However, a gain of more than 100% in the past one week demands justification.
A little bit of research indicates that a patent filed by Amazon has something to do with the rise. The eCommerce giant has received a patent for tracking and gathering data from streaming market places and sell it as a finished product. While the outline of the patent looks generic an in-depth study reveals that Amazon is eyeing on collecting Bitcoin related transactions on the blockchain. The patent now allows Amazon to collect all Bitcoin related transactions, analyze it and combine them with other data sources, and sell it as a finished product to the government.
The abstract of the patent, filed in 2014, to collect data from streaming sources is as follows:
“A technology for a streaming data marketplace is provided. In one example, a method may include requesting to receive a first stream of data from a first source via the streaming data marketplace. The first stream of data may be received and then correlated and combined with data from a second source as a combined stream. The combined stream may then be published to the streaming data marketplace.”
The patent, which was issued last week, describes a method of collecting and analyzing data from Bitcoin’s blockchain, including transactions and addresses, and then match it with other data sources such as the one from online retailers who accept Bitcoins to track down the identify of individuals behind the transactions. The system also mentions about the use of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of the transactions to identify the country of origin of transactions.
The patent explains the system as follows:
“Streaming analytics technologies hold the promise of making vast volumes of data available in a low latency fashion. However, while prior technologies may be able to provide data in a low latency fashion, the raw data may have low value (or have less valuable than the data could have) until the raw data is enhanced by correlating the raw data with additional data, such as by matching records using common values. In some examples, the useful additional data to correlate with the data stream may not exist in one place but rather may be held by many entities or owners. As the data from each of these entities is correlated and combined with the raw data, the data stream may become more valuable. One example is a data stream that publishes or includes global bitcoin transactions (or any crypto currency transaction). These transactions are completely visible to each participant in the network. The raw transaction data may have little meaning to a customer unless the customer has a way to correlate various elements of the stream with other useful data. For example, a group of electronic or internet retailers who accept bitcoin transactions may have a shipping address that may correlate with the bitcoin address. The electronic retailers may combine the shipping address with the bitcoin transaction data to create correlated data and republish the combined data as a combined data stream. A group of telecommunications providers may subscribe downstream to the combined data stream and be able to correlate the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of the transactions to countries of origin. Government agencies may be able to subscribe downstream and correlate tax transaction data to help identify transaction participants.”
If Amazon goes forward in its plan to sell Bitcoin transaction related data, then it would encourage many cryptocurrency users to shift to anonymous and private cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Private.
Bitcoin Private uses the same privacy technology as ZClassic (zk-snarks). This means payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient and other transactional metadata remain unidentifiable. Unlike Bitcoin, Bitcoin Private supports a slightly increased block size while being more anonymous and secure than any existing Bitcoin-based currency without sacrificing transaction speeds. There was no premine, and there is no founder’s reward. Bitcoin Private has been released in a fair manner to all. Coins were distributed on a 1:1 basis to BTC and ZCL holders.
Other factors fueling the rise of Bitcoin private
Merchant Solution
Businesses will soon be able to accept BTCP through a processing service created by Merchant Solution. The beta version of the facility is expected to be released later this month.
Integration with Nano ledger
Nano ledger, one of the popular and secure hardware wallets, would add Bitcoin Private to the next version of its firmware. The information was revealed by Nicolas Bacca, member of the Ledger team.
With a bit of effort, all Bitcoin transactions can be traced to the person who made it. However, developing a system mainly to expose individual behind transactions would certainly be a matter of concern to crypto community.
Interestingly, Amazon had registered several crypto-related domain names under their banner. Ironically, they don’t even accept cryptocurrencies as payment. So, there might be more going on behind closed doors.