Coin News

In an announcement via email newsletter today, Korbit, a South Korean Bitcoin exchange and wallet announced it is the first launching partner within South Korea to integrate BitGo Instant into their Bitcoin transfer and remittance protocol. BitGo is a Bitcoin security company that offers a multi-sig wallet and now BitGo Instant. Korbit is one of […]

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 The only security in this world is a reserve of knowledge, not money – so said the industrialist Henry Ford. Whether it’s the dollar, pound, rouble, rupee, euro or yuan, physical or digital, our entire world is built on currency exchange. But from barter, banknote to bitcoin, the means of exchange have evolved significantly. Read More

 Earlier today in Davos, where afternoon temperatures reached a balmy 20 degrees (and evening temps have dropped to limb-numbing f-f-five degrees Fahrenheit), CEO Valery Vavilov of the bitcoin infrastructure provider and transaction processing company BitFury swung by our temporary  studio. Among those topics addressed with senior editor Matt Burns: What BitFury does exactly, why… Read More

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world’s largest professional services firm, has recruited 15 leading technology specialists to explore the application and commercialization of the Bitcoin blockchain technology.

The blockchain research team will collaborate with PwC’s Belfast office and is expected to grow to more than 40 technological specialists throughout 2016.

The London-based corporation stated that they have decided to look into Bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain technology, due to the growing demand of their clients and investors. With the help of the blockchain research team, PwC aims to assist its clients in understanding the Bitcoin blockchain technology and implement it in its services.

“There’s clear evidence that banks, institutions and even governments are looking at blockchain technology as a secure storage and distribution solution. Now there is growing interest and a real demand from our clients to help understand the implications of blockchain and how to respond to it. So as the blockchain juggernaut continues to gather pace, PwC will be well-placed to service our clients’ needs at a global level,” said PwC partner and EMEA Fintech Leader Steve Davis.

“PwC is now breaking new ground in developing radical fintech solutions and these appointments represent the first stage of our plans to grow a world-class fintech offering,” Davis said. “We expect the initial core team of 15 experts to grow rapidly, with PwC in Belfast continuing to expand, exploit and deliver technology and digital solutions to global clients.”

The team further emphasized that the proposal of U.K. chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walpor to embrace blockchain technology in facilitating public services such as passport issuance, real estate ownership verification and tax collection inspired the company to actively explore the potential application of the blockchain technology.

PwC firmly believes that the blockchain technology could significantly reduce costs and enhance traditional financial systems in various industries. Through its growing blockchain team, the company plans to continuously explore the application of the technology in the existing banking systems and transaction settlement systems.

“Blockchain technology is worrying major players in the financial services industry as they don’t know where it will go or its potential to disrupt business models. However, in document delivery and settlement processing alone, it will offer significant cost reduction and efficiency gains,” said PwC U.K. Executive Board member and U.K. and EMEA consulting leader Ashley Unwin.

“We are confident that these disruptive fintech technologies will trigger a huge increase in demand for blockchain expertise, and we intend to be a leader in exploiting these disruptive new technologies,” Unwin said.

One limitation, according to PwC, is the relatively low level of awareness for bitcoin and digital currencies in general. According to the results of PwC’s forthcoming Global Fintech survey, which polled 545 leading asset managers, fund transfer companies, and insurers, 9 percent of the managers were familiar with bitcoin, but more than 30 percent of the managers had never heard of the cryptocurrency.

But the firm still feels optimistic in funding a group of blockchain researchers, as the fintech sector in the U.K. is growing at an explosive rate.

“The U.K.’s technology sector is increasingly focusing on fintech as offering radical and disruptive solutions to existing business models,” according to the company. “The sector raised a record $3.6 billion of venture capital in 2015, with the fintech sector accounting for almost a quarter of all investment raised by London-based tech companies.”

Over the next few months, the PwC team, which consists of more than 208,000, employees, will actively provide in-depth understanding of Bitcoin the system and raise the awareness of bitcoin the currency within their clientele.

The post PricewaterhouseCoopers Launches Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology Team appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This article is by Krystle Vermes.

In an effort to bring blockchain enthusiasts together for the sake of innovation, Wanxiang Blockchain Labs and Deloitte hosted the Shanghai Blockchain Hackathon on the weekend of January 8. Over the course of two days, teams of blockchain experts came together to create projects worthy of cash prizes.

The CargoChain team developed the winning idea, taking home the $30,000 grand prize.

“My partner [John Freeman] and I created CargoChain, which digitalizes international trade with specific focus on the bill of lading,” said Dominik Schiener, a member of the winning team. “CargoChain places the bill of lading as an eternal record into the blockchain and provides a clear chain of custody. It additionally has an escrow system which gets rid of the inefficiencies of letter of credit. This makes it possible for mutually untrusted parties to conduct trade without worrying about the legitimacy of the other party.”

A second-place prize worth $20,000 also was awarded, as well as a third-place prize and special prizes worth $10,000 each, which went to other participating teams.

“CargoChain was well received at the Hackathon, and people from Deloitte and Wanxiang loved the idea,” Schiener continued. “There is a clear demand to reduce costs and make international trade more efficient by finally getting rid of all the paperwork. Currently, I’m assessing potential opportunities, but I think that it would be amazing to help reshape the backbone of our economy with a blockchain-based system that benefits all the actors involved in trade.”

However, it wasn’t all about competition for the attendees of the Shanghai Blockchain Hackathon. The event also featured workshops and the opportunity for participants to speak with experts from Ethereum, Deloitte Rubix Team and Wanxiang Blockchain Labs. These individuals also were available for technical support throughout the hackathon.

The goal of Shanghai Blockchain was to bring together blockchain enthusiasts, engineers and designers to think creatively about Bitcoin as a whole. Now that the event is over, the sponsors of the Shanghai Blockchain Hackathon are still working to promote their initial objective.

Wanxiang Blockchain Labs recently announced the launch of BlockGrant X No. 2, which is a follow-up to its first sponsorship program, BlockGrant No. 1: Genesis. The first program gave a total of $100,000 to nine teams that created projects focusing on everything from random-number generation to decision-making. BlockGrant X No. 2 will have a budget of $40,000, and teams have until January 31 to submit their applications to participate. A global panel will convene to determine the winners based on their viability, significance and innovativeness.

As Wanxiang Blockchain Labs and other organizations continue to promote Blockchain and all things Bitcoin, the future looks bright for the industry as a whole.

“I think that in the coming years, we will finally see a crystallization of clear use cases of the blockchain,” says Schiener. “It will become clearer where and how exactly it makes sense to implement a blockchain to reshape certain processes. I am not a believer of ‘one chain to rule them all,’ which is why I think that once blockchains become interoperable, we will create new possibilities for organizations, startups and individuals to take the best of each blockchain and combine them in yet unimaginable applications.”

Krystle Vermes is a professional writer, blogger and podcaster with a background in both online and print journalism.

The post Blockchain Solution for Transport Industry Takes Prize at FBS and Deloitte Shanghai Hackathon appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

A legislative effort that would have allowed New Hampshire residents to pay their tax bills using bitcoin has been defeated.

The debate about bitcoin’s scalability should be viewed as a positive indicator, not a negative one. Instead, it has delivered a barrage of negative media that might have affected bitcoin’s price. The reverberations around bitcoin developer Mike Hearn’s departure from bitcoin continue, but bitcoin’s price has begun to recover while the global stock market is […]

The post Why ‘Reports Of Bitcoin’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated’ appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Are you sick of injustice and corruption in the world? Do you want a news source that is independent and want to change the status quo? Join the movement at Let’s Riot and become a part of something meaningful. Something that can and will change lives in the coming years. We will only deliver groundbreaking […]

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Bitcoin price has pulled back from its highs near $420. It is not immediately clear if this is merely a price correction or a reversal back into decline. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3-hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a $29 discount using the […]

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Shortly after the sensational public break-up between Bitcoin and R3CEV - hire Mike Hearn, and the launch of several alternative Bitcoin implementations, the block-size dispute is reaching fever pitch. Bitcoin Classic, in particular, has been gathering support among companies, users and some developers. Significantly, a number of mining pools has also publicly come out in support of the Bitcoin Core fork led by Jonathan Toomim.

The second largest mining pool on the Bitcoin network, with some 23 percent of hashing power, China-based F2Pool, was said to be among the pools prepared to switch to Bitcoin Classic. Yesterday, however, rumors started to surface claiming that the Chinese pools had changed position.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, F2Pool operator Wang Chun confirmed this is indeed the case.

“The rumors are true,” Wang said. “Miners in China were scared by Luke Dashjr’s proof-of-work changing pull request.”

The specific pull request Chun refers to was made by Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin LJR developer Luke Dashjr last week. Dashjr argued that a hard fork should be accompanied by a change of Bitcoin mining hashing algorithm, as it would render ASIC miners obsolete and could re-decentralize mining. Since Bitcoin Classic intends to democratize governance of the implementation, users could vote on the pull request; it had not received widespread support as of yet.

The pull request itself, however, was quickly closed by Bitcoin Classic lead developer Jonathan Toomim, who considered the idea too radical. He argued it shouldn’t have been submitted to GitHub directly – but rather discussed on the voting page and Reddit.

Many Bitcoin Classic proponents believe that the pull request was a sabotage attempt against Bitcoin Classic. They reason that the proposal was specifically intended to strike fear into the hearts of the mining community; if the pull request were to be adopted, any investments made in mining hardware could quickly be made worthless.

When Bitcoin Magazine spoke to Wang Chun earlier this week, the pool operator had already nuanced his position. F2Pool’s claimed support for Bitcoin Classic was misinterpreted, said Chun, stating:

“We did not say we would ‘support’ Bitcoin Classic. We used the word ‘welcome,’ to be exact.”

Earlier this week Chun did, however, emphasize that he wants the block size limit to be increased. Perhaps more important, Chun insists a hard fork is the desired solution to accomplish this – rather than a soft fork through Segregated Witness, as the Bitcoin Core development team intends.

“At the Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Hong Kong, almost every one of us agreed that block size should be increased, and should be increased as a hard fork, as there was no soft fork solution back then,” Chun explained. “Then, last minute, Segregated Witness was introduced. I admire Dr. Pieter Wuille’s brilliant hack to deploy it as a soft fork. But despite being brilliant, the soft fork Segregated Witness is still a hack. A hack is dirty. Such a technology would be better implemented as hard fork.”

Chun has made a concrete hard fork proposal since – though the details of this proposal are not yet clear.

A hard fork solution is regarded as a measure of last resort by the Bitcoin Core development team. With hard forks, all full nodes on the Bitcoin network need to change their software to the latest version or risk being “forked off” the network, with potential unforeseen consequences. Soft forks, considered safer by most Bitcoin Core developers as they only require miners to change their software, have been rolled out several times.

But Chun, like the Bitcoin Classic development team, believes the Bitcoin network can grow more cleanly through a hard fork.

Chun:

“Since Segregated Witness will only allow for some 70 percent of added space, a 2-megabyte hard fork would allow for more headroom, which could end the debate for now. People will not only be more satisfied, they’ll also see that we can actually get something done, get something fixed… not just find some detour hack to leave the issue to the next generation.”

While Chun earlier this week indicated that support for Bitcoin Classic in absence of a hard fork was not completely off the table, it seems that has now changed.

After finishing this article, a second Chinese mining pool, HaoBTC, has confirmed to Bitcoin Magazine that Chinese pools will stick with Bitcoin Core, too.

Bitcoin Magazine will be closely monitoring this story as it progresses.

The post F2Pool: Chinese Pools Will Stick with Bitcoin Core appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

In the midst of a heated debate over block size and Bitcoin’s future, Bitcoin Core developers Dr. Pieter Wuille, Eric Lombrozo and Johnson Lau have launched a third iteration of the Segregated Witness “testnet.” Dubbed SegNet, the latest version of the Bitcoin test network includes several improvements over its predecessors, and is available to anyone who wants to try it or experiment.

SegNet, like the previous versions, is essentially a clone of Bitcoin, specifically intended as a demo version. But while the two earlier SegNets were open only to developers working on the project, now everyone can use it.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Ciphrex CEO and Segregated Witness developer Lombrozo said:

“All wallet and other app developers are invited to test and experiment with the latest version of SegNet, and offer feedback. We’ve opened up an IRC channel on Freenode, #segnet-dev, and welcome all discussion pertaining to integrating and supporting Segregated Witness transactions in wallets. Many developers have already joined the effort. I’m happy to see the excitement and enthusiasm, and hope many others will join, too.”

Segregated Witness, the talked-about centerpiece of the scalability “roadmap” proposed by Bitcoin Core, is set to introduce several significant improvements to the Bitcoin network. Most important, it allows for an increased number of transactions by circumventing the original 1-megabyte block size limit, using an add-on to existing blocks called the “witness.” This could increase the effective block size up to some 1.75 to 2 megabytes, depending on the types of transactions.

“Compared to earlier SegNet versions, this latest iteration includes four main improvements,” said Lombrozo, whose mSIGNA wallet will implement Segregated Witness once it is rolled out. “First off, we moved the ‘add-on anchor’ - the Merkle root of the witness – to a different part of the coinbase transaction. We did some research, and as it turns out that works better for existing mining-hardware. Second, we changed the signature hashing algorithm such that verification requires fewer steps. This makes running a full node less burdensome, closes off a denial-of-service vector that is particularly nasty for bigger blocks, and decreases block relay time over the network. Third, transaction input values will be signed. This prevents some fringe attack vectors, where users can accidentally pay too high a fee. And fourth, we lowered the cost for typical, non-multisig transactions. Since these are still in the majority on the network, that should increase total throughput.”

One of the interesting attributes of Segregated Witness, as first presented at the Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Hong Kong, is that it can be rolled out as a soft fork. This means that to use it, only miners need to change their software; all other users can “opt-in” if and when they choose to. For this and other reasons, the Bitcoin Core development team prefers soft forks over hard forks, which require a synchronized network-wide switch of all users.

Over the past week, however, the idea of implementing Segregated Witness as a soft fork came under increased scrutiny. The team behind the recently launched Bitcoin Classic implementation believes that a change in fee policy is undesirable, questions whether the increased transaction throughput will be sufficient, and points out that there is a security degradation for nodes that don’t upgrade to the latest version of the software. Critics also maintain that the proposed soft fork method requires an “ugly” hack, which could complicate development of wallet and app software.

The Bitcoin Core development team, however, maintains that the security tradeoffs are highly theoretical and negligible, and far fewer than those associated with a hard fork. They point out that soft forks have been implemented several times before: when multisig was rolled out, or more recently with CheckLockTimeVerify. Core developers also contend that the increased throughput almost equals that of the 2-megabyte hard fork solution planned by Bitcoin Classic, and could in some cases amount to a bit more. They consider the changed fee policy a feature, not a bug, because it incentivizes users to utilize the added space in blocks.

“As for the ‘ugliness’ of the workaround… I’ll lay it out bluntly here,” Lombrozo said. “A simple block size increase via a hard fork puts all of the burden on the infrastructure rather than the app developers. What we’re proposing with Segregated Witness places a little bit of burden on app developers - which we think is fair. As a bonus, it also means these apps will be ready to support much more sophisticated features in the future, such as smart contracts, the Lightning Network and other payment channel solutions. It’s still not a very complicated thing to support, and many wallet developers seem eager and excited by all this.”

Segregated Witness is scheduled to be rolled out in Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin network by April of this year. BitGo, BitcoinJS, BlockTrail, Breadwallet, Coinkite, Coinomi, Digital Bitbox, EI8HT, Electrum, GreenAddress, Green Bits, Ledger, Libbitcoin, libbtc, mSIGNA, Mycelium, NBitcoin, Omnicore and Samourai Wallet have indicated support, so far.

For more information on Segregated Witness, see Bitcoin Magazine’s three-part series on the proposal.

The post Amid Bitcoin Scaling Debate, Segregated Witness Testnet Enters Public Stage appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

CoinDesk contributor Bailey Reutzel argues the communication breakdown in bitcoin reveals the project is no longer making good on its original ideals.

Noted Bitcoin skeptic Jamie Dimon was asked about Bitcoin during a recent televised interview. He doesn’t see the cryptocurrency going anywhere, although he does state blockchain technology “is real.” JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon appeared in a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the interviewer brought up the subject of electronic […]

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Bitcoin Press Release: BSAVE launches its unique Bitcoin savings account connected to users Coinbase wallets that allows clients to receive daily interest payments. BSAVE is pleased to announce the launch of BSAVE’s flagship product at the North American Bitcoin Conference Miami. BSave will attend and sponsor the Bitcoin Miami Conference. During the conference, Bsave is […]

The post BSAVE Launches Next Generation Bitcoin Savings Account at North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin Press Release: Innovative Bitcoin exchange platform Unichange.me is pleased to announce instant virtual Bitcoin debit cards and a range of other essential services to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Unichange.me is a leading cryptocurrency and e-currency exchanger. It has been in the market of digital currency exchange since 2013. This digital currency exchanger is rightly seen as […]

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Bitcoin Press Release: Nxt, the innovative digital currency, blockchain platform, and Bitcoin alternative, launches Version 1.7.4 on January 23rd. New features to be integrated into Nxt include Account Control, the NXT Data Cloud and CoinShuffling. Over the last few months, the entire Nxt community has been working on what will be one of the most […]

The post Bitcoin Competitor NXT Version 1.7.4 Goes Live: Decentralized Data Storage, Coin Mixing, and More appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin Press Release: Nxt, the innovative digital currency, blockchain platform, and Bitcoin alternative, launches Version 1.7.4 on January 23rd. New features to be integrated into Nxt include Account Control, the NXT Data Cloud and CoinShuffling. Over the last few months, the entire Nxt community has been working on what will be one of the most […]

The post Bitcoin Competitor NXT Version 1.7.4 Goes Live: Decentralized Data Storage, Coin Mixing, and More appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

MasterCard is looking to stay ahead of the curve by refusing to rush into integrating blockchain technology into their business model. Citing concerns regarding regulation, investment and security, MasterCard Chief Innovation Officer Garry Lyons stated why he didn’t want MasterCard to be “blindsided” by block chain in his comments at the World Economic Forum in […]

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In the game of anonymity, cryptocurrency fans have embraced Bitcoin and the blockchain technology which drives it. The technology does record and stamp the transaction, and is placed in the cloud, unlike Zcash, which sees its alpha release. Zcash has coded a decentralized network using a public blockchain. He and his team, a group of cryptologists, […]

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Bitcoin has been declared dead about ninety times since it's release in 2009, but this time it's different. Instead of a media outlet breathlessly repeating assurances from a banking sector executive that the first blockchain based virtual currency is dead, the source of the obituary was none other than Mike Hearn, a leading Bitcoin developer.

The North American Bitcoin Conference, TNABC, opened Wednesday with an energetic group of Bitcoin supporters who view the cryptocurrency as the next exciting chapter in Financial Technology. The conference holds two days of presentations and discussions from the brightest minds in FinTech delivering the technologies which will define innovative payment and transfer systems around the […]

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Blockchain — the technology that underpins bitcoin — is one of the most exciting areas of technology at the moment.

It has the potential to strip out huge amounts of admin costs and companies around the globe are signing up to get a piece of the action, through consortiums and direct investment.

Finance companies are particularly keen with everyone from NASDAQ to Barclays exploring the technology.

MasterCard is also keeping tabs, investing in bitcoin company Digital Currency Group (DCG) towards the end of last year.

One of MasterCard's top executives told Business Insider in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the company is "very, very interested" in the technology. But he added that MasterCard is being a more cautious than its market counterparts as it doesn't want to be "blindsided" if anything going wrong.

"Like the rest of the world, we're interested in seeing where blockchain technology goes and that's why we invested in DCG," Garry Lyons, Chief Innovation Officer of MasterCard, told Business Insider.

"The primary reason [we invested in DCG] is that it's connected to 15 different others and they have their fingers in the right pies, so we've got the right engagement right now to see people experimenting with the underlying tech," said

"It's not just the industry that's excited about blockchain — it's the world, everyone. Even at Davos, every single tech panel I have gone to mentions blockchain and some people call it 'the second coming.' But while we think it's very interesting, we don't want to, and no one wants to, be blindsided by rushing into it [as the technology is still developing]."

KPMG's Global Head of its Cyber Security Practice told BI earlier in the week that he was concerned by the rate at which many companies appear to be embracing new technologies such as blockchain without considering the security implications.

So what is blockchain and why are people going crazy for it? Blockchain is a name for a protocol underpinning bitcoin that uses complex cryptography and distributed ledgers — copies of records in multiple places — to regulate, record, and enable transactions using bitcoin.

Right now, if you pay someone in pounds, one bank will have to get in touch with the other and tell them to update the balance. Then at the end of the day bulk transactions are moved between banks, via an intermediary, to make sure everyone has the right amount of cash.

With the blockchain, all that hassle is wiped out — you just pay another person directly into a digital wallet. It's blockchain's novel approach to security that makes this possible.

Banks are hoping they can adapt this technology to let them deal directly with one another, making things faster, cheaper, and easier. This would involve either using bitcoin's blockchain or, more likely, building a replica system — a private blockchain.

R3, a startup pioneering use cases for blockchain in banking, announced yesterday that 11 top investment banks had carried out trades on a blockchain built on Ethereum, an open-source alternative to bitcoin's blockchain.

So what does Mastercard think about the consortium? "In order for blockchain technology to move to a wider scale, it needs regulation and investment," says Lyons.

"R3 is an interesting way of doing that because it brings several interested parties together to experiment with underlying tech. It's a good opportunity for the banks and there's more chance of blockchain technology succeeding as a group than disparate parties."

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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will meet on Jan. 26 to review the dual capabilities of bitcoin and the blockchain for the derivatives market. The commission appointed Paul L. Chou, CEO and founder of Ledger X, as a bitcoin trading expert to its technical advisory committee. The meeting will be from 9:45 a.m. […]

The post CFTC To Discuss Blockchain For Derivatives, Taps LedgerX’s Chou As Advisor appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Good morning! Here's what you need to know in markets on Thursday.

US stock markets had "one of the most chaotic days on Wall Street you'll see" overnight on Wednesday, according to BI's markets editor Myles Udland. Near midday in New York, the Dow was down more than 550 points while each of the major stock indexes were off more than 3%. Crude oil fell as much as 7% at one point. But indexes recovered to close around 1.5% by the end of trade. The Dow moved more than 1,000 points on the day.

Asian markets are taking a bruising. Japan's Nikkei closed down 2.43% with BI Australia's editor-in-chief Paul Colgon telling me: "Fear's back." Hong Kong's Hang Seng is up 0.73% at the time of writing (6.20 a.m. GMT/1.20 a.m. ET), but China's benchmark Shanghai Composite is down 1.64%.

Oil continues to fall. After crashing past the $28 (£19.73) a barrel level yesterday for the first time since September 2003, it's even lower today. Brent is down 0.25% to $27.75 (£19.56) at the time of writing and US crude is down 0.72% to $28.14 (£19.83).

Mario Draghi will announce his latest plans for Europe later today. The European Central Bank (ECB) delivers its latest interest rate decision at 12.45 p.m. GMT (7.45 a.m. ET), followed by a monetary policy statement from ECB head Draghi and a press conference at 1.30 p.m. (8.30 a.m. ET).

Deutsche Bank announced preliminary fourth-quarter earnings and they are not good. The firm said it expects to report a full-year net loss of €6.7 billion (£5.1 billion, $7.3 billion). Before income taxes, the loss will be about €6.1 billion (£4.6 billion, $6.6 billion). The firm cited "challenging market conditions" in the fourth quarter, leading to a drop in revenues in the Corporate Banking & Securities division.

Barclays is set to unveil a reorganization of its investment bank in the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter. The changes, which will likely include job and bonus cuts, will be the first since former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley took over as chief executive.

11 top investment banks have used blockchain technology — first invented to underpin bitcoin — to do mock trades with each other. R3, an industry-wide consortium of 42 investment banks looking at the technology, announced in an email that banks "simulated exchanging value, represented by tokenized assets on the distributed ledger without the need for a centralized third party."

A measure of international trade often seen as a bellwether for the global economy has crashed to its lowest level ever, fueling fears we could be heading for another 2008-style crash. Back in November, the Baltic Dry Index dropped below 500 for the first time in recorded history and has kept falling ever since. On Wednesday morning it fell to a low of 369.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has reportedly given a "six figure" donation to the campaign to keep the UK in the European Union. The BBC reports that the US bank is said to have backed Britain Stronger In Europe, a cross-party group leading the In campaign.

Asda is considering cutting more than 1,000 store jobs under plans to close hundreds of staff canteens and shopfloor services such as photo processing units. The Guardian reports that managers are understood to have met with union representatives on Wednesday to discuss 4,000 other job moves or changes in stores. 200 job cuts at Asda's Leeds headquarters were announced earlier in the week.

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Good morning! Here's what you need to know on Thursday.

1. Fund managers have become increasingly pessimistic towards the global economic outlook, helping to partially explain the savage sell-off in risk assets seen in recent weeks. That’s the view to come from Bank of America-Merrill Lynch’s latest global fund manager survey.

2. European markets dived into the red on Wednesday morning and failed to recover. All but two of the major stock indexes on the continent had tough days, with the FTSE 100 officially entering a bear market.

3. The best way to combat hate speech is with overwhelming acts of tolerance, including "like attacks," Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg said during a panel at the World Economic Forum.

4. Vladimir Putin has invited Jews to emigrate to Russia amid an increase in anti-Semitic violence in Europe. At a meeting between Putin and members of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), the Russian President was told that discrimination suffered by Jews in Europe was worse than at any time since World War II.

5. Experts have uncovered new evidence that a mysterious ninth planet is located within our solar system. Scientists think something bigger — perhaps four times the size of Earth — is lurking out there on the edge of the Kuiper Belt.

6. Pakistan observed a day of national mourning on Thursday for the 21 people killed when heavily armed gunmen stormed a university in the troubled northwest, exposing the failings in a national crackdown on extremism.

7. A British judge could point the finger at Russia on Thursday for the radiation poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London as an inquiry into his death finally publishes its conclusions.

8. After a month of slumping share prices for both Twitter and Square, the CEO of both companies, Jack Dorsey, is no longer a billionaire, according to Forbes.

9. Risk assets across Asia are enjoying a rare moment in the sun on Thursday, buoyed by a rebound in Chinese stocks, higher crude prices, and a sizeable cash injection into China's financial system from the Chinese central bank.

10. Eleven top investment banks have used blockchain technology to do mock trades with each other, signalling a big step towards adopting the technology first developed for bitcoin into mainstream finance.

And finally ... A 28-year-old from one of the poorest parts of London is trying to change the world in Davos.

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China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced today that it will make the necessary moves to work toward issuing a digital currency, as soon as possible. The PBC has announced in a release today that it intends to launch its own digital currency, following a meeting held in Beijing. The purpose of […]

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