Lately, the controversial topic of censorship on Big Tech platforms reached a turning point when U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign account was banned on both Twitter and Facebook for “spreading coronavirus misinformation.” The conversation over who has control over what kinds of information that get out to what kinds of audiences is not new. As we move toward Web 3.0, many believe this future version of the internet will be a more decentralized, immutable and censorship-resistant version of the web. The decentralized data storage solution InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, is a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol that is designed to make …

The failures of centralization in protecting individual and business data have been highlighted repeatedly over the past few years. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Sony and many more have all faced large-scale data hacks that have exposed the private information (and more) of their customers. The problem is not just data theft — banks, financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges have all suffered at the hands of malicious actors. Yet, huge amounts of information about our lives and livelihoods are still entrusted to centralized organizations, simply because that has always been the way things are done. With the onset of Web 3.0, …

Recent data published by Chainalysis revealed a surprising first place for Ukraine in the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2020, followed by Russia and Venezuela. The index looks at three on-chain metrics: the total value of on-chain crypto transactions weighted by purchasing power per capita, or PPP, the value of on-chain retail transfers weighted by PPP, and the number of on-chain crypto deposits weighted by the number of internet users. The index also factors in the volume of trades made on peer-to-peer crypto exchanges weighted by both the number of internet users and PPP. The report shows uneven levels of development …

The recent crypto market slump has driven massive trade volumes on centralized exchanges, but peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platforms actually saw a sharp decline in activity. Latin-America was the only region to buck the trend. The top region for P2P trade, the United States, posted a 42% slump in peer-to-peer volume this week — plummeting from $23.4 million to nearly $13.6 million. Sub-Saharan African has been the second-largest region for P2P trade after North America for much of 2020. It saw P2P volume fall 32%, from roughly $12.9 million to $8.7 million — driven by a 38% crash in Nigerian activity. …

If Bitcoin (BTC) was born in response to the systemic failures laid bare by one global financial crisis, then the subsequent rise of various decentralized networks can be seen as differences in opinion on the best way forward. All are in agreement that the existing financial system is broken, but are slightly at odds in terms of how to fix it. In a sense, each of these networks represents a new, if partial, vision of what could make for a better system. For instance, we’ve seen Celo leverage cryptographic tools and mobile phones to put financial instruments into the hands …

Supporting the open-source community continues to be a priority for OKCoin, which has enabled us to sponsor the development of the very infrastructure that we depend on as a crypto exchange. Our commitment to free and open-source software, or FOSS, has led us to provide three additional grants so far in 2020. Announced on Aug. 6, our most recent grant was awarded to Marco Falke, a Bitcoin Core maintainer and the most active contributor to the Bitcoin code since 2017. This has been preceded by three more: BTCPay, Amiti Uttarwar and Fabian Jahr. Sponsoring development of crypto infrastructure It’s been …

Recent geopolitical events, such as President Trump’s order to ban TikTok and WeChat in the United States, have exemplified the imperative of decentralization. The next generation internet will empower individuals to own their data, exchange their wealth, and control their digital footprint — all without being subject to the whims of politicians and tech giants, which have historically weaponized the web for their own gain. Content-addressable storage, or CAS, such as IPFS, eliminates reliance on path addressing, such as that of URLs. Content addressing can prevent malicious behaviors such as file path attacks and content manipulation. Peer-to-peer routing for communications: …

A global pandemic, massive and worldwide protests, job automation, environmental issues and geopolitical tensions are just a few of the challenges facing humanity today. Amid the chaos, keystone global institutions and bureaucrats have openly discussed the present day as an opportunity to remake the world. “The Great Reset,” as the plan has been called, represents a radical initiative by world leaders — many of whom are unelected — to transform the global economy. The World Economic Forum, for instance, claims there is an “urgent need” for “global stakeholders” to manage the direct consequences of what the International Monetary Fund has …

The rapid growth of the decentralized finance space, the rise in demand, the improvement of its protocols, and the breadth of offered services and opportunities will provide retail users with the options they are sorely lacking in the existing financial system. And it will enable institutions to move real-world assets onto the blockchain, generating untold cost-savings and improved efficiencies. But it doesn’t have to be a violent revolution. DeFi doesn’t necessarily need to overthrow the incumbent system. I believe that DeFi will complement traditional finance, force it to do better, and, more importantly, allow for financial inclusion of the world’s …

Combined global peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin trading volumes have surged to their highest levels since January 2018, with nearly $95 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) changing hands on Localbitcoins and Paxful in the first week of August. The spike comes as many Latin American markets have seen trade activity rally into new highs over recent weeks, with the Bitcoin P2P markets in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay and The Bahamas all posting record highs since the start of July. Venezuelan trade still represents the lion’s share of Latin America’s nearly $13 billion in weekly P2P trade, posting more than …

Chinese content generation platform TikTok, a video-sharing app that has been called the fastest-growing social networking service in history, has been in the spotlight since early 2019 and now surpasses 800 million users. Despite the fact that the app’s data security breaches are raising controversy worldwide, more and more young people are using it as the go-to social media for the new generation, with a reported 69% of TikTok’s global audience being between the ages of 16 and 24. Despite its overwhelming success and rapidly growing user base, the truth behind the worldwide sensation is that “the new Instagram" is …

Data from Bitcoin (BTC) marketplace Paxful shows a huge surge of interest in cryptocurrency peer-to-peer trading in Russia, with 350% growth on a year-over-year (YoY) basis. According to the study, from the period of May 2019 to May 2020, Paxful is now seeing an average monthly trading volume of $4M in Russia. The company says that this number “exceeds expectations,” together with the YoY usage increase figures. The last three-months saw a 42% increase, with May recording the best monthly performance amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus is one of the major drivers of growth according to Paxful. Lack of …