I got about 40 million of these Lite tokens.  I'm waiting for the Decemeber conversion to ERC20 tokens!

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has said that cryptocurrencies are not "mature" enough to be regulated.

Speaking at a press conference last week, CNBC reports, Draghi told reporters:

    "With anything that's new, people have great expectations and also great uncertainty. Right now, we think that – especially as far as bitcoins and cryptocurrencies are concerned – we don't think the technology is mature for our consideration."

Through the RNS, the Kremlin’s press service formally announced a decision which will see ICOs included in regulatory statutes “on the basis of ” IPOs.

In addition, the government may now legally define the status of various terms related to what the Kremlin describes as “digital technology.”

These include so-called ‘distributed ledger technology’ alongside ‘cryptocurrency,’ ‘token’ and ‘smart contract.’

Ideas for a dedicated regulatory sandbox for fintech in partnership with the central bank should also surface by Dec. 20, RNS reports.

https://rns.online/finance/-Putin-poruchil-pravitelstvu-propisat-regulirovanie-ICO-na-zakonodatelnom-urovne-2017-10-24/

Samsung's new "upcycling" initiative will allow you to put a completely new operating system on your old phones to give them new life.

Smartphones are ubiquitous, but smartphone habits are as diverse as the people using them. I like to buy a flagship device, such as an iPhone X or Pixel 2, and use it for four or five years. Others buy into upgrade plans with their carrier that lets them change out their phone every year. But lots of people still buy a phone, keep it for a year or two, and then buy a new one; their old phone ends up in a closet, shoebox, or nightstand.

Many people save these old phones in case of emergency, but the vast majority of them never get used again, and eventually become worthless. The phone-in-the-closet phenomenon has become a hidden store of e-waste; a two-year-old phone still has value and is still a powerful device. And so it's great news that Samsung is starting a new "Upcycling" initiative that is designed to turn old smartphones and turn them into something brand new.

Behold, for example, this bitcoin mining rig, made out of 40 old Galaxy S5 devices, which runs on a new operating system Samsung has developed for its upcycling initiative.

Samsung premiered this rig, and a bunch of other cool uses for old phones, at its recent developer's conference in San Francisco. Upcycling involves repurposing old devices instead of breaking them down for parts of reselling them. The people at Samsung's C-Lab—an engineering team dedicated to creative projects—showed off old Galaxy phones and assorted tablets stripped of Android software and repurposed into a variety of different objects.

The team hooked 40 old Galaxy S5's together to make a bitcoin mining rig, repurposed an old Galaxy tablet into a ubuntu-powered laptop, used a Galaxy S3 to monitor a fishtank, and programed an old phone with facial recognition software to guard the entrance of a house in the form of an owl.

Samsung declined to answer specific questions about the bitcoin mining rig, but an information sheet at the developer's conference noted that eight galaxy S5 devices can mine at a greater power efficiency than a standard desktop computer (not that too many people are mining bitcoin on their desktops these days).

It's all very cool and Samsung plans to release both the software it used to unlock the phones as well as the various plans for the projects online for free. "This innovative platform provides an environmentally responsible way for old Galaxy mobile devices to breathe new life, providing new possibilities and potential extended value for devices that might otherwise be forgotten in desk drawers or discarded." Robin Schultz, a spokesperson for Samsung, told me in an email.

Upcycling is a great way to keep old devices alive and it can't easily happen without the original manufacturer's support. "The challenge with keeping old electronics running a long time is software," Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, told me over the phone. "With phones in particular, the old software is insecure and doesn't run the new apps. So the question is, if you have this perfectly functional piece of hardware that doesn't have good software anymore and you want to keep it running for ten years, how do you do that?"

Wiens and iFixit are good at answering that question. His site is an open source resource for people looking to fix their electronics themselves. Wiens and his team are helping Samsung repair old S3s to use for the upcycling project. "You couldn't really do this as a third party," he told me. "What [Samsung] built is a layer between the hardware and you being able to install anything you want on it. It's a step lower than jailbreaking, it's removing Android entirely."

Samsung's upcycling project has a placeholder github with a video explaining its process. "They're setting up a maker magazine style portfolio of projects," Wiens explained. The site will work by allowing users to download software that removes Android and opens the devices up to other forms of software. From there, users can browse a wide variety of homebrew software and projects.

The platform will be open, so users can make and upload their own projects and software once it launches. In an example from a Samsung promotional video, a user downloaded fish monitoring software to an old Galaxy S3 and ordered the sensors for the water right from the website. After it's all set up, the user has a device that monitors the PH balance and heat of the fish tank. It even allows the pet owner to snap pics of their swimmers or turn the lights on and off.

Robust support for repurposing devices like this is unheard of in the tech industry. Companies such as Apple have made it hard for users to fix their own broken devices. In most cases, manufacturers would rather people just buy new devices than fix their old ones. It's a philosophy that's good for the company, but bad for the environment and bad for the customer.

"The best thing for the planet is for your old devices to be worth as much as possible," Wiens told me. "There's a direct correlation between secondary market value and environmental longevity. [Samsung] wants to maintain the value of their devices long term. If they know they're going to justify a new price of a thousand dollars for a new Note, it's easier to get people to spend that thousand dollars if they can resell it for five hundred."

I asked Samsung when the project would move off its placeholder site and onto the open source wonderland it imagined. "Stay tuned," it told me. It's an exciting idea and a philosophy other tech companies should embrace.

Source : https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/3kvdv9/samsung-upcycling-galaxy-s5-bitcoin-mining-rig


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MasterCard recently announced a way for businesses to make direct business to business (B2B) payments over their Blockchain technology-based network. The company has dubbed its offering “MasterCard Blockchain API,” and it will be debuted at the Money 20/20 Hackathon in Las Vegas in a few days.

Testing and validation have been completed, and the tech will officially be ready for customers’ use beginning next week. The announcement is a bit ironic after the company’s wholesale rejection of Bitcoin. I guess as the old saying goes, “monkey see, monkey do.”

#Advantage Blockchain
Blockchain technology has been raised as an excellent option for B2B transfers for a multitude of reasons. Blockchain transfers are fully private and secure, while at the same time offering flexibility and scalability for business transactions. According to one executive:

“By combining Mastercard Blockchain technology with our settlement network and associated network rules, we have created a solution that is safe, secure, auditable and easy to scale.”

While the solution is a major coup for Blockchain technology in general, the credit giant’s announcement may be seen as copycatting the technology of other systems and platforms. Blockchain technology has, until the past couple of years, been relegated to the fringes of the tech conversation. The sudden interest and application from enterprise-level corporations shows an awareness of the power of the systems already designed by other companies.

Source : https://cointelegraph.com/news/mastercard-announces-blockchain-b2b-payments-despite-rejection-of-bitcoin

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Russian Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov.

Said that the state issued cryptocurrency "CryptoRuble" cannot be mined and will be issued and controlled and maintained only by the authorities. The CryptoRubles can be exchanged for regular Rubles at any time, though if the holder is unable to explain where the CryptoRubles came from, a 13 percent tax will be levied. The same tax will be applied to any earned difference between the price of the purchase of the token and the price of the sale.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-russia-issuing-cryptoruble

"People get excited from big price movements, and Wall Street accommodates," he was quoted as saying. Describing bitcoin as a "real bubble," according to the publication, Buffett also criticized the idea of applying a value to bitcoin.

adding :
"You can’t value bitcoin because it’s not a value-producing asset."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-master-class-on-bitcoin-self-driving-vehicles-clean-energy-and-life-2017-10-26