Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief:

• IBM surveyed 200 global banks and financial institutions as part of two recently released studies.
• The widespread use of Blockchain could lead to more secure, efficient banking experiences.

Recent reports by IBM have revealed that by 2017, 15 percent of big banks worldwide and 14 percent of major financial institutions will be using Blockchain technology.

“One of the most interesting questions to me is whether we can figure out how to implement a proof of stake consensus mechanism in a large decentralized trustless public blockchain (ie Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc).”

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Worried about security for your bitcoin in the face of quantum computing? According to computer researchers, there’s no reason to be.

_{Source: https://hacked.com/breathe-easy-bitcoiners-quantum-computing…encryption}

Some people assume that once quantum computing comes along modern encryption technologies will be outpowered. But experts are starting to posit that hash functions and asymmetric encryption could defend not only against modern computers, but also against quantum attackers from the future.

Continue reading “Bitcoin users relax: Quantum computing no match for SHA-2 encryption” »

By now, most Bitcoin and Blockchain enthusiasts are aware of four looming issues that threaten the conversion of Bitcoin from an instrument of academics, criminal activity, and closed circle communities into a broader instrument that is fungible, private, stable, ubiquitous and recognized as a currency—and not just an investment unit or a transaction instrument.

These are the elephants in the room:

• Unleashing high-volume and speedy transactions
• Governance and the concentration of mining influence among pools, geography or special interests
• Privacy & Anonymity
• Dwindling mining incentives (and the eventual end of mining). Bitcoin’s design eventually drops financial incentives for transaction validation. What then?

As an Op-Ed pundit, I value original content. But the article, below, on Bitcoin fungibility, and this one on the post-incentive era, are a well-deserved nod to inspired thinking by other writers on issues that loom over the cryptocurrency community.

This article at Coinidol comes from an unlikely source: Jacob Okonya is a graduate student in Uganda. He is highly articulate, has a keen sense of market economics and the evolution of technology adoption. He is also a quick study and a budding columnist.

Continue reading “Diminishing Bitcoin Mining Rewards” »

I was pointed to this article by Jon Matonis, Founding Director, Bitcoin Foundation. I was sufficiently moved to highlight it here at Lifeboat Foundation, where I am a contributing writer.

On Fungibility, Bitcoin, Monero and ZCash … [backup]

This is among the best general introductions I have come across on traceability and the false illusion of privacy. The explanation of coin mixing provides and excellent, quick & brief overview.

Regarding transaction privacy, a few alt-coins provide enhanced immunity or deniability from forensic analysis. But if your bet is on Bitcoin (as it must be), the future is headed toward super-mixing and wallet trading by desgin and by default. Just as the big email providers haved added secure transit,
Bitcoin will eventually be fully randomized and anonymized per trade and even when assets are idle. It’s not about criminals; it’s about protecting business, government and individuals. It’s about liberty and our freedoms. _{[Continue below image]}

Continue reading “Bitcoin Fungibility: A Benefit of privacy & anonymity” »

” … the ECB urged EU lawmakers to tighten proposed new rules on digital currencies such as bitcoin …”

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California Space Center (CSC) founder Eva Blaisdell announced in a press release sent to CoinReport the launch of “Copernic,” a blockchain-based, finance-focused rights management system developed for the space industry.

Named after legendary Polish astronomer Copernicus, Copernic will provide the infrastructure for the future space economy and ecosystem to be built upon, said CSC.

Continue reading “California Space Center announces blockchain system for space economy” »

If the Defense Department is looking to implement blockchain, other organizations may quickly follow suit. Blockchain technology helps guarantee that information has a timestamp and recorded whenever any change happens, ensuring data can be trusted in real time. In DARPA’s case, blockchain technology could help track attempted data breaches.

“Whenever weapons are employed … it tends to be a place where data integrity in general is incredibly important,” Booher said. “So nuclear command and control, satellite command and control, command and control in general, [information integrity] is very important.”

In September, DARPA awarded a $1.8 million contract to computer security firm Galois, asking it to verify a specific type of blockchain technology from a company called Guardtime. If the verification goes well, the military could become one of a growing number of industries and institutions using blockchain to help ensure the security of their operations.

Continue reading “DARPA investigating blockchain for nuclear weapons, satellite security” »

Since they were first theorized by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers have promised to bring about a new era of computing. It is only relatively recently that theory has translated into significant real-world advances, with the likes of Google, NASA and the CIA working towards building a quantum computer. Computer scientists are now warning that the arrival of the ultra-powerful machines will cripple current encryption methods and as a result bring a close to the great bitcoin experiment—collapsing the technological foundations that bitcoin is built upon.

“Bitcoin is definitely not quantum computer proof,” Andersen Cheng, co-founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Post Quantum, tells Newsweek. “Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.”

The danger quantum computers pose to bitcoin, Cheng explains, is in the cryptography surrounding what is known as the public and private keys—a set of numbers used to facilitate transactions. Users of bitcoin have a public key and a private key. In order to receive bitcoin, the recipient shares the public key with the sender, but in order to spend it they need their private key, which only they know. If somebody else is able to learn the private key, they can spend all the bitcoin.

Continue reading “Will Quantum Computers Kill Bitcoin?” »