Litecoin is Sliding After its First Competing Fork is Announced (Markets.BusinessInsider.com)
Litecoin is down 2.2% Tuesday morning — alongside most other major coins — after the cryptocurrency’s first hard fork, Litecoin Cash, was announced by an unaffiliated organization. Litecoin holders will receive 10 tokens of litecoin cash for every one litecoin they own, the newly minted Litecoin Cash foundation said Monday. The goal of the new currency is to increase the “block speed” at which the network can process transactions. The foundation says litecoin cash has a goal block time of 2.5 minutes — faster than litecoin. Like bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies, but unlike the existing Litecoin network, litecoin cash will use the more energy intensive, but potentially more secure, proof-of-work mining method.
NVIDIA and AMD Have a Cryptocurrency Mining Conundrum on Their Hands (Madison.com)
Graphics card developers’ sales are surging: Of course, bitcoin is itself a special case. Whereas graphics cards were used to mine bitcoin tokens in the earlier days of its existence, special ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips are required to mine bitcoin today. That’s not the case for most of the other minable cryptocurrencies, with high-powered graphics cards more than doing the trick. And it’s a big reason graphics-card developers NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), more commonly known as AMD, have seen their sales and share prices skyrocket.
UAE Exchange Joins Forces with Ripple for Cross-Border Payments (Cryptovest.com)
One of the largest remittance companies has just taken a bold step towards embracing blockchain technology through a partnership with the organization behind the XRP token. UAE Exchange, a foreign exchange and remittance provider that operates in 30 countries, has joined Ripple’s network, RippleNet, with the aim of easing cross-border payments across its own infrastructure. “Incorporating Ripple’s blockchain technology into our payments systems will bring customers an enhanced, new payments experience. The early adoption of this game-changing technology allows us to offer a competitive service, as it will have an impact on the speed and cost of cross-border transactions,” said Promoth Manghat, CEO of UAE Exchange.
Microsoft exploring use of blockchain technology, pointing to the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin (FXStreet)
It is reported that tech giant Microsoft are exploring the use of blockchains, touting names such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, for their respective technologies. The reason this is of interest to the company, is they see value and efficiencies in the use of the blockchain technology for their decentralized IDs (DIDs) through the Microsoft Authenticator app. They highlight that with the current model, people do not have any form of control over their identity, which is exposed to all sorts of potential issues; theft, data breaches etc. Microsoft believe that with the use of Blockchain, people can store, control and access their identity in an encrypted digital hub.
Bitcoin CRACKDOWN: South Korean Crypto Boss Says Shutting Down Bitcoin is a BAD Idea (Express.co.uk)
BITCOIN and other cryptocurrencies are facing a crackdown in South Korea but one crypto boss has said regulators must not do a blanket ban on the digital currencies. South Korea is home to one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, being the third biggest market in the world for bitcoin trading. Demand and prices have reached a huge premium of 40 percent in South Korea. But Government officials have been signalling plans to crack down on the crypto trading. CIO of one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency funds #HASHED has warned that a straight ban on all cryptocurrencies is a bad idea.
