Coin News

The state of Florida has appealed a recent court decision that saw a judge rule bitcoin isn't money.

A winning bidder has claimed 2,700 BTC (worth $1.58m) at an auction held by the US Marshals Service (USMS).

Verizon Communications, the largest telecommunications company in the US, is experimenting with blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology, which powers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, depends on a distributed ledger that allows users to verify transactions without an intermediary. 

Autonomous Research has called the technology a "game changer," and Goldman Sachs has said the technology "has the potential to redefine transactions."

Blockchain has tons of applications that are currently being explored by banks, startups, exchanges and corporations that want to get in on the action. 

Business Insider obtained a copy of the US patent, filed on May 10, 2016, for a passcode blockchain Verizon has apparently been working on for three years. 

The patent relates to digital content (think e-book, digital music file or video file). Verizon declined to comment. 

Here is a passage from the filing: 

"The DRM (digital rights management) system may maintain a list of passcodes in a passcode blockchain. The passcode blockchain may store a sequence of passcodes associated with the particular digital content and may indicate a currently valid passcode. For example, a first passcode may be assigned to a first user and designated as the valid passcode. If the access rights are transferred to a second user, a second passcode may be obtained and added to the blockchain, provided to the second user, and designated as the valid passcode. Thus, the first passcode may no longer be considered valid. If the second user transfers the access rights to a third user, a third passcode may be obtained and added to the blockchain, provided to the third user, and designated as the valid passcode. Thus, the first and second passcodes may no longer be considered valid.

"Furthermore, the expiration date associated with the key may continue to be in effect with respect to the second user and/or any subsequent users. Thus, if access rights for a particular digital content are associated with a rental period, or a subscription period, users may continue to transfer the rights to other users during the rental period."

There is quite a bit of excitement about having digital rights on a blockchain-type system. It could allow for pay-per-usage, for example, while smart contracts (the contractual clauses that form part of a transaction) could provide automatic payment distributions, according to a Moody's Investor Service report. 

A blockchain of digital rights for consumer products (music, news articles, among others) could ensure that artists or authors are paid immediately once a consumer reads an article or listens to a song, with funds proportionally distributed as per contractual clauses.

Given lower transaction costs on a blockchain, micropayments through a blockchain would be more feasible, allowing for a pay-per-usage set-up each time an article is read or a song is listened to.

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Ethereum’s community is standing up to the challenge of securing smart contracts by taking steps to implement the lessons learned from the DAO. Microsoft Research, Harvard University and Inra, a French national research institute that employs 2700 computer science researchers from the “world’s most prestigious universities”, have published a highly technical paper [PDF] on the formal […]

The post Microsoft, Harvard, UCL Take Steps to Bulletproof Smart Contracts appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

For at least the past year, many investors and entrepreneurs have been talking about the power of the blockchain for use in a variety of...

The post PnP Fintech Startup Program May Signal Industry Shift From ‘Blockchain’ Back to Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

U.K. equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube announced that it planned to raise £5 million ($7 million) from its members in July and attracted around £39 million ($51 million) in pledges on its preregistration site.

Last week, itrevealed that the final volume raised was £8 million ($11 million). This is the largest UK crowdfunding round to date, and more than double the previous record of £4 million ($5 million), raised by money management fintech GoHenry. 

It plans to use the money to create a platform for secondary trading. Investors who buy a stake in a private company, via equity crowdfunding or other means, typically only get a return if the company is sold or listed. Crowdcube plans to create a platform that will enable shareholders in any UK private company to sell their stake to other investors, offering a quicker route to returns. Both professional investors and the inexperienced investors who make up the bulk of Crowdcube's "crowd" will be able to use the platform. This concept is similar to that used by US firm NASDAQ Private Market, which enables investors to trade stakes in private companies. 

But there are a number of hurdles that Crowdcube's platform will have to overcome in order to be successful:

• Protecting investors' tax breaks. In the UK, investors who buy shares in small businesses qualify for certain tax breaks. But in order to realise those benefits, investors must hold onto the shares for at least three years. Crowdcube will have to find a way to make sure investors who sell early don't lose out, otherwise trading volumes on the secondary market would likely be limited.  

• A secondary market could cause fluctuations in valuation. This is would likely cause a problem for startups that have a larger portion of equity in the hands of investors — like some of those funded by Crowdcube. If the shares that make up this equity are included on the secondary platform, and the value of those shares dip, it could lower the overall valuation of the startup. This might make future financing rounds more difficult.

• The need to protect inexperienced investors. Private businesses don't legally have to report financials or other performance metrics — and when they do, the numbers are not always validated by a third party. This makes it especially hard for inexperienced investors to fully understand the risks of investing and could result in significant personal losses — which would likely catch regulators' attention. In this scenario, Crowdcube would have to convince regulators that the investors were adequately educated. This could result in Crowdcube having to bring in an independant third party to audit company reports. 

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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The Chinese government has created a blockchain working group of government and blockchain industries to fast-forward the development and...

The post Strategic Alliance Formed to Speed Up Adoption of Blockchain Technology in China appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is considering the use of blockchain technology to prevent the influx of conflict diamonds from entering the multibillion-dollar global precious stones market. The Kimberley Process (KP), an organization set up to stop the flow of “blood diamonds” from entering the global precious stones market has revealed a new blockchain […]

The post Blockchain Technology Sought to Curb Trade of Conflict Diamonds appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Chain Inc., a blockchain company specializing in enterprise software for financial firms, has joined the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and...

The post Chain Joins Industry-Academia Blockchain Initiative to Solve Interoperability and Scalability Issues appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Today marks the official release of Bitcoin Core 0.13.0, the thirteenth generation of Bitcoin's reference client as first launched by...

The post Bitcoin Core 0.13.0  is Released: What's New? appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

In an extended interview with CCN to be published shortly, Dawei Lee, Chief Executive of CHBTC, China’s biggest ETH and ETC trading exchange and fourth by volume for BTC, stated: Recently the government in China has been giving positive signals in regards to digital currency and blockchain technology. Positive announcements from the Cyber security bureau, […]

The post Major Chinese Exchange CHBTC CEO: Chinese Government Giving Positive Signals with Digital Currencies appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

  A new consortium of Japanese banking and financial services giants will seek to use blockchain technology to provide domestic and foreign exchange services. Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings and its subsidiary SBI Ripple Asia, have collaborated to launch a consortium that will seek to use blockchain innovation – the technology underpinning bitcoin – […]

The post Japanese Banks Plan Blockchain Forex Services appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

  A new consortium of Japanese banking and financial services giants will seek to use blockchain technology to provide domestic and foreign exchange services. Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings and its subsidiary SBI Ripple Asia, have collaborated to launch a consortium that will seek to use blockchain innovation – the technology underpinning bitcoin – […]

The post Japanese Banks Plan Blockchain Forex Services appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Last week, a group of mysterious hackers dumped hacking tools from the world’s most powerful spying group, the National Security Agency, and demanded millions in dollars of bitcoins to reveal more tools it accessed. Now, a separate hacker is claiming that he has the rest of the tools.

Read more...

CEX.IO, the London-based cryptocurrency exchange, has introduced a new feature to its fee schedule, its most recent innovation to encourage higher market liquidity and improve bitcoin trading. The new Maker-Taker fee schedule sets the maker fee to 0%.   The 0% maker fee is CEX.IO’s latest incentive to make bitcoin trading and commerce easier. Bitcoin […]

The post CEX.IO Introduces New Fee Schedule to Improve Bitcoin Trading appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

2016 has perhaps seen a proliferation of new schools of thought under the crypto-currency genre, particularly thanks to the best known of all cryptocoins: Bitcoin. Among the most recent: the notion of Bitcoin maximalism. In short, Bitcoin maximalists look down upon alternative use cases outside the domain of Bitcoin; i.e. Ethereum, Litecoin, even your beloved […]

The post What is Bitcoin Maximalism? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

2016 has perhaps seen a proliferation of new schools of thought under the crypto-currency genre, particularly thanks to the best known of all cryptocoins: Bitcoin. Among the most recent: the notion of Bitcoin maximalism. In short, Bitcoin maximalists look down upon alternative use cases outside the domain of Bitcoin; i.e. Ethereum, Litecoin, even your beloved […]

The post What is Bitcoin Maximalism? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

“[Projects like the DAO] are an inelegant and wholly unconvincing way to commit securities fraud, speaking kindly,” Preston Byrnes said at the Blockchain Conference in New York. He compared the DAO and other blockchain crowdsales to “cargo cults.” Such cults revolve around the belief that ritualistic acts like building an airplane runway will bring desirable […]

The post Eris Industries COO: “The DAO Is a Cargo Cult” appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

By Michael Shields and Greg Roumeliotis

ZURICH (Reuters) - A U.S. national security panel has cleared ChemChina's $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta , the companies said, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

The decision removes significant uncertainty over the takeover of the world's largest pesticides maker after the two companies agreed a deal in February.

Syngenta shares jumped 11 percent in early trading to 422.60 Swiss francs ($438.75), while ChemChina's offer valued the company at around 448 francs at current exchange rates plus a special five-franc dividend.

Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Christian Faitz called the step a "major milestone for the deal", adding in a note to clients that

"approval removes a major potential hurdle and should come as a relief to Syngenta shareholders". Kepler Cheuvreux rates Syngenta shares a "Buy".Reuters had reported earlier on Monday that the acquisition was in the final stages of being cleared by a U.S. panel that scrutinizes deals for national security implications.

"China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and Syngenta today announced that the companies have received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)," a joint statement released by Syngenta said.

The statement made no mention of any concessions required to win clearance, and the company did not immediately respond to requests by phone and email for additional comment.

Syngenta reiterated that is expected the deal to be finalised by the end of the year.

"In addition to CFIUS clearance, the closing of the transaction is subject to anti-trust review by numerous regulators around the world and other customary closing conditions. Both companies are working closely with the regulatory agencies involved and discussions remain constructive.

RIPPLES ACROSS SECTOR

The CFIUS review is being watched closely by Monsanto Co , the world's largest seed company, which is deliberating whether it should sell itself to Germany's Bayer AG . Syngenta last year turned down offers to be acquired by Monsanto.

The deal comes as China looks to secure food supplies for its population.

Syngenta is a key player in the market for pesticides and seeds. It has facilities in North Carolina, as well a presence in California, Delaware, Iowa and Minnesota among other states.

Syngenta's share price has significantly lagged ChemChina's offer of $465 per share plus a 5 franc special dividend amid concerns that the deal would get through CFIUS. Syngenta derives about a quarter of its sales from North America.

Several U.S. lawmakers wrote to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew this year asking for CFIUS to subject the deal to additional scrutiny over its impact on domestic food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also joined the CFIUS review, Reuters previously reported.

Syngenta had said this year it would make a voluntary filing with CFIUS "even though no obvious national security concerns were identified during due diligence".

With a growing number of Chinese companies looking to acquire U.S. peers, CFIUS had emerged as a significant risk for such deals, particularly those with potential cyber security implications.

For example, in February, state-backed Chinese firm Unisplendor Corp <000938.SZ> scrapped a $3.78 billion investment in Western Digital Corp after CFIUS said it would investigate the transaction.

($1 = 0.9632 Swiss francs)

(Additional reporting by John Revill; Editing by Adrian Croft and Keith Weir)

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The cryptocurrency has a volatile past, but is now being traded around the world. Here’s the lowdown on going digital with your money

Looking at the negligible returns offered on cash investments, Edward Cunningham started searching for alternatives. Instead of going to the stock market or buying up gold bars, however, the 45-year-old from Sherborne in Dorset turned to the internet, and last September invested in the digital currency bitcoin. Since then his stake has more than doubled.

Bitcoin is a paperless, bankless, stateless currency which exists on computers, and carries with it a whiff of peril for investors. Cunningham admits to being nervous when he first signed up to trade in the currency, especially when he had to make his first deposit via a bank in Estonia. “It all turned out well and I bought my first coins for $225 each, well below today’s price of around $575,” he says.

Everyone is talking about blockchain. 

The nascent technology has the potential to allow a digital asset to be securely and seamlessly transferred from one party to another, eliminating the need for third-party intermediaries and shortening settlement time to seconds.

Based on recent data, the estimated annual budget for blockchain initiatives in 2016 is $1 billion.

Earlier this week, Business Insider interviewed chief technology officers, chief innovation officers, startup founders and venture capitalists to ask them the one thing that will change financial services as we know it in the next decade.

The immense potential for blockchain resonated from startup founders to incumbent industry giants.

Here's a sampling:

• Debra Walton, chief product and content officer at Thomson Reuters, “firmly believes that the blockchain will have as profound of an effect on the world of business and commerce as the internet .... The impact of blockchain will be most felt in how transactions are executed, cleared and settled."
• CommonBond cofounder and CEO David Klein said the technology "will be the most disruptive thing to happen in finance over the next decade. Possibly over the next century." 
• He added: "It will affect all areas of finance: lending, asset management, payments and more. And its impact won't be limited to just the finance industry; it will affect the finance functions inside every company around the world regardless of industry.”
• Mike Bodson, president and CEO of DTCC, also believes blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the financial services industry. We’re still a long ways away, however. “We’re probably overestimating the impact blockchain will have on the industry in the next two years, and underestimating its impact in 10 years,” he said.
• He sees the technology has having the potential to modernize the post-trade environment in areas like clearance, settlement and payments. While the scale of US equities makes it less likely to be impacted by blockchain, areas like repo can benefit from the “efficiencies and a single version of the truth it provides.”

While Wall Street and other industries are clearly excited about the technology, there are still significant challenges ahead, including uncertainty over regulation, the immense cost of overhauling legacy systems, and major security issues.

Earlier this month, hackers stole $72 million worth of bitcoin from accounts at the Hong Kong cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Back in June, hackers stole $55 million worth of ether, a rival to bitcoin.

A recent Greenwich Associates survey of 119 bankers and financial technology executives on concerns over the blockchain found that they were worried first about other banks seeing their transactions and then about the security of the transactions themselves.

It’s clear that these security issues will need to be addressed before the widespread implementation of blockchain.

Suresh Kumar, the chief information officer at BNY Mellon, believes that a high potential emerging technology like blockchain will only be a game-changer “if they achieve a network effect, which means we need to work together to establish standards.”

That echoes another emerging industry, that of the self-driving car. 

“Think of the impact that the computer had on industry,” said Klein at CommonBond. “That's what we're talking about with blockchain. It's the self-driving car of finance."

SEE ALSO: We asked some of the smartest minds in finance how Wall Street is going to change — this is what they said

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