatively faster development compared to Bitcoin.

To achieve the desired anonymity, Monero currently combines three mechanisms:

• Stealth addresses
• Ring signatures
• and Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT).

Stealth Addresses:

The recipient of a transaction is concealed by so-called stealth addresses. In Monero there is a private View Key, a private Spend Key and a public address. In a transaction, a unique, unique address is generated from the View Key and Spend Key, resulting in only the recipient finding the transaction on the blockchain. A third party can not recognize the objective of a transaction.

Ring Signatures:

The sender of a transaction is anonymized by the so-called ring signatures. The original input is obfuscated by combining it with past blockchain outputs to form a unique signature. The individual components of this signature are all the same probability the actual transmitter. Technically, the sender can not be traced back. This obfuscation happens automatically. In short, all transactions are hidden in Monero. Transparency is optional. If you want to disclose your transaction, you can do so by sharing the view key.

Ring Confidential Transaction:

The RingCT update in early 2017 finally made the transaction amounts invisible. Mathematical formulas ensure that the sum of the inputs equals the sum of the outputs - without the need for concrete numbers.

Through the interplay of these three functions, Monero actually manages to keep the sender, the recipient and the amount anonymous. Every Monero transaction is automatically secured, resulting in a truly fungible coin.

Weaknesses

A Monero transaction consumes significantly more storage space than a Bitcoin transaction. A transaction can easily be a few kilobytes in size. Of course, this also allows the blockchain to grow correspondingly fast (current size as of January 2018: just under 30 gigabytes). Efficiency measures are being worked on.

Legal uncertainty

The cross that all cryptocurrencies currently have to bear is the uncertainty about future regulations. Due to the lack of marketing, Monero is indeed more covered than other projects, however, the anonymity also serves illegal businesses such as tax evasion, drug trafficking and other illegal transactions, which states will probably be a thorn in the side.

Slow development

Compared to other cryptocurrencies Monero develops supposedly slowly. The reason for this is the open-source nature, in stark contrast to classic companies. Monero is driven by his community, for example, through voluntary work on the code or by donations of users. The answer to the question when "Feature XY will be released" is mostly "SoonTM" - a running gag in the Monero community, because projects are notoriously long in coming. It lacks features that are already a thing of the past for other coins, such as a hardware wallet integration, a light weight client or multi-sig support.

Trolling

Fluffypony, aka. Riccardo Spagni, is one of the faces of the Monero community and known for his sarcastic comments. In altcoin summer 2017 he made headlines. Announcing an announcement on his part, the price of XMR rose sharply, but then fell drastically later, when it became clear that it was a troll action. Fluffypony wanted to show how news-oriented the crypto market is and how few price pumps have to do with technological advances. With phrases like "Do not buy Monero unless you have a use for it" he confused many freshman. Monero is an experiment and the price is secondary.

Current state of the technology (Development)

With the introduction of the RingCT another essential aspect of the transactions was anonymized. Also a graphical wallet software (GUI) was published in 2017 by the Monero Project.

Currently, the Monero team is working on an I2p network solution called Kovri to disguise, among other things, the IP addresses of the users. Kovri is expected in 2018.

Multi-Sig is another feature that the Monero developers have recently completed and is not live yet. For the next Hard Fork Multi-Sig should be activated. This will especially simplify Escrow Services.

At least one hardware wallet seems to be on the way in 2018. Both Ledger and Monero work on a hardware wallet integration. Due to the technical uniqueness of the project, companies in this direction were complex.

View in the future

Undoubtedly, the developers of the Monero project are competent. This is reflected in the written code and the overall quality of the products. With Kovri and the Hardware Wallets, there are more important milestones for Monero on the doorstep. It is expected that 2018 will bring many new features and improvements for Monero.

Summary

Monero is a functioning, anonymous Coin: Sender, transaction amount and receiver are completely obscured to outsiders. As the only cryptocurrency, Monero has automatically activated this mechanism, avoiding fundamental economic problems such as lack of fungibility. If you want to protect your privacy, Monero is the right choice.

If you like to read Part 1 (Bitcoin) just click HERE!

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I wish you all a lovely Friday!!!
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@danyelk