While Bitmain creates new ASIC Antminers to mine any cryptocurrency running Equihash proof of work, the affected cryptocurrencies look at measures to prevent it. New York has a lot of news happening this week, with the New York Stock Exchange's parent company looking to get into bitcoin trading and Blockchain Week kicking off with the CDX Summit. South Korea continues to be a leader in blockchain technology, rolling out new partnerships with neighboring countries, and building out more blockchain technology.
Featured stories by Colin Harper, Nick Marinoff and Aaron van Wirdum.
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Bitmain’s Antminer Z9 Mini Designed to Mine Zcash, Threatens ASIC Resistance[2]
Bitmain announced, via Twitter, the release of its new Antminer Z9 mini, an ASIC miner capable of mining any cryptocurrency running the Equihash proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. This includes, most notably, Zcash[3], which is a decentralized and open-source[4] cryptocurrency designed to offer users complete privacy in transactions. Zcash has always used the Equihash PoW mining algorithm to prevent the progress of Zcash ASIC miners and has predominantly been mined by general-purpose GPU chips.
The development of ASIC hardware is causing some cryptocurrencies to change their proof-of-work mining algorithm. Bitcoin Gold has a hard fork coming to defeat it and Monero has already modified their mining algorithm to counter ASIC hardware.
GlobalData: South Korea Among the World’s Leading Markets for Blockchain Technology[5]
According to analytics firm GlobalData[6], South Korea has become a leader in the blockchain community. Businesses like Korea Telecom are already working to determine how the blockchain can be used to lessen production expenses and generate new types of revenue. Representatives of the South