Bitcoin Classic Folds as More Countries Become Interested in Blockchain Technology

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In the aftermath of SegWit2x’s evident failure, the rival Bitcoin Cash fork garnered the attention of investors and blockchain enthusiasts as members of the Bitcoin foundation officially announced that they will discontinuing Bitcoin Classic and instead putting all their energy into the blockchain’s younger offspring.

Bitcoin Classic was a fork of Bitcoin that was originally scheduled to be launched in February of 2016. The soon-to-be-defunct project’s goal was to amplify the transaction capacity of Bitcoin by enlarging the size of the individual data blocks. The project is now considered officially dead, after staff at the Bitcoin foundation have officially confirmed the suspension of Bitcoin Classic and have additionally stated that they view Bitcoin Cash as its most legitimate heir. In an official statement made last Thursday, Bitcoin’s release manager – Tom Zander – elucidated the position of most of his colleagues by commenting that Bitcoin Cash is the future and the relatively young cryptocurrency will simply “become Bitcoin” within the next six months.

Until these developments, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) had largely held a sideline position in relation to its older and better-known siblings. Indeed it was thought that in the aftermath of these news, Ethereum might overtake Bitcoin as the top digital token of the crypto-community. However its is Bitcoin Cash, not Ethereum that has been the main beneficiary of increasing public attention and interest.

These exciting developments continue to go not-unnoticed by global governments. The administration of Hong Kong announced on the 10th of November that they are planning to create a Blockchain technology-based trade financing system in the near future. Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr. James Henry Lau, commented that adoption of blockchain technology has the potential to significantly decrease the enormous expenditure of human resources and time that trade financing generally requires.

This would not be Hong Kong’s first foray into blockchain-based financial projects. Last March, the territory’s monetary authority successfully completed a proof-of-concept initiative on the use of blockchain, to digitize contracts and reduce the risk of fraud and duplicate transactions. Hong Kong’s central bank has also implemented a partnership with its Singapore counterpart to advance a blockchain-based project to maximize trade and flow of capital between the two global financial centers.

On the other side of the world, the leadership of the Baltic states are refusing to let the Asian economic powerhouses to have all the fun of blockchain innovation. In a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the economic ministries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have announced their cooperation on several joint, blockchain-based development projects – aimed at fostering economic growth and cooperation.

The Estonian government has been an especially ardent advocate of blockchain technology and has even mulled adoption of its own digital currency called “Estcoin.” Interestingly enough, initially the move brought the disapproving gaze of the European Central Bank (ECB). The Bank’s president – Mario Draghi – made it abundantly clear at the time that the ECB would not recognize the “Estcoin,” clarifying that that no member state can issue its own coinage – digital or not.

“The currency of the Eurozone is the euro, period.” were Mr. Draghi’s terse comments on the matter. It remains to be seen whether this sentiment will change as the idea of the usefulness of publicly distributed ledger technology gains traction.