Singapore-based digital currency trading platform, Crypto.com, has announced the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) support at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab.
As announced by the company, the support is a gift of a 4-year-based partnership whose monetary value was undisclosed.
The backing will help foster the research into the Bitcoin network while also digging into the protocol’s security as well as its underlying innovations. Per the defined goals of the support, Crypto.com said the gift is “designed to support continuing research efforts into the stability of fee-based rewards and software to provide strong robustness and correctness guarantees.”
“MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative is playing a critical role in building a sustainable blockchain ecosystem, in particular by fortifying Bitcoin’s underlying protocol,” said Eric Anziani, Chief Operating Officer at Crypto.com. “We are excited to further support blockchain research across the globe with such an esteemed institution and help accelerate the world’s safe transition to using cryptocurrencies.”
The entire backing of research initiatives notably aligns with Crypto.com’s efforts in related moves, which it publishes on a monthly basis in collaboration with members of academia. The exchange’s focus on pushing forth blockchain and crypto innovation spans other universities beyond MIT. The trading platform also backs the “Secure Blockchain Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, advancing on-chain safety.”
“Our research has shown over and over again that from Brazil to Australia, high-security standards are one of the top criteria for choosing crypto products,” added Dr. Henry Hon, Head of Research at Crypto.com, adding that “DCI’s research focuses on the security of one of the most widely adopted coins on the planet, a goal we want to support.”
Over time, trading platforms have assumed to advance crypto education in a bid to foster massive mainstream adoption across the board. From the launch of its app in several languages, including Turkish, to the partnership with regional tech startups, Crypto.com has continued to play a forerunner role in digital currency adoption worldwide.
Singapore-based digital currency trading platform, Crypto.com, has announced the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) support at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab.
As announced by the company, the support is a gift of a 4-year-based partnership whose monetary value was undisclosed.
The backing will help foster the research into the Bitcoin network while also digging into the protocol’s security as well as its underlying innovations. Per the defined goals of the support, Crypto.com said the gift is “designed to support continuing research efforts into the stability of fee-based rewards and software to provide strong robustness and correctness guarantees.”
“MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative is playing a critical role in building a sustainable blockchain ecosystem, in particular by fortifying Bitcoin’s underlying protocol,” said Eric Anziani, Chief Operating Officer at Crypto.com. “We are excited to further support blockchain research across the globe with such an esteemed institution and help accelerate the world’s safe transition to using cryptocurrencies.”
The entire backing of research initiatives notably aligns with Crypto.com’s efforts in related moves, which it publishes on a monthly basis in collaboration with members of academia. The exchange’s focus on pushing forth blockchain and crypto innovation spans other universities beyond MIT. The trading platform also backs the “Secure Blockchain Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, advancing on-chain safety.”
“Our research has shown over and over again that from Brazil to Australia, high-security standards are one of the top criteria for choosing crypto products,” added Dr. Henry Hon, Head of Research at Crypto.com, adding that “DCI’s research focuses on the security of one of the most widely adopted coins on the planet, a goal we want to support.”
Over time, trading platforms have assumed to advance crypto education in a bid to foster massive mainstream adoption across the board. From the launch of its app in several languages, including Turkish, to the partnership with regional tech startups, Crypto.com has continued to play a forerunner role in digital currency adoption worldwide.
Singapore-based digital currency trading platform, Crypto.com, has announced the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) support at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab.
As announced by the company, the support is a gift of a 4-year-based partnership whose monetary value was undisclosed.
The backing will help foster the research into the Bitcoin network while also digging into the protocol’s security as well as its underlying innovations. Per the defined goals of the support, Crypto.com said the gift is “designed to support continuing research efforts into the stability of fee-based rewards and software to provide strong robustness and correctness guarantees.”
“MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative is playing a critical role in building a sustainable blockchain ecosystem, in particular by fortifying Bitcoin’s underlying protocol,” said Eric Anziani, Chief Operating Officer at Crypto.com. “We are excited to further support blockchain research across the globe with such an esteemed institution and help accelerate the world’s safe transition to using cryptocurrencies.”
The entire backing of research initiatives notably aligns with Crypto.com’s efforts in related moves, which it publishes on a monthly basis in collaboration with members of academia. The exchange’s focus on pushing forth blockchain and crypto innovation spans other universities beyond MIT. The trading platform also backs the “Secure Blockchain Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, advancing on-chain safety.”
“Our research has shown over and over again that from Brazil to Australia, high-security standards are one of the top criteria for choosing crypto products,” added Dr. Henry Hon, Head of Research at Crypto.com, adding that “DCI’s research focuses on the security of one of the most widely adopted coins on the planet, a goal we want to support.”
Over time, trading platforms have assumed to advance crypto education in a bid to foster massive mainstream adoption across the board. From the launch of its app in several languages, including Turkish, to the partnership with regional tech startups, Crypto.com has continued to play a forerunner role in digital currency adoption worldwide.
To delve deeper into the opportunities, risks, trade-offs, and potential technical challenges faced when developing a CBDC system, the Bank of England (BoE) has joined hands Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a year-long research project.
In a statement, the Bank of England pointed out that the project aimed to explore the underlying technology and not create an operational central bank digital currency (CBDC). Per the announcement:
“The collaboration forms part of the Bank’s wider ‘research and exploration’ into CBDC, and will be focused on exploration and experimentation of potential technology approaches.”
The partnership will involve England’s apex bank with the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI).
The BoE follows in the footsteps of the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston as research partners with the DCI.
However, a decision has not been made on whether to roll out a CBDC in the United Kingdom, given that it would be a significant national infrastructural project.
The financial regulator recently announced the first regulatory framework for crypto assets based on their rapid growth.
CBDCs have emerged as a hot topic in the modern era based on the technological innovations being witnessed in the financial system.
Hiromi Yamaoka, a former Bank of Japan executive, recently suggested that the sanctions slapped on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine might prompt more nations to adopt CBDCs as a shield against the U.S. dollar’s supremacy in the global financial system.
Yamaoka added that national security and defence would become key issues when discussing CBDCs.
Earlier this month, the University of Cambridge, through the Cambridge Centre of Alternative Finance (CCAF), rolled out a multi-year research initiative with 16 key financial institutions like the WorldBank, IMF, and MasterCard to shed more light on the rapidly evolving crypto-asset ecosystem, with CBDCs being one of the areas of interest.
Ranked sixth among the top 10 technological breakthroughs of 2022, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) views Ethereum’s proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism as a game-changer that will prompt the adoption of energy-saving technology.
Per the announcement:
“Proof of stake offers a way to set up such a network without requiring so much energy. And if all goes as planned, Ethereum, which runs all sorts of applications in addition to the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, will transition to it in the first half of 2022. The shift has been projected to cut energy use by 99.95%.”
The MIT acknowledged that Ethereum’s PoS framework would be instrumental in changing the narrative about cryptocurrencies using vast amounts of electricity. For instance, Bitcoin (BTC) used more energy than Finland last year.
Ethereum 2.0, recently renamed to the consensus layer, was launched in December 2020 to transition a PoS framework from the current proof of work (PoW) consensus algorithm.
Since then, it has gained steam as more investments continue trickling in, given that the number of validators recently hit 300,000 and staked Ether crossed the 9.5 million mark.
With “The Merge” slated for the second quarter of this year, MIT noted that Ethereum’s transition would become the centre stage of triggering energy-efficient technology even though other networks like Solana, Cardano, and Algorand are already using PoS blockchains.
The report noted:
“With proof of stake, validators don’t have to vie against one another, spending big on energy and computing hardware. Instead, their cache, or stake, of cryptocurrency allows them to enter a lottery. Those who are chosen to gain the authority to verify a set of transactions (and so earn more cryptocurrency).”
The other top ten breakthrough technologies included Covid variant tracking, a long-lasting grid battery, artificial intelligence (AI) for protein folding, and malaria vaccine, per the MIT Review.
The United States Federal Reserve and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are collaborating on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative called Project Hamilton.
Project Hamilton has now tested a digital dollar that the Fed claims can process 1,700,000 transactions per second.
According to the project’s whitepaper,
“Our primary goal was to design a core transaction processor that meets the robust speed, throughput, and fault tolerance requirements of a large retail payment system. Our secondary goal was to create a flexible platform for collaboration, data gathering, comparison with multiple architectures, and other future research. With this intent, we are releasing all software from our research publicly under the MIT open source license.”
Phase 1 of the project sought to implement two different digital dollar architectures which address the performance, resiliency, and flexibility problems associated with CBDCs.
“The first idea is to decouple transaction validation from execution, which enables us to use a data structure that stores very little data in the core transaction processor. It also makes it easier to scale parts of the system independently. The second idea is a transaction format and protocol that is secure and provides flexibility for potential functionality like self-custody and future programmability. The third idea is a system design and commit protocol that efficiently executes these transactions, which we implemented with two architectures.
Both architectures met and exceeded our speed and throughput requirements.”
According to the project whitepaper, phase 1 of the project highlighted key insights into digital dollar design.
“Select ideas from cryptography, distributed systems, and blockchain technology can provide unique functionality and robust performance…
CBDC design choices are more granular than commonly assumed…
[And] by implementing a robust system, we identify new questions for CBDC designers and policymakers to address, regarding tradeoffs in performance, auditability, functionality, and privacy.”
Project Hamilton now plans to move to Phase 2, which will explore alternative technical designs from a wide range of research topics.
“Research topics may include cryptographic designs for privacy and auditability, programmability and smart contracts, offline payments, secure issuance and redemption, new use cases and access models, techniques for maintaining open access while protecting against denial of service attacks, and new tools for enacting policy.”
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Theoretical research into a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the U.S. has found that distributed ledger architecture has “downsides.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published their findings of their initial research into a CBDC on Feb 3.
The research project, dubbed “Project Hamilton,” tested a “hypothetical general purpose CBDC” using two potential models.
The first one processed transactions through “ordering server” distributed ledger technology (DLT), which organized the validated transactions into blocks to create an ordered transaction history.
The researchers were able to use this architecture to complete over 99% of transactions in under two seconds and the majority of transactions in under 0.7 seconds.
However, the ordering server resulted in a number of issues due to being run under the control of a single actor, the researchers concluding that “a distributed ledger architecture has downsides. “
“For example, it creates performance bottlenecks, and requires the central transaction processor to maintain transaction history, which one of our designs does not, resulting in significantly improved transaction throughput scalability properties.”
They added that despite using ideas from blockchain technology, a “distributed ledger operating under the jurisdiction of different actors was not needed.”
The second architecture processed transactions in parallel on multiple computers, rather than relying on a single ordering server to prevent double spends. The researchers wrote that although “this results in superior scalability,” it did not “materialize an ordered history for all transactions.”
It demonstrated throughput of 1.7 million transactions per second with 99% of transactions durably completing in under a second, and the majority of transactions completing in under half a second.
Related:Fed issues discussion paper on benefits and risks of a digital dollar
Project Hamilton was first announced in 2020 to explore the use of existing and new technologies to build and test a hypothetical digital currency platform. The code is the first contribution to OpenCBDC, a project maintained by MIT which will serve as a platform for further CBDC research.
Boston Fed Executive Vice President and Interim Chief Operating Officer Jim Cunha said that the project illustrates that it is “critical” for change makers to not only understand how emerging technologies could support a potential CBDC, but also what challenges remain.
“This collaboration between MIT and our technologists has created a scalable CBDC research model that allows us to learn more about these technologies and the choices that should be considered when designing a CBDC.”
The director of the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT Neha Narula said that “there are still many remaining challenges in determining whether or how to adopt a central bank payment system for the United States.”
The Boston Fed, M.I.T.-run Project Hamilton has published its Phase One results.
Project Hamilton is an effort to conduct research and build technology for a central bank digital currency.
While the project is not directly building a USDC that would be usable in the U.S., it seeks to inform policy decisions with respect to CBDC technology.
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The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published the results from Phase One of Project Hamilton, a multi-year collaborative research endeavor focused on CBDC research.
Phase One Complete
Earlier today, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT published the results of Phase One of Project Hamilton, a collaborative effort to research and design a workable prototype for a CBDC that could scale to a nation the size of the United States.
It should be emphasized that no branch of the United States government has ordered the creation or implementation of a formal CBDC. However, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston does fall under the authority of the Federal Reserve System.
Phase One sought to build a transaction processing software, dubbed OpenCBDC, that was sufficiently technically sound to function as a “general-purpose CBDC” for a nation as large as the U.S. The Boston Fed and MIT have released OpenCBDC as open-source software on GitHub.
In regard to building a core processing engine that could support a CBDC, the “team met its goal”: speeds surpassed 1.7 million transactions per second, with the “vast majority” reaching settlement finality within two seconds. The paper also reads that the technology possesses flexibility that would allow it to be adjusted depending on policy decisions.
The Boston Fed is responsible for the First District of the Federal Reserve. While the research is conducted independently of the Federal Reserve Board of Governor’sdeliberations, Project Hamilton does seek to inform and enrich policy decisions surrounding a United States’ central bank digital currency. Moreover, the Fed itself doeshavea TechLab that also conducts CBDC research and experimentation.
User privacy is one of the project’s stated priorities when it comes to its design, though the language used suggests the privacy consideration is primarily focused on protecting users’ from third parties.
In Phase Two, the Boston Fed and MIT will research other technical designs to further optimize the Phase One technology’s “robust privacy, resiliency, and functionality,” while better elucidating tradeoffs between different designs. This phase will take years.
Project Hamilton was named after two Hamiltons: Alexander Hamilton, the U.S.’s first Treasury Secretary and primary founder of the Bank of the United States (a precursor to the Federal Reserve); and Margaret Hamilton, an engineering software director for MIT’s Instrumentation Lab that built software for NASA’s Apollo mission.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.
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On Thursday, BitDAO, one of the world’s largest decentralized autonomous organizations with over $2.5 billion assets under management, and its partner Mirana ventures announced the creation of EduDAO with eight of the world’s top universities including University of California Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Oxford University.
EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury, and will allocate $11 million in funding each year project grants, research, and standalone product development with $33 million in initial capital. The funds will go to academic research for next-generation blockchain and Web 3 technologies.
EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury, and will allocate $11 million in funding each year project grants, research, and standalone product development with $33 million in initial capital. The funds will go to academic research for next-generation blockchain and Web 3 technologies.
Roman Ugarte and Virat Talwar, co-presidents of the Harvard Blockchain Club, said: “Placing the power of targeted funding and information distribution in the hands of a decentralized collective of students, faculty members, and alumni is a revolutionary step forward for institutions such as Harvard.”
Jocelyn Weber Phipps, UC Berkeley’s Deputy Director for RDI [Responsible Decentralized Intelligence], added:
UC Berkeley is honored to partner with EducationDAO and further build on our new Berkeley RDI Center’s efforts to act as a hub and platform for collaborations globally with other organizations & researchers, as exemplified in leading the first DeFi MOOC with thousands of students enrolled from 30+ countries and our non-dilutive Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator open to teams around the world.
The Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, showed his cards. He spoke with legacy-media-operation The Washington Post and host David Ignatius fortheir series “The Path Forward” and spilled the beans. We at NewsBTC saw the whole interview so you don’t have to. We selected the most crucial quotes, and present them in all their splendor for you all to read them and reach your own conclusions.
Of course, we’re going to offer our two cents. We’re not made of steel. In general, though, you’ll get Gary Gensler’s unadulterated words. They’re shocking enough as it is.
Gary Gensler Is Looking Directly At Stablecoins
Even though host David Ignatius had no questions about stablecoins, the topic was on Gensler’s mind. The SEC’s Chair brought it up a couple of times. First, he said:
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“On something called stablecoins, and how the banking agencies–and we, too, market agencies–coordinate because these stablecoins may have attributes of investment contracts, have some attributes like banking products, but the banking authorities right now don’t have the full gamut of what they need.”
But his organization is not only thinking about stablecoins and trying to define them and isolate their attributes. They’re preparing a formal document:
“We’re working right now under the guidance of Secretary Yellen and working on a report around stablecoins, and in the world of stablecoins, I do think that there would be some help from Congress.”
This doesn’t seem that bad. Their report could conclude that stablecoins are a useful innovation and tool that the whole financial system can benefit from, right? Wrong. This is what Gensler and the SEC think about stablecoins, and pay attention to the language:
“These stablecoins are acting almost like poker chips at the casino right now; so, add to the Wild West analogy. I mean, we’ve got a lot of casinos here in the Wild West and the poker chip is these stablecoins, you know, at the casino gaming tables.”
Things are about to get interesting for stablecoins, it seems.
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Does The SEC Want Crypto Exchanges To Register?
Look, there are no two ways about this. Gary Gensler wants all exchanges, including decentralized ones, to register with the Securities Exchange Commission. To convince them, he asks for the exchanges to come to him:
“I think it would be better–the platforms that are trading securities, the platforms that have lending products, who have what’s called “staking products,” and I’m glad to describe that for your listeners, but where you actually put a coin at the platform and you earn a return–that they come in and we sort through, figure out how best to get them within the perimeter.”
And, you might ask, what perimeter is that? Well, this quote makes it very clear:
“I think at $2 trillion, 5- or 6,000 projects, that it would be better to be inside investor-consumer protection, inside the tax compliance and anti-money laundering and financial stability.”
This goes in line withrecent declarations from Genslerabout the need for crypto regulation:
“Gensler believes that if the market is to grow, then it needs to embrace regulation. The SEC chairman explained that regulation would provide trust in the market, which is important if the market does not want to become irrelevant over time. “Finance is about trust, ultimately,” Gensler said. Gensler’s focus is mostly on trading platforms, given that this is where the majority (~95%) of activities in the crypto market are carried out.”
Is Gary Gensler Even a Cryptocurrency Enthusiast?
Since the new Head of the SEC once taught a class on Cryptocurrencies at MIT, people assumed he would be a pro-crypto legislator. Is he, though? Let’s read what he said about the subject specifically:
“I do think this new technology is a very interesting–and whomever she was, Satoshi Nakamoto, it’s led to change. It’s pushing at the side of central banks around the globe to reconsider how to provide payment systems. It’s pushing on the side as a catalyst for change in finance, so-called “fintech,” the intersection of new technologies and finance.”
So, a non-comital opinion. However, Gensler feels strongly about bringing cryptocurrencies into a public policy framework. So strongly, that he said, “I don’t think technologies long last outside of a social and public policy framework.” And then, “I think it’s better to bring it inside the public policy framework and ensure that we address these important public policy goals.” And later on one more time, “So, new technology is generally a good thing; it challenges the establishment. But I don’t think that new technologies really long exist outside of public policy frameworks.”
Does Any Of This Have To Do With Evergrande?
Days after ourreport about the situation, Evergrandebecame one of the biggest stories of the year. We explained that the company reportedly owes $300B, and the most likely cause for all that:
“Apparently, China Evergrande was caught in a loop. The company was pre-selling apartments and using that money to fund other projects, in which they also pre-sold the apartments and the cycle started again. Evergrande bonds are suspended, and there’s a chance they won’t be active ever again. They might be worthless. The stock is near its all-time low, it has lost nearly 80% of its value this year.”
Of course, The Washington Post’s Mr. Ignatius had to bring the subject up. He said that analysts are worried that there could be “contagion in financial markets, like what we remember from 2008 and the failure of Lehman Brothers.” Then, he asked: “Are you confident that our financial markets today are protected in the event that there was such a failure, not necessarily over this company but any large company with that level of debt?”
Gensler refused to comment on a Chinese company, that’s out of his jurisdiction. To the question, he answered:
“I do think the reforms after the 2008 crisis stood up a much stronger U.S. financial system. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that we look at, at the SEC and other important regulators like the Federal Reserve and the bank regulators and CFTC, that I once was honored to chair. But I do think that we’re in better position in 2021 to absorb some of those shocks than we were prior to the ’08 crisis, but it doesn’t mean we’re isolated. Our economies are connected around the globe.”
Featured Image: Screenshoot from the interview | Charts by TradingView
