ErisX to CFTC: Regulated ETH Futures Would Result in More Robust, Liquid Market

Chicago-based crypto exchange ErisX

has filed a comment letter with the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in response to the agency’s request for feedback on Ethereum (ETH)’s mechanics and market. The letter, submitted on Feb. 15, sets forth the exchange’s belief that “the introduction of a regulated futures contract on Ether would have a positive impact on the growth and maturation of the market.” As reported, ErisX is a reboot of traditional futures market Eris Exchange, and is expected to begin support for spot trading in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum and Litecoin (LTC), as well as futures contracts, in the second half of 2019, pending regulatory’ approval.

The letter argues that “listing and trading Ether futures compliantly on CFTC regulated markets is consistent” with the CFTC’s efforts to foster “open, transparent, competitive, and financially sound derivative trading markets [and] to prohibit fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices in connection with derivatives and other products subject to the [Commodity Exchange Act] CEA.” The CFTC has long determined that Bitcoin is a commodity, given that it aspires to replace sovereign currencies — rather than a security, which would bring it under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s charge. After significant debate, Ether too was cleared of a securities classification in June 2018.

In its letter, ErisX outlines the conceptual distinction between Ethereum and its predecessor, noting that “Ethereum built upon some of the architectural principles of Bitcoin to extend [its] functionality of [a] distributed, (crypto-economically) secured, (blockchain-based) record-keeping system to include new computational capabilities for the execution of arbitrary code.”

In its diagnosis of the current state of the Ethereum market, the exchange affirms its view that a lack of regulatory clarity has prevented regulated enterprises from entering the sector, resulting in a preponderance of “unregulated or lightly regulated ‘exchanges’ [and] ‘brokers’ [emerging] to fill the gap, many of them off-shore.” The associated risks — including price volatility and liquidity fluctuations —

are therefore:

“Not unique to Ether, but [may be exacerbated by] the current fragmented global market structure of trading platforms and ‘exchanges’ with significantly varying degrees of regulatory oversight and operational transparency and integrity.”

ErisX thus contends that standardized, CFTC-regulated ETH products would draw broader participation from institutional actors and commercial users, resulting in “more robust, liquid, and resilient markets,” better risk management and more efficient, accurate price discovery. As reported, ErisX has this month appointed three veterans from Barclays, YouYube and the Chicago Board Options Exchange to fill executive roles, having announced the appointment of ConsenSys’ Joseph Lubin to its board of directors in January.

Article Produced By
Marie Huillet

Marie Huillet is an independent filmmaker, with a background in journalism and publishing. Nomadic by nature, she’s lived in five different countries this decade. She’s fascinated by Blockchain technologies’ potential to reshape all aspects of our lives.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/erisx-to-cftc-regulated-eth-futures-would-result-in-more-robust-liquid-market

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Listing With IDEX Signals Step Forward for Ride-Hailing Company

IDEX, the only Ethereum-based, fully decentralized crypto exchange

with real-time trading and high transaction throughput has announced the listing of RedCab LLC’s REDC token. RedCab, a decentralized peer-to-peer transportation solution entirely powered by blockchain technology, announced the listing this week with the Panama-based exchange.

IDEX is recognized as the most advanced Ethereum DEX in the industry, supporting limit and market orders, gas-free cancels and also the ability to fill many trades at once. Consisting of a smart contract, trading engine and a transaction processing arbiter, the smart contract is charged with trustlessly storing all assets and also with executing trade settlement, while all trades must be authorized by the users private key. RedCab has ambitious plans to expand beyond its native Egypt into Bahrain, the KSA, as well as Asian and European markets.

At this stage, almost everyone has heard of, and possibly even tried out, some of the larger ride-hailing companies on the market, such as Uber, Lyft and Grab, but few know the way those companies go about running their business. A 25 percent profit is made through each driver, which makes it difficult for those working for those companies to earn a respectable living. With a 15 percent profit cut, RedCab provides drivers with a higher percentage of take-home pay, and have a distinct focus on community, providing users with an entirely different experience than those who use Uber.

One question on many readers minds is likely to be “Why RedCab?” According to the company itself, “Many start-ups have been rising in the market recently to solve the transportation issue. Most of them are successful as a business, but none of them have succeeded without social collateral damage.

“Despite the fact that technology has bridged the gap for transportation needs and has successfully solved some problems in the past ten years, this left us with multiple copycat business models without any iteration or innovation.” One pet peeve that many have with Uber is the spike in fares when certain conditions occur, such as rain and heavy traffic. “Customers are not only searching for a trendy service, but looking for a true reliable service with sustainable quality and safety, that offers all transportation options and services with a low competitive price, and because customers hate to be abused; so on a rainy day, or a day with heavy traffic; “high rates” fare is not a good move.”

RedCab seem able and willing to provide drivers with more tangible benefits than we’ve yet seen in this industry; “Based on a recent survey conducted on drivers working as part-time for one of the major car-hailing services app, 91% of the population have joined the hailing service apps to increase their income and 87% to work flexible shifts. Our business model guarantees a 20% increase in the income of drivers with a clear strategy to capitalize on the network dominance where the time of the people who chose to partner with us and drive is managed more efficiently.” The listing with IDEX is yet another step forward for this company that is looking to take the industry in a new, more community-based direction.

Article Produced By

Bob Keith

Chronic crypto nut and freelance writer/editor for longer than I care to remember. Have finally found a home here at Crypto Disrupt.

https://cryptodisrupt.com/listing-with-idex-signals-step-forward-for-ride-hailing-company/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Morgan Creek’s Venture Fund Raised $40 Million to Invest in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

Morgan Creek Digital Assets announced today

that it has successfully closed a $40 million venture fund that will invest in blockchain and cryptocurrency. Morgan Creek Digital Assets (MCDA) is an alternative asset management firm founded by Anthony Pompliano, Mark Yusko, and Jason Williams. The fund is an affiliate of multi-billion dollar asset manager Morgan Creek Capital Management.

According to a Tuesday press release, MCDA closed a $40 million fund targetting blockchain and cryptocurrency. The fund originally had a target of $25 million but was oversubscribed, raising a total of $40 million. Previously, MCDA has made equity investments in companies such as Coinbase, Bakkt, BlockFi, and RealBlocks. The firm is also likely to invest in cryptocurrency and other digital assets, as seen previously in its Digital Asset Index Fund. The index is comprised of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, EOS, and Bitcoin Cash with smaller positions in five other coins.

Morgan Creek Digital’s recent raise was supported by two public pensions, a university endowment, a hospital system, and an insurance company, according to the press release from the company. Pompliano told CryptoSlate that “I believe this is the first public pension money in crypto,” suggesting that more conservative pensions are starting to take notice of blockchain and cryptocurrency as an investment vehicle.

Meanwhile, Mark Yusko, partner and co-founder of the fund said:

“We are proud to partner with these investment professionals who have shown an ability to be forward-thinking and innovative.”

Jason Williams, the other co-founder stated:

“The blockchain industry is seeing an incredible influx of highly-talented individuals and entrepreneurs. We believe many of the largest, most valuable companies of tomorrow will be built using this technology.”

In another statement from Pompliano on Twitter, he said “the institutions aren’t coming. They’re already here,” suggesting that institutions are already looking to get involved in the sector.

Article Produced By
Mitchell Moos

Editorial Manager at CryptoSlate

Mitchell is a software enthusiast and entrepreneur. In addition to writing, he runs a non-profit that teaches people about the blockchain. In his spare time he loves playing chess or hiking.

https://cryptoslate.com/morgan-creeks-venture-fund-raised-40-million-invest-blockchain-cryptocurrency/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

âSwiss Leaks’ HSBC Whistleblower Plans to Launch âClean, Ethical’ Crypto Token

‘Swiss Leaks’ HSBC Whistleblower Plans to Launch ‘Clean, Ethical’ Crypto Token

Frenchman Hervé Falciani, a whistleblower who has been convicted

of the largest leak in banking history, plans to launch an ethical cryptocurrency that would combat money-laundering and fraud, Reuters reported on Feb. 8. In 2015, Falciani was convicted in absentia by Swiss courts for aggravated financial espionage after leaking the details of ~30,000 accounts, holding almost $120 billion in assets at HSBC’s Swiss private bank.

The evidence — which was alleged to have exposed a web of clients’ tax evasion, money laundering, and illicit financing schemes — has since triggered investigations and prosecutions in several countries, and Falciani remains in self-imposed exile in Spain after the country twice denied the Swiss authorities’ extradition requests.

He is now reportedly working on developing an ethical crypto token, dubbed “Tabu,” that would be fully traceable and thwart illicit dealings and tax evasion. The project is being spearheaded by Falciani’s non-profit Tactical Whistleblowers, whose team consists of Spanish academics — many of them mathematicians — and fintech experts. Speaking in Madrid under a witness protection program,

he told Reuters:

“What happens with any innovation […] is that it can be used in a bad way or maybe used in a friendly way with a […] positive social impact […] Fake information is the basis of any kind of fraud … [t]he same way that we have to deal with fake news, the same technology can applied to fake invoices.”

Falciani credits Spain’s second extradition request denial last year — a decade since he first leaked the “Falciani List” — with having drawn significant investor interest in the Tabu project. Having raised 1.3 million euros ($1.5 million), Falciani reportedly aims to raise a further 2 million euros ($2.3 million) pending approval from Spanish regulators. There are reportedly 5 million Tabu tokens, valued at 2 million euros, ready for the offering.

Aside from Tabu, the whistleblower is also preparing a blockchain system — dubbed “Aletheia,” meaning “disclosure” in Greek — to cross-check electronic procurement contracts for public administrations. The project aims to mitigate fraud and make efficiency gains to reduce costs. Cryptocurrency’s relationship with one of the decade’s most high-profile whistleblowers — Julian Assange —is well known. In fall 2017, Assange went so far as to publicly thank the United States government on Twitter for forcing the organization to rely on Bitcoin (BTC) due to the banking embargo, securing for WikiLeaks a 50,000 percent return.

Article Produced By
Marie Huillet

https://cointelegraph.com/news/swiss-leaks-hsbc-whistleblower-plans-to-launch-clean-ethical-crypto-token

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Canadian Securities Regulator âLooking Into’ QuadrigaCX Cryptocurrency Exchange

Canadian Securities Regulator ‘Looking Into’ QuadrigaCX Cryptocurrency Exchange

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has initiated

a probe into Canada’s major cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, Reuters reported on Feb. 8. The Ontario Securities Commission reportedly told Reuters that “given the potential harm to Ontario investors, we are looking into this matter and have already been in contact with the monitor.” OSC spokeswoman Kristen Rose reportedly declined to specify whether this means the Commission was formally investigating the exchange.

The news comes in the wake of the British Columbia Securities Commission’s claim that it does not regulate QuadrigaCX since the company has reportedly not shown signs of trading of securities or derivatives, or operating as an exchange in general. The aforementioned harm purportedly refers to the exchange’s missing funds in the amount of CA$190 million dollars ($145 million) in digital assets discovered after the death of QuadrigaCX’s founder Gerald Cotten in December.

Quadriga has not been able to access its cold wallets where it kept most of the assets, because Cotten was purportedly solely responsible for the wallets and corresponding keys. Cold wallets are storage systems for digital assets which are not connected to the Internet, which prevents users from being hacked. The exchange purportedly only has CA$375,000 ($286,000) in cash, while it owes CA$260 million ($198,435,000) to its users.

The crypto community has been sceptical about the circumstances surrounding Cotten's death, especially after news broke that his will, naming his wife Jennifer Robertson as the sole beneficiary of his estate, was released 12 days before his death. Robertson reportedly stated in an affidavit that “I do not know the password or recovery key. Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere.” Last year, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) froze five accounts belonging to Quadriga’s payment processor, Costodian Inc., and its owner, Jose Reyes, totalling to $21.6 million. The bank purportedly froze the accounts due to an inability to identify the funds’ owners.

Article Produced By
Ana Alexandre

Total change in her career took Anastasia into the world of analytics and business information as a researcher and translator in 2010. Some time later she got into FinTech, a dynamically developing segment at the intersection of the financial services and technology. Ana joined Cointelegraph in September 2017.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/seoul-city-govt-appoints-members-to-blockchain-governance-team

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Medical R&D Alliance Expands Blockchain Project to Include Data Sharing

The Pistoia Alliance has expanded its blockchain project

to include data sharing, data identity, and data integrity, according to a press release published on Feb 8. The Pistoia Alliance is a not-for-profit organization established in 2007, with representatives from well-known pharmaceutical industry companies which include Pfizer, Novartiz, and GSK. The Pistoia Alliance was formed to help integrate new technology to assist in the companies’ respective research and development (R&D) fields.

The newest project will focus on the use of blockchain to validate sources in identifying data, to ensure data integrity, and to improve sharing between the organizations. Prior to its foray into blockchain-based data management, Pistoia concentrated on educating the medical industry on the emerging technology. According to Pistoia, a recent survey found that access to skilled personnel and understanding of the technology are the primary barriers to blockchain’s adoption. That same survey reportedly stated that one-fifth of respondents do not think blockchain adds value beyond a standard database.

“Much of the industry is still at the ‘discussion’ stage of blockchain, we want to move beyond this and take action that actively supports members and leads to tangible outcomes that will benefit R&D, accelerate innovation and support the discovery of new treatments,” according to the president of the Pistoia Alliance, Steve Arlington. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) has been implemented across the healthcare industry to make medical data more shareable and more secure. In November 2018, Myongji Hospital, located in the city of Goyang, South Korea, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Korean IT company BICube.

Per the terms of the MoU, the two parties would use DLT to create a healthcare information exchange system and “build a hybrid cloud [platform] that combines a public cloud and a private cloud.” That same month, the Austrian government offered financial support for a U.K. cancer research company, Lancor Scientific, that uses blockchain technology to detect the disease. Lancor Scientific has purportedly developed a device to detect multiple cancer types and records the screening results with smart contracts on a blockchain.

Article Produced By
Miranda Karanfili

Miranda is a journalist based out of New York City. She is a dedicated writer, passionate about storyelling and making voices heard through her writing. She has joined Cointelegraph as a News Editor.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/canadian-securities-regulator-looking-into-quadrigacx-cryptocurrency-exchange

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

The next integration evolution â blockchain

The next integration evolution — blockchain

Here is one way to look at distributed ledger technologies (DLT)

and blockchain in the context of integration evolution. Over the years, businesses and their systems are getting more integrated, forming industry-specific trustless networks, and blockchain technology is in the foundation of this evolutionary step.

Enterprise integration

Large organizations have a large number of applications running in separate silos that need to share data and functionality in order to operate in a unified and consistent way. The process of linking such applications within a single organization, to enable sharing of data and business processes, is called enterprise application integration (EAI).

Similarly, organizations also need to share data and functionality in a controlled way among themselves. They need to integrate and automate the key business processes that extend outside the walls of the organizations. The latter is an extension of EAI and achieved by exchanging structured messages using agreed upon message standards referred to as business-to-business (B2B) integration. Fundamentally, both terms refer to the process of integrating data and functionality that spans across multiple systems and sometimes parties. The systems and business processes in these organizations are evolving, and so is the technology enabling B2B unification.

Evolution of integration

There isn’t a year when certain integration technologies became mainstream; they gradually evolved and built on top of each other. Rather than focusing on the specific technology and year, let’s try to observe the progression that happened over the decades and see why blockchain is the next technology iteration.

Evolution of integration technologies

Next we will explore briefly the main technological advances in each evolutionary step listed in the table above.

Data integration

To read more on this subject, please click the following link..

This is one of the oldest mechanisms for information access across different systems with the following two primary examples:

Common database approach is used for system integration within organizations.
File sharing method is used for within and cross-organization data exchange. With universal protocols such as FTP, file sharing allows exchange of application data running across machines and operating systems.

But both approaches are non-real-time, batch-based integrations with limitations around scalability and reliability.

Functionality integration

While data integration provided non-real-time data exchange, the methods described here allow real-time data and importantly functionality exchange:

Remote procedure call provides significant improvements over low-level socket-based integration by hiding networking and data marshaling complexity. But it is an early generation, language-dependent, point-to-point, client-server architecture.
Object request broker architecture (with CORBA, DCOM, RMI implementations) introduces the broker component, which allows multiple applications in different languages to reuse the same infrastructure and talk to each other in a peer-to-peer fashion. In addition, the CORBA model has the notion of naming, security, concurrency, transactionality, registry and language-independent interface definition.
Messaging introduces temporal decoupling between applications and ensures guaranteed asynchronous message delivery.

So far we have seen many technology improvements, but they are primarily focused on system integration rather than application integration aspects. From batch to real-time data exchange, from point-to-point to peer-to-peer, from synchronous to asynchronous, these methods do not care or control what is the type of data they exchange, nor force or validate it. Still, this early generation integration infrastructure enabled B2B integrations by exchanging EDI-formatted data for example, but without any understanding of the data, nor the business process, it is part of. With CORBA, we have early attempts of interface definitions, and services that are useful for application integration.

Service-oriented architecture

The main aspects of SOA that are relevant for our purpose are Web Services standards. XML providing language-independent format for exchange of data, SOAP providing common message format and WSDL providing an independent format for describing service interfaces, form the foundation of web services. These standards, combined with ESB and BPM implementations, made integrations focus on the business integration semantics, whereas the prior technologies were enabling system integration primarily.

Web services allowed systems not to exchange data blindly, but to have machine readable contracts and interface definitions. Such contracts would allow a system to understand and validate the data (up to a degree) before interacting with the other system. I also include microservices architectural style here, as in its core, it builds and improves over SOA and ESBs. The primary evolution during this phase is around distributed system decomposition and transition from WS to REST-based interaction. In summary, this is the phase where, on top of common protocols, distributed systems also got common standards and contracts definitions.

Blockchain-based integration

While exchanging data over common protocols and standards helps, the service contracts do not provide insight about the business processes hidden behind the contracts and running on remote systems. A request might be valid according to the contract, but invalid depending on the business processes’ current state. That is even more problematic when integration is not between two parties, as in the client-server model, but among multiple equally involved parties in a peer-to-peer model.

Sometimes multiple parties are part of the same business process, which is owned by no one party but all parties. A prerequisite for a proper functioning of such a multi-party interaction is transparency of the common business process and its current state. All that makes the blockchain technology very attractive for implementing distributed business processes among multiple parties.

This model extends the use of shared protocols and service contracts with shared business processes and contained state. With blockchain, all participating entities share the same business process in the form of smart contracts. But in order to validate the requests, process and come to the same conclusion, the business processes need also the same state, and that is achieved through the distributed ledger. Sharing all the past states of a smart contract is not a goal by itself, but a prerequisite of the shared business process runtime.

Looked at from this angle, blockchain can be viewed as the next step in the integration evolution. As we will see below, blockchain networks act as a kind of distributed ESB and BPM machinery that are not contained within a single business entity, but spanning multiple organizations.

Integration technology moving into the space between systems

First the protocols (such as FTP), then the API contracts (WSDL, SOAP) and now the business processes themselves (smart contracts) and their data are moving outside of the organizations, into the common shared space, and become part of the integration infrastructure. In some respect, this trend is analogous to how cross-cutting responsibilities of microservices are moving from within services into the supporting platforms.

With blockchain, common data models and now business processes are moving out of the organizations into the shared business networks. Something to note is that this move is not universally applicable and it is not likely to become a mainstream integration mechanism. Such a move is only possible when all participants in the network have the same understanding of data models and business processes; hence, it is applicable only in certain industries where the processes can be standardized, such as finance, supply chain, health care, etc.

Generations of integrations

Having done some chronological technology progression follow-up, let’s have a more broad look at the B2B integration evolution and its main stages.

First generation: system integration protocols

This is the generation of integration technology before CORBA and SOA, enabling mainly data exchange over common protocols but without an understanding of the data, contracts and business processes:

Integration model: client-server, where the server component is controlled by one party only; examples are databases, file servers, message brokers, etc.
Explicit, shared infrastructure: low-level system protocols and APIs such as FTP.
Implicit, not shared infrastructure: application contracts, data formats, business processes not part of the common integration infrastructure.

Second generation: application integration contracts

This generation of integration technology uses the system protocols from previous years and allows applications to share their APIs in the form of universal contracts. This is the next level of integration, where both applications understand the data, its structure, possible error conditions, but not the business process and current state behind it in the other systems:

Integration model: client-server model with APIs described by contracts.
Explicit, shared infrastructure: protocols, application contracts, and API definitions.
Implicit, not shared infrastructure: business processes and remote state are still private.

Third generation: distributed business processes

The blockchain-based generation, which still has to prove itself as a viable enterprise architecture, goes a step further. It uses peer-to-peer protocols, and shares business processes with state across multiple systems that are controlled by parties not trusting each other. While previous integration generations required shared understanding of protocol or APIs, this relies on common understanding of the full business process and its current state. Only then it makes sense and pays off to form a cross-organization distributed business process network:

Integration model: multi-party, peer-to-peer integration, by forming business networks with distributed business processes.
Explicit, shared infrastructure: business process and its required state.
Implicit, not shared infrastructure: other non-process related state.

There are many blockchain-based projects that are taking different approaches for solving the business integration challenges. In no particular, order here are some of the most popular and interesting permissioned open-source blockchain projects targeting the B2B integration space:

Hyperledger Fabric is one of the most popular and advanced blockchain frameworks, initially developed by IBM, and now part of Linux Foundation.
Hyperledger Sawtooth is another Linux Foundation distributed project developed initially by Intel. It is popular for its modularity and full component replaceability.
Quorum is an enterprise-focused distribution of Ethereum.
Corda is another project that builds on top of existing JVM-based middleware technologies and enables organizations to transact with contracts and exchange value.

There are already many business networks built with the above projects, enabling network member organizations to integrate and interact with each other using this new integration model. In addition to these full-stack blockchain projects that provide network nodes, there also are hybrid approaches. For example, Unibright is a project that aims to connect internal business processes defined in familiar standards such as BPMN with existing blockchain networks by automatically generating smart contracts. The smart contracts can be generated for public or private blockchains, which can act as another integration pillar among organizations. Recently, there are many blockchain experiments in many fields of life. While public blockchains generate all the hype by promising to change the world, private and permissioned blockchains are promising less, but are advancing steadily.

Conclusion

Enterprise integration has multiple nuances. Integration challenges within an organization, where all systems are controlled by one entity and participants have some degree of trust to each other, are mostly addressed by modern ESBs, BPMs and microservices architectures. But when it comes to multi-party B2B integration, there are additional challenges. These systems are controlled by multiple organizations, have no visibility of the business processes and do not trust each other. In these scenarios, we see organizations experimenting with a new breed of blockchain-based technology that relies not only on sharing of the protocols and contracts but sharing of the end-to-end business processes and state.

And this trend is aligned with the general direction integration has been evolving over the years: from sharing the very minimum protocols, to sharing and exposing more and more in the form of contracts, APIs and now business processes. This shared integration infrastructure enables new transparent integration models where the previously private business processes are now jointly owned, agreed, built, maintained and standardized using the open-source collaboration model. This can motivate organizations to share business processes and form networks to benefit further from joint innovation, standardization and deeper integration in general.

Article Produced By
Bilgin Ibryam
Contributor

Bilgin Ibryam is a principal architect at Red Hat, committer and member of Apache Software Foundation. He is an open-source evangelist, blogger, occasional speaker and the author of Kubernetes Patterns and Camel Design Patterns.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/blockchain-as-integration-evolution/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

SEC To Monitor Blockchain Transaction, Seeking Suppliers to Extract Data

An official announcement rolled out on Jan 31, 2019,

unveils that the SEC or Securities and Exchange Commission is analyzing blockchain transaction.

SEC to closely Analyze blockchain Services

According to the official report, the agency is looking for a supplier or vendor that would help them determine and monitor risk on grounds of digital assets. The opportunity is open for those that can extract blockchain data and parses them to make it reviewable. The opportunity page of

SEC reads that;

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is issuing these sources sought notice as a means of conducting market research to determine the availability and technical capability of large and small businesses to provide blockchain data to support the SEC’s efforts to monitor risk, improve compliance, and inform Commission policy with respect to digital assets.

The suppliers/vendors would further expected to enable SEC to access the data from the most widely used blockchain ledger. Besides data, SEC also demands to look at the process being used to extract the data and convert in reviewable format. This is to assure that the data transformation doesn’t lead to any kind of loss. Moreover, the requirement for the data provision mentioned by SEC website includes;

Provide data extracts on a recurring basis for the most widely used blockchain ledgers ,based on transaction volume.
Cleanse and normalize data to enable review and exploration. Provide capability to derive insights from the available data, including attribution data (i.e. to whom a particular address belongs).
Provide a means to demonstrate the data provided is accurate and complete

Article Produced By

Tabassum

Tabassum is a full-time content writer at Coingape. Her passion lies in writing and delivering apt information to users. Currently, she does not hold any form of cryptocurrencies.

https://coingape.com/sec-blockchain-transaction-seeking-supploers/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

SWIFT Ignores Ripple, Partners R3 to Improve its Service Delivery

Leading payment network SWIFT through its CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt

has revealed plans to integrate R3’s Corda technology to better the service of the network. The CEO mentioned this at the Paris Fintech Forum where the CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse was present. SWIFT is a global messaging technology company that facilitates the sending and receiving of messages on financial transactions between banks. The company currently facilitates messaging for over 11,000 banks. Its global influence has expanded greatly since its establishment in 1973. As a matter of fact, the company had little or no rival until the blockchain technology was born.

Its messaging technology, however, is said to be slower than is required at a time when technology is moving very fast. This has led many to believe that SWIFT was about to leverage Ripple’s effective and fast payment system by integrating its technology. However, SWIFT said it could never partner with Ripple. R3 which SWIFT is set to integrate with is a company that created the Corda Settler, a technology designed for payments. R3 had announced that Corda will use Ripple’s payment system to send and receive virtual currencies.

Meanwhile, Ripple has been a major competitor against SWIFT, with a lot of advantage mainly because of its speed and the simplicity of transactions. Ripple is growing really fast with over 200 customers globally and signs up at least three new ones every week according to the CEO. Just last week, Euro Exim, a major bank that has been using xCurrent indicated interest in adopting xRapid as well as exploring xCurrent for more services.

As competitive payment rivals like Ripple are showing up, SWIFT has to improve in order to stay afloat and its partnership with R3 is certainly a great move. The company has also recently launched its new ”Pay Later” API which allows users to pay for goods and services in installments. This may be a good way to keep its customers as it offers flexibility in payments thus reducing the pressure of having to pay at a fixed time. With its own improvements and partnership with R3, SWIFT may continue to thrive as long as it does satisfy its customers’ needs. But who knows what Ripple has up its sleeves?

Article Produced By
Ponvang Bulus

I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast, investor and writer. I am particularly interested in trending issues in the crypto space both technical and financial and love to write about same.

https://zycrypto.com/swift-ignores-ripple-partners-r3-to-improve-its-service-delivery/

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Ethereum Hackathon ETHDenver Partners With UNICEF on Blockchain Bounty System

Upcoming Ethereum (ETH) hardware hackathon ETHDenver is partnering with UNICEF

on a blockchain bounty token system, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Jan. 31. The token aims to incentivize developers to create projects which promote social good, the press release notes.

ETHDenver — set to take place February 15-17 in Denver, Colorado — has partnered with UNICEF Ventures, UNICEF France and ETH startup Bounties Network on the prototype for what it calls a “positive action token,” the firm stated in the press release. While the token is yet to have a name — indeed, its creators are appealing to ETHDenver attendees to contribute to finding one — it forms part of an incentivization program dubbed “The Impact Track.” As ETHDenver Diversity and Impact Steward Nick Rodrigues has outlined, the program encourages developers to think systematically about the positive social impact of a given piece of

technical innovation:

“For example, if someone had a project where they happened to develop a way to shard more efficiently which therefore required less energy consumption, they would be meeting a sustainable development goal.”

As a non-monetary, value-driven community coin, the token cannot be redeemed for fiat currency, as the organizers report. Instead, users can use their tokens to get early access to future UNICEF and Impact Track events, mentorship sessions, incubator-style support, and similar offerings. ETHDenver has also pitched the token as “digital public acknowledgement of positive actions.”

In a separate blog post published Jan. 30, ETHDenver and blockchain startup MakerDAO (MKR) — creator of the Ethereum-collateralized stablecoin Dai (DAI) — have also announced the creation of an ETHDenver pop-up token economy based on an ephemeral “localcoin.” Hackathon attendees will reportedly each be issued with a unique “xDai” wallet, which runs on their phone’s default web browser and is pre-loaded with the localcoin, dubbed “buffiDai.” The coin is pegged to the Dai and redeemable for food, drinks and activities at the event, the blog post reports.

As previously reported, the positive action token represents just one of UNICEF’s many forays into the blockchain space. Last month, the UNICEF Innovation Fund announced it would be investing $100,000 in six early stage and open-source blockchain companies working toward humanitarian goals. In February of last year, the organization appealed to PC gamers to use their computers to mine ETH and donate their earnings to a charity campaign for Syrian children.

Article Produced By
Marie Huillet

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-hackathon-ethdenver-partners-with-unicef-on-blockchain-bounty-system

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden