Landon Manning

Wyoming Passes New Friendly Regulations for Crypto Assets

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The Wyoming state government has been expanding its status as a hub for crypto and blockchain technology by passing several new bills this February.

According to Wyoming-based blockchain advocate Caitlin Long, the state of Wyoming has recently passed resolution SF0125 on February 14, 2019, claiming that Wyoming “law recognizes property rights in the direct ownership of digital assets.” The bill plainly states “that digital assets are property within the Uniform Commercial Code” and goes on to elaborate some of its ramifications.

Long gave a succinct rundown of the bill’s most salient points, stating that “In other words, you’re not forced to own digital securities through an intermediary. Blockchain tech enables direct ownership of assets, and now the law does too.” Since property law in the United States is in the hands of state jurisdiction, this new step is not only safe from the federal government but also can serve as a model for other states.

“It makes perfect sense that Wyoming is the epicenter of blockchain law in the US,” said Long, a Wyoming native. “That’s also why institutional investors, which are prohibited by federal law from directly owning the assets they manage, can rest assured that Wyoming’s digital asset custodians are actually solvent.”

This is not the only accomplishment made by pro-crypto voices in Wyoming, however. On February 2, 2019, the Wyoming State Senate also passed a bill updating the classification of crypto assets, including a clause to formally label them as currencies.

According to the text of the bill, crypto assets can be considered to have three different statuses for legal purposes: digital consumer assets, digital securities and virtual currencies. All three of these definitions are specifically registered as personal property rather than private property, formally upholding a stance that other jurisdictions overseas and abroad have taken.

More significantly, however, the bill also further elaborates on the specific terms and conditions for each of these three statuses. In addition to the respective classifications of “general intangibles” and securities, the bill also states that “virtual currency is intangible personal property and shall be considered money.”

In redefining the legal status of crypto in this way, it formally opens up the possibility for ordinary citizens to treat crypto as an actual currency on a daily basis. This, in turn, could provide the impetus for a more comprehensive tax code or new business use cases.

Wyoming has been cultivating a reputation as a major crypto haven in the United States, in a bid to angle itself as the blockchain hub of the nation. In addition to enabling blockchain into stock certificates with bipartisan support in January 2019, Wyoming has also helped make banking laws more friendly for blockchain companies last December. Many Wyoming legislators are evidently, at the very least, sympathetic to making blockchain a new Wyoming industry and further friendliness can be expected in the future.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

New Zap Point-of-Sale App Enables Merchants to Accept Lightning

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A new point-of-sale (PoS) app released by Zap allows merchants to independently accept transactions on the Lightning Network.

Jack Mallers, the founder of Zap, described some of the properties of this new app on a recent Twitter thread. Mallers also spoke with Bitcoin Magazine to elaborate on some of the inner workings of the project.

Zap’s new PoS protocol was recently put to the test at a Chicago cocktail lounge, uploading the menu onto the app and allowing customers to use a QR code for tipping. Mallers built a device to allow the establishment to run the app, a “Rock64 board (4GB ram) with a Samsung SSD (1TB).” Mallers said that the current hardware rig “is very similar to a Nodl (nodl.it) device” and that “the founder of Nodl (ketominer) was very helpful with advising the build out of the box.”

Self-sovereignty was a huge design concern for rolling out this app, so for the final product “total costs for the device hardware were under $200, and that was non-manufactured and ordered from Amazon. This allows the merchant to be fully validating, always online, and not reliant on any third party. The most powerful position any merchant can be in.”

Looking forward, Mallers said, “I’d like to help Bitcoin enter a more consumer-facing era, and build this new relationship with end users via the Lightning Network. However Zap can best help Bitcoin achieve adoption and success, is where Zap will go.”

With the first test launch successful, he went on to state that he’s seen a lot of demand from people in specific industries, “like marijuana for example, that struggle with banking relationships and are very interested in Zap PoS. We plan to continue working on the app(s) to get them to a point where they are helping real people. You can definitely expect more to come.”

The Lightning Network has already been heralded as a technology with the potential to completely transform the industry, with a way to circumvent the scaling problem associated with Bitcoin. Many companies have been taking notice of the network’s advantages and have made their own attempts to capitalize on it. BitFury, for example, has recently rolled out Lightning Peach, its own set of tools for the Lightning Network, including a PoS system.

For Mallers, spreading the use of the Lightning Network was the principal driver behind building the Zap PoS application and holding the Chicago event. “We want to humanize the Lightning protocol [and] present it in a way that is digestible, understandable, easy to communicate with, etc.”

The road to large-scale adoption won’t be easy, of course.

“Getting all of this right doesn’t take genius insight, rather learning from repeated efforts,” said Mallers. “It simply requires time and persistent ambitious effort towards a common goal.”

Nevertheless, Mallers seemed confident in the overall feasibility of this technology. “The benefits are clear. There is no more powerful position to be in than a self-sovereign merchant. Nobody can deny you payment, no paybacks, no down time, no banking issues, no border restrictions, attracts new customers, etc. There is literally only upside in this.”

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Lyn Ulbricht Speaks Out on the Anniversary of Her Son’s Incarceration

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Lyn Ulbricht and the Effort to Free Ross: Looking at "the End of the Road”

On the most recent episode of The Tatiana Show, host Tatiana Moroz opened with an interview with Lyn Ulbricht, leader of the Free Ross campaign, to deliver some recent updates with the struggle to petition the carceral state for his clemency. Ross Ulbricht just completed his NTH year of a double life sentence, plus 40 years, as a first-time, nonviolent offender. On the anniversary of his incarceration, his mother described some of the contentious events that helped to put him in jail, the conditions he is living under now and some of the efforts that are still ongoing to set him free.

Allegations that the Silk Road was used as a “murder for hire” platform were used to justify his extreme sentence, despite the fact that all charges related to alleged instances of murder for hire were dropped before ever going to trial. In turn, the astronomical length of his sentence has been used to place him in a maximum-security prison, where he has been at risk of being targeted by violent offenders. Lyn claims that, as a result of this threat, he has spent the last two weeks in solitary confinement, a practice widely condemned as inhumane and torturous by the United Nations and the international psychiatric community.

Lyn went on to state that Ross is just one of the 17,000 nonviolent drug offenders serving life in prison across the many prisons of the United States, a number that has quintupled due to the drug war despite all evidence showing that the availability of drugs has only increased in this time.

When looking at the massive rates of nonviolent incarceration from the perspective of a potential source of nigh-unpaid labor, it should be easy to see why Lyn said that “our government is engaged in human trafficking.” The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is very clear when it states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, except, it clarifies, as punishment for a crime.

Lyn invites all of her audience to sign the petition available on her website, freeross.org, and to spread the word about her grassroots initiative.

Tatiana also interviewed several other interesting guests this episode, including Rafael Hauxley, who traveled around the world spending only one bitcoin; crypto advisor Frederick Steinmann; and BTC Inc.’s own Head of Sales Operations Chris Ely. The full interviews of these other guests, as well as many others from Tatiana’s and other shows, are all available now on the LTB Network.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.