Blockchain and Crypto Week In Review: IBM’s Blockchain World Wire, Ethereum and BigQuery, BitMEX’s role in Bitcoin Price

Blockchain and crypto world is full of innovations, assumptions and sometimes wildly wrong predictions. If you’ve missed the top stories of this week, this post provides a comprehensive look at the stories that made headlines. A lot has happened in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world: IBM has introduced blockchain world wire, Google has released the Ethereum dataset and much more. Here is a quick round-up of this week’s related stories you may have missed:

Google Releases Ethereum Dataset For Analysis In BigQuery

Google Releases Ethereum Dataset For Analysis In BigQuery

Google has released the Ethereum dataset for analysis in BigQuery. This is an effort by Google to improve the analytic tools currently accessible to businesses and investors. A few days ago, the company made the Bitcoin dataset publicly available for analysis in Google BigQuery. With this move, all historical data is in the ethereum_blockchain dataset, which updates daily. The Ethereum ETL project on GitHub contains all source code used to extract data from the Ethereum blockchain and load it into BigQuery. It also de-normalizes and saves date-partitioned data to BigQuery for easy and cost-effective visualization. The Ethereum blockchain is the collection of a series of blocks.

A visualization of the various dataset is useful for making business decisions, such as prioritizing improvements to the Ethereum architecture itself to balance sheet adjustments. BigQuery has strong OLAP potential to support analysis of huge databases without implementing additional API. Not only this, Google has also created a software system that synchronizes the Ethereum blockchain to computers running parity in Google Cloud. It also executes a daily retrieval of data from the Ethereum blockchain ledger, adding the results of smart contract transactions, like token transfers.

Japanese Police Installs Cryptocurrency Transaction Tracking Software

Japanese Police Installs Cryptocurrency Transaction Tracking Software

Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) has decided to install a cryptocurrency transaction tracking software to restrict money laundering related cryptocurrency transactions. This transaction tracking software will only be used for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) has partnered with a private technology firm to develop software capable of tracking cryptocurrency transaction history throughout the country.

This software will extract only the transaction necessary for the investigation from the published record and will visualize it. This software is expected to be available for use to the National Police Agency, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Osaka Prefectural Police Department next fiscal year. The country has introduced some firm policies and rules to avoid money laundering. Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) is also going to increase its 2019 budget by 35 million yen ($315,000) to fight against crypto-crime activities.

BitMEX allegedly involved in an ‘orchestrated’ Bitcoin Price Increase

BitMEX allegedly involved in an ‘orchestrated’ Bitcoin Price Increase

According to few crypto enthusiasts, BitMEX planned and manipulated Bitcoin price. The reason behind this assumption is that BitMex planned a maintenance of its platform on a definite date and it affected the demand and supply and therefore the price of the token went above $6,700.

BitMEX announced a scheduled maintenance that was going to be implemented on August 21st. The support lasted 1 hour, and during that time few transactions were frozen because BitMEX is responsible for almost 40 percent of the total transactions with Bitcoin. People also claimed that short contract holders on BitMEX were liquidated so that they could not close their contracts. Youtube channel Bitraged uploaded a video in which it labels the action as a “market manipulation” and even says the event has all the characteristics of a textbook case.

IBM Introduces Stellar Based World Wire Payment System

IBM Introduces Stellar Based Blockchain World Wire Payment System

IBM has launched stellar based blockchain world wire platform, which can simultaneously clear and settle cross-border payments in near real-time. Blockchain World Wire will allow for an instant clearing and settlement of all transactions using Stellar’s blockchain network. Stellar is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat currency transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any currencies. It is a distributed ledger network that connects banks and payments systems.

This will change the payment world. It has reduced time to dispute resolution and reconciliation and World Wire eliminates multiple parties processing transactions. There will be one exchange fee between all currencies and it will have end-to-end transparency. Cross-border payments account for about 40% of global financial revenues with payment flows of more than $135 trillion during 2016. IBM’s goal is to create scalable and cost-effective solutions that can be implemented in parallel to current financial rails, so migration can be measured, rather than a risky one.

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