BitConduite is a visual analytics tool built to explore the activity of Bitcoin users over long-term periods.

Pseudonymous nature of transactions

With its position as the first and largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is attracting a plethora of different players among which are investors, governments, economists and researchers from all around the world. Transactions in Bitcoin are stored in an immutable distributed ledger that is accessible to anyone. However, this open data can be challenging to make sense of given its pseudonymous nature. Indeed, while transaction details such as the amount, the time and the sender and receiver addresses are publicly disclosed, no personal information is revealed on the identities of participants. Therefore, this abstract data does not lend itself easily to an exploratory analysis of the network actors. The increasing volume of transactions in Bitcoin is an additional challenge hampering the study of this network.

Analyzing the Bitcoin network

To visualize its billions of transactions, a team of researchers composed of Christoph Kinkeldey, Jean-Daniel Fekete and Petra Isenberg, are developing a tool to identify entities on the network from their public addresses, whether these entities are individuals or organizations. Dubbed “BitConduite,” this tool uses the network’s topology to estimate which addresses may belong to the same entity and classifies them following their activity patterns.

Since Bitcoin is used in diverse ways, from an investment asset to an illegal shopping payment system, the tool would allow us to know more about the main reasons behind Bitcoin use. Furthermore, while many argue Bitcoin is an influencing factor in world events, it is very difficult to assess such hypotheses. In 2012-2013, the financial crisis in Cyprus saw nervous cash-holders invest in Bitcoin to counter their banking system and be able to freely move their assets out of the country. Countries in crisis are no doubt raising the value of Bitcoin, but only a long-term analysis could shed light on the exact role of the cryptocurrency.

How does it work?

To make such an analysis possible, the researchers behind BitConduite extract raw data from the Bitcoin Core client and store it in a MongoDB database. This database is then tailored to visualization by using a column-oriented MonetDB database. Finally, input heuristics are applied to derive entities from pseudonymous addresses and cluster them. Analysts working with this tool can filter out entities with certain attributes, group the similar ones based on the factors of interest and visualize the number and volume of transactions of each cluster on a timeline. The development of the BitConduite tool is an ongoing work and we are very likely to see more analytics tools of this genre created to explore the use of other cryptocurrencies.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

While Bitcoin’s future may still be uncertain in the United States

as various states aim to regulate the industry, the first state government to take a big leap into Bitcoin is the state of Montana. As part of its efforts to boost local employment, the state has recently allocated public funds to help with a local Bitcoin mining firm project, according to the press release from the Office of Montana Governor, Steve Bullock.

Boosting local jobs

The state has allocated a $1,124,030 mln local job aid package, $416,000 of which was awarded to Missoula County of BSTF Job Creation funds that are backing up a Bitcoin mining firm named Project Spokane, LLC to assist with its expansion plans. This will allow it to create 65 new jobs in the Bonner area. The said BSTF fund will be used to purchase operations equipment, machinery, software as well as wage reimbursement to continue its efforts to expand its operations into Blockchain security services for the Bitcoin network.

Will other states soon follow suit?

Bitcoin is perceived as a long-term opportunity for job seekers and Montana is one of the first states that supported the potential of it. Whether other states eventually follow suit is still a question.

The story centers around two self-proclaimed artists,

Petula Thames and Tilda Darlings, who move to NYC to follow their dreams and, unfortunately, become entangled in the world of drug dealing and prostitution. A night comes that they lose $80,000 worth of narcotics and are given 48 hours to repay the hostile drug lord. They plan to rob their wealthy childhood friend, Daphne Peters, which leads them to participate in her twisted and violent make-believe game where the three women venture into a deadly maze of hallucinations, role play, torture and murder.

Beyond traditional funding

Traditionally, filmmakers rely on investments either from well-off Hollywood benefactors or crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, which promote donation funding. Braid’s production gave birth to this new way of film financing by tying up with ConsenSys and WeiFund, a crowdfunding platform. Braid’s team hopes to raise more money for the production of the film, with its token sale starting June 7, 2017. While most investors are usually focused on returns, which often results in the sacrifice of creative freedom and artistic brilliance of the young directors, independent filmmakers preferably take the other side.

This is possible thanks to open crowdfunding platforms, which in return pay off fans with items such as t-shirts and posters. Sadly, this doesn’t compensate the financial needs of the film. A Kickstarter-funded film can generate millions of dollars, forgetting the profit to be shared with its supporters.

Keeping the vision

Braid’s crowdsale aims to provide an incentive to people by becoming an investor or simply by promoting the film. Braid’s team will return the favor by keeping their creative vision with its film. Braid reveals the power of imagination in making reality an extension of human consciousness. In its ICO, Braid’s team wants to raise between $1.4 mln to $2.1 mln worth of Ether in return for 30 percent of the future revenue. Braid’s message is about turning your dreams into reality. WeiFund is the creative and right platform to make this happen.

Other industries poised to adopt Blockchain technology

The film industry is just one of many industries positively impacted by Blockchain technology. The same technology that powers Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies also have been disrupting industries such as the banking, cyber security, networking, IoT, music, ridesharing, insurance, stock trading, healthcare, energy management, retail, AI, among others.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Perhaps you have heard of John Myatt,

the famous forger behind the “biggest art fraud of the 20th century.” Myatt recreated over 200 art pieces from famous 19th and 20th-century painters. His fakes were so genuine that auction house experts valued them at enormous prices and buyers were tricked. Such deceptions and sophisticated forgeries are not an isolated case, nor are they decreasing. In fact, 2016 has even been labeled the “year of the fake” for the complex art forgery scandals it brought.

While many consider Blockchain to be a disruptive technology that could have a transformative effect on our global economy, I must at least agree on its versatility. I have yet to find an industry where it won’t have a tremendous impact and the fine art world is also one that could harness Blockchain to solve some of its issues. The actual system of transferring fine art suffers from great opacity that makes it difficult to track provenance and the movement of items. Transaction records are still paper-based most of the time, which exposes them to a plethora of risks – they can be easily lost, destroyed, altered or stolen.

Blockchain to certify provenance and track ownership

This is where Blockchain is particularly fit to solve these issues. As a distributed ledger, it can be used to provide an immutable and censorship-resistant database of ownership. Indeed, many organizations are looking to leverage this technology in issuing certificates of authenticity. One of these organizations is Verisart, which is building a worldwide permanent and decentralized ledger of art and collectibles. Its mobile application can be used by artists to generate a certificate of authenticity, and by collectors to verify provenance in real-time. We previously detailed its ambitions here. Ascribe and Monegraph are other startups that have entered this space. The Berlin-based Ascribe allows artists to generate a certificate of ownership for each one of their creations. Each piece is assigned a unique cryptographic ID from which its complete history can be retrieved.

Artists can then share their work, gain visibility on where it spreads on the Internet and use Blockchain to license it and generate revenues. As for Monegraph, it is also using Blockchain to verify digital assets. Artists can submit the URL of their online creations, and receive a Blockchain key and value to be stored in a Namecoin wallet. Namecoin is an open source decentralized key/value registration and transfer system based on Bitcoin technology. By using this method that looks at art as a digital currency, online artists can store certificates of ownership of their creations. Monegraph, in turn, can spot if an illegitimate person is trying to claim ownership of the same creations in the future.

Proof-of-concept

Besides, Blockchain’s ability to certify provenance has not only attracted new entrepreneurs. Professional services firms, such as Deloitte, have also expressed their interest in the technology. “The Blockchain distributed ledger can trace the journey of artworks. When this technology is used in the art market, all events in the life cycle of an artwork are recorded and traceable. The application addresses one of the main concerns in the art market today, namely the fragile documentation related to the provenance and movements of a piece of art,” explains Patrick Laurent, partner and technology leader at Deloitte Luxembourg. Deloitte has built a platform enabling anyone, from artists to galleries to owners, to access a distributed ledger of the provenance and transportation history of physical art pieces.

Dubbed “ArtTracktive,” this proof-of-concept validates movements on the supply chain through reached consensus, therefore shortcutting the need for a trusted third party. The initiative shows how Blockchain technology can solve the current authenticity and traceability issues in the art world, by recording the full history of an artwork in a secure environment available to all. Although Blockchain technology is still in its early days and business models are still under development, it is very likely that Blockchain will gain momentum among artists who are interested in gaining greater control over their work and being fairly compensated for it.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.