Dear Pundians,

Our year is drawing to a close. Looking back, we’ve steadily pushed for adoption despite the ongoing pandemic as well as adopting changes for regulatory compliance. But before we truly review the year that was, we will make the most out of the remaining month in hopes of ending the year a stellar one.

For now, allow us to walk you through the month of November. Some of our highlights include the work-in-progress decentralized XWallet version will become part of Function X family as well as the 3rd-anniversary celebration activities. In the meantime, the team is working on integrating new language support and adding other useful features to the merchant portal, making our products and services better.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

XWallet Updates

Fixed known bugs, including the ones in Crypto Zoo DApp.
Now it supports the Japanese language.

Decentralized wallet: Now under a closed beta test and will migrate to Function X.
XPOS Updates

Bring XPOS transactions on-chain: Work in progress
Merchant Portal Updates

Optimized the user interface of the Sales Account page.
Added detailed instructions to the on-chain deposit page.
Updated distributor and merchant KYC requirements based on the MAS guidelines.
On-ramp solution: now available testing in the Merchant Portal.
Other Updates

Our developers are exploring better server performance via optimization of infrastructure.

More: https://blog.pundix.com/2020/12/07/monthly-report-a-recap-of-activities-in-november-2020/

This could be a momentous week of change and chaos for the United States as the election polls close on 3rd November. What might happen to Bitcoin? It has started this week at $13,500: will it hold its strong position, or will we see some volatility?
Cointelegraph has identified five things that might influence the crypto markets, including the latest lock-downs in Europe.

Presidential elections are the kind of event that has a huge impact on all markets. The market makers will be considering what the new president’s policies will be at a time of global instability due to the pandemic. It is believed that whatever the result, there will be a rush towards safe haven assets, such as gold and Bitcoin.

In Europe, the outlook for the markets is bleak due to the various lock-downs. Cointelegraph says, “Amid fresh warnings of contractions in economic activity due to the measures, markets began shrugging off even bullish signs in favor of reducing potential election fallout.”
Furthermore, the European Central Bank (ECB) is printing more money. One trader called MMCrypto, told people on Twitter to reduce their investment in fiat currencies: “The crazy news is that the businesses which have to close will get up to 75% of their revenue in freshly printed money.”

Other things to keep an eye on include “yet another so-called “gap” to open up in futures markets.” Zack Voell said, “CME Bitcoin futures opening with a gap up for the fourth consecutive week. That’s pretty bullish.”

Also, analysts remain bullish over Bitcoin’s monthly close, with institutions seeing the monthly close figure as an essential tool for reinforcing bullish sentiment. Let’s not forget that Bitcoin began October trading at around $10,750.

Lastly, there is a shake up happening in mining. Cointelegraph says, “Difficulty, a measure of the competition and economic health of miners and an essential part of Bitcoin’s self-maintaining ecosystem, is set to drop by the most since March on Tuesday.”

...

https://lendoplatformltd.medium.com/watching-bitcoin-in-the-week-of-the-us-elections-cc1559a96e41

A new-generation Bitcoin fork, combining the best ideas and achievements of the crypto world!
A decentralized ecosystem with smart contracts, LPoS mining algorithm in conjunction with PoA, private transactions and other technologies at the heart of BTCU!

The main advantages of BTCU

The principle of validation and mining
The regulators, distributors and validators in the BTCU network will be authoritative advisers, blockchain companies, and crypto exchanges, which will gain control over the master nodes. This decision was made to unload the network, and to avoid classic, extremely energy-intensive mining. That is why the BTCU blockchain will be based on the LPoS mining algorithm combined with PoA, where LPoS will be used for mining by users, and PoA for transaction validation.

Coin sales principle

When the fork is launched, an airdrop will be conducted to all users of the Bitcoin network to wallets identical in the BTCU network in the ratio of 1:1 to the BTC balance on the branch block. After branching, all users will be able to find in the BTCU network the same amount of BTCU coins as in the BTC network at the time of branching. And most importantly, to use them you only need to log in your own address in the BTCU network.

High bandwidth

Using the PoA protocol to validate transactions will increase the bandwidth of the blockchain and get a speed of 200 tps with the ability to scale up to 10,000 tps. It is important to note that current bandwidth of the Bitcoin network is about 3,8 tps, which creates additional inconvenience to users when carrying out transactions.

Private transactions

It is worth remembering that the first and most important element of any blockchain network, especially in the matter of transactions, is anonymity. If a person, for some reason, chooses crypto payments as an alternative to the classic, then anonymity interests him no less than the absence of commissions and intermediaries. To keep BTCU users anonymous when making transactions, the development team added the ability to conduct private transfers within the network.

Smart contracts

The BTCU team sets itself the task of developing the direction of smart contracts and implementing atomic swap technology natively to the blockchain protocol to allow carry out transactions not only within the framework of a single blockchain protocol, but also interacting with other protocols, which will globally expand the possibilities of this technology. To make secure transactions, the BTC Ultimatum blockchain will use smart contracts that will save users from having to look for intermediaries or other ways to protect themselves from scammers.

https://btcu.app/