The blockchain platform verifies the health records of 17 million Chinese tourists in one month

 

Blockchain technology and its powerful capabilities can be used to speed up verifications without compromising the accuracy, security and integrity of data.

Recently, the Chinese government adopted a blockchain-based platform that checks health records with the aim of resuming cross-border tourism to the tourist city of Macau.

The blockchain-based platform makes it easy and fast for tourists from mainland China to verify their health status upon entering the city of "Macau", where in just 3 seconds, a tourist's health record can be verified.

Although the platform is only in use for one month, it has processed the health data of 17 million people.

The platform serves as an electronic corridor for residents to access public places.

After a few months, Macau expanded the use of the platform to add an inter-identification mechanism with the health system and platform in Guangdong Province, China.

The health code for the platform is based on the open source “FISCO BCOS” blockchain in China.

In a press release, the non-profit organization revealed the platform's impact, including the revival of tourism between mainland China and Macau.

The city of "Macau" had suspended the tourist visa application in January this year in light of the spread of the Corona virus in China.

According to the source, the digital platform was used by more than 17 million people who moved between the Chinese mainland and "Macau".

According to the authority supervising the platform, which revealed to the same source:

The average time to receive, convert and generate health code for the first time is only 100 seconds.

It takes less than 3 seconds to complete the procedure when the traveler crosses customs again.

The blockchain platform has solved one of the challenges facing privacy protection regulations in China and Macau.

While health officials need to verify the health information of those who cross borders, they should not share the data directly with each other, which is what the blockchain allows authorities to provide by securely encrypting and recording personal health data.

Once the user shares this data at the border, the health officer can verify the integrity of the data by comparing it with the corresponding digital credentials on the blockchain.

The organization overseeing the blockchain platform stated:

The mutual recognition mechanism enables seamless transfer of health codes for users without the need to repeatedly fill in personal information on various platforms, providing great convenience and ease of use for cross-border travelers.

China has continued to adopt blockchain aggressively in recent years, at the national level.

The city of "Shenzhen" recently provided $ 1.5 million in digital yuan to boost its adoption.

CBDC (digital yuan) digital currency is now used in more than 3 million transactions, with 1.1 billion yuan ($ 160 million) in circulation.

Is Bitcoin Mining Still Profitable in 2020?

 

Bitcoin's price performance in 2020 was dramatically volatile, as it fell to its lowest levels in March to quickly climb back to a new record it had not set in a full year.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin's hash rate has increased by more than 25% since March, recently reaching its highest value ever.

In May 2020, Bitcoin also completed the third split event in the bitcoin mining reward, which caused the amount of bitcoin mined each day to be halved.

With all of these factors coinciding with each other, the question can arise:

Is Bitcoin Mining Still Profitable in 2020?

We will deal with the answer as follows:

Mining difficulty increases with time:

One of the main things miners should keep in mind when mining bitcoins is the difficulty of the process.

In short, Bitcoin's difficulty determines the amount of work the mineral will need to solve the complex mathematical problem that will allow miners to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain.

This difficulty increases or decreases after every 2016 blocks, or approximately every 14 days, depending on how quickly you found the previous 2016 blocks.

If the previous 2016 block took less than 14 days to discover it, the difficulty would increase, while it would decrease if it took more than 14 days to discover it, all with the goal of returning the average discovery time to 10 minutes.

Since the hash rate tends to increase over time, so does the difficulty of detecting the mass which in turn makes it difficult for miners with old hardware to keep up as their percentage of the total hash rate decreases over time.

However, as the bitcoin price tends to rise after the hash rate increases, increasing difficulty does not always mean lower profitability.

There are also a few steps miners can take to accelerate their return on investment (ROI) and increase profits.

The profitability of Bitcoin mining depends on several factors:

The best way to stay on top of the difficulty curve and increase the profitability potential is to have the latest and most efficient mining equipment at an affordable price.

Those looking to make a profit by investing in new mining machinery will need to consider the price, shipping cost (and any potential delays), import taxes, and the electricity costs involved in getting their new machines up and running.

The perfect bitcoin miner is energy efficient, less fussing and has an ideal hash rate.

According to CryptoCompare's mining profitability calculator, 1 TH / s of hash rate would generate roughly 0.00000742 BTC, which is roughly $ 0.08639 per day in earnings with the current value of Bitcoin ($ 11,763).

For this reason, the Antminer S17 providing processing at 73 TH / s will fetch around $ 6.30 per day, while the S30 M offering processing at 112TH / s will fetch around $ 9.68 per day.

And not just this calculator. Miners need to deduct electricity and maintenance costs, which can vary greatly depending on the country and the energy costs they have access to.

Bitcoin mining has become more difficult than ever

 

Bitcoin block mining difficulty increased by 3.6% on Monday, marking an all-time high.

But the new change puts additional pressure on miners.

Although not the most significant jump in the history of Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Adjustment, the 3.6% rally raised the total bitcoin network segmentation difficulty to a record high of 17.56 trillion.

The last time network difficulty approached this figure was in July.

Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusts approximately every two weeks.

When blocks are mined too quickly or too slowly, the difficulty is adjusted to re-check the speed.

The upward revision in bitcoin mining difficulty is usually associated with a similar increase in network segmentation strength (the amount of computing power on the network).

On August 15th, Bitcoin's hash rate reached a record high of 136 hours per second (EH / s).

After a short recession the following week, the retail rate recovered to around 120 EH / s, apparently thanks to the rainy season in China, as China is a major region for bitcoin mining due to cheap hydropower.

Bad news for miners?

According to Mr. Thomas Heller, chief operating officer of bitcoin mining company HASHR8, the combined increase in both hash rate and difficulty could cause problems for less sophisticated miners - those with outdated mining equipment.

Heller explained:

If the difficulty and hash rate continue to rise, the old machines will struggle to continue mining, the S9 is the most common mining machine used, still profitable at $ 0.03 / kWh of power available in China now. However, after October, when the rainy season is over, and electricity prices are at $ 0.05 / kWh or more, the S9S is likely not profitable at that price.

According to data from BTC.com, the next difficulty adjustment, projected on September 7, is expected to lead to another increase in the difficulty rate, this time by 3.5%, which means pushing the difficulty of the Bitcoin network to another all-time high towards the level of 18 trillion. .

Kazakhstan intends to collect $ 700 million to mine Bitcoin and digital currencies

 

According to reports from Kazakhstan's Ministry of Digital Development, the country is already in talks to attract significant investment of more than $ 700 million to expand the digital currency mining sector in the Central Asian country.

Kazakhstan aims to invest $ 700 million in cryptocurrency mining:

Plans were initially revealed to attract 300 billion tenge (roughly $ 715 million) in investments in cryptocurrency mining.

Oskar Chumagaliev, former minister for digital development and innovation, explained that the Kazakh government concluded that mining cryptocurrencies is part of everyday life in Kazakhstan, after studying what other countries like the United States and South Korea do, at that time, Kazakhstan already had 14 A cryptocurrency mining farm, which attracted about $ 200 million in investment in a few years.

Hence, the country is seeking to double its digital mining endeavors.

Earlier in the day, Reuters reported that the new minister, Bagdat Mossin, was already in talks to increase the massive investment to more than $ 700 million.

The new minister stated:

Today we have initial agreements to attract investments worth 300 billion tenge, and he revealed that the country is currently building four additional mining farms.

In an effort to further boost the profits of cryptocurrency mining within the nation's borders, the Asian country has also introduced plans to impose a flat 15% tax on the sector.

Will Kazakhstan enter the top 3 miners of digital currencies:

Data provided by the University of Cambridge's bitcoin mining tracker, Bitcoin Mining Map, indicates that Kazakhstan is already responsible for a large portion of the global hash rate of bitcoin.

Source: Cambridge University

The country currently ranks fourth on the list with more than 6% of the retail rate, behind all of China (65%), the United States (7.2%), and Russia (6.9%).

If the planned investment of $ 700 million in cryptocurrency mining succeeds over the next three years, Kazakhstan may indeed go uphill to crack one of the top three.

In addition, another report released earlier this year claimed that rising electricity bills in China are driving miners to seek other destinations, regardless of the United States. Kazakhstan, which has borders in the West with China, has benefited from the exodus of Chinese miners towards it.

Kazakhstan has cheap electricity, which contributed to the increase in the bitcoin hash rate from within Kazakhstan by 334% in one year.

After mining 88 percent of all Bitcoins ... find out how much is left

 There is not much Bitcoin left to be mined by the miners, as according to the data provided by "Block Bot", 88% of all Bitcoins were mined, leaving only 2520000 Bitcoins.

When all bitcoins are mined, Bitcoin miners will no longer be able to collect the block rewards because there are no more bitcoins to be generated, which means that Bitcoin miners will only earn transaction fees that will be charged from each verified transaction.

Bitcoin mining is very important to continue protecting the blockchain, and the rewards of the mining process will be offset by fees for transactions made over the network.

Miners play a major role in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Since the last Bitcoin split in May 2020, the bonus has halved from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC, which means that Bitcoin miners are now getting around $ 63,750 ($ 10,200 x $ 6.25) per block.

As a reminder, mining is the process of adding confirmed transactions to a Bitcoin blockchain.

For the resources required for mining, the blockchain network rewards Bitcoins with transaction fees and subsidies.

The subsidies are paid per block at the current rate of 6.25 Bitcoin, and fees are paid per transaction.

This confirmation process involves solving complex mathematical problems and a lot of computing power.

The Bitcoin miner who successfully mined is rewarded for its contribution to the blockchain based on the PoW mechanism.

Despite the recent sell-off in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin has performed fairly well, with Bitcoin increasing by more than 30% since the beginning of 2020 and maintaining its position above $ 10,000 after testing this price level several times.

Bitcoin has not yet fallen below $ 10,000, and the currency is still struggling to stay above this level and psychological barrier.

It should be noted that bullish sentiment continues, as evidenced by the many data provided and many analysts believe that the Bitcoin price will continue to support the price and stay above $ 8,000.

A simple guide on Bitcoin mining and how it works?

 

Bitcoin mining, by simple definition, is the process by which blocks of transactions are added to the blockchain network and verified.

It is also the process by which new Bitcoin is generated, and Bitcoin mining is a mechanism that secures the integrity of the blockchain and stimulates participation in the network.

In other words, the mining process is about verifying the transactions that take place on the Bitcoin blockchain, and when the verification process is complete, it is automatically added to the blocks that make up the blockchain.

Miners compete to add new blocks to the blockchain.

The mining process requires a great commitment on the part of miners, as the process is an expensive and time-consuming task, and it is a necessary task for Bitcoin to work and people can trust its legitimacy.

Bitcoin was created more than a decade ago by the so-called “Satoshi Nakamoto” and since then people have heard about the mining process and what does it mean?

In this article we will try to explain and simplify the mining process and how it works.

What is Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining is not like mining gold or coal deep underground.

Rather, the process is done by computers in a clean environment, as the term mining in the cryptocurrency market refers to verifying transactions made using Bitcoin.

Miners or miners are the individuals or companies that support the auditing of the Bitcoin blockchain network.

These miners do this by validating transactions that are grouped into blocks and then added to the blockchain.

These miners are rewarded with Bitcoin for their verifications.

It is worth noting that the Bitcoin mining process is not as cheap as it used to be, but this does not prevent investors from taking part in this activity.

To motivate and keep participants to do the mining process, they are incentivized with Bitcoin bonuses.

Since the mining process is carried out by different people across different parts of the world, Bitcoin remains decentralized, which means that the mining process does not depend on any central authority such as the government or the bank for its credibility.

Why does Bitcoin need two miners?

Mining is the process of auditing and verifying Bitcoin transactions to prevent the problem of "double spending".

Double spending means when someone with a cryptocurrency tries to spend the same currency twice.

In traditional currencies, there is no such problem as it is not possible to buy a cup of coffee for $ 5 and then go to another store and buy a grocery for the same $ 5.

But with bitcoin it is possible, as there is a risk that someone with bitcoin will make a copy of the bitcoin and send it to the merchant instead of the real currency.

In the real world, a store cashier looks at the $ 100 bill to make sure it is not counterfeit and this is what bitcoin miners try to do with cryptocurrency as well as they check to make sure not to make a transaction twice.

How does Bitcoin mining work:

The Bitcoin mining process works as follows:

The miner's computer, called the node, collects and fills individual Bitcoin transactions from the last ten minutes into a block.

This node competes with other nodes in the network to solve a complex cryptographic problem and is the first to validate the new block configured to enter the blockchain.

First Metal broadcasts problem solving and success to the entire network.

Other nodes check if their solution is correct, and if so, the new block is added to the blockchain and the entire process begins again.

The first miner to solve the problem is the one to be rewarded with bitcoin.

Mining machines run a "hash cipher" function on the head of the block.

What this means is that each mineral creates a "mass filter" with uncertain coefficients.

This block includes a block header that summarizes the data within the block, along with a reference to an existing block in the blockchain (this reference is called nonce), which is a one-time only number.

In Bitcoin, the nonce is an integer number that lies between 0 and 4,294,967,296.

This nonce block head is then placed through the "SHA256" hash function. If the resulting number is higher than the current target's hash, the metal adjusts the nonce and tries again.

The mineral does this several thousand times a second.

This means the degree of difficulty, which is adjusted every 2016 blocks (approximately every two weeks), to ensure that the block is mined on average once every 10 minutes.

Bitcoin virtual currency price rises to a high of $ 1,400

The price of Bitcoin currencies rose to its highest level, reaching 1,400 US dollars on Tuesday, after it increased more than three times over the past year, as the recent rise is due to the strong demand for this currency in Japan, after the digital process was considered a legal means of payment.

According to what was published by the British telegraph website, "Cryptocompare", which is a data 

site that analyzes the trading of Bitcoin currencies across dozens of exchanges around the world, said that about 50% of the trading volume in the last 24 hours was on the Bitcoin / Japanese Yen exchange rate.

"Japan has recently strengthened its approach to Bitcoin by treating it legally as a form of payment, approving it and introducing it into the regulatory folds," said Charles Hayter, founder of the site, adding that China's campaign on exchanges could also be considered a positive step for the industry as well.

Chinese authorities have increased controls over exchanges this year, forcing them to start charging fees on trading after becoming concerned about Bitcoin speculation and the possibility of using it to launder money.

The price of Bitcoin rose 3% on Tuesday on the Bitstamp Stock Exchange in Europe, where it was traded in dollars, to reach $ 1,437, the highest since its launch in 2008, and this represents an increase of more than 200% over its price in early May of the year. the past.