The Cryptocurrency Informer

(00:33) First up, USPS. The United States Postal Service has been in the news for a number of months, given all of the controversy surrounding mail-in voting during the pandemic. COVID-19 has certainly been a royal pain for us all, but it has also made many realize the need for improved systems in our country. One of those systems is voting, and the United States Postal Service is hoping that blockchain technology can help to evolve the voting process.

According to Forbes, “USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) published a patent application filed by the USPS. The patent claims that a combination of the security of the blockchain and the mail service provides a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a QR code by mail. A separation of voter identification and votes to ensure voter anonymity is the principal feature of the solution. The votes are stored on a blockchain attested by election officials.”

There has been news of the USPS embracing blockchain technology in the past few months, but this is the first official look into how the technology would integrate with voting. Of course, the integration needs to be tested and perfected, and certainly won’t be available for the upcoming election – but this election, paired with COVID, most definitely lit a fire under USPS to get this moving.

(01:43) PayPal, a company synonymous with online payments, has been a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to cryptocurrencies. However, this week saw reports that indicate PayPal is close to getting with the times, so to speak, when it comes to cryptocurrency.

The Daily Hodl quotes Sandi Bragar, a managing director at the investment management firm Aspiriant:

“We also like that PayPal is working with merchants to bring crypto into the fold, and we think that’s going to be really important as more of the cryptocurrencies become more mainstream in the years ahead.”

In addition, The Motley Fool states that “During its second-quarter earnings call in late July, PayPal CFO John Rainey shared plans to invest an additional $300 million in new products and improvements in the second half of the year…PayPal is also working on several other online payment services, including more ways for consumers to use PayPal online at more merchants [and] the ability to pay in different ways (e.g., credit card rewards, digital currency)…”

At this point, it seems like it is only a matter of time before we see some sort of interesting new cryptocurrency integration in the PayPal ecosystem – the success of similar payment services’ cryptocurrency integration, like CashApp, have more than likely made it pretty clear to PayPal that it’s foolish to ignore the behemoth that is cryptocurrency.

(02:58) Social media platform giants like Facebook and Twitter understand the importance of blockchain technology. Facebook has it’s Libra Project – which, admittedly, hasn’t has a ton of positive press since it’s announcement – and, Twitter has the mysterious Blue Sky. Decrypt reports that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey released some new information about Blue Sky this week – at of all places, a Human Right’s Foundation Forum. Here are some select quotes about the project from Dorsey:

“This is a completely separate nonprofit from [Twitter]…this group will be tasked with building a protocol that we can use, but everyone else can use. And then we’ll really focus on becoming a client of it, so that we can build a compelling service and business on top of a much larger corpus of conversation that anyone can access and anyone can contribute to.”

“Blockchain and Bitcoin point to a future, point to a world where content exists forever—where it’s permanent, where it doesn’t go away, where it exists forever on every single node that’s connected to it. What that means is the job of content hosting goes away.”

“We need to enable people to contribute to a public blockchain, and we need to enable people to be able to pull and see from that public blockchain as well. If we’re able to do that, it’s something that is really powerful, and something that I think speaks back to the power and the original intent of what the internet could be.”

Clearly, there is a lot of passion from Jack Dorsey about blockchain technology. From his quotes, it appears as though Dorsey sees the initial implementation of blockchain tech to be somewhat smaller, until the tech is developed enough for Twitter to integrate with it. After that, it appears that Dorsey is hoping that blockchain technology will help morph Twitter into something less toxic and more useful – “He said that it will, in a way, help Twitter return to the early spirit of the service, when it felt more like a “movement” and things were simpler.”

(04:44) Finally, a quick piece of BCH related news. As we reported many weeks ago, a rift exists between BCH developers, and it has certainly not dissipated. In fact, Cointelegraph reports that “On September 24, crypto asset exchange CoinEx launched futures markets for Bitcoin ABC (BCHA) and BCHN, demonstrating the community’s expectation that a chain split will occur come November.”

And in terms of which coin is winning in terms of dominance? According to the article, “BCHN appears to be ahead on multiple fronts. More than 700 of the Bitcoin Cash network’s 1,262 nodes support BCHN. That compares to just 516 running Bitcoin ABC — the historically dominant implementation of BCH that is spearheaded by core developer Amaury Sechet.”

By these accounts, it looks like folks should start to prepare for some potential extra income coming in from the fork – although how much income depends entirely on how well the coin performs after the split occurs.

That’s it for this week’s episode of The Cryptocurrency Informer. Don’t forget – if you want to read more about each of these stories, go to talk.bitcoin.tax and click on The Cryptocurrency Informer link. Every episode is accompanied by a number of relevant links for each story, so you can do your own in-depth research on the topics that interest you.

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Have a great weekend everyone – stay informed and stay safe!