SCS S01E06 - Telegram & Kodak ICO and markets FEAR the S.K. government

Here is Episode #6 ... Had a lot of problems with the sound as usual, but this time I think I am getting closer to solving it - expect the next episode to have higher quality sound.

1. Topic #1 --  weekly review of the top five crypto’s of the week.
1. I’m going to lead this topic with related news - that of the South Korean government raiding exchanges, supposedly looking for tax evaders and legislation being pushed to close exchanges - In later developments yesterday however, statements regarding new legislation to close crypto exchanges by the appear to have been exaggerated by Reuters news service. What appears to be happening is that various agencies of the SK government are in conflict with regard to what should be done with the exchanges and hence there is no consensus yet on what the SK government will do.  Link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/nothing-finalized-south-korea-govt-ministries-diverge-over-crypto-ban-proposal
2. Bitcoin - a down week. Mostly on concerns of the SK government I believe, but also perhaps due to the continually increasing levels of competition in the cryptospace.
3. Ethereum - Moved much higher this week
4. Ripple - Huge drop in the value of Ripple this week.  Did a Ripple founder, who holds large quantities of Ripple manipulate the market and then sell off? Link:  https://steemit.com/ripple/@olyup/fck-you-money-the-rise-and-fall-of-xrp
5. Bitcoin Cash - up a bit for the week, mostly sideways.
6. Cardano -  big losses this week. I expected this to happen earlier, seems to be cut and dry profit taking now that the run up has finished.
2. Topic #2 -- news segment -- Aside from the news out of South Korea, this week we have two other interesting news items.
1. First off we have news that Kodak, once a major corporate figure in the camera and photography space, is doing an ICO to create a blockchain that will facilitate the copyrighting of online digital images. Link:  https://www.kodak.com/corp/press_center/kodak_and_wenn_digital_partner_to_launch_major_blockchain_initiative_and_cryptocurrency/default.htm
2. Secondly we have this little tidbit from the Next Big Future blog: ICOs reached $3.7 billion in 2017 --  Link: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/icos-reached-3-7-billion-in-2017.html
3. Topic #3 -- ICO SEGMENT.   -- The Telegram ICO is in our spotlight this week - So a document that appears to have been leaked - on purpose? (to gain free publicity) appears to be a primer for a major ICO for the telegram network. Telegram is a very popular messaging network and app that has been available for several years. Telegram is the most widely used app for communication in the ICO space - many, if not most ICO’s, list a telegram chat room for communication. The “problem statement” given in the primer is very telling “Bitcoin has established itself as the «digital gold», and Ethereum has proved to be an efficient platform for token crowd sales. However, there is no current standard cryptocurrency used for the regular exchange of value in the daily lives of ordinary people. The blockchain ecosystem needs a decentralized counterpart to everyday money — a truly mass-market cryptocurrency.”
1.  Key points of Telegram’s new system called ‘TON’ the Telegram Open Network, are as follows:
1. TON attempts to implement sharding - which should allow for infinite scalability.  Many new platforms are attempting to implement this, so they will be in good company here.
2. TON will use a Proof of Stake model, not proof of work.  This will also allow for better scalability and low energy consumption as compared to proof of work.
3. TON will implement 2-Dimensional ledgers. This is supposed to allow for blockchain ‘healing’ - they say in their primer, quote “new valid blocks can be placed on any blocks that were proven to be incorrect, to avoid unnecessary forks …. This guarantees that valid transaction will not be discarded due to unrelated errors.”
2. Drawbacks? - Only one jumps out at the moment - it is an inflationary currency - 2% per year, which is there to support the operation of the network -- payment to stakeholders who run the nodes.
3. Link to PDF primer doc:  https://icorating.com/upload/whitepaper/gNQ7e9z3lCGi519Wz8mmC0Kg8aA0goeZKAQ802vo.pdf
4. Topic #4 -- MAIDSAFE update
1. Highlights:
1. The MAIDSAFE Marketing team has published some high-level thoughts about what they are planning to focus on over the next few months.
2. MAIDSAFE is planning to archive the /r/maidsafe subreddit and focus our efforts on /r/safenetwork20 instead.
3. The front-end team will mainly focus on developing the new custom browser (Peruse). Only critical issues will be fixed in the SAFE Beaker Browser from now on.
4. MAIDSAFE is making progress on the Java and C# bindings. Such bindings to various computing languages allows programmers to build support for the SafeNetwork into their application.
2. I will only focus on the marketing update this week, for greater detail on the full update please check out the link in the shownotes: https://safenetforum.org/t/maidsafe-dev-update-january-11-2018