Insurance companies are always searching for the best ways to serve their customers. They have to be efficient, to give access to consumers and investors, but at the same time have to lower costs.

At the Blockchain Startup Contest, we learned of Etherisc - a decentralized insurance application.

Coinidol’s correspondent reached out to Dr. Stephan Karpischek about the experimental project Flight Delay Dapp and presents his answers to our readers.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/etherisc-smart-contracts-for-disrupting-parametric-insurance/

Bitpesa is a bitcoin exchange and Blockchain technology firm based in Nairobi, Kenya, that has recently optimized its platform to focus mainly on the massive trade between East Africa, Nigeria and China.

Gone are the days when East African traders transferred huge amounts of money Via western Union with all the large transaction fees involved. Bitpesa has made it possible for East African and Nigerian businesses to transfer funds safely and cheaply using bitcoin to their Chinese suppliers and vice versa.

You can read the full article and take part in the discussion here: https://coinidol.com/bitpesa-allows-african-businesses-to-trade-with-chinese-counterparts/

One of the largest Bitcoin mining companies, Bitfury, has turned down bids to buy bitcoin from various investors and Assets Under Management funds. This is seen by many to have been triggered by the surge in Bitcoin’s price from $800 to $900.

Predictions of the price of bitcoins are coming true, prompting investors to look to bitcoin as an opportunity to seize some significant profits from. Recently, it was predicted that bitcoin’s price wouldn’t stay long at the $800 mark and that came true. Now, there are ongoing predictions that bitcoin will touch the $3000 mark in 2017, causing investors to buy as many bitcoins as possible. This is in anticipation that the price will increase high enough for them to make a sizeable profit.

You can read the full artocle here: https://coinidol.com/bitfury-refuses-to-sell-43-m-worth-of-bitcoin/

Mmmglobal is a pyramid scheme authored by Russian fraudster Sergei Mavrodi. The scheme has numerous localized websites for every country or region where it operates. Recently, BCC authored a warning on mmmnigeria, the Nigeria chapter of mmmglobal citing it’s a scam aimed at stealing funds.

Sergey Mavrodi,  CEO or Founder of mmmglobal, is a Russian fraudster with a long history of crime and fraudulent activities. Mavrodi was previously behind “MMM”, the largest Ponzi scheme in Russia in the 80-90s that affected more than 5 million depositors. He was rebuked by the Russian government which confiscated millions of rubles of the company’s funds packed inside buildings for storage.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/mmmglobal-pyramid-scheme-a-way-to-earn-or-get-robbed/

Spectrocoin is a cryptocurrency launched on 20/11/2016 with a new concept for total security and anonymity on the blockchain which will be based on the Android platform. Spectrocoin’s main aim is small private remittances of money. Coinidol.com investigates whether the new Spectrocoin provides the best anonymity and security compared to the existing competitors on the market.

Cryptocurrency’s most celebrated achievement is the ability to provide maximum anonymity and security in money transfers and transactions. The cryptocurrency market on November 20th received yet another “powerful” player: Spectrocoin. Spectrocoin is said to be the best in terms of security and anonymity. Let's examine this claim with the leading experts in the cryptocurrency world.

Does Spectrocoin provide the best security and anonymity as it claims?

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/spectrocoin-provides-better-anonymity-than-zcash-dash-monero/

S7 Airlines, in partnership with Alpha Bank, have conducted the first Blockchain payment using Ethereum-based smart contracts in Russia.

The transaction was conducted by PJSC Siberia Airlines, operating as S7 Airlines, and one of the counterparties, the name of which was not disclosed, using a letter of credit covered by Alpha Bank.

You can read the full article and take part in the discussion here: https://coinidol.com/s7-airlines-alpha-bank-first-blockchain-payment-in-russia/

The number of Bitcoin ATMs has increased almost twofold recently in Vietnam, with new arrivals coming in and old players adding a number of machines in different locations across Vietnam.

Bitcoin ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines) provide convenience whereby users can exchange bitcoin to fiat or from fiat to bitcoin easily. As with any other ATM service, a Bitcoin ATM should be located in places with a maximum population of bitcoin users who require the service.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/bitcoin-atm-flourishing-in-vietnam/

Email servers are constantly vulnerable to sophisticated hackers, a Blockchain-based email system is the answer to a more secure email which cannot be hacked and have user information stolen. CoinIdol.com explores whether Blockchain email systems deliver the most secure email accounts.

Between 2013-2015, around 1 billion Yahoo user accounts were hacked in what Yahoo referred to as a state-sponsored hacking attack. Many other sites, such as Kiss & Tell and Adult Friend Finder, have also suffered similar kind of hacks, where approximately 412 million user accounts were exposed. This brings us to the conclusion that the current technology being used by email service providers is obsolete and exposed to sophisticated hackers.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/blockchain-system-way-to-go-for-securing-emails/

The “Banque de France” reported on the bank’s experiment with blockchain technology for the management of SEPA Credit Identifiers.

The Banque de France, start-up Labo Blockchain, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and several other French banking groups, launched an experiment on the potential use of Distributed ledger technology in July 2016. By October, the working group had managed to develop a prototype tool for creating and managing SEPA Credit Identifiers (ICS).

You can read full article here: https://coinidol.com/central-bank-of-france-experiment-with-blockchain/

Ukrainian Exchange has just announced the launch of new futures contracts, including on an index of Bitcoin.

The specifics of the contracts were recently approved and registered by the National Securities and Stock Market Commission of Ukraine, thus Ukrainian Exchange became one of the first regulated markets in the world ever to offer futures contracts on Bitcoin.

You can read the full article here: https://coinidol.com/first-regulated-market-of-futures-contracts-on-btc/

Two more West African countries - Benin and Togo - have joined the list of countries to have their own cryptocurrencies controlled by central banks following the pioneers of the initiative - Tunisia and Senegal.

George Sagala, the president of eCurrency, told that in the exclusive interview for CoinIdol.com Blockchain News Outlet. 

Recently two African countries have pioneered the breakthrough of establishing their own digital currencies. It first started with Tunisia, then the latest country on the list was Senegal. All this development has been fueled by eCurrency, an organization that supports digital currency research and development.

You can read full article and take part in the discussion here: https://coinidol.com/benin-and-togo-to-run-national-cryptocurrencies/

Wyre, a payments company that uses the blockchain to conduct transactions, has announced the launch of its cross-border payments platform also called Wyre.

According to the announcement, Wyre is the industry's fastest money transfer platform, enabling businesses to move money across borders from country-to-country at a competitive rate, usually at a rate between ~1 - 4.5% and in the shortest amount of time, typically in less than six hours, compared to the industry standard which is 24-72 hours.

You can read full article here: https://coinidol.com/wyre-launches-cross-border-payments-platform/

Indelible.ink has recently invented a way to store an 80 character record on the Blockchain. Coinidol.com caught up with Steven E. Williams, the CEO of indelible.ink, and asked him a few questions about his company and what it offers to the market.

“Currently, tweets are written into the Bitcoin blockchain. Each tweet or message is individually stored in plain, human-readable text within a unique transaction; tweets are not hashed, encrypted or bundled together. More blockchains coming soon. Your Blockchain Receipt will indicate a unique reference number where your tweet can be looked up instantly at any future time. Share with family, friends, colleagues. How does it work? What is our "secret sauce"? We are running a full network node which, along with custom programming and systems administration, allows us to embed so-called arbitrary data into the OP_RETURN field of transactions. But that's probably more than you need to know. As the Wizard of Oz said to Dorothy, Scarecrow and the gang, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

You can read more info and take part in the discussion here: https://coinidol.com/80-character-record-in-blockchain/

General Bytes, a bitcoin and blockchain technology provider, has manufactured a new bitcoin wallet card that can be used at every Near Field Communication (NFC) point of sale.

A Czech Republic-based Bitcoin hardware manufacturer, General Bytes, decided to replace QR codes with NFC bitcoin wallets for bitcoin point of sale (POS). The company thinks that the new NFC technology can simplify the user experience while transacting with bitcoin.
Meanwhile, other market experts and competitors think introducing NFC technology into bitcoin POS machines won’t really make a big difference as they are all automatic systems.

You can read more and take part in the discussion here: https://coinidol.com/integrating-nfc-technology-in-bitcoin-wallet-cards/

Australian banks are ready to replace both the R3 Blockchain Consortium and the Linux Hyperledger projects in the position of leaders who drive the development of Blockchain technology. This future is predicted by Thomas McAlister, an Australian expert at Bankcoin Reserve Pty Ltd, who works with governments and their central banks.

The Commonwealth Bank Of Australia embraces blockchain technology in a move that will see the bank develop its own blockchain hub later in 2020. The bank is implementing an ambitious goal of the Sydney government set up earlier in 2014.
“Banks are in a strong position, regardless of how much noise the fintech world is making about banks being left behind. Commonwealth Bank Australia is leading by example for the world to see. Precisely, Commonwealth Bank Australia have partnered with Barclay's AU and UK, they are making some huge moves in the blockchain space,” said Thomas McAlister to CoinIdol.com World Blockchain News Outlet. Mr. McAlister is working as a principal consultant at Bankcoin Reserve Pty Ltd, an organisation that works with central banks to offer new liquidity options through a series of Blockchain derivative options under licence agreements.

You can read more info here: https://coinidol.com/aussie-bank-to-unseat-r3-hyperledger-in-blockchain-race/

It has been no mean feat for Zcash to generate the kind of enthusiasm it has, much of it before it even launched.

On October 27, a day before the official launch, Arthur Hayes, a market analyst and CEO at the trading platform BitMEX, speaking to CoinDesk, described the enthusiasm for Zcash as “deafening.” He said:
"No one wants to miss the next bitcoin or ether. Everyone is trying to get their hands on ZEC."

You can read more info here:  https://coinidol.com/these-3-factors-drive-the-zcash-hype/

What do you think about Zcash?

Kaspersky Lab, an internationally recognized computer protection firm, in partnership with The Economist have recently held a challenge inviting teams from universities around the world to design a system for digital voting that addressed such issues as ensuring privacy and validating contested results.

Three students from the New York University – Kevin Kirby, Anthony Masi, and Fernando Maymi – won the first place in the Cybersecurity Case Study challenge with their system, Votebook, which is secure, scalable, and consistent with current voter behavior and expectations of privacy. As per the rules of the challenge, Votebook is based on blockchain technology, which creates a distributed, irreversible, incontrovertible public ledger that has been described as double-entry accounting for the digital age.

You can read more info here: https://coinidol.com/blockchain-voting-system-wins-kaspersky-contest/

DeepMind Technologies, a subsidiary of Google, has announced it will be utilizing blockchain technology in securing patient data.

DeepMind Technologies, a British Artificial Intelligence company, known for developing algorithms for simulation and testing in virtual environments, application GUIs and gaming protocols, has recently signed a 5 years deal with the London NHS trust to apply distributed ledger technology to healthcare. The company will build a specialized blockchain-based application to securely store hospital patient data and have all the information transparent.
DeepMind’s Co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, has detailed the plan in a post on CityAM:
“The company will use the software for “general transparency” in a “distributed and untamperable way.”

You can read more info here: https://coinidol.com/google-subsidiary-to-use-blockchain-in-british-healthcare/

The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has taken the all-time risk of pledging to resign after a negative result of a referendum on a constitutional reform which could make it easier for the government to pass laws without unnecessary delays.

The referendum ended with the ‘No’ campaigners, led by opposition politicians of the 5-star party, winning by a margin of more than 60%. CoinIdol.com Blockchain News Outlet will examine the effects of this referendum on Europe as a whole and the position of cryptocurrencies in Italy.
Was the referendum necessary?
As is the case in many democratic nations, critical decisions of public interest are made by the public through a majority vote process of referendum. In Italy, the prime minister saw a problem in how the government is run because of a lot of delay fr om the parliament, so with a Yes result he would be able to speed up the process of passing a bill.

You can find more info here: https://coinidol.com/influence-of-referendum-in-italy-on-cryptocurrencies-in-europe/

Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, has released its annual set of 'Outrageous Predictions' for the year 2017. The predictions for the next year also mention Bitcoin and its probability of seeing huge gains.

According to Saxo Bank’s 'Outrageous Predictions', the Bitcoin price may triple in value and rise up to the level of $2,100. One of the main reasons for this, according to Saxo Bank’s predictions, will be the increases in the US budget deficit during the first year of the Donald Trump presidency that would lead to the growth of cryptocurrency popularity as an alternative to the US Dollar.

More info here: https://coinidol.com/saxo-bank-predicts-bitcoin-price-to-rise-in-2017/

Time to invest? What do you think?