WTO Blockchain Report: A Festival of Conjunctives

Can Blockchain technology revolutionize world trade? The World Trade Organization (WTO), based in Geneva, has investigated this question in a recently published book. The book, written by Emmanuelle Ganne, was published at a blockchain workshop held on 27 November.

The fact that the World Trade Organization also has the issue of blockchain on its agenda was shown in the World Trade Report 2018 published in October at the latest. According to this report, the WTO counts blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies among the “big four” technologies that can significantly change world trade. The WHO held a blockchain workshop in Geneva on 27 November on what these changes could consist of. On the occasion of the workshop, WHO published a report entitled “Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade?

Bitcoin revolution: Interoperability and regulation

On the technical side, the lack of interoperability (and scalability) of blockchains remains the main obstacle to the full development of the Bitcoin revolution potential: Bitcoin Revolution Review 2018 » Full Scam Check “In particular, technical solutions must be developed to address the problem of the ‘digital island’ and to ensure that blockchains can communicate with each other”.

The report analyses possible application areas of the technology in international trade. The focus is on paperless commerce, copyright issues, new services in finance and e-commerce, and government procurement management. The author of the analysis is Emmanuelle Ganne, Vice President of the Allam Advisory Group. The almost 150-page report contains little that is new – but a lot of statements of the kind “Hätte, könnte, sollte” (Had, could, should). Ganne emphasizes the much-vaunted potential of blockchain technology, but also points to the technical and regulatory hurdles that still need to be overcome.

Moreover, there is still a lack of a global regulatory framework for the Bitcoin revolution

“The broad use of Bitcoin revolution requires an appropriate legal framework that recognises the legal validity of blockchain transactions, clarifies applicable law and obligations, and regulates how data can be accessed and used,

Ganne notes. It is by no means certain, however, that this will ever happen. This applies in particular to Permissionless Blockchains, where there is no de facto (and de jure) contact for regulatory authorities. An example: to whom should the German government turn in order to force the Bitcoin Protocol into a regulatory concept? Exactly. The situation is different with private or “enterprise blockchains”, for example, which are the focus of IBM’s Hyperledger.

In order to overcome these hurdles, close cooperation between all parties involved is required:

“Given the potential of blockchain, companies, civil society organisations, software developers, academics, governments and intergovernmental organisations should work hand in hand to assess the practical and legal implications of the technology and develop common solutions to existing challenges.

If this ambitious goal is achieved, world trade could undergo “radical” change in ten to 15 years.

Tether: USDT can be exchanged for USD again – but not for everyone

Tether now enables USDT in US dollars to be exchanged again on its own platform. The decision was made during the redesign of the platform. But not every investor can exchange his stable coins for fiat money.

Bitcoin loophole: Thick wallet

As the company recently announced, it is once again possible to exchange your Bitcoin loophole for US dollars directly at Tether: Bitcoin Loophole Review 2018 » Full Scam Check Provided you have a full wallet. Only those can make use of the new option who want to deposit or withdraw at least 100,000 US dollars with Tether. Thus, the offer is clearly tailored to professional investors. The fees for US dollar deposits and withdrawals are between 0.4 and 3 percent, but at least 1,000 US dollars. A maximum of one withdrawal per week in US dollars is allowed.

Tether is undoubtedly one of the crypto companies that have made the most wind this year. To the disappointment of the company (and the USDT holder), most of these were shitstorms that were fed by doubts about the company’s US dollar reserves. Questionable personnel connections between Tether, their former bank Noble and the crypto exchange Bitfinex reinforced fears that Tether might not have one US dollar in his account for every USDT.

The fee structure for the news spy and Fiat transactions on the Tether Platform

The fact that the news spy exchange can now again take place directly at Tether is explained by the company as ‘strengthening [its] banking business’, which was accompanied by the switch to Deltec Bank. However, the tether exchange rate is still struggling with the US dollar parity.

The report by the law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan (FSS), which is still emblazoned on the Tether home page and is supposed to confirm Tether’s US dollar stock, did not help either. Here, too, personnel links between the FSS and one of the tether banks ensured that doubts about the stability of the stable coin remained. The fact that the exchange of USDT for USD at a ratio of 1:1 did not have to take place via the tether platform but via the Bitfinex crypto exchange was a gift. At least on this point, however, there is good news for the holders of USDT tokens.

Faith in technology

In order to be able to map the entire house sale completely via a block chain, a large hurdle has to be overcome.

However, ChromaWay and Kairos Future are confident that the cryptosoft system will work

“It would be ideal if the cryptosoft processing of a house sale could be completely digitalized. In contrast, however, the law requires personal signatures on the papers,” explained Kempe. While trust in digital contracts is developing hesitantly, he argued that cryptosoft blockchain technology can generate the trust needed to move forward.

“Once the legislator understands that this is possible, I think it will become a reality,” says Kempe.

In this process, the EU adopted a directive in 2016 that puts more emphasis on digital signatures and could ultimately influence Swedish policy.

“Currently, the Land Registry Authority does not store much physical paper, they receive the contracts in PDF form, which are signed electronically. Our idea is that they register the contracts digitally in the blockchain in the land register, so that the land titles can be allocated and are no longer dependent on the physical archive. “

External interest of crypto trader

ChromaWay and Kairos Future say they have been contacted by more than a dozen crypto trader authorities from other countries interested in the crypto trader project.

The team explained that they do not hold patents for the platform, with the purpose of having other organizations work on similar systems, which will eventually lead to more collaboration.

The Swedish blockchain tests for land titles are perhaps the most ambitious applications of the technology in the real estate sector. But others are also working on the concept. Early last year, land registry authorities in the Eurasian nation of Georgia began working with the BitFury blockchain startup, which signed a report in February to expand testing for other government agencies.

According to ChromaWays CEO Henrik Hjelte, the blockchain could be used for developing countries to manage property and improve transparency in real estate sales.

On the other hand, the proof-of-concept tests conducted in Honduras by the end of 2015 were put to the test by a collapse in communication between the government and Factom, the company that was to conduct the audit.

Project Atlas: TRON wants to reward torrent seeder

The TRON Foundation has announced that it will make the BitTorrent network faster and more efficient. The integration of the TRON blockchain into the peer-to-peer system will create new incentives for digital content uploaders.

In July of this year, it became known that the TRON Foundation had acquired the company behind the torrent protocol, BitTorrent Inc. Now the blockchain company has announced more details on how the technologies will find each other.

Project Atlas Makes BitTorrent the news spy

With Project Atlas, TRON aims to connect BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer network to its own scam. This will be done with protocol extensions and its own token. TRON wants to create a token economy within the news spy client that will make data transfer significantly faster:

“Project Atlas is the basis for a new kind of content distribution. The product will offer faster downloads, more seeds, backward compatibility and all that without mining. It is adapted to today’s world: mobile, connected and transparent. Ultimately, we want to give all content creators and their communities more power by eliminating middlemen and enabling authors to “distribute” directly to users, said TRON founder Justin Sun.

Keeping Seeders at the Bitcoin secret

Once the TRON blockchain has been implemented in the torrent system, peers should be able to exchange Bitcoin secret with each other. The reason for this is that there is no Bitcoin secret for torrent users to seed data sets, i.e. to upload them completely in the network over a longer period of time. With TRON, uploaders should be able to earn tokens by seeding. Those who provide more bandwidth and storage space will earn more. Leechers, i.e. downloaders, should be able to offer amounts if they want to receive a certain file faster. The whole network should become faster and more durable.

The Tron tokens (TRX) do not work with the proof-of-work mechanism, which means that nobody has to do crypto currency mining when implementing torrents. Instead, TRX works with the delegated proof-of-stake mechanism. Here, a system of witnesses and delegates provides reliable validation of each block.

No need to make the switch
If the blockchain complements the Bittorrent network, there should be no user compulsion. According to TRON, nobody has to participate in the token economy. The technology is backward compatible, which means that file sharers don’t have to change clients or install extensions to continue leaching and seeding. The plan is to implement the new technology first in desktop applications and later in mobile apps. Just like BitTorrent, Project Atlas should be open source, so that third party vendors can integrate the system into their clients.

TRON’s Project Atlas and the introduction of tokens into the BitTorrent network continue to provide material for discussion. If Leecher Seeder pays for faster data transfers, this could lead to an imbalance in which the current free data exchange gradually dies. On the other hand, by creating monetary incentives, the peer-to-peer network could actually grow and much more data could become available than before. We will know more when the first torrent client with TRON extension appears.

Confusion about South Korea – Is a Bitcoin ban actually coming?

Since the early morning hours of today’s Thursday, news has been circulating that the South Korean government wants to start drafting a law to ban the trade of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. We have taken a closer look at these reports and are now classifying them.

South Korea forbids Bitcoin – so or similarly it sounded today from many different sides

The reason for this was the statement of the South Korean Minister of Justice Park Sang-ki, that he wants to issue a law that forbids the trade with crypto currencies in the country. Since the South Korean government has strong reservations about digital currencies, his ministry is already preparing such a law. This is being done in close coordination with the Ministry of Finance and the Korean regulatory authority.

At first, these events are reminiscent of the situation in China in September last year. While the government of the People’s Republic had initially banned Initial Coin Offerings in cooperation with the Chinese central bank PBoC, it followed up a week later and also announced the closure of the crypto exchanges located in China. South Korea quickly adopted the Chinese ICO ban, and now the East Asian state also seems to be thinking about the second part of the “China bomb”.

Then as now, the market reacted sensitively to the news and turned red almost all the time

However, the fall today is by far not as extreme as it was in September. If prices then fell by 30-50% in rows, causing the market to lose a third of its capital, the current case is very moderate and in most cases in the single-digit minus range. Moreover, today’s market capitalisation cannot be compared with that of the past, as much has happened in the crypto market since September.

Nevertheless, South Korea remains an important market for crypto currencies, it is estimated that up to 20 % of global crypto trade is conducted in Korea, and global exchanges with Bithumb or Coinone operate on the peninsula. The influence of the South Korean market was recently painfully experienced by Ripple, whose share price collapsed dramatically after Coinmarketcap took the market volume traded in Korea off the calculation.

There are, however, increasing signs that the announced regulation may turn out to be less bad than it is now being inflated by the media. Not only are prices currently recovering, but the question also arises as to what the general announcement of a Minister of Justice actually means in concrete terms. Unlike China, South Korea is not an autocratically governed one-party state, but has a parliament that passes laws. In addition, there does not yet seem to be an exact definition of the law, which is why it is not yet known what a possible restriction on trade in crypto currencies should look like at all. The role of the South Korean Ministry of Finance also seems unclear – local media report that representatives of the Ministry of Finance would not support the Minister of Justice’s proposals. Already in December the option of a crypto ban was on the table – but it was decided against.

And finally, the comparison with China doesn’t seem that scary either: after the ban on crypto exchanges in the People’s Republic, the largest Exchanges settled in the neighbouring Hong Kong Special Administrative Zone, from where trade in and with crypto currencies could continue as usual. Recently even a court judgement in China provided for attention, which granted the humans in China the right to trade crypto currencies. Reason enough, therefore, to look forward calmly to the current reports from South Korea.