Lifeboat Foundation

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb 5 (Reuters) — The Federal Reserve is looking at a broad range of issues around regulations and protections for digital payments and currencies, including the costs and potential benefits of issuing its own digital currency, Governor Lael Brainard said on Wednesday.

“By transforming payments, digitalization has the potential to deliver greater value and convenience at lower cost,” Brainard said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The speech did not touch on interest rates or the current economic outlook.

“But there are risks,” Brainard said, in a partial reprisal of her own and other global central bankers’ worries about the rise of private digital payment systems and currencies, including Facebook’s Libra digital currency project. “Some of the new players are outside the financial system’s regulatory guardrails, and their new currencies could pose challenges in areas such as illicit finance, privacy, financial stability, and monetary policy transmission.”

Cue in MolochDAO. Launched as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) by SpankChain co-founder and chief executive officer Ameen Soleimani earlier this year, MolochDAO puts members’ ether (ETH) tributes toward funding Ethereum projects that members vote on.

The can-do, do-it-yourself attitude of the group has proven popular in the Ethereum community and has already influenced several spinoffs, leading some to credit Moloch with a resurgence in Ethereum DAOs.

On August 16th, the DAO’s associated Twitter account reflected on what the group has accomplished in its first six months in operation.

O.o!

Portfolio manager and crypto analyst Mati Greenspan says billions of dollars are essentially sitting on the sidelines, ready to move into Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and the altcoin market at large.

Greenspan is using data from the crypto research firm Messari, which shows that the total value of all stablecoins is just shy of $6 billion. Stablecoins are digital currencies that are pegged to traditional assets like fiat. They’re designed to maintain a steady value and offer crypto traders an easy way to sidestep the extreme volatility of the crypto markets.

Continue reading “Nearly $6,000,000,000 Ready to Move Into Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Altcoin Markets: Crypto Analyst Mati Greenspan” »

“Everything is immensely conven…

China To Test Its Own Digital Currency. Will It Rival The Dollar Someday? Bitcoin promises users anonymity, but transactions using China’s digital currency would be tracked by its central bank. Experts say it could someday rival the dollar in international payments.

Continue reading “China To Test Digital Currency. Could It End Up Challenging The Dollar Globally?” »

While the cryptocurrency didn’t perform that well in 2019, Ethereum (ETH) is one of the best-performing digital assets of all time, rallying from an ICO price under a dollar to the $160 where it is today.

Despite this jaw-dropping gain in and of itself, investors in the cryptocurrency believe it will go higher. So much higher than one analyst laid out a case for the cryptocurrency’s value to surge to $1 trillion, 13 digits.

For some perspective, a trillion-dollar Ethereum market capitalization at current price levels would equate to about a $9,000 ETH price, with the current supply in mind. The cryptocurrency reaching such lofty prices would require it to rally by over 5,000%. Crazy, right?

No matter how cheap or fast paid internet service gets, the Internet of Things (IOT) won’t take wings until we have ubiquitous access to a completely decentralized, open-standard network that does not require a provider subscription. This month, we may be a step closer.

Let’s talk about internet connected gadgets. Not just your phone or PC—and not even a microwave oven or light bulb. Instead, think of everyday objects that are much smaller and much less expensive. Think of things that seemingly have no need to talk with you.

Now think of applications in which these tiny things need to communicate with each other and not just with you. Think of the cost of this “thing” compared to the added cost of continuous communications. Do so many things really need to talk in the first place?

First, there were Trackers…

Continue reading “IOT needs decentralized, long-range connectivity. It’s finally coming” »

A hacking group believed to be from North Korea is reportedly stepping up its game to continue its cryptocurrency stealing campaigns.

In a statement published yesterday, security researchers from Kaspersky say they found evidence to suggest Lazarus has made significant changes to its attack methodology.

According to Kaspersky, the hacking group is taking “more careful steps” and is employing “improved tactics and procedures” to steal cryptocurrency.

Continue reading “North Korean hacker group Lazarus is using Telegram to steal cryptocurrency” »

Crypto in the 2020s: scalable and private blockchains, barbell adoption, crypto as a core part of tech, and adoption by institutions and governments.

In September 2018, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres gave a speech on the global lack of trust, or what he called a “trust deficit disorder.” He just gave a similar speech, this time discussing blockchain specifically. The organization isn’t just motivated to build a more sustainable world or reducing waste from their supply chain, but as American support has waned, donors are demanding assurance their donations are being spent for the purpose they were intended.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres says the intergovernmental giant needs to embrace blockchain. In a statement provided to Forbes by the secretary-general’s office, Guterres touted the technology first made popular by bitcoin as a crucial component of the organization that generate’s $50 billion in revenue annually.

Coming at a time when the president of China has touted blockchain as a national priority, and the $6 billion United Nations Children’s Fund has started accepting bitcoin and ethereum donations for some of its projects, the statement from Guterres shows that cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology is being seriously explored at the highest levels of the largest organizations in the world.

Continue reading “Secretary-General Says United Nations Must Embrace Blockchain” »