One of the first and most influential lawyers to represent blockchain and cryptocurrency businesses is joining one of the industry’s oldest startups in an executive role. Announced today, Marco Santori is leaving Cooley LLP, where he’s been a partner since November 2016, to become the president and chief legal officer of blockchain, a longtime client […]

PhD candidate Yonatan Sompolinsky and Dr. Aviv Zohar, both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, released a paper this week on a new scalable BlockDAG — an alternative network structure to Blockchain — protocol called PHANTOM. Sompolinsky and Zohar's 2013 paper on the GHOST protocol …

Bitcoin, the much-hyped cryptocurrency, made headlines recently for driving a surge in power use. Around the globe, digital entrepreneurs are ‘mining’ Bitcoins by solving complex math problems, using supercomputers to get the job done. Those supercomputers use a ton of power, which largely comes form coal- and gas-fired power plants spewing gobs of carbon pollution. But, […]

ConsenSys, one of the most prominent startups in the ethereum ecosystem, will work with the European Commission on its EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, which officially launched Thursday. The Commission first announced the initiative last spring, citing its desire to expand institutional knowledge of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. “As an important actor in the blockchain community, ConsenSys […]

An Illinois government task force has outlined a potential direction for applying blockchain technologies in the state’s inter-government operations. According to a report filed on Jan. 31 by the Illinois Blockchain Task Force to the General Assembly, the state is eyeing the use of blockchain technologies to, at least, manage state residents’ identification, as well as tokenizing […]

For the most part, everyone I talk to (who is not an engineer) doesn't really get what blockchain is and how it can actually be used (besides as a currency). To those of you who are unaware that there is any other purpose for blockchain, it is important to note that while the press has focused on the 1300% …

An exchange-traded fund focused on companies that are working with blockchain or are eyeing applications of the tech has launched today. Innovation Shares LLC’s NextGen Protocol ETF (ticker symbol: KOIN) went live on the NYSE Arca exchange this morning. As of press time, price data via though NYSE shows that trading has begun. The information, as of 9:46 […]

The Blockchain Connect conference, which took place on Friday, Jan. 26 in San Francisco, did not get off to a strong start. However, the content of the panels, talks, and informal meetings that took place that day arguably delivered for the 1500 attendees. The event, hosted in part by media company SV …

Due its distributed nature, recording new assets on a blockchain can be quite slow, with transaction times measured in hours or even days rather than the seconds that are typical of e-commerce. As such, blockchain technology is a poor substitute for existing ownership records in developed or even …

Regulators and investors alike are just beginning to understand what cryptocurrency is, says Jamie Smith, president of the Global Blockchain Business Council. The organization helps regulators understand blockchain technology and other cryptocurrencies. “What concerns me is that there are so many regulators, not just in the United States, but all over the world, who are just waking […]