This week, Bitcoin and the blockchain, the underlying technology that runs Bitcoin, received some academic attention with the first Bitcoin-related scholarly journal from the University of Pittsburgh named the Ledger. The blockchain itself continues to keep the interest of financial institutions as an economic technology and now nine major world banks are throwing their weight behind a New York-based startup R3CEV LLC to set standards for the emerging use cases.

BlockTrail B.V., originally a Bitcoin analytics and bitcoin developer company, has recently launched a Bitcoin wallet designed with consumer security in mind using multi-signature access and private key ownership. Also CardCash Inc., a competitor to Gyft, Inc. in the gift card resale market, has partnered with BitPay, Inc., one of the largest Bitcoin payments processors currently in the world.

The saga of Mt Gox, the failed Bitcoin exchange, continues as the CEO, Mark Karpeles, is formally charged in Japan for his role in the decline and eventual bankruptcy of the exchange.

Bitcoin blockchain scalability debate

The debate over how to handle the scalability of the Bitcoin blockchain and the size of blocks on the blockchain continues this week with the first of the conferences: Scaling Bitcoin Montreal. This conference took place September 12 and 13 in Canada.

Videos have already surfaced from the conference, and Travis Patron kindly wrote up a recap of the conference including links to what he believes are some of the best presentations on the matter.

Amid his picks he included Peter R – Transaction Fee Market Exists Without Blocksize Limit, Miles Carlsten – Mind the Gap and Eric Lombrozo – Validation Costs & Incentives.

Readers may also want to listen to Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin core developer for BitPay and author of the BIP 102 proposal, Issues Impacting Blocksize Proposals.

The full videos from the Scaling Bitcoin conference can be found on the Scaling Bitcoin YouTube channel’s videos page. There is almost ten hours worth of video to watch encompassing both days of presentations. It could get rather overwhelming for any but the most dedicated Bitcoin and cryptocurrency aficionado.

For a little bit of history of this debate, news has been rolled into the August 26 and September 2 issues of Bitcoin Weekly.

Screenshot of the homepage of the Ledger, the University of Pittsburgh’s cryptocurrency scholarly journal.

Cryptocurrency and blockchains get an academic journal with the Ledger

The University of Pittsburgh this week announced the world’s first cryptocurrency scholarly journal: the Ledger. The journal, published by the University Library System, will be a quarterly peer-reviewed journal featuring full-length papers written about studies of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The journal also intends to encourage authors to digitally sign their work (allowing cryptographic proof of authorship) and will also tag each published paper with a Bitcoin blockchain transaction providing for proof of existence and proof of publication date. As a result, the journal itself will become a proof of concept for the use of the Bitcoin blockchain as a source of provenance for a document.

The journal has put out a call for papers; deadline for author submissions is December 31, 2015.

BlockTrail multi-signature secure Bitcoin wallet launches

BlockTrail B.V., an Amsterdam-based Bitcoin developer infrastructure and analytics company, last week announced a consumer Bitcoin wallet service for web, Android and iOS platforms. The service would include multi-signature capabilities allowing users to hold onto their own private keys and provide high security for any bitcoins stored.

The move at first blush seems divergent from BlockTrail’s original services, which included a blockchain explorer and a developer API. However, one of the services BlockTrail provides is a developer API designed around providing the tools to create private Bitcoin wallets for secure transactions.

CEO of Mt Gox a step closer to prison time

Mark Karpeles, the Chief Executive Officer of failed Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, has been formally charged in Japan with crimes related to the bankruptcy of the aforementioned exchange in 2014. The charges include falsifying data, embezzlement and misappropriation of $2.6 million in funds from Mt Gox.

Mark Karpeles, chief executive officer of Tibanne Co., poses for a photograph with a bitcoin in the office operating the Mt.Gox. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

During the downfall of Mt Gox, it was speculated that approximately 650,000 bitcoins were missing from the company’s coffers–today that many bitcoins would be $150 million at today’s exchange rate of $230 per BTC. Interestingly, the disposition of these funds has not been brought up in the charges against Karpeles in Japan.

CardCash partners with BitPay for bitcoin payments

CardCash Inc., a secondary marketplace for gift cards on the web, last week announced a partnership with BitPay, a Bitcoin financial services company, to accept bitcoin for gift cards. CardCash purchases unwanted gift cards in bulk and then sells them at discounts up to 35 percent less than face value.

Through this partnership, customers can now pay for gift cards with bitcoin and shop at over 1,100 of the largest region retailers, including Walmart, Delta Airlines, and Shell.

Approximately 70 percent of all CardCash’s gift cards are e-cards. This means that customers can pay with bitcoin for a cryptographically secure code that will redeem for whatever amount is displayed on the card.

“BitPay has developed a sophisticated bitcoin payment processing platform, which meets CardCash’s industry-leading compliance and security standards,” said Elliot Bohm, CEO of CardCash. “We continually look for ways to improve our customers’ shopping experience, and bitcoin helps ensure the fastest and most secure transactions possible.”

By partnering with BItPay, CardCash has opened up new opportunities to use bitcoin, an already digital currency, to exchange for something else digital and also valuable. It also means that CardCash will be competing against Gyft, Inc., a company that also re-sells gift cards for bitcoin.

World’s nine largest investments banks seek standards for blockchain fintech

Nine of the world’s largest investment banks are planning to develop common standards for using blockchain technology, according to The Financial Times. This effort is designed to help broaden the use of the technology across the financial technology ecosystem.

The banking institutions backing this initiative include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, State Street, RBS, BBVA and UBS. The last in this list is not surprising to readers of the Bitcoin Weekly as UBS has been working on financial blockchain technology announced earlier this month.

The group of banks is looking to send data, research, ideas, and financial backing to a startup called R3CEV LLC. This New York-based company describes itself as a “an innovation firm focused on building and empowering the next generation of global financial services technology.”

“If you’re looking to introduce applications with distributed ledger technologies to improve the financial markets, you can’t have each participant working to a different pattern,” said Christopher Murphy, global co-head of FX, rates and credit at UBS. “What R3 are doing is bringing a consensus which could establish common standards.”

When it comes to financial settlements, blockchain technologies have repeatedly been described as superior in providing speed and security. Under the current system it could take two to three days for a security or settlement to complete; using blockchain technology that time could be cut down to a matter of minutes (or seconds) according to Oliver Bussmann, CIO of Switzerland-based UBS.

It is most likely that any standards developed will use the technological innovations proven by the Bitcoin blockchain as a privately implemented blockchain and not the Bitcoin blockchain itself. From any announcements of the this type, similar to that of R3CEV, it’s generally hard to tell the end intent as many mention “blockchain” but rarely specify.

Featured image credit: Bitcoin Logo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/12350379324.