Russian Buyers Provide Demand for Chinese Mining Equipment

South China Morning Post spent time with Alex, a 38-year-old Russian businessman visiting China to establish connections with bitcoin mining hardware retailers. The report states that Alex spent three days exploring central Shenzhen, where he compared the products offered by 30 different retailers. Alex claims to have had two or three trips to China over the last 15 years to purchase toys that he resells in Russia, however, this is the first trip that he has undertaken in order to purchase mining hardware.

Alex states that when he first entered the bitcoin mining industry he purchased 200 units in Moscow, for which he paid a 20% premium when compared to the Chinese market. He states that there is far more to consider than just the prices of the hardware he inspects, emphasizing that “It’s about how to choose a true retailer .”

For Alex, Shenzhen, in particular, offers too many potential retailers to easily choose from.
Mining Hardware Vendors Plentiful in Shenzen

South China Morning Post recounted exploring the SEG Plaza in Huaqiangbei, Shenzen – a major manufacturing hub that has comprised a Special Economic Zone since the 1980’s.

The report states that the plaza houses “vendors of mining machines scattered between the fourth and sixth floors in spaces originally occupied by sellers of computer components,” noting that “One mining shop had a Russian translation at the bottom of its ad.”

Whilst South China Morning Post article states that “Russians dominate the list of foreign customers,” it is also reported that “Indians and other Europeans” comprise a significant share of the market demand for Chinese mining hardware.

Source: Bitcoin Isle

Defining Legal Status of Cryptocurrencies

A cyber unit of the Ukrainian national police has said it’s in favor of the full legalization of the cryptocurrency market. The digital crime busters have said that cryptocurrency can act as electronic money; therefore it should be regulated and legalized.

According to Interfax Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian Cyberpolice Department, Serhiy Demediuk has said:


“De facto, by all signs, the cryptocurrency can belong to electronic money – a unit of value stored on an electronic device and accepted as a means of payment. At the same time, control over its transaction is ensured by its cryptographic protection. Thus, despite the fact that the existence and circulation of the cryptocurrency is based on the foundations of a financial pyramid, the cyber police support the idea of the legalization of the cryptocurrency in Ukraine as well as the process of its mining (at least equating it to electronic means).”

The cyber police chief also hinted at a plan to deploy blockchain technology in the public and private sectors of the Ukrainian economy in a relatively welcome development. In Demediuk’s words:


“Today there is a need to resolve at the legislative level the issues related to the use of the cryptocurrency as soon as possible, as well as the introduction of the necessary taxation of transactions on the purchase and sale of the cryptocurrency. In addition, it’s necessary to determine the respective rules for the functioning of Ukrainian cryptocurrency exchanges and cryptocurrency exchanges points.”

Demediuk reiterated that all cryptocurrency exchanges in the country must conduct proper KYC/AML operations and ensure that all virtual currency transactions are above board. Ultimately, the task force looks to track every single crypto transaction, and it’s owner.


“If it is impossible to regulate the Cyber status of the cryptocurrency in Ukraine, the state should officially prohibit its turnover, so that everyone knows that by buying or selling digital currency in Ukraine, they risk losing their financial investments irrevocably, without the right to protection and recovery of losses”

The official concluded by saying that the Cyberpolice are ready to cooperate with agencies and fintech companies in Ukraine, towards the legalization of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

With this latest development, if the virtual currencies legalization process goes according to plan, many see Ukraine joining countries like Japan and others who have already legalized the use of cryptocurrencies.

Source: BTC Manager

Analog to Blockchain

Legislators initially introduced the bill on January 16, 2018, and it suggests that if they implemented the use of a distributed ledger, there would be no reason to continue with paper records or to have people manually updating these data sets.

Therefore, the problems the state is currently experiencing when it comes to their current collection of data and issues related to retention would be solved, and the records would be kept more secure.

At current, Colorado citizens still have to pay a visit to the state agencies in the flesh if they want to make some modification to their information, which is another inconvenience that could be resolved by the use of a blockchain-based system.

PhD candidate Yonatan Sompolinsky and Dr. Aviv Zohar, both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, released a paper this week on a new scalable BlockDAG — an alternative network structure to Blockchain — protocol called PHANTOM.

Sompolinsky and Zohar’s 2013 paper on the GHOST protocol introduced the BlockDAG structure — which essentially changes Bitcoin’s Blockchain structure into a tree — as a way to improve security and speed up transaction times.

In a talk at “Blockchain in Berkeley” in November 2017, Sompolinsky explained the BlockDAG structure as serving everyone simultaneously. This is in contrast with the structure of Blockchain, in which new blocks are added one at a time once they have been verified.



The PHANTOM paper builds off of the researchers’ SPECTRE protocol, which confirms transactions with recursive voting of previous blocks. However, unlike SPECTRE, PHANTOM will use a “greedy algorithm” on a BlockDAG protocol to create a more linear block structure by “distinguish[ing] between blocks mined properly by honest nodes and those mined by non-cooperating nodes that deviated from the DAG mining protocol.”

The linear structure of PHANTOM means sacrificing the faster confirmation times that came with SPECTRE, although the paper brings up the possibility of combining the two protocols in order to “enjoy the best of both worlds.”

Although most cryptocurrencies run on a Blockchain protocol, there are several that run on BlockDAG. Byteball is a DAG-based currency in which transactions are linked together and contain hashes of previous transactions. IOTA is also DAG-based — the creation of a new transaction must validate at least two previous transactions.

One of Europe’s Largest Power Companies Allegedly Evaluated Cryptocurrency Mining Operations

The Italian multinational renewable-energy corporation located in Rome, Enel, made a statement on Thursday that explains it will not sell power to data centers who plan to mine cryptocurrencies. According to the financial publication Bloomberg the company was allegedly discussing a deal with a Switzerland-based cryptocurrency business called Envion AG. The news outlet stated that “according to people with direct knowledge of the matter” Enel was evaluating the market to sell power to bitcoin and other digital asset miners. Further, a company executive also commented on the mining evaluation story.

“Enel is particularly interested in understanding how the energy business can benefit from the blockchain technology,” the head of the firm’s front trading office, Leonardo Zannella said at the time.
Enel Changes Its Tune “No Interest Whatsoever In Selling Power” to Cryptocurrency Miners

However, subsequently after the alleged discussions, the power company changed its tune. Enel says it takes pride in providing “green power” deriving from biomass and incineration practices, geothermal resources, hydroelectricity, wind, and solar power. Moreover, the company believes that cryptocurrency mining cannot be maintained in an environmentally friendly way.

“Enel has undertaken a clear path toward decarbonization and sustainable development,” explains a spokesperson this past Thursday.


The intensive use of energy dedicated to cryptocurrency mining as an unsustainable practice that does not fit with the business model it is pursuing.

The news follows the swathes of Chinese miners looking for new residency in other areas around the world. Just recently Bitmain Technologies said it was looking for properties in Canada and also launched a subsidiary in Zug, Switzerland. Enel’s decision may be seen as a small obstacle as miners can utilize more friendlier power companies willing to sell cryptocurrency miners power. Although the firm has operations in sixteen countries across Europe, North America and South America. The company controls a majority of power operations in Spain as well.

Source: Bitcoin Isle

Blockchain is slowly being integrated into almost all fields of life as professionals from across the spectrum are looking towards blockchain as a solution to current and future problems. But, blockchain adoption is not an easy task to complete as there are several roadblocks in the path; The nature of the wide-ranging platforms and scalability is one of them.

While the programmable blockchains like Ethereum, Stratis, NEO, provide a lot of utility, it still takes a lot of understanding of the working of each platform to implement things practically. So, an easy-to-use blockchain creation solution is in very high demand these days. With a platform like this, any party would be able to deploy the blockchain network and protocol that their organization requires.

This “Blockchain for everyone” approach is going to usher in a new era of development in the crypto world with universal application and outreach of the new technology. ARK, a blockchain network creation services provider has recently announced a script update of its promising platform. ARK allows easy and hassle free deployment of multiple blockchains at a time.