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Microsoft Announces Availability of R3’s Corda Blockchain Platform on Azure

R3’s blockchain software Corda, developed by the Fintech startup alongside 70 of the world’s biggest banks forming the R3 consortium, is now available on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure.

Announced quietly last week, the revelation comes soon after Corda’s code was contributed to the Linux Foundation-led Hyperledger Project on November 30. R3 first announced its decision to go open-source with Corda, the product of its Concord blockchain product, in October this year.

Elaborating on R3’s year-long development, Richard Brown, technology chief at R3 claims:

Corda is a distributed ledger platform designed from the ground up to record, manage and synchronize financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios.

Corda’s availability is the latest offering and addition of Microsoft’s blockchain services toolkit called Project Bletchley. First announced in June 2016, Project Bletchley is Microsoft’s endeavor to push for “an open, modular blockchain fabric powered by Azure.” Fundamentally, Microsoft is looking to provide comprehensive solutions with blockchain technology for customers on various platforms, as Blockchain as a Service (BaaS).

R3’s Blockchain Demo Available

Microsoft’s announcement includes a demo offering of Corda via virtual machine image. While this author hasn’t tried the demo prior to publishing, Microsoft claims the demonstration will showcase Corda’s capabilities through real-world scenarios such as interest rate swap deals. Details reveal that deployment will take 3-5 minutes for the virtual machine to be created, one which will deploy a multi-member Corda demo network. The demo isn’t charged, but usage of Microsoft’s resources including storage, networking and computing will be billed.

R3’s blockchain software Corda is now available on Microsoft’s clould computing platform, Azure.

Brown’s comments above point to a marked difference in the ‘design choices’ made by Corda compared to a public blockchain, like bitcoin’s ledger. These choices include developing the Corda blockchain platform within the confines of legal and regulatory frameworks, a focus on privacy and the means to achieve a modular consensus.

R3’s CTO added:

By making simple Corda demos available on the Azure Marketplace, R3 and Microsoft are making it easy for newcomers to experience Corda for themselves before joining the community.

R3’s efforts to push its blockchain product for wider adoption (with its notable call to go open-source) comes during a time when the New York-based startup is losing some of its notable banking members. The likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Banco Santander have all decided to exit the consortium after a year’s membership.

Images from Shutterstock.

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• Posted in: Blockchain News, FinTech News, News, Smart Contracts


• Tagged in: Azure Blockchain, Corda, microsoft, R3

Chris Corey 

CMO Markethive Inc

 

Microsoft Announces Availability of R3's Corda Blockchain Platform on Azure

Bitcoin Latency Solved!

Bitcoin’s Big Problem: Transaction Delays Renew Blockchain Debate

Bitcoin is facing a major problem as the time it takes transactions to be processed has increased dramatically leading businesses to stop accepting the cryptocurrency and others to issue warnings that the problems could be terminal.

The problem is not something that has come out of the blue with those within the bitcoin community as well as researchers pointing to this looming issue for some time. The problem relates to how transactions are processed on the blockchain, the decentralized, distributed ledger technology that underpins bitcoin.

The average time it takes for a bitcoin transaction to be verified is now 43 minutes, and some transactions remain unverified forever. Some of the problem stems from the fact that anyone can add a fee to every bitcoin transaction, which bumps that transaction up in the queue, meaning that those who didn’t pay such a fee — or didn’t pay a sufficiently big fee — may be waiting hours and sometimes even days for a transaction to complete.

This is how it works. When someone uses bitcoin to pay for an item in a shop, that transaction needs to be verified on the blockchain. This is done by what are known as miners, individuals or groups who use massive computing power to solve increasingly complex mathematical equations to mine new bitcoins, which come in “blocks” and are mined about every 10 minutes. These blocks are used to record all transactions made on the bitcoin network, and have a maximum size of 1 megabyte (MB), meaning they can record just seven transactions per second at most.

To put this in context, Visa says its payment system processes 2,000 transactions per second on average and can handle up to 56,000 transactions per second if needed.

The result of the slowdown in transaction clearance rates has led some businesses to give up on bitcoin completely while others are recommending users to switch from bitcoin to alternative cryptocurrencies like litecoin.

The problem grew so large this week that at one point there were 40,000 bitcoin transactions waiting to be cleared — though at the time of writing, that figure has dropped to under 10,000. This drop has mirrored a drop in bitcoin’s dollar value this week, going from over $917 on Friday to under $863 yesterday, according to Gemini's tracker.

The bitcoin community has split into two distinct groups over the past years. The first group is known as Bitcoin Core, the network’s volunteer developers who want to change the way the signatures are stored on the blockchain rather than increase the size of the blocks. The other is known as Bitcoin Classic, a group comprised of developers and enthusiasts who propose the adoption of an alternative blockchain (incompatible with the original) that would increase the block size to 2 MB, a move it believes would increase user adoption.

Bitcoin’s architecture worked well when it was not widely used, but with over 200,000 bitcoin transactions processed every day and a market capitalization of over $14,588,828,445, the system is beginning to creak.

The problem was flagged up earlier this year  by one of the main developers of bitcoin over the last five years, Gavin Andresen, who told MIT Technology Review at the time that the problem with bitcoin’s limited transaction rate "is urgent."

"Looking at the transaction volume on the bitcoin network, we need to address it within the next four or five months,” Andresen said.

Then last January, another core bitcoin developer Mike Hearn penned a widely read missive on Medium, which declared bitcoin a failure. “[Bitcoin] has failed because the community has failed,” Hearn said. “What was meant to be a new, decentralized form of money that lacked ‘systemically important institutions’ and ‘too big to fail’ has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people in China.”

These concerns were backed up last month with the release of a research paper from a large group of researchers mostly affiliated with Cornell University, titled “On Scaling Decentralized Blockchain.” The research suggests that bitcoin would need a complete redesign if it is to support a much larger network of users and transactions.

In a blog post this week, Andresen said that the block size limits are there to protect the network from attacks — and so far that method has been effective. He added that the current problems could be highlighting an underlying problem. “In my view, people are using the block size limit for something it was never meant to do — to influence how people use the bitcoin blockchain, forcing some users off the blockchain,” he said.

It is time for a new evolved enterprise solution.

Enter the impending launch of a new type blockchain that is a POS (Proof of Stake) in contrast to Bitcoins POW (Proof of Work).  A truly exponentially expanded distribution that has no latency and gets even faster as it grows.

The technology is in the phone apps, not big cumbersome Mining Computer systems.

And this prevents the density of miners in one area or country as Bitcoin is mostly mined in China. And there are many reasons to have concerns in that regard.

A new type of Blockchain coin that delivers a wallet that transacts all fiat and crypto currency, comes with a VISA debit card and is part of the POS system, thereby earning you money on an ongoing basis.

MCC (My Crypto Coin)

Launches January 10^th on to all the exchanges, it will be exciting to watch how this progresses.  MCC is in the final days of a Crowd Funding where you could fund at any level and find yourself holding a fortune as a result. Do not delay. Come to our meetings. There are only a few days left.

To get going join our group in Markethive
https://markethive.com/group/cryptocoin

Thomas Prendergast

Founder and CEO

Markethive Inc.

Bitcoin Latency Solved!

Bitcoin has had quite a month, rising from $725 to a high of $911 today.

Part of what is driving bitcoin's price movement is the financial turmoil in China. A weakening yuan in combination with increasingly strict capital controls in the country have driven investor's capital out of mainland china and into bitcoin.

Likewise, since the Chinese government considers bitcoin to be a commodity rather than a currency, it is impervious to foreign exchange regulators – meaning that it is nearly impossible for them to limit its upside.

But, in my opinion, China is only one of numerous reasons bitcoin has been rising.

The Trump effect as well and his embracement of the Blockchain apparent in his cabinet appointments as Kim Dotcom has also predicted Bitcoin to hit $2000 next year giving Trump much of the credit.

But, with it breaking out to all-time highs now, it begs the question, how high can it go?

Let's look at the total market cap compared to other money and sectors.

Bitcoin is currently near $14 billion of total market cap.  If you multiply the total amount of bitcoins available (currently just above 16 million) by its current price you get its market cap near $14 billion.

At $14 billion, bitcoin has nearly the same market cap as silver.

But, when compared to Bill Gates, with a worth of $75 billion, bitcoin is still worth much less than the world's richest man.

When comparing it to companies, like Apple, the world's highest market cap company at $620 billion, bitcoin is still only worth 2% of the value of Apple.

And, compared to the total value of all gold in the world of $7.8 trillion, bitcoin is only 0.17% of that value.

Gold is likely the most similar item to compare bitcoin to.  Like bitcoin, it is a store of wealth and considered by many to be money.

And given the ease of use of bitcoin and how digital the world is becoming, it is fair to posit that at some point bitcoin may be worth as much as gold.

If that were to happen the price of each bitcoin would have to be valued at $487,500.

Another item that could be compared to bitcoin is the value of all fiat money in the world.  It is estimated, by the CIA Fact book, that there is about $28.6 trillion of coins, bank notes and bank deposits in the world.

If bitcoin were to replace all fiat currencies, something in which we speculate is certainly a possibility, the value of each bitcoin would be worth $1,787,500.

Will that happen anytime soon?  Of course not.  Could it happen?  Absolutely.

So, if you think you have missed the boat on bitcoin by not buying it earlier… there are plenty of reasons to think that it hasn't even begun yet.

 

Will Latency Slow Bitcoin Rise

Yes bitcoin has doubled in value over the past year, however as more people turn to bitcoin then more miners are required to ensure transactions are completed quickly. China has a large share in mining pools, however in the past months some of them have been shut down for stealing electricity to power the computers required to solve the mathematics which builds blocks in the blockchain. the longer it takes to produce blocks the slower the transaction becomes.

There has been talk of fork to update the blockchain but there is no consences for this. Implimentation might also prove challenging due to its widespread distribution which perversly adds to it security.

Waiting in the wings is a new coin Mycryptocoin (MCC), which brings together the best of bitcoin and ether, but using Proof Of Stake(POS) to replace mining as all coins will be allocated at launch.

Smart contract and application can be run on the blockchain. Owners walletscan hold MCC and these can be bought and sold within the wallets with links to all other ccyptocurrencies, bank accounts, cards and other payments systems such as paypal. Truly a one stop wallet complete with its own Visa card.

Are you interested to join a brave new world, if so you are just in time to join an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) cloud funding project which is about to close.

MyCryptoWorld, has a lucrative offer at the moment which is going to be explained TODAY

Take the first step now by joining me at  https://markethive.com/group/cryptocoin

Then remember to come to our webinar today at 12 noon MT on Friday 23rd December (Use http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html enter Denver as location 1 and your own location to check your local time)

Join our live Webinars Every Day: For times and Webinar logins on go to the Markethive calendar: https://markethive.com/calendar

Direct access to our webinar room is at: https://www.ivocalize.net/#room/TheHive

Thomas Prendergast

Founder and CEO

Markethive Inc.

Bitcoin has had quite a month, rising from $725 to a high of $911 today.

Experts Predict Bitcoin Hits 1 Million Next Year

We have the opportunity right now to take a very good risk to acquire results into the millions of dollars.

Here me out and come to our live webinars. Time is running out.

The lessons learned in business. Paying attention and seeking knowledge. Pursuing wisdom and mentors with wisdom and experience

Case in point, Bitcoin 2009, where were you?

You see back in 2012 when Bitcoin was trading around a penny, I was aware of the new revolutionary tech called Blockchain. Aware, but very ignorant. I had $50,000 invested in bulk silver coin and gold 1 ounce Maple Leafs. I was totally focused on the wrong preparations for the immediate future

I am a smart, experienced, entrepreneur and have been my entire life. I created and built Veretekk with nothing more than my visions, and my bare hands. There was no one before me to teach me. I joined UCSD’s Super Computer center to learn how to build the tools I envisioned and with the help of George Kremeneck and the partnership I built with Jeff Balmeo, we, laid the foundations, for what is now Markethive, the first off, Market Network (evolving from the Social Networks). I invented Inbound Marketing in the mid 1990’s Way way to early.

Markethive is a new wave technology, born from 20+ years of endeavor, innovation and dedication. It’s time has come. Why? And why am I discussing the summary history of and birth of Markethive?

Because it needed the Blockchain to morph into the most powerful social network what the pundits have identified as the new Market Networks that will dwarf the “Social Networks” and we are the first to produce one.

But Markethive needs a Blockchain to produce a shopping platform that every single human could utilize to build wealth regardless of nationality or residency. That is our mission, and MCC’s blockchain has given us the foundation to do it.

So, how in the world did I miss it in 2009-2012? I was not “Paying Attention” If I had paid attention, I would have liquidated my small holding of silver and gold, and purchased $50,000 worth of Bitcoin at less than a penny per coin.

Segway to the near completion of Markethive, discovering that Markethive was actually a Market Network, a new market to supersede the Social Networks, as has begun recognition of this new burgeoning  SAAS, Social Network, market platform predicted to eclipse the Social Networks and become the first Quadrillion dollar market.

Markethive (over 20 years in development) is ready to launch, as the new Market Network.

In that process we are seeking capital investors. And along came MCC, as this new emerging Blockchain company, they see the future and raw power potential in Markethive.

So James Wilfong and I talked about their investing into Markethive. We negotiated 5% of the Markethive stock for $5 million. This comes about in January after their ICO (Initial Coin Offer).

A few weeks after the negotiations I started really looking at the bitcoin market, educating myself, researching etc. As I did so, it started to form from the fog, that perhaps MCC (MyCryptoCoin) was more then I realized at first.

Now understand; as I did this research it dawned on me that back in 2008 when I started buying up Gold and Silver bulk coins (not collector coins) at around $800 per ounce. About $50,000 worth.

If I had paid attention to the Bitcoin revolution and bought the same amount I would have over $4.5 billion today. This caught my attention. I have seen a similar event with the Internet, but this is actually hundreds of times more intense. In fact, this trend (revolution) will likely be bigger than any other event in the history of mankind.

I started to realize that what MyCryptoCoin was doing was not just another coin, MyCryotoCoin’s DAO (Do you know what that is?), Their own Blockchain, their own proprietary Wallet, all developed with engineers that came from Bitcoin and Etherium, are about to launch the next level in this revolution. I call it bitcoin V2 and will address and solve the latency of Bitcoin, will give Markethive the ability to offer an Ebay type shopping platform that will allow all forms of live payment processing within 2nds.

Listen carefully, Markethive will be able to offer an Ebay type shopping platform that will accept all forms of payment. With MyCryptoCurrency over coming Bitcoins bottle neck of latency, transactions in crypto coin, fiat accounts (ACH), credit cards, 3^rd party wallets like Payza, and Paypal will all be accepted with instantaneous transactions. Instant, no waiting (like) occurs with today’s crypto coins.

This is a substantial technical advancement that will both catapult Markethive becoming a trillion dollar Market Network, eclipsing LinkedIn (A social network) with monthly profits in the billions. Think I am kidding?

Fueled by MCC (mycrytocurrency) another huge disruptive company poised to launch, which I am convinced will eclipse Bitcoin, because they will be launching the “Latency” solution Blockchain, an advanced Wallet that solves the online Merchant Account issues and a series of other proprietary technology that will bring the CryptoCurrecy revolution into the main stream.

Did I mention? No I did not. Until the year end, we are offering you the option to purchase 3 million coins and $500,000 worth of Markethive stock for a ridicules low cost. We have other incredible packages that I can personally embrace as being one of those once in a lifetime events were you can leap from your financial level into wealth. Making literally millions even billions in dollars in profits.

I missed the first wave with Bitcoin in 2009 but I am firmly paying attention this time.

Come to the meetings! Do not miss this!
CHECK THE CALENDAR

Join our group
https://markethive.com/group/cryptocoin

Thomas Prendergast

Founder and CEO

Markethive Inc.

Experts Predict Bitcoin Hits 1 Million Next Year

Trump Picks Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Advocate as Budget Chief

Bitcoin Caucus co-founder Mick Mulvaney is the US'

next Director of Office of Management and Budget.

 

 

It seems the election of Donald Trump could spell great news for American blockchain startups and cryptocurrency users. President-elect Trump has added to his cabinet an active and vocal supporter of cryptocurrencies and blockchain which means that there will be at least one powerful voice in the US government that will resist further efforts to legislate the technology into oblivion.

Trump picked Congressman Mick Mulvaney, Tea Party Republican, as his administration’s Director of Office of Management and Budget. He is considered a staunch fiscal conservative that wishes to drastically limit the federal government’s spending on social programs.

Just this September he was among the founders of the bipartisan Blockchain Caucus. Commonly called the Bitcoin Caucus by American media, it is meant to help congressmen stay up to speed on cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and develop policies that advance them.

Mick Mulvaney

“Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial services industry, the U.S. economy and the delivery of government services, and I am proud to be involved with this initiative,” Mulvaney said in a statement back then.

Mulvaney is also a supporter of Coin Center, a non-profit research and advocacy center focused on public policy issues facing cryptocurrency technologies, which raised over $1 million earlier this year.

“For the past two years we have worked with Representatives Mulvaney and Polis to educate their colleagues through briefings and other events, and the new Congressional Blockchain Caucus will be a wonderful new platform to continue these efforts,” Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center said at the time. “Their forward-thinking leadership on blockchain technology in Congress is unmatched.”

 

Thomas Prendergast

CEO

Markethive Inc.

Join our Bitcoin Group. Time is running out.

https://markethive.com/group/cryptocoin

Trump Picks Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Advocate as Budget Chief

Bitcoin Will Rise to $2000 in January 2017

Bitcoin Can Rise to $2000 in January 2017

The Confirming Trends

Trump’s ascendancy will be confirmed in January – a time in which Kim Dotcom hopes to launch his Megaupload 2.0.

Saxo’s projected three-fold increase in the current price of the digital currency – currently at $760 – is similar to Dotcom’s prediction that Megaupload and its potential Bitcoin wallet Bitcache system could take the price of Bitcoin to $2000, based on the claim that the file sharing product would overcome Bitcoin’s scaling problems.

The anonymous cloud sharing, anti-surveillance, video hosting, Bitcoin-caching online service, that will serve the equivalent to the population of the Philippines (approximately 103 mln), is slated for a release in late January. Let’s hope he can pull it off.        

China to exceed growth expectations

On Dec. 1, China restricted the importation of gold in order to prevent capital leaving the country. The country still plans to regulate the importation of gold to avoid the Chinese yuan from leaving the country.

As a huge determinant of the eventual quasi-synchronization in price between Bitcoin and the yuan, the Chinese trading volume will correlate with the price of Bitcoin in the coming weeks even as the Chinese central bank and authorities struggle to recover the value of the yuan which has fallen 5.8 percent against the dollar already this year.

Saxo Bank notes that China is expected to exceed growth expectations in the coming years, adding that the country’s current slowdown has been predictable due to elevated investment levels of around 50 percent of GDP while total debt has swollen to an unsustainable 237 percent of GDP.

Through massive stimulus from fiscal and monetary policies, and by opening up capital markets even more, the country successfully steers a transition to consumption-intensive growth surpassing current expectations and reaching eight percent growth in 2017.

India is ready for Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s price increased following the recent demonetization of the Indian rupee. Following this, there were suggestions that the government could be planning a ban on the importation of gold as the precious metal reached two-year highs in November. This, coupled with the growing awareness of Bitcoin in the world’s second most populated country and the Indian government's resolve to work on Bitcoin and the Blockchain framework before 2018, could push it to a tipping point.

In its Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision-2018, the Reserve Bank of India notes that it will be monitoring framework for new technologies/innovations in order to “ensure that regulations keep pace with the developments in technology impacting the payment space, the global level developments in technology such as distributed ledgers, Blockchain etc. will be monitored and regulatory framework, as required, will be put in place.”

This will improve the country’s payments ecosystem, it says, which has been evolving dynamically with the advancements and innovations taking place, particularly in the area of FinTech.

In a chat with Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for Zebpay agrees that there's been no talk of Bitcoin without the mention of India lately and this will continue for a little longer because Bitcoins are the new game changers in the era of cashless economy offering billions of Indians the ability to go cashless using digital currencies.

The spokesperson says: “We skipped the landline generation and have a modern mobile phone infrastructure. Similarly, India has the potential to skip the plastic money generation and build a modern financial infrastructure on this revolutionary technology.”

For Coinsecure CEO Mohit Kalra, India is rising to Bitcoin and 2017 seems promising for its adoption and usage.

"In terms of use, we are hoping to see more merchants start accepting Bitcoin in India. Demonetization and going cashless can definitely help boost adoption rates across merchants, businesses and individuals alike!"

Read more at: The CoinTelegraph

Join our live Webinars and special guests: Events and Webinar logins on the Markethive calendar: https://markethive.com/calendar

Direct access to our webinar room is at: https://www.TheHiveRoom

Thomas Prendergast

CEO

Markethive Inc.

P.S. At least move some of your money into Bitcoin. Here is a comprehensive list of Bitcoin exchanges. This is a new shift, much like the Internet. Do not reject this move, rather embrace it. The List:
https://99bitcoins.com/best-bitcoin-exchanges-comparison-review/

Bitcoin Will Rise to $2000 in January 2017