Block by Block: Ticketing | Vertcoin experiences a 51% attack | The SEC met again with the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust team to discuss a bitcoin ETF
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BTC Dominance 53.70%
“We need the decentralized tech stack to evolve more quickly and show the world how decentralized technology works in a mainstream way at scale before policy makers and regulators force the tech sector to go the wrong way.” — Fred Wilson, Partner Union Square Ventures
The Big Block
Ask any hard-core concert-goer about the worst part of the event, and they will likely tell you a war story about buying a ticket.
The ticketing industry is incredibly flawed. Ticket-buyers face high-fees and have to compete with bots who buy up tickets seconds after they are on the market. And that is if they are even lucky enough to purchase tickets on the primary ticketing platforms. Event-goers who are forced to look to the secondary markets for their tickets are immediately thrown into a world of fraudulent ticket sales and scalpers that resell tickets at absurdly high marked-up prices. For an industry as broken as ticketing, it is no surprise that the industry has attracted a swarm of startups and entrepreneurs offering solutions. These startups include both centralized ones like SeatGeek and decentralized ones like Aventus. This piece will explore firms leveraging crypto to remedy the headaches of ticketing.
To sell and distribute their tickets, event organizer and content creators (i.e., artists and performers) will typically issue their tickets onto the primary market. Primary markets include ticket box offices, venue websites, and primary authorized sellers like TicketMaster. Primary authorized sellers generate their revenue through the fees they charge to consumers. A single ticket can have multiple fees. For example, a consumer could end up paying a service fee, a processing fee, and a convenience fee on top of the price they are paying for the original ticket.
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Around The Block
Long-tail cryptocurrency is 51% attacked: Vertcoin edition
With the fall in cryptocurrency prices and ensuing drops in mining hash rate (as marginally profitable miners shut down), crypto-networks remain more vulnerable to attack than earlier this year.
While hash rate may go up in absolute terms due to improved ASIC efficiency (in August, Bitcoin hash rate was up 4x from January 1st), hash rate is just a proxy for network security. The key metric to note is security spend, quantifying how much money is spent on mining opex and capex to secure the network. — More
The SEC met again with the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust team to discuss a bitcoin ETF
On November 28, representatives from three of the SEC's divisions met with representatives from SolidX, VanEck, Cboe and Patomak to discuss a proposed rule change to list and trade the first bitcoin ETF (VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust). A previous meeting happened on October 9 and focused on convincing the SEC that the market is mature enough to support the ETF. — More
Leading Ethereum Classic development group shuts down — More
G20 put crypto regulation in the pipeline — More
Report: Over 50% of U.K.-based blockchain companies have difficulties opening bank accounts — More
Ohio startup accelerators and venture funds plan to invest over $100M in early-stage blockchain startups — More
Calastone is bringing blockchain to Britain’s major asset managers — More
Security token offerings deemed illegal in Beijing — More
The SEC knocks Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled out of the ICO promotion game — More
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