Litecoin the next Bitcoin?

[Woodenhead]

http://www.obj.ca/article/ottawa-firm-bitaccess-powers-feds-blockchain-experiment

Canadian government now publishing public data to the Ethereum blockchain

A local startup is helping the federal government take its first steps into the blockchain with a pilot program to publish open data on grants and other financial contributions.

Bitaccess, the firm behind the Bitcoin ATM, has developed a platform called Catena that can help public institutions put information on the blockchain, a highly secured public ledger that acts as the foundation for cryptocurrencies – just one of the technology’s complex uses.

Through the Build in Canada Innovation Program, Bitaccess has landed an enormous guinea pig for its product: the Government of Canada.

The pilot is being run out of the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, a common source of funding for Canadian startups. The NRC will publish information about any awarded grants and contributions through Catena in real-time, at which point it will be secured to the blockchain through a platform called Ethereum.

So what?

The difference between uploading data sets like these to a blockchain as opposed to a standard web page is about who has final control over the information.

Once information is hosted on the blockchain, it cannot be altered. Hundreds of thousands of nodes – computers around the world that are sustaining the blockchain – simultaneously verify the data, ensuring that no one source can change it, including the original poster. Catena is user-facing as well, meaning citizens can browse through an exact log of IRAP spending.

That can go a long way for government accountability. While information can be amended, it can never be edited without leaving a clear audit trail. Bitaccess CEO Moe Adham says this makes the government’s posts on Catena “irrefutable.”

Eventually, the government and other authoritative institutions such as banks could encode more complicated contracts and exchanges using this technology. Transfers of land deeds, getting multiple parties to sign onto a single contract, processing the payment of IRAP grants – from real estate to law, there’s a myriad of potential disruptions that Bitaccess sees in blockchain’s future.

Really cool, and actually pretty big news. Ethereum is built upon the idea of "smart contracts" - it's not really a "cryptocoin" in & of itself. I'd love to see governments utilize this tech, going forward. It's a huge leap towards full (and real-time) transparency. Still, I'm not about to hold my breath until they actually do this large scale.

2 good intros to smart contracts:
https://www.coindesk.com/information/ethereum-smart-contracts-work/
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/

[Woodenhead]

Figured I should post a direct link:

https://nrc-cnrc.explorecatena.com/en

The National Research Council of Canada, through its Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) is using the Ethereum blockchain to proactively publish grants and contribution data in real time, a measure that complements ongoing quarterly proactive disclosures available through the Open Government website.

On the simplest level, blockchains are public ledgers that records transactions shared among many users. Once data is entered on a blockchain it is secure and unalterable, providing a permanent public record. This technology offers unprecedented levels of transparency and trust allowing public records to be searched, verified and audited at a level the world hasn’t seen before.

[StraitTalk]

In my hopeful and humble opinion, BTC will ride the hype, but Ethereum is the crypto that makes the most sense all-around. As far as from an investment standpoint, it's always "too late" but it's also never too late for monero and stellar lumens. I could be totally wrong, but that's my bet. Litecoin is an investment I wish I never made, but we'll see what happens.

Don't invest more than you're willing to lose, in crypto.

[Loed]

That or, don't invest at all in magical internet money.

It's tempting, but pointless.

Without some kind of regulation you're just being played by people with far more money and time invested than you have.

Love watching this all bite people in the *bleep*.

[Woodenhead]

That or, don't invest at all in magical internet money.

It's tempting, but pointless.

Without some kind of regulation you're just being played by people with far more money and time invested than you have.

Love watching this all bite people in the *bleep*.

You need to have a certain modicum of intelligence to invest in the crypto sector. But yeah, it's not for everyone (or most people, honestly, right now) However, it's far from pointless. I've already gotten way more out of it than I ever dared think I would way back when I first stepped into it. There's no possible way for it to bite me in the *bleep*, at this point.

People who miss the bus like to say "That bus was crap anyway."

[GoStumpy]

People who miss the bus like to say "That bus was crap anyway."

And the telltale sign of those people are the joy they get in watching others (they think) fail.

[LANDM]

Woodhead, where are you trading quadriga?

I might throw a bit into litecoin just in case

Sucks to have anything in quadriga now, given the disappearance of all of the funds.