Latest News On Cryptocurrencies

Retail giants Walmart and JD.com are among several companies backing a new blockchain effort in China focused on food safety and traceability. Along with Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory for E-Commerce Technologies and IBM, the four parties have created the Blockchain Food Safety Alliance, which will seek to connect businesses along the food supply chain within the world's most populous country. The idea, according to statements, is to develop "a standards-based method of collecting data about the origin, safety and authenticity of food" among the parties involved, with blockchain serving as a technological basis for recording that information in real time. For Walmart, the effort represents an expansion of its previous work in the food supply chain area. In October 2016, the retailer  unveiled  that it was working with Tsinghua and IBM in an effort to track pork products, a process that the company called "very encouraging" during a p...

Vanguard, the mutual fund giant, will begin using smart contract technology developed by blockchain startup Symbiont in some of its actual business processes starting early next year. For the last few months, the companies have been testing the technology to simplify the way Vanguard takes in data from the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. This information is used to determine the composition of certain  index funds  managed by Vanguard, and includes things like company names, share counts, index weighting and corporate actions such as mergers or stock splits. The three partners found the private blockchain speeds up delivery of the data from CRSP to Vanguard, removes the need for manual intervention and lowers risk. The project will go into full production in early 2018, the companies said Tuesday. Warren Pennington, a p rincipal in Vanguard's Investment Management Group said in a release: ...

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has partnered with a well-known economist on a new blockchain land registry venture – and he may wind up selling the e-commerce giant in order to fund it. The joint venture between Overstock subsidiary Medici Ventures and Hernando de Soto, named De Soto, Inc., will focus on creating a system for local property records, which will leverage the tech as a way to transfer rights while also incorporating mobile tech and social media elements. Byrne told the  Financial Times  that the plan is to launch a pilot system in early 2018, adding that he feels he has "a great moral obligation to refocus my life around this." To that end, Byrne indicated that one funding option would be to sell Overstock, either in segments or in its entirety, and use the money as capital for the new venture. "One of the possibilities is I sell the business and we have all the capital we need," he said. According to the FT, advisory firm Guggenheim Partn...

A recent  report  by Reform, an independent think tank in the  UK , recommends that the UK government use Blockchain technology to manage the  personal data  of its citizens. One of the opening statements of the report reads: “Government should use Blockchain technology to make identity management more secure and efficient.” According to the report, a new Blockchain-based model of  identity  management would put citizens in control of their own personal data, fundamentally altering the current state-citizen relationship: “This new model would reimagine the relationship between state and individual, as government would become the verifier, rather than the controller, of people’s public service identity.” Room for improvement Reform say that the government has already attempted to decentralize their identity management with the introduction of  GOV.UK Verify , a service that lets citizens verify their identity when accessing a g...