British Blockchain & Frontier Technologies Association - News

5 Years Ago

The Port of Marseilles to Use Blockchain to Handle Logistics

BBFTA News Editor | March 21, 2019 | PERMALINK

Marseilles, the Mediterranean’s second busiest port and Frances largest, is using Blockchain technology to improve the efficiency of its supply chains and the way it handles freight and goods, looking at how it can make better use and share data in a highly secure manner.

A number of ports are now using Blockchain technology, IBM and Maersk have a system that involves a number of organizations that are able to track in real time shipping data and shipping documentation.
Meanwhile, Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, has a Blockchain initiative with bank ABN Amro and Samsung as they look at how to make the shipping of containers more efficient. Currently, there is an average of 28 different organizations involved in transport of one container from China to Europe.
Shipping containers account for over 66% of all goods transported globally and the items they transport are valued at over $4 trillion worth of goods p.a. so efficiencies can make a huge impact.

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Logistics And Supply Chain

https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/french-governm...ics-pilot/

Blockchain Improving Food Supply Chains in the USA

BBFTA News Editor | March 21, 2019 | PERMALINK

Bumble Bee, one of America’s largest food supply companies, has announced that they are partnering with SAP and using its cloud-based Blockchain technology platform.

Customers will be able to scan QR codes on the packaging with a smartphone to trace the journey of yellow-fin tuna when shopping, tracking the journey from the ocean to the shelf, providing traceability and so greater transparency and assurance that the fish is fresh and coming from sustainable sources – as they will know where and when it was caught.

Also in the USA Seattle-based Transparent Path, and Penta Network, from Los Angeles, have joined forces to offer greater traceability to shoppers and food producers. The aim is to quickly be able to track food supplies so reducing risks related to food-borne illnesses, and giving customers greater knowledge of how and where the food they are buying has been produced.

Such projects are becoming more and more common globally as consumers demand information of sustainability, provenance and higher food standards, especially in the light of an 83% rise in some meat and chicken product recalls over concerns around potential pathogens and food-based contaminants in the US last year.

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Food & Beverages

http://xparent.io/food-startups-transparent-pat...duce-risk/

Germany to Set Up a Register as They Aim to Expand Blockchain-based Businesses

BBFTA News Editor | March 20, 2019 | PERMALINK

The German government has issued a paper laying out how it wishes to encourage the spread of Blockchain businesses and “electronic instruments “ i.e. Digital Assets.

They want to ensure that investors are protected while expanding Germany’s global role - so that they’re not left behind in these sectors.
Interestingly, German firm Naga was the first publicly listed company in Europe to carry out an Initial Coin Offering ( ICO), in 2017 when it raised Euros 40m from over 50,000 investors.
This announcement from the German government comes hot on the heels of its financial regulator, BaFin confirming that they have approved BitBond to issue Digital Bonds. This will be Europe’s first fully regulated Security Token. Bitbond has already issued $15m of loans and its platform has over 165,000 registered users. So like Naga seems to be attracting considerable interest from investors.
The issuing of bonds using Blockchain technology is believed to be able to reduce the associated costs by over 60% so ought to enable smaller companies to be able to offer bonds creating an alternative source of finance.
If issuing bonds using Blockchain technology is successful in reducing costs and allowing SMEs to issues bonds, then the Peer To Peer (P2P) lending market could face new competition. The P2P market is expected to grow to nearly $900 Billion by 2024.

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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/internatio...egulations

Asset Manager Invesco Launches a Blockchain ETF on the London Stock Exchange

BBFTA News Editor | March 20, 2019 | PERMALINK

The $800 Billion fund manager company Invesco has launched an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) on the London Stock exchange that will be investing in 48 different companies that have exposure to Blockchain technology.

The EFT will be investing in business such as microchip manufacturers, financial services companies, and IT firms that are using Blockchain technology. While the EFT will not be investing in actual Cryptocurrencies right now, it will have exposure to organizations that are building the infrastructure that Digital Assets require to gain wider adoption. While Invesco’s EFT will not be investing in Cryptos to trade Digital Assets, it is another sign of the importance that Blockchain is beginning to have on institutional investors.

As fund managers gain a better understanding of Blockchain and its ability to improve efficiency and profitability for companies, we expect to see more money finding its way into Digital Assets as the old barriers preventing asset managers buying into Digital Assets i.e. banking facilities, Professional Indemnity Insurance, independent custody services or regulated exchanges, are now being removed.

The infrastructure for fund managers is broadly in place. This is why we are now seeing more Security Tokens being launched and no doubt we will soon see new funds launched to invest in this NEW asset class.

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https://www.coindesk.com/a-blockchain-etf-is-la...ange-today

Traditional Banks Laundered $2TRILLION in 2018

BBFTA News Editor | March 19, 2019 | PERMALINK

Yes, $2 Trillion was laundered by regulated banks last year according to a recent report, yet banks remain resistant to offer banking services to firms involved in Cryptos.

Despite claims that 90% of all US$ banknotes have traces of Cocaine on them, banks and regulators still believe those in our society that want to carry out nefarious activities are using Crypto, not cash. But why would someone carrying out a criminal activity want to use a form of payment that leaves a digital footprint - a Crypto, when cash leaves no traces and banks seem to still be accommodating these activities?

Since 2008 banks have been fined over $26Billion JUST for KYC/AML non-compliance, with the USA regulator being the most active. While in Europe the UK’s FCA has imposed the largest number of fines. It is no surprise that many claim the current system needs to change, and while it was refreshing to see the FCA being proactive creating the FCA sandbox in 2016 where it allows regulated companies to trial new technology, which hopefully can improve the robustness of the financial system, more recent moves have called their ongoing commitment to innovation into question.

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https://www.btcwires.com/c-buzz/regulated-banks...-adoption/

Investing in Blockchain and Digital Assets Funds Continue to Attract Capital

BBFTA News Editor | March 19, 2019 | PERMALINK

San Francisco based Forte has just been given $100 million by Ripple to invest in Blockchain gaming companies.

Gaming is seen as an attractive sector that can use Blockchain and Digital Assets. It is a $140Billion industry and growing fast.

Chinese company Tencent have been active buyers of online gaming companies, so offers an exit to many emerging firms in the gaming sector according to UBS. China looks to be well positioned as it expects its gaming industry to grow to three times its current size by 2030. Tencent distributes some of the most played games in the industry and is the largest video game company in the world based on game sales. In 2018 over $1.3billion was invested into Blockchain projects from Venture capitalists. Considerably more than in 2017.

This trend is continuing according to Tim Bird, corporate partner at lawyers Field Fisher, who claims that “Blockchain is still one of the Top 5 sectors VCs are investing in at the beginning of 2019”.

Meanwhile, we are seeing Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offering (STOs) being used to help finance Blockchain powered businesses which, on the whole, are far better structured and thought through propositions compared to those seem a year ago.

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Capital Markets

https://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/top-5-sectors-...9-2556086/

Institutional Platform to Allow High-frequency Traders Access to Cryptos

BBFTA News Editor | March 18, 2019 | PERMALINK

Specialist financial instruments exchange, Drive, has announced they are now offering institutional clients access to spot prices, CFDs and Futures in a selection of Cryptocurrencies.

This ought to help provide greater liquidity and acceptance among institutional investors as it enables them to easily go long or short of a variety of Cryptocurrencies via a platform that they are already using, so gain exposure to Digital Assets by osmosis.

The pronouncement from SEC Chair Clayton has confirmed that certain cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum and Bitcoin, are not securities and has provided the clarity many have been seeking. Which ought to assist lawyers, insurance underwriters and compliance departments at asset management firms as to where and how these Digital Assets can be used.

Meanwhile, back in main street in the US, or as some would say in the UK for ‘Joe Public’, of those that own Digital Assets like Bitcoin less than 40% said they were happy to use Cryptos for payments. So while adoption of Digital Assets is increasing there is still a long way to go before we see cryptos replacing cash…

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Financial Services

https://www.leaprate.com/forex/institutional/dr...th-gold-i/

Ex IBM Chairman Raises Concerns of How Public Blockchains can Comply with GDPR Regulations

BBFTA News Editor | March 15, 2019 | PERMALINK

Sam Palmisano, the retired chairman of IBM in a recent interview on Bloomberg said it is hard to come up with a good solution for creating public blockchains which are fully compatible with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in Europe

Blockchains are immutable, so once data has been added it cannot be changed or removed, which is in direct conflict with GDPR.

Palmisano believes that because private blockchain has more centralization, ought to be more compliant, but because public blockchains are very decentralized they struggle to be compliant with GDPR.

Queen Marys and Cambridge Universities have also raised similar concerns. A possible solution is to ensure that Blockchains do not hold personal/ private data so this information would be held off chain where such data could be removed or changed if required at some stage in the future.

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https://readwrite.com/2019/03/04/how-can-blockc...compliant/

SWIFT Partners with Global Banks to Trial E-voting Using Blockchain

BBFTA News Editor | March 15, 2019 | PERMALINK

SWIFT handled on average over 34million messages a day last December and is used by many international banks to settle FX and cash positions daily.

SWIFT has had a virtual a monopoly with global banks but has been facing increasing pressure from RIPPLE, the third most valuable cryptocurrency which is capitalized at over $13 Billion, and at one stage in 2018 had grown in value by a whopping 37,000% in 12 months. SWIFT is now using Blockchain technology and is working with the Singapore stock exchange, HSBC, Standard Chartered, DBS and Deutsche bank to create a more efficient way to handle share voting. The majority of publicly quoted shares are held in nominee accounts and proxy voting has become increasingly difficult and cumbersome.

The new e-voting service SWIFT are developing is designed to be faster and more transparent and reduce errors which in the past have proved to be very expensive. In 2016 it cost a US brokerage over $190million to compensate shareholders due to share proxy errors, as the current system is largely paper-based.

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https://www.chainbits.com/news/swift-partners-w...in-voting/

Alibaba embraces Blockchain and IoT to improve efficiency in it’s supply chains

BBFTA News Editor | March 14, 2019 | PERMALINK

Alibaba, the world’s biggest FinTech company, which is capitalized at over $453Billion is planning to use Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) for its vast international logistics and supply chains.

Alibaba has been experimenting with Blockchain for a while with its Food Trust Framework as it tries to improve transparency, help customers track goods and ensure their authenticity. Using QR codes customers will be able to scan a good and have greater certainty over a product's provenance.

Given Alibaba’s distribution and financial clout, one wonders how long it will be before they launch the AliCoin as a possible way to encourage and reward customers in some form of loyalty scheme. An AliCoin could then be exchanged for goods and services as Alibaba continues its expansion into banking and financial services with Alipay.

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Logistics And Supply Chain

https://www.businesstelegraph.co.uk/alibaba-loo...nge-guide/

Ridesharing App Lyft Using Blockchain to Tokenize Healthcare Transport

BBFTA News Editor | March 14, 2019 | PERMALINK

Lyft is the first ridesharing company to file an IPO in February 2019 and has also announced that it is partnering with Solve.Care to schedule transport to and fro for patients appointments to doctors, hospitals or clinics.

The aim is to coordinate and reduce the paperwork between insurers, patients and healthcare providers using automated payments using SLOVE tokens. Blockchain is increasingly being used in healthcare as the technology is ideally suited where data has to be held securely, yet shared by potentially many different parties in multiple locations.

Only last month the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim announced it was to deploy Blockchain for clinical recordkeeping and in January 2019 Aetna said it too was starting to use Blockchain.

However, it is not just using Blockchain for clinical records but it is also being used to reduce the risk of using fraudulent drugs and to improve transparency in clinical drug trials which historically have been fraught with fraud and errors.

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http://www.tokenpost.com/Blockchain-healthcare-...-Lyft-1385

A Digital account paying 6% on your Bitcoin and Ethereum holdings

BBFTA News Editor | March 13, 2019 | PERMALINK

BlockFi, who raised over $54million last year has launched a high-interest account paying 6% p.a. if they hold your Bitcoin or Ethereum assets.

The reason they can pay such high-interest rates is because they lend out your Crypto to other institutions but more importantly, your Digital Assets are held by a custodian independent of BlockFi called Gemini Trust Company. Gemini was co-founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and is regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services.

This new way to hold Cryptocurrencies is another example of how the traditional and the Digital worlds are converging, as BlockFi are offering in effect an instant-access, high-interest account to depositors while providing institutional asset lending facilities. Because the transactions are stored on a Blockchain there are fewer intermediaries involved, it is secured using military-grade security and not reliant on one company’s server/computer as the records will be distributed thus reducing concerns over disaster recovery.

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Financial Services

https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/03/06/highest-yiel...-interest/

Blockchain Helping Gulf States with Renewable Energy

BBFTA News Editor | March 13, 2019 | PERMALINK

The Gulf Corporation Council (GCC), which coordinates renewable energy projects in Arabian States in the Persian Gulf has plans to install 80GW of renewable energy and is looking at how Blockchain technology can be used.

The CCC aim is that renewable energy will account for 50% of global energy requirements by 2050 and believes that Blockchain is ideal to track the production and final use of energy. By using Smart Contracts, Blockchains could make the peer-to-peer trade of energy a reality while charging consumers different price to encourage energy to be consumed at times when demand is usually low and capacity is high.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) and the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) are already using Smart Contracts to improve operational efficiencies. Meanwhile, Iberdrola, an energy firm in Spain, revealed earlier this year they were using Blockchain to track sustainable energy sources, using the Energy Web Foundation’s open-source blockchain platform.

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Renewable Energy

https://coinnewstelegraph.com/experts-believe-g...nge-guide/

City of Denver in the USA is to Use Blockchain on Smartphones to Enable Voting

BBFTA News Editor | March 12, 2019 | PERMALINK

Denver is going to use mobile phones and Blockchain technology to enable voting in their Denver mayoral May 2019 elections, so allowing eligible voters overseas and those on military duty the ability to also vote.

The technology powering this electronic voting has been used for 30 previous elections since 2016 and is provided by a company called Voatz who are owned by Overstock.Com. By trialing voting using mobile phone is to try and increase the % of people who vote and improve transparency. In the recent Mid Term Elections in the US only 47% of eligible people actually voted, which was the highest since 1968 when 49% of people voted.

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https://blockchainseo.net/denver-blockchain-mobile-voting/

Ex IBM Chairman Raises Concerns of How Public Blockchains can Comply with GDPR Regulations

BBFTA News Editor | March 11, 2019 | PERMALINK

Sam Palmisano, the retired chairman of IBM in a recent interview on Bloomberg said it is hard to come up with a good solution for creating public blockchains which are fully compatible with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in Europe.

Blockchains are immutable, so once data has been added it cannot be changed or removed, which is in direct conflict with GDPR.

Palmisano believes that because private blockchain has more centralization, ought to be more compliant, but because public blockchains are very decentralized they struggle to be compliant with GDPR.
Queen Marys and Cambridge Universities have also raised similar concerns. A possible solution is to ensure that Blockchains do not hold personal/ private data so this information would be held off chain where such data could be removed or changed if required at some stage in the future.

#FrontierInsights

https://readwrite.com/2019/03/04/how-can-blockc...compliant/

New York bank to offer Crypto banking facilities in Bermuda

BBFTA News Editor | March 08, 2019 | PERMALINK

Signature bank of New York has announced that it is now offering bank accounts for businesses based in Bermuda that deal in Digital Assets.

There are believed to be over 60 companies that initially this will be of great assistance to, as despite the Bermuda government changing it’s law no locally based bank offer accounts in the Crypto sector. However, Signature bank claims that they are signing up companies that are also not involved with Cryptos.

The lack of banking facilities is a major hurdle facing businesses that deal in Digital Assets globally as it is extremely difficult to get a bank account in many jurisdictions around the world.In the UK Clearbank which is the first bank in over 250 years to be granted clearing bank status, is one of the is one of the few banks to offer bank accounts to firms engaged in Digital Assets but the company needs to be FCA regulated or in the process of applying to the FCA to be accepted by Clearbank.

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https://coinfomania.com/signature-bank-services...n-bermuda/

London Stock Exchange invests and joins the board of a FinTech firm tokenising equities and bonds

BBFTA News Editor | March 07, 2019 | PERMALINK

Nivaura has secured $20m of fresh capital, with investors including The London Stock Exchange (LSE), Santander and the law firm Allen and Overy. LSE will also have one of their staff joining the Nivaura board.

Nivaura was the first company in the world in 2017 to issue a bond for a client using a Blockchain while in the UK FCA Sandbox and they claim that the time needed to issue bonds could be reduced by 60% by using Blockchain technology. They have recently been followed by BVVA in Spain who issued a bond using Blockchain technology to raise $160m.

If it proves to be so much cheaper to access the debt markets using Blockchains then bonds could become an option for SMEs to raise capital, which in turn could be competition for the Peer 2 Peer lenders...

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Capital Markets

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo...1d0d146e46

Artificial Intelligence ICO raises $6million in 10 seconds

BBFTA News Editor | March 07, 2019 | PERMALINK

ICOs are still being used as a method to fund small businesses as demonstrated by Fetch.AI who attracted over 19,860 people register to buy and successfully raised $6million from 2,758 investors in 10 seconds.

Fetch.AI based in Cambridge in UK said they were “aiming to get as many people involved as possible so they limited the maximum number of tokens one could buy to only $3,000”. It is likely we will see a lot more firms using Digital Assets to raise relatively small amounts of capital; from platforms like Binance and Token Market

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Artificial Intelligence

https://cryptonomist.ch/en/2019/02/15/binance-l...oken-sale/

Survey suggests millennials trust Bitcoin more than the stock market

BBFTA News Editor | March 06, 2019 | PERMALINK

Guy Hirsch, Managing rector of eToro U.S., sees the increased interest and investments in Digital Assets as a clear “generation shift."

He stated via press release: “we’re seeing the beginning of a generational shift in trust from traditional stock exchanges to crypto exchanges. At the heart of this change are the asset classes themselves.

Younger investors’ experience with the stock market has seen a great deal of loss of trust, with the fall of Lehman brothers...” One of the benefits of people investing in digital assets is that companies can know who their actual shareholders are and so have a relationship with them, and reward so offer them shareholder perks e.g. discounts off goods and services. This is almost impossible when shares are held as they currently are, in nominee structures.

Potentially companies could have no need for share registrars saving them money, as shareholders records can be updated in Real Time, which in turn would help regulators know who owns what which at the moment is impossible for a listed quoted company.

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Asset Management

Digital Currency

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-is-the-gateway-drug...illennials

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