Kodak surges at it becomes latest ‘cryptocurrency’ convert
NEW YORK (AP) — Kodak, which traces its roots to the early days of film-based photography, is getting into the digital licensing and cryptocurrency market as part of a partnership with WENN Digital. The companies are launching blockchain technology with KodakOne and KodakCoin. Blockchain is a ledger where transactions of digital currencies, like bitcoin, are recorded.
Rochester, New York-based Kodak, founded in 1880, is the latest company to enter the cryptocurrency market as Bitcoin makes gains. Bitcoin has surged from less than $1,000 a year ago to more than $14,000.
Recently, Long Island Iced Tea Corp. said it plans to change its name to Long Blockchain Corp., as it wants to focus more on blockchain technology while continuing to make beverages.
The Kodak systems will allow photographers to register work that they can license and then receive payment. The initial coin offering will open Jan. 31. Full Story
A clear indication that Bitcoin will probably trade below 10K and possibly as low as 5K before rallying to new highs; more and more companies will follow this path. Eventually, a garbage collection company might decide to join the pack.
Bitcoin headed to $100,000 in 2018, says analyst who predicted last year’s price rise
Bitcoin (Exchange: BTC=) could hit $100,000 in 2018, an analyst who correctly predicted the cryptocurrency’s rally at the start of last year told CNBC on Tuesday. Kay Van-Petersen, an analyst at Saxo Bank, added that other rival digital coins could also outperform. Van-Petersen forecast in December 2016 that bitcoin would reach $2,000 in 2017 . At the time, bitcoin was trading below $900, according to CoinDesk, a website that tracks the price of digital currencies on a number of different exchanges. Bitcoin blew past the $2,000 figure in May. Van-Petersen said Tuesday that bitcoin could hit between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2018. “First off, you could argue we have had a proper correction in bitcoin, it has had a 50 percent pull back at one point, which is healthy. But we have still not seen the full effect of the futures contracts,” Van-Petersen said. The CME and Cboe both launched bitcoin futures trading contracts last year. Full Story
This eerily similar to some of the articles the Gold camp was pumping out in 2011 and early 2012 after Gold topped out. Their take at the time was that Gold was just building momentum and getting ready to soar to the next galaxy. Instead, the spacecraft blew up before it even achieved escape velocity. Individuals that pen such articles are nothing but shills looking for a way to push the markets up so they can bail and leave the masses holding a rusty can.
Bitcoin cryptocurrency is part of blockchain technology, and while the outlook generally appears good for blockchain, some technology experts are already warning that quantum computers could blow a hole through blockchain. We feel that several significant discoveries will be suddenly announced in the field of quantum computing.
Bitcoin could still trend higher, but when people keep pushing ridiculous targets, it indicates that the market in question is more likely to pullback then rally to new highs. At this point, the odds are far better for bitcoin to trade to 5K then 100K. Bitcoin is not something we would invest for the very long term, it is going to go through a brutal correction at some point, but this market is still indicating the superbubble pattern we spoke of last year is still intact. For this to play out, the market would need to experience a very strong correction and shed at least 60% of its value, but we would prefer a pullback of 70%.
The story below discusses the quantum computer threat
Could Quantum Computing Kill Blockchain and destabilize cryptocurrency?
Quantum computing gives us extraordinary computational power, making mince meat out of problems classical computers struggle to solve. The world’s most pressing issues, like that of climate change, can only be overcome with machines like quantum computers. Yet, as with all new technologies, it has the power to render features of other technologies obsolete. These technologies must mutate to survive and thrive, or else be left in the junkyard of one-hit wonder technologies.
With blockchain, that predator is quantum computing. Blockchain’s security comes from its enhanced encryption standards, but the power of quantum computing leaves experts worried that the encryption employed by blockchain will be overcome too easily by quantum computing.
Recently, researchers from the University of South Wales constructed a new architecture, similar to the ones used in today’s processors, to perform quantum calculations. This has significant implications for the average person. It means that the same technology used to run the devices you use today could be used to run quantum computing calculations.
Quantum computing, even pocket quantum computing, is inevitable. However, it has always been seen as a distant dream – 10 to 15 years in the future has been the industry opinion on the arrival of commercial quantum computing. This discovery by UNSW researchers discredits that prediction. It could now arrive much faster and that may not bode well for cryptography and blockchain as a whole.
It is technically possible for a classical computer to break through the asymmetric encryption that coins like Bitcoin use, using sheer brute force (running through all possible solutions); it would just take a very long time. Quantum computers operate at a magnitude many times quicker than classical computers though, and it is easier for it to defeat asymmetric encryption.
That puts cryptocurrency and blockchain in a tight spot. Cryptocurrency and blockchain could be forced to evolve, to mutate so as to possess new characteristics, or else the much-loved security and privacy that enthusiasts sing praises about might be a thing of the past.
If quantum computing research continues at its current pace, then it will have no problem breaking the encryption used by blockchain. The economic system of cryptocurrencies would become all but useless since it would be possible for hackers to steal your coins, commit fraud and control the blockchain. If someone could easily steal your bitcoins, it wouldn’t be good for Bitcoin’s reputation.
You may have heard of the term “51% attack”. This is when miners control over 50% of the network, allowing them to double spend. In layman’s terms, this means they can spend money twice by deleting transactions from the blockchain.
Quantum computers could give malicious miners the power they need to break this 50% threshold. This particular security worry is not an immediate concern. The projection is that it will be at least 10 years before quantum computers are capable of doing this. However, with the recently revealed engineering architecture for quantum computers, that timeline may be shortened.
There is a far bigger concern which, as we mentioned, is the ease with which quantum computing can break public key encryption. Quantum computing is expected to reach this level of power by 2027. In other words, if today’s encryption standards and by extension, blockchain security, doesn’t evolve new security techniques or encryption standards, it will be practically useless.
The good news is that long-term thinking developers of cryptocurrencies are in fact preparing for this eventuality and they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeve. https://goo.gl/df4ykZ
China has opened the world’s largest Quantum Computer research centre at the cost of $10 billion. Russia with the world’s best hackers has several covert programs dedicated to quantum computing. It is just a matter of time before they figure out a way to use quantum computers to not only hack the bitcoin market (very easily) but to hack many other encrypted systems. We have already witnessed the many heists hackers have performed on the bitcoin market using non-quantum computers.
The underground world is usually always two steps ahead of the corporate world, and that’s generally because the corporate world does not want to spend large amounts of money to update their systems to new threats. They rely on an uninformed consumer believing their pathetic excuses that something unprecedented happened that was beyond their control and now that it has happened they are implementing top-notch technology to protect their systems. When hacked again, they will mouth the same excuse, which is what they have been doing for the past 30 years. Full Story