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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

The TSX Venture Exchange lost 1.59 points to 793.20 Thursday. John Varghese and Erroll Treslan's first capital pool shell, Nobelium Tech Corp. (NBL: $0.045), has cancelled its qualifying transaction with NextBlock Global Ltd., a newly formed venture capital firm that plans to focus on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

(A blockchain is a digital ledger that cannot be edited without leaving a trace. A blockchain-based record-keeping system is thus said to be highly secure, and blockchain proponents suggest that such a system could be used to keep reliable records of anything from wire transfers and sales transactions to health care information and voting information. There are many blockchain systems in development, but there is none yet on the fantastic scale that blockchain promoters enjoy suggesting. In May, following a year-long trial, the Bank of Canada concluded that blockchain technology was not yet capable of supporting a national interbank payment settlement system. Today, the more exciting things about these dreamed-of blockchain systems are cryptocurrencies, for instance bitcoin, of which one is worth $9,236. The connection of cryptocurrencies to blockchain systems is this: Blockchain systems typically generate cryptocurrencies. You see, blockchain systems are decentralized. They are maintained by any number of computers, linked together through the Internet. Anyone could connect his own computer to a blockchain system and then allow that system to use his computer's hardware and software capacity. In exchange for his computer's capacity, he would then receive compensation in the form of a cryptocurrency. Besides bitcoin, the other cryptocurrencies include Ethereum, which is worth $406 each, and Ripple, which is worth only 27 cents each but has a high circulation. Ripple's market cap of $10.65-billion is the fourth largest among the 1,200 cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's market cap is the largest at $154-billion.)

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