Today Coindesk, an important name in the world of cryptocurrency media, released both its blockchain report for Q3, and the news that it will be devoting more of its coverage to Ethereum.
It’s an interesting announcement especially considering bitcoin remains the ‘media darling’ of the cryptocurrency world, to quote from Coindesk’s newly released Q3 2016 State of Blockchain report. Coindesk will still cover bitcoin news, of course, but will also now provide more in-depth coverage on what’s happening in the Ethereum world.
Coindesk Managing Director Ryan Selkis says the move is due to the company’s desire to better explore the possibilities Ethereum provides.
“Bitcoin was designed for a very specific purpose—to facilitate payments. The enthusiasm for Ethereum is entirely different and that’s because of smart contracts,” Selkis wrote. “We kind of view this as technology that’s not going away.”
There’s also the fact that bitcoin is often referenced in lieu of or alongside of blockchain in the media, which makes its status as the “media darling” fairly tenuous, especially as more companies explore blockchain.
According to Coindesk’s study, 70 blockchain proof-of-concepts were announced publicly this quarter, dealing most popularly with trade finance and cross-border transfer.
Ripple’s funding round of $55 million remains the highest round this quarter according to the report, as investor interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency appears to be at a bit of a sticking point currently.
In other cryptocurrency news, Zcash burned the hardware used to create the Zcash key in a security ceremony designed to stop others from inflating the cryptocurrency by creating more of it out of thin air, according to Coindesk.
This actually would have been possible, if the trusted six involved in the security ceremony had not actually burned their computers used to create shards of the private keys. In public. With blowtorches.
“The general interest in Zcash is that it has the potential at least to be truly anonymous, unlike bitcoin which is only pseudo-anonymous,” said Selkis of the new digital currency, which burst onto the scene shortly after the close of Q3 and, according to Coindesk’s report, is generating a fair amount of interest in the industry.
Truly autonomous digital currency is intriguing to cryptocurrency enthusiasts because currently bitcoins that have been used for illicit purposes can be flagged as such, effectively removing them from circulation.
Zcash doesn’t have that problem, but on the other hand, Satoshi Nakomoto never had to pick up a blowtorch to ensure trust, even if it was just “security theater.” Bears thinking about.