BlockShow, one of the largest blockchain events in the blockchain and crypto industry, will curate discussions around blockchain and cryptocurrency for a five-day hybrid online and offline event hosted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The event runs from Dec. 7–11 and the attendees will have 24-hour online access to the conferences. As a “Knowledge Partner” of the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) 2020, BlockShow will bring some of the best blockchain leaders to discuss blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. The discussions spanning blockchain and crypto are expected to expose the global fintech community to this new technological landscape. And it will …

BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week have partnered with Gitcoin for a hackathon — with $15,000 in prizes to be won. The event follows the success of the Unitize online conference, which ran from July 6 to 10 and attracted an estimated 10,000 attendees. It is hoped that the Unitize Virtual Hackathon will allow hackers from all over the world to work together to achieve long-term blockchain adoption in a wide range of sectors, including decentralized finance and gaming. Hurdles do remain to achieving widespread adoption, and according to Gitcoin, one of them is consistently providing a unique, compelling digital …

The five-day Unitize virtual blockchain conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week ended with the final session on Friday. The event saw appearances from Heath Tarbert, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum; and Tim Draper, a serial blockchain investor, as well as other speakers from a diverse pool of market segments both within and outside the crypto space. Blockchain adoption, decentralized finance, central bank digital currencies and the future of Bitcoin (BTC) dominated the conversation in many of the panels. The event also saw speakers chart possible paths forward for …

Retail and enterprise blockchain adoption trends dominated the discussions on days three and four of the ongoing virtual conference Unitize, organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week and sponsored by crypto derivatives exchange ByBit. The key topic that dominated discussion was blockchain adoption, which continues to spread across the globe, with governments and corporate establishments developing solutions based on distributed ledger technology. Exploring the blockchain development landscape Speaking during one of Wednesday’s panels at the conference. Yi Ming Ng, a member of the Tribe Accelerator project in Singapore, and Marloes Pomp, a blockchain consultant with the Dutch government, shed …

Research into stateless clients for Ethereum is seen as instrumental for the long-term health of the network, but despite all the progress, some fundamental limitations prevent them from being applied in practice for now. At the Unitize conference, Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, provided an up-to-date picture on the latest progress and problems for the stateless client transition. Stateless clients, in short, are a way to allow nodes to fully participate in validation without having to hold the entire earlier history of the blockchain. The state represents all current balances, smart contracts code and their respective data. Each new …

UC Berkeley professor Barry Eichengreen argues that Facebook’s planned Libra stablecoin faces too many “insoluble” problems, and too much resistance from governments, to ever launch. “Libra is an interesting idea that will never see the light of day,” he told the Unitize conference on July 10. Eichengreen asserts that the stablecoin sector is largely ignorant of monetary economics and history. He said his economic work had led to invitations “to a series of lunches at excellent San Francisco restaurants with the founders and funders of prospective stablecoins.” “My conclusion was that my luncheon companions knew all about blockchain, but they …

Smart contracts have limited efficiency in certain industries if not implemented in conjunction with IoT sensors according to experts in blockchain and business from NYU. Stern School of Business Associate Professors Hanna Halaburda and Yannis Bakos presented their research at the Unitize conference July 10 on the interaction between smart contracts and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in improving business efficiencies. Smart contracts make business more democratic The study looked at how “smart contracts will make the business landscape more democratic” — that is, beneficial for all parties involved — however it found shortcomings in the current implementation of the …

Richard Holden, an economics professor at the University of New South Wales Business School, says using distributed ledger technology could allay Republican concerns over mail-in voter fraud — but would likely benefit the Democratic Party. Holden spoke at the Unitize conference on July 9 on The Law and Economics of Blockchain. The university professor said distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to increase voter turnout and have a “meaningful effect” on the outcome of U.S. elections — but there are still issues around the overall integrity of the process. Screen capture from Unitize The UNSW professor cited Republican lawsuits …

Richard Ma, the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain security startup Quantstamp, explained that decentralized finance has the potential to change our financial ecosystem but security remains a huge challenge. “We think security is very crucial for DeFi’s growth,” he said at the Unitize digital conference today. Ma noted the several DeFi hacks that occurred so far in 2020, stating that $26 million worth of funds were stolen from DeFi projects this year alone. Rising interest in DeFi The DeFi ecosystem grew almost three fold from $700 million in December 2019 to $2 billion at present. Reflecting on this growth, …

Enterprise adoption of smart contracts and blockchain technology is coming to a head soon, according to Chainlink CEO Sergey Nazarov and Interwork Alliance President Ron Resnick. The pair were members of a Unitize 2020 panel earlier today and said they were optimistic that we are moving forward at an exciting rate with both enterprise adoption, and regulation and government acceptance of the technology. However they couldn’t say if 2020 will prove to be a turning point in adoption. “Compared with a few years ago,” Nazarov stated, “there are more and more people that are ‘fast followers’ just waiting for a …

The World Economic Forum’s head of blockchain and data policy, Sheila Warren, says that people who have turned away, or been excluded, from traditional financial systems are the ones most likely to drive mass adoption. Warren spoke at the Unitize conference on July 8 on the path to mass adoption with moderator Shira Frank. She said bridging the digital divide is the key to making blockchain mainstream. Screen capture from Unitize According to Warren, many powerful financial institutions aren’t really benefitting society so much as serving a “small section” of it. She said that someone from the blockchain industry told …

Bitso, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Latin America, has hit 1 million users prior to its upcoming launch in Brazil. Santiago Alvarado, director of cross-border payments at Bitso, discussed the latest developments in leveraging crypto for cross-border payments in Latin America during a Unitize panel on July 8. The discussion was joined by Ripple’s director of product Craig DeWitt and Prysm Group’s Reed Cataldo. Bitso tops Argentinian market after launching in February During the panel, Alvarado revealed that Bitso reached a major milestone by hitting a one million user market last week. After topping Mexican and Argentinian crypto …