Category: Blockchain

Bitstamp, Europe’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and BCB Group, one of the world’s leading global digital asset prime brokers, today announced a new partnership that will enable investors from the UK to transfer GBP directly to and from their Bitstamp accounts.

Through this partnership, Bitstamp will be able to support deposits and withdrawals directly in GBP, providing increased efficiency and reduced costs for clients. The new GBP service will be available to Bitstamp’s customers by the end of the year.

Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, Founder & CEO of BCB Group, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Bitstamp to create an efficient transaction experience for UK investors wishing to deposit and withdraw funds in GBP. We value this partnership not only because it enables UK clients to transact with Bitstamp onshore, rather than having to send funds offshore, but also because it furthers our mission to provide seamless prime services infrastructure covering compliance, trade execution and settlement and custody for clients wishing to access cryptocurrencies.”

BCB Group’s range of solutions has been developed to cater to the needs of exchanges, institutions and high net worth clients seeking OTC best execution for their own accounts and who wish to offer cryptocurrency products and services to their own clients.

Bitstamp, which is the world’s longest-standing crypto exchange and widely regarded as a pioneer in the industry, has placed an emphasis on reliable and secure service ever since it opened its doors in 2011. “This is a great fit,” said Nejc Kodrič, Bitstamp CEO. “One of our points of emphasis is providing robust payment rails to our global customer base. We’re excited to have BCB Group provide an additional boost to our efforts on that front.”

Bitstamp, which will soon be celebrating 8 years of continuous operations, has had a busy year so far, launching a new mobile app and webpage redesign, reaching a number of new partnerships and ramping up the exchange’s presence in the US by obtaining a BitLicense and making strategic hires.

Many governments certainly seem to be fearful of digital currencies. Just this month, President Trump tweeted his dislike of Bitcoin and Facebook’s new Libra coin. Of course, many commentators are quick to point out that governments worry about them because their currencies have the most to lose from them. However, as far as consumers and coin buyers are concerned, there are many reasons they have to be thankful for them, providing useful, low-cost solutions for all of society.

One such cryptocurrency that is offering a valuable use case for everyone is PopUp Coin. The coin will pave the way for consumers to be able to pay for their lifestyle while enjoying time at their favourite entertainment venues, such as dining in a nice restaurant or buying the latest products they have their eyes on.

It has the advantage of allowing consumers to purchase goods more easily, and for a cheaper price, without retailers needing to offer discounts on their products to capture sales, which results in adverse impacts on both their profit margins and the value of their brand.

PopUp Coins benefit the consumer by the stable growth that holding them provides. To give an example, if a PopUp Coin holder spots a new pair of sneakers they want to buy at the beginning of the week for £100 or 100 PopUp Coins, the coin’s stable growth sees the price of the coins increase daily due to the coins limited pool and its growth on exchanges, so by the end of the week the price of each PopUp Coin is £1.25. This means they are effectively spending £75 on their sneakers, with £25 left to either spend on whatever they choose, or hold onto for further gains.

The advantage for the retailer is not having to discount their products, so they also gain the profits they desire – it’s a win-win for both sides. They can either convert the coins to fiat for minimal cost or decide to hold the coins and take advantage of their increasing value. In addition, the retailer benefits from transaction processing fees being significantly reduced, and the chance of fraud being eliminated, with zero chance of chargebacks from customers.

For consumers, as well as obtaining products for a cheaper price, they can enjoy zero foreign-exchange fees for any payments overseas, plus take advantage of consumer loyalty programs and profit from the growth of their coin investment.

PopUp Coin’s vision is to provide both retailers and consumers with considerable upsides, saving them money and making their lives much easier. Their growing list of collaborations with merchant acquirers and retailers is testament to the potential the coin holds. We look forward to seeing this coin blossom, and for further details and technical information, you can check out more by visiting their website: www.popup.money

Stratis Group Ltd, the enterprise-grade blockchain development platform has announced the launch of Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes and Stratis Smart Contracts in C#, making Stratis the world’s first blockchain to offer businesses and developers the ability to execute Smart Contracts on the Microsoft .NET core architecture.

The launch of the Cirrus Sidechain – a blockchain pegged to the Stratis mainchain – extends functionality for businesses operating on the Stratis platform. This includes the first Smart Contracts platform built entirely from the ground up in native C# on Microsoft’s .NET framework, the most popular enterprise programming language on the most widely-used enterprise framework.

Today’s full production release follows a successful two-week community testing phase during which Masternode Operators were able to familiarise themselves with operating a Sidechain Masternode and interacting with the Cirrus Sidechain.

With Stratis Smart Contracts in C#, businesses no longer need to create a completely new blockchain for every new decentralised application, but instead can develop a set of smart contacts in a programming language they understand and deploy them on one underlying general-purpose blockchain. This opens up a wide range of enterprise use cases, from tokens and lending platforms to provenance and self-sovereign identity solutions.

“At Stratis, we are committed to making it easy for businesses to adopt blockchain solutions for real-world use cases. Now, for the first time, enterprises and developers are able to build private blockchains and programme Smart Contracts in their familiar C# language”, said Chris Trew, Founder and CEO of Stratis. “We see this being of particular benefit to large enterprises, financial services companies as well as government organisations whose systems operate within Microsoft’s .NET framework as our solution is designed to minimise any incompatibility issues which may arise from blockchains and Smart Contracts being built in other computer languages”,  he added.

C# is a general-purpose language estimated to be used by 6.7 million developers (SlashData, 2019). It was originally developed by Microsoft within .NET, its development platform for building apps for web, Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Server and Microsoft Azure. Stratis is a certified Microsoft partner and, since last year has been an accredited Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV) listed on the Azure Marketplace, Microsoft’s online store providing applications and services to over 100 million active users.

The Cirrus Sidechain has been developed in order to prevent bloating of the main Stratis network and facilitate a high level of scalability. The Masternodes will operate on the Cirrus Sidechain using a Proof-of-Authority consensus algorithm, thereby enhancing security by adding accountability while also reducing the workload and energy consumption required for Masternodes to maintain the blockchain. In addition to the existing Stratis Core wallet, which has been updated to offer end-users the ability to perform cross-chain transfers, a new Cirrus Core wallet has been launched. This will be used by end-users to manage their sidechain tokens, interact with and deploy Smart Contracts, manage tokens via token issuance contracts and perform transfers back to the mainchain. There will be more than one million STRAT locked up in collateral by the participating Sidechain Masternodes, increasing the scarcity and bringing further value to the Stratis Token.

“Cirrus Sidechains will allow us to scale up the Stratis platform as we add functionality and deploy sidechains with use-case specific modifications, such as block time and block size. We are excited to welcome new developers and work alongside new businesses, and provide them with unprecedented access to develop blockchain solutions on an industry-leading platform”, said Gustav Stieger, Senior Developer at Stratis. “It will now be easier, cheaper and faster for developers to build DLT and Smart Contract functions bespoke to their business needs”, Gustav concluded.

On Tuesday night, the City of Berkeley took a big step forward in its plan to issue Blockchain based municipal bonds. The long-awaited BlockChain Community Microbond Initiative will now proceed via a Request For Information which will invite the industry to put forth qualified proposals. First introduced by District 3 Councilmember Ben Bartlett, the Microbond Initiative aims to see the city issue bonds as low as $25 directly to community members to invest in public projects.

Although cities have long issued municipal bonds, the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market lacks transparency and involves a slew of fee-collecting middle men, and are often priced out of reach for normal Americans. In lieu of a banking intermediary, Berkeley’s microbonds will be issued directly to investors, thus removing unknown middlemen and lowering prices.

Microbonds are low-cost, interest-bearing instruments, designed to be affordable. Bartlett hopes that Microbonds can be an antidote to extreme wealth concentration, by creating investment opportunities for historically marginalized populations.

“Right now, a staggering 43 percent of Americans are poor or low-income,” Councilmember Bartlett said. “This is because capital is bound up in too few hands. Blockchain Microbonds might offer a way to expand the pie for ordinary people and help short term consumers, become long term investors.”

Cutting costs and removing middlemen allows the City to increase flexibility in the targeting of projects. Combining civic crowdfunding with municipal microbonds secured by a blockchain-based system can democratize capital markets by creating a vehicle for community members to directly invest in their communities.

According to Kevin Dayton, president of the California-based Labor Issues Solutions, one of the advantages of microbonds is that they’re issued in “tiny denominations,” making them accessible for anyone. Bartlett added that because the community can choose to fund different local scale projects, such as parks, public art, and affordable housing, it opens the doors to “community-powered finance.”

While microbonds bring down the traditional barriers for investing in municipal bonds, the blockchain component of the Community Microbond Initiative ensures that consumer information is secure with an automated digital ledger to keep track of transactions, and resistant to concentrated attacks and failures. And the irrevocable nature of the transactions increase the accuracy of records.

“Because of the blockchain technology, [the bonds are] going straight to the consumer,” Bartlett said. “There’s real-time transparency with where it’s going and who possesses it, and payments made in a variety of frequencies.”

Bartlett added that the blockchain technology can dramatically lower the cost to issue, obtain, and administer bonds by “streamlining and automating” transactional processes. He sees the Initiative as a potential template for municipalities similar to Berkeley who seek to empower communities. Bartlett believes that is our civic responsibility to ensure that everyone can invest in their community and share in the upside. “The revolution needs a coin.”

The Swiss Blockchain Hackathon, led by six of Switzerland’s leading blockchain and ICT institutions, took place over the weekend at Zurich’s Trust Square blockchain hub. The three-day event was attended by over 200 participants from almost 20 different countries around the world. The organizers presented hackathon participants with real-world challenges in diverse verticals, with help from major corporations, top-tier academic institutions, and Amazon Web Services.

The Swiss Blockchain Hackathon took place from 21 to 23 June and had over 200 hackers in 41 teams from around the world. The event was jointly hosted and organized by Trust Square, CV Labs, Crypto Valley Association, Swiss Blockchain Federation, Bitcoin Association Switzerland, and Swiss ICT. The participating hackers solved real-life challenges in six different verticals: eGovernment, Agriculture & Food, Mobility, Finance, Supply Chain, and Intelligent Parcel.

At the opening ceremony Carmen Walker Späh, President of the Government Council of the Canton of Zurich, stated “Personally, I am convinced that blockchain has what it takes to become the next big development step of digitalization,” and she continued “Together with partners from politics, industry and academia, I am committed to creating legal certainty, favorable general conditions and a broadly supported ecosystem. So that Zurich and Switzerland can maintain the positions of internationally competitive blockchain locations.“

The hackers each had a chance to win multiple, exciting prizes, equaling up to more than CHF 200,000. Hackers won everything from crypto bags filled with essentials for anyone interested in blockchain technology to the big Entrepreneurial Prize, where one team won the chance to fast track their startup idea at the CVLabs Incubator. The submitted projects where so convincing that the jury decided to bring two projects in front of the audience for the final decision – it remained a draw and it was decided to split the CHF 25,000 main prize between the two projects from Team Axelra and Team Blockbyte. The list of every winner is on the next page.

The teams worked diligently throughout the Swiss Blockchain Hackathon, staying up until the early hours of the morning working on the challenges presented to them in their verticals. Coaches were on-site throughout the event to help the teams with any hard-pressed issues they faced. The vertical coaches, volunteers from partner organizations were there to help each team out about their concerns in the contents of each vertical. Platform coaches represented technical partners like Amazon Web Services to help each team out with any technical question or need. 

Overall, The Swiss Blockchain Hackathon was a great success and the event showcased the vast talent within the local and worldwide blockchain community thanks to the vigorous work from each single participant.

You can see pictures and videos of the first Swiss Blockchain Hackathon at http://hackathon.trustsquare.ch

Crypto Valley Week Media Roundtable

Marc Degen, co-initiator of the #SBHACK19 will be present at the Crypto Valley Week Media Roundtable on 25 June 2019, from 12.00-13.30hrs at the Casino in Zug.

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Winner Overview:

 Agriculture & Food:

Co-Overall winner: Team Blockbyte led by Mike Schälchli, for the Lend-it solution, where you can offer and lease land in trusted way.

Mobility:

Co-Overall winner: Team Axelra led by Severin Wullschleger, for #velove, an app that awards crypto currency rewards for biking to work and reducing your personal CO₂ offset.

 eGovernment:

Team ETH led by Burak Seyid, for Petizio, an app that lets you safely create and sign petitions.

Finance:

Team Kuznyechik led by Anton Permenev, with their project on crowd valuation of assets that have no financial history!

Supply Chain:

Team Elastonians led by Adem Bilican, for peer-to-peer traceability solution.

Intelligent Parcel:

Team OSB led by Joao Aguiam, for the close range package delivery service Padely.

AWS Special Prizes

1^st: Agrofood led by Oliver Gaede (Agriculture & Food)

2^nd: Orvium led Antonio Romero Marin (Intelligent Parcel)

3^rd: Traceauth led by Trevor Oakley (Intelligent Parcel)

Swiss Blockchain Hackathon At A Glance

 Date: 21 – 23 June 2019

Location: Trust Square, Bahnhofstrasse 3, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland, and surrounding locations

Total Countries: 19

Austria, Egypt. Estonia. France, Germany, India, Israel, Liechtenstein, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, UAE, UK, Ukraine, USA

Teams: 41

Hackers: 203

Verticals: 6

Coaches: 57

Slack Messages: 6211

Organizing partners

Trust Square, Bitcoin Association Switzerland, CV Labs, Crypto Valley Association, Swiss Blockchain Federation, Swiss ICT

Vertical partners

Accenture, Agroscope, Canton of Zurich, Die Post, SDX, ZVV

Platform and Service partners

Amazon Web Services, Amanox Solutions, Blockfactory, Cardano, PwC, Andibefree, Avado, Tecflower, certification, bitConsultant, Froriep, Felfel, Intellica, Tezos, Shift, Kilt

Academic partners

Universität Basel, Universität St. Gallen, Universität Zürich, HSR Hochschule für Technik

Rapperswil, Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, Hochschule Luzern, ETH Zurich, b2lab at ETH Zurich, ZHAW School of Management and Law

Supporting partners

ARC, Blocksport, Cargolux, Dezentrum, GS1, i.AM, Mobility, Modum, MS Direct, Procivis, Panalpina, Q_Perior, Proxeus, Smart Containers, Sigma Ledger, Sygnum, Verum Capital, Smiling Gecko, myclimate, Lipton, Pepsi Max, Orangina, Webtiser

Media and Communication partners
MoneyToday, Farner, BerChain, SICTIC, Mama, SWI

Zichain launches B2B crypto-fiat processing service and offers clients around the world an opportunity to join the global trend for crypto adoption.

The B2B crypto-fiat gateway  is available for customers from 180 countries and supports transactions with several currencies: EUR, USD, GBP, RUB. The unique difference of the platform is the ability not only to buy, but also to sell cryptocurrencies, withdrawing them to cards. It also offers an industry-leading set of features coupled with an extremely competitive fee structure – the best of known conditions on market.

This latest addition to the company’s ever-growing product range make it easy for any business to provide its clients an easy, automated, fast and hassle-free way to buy cryptocurrencies – a key advantage in the eyes of many customers.

Zichain’s B2B platform is a unique market offer, customized for each client. It offers customers a convenient way to process clients’ payments (including crypto purchases made with credit and debit cards) and to completely automate all crypto transactions. The gateway API is easy to implement into any website and the client’s buying experience is quick and intuitive.

The company expects its new product to be used by a wide range of businesses –  both as those projects that have their own internal token and whose customers need an easy way to purchase, as well those that provide information resources and interested in monetizing their traffic.

Members of Zichain team are distributed over different countries around the world and spent the last year bolstering its positions in a number of different regions. The core market for providing company`s services is Europe – where Zichain has received financial institution licensing from Estonian regulators in March 2018. In Switzerland, company actively supports blockchain-related research and education projects. The company has also built strong partnerships with leaders of Asian market –  second most important vector of expansion after Europe.

Thus, according to its mission, Zichain has created two different directions for two types of clients: Cryptoeye – platform for retail investors  and Zichange – B2B crypto-fiat processing service for institutional market participants.

Zichain CEO, Mr. Khachatur Gukasyan, said:

“As a business with a truly global presence, we have made it our goal to make the new crypto-fiat gateway available to users worldwide. And I am proud to say that we have delivered on this promise – our product can be used by businesses and individuals in more than 180 countries”.

About Zichain. Adhering to the principle of creating an ecosystem of products rather than narrow standalone tools, Zichain offers a range of interconnected solutions making it a new type of financial institution, ready for the upcoming era of the digital economy. The company creates a unique high-quality crypto platform accessible to both retail and institutional investors.

For further information, please, contact: [email protected]

MediaSmart, the company known for helping mobile advertisers run successful campaigns with the aid of data-driven metrics, have teamed up with the advertising technology company NEXD, this month announcing a new partnership. Integrating a range of new rich media tools within MediaSmart’s demand-side platform dashboard, the two companies will streamline the rich media creation process for all of MediaSmart’s customers.

With the new features rolling out to select partners from this month onwards before full access for all customers in the coming weeks, the integration of NEXD’s Campaign Manager and rich media ad creator with MediaSmart’s DSP console will enable customers to rapidly create engaging, elegant, interactive adverts that are lightweight and easy to build using simple drag-and-drop methods.

The partnership comes at an ideal time, as all the data from market research company Statista points to a consistent increase in demand for rich media year-on-year, with the growth set to continue for the foreseeable future. The reason is largely due to the rapid growth of the mobile sector, an area both Mediasmart and NEXD are already well established in.

When it comes to rich media solutions, most use HTML5 to create ad campaigns, with considerable downsides such as slow-loading pages and a limited range of creative options which end up with more of the audience using ad blockers. To combat this, NEXD have created a proprietary, rich media-focused ad framework. Four years in the making, their NEXD Engine overcomes problems associated with HTML5, with solutions that enable faster, lighter media.

MediaSmart’s CEO, Noella Amoedo, is thrilled about the potential this new partnership offers: “MediaSmart has always been very clear about its position within the mobile advertising ecosystem: full focus on advertisers and the buying process…with NEXD’s technology, Mediasmart can focus on delivering our advertisers the best the industry has to offer without compromising the advertiser experience.”

 

 

Erik Tammenurm, NEXD’s CEO, is also enthusiastic about how this partnership will increase the range of companies who’ll have access to cutting edge tools: “It’s been NEXD’s goal from the start to give much broader access to the kind of rich media creativity previously only accessible to a handful of agencies…we have taken a huge leap towards achieving our goal of accessible rich media ad production for all.’

 

With NEXD’s broad network of offices around the world from London to Singapore and Paris to Tokyo, and MediaSmart’s experts backed by well-known investors such as KOMM Investment and Kibo Ventures, they have the means and the broad client base to make a huge impact.