Miners have now extracted 90 percent of privacy-focused
cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) and will net the remainder by May
2022, data from monitoring resource Monero Blocks confirmed
Dec. 20.
Monero — whose developers place anonymity and untethered
usage of coins as a priorities — will have an ultimate supply of
18.4 million XMR.

So far, a total of 16,659,407 XMR is available.
Unlike Bitcoin (BTC) — which has a fixed supply once all coins are
mined — Monero will continue generating tiny 0.6 XMR block
rewards infinitely after 2022, a feature known as “tail emission.”
This is to ensure miners have an incentive to keep the network
secure, reference bank Moneropedia explains, stating:

“Because of the dynamic blocksize, competition between
miners will cause fees to decrease. If mining is not
profitable due to a high cost and low reward, miners lose
their incentive and will stop mining, reducing the security
of the network. Tail emission ensures that a dynamic block
size and fee market can develop.”

Despite the feature, it is unlikely Monero will become an
inflationary cryptocurrency, due to the technically unlimited
issuance of 0.6 XMR per block. Lost or burned coins will likely
equal more than the block reward within the same period.
After controversy over tail emission during this year’s contentious
hard fork , Monero has fought off negative publicity, despite its
anonymity meanwhile making it a favorite of hackers and
cybercriminals.

As Cointelegraph reported this fall, ‘ cryptojacking’ — the process
by which hackers use a device to secretly and remotely mine
cryptocurrency without the owner’s knowledge — has jumped in
prevalence in 2018. Cryptojackers generally prefer to mine
anonymity-focused coins, such as Monero, according to reports.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/

Ethereum venture studio ConsenSys is spinning out or cutting off
funding for a number of its portfolio startups, or “spokes” in
company parlance, three sources with knowledge of the situation
tell CoinDesk.
According to a report published Thursday by The Verge, roughly 50
percent of ConsenSys’ 1,200-person workforce could be let go as a
result of the move. CoinDesk was not able to independently
confirm that figure, but multiple sources have said additional staff
cuts are impending.
Thursday’s news follows the announcement earlier this month of
roughly 150 layoffs , or 13 percent of the company’s staff.
CoinDesk reported last week that more cuts were likely, citing
current and former employees.
One source told CoinDesk that ConsenSys is presenting some of
its spokes with an option to discontinue work with a severance
package or seek outside investment. The company has declined to
answer questions about how the spokes will be jettisoned.
It’s perhaps the most dramatic development at the company since
founder Joe Lubin first announced his vision for “ConsenSys 2.0″
late last month.
Whereas previously “it was good enough to do cool projects,”
Lubin told CoinDesk earlier this month, ConsenSys 2.0 will be
different: “We are going to focus much more rigorously across the
different business lines on accountability, that includes financial
sustainability.”
The decentralized company has grown rapidly, with a major hub in
Brooklyn and outposts spanning the globe. A recent profile
published by Forbes estimated the company’s annual burn rate at
over $100 million.
“At best this is just ordinary course fat trimming given the
company grew its workforce by at least 300% in the past year to
1,200 people,” said investor Jeanna Liu in a comment published by
Quartz. “At worst this could indicate internal disorg and poor
currency risk hedging (ie not converting sufficient ether to fiat).
Let’s hope it’s the former.”

https://www.coindesk.com/

Cryptocurrency businesses find it “almost impossible” to get
insurance and this is deterring investors, Big Four auditor
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) told Reuters Dec. 20.
In comments focusing on the global fintech market, Henri
Arslanian — the firm’s fintech and crypto leader for Asia —
highlighted the contradictory status quo industry businesses face
trying to attract funding.
“Most institutionally-minded crypto firms want to buy proper
insurance, and in many cases, getting adequate insurance
coverage is a regulatory or legal requirement,” he told the
publication, continuing:

“However, getting such coverage is almost impossible,
despite their best efforts.”

The paradox is made more painful by investors’ persisting high
levels of interest in getting into the space, Reuters adds, quoting a
September survey that placed such interest at 72 percent among
institutional investors.
Following a year of heavy losses for participants and issuers of
initial coin offerings (ICOs ) in particular, investment and long-term
prospects of crypto operators has come under the spotlight once
more.
Mining giant Bitmain — whose reported plans to conduct an initial
public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong were revealed in June — has
faced multiple reports of misgivings on the part of both local
regulators and prospective host, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
(HKEX).
At the same time, those involved in funding crypto businesses,
such as cryptocurrency merchant bank Galaxy Digital, maintain
that the entry of institutional investors is both guaranteed and a
major step to legitimizing the market.

https://cointelegraph.com/

Sunita Sunchakar, an engineer and operations manager for the
‘Monero Talk’ YouTube show was recently interviewed by
Monica Mizzi to discuss the blockchain industry and women’s
involvement in it.
Sunchakar shared her positive experiences of working in the
industry and actively encourages women who are interested in
getting involved to “go for it” as this is how you overcome
barriers.

Statistics do show there is a large gap between the number of
men and women participating in the industry. However, is
constantly highlighting statistics like this the best approach or
is it putting too much emphasis on the negative?
Sunchakar’s Experience in the
Blockchain Space
Sunchakar was introduced to Bitcoin in 2015 by a friend and
found it interesting and confusing at the same time.
She realized the amazing potential of the technology as she
began to understand it. She sees the technology as a way of
bringing balance to a society controlled by the few and
powerful.
Sunchakar said:

“Most of us don’t realize that we do not have control
of our daily lives, that many key items are controlled
by other people and that there is no way around it. I
believe this ‘Cryptocurrency Revolution’ came out of
necessity to try and take back power by being
censorship resistant.”

She believes that blockchain technology can be used to avoid
data breaches and reduce banks’ control of everyday
transactions. Sunchakar was involved with Monero in late
2016 and “realized that Monero was not like any of the others
[altcoins] .” She is working with several Monero enthusiasts to
organize Monero meetups.
She was attracted to Monero because:

“it has all the parameters that Bitcoin is trying to
achieve: it is private, untraceable, and fungible. These
are the perfect qualities of a cryptocurrency created to
promote its goal of decentralization and that could
potentially be used as a peer-to-peer digital
currency.”

She also likes the fact Monero’s growth is not largely driven by
aggressive marketing.

Women in Crypto
Sunchakar has not experienced any disadvantages from being
a female in the industry and says that “it has been welcoming
and great so far.” The environment is conducive for anyone to
contribute no matter the gender.

She said
“At the end of the day, it has to do with what skills
and ideas you bring to the table, and if it has a
positive impact on the project, it will get recognized.”

She says that the push to get women involved in crypto tends
to achieve the opposite. The best way to go about it is to have
a collaborative approach from both men and women.
She is not sure why participation from women is relatively
lower but it could be because of a number of reasons. Some
women may be less vocal, others prefer to be anonymous, and
others may not be getting enough attention from the media.
She agrees with women who don’t want to be labeled as
“women in blockchain.” She says that there is a “need to focus
and write about the accomplishments of women rather than
knit-pick on the gender gap.” This is an industry where people
are recognized based on the merits of their contributions.
She believes discussions should not be centered mainly on
gender inequality but finding women who are doing great work
behind the scenes and getting their work exposed to the
public. She says that the Monero community doesn’t
discriminate – it supports feasible ideas.

“Of course, you will be exposed to trolls and sexism (that
happens in every environment), but that has to do with that
individual’s insecure character and shouldn’t be a
generalization of all men,” said Sunchakar as she pointed out
that some issues are the same everywhere.
Her advice to other women who want to get into crypto is
simple and practical:

“Just do it! The information out there can be
extremely overwhelming, but if you take the time, you
will eventually understand it. In this space, you feel
like there is a never ending amount of information that
you will never catch up with, but that is how everyone
feels so don’t ever feel discouraged!”

https://blokt.com/news/

CryptoPotato recently sat down with the co-founder of Ethereum
and the founder of the popular cryptocurrency Cardano, Charles
Hoskinson to discuss recent events in the crypto space. During the
interview with IOHKs CEO, several topics were brought up
including what makes Cardano different from everything else, the
blockchain potential in Africa and the current state of blockchain
protocols.
The first question that Hoskinson was asked was how Cardano is
different from Ethereum and what makes it unique. To this, the co-
founder said:

“When I was working at Ethereum, we had a lot of options ab
how much innovation we wanted to put forward. We cre
Ethereum with the idea that if we have a programming langu
attached to a blockchain, this could push out more complic
financial transactions and we would see what the space would
with that. We assumed that we would see a rehash of what
been done with Namecoin, Mastercoin, and Colorcoin – that w
form the dominant use case for Ethereum for the next 4-5 ye
And to a certain extent, we were right.”

Furthermore, Hoskinson added:

“There is definitely room to keep the innovation going, take w
we’ve developed with Ethereum and architecturally br
Ethereum apart. Then, develop two different independent syste
one is accounting, and the other is computation. So basically,
taking the lessons we’ve learned from Ethereum and from stud
Bitcoin and building a multi-layered system.”

A later question, Hoskinson was asked was regarding Cardano’s
involvement in blockchain adoption for Africa and he was asked to
explain more about this.

“Talking about supply chain management, right now we have
office in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and we are doing a lot of rese
on how to get coffee farmers into a blockchain setting. The l
government is quite keen on figuring out how we plan to take
million and a half Ethiopian coffee farmers and get them di
credentials. The next step is to model how coffee goes through
entire supply chain.”

In addition to this:

“So, the minute you can put these farmers into an immut
ledger like Hyperledger Fabric or Enterprise Cardano, they
have a real connection. This means that you can connect to
side chain and use Cardano for lending, remittances, insuranc
any of these types of financial products.”

Finally, Hoskinson was asked about where he sees Cardano going
next year

“In 2019, we are planning to catch up regarding functionality
utility, and at that point, we can release some protocols and s
the market how it gets done. We’re already starting to se
change in the industry from a research standpoint. For exampl
was at CCS, a cryptographic conference in Toronto. Usually, yo
go there and only see cryptographers. But I saw cryptocurre
companies as well, and they were presenting their research.”

Hoskinson finally adds:

“If we succeed, the only way to compete with Cardano will b
emulate our engineering, which means that the software qu
will dramatically increase in the entire space. If that’s our
accomplishment and Cardano doesn’t become a commer
success, that’s still great because it makes the world a be
place for everybody.”

Hoskinson also said that he is hoping that Cardano will stay very
competitive and that it will hopefully get back in the top five
cryptocurrencies in terms of the market cap next year too.

https://cryptodaily.co.uk/2018/12/

BBVA and the European Investment Bank Group (EIB) have
signed a synthetic securitisation of €1 billion on blockchain.
The agreement is the first of its kind in the European Union and the third
synthetic corporate loan securitisation signed by EIB and BBVA.

The DLT platform developed by BBVA was used to negotiate
this agreement, from the origination to the signing, and also
ensures “traceability and immutability”, so making the
documentation process “safer and more transparent”.
All the negotiation was recorded on the private blockchain
Hyperledger, while a hash or unique identifier of the signed
agreement were recorded on the public blockchain Ethereum
(testnet).

BBVA and EIB Group will also provide €360 million to finance
investments projects of Spanish SMEs and midcaps, for which
the EIB Group, formed by the European Investment Bank and
European Investment Fund (EIF), have granted BBVA a €60
million synthetic guarantee.
The agreement got support from the European Fund for
Strategic Investments (EFSI). BBVA says EFSI’s support
increases the EIB Group’s capacity to finance investment
projects with a higher risk profile.

In November 2017, EIB and BBVA provided €300 million to
finance the digitalisation of small Spanish businesses; in June
2016, they launched a €600 million credit line; and in 2015,
they approved a €1 billion credit line to help SMEs.
This synthetic development is another chapter in BBVA’s
blockchain progress.

Last week, BBVA and Porsche Holding Salzburg closed the
“first” acquisition term loan using the technology.
Prior to that, BBVA and Santander got involved in the
European Commission’s planned launch of the International
Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (IATBA) next
year.
In addition, BBVA delivered the first syndicated loan on the
technology; and joined a pilot test for improved issuing of
warrants .

https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/12/

* According to Ripple’s head of banking, Marjan
Delatinne, the reason why banks are hesitating to
adopt Ripple products is the lack of regulatory
clarity.
* Delatinne claims that the situation is more
comfortable for payment services and other financial
institutions.
* However, Ripple’s products and XRP itself can be
used for better liquidity management, which may
lead to the creation of a global economy through
cryptocurrency.

XRP has been a somewhat controversial cryptocurrency
for a long time now. There are even some who claim
that it might not be decentralized, that it is a security,
and alike. It is also judged by the crypto purists for
collaborating with banks. However, it appears that even
the banks are hesitant when it comes to adopting XRP
and its technology.
Marjan Delatinne, Ripple’s head of banking, has
recently commented on the current situation regarding
the role of XRP in the banking industry. According to
Delatinne’s statement, banks are not in a hurry to use
XRP or even its xRapid which is XRP-powered, because
of the lack of regulatory clarity.

How can Ripple change the finance industry
Delatinne commented on the issue during Frankfurt-
based Euro Finance Tech conference. On this occasion,
she openly stated that the reason behind not using
Ripple’s technology is the regulatory framework which
revolves around digital assets. In other words, the
structure is not clear enough for banks to be
comfortable, while payment service providers and
potentially other financial institutions are less governed
by such obligations.

As a result, banks are hesitant to adopt crypto-based
payment solutions, XRP-powered or otherwise.
Delatinne also mentioned XRP’s use cases in regards to
xRapid, explaining the process through an example of
someone sending $100 from the US to Mexico. With
Ripple product such as xRapid, doing so is instant and
simple, as cross-border payments are one of Ripple’s
and XRP’s primary use cases.
Thanks to its efforts, Ripple might change the way in
which liquidity is managed, at least when compared to
the current situation. By making use of xRapid, people
can learn how to build a global economy through
cryptocurrency, by just “using the costs associated with
the liquidity management.”

Due to regulation uncertainty, NO banking
institutions are using xRapid as of now, ONLY
payment service providers.
Marjan Delatinne, Ripple
NOV18 #XRP
pic.twitter.com/QeLxLQQaKJ
— Steven Diep (@DiepSanh) December 18, 2018

Ripple’s xRapid was a product expected to arrive for a
long time, which finally happened during San
Francisco’s Swell conference in October of this year.
Since then, Ripple was able to confirm at least three
payment providers that are willing to support the
system, including Cuallix, MercuryFX, as well as
Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union.
Furthermore, Ripple’s managing director of South Asia,
the Middle East, and North Africa, Navin Gupta, has
made a move to revolutionize the world of finance.
During the Bahrain-based BlockOn conference, he
talked about Ripple’s reasons for focusing on the
international payments sector.

According to him, Ripple’s goal is to try and solve all
the most significant problems regarding international
payments. After completing that task, the company will
be able to start focusing on other things as well. He
compared Ripple’s role in cross-border transactions to
Google’s role in internet searching. He also stated that
the goal is not only to do it, but to do it right, and to
earn the respect of people and their businesses.

https://cryptopotato.com/