Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents – e-Residency Blog | Medium

August 23, 2017

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has a keen interest in Estonia’s development as a digital nation and has provided valuable feedback for the estcoin proposal.

He believes estcoins could be used to incentivise investors to support the success of a country in a way that is not currently possible through existing means of raising international finance.
“An ICO within the e-Residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together,” says Buterin.

“Additionally if these estcoins are issued on top of a blockchain (they could possibly be issued in multiple formats at the same time, nothing wrong with this) then it would become easy and convenient to use them inside of smart contracts and other applications.”

Source: Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents – e-Residency Blog | Medium

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The IRS Has Been Using Bitcoin Tracking Software Since 2015 | CoinDesk

August 23, 2017

The IRS states in the documentation that it’s using the software to “trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy,” going on to explain:

“This is necessary to identify and obtain evidence on individuals using bitcoin to either launder money or conceal income as part of tax fraud or other Federal crimes.”

Source: The IRS Has Been Using Bitcoin Tracking Software Since 2015 – CoinDesk

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Suppliers and retailers will use blockchain to keep food fresh | Engadget

August 23, 2017

IBM has joined with a group of food supply companies and retailers to use the computing company’s blockchain tech to keep food fresh. Currently, it can take up to two weeks to track down the source of contaminated foodstuffs. But just like tracking cryptocurrency transactions all over the world, this consortium will harness IBM’s enterprise blockchain services to give its members access to a constantly-updating ledger of food, from source to store.

2:05 We believe that transparency is the
2:07 ultimate goal. Blockchain will give us the
2:09 ability to not only track where food
2:11 came from but how was it produced. Was it produced safely?
2:14 Was it produced responsibly? Is it
2:16 sustainably grown? How many dates of
2:18 shelf sites are left on that product? The
2:19 food system is a shared responsibility.
2:21 And for blockchain and traceability and
2:23 transparency
2:24 to work we need a lot of
2:25 people working together.

Source: Suppliers and retailers will use blockchain to keep food fresh | Engadget

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ILTA 2017: Where Have all the Lawyers Gone?

August 18, 2017

This confirms what I see more and more: Lawyers from small firms are willing to look under the hood, to get engaged with technology and to look for ways to innovate and disrupt. Big firms rely on “staff” and often do little to engage in understanding the changes driving the profession. At its core, many big firm lawyers, who in many ways should be leading the profession, don’t find technology and legal change and disruption all that important. At the end of the day, this is the real and fundamental problem.

Source: ILTA 2017: Where Have all the Lawyers Gone?

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Former Paypal COO Discusses Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, Argues ICOs Are Threat to VCs

August 17, 2017

Former paypal COO, David Sacks, discussed bitcoin and cryptocurrency during a recent interview with CNBC. During the interview, Sacks articulated that bitcoin is fulfilling the vision for a digital payment network originally held by Paypal, and expressed his belief that cryptocurrencies pose a significant threat to the venture capital sector.

Source: Former Paypal COO Discusses Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, Argues ICOs Are Threat to VCs

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Is Blockchain Technology the Biggest Disruption in Law? | Big Law Business

August 17, 2017

In the legal profession, quite a bit of time is spent researching and litigating whether a valid contract existed and, if it did, what the actual terms of the contract were. Traditionally stored on a single server with a single party having privileged control, most contracts are subject to questions of trust and the handling of the data. Blockchain – basically a distributed ledger, or list, of entries much like a stock ledger – breaks the information up into nodes across different servers and that can only be adjusted by an agreement of involved parties and, once updated, cannot be retroactively altered.

“Law and money have always evolved together. We are at a major change point of that evolution,” Alber added. “It seems probable that blockchain will become a basic infrastructure for process management inside law firms. It’s an important time and we should be paying attention to it.”

Source: Is Blockchain Technology the Biggest Disruption in Law? | Big Law Business

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99% of ICO’s are complete garbage and I will tell you why. | Ameer Rosic | Pulse | LinkedIn

August 17, 2017

ICO Formula. A simple three step check list for you to use.

#1 What is your Token Utility?
Ask yourself this questions. If you take away your token does your business fall apart? If the answer is no, then you don’t need a token.
…
#2. Cryptoeconomics
This ensures the security and usability of your token to be valid.
…
#3 Security
At this stage, you become a red target for hackers to attack you and trust me they will. Every week people are getting hacked and millions are stolen.

Source: 99% of ICO’s are complete garbage and I will tell you why. | Ameer Rosic | Pulse | LinkedIn

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Blockchain is Eating Wall Street | Alex Tapscott | TEDxSanFrancisco – YouTube

August 11, 2017

Trust is the expectation that the other party will abide by their commitments. That they will act with integrity. And it’s been very difficult to get people to do that. What if we could program that into the fabric of our economy? What if we had a new protocol, a trust protocol on top of which we could build any kind of business? So it’s an exciting time. One fraught with peril but also lots of possibilities. Because it appears that once again the technology genie has been unleashed from the bottle. Summoned by an unknown person or persons with unclear motives at a very uncertain time in history. This genie is once again at our disposal to broker, to fix a broken system and to transform the economic power grid and the old order of human affairs for the better if we will it.

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Tokens, Tokens and More Tokens – The Control

August 9, 2017

Tokens enable Internet tribes to emerge not in the form of traditional companies as we know them, but instead in a new type of organization called a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). A DAO is best described as a group of people bound together not by a legal entity and formal contracts, but instead by cryptographic tokens (incentives) and fully transparent rules that are written into the software.

There will be a variety of blockchain-based tokens in the future and it’s possible that when regulations are clearly established, traditional assets like stocks and bonds will be tokenized on blockchains. But for now, there are two legitimate types of blockchain-based tokens that bind participants in DAOs:

Usage tokens: A token that is required to use a service
Work tokens: A token that gives users the right to contribute work to a DAO and earn in exchange for their work

If you’re building a network-based Internet product, forming a decentralized autonomous organization, implementing a blockchain-based token into the product and structuring the token as a usage or work token is likely to be a winning business model.

Source: Tokens, Tokens and More Tokens – The Control

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