Africa isn’t included on the virtual asset regulatory map just yet. But crypto businesses seeing strong growth across the 54-country continent are working hard on know-your-customer (KYC) rules to meet the exacting standards set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). A broad range of entities operating in Africa, […]
Ian Allison
34 posts
Music is back on the blockchain. Audius, a streaming service that connects music fans directly with artists, has raised $3.1 million in a strategic round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Audius has now raised a total of $8.6 million as […]
Ethereum has attracted the attention of large companies for almost as long as it has been around. But it wasn’t until early 2017 that a formal business-focused consortium came into being: the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). The EEA created a concerted effort to get large corporates and tech providers on […]
Ethereum’s Devcon 1, held in London in November 2015, was like Woodstock, except perhaps with less nudity. Bankers and Big 4 consultants disguised in hoodies shared space with dreadlocked Ethereum coders, sitting cross-legged in the corners, their laptops open in front of them. Packed into a Victorian banking hall in […]
Crypto companies enthusiastically building solutions to bring the industry in line with anti-money laundering (AML) benchmarks may be creating their own interoperability problem. There are a number of promising and popular solutions coming to the fore, but If a virtual asset service provider (VASP) using one solution is unable to […]
PayPal, the fintech giant planning to bring crypto trading to its massive user base, has chosen Paxos to handle the new service’s supply of digital assets, according to two people familiar with the matter. It’s a plum assignment for New York-based Paxos, which last week launched Paxos Crypto Brokerage and […]
IBM is giving its blockchain track-and-trace capabilities the social-impact treatment with a provenance application that enables coffee drinkers to directly assist the smallholders who farmed the beans. Announced Wednesday, IBM has teamed up with J. M. Smucker Company – the $12.2 billion food giant behind coffee brands like Folgers, Café […]
Evertas, an insurance provider focused on the cryptocurrency space, has raised $2.8 million in a seed round led by Morgan Creek. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is […]
There may be an enterprise blockchain arms race brewing in Latin America. LatamLink, an alliance of three organizations involved in the launch of the EOS public blockchain in 2018, is now busy integrating the EOSIO software for enterprise uses. The group seems to be competing for business in the region […]
Binance Labs, the incubation and seed funding arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange, has made its first investment this year, backing decentralized privacy startup HOPR. Announced Thursday, Binance Labs led a $1 million seed round in HOPR, which also saw investment from Focus Labs, Spark Digital Capital, Caballeros Capital […]
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the business end of the second-largest blockchain, has appointed a new executive director, Daniel C. Burnett. Burnett, who previously worked as a standards architect within Ethereum-focused ConsenSys, wants to widen the EEA’s scope beyond banks and blue chips, to include exchanges. Burnett even aims to embrace […]
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange by trading volume, has donated 27,000 KN95 masks worth over $60,000 to the U.K. National Health Service’s Pru Trust to aid the fight against COVID-19. The Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) is one of London’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals. It’s part of the […]
Ocean Protocol, a blockchain-based data-sharing platform, has completed a proof-of-concept (PoC) with Daimler, showing how the Mercedes-Benz maker can begin monetizing data streams within the company and across its supply chains. Announced Tuesday, the Singapore-based Ocean collaborated with Daimler AG to explore the decentralized sharing of internal sales and financial […]
Curv, a company that provides increased secrecy when it comes to holding crypto assets, has closed a $23 million Series A funding round. Announced Wednesday, the crypto custody tech provider, which uses a technique called multi-party computation (MPC), received investment from CommerzVentures, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Team8 and […]
Blockchain analysis company Elliptic has added two privacy coins to its monitoring platform. Announced Tuesday, the addition of zcash (ZEC) and horizen (ZEN) will provide exchanges and institutional investors insight into when a transaction trail ends so they can take additional due-diligence measures. Privacy is a core tenet of crypto, […]
The COVID-19 crisis may have been the last straw for a non-profit digital identity organization, breaking its efforts to raise funds to pay staff and carry out a regulated token issuance. The Sovrin Foundation, a U.S.-based umbrella organization that oversees the development of blockchain-based digital identity standards (also known as […]
Fintech giant PayPal plans to roll out direct sales of cryptocurrency to its 325 million users, according to three people familiar with the matter. Currently, PayPal can be used as an alternative means for withdrawing funds from exchanges such as Coinbase, but this would be a first in terms of […]
The Austrian government is taking a considered approach to COVID-19 tech solutions after an initial rush to get some kind of contact tracing app out the door. The nation’s second wave of projects now includes blockchain. Announced Wednesday, the country’s Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs awarded a €60,000 […]
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is working with the Colombian government to see if blockchain-based transparency can help prevent a hotspot for corruption, which happens in the process of bidding for high-value contracts to provide public goods and services. WEF partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Office […]
Ethereum development house ConsenSys is being backed by heavy hitters like Binance and Huobi to test its new “staking-as-a-service” offering, designed to make it easy for institutions to earn income from the next iteration of the second-largest public blockchain. Announced Tuesday, the Eth 2.0 staking pilot from ConsenSys Codefi includes […]
Nexus Mutual, an alternative insurance provider for a variety of Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, has seen its risk pool double over the past 90 days to more than $4 million. Indeed, Nexus can barely keep up with the demand for smart-contract cover in the exploding decentralized finance (DeFi) arena. “We are […]
U.K.-based cryptocurrency platform Ziglu has launched, following a £5.25 million (US$6.6 million) seed round. As a starting point, the platform aims to painlessly put crypto in the hands of consumers. Announced Monday, Ziglu allows users to exchange GBP for bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH), with […]
Crypto custodians are in a race to build the next State Street or BNY Mellon. There are only a handful of these types of large custody banks and most of them have been around for hundreds of years. But crypto is such a striking example of old world meeting new […]
The first Libra white paper published in June 2019 had the temerity to threaten the monetary authority of central banks and governments. The empire struck back. That’s why an updated white paper from April 2020 has taken a belt and braces approach to regulatory compliance, said Dante Disparte, head of […]