Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:48 AM on Wednesday, October 16th, 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.
Brokerage firm eToro has brought a new tool to the market that’s supposed to help investors crack the code of investing in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin – crypto Twitter.
By: Harsh Chauhan
Brokerage firm eToro has brought a new tool to the market that’s
supposed to help investors crack the code of investing in
cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin – crypto Twitter.
In a recent blog,
eToro announced that it is partnering with cryptocurrency information
service provider TIE, which uses algorithms based on crowd-driven
sentiment to develop trading strategies.
Twitter can help you make money in bitcoin and crypto
The brokerage firm points out that TheTIE-LongOnly CopyPortfolio will
open trades on the basis of positive Twitter sentiment. The machine
learning-powered algorithm will analyze over 850 million tweets daily to gauge cryptocurrency and bitcoin sentiment.
What’s more, eToro claims that the crypto Twitter-based trading
strategies have led to returns of 281 percent after fees in the past two
years. The annualized return of the trading strategy is 123 percent,
which outpaces the 29 percent return delivered by an equally-weighted
basket of identical underlying crypto assets.
eToro claims that the algorithm has also beaten bitcoin’s 41 percent
return over the past two years. So, the premise of the Twitter-based
investment strategy looks promising given the track record over the past
couple of years. But what’s the reason why this strategy seems to be
working so well so far?
Sentiment-driven investing could be the key to cracking crypto
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are relatively new. So the world seems confused about the characteristics
of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which was originally meant to be
a method of peer-to-peer electronic cash system for making online
payments.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:03 AM on Friday, October 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.
IDK: CSE
Australia’s Gold Mint Is Backing a Crypto Token Based on Ethereum
Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) was launched by InfiniGold on Friday, and is backed 1:1 by GoldPass certificates issued by The Perth Mint.
The digital certificates are 100% gold backed and guaranteed by the Government of Western Australia, which is the sole owner of the 120-year-old mint.
Australia’s only bullion mint is backing a new digital token aimed to allow investors to trade the precious metal in real time.
The Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) was launched by InfiniGold on Friday, and is backed 1:1 by GoldPass
certificates issued by The Perth Mint. The digital certificates are
100% gold backed and guaranteed by the Government of Western Australia,
which is the sole owner of the 120-year-old mint.
“PMGT is digitised gold that allows users to conveniently acquire and
have entitlement over government guaranteed physical gold stored at The
Perth Mint in a trusted and cost-effective way,†InfiniGold said in an announcement. The
token – designed with the assistance of professional services firm
Ernst and Young – is aimed to offer an alternative to traditional gold
investment products such as ETFs, while using blockchain tech to allow
real-time trading and settlement.
InfiniGold CEO Andreas Ruf said:
“With The Perth Mint as custodian of the underlying physical gold
that backs PMGT, buyers will be able to access a secure and reliable
token representing the strongest asset class to date – gold.â€
As far as the underlying tech goes, PMGT is a compatible with
the ERC-20 standard behind by many ethereum-based tokens. InfiniGold is
further touting the token as an alternative to U.S. dollar-backed
stablecoins such as tether and USD Coin.
Perhaps taking aim at tether – the top stablecoin by market cap that’s faced accusations that it manipulated the price of bitcoin and was not actually fully backed by USD –
InfiniGold said PMGT’s gold backing offers investors “superior
transparency, credit quality, risk diversification and hedging against
market volatility.â€
Investors are able to sell their PMGT back to The Perth Mint via its
GoldPass platform, or alternatively can exchange their certificates for
gold the mint’s products. “Subject to final regulatory consultation,
this will make PMGT directly tradable against traditional gold products,
including gold ETFs, CME gold futures, and physical XAU,†said the
company.
Richard Hayes, Perth Mint CEO, said in the announcement:
“The digitisation of gold via a public ledger is a natural
progression for the global commodity markets. It will promote gold as a
mainstream asset, enhance its accessibility, and offer greater
liquidity, transparency and auditability of the real assets backing this
type of digital token.â€
The launch comes as haven assets like gold, and possibly bitcoin, are becoming more attractive to investors. Fears of a U.S. recession
have seen gold prices bounce in recent weeks, and other companies are
launching products to capitalize on the yellow metal’s growing
popularity.
Just yesterday, crypto liquidity and OTC provider B2C2 launched the first gold derivatives product that synthetically trades against bitcoin and is targeted at investors seeking safety from market uncertainty.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 4:45 PM on Tuesday, October 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.
IDK: CSE
Experts Weigh In On The Future of Bitcoin and Blockchain
Both Bitcoin and blockchain have not
only garnered the interest of investors, speculators, and even
businesses, it has also caught the attention and piqued the curiosity of
some of the world’s greatest minds and thinkers.
In a new report,
a panel of experts from the business world and finance industry were
asked to supply their views on Bitcoin and what its long-term potential
may be.
Bitcoin is a
revolutionary new technology that has taken the world by storm, and
could not only disrupt modern financial systems, but it could also go on
to replace all fiat currencies and become the sole digital currency
used across the globe.
With so much potential, even experts have joined in on
speculating over the king of speculative assets, and have weighed in on
their expectations for the first-ever crypto asset.
The Smartest Minds in Tech and Finance on Bitcoin and Blockchain
Bitcoin is a
powerful, decentralized digital cash system, that could potentially
change the world and redefine money as the world knows it. It also
brought with it the emergence of blockchain – a distributed ledger
technology with a number of use cases that could revolutionize many
industries.
Both Bitcoin and blockchain have not only garnered the interest
of investors, speculators, and even businesses, it has also caught the
attention and piqued the curiosity of some of the world’s greatest minds
and thinkers.
In a new report,
a panel of experts from the business world and finance industry were
asked to supply their views on Bitcoin and what its long-term potential
may be. As one would expect, the sentiment surrounding Bitcoin is mixed,
with some realizing the disruptive potential it wields, while others
were quick to dismiss the asset as a vehicle for criminal activities.
Sabrina T. Howell, Assistant Professor, Finance, NYU Stern
School of Business & NBER believes that Bitcoin has some serious
hurdles to overcome, namely the cryptocurrency’s “7 transactions per
second.†Instead, Howell sees the real disruptive value provided by blockchain, and cites how the technology will soon be rolled out to better manage quality control surrounding green, leafy vegetables that are known to carry food-borne illness.
Garrick Hileman, Head of Research at Blockchain and Researcher at the London School of Economics, cited Bitcoin’s recent safe-haven asset narrative,
and claims its been a factor in the asset’s “3x price appreciation this
year in the wake of US-China trade disputes, challenges to central bank
independence, Brexit and other European political turmoil, and the
return of financial instability to Argentina and other emerging
markets.â€
James Grimmelman, Professor of Law, Cornell Tech claims that
Bitcoin will continue to be forked again and again, because “humans have
never been great at consensus, not even with the help of cryptography.â€
Researchers Steven Goldfeder, Ghassan Karame, and Linda
Schilling, all believe that Bitcoin will need to beat out stiff
competition from other, newer altcoins that alleviate the issues related to Bitcoin as it currently stands.
All experts also commented on how regulation is paramount to Bitcoin becoming widely adopted and saw the technology as something with incredible, currently untapped potential.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 3:18 PM on Thursday, September 19th, 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.
IDK: CSE
CIOs can’t ignore these 5 realities of blockchain
By Rajesh Kandaswamy Gartner, Inc.
What would happen if a car automatically negotiated its own insurance rate, or if centralized banks were no longer necessary to verify payments?
What if neighbors could buy energy directly from each other’s solar panels? What if a contract enforced its own clauses?
These scenarios might seem overly futuristic, but the reality is that blockchain could
make all of them possible. The more important question is how might
these changes affect the enterprise, and how can the organization take
advantage of this technology?
Few enterprises have deployed blockchain, yet it can significantly impact
broad swaths of the business. The low adoption of blockchain
technologies lulls many CIOs into thinking they don’t yet have to take
action, yet the opportunities for blockchain technology are massive.
Only 4 per cent of enterprises expect
that blockchain will be a game-changer for them, according to the 2019
Gartner CIO Survey. Furthermore, only 11 per cent of enterprises have
deployed — or will deploy over the next year — even minimal,
blockchain-inspired technologies. CIOs
need to start thinking about what value blockchain can add to their
organization and how to tackle its challenges over the next five years.
Reality #1: Blockchain provides a spectrum of opportunities that evolve over time
Blockchain is not a monolithic
technology. The term blockchain actually encompasses a wide range of
technologies, from smart contracts to tokens to consensus models that
will continuously mature and become available. In turn, CIOs should plan
for incremental evolution of their own blockchain strategies.
Blockchain-enabling:
These are the building blocks of blockchain, including encryption and
consensus algorithm, distributed computing infrastructures, tokens and
others.
Blockchain-inspired: Technologies in this stage combine some elements of blockchain, but lack two core elements: decentralization and tokenization.
Blockchain-complete: These solutions have all five elements of blockchain. They are decentralized, immutable, encrypted, tokenized and distributed.
Blockchain-enhanced:
Alongside the five elements of blockchain, blockchain-enhanced is
combined with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the
Internet of Things (IoT) for more intelligent solutions.
Reality #2: Blockchain can change your operating model, not necessarily your business model, in the next 5 years
While blockchain will eventually
change the core of a business, in the next five years it will mostly
affect how an organization executes its business. Focusing solely on how
blockchain is being used today (i.e. efficiency and record keeping) is
limiting. CIOs should look for opportunities to leverage blockchain
technology for deeper business changes that can drive real value.
Begin by looking for areas where
blockchain could strengthen the organization’s value proposition, and
propose projects that could truly differentiate the organization. Put
real thought into how this technology could benefit the business, versus
just purchasing a cool “disruptor†venue.
Reality #3: Blockchain offers the ability to create a multi-asset digital economy
It’s time to think creatively about
tokenization and digitally representing assets in the marketplace. For
some organizations this will increase efficiency, and for others, it
will enable entirely new markets. Consider how tokenization would be
helpful in current business operations and in the future, and talk to
ecosystem partners about tokenization’s potential and challenges.
Reality #4: Blockchain enables a new society, but doesn’t solve trust problems at all levels
One of the main elements of
blockchain is decentralization. It removes central authorities from the
process and enables a level of trust between two parties who have never
done business together. This means that the definition of participant
will expand beyond individuals and businesses to include smart
contracts, distributed ledgers, connected things and DAOs.
Blockchain will facilitate the
interactions between all of these participants and enable a new society,
but it cannot solve all trust problems. For example, any goods that are
physical or not completely digital, would gain limited (if any) trust
value. Create a map that highlights potential gaps and weak spots, and
don’t oversell blockchain technologies to executives as a solution to
every problem.
Reality #5: The programmable economy will set the terms of competition in the future
The reality is that blockchain and
its core elements will radically alter not only the business world, but
the world in which businesses exist. Blockchain will allow autonomous
ecommerce and eventually a programmable economy.
A programmable economy results from
applying distributed computational resources, such as blockchain at
scale, in a decentralized manner to support exchanges of monetary and
nonmonetary value between people, organizations and artificial agents
that have a legal standing equivalent to today’s corporations and
individuals. This will eventually evolve into a digital society,
as consumers change behaviors and adopt new practices. Organizations
will need to develop the technology, but also the ethics and practices
to exist in the digital society.
Rajesh Kandaswamy is a Research Vice President and a
Gartner Fellow in Gartner’s Technology and Service Provider research
practice. His responsibilities include helping establish the direction
of research for emerging technologies and industries, as well as
co-leading blockchain research enterprisewide at Gartner. His Gartner
Fellows research is on how technology will radically transform the
concept of an organization.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:55 AM on Monday, September 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.
IDK: CSE
Bitcoin Price Hovers Around $10,000, Analysts Urge Buyers to Accumulate, Bodes Well For ThreeD Capital
As the Bitcoin price consolidate around $10,000 level, analysts tell investors that now is the time to remain bullish and accumulate more BTC tokens in their wallets.
After making a recovery above $10,000 last week, the Bitcoin
price is hovering above $10,000 levels now. Last week, Bitcoin was
riding on an upward momentum until Thursday, where it hit its weekly
high of $10,850. However, post that the momentum has again turned south
for the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
In the last three days, Bitcoin lost nearly $700 of its price. At the
press time, Bitcoin is trading at $10,151 with a market cap of $181
billion. But there’s a good amount of trading activity in Bitcoin with
24-hour trading volumes crossing $14 billion. Bitcoin still dominates a
massive 69.8% share in the overall cryptocurrency market cap.
However, some analysts feel that this is the right time to buy more
Bitcoins. They are urging investors to make the most of this moment and
stash as many BTC tokens as per their appetite.
Bitcoin Bull Market Is Now On
Bitcoin investor and partner at Adamant Capital, Tuur Demeester compares
this time with the “post-ICO-bubble bull marketâ€. Demeester calls for
“a screaming buy†on Bitcoin. Besides, he also predicts that Bitcoin
price will just sky-rocket as the Amazon stock did over the last two
decades.
He says that just like Bitcoin, Amazon
stock showed massive volatility in its first decade of listing. Thus,
he believes that weathering this roller-coaster ride, Bitcoin will
ultimately emerge victoriously.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:15 AM on Friday, September 6th, 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.
IDK: CSE
A Top Apple Executive Reveals the Company Thinks Crypto Has ‘interesting
long-term potential’ – Bodes Well For ThreeD’s Vast Crypto Holdings
Vice president of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey told CNN Business during a private event in San Francisco that Apple is “watching cryptocurrency,” adding the company thinks “it has interesting long-term potential.”
The comments follow Apple’s latest push into consumer
finance products, with its Apple Card credit card releasing in August in
collaboration with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard.
Apple’s potential move into digital coins would serve as “a
major shot in the arm for crypto,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives
told CNN Business.
By: Ben Winck
An Apple
executive said the tech giant is keeping an eye on cryptocurrencies
during a private event in San Francisco, saying digital coins have
“interesting long-term potential.”
“We’re watching cryptocurrency. We think it’s interesting,” vice president of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey told CNN at the event. “We think it has interesting long-term potential.”
She addressed the new asset class as part of a talk on the future of digital payments and the company’s push into the sector.
Bailey’s comments follow the August release of the Apple Card, a credit card made in collaboration with Mastercard and Goldman Sachs. The card served as the first major expansion of Apple’s consumer finance products since Apple Pay launched in October 2014.
Apple’s potential move into digital coins would serve as “a major
shot in the arm for crypto,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told
CNN Business. He added that the interest in crypto “could make sense
given its sights on further monetizing its consumers.”
The introduction of finance products would fall in line with Apple’s
continued push into service revenue growth. Its Services business now
contribute to more than one-fifth of the company’s quarterly income, and upcoming offerings like Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade could further boost its earnings.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:35 AM on Tuesday, September 3rd, 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.
The crypto market cap and bitcoin (BTC) are currently surging above key resistances. Ethereum (ETH), litecoin, ripple, BCH, TRX, XLM, BNB and EOS are also correcting higher.
Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis
BCH price formed a decent support base near the $280 level against
the US Dollar. The BCH/USD pair started a solid upward move and broke
the $290 resistance level. The price is currently up more than 5%, with
an immediate resistance near the $300 level.
If the price surges above the $300 and $305 resistance levels, there
could be more gains in the coming sessions. On the downside, the $290
level may now act as a support in the short term.
Binance Coin (BNB), Litecoin (LTC) and Tron (TRX) Price Analysis
Binance coin (BNB) price is also showing a lot of positive signs and
it recently climbed above the $22.00 resistance area. BNB price is up
around 6% and it is trading above the $22.50 resistance level. The next
key resistances are near the $23.00 and $23.20 levels.
Litecoin price is still facing a lot of hurdles on the upside near
the $68.00 and $70.00 level. LTC price must settle above the $70.00
level to start a decent upward move. On the downside, the main supports
are near the $65.00 and $62.00 levels.
Tron price is slowly moving higher and is trading above the $0.0155
level. An immediate resistance is near the $0.0160 level, above which
TRX price could climb further above the $0.0162 resistance level. The
main supports on the downside are near $0.0152 and $0.0150.
Looking at the total cryptocurrency market cap 4-hours chart,
there solid recovery initiated from the $235.0B support area. The
market cap broke the $240.0B and $250.0B resistance levels to move into a
positive zone. Moreover, there was a break above this week’s followed
bearish trend lines near $248.0B and $252.0B. The market cap is now
placed nicely above $250.0B and the 100 SMA on the same chart.
Therefore, there could be more gains in bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS,
litecoin, ripple, binance coin, BCH, TRX, XMR, XLM and other altcoins in
the near term.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 5:18 PM on Wednesday, August 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.
IDK: CSE
Why Some Executives See Crypto As A New Business Tool
Executives are leveraging blockchain-driven currency to axe business process friction or fuel innovative products and services.
Signals are building that more organizations recognize its alluring features as fuel for innovative products and services, or useful for axing friction in the business process behind a transaction.
By: Jason Abdilla, Unsplash
Many executives see blockchain-driven digital currency as a terribly clunky payment vehicle or speculative investment. But signals are building that more organizations recognize its alluring features as fuel for innovative products and services, or useful for axing friction in the business process behind a transaction.
Unlikely Bedfellows Align Around Feature-Rich Token Projects
For example, a group of 14 financial firms
led by UBS Group AG and including Barclays PLC, Nasdaq Inc., Credit
Suisse Group AG , Bank of New York Mellon Corp., and State Street Bank
& Trust Co have created a new company, Fnality International, to
control development of a bitcoin-like token that the firms plan to use
to settle cross-border trades. The token, called utility settlement coin
(USC), is designed so banks can settle transactions directly with each
other without having to involve a third-party intermediary, removing
layers of costs and inefficiency. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is taking a
similar approach, creating a network of more than 250 members that is
working on a token called JPM Coin. Twenty eight brands, led by Facebook
and including Mastercard, Visa, Uber, Spotify, PayPal, and eBay have
created the Libra Association
to develop a token, which is named Libra. In so doing, unlikely
bedfellows are coming together to take on the extremely difficult work
of forging a new financial infrastructure, pioneering challenging
territory in joint governance, and navigating regulatory uncertainty.
What Is So Compelling?
Blockchain-driven digital tokens have very attractive attributes that
make it possible to do something totally new: merge business and
operational activity with the movement of money. All of a sudden, money
can be programmable—terms and conditions could be directly
embedded into how money moves from one party to another. While this is
certainly possible in today’s financial world, the potential to reduce
the cost of doing so to writing a few lines of code is tantalizing.
For example, the USC token serves as a messenger that includes the
data needed to complete a trade along with payment, which could cut
transaction cost and time. A key feature of Facebook’s Libra is a
programming language called Move that can be used to customize
transaction logic and create “smart contracts†that dictate the
conditions under which value is moved—an element which could fuel a
range of financial innovations. Imagine a world in which a few lines of
code ensure a transaction doesn’t take place until certain other
conditions are met—an asset couldn’t be spent until a certain time in
the future, or until a certain number of parties have registered their
approval. While moving this logic to code comes with a new set of
challenges (including the possibility of bugs and the open question of
legal enforceability), pioneers imagine digital tokens flexibly embedded
into existing products, used to create innovative bundling, or develop
completely new financial products.
Digital tokens carry other attractive attributes as well. They are
designed to be interoperable (they are more useful the more widely
accepted they are, and so token development is a race to get the
flywheel turning on network effects). They are typically traceable, so
they provide clear auditability, and hold the potential to settle on a
near-immediate basis.
By cutting out intermediaries, they also offer the prospect of a
low-transaction cost global currency. According to Bloomberg, retailers
are paying $90 billion in swipe fees on credit and debit cards every year. On August 14, supermarket giant Kroger stopped accepting Visa at 21 supermarkets and five gas stations because of what the company called “excessive feesâ€.
Digital tokens could eventually also serve as an efficient way to
shape and align consumer or partner behavior, functioning as a high value rewards system,
like a supercharged loyalty point. This has the potential to exert
influence across a wide range of organizations and business objectives.
Regulators Are Taking These Signals Seriously
UNITED STATES – JULY 16: David Marcus, head of Facebook’s Calibra
digital wallet service, prepares to testify during the Senate Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on “Examining Facebook’s
Proposed Digital Currency and Data Privacy
CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
Momentum has been met with a heightened response from regulators and
lawmakers. Facebook’s announcement of Libra led to heated U.S. Senate
Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held
hearings. At the hearings, Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho
painted the complexity ahead, “Libra is based on a relatively new and
continually evolving technology in which it is not entirely clear how
existing laws and regulations apply.†The Financial Stability Oversight
Council, an umbrella group of regulators that includes the Fed, has
formed a working group to discuss oversight of digital assets. The Group
of Seven (G7) industrialized nations have elevated cryptocurrencies to a
priority issue, with finance ministers debating how global
cryptocurrency could impact financial markets. Bank of England Governor
Mark Carney even suggested central banks should consider joining forces to create a virtual currency
(based on a network of digital central-bank currencies) that could ease
the global economy’s reliance on the dollar and be used to facilitate
cross-border trade and international payments.
Suddenly, the prospect of whether this new form of money could
undermine the role of central banks or become a viable alternate to
national currencies had become serious debate. This acknowledges the
power and influence of the players exploring these new currencies as
well as the complexity of projecting how they would operate in the wild.
Canary In The Coal Mine?
Will these initial projects succeed or fail? It is too early to
project the outcome of such early work in the space, much less how it
could evolve as momentum builds. However, we are seeing clear signals
that there is hunger for the features and functionality
blockchain-driven digital tokens and currency make possible. And many in
the space are taking the position that it’s inevitable that something
like these early projects will ultimately come to market, even if the
initial attempts fail to make it through the regulatory gauntlet. It is
likely we will see a race for innovation in this space, one that could
blur the lines between the financial services industry and other
sectors, and even the role of nation-states versus corporations.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:37 AM on Thursday, August 15th, 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.
IDK: CSE
How Blockchain can further the cause of electric vehicles
According to researchers, EV charging infrastructure could get a further boost if blockchain is integrated into energy systems
Countries such as India and those in the European Union are pulling out all the steps to strengthen the EV ecosystem
Bengaluru: Charged up with the idea that electric
vehicles (EVs) hold the future of energy and transportation, many
countries such as India and those in the European Union are pulling out
all the steps to strengthen the EV ecosystem with battery storage
manufacturing plants, besides offering a host of financial and tax
incentives.
While all these initiatives are steps in the right direction, many
researchers believe the EV charging infrastructure could get a further
boost if blockchain is integrated into energy systems.
A new study by researchers at the University of Waterloo, for
instance, reveals that there is a lack of trust among charging service
providers, property owners and owners of EVs. With an open blockchain
platform, all parties will have access to the data and can see if it has
been tampered with, researchers insist. Their reasoning is that using a
blockchain-oriented charging system will allow EV owners to see if they
are being overcharged while property owners will know if they are being
underpaid.
Blockchain, primarily known for powering cryptocurrencies like
bitcoins, is a form of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that promises
to reduce costs and establish trust, but faces challenges like the
speed of processing transactions. Its popularity lies in the fact that
participants have a copy of the ledger’s data that contains the most
recent transactions or changes, thus reducing the need to establish trust using traditional methods.
“Energy services are increasingly being provided by entities that do
not have well-established trust relationships with their customers and
partners,” said Christian Gorenflo, a PhD candidate in Waterloo’s David
R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, in a 14 August press statement.
“In this context, blockchains are a promising approach for replacing a
central trusted party, for example, making it possible to implement
direct peer-to-peer energy trading,” he added.
In undertaking the study (recently published in the ‘Proceedings of
the Tenth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems’),
Gorenflo, his supervisor, professor Srinivasan Keshav of the Cheriton
School of Computer Science, and Lukasz Golab, professor of Management
Science, collaborated with an unnamed EV-charging service provider who
works with property owners to install EV supply equipment that is used
by EV owners for a fee.
The revenue stream from these charging stations is then shared
between the charging service provider and each property owner. The EV
supply equipment is operated by the charging service provider, so the
property owners must trust the provider to compensate them fairly for
the electricity used.
From the case study, the researchers deduced that to incorporate
blockchain technology into an energy system, the involved parties must
first establish trust between themselves. Second, the parties concerned
should design a minimal blockchain system including smart contracts that
resolves the trust issues identified in the first step. Finally, with
the trust-mitigating blockchain in place, the rest of the system can be
migrated iteratively over time. This allows the business model to
eventually grow from a legacy/blockchain hybrid into a truly
decentralized solution, the researchers said.
According to Gorenflo, “In the end, we could even have a system where
there is machine-to-machine communication rather than
people-to-machine. If an autonomous vehicle needs power, it could detect
that and drive to the nearest charging station and communicate on a
platform with that charging station for the power.”
While blockchain implementations in India especially have centred
mostly around the banking, financial and insurance services sector
(BFSI), Jio recently announced it will install one of the largest global blockchain networks in India, comprising “tens of thousands of nodes operational on day one”, over the next 12 months.
That said, integration of blockchain technology into energy trading is now being touted as a promising area of research, and many studies have made efforts in this regard.
Switzerland-based The Share&Charge Foundation, for instance, is
building a decentralized blockchain system for EV charging, to support
payment and contracts. It uses the Open Charge Point Interface protocol
(OCPI) protocol for the peer-to-peer (P2P) connections between service
providers and charge point operators. According to Share&Charge, the
combination of OCPI with blockchain technology can result in secured
contract and connections between parties and improved payment and
settlement.
During the ‘Global Blockchain Congress–Consensus 2018’, organised by
the Department of Information Technology and Electronics, Government of
West Bengal in December 2018, researchers from New-Delhi based The
Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) made a presentation on the
‘Application of Blockchain in Modern Day Power Systems: Trendsetting a
New Paradigm’. Teri’s proposal, made by Alekhya Datta, Fellow, and
Shashank Vyas, Associate Fellow, covered use cases for EVs, distributed
battery storage, grid-connected microgrids, and rooftop solar PV project
financing using blockchain.
As an example, the Teri researchers pointed out that privately-owned
EV charging stations could be used to charge some vehicles passing near
the station and the transaction of bids of charging station owners,
power/energy flow, billing and real-time settlement of payments could be
managed over a blockchain.
Similarly, IIT-Kanpur researchers have proposed that since current billing systems
lack transparency, enabling the service provider to overcharge the
customer, blockchain could be used to develop a “verifiable billing”
system.
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Large Enterprises Are Betting On Blockchain In 2019
First half of this year was full of blockchain developments led by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade finance.
2019 is the year when the blockchain ecosystem and the crypto
industry as a whole had to get sober. After a wild 2017 and a bear 2018,
the blockchain space is back on an upwards trajectory with new developments.
There are no more Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to distract the crypto
ecosystem and the building mentality is back on. This post-ICO and
post-useless-PR-partnerships age urges the blockchain community to be
less focused on the current price of bitcoin and more focused on
producing meaningful services and advancements. Big projects from
established enterprises like Facebook Libra are taking all the media space now and this is net positive for the enterprise blockchain space as well.
The first half of this year was full of blockchain developments led
by large enterprises in almost all important sectors, including
insurance, financial services, supply chain, healthcare and trade
finance.
There is a huge benefit in joining a specialized industry-focused
blockchain consortium because you sit at the same table with your main
competitors but at the same time you work toward the same goal. You are
not alone in figuring out the benefits, implementations and roll-out of
distributed ledger technologies. There is also a financial benefit when
commonly building applications as sometimes the membership fee is lower
than the cost of hiring and training blockchain developers. Some of the
big names in leading blockchain consortia networks that have made
significant progress so far in 2019 are:
B3i, a blockchain consortium focused on the insurance
industry, recently launched its first live product on R3’s Corda
platform. Their members include big insurance and reinsurers companies
like Allianz, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Tokio Marine, XL Catlin and Zurich.
Energy Web Foundation (EWF) launched their
enterprise-grade public blockchain with 17 applications already on it.
That network consists of 100 affiliate members like Total, Shell, GE,
Siemens, Duke Energy and PG&E.
Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) was created by
five of the ten largest container carriers: CMA CGM, COSCO SHIPPING
Lines, Evergreen Marine, OOCL, and Yang Ming.
Two of the largest health insurance companies in
the United States, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, have teamed up to
tackle the massive datasets of provider demographic data from hospitals
and medical partners.
Health Utility Network
was formed by Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corporation, PNC Bank
and IBM to drive digital transformation and blockchain enabled-solutions
within the healthcare industry.
The owners of the famous Louis Vuitton label, LMVH, launched a special blockchain that will help prove the authenticity of expensive goods. It is built on Ethereum with the help of Microsoft.
Samsung launched a consortium including six major South
Korean companies, focused on launching a blockchain-based mobile ID
system. The company is already pretty advanced in their blockchain and
crypto developments with the release of the Galaxy S10 phone with
designated crypto wallet and Blockchain Keystore online app marketplace.
Moreover, Samsung released a developer-friendly Blockchain SDK.
The IBM Food Trust network launched. Built on
Hyperledger Fabric, the network aims to create a traceable audit log for
time-sensitive foods and when an issue occurs, the network participants
will be able to pinpoint exactly where the damaged items shipped and
won’t have to empty all their shelves. The consortium consists of
companies like the European giant Carrefour, Walmart, Nestle, Dole Food,
Tyson Foods, Kroger and Unilever.
Walmart, similarly to Samsung, is involved on several
different tracks with blockchain. They have joined MediLedger, a private
consortium that aims to create a drug supply chain. Apart from that
they are also partnering with KPMG, Merck and IBM as part of the FDA’s
program to evaluate the use of blockchain to protect pharmaceutical
product integrity. Recently it become public that Walmart also filed a patent for issuing a digital currency on a blockchain, or stablecoin, as they are known in the industry.
The whole private consortia ecosystem is still in early development
but the right mentality is there. We will see how the technology
develops over time to support those formations. A popular approach might
be a hybrid infrastructure, where consortium members interact with each
other in a permissioned environment or a shard but eventually anchor to
some public blockchain for audit and reference purposes.
From the enterprise blockchain technology perspective, this first
half of 2019 was pretty interesting and the major blockchain platforms
made progress in not only improving and maturing their services but
releasing new products. The general sentiment has been to focus on
privacy, consensus options and digital asset standardization in
anticipation of the tokenization revolution.
Digital Asset is another of the big names that made
great progress in 2019. While work with the Australian Stock Exchange
(ASX) is still going as planned, they have completely open-sourced their
modeling language, called DAML. That
move was very well accepted by the blockchain developer community as
DAML is a great language to code smart contracts with.
The Hyperledger family got bigger with a new tool called Transact,
which should provide advanced transaction execution and state
management. The long-awaited version of Fabric 2.0 is still in the shop
but once released it will provide performance improvements in many
areas, such as data storage, privacy and consensus layer, over the
current 1.4.2 version.
Pantheon,
the open source enterprise Ethereum client from PegaSys, launched
version 1.2 with extensive privacy features like on-chain smart contract
node and account rules, whitelisting nodes and others.
Microsoft was very active during H1 2019 and launched a decentralized online identity platform on top of the bitcoin blockchain called ION.
More than that, they continued to expand on their Azure Blockchain
development kit, which is very helpful from a developer perspective.
R3 achieved a large milestone this year by releasing
version 4 of their Enterprise Corda protocol. Now their well-rounded
team is perfectly capable of publishing regular releases on both the
open source and the enterprise versions of Corda. Another great
achievement was releasing the Token SDK;
now it is easier to implement and work with tokens on the Corda
network. Recently also R3 announced a large expansion of their London
office and growing of IT team.
Ernst & Young released their project Nightfall,
which uses zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology to enable transfers of
Ethereum-based tokens with complete privacy. There are a few things
that E&Y are doing here that deserve acknowledgment. They are using
the permissionless public Ethereum network, which is the complete
opposite of the permissioned and siloed approach adopted by similar
enterprises. Then they rely on privacy and implement ZKP to achieve
that. It remains to be seen what they will decide to support when
Ethereum 2.0 becomes a thing and the current chain might split as not
nodes will migrate.
2019 has proven to be a year when blockchain technology has gotten
down to business. Going further from the wild early days of bitcoin and
cryptocurrencies, blockchain is making large steps in nearly every
industry, from insurance to pharmaceuticals to luxury goods. Backed by
large enterprises, we saw the maturing of the underlying protocols and
improvements in security and privacy aspects. There is still a lot to be
done as the core blockchain infrastructure needs to mature enough to be
prime-time ready, and like Q1 and Q2, the second half of 2019 is
certain to be filled with new developments.
