Harbor raises $28M to help businesses legally issue cryptocurrency tokens tied to ownership of real-world assets

Harbor  helps businesses legally issue cryptocurrency tokens that represent ownership of real-world assets like real estate, fine art, company equity, and investment funds. This “tokenization” might sound boring, but it could be a big business that unlocks trading of illiquid property.

Harbor‘s intention to become a fundamental bridge between the offline and crypto economies has attracted a $28 million strategic round led by Founders Fund and joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, and more. Following its $10 million Series A in February, Harbor has now raised over $40 million to dissolve the legal barriers to private securities tokenization.

“We think there’s going be a far greater appetite for owning real-world assets using the blockchain” than digital only cryptocurrencies, Harbor CEO Joshua Stein tells me. He expects it be like the impact “email had on snail mail”, but with value instead of content being sent back and forth. Once someone like Harbor handles the technical necessities to make transfers instant, free, and secure, people will exchange a lot more frequently.

techcrunch

I was really looking for a topic like that. Very well explained and with an excellent analysis. This kind of statistic must always be taken into account when radical changes occur in a large group of people like this. Analyzing just based on what each one lives and feels is quite different from analyzing based on numbers.

Given these numbers, it is clear that the funnel created with the addition of Merits is much larger than any other change. And by having turned rank up into something so rare, it's pretty likely we'll see more and more people looking for alternatives outside the rules. I still believe that the best alternative would be to turn sMerit into a hot potato, where it is not good to keep holding it for long. Use in 1 week or it will be redistributed.

I found it interesting to know that I am among the 1146 Full members who could have been ranking up for Sr Members but who have not yet reached the necessary merits. Less than 0.01 achieved. This seems extremely exaggerated.

The Indian central bank’s crackdown on virtual money may drive cryptocurrency exchanges out of the country to more friendly locations.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a directive that, by July 06, lenders must close the bank accounts of firms dealing in cryptocurrencies. Banks are also forbidden from offering loans or other services post-deadline. Essentially, this marks the end of the road for the digital currency-related operations in India.

But the exchanges are not giving up just yet.

“It won’t be possible for us to function in the current regulatory environment with existing business models. Therefore, several firms are looking at registering their head offices out of India,” said Shubham Yadav, co-founder of Coindelta, a cryptocurrency exchange.

These “cryptocurrency-friendly” locations include Singapore, Switzerland, Estonia, Malta, Japan, Dubai, and the Cayman Islands. “This way, we won’t be an India-centric exchange but will become a global player,” the CEO of another virtual exchange company said, declining to divulge the firm’s plans.

qz.com

QZ
In the case of cryptocurrencies, blockchain’s only globally successful application to date, for instance, concerns about interconvertibility or divisibility or the impact of volatility on credit are trivial. They completely underestimate the power of “smart contracts”, self-executing computer programs that can be used to program how any financial metric should behave given a particular scenario, addressing many of the drawbacks usually cited as showstoppers.

In fact, AI-based smart contracts can even anticipate hard to predict scenarios. And virtually any smart contract of the appropriate kind would be cheaper and more adaptable than even the best contracts drafted by the best lawyers.

The real problem of blockchain goes to its roots, to the implicit manifesto which embedded the values of its creators in 2008 into the underlying concept.

At the core of the blockchain theory, first applied to bitcoin, is the idea of transactions between equals (peers) without a trusted third party.

"Internet of Things". With several products and Home and Kitchen Appliances that connect the internet directly, I do not see any nonsense in starting to create OSs that already have some wallet to be used in a fast, practical and safe way. I believe that eventually, this will be a pattern in some products. And with the practicality and the huge number of Linux distros, it's even more practical to have some who are willing to place secure wallets, preferably open-source wallets.

Imagine the impact that we would have if Microsoft decided to make a wallet available in the next office package, it would be something extraordinary. I found it curious the amount of rejection of so many people on this topic to something like that.

This has always occurred and will always occur. The reason is that many people manage their portfolios by trying to split the investments. So when some project has a great rise, they end up selling a little and buying a little more of the other projects. This is balancing the market and all projects usually walk the same way.

As @quickseller has explained to me early, there are a group of moderators that is call patroling.This group is made up of people who are new to moderation and are responsible for taking care of posts initiated by new accounts. In the will to demonstrate a good service, it is very probable that they act with more speed and delete a topic without thinking much about it. Or discuss about it. Even more if on the topic you have many discussions that look like spam with many newbie accounts and if you are in the wrong section.

I believe that only an adm could moves topics between sections. So to avoid given too much job to cyrus, they choose to delete.

coindesk


Chinese internet search giant Baidu has launched a blockchain-based stock photo service in bid to protect image intellectual property in China.

The service, called Totem, went online Wednesday and uses a blockchain to timestamp submissions of each original photograph from a user with a real-name identity and store data associated with the images on a distributed network.

With Baidu's existing capacity in internet data scraping and artificial intelligence, the platform says that, by comparing images that are circulated over the internet with data stored in a traceable blockchain, it would be able to substantiate allegations of intellectual property infringement.

Currently, according to the new site, several traditional stock photo services have also moved onto the platform, including notable services such as Visual China Group, a local partner of the stock photo giant Getty Images.

While it remains unclear whether the platform is being built on a public blockchain or a private one, it marks yet another effort by Baidu, often considered the "Chinese Google," in its push for blockchain adoption.

This site, Stake.com, is spamming in all local sections. They create a post and daily post spam on that post or create a new one. When there are no active moderators, nobody can do anything.

It is necessary to pay more attention to these local sections if we want the forum to grow in an organized way. Have more trusted moderators, have more sources of merit, have more subsections.

I have been a user of earn.com for quite some time. They provide a very interesting service. But I found this acquisition curious. Perhaps because they have many investors in common, it may have been interesting to both.

But coinbase just received financial contributions and had announced that it would start investing in startups working with cryptocurrency. To make an acquisition of this level, in these values they escape a little of what they had announced.

Wait, what are you talking about? Nobody has ever said he created the Software that the forums use. But Satoshi did create this forum as you can see in his welcome message. SMF is a well know SOFTWARE to use to build forum communities.

Before creating bitcointalk, he used sourceforge board and mail List.

The badge is disabled in some sections, so sometimes can be confusing, but he has none. And as it is on the topic, someone on the list needs to indicate.
gmaxwell already has the developer badge. He can not have both.

It would be interesting to put what they claim to be different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash has larger blocks. BTG a different mining system.

BTCP claims it's anonymous, but I do not think it's a fork of Bitcoin, but from Zcash.

  I was reading some old threads and in some moments crossed with users who used a badge of Bitcoin Experts. I looked for some more information about them and found no topics. Not even on the original topic. @qwk made a list with some of the users in another topic, but I do not know if it is complete and updated these days. Moreover, there is no information about what they did or who they were.





So I decided to make a list with some information about them and link to some personal information outside the forum. If you have any additional information or if you know someone who has this badge but is not on this list, please let me know.

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• Hal Finney

Hal
He was a developer for PGP CorporationPGP and he was very active in Cypherpunk Mailing List and created Reusable Proofs of Work.
If you have never read, please, read his post "Bitcoin and me" "I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin"

• Adam Back

adam3us on Bitcointalk  
He is the inventor of hashcash, the proof-of-work system used by several anti-spam systems. A similar system is used in bitcoin.

• Amir Taaki

genjix
He created the Dark Wallet, DarkMarket. Worked on Electrum. He fought against ISIS.

• Alan Reiner

etotheipi
Founder of Armory wallet

• Mike Hearn

Mike Hearn
Former Google engineer, and a former contributor to Bitcoin Core

• Sergio Demian Lerner

Sergio_Demian_Lerner
He has reported some vulnerabilities and is working on rsk

• Mark Karpelès

MagicalTux
CEO of Mt. Gox

• luke dash jr

Luke-Jr
Bitcoin Core Developer. Created one of the first bitcoin mining pools

• Matt Corallo

Matt Corallo
Bitcoin Dev.

• Meni Rosenfeld

Meni Rosenfeld
Translated Bitcoin's white paper into Hebrew. Created several meetups in Israel. And he was very active in the forum.

• Forrest Voight

forrestv
He was very active in the pool section. Created p2pool.org

• Peter Todd

Peter Todd
Cryptography Consultant. Bitcoin Dev

• Ben Reeves

piuk
Founder of Blockchain.info

• J.R. Willett

dacoinminster
Invented the Mastercoin (Omni) protocol, ICO, Token.

• ByteCoin

I'm still researching about he. But I think it's a person who wants to remain anonymous. Still, it's worth reading every one of his old posts.

• Michael Marquardt

theymos
He is one of the few people that HODL the community too. It is possible to see several people who were very active in various parts of the forum, including people on this list, and who over time look for other interests or other communities. Some of them get tired of Bitcoin and everything that surrounds it. Others get tired of talking and communicating. Others look for different places to express their opinions. And some decides to cut their online activity for security reasons or financial reasons.
So I consider Theymos a community HODL and not just a Bitcoin HODL. He was here when Satoshi was active, he's here right now, and he'll probably be right after a nuclear war.

• Andrew Chow

achow101
Personal Website
Video where he talks about Armory Wallet
Developer, specializing in C++, Python, and Java. Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Armory developer.
He is the moderator of the Technical Support and Development and Technical Discussion sections of Bitcointalk. And it is one of the core devs that are most present on the BTalk.
[/list]

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Later I will put more information about them.

Who do you think should be considered a Bitcoin Expert?
Remember that it only enters the list if someone who is already in it indicates.

I personal believe achow101 deserves to be in it. Since he is one of the most active in the Technicals sections.

I did not know about the patrollers. Who are they and what are their functions? Do they work as moderators, but with a smaller decision-making power?

This is a great idea. Some proposals related to altcoins are sometimes discussed in the technical areas of Bitcoin. And that may confuse it a bit. In addition, it could be a way to oxygenate the forum with people who understand the specifications of some protocols, but can not find a place to discuss them. Discussing a specific project, which already exists, is different from discussing a protocol. For example, a discussion of PoS may go well beyond what is discussed in the specific topic of ETH.

He put official in quotes. It is quite unlikely that a stupid person who believes that a forum is the same as a currency would do it. Of course, he probably does not know exactly how everything works. So the best way would be to link to explanations that solve the problems he encountered with the forum and the tutorial on how bitcoin works.

The best thing about this new market is that the barriers to entry are quite small. Almost anyone can in a matter of a few hours acquire their first cryptocurrency. This will depend on the country you are in. For this it is necessary to check if it is something legally legal to acquire a cryptocurrency.
check this list

Then, you could open an account in a respectful exchange. It is more safe, faster and easy buy there then buy directly from another person.List with great exchanges by countries

After these first steps, you need to educate yourself on how to invest. list of great courses and books

There are several embryonic projects in this sense. They seek to create a structure using the blockchain idea to ensure safer and more transparent elections. But still, there is none that provides a robust system that can be used now. Many of these processes use the blockchain to only record the votes.
Now, the governance of Bitcoin is also sometimes questioned. Since there is no well-established voting system to decide the future of the project. It's kind of confusing to understand for who's coming in now.

  But there are some projects like deCreded that seek to offer a governance system. With the users defining the future of the currency by vote. ETH failed when it tried to create the DAO. And many other projects are still centralized because they can not define the best way to introduce a voting system within the project.

This is becoming a global problem. Many countries are only now beginning to investigate those who have had capital gains by investing in cryptocurrency. They are investigating, but they are not educating or reporting adequately on the process. They expect investors in cryptocurrency to be the same as in the financial market. But they are not.