Blockstream has just upgraded their satellite network that carries the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time in almost two years. The data rate is now 25 times faster and users can sync an entire node without connecting to the web. The Blockstream satellite service provides internet-free Bitcoin (BTC) transactions and information sharing to crypto users in nearly every corner of the world. The company has leased six geostationary satellites which are used to broadcast the blockchain to Africa, Europe, South and North America, and the Asia Pacific region. According to a May 4 announcement on the company website, the Canada-based …

Curv, a Tel-Aviv and New York-based digital asset security platform, has launched Curv Air Gap — an institutional transaction signing solution that uses multi-party computation, or MPC, protocols on offline devices. The launch comes roughly one week after Curv expanded its operations in Asia — opening an office in Hong Kong and partnering with Japanese blockchain firm, Crypto Garage, to provide secure transaction signing for their Liquid-based settlement solution. Curv launches multi-party keyless signing solution On April 23, Curv launched its Air Gap security product, allowing multiple actors to jointly sign transactions offline using keyless cryptography. Itay Malinger, co-founder and …

Researchers from the Norwegian University and the University of Luxembourg have published a research paper detailing an attack that can deanonymize transactions broadcast across Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. The Lightning Network emerged as a controversial compromise from the Bitcoin (BTC) block limit and scalability debate. It’s a second layer solution that facilitates near-instant, low-cost Bitcoin transactions. Proponents claim it offers privacy by implementing segregated witness (SegWit). University students crack Lightning channel balances Four researchers from universities in Norway and Luxembourg including Bitcoin, along with Lightning community developer Ren Pickhardt, contributed to the research. The academics claim to have used transfer routing …

Crag Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto and chief scientist at NChain, has dropped a libel lawsuit against Adam Back over the Blockstream chief executive’s assertion that Wright was fraudulent in claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin (BTC). Wright filed the complaint alongside similar suits targeting Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver, podcaster Peter McCormack, and Twitter user ‘Hodlnaut’ one year ago. Craig Wright drops libel suit against Blockstream CEO On April 12, Adam Back tweeted that Craig Wright had abandoned his libel suit. Back stated that Wright’s representation “declined to give any explanation of why Craig retracted.” …

American Institute for Economic Research editorial director Jeffrey Tucker reignited the long-running Bitcoin scaling debate with a tweet earlier today. The economist — who has long been a proponent of Bitcoin (BTC) — suggested the current price is much lower than it otherwise would have been because the underlying technology has not been “properly scaled”. On March 31, Tucker tweeted: I'm not unimpressed by a $6K price of BTC. I was blown away when the thing reached $30.00. But can you imagine the price today if the thing had properly scaled? — Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreyatucker) March 30, 2020 The …

Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain settlement network welcomed 10 new members to the Liquid Federation on March 27. The new additions bring the Liquid Federation’s membership up to 45 — including crypto exchange trading desks, and financial institutions. New members come from diverse backgrounds The new members include hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, peer-to-peer exchange Hodl Hodl, crypto trade firm MerklePro, cryptocurrency manager Point95, Wiz, Blockchain tool developer Wyre, blockchain marketplace STOKR, and crypto fund manager ListedReserve. Daniel Pickering, ListedReserve’s chief investment officer, emphasizes that ensuring capital can circulate quickly is essential to the firm’s operations. “The Liquid Network is enabling much faster …

As the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) sidechains continues to grow, a major Bitcoin sidechain, the Liquid Network, will soon host a token sale. BTSE, a multi-currency digital asset and derivatives exchange, plans to launch its Liquid Network-powered token sale on March 5, 2020, the exchange tweeted on Feb. 25. According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, BTSE has recently completed a private sale round featuring high-profile investors like major digital asset manager FBG Capital. Other investors included early stage investment firm Lemniscap, CMS Holdings, Taureon Capital, GBCI Ventures and BCB Blockchain, as BTSE CEO Jonathan Leong noted. First-ever native exchange …

Cryptocurrencies could not exist without cryptography. Advances in this field can have far-reaching impacts on blockchain technology and its potential. We will examine the opinions of industry experts on the latest cryptographic advances and their potential for cryptocurrencies. Zero knowledge proofs: more than just privacy Director of research at blockchain firm Blockstream and mathematician Andrew Poelstra told Cointelegraph that zero-knowledge proof (ZK-Proof) systems are “one of the most exciting areas of development” in the cryptography space. This kind of cryptography is known and appreciated for being the basis of privacy-preserving solutions. ZK-Proofs are the basis of the privacy-preserving technology included …

The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT) is looking to find Bitcoin Mining Engineers for a “new business opportunity.” The proposal is coming from the team behind Fidelity Digital Asset Services (FDAS), the crypto trading arm of the financial giant. The recruit will support Fidelity’s mining operations, likely in reference to its partnership with Blockstream. The company was reported in June of 2019 to have leased two data centers from the Bitcoin (BTC) developers. Job description The company is seeking for a person with three to five years of experience in a DevOps (developer operations) or engineering role. The term …

Eleven years after Bitcoin's release, Cointelegraph caught up with Adam Back to discuss the early years of Bitcoin, his emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, privacy and much more. The Blockstream CEO, who spoke to Cointelegraph at the Latin American crypto event LaBitconf in Uruguay, is a developer and cryptographer known for inventing Hashcash, a predecessor of the proof-of-work system used by Bitcoin. Back also dismissed the idea that he is the father of Bitcoin and said he didn’t help Satoshi create the world’s first cryptocurrency, despite confirming he was probably the first person Satoshi talked to about Bitcoin when he sent …

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Blockstream CEO Adam Back stated that for him, nothing is above Bitcoin, not even stablecoins or other coins issued by central banks. Adam Back invented the hashcash proof of work system, and was one of the first people to work with Bitcoin (BTC). In addition, he was present this year at the G20 meetings in Japan, where he spoke about the positive uses of blockchain. At G20, sitting next to the president of the Dutch central bank, Back said he believed the blockchain would be another initiative for an open network, and said financial …

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex moved 1 .561 million Tether (USDT) from the Omni Protocol to the Liquid Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain. Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino announced the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin’s protocol swap on Twitter on Nov. 2. The conversion increases the quantity of USDT available on the network after the stablecoin was first launched on the Liquid sidechain at the end of July. Ardoino said that the development will have a beneficial effect on the protocol: “Liquid sidechain has now more liquidity for atomic swaps and cross-exchange arbitrage.” A sidechain in rapid development In July, Liquid developer Blockstream launched a new tool …