Meeting between miners, core developers triggers drop in bitcoin price

Avid bitcoin followers might have noticed that the price of the popular digital currency has been on the downward trend lately.

Meeting between miners, core developers triggers drop in bitcoin priceOn Tuesday, the cryptocurrency traded at $602.93 per bitcoin—a drop of more than $50 from last week’s price—while market capitalization also dipped to $9.55 billion.

But there’s no need to fret—yet—according to some analysts, who chalked up the price drop to the “market uncertainty” caused by the recently-held meeting between miners and bitcoin core developers.

The meeting was closed to media representatives or independent observers, so details are sparse. There were reports, however, that nearly two dozen developers from the Bitcoin Core and Lightning as well as seven Chinese miners and representatives from mining companies attended the meeting.

Organizers referred to the meeting as a “social event,” but analysts believe that there’s a high chance the attendees will discuss matters relating to bitcoin’s block size issue as well as the digital currency’s other scalability difficulties, which, in turn, fueled the so-called “market uncertainty.”

This isn’t the first time that the top brass of bitcoin held a meeting, and by doing so, also caused the price of the digital currency to dip. But for now, it’s anybody’s guess as to what we can expect from the event.

Jack Ma punts on blockchain technology to record donations

Meanwhile, Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma is turning to blockchain for help in improving the accountability of Chinese organization involved in philanthropy, Bloomberg reported.

Ant Financial Services, an affiliate company of Alibaba, announced it has started using the technology behind bitcoin to create a “tamper-proof” ledger where it can record the donations of more than 400 million users of its online payment platform Alipay.

With Alibaba’s “Ant Love,” donors can track their transaction histories, learn where their donations go and check how the fund is spent, the company said.

According to state-run Xinhua News Agency, philanthropy in China increased by as much as 10 times, reaching $10 billion in the decade through 2014, despite reports of scandals and mismanagement.