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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #Blockchain Technologists And Finance Veterans Collaborate To Bring Blockchain To Capital Markets $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:15 AM on Thursday, January 31st, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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Blockchain Technologists And Finance Veterans Collaborate To Bring Blockchain To Capital Market

  • Bridging old-world and new-world finance is something that blockchain technology has aimed to achieve since bitcoin was first released in January 2009.
  • Ten years later, this is coming to fruition as blockchain-based solutions designed to enable faster, more transparent, peer-to-peer financial transactions are coming to market.

 Rachel Wolfson Contributor

According to Sam Tabar, co-founder of Fluidity, in order for capital markets to evolve, industry veterans need to join forces with blockchain technologists to truly bring blockchain’s fundamental technology to today’s financial markets.  

“If you look at the industry landscape, to date there has not been a comprehensive platform built by blockchain technology professionals and structured finance veterans,” says Tabar.

In order to bridge this gap, Fluidity, a company that provides technology services to registered broker-dealers, issuers and financial institutions for tokenized securities, has joined forces with Propellr, an end-to-end solution for creating, managing, and servicing digitally held assets with an integrated FINRA-registered broker dealer.

Announced today, Propellr and Fluidity have created “Fluidity Factora,” a new, out-of-stealth company that takes complex financial assets, breaks them down into their basic factors, and encodes them to a blockchain. This enables standardization, transparency, and liquidity, making markets more efficient, while reducing the need for middlemen.

The company is unique because it was built by finance and blockchain technology professionals with extensive expertise in their respective fields. The joint team previously published the Two Token Waterfall whitepaper, a liquidity optimized framework for private placement securities.

Propellr is a team of structured finance experts that continues to create institutional grade deals. Factora and AirSwap are an excellent complement of independent platforms, and are uniquely positioned as a full-stack solution to tokenize and trade real-world assets,” says Michael Oved, co-founder of AirSwap. “We’re excited to help push the blockchain world into this forefront: using the fundamental technology of blockchain to revolutionize the industries that need it.”

Simply put, this team takes a new approach to blockchain, mainly by uniting it with structured finance.

Blockchain gives us a tremendous opportunity to make financial information standardized, normalized, and transparent across capital markets,” says Todd Lippiatt, Propellr’s founder and CEO, and co-founder of Fluidity Factora. “We are not trying to become capital raisers, but are focused on building technology with institutional partners in order to establish easily adoptable infrastructure. We’re thrilled to join forces with the minds behind Fluidity.”

Bringing Blockchain Technology With Traditional Capital Markets

In addition to the unique team behind Fluidity Factora, the company’s initial offerings are focused on tokenizing real estate assets. As regulated institutions increasingly move into the blockchain space, tokenizing digital assets is predicted to be a major trend for 2019.

“Tokenizing assets creates a clear, instant, and elegant solution, simplifying complicated industries. Smart contracts lower friction for investors and issuers, making everything replicable and scalable, all while enabling a fluid digital marketplace,” says venture capitalist Bill Tai.

Furthermore, tokenizing assets, such as real estate, could also help solve the problem of illiquidity.

“The private securities market is historically opaque and illiquid; it is on the investor to vet the quality of an investment vehicle, and once committed she/he holds it for the life of the investment. With Factora, incorporating blockchain technology presents the industry with an opportunity to take a significant step forward,” says Lippiatt.

Additionally, trade settlement and servicing are generally bespoke in nature. A blockchain-based solution helps standardize these constructs, ensuring confidence in symmetrical information and transparency.

“The infrastructure behind privately placed securities has barely evolved in 25 years, which is staggering for a constantly evolving market. This team is upgrading the infrastructure in accordance with best practices from both the blockchain and financial industries to create one cohesive framework,” says Donna Redel of the World Economic Forum.

Ultimately, blockchain technology could push forward an industry that has not evolved in a generation, finally creating a true bridge between traditional and new world finance.

Subject to regulatory approval, Propellr is becoming Fluidity Factora.

You can follow Rachel Wolfson on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest cryptocurrency happenings.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelwolfson/2019/01/30/blockchain-technologists-and-finance-veterans-collaborate-to-bring-blockchain-to-capital-markets/#73234f9278ce

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – 5 #Blockchain Trends Everyone Should Know About

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 8:51 AM on Monday, January 28th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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  • Many big players including IBM and Walmart are continuing to push ahead, confident it can provide real value for organizations in need of innovative solutions around record keeping and secure recording of transactions.

Bernard Marr

Blockchain traveled a rocky road in 2018 but is still hotly tipped as a technology with huge potential for transforming business and day-to-day life.

The past year saw huge drops in value for its flagship use case – cryptocurrency Bitcoin – and reports that many pilot programs are failing to show true value. However, many big players including IBM and Walmart are continuing to push ahead, confident it can provide real value for organizations in need of innovative solutions around record keeping and secure recording of transactions.

5 Blockchain Trends Everyone Should Know About

So, here are my five predictions for how we’re likely to see blockchain use growing and continuing to make headlines – although they may be slightly less hyperbolic – in 2019.

Less Hype and Scams, More Substance

Any new technology has the potential to attract snake-oil salesman, and perhaps blockchain attracted more than most. This meant that 2018 saw regulators stepping in, meaning that those offering “miracle solutions” and get-rich-quick schemes built (or not built) on blockchain should be far less visible in the next 12 months.

What we should see instead is results of more considered, mature endeavors in the blockchain arena. Businesses such as Walmart that is investing in solutions designed to shore up food safety standards in the wake of crises such as 2018’s E.coli outbreak. Walmart’s solution means anyone involved in the supply of certain products will be able to trace individual items back to the farm where they were grown, using a tamper-proof distributed database.

Amazon is also announcing blockchain projects for this year – with two blockchain initiatives aiming to enable its AWS customers to take advantage of distributed ledger technology in their own projects.

With big players like those two (and others) entering the game, it seems certain that blockchain will start to demonstrate that it can bring real value during 2019.

The Blockchain and Internet of Things Convergence Continues to Gather Pace

According to one report, the use of blockchain technology to secure data and devices in the internet of things (IoT) doubled during 2018. This trend is likely to continue next year and beyond, as more organizations wake up to the potential of distributed, encrypted ledger technology in this field. The powerful encryption used to secure blockchains means that attackers need a vast amount of computing power to brute-force their way into just one node. Additionally, their decentralized nature means attackers can’t bypass security by disabling a single-point-of-failure with, for example, a denial-of-service attack.

As well as security, blockchain offers utility benefits in the IoT field, too. With the number of connected devices predicted to top 26 billion during 2019, vast amounts of machine-to-machine communication will be taking place, at far too high a speed for humans to keep up manually. Experts predict that blockchains will increasingly be used to log and monitor these communications and transactions, and although this convergence is at a very early stage, 2019 will see an explosion in its use.

More Blockchain Offerings from the Financial Services Industry

Cryptocurrency values may have taken a hammering during 2018, due in no small part to a bursting of the speculative bubble built up around the arrival of such potentially transformative technology.

But the mainstream financial services industry was undoubtedly shaken by the emergence of this tech and the potential it has to disrupt their businesses. So much so that it seems likely they will be at the forefront of the next wave, when it comes crashing in.  One example is Bakkt, the Bitcoin-based futures trading platform planned by ICE, the operator the New York Stock Exchange.

In developing markets particularly, where much of the population is labeled “unbankable” due to institutions’ inability or unwillingness to connect them to its services, start-ups are likely to lead the way with innovative services built around blockchains and digital, fraud-resistant currencies, storage, and transfer mechanisms.

More Investment Opportunities

Not just in quirky, unknown cryptocurrencies with unproven use cases – blockchain technology makes it possible to offer and track investments in a whole range of asset classes that traditionally have been the preserve of institutional investors and the wealthy.

For example, tokenization lowers the bar to entry for investment in property, potentially allowing more liquid trading of high-value assets and allowing more of us a slice of the pie of the growth (or losses) they can generate. Regulation will be needed before these investment opportunities will be considered safe enough for everyday investors to take part, and as we’ve seen over the last year, this certainly seems to be on its way.

Art, fine wines and property are all examples of investment assets that traditionally were only an option for well-off investors with the luxury of being able to put capital in up-front and be in no hurry for their investment to pay off. With regulation in place, everyday investors can purchase digitally-backed “shares” in these asset classes and sell them off when they need to liquidate their funds.

Additionally, blockchain-based “smart contracts” are designed to reduce the reliance on middlemen such as brokers and lawyers when establishing these transactions, further lowering the costs and barriers to entry.

Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) will still be big business

I’m not going to be stupid or irresponsible enough to predict that the value of cryptocurrencies is going to shoot into the stratosphere (again) in 2019. As I’ve said before, speculating on the value of these digital assets isn’t my business, and if the tumultuous volatility of recent years proves anything, it’s that no one can accurately predict what will happen next.

One thing that is clear, though, is that cryptocurrencies are far from dead. Using the Bitcoin price as a benchmark, prices are still some ten times higher than they were two years ago, and trading volumes on exchanges show there is still a healthy appetite for speculative investment.

And that’s before we even start to consider the possible future of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Ripple and Tether, that all promise to improve on Bitcoin in some way – offering more utility, security or speed.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/01/28/5-blockchain-trends-everyone-should-know-about/#20f9e8ab3bb9

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – #Nasdaq Leads $20 Million Investment in Enterprise #Blockchain Startup #Symbiont $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 12:51 PM on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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Nasdaq Leads $20 Million Investment in Enterprise Blockchain Startup Symbiont

NASDAQ FMC TOWER© 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP

  • Nasdaq today made its largest investment in enterprise blockchain, leading a $20 million Series B in Symbiont,
  • a startup working to bring new kinds of assets that are custodied by blockchain to mainstream adoption.

The investment, which also includes Citi Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and Raptor Group, marks the latest escalation in an arms race among traditional exchanges looking to capitalize on the technology that was once thought of as an existential threat.

Instead of being disintermediated by blockchain technology, which like bitcoin offers the potential for counterparties to move value without a trusted third party, exchanges like Nasdaq and others are partnering with those companies to study the technology and, increasingly, to use it.

As part of today’s investment, Nasdaq is also announcing a commercial integration that could see the company, which runs 26 exchanges for equities, options, bonds, derivatives and commodities in the United States,  Scandinavia, the Baltic region, Armenia, and others, expand into new areas.

“We see this huge opportunity to be able to go all over the globe with Nasdaq,” said Symbiont cofounder and CEO Mark Smith. “And use this marketplace solution from origination to finality, including ways you can buy and transact new types of instruments backed by our smart-contract technology.”

The Series B investment brings the total amount raised by Symbiont to $36 million, with previous investors including Fenbushi Capital and Medici Ventures, Overstock.com’s blockchain investment arm. This is the first time investing in Symbiont for each of the Series B investors. The terms of the investment are not being disclosed.

The investment comes at a time when leading cryptocurrency startups are cutting back on staff after last year’s catastrophic drop in prices. Smith says most of the money will be spent to move out of the WeWork offices in front of the famous Wall Street bull statue that have served as the company’s home for the past five years, and to hire new blockchain engineers. Symbiont has grown quickly recently, doubling its staff to 30 employees in 2017 and doubling aging in 2018. While Smith doesn’t expect that rate of growth to continue, he says most of the recent investment will be spent on new hires.

“The overwhelming place we’ll be spending that money is continuing to grow our team,” he added.

Unlike public blockchains such as bitcoin and ethereum that anyone can build on, and permissioned blockchains developed by IBM, R3 and others and given away to the open source community, Symbiont’s blockchain and smart-contract solution, Assembly, was built for permissioned use from the beginning.

Assembly lets users originate and issue traditional securities, what Smith calls “smart instruments,” and acts as the sole custodian of the assets. By integrating with the Nasdaq Financial Framework (NFF) for building financial applications, Smith says, Assembly will help the exchange streamline the process for finding, executing and settling liquidity.

Startups and larger clients of Nasdaq—and Symbiont’s other partners—can then use Assembly to build solutions for a wide range of marketplaces, including tokenized ownership of real-estate and artwork, both of which would be new lines of business for Nasdaq. Importantly, the commercial integration between Symbiont’s Assembly and NFF is not exclusive. Both companies are free to work with competitors.

Symbiont’s existing customers include investing management giant Vanguard, financial data provider Ipreo, purchased by IHS Markit in 2018, and Lewis Ranieri, an early proponent of mortgage-backed securities. Symbiont also played a pivotal role in helping the state of Delaware pass a number of new measures designed to give companies confidence that shares they issue on a blockchain will be legally recognized.

While Delaware’s new administration has largely pivoted from its original plan and is now working with IBM on an alternative, Smith revealed today that former Delaware governor Jack Markell now serves on Symbiont’s board of directors. “The new administration took a wait-and-see approach,” said Smith, alluding to the potential impact blockchain could have on Delaware’s existing business model. “They wanted to see how it would affect their constituents.”

Nasdaq and Citi had already invested in blockchain startup Chain, a potential Symbiont competitor that was acquired by the Stellar Development Foundation, the organization behind the Lumen (XLM) cryptocurrency, currently valued at $2 billion. In turn, Chain helped Nasdaq and Citi build Linq, an early end-to-end solution for instantly settling private securities, first tested in 2015. Other Nasdaq blockchain investments include Paris-based Stratumn, which builds enterprise blockchain applications, and CFTC-regulation cryptocurrency trading platform, ErisX, which recently added ethereum cofounder Joe Lubin to its board of directors.

Showing a possible path forward for Nasdaq, which has 3,400 companies listed on its exchanges, one of its biggest competitors, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), recently announced it was opening its own cryptocurrency exchange, Bakkt, later this month, after making its own batch of exploratory blockchain investments.

“We are committed to discovering and investing in innovative technologies to help build our future market infrastructure,” said Gary Offner, head of Nasdaq Ventures, in a statement. “We are pleased to support this important, growing area for creating unique institutional applications of blockchain technology.”

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/01/23/exclusive-nasdaq-leads-20-million-investment-in-enterprise-blockchain-startup-symbiont/#5651bfc346d1

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – MIT Professor: Blockchain Can Allow for More Inclusive, Borderless Economy $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:13 AM on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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MIT Professor: Blockchain Can Allow for More Inclusive, Borderless Economy

  • “Only a true decentralized system, where the power is really so spread that is going to be essentially practically impossible to attack them all and when you don’t need to trust this or that particular node, is going to bring actually the security we really need and deserve.”

By Helen Partz

Blockchain can allow for the creation of a borderless economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Silvio Micali claimed in a interview on Bloomberg’s Daybreak Asia, Jan. 21.

Speaking on the show, Micali outlined three major properties of blockchain systems that must function simultaneously to enable a more inclusive and borderless economy — security, decentralization and scalability. According to MIT’s Ford Professor of Engineering, until recently, only two of those three basic properties could have been achieved simultaneously at any time.

When asked about scalability in particular, Micali stressed that a decentralized system really needs superior technology to provide the same level of participation and confidence that is enjoyed by centralized systems.

When asked about security breaches in blockchain systems, Micali stated that centralized systems are far more vulnerable to hacking attempts, pointing to the frequency of security and privacy breaches that repeatedly take place among centralized institution of various sorts.

The professor expressed optimism about blockchain in terms of security, noting the level of security built into the concept of a trustless system:

“Only a true decentralized system, where the power is really so spread that is going to be essentially practically impossible to attack them all and when you don’t need to trust this or that particular node, is going to bring actually the security we really need and deserve.”

Recently, a group of major United States universities, including MIT, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, announced the launch of Unit-e, a cryptocurrency project touted as a “globally scalable decentralized payments network.”

Earlier in January, MIT Technology Review issued an article claiming that 2019 will become the year when blockchain technology finally becomes normalized.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/mit-professor-blockchain-can-allow-for-more-inclusive-borderless-economy

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Why is $1 Billion Bitcoin Giant Bitfury Building a Blockchain Music Service? $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 8:54 AM on Monday, January 21st, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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  • An early bitcoin mining firm turned global blockchain company based out of London, has announced that it will launch an entertainment division tasked with developing an open-source music platform that runs on blockchain technology.

By CCN.com: The Bitfury Group, an early bitcoin mining firm turned global blockchain company based out of London, has announced that it will launch an entertainment division tasked with developing an open-source music platform that runs on blockchain technology.

From Mining Bitcoin to Tracking Music IP on a Blockchain

Tech companies trying to make waves in the music industry is nothing new. Bitfury is a significant player in the blockchain industry, however, which makes this foray particularly interesting. The aim of decentralizing the music industry has long been a pipedream but could now be closer to reality.

The open-source platform, labeled SurroundTM, will purportedly simplify the safe transferal of copyright assets. At the very core of the project is the creation of an environment that allows musicians to manage their affairs far more efficiently. This includes monitoring their output, being able to see what works, and — most importantly — what doesn’t. According to Bitfury, SurroundTM will lead the way in promoting innovation within the music industry.

Bitfury wants to be more than just a bitcoin mining company. | Source: Shutterstock

Speaking to Reuters, Bitfury Surround CEO Stefan Schulz commented:

There is a very strong momentum for an open entertainment-related blockchain where market participants themselves would be participating in the market venue, not only from a transactional point of view.

The platform itself will look to provide a digital system for both monetizing and sharing intellectual property. Based out of Europe with a presence in Amsterdam and Berlin, offices in Tokyo, LA, Moscow, and Seoul are set to follow. Schulz, a veteran of the entertainment and music industry, said that although “the actual platform is being put together and developed as we speak,” it wouldn’t be near completion for quite a while.

Bitfury isn’t the only major firm to eye blockchain as a solution to copyright management. Via a licensing agreement, Kodak‘s blockchain platform also offers photographers the ability to register their images and secure their intellectual property.

Bitfury Becomes Bitcoin Mining’s Latest Unicorn

Recently valued at $1 billion, The Bitfury Group raised $80 million from investors late last year, including Mike Novogratz-led merchant bank Galaxy Digital. The former Fortress Investment Group hedge fund manager’s contribution helped push Bitfury’s valuation into the “blockchain unicorn” category inhabited by firms such as Bitmain, Coinbase, and Circle.

Source: https://www.ccn.com/why-is-1-billion-bitcoin-giant-bitfury-building-a-blockchain-music-service/

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – The $100B Blockchain Proof Of Concept Hiding In Plain Sight $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 2:03 PM on Thursday, January 10th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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The $100B Blockchain Proof Of Concept Hiding In Plain Sight

  • Last year, perceptions of blockchain technology were caught in the crossfire of both cryptocurrency’s swift peak and dramatic plunge.
  • It’s not surprising: cryptocurrency is the first and most visible application of blockchains, and many people think they are one and the same.

Alison McCauley

What’s hiding behind crypto winter? Blockchain development, gathering disruptive energy.Getty

Are you measuring the health of the blockchain industry by the cryptocurrency market? If so, you’re missing the real story.

Last year, perceptions of blockchain technology were caught in the crossfire of both cryptocurrency’s swift peak and dramatic plunge. It’s not surprising: cryptocurrency is the first and most visible application of blockchains, and many people think they are one and the same. It may be convenient and easy to use price or market cap to summarize the industry narrative. But it’s incorrect. The blockchain space is vast, spanning industries, each with different adoption curves and opportunities—and the nuanced value of the nascent technology isn’t reflected in these numbers. In fact, focusing on these metrics obscures what is really happening inside the space, putting execs at risk of developing blind spots that hide potentially disruptive development as it gathers steam.

But as billions poured into cryptocurrency in 2018, we did we learn something meaningful.  The world got a high-stakes proof of concept exploring if blockchains could really be a way to safely transfer digital value from one party to another. Even as large-scale hacks of companies with poor custody practices filled the news, millions of people around the world contributed to a global battle test to see if the technology could safely hold or transfer, at times, well over a hundred billion dollars of digital value in the form of blockchain-driven cryptocurrency. This revealed challenges ahead (the need to evolve consensus and governance mechanisms, improve user experience, and get to regulatory clarity, to name just a few). But it also showed us that yes, blockchains can safely transfer digital value.

So how are businesses reacting? Corporations are paying attention, working hard to understand how this functionality translates to their industry, and how it shapes potential disruption. Here are several insider perspectives on where we are today, and where companies are investing in the technology as we go into 2019:

Jessica Groopman, Industry Analyst and Founding Partner, Kaleido Insights:

The market seems to be entering a winter, as AI did two or three times before its commercial boom. These kinds of shakeouts are ultimately a good thing because they help distinguish fact from fantasy. There are signals that suggest this will be a mild winter, rather than a full hibernation. First, several adjacent spaces that will influence adoption are growing, like AI, encryption techniques, and digital identity management. Second, we see some steps towards mainstreaming, with regulatory actions, consolidation in crypto-exchanges like Coinbase, and virtually all of the world’s largest technology companies building dedicated blockchain-based teams and products. Third, investment is moving away from speculation, such as in ICOs, and towards practical investmentslike smart contracts platforms, data exchanges, and prime use cases. One of most powerful things blockchain has done for business is teach us to think blockchain, i.e. to question the efficacy of centralized processes and think about value chains more strategically.

Brian Lio, CEO of research and advisory firm Smith + Crown:

The current markets are a poor reflection of the actual pace and type of development that is going on right now. We are seeing increasingly large brands and sophisticated multi-national organizations realize this technology has the potential for both disruption and opportunity. They are starting to perceive there is risk in leaving it up to others to figure out first. More and more companies are understanding they need to build their front lines, to understand the power this technology offers so they can start to prepare for or even take a lead in building what a blockchain-influenced future looks like for their particular industry. It’s happening across quite a few industries. Companies are becoming more public about their exploration, but we are also seeing thoughtful, innovative foundational work being done behind the scenes as well.

David Post, Managing Director, IBM Blockchain Ventures

We have a high degree of confidence that 2019 will be the year that enterprise blockchain networks—especially those addressing strategic industry use cases—will begin to emerge at scale. Blockchain business models will continue to mature, with both companies and the venture community helping to shape how these blockchain networks evolve. A variety of compelling concepts are emerging in financial services, supply chain, and media and entertainment. And we will see strategically important networks move to production, as companies partner with startups to solve complex challenges via the improved trust and transparency delivered by blockchains.

Linda Pawczuk, principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP

As we head into 2019, supply chain continues to be one of the largest enterprise applications for the technology—in a recent survey we found 53% of the execs surveyed stated they have ongoing supply chain use cases for blockchain. We’re seeing pharmaceutical companies, logistics providers, retailers, government agencies, and technology firms all working to enhance logistics network visibility via blockchain technology. We’re also seeing increased investment in digital recordation, digital identity and IoT from corporates. In the same survey, greater than 44% claimed to be working on an active use case using blockchain in at least one of these spaces.

Lou Kerner, Founding Partner of venture firm and advisory CryptoOracle:

Shakeouts are a natural part of our economic system.  Economies with no shakeouts are the unhealthy ones.  We’re still in the infrastructure phase of investing, building the rails that the industry will use to grow applications and services, and companies like R3 (enterprise blockchain), Coinbase (trading platform), Circle (finance company), and Ledger (wallet) are still attracting investment. The crypto bulls, like myself, believe crypto is a thing.  The question is less ‘if’, than ‘when’.  The companies getting the most funding today either have rapidly growing user bases or have great teams going after large opportunities, like stablecoins.

These insiders paint a measured counterpoint to the gloom and doom of headlines focused on crypto markets. However, “crypto winter” has certainly impacted blockchain entrepreneurs, with the price drop triggering sometimes fatal collateral damage to young businesses. Smith + Crown’s ICO Tracker shows the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market chilled from 113 in December 2017 to just three in December 2018 . Poor treasury management practices created cash crises for upstart companies that kept funds in cryptocurrency after an ICO. Consensys and Steemit, two well-known firms in the space, reported layoffs in December while many smaller companies are quietly shutting down.

But as the market plunged, it released another kind of pressure. The misperception of cryptocurrency price as an indicator of blockchain potential had triggered overinflated expectations of blockchain technology. In the (relative) quiet after the fall, blockchain entrepreneurs now have the space in which to explore how to build on last year’s work to create something truly meaningful. From the outside, and next to 2018’s drama, measured but steady progress may feel almost boring. But inside the community, something very exciting continues to brew. It just requires more nuanced perception to see it.

I am the founder and CEO of Unblocked Future, a consultancy that helps executives to drive adoption at the forefront of emerging tech. We help companies communicate their vision, resonate with stakeholders, and activate communities for change. I’m also the author of ‘Unblock…

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2018/12/11/these-innovative-technologies-are-making-the-steel-industry-more-efficient/#689fcaaeb861

Posted in All Recent Posts, Bitcoin, Blockchain stocks, Canadian Blockchain Stocks, Smallcap Blockchain stocks, ThreeD, ThreeD Capital | Comments Off on ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – The $100B Blockchain Proof Of Concept Hiding In Plain Sight $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – US Department of Energy to Fund #Blockchain Research Projects $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 5:08 PM on Wednesday, January 9th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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  • The U.S. Department of Energy has announced federal funding of up to $4.8 million for universities working on R&D projects, including those related to blockchain.

Yogita Khatri

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced federal funding of up to $4.8 million for universities working on R&D projects, including those related to blockchain.

Announced Monday, the funding is being made available through the department’s Office of Fossil Energy as a part of the “University Training and Research” initiative aimed to develop fossil energy applications.

Projects under the initiative are aimed at achieving various objectives, including the development of early-stage technologies for more affordable domestic energy resources and improved electric grids, the department said.

One of the areas being targeted for funding is blockchain technology that would “secure process signal data and other information flows within distributed sensor networks for fossil-based power generation systems.”

Other potential projects not necessarily including blockchain include those that would explore advanced computing resources for coal plants to generate analytical results, improve water reuse processes, and investigate physical and biological sciences to measure chemical elements within coal fly ash.

The department said it funds research and development projects to reduce the “risk and cost” of advanced fossil fuel-based energy technologies and make more sustainable use of fossil resources in the U.S.

This is not the first time that the department has looked to explore blockchain for technological improvements. Last January, it partnered with BlockCypher to develop solutions allowing energy transactions to be settled across multiple blockchains.

And, in July 2018, the department awarded a grant of nearly $1 million to a Colorado-based blockchain startup Grid7 in a move aimed to advance the development of a decentralized energy grid.

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/us-department-of-energy-to-fund-blockchain-research-projects

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Apple $AAPL and Tesla $TSLA shares on the #blockchain could be the next big thing in #crypto $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:15 AM on Tuesday, January 8th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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  • Security tokens — digital versions of financial securities like stocks and bonds — are becoming a new buzzword in crypto.
  • Analysts and executives in the industry see security tokens as a development that could reinvigorate the cryptocurrency space.
  • A key difference setting security tokens apart from other cryptocurrencies is that they are asset-backed and fall within regulatory parameters, experts say.

The Apple logo is displayed at the Nasdaq MarketSite just before the opening bell in New York on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011. Scott Eells | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cryptocurrencies had a wild 2018, tumbling well below some of the record highs seen toward the end of 2017.

Bitcoin, once worth almost $20,000, plunged last year, closing out 2018 at a price below $4,000. Other major virtual currencies, including XRP and ether, also fell steeply.

Analysts and executives in the industry are increasingly pointing to a fairly new development that could reinvigorate the space: putting securities like stocks and bonds on the blockchain.

So-called security tokens are becoming a new buzzword in crypto. The term is part of a phenomenon in the industry known as “tokenization” — turning real-world assets into digital tokens.

In the case of security tokens, tradable assets like equity and fixed income are transformed into digital assets that use blockchain technology, the virtual ledger of activity that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

Security tokens had been talked about for some time, but now one firm is looking to put them to the test.

On Monday, DX.Exchange, an Estonia-based crypto firm, launched a trading platform that lets investors buy shares of popular Nasdaq-listed companies, including Apple, Tesla, Facebook and Netflix, indirectly through security tokens.

Each token is backed by one share of the company traders want to invest in and entitles them to the same cash dividends.

“The crypto community has been talking about security tokens for well over a year now without much progress, so we think the impact will be huge,” Amedeo Moscato, DX’s chief operating officer, told CNBC by email over the weekend.

“By tokenizing stocks of some of the biggest publicly-traded companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and more, we are opening an untapped market of millions of old and new traders around the globe cutting out the middleman. ”

watch now VIDEO02:40 What is a security token?

Investors will be able to trade the digital stocks round-the-clock, even after markets close, DX says.

“The ability to trade around the clock, with a range of currencies, offers investors both convenience and liquidity,” Dan Doney, co-founder and chief executive of fintech firm Securrency told CNBC by email over the weekend.

But Doney questioned whether DX’s exchange was sound on the regulatory front.

“We’re unsure and even skeptical of DX.Exchange’s model because we don’t think that it’s acceptable to list tokenized shares of a company without shareholder consent,” he said.

“However, we do think that the model can meet regulatory standards if executed properly.”

DX stressed that its digital stocks are classed as derivatives — with the underlying asset being equity of 10 Nasdaq-listed firms — and that its platform is regulated under the European Union’s Mifid II directive. Mifid II, a set of reforms to EU investment services regulation, aims to protect investors and increase transparency and confidence in the industry post-crisis.

Cyprus-licensed firm MPS MarketPlace Securities is holding the stocks in a segregated account. DX built the platform on top of Nasdaq’s Matching Engine technology, which is used across more than 70 international markets.

Experts are pointing to the model as one that could provide a solid form of investment for traders — versus cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which have proven at times to be highly volatile — as well as a new potential source of fundraising for start-ups and large firms alike. ‘STO’

New security tokens can be issued and sold to investors, similar to how new digital tokens are sold through a crowdfunding method known as an initial coin offering (ICO). This is what’s known as a security token offering (STO).

ICOs were a source of much controversy in the crypto sphere in both 2017 and 2018, with China and South Korea banning the practice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rapping a number of ventures and founders over alleged illegal activities.

One supposed cryptocurrency start-up called Giza made off with more than $2 million through a fake ICO scam, a CNBC investigation last year showed.

Dubious as the murky world of ICOs is, the funding method at one point eclipsed early-stage venture capital funding. ICO projects raked in almost $6.6 billion in 2017 and $21.5 billion in 2018, according to data provided by ICO listing site CoinSchedule.

The difference with STOs, experts say, is that security tokens are asset-backed and fall within regulatory parameters.

“Security tokens use blockchain to allow for efficient transactions like cryptocurrencies, but are different in all other ways,” Securrency’s Doney said.

”(They) emphasize regulatory compliance, automated regulatory reporting, and represent share interest in value-producing assets. This ultimately provides stable value versus the volatility of crypto.”

Crowdfunding site Indiegogo delved into the world of STOs last year, hosting a platform that let investors indirectly own shares of a luxury ski resort by buying security tokens. That token sale brought in $18 million, according to VentureBeat.

Security tokens and STOs have been compared to “stablecoins,” cryptocurrencies pegged 1:1 to government-backed currencies to avoid the volatility typically seen in the cryptocurrency market. Stablecoins are seen as another potential area for growth in the crypto industry.

Goldman Sachs-backed fintech start-up Circle launched a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar last year, and Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire has told CNBC he thinks “all fiat currency will be crypto” one day.

“Cryptocurrencies and STOs will continue to evolve, and digital stocks are another step in that process,” Daniel Skowronski, DX’s chief executive, told CNBC by email. STOs to ‘ramp into the market’ by mid-2019

Advocates also say that security tokens could reduce the cost of listing a company on the stock market and that they will make it easier to trade less liquid assets like private equity.

And though it may be early days, one expert thinks the trend of tokenizing securities will become a major theme by mid-2019.

“In terms of timing, we hear that mid-2019 is the time-frame when most STOs will be able to ramp into the market,” Lex Soklin, partner and global director of fintech strategy at Autonomous Research, told CNBC by email.

“Given a longer regulatory approval process for these assets (rather than none for ICOs), entrepreneurs have a slower path to market. But perhaps a more stable one.”

Some even believe that, eventually, everything from artwork to real estate will be transformed into digital tokens.

“Over the next decade, we could very well see the tokenization of the entire financial markets,” Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro, said in a note last week.

“Essentially, anything that has value and can be traded can also be represented as a digital token and traded on a blockchain.”

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/bitcoin-security-token-and-sto-explained.html

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Falling Crypto Prices Aren’t Stopping Real Blockchain Progress $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 8:55 AM on Friday, January 4th, 2019

SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap exits. Click Here For More Information.

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Falling Crypto Prices Aren’t Stopping Real Blockchain Progress

  • While public exchanges have been consolidating their hold on the market, private blockchains are getting to work by delivering real business value for enterprises.
  • At EY, a number of systems entered production status, including our software licensing solution with Microsoft and a maritime insurance joint venture with Maersk and Guardtime.

Paul Brody   Jan 4, 2019 at 05:00 UTC  

Paul Brody is EY’s global innovation leader for blockchain. The views expressed are his own.

The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review. 

Plunging cryptocurrency values in 2018 and the collapse of the money-for-nothing white paper market in initial coin offerings (ICOs) took much of the focus last year for many people when it came to blockchain mindshare.

All of that marketplace drama, however, concealed an enormous amount of real progress for the technology that will, slowly but surely, lay the foundation for a robust revival of the blockchain markets in the future.

Over the last year, the market did provide lots of drama related to ICOs. Nearly a quarter of all the ICOs from 2017 lost most of their value, and the market as a whole declined by nearly two- thirds.

The first half of 2018 was no better. There were nearly 1,000 ICOs every month, but only 5% of them raised more than $1 million – with one, EOS, raising around $4 billion.

Not only did the bulk of the money raised go to a very small number of the ICOs, but nearly every aspect of the world of blockchain also became more consolidated and, dare I say, centralized, in 2018 – rather counterintuitive for blockchain, since decentralization is at its core.

Public blockchains consolidate

According to a study by EY that examined the ICOs’ progress and investment returns, ethereum, which is the dominant platform and shows the highest activity among developers and on social media, became even more dominant, with more than 95% of all ICOs and funds raised.

The market for exchanges consolidated rapidly as well, with 73% of daily trading volume in the first half of the year taken by the top 10 exchanges. Though the full-year numbers are yet to be updated, that trend seems set to continue.

The biggest exchanges are consolidating their positions in part by rapidly maturing their processes and approach to regulatory compliance. Know-your-customer procedures are being tightened and many of the big exchanges are, or soon will be, audited by some of the major financial services organizations (EY included). These same exchanges have been beefing up their security as well, with fewer large-scale thefts in 2018 than in 2017.

Another big trend last year in the world of public blockchains was the surge in popularity of stablecoins of all kinds, mostly based on fiat currencies. While stablecoins offer some advantages, including stability, they do raise the single most important question remaining for public blockchains: why are they useful?

Parking money in a stablecoin is beneficial if it’s between investments or purchases as a way to avoid volatility, but it’s not a very good investment in and of itself. The purpose of capital markets is to allocate capital to productive uses and, at least for the moment, that doesn’t seem to be happening. For public blockchains in 2019, this is the single most important question.

Private blockchains deliver

While public exchanges have been consolidating their hold on the market, private blockchains are getting to work by delivering real business value for enterprises. At EY, a number of systems entered production status, including our software licensing solution with Microsoft and a maritime insurance joint venture with Maersk and Guardtime.

Looking at the enterprise space, there are three key learnings from the work with blockchain in 2018.

First and foremost, the biggest rule in blockchain seems to be: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Over and over again, when companies are working on projects where blockchain seemed to be an excellent fit, they did not move forward because they already found a solution to their problem. Despite the fact that blockchain in nearly every case would be better, that isn’t necessarily enough to justify replacing already existing processes, given the cost and risk.

Second, and very closely related to the first learning, is the primacy of solving real problems. While chief innovation officers sometimes love to do blockchain proofs of concept, the technology is far past that. It’s all about the focus on productizing and solving solutions for line-of-business executives — with real ROI. If one can, with confidence, point to an ROI from a solution, then there’s no need to worry about which blockchain platform or future comes to pass. There is a return from this investment, no matter what.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is clear that companies are prioritizing operations before finance. While tracking products and assets as they move through the supply chain is useful, there are a lot of financial services that could add value, from the very simple approach “payment upon delivery,” to complex services like factoring receivables and trade finance.

However, in most cases, companies want to achieve confidence in their operational systems before closing the loop with payments and financial services, a challenge they will start to take up at the start of 2019.

Ladder image via Shutterstock

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/falling-crypto-prices-arent-stopping-real-blockchain-progress

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ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca Announces Commitment of USD$500,000 In TODAQ $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 8:12 AM on Thursday, January 3rd, 2019
  • Announced that it has committed USD$500,000 to acquire 248,201 Preferred Series A-1 Stock in TODAQ Holdings Inc.
  • TODAQ is a blockchain powered “bank of the future” that offers both a supply chain solutions platform and a consumer solutions platform to enterprises, banks, and smart cities for all their asset and money transactions.

TORONTO, Jan. 03, 2019 — ThreeD Capital Inc. (the “Company”) (CSE:IDK), a Canadian-based venture capital firm focused on investments in promising, early stage companies and ICOs with disruptive capabilities is pleased to announce that it has committed USD$500,000 to acquire 248,201 Preferred Series A-1 Stock (the “Subject Shares”) in TODAQ Holdings Inc. (“TODAQ”).  The Subject Shares represent approximately 1.3% of all issued and outstanding preferred and common shares of TODAQ as of January 3, 2019.  The Subject Shares will be acquired in a series of private placements and not through the facilities of any stock exchange.  The Company, through the preferred stock acquisition, will also receive Toda Notes (“TDN”) royalty rights to approximately 176 million TDN out of a total supply of 237 TDN, representing approximately 0.13% of the total TDN supply. 

TODAQ is a blockchain powered “bank of the future” that offers both a supply chain solutions platform and a consumer solutions platform to enterprises, banks, and smart cities for all their asset and money transactions.  It intends to also provide these clients access to value added finance and insurance services.  Its solutions are powered by the TODA Protocol, a soon to be open source fourth generation public and ledgerless blockchain that provides secure and efficient management for the ownership of any type of digital assets.  It is a decentralized technology that is efficient enough to be run on only low power mobile devices (without crypto mining),  and settle P2P one-way and two-way atomic swap transactions in half a minute, requiring close to zero electricity. 

The value proposition for TODAQ’s clients include: major cost reduction of transaction, reconciliation, escrow, trade finance, and insurance fees; improved data quality and auditability that can easily be integrated to ERP, AI, and other management systems; and frictionless interoperability with customers as well as supply chain and distribution partners.   TODAQ is currently commercializing and executing its first contracts including a sharing economy project in Korea covering tens of thousands of urban residents, an oil & gas supply chain project in Europe and the Middle East, followed by mining, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and education projects.  TODAQ’s solutions platforms are based on a software as a service recurring revenue model.

The Toda Note is a USD-backstopped digital note designed to accelerate commerce and industry as well as complement existing fiat currencies (which can also be put directly on the Toda blockchain).  Due to the TODA Protocol’s efficiency, TDN is not needed to settle or reach consensus on protocol-based transactions of other TODA based digital assets.  There will be a total of 237 TDN cryptographically generated, with a distribution period of about a decade to place the entire supply into the global market.  Any node or low power device taking part in distributed consensus or settlement work can also have a very small probability of generating a net new TDN so that there is a slow but capped inflation of the overall TDN supply over time. 

The target market for TDN is individuals, businesses and organizations (which pass OECD know-your-client standards) that are building solutions and conducting real economy transactions on the TODA protocol.  Approximately 75% of the TDN supply will be directed towards this target market, approximately 15% is set aside to build the underlying USD backstop through private placement investment and secondary market exchanges, and 10% of the TDN supply is set aside for founding shareholders.  In the early stages, TDN distribution will focus on populations especially in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America in order to access the largest markets that can benefit from TODA’s unfair trust and efficiency advantage.

TDN will be distributed through a mechanism similar to a universal loyalty program where every TODA based node (wallet) will receive a small TDN grant.  As each node does work to settle transactions, add additional nodes to the protocol ecosystem, or execute commercial transactions, it can earn more TDN. TDN wallets will also be available for download to mobile devices from app stores in Q2 2019, and on activation can also receive TDN direct distribution.  

About ThreeD Capital Inc.

ThreeD is a publicly-traded Canadian-based venture capital firm focused on opportunistic investments in companies in the Junior Resources, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain sectors.  ThreeD seeks to invest in early stage, promising companies and ICOs where it may be the lead investor and can additionally provide investees with advisory services, mentoring and access to the Company’s ecosystem.

For further information:
Gerry Feldman, CPA, CA
Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary
[email protected]
Phone: 416-941-8900 ext 106

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