Environment

Bank of Korea Launches Experimental Trial for National Cryptocurrency

The central bank of South Korea has announced the launch of its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project to determine the requirements of issuing a government-backed cryptocurrency in the future.  According to a report by Yonhap today, the trial which commenced last month is a 22-month program focused on the technological and legal provisions needed to launch a CBDC. The Bank of Korea (BoK) believes the possibility of issuing a CBDC in the future is slim because of the increased demand for fiat currencies, the competitive nature of the global

FATF Grades U.S. Government on Crypto Regulation Enforcement 

The Financial Action Task Force, one of the most prominent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) enforcers in the world, has called out the United States government for being lax on policy enforcement. On March 31, the body published a report in which it explained that the United States is only “largely compliant” with its AML and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) regulations – especially when it comes to the issue of virtual currencies. Higher Awareness is Good, but Loophole Still Exist In the report, the FATF outlined the United States’ degree of compliance with the recommendations it issued last

Talking Digital Future: Smart Cities

My journey into smart cities and their future development was a really big surprise, as the way I arrived there was not something that I had planned. I was working as the chief information officer for a company in Northern California called O'Reilly Media when I got a call from a headhunter who asked if I would consider being the chief information office for the City of Palo Alto. I can vividly remember — it was only about eight years ago — my feeling when she asked the question. The

Is Decentralized ASIC Production Possible?

The news about ASICs for Nervos CKB came out recently, as the time of writing, there are four ASICs announced, the Toddminer C1, Toddminer C1 Pro, Bitmain K5 and PA miner — the first batch of C1 was delivered on March 9, K5 and PA Miner are expected to be delivered in April and C1 Pro in May.Since mainnet launch, the total hashrate on CKB mainnet has been around 200TH/S on average, it is now gradually picking up (at the time of writing at ~500TH/S) with ASICs. Toddminer says C1+C1

Ark’s 1 Million Token Grant Fund Drives Community Innovation

Interoperable blockchain project Ark (ARK) designated one million ARK valued at roughly $150,000 toward its new development grants program on March 24.While the grant program was launched one week ago, Ark’s Strategic Partnerships Manager, Ray Alvarez, told Cointelegraph that it has already received proofs-of-concept from developers.The program exclusively funds “proposals involving technical deployments and usage of [the] ARK technology stack.”The applications include standalone applications and plugins, including development contributing to Ark’s decentralized private messaging application, desktop wallet, and transaction plugins.In addition to sparking development for specific applications, Alvarez states that

Fed’s Quantitative Easing Strategy Holds Long-Term Benefits for Crypto

These are perilous times, and it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the United States Federal Reserve is doing its part to alleviate the suffering — which began with the coronavirus pandemic and has spread to the global economy. It’s printing more money. “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve,” Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told Scott Pelley of CBS on March 22, adding: “We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial