Bank of England assesses risks of state-backed digital currencies
On May 18, the Bank of England published a working paper on the possible risks and financial stability of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The paper constructs three models, each with a different set of sectors that have access to the CBDC.
Brian Kelly: BCH could go up due to development fund
Bitcoin cash miners met to discuss funding for a bitcoin cash development fund on Saturday, crypto trader Brian Kelly told CNBC’s “Fast Money”. In his opinion, this action could give the digital currency more value. According to Kelly, miners are "going to take some of the rewards they get from mining and put it in a fund to build stuff on top of bitcoin cash."
"That's how blockchains gain value," Kelly continued. "You're going to be getting more use cases to the extent that usefulness translates into value. That could be a positive for bitcoin cash."
BCT terminal to bring digital currencies to Wall Street
“The whole scope of the project is to build an industrial, institutional grade cryptocurrency terminal similar to what marketplaces are using today, providing a consolidated view of a very decentralized market”, Demetrios Skalkotos, a Consultant at BTC Inc., told Techcrunch.
According to the report, the tool is a double-screened PC with a great deal of proprietary software installed. The terminal will analyse multiple exchanges at once, enabling the user to read news, prices and market dynamics in one easy-to-understand package.Compared with the Bloomberg and Reuters terminals, BCT’s product provides institutional traders with the “a view of the marketplace of the depth and breadth that they would want to have”, Skalkotos said.
Monacoin hit by selfish mining attack
The Japanese cryptocurrency suffered from a “selfish mining attack” between May 13 and 15. This type of attack meant that the attacker successfully mined one block on the blockchain but didn’t broadcast it to other miners. It appears that the hacker had been trying to exploit a weakness in Monacoin’s difficulty adjustment mechanism for the better part of 6 months. While the developer tweeted that they had “grasped the attack” on May 18th, proposed solutions have not yet been outlined, and no new information about the incident has yet been released.
攻撃については把握しました。
— monacoinproject (@tcejorpniocanom) May 17, 2018
Robert Shiller: The cryptocurrency revolution is an attempt to reinvent money
Robert Shiller, Nobel-prize winning economist and professor at Yale University, believes that cryptocurrencies are nothing but the latest iteration of century-old attempts to reinvent money.Shiller compared the cryptocurrency boom - almost 2000 digital currencies have been created since 2009 - to the rise of “time money” in the 1800s.
“No one, outside of computer science departments, can explain how cryptocurrencies work,” Shiller wrote in a blog post. “That mystery creates an aura of exclusivity, gives the new money glamour, and fills devotees with revolutionary zeal. None of this is new, and, as with past monetary innovations, a compelling story may not be enough.”
Walmart intends to use the blockchain for retail sales
According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, retail giant Walmart recently filed a patent application for a blockchain platform enabling the tracking and resale of purchased goods. The document, released last Thursday, describes a service that allows a client to register an item after its initial purchase, then stating a price for its resale, with the system essentially acting as a digital marketplace.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at $374 998 265 722
By Ekaterina Ulyanova