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Showing posts from November, 2017

Hacking the Social Welfare Protocol

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Ripple offers banks a new way to settle international transactions in fractions of the usual time and cost. Australia plans to re-launch its stock market using blockchain technology. Bitcoin continues its meteoric climb in price as the CBOE releases futures trading. 2017 has witnessed a marked rise in blockchain technologies grabbing the headlines, but the more fascinating use cases may be quietly developing in the background. What do a woman struggling to open a bank account in the Congo, refugees crowding a makeshift camp, and a forest slowly eroding to logging all have in common? They may be the next beneficiaries of blockchain technology. Silicon Valley technologists are often maligned for creating “the internet of stuff your mom won’t do for you anymore ,” and known (sometimes rightly ) for focusing on lucrative solutions to first-world problems. The community that has grown around bitcoin sometimes fits eagerly into that mold . And yet, away from the spotlight