1.Leading crypto wallet adds Bluetooth support for mobile bitcoin access

   2.Zcash Plans To Reduce Inflation With Harmony Mining

   3.Some Nevada governments using blockchain for public records

   4.DogePal Releases New Version With More Advanced Features

1.Leading crypto wallet adds Bluetooth support for mobile bitcoin access

On Sunday at CES, the crypto wallet company Ledger revealed its latest device — the Bluetooth-enabled Ledger Nano X. The device is roughly similar to the previous Nano S, offering more support for multiple wallets and coin types but leaving internals otherwise the same. But Bluetooth will allow the X to connect to mobile devices through the new Ledger Live app, a powerful new way to access hardware wallets through your phone.

Adding Bluetooth may be controversial. Wallets typically connect over USB, and any wireless capability raises the risk of unauthorized access. Still, the hardware-level PIN protections (and Bluetooth’s limited range) should mitigate the risk. Crucially, Ledger says the Nano X is designed to only respond to devices running the corresponding Ledger app, which has its own security features to preserve authenticity.

The Nano X costs $119 and will be available for pre-order tomorrow, to ship in March. The corresponding app is expected to go live on January 28th in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

2.Zcash Plans To Reduce Inflation With Harmony Mining

Zcash, a prominent privacy coin, has announced plans to reduce its rapid inflation rate. Currently, the coin is experiencing inflation at a rate of 0.1% per day. This may not sound like much, but the rate compounds dramatically over the course of a year, and in absolute terms, the network is issuing miners $400,000 worth of ZEC tokens on a daily basis—quite a substantial amount.

Inflation is an issue because it drives down the value of each ZEC token significantly, and now the coin’s development community is planning to do something about the problem.

If the proposal succeeds, a new feature called Harmony Mining will be included in Zcash’s Blossom upgrade in October, and it will change the way that tokens are distributed to miners. Basically, Harmony Mining will use two different proof-of-work consensus algorithms, ensuring that everyone is able to mine on the Zcash network.

every cryptocurrency faces some degree of inflation. Bitcoin and Ethereum also suffer from the problem, although their inflation rates are much lower than Zcash’s — about 0.01% daily rather than 0.1% daily.

3.Some Nevada governments using blockchain for public records

Some northern Nevada counties are using blockchain to store digital versions of government records like birth and marriage certificates.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of December in Washoe County, about 950 couples had received secure digital marriage certificates to home computers and smartphones since the program debuted in April 2018.The newspaper found that Elko County is trying similar technology for certified digital birth certificates.

Phil Dhingra at San Francisco-based Titan Seal said the Washoe County digital marriage certificate program uses the Ethereum blockchain because it has computing power that makes it hard to hack.

Because a lot of people come from other states to get married in Reno, a lot of certificates are delivered to people in outside Nevada, said Hunter Halcomb, a Washoe County systems technician.

“But some people say, ‘Nah, I don’t use email so I don’t want it,'” Halcomb said.

Halcomb said that while institutions like the Social Security Administration are good at accepting digital certificates, agencies like state motor vehicle departments can vary with acceptance.