Goldman Sachs-backed Circle is the latest to launch its own cryptocurrency bundles

It’s barely been a few weeks and yet another cryptocurrency startup has launched its version of a cryptocurrency “index fund” to try to make investing in cryptocurrency even easier.

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency service Circle launched its new investment product, “Circle Collections,” – its take on cryptocurrency bundles.

There are three new Circle Collections to choose from: Payments, Privacy, and Platforms. Each collection aims to cater for a slightly different crowd.

Circle has not provided details of what coins are included in each of these packs, however, Circle do give some description of the Payments collection. I tried to download the app to find out for myself, but sadly, it appears to be geo-restricted (we’re based in the Netherlands).

The Payments collection is designed for investors who are interested in, as the name suggests, cryptocurrencies trying to develop payment networks. Think Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Stellar, and so on.

With that in mind, it’s probably fair to assume that the Privacy collection will contain coins that are focused on delivering private and anonymous cryptocurrency payments. I would expect coins like Monero and Zcash to appear in the Privacy pack.

The Platforms collection will most likely contain cryptocurrencies that are tied more to developing a blockchain-based multipurpose platform. Coins like Ethereum and EOS would likely be included in this pack.

Any investment into each of these packs is spread across the coins by market weight. The most valuable coin will receive the greatest portion of the investment all the way to the least valuable coin receiving the smallest portion of the investment.

Circle has not given any details for how this market weighting will be adjusted, if at all. The announcement also does not disclose how the coins in these packs are stored and verified; whether you are actually buying the cryptocurrency, or a market tracking token remains unclear.

Over the last few weeks, we have seen a number of big names in the cryptocurrency world launch similar products.

Coinbase recently launched its “ Coinbase Bundles ” which contains the top five cryptocurrencies by market weight, and stores each coin in its own Coinbase wallet. With Coinbase Bundles you actually own the cryptocurrency.

Earlier this week, Abra launched its BIT10 “index” style token which tracks the markets performance, appreciating or depreciating in line with the market. With the BIT10 token, investors don’t actually own any cryptocurrency, just the BIT10 token.

It seems “index fund” styled cryptocurrency investments is becoming a bit of a trend. These funds tend to promise greater ease and speed of investment, but remember, there is no less risk.

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UK toys with blockchain for tracking properties across England and Wales

Here’s the latest in government-sponsored distributed ledger tech (DLT): England’s primary land registry has its eyes on using the blockchain to supe up its new property tracking system.

Her Majesty’s (HM) Land Registry has just announced it will be blockchainifying its new system, Digital Street, as it moves to the second phase of development. It hopes that DLT tech is the key to making its service the “world’s leading land registry for speed, ease of use, and an open approach to data.”

HM Land Registry is the United Kingdom’s go-to department for property record keeping. It manages more than 25 million titles that detail ownership of over 85 percent of the land mass across England and Wales.

Maintaining those records can be an incredibly cumbersome task – especially considering it must make updates for every buy and sell transaction that occurs across both countries.

HM Land Registry’s chosen blockchain for streamlining this process is Corda, an open source DLT platform. Corda is built by American software firm R3, a consortium of over 200 members across commerce and finance that designs enterprise-level blockchain software.

In this case, developers will be experimenting with its smart contracts to automate the process of changing and proving ownership – which is a great first step. While Corda has been around for a few years – its reassuring to see those willing to dip their toe into blockchain tech are still capable of doing it slowly.

There are other countries toying with R3’s blockchain tech, too. Recently, Thailand disclosed its plans for an official digital currency for its banking sector, which it will deploy via Corda.

It has a way cooler name though – Project Inthanon – which sure beats Digital Street.

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Scaling blockchain: Sidechains explained in plain English

Welcome to Hard Fork Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice to keep you up to date in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

Blockchains are actually quite limited in their scope. There are challenges of scalability and speed which make it challenging for some applications of the technology to work well.

Even so, the blockchain might be desirable to use for its immutability, security, and transparency. But for it to be used, its challenges need to be overcome. One emerging technology that is trying to make the blockchain more efficient and scalable is “sidechains.”

This article will take a look at what sidechains are and explain them, in plain English. But first, a quick reminder..

A reminder about Bitcoin’s scalability ‘problem’

Bitcoin transactions are verified using a process called Proof-of-Work, while it’s great at confirming transactions, it’s kind of slow and cumbersome. By design, Bitcoin transactions take a while to verify – in comparison to our world of instant gratification at least.

As Bitcoin has grown in popularity, the slowness of its verification process has become the focus of a contentious debate about how the Bitcoin blockchain should be “scaled” to increase its throughput. There are numerous solutions being developed, and sidechains is one of them.

So, what’s a sidechain?

No, it’s not that thing you had hanging from your jeans when you were 13.

Like its name suggests, a sidechain is a type of blockchain that exists along side its master chain. The master chain can be thought of as the parent chain and the sidechain as a sort of “child chain.”

Sidechains shouldn’t be confused with hard forks though. The two might sound similar, but with a sidechain the original chain remains unaffected, and can be rejoined in the future. In some cases, sidechains can offer a specialized platform to carry out a specific task or test beta releases of blockchain software, for example.

You might hear of things like the Lightning Network operating as another “layer” on top of the Bitcoin protocol, to offer a high speed micro-payments network – in principle sidechains operate in a similar way.

Ok, but why?

With all the work that parent chains have to undertake, sidechains offer a place to offload and out source some of the work. Rolling with the parent-child analogy, the child chain has enough resources to do some chores about the house, while the parent chain prepares dinner for the whole family. It can help make things a little more efficient.

Of course, for a sidechain to function it needs to have digital assets or tokens. Usually these tokens/coins come from a user on the parent chain. Assets that move between parent and sidechains are pegged bothways, basically this means that the coins are transferred between the chains at a pre-agreed rate.

To get the coins on the sidechain the user will send the coins to predetermined address connected with the sidechain. This address will hold on to the coins, which prevents the user from spending them on the parent chain, or elsewhere for that matter.

Once the locked funds from the parent chain have been communicated across all chains they will become available on the sidechain. The user will then be able to pick up their coins and start using them on the sidechain. When moving cryptocurrency from the sidechain back to the parent chain, this process is effectively reversed.

So there you have it, next time someone tells you about the sidechain project they’re working on, you’ll know what they’re on about.

But whether or not sidechains hold the silver bullet for blockchain‘s scalability problem is a whole other matter.