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Bitcoin is Permanently Superior to Paper Money in Ways: German Business Magazine – CryptoCoinsNews

July 9, 2017 | Author: admin

Thorsten Polleit; image taken from authors website

While many mainstream media personalities and analysts remain skeptical about bitcoin (and often rehash misinformation), others are beginning to give cryptocurrency an honest appraisal.

The latest comes from leading German business magazine Wirtschafts Woche, which recentlypublished an article praising bitcoin.The Revolution of Cryptocurrency, written by economist Thorsten Polleit, argues that the advent of cryptocurrency set off a monetary revolution that could eventually supplant fiat national currencies.

Public fiat money, he explains, possesses four inherent flaws:

Polleit states that cryptocurrencies avoid these and other flaws due to market competition. As long as no currency has a state-mandated economic monopoly, consumer demand should favor better coins.

However, it should be noted that not all cryptocurrencies resist the flaws Polleit finds in fiat money. Many cryptocurrencies are inflationary, although their rate of inflation is generally fixed rather than variable. Cryptocurrency distribution models can also exhibit inequality, and there is much debate about what constitutes a fair coin/token dissemination method. That said, by divorcing monetary policy from the national government, one will avoid the final two flaws of public money.

Polleit believes consumer demand for bitcoin will likely increase as fiat money loses purchasing power and national governments reduce or even eliminate cash transactions. He foresees the potential for blockchain-based currencies to makeFiat money worthless.

Despite this bullish tone, Polleit urges investors to approach cryptocurrency speculation with caution. As he states (translated into English):

Whoever obtains [cryptocurrency] should know that he does not invest, but speculates. Unlike in the case of shares or bonds, they do not have a recognized and tested valuation formula the same also applies to raw materials or art objects. You can not even estimate whether the price you pay is justified with regard to the intrinsic value of the [coins].

For this reason, he seems to favor colored coins tied to physical assets, such as gold.

Diverging from other pro-bitcoin analysts, Polleit encourages investors to avoid currency speculation. The sensible investor, he says, should instead continue to invest in great companies and take a long-term approach to the markets. The monetary revolution may cause economic upheaval, but he explains that solid companies will continue to bring positive returns no matter what currencyor cryptocurrencythey use to transact business.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Technique for measuring and controlling electron state is a … – UCLA Newsroom

July 9, 2017 | Author: admin

During their research for a new paper on quantum computing, HongWen Jiang, a UCLA professor of physics, and Joshua Schoenfield, a graduate student in his lab, ran into a recurring problem: They were so excited about the progress they were making that when they logged in from home to their UCLA desktop which allows only one user at a time the two scientists repeatedly knocked each other off of the remote connection.

The reason for their enthusiasm: Jiang and his team created a way to measure and control the energy differences of electron valley states in silicon quantum dots, which are a key component of quantum computing research. The technique could bring quantum computing one step closer to reality.

Its so exciting, said Jiang, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute. We didnt want to wait until the next day to find out the outcome.

Quantum computing could enable more complex information to be encoded on much smaller computer chips, and it holds promise for faster, more secure problem-solving and communications than todays computers allow.

In standard computers, the fundamental components are switches called bits, which use 0s and 1s to indicate that they are off or on. The building blocks of quantum computers, on the other hand, are quantum bits, or qubits.

The UCLA researchers breakthrough was being able to measure and control a specific state of a silicon quantum dot, known as a valley state, an essential property of qubits. The research was published in Nature Communications.

An individual qubit can exist in a complex wave-like mixture of the state 0 and the state 1 at the same time, said Schoenfield, the papers first author. To solve problems, qubits must interfere with each other like ripples in a pond. So controlling every aspect of their wave-like nature is essential.

Silicon quantum dots are small, electrically confined regions of silicon, only tens of nanometers across, that can trap electrons. Theyre being studied by Jiangs lab and by researchers around the world for their possible use in quantum computing because they enable scientists to manipulate electrons spin and charge.

Besides electrons spin and charge, another of their most important properties is their valley state, which specifies where an electron will settle in the non-flat energy landscape of silicons crystalline structure. The valley state represents a location in the electrons momentum, as opposed to an actual physical location.

Scientists have realized only recently that controlling valley states is critical for encoding and analyzing silicon-based qubits, because even the tiniest imperfections in a silicon crystal can alter valley energies in unpredictable ways.

Imagine standing on top of a mountain and looking down to your left and right, noticing that the valleys on either side appear to be the same but knowing that one valley was just 1 centimeter deeper than the other, said Blake Freeman, a UCLA graduate student and co-author of the study. In quantum physics, even that small of a difference is extremely important for our ability to control electrons spin and charge states.

At normal temperatures, electrons bounce around, making it difficult for them to rest in the lowest energy point in the valley. So to measure the tiny energy difference between two valley states, the UCLA researchers placed silicon quantum dots inside a cooling chamber at a temperature near absolute zero, which allowed the electrons to settle down. By shooting fast electrical pulses of voltage through them, the scientists were able to move single electrons in and out of the valleys. The tiny difference in energy between the valleys was determined by observing the speed of the electrons rapid switching between valley states.

After manipulating the electrons, the researchers ran a nanowire sensor very close to the electrons. Measuring the wires resistance allowed them to gauge the distance between an electron and the wire, which in turn enabled them to determine which valley the electron occupied.

The technique also enabled the scientists, for the first time, to measure the extremely small energy difference between the two valleys which had been impossible using any other existing method.

In the future, the researchers hope to use more sophisticated voltage pulses and device designs to achieve full control over multiple interacting valley-based qubits.

The dream is to have an array of hundreds or thousands of qubits all working together to solve a difficult problem, Schoenfield said. This work is an important step toward realizing that dream.

The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office.

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Quantum Computing Record Broken – Wall Street Pit

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Researchers have been chasing after the dream of quantum computing for quite awhile now. And its easy to understand why.

Currently, conventional computers, even the fastest and most powerful ones, theoretically pale in comparison with quantum computers. And its mainly because of the way the respective computers process data.

A traditional computer uses bits that can only take on the form of either 1 or 0. On the other hand, a quantum computer uses qubits (short for quantum bits) which can take on the form of either 1 or 0, or 1 and 0 simultaneously. And it can do this via the bizarre quantum behavior known as superpositioning being able to be in two states at once. This extraordinary ability is what allows a quantum computer to process data much faster than a conventional computer as it can perform more than one calculation at a time. To be more specific, while at a superposition, one qubit can do two calculations; two qubits can do four calculations; three qubits can do eight calculations; and so on.

By itself, the very idea of superpositioning is already hard to ponder. What makes it even more complicated is the thought that as soon as superpositioning is detected, measured, or simply observed in some way, the system collapses, and the quantum computer reverts to an ordinary computer. This is what makes building a quantum computer so challenging.

Theres this general belief that for a quantum computer to achieve processing power equal to todays supercomputers whats being referred to as quantum supremacy it has to be working at least 49 qubits. Anything higher and its performance will be completely out of any conventional computers reach.

While there have already been a few simulations using up to 6 qubits and one done at 42 qubits, the feat achieved by Thomas Hner and Damian S. Steiger of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) tops them all as they have succeeded in simulating the largest quantum device so far a 45-qubit circuit. Its not yet the 49-qubit circuit being aspired, but its pretty close.

The simulation was done at the National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center (NERSC) using the supercomputer called Cori II. All the technical jargon aside, what this achievement proves is that a 49-qubit device is nearing our reach, and the simulation done by Hner and Steiger can be used as a standard or precedent for succeeding quantum supremacy experiments. Google, IBM and all the other quantum computer developers might all benefit from looking into this 45-qubit simulation.

The race to quantum supremacy is fierce. But theres no denying that the company who gets to be the first will not be the sole winner in this race. Considering that quantum computers are being envisioned as instruments that could help solve some of the worlds worst and most urgent problems, all of humanity will certainly benefit when the first practical quantum computer is finally built.

Hner and Steigers work are detailed in a paper entitled 0.5 Petabyte Simulation of a 45-Qubit Quantum Circuit published through arXiv.org.

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Quantum Computers Made Even More Powerful with New microchip generating ‘Qudits’ – TrendinTech

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Before quantum computing has fully gotten off the ground, a team of researchers has made advancements to them already.Called qudits, this new configuration promises to improve the impressive power and speed of quantum computing.

Currently, quantum bits, or qubits, make up the basics of quantum computing storage with their ability to simultaneously perform as 1 and 0 or both on and off at the same time. However, the latest microchip that creates qudits surpasses this ability by being able to act in a number, at least 10 and sometimes more, states concurrently. Such a configuration could lead the pack to quantum computers even more powerful than previously imagined.

In traditional computing, classical bits can only be 1 or 0 at any given time so to solve equations only one possibility can be considered at a time. However, the superposition of qubits allows them to do two calculations at a time and therefore quicker than even the quickest of traditional computers.

Yet, the superpositions are delicate in nature and create challenges when trying to combine more than one qubit, which is necessary to build a functioning quantum computer. Qudits can eliminate this hardship by reducing the number of qubits needed for the same power and performance. For example, two qudits with 32 states each have the same computational power as 10 qubits working together while eliminating the fragility and complications that accompany a qubit entanglement.

The microchip at the center of this breakthrough can create two entangled 10-state qudits, a total of 100 dimensions, and is more than six qubits working cooperatively could generate.

We have now achieved the compact and easy generation of high-dimensional quantum states, announced a statement from Michael Kues, co-lead author and a quantum optics researcher at Canadas National Institute of Scientific Research.

In their research, scientists fired laser pulses of light at a circular resonator fixed to silica glass. A key role in the procedure, it produces pairs of entangled photons in a superposition of 10 colors or wavelengths.

For example, a high-dimensional photon can be red and yellow and green and blue, although the photons used here were in the infrared wavelength range, said Kues.

Recently published in the journal Nature, the scientists findings assert that the new microchip could support 13 qubits, a grand total of 9,000 dimensions, theoretically.

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IPI Solutions: Frontier Cloud Computing Services Provider In 17 … – Leadership Newspapers

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

BY KAYODE TOKEDE

As the global digital age is evolving, companies, individuals and governments are transforming the information technology space to retain their competitive edge.

As expected in the 21st century, companies and governments are increasingly seeking solutions that cater for their unique business solution, technology and user specific requirements.

With the deployment of Information Technology, companies and government operations are driven by efficient, cost-effective, and minimizing risk in complex initiatives.

As the world of productivity and digital usage is on the rise, an organization with the use of Information Technology is aimed at cost reductions, agility for improvement in profits, productivity, device and location independence, and improved security due to centralization of data.

This initiates Cloud Computing; a new form of internet-based computing that provides shared computer processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand.

In Nigeria, there has been increased patronage of Cloud Computing as digital transformation is the only way for organisations to adapt in order to meet up with the current trend and this will not be possible without cloud, a powerful enabler.

For this in Africa, IPI Solutions Nigeria Limited has evolved over the years to become one of the most trusted Cloud computing platform solutions in 17 African countries.

IPI Solutions last year was chosen as Microsofts 1 Tier partner for its recently introduced Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme for West & Central Africa region and Nigeria.

That alone provides IPI Solutions the opportunity to provide Microsoft cloud services covering the markets of the Angola, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Cameroun, Cote dIvoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Basically, Cloud computing allows the users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and processes their data in either privately owned cloud, or on a third-party server in order to make data accessing mechanisms much more easy and reliable.

Cloud Computing model enable service providers leverage on the power of the cloud to deliver profound Information Technology services with stringent application of international best practices Experts claim that Cloud computing allows companies and Individuals to avoid up-front infrastructure costs.

As well, it enables organizations to focus on their core businesses instead of spending time and money on computer infrastructure.

With IPI Solutions on board, Cloud computing with Microsoft has been made easy comfortable and affordable.

Being a Microsoft CSP allows IPI Solutions to sell Microsoft Cloud Services (Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Enterprise Mobility Suite and Microsoft) along with their own offerings and services.

Armed with its expertise in Microsoft Azure, the IPI Solutions implements a simple process of designing, publishing web and mobile apps with customer specifics.

Azure makes it easy and quick for businesses to leverage on the power of cloud to deliver cutting edge solutions, improve productivity and Return-On-Investment (ROI).

IPI Solutions own the complete customer lifecycle through direct billing, provisioning, management, and support.

In addition, the CSP program enables IPI Solutions to integrate service offerings with the Microsoft cloud services.

As Microsoft CSP partner, IPI Solutions has developed an ordering portal for Microsoft cloud products where payment can be made either in foreign exchange or the local currency, Naira.

The portal by IPI Solutions is an innovative self-service platform enabling customers and partners to independently initiate and conclude their ordering process online.

The portal is the first comprehensive self-service ordering platform for Microsoft Cloud products in the country. This portal has reduced procurement time, lowered logistics costs and enhanced productivity.

Customers can quickly and conveniently deploy Microsoft Cloud Services with full support from IPI Solutions IPI Solutions has 5 Microsoft Gold competencies including Messaging, Datacenter, Cloud Productivity, Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions, Application Integration. This has enabled IPI Solutions to deliver cutting edge enterprise Information Technology services to clients.

Elaborating on the advantage of Cloud computing, Chief Executive Officer, IPI solutions Nigeria Limited, Mr. Adamu Garba II, said Cloud computing is the most secure platform any business can depend on.

He expressed that Cloud computing allows individuals and organisations access technology products and services, using any device of their choice by paying for only what they consume He said many companies consider cloud as less secure but it is simply lack of understanding on how cloud services operate.

According to him, businesses that define themselves to giving the right products or services out there to their customers can only be efficiently sustained when they are sitting on the cloud.

That is why the sustainability of your business today depends on how highly available you are to provide the needed products and services to your customers.

All reasonable business services cannot afford any downtime below 99.9 per cent and to our record at IPI it is only Microsoft that can provide such needed agility. So if you truly want your business to be sustainable you have to be on the cloud, he said.

Elaborating more, he said, level of security built around the cloud Computing is unmatched, it is the most secure platform for you to save your data , provided the information you saved is not harmful to the society.

Aside offering Cloud computing solutions, the indigenous information Technology firm providescomplementary solutions including Technology Advisory Services, Systems Integration, Managed Services, Enterprise Security Solutions, Unified Communication, Disaster Recovery Solutions, Analytics and Large Data Services, Line-of-Business Applications and other related services.

In addition to the support services listed above, IPI Solutions offers the following value added services, Free basic setup and configuration services, Free Cloud readiness assessment services, Free Microsoft Azure advisory services.

IPI Solutions is customer centric Information Technology firms that understand that any downtime is at a cost of organization in terms of resources- the company ensures that client system is built to maximize uptime and availability.

The Information Technology firm was incorporated out of a necessity to curb the ills that plagued the business technology solution industry, at a time where the norm in the industry was to focus on only sales margin and not on effective and conclusive project delivery.

With the delivery of their professional, technology advisory, system integration, and managed services, IPI addresses the most pressing IT needs. Whether system management, collaboration or unified communications, IPI staff are Microsoft certified and competent experts, who can design the most efficient solution for individual needswith optimized results and cost savings.

In an instance, one of IPIs clients who had 400agents nationwide attending to over thousands of customers, was facing issues such as service downtime, frequent user dissatisfaction, and delayed responsiveness to issues.

IPI ended up recommending that they move to Azure and since deployment, there has been tremendous reduction in customer complaints while the service is always on and connected IPI solutions has gained recognition from reputable organizations such as African Quality Achievement Award category from African Quality Institute as Africas Most Reliable Quality Business Technology Solution Provider 2016; Microsoft Partner of the Year Competency Award 2016 from Microsoft Nigeria; Top 100 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Provider 2016 by CIO Review, Fremont, California, USA; 30 Fastest Growing Microsoft Solutions Provider 2016 by Silicon Review; International Quality Summit (IQS) Award in Gold category in Business Prestige and Business Excellence by Business Initiative Direction (BID), New York, USA; Africas Best Premium Microsoft Product and Services Provider 2017 by African Brand Congress (ABC) and Most Important Business Excellence award in the world 2017 by the World Confederation of Businesses (WORLDCOB).

For the future, IPI Solutions aimed at offering unparalleled solutions advantageous both to themselves and their customers, as well as increasing their client base within a vertical market. We are currently developing our own intellectual property to help integrate solutions for our existing and prospective customers, Garba added.

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Microsoft Terminating Up To 5000 Employees Due To Cloud Computing Focus – EconoTimes

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Microsoft Store.Fuzzy Gerdes/Flickr

In a new report, Microsoft has just announced that it is going to be conducting mass termination among its sales force. The company would be shedding about 10 percent of the workers who are stationed in retail, the majority of the affected being overseas employees. This is due to the massive effort by the company to focus on its cloud computing business, which is fast becoming a major part of its enterprise.

The reorganization effort by Microsoft is intended to shift its focus on more profitable ventures, CNBC reports. Right now, this would be its cloud computing efforts, which as it turns out does not require too many sales personnel. This really did come as a surprise to analysts since reports of the mass layoffs have been circulating since last week.

In any case, the terminations are not indicative of troubles within Microsoft and instead is just an expected part of running a software business. These changes are also a reflection of how the company intends to serve its customers in the future, as a spokesperson told CNBC.

"Microsoft is implementing changes to better serve our customers and partners, the spokesperson said. "Today, we are taking steps to notify some employees that their jobs are under consideration or that their positions will be eliminated. Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time-to-time, re-deployment in others."

While the layoffs will mostly be centered on the sales department, which includes cashiers and store personnel, some of the finance and legal departments related to these sectors will be affected as well, Business Insider notes. In total, these could number somewhere around 5,000. Whats more, the announcement also coincides with Microsofts fiscal year end. This occurred back on June 30 and the event is typically accompanied by restructuring efforts.

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6502 Retrocomputing Goes to the Cloud – Hackaday

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

In what may be the strangest retrocomputing project weve seen lately, you can now access a virtual 6502 via Amazons Lambda computing service. We dont mean theres a web page with a simulated CPU on it. Thats old hat. This is a web service that takes a block of memory, executes 6502 code that it finds in it, and then returns a block of memory after a BRK opcode or a time out.

You format your request as a JSON-formatted POST request, so anything that can do an HTTP post can probably access it. If you arent feeling like writing your own client, the main page has a form you can fill out with some sample values. Just be aware that the memory going in and out is base 64 encoded, so you arent going to see instantly gratifying results.

You may not be familiar with Amazon Lambda. It is the logical extension of the Amazon cloud services. Time was that you paid to have a server in a data center. The original Amazon cloud services let you spin up a virtual server that could come into existence when needed. You could also duplicate them, shut them down, and so on. However, Lambda is even one step further. You dont have a server. You just have a service. When someone makes a request, the Amazon servers handle it. They also handle plenty of other services for other people.

Theres some amount of free service, but eventually, they start charging you for every 100 ms of execution you use. We dont know how long the average 6502 program runs.

Is it practical? We cant think of why, but weve never let that stop us from liking something before. Just to test it, we put the example code into an online base64 decoder and wound up with this:

Then we went over to an online 6502 disassembler and got:

We then ran the 6502cloud CPU and decoded the resulting memory output to (with a bunch of trailing zeros omitted):

So for the example, at least, it seems to work.

Weve covered giant 6502s and small 6502 systems. We have even seen that 6502 code lives inside Linux. But this is the first time we can remember seeing a disembodied CPU accessible by remote access in the cloud.

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Retail apocalypse may jump start suburban renewal – Lexington Herald Leader

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Lexington Herald Leader
Retail apocalypse may jump start suburban renewal
Lexington Herald Leader
But the end of brick-and-mortar retail is certainly a concern, for a very different reason. Modern U.S. cities, especially the suburbs, are built around retail stores. If those stores evaporate into Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud servers, huge gaping holes ...

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Why Bitcoin’s value could get even more volatile – VentureBeat

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

Bitcoins price could be in for a big drop, and thats because the cryptocurrency is facing a potentially contentious upgrade to its core software in August. If you havent heard about the impending deadline for a user-activated soft fork, heres the story:

For close to six years, the Bitcoin community has struggled to arrive at a consensus on how to scale the 1MB block size to meet growing popularity and adoption. A proposed user-activated soft fork (UASF) is an attempt to nudge the Bitcoin network to embrace and activate segregated witness (SegWit) which some believe to be one of the most promising scaling solutions by August 1.

In 2012, the network confirmed a daily average of 8,000 transactions. Today, that figure is around 350,000. Transaction overflow has resulted in high fees as users compete every 10 minutes for limited space in the Bitcoin block. The time it takes the network to confirm payments has also grown longer, at times going into hours.

Choosing and implementing a scaling solution for a decentralized platform is difficult. Having no central decision-making body is a good thing, for the most part. It makes Bitcoin less susceptible to censorship or takeover.

Several Bitcoin improvement proposals (BIPs) have been developed to fix the scaling problem. They all require a slow consensus-building process within the community.

Bitcoin core developer Pieter Wuille first proposed SegWit in 2015 to solve issues unrelated to scaling. He wanted to fix transaction malleability, or the possibility of an attacker changing the identification details of a transaction before it confirmed.

It turned out that SegWit could also create about 60 percent more room in the Bitcoin block to accommodate more transactions. It would achieve this by storing signatures separately from other transaction data.

Developers, business leaders, and miners present at the December 6, 2015 Hong Kong Bitcoin Scaling Conference signed a statement declaring a pursuit of SegWit as the first layer of scaling.

A team of developers selected at the Hong Kong meeting released the SegWit code in October 2016. To activate, the code requires at least 95 percent of nodes to signal their support. Miners and nodes owners, however, have not been enthusiastic about SegWit. So far only 33 percent of about 7,500 nodes in the network are signalling support for it.

On February 25, an anonymous core developer who goes by the pseudonym Shaolinfry published the UASF as BIP148 on the Bitcoin-developer mailing list. He or she also released the corresponding code. The mission of the UASF was to nudge more miners and nodes to embrace SegWit and hasten its activation.

Many who agree with Shaolinfry take the view that miners in particular lack the incentive to adopt SegWit. A full Bitcoin block guarantees them increased revenue in the form of the high fees users pay to speed transactions. It is therefore users who have the interest in pushing for a more efficient system.

Indeed, some users are setting up new nodes specifically so they can use them to signal support for SegWit.

Even though UASF carries the name soft fork, meaning a software upgrade that is compatible with the preceding version, it could turn into what is known as a hard fork. If half or more of the miners refuse to meet the demands of soft fork supporters, the upgrade could fail to recognize nodes that continue to run the older version. In the words of Cornell University computer science professor Emin Gn Sirer, UASF is just the face saving name for a hard fork.

Indeed, any change to the core software is a hard fork if it alienates those in the network who dont accept it, and it could therefore lead Bitcoin to split into two independent coins.

Those who oppose a UASF believe SegWit provides only short-term relief. With fast-growing Bitcoin adoption, they believe the capacity created will soon fill up again and the problem will return.

They also believe those pushing for UASF and SegWit prefer a smaller block size so they can implement their own second-layer solutions.

To a majority of those who oppose UASF and SegWit, increasing or removing the cap on the block size is the only way to solve the scaling problem. Some also think UASF poses security risks to the network. Bitcoin core developer Gregory Maxwell, for example, has said, I do not think it is a horrible proposal: it is better engineered than many things that many altcoins do, but just not up to our normal standards.

In the run-up to the potential fork in August, experts are advising users to protect their coins by making sure they use wallet services that support the UASF. A user could also set up a full node and signal for UASF as a way to protect their coins. Developer and blogger Jimmy Song:

[Users] supporting BIP-148 means they can support both forks when the UASF happens. There are really only economic benefits, not really economic penalties for supporting a BIP-148 fork other than some fixed costs. [Users] do not have to choose which software they run, they can run both and really, they should if they want to maximize their value.

On June 17, Chinese miners representing 80 percent of the Bitcoin hash power issued a statement declaring support for SegWit. Theyve also expressed their intent to have the upgrade implemented in July. If the Bitcoin community can agree to adopt SegWit before August 1, there will be no need for UASF.

The Bitcoin price may drop because of possible contentious forks ahead, but if it does, it will likely recover once the deadline for the UASF passes and a resolution to the present uncertainty becomes more clear. And since investors will want to buy in prior to the recovery, it is also possible a drop wont happen at all.

Rupert Hackett is general manager of Bitcoin.com.au, Bitcoin.co.uk (subsidiary of Bitcoin.com.au), and BuyaBitcoin.com.au. He specializes in the digital currency and digital payment space and holds the worlds first Masters degree in digital currencies. He writes for multiple Bitcoin and tech websites and is an acting Board Director for the Australian Digital Currency Commerce Association (ADCCA).

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Bitcoin can be an asset but not a currency, says China central bank adviser – CNBC

July 8, 2017 | Author: admin

"Bitcoin does not have the fundamental attributes needed to be a currency as it is a string of code generated by complex algorithms...But I do not deny that virtual currencies have technical value and are a type of asset," he said.

His comments come after the Chinese central bank increased scrutiny of the country's bitcoin exchanges earlier this year, a move that prompted the companies to stop margin lending, introduced trading fees and issue rules to rein in users.

Many governments around the world are still mulling how to regulate and classify bitcoin, whose value surged in June to hit a record just shy of $3,000. China has classified it as a "virtual good".

Squaring in on bitcoin, Sheng said expectations that bitcoin supply would be capped in the year 2140 would make it difficult for it to become a medium of exchange that could meet modern economic development needs as money supply should be related to economic needs.

He also said that Chinese monetary authorities should study issuing a central bank virtual currency that it could regulate and run properly.

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