Is Warren Buffet Ready To Invest In Crypto?

For many years, the legendary investor Warren Buffet had publicly expressed his dislike of cryptocurrencies saying that bitcoin, the most popular and valuable cryptocurrency, as rat poison and nothing more than a bubble and a scam.

However recent investments of his company would indicate that Warren Buffet may have began to see crypto in a different light.

Reports have indicated that Buffet’s multinational investment conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway is investing into two large Fintech firms.

The conglomerate’s first investment will go to Paytm, the largest mobile-payment service in India.

The Indian company will receive around $300 million on investment.

While this investment is not indicative of warming up to crypto-related investment, it is still odd that the firm will invest in Fintech as it has not traditionally done so.

The second investment may reveal a more telling story as the company also invested in an IPO by StoneCo, a large Brazilian payment processor.

This particular investment is interesting as the country seems to be moving towards the cryptocurrency mainstream adoption with the biggest brokerage in the Brazil launching Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange.

Technology investment has never attracted Warren Buffet as it is a realm outside of his expertise however these current investments are being lead by one of two of his portfolio managers, Todd Combs, which seems to be ready to expand their views.

MetaMask Announces A Mobile App

MetaMask, the popular cryptocurrency wallet browser extension from ConsenSys, will release a mobile wallet version soon.

This was revealed at DevCon, an Ethereum-focused conference hosted by large organizations involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including Ernst &Young, Microsoft, ShapeShift, and Blockfolio.

The development team of the MetaMark showcased the Android and iOS version of the mobile wallet in the event.

Joseph Lubin, the founder and CEO of ConsenSys shared this development on twitter revealing that it will not only be an ERC20 wallet but will also allow them to interact with decentralized applications built on top of the Ethereum network.

This is exciting news for MetaMask users as they have been asking for the wallet to be available on mobile devices since its launch in 2016.

It has been available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Brave browser.

Moreover based on what Mr. Lubin has revealed, it will also enable users to use the new mobile wallet as a type of store for decentralized applications (dApps), that is set to allow users to run dApps like the popular Cryptokitties game.

However, this type of mobile Ethereum wallet is not the first one to do so.

There are other Dapps browsers available in the market.

One of these is Binance’s Trust wallet which not only supports Ethereum but a multitude of other blockchains such as GoChain (GO), Wanchain (WAN), Etherem Classic (ETC), POA Network, VeChain (VET), and TRON (TRX).

Coinbase has also offer such a functionality with its acquisition of Toshi wallet which it had rebranded to Coinbase Wallet.

Cryptocurrency Project In New Zealand Funded By Government

The New Zealand’s innovation institute has officially awarded a $330,000 grant to NZ-based crypto project called Vimba.

Formerly known as MyCryptoSaver or MyBitcoinSaver, it now allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies easily by setting up automatic purchases.

The grant was made by Callaghan Innovation, New Zealand government’s innovation group.

The grand is called R&D Project Grant by Callagahan which is very difficult to acquire.

Only 355 grants were approved in the last fiscal year.

Vimba intends to use the grant to list more cryptocurrencies and add multi-signature functionality to their wallets. Currently Vimba only supports biotin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Vimba positions itself more of an investment vehicle than a trading platform by emphasizing dollar cost averaging.

This is an investment strategy that is executed by making scheduled purchases into an asset, which effectively lowers the investor’s average dollar cost.

This unique approached combined with the governments backing only means a very positive future for Vimba and cryptocurrency projects in the country.

According to Sam Blackmore, CEO of Vimba, the investment of the government is a real show of faith in the future of this new asset class.

He also predicts that Bitcoin will at least reach the market cap of gold as it is a more efficient, more accessible, more secure version of it.

The government of New Zealand earlier this year proclaimed that cryptocurrencies are taxable property like gold which many has seen as a clear stamp of approval to this new emerging asset class and clarifies the stance of the government on the nascent industry.

Ethereum 2.0 Soon According To Its Founder

In a keynote presentation at the Devcoin4 conference in Prague last October 31, 2018, Vitalik Buterin unveiled the roadmap for Ethereum 2.0 which is popularly known as Project Serenity.

The project encompasses multiple projects of Ethereum developers have been working on since 2014.

The said upgrades to the network have been pushed back on several times to give time for developers to refine the technical aspect of the project.

Two of the most important upgrades to the Ethereum network which constitutes part of Serenity are the plan to transfer to proof-of-stake algorithm, known as Casper as well as Sharding which seeks to address the scalability issues the Ethereum network currently is facing.

The implementation of the said upgrades and other various enhancements were pushed back to give time for the developers time to stabilize protocols specifications and cross-client testnet.

He reveals that additional testing is important, a lesson is learned during the Ethereum 1.0 initiative which he says happened too quickly.

Also in the conference, Fabian Vogelsteller, co-author of ERC-20 token standard, introduced a new model for initial coin offering (ICO) which he claim will better protect investors from fraud.

Dubbed as Reversible ICO (RICO) enables investors to return their tokens and be reimbursed at any stage of the project, via a special purpose smart contract.

World’s First Private Transaction On the Ethereum Public Blockchain

One of the world’s largest consulting firms in the world, Ernst and Young (EY) has recently announced that they have devised a solution that allows business to enjoy the benefits of private transactions over a public blockchain through the use of what they call the EY UPS Chain Public Edition (PE).

The solution leverages the privacy benefits of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and the security of the Ethereum network that is powered by thousands of distributed computers spread across the world.

ZPS is a verification protocol where transactions authentication can be done without exchanging passwords which basically means nothing can be stolen guaranteeing security.

According to the leader of EY Global Innovation, PE is the first-of-its-kind application and a major step to blockchain adoption of Enterprises.

This will give companies transaction privacy over the Ethereum public chain.

With zero-knowledge proofs organizations can transact on the same network as their competition in complete privacy and without giving the security of the public Ethereum blockchain.

Although private blockchains are advantageous in scalability, immutability and speed the technical know-how and the incentivization needed from the enterprises to develop their own is lacking.

Using the Ethereum blockchain, enterprises wishing to integrate blockchain application in their businesses will not need to start from scratch with the associated expense and time developing their own protocol.

With the indications that Ethereum will soon release upgrades to address scalability issues makes a very attractive platform to use.

Ethereum by far is still the leading platform for smart contract and dApp development reflected by the number of on-chain projects and applications choosing it over a wide variety of alternatives.

Headlines for the world of Cryptocurrencies - November 02, 2018 Goldman Sachs Enlisting Clients For Crypto-Related Product / Bitcoin Will Not Destroy Our Climate / Dismissing Crypto Is Like Dismissing Internet 1993 VC Investor / Finance Minister Of South Korea Sees No Problem Allowing Crypto Exchanges Banking Services / Coinbase Debanks IPO Initiative But Reveals Adding Up To 300 Digital Assets
Headlines for the world of Cryptocurrencies - November 01, 2018 Blockchain Documentary Released In New York / French Business College Now Accepting Cryptocurrencies / Blockchain Will Surge In 2019 According Fidelity Digital Assets Lead / Bank Of Canada Official: Fiat and Crypto Co-Existing Could Work / Berlin Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Hotspot
Headlines for the world of Cryptocurrencies - October 31, 2018 The Biggest Diamond Producer Alrosa Joins Blockchain Pilot / Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Details New Specification for Ethereum Devs / 60% Of Americans Want Crypto To be Treated Like Fiat / PricewaterhouseCoopers Has 400 Crypto Specialists On Staff / BitGo Adds First Gold-Backed Digital Asset