IBM-Powered Blockchain Platform Completes First Live Trades Via Five Major Banks


Source:https://www.bitcoinglobalnews.com/single-post/2018/07/03/IBM-Powered-Blockchain-Platform-Completes-First-Live-Trades-Via-Five-Major-Banks
By: William Suberg
Posted: July 04, 2018



European blockchain trading platform we.trade confirmed it had completed its first live operations today, July 3, involving twenty companies and five major banks.

 
The blockchain platform, which claims to provide a “more efficient and cost effective way” for banks and businesses to trade worldwide, uses IBM’s Blockchain Platform, powered by Hyperledger Fabric.
 

Part of various blockchain solutions currently under appraisal by the banking sector, the platform counts Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Nordea, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and UniCredit as its founding members.

 
Together, according to Dutch institution Rabobank, the collaboration highlights the banks’ ability to “innovate.”

“These trade(s) represents a great example of traditional banks innovating to meet their clients’ needs by working with we.trade,” the bank’s chief digital transformation officer Bart Leurs commented in a press release.

 
Currently available in eleven European countries, the platform’s expansion plans appear to depend on further lenders coming on board.

 
Meanwhile, bank-sponsored blockchain platforms are becoming an increasingly crowded space both in Europe and beyond. Spain’s Santander became the first to offer blockchain settlements for retail customers using Ripple in April, while remittances also form the basis for a major project between banks in Asia, also involving technology from IBM.
 

At the same time, other plans appear to have fallen by the wayside, Rabobank remaining silent on its ‘Rabobit’ cryptocurrency wallet project since March.


As Cointelegraph reported in June, some sources fear banking demand for blockchain services is overrated, and the technology actually has less to offer to the sector than many assume.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/european-banks-complete-first-live-blockchain-financial-trades/
Posted: July 03, 2018

A group of European banks announced they have completed first live blockchain-based financial trades across borders via their jointly developed we.trade blockchain plaform.

According to an announcement on Tuesday, the real-life trades were executed over the past five days among 10 companies and were facilitated by four banks using the blockchain technology.

HSBC, one of the nine institutions that set up the platform as a joint venture, claimed that three of its clients managed to complete open account transactions last week via we.trade within Europe.

Built on IBM's Blockchain Platform and its Hyperledger Fabric technology, we.trade was established by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Nordea, Rabobank, Santander, Société Générale and UniCredit, in a bid to boost the efficiency of cross-border financial transactions.

As reported by CoinDesk in April, we.trade was planning to begin testing the platform in May with an expected commercial release in the summer.

At the time, Société Générale told CoinDesk the reason we.trade's development can move fast is that it focuses on small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) trading within Europe.

Parm Sangha, IBM's blockchain lead in Europe, commented in today's announcement:

Quote
"As we.trade has moved from pilot applications to conducting live transactions across borders, it has demonstrated the power of blockchain technology in an enterprise setting."

Currently, we.trade operates in 11 European countries. Roberto Mancone, the platform's chief operating officer said in the announcement the next step will be "getting buy-in from additional banks and their customers in Europe and further afield."

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Read More Here: https://news.bitcoin.com/japans-gmo-launches-upgraded-7nm-bitcoin-miner/
Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space
Posted: July 3, 2018

Japanese internet giant GMO has launched a new, upgraded model of its bitcoin miner equipped with 7nm ASIC mining chips. The previous model was sold out. The new model can achieve a higher hash rate and has a “hash power optimization function.” It is for sale at the same price as the previous model.


While the B2 model has a hash power of 24TH/s, the B3 model has a maximum hash power of 33TH/s, “which is much better than our existing products,” the company described, elaborating:

"The major characteristics of GMO miner B3 are that it has the maximum hash power of 33 TH/s as well as can adjust the hash power optimally up to 33TH/s depending on the mining environment and global hash rate."

Blockchain conference for fintech leaders: Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference will take place in Malta
Source: https://www.crypto-news.net/blockchain-conference-for-fintech-leaders-blockchain-bitcoin-conference-will-take-place-in-malta/
 By Kewl - July 2, 2018


On October 23, St. Julian’s will host Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Malta – a large-scale event dedicated to blockchain, topical trends in the cryptocurrency market, and ICO projects. A single platform will gather the international crypto community, top blockchain developers, and business representatives.

Why Malta

The government of Malta actively works on the development of transparent and favorable laws in the field of blockchain industry regulation. There are plans to establish a special agency – a Digital Innovation Authority that would control and certify blockchain companies. Besides, DLT legislation is being drafted as well as a regulatory framework for ICOs.

The first draft law of the Digital Innovation Authority has already been introduced to the public. The paper received a very positive feedback from industry representatives. Not a single government has offered a comprehensive draft legislation to regulate the activity of blockchain platforms.

These steps have already given first results. Cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Okex are relocating their headquarters to Malta. Senior management of such crypto companies as Monaco Card, BigONE, and Tron Foundation have also expressed intention to open offices on the island.


What waits for guests?

Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Malta is a B2B event held annually in the format of a conference and an exhibition area. In 2017, 400 guests attended the event, 16 top speakers gave presentations, and 20 companies presented their booths in the exhibition area. Among guests, one could find Maltese government officials and the President of the Free Republic of Liberland.

The international company Smile-Expo, the organizer, reports that in 2018, the conference program will be even more intense with new relevant discussion topics. Speakers will include global crypto experts, investors, developers, representatives of successful blockchain startups.

Furthermore, guests will be able to attend the exhibition area with booths of blockchain software developers, mining hardware, and related industry services.

Someone claiming to be Nakomoto published 21 pages of new material—a sneak preview, allegedly, of a book about the origins of the first cryptocurrency.

The excerpt appeared at NakamotoFamilyFoundation.org, a website anonymously purchased three days earlier via Amazon’s domain registrar.

As Cryptoslate notes, The Nakamoto Family Foundation website certainly reflects the mysterious persona of the creator of Bitcoin, providing readers within insight into the earliest days of Bitcoin development alongside a cryptogram that, when solved, provides the title of the two yet-to-be-released books: “honne and tatamae.”

The terms used as titles for the books, in a similar manner to the double entendre associated with the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym, are associated with a Japanese expression that “the contrast between a person’s true feelings and desires” and “the behavior and opinions one displays in public.”

According to the post, the book will be divided into two parts, according to the results of a “cryptopuzzle” published with the post.

For those unaware, Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonymous name integrally tied to the identity of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Speculation has raged about the true identity of the programmer who created the Bitcoin code base.

This new Nakamoto—who still does not want his real identity revealed—declined to move any coins or sign anything with his own keys.

According to information provided to WIRED:

    “He” (if it is a him) is not … any of the three leading Nakamoto suspects: Wright, Nick Szabo, or Dorian Nakamoto, the person identified previously by Newsweek”.

Whether the post’s author is indeed the real Nakamoto cannot yet be verified.

Craig Wright, an Australian academic and chief scientist at nChain, who claimed to be Nakamoto back in 2015, with no adequate proof provided though, took to Twitter after the announcement was made, saying that its author “cannot get the dates nor technical details correct.”

However, the text of the excerpt contains some of potentially new, identifying details on the alleged Nakamoto’s background. Notably, his mother is described as an author and his grandmother as the founder of a very small publishing company. At age 14, the author writes, he was drawn into the cypherpunk community, “where anonymity was as fundamental as breathing.”

The books also claims the author was in his 20s when he began posting about bitcoin while working as a university researcher in a lab, and that he came up with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto because it was the Japanese “equivalent of ‘John Smith’”—though he all but confirms that he is not Japanese.

The author devotes considerable space in the new excerpt to explaining his desire for privacy, describing how he ran the network on his own computers using anonymizing software. He notes, though, that he forgot one detail in shielding his identity: time stamps.

    “Some were intuitive enough to graph together the hours in which I would post on the forums and commit to the repository and formed a literal ‘map’ of when I was awake and when I was asleep,” he writes, a map that identified him as appearing to keep the hours of someone on the East Coast of the United States.

Otherwise, the bulk of the excerpt offers a history of bitcoin’s origins by detailing the author’s purported correspondence with other prominent members of the cryptographic community: Adam Back, Wei Dai, Gavin Andresen, and Hal Finney.

Bitcoin, the author writes, “arose out of the many failed attempts by many groups, and the only reason it succeeded was because it was at the right place, at the right time.”

The document is also filled with unverified details about the early days of the project. The blockchain, he writes, was initially referred to as the “time chain.” A fork, the mechanism by which cryptocurrency projects split off from each other, was originally called a “branch point.”

And as for why he capped the supply of bitcoins the way he did, he offers this explanation:

    “Why 21 million? The truth is, it was an educated guess.”

In the document, the purported Nakamoto says he left the Bitcoin project by Christmas 2010, rather than the long-publicly acknowledged date of his departure, April 2011.

As he explains, “I tried my best to leave no affirmation that I had ever existed at all, and everything that did link me I put into a series of files, so in the case I left, anyone could take on the persona. There are other, more serious reasons for leaving that I will not include here but will be mentioned in the book.”

Gavin Andresen, one of the early pioneers on the project who could presumably verify whether Nakamoto’s early departure date was accurate, declined to speculate about the document’s authenticity, saying by email to Wired, “No comment—I’m retired from the ‘who was Satoshi’ game.”

Researchers believe that the person or persons who invented Bitcoin still retains upwards of 900 000 BTC, a fortune even at today’s prices (around $6bln), enough, if he is an American, to place Nakamoto among the 100 wealthiest Americans.

    “The truth is one that people will not come to expect,” Nakamoto says in the excerpt.

Source: https://www.ccn.com/former-big-three-chinese-giant-btcc-relaunches-cryptocurrency-exchange/
Posted at July, 02, 2018

After shuttering its doors nine months ago, the world’s oldest cryptocurrency exchange is relaunching its exchange platform for business and has revealed its plan to launch its own token in the future.

BTCC on Monday announced the launch of its revamped exchange with support for crypto-to-fiat and crypto-only trading pairs including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin and ethereum.  BTCC, formerly BTC China, was the world’s first cryptocurrency exchange to launch operations n 2011. However, a crackdown by Chinese authorities on the domestic cryptocurrency sector, followed by an ICO ban, resulted in BTCC closing down its doors in September 2017.

BTCC was formerly one of China’s original ‘big three’ exchanges but eventually moved its operations to Hong Kong and London before being bought out by a Hong Kong blockchain investment fund in January 2018.

Speaking to CCN, Vice President BTCC Exchange Aaron Choi said that the relaunch of BTCC would feature a system to reward clients with points that would eventually be fully converted to BTCC tokens.

He stated:

Quote
“A soft launch has already been made and we decided to go ahead with the BTCC points system that will be fully convertible to BTCC tokens. We wanted to give something back to the community which has supported us through a rather difficult period. Initially, we started trading with just Bitcoin/USD pairs and eventually added Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. We will be adding further coins according to what our customers tell us although these will probably be Top 10 anyway”.

Some of the features of the new BTCC Exchange include new trading pairs (BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC/USD, ETH, BCH, LTC/BTC, etc.), enhanced liquidity as well as supposedly quicker deposits and withdrawals. Tighter bid-offer spreads are also being offered to enhance the trading experience.

In addition to the new trading pairs, BTCC will regularly launch additional trading pairs based on user feedback. All reward points are fully convertible to BTCC tokens upon release, which will be tradeable on the exchange.  BTCC has not revealed a concrete timeline for its token issuance.