Ian Simpson is head of marketing and communications at Lakeside Partners, an early-stage investment firm in Zug, Switzerland. The following article is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2017 in Review. Without a shadow of a doubt, this past year has been huge for cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology. Whatever the future may hold for Satoshi’s brainchild […]

The controversial scaling proposal Segwit2x may have been officially called off this August, but that doesn’t mean its former lead developer is giving up on plans to keep its codebase alive. In fact, Jeff Garzik, better known as the CEO of blockchain startup Bloq, now believes his prior work could be revived in a way that promotes […]

Tim Swanson is the director of research at Post Oak Labs, a U.S.-based technology advisory firm, and the former director of research at distributed ledger technology consortium R3.  The following article is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2017 in Review series. Imagine a parallel universe in which the U.S. economy could only grow at $50 every 10 […]

RSK is launching its bitcoin smart contracts platform in beta today. Formerly known as Rootstock, the startup has long been lauded for its potential to pave the way for the implementation of ethereum-style smart contracts on bitcoin, something enthusiasts believe will keep the world’s largest cryptocurrency competitive with the platform that arguably pioneered the idea that more […]

There’s a new privacy technology in the crypto Wild West, and if the rate at which it’s winning favor from developers is any sign, it’s one to watch. Called “bulletproofs,” the new invention by University College of London’s Jonathan Bootle and Stanford’s Benedikt Bunz was announced last month, and quickly developers from major blockchains took steps to […]

The developers behind Bitcoin ABC, a software implementation which accounts for 81.48% of all nodes running on the bitcoin cash network, have released a new update designed to solve an issue whereby users could lose funds when mixing up BTC and BCH addresses. The problem stems from bitcoin cash’s hard fork last year, which resulted in the […]

The non-profit that oversees development of ethereum has officially unveiled two subsidy programs that will support research on how to grow the number of transactions its blockchain can process. In a blog post published Tuesday, ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin described how the network is beginning to reach 1 million transactions per day. In his view, scaling the […]

This is an entry in CoinDesk’s Most Influential in Blockchain 2017 series. Strange as it might seem, Charlie Lee stills pays for parking. On the sun-streaked streets of San Mateo, California, the man affectionately known as “Satoshi lite” feeds the meter before walking up to the front of the famed early-stage startup incubator Boost VC. The locked glass […]

Caitlin Long is the chairman and president of Symbiont, an enterprise blockchain platform.  The following article, an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2017 in Review, outlines Long’s personal views and is not intended to provide investment advice. Bitcoin and blockchain are often pitted against each other, but I come from both worlds and believe that both are […]

Faster and cheaper bitcoin transactions may soon go alive. A recent transaction posted on Twitter from inside the offices of prepaid phone payment provider, Bitrefill, used the Lightning network to top up a mobile (for real) at near instant speed with zero fee, as the Tweet touted. While such transaction is not yet generally available to the […]