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All the cool kids are doing Ethereum now
n the beginning the Prophet Satoshi brought us Bitcoin. And the cryptogeeks and libertarians looked upon it, and said lo, we smile upon this, for it is good, and decentralized, and solves the Byzantine Generals Problem. For a time all was well. But then came wailing and gnashing of teeth and wearing of sackcloth. And then came the Prophet Vitalik, bearing Ethereum; and lo, it was even better.
Maybe.
For the past year we have worked on AKASHA, a next-generation social media network powered by the Ethereum world computer and the Inter-Planetary File System. Today, May 3rd, we celebrate World Press Freedom Day by unveiling our project to the world at large and opening the signups for the alpha release.
Living In The Industrial $15 Trillion IOT Market
From Bitcoin to IoT, Big Data to AI, the world is experiencing a new industrial revolution as likely to transform the fabric of society as the first revolution.
(Image: michael davis-burchat)
EtherEx – Decentralized Exchange On The Ethereum Protocol
The Ethereum ecosystem has been attracting a lot of attention from both within and outside of the digital currency ecosystem in recent months. Most people attribute this to recent Ethereum price increase, but it can also be attributed to the number of projects set to launch in the next few months. EtherEx, a decentralized digital currency exchange, will be launching shortly after being in development for two years.
Can Ethereum Restore Online Freedom & Transform the Internet?
"If you think the Internet has affected your life, Ethereum will have that same pervasive influence on our communications and our entire information infrastructure," says Joseph Lubin, who's the founder of the Brooklyn-based software-production studio ConsenSys. "It will impact every aspect of our existence." ConsenSys, which employs 68 people in nine countries, is developing applications to run on this ambitious new computing platform. On Ethereum, the same types of services offered by companies like Facebook, Google, Ebay, and Amazon, will be provided instead by computers distributed around the globe. But how does Ethereum bring together these scattered nodes into one network? By using the groundbreaking organizational system known as a blockchain, which The Economist has aptly dubbed "the trust machine." It’s the same technology that makes possible peer-to-peer exchange of Bitcoins without a bank keeping track of who owns what. Ethereum is controlled by a different kind of blockchain that’s specifically designed to keep this decentralized network in sync, forming one powerful global computer that could one day match the capabilities of a Facebook or a Google. To find out more about how Ethereum could transform the Internet, watch the story above.
OpenBazaar is Open for Business
OpenBazaar is now released on the mainnet and is ready for real transactions. You can download the program on the OpenBazaar website.
You can read our user tutorial explaining how to use OpenBazaar for the first time. If you need help, join our Slack or visit our help center.
If you’re not familiar with OpenBazaar, it’s a decentralized peer-to-peer network for trade that uses Bitcoin. That trade happens directly between buyers and sellers with no one in the middle – and no fees or restrictions on trade. You can read more about it at this post.
Microsoft’s Azure Partners With R3 Blockchain Consortium
Microsoft is also looking at ways to incorporate this technology into its own products and services. The company announced last week that it was building support for an Ethereum programming language called Solidity into its Visual Studio.
“We’re all in,” Ms. Johnson said.
The rise of the blockchain asset class
Bitcoin first cracked a $1 billion market cap on March 30, 2013. And by the following month, it had reached $1.504 billion. Meanwhile, the market for additional blockchain assets outside of bitcoin (“non-bitcoin blockchain assets”) was vastly smaller, totaling in at just $92 million on April 28, 2013.
Less than three years later — on March 21, 2016 — while the bitcoin market cap had grown 300% to $6.318 billion, non-BTC blockchain assets had grown a whopping 1,600% to $1.602 billion.
You can see the dramatic evolution of blockchain assets in terms of market capitalization and asset composition in some illustrations below.
(Image: Marc Smith)
Ethereum: Towards A New BitSociety
We have been thinking of Bitcoin as a new currency and/or a new class of asset, and its underpinning technology – the blockchain – as a shiny new type of payments system that will eventually eliminate the need for intermediaries such as central banks. But the technology potentially takes us much, much further than that. Recent developments take us towards new forms of law, new types of democracy, even – perhaps – the redefinition of what we mean by a “nation”. It may sound extreme to say this, but some blockchain aficionados are even talking about complete reordering of society. Welcome to the Brave New BitWorld.
Or rather, the EtherWorld. For in this piece, I am not talking about Bitcoin, but its rival Ethereum.
Etheropt is a decentralized options exchange built on Ethereum. The options are vanilla call and put options on the price of Ethereum in USD as reported by Poloniex and Coindesk and verified by Reality Keys. Etheropt has no owner. Its entire operation is described and executed by an Ethereum smart contract. Etheropt does not make any money as the smart contract does not charge any fees — not for trading, not for adding funds, not for withdrawing, not for anything.
The Rise And Growth of Ethereum Gets Mainstream Coverage
Ethereum, considered by many to be the most promising altcoin, has grabbed the attention of The New York Times. The “newspaper of record” has run a big feature story on Ethereum, noting its value has spiraled 1,000% in the last three months and is attracting interest from major financial companies that are using it for private blockchains and smart contracts. The story notes the first public version of Ethereum was recently released.
Why July 10 Will Determine Cryptocurrency’s Future
July 10, 2016 will be the important day in the history of cryptocurrency. A number of events and trends are converging towards this day or the time period immediately surrounding it. For the first time in seven years, by August we may finally have clarity on bitcoin’s future and whether it is going to succeed or fail in the long term.
“… consider that if both Ethereum and Bitcoin were starting from zero right now, it’s difficult to see how Bitcoin would become the preferred coin.”
(Image: acearchie)
Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s
A new virtual gold rush is underway.
Even as Bitcoin, riven by internal divisions, has struggled, a rival virtual currency — known as Ethereum — has soared in value, climbing 1,000 percent over the last three months.
Aurélien Menant - Gatecoin CEO
Slock.it - Ethereum Blockchain + IoT
Slock.it enables anyone to rent, sell or share their property without middlemen. With Slock.it, the unused bicycle in the garage gets a new lease on life. Wifi hotspots can be sublet on demand. Airbnb apartments become fully automated. Slock.it is an IoT + Blockchain framework decentralizing the sharing economy by:
