Tag: blockchain

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Crypto News

The UK Lawmakers Work On Establishing Legal Framework For Blockchain And Smart Contracts

In an attempt to adapt the laws of the United Kingdom to the new technological realities, the British Law Commission announced, through a report released on Thursday, July 19th, that it will launch an investigation to call for potential reform of the law to adjust it to the use of blockchain and smart contracts.

The announcement is part of the Commission’s annual report 2017-2018, a 91-page document that addresses different aspects and laws such as those involving criminal law, commercial and common law, public law, property, and family law. The section on blockchain and smart contracts has been included in the commercial and common laws.

The report states, according to the commissioners who participated in its preparation, that there has been much media coverage concerning smart contracts, particularly those related to financial services. However, the Commission broadly recognizes the potential for improving many processes.

Lawmakers around the world struggle to legislate blockchain and smart contracts

The purpose of this project would be to ensure that the law is secure and flexible enough to be applied in a global, digital context and to highlight any issues that lack clarity or certainty. We have begun our initial research on this project, which is scheduled for the summer of 2018.

United Kingdom Law Commission

The agency’s recommendation is to ensure that both the courts and the law itself remain competitive for new business, which could leave the door open for some regulation in the short or medium term.

It is not the first time when an agency or state has announced changes in its legislation to add or recognize the legality of smart contracts. That has been the case, for example, in Florida, in the United States, where it became known last January that a bill was introduced to create a legal database on blockchain and smart contracts.

A similar situation occurred in the state of Tennessee, also in the United States, where Governor Bill Haslam signed an amendment to the state’s commercial legislation related to electronic transactions last March. The intention was to include, in a new section, blockchain technology and smart contracts.

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Crypto Finance News

Central Bank Of Thailand Plans Adopting Blockchain Technology For Cross-Border Payments

The push for the adoption of Blockchain technology in Thailand’s banking sector appears to be unstoppable. The Governor of the Bank of Thailand (BoT), Dr. Veerathai Santiprabhob, at the ASEN Bloomberg Business Summit, disclosed that the Central Bank was carrying out a thorough examination of blockchain applications for authentication of documents, financing of the supply chain, and cross-border payments.

“The Sandbox serves as a platform for FinTech financial institutions and firms to test new technologies and operating standards in a secure environment before products and services are released to the general public,” said Santiprabhob.

The Governor of the Bank of Thailand also asserted that there is a secure attachment on the part of the Central Bank to the region’s connectivity with the world. The Bank considers the use of Blockchain for cross-border payments as a way of enhancing the financial sector in Thailand.

Central Bank of Thailand has the goal to adopt blockchain technology for cross-border payments and back-office activities

Earlier this July, Santiprabhob announced that he was collaborating with the country’s banking sector under Thailand’s Blockchain Community Initiative to harness blockchain technology in the financial system. This effort gathered 14 commercial banks, as well as seven state and private enterprises.

The governor of the BoT also considers that Blockchain has an essential role to play in mitigating fraudulent activity and safeguarding financial information.

“The adoption of modern technologies such as biometrics and Blockchain can help safeguard financial information and reduce the number and scale of fraudulent activity,” said Santiprabhob.

“The Bank of Thailand is also undertaking regulatory reform to review obsolete rules and regulations, to facilitate trade and to ensure that our regulations do not impede competition and innovation and also contribute to the high costs of financial services,” the Governor added during the ASEN Bloomberg Business Summit.

Ultimately, the Central Bank of Thailand’s purpose would be to use blockchain technology for cross-border payments and back-office activities.

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Crypto News

London School of Economics Launched An Online Course On Cryptocurrency Investments And Blockchain

The London School of Economics (LSE) will hold an online training course on cryptocurrency investment, starting in August 2018, according to a Financial Times article issued on Monday, July 9th.

The announcement states that the new course entitled “Cryptocurrency Investment and Disruption” will assist students in mastering many “practical skills for interacting with cryptocurrency exchanges,” as well as how to use cryptocurrency wallets and also “evaluate analyses” of Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

The LSE, the alma mater of 36 “world leaders” and 18 Nobel Prize laureates, claims to be known for its slogan of “understanding the causes of things.” By introducing the new cryptocurrency course, the university seeks to support “global private organizations, individual investors, financial services companies, governments,” as well as “regulators” in understanding the “highly disruptive trend” of cryptocurrency.

London School of Economics will join other universities around the world by teaching about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies

The exponential growth and volatility of cryptocurrencies and the distributed accounting technology that supports them have led to a worldwide interest in cryptocurrencies, ICOs and the distribution of digital wealth.

London School of Economics

The online course will be conducted by Dr. Carsten Sorensen, an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Innovation. Comprising six modules totaling 60 class hours, the attendance of the course will be approximately €1,800 or $2,116 in price.

The University of Malta also informed earlier today that it would launch a blockchain degree from October 2018 onwards.

In February 2018, the Australian public research university RMIT introduced the country’s first university class on blockchain technology. The 8-week training course, entitled “Developing Blockchain Strategy”, is intended to provide not only the theoretical skills required to use blockchain technology but also the necessary know-how for distributed accounting technology usage.

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Crypto News

Malta Becomes The First Country To Adopt Comprehensive Blockchain And Cryptocurrency Legislation

Malta passed the three bills that will regulate the entire blockchain and cryptocurrency space on the so-called Blockchain Island. The Prime Minister of the country, Joseph Muscat, confirmed in a press conference that the parliament unanimously reaffirmed its decision to approve the three projects, which reach legal status with the names of Digital Innovation Law, Law of Innovative Technology Arrangements, and Services and Law of Virtual Financial Assets.

Malta, officially the first country in the world to have a holistic legislative framework regulating blockchain and DLT technology. We will be the global hub for market leaders in this new sector. Now let’s move on to the implementation of Blockchain Island.

Joseph Muscat, PM of Malta

The Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Innovation and Finance of Malta, Silvio Schembri, then issued a tweet to disseminate the announcement, stating that with the legal status of these three projects, Malta becomes the first jurisdiction to provide full legal certainty in the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystems.

This is the final stage of legislation that will put Malta on the international map of blockchain and kryptonite regulation. There is political consensus on this roadmap and we anticipate that this area will become the pillar of our growth for the next 4-5 years.

Silvio Schembri

Malta adopted three projects that will comprehensively regulate blockchain and cryptocurrency

Malta’s Digital Innovation Act will allow for the establishment of the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA), which will operate autonomously and independently and will be responsible for all matters relating to technological innovation and its forms of use. In its initial phase, it will only regulate blockchain technology and smart contracts, but will also promote government policies, educate on technological fixes and encourage the advancement, design, and use of innovative technology.

On the other hand, the Law of Innovative Technology Arrangements and Services, which will be in charge of establishing the regulations required by the MDIA to operate with cryptocurrency, it will include registration of service providers, system administrators and auditors, as well as certification of technological arrangements.

Finally, the Virtual Financial Assets Act will establish the regulatory regime of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies market in order to ensure that the fundamental principles of financial regulation are complied with, that the investor is protected and that financial integrity is provided.

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Crypto

Ethereum (ETH) Sharding To Overcome The Recent Blockchain Clog, Announced By Vitalik Buterin

Now, that the crypto coins and blockchains grow in acceptance and popularity, the scalability of the crypto networks is a growing issue, as the blockchains of the largest cryptocurrencies may not be prepared to handle as many transactions as they would require. This rapid increase in the number of cryptocurrencies holders over the past year has resulted in Ethereum (ETH) blockchain to clog up and the fees charged by it to rise. The solution would be Ethereum (ETH) sharding.

Therefore, the application of certain scalability measures put forward by the ETH developer, Vitalik Buterin, toward the community grew in priority. Thus, Vitalik Buterin, the founder and the leading developer of Ethereum (ETH), indicated today they will perform a Proof of Concept (PoC) based on sharding the network.

The sharding proposal to overcome this issue means the “repartition” of the blockchain among the net’s nodes. This means that every node can only approve a portion of the transactions.

Ethereum (ETH) sharding will improve the speed of the network

By allocating the approval of new blocks by this procedure means, Ethereum (ETH) network is able to significantly improve the processing of the network transactions. While the current protocol handles a new block every 12 to 15 seconds, via sharding the nodes it will process new blocks once every 2 to 8 seconds.

Even though the GitHub trial script has only 4 shards, Ethereum (ETH) team is expecting to be over 100 shards by the time it is deployed in the main blockchain.

Furthermore, Buterin argues that this backup chain will run on a PoS interface which will be tied to the primary Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, for the time being, but, when the Casper protocol will be completely deployed, the backup network should be completely incorporated into the primary ETH network.

With the complete and effective deployment of this Ethereum (ETH) sharding protocol, Ethereum (ETH) will be capable of handling many more transactions than it is able of processing at the moment. As a result, the different decentralized projects, that have been made famous under the name of CryptoKitties, will not negatively impact on the blockchain performance anymore.

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