Blog Posts

The Bitfury Group now develops and delivers both the software and the hardware solutions necessary for businesses, governments, organizations and individuals to transfer their work to this groundbreaking technological solution and securely move and timestamp an asset using Blockchain technology. We remain dedicated to securing the Blockchain from our data centers around the world, and we provide consulting and analytics to partner companies world-wide. We have also made major progress in advancing our global footprint. In addition to our office expansions in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Washington DC, London and San Francisco, we recently announced a $30 million partnership with Credit China Fintech, and we have hired a new head of Asia to lead our efforts.

Fundamentally, what drives our work is our deep commitment to the belief that Blockchain technology can make the world a better, easier and less challenging place for millions of people, businesses, governments and institutions.

We are extremely proud of our leadership efforts to advance this mission and Blockchain technology overall.

The Blockchain Trust Accelerator (BTA) — an incubator for blockchain pilot projects for social good that demonstrate the Blockchain’s limitless potential — is growing quickly and we are proud to call New America and the National Democratic Institute our partners in this initiative. Just days ago, we announced that we moved into a second phase with the forward-looking leaders of the Republic of Georgia to provide more blockchain solutions for their constituents. This comes on top of our successful creation and launch of a secure and efficient Blockchain infrastructure solution for the country’s National Agency of Pubic Registry — a major milestone for our Blockchain land-titling pilot project.

We also recently announced the launch of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) in Davos, Switzerland around the World Economic Forum’s Annual meeting. The GBBC is a global umbrella organization focused on bringing together the world’s leading businesses and business leaders to educate on the latest innovations in Blockchain technology and advocate for its goal adoption and advancement.

And we are gearing up for our Third Annual Blockchain Summit on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island — a unique gathering where we bring together some of the brightest and most optimistic global minds of our generation to develop tangible initiatives that will deliver far-reaching, impactful results.

These are exciting times for Bitfury and for anyone who cares about this breakthrough technology, and that excitement and enthusiasm drives us daily.

Two years ago, the Bitfury Group had about 70 team members. We are now up to nearly 250 dedicated and talented ninjas working 24–7 all over the world. These remarkable individuals represent some of the sharpest thinkers on the planet, and we are happy to celebrate this occasion with them and thank them for their leadership.

The best news is that we are just getting started! We have a lot of work to do, and the coming year is filled with much promise and limitless opportunity.

We want to thank all of our partners, our investors and supporters. You make the dreams come alive every day, and we are grateful for your trust and dedication.

Onward.

The core value proposition provided by Blockchain technology is not just decentralized data distribution, although that is groundbreaking on its own and stands on its own merit.

But a true Blockchain has even more powerful and valuable characteristics that carry with them the promise of unlocking the technology’s vast potential.

• A true Blockchain is a source of immutable information.
• A true public Blockchain provides an easy avenue for auditability.
• A true Blockchain can be trusted to have authentic information.
• And, most importantly, these are the characteristics that provide a level of security and confidence to Blockchain users far beyond what we see being used in the world today.

Simply put: for a Blockchain to really be a Blockchain, -- in the truest sense -- it must be designed to be auditable, accountable and authentic. To learn more about how to design a Blockchain with these characteristics in mind, The Bitfury Group offers a white paper detailing these characteristics and our technical recommendations for a strong, secure and trusted Blockchain. We go into more detail about the value of Blockchain receipts and Blockchain timestamping, as well as the security benefits of anchoring to the public Bitcoin Blockchain.

As CEO of The Bitfury Group, I support the creation and advancement of secure, useful and trusted public and private Blockchains. As part of our commitment to a thriving ecosystem, we are constantly engaging in research and engineering to make the characteristics of our Blockchain solutions even more secure, and we will issue more papers on many related topics as we progress.

The ability to seamlessly transfer value digitally is creating limitless new opportunities for humankind, and this global transformation across Blockchain-based systems is expanding every day. The enormous potential of the Blockchain has attracted some of the world’s brightest minds, and the substantial results thus far are indisputable.

The Bitcoin Blockchain was created eight years ago and is the first original and largest Blockchain — I call it The TrustNetwork or TrustNet. I call it this because Bitcoin Blockchain technology is built on security and network infrastructure — including the system’s software and hardware — with real-time auditing through consensus.

Since every transaction must be verified and recorded by thousands of nodes, any attempt at fraud, duplication or tampering is detected and the transfer is rejected. The Bitcoin Blockchain has never been hacked thanks to all of the talented core developers who have devoted endless hours building this system to withstand the significant threat posed by malicious actors.

As former US Homeland Security official and current cybersecurity attorney Alan Cohn said, the Bitcoin Blockchain is “the first industrial-scale ecosystem that truly incorporates both security and resilience by design. Because of the cryptographic proofs, because of the encryption, and because of the distributed consensus mechanism, those attributes are built into the system.”

The enthusiastic rush towards a new future of value exchange through a Blockchain-based system is understandable and should be applauded. It is this drive toward innovation that makes the Blockchain ecosystem so exciting, so ground-breaking and so inspiring to me and my Bitfury Group team every day.

It is also important that we take our time as we advance additional Blockchain systems and applications in the coming years. We must come together to ensure that, like the Bitcoin Blockchain, the #1 most important priority is and always will be security. This is especially important given the increased frequency of major transformational political and economic events happening around the world like the recent Brexit vote.

The alleged hacking incident on what is called the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (aka: the DAO) is a reminder that anyone in the Blockchain ecosystem working to expand its potential must double down on security.

I co-founded The Bitfury Group in 2011 and have had a front row seat to Blockchain’s thrilling expansion.
What I have learned is that our community is stronger when we join forces in every possible way through coalitions, consortiums and collectives to support developers and other emerging leaders in our space — from communications, to pilot projects to business inclusion.

That is why The Bitfury Group is actively working with other passionate ecosystem leaders under the leadership of our Chief Global Communications Officer and former White House communicator Jamie Smith to improve how we are telling the broader story of the power Blockchain technology. It is also why The Bitfury Group recently announced the creation of the Blockchain Trust Accelerator and the Global Blockchain Business Council — you can read and learn more about these announcements here and here.

The bottom line is clear: a rising tide lifts all boats in the Blockchain ecosystem and our shared commitment and responsibility to security will serve as the gateway to increased prosperity and opportunity for all.

Our goal for this extraordinary event was to focus entirely on the future – finance, security, pilot projects, real impact, global expansion, communications and global understanding that can lead to effective adoption.

Many of the great ideas from our inaugural Blockchain Summit in 2015 became real over the past 12 months. Two of the ideas are especially notable:

• The Bitfury Group lead Blockchain-based land title registration project in the Republic of Georgia – created and implemented by The Bitfury Group in close cooperation with renowned global thought leader and President of Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Dr. Hernando de Soto. This is the second ever land-titling project in the world to date.

• The Blockchain Alliance – created to protect consumers and their privacy from bad actors who try to use technology for nefarious reasons. This public-private forum between law enforcement, regulators and blockchain companies is now one of the most prominent organizations in the Blockchain space and is headed up by Jason Weinstein, the former deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice supervising Computer Crime, Intellectual Property and Organized Crime and Gang Sections. The Blockchain Alliance aims to bring global acceptance and trust in the Bitcoin Blockchain and its unmatched security. The Bitfury Group supports these efforts because we want to protect consumers in every possible way and stop criminal actors who wish to do harm.

This year, many new ideas are in the works. For starters:

The Bitfury Group announced at the end of this year’s Summit a call to action: an invitation to industry leaders to join with them in establishing the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC).

The goal of the GBBC will be to assist businesses in sharing best practices for the use of Blockchain technology worldwide. The Council will provide a framework for industry leaders to work together in building an efficient environment for innovation and expanding the adoption of Blockchain technology.

Watch Our Video and see our summit participants up close. These extraordinary individuals came from a range of geographies and backgrounds: business, government, finance, the arts, and NGOs, with a shared deep commitment to global positive change.

The Bitfury Group will have much more Blockchain Summit outcome news to announce soon – stay tuned!

About The Bitfury Group
The Bitfury Group is the leading full service Blockchain technology company and one of the largest private infrastructure providers in the Blockchain ecosystem. The Bitfury Group develops and delivers both the software and the hardware solutions necessary for businesses, governments, organizations and individuals to securely move an asset across the Blockchain. The expertise of The Bitfury Group ensures successful, easy, fast, secure and cost-effective connectivity to the Blockchain. The Bitfury Group is a global team of experts in technology, business, communications, security and civil society. The Bitfury Group believes the Blockchain can and will open new doors for global economic opportunity and prosperity, and its mission is to create and advance Blockchain applications that will further promote innovation and the advancement of the peer-to peer economy and the Economy of Things.

We have all seen this before.

If you think about it, at its very core, a bank is essentially a leveraged ledger of ‘who owns what, when’, with built-in time delays to allow transactions to be ‘authenticated’ (aka ‘clearing’) whereby the bank captures deposits, makes interest during and after the time delay, and can charge relatively hefty fees to cover massive overhead to complete transactions.
All of the above is covered in a big regulatory wet blanket forcing all the subsystems to work together so the aggregate system can be ‘trusted’. Layers of ‘balance sheet backup’ allow massive hacks to occur, even at the central bank level, and still be absorbed by the system. With opaque heft, the system is ‘trusted’ in aggregate.

But what happens to this era’s financial institutions when ‘trust’ is IMPLICIT and built into the inside of the system itself at the core? What happens to the outer shell of layers and layers of bodies and computer systems and law makers and regulatory enforcers holding the morass in place? Do the layers of overhead slough off like a caterpillar’s cocoon allowing a butterfly to emerge over time? Does the system eventually become low friction, seamless, automated and low cost? We have seen this before.

Telephone operators, connecting caller to recipients in a ‘circuit switched’ network.
Our telephony system started as a network of wired, point to point connections, where conversations were physically connected over a series of wires that were plugged together from station to station much like one would plug earbuds into an iPhone today. The ‘integrity of the system’ (trust) started as a physical connection that one could see. That system got automated over time such that people were replaced by computer based telephone switches.
Over time, much greater aggregate system efficiency was achieved by digitizing voices as they came into the system, cutting up conversations into ‘little pieces’ and flowing those chunks over the system. The switching happened not physically, but by adding headers to the voice packets so each could flow across closest empty lines, and later reassemble at their intended destination. Sounds simple, modern and efficient eh? The ‘digitization’ and automation of the essential function unleashed massive productivity, flexibility, and made the communications system based on TCP/IP (transmission control protocol / Internet protocol) extensible into all the things we do with the Internet that we do today. Going forward, in the world of Blockchain, we’re sending chunks of value, be they monetary or titles to physical or digital things, instead of voice. Every piece of value will have a digital location the world’s networks can point to, much like information on a page has a URL that can be reached by, or transferred to, anyone, anywhere. Lots to be done, with that.
The world’s financial system, which is essentially based on ‘ledgers’, as described above, has a germ of innovation deep inside it in the form of Blockchain. The core essence of ‘trust’ — created today with government guarantees, physical vaults, behemoth balance sheets to make institutions seemingly ‘too big to fail’, and layer upon layer of regulatory framework enforced by ‘zillions’ (yes I know its not a real number and not an accurate one, but there’s no way for me to count the bodies spending time making banks function) of people leading very exciting lives holding a gigantic ball of water in the air— is likely on the front edge of a very big wave of foundational change.
No one expects this change to be fast, as financial assets are part of the core layers of both ‘security’ and ‘esteem’ in Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs; thus switching costs will have an emotional aspect that humans have to ‘get over’. It’s hard to define the ‘starting point’ and the ‘commercial culmination’ of the Internet but that wave has most certainly been measured in decades and is still barreling. I suspect that the wave to be enabled by ‘the Blockchain’ will be slower to develop and longer to roll as a result. The exciting thing to think about though, from an investment standpoint is that this wave has the potential to be comparable or larger in size, duration, breadth of application and “pervasiveness” as the digitization of communications.

It’s been a delight catalyzing some of the little starting ripples in the water by creating the Blockchain Summit we have held on Necker Island the past two years. I was fortunate to stumble upon BitFury a couple years ago and led an angel financing which gave me relatively early exposure to Blockchain as the underlying protocol carrying the value units known as BitCoin. A big ‘thank you’ to Bitfury for being a driving force and to Sir Richard for hosting us at Necker Island for our gatherings.
The initial idea behind the summit was to create a place where human to human discussions could be held in the spirit of the ‘Homebrew Computer Club (HCC)’ (albeit a little higher end, and with kitesurfing between sessions) to advance the community’s thinking on the required infrastructure and applications to allow Blockchain to be used for societal good — and to actively do something about it, in the same way that the early attendees of HCC were builders, not just ‘talkers’. Pretty cool to see at least 9 tangible projects emerge from our 2015 Summit, some of which will remain ripples but some of which may grow into monster waves. I’m hoping to chronicle those in a future post.

It was quite fun to kick off the discussions at our 2016 summit with a perspective of “30 years of Silicon Valley History in 15 minutes” leading up to the market value waves that may be efficiently enabled by Blockchain. My intention in doing so was to set the stage for the group with a historical framework that could stimulate open ended ideas of what might lie ahead. I’m excited to see how our 2015 projects continue to evolve and also what may emerge from the 2016 summit.
By the way, this post is not a statement in any way that banks will be wiped out by Blockchain. Rather, it’s quite the opposite. Just as the telcos embraced TCP/IP and actually had a huge hand in defining and bringing it to market, ALL major banks today are experimenting with Blockchain based technology. The beauty of waves of ‘digitization’ is that the rapidity of development, deployment and provisioning of services can be greatly improved and can be executed at far lower cost — allowing for a total redefinition of product lines that is, was and will continue to be great for consumers.
We have seen this before.

Las Vegas, NV — May 12, 2016 — The CEO of the Bitfury Group, Valery Vavilov, addressed the SALT Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada about the importance of the Blockchain, and released a video that explains its ease of use, security and limitless possibilities.

“The Blockchain is the single biggest technological breakthrough since the Internet. We want people to understand how easy it is to use, the unpresented security it offers and its limitless potential,” said Vavilov. “The SALT Conference is a perfect venue for this first video message and we envision releasing many more pieces of content in the future.”

About The BitFury Group
The BitFury Group is the leading full service blockchain technology company and the largest private infrastructure provider in the Blockchain ecosystem. The BitFury Group develops and delivers both the software and the hardware solutions necessary for businesses, governments, organizations and individuals to securely move an asset across the Blockchain. With the help and expertise of The BitFury Group, we will ensure that you will successfully plug into the Blockchain — we make it easy, fast, cost-effective and secure. We are a global team of experts in technology, business, communications, security and civil society who believe the Blockchain can and will open new doors for economic opportunity and prosperity, advance fresh applications that will further promote innovation, spread opportunity through transparent voting, small business ownership, land ownership, and global peer-to-peer support and drive the further advancement of the peer-to peer economy and the economy of things. We believe the world is changing and we are on the front lines of this groundbreaking evolution.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Rachel Pipan
[email protected]
Website: www.bitfury.com

I co-founded The BitFury Group in 2011 because I deeply believe in the transformational power and potential of the groundbreaking technology of the Blockchain.

Over the past few years our company has focused its energies on providing the hardware solutions that allow users all over the world to transfer assets securely and quickly on the Blockchain. I am proud of our hard work, tenacity, dedication and passion for doing good work — it has propelled us to became one of the largest Blockchain transaction processing companies and Blockchain security providers in the world.

Thanks to our great success, I am thrilled to announce that we are now expanding our company to include software. We are not at all abandoning our efforts to secure the blockchain (often referred to as mining.)

We are evolving our business to become a full service technology company.

With the help and expertise of The BitFury Group, we will ensure that any business, organization, individual or government will successfully plug into the Blockchain — we make it easy, fast, cost-effective and secure.

Our broad suite of software capabilities will include but are not limited to:
Blockchain-Based Property Rights Registry
We just announced our pilot blockchain-based property rights registry project in the Republic of Georgia. This innovative project is a partnership with the National Agency of Public Registry of the Republic of Georgia. Hernando de Soto, The BitFury Group board advisor and a renowned economist famous for evangelizing the importance of property rights, will be advising on project development. We envision that this initiative would expand globally, securing the ownership rights for billions of people worldwide.

Blockchain Analytics
The Blockchain contains an unalterable record of every transaction ever made on Bitcoin Blockchain. This immutability allows to trace nefarious uses of digital currency through big data mining and advanced data analytics. We plan to partner with law enforcement agencies globally, just as we have in the U.S. through the Blockchain Alliance, a public-private forum formed by the Bitcoin community to help combat criminal activity involving bitcoin and the Blockchain. Supported by regulators and law enforcement, Blockchain adoption will rapidly accelerate, providing ultimate security and bringing new opportunities.

Lightning Network
Lightning — an overlay network to the Bitcoin Blockchain — increases its utility by enabling instantaneous microtransactions. Lightning brings significant transactions scalability and provides a solid foundation for new applications such as the monetization of the Internet of Things. The Lightning Network is among the industry’s most important efforts for Blockchain extensibility. We believe that the Bitcoin Blockchain and its extensible elements such as Lightning Network have the capacity to enable a trillions-of-transactions-per-year economy within a decade.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
We are building a digital assets platform-as-a-service (PaaS) framework. This framework will assure privacy, external auditing capability and authentication and can be used for both permissioned and permissionless blockchains. To ensure immutability, the service will allow for anchoring to the Bitcoin Blockchain. Cloud technology enables lower costs while providing the same level of security as on-premises solutions. We see the Blockchain technology becoming even more widely adopted as users reap benefits brought by the cloud technology.

Informational Web Portal
This new web portal is envisioned as an information hub that aggregates bitcoin and Blockchain-related statistics and news from around the web-a valuable resource for bitcoin Blockchain novices and experts. The goal is to demystify the Blockchain by making information available and easy to digest, and establish this portal as a trusted source of information for all-things Blockchain.

Blockchain Infrastructure
We will continue to offer our leading-edge technology for providing and securing Blockchain infrastructure including our custom design application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and portable data centers packaged in cargo shipping containers. We remain true to our mission as we expand our technology offering to include the software platform capabilities. The Bitcoin network and community continue to evolve and so do we, meeting the increasing performance demands with innovative technology solutions.

We will share additional updates on our expansion and specific projects in the coming months. For more information about the BitFury Group and our company expansion please visit our website www.bitfury.com.