2019: The Year in Cryptocurrency

Natallia Martchouk Leave a comment
Natallia Martchouck looks back on the cryptocurrency developments of 2019

Another fintech year is over. Even a fintech decade. A lot of things happened last year and in good tradition, I’d like to look back at 2019. In this article, I’ll recap the highlights of the crypto scene from my point of view. It has been a year full of victories and drawbacks, as usual.

The beginning of the crypto year was quite turbulent.

The 51 Percent Attack

Bitcoin, father of the crypto industry and most prominent and popular cryptocurrency, started the year below the 4.000 USD mark, achieved a yearly high in July at approx. 12.000 USD and then fell back to 7.000 USD at the end of the year.

In the meantime, the start of the new year wasn’t much better for Ethereum Classic. The blockchain experienced a 51% attack. The attack began on January 5th, went on for three days, finally ending on January 8th with estimated losses of 1.1 million USD. The attack could be stopped due to the collaboration of blockchain analytics companies and exchanges, who halted the ETC transactions and provided data to the analytics companies. Even though the possibility of a 51% attack on a proof-of-work blockchain was known it was scary to see it becoming reality on a blockchain that ranks in the top 20 crypto assets list.

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Portrait of Andrei Martchouk, interview partner of the first finquiry episode, talking about blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Finquiry #1: Andrei Martchouk on Blockchain

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

The financial industry of today and tomorrow branches out in many directions. As providers of software foundations for e-wallets and payment processing systems, we plant the roots on which your trailblazing financial products can stand firmly. Yet, with catchwords like  “PSD2”, “fintech”, “blockchain”,” neobanking” and “robo-advisory” entering the scene every day, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.

To keep oneself up-to-date on the newest industry developments, what better way than to ask the experts. In our new blog series “Finquiry”, we interview professionals about the today and the tomorrow of the financial industry. 

Our Guest: Blockchain expert Andrei Martchouk

Our interview partner Andrei Martchouk is Managing Director and Co-Founder of KI decentralized GmbH. We have asked him about blockchain and the cryptocurrency sphere. 

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Two computers placed opposite of each other, symbolizing the advantages of third party software over in-house development

Why Third-Party Solutions Bring First-Rate Results

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

Do it yourself—it’s an overrated mantra. 

At first, those three letters promise empowerment. You have full control over what you do and which way you want it to be done. Take fice, third-party software, we are on it ourselves. 

But then you stumble over the prerequisites. You have to know how to do it all in the first place. And that you have the right tools for the task. But that should be doable, too. I have a screwdriver lying around somewhere! And there must be a YouTube tutorial for this, right? 

Well, when it comes to the complex field of software development, the truth is a little more complicated. 

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Coding Smart Contracts – Tutorial Part II

Natallia Martchouk Leave a comment

How to use a smart contract from a java application

Photo of Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement
Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement, explains how to develop Ethereum smart contracts.

In Part I of my tutorial I’ve explained how to develop and deploy a simple smart contract. Today we will see how this deployed contract can be used in java applications. 

We are going to use Parity as Ethereum client and Web3j java library for interaction with Parity. I’m assuming that you already have installed Web3j, solc and Parity following “Prepare” instructions in Part I.

5. Get Parity Synced

First of all your Parity needs to get synchronized with the Ethereum testnet Rinkeby, meaning it needs to download the current database status to your local machine. Start your local parity with 

$parity --chain rinkeby --rpcapi "eth,net,web3,personal"

See also this documentation of Parity about getting synced.

In the meantime, we can prepare everything that we need to call our smart contract from a java application.

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Coding Smart Contracts – Tutorial Part I

Natallia Martchouk Leave a comment

How to Write, Deploy and Test a Smart Contract

Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement, the fintech enabler
Natallia Martchouk, co-founder of trimplement, explains how to develop Ethereum smart contracts.

In this article, I will give you a smart contract tutorial. It will tell you how to quickly write, test and deploy Ethereum smart contracts. My motivation is to help people to make the first steps. There are several good tutorials which helped me to get started. But I missed kind of a “cookbook recipe” for the entire journey, starting with the installation of tools and frameworks and ending with deployment to Ethereum and usage out of an application.

And so, I decided to write down all the steps involved and hope that you will find it helpful!

I’m working on a Mac, but I’ll provide links to the documentation of all tools and frameworks so that you’ll be able to find fitting instructions for your personal environment.

Today we will: 

  • Setup an environment that  allows you to write production-ready smart contracts
  • Write a simple smart contract
  • Test security and style guide issues with solhint
  • Write unit tests with a Truffle framework
  • Deploy the contract on the Rinkeby testnet using MetaMask and Remix
  • Execute calls on the deployed smart contract
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A world map with a paper ship, symbolizing the world of payment.

Payment Around the World – Part 3

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

This article was published on April 30, 2019.

But since the payment landscape is constantly evolving, we wrote a new article based on research not available at the time of the creation of this article.

You can read the new article here. Please consult it, if you want an updated overview of payment methods around the world: 

A Voyage Through the World of Payment Methods: How Customers Pay

Enjoy your reading!

Asia, India, the Middle East

Payment around the world – where were we? In the previous articles of this series, we devoted ourselves to different payment landscapes of the globe. And with the trends and challenges, we found there.

But no matter which region we looked at: All of them stood on the verge of digital transformation or have crossed that line. China and the USA press ahead in terms of payment innovation, as we have seen in our second article. In other countries, digital payments are still in the process of taking hold in the populace. The changes they bring have already become apparent. Digital payment services play the role of an equalizer, especially for the unbanked people. Developments in Africa‘s and Latin America’s payment landscape, as detailed in the first article of this series, stand as an example for this.

We will see if those tendencies manifest in the last waypoints of our journey, too. So, let’s move on, shall we?  

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A picture of two piggy banks, symbolizing financial literacy and financial education in Germany

More Than Pocket Money – Financial Education in Germany

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

Financial education. It starts with simple questions. Just like this one:

For her 9th birthday, Emma asks her parents to put money on a savings account, instead of buying her presents. She rather wants to celebrate her next birthday in style, with party assets worth 200€. At a yearly interest rate of 5%, how many Euros must be put into the account to fulfill Emma’s birthday wish?

Sound familiar, such questions, right? We all had to answer a fair share of them in math class during 8th grade. Looking at them today, they still are tricky to answer for many of us. And you would have to explain your child, that putting €4000 on a savings account tears a big hole in your financial planning. And only under the premise that you would find a bank providing 5% interest on savings accounts. Which you wouldn’t. Emma, who already showed prudence in her financial behaviour not normally seen in her contemporaries, still has to face some hard truths.

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A compass resting on a world map, symbolizing the world of payment

Payment Around the World – Part 2

Christoph Laurer Leave a comment

This article was published on April 15, 2019.

But since the payment landscape is constantly evolving, we wrote a new article based on research not available at the time of the creation of this article.

You can read the new article here. Please consult it, if you want an updated overview of payment methods around the world: 

A Voyage Through the World of Payment Methods: How Customers Pay

Enjoy your reading!

USA, Canada, Australia, China

When exploring the payment preferences of the world, you have to go places. In the first part of our article series, those places were Europe, Russia, Latin America, and Africa.

The takeaway: Hard cash dies hard in many parts of the world like Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Brazil. But digital payment services have taken up the fight. They give new options to emerging countries with vast numbers of unbanked people. Mobile access to finances and digital-only money accounts help integrate the unbanked, so they can become proactive contributors to the financial system.

But it’s a large world with a great number of payment landscapes still waiting to be sketched. In this article, we will take a good look at the clashing fintech forerunners USA and China, as well as Canada and Oceania. So, let’s go!

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