Among the interesting stories featured in today's edition of Bitcoin in Brief are the new crypto tokens added by Pornhub, Fcoin founder's defense of the controversial trans-fee mining practice and an update on the upcoming launch of Coinbase Pro.
Bigwigs Talking Bitcoin vs Blockchain
The Daily: Pornhub Adds New Tokens, Fcoin Defends Trans-Fee, Coinbase Goes ProA few well known people who don't routinely speak about Bitcoin and blockchain technology have recently shared their opinions about the subjects. Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire behind Alibaba Group, opined that "Blockchain technology could change our world more than people imagine. Bitcoin, however, could be a bubble." And he added that "traditional financial institutions serve 20 percent of people and make 80 percent of profits. New financial institutions should service 80 percent of people, and make 20 percent of profit."
Steve Wozniak, the Bitcoin-loving co-founder of Apple, has on the other hand said he feels that all the current hype around blockchain technology is just a bubble akin to the Dot Com one. "If you look now you say all that internet stuff happened, we got it, it just took a while," Wozniak explained. "It doesn't change in a day, a lot of the blockchain ideas that are really good by coming out early they can burn themselves out by not being prepared to be stable in the long run."
And Professor Robert Shiller, who received the 2013 Nobel prize in economics, thinks that Bitcoin is a generational social movement, that might be in a speculative price bubble but it does not mean it is going away any time soon. He said in an interview that: "The East Coast is less into it than the West Coast. Silicon Valley is really into it. It's a social movement. It's an epidemic of enthusiasm. It is a speculative bubble. That doesn't mean that it will go to zero."
EOS to Get a Makeover?
After coming under a lot of criticism lately over centralization, freezing accounts and other issues, EOS might soon get a serious makeover. Daniel Larimer, the creator of EOS, has proposed a major revision to the way its constitution works. He explains that this is because, he just now learned that, "if you give people arbitrary power to resolve arbitrary disputes then everything becomes a dispute and the decisions made are arbitrary. The more power the arbiter has, the more vicious and petty the disputes become and the less predictable the outcome." Better late than never.
Pornhub Adds New Tokens
The Daily: Pornhub Adds New Tokens, Fcoin Defends Trans-Fee, Coinbase Goes ProAdult entertainment video portal, Pornhub, has announced it will accept two new cryptocurrencies, Tron and Zen Cash. As you may recall, a couple of months ago Verge has made a big deal about the site accepting its token. There is no explanation on the way Pornhub selected the few tokens it did, but at least in the case of Verge it is reported it just got paid 75 million XVG for doing so.
"Here at Pornhub, as one of the most viewed websites in the world with over 90 million daily visitors, it's important that we continue to expand our crypto payment options to align with our community's growing payment preferences. Decentralized payment systems have continued to grow in popularity, and cryptocurrency adoption is exploding across a broad economic spectrum. Today, cryptocurrencies are especially viable in the adult entertainment industry because they are privacy-centric and incorporate more anonymity tools than traditional tender," said Corey Price, VP of Pornhub.
Fcoin Founder Defends Trans-Fee Mining
In an interview released in China yesterday, Jian Zhang, founder of Fcoin, faced challenging questions regarding his business and controversial business model of "trans-fee mining." As we previously reported, the practice of rewarding users with exchange issued tokens for generating transactions was called an over-priced backdoor ICO ripe for manipulation by critics including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
FCoin Founder Jian Zhang
Zhang said: "With respect to the accusations of pyramid selling, currency manipulation, and being a stock maker – I won't be answering these questions directly. You can refer to the notion and history of Bitcoin, and see how many people have been wronged this way. Are there still people who think Bitcoin is pyramid selling? If so, you are not rejecting Fcoin, you are actually denying the economic value of the cryptocurrency in general."
"The accusation of an expensive ICO is the most funny and ridiculous. First of all, Binance grew from an ICO, some people must be out of their mind when criticizing the ICO of others while raising no money by themselves. Second of all, it's wrong in the first place for some people to calculate our market value using the total amount of Fcoin token yet to be issued by us. Those unissued FT [Fcoin token] cannot be regarded as transaction, nor can they be a part of any distribution of dividend. They actually don't exist until after issued. Therefore, the miscalculation is just wrong. In no cryptocurrency exchange is market value calculated this way. Lastly, our valuation is actually very low, given our transaction amount, dividend ratio, number of active traders and growth rate."
Coinbase Switches to Pro
If you are a GDAX user, this is a kindly reminder that the platform will be switching over to Coinbase Pro tomorrow, Friday June 29, and you will not be able to access the old domain anymore. According to the developers, the redesigned platform is meant to make the trading experience easier and more intuitive, with a simplified deposit and withdrawal processes, improved charts that will allow customers to easily scroll and access historical data and a new consolidated portfolio view called "My Wallets" that lets customers see an overview of their account orders and balances.