E-cash inventor David Chaum says he believes the real killer app for blockchain and cryptocurrencies will be privacy-oriented messaging systems integrated with payments. Chaum made his remarks in an interview on the Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast on May 27. Chaum — a trailblazing American cryptographer who invented a secure, privacy-preserving digital currency back in 1982 — told Bloomberg that he believes that increased awareness around privacy and digital sovereignty in the contemporary era has paved the way for blockchain and cryptocurrencies to make a breakthrough as a mass society and consumer application. He stated that: “In the modern world, the …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed creating an on-chain smart contract-based ether mixer in a note on collaborative development platform HackMD on May 24. In his note, Buterin argues that the Ethereum ecosystem needs more privacy, and points out that the default behavior is to do everything through a single account, allowing for all of the user’s activities to be linked to each other. Furthermore, he notes that simply spreading the ether across multiple addresses is not a solution, since the transactions sending ETH to those wallets connect them. Buterin also linked to a Twitter thread where it has …

The South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT is going to run a follow-up study on blockchain regulations, according to a Yonhap News report on May 21. The study is called the “Blockchain Regulation Improvement Study Group” and is part of an initiative run by the government’s science and tech arm to figure out how regulations could be improved so that blockchain tech could achieve widespread institutional adoption. The Blockchain Regulation Improvement Study Group was launched in June of last year, and initially focused on improving legal regulations pertaining to blockchain tech such as personal privacy, smart contracts, electronic documents …

Dutch, Luxembourg authorities and Europol have shut down one of the three largest cryptocurrency tumblers, Europol reported on May 22. A cryptocurrency tumbler, also known as a cryptocurrency mixing service, is an anonymity tool that claims to transform transactions of non-private coins to private ones by mixing crypto funds with others, which makes it difficult to track the funds’ original source. According to the report, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has now seized six servers of major crypto tumbler Bestmixer.io, which had a reported turnover of at least $200 million since its launch in May 2018. The …

Firefox Quantum, the latest version of open-source internet browser Firefox, has a new privacy toggle that protects against cryptojacking, according to a blog post by Mozilla on May 21. Mozilla previously warned official blog post that websites can deploy scripts that launch a crypto miner on a user’s machine without them being aware — a practice known as cryptojacking. To combat these exploitative practices, Mozilla partnered with online privacy company Disconnect to create a crypto mining blocker for their browser. Users can now toggle an opt-in feature, that purportedly blocks would-be cryptojackers from taking advantage of spare computing power to …

The team behind a private digital currency for secure payments says its goal is to make every consumer their own bank — enabling them to send and receive crypto with the gadget of their choice. Xeonbit says its peer-to-peer technology ensures that every user’s accounts and transactions are “out of reach to any prying eyes.” A feature known as “ring signatures” means public keys are shuffled in order to ensure that particular users cannot be identified once a transaction has taken place. The startup says this is not at the expense of speed, scalability or security. In a blog post …

Blockchain infrastructure firm Blockstream announced the launch of its security token platform in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on May 15. Per the announcement, the new Liquid Securities platform is a solution for businesses to issue security tokens on the Liquid Network. Blockstream Chief Security Officer Samson Mow claims that while businesses are willing to issue tokenized securities, platforms such as Ethereum are not the right choice because of their scalability, privacy and reliability limitations. Blockstream claims that its platform is more suitable for such use: “Now, with the launch of Liquid Securities, businesses can quickly issue Liquid-based security …

Polish-British fintech firm Billon has reportedly sealed an almost €2 million (~$2.1 million) grant from European Commission’s Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) Instrument program to develop a blockchain document management system. The news was reported by Billion in a press release on May 14. The Commission’s SME Instrument program provides funding for innovation projects which are close-to-market, and has reportedly awarded Billon a grant under Phase 2 of the program — which provides enterprises with up to 70% of the costs of their proposed project. Billon’s system, dubbed B4TDM (Blockchain for Trusted Document Management), is reportedly a proprietary blockchain-powered solution …

Member-driven blockchain standards organization the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) has released two new specifications aiming to accelerate and enhance blockchain implementation for enterprises. The news was shared with Cointelegraph in two press releases on May 13. The EEA, which counts over 500 members, describes itself as a “standards organization whose charter is to develop open, blockchain specifications that drive harmonization and interoperability.” EEA members include global consulting firm Accenture, banks Santander and JPMorgan Chase, blockchain incubator ConsenSys, Big Four auditor EY, tech giants Intel, Microsoft and IBM and blockchain consortium R3. One of today’s newly-released specifications is a set of …

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) — the United States’ largest bank with over $2.62 trillion in assets — has reportedly rehauled the infrastructure of its blockchain platform Quorum with the help of Microsoft. The development was reported by crypto media outlet Coindesk on May 9. As reported, Quorum is JPM’s private blockchain platform built on the Ethereum protocol. According to JPM head of Quorum and crypto-assets strategy Oli Harris, developers have been working to innovate Quorum’s privacy architecture by replacing its former Haskell-based privacy engine Constellation with the Java-based “Tessera” privacy transaction manager. Harris is cited as outlining that the innovation is …

Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has participated in a $10 million Series A round for QEDIT, an Israeli blockchain privacy solutions firm that develops zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology. The news was reported by Israeli daily business newspaper Calcalist on May 7. The Series A was reportedly led by MizMaa Ventures, and its closing was announced alongside partnerships with Ant Financial, major software firm VMWare and RGAX, a subsidiary of Reinsurance Group of America. Both latter firms also participated in the financing round, alongside Meron Capital, venture capital firm Jovono, Collider Ventures and Target Global. The …

Mixed cryptocurrency transactions now represent 4.09% of all bitcoin (BTC) payments, according to data published by Longhash on April 29. So-called “CoinJoins” have risen by 300% in the space of nine months. By blending multiple transactions together before they are sent to the recipient, the technique is regarded as a way of obscuring the sender’s details. The data was provided by Adam Fiscor, the CTO of the company that runs Wasabi Wallet, a product that aims to deliver greater levels of anonymity to bitcoin users. It shows that CoinJoin transactions have reached their highest level since 2013-14. CoinJoins have become …