Author: Antoinette Turner

China’s top digital bank WeBank has announced its partnership with Singaporean government-backed OpenNodes. This partnership will allow China’s FISCO BCOS blockchain platform to be brought to Singaporean academics for innovation and new initiatives. FISCO BCOS was deemed to be China’s version of Hyperledger Fabric when it was launched in 2018.      The Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium (FISCO) is backed by more than 100 Chinese organizations, including Huawei, Tencent, JD Finance, and WeBank, which is partly backed by Tencent. Developed by FISCO, the enterprise blockchain protocol was the first blockchain to be supported by China’s Blockchain Service Network.   WeBank’s executive vice president and Chief Information Officer, Henry Ma said, “We seek to spur the next-generation talen...

Sunday’s episode of the Showtime series Billions featured a cryptocurrency mining scheme being executed in a prep school. The Bitcoin focused episode was written by Ben Mezrich, who also wrote the book Bitcoin Billionaires which tells the story of the Winklevoss twins, the venture capitalist’s behind the Gemini crypto exchange who are reported to own about 1% of Bitcoin’s total supply between them. Mezrich teased the episode on Twitter: Billions this Sunday night... I’m not sayin’ there’s definitely gonna be some Bitcoin... I’m just saying I did happen to write the episode...I mean, just sayin’... — Ben Mezrich (@benmezrich) May 14, 2020 Beg, Bribe, Bully The episode entitled “Beg, Bribe, Bully” told the story of Gordie Axelrod, son of the shows main character Bobby Axelrod. Gor...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) suggested that leaders around the world need to do more to ensure a quicker and more sustainable recovery for the global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.      Amongst the 350 top risk professionals in the world surveyed, these risk managers expect a prolonged global recession, as a number of areas of concern were identified in the report compiled by the Forum’s Global Risks Advisory Board, Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc, and Zurich Insurance Group.   Half of the respondents expressed expected bankruptcies and industry consolidation, and failure of industries to recover, and a disruption of supply chains. The World Economic Forum published a report on the importance of blockchain in supply chain disruption amid the pandemic.    Saadia Zahidi, Mana...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many subjects to the forefront: our reliance on oil, manufacturing in China, the need for digital dollars, the frailty of our global supply chain, and our lack of preparation to deal with the outbreak. However, perhaps the strangest topic online and the most unavoidable has been the conspiracy theory chasing Bill Gates and his foundation’s efforts to produce a Covid-19 vaccine. The accusations range from him directly being the cause of the pandemic, to being the head of an Illuminati like circular cabal bent on controlling the world through microchips, and now an insidious plan to depopulate the planet of billions of people. Where we Came In We are a blockchain news site, while we absolutely love discussing technologies that may appear to border on fantas...

A recent clip from a soon to be released documentary called ‘Plandemic’ features a disgraced virologist, Dr. Judy Mikovits accusing a sinister corporate-controlled “circular cabal” led by Bill Gates himself, of creating the coronavirus pandemic. Mikovits is adamant that this group she refers to as a “circular cabal” is led by Microsoft Founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates and she even goes on to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of burying her research which allegedly proved that vaccines weaken people’s immune systems and made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Disgraced Doctor’s COVID Theory Prior to the clip of Plandemic being released, Mikovits authored and published a book entitled ‘Plague of Corruption’ whic...

A billboard in Times Square has been hired by the ‘Free Ross’ movement as part of a campaign to release Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road contraband marketplace on the darknet. Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a double life sentence for his role as a darknet marketplace entrepreneur. He is in the seventh year of his sentence and it would appear that he is unlikely to ever be released without a pardon. He is 36 years old. According to a tweet from the account ‘Clemency for Ross’, the billboard has been rented for several months. The post also claims the campaign message was paid for by a single ‘generous supporter’ and was not funded by any donations that they have received. Times Square says FREE ROSS! #FreeRoss2020 pic.twitter.com/lbeRvakH2c — Free_Ross (@Free_Ross)...

Chinese officials are considering a cross-border Asian stablecoin in Hong Kong, to facilitate a cross-border payment network between three Asian countries, and four currencies - China, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The world’s second-largest economy is aiming to build Hong Kong into an international financial center in the digital economy era.     At China’s annual “Two Sessions,” also known as the National People’s Congress, China’s most important annual political event in Beijing, officials set the decision to impose new national security legislation on Hong Kong.    The annual political event was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, as the representatives of the National People’s Congress continue to advise on post-pandemic economic recovery.    Neil Shen, also known as Shen...

The French Central Bank, Banque de France has recently successfully trialed a central bank digital currency (CBDC) – the digital euro, operating on a blockchain.      The Bank of France experimented with the use of a central bank digital currency to test a sale of securities, which was carried out by Société Générale Forge.    Banque de France launched a program of experiments to test out potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) aimed for interbank settlements. Potential participants have been invited to submit their applications to experiment with the use of a digital euro.    The three main objectives of the CBDC experiment includes identifying benefits, analyzing potential risks, and modeling as CBDC-based interbank settlement.    A maximum of ten CBDC-related applications create...

IBM has announced a new collaboration with blockchain-based trade finance platform, we.trade to enhance network capabilities and accelerate the global growth of the platform. We.trade was designed to connect buyers, sellers, banks, insurers, and other organizations in a network, simplifying cross-border trading.      We.trade is backed by a group of banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rabobank, Santander, UBS,  Société Générale, and a few others. As one of the largest blockchain-enabled trade networks in the world, the blockchain platform first aimed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe to get better access to trade finance. With the new partnership with IBM, we.trade is looking to scale globally as it is expanding in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.    Built on t...

On Wednesday a Twitter bot reported that a Bitcoin transaction came from a wallet that possibly belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of the network and author of the Bitcoin whitepaper. 👤👤👤 40 #BTC (391,055 USD) transferred from possible #Satoshi owned wallet (dormant since 2009) to unknown walletℹ️ The coins in this transaction were mined in the first month of Bitcoin's existence.Tx: https://t.co/hxDJGGtfF0 — Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 20, 2020   The recorded movement came from an address containing coins that were mined barely a month after the launch of the Bitcoin mainnet in 2009, at this time it is suggested that only three people could have known about BTC, one of them being Satoshi. Beyond the age of the wallet, the...