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The  Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ , Japan’s largest bank, has chosen blockchain technology as the core infrastructure toward testing the digitization of checks using Singapore’s Fintech-friendly regulatory sandbox installed by the country’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. First  announced  [PDF] last year, the Proof of Concept (PoC) testing is the result of a joint endeavor between the bank and major Japanese conglomerate Hitachi. The two companies developed a blockchain-based infrastructure to issue, transfer and collect electronic checks. With the PoC testing, the bank issued and settled checks while the Hitachi Group’s companies in Singapore received the electronic checks and then deposited the funds. “The project is to digitalize entire check processing – from issuing checks to clearing checks,”  stated Hirofumi Aihara, general manager at MUFG’s Asian Systems Office, recently. What is commonly seen as a paper-only process, a bank first issuing checks to the cus

As there is no centralized entity controlling the ecosystem. Nigerian banks are contemplating to legalize bitcoin, which would give the popular cryptocurrency a significant boost, to say the least. NIGERIA HAS PLANS WITH BITCOIN It is not the first time someone brings up the concept of Nigerian banks legalizing bitcoin. The same idea was  proposed  several months ago. Albert no one saw this as a hint of what the future could hold, it would appear various Nigerian banks are thinking along the same lines. This development caught quite a few people by surprise, even though it makes a lot of sense. An article appeared in The Inquirer, which talks about how the Nigerian Bankers Committee is studying blockchain technology. That is anything but surprising, as nearly every bank around the world is well aware of what distributed ledgers bring to the table. However, there has not been any major product to come forth from this interest so far. Experts predict a few of these bl

U.S. FinTech investments in 2016 reached  $4.27 billion  illustrating that the financial technology sector in the country is continuing to grow at a significant pace. However, with this amount of FinTech investment you would naturally assume that the U.S. is one country where the topic of regulation is not an issue, reports  Tech Crunch . And yet, that’s not the case. According to a report from  Reuters  in 2016, investments declined by around 30 percent in the U.S. even if the nation did still manage to bring in over $4 billion. However, while the U.S. is producing FinTech companies that are lucrative to investors, a report undertaken by the Treasury of the U.K. [ PDF ] found that the U.S. ranked last and second-to-last when it came to regulatory regimes, government programs, and taxation. When mentioning regulators, the report references The Department of Business Oversight in California and the Department of Financial Services in New York and says: Engagement wit

In a surprising move, the network’s share of Bitcoin Unlimited jumped by more than 10% in the past 24 hours, rising from around 20% to more than 30%, the highest any alternative client has ever achieved. PayPal is giving out $500 worth of Bitcoi n Bitcoin Unlimited Gains More than 30% of the Network’s Share –  image from nodcounter The significant increase coincides with the sudden arrival of 100 Bitcoin Unlimited nodes earlier this week. Although there were suggestions these nodes are fake, it now appears more likely that someone, probably a miner, has switched to Bitcoin Unlimited. Current Bitcoin Unlimited Node Count –  image from nodecounter A new pool has indeed joined with a small amount of hashrate, the Canoe pool. They appear to have left BW.com, which has seemingly lost hashrate, but we cannot currently confirm. Another miner is meant to leave BW.com. Chandler Guo has  stated  he will take out his hashrate form BW.com to form his own pool which will min

Golem ’s initial coin offering  raised $8.6 million dollars  in just 29 minutes, making it the third largest  ICO  behind  Ethereum .  After last night’s 100% run, the momentum has carried its market cap to rank 11 th  on  CoinMarketCap  at a whopping $32 million. Golem now sits ahead of  Factom  and  Steem , poised to break the top 10, later this month. Experts expect the price to rise substantially as more exchanges gain access to Golem Golem Super Computer Fundamentally Golem is a decentralized supercomputer, with ability to connect through the cloud computers to computers around the world. Through Golem, users will be able to buy and sell processing power on the open market for purposes such as scientific research, graphics rendering, data analysis, cryptocurrency mining among other things. Decentralized Computing Market “If you have a powerful gaming computer that you aren’t using all day, or a PC that you leave at the office each night, you can rent your unused computing pow

Executive Brief The US regulation of digital currencies is out of date, impractical, and damaging to a potentially lucrative economy. The lack of unity in state regulations has created an unworkable system that makes the operations of Fintech (Financial Technology) companies complicated and confusing. A unified and clear regulatory policy would clear these muddy waters and benefit the digital currency industry, and have a positive impact on the American economy as a whole. Read the full story below.  The US Once Led the Bitcoin Revolution Every country is feeling their way through this relatively new digital currency, but America was initially proactive in the digital currency industry. For example, the US Senate was the first to conduct hearings on Bitcoin in 2013. The IRS was the first to release information on taxes in relation to Bitcoin, and FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) was the first crime agency to make any reference to the digital currency.

After buying up digital currency transfer company PayCash, Daimler has signaled it may use digital currency to build up its presence in Africa. DAIMLER: ‘CLEAR SIGNAL OF FURTHER AFRICAN GROWTH’ The continent is providing huge demand for transport networks, yet businesses are continually faced with financing problems, the vehicle giant  told  industry magazine Autconomy this week. “We are already present in over 30 marketplaces in Africa and are still expanding both our product range and our service operations network,” said a spokesperson. “This is a clear signal that we expect further growth in Africa.” The scale of under access to financing means in developing economies is staggering. Two billion individuals and 200 million companies lack suitable support, Autconomy says, giving a clear advantage to digital currency-based alternatives, which businesses can use to cut out hungry middlemen. When Daimler  quietly purchased  Luxemburg-based digital currency transfer ope

Eric Lombrozo, a Bitcoin core developer, believes that bitcoin is about monetary independence and freedom, instead of offering a centralized settlement network which already serves because the backbone of today’s international economic environment. During the last two years, various bitcoin communities, analysts and specialists have debated on the characterization of bitcoin, especially whether bitcoin demonstrates the qualities of a settlement network or virtual gold. Since the preliminary deployment of the bitcoin network, Bitcoin core creators and different abilties in the open source improvement community of bitcoin have focused on strengthening security measures to remove the presence of a government in the bitcoin network and ensure the network itself will not be compromised in the future. The prioritization of safety rather than flexibility and capability as seen in opportunity failed blockchain initiatives allowed bitcoin to prosper and evolve into a decentralized

The powerful and user-friendly CoinVert makes use of an isolated and highly secure system to give users everything they need 24/7 for instantly exchanging 20 major cryptocurrencies with more added each month. The platform prides itself on having a fee between 0.1% while providing better exchange rates than all major competitors like ShapeShift or Changelly. CoinVert.io was conceived in 2015 and launched in May 2016 as an instant cryptocurrency exchange platform. Currently Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, ZCash, BitCrystals, BitShares, Dash, DigixDao, Dogecoin, Factoids, Lisk, MaidSafeCoin, Namecoin, Nxt, Peercoin, Steem, Counterparty and Ripple can be exchanged instantly and securely. CoinVert keeps customer privacy in mind, no account or personal information is requested to complete an exchange. The digital exchange platform never stores client data. “We launched the service over a year ago with a very clear aim: to always have the lowest fee in the whole marke

Is mining Bitcoin or any other digital currencies still profitable? It’s a question many are asking, but the answer may vary depending on the person. Digital currency mining has proven to be extremely popular over the last years, as it has been an easy way to earn “free” money and allowed people to accumulate their cryptocurrency portfolio. Claim $500 Worth of Bitcoin from PayPal “Mining” is the term used for creating new digital coins. Each miner will be part of an online mining pool, and together they will solve mathematical algorithms that authorize transactions and yield the rewards of new coins of the respective currency (e.g. Bitcoin, Litecoin, and so on). In order to measure the power of one’s mining capabilities, people call it “hashing power,” which is in the number of calculations done per second. The more hashing power one has, the more digital currency they can earn. Sounds easy, right? Well, it used to be something not many people participated in, and you c

Global professional services firm Accenture PLC and Thales e-security recently announced the launch of a patent-pending security system for enterprise use that, “creates a simple path to large-scale commercial use of blockchain technology,” according to Accenture. Thales’ technology is found in enterprise finance, Aerospace, Transport, Defence and Security markets. With 62,000 employees in 56 countries, 25,000 of which are engineers and researchers, Thales deploys equipment and systems in some of the most complex security environments worldwide. As part of the Thales Group,  Thales e-Security  is the data security solutions and services branch that works with companies and governments to secure data. “The possibilities for blockchain are endless,” said Jon Geater, the CTO of Thales e-Security. “In the financial sector everything from transactions to contracts and deeds could use a blockchain to legitimize and simplify the settlement process, and industries such as healthc

Prominent venture capitalist and prolific tech and bitcoin industry investor Tim Draper is making a return to the Indian market for early stage investing in startups in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. The investment into India’s blossoming technology sector, despite common consensus of it being overvalued to the point of being a ‘ tech bubble’ , will occur through Mumbai-based Blume Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that now joins Draper’s DVN (Draper Venture Network) as a member, according to  TechCrunch . Having existed since the early Silicon Valley boom era during the 90s, the DVN has backed over 600 startups over two decades, cashing out on a third of its portfolio that sees companies of the likes of Skype, Baidu and Twitch. The Draper Venture Network, formerly known as DFJ Innovation, has invested in bitcoin startups around the world and previously had a presence in India after setting up shop in 2007. However, the local branch was shut down

Germany’s most popular and largest financial news network and platform, is listing bitcoin amongst other major reserve currencies such as US Dollar, Japanese Yen and Chinese yuan on the company’s “most important exchange rates” section. The list contains rates of 7 major reserve currencies which Finanzen.net consider operate as the basis of the global economy. Listing of bitcoin on the exchange rates section implies that Finanzen.net, a key player within the German financial and media industries, considers bitcoin as one of the most important currencies in the world. In its widely-utilized currency converter and rates ticker platform, Finanzen.net also provides native support for bitcoin, demonstrating year-long charts of bitcoin price and listing the digital currency among all of the reserve currencies listed by the company. Over the past few months, Finanzen.net consistently broadcasted and reported bitcoin-related news to its nationwide audience and readers in Germany. E

Merely weeks after  cautioning residents  that bitcoin companies weren’t authorized or licensed to operate in the country, India’s central bank is reportedly not including bitcoin under the purview of regulations for digital payments. In essence, the cryptocurrency will not be legitimized as a legal form of payment or settlement in an economy which is the world’s largest receiver of remittances, anytime soon. Claim Your $500 worth of Bitcoin  Digital payments and financial technology (Fintech) solutions have caught on rampantly amongst the Indian society in recent times, particularly after a sweeping, unprecedented  cash crunch  brought on by the government’s demonetization drive. In light of these new innovations, the  Payments and Settlement Systems Act of 2007  [PDF], the code by which payment systems are regulated, was amended to include digital payment gateways and platforms. The amended regulations will look to deem physical cash and digital cash as equals, with develo

Investors are betting the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve at least one of the three proposed bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds, despite doubts expressed by Wall Street analysts, according to  MarketWatch . Futures contracts traded on BitMEX , an exchange incorporated in the Republic of Seychelles, and the falling premium of the Grayscale bitcoin trust shares traded on the secondary market, indicate participants are expecting approval, said Spencer Bogart, an analyst at Needham & Co., one of the few Wall Street analysts who cover bitcoin. Trust Premium NAV Drops The trust’s premium over bitcoin’s net asset value (NAV) has dropped from around 42.21 percent in early January to about 13% in recent trade, according to Grayscale. The falling premium reflects less willingness to pay for shares since investors expect near-term approval of one of the ETFs, Bogart said. Shares of a bitcoin ETF would trade closer to bitcoin’s net asset value, accordi

P. H. Mador e   Bitcoin is by default and by nature a currency which  shows no respect for borders . One of the less popularized advantages of Bitcoin is that, through the power of encryption, immutable transactions are possible, as well as the ability to withhold funds from seizure. In the nations which are currently producing the most refugees, Bitcoin’s digitization is another great aspect of it – people are less likely to steal what they cannot see. A private key can be written and stored virtually anywhere. For all intents and purposes, Bitcoin is precisely the currency you would want if your world were torn apart by war and famine, provided you had some way to turn it into usable goods. AirBNB recently entered the political conversation by launching its #WeAccept campaign. The decentralized rental service made a stern political statement, despite having a bright and positive message, with the following commercial: The sentiments expressed were not l

A dedicated bitcoin bank, possibly the world’s first, has opened on Mariahilfer Strasse in downtown Vienna,  Austria , according to  The Local , an English-language Austrian news site. The bank is owned by a Berlin-based blockchain startup, Bit Trust Services, and it is named Bitcoin-Bank. The bank is designed to make buying and selling bitcoin easier and safer than other in-person options. The bank’s ATM machines exchange  bitcoin  for euro, and vice versa. The bank also provides information about the virtual currency. Magdalena Isbrandt, managing director of Bit Trust, told state broadcaster ORF that digital currency transactions are faster than other transactions and can be done without a middleman. “Value and money can be sent straight from user to user,” she said. Touting Digital’s Advantages Andreas Petersson, co-founder of Bitcoin Austria, said digital currency’s main advantage is anonymity. “If I pay online with bitcoin, I have a degree of privacy,” Pe