MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative has launched a new four-year bitcoin software and security effort research and development program, according to a company announcement.
The program is aimed at continuing “to harden the bitcoin network” and “reinforce bitcoin’s security and preemptively shore up any vulnerabilities.”
DCI has raised $4 million thus far for the program, and aims to raise a total of $8 million. Contributors include Square’s Jack Dorsey; Gemini’s co-founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss; MicroStrategy’s founder and CEO Michael Saylor; and Fidelity Digital Assets, among others.
DCI’s research will focus on addressing protocol risk associated with bitcoin. The initiative plans to add new experts to its team, enforce bitcoin’s defenses against system bugs by researching safer programming strategies and strengthen the software against attacks.
The program will also research bitcoin’s long-term economic security and will investigate certain aspects, such as the stability of a fee-based reward system. It will also aim to find solutions to bottlenecks in development “which might lead to centralization.”
“Crucially, effort must be taken to ensure that critical knowledge, not only around the technology itself, but also around key processes, is systematically recorded and passed down to harden security and improve resilience,” noted the announcement.
In other news, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is looking to raise new funding that could boost the trading platform’s valuation to over $10 billion, or even over $20 billion depending on demand, according to Bloomberg, citing “a person familiar with the matter.”
The firm is in private talks with possible investors including General Atlantic, Fidelity and Tribe Capital. The terms of the funding round, such as lead investors, have not been finalized.
Kraken is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S. based on spot trading volume, and one of the top ten largest exchanges in the world for trading on bitcoin futures, Bloomberg reported, citing data from CoinMarketCap.com and Skew.com.
Representatives from Kraken, General Atlantic, Fidelity and Tribe Capital declined Bloomberg’s requests for comment.
Meanwhile, YouTube briefly took down CoinDesk’s YouTube channel, alleging it had made “severe or repeated violations” of the video platform’s community guidelines.
“Content that encourages illegal activities or incites users to violate YouTube’s guidelines is not allowed on YouTube,” the platform wrote in an email to CoinDesk, which made the news public in an article published on Friday.
CoinDesk’s channel, which has over 23,500 subscribers, was taken offline on Thursday, and reinstated on Saturday, after CoinDesk filed multiple appeals.
YouTube also disrupted CoinDesk TV’s daily livestreamed broadcast of “All About Bitcoin,” on the basis that it violated the platform’s “harmful and dangerous policy.”
CoinDesk noted that in the past, YouTube has suspended other legitimate cryptocurrency-related accounts — as opposed to scam crypto accounts — that it perceives to be in violation of their “harmful and dangerous policy,” but has later reinstated them.
And bitcoin fell below $45,000 early on Friday morning (Feb. 26), its lowest level since Feb. 11. CoinDesk reported that it fell as low as $44,279 at 2:40 am EST. It rose only slightly over the weekend, resting at 45,190.875 as of 5:48 pm EST on Sunday (Feb 28).
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