Coin News

Bitcoin hasn't quite taken off the way many had hoped it would.

Post-trade market infrastructure provider DTCC, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings have announced plans to develop distributed ledger solutions to improve the current process he clearing and settlement of repurchase agreement (repo) transactions. In a new announcement by DTCC and Digital Asset, the firms will develop and test a […]

The post Digital Asset & DTCC Partner to Form Blockchain for Repo Clearing appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), a firm at the center of Wall Street's trading infrastructure, is about to launch an important...

The post DTCC and Digital Asset Holdings to Test Blockchain Solutions for the $2.6 Trillion Repo Market appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin price decline continued all day, and pattern analysis shows $400 (Bitstamp) is a likely target during the coming 24 hours. 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 code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of […]

The post Bitcoin Price Decline Eyes $400 appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin Core developers Dr. Pieter Wuille, Eric Lombrozo and Johnson Lau launched a fourth - and probably final - iteration of the...

The post Segregated Witness Enters Final Testnet Stage, Includes Lightning Network Support appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

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Machines are becoming a bigger part of our everyday lives, but would you let one give you financial advice?

Robo-advisory firms, which provide automated algorithmic portfolio advice without human financial partners, have been growing in popularity, and one of them just scored a major round of funding.

Betterment, a firm based in New York City, closed a $100 million funding round on Tuesday led by Swedish investment group AB Kinnevik. The round brings the firm's total funding to $205 million.

Betterment is now valued at $700 million, which is 55% higher than after the last investment round in early 2015, reports Bloomberg.

Traditional investment managers such as Fidelity have been partnering with wealth management startups, which has been disrupting the mainstream advising industry. These startups, however, have been establishing their own place in the market.

Betterment has $3.9 billion in assets under management (AUM), while competitor Wealthfront has $3 billion. Major funding rounds should help these startups expand and add legitimacy to their business models. This, in turn, should create more partnerships between legacy firms and startups and incentivize more managers to digitize their businesses.

Betterment's success is further proof that we’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.

No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

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Bitcoin exchange Cointrader has announced that it is shutting down following what it claimed was a debilitating hack.

Canadian bitcoin exchange CoinTrader has shut down its operations. By the look of things, there is no indication that the exchange will resurface at a later time, either. CoinTrader, a Canadian bitcoin exchange that – in addition to its exchange platform – also has BTM ATM machines in London and Tokyo, along with point-of-sale systems […]

The post Canadian Bitcoin Exchange CoinTrader Shuts Down appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Ethereum continues to make waves on the cryptocurrency landscape, with developers introducing new applications that take advantage of its smart contract and crowdsale capabilities. The Ether’s market cap has soared above $1 billion recently. As Ethereum grows, it earns media coverage which in turn fuels its growth. The New York Times recently ran a feature […]

The post Ethereum’s Growth Draws Support from More Platforms appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

In a breakthrough special address to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation 2016 Blockchain Symposium, CFTC Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo, signalling the changing attitude of regulators towards blockchain technology, called on regulators to follow private sector innovation, and not lead, to adopt a light touch approach and to primarily follow the philosophy of “do no […]

The post CFTC Commissioner: Blockchain Tech Could Have Averted Lehman Collapse appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin startup Purse has expanded its online marketplace in a move that now allows a wider range of buyers and sellers to connect on the platform.

Billing itself as “the easy instant access to Bitcoins,” Bitit, a Paris, France-based bitcoin sales platform, allows people to buy bitcoin for cash or credit card in stores and online. The vouchers and prepaid gift cards are available at 100,000 stores. There is a map of the stores on the company website. Bitit’s goal, according to […]

The post Bitit Sells Bitcoin at 100,000 Stores appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in part with the MIT Media Lab has announced in a blog post that a $900,000 Bitcoin Developer fund has been started to help fund independent research of Bitcoin associated technology. Appropriately, the fund has a specific wallet set up to accept funding donations in the form of Bitcoin as […]

The post MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative Establishes $900,000 Bitcoin Developer Fund appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

By Naomi Tajitsu

TOKYO (Reuters) - Five years after a huge earthquake temporarily crippled parts of Japan's auto supply chain, some companies have adjusted the industry's famed "Just in Time" production philosophy in a bid to limit any repeat of the costly global disruption.

The quake exposed the vulnerability of a system pioneered after World War Two by Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, under which companies aim to boost efficiency by receiving small quantities of parts from suppliers only when needed.

But even with the risk of new disasters in one of the world's most seismically active countries businesses have had to balance efforts to disaster proof the supply chain due to concerns of the cost of, say, storing more inventory in case of an emergency which may or may not strike.

"Holding more inventory, or adding another production line as a business contingency measure may improve a company's robustness in the face of disaster, but it won't necessarily improve its global competitiveness," said supply chain expert Takahiro Fujimoto.

"Companies which take such steps at the cost of competitiveness would probably go bust even before the next disaster occurs," said Fujimoto, a professor and executive director at Tokyo University's Manufacturing Management Research Center.

Since the 2011 disaster, global auto suppliers have changed the way they produce and source the 30,000 parts required to assemble a single car, including raising stocks, diversifying production and creating alternative manufacturing capabilities.

German drugs and chemicals maker Merck KGaA said it has "significantly" increased its supplies of Xirallic, a pigment which creates the shimmery effect in vehicle paint, since the quake.

Merck's plant in Fukushima Prefecture, which at the time produced the firm's global Xirallic supply, escaped major damage, but its warehouse was inaccessible immediately after the quake, prompting automakers including Ford and Chrysler to suspend sales of vehicles in certain colors.

Nils Oldenburg, head of Merck's global pigments production, who was in charge of operations in Japan at the time of the quake, said Merck now keeps "multi-month" stocks of Xirallic at warehouses in Japan and other regions around the world.

Merck in 2012 also began a second Xirallic production line in Germany.

DUAL SOURCING, DUAL CAPACITY

Other auto parts companies are also giving themselves more leeway on inventories. German-U.S. supplier ZF-TRW said it had increased stocks of some parts procured from single sources to last six days, double the three days it held before the quake.

But industry experts say that many Japanese firms are sticking to "Just in time", opting not to increase inventories.

"The costs of maintaining extra inventory, or the view that extra inventory may be wasteful are considered to be reasons not to hold more stock," said Hiroaki Mochida, an analyst at Marusan Securities.

A spokesman at Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp <6723.T>, whose plant in Ibaraki Prefecture that produces microcontrollers used in automobiles was devastated in 2011, said it had not increased its inventories as a risk management strategy.

However, he said it had begun to standardize more parts across vehicle models to improve efficiency and enable alternative production during emergencies.

Tokyo University's Fujimoto said having capacity to transfer production to other lines was key to a quick recovery from disasters.

TRW, which specializes in vehicle safety systems and was acquired by ZF Automotive last year, now stores back-up production equipment at more of its suppliers' plants.

"In the past we believed that having moulds for some plastic parts at only one of our suppliers' plants, say either in the U.S. or China, would suffice, but now we have backups at other locations," said Yoshihiro Nakane, president of TRW Automotive Japan.

The quake was also a wake-up call for automakers to keep better track of procurement.

Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, which spent weeks identifying how its suppliers had been affected by the quake, and Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> have both developed supply chain databases.

Nissan now also requires prospective suppliers to include alternative sourcing plans for parts for new models.

(Additional reporting by Maki Shiraki and Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Ed Davies)

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Bitcoin hasn't quite taken off the way many had hoped it would.

CurrencyFair, an open-source, peer-to-peer, international currency exchange with offices in the U.K., Ireland and Australia, has raised an additional €8 million and announced a new chief marketing officer. The new funding brings the total investment in CurrencyFair to more than €20 million. Proxy Ventures, a venture capital firm, led the new funding, along with Octopus […]

The post Open-Source P2P Currency Exchange CurrencyFair Secures €8 Million appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.