Ep. 73 Splits and Pauses
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast: The price of Popcorn is up 5% this week as news hits of another imminent BCH split. Who will get the last laugh in the ongoing drama of Bitcoin chain splits? Iota paused its chain this week after a hack was revealed. Is this a clever way to exit scam or do these functions actually serve some limited purpose? And...Microsoft is developing digital identity on a second layer of Bitcoin. Will someone finally do this right, or this use case just inherently a dud?
Weekly News Wrap Up:
PAUSE! That’s been the news this week from several blockchains/whatever the fuck tokens. Both bZx and IOTA paused thier networks this past week. Is this a clever way to exit scam or do these functions actually serve some limited purpose?
Bitcoin ABC 0.21 was released, which introduces a controversial hard fork change that hands 5% of the block reward to a fund, provided two thirds of miners vote to activate it. Rejecting it by sticking with the old version of Bitcoin ABC is not possible, because it is programmed to stop working shortly after the hard fork date on May 15th. ABC developer Amaury Sechet asked Bitcoin developer Gregory Maxwell to fork the code and release a version without the controversial change. Presumably this was a political play, because the BCH community hates Maxwell. In an apparent trolling attempt, Maxwell actually went ahead and released the code. BCH users would either have to run this code or switch to Bitcoin Unlimited, which does not contain the controversial change. If the BCH community does not act in unison, this could potentially cause another split, similar to BCH and BSV. The stock price of popcorn went up by 5% in response to this news.
Microsoft has tasked a development team to build a decentralized identity system on top of Bitcoin. Dubbed ION, the second layer network will feature its own node structure to complement Bitcoin’s own and will be completely open source. Project lead Daniel Buchner believes that this system could unlock a radical new methodology for digital ownership and online credentials. In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, he explained the value of the project: “Everything in the world you see around you today, there are few cases of true digital identity. People are used to accounts, but that’s not really identity — that’s a password to get into someone’s server somewhere. Your accounts are not yours, your email is not yours — if those companies disappear, those are gone. The issue becomes, you can’t have legal, personal and business assurance of the continuity of anything tied to those accounts. Imagine the moral hazard if I had an email address tied to something like an important benefit, like a UN food allotment or a bank. If the company in the middle of that went away or even just didn’t like me, they could sever me from the important proofs in my life that could attest to those accounts. Bitcoin is important; but decentralized ID could be more important. Who needs decentralized money if, with the stroke of a pen, they can cut you off from the proofs you need to board an airplane?”
It been a bit “South Park”-esque lately from the BSV camp, with CSW’s common refrain of “I’ll fucking sue you!”. His latest refrain has been owning the BTC database and threatening to miners for using unlicensed copies of “his database”. The prose reads like he paid a someone on Upwork $20 to write it (link in show notes). So, who is he even writing this for and what is the purpose as this point?
Chinese Exchange FCoin is shutting its doors this week, still oweing depositors $125 Million. According to Founder Zhang Jian “This is a problem that is a little too complicated to be explained in a single sentence” however, to explain it in a single sentence: Using a complicated trading/staking rewards program, Fcoin promised users more Bitcoin than it was earning or had.
Price Analysis:
Number go up
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