Switzerland, renowned for its banking secrecy laws and favored by the wealthy, has quickly embraced the principles of self-sovereignty embodied by Bitcoin (BTC).
The head of Lugano’s Plan ₿ initiative, Giw Zanganeh, spoke with Cointelegraph journalist Joe Hall at the Plan ₿ Bitcoin Summer School, shedding light on the growing use of Bitcoin for everyday transactions in the Swiss city.
Lugano has emerged as a hub for Bitcoin adoption, as well as for Tether and its LVGA stablecoin, which can be used for various utility bills, goods, and services throughout the city.
Zanganeh, who leads Tether’s Plan ₿, expressed his enthusiasm for Switzerland’s remarkable cryptocurrency adoption, despite its well-established financial and banking infrastructure.
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He noted that many Swiss citizens are not only interested in Bitcoin from a philosophical perspective but also find alignment with Swiss values.
Swiss society places high value on individual sovereignty and financial privacy, which creates a natural overlap between Swiss culture and the ideals of the Bitcoin movement.
Zanganeh stated that Switzerland likely has one of the highest densities of Bitcoin-only companies per capita in the world, and even politicians, diplomats, and members of parliament are embracing Bitcoin, reinforcing a positive outlook for adoption in the country.
The increased usage of Bitcoin in Switzerland can be attributed to concerted efforts to educate and inform the populace about the advantages of BTC.
Regular articles in newspapers discuss various aspects of Bitcoin and its relevance to financial freedom and freedom of speech, targeting individuals interested in these concepts.
Zanganeh acknowledged that Bitcoin adoption is a gradual process, but the onboarding of merchants in Lugano has played a crucial role in establishing a new payment paradigm in the region.
Zanganeh likened the process of Bitcoin adoption to the initial proliferation of bank cards decades ago, emphasizing that practical experience with novel transactional methods will continue to attract more users to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Switzerland’s potential as a center for institutional cryptocurrency adoption has also been highlighted by Bitcoin Suisse CEO Dr. Dirk Klee, with the Canton of Zug attracting numerous cryptocurrency and blockchain companies due to its progressive and crypto-friendly initiatives supported by the government.
The interview with Giw Zanganeh is part of an upcoming Cointelegraph documentary that delves into the experience of attending a Bitcoin School.
For those interested, subscribing to Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel will provide access to the documentary.
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Despite monumental progress in the past few years, the most popular smart contract blockchains remain limited in their scalability prowess. New blockchains like Solana and Sui have been somewhat of a disappointment, while developers are looking for better frameworks than Solidity and the EVM.
In this environment, a new chain provides a completely new architecture for smart contract scalability: Vara. It wants to bring modern asynchronous computing to smart contracts, a first in the industry.
The traditional blockchain machine is sequential: each transaction is expected to be executed one after the other. You can’t create transactions that wait for some process to finish, so either it all gets executed in its spot in the queue, or it gets rejected (or reverted) outright.
This model applies both to Bitcoin and to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which have been some of the earliest blockchain designs out there. With some dubbing Ethereum as the “world computer,” over time people came to realize that it’s an incredibly inefficient one.
Since all nodes in the world execute the same sequential tasks, the performance of the EVM is laughable for modern computing standards. Ever since the early days of blockchain, the tech community’s goal has been to introduce parallel processing to the transactions, so that not every single computer is doing the exact same thing.
Ethereum’s roadmap is to scale by making, in a nutshell, more of these sequential blockchains using the EVM as their core. But other projects decided to tackle the core virtual machine architecture, notably Solana, Sui and Aptos.
The goal for these projects is to ensure that, even if the exact same blockchain is replicated in all machines, at least it runs as fast as the machine itself.
Vara, a blockchain powered by the Gear Protocol, goes even further by adding fully asynchronous, multi-threaded transactions, which should provide developers much higher performance and flexibility.
Actor-based Processing Enables Modern Async-Await Programming
The key ingredient in Vara is a system that the team calls Actor Model, where an Actor can be a smart contract program, or a user’s wallet. Each Actor is an island of its own memory, which makes the blockchain much more efficient: each transaction can only modify the memory of the Actors it targets, while a global state system like the EVM has to keep literally every single contract in memory.
Actors communicate with each other by passing messages, which the recipient is free to accept, disregard or process later. This is a feature suited for secure parallel processing, as multiple Actors can send messages to another, but the target Actor will only process the messages one at a time.
This asynchronous processing is available in Vara code through the Async-Await pattern, a modern web programming technique, which enables a huge amount of flexibility to developers, especially when it comes to off-chain interactions with oracles.
Requesting information from the Web is an inherently uncertain operation: it takes a long time (by CPU standards), it could fail, or it could freeze. Asynchronous programming is designed to deal with this issue, as you can just send the request, do other things, and collect the results when (or if) they arrive.
Because blockchains are usually sequential, directly querying data is out of the question, so most projects rely on external and comparatively centralized providers like Chainlink. With Vara, oracles can be native to the blockchain’s code, which would make projects as decentralized as the chain itself.
Can Vara Stand Out Amongst The Competition?
From a technological perspective, Vara is similar to Solana and Sui, and to a lesser extent to Aptos, all of which are new blockchain networks that came after Ethereum. The Asynchronous model in Vara is more flexible for developers, for example enabling operations that span multiple blocks.
From a perspective of attracting developer talent, Vara has an edge over Aptos and Sui. Its smart contracts are based on WebAssembly, which focuses on Rust, a popular language used extensively in Web2 and Web3. While Aptos and Sui use Move, a novel language where few people have development expertise (and even fewer have good auditing experience).
Gear Protocol and Vara have been founded by Nikolay Volf, a core engineer at Parity who helped make Polkadot possible. The project is an active part of the large Polkadot community, and its founder Gavin Wood invested in the project. This gives it a good initial fit as it can attract its first developers and users from a well-established community, though Vara will be a stand-alone blockchain at first.
The market for alternative layer-1 networks has retreated in the past few months, as all the hype moved to the Ethereum layer-2 networks. Tokens like SOL, APT and SUI have fairly small capitalizations, and combined they have much less value locked in DeFi than just Optimism, the second largest layer-2.
But the woes of others may become an opportunity for Vara: its similarity to Solana may help attract its developer talent, now that the chain has been badly damaged by the FTX fallout.
Vara has solid tech fundamentals, a consistent and well-made developer onboarding program, as well as the support of a passionate community. With the bear market, these factors start to outweigh flashy liquidity mining programs and massive capital allocations, as evidenced by SUI’s rocky start.
Though it’s difficult to make predictions, at the very least Vara has all the ingredients to become a dark horse in the race for the most successful blockchain network.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently expressed his belief that the Bitcoin network requires scalable solutions, such as zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups), in order to transcend its current role as a payment network.
Buterin shared his thoughts during a Twitter Space event hosted by Bitcoin developer Udi Wertheimer, where the focus was on Ethereum’s scaling experiments.
ZK-rollups are off-chain protocols that operate on the Ethereum blockchain and are managed by on-chain Ethereum smart contracts.
They offer a faster and more scalable approach to verifying transactions without compromising critical user information.
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Buterin highlighted how Ethereum has implemented various scaling solutions over the years to enhance throughput.
He pointed to Optimism and Arbitrum as successful examples of rollups that could serve as case studies for Bitcoin.
He stressed the need for additional scaling solutions if Bitcoin aims to expand beyond its current payment-centric role, stating, “I think if we want Bitcoin to be more than payments, it needs more scaling solutions.”
Scalability has long been a topic of discussion for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum has transitioned from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake network and is actively exploring layer-2 solutions like ZK-rollups and Plasma to address scalability challenges.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has relied on its layer-2 solution, the Lightning Network, to improve scalability.
More recently, the emergence of Bitcoin Ordinals has played a significant role in transforming the Bitcoin network into more than just a payment layer.
Buterin praised the rise of Ordinals and believes they have revitalized the builder culture within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Bitcoin Ordinals represent the latest layer-2 solution enabling decentralized storage of digital art on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Their popularity has skyrocketed, with trading volume for Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions surpassing $210 million by the end of June.
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Paytm founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, recently expressed his concerns about the potential consequences of advanced AI systems, including the disempowerment and even extinction of humanity.
He took to Twitter to share his worries, referencing a blog post by OpenAI.
Sharma highlighted some alarming findings from the OpenAI blog post, stating that he is genuinely concerned about the power that certain individuals and countries have already accumulated.
He drew attention to a specific claim in the post that suggested the development of such systems could lead to the disempowerment and extinction of humanity in less than seven years.
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The blog post, titled “Introducing Superalignment,” discusses the need for scientific and technical breakthroughs to ensure control over AI systems that could surpass human intelligence.
OpenAI is actively dedicating significant computing power and has formed a team led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike to address this issue.
While the arrival of superintelligence may still seem distant, OpenAI believes it could become a reality within this decade.
The post emphasizes the importance of managing the risks associated with superintelligence through new governance institutions and aligning AI systems with human intent.
Current AI alignment techniques rely on human supervision, particularly reinforcement learning from human feedback.
However, these techniques may not be sufficient to align superintelligent AI systems that exceed human capabilities.
OpenAI asserts that new scientific and technical breakthroughs are necessary to tackle this challenge effectively.
OpenAI plans to build an automated alignment researcher operating at a human-level intelligence to address the issue.
They intend to leverage substantial computing resources to scale their efforts and align superintelligence.
This process involves developing scalable training methods, validating models, and stress-testing the alignment pipeline.
Recognizing that research priorities will evolve, OpenAI aims to provide more details about their roadmap in the future.
They are in the process of assembling a team of leading machine learning researchers and engineers dedicated to addressing the challenge of superintelligence alignment.
OpenAI emphasizes that their work on superintelligence alignment is complementary to their ongoing efforts to improve the safety of existing AI models and address other risks associated with AI.
The concerns raised by Vijay Shekhar Sharma and the findings presented in the OpenAI blog post highlight the need for careful consideration and proactive measures to ensure the responsible development and deployment of advanced AI systems.
While the potential benefits of AI are vast, it is crucial to navigate the risks associated with its exponential growth and mitigate any potential threats to humanity.
Gerardo Moran, an 18-year-old teenager from El Salvador, recently took to social media to share his remarkable story following the completion of the country’s Bitcoin diploma program, Mi Primer Bitcoin (my first Bitcoin).
This program, supported by El Salvador’s Ministry of Education, provided Moran with an opportunity to leave behind his challenging life in construction, where he earned a mere $6 a day.
In a series of heartfelt tweets on July 8, Moran opened up about his experiences, highlighting the stark realities faced by many Salvadoran citizens who toil tirelessly for minimal compensation.
Having worked since the tender age of 11, mostly in construction and tourism, Moran struggled to comprehend why his fellow countrymen put in so much effort for such meager rewards.
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“I’ve pondered why people in my country work so diligently for so little money,” Moran expressed on Twitter, acknowledging that he, too, had been trapped in a cycle of arduous labor for paltry compensation. He reached a breaking point, realizing that earning $6 a day in construction was simply not sustainable for him. Unbeknownst to him at the time, a life-changing opportunity lay just ahead.
It was when Moran’s school announced its search for students interested in enrolling in the Bitcoin diploma course that he decided to seize the opportunity. With determination and dedication, he excelled in the program, acquiring a profound understanding of Bitcoin and its implications.
Now, Moran has returned to his former high school, Antonio J. Alfaro, to educate the teachers about Bitcoin. As a leader in Bitcoin education in his hometown, he is currently training and instructing a group of eight senior professors, sharing his knowledge and experiences through the Bitcoin diploma program.
Mi Primer Bitcoin has garnered immense support from global advocates of Bitcoin education, amassing over 1 BTC in donations.
Generous individuals from countries like Poland and Canada have contributed satoshis over the Lightning Network, showcasing their commitment to fostering the growth of El Salvador’s Bitcoin diploma program.
El Salvador’s director of education, Gilberto Motto, previously emphasized the government’s focus on educating citizens about Bitcoin, particularly targeting teenagers.
Motto explained that by reaching every 16- and 17-year-old in the country, they aim to effectively educate the entire nation within a year.
This strategic demographic is expected to disseminate their knowledge to their families, creating a ripple effect of understanding and adoption.
Gerardo Moran’s inspiring journey serves as a testament to the transformative power of education and the positive impact that Bitcoin can have on individuals and communities.
As El Salvador continues its efforts to embrace digital currencies, Moran’s dedication to sharing his newfound knowledge is playing a vital role in shaping a more informed and empowered society.
In a recent incident, a hacker exploited a code vulnerability in the noncustodial decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Arcadia Finance, draining approximately $455,000 from the platform.
PeckShield, a blockchain investigator, identified the cause of the hack as the absence of untrusted input validation in the code.
The hacker took advantage of this vulnerability, which allowed them to siphon funds from the Ethereum (darcWETH) and Optimism (darcUSDC) vaults.
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Arcadia Finance has not yet provided a comment on the hack in response to inquiries made by Cointelegraph.
However, the team did mention that PeckShield’s assessment of the root cause was incorrect.
Nevertheless, Arcadia Finance acknowledged the hack and took immediate action by pausing the contracts to prevent further loss of funds.
While investigations are ongoing, it has been discovered that Arcadia’s code contains another vulnerability that could potentially have catastrophic consequences if exploited.
PeckShield revealed that there is a lack of reentrancy protection, which enables instant liquidation to bypass the internal vault health check.
The majority of the stolen funds, approximately 180 Ether (ETH) equivalent to $1,864 at the time, were from Optimism and have been laundered through Tornado Cash.
However, the stolen tokens on the Ethereum network, valued at over $103,000, are still held in the suspected wallet address.
In the second quarter of 2023, the crypto space experienced a series of hacks and exploits, resulting in a cumulative loss of more than $300 million.
CertiK, a blockchain security company, reported a total of 212 security incidents during this period, which led to a loss of $313,566,528 from various Web3 protocols.
Comparing the data with the same period in the previous year, CertiK observed a decline of 58% in crypto hacks. Among the incidents, the BNB Smart Chain had the highest number, with 119 recorded cases amounting to losses of $70,711,385.
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Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the United States has admitted to owning a substantial amount of Bitcoin (BTC), contrary to his previous denial of being an investor in the leading cryptocurrency.
According to records obtained by CNBC, Kennedy Jr. held between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of Bitcoin by the end of June.
The investment was made following his speech at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in May, during which he announced that his campaign would be the first in the United States to accept Bitcoin donations.
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Interestingly, during the conference, Kennedy Jr. explicitly denied investing in Bitcoin, stating, “I am not an investor, and I am not here to give investment advice.”
The financial disclosure filed on June 30 did not specify the exact timing of the cryptocurrency purchase but revealed that the investment had yielded a return of less than $201 thus far.
Although the filing did not identify the purchaser, Kennedy Jr.’s campaign acknowledged that it was him.
Kennedy Jr., who is challenging President Joe Biden, has been actively targeting the crypto community as part of his campaign.
In a tweet on May 3, he expressed his belief that cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, are a significant source of innovation.
He also criticized the U.S. government for impeding the industry and potentially driving innovation away.
Notably, Kennedy Jr. has gained support from prominent figures within the crypto industry, including Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and CEO of The Block.
Dorsey took to Twitter to express his confidence in Kennedy Jr.’s strategy to defeat his opponents in the upcoming race.
As the son of former Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the nephew of the 35th President of the U.S., John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy has attracted attention and backing from influential figures.
His support comes at a critical juncture for the American crypto industry, which is currently grappling with regulatory uncertainties as the Securities and Exchange Commission tightens its scrutiny of crypto businesses in the absence of a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the United States.
According to recruitment executives, despite the excitement surrounding crypto firms entering Hong Kong, there has been a lack of in-country hires in the industry.
On June 1, approximately 150 companies applied for a local crypto license to operate a trading platform, with some reportedly spending up to $25 million to obtain one.
Sue Wei, managing director of recruitment firm Hays, mentioned that while exchanges aim to establish a presence in Hong Kong, the industry’s recruitment needs are currently low.
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She expects an increase in job openings as Web3 companies continue to develop and expand.
However, there has been a decline in demand for technical talent since the crypto market dip, especially after numerous layoffs, which has made candidates hesitant to work for crypto companies due to the business’s instability tied to crypto prices.
Neil Dundon, founder of crypto recruiter Cryptorecruit, also noted a lack of significant activity in Hong Kong despite regulatory changes.
He believes that the venture activity is currently low but anticipates an upward trend in the future. Olga Yung, managing director of Michael Page Hong Kong, shared similar sentiments, stating that there hasn’t been a significant increase in job seekers interested in Web3 despite the government’s recent support.
However, Yung observed a slight increase in Web3 companies seeking legal and compliance hires in the second quarter of 2023.
Looking ahead, Kevin Gibson, founder of Web3 recruitment firm Proof of Search, expects a surge in crypto talent to take around six months as companies wait for license approvals.
He also mentioned that the local talent pool in Hong Kong is limited, and companies establishing themselves there may face intense competition for talent.
Gibson believes that the talent squeeze will persist until 2024, with Web3 companies potentially relocating their headquarters to pro-crypto jurisdictions if their plans align.
Hong Kong’s demographics data indicate a negative population growth rate since 2020.
Employment statistics for the first quarter of 2023 show a nearly 38% increase in job vacancies compared to the previous year.
One of the main challenges is attracting candidates interested in the crypto and Web3 sectors. Many candidates remain risk-averse due to the current market sentiment.
However, Neil Tan, chair of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong, noted that he has encountered several individuals who have recently transitioned from traditional finance to crypto.
Some are approached directly by crypto firms, while others search for roles through platforms like LinkedIn.
The instability and shedding of headcount in traditional finance have made the stability of crypto more appealing to some candidates.
In a significant ruling, a Canadian judge has declared that the popular thumbs-up emoji can serve as an indication of a person’s legal agreement to a contract.
The decision comes in response to the increasing prevalence of emojis as a means of expression in various contexts, including business transactions, within Canadian society.
The case in question revolved around a dispute between a farmer and a grain buyer regarding the sale of large quantities of flax in 2021.
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The buyer had sent the farmer a purchase contract accompanied by a message requesting confirmation. Upon receiving the contract, the farmer replied with a thumbs-up emoji.
Interpreting this as an acceptance of the agreement, the buyer believed that the farmer had agreed to the contract.
However, the farmer contended that the emoji was merely meant to confirm receipt of the contract.
In reaching the ruling, Judge T.J. Keene took into account the established trade relationship between the farmer and the buyer, along with the farmer’s past responses to similar sales agreements, which often included phrases like “looks good,” “ok,” or “yup.”
Judge Keene also referred to the definition of the thumbs-up emoji as found on dictionary.com, which described it as conveying assent, approval, or encouragement in digital communications, particularly in Western cultures.
Legal experts, such as Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, emphasized that despite this ruling, the interpretation of the thumbs-up emoji’s meaning may still vary depending on the specific circumstances of each case.
Goldman highlighted that some young individuals might employ the emoji sarcastically or insincerely, while others might use it solely to acknowledge the receipt of a message.
Furthermore, he noted that in certain Middle Eastern countries, the gesture could be deemed offensive.
Consequently, Goldman underscored the importance of recognizing that the use of the thumbs-up emoji can carry significant legal consequences.
This ruling serves as a reminder that as emojis continue to proliferate as a form of communication, their interpretation within legal contexts remains an evolving and nuanced area.
While the Canadian judgment establishes a precedent for the thumbs-up emoji, it also underscores the necessity of considering individual context and cultural factors when determining the meaning of emojis in legal agreements.
In a recent Twitter thread, investor Luke Broyles predicts Bitcoin (BTC) could engulf future prosperity gains, leaving non-investors behind.
He foresees BTC becoming society’s base money due to its key attribute— a fixed, immutable supply, a feature that makes it a future-proof asset.
Broyles argues that while technological innovations, including artificial intelligence (AI), will drive prices down, and nations will continue to print currency to maintain credit markets and raise prices, BTC’s emission will remain unchanging.
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Consequently, even minimal exposure to Bitcoin would be vastly different from having none.
“We have less in common with the future than the past… Bitcoin is already trading for hundreds of millions of political currency units in several nations.
But the actual big deal is that all future innovations’ prosperity gains will pour into society’s base money – BTC,” Broyles explained.
He insists it is vital for individuals to invest, or “get off zero”. Comparing Bitcoin to “digital gold”, he said, is like calling a locomotive an “iron horse”.
This view echoes the opinion of Arthur Hayes, ex-CEO of BitMEX, a crypto derivatives exchange.
Hayes suggested AI will naturally select BTC as its financial backbone because of its distinctive characteristics, leading to a potential price surge past $750,000 per BTC.
The competition for the remaining Bitcoin supply has likely already begun.
According to Broyles, Bitcoin’s liquidity reached its apex during the 2020 cross-market crash and won’t ever revert.
The announcement of a Bitcoin spot-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) filing by BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, boosted US Bitcoin activity. Glassnode, an on-chain analytics firm, observed that the US appears to be reconsidering its own Bitcoin exposure.
“Following the Blackrock Bitcoin ETF request announcement on June 15th, the share of Bitcoin supply held/traded by US entities has seen a significant increase, indicating a potential inflection point in supply dominance if the trend continues,” Glassnode stated on July 8.