Blockchain is expanding its reach.The database system — a kind of public ledger that gained attention as the technology underlying the virtual currency Bitcoin — is maintained by many people rather than by a single authority, like the way Wikipedia is maintained by its users.Blockchain’s decentralized nature means it is viewed as more difficult to corrupt and hack.Big corporations have been looking for ways to use blockchain technology to keep track of information generated by multiple companies.Now, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and other corporate giants are joining forces to create a computing system based on another virtual currency network, Ethereum.They are set to announce the formation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which will create a standard version of Ethereum software that businesses can use to track data and contracts.Some backers of the new alliance described it as a way to ensure that a separate, IBM-led blockchain effort is not the only option for businesses.Ethereum has also won a following among those who view it as being more agile and adaptable than Bitcoin.Uber Executive ResignsA little more than a week after accusations that Uber ignored complaints of sexual harassment, the company has dismissed its head of engineering for failing to disclose a sexual harassment accusation from his previous job.

Uber had learned that the executive, Amit Singhal, did not disclose the circumstances of his departure from Google, where he spent 15 years.Google had deemed as “credible” the claim of sexual harassment against Mr.Singhal, according to two people familiar with the matter.bitcoin live ticker euroRecode, which earlier reported Mr.earn bitcoins hourlySinghal’s departure from Uber, said that Google had been prepared to dismiss Mr.ethereum krakenSinghal, but that he had resigned on his own.litecoin mining with macSign Up for the DealBook Newsletter Every weekday, twice a day, get the news driving the markets and the latest on mergers and acquisitions.bitcoin xbt

You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.The resignation comes at a tricky moment for Uber, which is struggling with complaints that its rough-and-tumble culture has allowed sexual harassment to go unpunished.Big Money and Big FeesWhy do people pay high fees for money management?p2p bitcoin walletIs it, as Warren E. Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, that the wealthy feel they should be able to afford some kind of superior service?There has been a growing debate about the performance and fees of professional money managers.ethereum news calendarAnd in the face of that, investors are turning away from hedge funds.ethereum miner diyPaul Tudor Jones, who for years charged some of the highest fees in the industry, is cutting fees for the second time in eight months, The Wall Street Journal reports.But much of the biggest money in the United States hasn’t taken Mr.mit bitcoin online einkaufen

Buffett’s advice to invest in low-cost index funds, Andrew Ross Sorkin notes.It may be because this advice seems counterintuitive coming from the man considered the most successful investor in history.But it may also be because human behavior doesn’t change and people won’t give up the dream of trying to beat the market, as Mr.ing Up• The Commerce Department publishes a revised estimate of growth in the final quarter of 2016.Economists expect this reading to be slightly higher, an indication that the United States economy might expand faster this year.• Apple holds its annual shareholders meeting, where it will seek shareholders’ blessing for its compensation plan.It’s almost spring, and that means it’s time for a new nerdy 512 Pixels t-shirt.This time around, the art is all about the iMac G3: The original iMac brought Apple back from the brink with a lovable, colorful design.The quote on the back of the shirt is from Steve Job’s introduction of the machine, and became a joke in Apple keynote for years to come.

The shirts will be on sale until March 16 over at TeeSpring.There are both men’s and women’s options, as well as an unisex long-sleeve because Myke asked for it.There are two campaigns running.If you’re not in the US, the EU campaign may be cheaper on the shipping: Thanks in advance for the support this year!The t-shirt drive is a big part of keeping this site up and running.I hope you enjoy them!Ethereum, the world’s second-most valuable cryptocurrency, has seen its value skyrocket as investors and developers have sought different ways to use the technology introduced by bitcoin.But is it ready for the big time?That’s what some are asking with its market capitalization briefly crossing $1.1 billion — up from $72 million at the beginning of 2016 — in mid-March.The price of a single ether token has surged from around $1 at the beginning of the year to more than $14 in just months.Ethereum counts some of the world’s largest technology companies as believers, and regulators recently cleared the way for buyers in New York state to purchase tokens through a major cryptocurrency exchange.

A March New York Times profile quoted one of Ethereum’s creators as calling the platform the “crystallization” of the vision bitcoin put forward.But as Ethereum has moved into the spotlight, critics have wondered if its founders have overstated the capabilities of their technology.Some companies that were considering building on the platform, meanwhile, have decided not to.One ether token recently traded at $12, leaving its market capitalization just below the $1 billion mark.Bitcoin’s market capitalization, by comparison, is above $7 billion.Read: Bitcoin price hits 18-month high at $465 “Bitcoin’s gains have set a precedent for game-changing wealth creation,” said Charles Hayter, founder of CryptoCompare, which analyses the cryptocurrency market.“Ethereum holds that hope too.The problem is when hope runs away from reality.” The great cryptocurrency experiment started in late 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for the mysterious creator — or creators — of bitcoin, published a white paper explaining how bitcoin might work on a cryptography mailing list.

Bitcoin itself launched in early 2009.Read: Craig Wright claims he is bitcoin inventor ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ Since then, bitcoin has experienced a series of booms and busts, spawned a multitude of imitators and inspired entrepreneurs to imagine other applications for bitcoin’s blockchain, the underlying technology that powers the cryptocurrency’s network.Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s creator, was one of them.He became involved with cryptocurrency projects in 2011 while a teenager, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine before turning his attention to Ethereum.Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin during TechCrunch Disrupt London 2015.Buterin set out to create a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that could handle applications besides payments, publishing a white paper explaining his idea in 2013, when he was 19.A small team of developers — including Joseph Lubin, who is credited as a co-founder of Ethereum and is CEO of Consensus Systems, which builds Ethereum-based applications — signed on.

Buterin introduced Ethereum to the public in February 2014 during a presentation at Bitcoin Miami, a conference of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and bitcoin evangelists.By the end of that summer, the newly formed Ethereum Foundation — a nonprofit registered in Zug, Switzerland — had raised about $18.5 million in exchange for 60 million ether tokens through a crowdsale that funded more development.Those first buyers sat tight for nearly a year, unable to trade or transfer their tokens.(It’s unclear how much ether Buterin and other Ethereum developers currently possess, and Buterin declined to answer a question on that matter.)The Ethereum “genesis block,” the start of the publicly available record of all transactions processed by the network, launched on July 30, 2015, finally allowing those who had bought the first tokens to access and transfer them.The price of a single token quickly rose from about 50 cents to more than $1.It lingered around that level until this year, when its rise accelerated dramatically.

So what’s the difference between bitcoin and Ethereum?Lubin likens bitcoin to a calculator, a tool with a set purpose and range of function; he sees Ethereum as a computer, its uses limited only by the imagination and skill of its programmers and its ability to process and run the applications they build.The bitcoin blockchain can send packets of data — the individual bitcoins — back and forth from one node to another.Today, that mainly means payments, which are sent over the Internet without the aid or interference of anyone but the sender and receiver.Read: Could bitcoin ever overtake the dollar?Ethereum’s potential uses are more ambitious, supporters say, because it adds another layer: Developers can build applications based on “smart contracts” that would allow them to do more than transfer payments.In essence, they say, this would merge business applications and virtual currency.Ethereum’s creators say applications on their network can run on computing power contributed by its users, who are compensated with tokens.

That, they say, removes the need for a centralized system that powers applications and controls their use and governance.Germany-based Slock.it is building a network that would connect objects — just about anything that can be remotely locked, such cars, bicycles and apartments — to the Internet of things, allowing them to be sold, shared and rented without human intermediaries.It has been compared with a mashup of Airbnb and Uber.Read: 4 blockchain companies that could change everything from accounting to money transfers And Microsoft MSFT, +1.35% offers a platform for building Ethereum-based applications built by Consensus Systems to clients of its Azure cloud-computing service.Ultimately, what Ethereum’s creators want to build is a system that lets people perform complex computing tasks with as little reliance on middlemen as possible.Another example Lubin provides: a “decentralized” social network that lets users maintain control of, and profit from, their own data.

The interface might look familiar — users could build profiles, add friends, and publish and tag photographs — but members wouldn’t need to give a third party as much personal information as they do other social platforms.In a video, Slock.it’s founders say they are using Ethereum to build a “DAO,” or “decentralized autonomous organization.” “Think of it as a company operating under a set of immutable rules controlled by the blockchain so that even if the company was to go under, the DAO would continue to operate,” they said.Investors, entrepreneurs and developers are intrigued by Ethereum’s promise.But even some who have invested in building applications on the platform say the system needs work.For decentralized networks to be effective, every transaction must be processed by every node — or computer — and then verified and stored.This requires a massive amount of computing resources, as well as the capability to store a quickly growing quantity of data, by every participant in the network, said Tone Vays, head of research at BraveNewCoin, which provides data on the cryptocurrency market.

This issue — what computing experts commonly refer to as the blockchain’s “scalability problem” — could strain the network’s ability to function as it becomes more widely used, Vayes said.Ethereum critics and supporters alike worry that the network can’t generate enough computing power to run applications on a global scale and say the creators haven’t shared enough information about how they intend to fix that.“They still need to build all of the things they promised they’d build,” said one entrepreneur who attended a March meetup about Ethereum held at the offices of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in Manhattan.Some companies have opted to pursue their own blockchain solutions after experimenting with Ethereum.A spokeswoman for International Business Machines Corp.IBM, -0.19% said the company decided to build its own system to “solve a number of issues that Ethereum did not address.” Ethereum’s creators acknowledge these concerns, and say that developers are working hard to solve the problem.

Lubin said in March that a “scalability solution” might be ready in two to three years.Meanwhile, the market for ether tokens — like the broader cryptocurrency market — has relatively low trading volume, so a comparatively small number of transactions can have an outsize impact on the price.Hayter and others believe there are signs high-frequency trading bots have been used to artificially inflate prices.Buterin says there’s little Ethereum’s developers can do to fight price manipulation of its tokens.“I have no idea how we can even detect something like that or what we can do about it,” he said in an interview.Regulators gave Ethereum a credibility boost in early May when the New York State Department of Financial Services said it would allow Gemini Trust Company LLC, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, to offer trading in ether tokens to clients in New York state.Tyler Winklevoss, left, and Cameron Winklevoss during TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City in May 2015.

But the most fundamental concern about Ethereum’s future extends beyond issues of engineering and mechanics.Some critics say that while bitcoin’s purpose is clear — facilitating the transfer of value between two parties and allowing it to be stored in a way that makes it practically impossible for a third party to interfere — no similarly clear use for Ethereum has emerged.Slock.it and others are building applications that seek to disrupt more established, centralized, businesses: Companies like Facebook FB, +1.09% and Airbnb already have massive, dedicated user bases and followings.Critics worry that it would be difficult to persuade users that the benefits of blockchain-powered systems outweigh concerns about the system’s lack of processing power and the hassle of migrating to a new, untested technology.And so while some observers see massive potential for the platform, others see it as something else: a “solution in search of a problem.” But believers are confident that a solution to the scalability problem will soon be found — and when it is, interest in building Ethereum-based systems will increase rapidly.