Blockchain – Infinite Unknown

– Unknown Group Pays $175 Million For 74,000 Acres In Nevada For Mysterious Ethereum Project:

…

All told, Blockchains bought 74,000 acres for $175 million – the largest deal since the park was developed in 1998, and more than the Gigafactory and the other corporate campuses.

A little-known company focused on the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has purchased a huge chunk of land at a Northern Nevada industrial park.

Storey County Commissioner and Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center broker Lance Gilman said he closed escrow last week on the sale of 67,125 total acres of land to Blockchains, LLC, a business that studies and develops applications for blockchain distributed ledger technology, the decentralized platform that makes up the backbone of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Though Gilman said he was prohibited from discussing terms of the sale, which is expected, he said that total value of the 74,000 acres in land sales closed this month at the park, including the sale to Blockchains, was worth about $175 million.

“There’s no question — they’re going to have a major footprint in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center,” he said.

But little information is publicly available about the company or its intentions, though Gilman says they now own more than 104 square miles at the industrial park. The land sale was first reported by Nevada Newsmakers.

According to the company’s website, which provides only a vague description of what the company does, Blockchains, LLC is a “premier innovator” in the blockchain industry, specializing in “financial services, software development of distributed applications (Dapps) for the Ethereum blockchain.”

…

* * *

PayPal: Donate in USD
PayPal: Donate in EUR
PayPal: Donate in GBP

Nat:

“I understand the distinction, but it does leave an interesting question:

If the block chain is unhackable, but all its end points are easily vulnerable, isn’t the currency medium just as vulnerable as if the block chain itself were full of security holes?”

Wolf Richter:

“Yes, I think that question weighs on many minds. Actually, I don’t think blockchain is “unhackable” – every software is hackable – it just hasn’t been hacked yet, or at least, we don’t know about it. But nothing that is connected to the internet is totally secure, never has been, never will. So I think this problem will stay with us.”

*****.

– Big Banks Are All Over Blockchain:

As a general rule, most bankers disparage cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, as anything but purely speculative instruments. But they don’t disparage blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. On the contrary. They’re pouring money into developing their own “digital currencies,” as they call them. Just don’t call them “cryptocurrencies.”

UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Santander, the market operator ICAP, and the startup Clearmatics formed an alliance in 2016 to explore the use of digital currency between financial institutions and central banks, using blockchain.

The ultimate goal of the project is to create a digital currency known as Utility Settlement Coin (USC), which will facilitate payment and settlement for institutional financial markets. As the FT reported in October, commercial banks are growing tired of waiting for central bankers to take the lead in fending off the challenge that standalone cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could pose to their control of monetary policy, and are pressing on with their own pet projects.