Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

The adoption of blockchain technology in the energy sector will generate over $3 billion by 2025 owing to an increase in deployment in the power, oil and gas sectors, according to Global Market Insights. Worldwide, the deployment of blockchain technology in energy-related applications has become a trending subject of sorts among industry giants as well as the start-up investor community, with applications ranging from grid transactions, financing and transparency in supply chain.  Advancements in the technology have resulted from widespread efforts to replace outdated and less secure trading and documentation platforms through digital transformation. Blockchain is deemed ideal for the energy segment since it can enable the creation of automated, auditable and transparent records of generated power and its subsequent consumption. Even in the oil & gas industry, legacy systems are being overhauled for implementing more reliable and cutting-edge dig...

    By Helen Partz     Crypto market cap tracker CoinMarketCap (CMC) will remove exchanges from its calculations if they fail to provide mandatory data by June, the firm wrote in its sixth anniversary blog post on May 1. CoinMarketCap, a major source of data about all traded digital currencies , has made a series of announcements to celebrate its sixth birthday today. As such, CMC has announced a brand new alliance called the Data Accountability & Transparency Alliance (DATA) in order to provide “greater transparency, accountability, and disclosure from projects in the crypto space.” A broad number of exchanges have already joined the new alliance, including Binance , Bittrex , OKEx , Huobi , Liquid, UpBit, IDEX, OceanEX, Gate.io, KuCoin, HitBTC and Bitfinex, with more partners expected in the future, the announcement states. As a part of its transparency initiative, CoinMarketCap will also now require all the crypto exchanges...

  By Jeff Kauflin A new movement is pumping oxygen into the cryptocurrency industry despite asset prices that remain 75% lower than where they were in late 2017. It’s called DeFi, short for decentralized finance—it’s the notion that crypto entrepreneurs can recreate traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies’ and governments’ control. And with fresh allegations of misused funds against the centrally controlled cryptocurrency tether, the argument for decentralized applications has become even more relevant. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the original DeFi applications. Both are controlled by large networks of computers, not central authorities. Many investors use bitcoin like gold, as a store-of-value investment that protects against inflation, while Ethereum has been instrumental—and controversial—in helping startups crowdfund their operations. But newer apps are dominating the DeFi...

  BY Erik Gibbs    Japan has always been a leading country. It embraces new technologies quicker than most others and this has even included cryptocurrencies. A recent discussion on the future of integrated resorts (IR) and crypto in the country reveals that, if it chooses, Japan could become one of the first countries to fully embrace digital currencies as a form of payments at its casinos. Could Japan's IRs accept crypto? The discussion took place during a panel session at the iGaming Asia Congress, which was held this week at Studio City in Macau. The event wraps up today and saw participants involved in the “Spotlight on blockchain and crypto regulation in Asia” talk on Wednesday. During that talk, Japan was singled out for its experience and adoption of crypto, and how these could give it a serious competitive edge in the casino industry if it decides to allow crypto in the country’s casinos and IRs. One of the panelists in the discussion, Bitwork Asia co-founde...

By John Detrixhe As part of Japan’s drive to embrace electronic payments, Mizuho and about 60 other banks have launched a new digital wallet called J-Coin Pay. But contrary to what you may have read about it, it doesn’t use crypto. Mizuho’s new service uses QR codes to process smartphone payments, resembling Alipay and WeChat Pay, the dominant platforms in China. Japan has one of the most cash-intensive economies in the world, and its government is pushing for an electronic overhaul in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Digital payments account for about 20% of transactions in Japan—compared with more than 60% in China—and the government aims to double that percentage by 2025 . According to a Mizuho spokesperson, J-Coin doesn’t use cryptocurrency or blockchain in any form. That conflicts with numerous reports going back as far as 2017 suggesting that the bank was researching or planning a digital currency pegged to the Japanese yen (paywall). Perhaps ...

By Moris Beracha .- The blockchain technology is a public database decentralized in a computer network that is used to record all kinds of transactions. Roma Siri, born on November 8, 2015, also known as the “Baby Blockchain”, was the first human being whose birth was registered in the blockchain. Now in 2019, some public institutions worldwide have decided to make official records through the blockchain and the United States has been a pioneer in this activity. According to an article published by the Associates Press (AP) news agency, it was known that some counties in the state of Nevada are using the best known online registry book in the world to store digital versions of birth and marriage certificates. “The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of December in Washoe County, about 950 couples had received secure digital marriage certificates to home computers and smartphones since the program debuted in April 2018,” reads the memo published b...

By Adrian Zmudzinski The vice president of blockchain and digital currencies for IBM , Jesse Lund, said that he expects Bitcoin’s ( BTC ) price to eventually hit $1 million. Lund made his prediction during an interview with comparison and news platform Finder.com, published on YouTube on Feb. 20. Towards the end of the interview, Lund was asked what he expects the price of Bitcoin to be on this new year’s eve. He answered that he thinks it is going to be higher than the current price, clarifying, “I’ll go with $5,000.” He then continued his prediction, adding: “I see Bitcoin at a million dollars someday.” Lund explained that he “likes that number,” given that “if Bitcoin is at a million dollars, then satoshi is on value parity with the U.S. penny.” He noted that at such a value, the whole network would have over $20 trillion of liquidity. He then suggested that such liquidity could change corporate payments and high value payments in general, concluding:...

By Moris Beracha .- A significant number of companies engaged in apps development are undertaking crypto raffles among all those users who try and get some kind of error in their digital products. This kind of lottery consists of completing small tasks such as captchas or clicking a button to claim free coins every hour without any investment, because it is just about spending time on the platforms and watching ads and completing the tasks. The adult entertainment industry is one of the most emblematic sectors that rewards its customers and users in cryptocurrencies. Currently, a large number of micro earning websites pay you in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency every couple of minutes. Eventually, you can get enough tokens to charge and get a small profit on the wallet or digital wallet. Ripple has also decided to raffle or give away millions of its cryptocurrencies also known by the acronym XRP, but the aforementioned company aims to achieve the u...

By  William Suberg The  central bank  of  Egypt  wants to introduce a digital version of the Egyptian pound to reduce costs, local English language news outlet  Amwal Al Ghad  reported Dec. 16. Ayman Hussein, sub-governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), told an Abu Dhabi conference on Sunday that “feasibility studies” were currently ongoing. In line with various authorities in the vicinity, Egypt believes a  blockchain -based digital version of its  fiat currency  can help keep issuance and transaction costs to a minimum compared to coins and banknotes, Amwal Al Ghad notes. The move is one step in the journey to a cashless society. “A number of international institutions” are involved in the studies, Amwal Al Ghad reported Hussein as saying, “without disclosing names or specifying whether the anticipated currency would be traded for banks only or between banks and clients.” Egypt has traditional...

The Chinese tech giant has announced the universal accessibility of its Blockchain Service (BCS) platform, following its debut in China, to deploy blockchain apps at scale Huawei has announced that its Blockchain Service (BCS) platform, which has been designed to support and enable business to develop blockchain-based applications, has been made available on a global scale following its commercial launch in China in October. According to Huawei, the BCS platform, hosted on the Huawei Cloud website, offers decentralization, tamper resistance, traceability and transparency in transactions, providing businesses with the ability to "create, deploy and manage blockchain applications quickly and at minimal cost on Huawei Cloud". The BCS platform can be used for various use cases such as data, IoT and finance-related applications, as well as data transactions, identity authentication, proof of information (such as real estate and education), remote healthcare, food sou...

By Molly Jane Zuckerman U.S. investment firm Fidelity, which administers over $7.2 trillion in client assets, has announced the launch of a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, according to an Oct. 15 press release. The new company will offer custody and trade execution services for digital assets, targeting institutional investors like “hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries,” and will not for now be open to retail investors. According to the press release, Fidelity Digital Assets will focus on providing a “secure, compliant, and institutional-grade omnibus storage solution for bitcoin, ether and other digital assets.” Tom Jessop, head of the newly-created business, is quoted in as saying that Fidelity began exploring blockchain and crypto “several years ago,” telling CNBC in an interview today that the idea of commercializing a “standalone” crypto firm began in mid-2017. Fidelity cites research from Greenwich Associates that found t...

By Molly Jane Zuckerman | cointelegraph The Liquid Network sidechain for the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain went live on Sept. 27, according to an Oct. 10 post from Blockstream. Blockstream is a blockchain development company founded in 2014, with Samson Mow as its CSO. The Liquid Network project, first announced in 2015, was then launched by Mow and Joseph Weinberg of Paycase in 2017 in order to allow for better liquidity between Bitcoin exchanges and brokers. According to Blockstream’s blog post, the Liquid blockchain generated its first block on Sept. 27, 2018 at 1:29 UTC with participation from 23 crypto industry members including Bitfinex, OKCoin, BitMEX, and the SIX Digital Exchange. The blog post explains that Liquid aims to allow for faster transactions with Bitcoin between businesses and individuals with the use of its features. These include a native Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) asset backed by a “two-way peg” to Bitcoin, Issued Assets bringing “bitcoin-...