Your Crypto News on Steemit November 3, 2017

• Blockchain Job Demand is increasing exponentially!
• Universities are teaching Crypto Currencies!
• ZoKrates to further expand Ethereum!
• BT Group receives Patent for Blockchain Security System!
• Amazon secures Crypto Currency Web Domains!
• 124 Hedge Funds focused exclusively on Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies!

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Bitcoin related jobs are the fastest growing category on the international job platform 'Freelancer', the company announced Wednesday.

It says:

With 82% growth in the third quarter, the job offer in the area of crypto currency has skyrocketed, the data showed. The company's periodic report tracks the top trends in online jobs based on the listings on its Freelancer.com platform.

"People are getting freelancers to design new types of crypto currencies," said Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer, to CNBC. One of the key skills companies are looking for is the ability to manage initial coin offering, the process by which digital coins are first offered for sale to speculators.

According to 'Freelancer', employers are also looking for people to create new crypto currencies and to create technology plans using blockchain of the data structure introduced by Bitcoin.

The related area of ​​cryptography also experienced a 59% increase in job listings in the third quarter, according to 'Freelancer'.

The popularity of Bitcoin has experienced ups and downs in recent years, but the crypto currency has posted record highs in recent months, breaking the $ 6,250 mark on Sunday.

Freelancer.com lists more than 480,000 new jobs in the third quarter and currently offers over 12 million jobs with 25 million users, according to the company.

The most sought-after skills of the company were: Adobe InDesign, 3D design, creative design, HTML5 web language, and e-commerce platform WooCommerce.

In social media, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat dominated the platforms, outperforming their peers on Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus.

In the meantime, there are even job portals that only address people who want to be paid for their work in Bitcoin:

• Bitgigs | http://bitgigs.com
• Coinality | https://coinality.com

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Crypto currencies have found their way into universities. As I already reported, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences accepts Bitcoin as a means of payment. Now crypto currencies also appear on the curricula of the universities.

Huge interest in crypto seminar

Dan Boneh is co-director of the Stanford Computer Security Lab and offers coveted cryptography courses. For almost 30 years he has been involved in the "science of encryption of information" and concludes:

His enthusiasm finds followers. Boneh began teaching Bitcoin and other crypto currencies back in 2015, quickly attracting over 100 students. Now more than one million people have signed up for Coursera for their online course, CNBC reports. More and more students are interested in crypto currencies and blockchain technology and see their professional future. This development is not surprising since Bitcoin and Ethereum have gained enormously in value since last year and hundreds of other crypto currencies were created in 2017 alone. . Boneh has recognized this interest, noting that security and cryptography are the second most common topic in the computer science department of the university behind machine learning.

Other universities are as well dedicated to crypto currencies

Boneh's textbook is also used at Carnegie Mellon University, a private research university in Pittsburgh. This year, a seminar on special topics in cryptography is offered, which focuses on blockchain technology and crypto currencies.

The trend is not limited to just these two universities: The University of California at Berkeley last year launched a course whose stated goal is to provide students with terminology and in-depth insights into all aspects of crypto currency in order to gain a consolidated understanding to reach the complex topic. In 2015, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab founded the Digital Currency Initiative. This is all about exploring crypto currencies and their underlying technologies, as they have the potential to impact millions of people and become an essential part of their daily lives.

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Jacob Eberhardt, doctoral candidate at the TU Berlin, introduces a new programming language at the annual Ethereum Developer Conference. It aims to expose the benefits of ZK snarks to the Ethereum Blockchain. The objective of the ZoKrates project is to provide developers with a toolkit that exploits the potential of Zk-Snarks.

ZK Snarks is a tool that runs on the Ethereum Blockchain. The zero-knowledge proof can be used to validate calculation steps. Thus, without knowing the content of a calculation step, one can say whether it was doing right things or not.

This has advantages in terms of privacy and security. For example, with ZK-Snarks, one could verify transactions between actors without, for example, having to reveal their identity.

ZoKrates exposes benefits of Zk snarks to programmers

The new feature of the programming language ZoKrates developed by Eberhardt is now to make these advantages accessible to all developers of the Ethereum blockchain. As an additional feature it also becomes possible to optimize the calculation steps. Because ZK snarks move information away from the main blockchain, it becomes possible to relieve it. This in turn frees up computing capacity and reduces the burden on the blockchain.

ZoKrates finally makes it possible to translate this information into a smart contract. This automates the processes to a further degree and relieves the blockchain.

So ZoKrates is a self-executing code that exposes the benefits of ZK-Snark to the Ethereum blockchain. The new programming language can verify information and calculations, as well as transactions and relieve the platform. ZoKrates transforms a program into a set of conditions, which then run along with computation steps.

By outsourcing the calculation steps, costs are saved that are currently too high for ZK snarks. Since Eberhardt is currently working on the development alone, it is not yet possible to estimate how long the development will take.

Elsewhere, the zero-knowledge proof is currently being used elsewhere. Just two weeks ago, JPMorgan announced that it would integrate Quorum.

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A patent was granted yesterday to the UK's largest internet and telephone operator "British Telecommunications". The application submitted in July 2016 provides for a security system to protect blockchains.

In the patent British Telecommunications have explained a method to fend off attacks against blockchains in the mining process. The system should identify its users through specific profiles. This limits the number of users and the number of possible transactions. The code underlying the particular blockchain would then be able to automatically reject transactions that do not conform to the prescribed or specified accounts.

With the new system it should also be possible to ward off the so-called 51% attacks. With these it would be theoretically possible to falsify the otherwise quite safe blockchains, if one owns over 50% of the computing power. With the new technology, it should therefore be possible to prevent such attacks in advance. This is to make the Blockchain technology even safer. Especially in block halving blockchains are susceptible to such attacks. In the halving block, the number of found tokens per block is halved. These are just a few of the moments in which hackers can theoretically intervene in blockchains and manipulate them in their favor.

New security system to protect against attacks

However, British Telecommunications' new security system would preemptively identify such potential attacks and stop any transactions immediately. The patent also provides for ways to ward off distributed denial-of-service attacks. The attackers overwhelm the victims with such a high number of transactions that they have to finish their mining work. In December last year, the Indian blockchain coinsecure was the victim of such an attack.

The world's oldest telecommunications company has yet to announce which blockchain to focus on. It is only known that the new security system is aimed at the mining process.

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As online records show, e-commerce giant Amazon has secured three crypto currency related web domains.

According to Whois Lookup, the following three domains, "amazonethereum.com", "amazoncryptocurrency.com" and "amazoncryptocurrencies.com" were registered on October 31st. The domains are associated with Amazon Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It is attributed to earlier patent applications of the e-commerce company.

The telephone numbers listed in the registration documents are linked to the Amazon Legal Department. The registrations were first reported by the industry news site DomainNameWire. At this time, it is not clear what purpose the domain names should fulfill. There are different reasons for this approach in question.

Possible reasons

One possible reason could be that Amazon simply wants to protect its brand. In 2013, Amazon secured amazonbitcoin.com, which is currently redirecting to Amazon's main page. This agreement indicates the intent to protect the registration.

Registration of domain names could also indicate that Amazon is willing to work with the Ethereum Blockchain or create its own cryptocurrency.

Alternatively, Amazon may seek to avoid confusion between crypto currencies and Amazon Coin, a virtual currency product introduced in 2013 that serves as an online payment method for customers.

Registrations followed a week after Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin Tech listed companies on their blockchain readiness.

About Amazon Lubin said:

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More than 90 funds focused on digital assets such as Bitcoin have emerged this year, according to financial research firm Autonomous Next, bringing the total number of such "Crypto Funds" to 124.

The data comes from a research by CNBC. These data also show that the largest proportion of funds (37%) used risk capital-like strategies and managed approximately $ 1.1 billion in assets.

Funds focused on digital asset trading ranked second with 32%, with approximately $ 700 million in managed assets.

Funds, with special use of smart programs, scientific data sets or digital currency statistical arbitrage, ranked third in terms of data, with 10% and $ 100 million in managed assets.
The total value of managed assets related to crypto funds currently stands at $ 2.3 billion, according to Autonomous Next estimates.

This year's rise in the price of Bitcoin and another crypto currencies has drawn attention to the crypto currencies and the potential of their blockchain technology. Advocates say blockchain can change the world to the same extent as the Internet, and several major banks are researching or developing blockchain projects.

Enthusiasts attribute the recent record increase in Bitcoin to over $ 7,000 to the growing interest of institutional investors. While several Wall Street senior bank directors remain skeptical of Bitcoin, more and more experienced asset managers are turning to digital wealth management.

Led by former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz with the launch of his $ 500 million digital assets fund through his new company Galaxy Investment Partners. It is expected that this fund will be the largest of its kind.
Aside from investing in digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, enthusiasts are betting on a turnaround on new, digital coins for projects based on the same Blockchain technology. The coins are being put into circulation through a process known as "initial coin offering" and have recently risen to over $ 3 billion, according to the "Monetary Next".

Despite the above, many digital coin projects are still in their early stages. China has banned the "initial coin offering" while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has warned investors about the risks of investing in this regard.

In addition, the total number of crypto funds and their managed assets is still insignificant compared to the record $ 3.15 trillion managed by the hedge fund industry in the third quarter, according to HFRI.

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