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UNICEF Unveils Cryptocurrency Donation Fund

UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), whose objective is defending children’s rights and assisting them in attaining their optimal potential, has unveiled a cryptocurrency donation fund for this goal.

Expressly, UNICEF will be able to disburse, hold, and receive cryptocurrency donations in both ether and bitcoin. UNICEF has, therefore, set a precedent as this is the first-ever move by a UN organization. The UNICEF crypto initiative was launched for open-source technology funding as it will be beneficial to young people and children across the globe.

Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, noted that emerging technologies should be embraced. She asserted:

“If digital economies and currencies have the potential to shape the lives of coming generations, it is important that we explore the opportunities they offer. That’s why the creation of our Cryptocurrency Fund is a significant and welcome step forward in humanitarian and development work.”

Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation is expected to make the first contribution. Its executive director, Aya Miyaguchi, made this revelation, proclaiming:

“The Ethereum Foundation is excited to demonstrate the power of what Ethereum and blockchain technology can do for communities around the world. Together with UNICEF, we’re taking action with the Cryptofund to improve access to basic needs, rights, and resources.”

The UNICEF Cryptocurrency Donation Fund is part of the organization’s ongoing project with blockchain technology. Notably, UNICEF is instrumental in the UN Innovation Network mandated with researching the capabilities and challenges of blockchain, as well as innovative technologies.

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Which Cryptocurrency Was Most Correlated to Rest of the Crypto Market In 2019?

A reportpublished by research projections from Binance released figures which amounted to ETH (Ether), averaging a correlation coefficient of 0.69. The research showed the following comparative values; “Ether is the highest correlated asset. With an average correlation coefficient of 0.69 throughout 2019, it is consistently among the most correlated assets. The coefficient started at 0.69 in Q1 and rose to 0.72 in Q4 (Q2: 0.65; Q3: 0.74).” Findings from the report show that Ether was relatively less correlated in the earlier half of 2019. The incline of its correlation began in the second half.

What was most interesting is that research shows that ‘programmable blockchains,’ for instance, Ethereum, NEO, and EOS showed moderately higher correlations in comparison to non–programmable assets. The most significant contrast was amongst those assets with the lowest correlation, namely Cosmos, standing at a correlation of 0.31. To add are Chainlink (LINK) and Tezos (XTZ) at coefficients of 0.32 and 0.4, respectively.

The “Binance Effect,” which was highlighted in the article, reveals that cryptos listed on Binance resembled higher correlations than those that are not listed. Additionally, the relationship between BTC and well- known commodities such as Gold is debatable, but recent data reveals that it is significantly less correlated than popular belief.

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Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Says Layer 2 Scaling Solution Has ‘Basically’ Succeeded

Ethereum has been seeing an upward trend, and demand may increase further in anticipation of the upcoming ETH 2.0 update expected in Q3 2020.

Ethereum is scheduled to undergo a major change of its consensus mechanism, transitioning from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Ethereum has been expecting its scaling to occur for some time, and according to Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, it could already be happening.

Vitalik Buterin recently tweeted that the Ethereum blockchain network’s “layer 2 strategy has basically succeeded.”

Previously, Buterin identified blockchain scalability has a difficulty for typical blockchain designs because it requires every node in the network to process every transaction, limiting the transaction processing capacity of the entire system.

To solve the scalability issue, the Ethereum creator identified strategies for scaling, including sharding, also known as the “layer 2 protocols,” which allows transactions to go through without every node processing the whole transaction.

Token transfers will continue moving to layer 2 solutions due to the fact that these transactions take up a large chunk of the network activity, according to Buterin.

Scalability: Shard Chain Simplification

Dubbed as “HackMD,” Buterin proposed the ETH2 shard chain simplification in early October 2019. In this proposal, a persistent shard chain will be abandoned, and it is replaced by every shard block which is a direct crosslink.

The number of shards is reduced from 1024 to 64 and the maximum number of shards per slot increased from 16 to 64. The “optimal workflow” is revised that there is a crosslink published for every shard during every beacon chain block. Other simplifications include less shard chain logic required, simplification of EEs, and decentralized exchanges no longer needed to facilitate paying transaction fees across shards.

The simplification proposal does come with limitations. There will be more beacon chain overhead with the attestation aggregation having an overhead of 307,200 bytes per slot in each shard. As there are more pairing from a maximum of 128 to 192 per block, the block processing time will increase by around 200ms.

Cardano’s Shelley upgrade is also expected soon, for June 30. While speculation around the upcoming hard forks, ETH and ADA prices are expected to rise, as people who want to earn staking rewards will push buying pressure.

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UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund Invests in Tech Startups Fighting COVID-19 in Emerging Economies

Eight technology companies in developing and emerging economies will receive investment from the UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund (CryptoFund) to solve local and global challenges.

In an email shared with Blockchain.News, UNICEF announced that its CryptoFund will invest 125 ETH into eight tech startups from seven different developing nations. The companies—Afinidata, Avyantra, Cireha, Ideasis, OS City, StaTwig, Somleng and Utopic—will be awarded the Ethereum cryptocurrency to fund the development of prototypes, pilots, or scale their technologies over six months.

All of the above investees have previously been the recipients of UNICEF’s Innovation Fund and are now receiving cryptocurrency to continue the development of their open-source and digital public goods.

UNICEF’s Innovation Fund

UNICEF’s Innovation Fund is the first of its kind within the UN and offers financial support of up to $100,000 USD, as well as technical advice and mentorship, to worthy startups that are innovating to improve the world through open-source technology.

Christina Lomazzo, Blockchain Lead at UNICEF told Blockchain.News, “There are different ways to actually explore how these new exponential technologies may have an impact on UNICEF and one of those ways is through a venture fund, because it actually widens the amount of exposure that we have to the tech.”

UNICEF does not take any equity away from these startups and exclusively invests in open-source projects, that are based in UNICEF program countries. Lomazzo said, “These projects are typically in emerging or developing economies—the thing that is so fantastic is that they are building solutions for local challenges.”

According to Lomazzo, one of the difficulties within the tech space is the assumption that new technology built in places like San Francisco or New York will automatically translate to every single geography’s needs, which she asserts is “absolutely not the case.” This is why UNICEF invests in local innovation and exclusively open-source technology that can be accessed by everyone. Lomazzo said. “Open source software can reach the most people and the beneficiaries of our venture fund are solving local challenges which will also have a greater impact. When you start building for those who are in low connectivity areas, or those who are not literate—those types of tech applications will also work in developed economies.”

Investees Fighting COVID-19

The investees of the CryptoFund come from seven different emerging or developing economies. Several of the startups benefitting from the CryptoFund are working to mitigate the hardships of COVID-19 on children and youth around the world. They are collaborating with national governments and local partners to send vital messages on COVID-19, track the effectiveness of rice delivery to vulnerable communities, improve children’s literacy through remote learning, treat pandemic and isolation-related anxieties, and other vital solutions.

“We are seeing the digital world come at us more quickly than we could have imagined – and UNICEF must be able to use all of the tools of this new world to help children today and tomorrow,” says Chris Fabian, Senior Adviser, co-Lead, UNICEF Ventures. “The transfer of these funds – to eight companies in seven countries around the world – took less than fifteen minutes and cost us less than five dollars. Almost instant global movement of value, fees of less than 0.000015% of the total amount transferred, and real-time transparency for our donors and supporters are the types of tools we are excited about.”

Besides funding, investees receive business growth mentorship, product, and technical assistance, open-source and UX and UI development, access to experts and partners, as well as opportunities to showcase their solutions.

The UNICEF Innovation Fund and CryptoFund currently have an open call for blockchain solutions to apply for funding (up to $100,000 and cryptocurrency combined) and mentorship.

Chinese Police Seize $14M in Crypto from Scammers Posing as Huobi Officials

The Chinese police arrested a crypto scammer gang in Wenzhou that reportedly swindled $14.3M in cryptocurrencies.

The gang, which was made up of Chinese graduate classmates, operated by reaching out to victims through Telegram group chats, one of which was called “Huobi Global Moving Brick Arbitrage HT Chinese Group Community.” By posing as the global investment group and with the help of devised marketing schemes, the fraudsters advocated the use of “smart contract” blockchain technology in order to invest their “clients'” money.

They claimed that the blockchain smart contract could generate Huobi Tokens (HT) – the official coin of the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi. The criminals told victims that this investment would enable the latter to earn an 8% return via arbitrage.

The fraudsters convinced individuals to transfer Ethereum coins to a designated web address, after which the client would be compensated with 60 HT. They posed as investors and they told interested participants that all they needed to do was send their crypto coins to a fake Huobi wallet address, after which the victims would receive the promised HT tokens in return. Instead, it was reported that individuals falling for the scam only received a fake HT link in return. One victim came forward and filed a complaint to the local police. He told them:

“Simply put, you send one unit of Ether to a designated account, and they send you 60 HT. If you sell it, the profit you gain is around 8%.”

After investigating the criminal case for more than a month, Chinese police officers finally managed to locate the scammers. During their raid, officers arrested 10 suspects residing in a luxury villa and a commercial house in the Cangshan District of Fuzhou City. The police also seized real estate property, two luxury cars — a Ferrari and a McLaren — estimated to respectively be of $430,000 USD and $570,000 USD in value.

Bitcoin and Ethereum win sentiment scores

With cryptocurrencies on the rise, hackers and fraudsters have been quick to use this to their advantage. Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoins, and Zcash appear to be popular choices used in fraudulent activities. Though cryptocurrencies are relatively safe and secure, the guaranteed transparency of them can sometimes be problematic.

A random sample population surveying whether people generally had a positive or negative outlook on cryptocurrencies found that Bitcoin and Ethereum generated the most positive outlooks, while Binance coin received the highest sentiment rate. Eleven cryptocurrencies were used in the experiment.

Ether Surges Ahead of Bitcoin and Sets the Record for 2020

Ether has been having a solid run this year. Once again, it has managed to steal the headlines this week, and is ahead of its rival, Bitcoin.

Ethereum Rises to Prominence

Ether (ETH) underwent a 20% surge, and the increase in pricing can be attributed to the rising popularity of DeFi applications and the resulting number of dividends pay-outs. This is exciting for the crypto community, as Ethereum has not seen the time of the day since its early 2018 crash.

Also, until recently, it has been seen to be trailing behind its counter rival Bitcoin on the crypto markets. But 2020 appears to be the year that revolutionizes it all for Ethereum.

BTC Falls From Grace

Bitcoin (BTC) has been having a hard time and has up to now been bearish on the market. However, it was reported this week that Bitcoin rose to its highest price in a month. Before that, BTC’s trading value was stagnant, partly due to the European Union’s agreement of delivering a coronavirus stimulus package earlier in the week. Despite BTC doing a bit better, its price is still plateauing below $10, 000, which is a disappointment for a lot of crypto enthusiasts.

Binance CEO CZ Comments on BTC

Crypto traders are also worried about BTC, as expectations were set higher for the cryptocurrency. In a report earlier last week, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) confided in Bloomberg and told them that he was worried about Bitcoin potentially experiencing another crash. He is also uncomfortable with the idea that BTC is still tied to the stock market.

Catch Me If You Can: ETH and DeFi Platforms

As for Ethereum, it has been having the best bull run this year. ETH reportedly surged to $309 this Saturday, setting a 2020 high record on the crypto market. This may be attributed to the recent surge of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Furthermore, as of yesterday, the total value of funds locked into DeFi platforms has reached an impressive $4 billion. With all this exciting news happening in the crypto community, it is evident that there is great potential that lies with decentralized computing that relies on blockchain and cryptographic mechanisms to function. In fact, it appears as though the future is paved for the creation of a whole new realm of decentralized applications, that will integrate cryptocurrencies on its digital platforms.

New Horizons for Ethereum: ETH 2.0

On top of their new all-time record on the crypto market, Ethereum has also announced its strategies behind the launch of its mainnet Ethereum 2.0.

Ethereum 2.0 testnet, “Medalla,” is set to be released on August 4, and it will be the final one before mainnet Ethereum 2.0 is made available to the public.

Twitch Offers Bitcoin Discount to 15 million Gaming and Livestreaming Subscribers

Twitch is now leveraging BitPay’s digital currency processing network to facilitate Bitcoin cryptocurrency payments and has announced a special 10% crypto discount promotion.

The World’s leading live-streaming platform for gamers, Twitch has announced that its subscribers who choose to pay with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will get a special 10% discount.

The Amazon-owned premier live streaming platform Twitch is escalating its digital strategy with its recent crypto promotion ramping up its crypto strategy. Twitch is primarily leveraged by video game live streamers and is now offering a 10% subscription discount when paying with cryptocurrency through the platform’s payment processor, BitPay.

Gaming and Crypto

The potential for mass crypto adoption through Twitch is huge as the site has a regular viewer base of over 15 million, as well as 27,000 partner channels and over 2 million people who broadcast their gameplay live on a monthly basis.

Twitch had originally introduced cryptocurrency payments back in 2014 but the system was stopped in the first quarter of 2019. Twitch is now leveraging BitPay‘s digital currency processing network to facilitate cryptocurrency payments. The system now accepts Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin(LTC) as well as four USD-pegged stable coins Gemini Dollar (GUSD), USD Coins (USDC), Paxos Standard Token (PAX) and Binance USD (BUSD). Ripple‘s XRP is also accepted.

When paying with cryptocurrencies on Twitch, users just have to select the ‘Pay with BitPay at Checkout’—to get the 10% discount.

Representatives from BitPay believe that cryptocurrency payments and gaming are made for each other and that using cryptocurrencies for transactions will increase the number of users on the gaming platform while reducing the cost of maintenance, and streamlining payments with less error. The payments platform believes that Twitch is just the first of many to utilize crypto payments.

Blockchain Live Streaming

While Twitch may be the first live-streaming site to leverage crypto, it is definitely not the first to utilize blockchain and in fact may start to lose market share to more decentralized platforms that allow creators more control.

DLive is one such platform looking forward to disrupting the existing monopolized video streaming services existing on the internet, which are dominated by only a few players in the market players mainly YouTube and Twitch.

Dlive is powered by the Lino blockchain, on which you can build your own value-sharing content-based economy and promises that “content creators, viewers, and all other contributors are fully and fairly incentivized.”

This project focuses on building and promoting a decentralized video content distribution infrastructure, which does away with the middlemen to better pays the content creators and the artists more fairly.

Cause for Concern? Ethereum's 15 Minutes of Extreme Volatility Explained

Ethereum’s price on the crypto market underwent a lot of fluctuations in the span of 15 minutes yesterday, causing quite a stir in the crypto community.

Market Experts on Ethereum

Across major coin exchanges, such as Binance Futures, Ethereum (ETH) peaked at $418, but within 5 minutes, it dropped by 25%. Eventually, it climbed back to $385 within a 10-minute span.

The reason behind ETH’s price fluctuations has been speculated upon by market experts, who are saying that the $410 to $420 range has always been a historical resistance area since 2017. Also, the sudden 25% drop of ETH led to a cascade of futures liquidations across major crypto exchanges and extreme movement for Ethereum.

Ethereum Has Big Plans for The Future

Global markets analyst Alex Krüger commented on Ethereum’s price fluctuation and said that though ETH underwent a “blowoff top” of 25%, a blowoff doesn’t have to be “the top”, meaning that Ethereum’s market value may still escalate further. Despite the digital asset’s sudden market correction, a lot of crypto investors still remain positive about the blockchain ecosystem’s outlook.

With the launch of ETH 2.0 testnet set for August 4, much is to be anticipated of Ethereum. Kelvin Koh, co-founder of cryptocurrency venture capital firm Spartan Black, stands by the belief that ETH is leading the crypto market’s uptrend. With the launch of ETH 2.0 testnet’s first phase, there is much to be expected of the blockchain ecosystem. Koh added:

“Depending on how hard ETH runs, the successful launch of phase 0 may culminate in a near term peak for ETH and other large caps.”

Ethereum Introduces Testnet Medalla

As Ethereum is transitioning from a Proof-of-Work format to a Proof-of-Stake, Ethereum 2.0, dubbed “Medalla” will be launched in at least 3 phases, the first being phase 0. Ethereum hopes that by separating the testing in phases, aspects of the new blockchain can be covered methodically and perfected before release.

Phases 0, 1, and 2 each outlines a different concept. Phases 0 focuses on all the machinery behind ETH 2.0’s consensus, and it tracks the validators and their transaction balances. Phase 1’s main objective is to handle the addition and storage of new and old data associated with ETH 2.0. Finally, Phase 2 adds execution to ETH 2.0, and it enables programs to be run on top of it.

Ethereum Dominates The DeFi Scene

Ethereum Foundation has come a long way since its beginning, with new projects such as ETH 2.0 in the horizon. Last Thursday marked the anniversary of Ethereum’s official network launch. The blockchain ecosystem has since expanded its growth, with it currently holding the majority of DeFi applications run on a blockchain. As the pioneer of DeFI applications and with their rising popularity, Ethereum seems to be having a pretty good bull run this year, despite its setback on the crypto market on August 2.

The new multi-client testnet that Ethereum has been planning for quite some time is set to launch on August 4, at 1 pm UTC. However, all pre-launch criteria must be met beforehand.

Solid Bull Run: Why Ethereum Is Up 50% in 10 Days

Ethereum faced a flash crash on August 1, where it plummeted by approximately $90 from $415 in 5 minutes.

‘Everything is Happening on Ethereum’

Eventually, it climbed back to $385 after 10 minutes, but the fluctuation in price value led to a mass liquidation of futures contracts.

What this translates to on the crypto market is that despite undergoing such a huge crash, Ethereum is still up by 50% within the last past 10 days, a phenomenon that has caused quite a stir among market experts and traders. Former Messari executive and cryptocurrency trader Qiao Wang took to his Twitter platform and addressed Ethereum’s recent bullish behavior to get to the bottom of Ethereum’s strength in pricing.

The majority of his followers seemed to feel that the reasoning behind Ethereum’s solid price performance despite its recent plummeting simply lay in the fact that “Everything is happening on Ethereum.”

Crypto Investors Are Positive About Ethereum

2020 has been a bullish year for Ethereum, up to now. Ethereum is ranked #2 by market capitalization, trailing behind the biggest cryptocurrency on the market, Bitcoin. Ethereum’s market cap translates to $42.44 billion at the time of writing, with a 24-hour volume of $18.63 billion.

Also, Ethereum appears to be the first and the largest blockchain optimized for digital contracts. It dominates the scene for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications run on a public blockchain. It appears that across the board, the underlying market sentiment regarding Ethereum has been very positive.

Bitcoin Rallies

With the ongoing pandemic and the global economic downfall, the silver lining seems to be that traditional market advocates are more willing to turn to cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) as side investments. As the US is printing stimulus money by the bulk and the dollar is dropping, BTC and ETH have been surging.

Over the weekend, Bitcoin, Ethereum’s counter rival, also dove from $12,200, before rising back to a steadier $11,200. BTC has recently emerged from its slump, undergoing a surge last week and rallying with gold.

Ethereum Gathers Cybersecurity Team Dedicated to ETH 2.0 Final Testnet Launch

With the launch of Ethereum 2.0 testnet set to be released on August 4 at 1 pm UTC, the Ethereum Foundation has been looking to build a security team that will be responsible for maintaining ETH 2.0.

Cybersecurity 2.0

The security team’s main point of focus would be to attend to any potential cybersecurity issues and maintain the anticipated ETH 2.0 upgrade. Ethereum 2.0 researcher Justin Drake took to his Twitter platform and announced that Ethereum was hiring for multiple tests that include fuzzing, bounty hunting, pager duty, applied cryptanalysis, formal verification, to name a few.

The security team hired by Ethereum Foundation will therefore be responsible for coding and verifying the cryptographic algorithms behind ETH 2.0. As their duties would include fuzzing, an automated testing software would have to be set up to make ETH 2.0 stronger. “Fuzzing” refers to a technique used in cybersecurity to weed out potential catastrophic bugs that may occur on the network. The technique involves inputting random, miscellaneous data into the computer program to generate undesired behavior such as crashes, leaks, and much more. The goal of the cybersecurity team is to perfect and coordinate all aspects of the network to make ETH 2.0 testnet safer, stronger and more efficient.

Ready, Set, Launch – Medalla 2.0 Testnet

The Ethereum Medalla testnet is set to launch on August 4, at 1 pm UTC. For it to launch, the multi-client testnet needs to fulfill two criteria.

The first is to achieve “minimum genesis time,” which details the parameters around the earliest the ETH 2.0 testnet can launch. The second criterion that needs to be fulfilled is that there needs to be a minimum number of validators signed up for the Medalla testnet. That number is set at 16,385 blockchain users, who all need to make a deposit of 32 Ether coins for Medalla to be launched. Also, the emphasis for Medalla is that it is a multi-client testnet, which means that the trial network is run by the community.

Ethereum coordinator Danny Ryan has announced that “the minimum validator deposits (16k+of them) required to kick off the Medalla testnet were met on Friday.” This means that the genesis of the testnet will happen on August 4 at 1 pm, as expected.

When Will ETH 2.0 Mainnet Launch?

As for the mainnet, the official launch has not yet been confirmed, as software developers need to make sure the blockchain is stable before clearing it for official release. Ethereum researcher Drake has predicted that this will only happen in 2021. However, co-founder and CEO of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, seems to be pushing for it to happen this year.

The CEO took to his social media platform earlier last week and expressed his wish to see the beginning of phase 1 sooner than later.