Fang Zhou and Yue (Brett) Zhang of JunHe review the old regulatory system of cryptography law and how the newly introduced PRC Cryptography Law brings a more flexible approach for cipher products to flourish in China

On Oct. 26, 2019, the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress passed the PRC Cryptography Law (Cryptography Law) (). The Cryptography Law is the first cryptography statute at a national law level, replacing old regulations that have been in use for more than two decades. By introducing major changes to the existing regulatory regime on cipher products, the Cryptography Law marks a new era of cipher regulation in China, particularly in relation to the use of cipher in commercial environment.

The Cryptography Law introduces classification of ciphers based on the nature of the data or information they intend to protect:

The Cryptography Law does not stipulate general approval procedure for R&D, manufacture, sale, use and import of plain commercial cipher products. Instead, the Cryptography Law plans to regulate commercial cipher products by way of formulating and implementing relevant national standards, which presumably should be technical in nature and may also incorporate overseas or internationally recognized standards with necessary localization. As exceptions, the Cryptography Law permits the PRC government to establish import/export approval for commercial cipher products that concern Chinas national security, public interests and welfare, or international commitments made by the PRC government.

The Cryptography Law makes it clear that a non-discriminatory principle should be observed in relation to foreign invested companies and their activities involving commercial cipher. It further requires that no PRC authority may force any foreign invested companies to disclose or transfer their commercial cipher by administrative measures.

Despite the general non-approval approach, the Cryptography Law provides certain exceptional cases where commercial cipher products may be subject to additional certification or assessment requirements:

LOOKING FORWARD

However, it remains to be seen how the PRC authority will define exceptional cases through future implementation of the Cryptography Law, particularly with respect to the scope of key terms such as national security or public welfare. Giving these exceptional cases a broad scope means more commercial cipher products would need to obtain certification or pass review or assessment procedures supervised by the authorities. This may, to some extent, undermine the benefit of the non-approval principle set out by the Cryptography Law because such procedures may be structured as a modified form of governmental approval.

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China's Cryptography Law: Embarking on a New Era of Cryptography Regulation [Brought to you by JunHe] - Legal Business Online

Technological evolution in computer, information can be transferred in digital way has increased rapidly. So, there are so many applications such as data processing systems, electronic mail systems, and bank system. In these applications the transferred information must pass through communications channels that can be monitored by electronic auditor. While the degree of security may be different for different application, as it should generally pass important information directly from sender to a deliberate receiver intermediate parties being able to explicate the transferred message and without any loss of information.

Furthermore, information that is saved in memory bank of computer must be secure from threats. Cryptographic security is used to transfer a message between remote locations and to send information from one end to another end every system should include at least one encoding devices at one location and one decoding device at a second location. Cryptographic security decoding and encoding technology are available to protect the authentication and privacy for communication devices.

Technological development and the need for remote access security and wireless communication is increased due to this cryptography security application that provides security and protection on the adoption and decency of the data and network. The ongoing advancements is increasing continuously in the internet, technology and the development of new computers to support remote computation has led to increase in the requirement of network security for the secure data transmission.

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Some of the main challenging factors are low customer awareness about cryptography security, and lack of expertise and skilled manpower are obstructing the growth of the Cryptographic security market. The cryptography security market is witnessing a stable growth with rising security threats, lack of the ability to acknowledge such attacks. The quality performance of cryptographic security is depend on the complication of the decoding and encoding devices. The problem regarding privacy of communication for a system where an auditor can listen to every transmitted message on the communication channel.

The Cryptographic security market can be segmented by hardware, services, organization size, application and geographical regions. By Hardware, the market can be segmented into blade, server, random number generator and research & development platform. The hardware is the main equipment of the Cryptographic security to make possible effective content transfer with secure system. The Most of the vendors are updating their hardware setup to maintain a competition in the Cryptographic market. By Services, the market can be bifurcated into consulting services, support and maintenance services and integration and deployment Services.

Request To Access Market Data Cryptographic Security Market

By Organization, the cryptographic security market can be segmented as large enterprises and small & medium-sized enterprises. According to the application, the cryptographic security market segment can be bifurcated as IT & telecom, network security, government & defense, database security, consumer goods & retail, healthcare & life sciences, banking, financial services & insurance and others. Furthermore, the Cryptographic security market can also be studied according to regional bifurcations such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America. Moreover, with the feeling of enchanting experience, increase in demand, growth of technology and advancement in security system is expected to positively support the growth of cryptographic security market during the forecast periods. The cryptographic security market has seen huge growth in defense and banking industry in recent years.

Many players are involved in the Cryptographic Security market with wider solution portfolio. Some of the key players in the cryptographic security market are Crypta Labs, IBM, HP, Id Quantique, Magiq Technologies, NEC Corporation, Infineon, Mitsubishi, Nucrypt, Qutools, Qasky, PQ Solutions, Qubitekk, Quintessencelabs, and Toshiba among others. Most of these providers are headquartered in North America region. Most of the companies to upgrade their research and development activities to introduce innovations and security methods in this field.

This post was originally published on Market Research Sheets

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Cryptographic Security Market To 2025 Emerging Niche Segments And Regional Markets - Market Research Sheets

Ever since your parents got smartphones, it was game over. Now when you go home for the holiday season, the roles have reversed with parents constantly squinting at their bright phone screens and meticulously typing with one finger at a time.

Older family members have become just as addicted to their smartphones as the younger generation. However, some of them may not be as aware of the privacy risks associated with these devices.

If youre not careful about privacy settings, smartphones can track your location, phone applications can have access to your camera and microphone at all times and constantly collect your data to target you with certain ads. So, it was no coincidence that three different brands advertised snakeskin boots on your timeline after you wouldnt stop texting your friends to ask if you could pull them off.

Most of these features can be disabled by enabling the privacy settings of the phone, and checking what apps are allowed to access even when they are not in use.

While you are gathered with your family during this holiday break, give them the gift of privacy, by following a few simple steps as illustrated by Twitter user Matthew Green who also runs a blog on cryptography.

Dont find my iPhone

Without GPS on our smartphones, we would probably all be going around in circles. However, as convenient as it is, GPS tracking is also one of the more invasive features of our devices. Not only does your phone track where you are at all times, but apps also have access to that information and often share it with third-party companies.

In order to disappear off their corporate grid, go to settings, privacy then location services. On there, you will find a list of apps that have requested to access your location. For ones that dont necessarily require that information, like Facebook, switch the setting to Never but for the ones that do, including delivery or taxi services, then switch it to While using the app.

Privacy, please

On that privacy tab, there are also settings related to your camera and microphone. When you take a picture, your location is embedded into that photos metadata which means that someone could find out where you are through that photo. You can disable apps access to the camera through the camera settings on the privacy tab.

Youll find that plenty of apps have also requested access to your microphone, so disable those through the microphone settings as well because YouTube does not need to listen to you at any point.

The same goes for Bluetooth settings, which apps may use to track your phone as well.

Stop the ads

If you scroll way down to the bottom of the privacy settings, the very last tab is Advertising. One thing most people are not aware of is that the iPhone gives you the discrete option to limit advertising targeted at you.

If you switch on the tab, Limit Ad Tracking, then your phone will do just that. That doesnt mean you wont receive ads on your phone anymore, but it will limit the amount of ads that are targeted directly at you by collecting your information.

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Give the gift of privacy settings this year - Inverse

Out of $8.5 Mn blockchain investments, India has been at less than 0.2%

Zubi-IBCOL plans to help students apply cryptography and blockchain solutions to real-world problems across India

Nigeria's MIPAD to use blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and data science to identify and geo-tag planted trees

In recent times, blockchain technology has been gaining a lot of momentum across various industry verticals. Most certainly, the trend is shifting from the pilot stage to actual use cases. Nearly, 50% of the blockchain projects are driven by startups. For the ecosystem to thrive in the long run, it requires the support of all the stakeholders involved, including government, investors, innovators and entrepreneurs.

According to NASSCOM Avasant India Blockchain Report 2019, the investments through venture capital firms (VCs) or initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the blockchain ecosystem in India are at less than 0.2% out of $8.5 Mn globally. The drop in the investment collides with the uncertain policy and regulatory norms in the country.

This cautious regulatory environment in India is hindering the investment opportunities for both domestic and global investors into Indian startups. Surprisingly, several Indian-based investors are raising funds through VCs and ICOs in other jurisdictions such as Malta, Singapore, UK, Switzerland and others due to open regulatory environments.

Moreover, the uncertainties or risk around blockchain in India has made it difficult for startups to enter the radar of global investors that are specifically looking to invest in blockchain startups developing innovative products or solutions.

Graph Of The Week: Size of the blockchain technology market (2018-2023)

Global blockchain technology revenue is expected to see massive growth in the coming years. Currently, at the size of $2.2 Bn, the market is expected to touch $23.3 Bn by 2023.

(Source: Statista 2019)

Here are the biggest block-related headlines from across the world.

A blockchain community platform Zubi partners with International Blockchain Olympiad (IBCOL) to enable its users to apply cryptography and blockchain solutions to real-world problems across India. Through this collaboration, Zubis community of students and blockchain enthusiasts will leverage IBCOls resources to achieve a decentralised future.

With this, Zubi-IBCOL has started a National Chapter in India (IN-BCOL). The IN-BCOL will be responsible for selecting top-projects for the final round of the IBCOL, which will be held in Hong Kong. Both the parties believe in educating and encouraging people to build a sustainable blockchain talent ecosystem. Most importantly, the duo aims to promote awareness on blockchain technology and its applications and enhance employability by equipping participants with necessary skills.

At Indias largest artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and blockchain hackathon held in Pune from December 18 to December 22 organised by Icertis, BlockchainMegaminds won an all-paid trip to Seattle along with INR 5 lakh grand prize.

Interestingly, the winning team members all hailed from agriculture backgrounds. The team utilised ML models to build an app that can analyse crop distress and weather patterns. Additionally, they harnessed blockchain-enabled smart contracts for instant and automated claim settlements to those adversely affected by crop failures and natural disasters.

Team Boopalan were the runners-up with INR 3 lakh cash prize, followed by Team Heuristic at third place, who won INR 2 lakh.

Nigerias Most Influential People of Africa Descent (MIPAD), through its social impact initiative My Roots in Africa Project, will be planting more than 200 Mn trees by 2024 before the end of the UN International Decade for People of Africa Descent. The company has partnered with Decagon Institute to deploy artificial intelligence and data science to identify and geo-tag trees planted using blockchain technology.

Through this initiative, people can place a request to have a tree named, planted or gifted in honour of themselves or anyone they love. This platform is said to bring transparency and enable users who have planted the trees to know the exact location and be able to see it using satellite imagery using Google Maps. This, in a way, helps prevent allocation of the same tree to more than one person and bring down deforestation.

The Blockchain World Forum (BWF) will be held in Dubai from February 27-28, 2020. The event gives all the industry stakeholders to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with blockchain ecosystem. The platform will enable leading technologists, entrepreneurs, regulators, investors and financial institutions in the emerging blockchain industry.

In addition to this, BWF will be giving out the Blockchain Innovation Awards for the highest achievements from the global blockchain industries and entrepreneurs.

Hedera, a multiple blockchain protocols for improving transaction throughput in digital currency, recently announced the launch of Hedera Boost, where it allows startups to plan, build or launch a blockchain-based application using Hedera.

The platform offers technical guidance and ecosystem tools, marketing and business development support and subsidising transaction fees. The platform lets developers design, and test multiple iterations on Hedera Boost. Once the startup is ready to launch its blockchain application, Hedera claims to be funding the project with $1000 worth of Hedera to cover initial transaction costs.

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Blockchain This Week: Farmers Kids Win Blockchain Hackathon, Blockchain Fights Deforestation & More - Inc42 Media

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 24, 2019 NTT Research, Inc., a division ofNTT, today announced its plan to move to a facility in Sunnyvale in mid-2020 to better accommodate a growing number of researchers, including medical scientists it expects to hire for its Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. These priorities follow six months of progress in all three labs at NTT Research since its official launch in July 2019.

To recap, NTT Research has signed anIndustrial Partnershipbetween its Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley; set upjoint research agreementsbetween its Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab and six universities (CalTech, Cornell, Michigan, MIT, Stanford and Swinburne), one US Federal Agency (NASAs Ames Research Center) and one private quantum computing software company (1QBit); and reached anotherjoint research agreementbetween the MEI Lab and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The need for a larger facility, in part, reflects this activity.

We are aiming for a research-friendly space to hire more excellent scientists, said Kei Karasawa, NTT Researchs Vice President of Strategy. We need both private offices as well as collaboration space to accelerate research with partners, whether professors, NTT colleagues or other stakeholders in our three research domains.

NTT Research has already hired more than 20 scientists, about half of whom are university professors and senior researchers. With the PHI and CIS Labs both on pace in terms of staffing, NTT Research plans to focus on talent acquisition for the MEI Lab in the new year. The ultimate target for the entire organization is about 50 scientists.

Based on the joint agreement between the MEI Lab and TUM, NTT Research will send two of its researchers to Munich in Q1 2020. The initial phase of that long-term research project involves screening and optimizing materials that can eventually be used for three-dimensionally transformable and implantable electrodes. The project leader in Germany is Dr. Bernhard Wolfrum,Professor of Neuroelectronicsat TUM in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Munich School of BioEngineering (MSB).

The MEI Lab is directed by Hitonobu Tomoike (M.D., Ph.D), former Director of the Sakakibara Heart Institute, Director Emeritus at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in Japan, and former Professor of Cardiology at Yamagata University. Dr. Tomoike is known for his work in precision medicine involving bio-sensors and analytics.

One goal of the MEI Lab is to explore the potential of bio digital twin. Already applicable in the field of business transformation it is one of NTT Ltd.sIntelligent Business: 2020 technology trends bio digital twin in the medical domain is the idea of scanning an individual and creating a replica, which medically-guided supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI) can then examine, diagnose and treat as a roadmap to caring for a human. In a smart world, our digital twin will be second-nature technology, Dr. Tomoike said.

In addition to the move to Sunnyvale and the plan to hire more scientists for the MEI Lab, NTT Research expects to announce several more joint research agreements in early 2020. Throughout the year, NTT Research scientists will continue to submit papers and attend conferences in the United States and around the world.

About NTT Research

NTT Research opened its Palo Alto offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind. Currently, three labs are housed at NTT Research: the Physics and Information Science (PHI) Lab, the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, and the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. The organization aims to upgrade reality in three areas: 1) quantum information, neuro-science and photonics; 2) cryptographic and information security; and 3) medical and health informatics. NTT Research is part of NTT, a global technology and business solutions provider with an annual R&D budget of $3.6 billion.

Source: NTT Research

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NTT Research to Expand its Silicon Valley Footprint in 2020 - HPCwire

Encryption is widely regarded as a necessary resource to ensure that an individuals privacy is protected in the digital age. Cryptography is a technique of encrypting and decrypting data; for instance, messages on platforms like WhatsApp, Viber and Signal that offer end-to-end encryption. In a new study, researchers have claimed to have developed a cryptography technique that ensures perfect secrecy.

Cryptography methods use algorithms that can encrypt data very quickly by using a short public or private cypher. But these cyphers would be susceptible to the computation prowess of future supercomputers and quantum algorithms. Thus to overcome the limitations, researchers developed optical chips that allows users to interact via a one-time un-hackable communication that is more secure than the conventional methods of cryptography.

Author of the study, Andrea di Falco from the University of St. Andrews explained, It can be used to protect the confidentiality of communications exchanged by users separated by any distance, at an ultrafast speed close to the light limit and in inexpensive and electronic compatible optical chips.

SEE ALSO: Websites With 'Inconsistent And Misleading' Password Meters Invite Cyber Attacks, Claim Researchers

The new method is based on One-time pad (Vernam Cypher), a code developed to encrypt telegram messages, proven to be perfect when implemented correctly. The code uses a random key that is as long as the message to encrypt the message never to be used again and is kept a secret. The code has not been implemented there is no secure way for the sender to share the key with the user.

Researchers in their study explained that by using the second law of thermodynamics, the complex time-varying irreversible structures of silicon chips can be used as the one-time key. Such a one-time-key cannot be recreated and intercepted as it is never stored anywhere, making it secure from data breaches. Also, the method is compatible with the existing optical communication infrastructure.

SEE ALSO: This Company Says It Can Extract Email Addresses, Passwords From Locked iPhones

Cover Artwork: Dhawal Bhanushali/ Mashable India

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Century-Old Cryptography Technique With 'Perfect Secrecy' Inspires The Most Secure Chip - Mashable India

Washington, D.C. - On December 20, 2019 Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) announced the winners of the Fifth Annual Congressional App Challenge for the Fifth District.

This year, Patuxent High School student Matthew Hunter won first place with his app, The Art of Cryptography. Matthew's app aims to help individuals understand cryptography and allows users of the app to decode cyphers.

Karley Trinidad and Aubrey Zeltwanger, both from Patuxent High School, won second-place for their app, Safer Together, which provides students, teachers, and administrators with specific instructions during various types of school emergencies.

Patuxent High School student Alyssa Mazzone and Gwynn Park High School student Kehniah Watts tied for third place. Alyssa's app, Striving and Driving, is a memory challenge game. Kehniahs app, NaxaNow, teaches students about the opioid epidemic and provides resources to help those struggling with addition.

"I join in congratulating the winners and everyone who participated in the fifth annual Fifth District Congressional App Challenge," said Congressman Hoyer. "I was extremely impressed by the creativity displayed by students this year, as well as the hard work and dedication they put into each of their apps. I also applaud their efforts to address issues confronting our communities, such as public safety and opioid abuse. Congratulations to Matthew, Karley, Aubrey, Alyssa, and Kehniah for their winning apps, and I encourage all Fifth District students to consider participating in next year's competition."

The Congressional App Challenge was established by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013 as a nationwide event which invites middle and high school students from all participating Congressional districts to compete as individuals or groups up to four. Students work to create and present an original software application, or app, for a mobile, tablet, or computer platform of their choosing.

The contest is modeled after the long-successful Congressional Art Competition and is designed to promote innovation and engagement in STEM education fields. Students who live in or are eligible to attend public schools located in Marylands Fifth Congressional District were invited to join the Fifth District App Challenge. The winning app will be placed on display in the U.S. Capitol alongside other winners from the nation. Additionally, the first place winner will receive $250 Amazon Web Services credits and receive an invitation to the #HouseofCode Capitol Hill Reception in Washington DC.

For more information about our releases, please contact Annaliese Davis at 202-225-4131.

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Hoyer Announces Winners of the Fifth Annual Fifth District Congressional App Challenge - Bay Net

Recently, when floods ravaged major parts of North Karnataka and people were stranded in different places,Pratap NMused the drone he made to provide food and relief materials to several affected areas. From Hipparagi Barrage to Janwada, a nearby village he used his drone to help many. Thousands of people gathered to watch if this drone could really reach the right place. And when it did, both police personnel and the public cheered loudly for the 22-year-old. Originally from the Mandya district, Pratap is a BSc graduate from JSS College of Arts, Science and Commerce in Mysuru.

He is popularly known as the Drone Scientist or the Youngest Scientist in India. A fitting name, we think, considering he thought about building drones when he was just 14 years old. When he was 16, he already had a drone in his hand ready to fly. "Have you seen an eagle, whose eyes are sharp and flight precise? It was this bird that inspired me to build a drone. The late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam also served as an inspiration as he achieved a lot in his lifetime. The first drone that I built was a basic one which could simply fly and capture some images. As I learnt more about technology and how drones can be helpful, I built bigger drones. To date, I have built around 600 drones," he says.In 2017, Pratap was recognised on several national as well as international platforms for his work. I exhibited one of my drones at Skills India and won second place. I exhibited a self-made project called Drones in Cryptography. The Germans used cryptography to send coded messages about bombings, especially during the time of Adolf Hitler, the dictator. Usually, radar signals can trace drones, but if you send messages or signals through cryptography, you can neither detect them nor decode the encrypted message," he explains.This young scientist has been invited to over 87 countries to showcase the different drones he has built.

When we ask him about the funding required to fuel his passion, he says, "I use very little money and a lot of e-waste to make my drones. Whenever I win competitions, I am awarded money which I save for the future. And as far as e-waste goes, a lot of it is generated and I get it from electrical shops in Mysuru, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai and a few other cities. For example, if there is a mixer-grinder that is defunct, I can remove the motor and use it in my drone. Similarly, I make use of chips and resistors from broken televisions to build my drones. It doesn't matter what the prototype looks like. Proving the technical points of the drone is all that matters."

Pratap has won young scientist awards from Japan and France and gold medals for his research on drones from Germany and the USA. among others. But he had to face several challenges before he could earn these recognitions. Being the son of a farmer, Pratap comes from a poor family and could hardly afford to buy good clothes for himself. "When I travelled to France for the first time, people were shocked and judged me for travelling in business class. However, this did not matter to me. One of the companies in France offered me an opportunity to work on their research project. I earned some money there and contributed to the improvement of my family's financial condition. Currently, the drones I am building now are funded by the money that I earned in France," he says happily.Eagle 2.8, the saviourPratap feels happy that his creation saved the life of a little girl in Africa. Narrating the series of events, he says, "Africa is home to many indigenous people and species. There is a dangerously poisonous snake called the black mamba in this country. In one year, around 22,000 people in a particular tribal area had died due to this snakes bite. When I was in Sudan for a research project, an eight-year-old girl was bitten by this snake and needed urgent medical assistance. Usually, a person can survive for only 15 minutes after being bitten by this snake.I used a drone to send the antivenom to the place where she was,a place so remote that you wont even be able to find its location on Google Maps. The place was 10 hours by road from where I was, so I used my Eagle 2.8 drone, which can cover 280 km per hour. The antivenom was delivered within eight and a half minutes. It was a very challenging task for me. Later, the child and her mother came all the way to Sudan to meet me and thanked me for saving her life. I was very happy that I could help."

Pratap has also delivered a few lectures at IIT Bombay and IISc on how drones can be used in time-sensitive situations like transferring of organs during organ donation, blood transfer and other such purposes. Pratap says, "When my lecture was held in these institutes for the first time, only three or four people attended. But these few people told the others about me and my talks, so when the lectures were organised again, the hall was jam-packed." Currently, Pratap is working to establish his own start-up that can involve youngsters to build drones or any other devices. According to him, there are several people out there who have the talent, but don't have the degree. "I will employ such talents and bring out many innovative devices that can help the nation during disasters and wars and in the fields of defence, aviation and beyond. The aim is very simple, it is to use technology in the interest of our nation."

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Meet 22-year-old Pratap from Mandya, who has built over 600 drones, and is known as the Drone Scientist - EdexLive

If the 1980s marked the rise of personal computing and the 1990s and the 2000s the ascendance of internet connectivity, the 2010s will be known as the decade in which bitcoin and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies started to change the way the world moves value. Bitcoin is a unique monetary asset in that it is free from the control of any central bank and doesnt need to be audited by a third party to ensure its value. It is instead tracked and verified by thousands of computers on a shared network that is called a blockchain, which uses cryptography to reach consensus. Bitcoins underlying distributed ledger technology has the potential to not onlydramatically overhaul finance, but also fields ranging from property ownership to health care and voting.

As the decade began, only a handful knew anything about bitcoin, which was created on January 3, 2009 by a mysterious developer known to the world as Satoshi Nakamoto. Buried within the code of his Genesis block, Nakamoto embedded a reminder of what happens when too much trust is placed in banks. It was a headline from a British newspaper announcing the imminent bailout of the financial institutions following their collapse in 2008 and 2009: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor On Brink of Second Bailout for Banks.

The first full decade of digital currency without banks kicked off a year later, on January 1, 2010, with the mining of bitcoin block number 32620, which rewarded its miner with 50 bitcoin, then worth less than a single penny but now worth about $375,000.For the first five years or so, bitcoin largely went unnoticed, appealing to a fringe group of programmers and libertarian idealists.During the latter half of the decade, as more people came to understand the benefits of blockchain technology, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency speculation took off.

The ascendance of bitcoin has not been without its setbacks. The nascent technology has been plagued by infamous scandals like the FBIs shuttering of underground bitcoin-fueled drug and contraband marketplace Silk Road in 2013 and the $450 million hacking of cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox in 2014.At the end of 2017, the frenzy in cryptocurrency speculation peaked with bitcoin at $20,000 and produced thousands of worthless cryptocurrency tokens and investor losses in the billions.

Click here to learn about the next class of Blockchain 50 innovators.

Bitcoin believers have not given up their idealistic visions for an economy outside the influence of central control. A budding ecosystem has arisen, powered by new computer languages and breakthroughs in cryptography that is only now starting to change the way banks, corporations and governments operate. In fact in a bit cruel irony, some of the most enthusiastic supporters and co-opters of blockchain technology today are those same big companies, ranging from IBM and Cargill to JPMorgan, that early bitcoin believers were rallying against.

13 Moments Defining The Future Of Money

May 22, 2010

Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz buys two Papa Johns pizzas for $25 using 10,000 bitcoin, establishing its first market-based price: $0.0025

June 2012

Ripples XRP is born when co-founder Arthur Britto submits code limiting tokens to 100 billion. Ripple now competes with Swift.

March 2013

Failing Cypriot banks threaten to seize deposits, triggering global interest in digital currency. Bitcoin soars 40% to $80.

October 2013

The FBI shutters online black market and drug bazaar Silk Road. Its boss Ross Ulbricht gets a life sentence.

February 2014

Japanese Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox is hacked and $460 million is stolen. Bitcoin drops 20% to $400.

December 2014

Following Overstocks lead, Microsoft starts accepting bitcoin for Xbox games. Bitcoin ends 2014 at $312.

May 2015

Second Market founder, Barry Silbert, launches Grayscales bitcoin trust, a securitized bitcoin for accredited investors only.

July 2015

Waifish Canadian Vitalik Buterin launches the Ethereum blockchain, enabling decentralized applications. Ether debuts at $3.

December 2015

JP Morgan refugee Blythe Masters co-founds Hyperledger with institutions including IBM, to make blockchain software for enterprises.

October 2016

Privacy coins gain traction after Zcash launches with zero-knowledge proofs, now being explored by the likes of JP Morgan.

December 2017

Amid crypto trading frenzy, Cboe launches bitcoin futures allowing investors to short bitcoin. Bitcoin price: $15,300.

December 17, 2017

Bitcoin bubble peaks at $19,902, up 2,100% in 2017. Ripple CEO Chris Larsens net worth briefly hits $37 billion.

June 18, 2019

Facebook announces libra, a cryptocurrency partially backed by dollars. China announces its own crypto.

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10 Years Of Bitcoin Breakthroughs And Bombshells - Forbes

INDIANAPOLIS A national competition designed to encourage girls to pursue cyber-based learning and career opportunities is coming back to Indiana.

Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Monday that the Girls Go CyberStart competition will take place in Indiana for the third year on Jan. 13. The competition, hosted by the SANS Insitute, centers on a fun and thought-provoking game to inspire young women to test their aptitude in cyber skills. Female students in grades 9-12 can participate for free, either as individuals or as part of a school-based team.

Indiana was one of 27 states to participate in last years competition. More than 10,300 girls competed, including more than 800 Indiana high school students. Four teams from Indiana scored among the top 50 high schools nationally.

Cyber jobs in the United States have increased by 75% since 2010, and one million of those jobs are unfilled nationwide. Indiana has an estimated 2,300 jobs unfilled, according to the Cyberseek jobs tool.

Training young Hoosiers in cybersecurity and tech-based skills is essential to improving Indianas cyber-resiliency for decades to come, Holcomb said in a statement. Indiana is a proven leader in cybersecurity, and our state is committed to providing the skills and opportunities Hoosiers need to pursue fulfilling careers in this high-demand field.

This year, 38 states will participate in the competition. Students will take on the roles of agents in the Cyber Protection Agency, where they will develop forensic and analytical skills and deploy them to sleuth through challenges and tackle various online cybercriminal gangs.

As they work their way through the game, players will be challenged to solve puzzles and be introduced to cybersecurity disciplines, including forensics, open-source intelligence, cryptography and web application security.

Registration for the competition is now open, and student practice programs are available.

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Girls Go CyberStart competition will return to Indiana for third year - pharostribune.com