Tag: news

  South Korean tech giant Samsung has announced a new revolutionary turnkey security solution to secure cryptocurrency transactions on its smartphones and tablets.   Cryptocurrency transactions are one of the primary purposes of Samsung’s new Secure Element chip, which is expected to be available in Q3 2020.    The solution involves a Secure Element (SE) chip S3FV9RR, which is Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (CC EAL) 6+ certified. The new SE chip along with enhanced software is designed to offer higher protection for tasks including booting, isolated storage, mobile payment, and other applications.    Dongho Shin, the senior vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics said, “In this era of mobility and contact-less interactions, we expect our connected devices,...

What is Novi?   Facebook has renamed its digital wallet, Calibra, as Novi. Calibra was the digital wallet that the social media giant has been building to access Libra digital currencies.      In a blog post, the company explained that the new name was inspired by the Latin words “novus” and “via,” meaning “new” and “way.” The digital wallet company, a subsidiary under Facebook will now be named Novi Financial.   As previously reported by Blockchain.News, Libra has abandoned its original plan of a widely accessible permissionless digital currency aimed to solve financial inclusion issues, due to ongoing regulatory backlash.    Libra was seen as a controversial project, especially in the eyes of regulators. Libra has then applied for a payment system license from the Swiss Financial Market...

Argentina’s Financial Information Unit (FIU) has ordered stricter controls and monitoring into cryptocurrency transactions in the country to eradicate money laundering and other illicit activities.      Argentine newspaper El Cronista reported that the FIU, a government agency that is responsible for enforcing anti-money laundering laws and compliance, is looking to tighten its controls on cryptocurrency trading.    President of the Financial Information Unit, Carlos Alberto Cruz said, “In recent times, we have seen an increase in operations carried out through virtual assets.” He added that these transactions could be “carried out by people who intend to circumvent international standards and avoid the anti-money laundering system.”   The announcement by the FIU comes at a time when Arge...

Crypto businesses may soon be offered a regulated path to legalization in the state of Louisiana. The state of Louisiana may soon pass a bill, that was filed earlier this year and will allow crypto-businesses to operate legally under a state license. The proposed bill has been backed by Louisiana state representative Mark Weight. Should the bill be passed, the state would have a regulated crypto framework to operate within and would provide an official definition of traditionally ambiguous cryptocurrency-related terms. Unanimous Approval The crypto-license bill was unanimously approved in Louisiana’s House of Representatives last week. A positive sign for potential cryptocurrency providers, but it will now have to pass through the State Senate, and then to the Committee on Commerce, Consu...

According to recent data and reports, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption are soaring across Africa. Cryptocurrency adoption and peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions are on the rise across the African continent. There have been significant advances across Africa for crypto adoption in terms of regulation, trade volume, and reported cryptocurrency ownership. Currently Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya frequently rank among the top 10 countries for Bitcoin Google searches according to a recent report by Arcane Research and Luno. The research emphasizes that Africa is, “one of, if not the most promising regions” for cryptocurrency adoption as it exhibits a young and largely underbanked or unbanked population who are often forced to use expensive forms of money remittance.Crypto P2...

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, also known as Jingdong, has successfully launched two enterprise-level applications, including blockchain-based smart contracts, and the protection of commercially confidential information.     These two applications were launched on JD’s independently-developed proprietary blockchain, JD Chain. The JD Chain blockchain framework was made open sourced around a year ago, five months after the company launched the JD Blockchain Open Platform enabling companies to use JD’s platform using pre-built APIs. The blockchain protocol has been opened up to allow enterprises to built custom solutions.   The two enterprise-level blockchain applications have been applied to industries such as supply chain, human resources, leasing, and around ten other industries. The bl...

Over the past week, the comments of a counter-terrorism think tank Director have indicated that ISIS has been using cryptocurrency platforms to conceal donations and bypass financial security measures and could be hoarding close to 300 million in Bitcoin. The Think Tank expert initially made the revelation after identifying an increase in advertising for BTC donations. However, a recent report from Chainalysis suggests that there is no evidence of ISIS's 300million BTC war-chest and they are not impressed with the mainstream media's conflation of the Director's comments.  The articles reporting the supposed war-chest took their lead from the comments of Hans-Jakob Schindler, Director of the CEP (the Counter Extremism Project, a specialist think tank tracking the trend of terrorism financ...

Brian Armstrong the Coinbase CEO, has joined the list of cryptocurrency executives who prefer to leverage their own blogs and platforms to distribute information to the media, as opposed to direct contact with any journalists. Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong noted in a tweet that company leaders seem increasingly unwilling to engage with the mainstream media and prefer to use social media platforms like Youtube, Twitter, and their own blogs. Trend I'm noticing: most execs/CEOs don't want to speak with mainstream media as much as they did even a few years ago. Our customers are on YouTube/podcasts/social media - not reading mainstream media. And companies are able to control their own distribution channels. — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) May 21, 2020 Coinbase CEO Circumvents...

Singapore’s state investor, Temasek Holdings has officially been named a member of the Facebook-backed digital currency project Libra. Temasek as a portfolio value of 313 billion Singapore dollars (roughly $219 billion), making it one of the more prominent backers of Libra.      The Libra Association, an independent group based in Switzerland has also welcomed crypto investor Paradigm and Slow Ventures, a private equity firm.    Facebook, the company behind Libra, announced the digital currency initiative in 2018, which took the world by storm with its controversial project. With the ICO bubble having expanded exponentially in 2017, the public started to become aware of cryptocurrencies. Digital currency and cryptocurrency were still seen in the light of being scandalous, illicit, and unf...

Visa applied for a new patent application to create a blockchain-based digital currency on a centralized computer, according to a publication by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).     The patent was originally filed in November 2019, and was described as “Digital Fiat Currency.” The US dollar was mentioned as one of the fiat currencies to be used potentially, although the patent could also apply to other central bank digital currencies including the pound, yen, and the euro.    Filed by Simon J. Hurry and Alexander Pierre with the Visa International Service Association, the application noted that Ethereum could be used as a possible network for the digital currency.   The central entity computer described in the patent will receive requests with details including the serial numbe...