Episode 211 - China goes bullish on blockchain, Uber Money is a thing, and.. happy birthday Bitcoin!

Come one, come all, to this week's Flagship Friday, where we cover the week's crypto news and happenings!

Today we're taking a look at Uber getting into the crypto world with Uber Money, we're taking a look at China that, in true China fashion, goes bullish on blockchain in the most authoritarian, orwellian way possible, and finally - we're celebrating! Big Daddy Bitcoin is 11 years old as of today! 

All of the above and more on today's episode!

Dive into the cryptoverse with us on this week's edition of Flagship Friday!

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• Rapid Fire
  • Bitcoin Is 11 Years Old!!
  • Mt. Gox Bitcoin Refunder Pushed Back Deadline to Spring 2020
  • Congressman Tom Emmer Introduces A Bill To Limit SEC's Reach
  • Substratum CEO bought a $1.5M house while tweeting about how everyone should buy SUB
  • A German engineering consultancy DMT has launched CERA, a blockchin-based certification scheme that tracks raw materials.
    • Volkswagen and the United Nations are on its advisory board in hopes that CERA can be a universal standard for the raw materials industry.

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• Uber Is Creating Its Own Payments Service Called Uber Money
  • On Monday, October 28th Uber launched it's own payments service called Uber Money initially aimed towards its 4 mill drivers.
  • Can store money, track transaction history and make electronic payments. One cool feature is the overdraft protection of up to $100. So if a driver is strapped for cash, they can fill up their tank with gas so they can go out and work.
  • No cryptocurrency element. Crypto can be murky with the law, and expensive and slow if transferring small amounts.
  • Financial firms have actually been improving their own tech to make mobile payments faster and cheaper.
  • Uber could one day offer a bank account to consumers.
  • “We wanted to help everybody understand that there’s a new part of Uber that’s focused on financial services, and that has a mission of giving people access to the type of financial services they were excluded from,” Uber Money head Peter Hazlehurst told CNBC.
  • Industry observers see this as a way to bind users to their platform to keep them engaged—a customer retention play as well.
• (Charting the course of Bitcoin, 11 years and counting)

  • Bitcoin white paper was published Oct 31 2008 (all we know about author is it wasn't CW)

  • coinbase blog post examining 11 indicators btc is gaining momentum, creating econ opportunity, increasing global utility

  • Comparisons with other tech

    • Email (1972) - Took till 1997 to surpass 10m people
    • TV (1927) - By the end of the 1940s only 2% of families had one
    • BTC (2008) - 27m in US by 2019, 9%

  • Google Trends

    • Interest has been spreading across the world, with countries taking turns on the top spot for highest relative interest
    • 2009, Austria had the highest relative interest, followed by Kazakhstan (2010), Estonia (2011), Finland (2012), Ghana (2015), Nigeria (2016), and South Africa (2017).
    • In 2018 more americans typed in Bitcoin than royal wedding or election results

  • Over 55,000 computers in 96 countries running full nodes

  • Buying $10/mo in btn over past 4 years (Oct 2015) would have a yield 595%

    • $480 to 3337...sponsored by coinbase =)

  • Demand for Bitcoin in economically volatile regions reached record highs in 2019

    • Local Bitcoins exchange volume in Venezuela, Argentina, & HK spiking

       

  • Okay so we all know Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain

    • Now at 108m terahashes per second
    • "Bitcoin is far and away the largest computational network ever created,"
      • Source is legit but had to check this claim
      • Multilple articles from 2013, 2015 talking about how many times more powerful than 500 supercomputers bitcoin was
• Get your cows, BUT ON BLOCKCHAIN
  • There's a lot of issue with supply chain, more than I ever knew.
  • Being launched by Wong Supermarket, which is apparently Chilean, you'll be able to scan your meat via an app, and see where its been.
  • There's a company behind this is called SUKU, which is a US based supply chain company with founders from Deloitte.
  • They're actually developing on the Quorum chain, which is the JP Morgan permissioned chain.
  • “You have a large group of consumers that want to buy sustainability, and want to buy transparent products from brands. But they don’t do it today – they don’t trust what the brands are saying. There’s a $1 trillion market sitting there for companies and brands to take if they can speak the same language as those consumers do.”
  • This would even track the animal welfare and everything. If they say "We have vaccinated every animal" it would then need to be confirmed by the correct observing party.
  • Apparently Wong is kinda like a Whole Foods, but it was bought by a conglomorate called Cencosud and people were pissed.
• WTF is going on with Bitmain
  • Bitmain is a huge mining firm, one of the biggest in existence.
  • They've ousted the co-founder and executive director - his name is Micree Ketuan Zhan.
  • Coindesk got the following from an anonymous source for an internal E-mail from Jihan Wu-
  • “Bitmain’s co-founder, chairman, legal representative and executive director Jihan Wu has decided to dismiss all roles of Ketuan Zhan, effective immediately. Any Bitmain staff shall no longer take any direction from Zhan, or participate in any meeting organized by Zhan. Bitmain may, based on the situation, consider terminating employment contracts of those who violate this note.”
  • There isn't any information on WHY.
  • He actually owned more shares than the more well known Jihan Wu .
  • There was an all hands meeting on Tuesday to discuss this, and CoinDesk was even able to get some info from that.
  • Wu had stepped away from Bitmain in December of 2018 as an active day to day participant, but obviously is back at it. Apparently the two had a massive falling out, and it resulted in what Wu described as a power struggle in the meeting, and they had been since 2015.
  • The major layoffs in 2018 were a key point of contention, Zhan didn't want to fire anyone, and Wu didn't see the company surviving if they didn't, so Zhan tried to seize control as the sole CEO at that time .
  • So he starts throwin shade, saying Zhan was insecure and he let him have his chainman role etc, but that this resulted in pulled credit lines, and calling up of credit. If Bitcoin hadn't bounced back, maybe there was no saving the company after that.
  • Bitmain has had declining hashrate share and it continues to do so.
  • Apparently Zhan wanted to move into AI, which isn't really their niche and wanted to raise funds and dedicate current funds to do it. I guess this was the big divide.
  • He's also banned from the offices.
  • Maybe this will hurr their chances at their planned US IPO?

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Crypto Around the World

• China goes bullish on blockchain
  • China Now Banning Anything Calling Blockchain A Scam
  • Business Insider article
  • Xi said last week that China should accelerate the development of blockchain technology
    • called for greater research and investment
    • Quoted saying it will play an important role in next round of tech innovation and industrial transformation
    • And that China wanted to gain an edge over other major countries in R&D
    • and in a wider goal, demanded deep integration with other information technologies , including AI, big data, & IOT.
  • Official at Central Bank urging commercial banks to 'step up their application'
    • So of course that caused a market boom
    • People's Daily (State newspaper) tried to tamper enthusiasm
    • “Blockchain’s future is here but we must remain rational, The rise of blockchain technology was accompanied by that of cryptocurrencies, but innovation in blockchain technology does not mean we should speculate in virtual currencies.”
• Croatia's UBIK NGO Moves Governance To Blockchain
  • Starting Nov 1st Croatia's NGO is moving it's governance onto the Ethereum blockchain in the form of a DAO using Aragon.
  • UBIK is a Croatian blockchain and cryptocurrency association. If you belong to it you will have the right to 10 reputation tokens
  • Board members will get 100 tokens
  • UBIK executed a blockchain vote earlier in the year but it was using QR codes in a temporary wallet not on Ethereum. They were trying to keep it simple for non-technical users.
  • UBIK requires a proper blockchain wallet to use like Metamask or Frame. Less straightforward so there might be some onboarding for the less savvy users.
  • DAO will be used to group decisions and will be first blockchain in the world to do such a thing in an official capacity. DAO will also keep the funds in DeFi earning 5-10% annually to offset fees for the org.

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• Exit

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