Weekly Round up
This wrap up of blockchain and crypto developments for last week is a day late. But do read on. Exciting advances and new ideas are happening.
A piece of web history sold in NFT
The source code of the World Wide Web is being put up for NFT auction. Written by British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1990–1991, the 9,555 lines of the source code will sit on a blockchain smart contract that proves the code’s authenticity and unique right of ownership.
Auction house Sotheby is organising the sale with bids starting from US$1,000. At the time of writing, the current bid has hit US$2.8 million. When bids closes on June 30, the NFT sale will make the inventor a wealth man.
The winning bidder will receive the source code and other gifts including a letter from the Sir Berners-Lee in which he reflects on the significance of the code and the process of creating it.
The Apple Daily Is Dead, Long Live The Apple Daily
A Hongkong pro-democracy newspaper, the Apple Daily shut down after it printed its last edition on June 25. It closed down its website and erased all its social media platforms after authorities froze company-related assets as part of a national security probe.
But some of its content will live on forever in a blockchain. Cyber activists saved more than 4,000 Apple Daily articles, uploading them onto a blockchain called ARWeave. A distributed file storage platform, ARWeave breaks down a file into bits of information distributed over an open network of anonymous computers around the world.
Cyber activists have also been using another decentralised registry called LikeCoin to save more content. LikeCoin helps Internet users identify the metadata — creator, date, time, location, version — of the content through a unique number called an International Standard Content Number (ISCN), akin to a book’s distinctive International Standard Book Number. However, the digital repository is still in its beta phase and months away from an official launch.
Will bitcoin light up again?
Bitcoin went into a freefall from an all-time high of US$64,000 in mid-April to around US$33,000 on June 26. Price volatility will not stop, say professional investors and observers.
But there is a silver lining amid these uncertain days. Encouraged by the maturing crypto market infrastructure, traditional players like banks which have largely ignored Bitcoin three to four years ago, are now looking into the asset more seriously.
US financial institution Morgan Stanley is offering Bitcoin to its high networth private banking clients. In Singapore, DBS Private Bank will allow its private banking clients to invest, custodies and manage digital assets through its wholly-owned trust company DBS Trustee. More banks in Southeast Asia will follow this trend.
In-orbit blockchain solutions
Digital finance asset custodian Nexus has become the only company to offer both Ethereum and bitcoin in-orbit transactional authentical solutions.
Its proprietary bitcoin blockchain node installed on a YAM-2 satellite blasted into space on June 25. Together with its Ethereum multisignature hardware installed onboard the International Space Station earlier this month, Nexus is now able to offer offline end-to-end encrypted data and security keys, stored remotely in space.
The company claims that it will complete bitcoin transactions under guaranteed ultra-secure conditions. By limiting to just 50 transactions a day, Nexus’s cryptocurrency clients are further fully insulated from would-be digital thieves as a result of its one-of-a-kind authentication protocols.
Besides, Nexus claims that its ground-based interface, which has an uplink-downlink latency of at least 12 hours, effectively slows down and delays the movement of digital assets and currencies in order to execute bitcoin multisignature protocols effectively.
In opting for space-based payloads as opposed to land-bound servers, Nexus has installed a truly decentralised system, claiming that it has solved terrestrial centralised infrastructure issues that have been plaguing institutions and businesses in the last two decades
This is cool and useful
With millions of people owning cryptocurrency for the first time — and making loads of money — ensuring that your dependents and loved ones can access your coins are becoming essential.
Generally leave a document where your heirs know three things:
• Exchanges: which accounts you are currently using, and those that are no longer in use but are still open. Useful to keep the passwords to these exchanges somewhere safe, like with your lawyer.
• Digital wallets: Identify the wallets you are using and where the wallet backups are kept.
• Devices: State what devices — laptop, phone or others — you use to access the wallet accounts. The wallets will have copies of your security keys stored on them.
Some websites like Casa and cryptoasset inheritance guides are cropping up to help crypto millionaires ensure that their families and loved ones inherit their coins.
For feedback and comments, write to grace.chng1@gmail.com
