Australia is serious about implementing blockchain into its daily operations. The Blockchain Roadmap has been published to guide Australia’s productivity in all industries.
Australia is keen to use blockchain in its future developments
Australia’s government announced the development of a National Blockchain Roadmap over one year ago, and spent over 100,000 AUD on it. Today, the roadmap is ready and will be utilized to help develop the usage of blockchain in all its industries.
According to Karen Andrews, the Miniter of Industry, Science and Technology, the government worked with various researchers to complete the blockchain roadmap.
The minister is a strong believer of the beneficial results of incorporating blockchain in bost public and private sectors, which will lead to a significant increase in jobs:
“Blockchain technology offers great potential to save money, initiate new business and export opportunities, boost economic growth, and create new jobs. Governments and private industries all stand to benefit from embracing this technology.
Employment opportunities in blockchain are growing substantially, with rapid growth in job advertisements since 2016.”
The blockchain roadmap includes all the essential sectors, not just the financial industry. The roadmap mentions education, transportation and the agricultural sectors.
The minister believes that Australia can become a leader in the new digital era after it will combine the blockchain’s roadmap with the already published one for Artificial Intelligence.
The potential risks of adopting the blockchain technology for mass usage
The government is also paying attention to the potential threats of implementing blockchain on a mass scale. For the blockchain roadmap to successfully work, it needs to be mentioned in a regulatory framework.
A major challenge of such massive use of blockchain is to maintain trust, the data integrity and security. Balancing privacy and transparency is a challenge.
The Australian government decided to spend 350,000 AUD more and work with Standards Australia, which will develop a regulatory framework which will guarantee the blockchain’s integrity, using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Australia is recognizing the efforts other countries are making to develop the blockchain technology and is willing to cooperate with the UK, China and Singapore to remain a leading country in this blockchain era.
Bitcoin transactions are over 500 million as of the beginning of February 2020. The number of transactions doubled in 3 years, from 250 million in 2017 to 500 million in 2020.
The Bitcoin network went live on January 3, 2009. Eleven years later, in 2020, the network processes over 500 million transactions.
Since 2017, Satoshi.info, named after the pseudonym of the presumable creator of Bitcoin, started tracking and recording the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network.
The data on Satoshi shows a constant increase in the Bitcoin transactions, year after year. In only 3 years, the volume of Bitcoin transactions has doubled and considering the same growth rate, Bitcoin transactions can exceed 1 billion transactions.
How did the community react to the 500 million milestone?
Today, as of block 00000000000000000001145bf2e7cb7f04df55feaf3b55d9f6511522bbbf333f at height 616064, Bitcoin surpassed 500 million transactions confirmed on the blockchain. https://t.co/eVLbYnHohj
500 million transactions confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin isn't talking about this. Or about how revolutionary and unprecedented its traits of censorship resistance and immutability are. Bitcoin just is. And does. One block at a time.
More and more startups seem to agree that Africa is the future of Bitcoin and can possibly be the next Crypto Valley. And the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, agrees.
After his first visit to the African continent last year, The CEO of Twitter declared that this is the future of Bitcoin.
During his visit, Dorsey sought to find startup founders, such as Atsu Davon, the founder of Bitsika, a cross-border transaction app, based in Ghana.
Jack Dorsey announced that he will go back to Africa, and this time he will invite investors to come with him because the current challenges and workforce of Africa can prove to be exactly what Bitcoin needs to succeed.
Africa pays the highest remittance costs in the world and is one of the largest unbanked population. These can turn into opportunities for cryptocurrency startups.
But is this enough and will Africa lead the way to blockchain infrastructures and Bitcoin mass adoption?
What is the current progress of cryptocurrency in Africa?
According to Ray Youssef, the CEO of Paxful, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, there is potential to bring Bitcoin into mass adoption, as he tries to teach people the use cases of crypto:
“Africans have had peer-to-peer financial systems in place for thousands of years,”
In Africa, sending money is so expensive and troublesome, that most of the time is better to go and deliver them yourself. That’s why Paxful is so successful in Africa and 45% of its subscriptions come from the African continent.
Youssef believes that the best asset of the African continent are its people:
“The greatest national resources in Africa are above the ground, not below it,” “It’s the people—so driven, so ambitious, and just looking for a way to make a difference.”
And the greatest feature of Africa is also young. 60% of the continent’s population is under 25.
Philip Agyei Asare, the CEO of BTCGhana, a remittance platform founded in 2015, recognises the usage of crypto as a means to store value, a medium for borderless transactions.
As for the regulations in Africa, Atsu Davon, the founder of Bitsika sees it like this:
“African crypto is like the Wild West, there are no legal hurdles or regulations,” “Governments don’t know that much about crypto so they let people do whatever they want to do.”
Atsu Davon also added that he knows about a case in which transactions of $30 million in Bitcoin were processed over the counter.
The potential of national digital currency in Africa
South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the three major economies in Africa and they are interested in crypto. South Africa and Ghana are looking into national digital currencies.
Crypto regulation in Africa. (Source: Baker and Mckenzie)
Senegal, one of the most liberal crypto state in Africa, is where the first crypto city has started being built by the rapper Akon. But the project seems to be stalled as an immediate improvement of education is more pressing.
Paxful started building 100 schools in 2017, using bitcoin.
Why Africa can be a giant sandbox for blockchain development
“Africa missed the first, second and third industrial revolutions, but we have a real opportunity to be a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,”
Crypto and blockchain developments are obvious in the African continent. In Nigeria already exist blockchain commodity exchanges, while Kenya uses blockchain to establish land rights and to boost agriculture.
At the moment, Africa can stop worrying about how it failed to develop the current technology because the future is here – AI, IoT and 5G. Africa can now focus on building all of these, better than the rest of the world.
The digital revolution has started in Kenya, where M-Pesa was founded, and it explores the applications of technologies like blockchain. AS the startups are thriving in Kenya, the government needs a trusted identity platform and to use biometrics to verify transactions.
The spread of smartphone usage in Africa led to the this digital revolution. Ten percent of GDP in transactions are made with mobile money
Many believe that in 2020, the African continent will have its own stablecoins. NairaEx is a crypto exchange from Nigeria which is working on Naira, a stablecoin backed by the national currency, while Bitsika is developing its own stablecoin.
The challenges of a big continent
Of course, Africa is huge and that means that we will see a lot of disparity in how technology is being used. Africa is home to over 1.2 billion people ans has 54 different countries.
What works in one country, can fail in another.
Although it is being regarded as a digital currency for the entire continent, M-Pesa’s success from Kenya wasn’t replicated in South Africa, and there is no explanation to it.
And while some countries make cryptocurrency very accessible, others have banned it, and Zambia is an example.
But what makes the African continent such a suitable place for a cryptocurrency revolution are its startup founders, who grew up in an era of digital transformation, and this alone could lead to Africa becoming the melting pot of cryptocurrency and blockchain developments.
“Jack said the future of crypto is in Africa, and I totally agree,” “If you just look at the freedom we have here, the talent and the attention we’re getting from outside—and the role and purpose these solutions serve—this is the perfect place. When I look at all the exciting companies being built here, I think that very, very soon, we’ll see a crypto valley happening in Africa.”
After millions have been spent to find a solution for the scalability issue of the decentralized blockchain, a solution appeared in sight.
A former lead researcher at Microsoft, Jia Ping Wang, created the Asensys protocol and recently presented his solution for a scalable blockchain.
The Asensys protocol was designed specifically to test the concept Wang proposed, and it showed a greater capacity than the main blockchains during the tests. How?
According to Wang:
“Asensys is able to essentially ‘divide and conquer’ all network actions, thereby reducing unnecessary redundancy,”
The blockchain scalability trilemma
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, came up with the concept of the scalability trilemma.
He says it’s easy to have a blockchain with only two key attributes, out of the three needed: security, decentralization and scalability. The ‘trilemma’ is to have all three at the same time, but usually, you have to give one up to make a network scale.
As District0x presented the issue:
“…if Ethereum nodes become too expensive to run, the network will be more susceptible to centralization. At the same time, requiring each transaction to be processed by every node will make it so Ethereum never scales.”
Trying to overcome this problem, some Ethereum developers have tried to apply the sharding method, which essentially lets the network’s nodes process only parts of the transaction.
On the other hand, Bitcoin developers have exploited other solutions. such as Lightning, which doesn’t get the network clogged up with small transactions and allows them to be processed off-chain. Some believed this to not be a secure solution.
So what’s the big news from Asensys?
Supposably, Asesnsys has solved the trilemma, and it doesn’t go off-chain.
In his paper, Wang proposed to remove duplicating efforts on the blockchain and spreading the workload asynchronously.
On top of the increased capabilities of the network, “the Asensys protocol increases proportionately to the community size,” according to a press release.
We are still waiting to hear more about this solution, as it is in its early days and few details were revealed to the media.
Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin, talked about inter-blockchain communication at the Blockchain Summit in October 2019:
“I find it astounding after all this time that people still try to follow this idea of ‘winner takes all.’ One coin to rule them all. One chain above all else. We’re coming for ya. The flippening,”
The market has the conviction that one day, one of these networks will surpass Bitcoin’s $170 billion market cap.
The Ethereum network would the next one in line, but even so, its market cap is at only $19 billion. But according to Antonopoulos, “The data just doesn’t support that hypothesis,”
We might have multichain in the near future
According to Andreas Antonopoulos, we will have many useful distributed blockchain in the near future.
The CEO of Bison Trails, Joe Lallouz believes that
“We’re going to continue to see blockchains get built with very specialized ideas in mind,”
“Mass adoption will be more likely in the future of interconnected blockchains,”
Bitcoins have value and the Ethereum network operates smart contracts.
The blockchain space is expanding, as the Loom network reached out to Tron and Binance chains and Summa is providing interoperability solutions. A lot of investments have gone into Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) solutions and can eventually reach a consensus position in the industry.
Some may argue that the solution is already here and it’s the lightning network.
Bruce Fenton, founder of the Bitcoin Association and the Satoshi Roundtable, stated:
“Personally, I believe that the rising tide lifts all boats and that many projects can benefit from the efforts of each other,”
Keld van Schreven, a co-founder of crypto investment firm KR1, argued IBC yields an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.
“Without IBC we will just have a limited horizon of possibility,” he said.
If the industry decides to shift towards IBC, it could be some sort of enlightenment moment, and it can ever lead to a more united ecosystem.
But building this inter-blockchain communication system is much more complex than speaking about it.
The first month of 2020 has come to an end and the crypto world has a lot going on. So what happened in the Crypto World in January 2020?
Coinbase is moving to Dublin, Ireland to serve European customers
Following the Brexit announcement, Coinbase has launched Coinbase Custody International Inc. in Dublin, Ireland, to handle European cryptocurrency deposits. The company has acquired an Irish e-money license in October 2019.
Coinbase explained their decision in a blog post and wrote:
“While Coinbase Custody has served European-based clients in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and more since 2018, our dedicated presence in Europe will allow us to offer these services in a completely localized way, with local staff, localized [service-level agreements] and in compliance with local laws,”
Coinbase and Coinbase Custody Internationa are two different companies and aim to provide support for the European demand for investment and cryptocurrency.
Swiss Incorporates a Blockchain IPO
Andriotto Financial Services , a Swiss company has been allowed to incorporate for an initial public offering (IPO) of tokenized shares on a blockchain.
The company has stated that it will be using the blockchain technology to keep the shareholders registry and tokens will be used to represent shares.
The firm’s IPO prospectus indicates an offering of 8,399,000 “common equity share security tokens” on the ethereum blockchain, with smart contracts provided by with EURO DAXX, a digital assets exchange based in the country’s “Crypto Valley” city of Zug. The offering price will be €1.25 ($1.38) per share.
IBM has received a U.S. patent for a token that can record its own transaction data.
Referred to as the “self-aware-token”, the token makes it easier for all participants to trace transactions, even when it’s used on other platforms, than the IBM payment platform.
The patent describes the ledger-based system, which is designed to record all data when is not used on the IBM platform. When the token rejoins the ecosystem, it automatically uploads the data.
Awarded by the U.S. Patent Office on Jan. 7, the patent outlines a ledger-based payments system that could make it easier for individual users, businesses and governments to track and trace transactions made using a cryptocurrency.
The token itself cannot store any information, but it would use personal devices or a dedicated database.
Such tokens can prove to be useful for a business trying to discover which crypto have been used for criminal activities, to ensure that they haven’t been corrupted or to enforce regulations.
Singapore Announces New Regulation for Crypto Businesses
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is updating its regulatory framework for digital payments.
Singapore announced the DPT (Digital Payment Token) as a service, to cover all crypto businesses and crypto exchanges based in Singapore, under the current anti-money laundering (AML).
As a result, any crypto business in Singapore has to first register and then apply for a license to operate.
MAS Assistant Managing, Director Loo Siew Yee, stated:
“The Payment Services Act provides a forward-looking and flexible regulatory framework for the payments industry,”
“The activity-based and risk-focused regulatory structure allows rules to be applied proportionately and to be robust to changing business models. The PS Act will facilitate growth and innovation while mitigating risk and fostering confidence in our payments landscape.”
Deutsche Bank Says Digital Currencies Could Be Mainstream in 2 Years
A report from Deutsche Bank states that digital currencies have “potential to radically change payments, banking, central banking and the balance of economic power.”
This could mean that we will see widespread adoption within the next few years.
Considering China’s digital yuan and the Facebook project of launching Libra, this could lead to introducing digital currencies to over half of the world’s population.
Ukraine Will Track Crypto Transactions Above $1,200
According to the head of the country’s Ministry of Finance, Oksana Makarova, Ukraine plans to track crypto transactions exceeding $1,200.
Last month, the Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelensky, signed a law which reinforces anti-laundering practices for cryptocurrency transactions.
For the first time., The law included cryptocurrency as an asset to be monitored. The threshold for triggering the scrutiny process is 30,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH), or US$1,200.
The Ministery of Finance stated:
“If exchanges, exchangers, banks or other companies make payments in cryptocurrencies worth more than UAH 30,000 in equivalent, they must verify such transaction and collect detailed customer information,”
“The customer must provide comprehensive information about the origin and destination of their virtual assets.”
The Coronavirus Outbreak in China Could Weigh on Crypto Prices
After the Coronavirus epidemic broke out this month in China, most crypto clients cancelled their meetings in China, as nobody wants to attend any conference or meeting during this time.
China is a crypto investment hub and it has the most crypto exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region, and the epidemic will disrupt business and can potentially impact prices.
Marketing events are crucial for crypto investments, but these will be put on hold until the crisis goes away.
Jason Wu, the CEO and founder of non-custodial crypto lender DeFiner stated:
“The market might take a heavy blow if the money stops flowing into these crypto asset classes as it usually did before,”
Aside from the epidemic, the Chinese New Year is also a bad time for investments, as many prefer to cash out during this time. But VCs are confident that they will see those investments coming back.
