China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has released the results of a study involving 28 cryptocurrencies.

The methodoligy was explained like this (translated):

"The evaluation of the global public-private chain technology mainly focuses on the basic technical level, application level and innovation ability of the public chain. In terms of sub-indexes, the Styme chain that utilizes the blockchain graphene architecture has the highest score in the basic technical indicators. The NEO whose goal is to use smart contracts to automate the management of digital assets is ranked first in application assessment. The first place in the innovation power index is Bitcoin, which pioneered the application of blockchain technology."

Now people are wondering - why is the Chinese government even conducting studies like this? Could this be a sign that regulations on cryptocurrencies could soon be loosened? Which would be a huge boost to global cryptocurrency markets.

Below is their scoring card - while we haven't been told what specific tests are included in each category, you can see they are scored on 3 features: Technology, Application, Innovation.

My opinion - some results on this list I can understand, but there’s a few surprises that have me questioning the specific underlying factors they analyzed. Regardless, it’s nice seeing China talk about cryptocurrencies besides just saying they’re ‘too risky’ - this is a step in the right direction.


Not listed: the 16th to 28th places - which are Ether Classic, Reverb Chain, Dash, Cloud Storage Chain, Litecoin, Ark, Big Zero Coin, Nano, Bit Cash, Decred, Super cash and new chain.

For over two decades, advancements in communication tech have constantly challenged the legacy institutions of old. We live in the millenium of internet dominance, where new disruptive ideas devour entire industries. AirBnb takes on hotels, services like Lyft displace taxis, and Bitcoin challenges the banking system we’ve known for generations. In 2018, these challenges are amplified by the prevalence of blockchain and all the solutions peer-to- peer protocols have to offer.

There are several cryptocurrencies that take on the system of publication and intellectual property, notably Publica and Po.et, but the scientific research model remains needlessly complicated, according to a new ICO called Orvium.

As noted by Orvium, the top five scientific publishers make up 50% to 70% of all publications in the world. The global market can produce up to $25 billion in science manuscripts in a year, and yet the economic model has been convoluted, even downright awkward for decades. The system of funding, reviewing, and publishing is primarily done with government oversight, since governments spend the most on research. So the science community has been weighed down by bureaucracy for over a century, and Orvium wants to step in. Should we continue to trust this arcane system with the most influential information in the world?

In a nutshell, Orvium is an open-source smart-contract system that aims to make the research, funding, validation, and publication process efficient and put the control back into the hands of the authors and general public. The Orvium business model would increase revenue while lending support to the research community. Almost every aspect of publication, including but not limited to peer-review, copyright licenses, and even subscription services would be open and available on the Ethereum blockchain. The Orvium token, ORV, will be the unit of exchange for the system, and it can be used to transact every detail of the process.

The Orvium whitepaper is comprehensive. The new protocol will combine four general technologies: blockchain and smart contracts, decentralized storage, cloud computing, data analytics and machine learning. Orvium has a huge list of goals, but the primary aim is to make science transparent and open-access. They want to make sure the authors get the recognition they deserve and to make scientific collaboration and validation more streamlined. Following the more common concept of Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Orvium uses what they call Decentralized Autonomous Journals or DAJs. These allow the users to set up their own rules of governance and contribution. According to Orvium, DAJs will reduce costs, improve organization and distribution, bolster democratization, and allow for “an everlasting and unbiased platform of science”.

The ORV token can be used in numerous ways. One example is to incentivize peer review. Authors, when submitting manuscripts for review, can stake tokens to be redeemed by reviewers. The reviews are then submitted and the manuscript is published immediately. Another example is in copyright and licensing, where authors are paid ORV tokens in exchange for the use of their material. There are 14 other specific uses outlined in their whitepaper. To see them all, check it out here: https://orvium.docsend.com/view/nvr6ywj

In addition to all these, Orvium will seamlessly integrate UX design in their user platform. This includes an open-source and public API. The API will allow free access to all information and smart-contracts on the blockchain, and will be easy to use. Imagine a user-friendly library of research you can access from any online device.

The Orvium roadmap is extremely thorough. It begins with the initial concept discovery in 2017, and continues all the way through to Q1 of 2020, when the full platform will launch. Needless to say, this is an ambitious project. The team is studded with success and accomplishment. Founders Manuel Martin and Antonio Romero are known for their work on the CERN project (aka The European Organization for Nuclear Research) as well as collaborations with NASA. They have a panel of academic and scientific advisors from NASA and notable universities. Bernd Lapp, their blockchain advisor, is a former advisor at the Ethereum Foundation. Almost the entire staff of engineers is from the CERN project. The team is extremely familiar with the terrain and has invaluable experience with with research community. These are the people we would want in charge of changing the system.

Orvium has a powerful vision and a complex but well thought-out proposal. If they succeed, we could see a dramatic improvement in the quality of research, which in turn will deliver more benefits of science to society. Token sale is set to begin in Q2 of this year. Visit https://orvium.io/ for more info or to register for
the pre-sale.

HTC announced their upcoming phone titled 'Exodus' is being built by and for users of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech.   But what does that mean?

Well, the phone's hardware is optimized to support decentralized apps (dApps), and there's a built in 'universal wallet' to support storing your cryptocurrencies. Head of the project at HTC Phil Chen tells TheNextWeb;

“Through Exodus, we are excited to be supporting underlying protocols such as Bitcoin, Lightning Networks, Ethereum, Dfinity, and more. We would like to support the entire blockchain ecosystem, and in the next few months we’ll be announcing many more exciting partnerships together.”

Previously, Chen was heading up HTC's Virtual Reality headset project.

Here's where things get a bit murky in my opinion - many are saying these phones could come to rival Ledger and Trezor for hardware based 'cold storage'.   But it's important to remember - a phone connected to the internet, running Android OS, should not be considered an alternative or an equally secure storage method to an offline device. In fact, i'll bet that these phones which double as a cryptocurrency wallet will become a prime target for attacks, and hope HTC is aware of this when developing it.

Until I can hold one in my hand and see if this 'optimized' blockchain phone's performance can really do anything other phones can't do with the right software, i'm undecided on if this is worth being excited for or not.  But i'm definitely curious to find out.

Gemini has added the first new coin in quite some time to their exchange - ZCash. 

What makes this unique is the 'official approval process' they largely created themselves - by approaching NY's financial services department seeking approval to execute trades of and storage the cryptocurrency - which was successful.

Gemini has really lead the way in conducting business in the unregulated cryptocurrency market in a way in which they imagine the regulations that may be coming - and securing their business by staying complaint to these possible future regulations.  Think of it as a 'better safe than sorry' way to operate.

Eric Winer, VP of Engineering at Gemini posted to their official blog:

"When we began building Gemini over four years ago, we envisioned a platform that would allow customers to trade many virtual commodities. Zcash is a friendly fork of the Bitcoin source code, making it a member of the “Nakamoto Family Tree” of virtual commodities. The Zcash protocol’s cutting edge use of zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (“zk-SNARKS” or “zero-knowledge proofs”) makes it a truly innovative privacy coin that offers confidentiality for peer-to-peer transactions similar to those afforded to fiat currency transfers (e.g., ACH, FedWire, SWIFT, etc.).

We have been working closely with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) to obtain approval to offer Zcash trading and custody services to our customers as a New York trust company."

ZCash is up nearly 20% today following the news.

Gemini exchange is owned the Winklevoss twins - who once sued Mark Zuckerberg claiming they were the actual creators of Facebook, as seen in the movie "The Social Network".

Having seen the buzz around this pop up in several cryptocurrency groups/channels i'm part of this week, I decided to dig in and see what is just hype and speculation, and what's actually true.

This story really started at the beginning of this year - with Mark Zuckerberg simply stating in Janurary that he wanted to 'study decentralizing technologies like encryption and cryptocurrency'.

Until this week that was all we knew - then on Tuesday Facebook officially announced their plans to create a team dedicated to Blockchain technology.  The team is headed by none other than David Marcus, who is not only director of Facebook Messenger, but sits on the board of Coinbase.

So we know this for sure: a blockchain team has been created at Facebook - but we do not know it's purpose, yet.

It's important to remember - blockchain technology can be used to keep records of any kind of transaction or data - those of us in the cryptocurrency world just happen to use that tech to facilitate and store records of the transfer of virtual currencies.

Bridget van Kralingen, IBM’s senior vice president of global Industries, platforms and blockchain spoke to Fortune Magazine this week with a theory that Facebook could use blockchain tech to combat criticism of how they handle user data, saying:

"What they are grappling with is securing data, and making sure that if people want privacy or trackability of their data they can actually secure that—whether it’s on the ad side or the personal side. So I think it’s a technology that fits very well with some of the business model challenges that they’re actually facing, and I think they’re very right to take this very seriously.”

While it's just a theory, i'm leaning in this direction as well.

So why are people saying "Wow I heard Facebook is coming out with Facebook Coin!"? 

It started with this article on Cheddar.com which claims they have anonymous sources within Facebook telling them “They are very serious" about starting a cryptocurrency.  Then, other sites felt this was enough to go off, and wrote their own articles speculating on an official Facebook coin.

Sure, maybe their secret insider actually exists - but as a resident of Silicon Valley myself, I have more friends working at Facebook than I can count (largely because it's quite a revolving door over there) - so, from my sources - one of them absolutely in a position to know - they have heard nothing about a Facebook coin coming.

Either way - I applaud Facebook for at least taking these first few steps to see how Blockchain could improve the service for everyone. It's exciting - but let's separate the facts from the speculation - whatever they're up to is still in it's very early phase.

There's a real a chance Facebook doesn't even know how Facebook is going to use Blockchain yet.

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Thus far in crypto, there have been few concepts that stretch the use of blockchain more than digital assets. Some of these projects might seem like a joke or even a problem, like Cryptokitties, the infamous trading game that bottlenecked the Ethereum network last year. However trivial the game may seem, it did address distributed intellectual property in a novel way. More importantly, it showed there was a strong demand for these new and abstract use-cases. Ethereum development teams have recently created the ERC721 token specifically for this type of media, what is now called a non-fungible token (NFT). This token is a new standard in distributed property and sure to be a hit in the gaming, VR, and trading communities.

These elements and more come together in a new ICO brought to you by Blockchain Studios. Cryptocarz is a multiplayer, virtual reality-enabled experience created using the Ethereum blockchain and ERC721 standard token. A project for collectors, car enthusiasts, and gamers ready for a truly 21st century experience.

To play Cryptocarz, all you do is load a specific set car assets into the game from a wallet like Metamask, which stores the NFTs. Keep, control, and modify your own cars, just like you would in the physical world. Race against other users in a fast-paced, VR- enabled, multiplayer game. The initial cars available will represent the top 20 cryptos on the market. Each model will be unique in assets, hard coded into the specific ERC721 contract.

In the case of this particular ICO, the tokens are distributed on the Ethereum blockchain, but the game itself is controlled by the developers. This gives a modest amount of control to the users to trade, buy, and sell as they please, but gives Cryptocarz ease of updates and changes. So the game should be ready to play quickly and without the bugs that often slow the development of dapp tokens. This isn’t your ordinary racing game. There are several layers of gameplay and they all sound well thought-out. According to Blockchain Studios:

“The core game asset build phase is where we create the various models, effects and interface design that will be put into the gameplay environment. There are four key components to this phase: modelling, animation effects, components and marketplace.”

And that’s just the design portion, so expect the actual racing game to have all the detail you’d expect, with intense animation and the ability to play in VR mode.

The road map looks thorough and ambitious as usual. The goal is to have a partially functional gameplay and marketplace within 3 months of launch. Online multi-player worldwide competitions within 8 months. It may be a longshot, but they also plan to port the game to various consoles, including Steam and Playstation. Initially they will store non smart-contract data (like car graphics) on a central server, but eventually move to a distributed network like IPFS (Interplanetary File System).

The team is unique in that it is a joint venture between established partners in their respective fields: Active Genes, Diginex and Shadow Factory. Each partner brings something unique to the table from their previous experience. It’s refreshing to see this kind of detail put into practice.

ICO token details are forthcoming. To get a sneak-peak at some of the visuals, check them out at https://cryptocarz.io and see their “Drive Paper” for more details.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who I covered in a report last month following him launching an official inquiry into cryptocurrency exchanges (link) has been hit today with a scandal involving 4 women - causing him to resign his post.

In a statement just released, Schneiderman announced:

"It's been my great honor and privilege to serve as Attorney General for the people of the State of New York. In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me. While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office's work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018."

The women spoke with The New Yorker and went on the record giving interviews stating Schneiderman had "repeatedly hit them during the course of their relationships with him in recent years" and even threatened to kill the women if they left him.

Schneiderman was investigating all the top exchanges and how they operate, including Coinbase, Gemini, bitFlyer, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Kraken, Bittrex, Poloniex, Binance, Tidex, Gate.io, itBit, and Huobi - requesting information on "Their Operations, Use of Bots, Conflicts of Interest, Outages, and Other Key Issues".

The resignation came following pressure from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who stated publicly "for the good of the office, he should resign".

His replacement has not yet been named.