The JD Blockchain Open Platform expands the company’s Retail as a Service and will allow customers to build smart contracts on both private and public enterprise clouds.

The platform will allow companies to streamline tracking of product movement, property assessments, digital copyrights and authenticity certifications. The company oversees quality control of its offerings on the app store to allow users to customize applications.

Numerous Offerings Available

The platform includes an application store that offers software and numerous blockchain base layers developed by independent software vendors as well as JD.com’s internal development team.

The platform will be especially helpful to companies lacking the capability to develop blockchain solutions on their own.

China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC) has become the first JD.com partner to use the open blockchain platform. The insurance company applies a unique blockchain ID to each invoice document, improving the efficiency and streamlining the accounting process, thereby strengthening the security governance of electronic invoices.

Yanhong Pan, vice president and chief financial officer at CPIC, said the e-invoice system has improved operational efficiency.

Jian Pei, who oversees big data and smart supply chain at J.D.com, said the open platform was initially developed for the company’s own operations to improve visibility to consumers.

Blockchain Innovation Continues

Earlier this year, JD.com launched AI Catapult, a blockchain and artificial intelligence accelerator, and has developed AI applications at a Silicon Valley lab as well as in China.

AI Catapult already includes companies such as Bankorous, a Chinese fintech provider; CanYa, an Australia based cryptocurrency company; Bluezelle, a Singapore based blockchain-powered database service; Nuggets, a blockchain-based ID platform and payments platform based in London; and Devery, a blockchain based product verification protocol.

Last year, JD.com introduced a blockchain platform to allow customers to track the development process for products and food items they buy. This initiative deployed blockchain based tracing for more than 11,000 stock keeping units and 400 brands.

JD.com will also work with certificate authorities and software providers to examine ways to apply blockchain for business uses, such as enterprise resource planning.

– CCN

Posting on his Twitter account, Blockchain CEO and Cofounder Peter Smith made the claim in a tweet that also appeared to take a shot at Coinbase.

Defying the Downturn

Responding to a Bloomberg interview with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong where he stated that Coinbase was signing up 50,000 new users daily at the peak of last year’s bitcoin rally, Smith tweeted that Blockchain is currently managing to sign up that number of new users daily, and that the service helps them to actually use and engage practically with crypto, as against other unspecified use cases.

Observers are likely to take the statement as a shot at Coinbase for apparently helping people to get into crypto for speculative purposes, instead of for practical purposes, unlike Blockchain. The implication, in other words, is that Smith was hinting that the trading and investment-heavy Coinbase model does not necessarily help the long-term adoption of crypto, and it may have in fact contributed to the crypto industry downturn.

Blockchain’s Big Ambitions

As the self-described “most trusted crypto company”, Blockchain certainly does not seem unwilling to take part in a little self-promotion from time to time. Smith’s statement, while difficult to verify is in keeping with the company’s aggressive growth mindset, which recently saw it hit the milestone of 25 million wallets.

The company offers its users the ability to send, receive, trade and store their cryptocurrency, which places it firmly within ‘Coinbase competitor’ territory. So far it appears to be more than holding its own, since successfully closing a $40 million Series B funding round led by Google in 2017.

Once listed among Virgin UK’s Top Ten most disruptive businesses, Blockchain has designs on conquering both the retail crypto market and the investment market. CCN reported in July that the company launched a product aimed at institutional investors called Blockchain Principal Strategies.

The product offers institutions and family offices customized access to markets and research in the light of growing interest from endowments, pension, hedge and mutual funds in the crypto industry.

On the retail side, Blockchain has also been at the cutting edge of some of the most significant moves in crypto transaction engineering such as the introduction of Segregated Witness (Segwit) and the pioneering transaction fee estimation program that allows users to allocate fees on a Satoshis per byte basis.

– CCN

This product, which began trading on the U.K.-based Crypto Facilities on Friday at 4 p.m. local time, allows investors to bet on the future price movements of bitcoin cash, as well as hedge risk in their overall cryptocurrency portfolios.

“We are pleased to be expanding our cryptocurrency derivatives offering with the launch of Bitcoin Cash futures,” said Crypto Facilities CEO Timo Schlaefer in a statement. “BCH is a top five coin with a market capitalisation of around $10 billion and we expect our new contracts to spur the evolution of the crypto markets by bringing greater liquidity and transparency to the digital asset class.”

“This is another example of how Bitcoin Cash is proving itself to be one of the most innovative and useful cryptocurrencies in the world,” added BCH evangelist Roger Ver.

Tokyo-based trading and investment firm Profluent Japan says that it will make markets in the new bitcoin cash futures markets.

“Profluent Japan welcomes the opportunity to make markets in BCH derivatives on the Crypto Facilities platform. The institutional trading community was in great need of a proper BCH hedging mechanism at an FCA-registered exchange with a first class management team,” said Profluent Group CEO Bert Mouler. “Crypto Facilities is the first to provide such a service.”

In addition to BCH, Crypto Facilities has also launched futures products for bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, and litecoin. Earlier this year, Crypto Facilities CEO Tim Schlaefer told CCN that the platform has seen strong growth in 2018 despite the bear market. He said that volume had increased 84 percent between Q4 2017 and Q1 2018 and that he expected Q2 volume to double that of Q1.

Notably, Crypto Facilities is one of several cryptocurrency exchanges that provide pricing data used in Chicago-based derivatives exchange CME’s cryptocurrency reference rates. To date, CME has launched reference rates for bitcoin and ether, and the former has been used as the foundation for the platform’s bitcoin futures product. Consequently, the launch of BCH derivatives products on this platform could be the first step toward eventually seeing bitcoin cash futures listed on a major exchange.

– CCN

The company behind the project is DEXON, which is focused on blockchain mass adoption within the banking industry and real-world application requirements.

DEXON reports that the new blockchain technology uses a blocklattice structure that meshes multiple chains together to form what the company claims to be an infinitely scalable, low-latency decentralized transaction processing engine. The company was launched by the executive team of the zero-fee crypto exchange Cobinhood, and the $20 million funding round that just closed was led by IDG Capital, a venture capital firm which manages over $20 billion in assets. The funding round also drew investments from various angel investors.

While it sounds far-fetched, the company claim to have already recorded test transaction speeds at 50 blocks per second or approximately 1 million transactions throughout 25 nodes, with each block being 2MB and each transaction being 100 bytes on average.

“Clearly, investors believe in DEXON’s ‘blocklattice’ protocol, which is underpinned by consensus algorithms that allow for transaction speeds competitive with major credit card companies,” said Popo Chen, founder of Cobinhood and co-founder of the non-profit DEXON Foundation. “In fact, we hope to partner with these institutions, as we’re now able to offer the same processing power without a need for centralization. Other than DEXON, current blockchain protocols can only process a few secure transactions per second, leaving them unable to keep pace with traditional solutions.”

Through the use of a blocklattice structure along with a total-ordering consensus algorithm, DEXON claims to be able to make decentralized transactions scalable. Unlike traditional blockchain systems that build encrypted blocks linearly, DEXON’ s blocklattice features multiple blockchains that work together in parallel, which DEXON execs say makes it easier to scale automatically and energy-efficiently.

“With its fundamentally new architecture, the DEXON network is poised to become the world’s first mainstream blockchain,” said Wei-Ning Huang, co-founder of DEXON. “Investors are recognizing that there is a problem with current blockchain technology, and that the protocol most focused on throughput and scalability will form the basis of Blockchain 4.0. These tests prove that the blocklattice works, and this funding is proof that investors trust DEXON’ s strategy over the long term.”

Launched earlier, the DEXON blockchain will be the fastest in the world by a long shot — if it works. The difficulties in scaling blockchains are well-documented at this stage, and with an enormous undertaking like DEXON it remains to be seen whether the block lattice structure can scale as advertised. However, if the design is as advertised, the blocklattice system may be about to make a major impact on the cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape.

– CCN

Ripple has partnered with U.S.-based Bittrex, Mexican Bitso, and Philippine Coins.Ph cryptocurrency trading platforms within its initiative to build a “healthy” ecosystem of digital asset exchange.

The new partners will enable Ripple’s xRapid payments solution to move between XRP and U.S.dollars, Mexican pesos, and Philippine pesos respectively. Ripple explained the operational principle like this:

“A financial institution (FI) that has an account with Bittrex would initiate a payment in U.S. dollars via xRapid, which instantly converts into XRP on Bittrex. The payment amount in XRP is settled over the XRP Ledger, then Bitso, through its Mexican peso liquidity pool, instantly converts the XRP into fiat, which is then settled into the destination bank account.”

XRapid is a liquidity solution for Ripple’s blockchain-based real-time gross settlement system, which is developed to facilitate international fiat transfers between financial institutions. Ripple Chief Market Strategist Cory Johnson said:

“We’ve seen several successful xRapid pilots already, and as we move the product from beta to production later this year, these exchange partners will allow us to provide financial institutions with the comfort and assurance that their payments will move seamlessly between different currencies.”

In May, financial institutions who participated in the pilot of xRapid platform, which tested payments between the U.S. and Mexico, reported transaction savings of 40-70 percent. Additionally, the participants noted an improvement in transaction speed from 2-3 days to “just over two minutes.”

Although the testing showed solid product performance, Ripple chief cryptographer David Schwartz claimed that banks are unlikely to deploy blockchain to process international payments, citing low scalability and privacy problems.

Earlier this week, Cointelegraph reported that Ripple is considering breaking into the Chinese market to speed up international payments with blockchain technology. Jeremy Light, vice president of European Union strategic accounts at Ripple, said that “China is definitely a country and region of interest.”

– Cointelegraph

The collaboration involving EZ-Link, You Technologies Group and Mastercard is said to mark EZ-Link’s first step into fintech.

YouTrip comes with a contactless Mastercard prepaid card issued by EZ-Link in collaboration with You Technologies Group, which enables users to pay at over 30 million Mastercard merchants worldwide.

You Technologies Group is a Hong Kong-based fintech start-up that develops mobile payment solutions.

With YouTrip, users will not incur fees typically charged for currency exchange at banks or money changers, as well as online currency conversion and transaction fees typically incurred for cross-border payments.

Currently, YouTrip supports no-fee overseas transactions in more than 150 currencies.

Users can also use the YouTrip app to “maximise savings” by monitoring live foreign exchange rates on the go and instantly exchange and store up to 10 selected currencies in their wallets at their preferred rates, with no additional fees or mark-ups.

The 10 wallet currencies are the Singapore dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, euro, pound sterling, Swiss franc, US dollar and Swedish krona.

With YouTrip’s SmartExchange technology, users can also use leftover currencies to transact in any of the 150 and more currencies during their next trip or in Singapore.

The app will automatically convert leftover currencies at wholesale exchange rates at no additional fees for users to complete transactions when there is insufficient balance for the transacting foreign currencies.

The YouTrip app will provide instant notification on every transaction and allow instant card deactivation when the linked Mastercard is lost or misplaced.

“As users can check their balance and top up on the go, they will never have to worry about running out of cash when overseas,” the three companies said in a joint statement.

Users can sign up for a YouTrip account at no charge and without any minimum account balance or card fees. Topping up the YouTrip wallet in Singdollar with any debit or credit card is free and each account can store up to $3,000.

The first 1,000 users who sign up will receive an early bird bonus of $20, to be credited on their first successful top-up.

– The Straits Times

BEIJING, Aug. 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — On August 5, 2018, Hitters XU, founder of Bitsclub and Nebulas has announced the launch of the “Bitsclub Vision Program” (BVP) together with SB China Venture Capital (SBCVC) partner Dr. Ye ZHOU, Danhua Capital (DHVC) Vice President Dr. Yang YAN, Oneboat Capital founder Chang LI and Odaily founder Mandy Wang in Shanghai. BVP aims to create a seamless connection between classical industry and blockchain. This will introduce new quality users to the blockchain industry thereby building a healthy industry ecosystem.

In the past two years, the rapid growth of the blockchain industry has received extensive attention from classical industries which hope to upgrade their technology, transform business models, reward current users and revitalize existing traffic with the support of blockchain technology. However, the information asymmetry in the Blockchain industry pose a challenge and in turn leads to the issues of high cost for qualified projects to make the transformation, technical difficulties, low successful transformation rate, and more. In order to solve these problems, Bitsclub, the first angel club focusing on cryptocurrency, digital asset and blockchains in China, together with senior blockchain experts, investment institutions as well as industry media initiated the Bitsclub Vision Program.

BVP will support qualified projects in business consultation, technical guidance, financing planning and media channels. BVP will rely on Atlas Protocol which is a standard protocol for defining marketing interactions among onchain audiences. This will provide the most effective analysis of onchain data and interactions. Atlas Protocol will help solve the problem of information asymmetry which will facilitate the transformation of classical industries, drive the paradigm shift and in return generate new value to the industry.

The founders of BVP are formed by world renowned entrepreneurs and leading organizations of the blockchain industry who span the entire industrial chain.

Hitters XU, founder of Bitsclub, NEO and Nebulas, is a leading pioneer of China’s blockchain industry since its early stage. Dr. Ye ZHOU, a partner at SBCVC, leads investment in TMT sector, covering Internet, Enterprise Services, Fintech and Blockchain, etc. DHVC, founded by the renowned scientist Shoucheng ZHANG, aims to serve as a high speed bridge to connect Chinawith the world in entrepreneurship and innovation. DHVC’s current assets exceed $500 million with focus on the areas of AI, AR/VR, Big Data, Blockchain, Enterprise Software and other disruptive technologies. Oneboat Capital, the leading cryptocurrency investment institution which focuses on early stage investments of blockchain, with phase I AUM of 200,00 ETH, has incubated and invested in over 50 blockchain projects. Odaily, a blockchain-focused media platform incubated by 36Kr, whose operations include news coverage, data provision, technology interpretation and in-depth analysis. Their vision is to build a comprehensive, technology-focused service provider for blockchain companies worldwide on top of the resources 36Kr offers.

In addition, guests present at the press release also included the co-founder of Atlas Protocol (ATP), Duran LIU; the founder of the renowned blockchain game engine Egretia, Peter HUANG; the Partner of Contentos, a decentralized global content ecosystem, Wenwei WU; as well as other honored guests.

Founding President of DHVC Professor Shoucheng ZHANG indicated, BVP will focus on high-quality projects with stable users and mature business models to promote to the development of blockchain technology, explore more application fields, and break through the barrier between classical industries and blockchain industry to promote healthy and sustainable growth of blockchain.

– AsiaOne

Excluding this mega-deal, Asia still saw strong fintech investment, including quarter-over-quarter increases in overall fintech investment in India, Australia, and Singapore, KPMG noted.

Following the global trend, median fintech VC late stage deal size in Asia increased significantly during the first half of the year—rising from US$25million to US$37.7 million—the highest of any region, according to the KPMG Pulse of Fintech report.  said the firm.

Blockchain and AI continued to be key priority areas for fintech investors in Asia, in addition to insurtech and regtech, KPMG added.

Global fintech investment hit US$57.9B

Globally, fintech investment roared ahead at a record pace in the first half of 2018, with US$57.9 billion invested across 875 deals, up from US$38.1B invested in all of 2017, according to the report.

Highlights of the first half included the successful closing of two massive deals: the record-setting US$14B raise by Ant Financial in Q2’18 and Vantiv’s acquisition of WorldPay for US$12.9B in Q1’18.

Overall deal volume was robust, rising from 834 in H2’17 to 875 deals in H1’18. Further, global median size of late-stage venture financings rocketed to US$25M during H1’18, up from the US$14M annual median size seen in 2017. Early stage deal size jumped as well, from a median of US$5M in 2017 to US$9.2M at the mid-point of 2018.

In Europe, fintech investment hit US$26billion across 198 deals in 1H 2018, fueled by substantial deals by WorldPay, Nets, iZettle and IRIS software  – which together accounted for US$22.4B of the European total, the report says.

US fintech companies attracted US$14.2B in investment in the said period, including over US$5billion in VC investment, the report adds.

Fintech sub-sectors to watch

“Large deals at all stages powered fintech investment in the first half of 2018,” said Ian Pollari, Global Co-Lead, KPMG Fintech. “But just as notable is the breadth of investment. A mix of fintech sub-sectors are increasingly drawing interest, including data, AI and regtech—these horizontal capabilities have appeal across the full spectrum of the financial services industry.”

“Not only is more investment flowing into emerging technologies like AI and subsectors like regtech, we are also seeing efforts to combine fintech capabilities and embed them within broader digital transformation programs,” added Anton Ruddenklau, Global Co-Lead, KPMG Fintech.

Venture capitalists remain excited about funding fintech start-ups across a wide range of fintech subsectors, but M&A activity is also growing as more mature fintechs seek exits, said KPMG, adding that current M&A activity has easily matched the most active M&A periods seen to date.

Payments and regtech shine

As one of the most mature sub-sectors of fintech, payments witnessed a number of large exits in 1H 2018, including successful IPOs by EVO Payments and GreenSky, Paypal’s US$2.2 billion acquisition of iZettle and  Vantiv’s  acquisition of WorldPay in the UK, the report says.

The regtech sector also got off to a hot start in the said period, with US$1.37 billion invested, already surpassing the 2017 total, the report adds.

Blockchain moving beyond experimentation

Blockchain continued to draw a significant amount of attention from investors in 1H 2018, with investment typically focused on more experienced companies and consortia looking to obtain additional rounds rather than on new market entrants, said KPMG.

Large rounds in blockchain companies were seen during the first half of 2018, including US$100M+ rounds to R3 and Circle Internet Finance in the US, and US$77M to Ledger in France, the firm noted.

Strong outlook

With a significant amount of capital waiting to be deployed, a growing diversity of fintech hubs across the globe, and a growing number of corporates looking to leverage fintech in order to drive innovation, investment in fintech will remain strong heading into the second half of 2018, KPMG predicted.

– CFO Innovation

Money Finds a Way

Following the crypto banking ban by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which went into effect last month, Indian traders are finding multiple ways to bypass the ban.

One of the methods they are using is referred to as Dabba trading, Business Today recently reported:

Ever since the banks were stopped from providing financial services to digital exchanges, the trade of bitcoin through Dabba trading has increased manifold.

In Dabba trading, brokers do not execute trades on a “system connected with commodity or stock exchange,” the news outlet described. Instead, they transfer “money through hawala network” and trade “using an overseas bank trading account,” most of which are based in Europe, especially the UK and Dubai.

While “mostly used for trading in stocks,” the publication explained that this method “has seen an upsurge as traditional Dabba operators are accepting bets on bitcoin too, giving a boost to their overall earning,” adding:

Such traders are based out of Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot, Kolkata and Mumbai. They work as a bridge between a customer and foreign trading company. The broker accepts money in cash, buys bitcoins using an overseas trading account and sells them when the bet placed in India is settled. The difference is paid in cash to the customer.

Where are the Deals Happening?

Most Dabba deals are done “via messaging app Telegram, cloud-based instant messaging service with end-to-end encryption and the money in cash is routed through the hawala channels,” the publication detailed.

Citing that “such deals are also happening through official channels like brokers who maintain bank accounts in India as well as overseas,” the news outlet elaborated:

The money is then routed through official or unofficial channels to the foreign account where bitcoins are bought and sold. The money is usually paid in cash or cheque to the investor following the deduction of commission or any loss.

Cash and P2P Markets

The use of physical cash for crypto trading has also surged since the RBI ban took effect, the news outlet noted. “The cash market existed way before the RBI diktat on cryptocurrencies but it has now flourished as people with illicit cash are using it to earn more money.”

In addition, a number of crypto exchanges in India have launched peer-to-peer (P2P) trading solutions to circumvent the ban. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on a few crypto exchanges launching P2P trading services – Koinex, Wazirx, and Coindelta. A few others such as Giottus, Instashift, and Zecoex also offer some forms of P2P systems. Furthermore, Chinese exchange Huobi has reportedly said that it will launch P2P trading in India.

– Bitcoin.com

It Does Not Matter To Bitpay Whether It’s ”Crashing”

Sonny Singh, the chief operating officer of Bitpay, recently discussed the use of bitcoin as a means of payment.

Mr. Singh stated that “Bitcoin is actually working,” adding that when “people say ‘wow the price has gone down so much, it’s crashing’ – that’s not relevant to what I’m doing.”

The Bitpay CEO asserted that “The key thing is that bitcoin is actually being used all around the world for things other than speculation and trading.” Mr. Singh claims that Bitpay “did 1.2 billion dollars last year in payments,” adding that such “means people spent $1.2 billion dollars of payments using bitcoin.”

Need for Greater Crypto Education to Foster Adoption

Despite his belief that bitcoin is currently “working” as a means of payment, Mr. Singh emphasized the need for greater education regarding the benefits of cryptocurrency in order to foster adoption.

“In America, everyone’s so used to credit cards or goes online and types credit card numbers. But it’s safer and easier to do this through QR code because you don’t have to give your credit card numbers. […] The merchants save money in America by paying with bitcoin, because they pay 1% of the transaction fee, but with credit cards, that’s 4%. So the merchants can make a lot of money if you are paying with bitcoin. But yet they don’t understand it, they have to be educated about it. And the consumers have to get the habit of spending with bitcoin. For them, it’s better and quicker than credit cards, and better for privacy,” he stated.

Mr. Singh added that the typical American cryptocurrency-user is principally concerned with speculation rather than the utility of bitcoin, stating: “A lot of people in America have heard of bitcoin, but not a lot of them own bitcoin. Even the tech people and college kids bought bitcoin, they’ll not spend it. They bought it only for speculation. And if you ask them about bitcoin, they can tell you about the price but nothing else, because they treat it as an investment tool. We need to get these people to actually start to spend bitcoin.”

Asian Region a Key Market for Bitpay

The Bitpay COO indicated that Asia comprises the company’s major market, stating “I have to say that Asia is a very big market for Bitpay and for bitcoin overall. And it will be that way for a long time, not just for trading, but for businesses as well. If you [live] in China or Korea and you have to pay an invoice to America, let’s say a million dollars, and you use bank services, it’ll take you 3 to 5 days for that payment to happen and it cost 3% to 4% in fees. We can do the whole thing in one day for 1% fee by bitcoin. That’s how bitcoin solves a real pain point. It’s cheaper and quicker than bank wire in most regions of the world.”

Mr. Singh also expressed his confidence that bitcoin “will become a main street product in the next couple of years,” adding “It just takes a little time.”

– Bitcoin.com