Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:00 PM on Thursday, April 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.
——————-
New $50 Million Fund Makes First Investment in Blockchain ID Startup
A new $50 million VC fund has been set up by Nasdaq-listed company Okta to invest in early-stage technology startups, including those working with blockchain
Okta, which provides identity management solutions, announced the Okta Ventures Fund Wednesday, adding that it has made its first investment in blockchain-based identity startup Trusted Key
Trusted Key was founded by former Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec executives and offers decentralized digital identity solutions allowing organizations to “work together as ecosystems to share strongly proofed user identities with user consent.â€
Through its venture fund, Okta said it will invest in startups that
are focused on building innovative solutions around its core businesses
using blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The San Francisco-based firm’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Frederic Kerrest, said:
“In line with Okta’s vision of enabling any organization to use any
technology, Okta Ventures will invest in the growing ecosystem of
startups tackling issues like identity, security, and privacy.â€
Besides providing investment capital, Okta plans to provide its
portfolio companies with additional support, including the use of its
software and co-marketing opportunities.
Founded in 2009, Okta has raised total funding of over $229 million,
according to Crunchbase. The firm is also backed by notable investors,
including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures and
others.
Okta went public in
the U.S. in April 2017, raising $187 million via an initial public
offering (IPO) that saw 11 million shares sold at $17 apiece. The share
price of the company has risen sharply since and is currently trading at around $89.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:19 AM on Thursday, March 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.
——————-
Why Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey Are Warming to Blockchain
Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and
a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency
Initiative.
The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers.
“Left to their own devices, computer scientists would recreate the Soviet Union.â€
That line belongs to Preston McAfee,
an economist whose job history includes senior positions at tech giants
such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. As he explained to an audience at
the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, recently, it refers to software
engineers’ tendency to favor centralization as the most efficient design
principle for any computing system.
The point, he said, is that decentralized networks, such as those
based on blockchain models, can often enable more positive overall
social outcomes despite the relative inefficiency of their
command-and-control architecture. It’s useful to contemplate this idea,
and McAfee’s colorful metaphor, in relation to the current state of play
on the Internet.
For the first time since they emerged as the victors of the
post-dot-com bubble shakeout at the turn of the century, the platforms
that dominate our online lives are running up against the social limits
of their centralized models.
A backlash is emerging against “surveillance capitalism†and against
the broad strategy of mining users’ data to capture audience for
advertisers and to shape consumer behavior. Manifest as both political
pressure and user rebellion, it is forcing a design rethink at these
companies.
Perhaps the Internet is facing its Berlin Wall moment.
This is ultimately why some of the principles underlying blockchains
and cryptocurrency technologies are finding favor in the business
development strategies – or at least in the PR signaling – of social
media companies.
Warming to Decentralized Models
Facebook especially has attracted much attention in this area.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently made a bombshell post outlining a “privacy-focused vision for social networking†that suggested a move to embrace end-to-end encryption of users’ data on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
In a separate post of a video interview
with Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain, Zuckerberg speculated on
the prospect of Facebook using a blockchain model to enable
decentralized logins without its servers acting as authenticators. All
this came around the time The New York Times reported that Facebook is
developing a digital currency that its users can trade among each other
and exchange on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appears to have gotten religion
when it comes to cryptocurrencies. He has declared that bitcoin will be
the “native currency of the Internet,†has invested in Lightning Labs, which is developing payment channels for bitcoin based on the lightning network, and recently announced that Square, the separate payments company that he heads, will hire crypto engineers and likely pay them in bitcoin.
It’s fair to say there is a significant degree of skepticism that
social media companies, having made fortunes out of a centralized model
that accumulates user data, will change their stripes.
Facebook, in particular, has come under criticism from pundits who
argue that it won’t be able to shift its business model. Given data
abuse scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica affair, skeptics such as
cryptocurrency pioneer David Chaum argue that Zuckerberg’s
decentralization and privacy mantra is nothing more than a PR message.
But the departure of certain senior executives, including those who
oversaw the development of the centralized data-gathering model and the
algorithms that mine that data to deliver audiences to advertisers, has
led others to conclude that Zuckerberg is indeed serious.
Winds of Change
One thing’s clear: there’s pressure for change, whether it comes in substance or merely in message.
Much like citizens who reach a breaking point and rebel against
political leaders who act in their own interests rather than those of
the public, users of these social media platforms are starting to signal
that they won’t stand for data abuses.
Obviously, without users, these businesses fail. So, these companies
are now contemplating a revised model in which, to paraphrase Bruce
Schneier, users are no longer the product but the customer.
It’s an open question whether such companies can make money on a
model in which the nodes in the network are free from control by the
center. But let’s continue with the McAfee-inspired metaphor and
contemplate how governments in capitalist economies accrue power and
influence when their citizens are empowered to transact with each other.
Similarly, we can imagine how a Facebook or a Twitter that helps its
vast number of users conduct peer-to-peer exchanges can extract great
value from the expansion of such networks.
Either way, the winds of change are coming to the centralized systems
of the Internet. Whether the incumbents survive those changes, or
whether they go the way of, say, MySpace is not clear. More important,
let’s consider what might arise in their place and how smoothly we
transition to the new era.
These are questions for developers of decentralized solutions such as
those enabled by blockchain technology. What kind of governance models
will be in place so that users are truly able to maintain a healthy
degree of autonomy even as new centralizing forces emerge to extract
value within the new paradigm?
Remember, the Soviet Union collapsed, but it was hardly replaced by a utopia.
Image via CoinDesk archives
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.
CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency
Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:45 AM on Monday, March 25th, 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.
——————-
Crypto Trader DataDash Says Bitcoin Is Bottoming – Plus Ripple and XRP, Ethereum, Tron, Litecoin, IOTA, Stellar
From Bitcoin’s price action to the adoption of XRP, Stellar, and Litecoin, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
YouTube’s biggest crypto analyst Nicholas Merten says he believes Bitcoin is bottoming.
Bitcoin
YouTube’s biggest crypto analyst Nicholas Merten says he believes Bitcoin is bottoming.
In the latest edition of DataDash, Merten compares BTC’s current
price action to the market decline in 2014 and subsequent sideways
trading in 2015, and says three indicators suggest Bitcoin is entering a
period of sideways consolidation before a run to the upside.
Merten says the 50 and 100-week moving averages, stochastic RSI and
true strength indicator all signal BTC is starting to enter a bottoming
phase.
“We’re going to need to see much more
substantial price action for Bitcoin to be considered in a bull market.
So we’re in neither really a bear market as of the last few weeks, and
we’re also not in a bull market. Again, we have to see a justification
of price on either side.â€
According to Merten’s analysis, current market conditions indicate it
will take a few weeks or months for Bitcoin to start gaining momentum.
Ripple and XRP
Days after adding XRP to its platform, the Bahrain-based crypto
exchange Rain says the digital asset has officially been declared
Sharia-compliant in an audit from their partner, the Shariyah Review
Bureau.
Our Shari’a compliance audit was completed by our partner @ShariyahReview.
Ripple has been pushing to expand its presence in the Middle East, announcing an expansion in the region late last year.
Ethereum
Mist, one of the first projects from the Ethereum Foundation, is
shutting down. The Mist browser, also known as the Ethereum DApp
Browser, allowed users to access Ethereum applications and projects. The
Mist wallet, designed to be downloaded and run on a computer, allowed
users to store, send and receive crypto.
In a farewell post, developer Alex Van de Sande outlines a number of
the project’s technical problems, and names Samsung, Opera and Brave as
projects that are better suited to move the tech forward.
“While I’m proud of all the
accomplishments we achieved in this time advancing the usability of
Ethereum and sharing a vision for web3, we feel Mist, the browser has
outlived it’s usefulness: the ecosystem has matured so much that now the
user has tons of great options of wallets and browsers on both mobile
and desktop.â€
This is a bitter post to announce, but we are discontinuing Mist. You
can read the full post here but for your convenience I will try to
summarize in a few tweets: https://t.co/eqw5yWacsa
There are mainly two reasons a good and a bad one: ecosystem and security
Jon Moore aka ‘Johnny Litecoin’, the vice president of Nationwide
Merchant Solutions, is showing off Litecoin’s integration with the
payment system Clover.
Checkout the Clover Flex device!! #Clover devices can easily display a #Litecoin Payment button with QR code printing on receipt for easy payment. Clover also integrates with @ecwid which allows for LTC/BTC Payments to come in from online and the data connects to Clover!! pic.twitter.com/WNVRG3BYKP
The Clover platform offers free open-source code allowing merchants to implement custom third-party payment options.
Stellar
The foreign exchange company Currency Matters says it’s joining IBM’s World Wire remittance platform, which is powered by the Stellar blockchain.
“By connecting to the World Wire
network, Currency Matters now has access to a single unified network for
foreign exchange and cross-border payments clearing and settlement
built on blockchain technology and the Stellar public protocol. This
will allow Currency Matters to offer clients the ability to conduct
transactions across additional currency corridors and provide access to
new digital assets including stable coins using Stellar Lumens (XLM).â€
So far, IBM says six banks have signed letters of intent to issue their own stablecoins on the platform.
Tron
The Tron community site Tron.Live is giving crypto enthusiasts an inside look
at Tron’s headquarters in Beijing. It occupies two floors with modern
flair, lime green accents, wall art, smiling stuffed animals, a circular
resting area, a tatami room and a rainbow-colored entertainment lounge.
Source: Tron.Live
Tron currently has offices in San Francisco, Singapore and Beijing.
IOTA
IOTA just released the latest edition of the Untangled podcast. The
episode explores the platform’s push for smart city adoption, focusing
on the energy sector and what the cities of the near future may look
like.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, March 20th, 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.
——————-
Follow The Money – Why Investment In Blockchain Has Never Been Higher
Fortune 1000 companies are not the only ones taking advantage of
savvy data deployment. Small businesses are also using databases to
manage inventory and cash flow, market to customers, and carry out
countless other tasks.
With most businesses reliant on databases, staying ahead of the
data-technology curve has become a central issue for executives.
According to the New Vantage study, almost 80% of executives surveyed
expressed concern about disruption or displacement from competitors due
to data-technology advantages. And well over half identified inability
to compete on data, lack of agility, and data-driven competitors as the
primary data-related threats to their organization.
The promise of blockchain
Most people don’t think of data management when they hear the word
“blockchain.†The word tends to evoke cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin’s
attention-grabbing price swings. However, blockchain technology is
currently being adopted at all levels of the business environment.
That’s why investment in the field is still at an all-time high by
private investment funds like the New Global Capital Investor Fund,
founded in 2017 and still one of the largest institutional investors of
blockchain technologies. They have been a key contributor to a number of
leading projects including Zilliqa, Ontology, NKN, Oasis, Mainframe,
Certik, Bluzelle, and Iotex.
Roger Lim, Founding Partner at NGC said, “We’ve been concentrating on
low hanging fruits in blockchain for a while, anyone who can
potentially solve a problem. But now we’re interested to hear from good
projects where the total metrics make sense, the team makes sense and
they have a great strategy.â€
Right now, forty per cent of investment in blockchain by NGC is
heading to Greater China where blockchain is booming, but they are still
open to all with a good idea. Open to lending from as little as
$200,000 to $10million, the company wants to spread the word that there
are still great funding opportunities out there. Lim added, “We go off
to where the talent is, not just because it’s in Silicon Valley, we
don’t portion off our funds. We look globally and we go after the
talent.â€
Profile rising fast, but not enough
Despite the interest of investors, blockchain is still relatively
young in the mainstream market and actual deployment of blockchain
solutions is not yet widespread. This relatively young technology has
come a long way since its inception in 2008, but only about a quarter of
the companies PwC surveyed had up-and-running blockchain projects.
Though blockchain’s profile is rising fast, the technical expertise
needed to create blockchain platforms and smart contracts is still hard
to come by in enterprise business settings. Travis Reeder, CTO of
blockchain firm GoChain, sees this lack of expertise as a significant
obstacle.
He said, “If you’re an IBM or a JP Morgan, you might have the
resources to develop the kind of in-house expertise needed to compete
with the startups going after your industry in Silicon Valley. But
there’s a huge group of companies who can’t just set up a dedicated
blockchain division. These businesses understand what blockchain could
do for them, but don’t have access to the tools and knowledge they need
to build actual solutions. A lot of companies encounter the related
problem that there are many options to choose from, but they don’t know
which to choose or where to start.â€
Now Reeder hopes to remove obstacles to participation in the
blockchain revolution by investing in widespread knowledge. They offer
partner companies blockchain-based training, workshops, platform design,
and other services. Their aim is to provide the human capital that is
as essential to the technology’s success as the technical
infrastructure. These cost-effective consulting services are popular for
companies to develop and maintain tailor-made blockchain business
strategies and tools. With their own public blockchain that anyone can
use to build smart contracts and applications, as well as GoChain
private installation, it allows for all possibilities.
Still, a few common concerns when it comes to blockchain are slow
transactions and vast amounts of energy needed, but with 1300
transactions per second GoChain is certainly holding its own against the
big guns. It’s 100 times faster than Ethereum for example.
A market for loans
And while the money is flowing freely into the blockchain, there are
also possibilities to dole it out from firms such as Forest Park
Advisors. They are creating the first tradeable syndicated loan market
via security token issuances. The firm is the brainchild of Steve Shaw,
investment manager at Clear Harbor Asset Management, who was previously a
managing director at Credit Suisse First Boston, co-heading the firm’s
trading and distribution franchise. Steve originated some of the
earliest Credit Default Swaps at Credit Suisse product prior to the
recession. Combined with the rest of the team, Forest Park Advisors has
over 60 years of Wall Street experience and are intent on using their
decades of experience to issue the first generation of real estate
backed structured debt security tokens. With up to $200million for a
single loan, this is a wealthy market.
If the public could be convinced, then there are plenty of opportunities to spread the wealth.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, March 13th, 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.
——————-
Kakao’s Blockchain Arm Raises $90 Million in Private Token Sale
Ground X, the blockchain subsidiary of South Korean messaging giant Kakao, has raised $90 million in a private coin offering.
As reported by Bloomberg on Monday, Ground X CEO Jason Han said that IDG Capital, Cresendo Equity Partners and Translink Capital had participated in the round.
The firm is also reportedly planning to raise “a similar sum†in another round starting Tuesday, before launching its blockchain platform in June.
Kakao first revealed its plan to set up a blockchain subsidiary back in March 2018, soon after confirming that it had launched Ground X to develop a blockchain-powered platform as a foundation for application developers. Kakao’s top execs said at the time that the plan was to integrate future blockchain-based services with Kakao’s existing internet offerings, such as the Kakao Talk messaging app.
Ground X launched
a test network (or testnet) for its proprietary blockchain network,
dubbed Klaytn, last autumn. It has already partnered with 26 companies
that aim to run apps on Klaytn, Han told Bloomberg. These include South
Korean video game developer Wemade and video streaming platform Watcha,
as well as a unit of Chinese travel agency Zanadu.
The subsidiary has also said it
will work with the Seoul Digital Foundation, an organization created by
the Seoul Metropolitan Government, to develop blockchain projects
focusing on social and public services.
Ground X could be summed up as “partial or gradual decentralization,†Han told CoinDesk Korea last year, adding that some of Kakao’s services could be decentralized.
He added:
“The token economy is a business model that no one could have
imagined before. Until now, Kakao has only operated in Korea, but
through blockchain we could expand into the global market. That means
taking a portion of the profits we earn as an intermediary and using it
to expand our market by sharing it with users.â€
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:22 AM on Tuesday, March 12th, 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.
——————-
Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency Is Almost Here
Investors will soon be able to buy gold and stocks in the form of cryptocurrency, the same way they might buy Bitcoin.
Paxos, a New York-based firm that already offers a dollar-backed cryptocurrency (known as a stablecoin) as well as Bitcoin trading services, plans to introduce digital tokens backed by precious metals and publicly traded stocks sometime in 2019.
The company launched its stablecoin, Paxos Standard,
six months ago by tying cash reserves to a blockchain—a digital ledger
of transactions that is the backbone of any cryptocurrency. Now, it
wants to take “any type of asset and put it into a blockchain,†Paxos
CEO Chad Cascarilla told Fortune’s“Balancing the Ledger.†The goal is to move assets and settle transactions more quickly and securely and with lower fees, he added.
In order to make it work, Paxos has to ensure that it holds the same
amount of inventory—whether that’s dollars, precious metals, or
stocks—in the “real world†as are registered on the blockchain. “How you
do it with a gold token is how much gold you have in a vault equals how
many gold tokens outstanding,†Cascarilla explained. “How do you do it
with stocks? How many stocks do I have sitting in an account, equals how
many stocks in the blockchain.â€
Closest to reality is likely the tokenization of stock market
equities and bonds, assets which Paxos has already successfully tested
in blockchain transactions, Cascarilla said. “We’re getting pretty
close, and I think we’ll see it in 2019.â€
Cascarilla believes Paxos is the only cryptocurrency company with an
account at the Depository Trust Company, which holds the vast majority
of U.S. stocks and bonds, positioning the firm to potentially become the
first to bring stock trading to the blockchain. Still, Paxos, which was
the first virtual currency company to be licensed in New York, needs
additional approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
before it can roll out cryptocurrencies tied to more traditional
securities. It’s currently awaiting that approval—something the lengthy government shutdown did not help speed along.
Putting commodities on the blockchain is also underway, and “gold is
probably the most obvious,†Cascarilla said, adding that it would be
introduced “definitely this year.â€
Tokenizing precious metals opens up new possibilities that are
currently physically difficult—such as dividing up a gold bar into
smaller denominations, transporting heavy quantities more easily, or
lending the assets out more efficiently, Cascarilla explained. “Having
it sit in a vault but also having it be on a blockchain kind of bridges
those two worlds,†he said.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:55 AM on Monday, March 11th, 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.
——————-
Kakao Corp raises $90M for its blockchain platform
Raised $90 million in a private coin offering for its upcoming blockchain platform, as reported by Bloomberg.
The company is planning to have another round, similar in size, in March
Kakao Corp., the parent company of a South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, raised $90 million in a private coin offering for its upcoming blockchain platform, as reported by Bloomberg. The company is planning to have another round, similar in size, in March. IDG Capital, Crescendo Equity Partners and Translink Capital participated in the round, per Bloomberg.
The blockchain platform dubbed Klaytn, which is planned to launch in
June, will start with popular third-party services such as games and
travel apps but eventually could support some messaging features
of KakaoTalk. Klaytn already has 26 partnerships lined up with apps that
already have millions of daily active users. The platform aspires to
attract a user base of 10 million accounts within the first year.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:54 AM on Monday, March 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.
——————-
KPMG: Tech Execs See the Future- It’s Blockchain
Almost a full 50% of the executives polled (76% of whom are C-level executives — meaning they have titles like CTO, CEO, COO) firmly believed that blockchain is ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to change the way their company does business — within three years. That is a short time, especially in the business world.
By R.R. Hauxley
Plenty of people love blockchain.
Plenty more hate it. But the biggest chunk of people by far are those
who are neutral about it. They neither love it nor hate it. They’re just
waiting for the world to make up its mind — like when VHS fought
Betamax or Bluray fought HD-DVD. Well, the world is making up its mind
right quick — and the winner is blockchain.
A survey was recently released. A big, meaningful one. It was released by KPMG,
one of the top four auditor agencies in the world. They call it the
Technology Industry Innovation Survey and it polls over 740 gigantic
tech leaders across twelve countries around the world. The results are
fascinating.
Almost a full 50% of the executives polled (76% of whom are C-level
executives — meaning they have titles like CTO, CEO, COO) firmly
believed that blockchain is ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to change the way
their company does business — within three years. That is a short time, especially in the business world.
Taking that one step further, 41% of these higher-ups also believed
that, in these next three short years, the company they direct will, in
fact, implement blockchain tech.
Perhaps the most telling statistic, however, is the change from last
years survey. Despite the crypto bear market, despite hacks and scams,
the executives who were neutral last year are moving bullishly into the
blockchain believer category. Last year a full 42% of respondents were
neutral on all this and 30% even responded that blockchain changing
things would be “very likely.†Today the neutral camp has shrunk to 24%
— with the majority moving camp to the “we will use blockchain†side of
the story.
So you see, the battle between blockchain believers and
doubters is coming to a close. High powered executives running
multi-billion dollar companies (which produce products and services that
we all use) are learning about blockchain, believing in it, and will be
shaping their companies to use it — all in the next three years. It’s
high time, then, that those who are also neutral take a page from the
tech exec playbook and read “An Introduction to Blockchain.â€
These titans of industry are not making their decisions because of
tabloid headlines. They are educating themselves about blockchain with
proper guides. That is the only way to make proper profits. We should
follow such footsteps if we want to profit from blockchain too.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:58 AM on Friday, March 1st, 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.
——————-
10 Major Blockchain Trends in 2019
While cryptocurrencies took a hammering, 2018 was huge for Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and a myriad of other coins.
Blockchain has plenty of use cases outside of the cryptocurrency space with IBM, Oracle, and Amazon and other multi-billion dollar companies trying to capitalize on the disruptive technology.
Now, it’s time to find out what major Blockchain trends will define the current year.  Â
By: Alex Morris Â
From the Internet-of-Things (IoT) convergence to startups for the unbanked — find out what to expect from Blockchain in 2019
While cryptocurrencies took a hammering, 2018 was huge for Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and a myriad of other coins. Blockchain has plenty of use cases outside of the cryptocurrency space with IBM, Oracle, and Amazon and other multi-billion dollar companies trying to capitalize on the disruptive technology. Now, it’s time to find out what major Blockchain trends will define the current year.  Â
STOs replacing ICOs
Security tokens (STOs)
have been a hot topic in the crypto space, and it looks like they will
continue to be hot now that Overstock’s tZERO announced the launch of
the new STO platform on Jan. 21. The Blockchain-powered platform will
provide any company with the opportunity to raise funds by launching its
own STOs. Prior to that, the startup made an announcement about the
completion of its utility token distribution.
STOs, which combine the best features of the stock market and
cryptocurrencies, arose as a fully regulated alternative to ICOs, which
turned out to be the passing fad of 2017.
Tokenization creating more investment opportunities
The launch of the Estonia-based DEX,
which buys the shares of the biggest companies in the world in the form
of ERC20 tokens, proved that 2019 is all about tokenization. The
Ethereum-powered startup will allow non-US investors to engage in the US
stock market without any limitations pertaining to their location or
investment amount.
Crypto startup Zilliqa also recently introduced Hg Exchange, a fully regulated exchange that allows accredited investors to buy US stocks.
Tokenization already became a pervasive trend in 2018, going far
beyond the stock market, but this is the year when pretty much
everything will be tokenized – art, wine, real estate, etc.
Blockchain and IoT forming an alliance
Back in January, leading digital security company Gemalto released a report
that states that 23 percent of responders think that Blockchain
technology could be a boon for securing IoT-powered devices. Meanwhile,
almost 91 percent of businesses who do not utilize Blockchain consider
making use of the technology in the future.
The number of IoT-powered devices is expected
to reach 26.66 bln in 2019, but less than half of all businesses can
detect whether their device experienced a security breach.
IBM also illustrated the benefits for this convergence with the help of
their game-changing platform Watson IoT. Apart from bringing more
security to the table, Blockchain significantly simplifies the task of
managing different devices and increases the efficiency of the
transaction.
Wall Street transitioning from dabbling to actions
The fact that cryptocurrency prices took a nosedive in 2018 doesn’t
mean that the global financial industry is going to suddenly give up on
Blockchain. As U.Today reported earlier, Bakkt,
the ICE-backed exchange, was supposed to go live in January, but its
launch was eventually delayed due to the longest government shutdown in
history. Speaking of other ‘big-fish’ players, NASDAQ and the NYSE
plan to launch Bitcoin futures while also being keen on Blockchain.
Since the crypto hub died down, there is a good reason to believe that
2019 will be the year of exciting developments in the Blockchain space.
More decentralized exchanges appearing on the horizon
Decentralized exchanges, while actually living up to Satoshi’s
vision, have numerous usability issues that take a toll on their
popularity. There is no centralized authority that manages the users’
funds, but it’s also a double-edged sword problem – there is no way to
revert a certain transaction if private keys are stolen or lost. Keep in
mind that there are certain degrees of centralization. Case in point:
the Bancor DEX, which suffered from a $13.5 mln hack, though Charlie Lee later claimed that no decentralized exchange can lose its funds.
With that being said, major crypto startups – from Binance to Tron – have launched their own DEXs in order to spearhead the shift towards decentralization in the crypto world.
Governments will continue looking into Blockchain
The wide variety of Blockchain applications are being explored by
governments across the globe (even those ones who are openly hawkish
towards cryptocurrencies). China cracked down on Bitcoin, but this
country is hell-bent on becoming the leader in the Blockchain race.
Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities are all supporting Blockchain
developments. As reported by U.Today, the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) launched
an initiative to incentivize business who are working with the DLT
technology. Moreover, there are specific Blockchain guides in China for
educating government officials.
Estonia is yet another country
that is focused on the e-Estonia program that will digitize the
government. Meanwhile, Dubai could become the very first government that
is powered by Blockchain. The implementation of Blockchain could help Dubai save up to $1.5 bln per year by cutting the red herring and creating a fully paperless government.
Blockchain-powered startups banking the unbanked
Africa, where a substantial part of the population remains unbaked,
represents a breeding ground for different startups that utilize
Blockchain technology in order to increase economic inclusiveness. The Rohingya Project
went even further by using Blockchain to restore the identity of
stateless Rohingyas and give them access to banking services.
Real-word use cases beyond fintech
It is worth noting that Blockchain is the most disruptive technology
of the last decade, but it remains unknown to the general public. Yes,
along with Bitcoin, Blockchain was one of the buzzwords in the tech
space, but it’s all about real-world adoption. According to PwC research,
84 percent of companies have dipped their toes into Blockchain, but
they are not ready to embrace it due to numerous ‘trust issues.’ Those
who will be able to integrate Blockchain into their businesses will turn
out to be the true winners of 2019.
Scalability becoming one of the main issues
Without a doubt, scalability is one of the major bottlenecks of
Blockchain, which poses a major hindrance to mainstream adoption. That
became very evident when CryptoKitties, one of the best-known dApps,
created congestion on the Ethereum network. Bitcoin and Ethereum are
only able to handle seven and 25 TPS (this level of scalability doesn’t
hold a candle to mainstream payment processors in the likes of VISA).
Hence, many promising solutions, such as sharding and sidechains, are expected to be implemented in 2019. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN),
for example, is witnessing growing popularity with major industry
players, with an eye-popping 830 percent surge in half a year. LN will
significantly boost Bitcoin adoption while solving scalability pain
points.
Blockchain jobs will become more common
Despite Bitcoin, the major use case of Blockchain, taking a hammering
in 2018, the number of Blockchain-related jobs continued to grow
throughout the year. Moreover, as reported by CNBC,
the salaries of Blockchain engineers skyrocketed to $175,000 per year,
which means that they receive the highest salaries in the software
development niche on par with AI specialists. According to Hired CEO
Mehul Patel, ‘there’s a ton of demand for Blockchain.’ On top of that,
Upwork, the leading freelance platform, had a 35,000 percent uptick in
the number of Blockchain freelancers (it’s the fastest-growing freelance
sector).
However, earning a six-figure salary is not an easy feat. Blockchain developers
have to code in numerous languages, including Go and Solidity. As
mentioned above, major companies do not want to miss the boat on
Blockchain, so they are striving to hire talented programmers.
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Blockchain Fund Launches With $22 Million Round Backed By Roger Ver
Switzerland-based Pangea Blockchain Fund is making its debut after closing a $22 million seed round backed by crypto investor Roger Ver.
Announcing the news on Wednesday, Pangea said other investors in the round included Copernicus Asset Management, a Swiss firm regulated by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority. Copernicus is also acting as investment manager for the fund.
Pangea will invest in “transformative†blockchain startups around the
world to provide them with an early-stage capital boost and other
resources. The aim is to focus on the “commercial and industrial
applications†of blockchain technology, and there are no plans to invest
in cryptocurrency, the fund said.
The fund’s Swiss investment advisor is Blockchain Investment Advisory
Sagl, while U.S.-based Blockchain Investment Advisory LLC is acting as
sub-advisor. Pangea expects to cap its fundraising at $200 million.
James Duplessie, co-founder of Blockchain Investment Advisory Sagl,
said he believes blockchain technology will “fundamentally alter the way
society collaborates, transacts, governs and brings new concepts to
life.â€
He continued:
“Blockchain technology has the potential to change the nature of the
systems that lie beneath the things we do every day and could be the
greatest driver of value creation in our lifetime.â€
Maggie Rokkum-Testi, chief investment officer of Copernicus Asset
Management, added that the use cases for “a transparent, verifiable
register of data transactions are endless.â€
Blockchain Investment Advisory Sagl will also launch a Swiss-based incubator to be called Ticino Labs in the coming months.
Tags: blockchain, tsx Posted in ThreeD, ThreeD Capital | Comments Off on ThreeD Capital Inc. $IDK.ca – Blockchain Fund Launches With $22 Million Round Backed By Roger Ver $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca
