Technology entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sparked a conversation with ether (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin with his laconic one-word tweet “Ethereum” on April 29. The tweet, which Musk swiftly ironized by adding “jk” within the same thread, prompted Buterin to extend an invitation to Musk for Ethereum’s DevCon in October. In response, Musk asked Buterin the question, “What should be developed on Ethereum?” Buterin listed five of his top picks for the network’s developments, peppered with references to his own past Twitter threads and Ethereum research content. Foremost among these is the creation of a “globally accessible financial …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a higher staking reward for the upcoming proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm implementation on the Ethereum blockchain on GitHub on April 20. Per the proposal, 2,097,152 ether per year would be issued when 134,217,728 ether is staked and validating transactions, resulting in an annual return for stakers of 1.56%. The current circulating supply of the coin is 105,764,762 ETH, which means that this amount of stacked ether is a theoretical maximum of sorts. The proposal also estimates the annual return for various quantities of validating ether. For instance, if only 1 million ETH was staked with this …

A cross-party group of South Korean lawmakers have reportedly called on the government to ease regulation of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The news was reported by local English-language newspaper the Korea Herald on April 7. Notwithstanding the ruling Democratic Party’s broad agenda of deregulation, the lawmakers claim the Moon Jae-in administration is pursuing measures that stifle and hamper growth of the nascent industry. They reportedly claim the country’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission, has taken an unduly conservative stance toward easing regulation of the sector. In a speech on Friday during the 2019 Deconomy Conference at the National Assembly, …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has argued that the crypto community should evolve beyond the individualism associated with its early cypherpunk days and harness technology to create new, equitable and innovative systems with positive social impact. Buterin made his comments during a keynote speech at the RadicalxChange conference in Detroit, Michigan on March 24, BreakerMag reported on March 25. Buterin had jointly initiated RadicalxChange with economist Glen Weyl, co-author of the book “Radical Markets,” which argues in favor of rethinking markets from within an emboldened and radicalized liberal perspective as an antidote to neoreaction, populism and protectionism. In his speech, …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that high ether prices are important both for network security and the wider ecosystem’s development. Buterin made his remarks during an interview for Laura Shin’s crypto-focused “Unchained,” hosted at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and live-streamed on March 20. In response to Shin’s question as to whether protocol designers and project leaders should be focusing on the question of a cryptocurrency’s price, Buterin referred to the “earlier rhetoric” of the Ethereum project, which had explicitly downplayed the importance of the asset’s value: “In part, it was counter-signaling to distinguish ourselves [Ethereum] from other …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that blockchain applications outside of finance face more difficulty gaining traction, as the primary added value they offer is decentralization. Buterin made his remarks during a speech at crypto event Token 2049 in Hong Kong on March 13. Buterin began by noting that finance is “realistically the first blockchain [application] that will probably achieve wide scale adoption,” and that even though he is a self-declared huge fan of other applications: “The problem is that decentralization is basically their value add. With finance you’re competing with banks that take five days to do something interesting. …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed that wallets charge a gas fee for transactions in order to support developers in a tweet on March 8. Gas is a unit for measuring the computational work of operating transactions or smart contracts in the Ethereum network, wherein different kinds of transactions require a different volume of gas to execute. Gas price is the price of ETH a user wants to pay for every unit of gas measured in gwei, while gas limit represents the maximum amount of gas a user will pay for a transaction. In the tweet, Buterin stated: “I propose …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has stated he was trying to solve Bitcoin’s (BTC) limited functionality with the creation of Ethereum, according to an interview with Business Insider published on Feb. 28. During the interview, Buterin compared Bitcoin to a plot key calculator, stating that it does one thing and it does it well, while he believes Ethereum is more like a smartphone, which can run apps capable of doing almost everything, including acting as a plot key calculator. Buterin concluded by defining his solution in a single sentence: “So [what I did is] basically taking that same kind of …

Top Stories This Week Tesla CEO Elon Musk Compliments Bitcoin’s Structure, Sees Future With No Paper Money Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla, said this week in an interview that Bitcoin’s (BTC) structure is “quite brilliant.” Speaking to advisory services firm ARK, Musk noted that digital currency is “a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper.” However, Musk did point out some of the downsides of crypto, namely that it is energy-intensive computationally, but added that Tesla resources could help bring about the use of sustainable energy in crypto. Last year, Musk had noted that …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has disclosed that his crypto investments are virtually exclusively devoted to the Ethereum network, in a post published to an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Reddit thread on Feb. 18. The AMA post is dedicated the Ethereum leadership and accountability, asking those in leadership positions in the ETH community to share their possible conflicts of interest. In Buterin’s summary, his total holdings of non-Ethereum ecosystem tokens — comprising Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Zcash (ZEC) — account for less than 10 percent of the value of his Ethereum holdings. A further set of …

Volatility coupled with one of the longest bear markets ever experienced by the cryptocurrency industry have compelled many investors to consider staking as a method of “playing it safe,” according to a Bloomberg article. Staking, which is similar to earning dividends or interest on your investment, is not a new concept. However, in a long bear market, it does become more prevalent among cryptocurrency investors, as possible gains from regular trading are not as fruitful. As Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital Management, stated to Bloomberg: “Regardless of market conditions, staking provides returns denominated in the asset being staked. …

Top Stories This Week Fundstrat Global Advisors Expects 2019 to Bring More Institutional Investors to Crypto According to a report on the 2019 crypto outlook released by New York-based research company Fundstrat Global Advisors, incremental improvements in the crypto space can provide support for higher prices for cryptocurrencies. The report notes that, as the United States dollar is expected to weaken and more institutional investors enter the space, a visible market recovery can be expected. Fundstrat states that the current year’s crypto hangover can be attributed to the waning interest in the initial coin offering (ICO) sector as well as …