CoinDesk reports that the Ethereum incubator has cut over 90 staff, or about 14% of the company; the news follows...
With the recent hack of Equifax still top of mind for regulators and consumers alike, there are individuals beginning to explore potential solutions including blockchain technology; Bloom and Open Identity Exchange are working on protocols and standards that could be used by any entity to create an ID system on the blockchain; having such a system would allow for more security from hackers and help to verify individuals; while there are current limitations to the technology there are many groups looking to solve these issues and a potential government led initiative could speed up development. Source.
Blockchain payments company BitPay has raised more than $40mn in their most recent funding round; the new funds will help the company to support B2B payments and expand to new markets; "We brought on these new investors who can help BitPay scale globally to meet customer demand,” Stephen Pair, BitPay's CEO, said in a press release reported by American Banker. Source.
Mark Williamson, chief operating officer of FX cash trading and risk management, said the bank’s blockchain system helped them to...
Business Insider takes a look at a growing trend in fintech as companies look to offer blockchain technology as a service; companies offering this already include Amazon AWS, IBM, Microsoft Azure and R3 Corda; this trend is seen as something that will only increase in the coming years as more adoption of this technology occurs in financial services and beyond. Source.
Humaniq is a blockchain startup focused on financial inclusion; the company released an alpha version of their app; initial features include remittance payments and P2P lending as well as support for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether; Humaniq also has their own tokens called HMQ; app includes biometric ID verification for unlocking and verifying transactions; user profiles are based on facial and voice recognition algorithms; according to CEO Alex Fork: "Our initial target audience is people in emerging economies, and many of them don't have email. By using biometric ID we make the signup process more inclusive for people with low literacy while also lowering opportunities for fraud. Each real person will only ever be able to create one account, and no one will ever be able to steal their account. For businesses, a network full of real people is a dream come true, for reasons that are self-evident." Source
Nearshore Systems announced two online lending platform development partnerships at LendIt USA 2017; the software engineering firm was chosen by Dianrong to support the efforts of the firm's new blockchain-based solution; Nearshore was also selected by US-based Hijro to support the development of the firm's trade finance platform built on distributed ledger technology. Source
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said he thinks bitcoin is “certainly something more than just a fad,” according to a Bloomberg report; he also stated that the concept of anonymous currency is interesting because of the privacy it provides; while he has yet to invest in the technology he does see more regulatory control coming soon. Source.
City A.M. reports on Sydney-based Othera's use of blockchain for improving liquidity in online lending; Othera is a P2P lender; once its loans are made, it has developed a process through blockchain operations that can assign loan portions to tokens that can then be tracked through blockchain operations and sold on an exchange; the firm already uses blockchain for all of its lending operations and has a global patent pending for the tokens. Source
The solution lies in blockchain-powered protocols that increase transparency and efficiencies while handling compliance for workflows.