OK Intelligence Bureau Weekly Report: Legalization of Bitcoin Mining, Central Bank Digital Currency Continues
1. Developed countries and developing countries work together: Mining is legalized, and the central bank's digital currency continues to be popular
Recently, another country announced that mining is about to be legalized, and that is Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry plans to legalize digital currency mining in the country within two to three years. In a statement issued on October 7, the country’s news department stated that the government hopes to formulate tax rules to deal with digital currencies and approve regulations to focus on combating digital currency money laundering and minimize the negative impact of digital currency legalization before the summer of 2020. Influence.
At the same time, Ukraine also plans to introduce blockchain technology into the national registry, encourage digital currency exchanges to settle in Ukraine, and welcome foreign companies and investors to invest in blockchain in Ukraine to enhance Ukraine's global digital assets. Competitiveness in the market.
At first glance, Ukraine's approach is somewhat similar to that of Malta (a European country). We know that Malta has been following the policy line of "actively developing the blockchain", creating a relatively friendly and relaxed environment for blockchain entrepreneurship. Now Malta has become an "entrepreneurial paradise" for blockchain and digital currency.
Although they are both "blockchain-friendly countries", the situation of Malta and Ukraine is different, and the "foundation" of these two countries is still much different: Malta is a rich and developed country in Europe, although its land area is small, However, the pleasant scenery and climate have become a trend of rich immigrants; but Ukraine is almost one of the poorest and most turbulent countries in Europe, with fragmented territories and internal turmoil.
We can find out what is a major trend in the international blockchain industry now. A typical feature is that small and medium-sized countries like to develop blockchain, whether it is a small rich country like Malta or an underdeveloped medium-sized country like Ukraine. There are also countries including Iran (Iran announced the legalization of digital currency mining in July this year), Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, and their attitudes towards blockchain are relatively tolerant.
Of course, we can think that for a rich country like Malta, the development of blockchain may be pursuing a kind of "icing on the cake". After all, looking at the whole of Europe, Malta is not very well-known, so it wants to develop "blockchain" into a "killer tool". ", a "country card". As for some underdeveloped regions like Iran and Venezuela, through the blockchain, especially digital currency mining, they can obtain a certain amount of capital inflow in a short period of time.
Speaking of small and medium-sized countries, by the way, what are the main trends in big countries regarding blockchain and digital currency. As we mentioned above, small and medium-sized countries are mainly committed to the introduction of blockchain entrepreneurship and digital currency mining; as for large countries, such as China and the United States, the current main trend is the development of central bank digital currency: China's central bank digital currency is about to come out , and recently it was reported that members of the US Congress are also proposing that the Federal Reserve develop a "central bank digital currency".
It should be emphasized that the central bank digital currency developed by a big country is fundamentally different from digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The central bank’s digital currency is mainly a supplement to cash. It is a form of legal currency and an extension of the "digitalization" of legal currency. Through a special currency form such as "digital legal currency", it can improve the efficiency of transaction settlement and reduce costs. Therefore, this is fundamentally different from digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
2. Re-sentence for divorce? Facebook's "embarrassed" continues, not only the regulatory pressure, but also the withdrawal of partners
Since Facebook released the digital currency stable currency Libra white paper in June this year, the controversy about Facebook has not stopped. Recently, Facebook has fallen into a new predicament. The previously identified partners (some giant payment companies) announced their withdrawal from the Libra project. If you want to quit, is this the rhythm of becoming a "lonely person"?
What is the relationship between the Facebook Libra project and these traditional payment giants? Here we briefly introduce the background. In June of this year, Facebook released the white paper of the Libra project. One of the regulations is that the Libra project will establish an association to manage the entire project. This association will be composed of 28 companies, including Facebook, PayPal, Uber, Visa, MasterCard and other traditional Giant companies, including some emerging blockchain startups, need to invest at least 10 million US dollars as the association's operating costs to become members of the association.
However, due to regulatory pressure, these giant companies are currently withdrawing from the Facebook Libra project.
According to CNBC reports, the global payment giant PayPal announced that it is withdrawing from the digital currency project (LIbra Association) managed by Facebook. In a statement, PayPal said: "PayPal has decided not to further join the Libra Association at this time, but to remain committed to advancing its existing mission and business priorities...but will remain supportive of Libra and will continue to do so in the future. Work with Facebook."
Not only PayPal, Visa and MasterCard have also announced that they will reconsider the issue of supporting the Libra project.
The Facebook Libra project will have such a situation of "renunciation", mainly because of regulatory issues. Countries headed by the United States have been attacking Libra in various forms since Facebook released the Libra white paper, including holding multiple hearings and forming special groups to investigate details in Switzerland, the "base camp" of the Libra project, etc. , Some officials have also continued to badmouth the project in public and private occasions.
Recently, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii wrote to the three major payment processing companies Mastercard, Visa and Stripe, asking them to reconsider their relationship with Facebook's digital currency Libra, on the grounds that Facebook Libra Projects may bring crime, terrorist financing, destabilize the global financial system, interfere with monetary policy, expose consumers to risk, and more.
There is a reason why giant companies have withdrawn from the Libra project. Because for these giant companies, an investment of 10 million US dollars is not a big amount. They can also try the new field of "blockchain and digital currency", and they may get a big share of the pie. How to say It's all a bargain. However, if the regulation does not allow it, then there is no need to make such an attempt. After all, these giant companies still have their own business, and their own business is the main one. In other words, if you don’t participate in Facebook Libra, you can’t lose anything , Why risk the pressure of offending the regulators to participate?
Therefore, we can see that PayPal's exit statement reads that "it will not participate in the Facebook Libra project, but will continue to work on advancing its existing mission and business priorities." What's more interesting is that David Marcus, the general manager of the Facebook Libra project, was once the president of PayPal, but what can he do? Under the pressure of supervision, the so-called "humanity" is obviously of no use.
According to existing news, Mastercard, Visa, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago have announced their withdrawal from the Facebook Libra project. The ride-hailing giant Uber, the ride-hailing app Lyft and the digital currency custodian Anchorage will still participate in the Libra project.
3. The era of Ethereum 2.0 is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2020
From October 8th to October 11th, Devcon 5 was held in Osaka, Japan. This conference brought together many "big names" in the Ethereum community, and "Ethereum 2.0" became the main topic of this developer conference. According to the news delivered at the meeting, it is generally predicted that the Ethereum 2.0 platform is expected to be launched in the first quarter of next year.
Ethereum is currently the second largest digital currency in the digital currency market value rankings, and it is also a currency with a high degree of recognition among mainstream currencies. Unlike Bitcoin, which is a single digital currency, Ethereum is a smart contract platform on which developers can develop blockchain applications. However, Ethereum has been facing the problems of scalability and network congestion. Therefore, the Ethereum development team hopes to upgrade the Ethereum system and transition the Ethereum system from the 1.0 era to the 2.0 era.
The main problem to be solved in the Ethereum 2.0 era is to improve transaction throughput through scalability and efficiency updates. At this developer conference, Ethereum 2.0 developer Danny Ryan stated that the deposit contract of Ethereum 2.0 has completed "formal verification". The Ethereum 2.0 deposit smart contract is written in the Vyper language, a smart contract programming language similar to Solidity, but it is more like Python in syntax.
At present, one of the biggest problems of the blockchain is the problem of processing speed, because the blockchain is decentralized, which is similar to absolute democracy, and the consequence is bound to be a lag in efficiency. In the blockchain circle, there is such a view that the decentralization, security, and scalability of the blockchain are an "impossible triangle theory". If the security remains unchanged and the scalability is improved, then Must pass "centralization". For this problem, Ethereum's main solution is "sharding technology".
Fragmentation technology is a kind of "expansion method". Simply put, it is to divide the database into multiple fragments and place these fragments on different servers. This means that in the system of the underlying public chain of the blockchain, the transactions on the network will be divided into different fragments, which we can understand as "grouping", so that a transaction does not have to initiate all nodes in the entire network. To process it, just let some nodes (miners) in the network process it. In short: to improve the efficiency of transaction processing by dividing and conquering.
4. WeChat and Alipay prohibit digital currency transactions
Last week, Alipay issued an official announcement: Alipay is prohibited from being used for virtual currency transactions. If it is found that the transaction involves Bitcoin or other virtual currency transactions, Alipay will immediately stop the relevant payment services. For merchants involved in virtual currency transactions, they will be resolutely cleared; for personal accounts involved in virtual currency transactions, according to the circumstances, measures such as restricting the account’s collection function, or even permanently restricting collections, will be taken. In addition, WeChat Pay also stated that it does not support virtual currency transactions, and has never opened access to merchants in the category of virtual currency. If any behavior of using WeChat payment for virtual currency transactions is found, it will be cleared and refunded.
Alipay and WeChat’s attitude towards digital currency transactions has always been unsupportive. I don’t know why they have issued an announcement to emphasize it. Could it be that more users are conducting digital asset transactions on Alipay and WeChat? We don’t know the specific reasons. Here I would like to remind everyone that it is best to avoid using Alipay and WeChat for digital asset transactions, and avoid remarking such words as “Bitcoin, digital currency, and buying coins” in the transaction, otherwise the account is very likely to be frozen.
