By Ben Munster
3 min read
What’s Facebook doing with our blockchains? It’s not entirely clear, reports The Block, but one thing’s (possibly) for sure: a "review of the social-media giant’s careers site” revealed that the company is actively hiring a Head of Brand and a Global Brand Development Lead to front its nascent blockchain efforts.
The newcomers would presumably join the at-least 32 blockchain-related Facebook staff The Block found by plugging the word “blockchain” into LinkedIn (Decrypt found roughly the same number, though it’s not always clear via LinkedIn what exactly qualifies as a blockchain-related role, since some people just write “blockchain” as a skill they have.)
The Block’s conclusion is that the hunt for the two marketing-heavy roles signals a shift at Facebook’s blockchain division from the technical, to the creative, which they suggest means Facebook’s blockchain whatever-the-hell-it-is may well roll out soon! And hopefully won't disseminate Russian propaganda, this time.
“I believe that ICOs can be effective ways for entrepreneurs and others to raise capital,” said Jay Clayton, SEC chief and crypto’s long-time bets noire.
Hooray, right! He likes them! He loves them! He thinks they’re “effective”! He’s probably poised to issue his very own ClaytonCoin right now! Adoption and ETFs and Satoshi confirmed!!!????
Steady on, now.
Clayton, you see, is still very much insistent that ICOs follow the SEC rulebook and register their tokens as securities, comply with anti-money-laundering/know-your-customer laws, update the SEC on progress and so on.
“The novel technological nature of an ICO,” he explained, "does not change the fundamental point that, when a security is being offered, our securities laws must be followed.” What a buzzkill, demanding startups follow the law. Tsk.
When little-known token Vertcoin suffered a 51 percent attack—in which a majority of miners overwhelmed the network and verified $100,000-worth of fraudulent “double-spend” transactions—other tokens looked on in terror. Could it happen to them, too?
Not for a while, at least. Vertcoin’s weakness was, in a way, by design. The token's small, dedicated team deliberately developed its network in such a way that high-end mining pools using ASICs—read: Bitmain—would not be able to concentrate power. A shifting algorithm would immediately cast off ASICs should they arrive. Failing that, the miners would simply fork the network and reset.
Subsequently, ASIC-heavy mining giants couldn’t conglomerate on the network. Though this helped ward off centralizing forces like Bitmain, it left the network exposed to small-time miners jockeying for power through other means. In Vertcoin’s case, it was miners using vast amounts of rental power made cheap by the network’s relative small size, allowing them take control at little cost to themselves. To wit, the Vertcoin attack would only have cost around $200 an hour, according to the NiceHash website (Via CoinDesk).
But don’t worry! To do the same to Bitcoin, by contrast, would cost a perpetrator $226,000 per hour. And even after that? The spoils would be severely devalued; news of the 51 percent attack knocked $3 million off Vertcoin’s market cap. So until somebody figures out how to 51 percent attack a stablecoin, don’t start unHODLing your bitcoins just yet.
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