Ep. 71. Initiative Q who?

Nov 8, 2018

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Simon and Colin are in the studio with Alex Batlin, Founder and CEO of Trustology.

First up, Bitcoin turns 10. Halloween 2008 Bitcoin was born, although it wasn't traded until a couple of years later we take a look at what BTC has given us in the last 10 years, if it's here to stay and what's in store for the future of Bitcoin.

Why “the Institutionalization of Cryptocurrency” is a paradox. Jackson Palmer writes that If you stay up-to-date with the cryptocurrency news cycle, a recent trend you may have observed is the widespread excitement at the prospect of large, traditional financial institutions entering the space. We’ve seen a wave of institutional news lately, and many cryptocurrency enthusiasts express blind enthusiasm at the notion of positive price impact associated with this money flowing in. We look at censorship resistance, trustless transactions, verifiable history and what comes next.

Initiative Q: an elementary pyramid scheme with grandiose ideas. The Q token is a centralised private currency issued by Initiative Q. It’s presently worthless, and not exchangeable even on Initiative Q’s own servers but they aspire to it being used in their nonexistent future payment network. At that point, they intend it to be freely exchangeable with dollars.

Pragmatic decentralization: How IDEX will approach industry regulations. Decentralization exists on a spectrum, and unless your system or application lacks any centralized parts it can be subject to regulation. Aurora is working to create a fully-decentralized financial system, but the path to getting there requires significantly more control and centralization than the end state. In addition to IP blocking, IDEX will be implementing KYC/AML policies in order to comply with sanctions and money laundering laws.

How much have ICOs raised in 2018? Depends on who you ask. Lack of rules, transparency leaves issuance amounts murky. More digital tokens are being issued through direct sales. It remains hard to ascertain the amount of funds a issuer claims it’s raised when no one has to submit any regulated filings or even reveal their identities.

Bitcoin Cash hard fork set for November 15th. After the decision to implement a 'pre-consensus' protocol in a long scheduled software upgrade to Bitcoin Cash on November the 15th, its community is split and a hard fork that will see the digital currency split into two separate chains should occur on that date. In July, Bitcoin Cash developer Amaury Sechet published a post announcing the decision to include a new software alteration to a planned upgrade.

We also have a great Tweet of the Week on statistical dishonesty.

All this and so much more on this week's episode of Blockchain Insider. And if you enjoyed our tweet of the week why not send us your best tweets? See if you can get a shout out on the show!

We hope you enjoy the show and, as ever, don't forget to subscribe!

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This week's episode of Blockchain Insider was produced by Laura Watkins and Petrit Berisha. Edited by Michael Bailey.

Special Guest: Alex Batlin.

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