Ahead of his talk at Blockchain Expo on March 17, The Block speaks with Fergal Downey regarding the inner workings of his engineering team, his thoughts on the challenges facing enterprise organisations, and the potential future directions of the blockchain industry. Fergal Downey is vice president (VP) of engineering at Rakuten Blockchain Lab in Belfast, … Read More “Fergal Downey, Rakuten: On how blockchain is being used for retail, Covid compliance, and more” »
Auction house Christie’s has concluded its single lot online of Beeple’s ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ artwork for $69.3 million (£49.8m) as the NFT (non-fungible token) space continues to heat up. Christie’s said the sale was the highest total for any online-only auction, as well as setting a new world record for any work of … Read More “Beeple NFT digital artwork sells for $69.3 million in Christie’s auction” »
Concordium, a provider of enterprise-oriented public and permissionless blockchain offerings, has raised $15 million (£10.7m) in a private sale of tokens. The Switzerland-based company had announced a joint venture cooperation with Geely, the owner of Volvo, last month to provide Chinese customers with blockchain technology. As this publication reported at the time, the joint venture … Read More “Concordium raises $15m in private sale and completes MVP testnet” »
As non-fungible tokens (NFTs) become an increasingly popular way to create artificial scarcity in the digital marketplace, the Associated Press (AP) has listed its first ever NFT artwork for auction in collaboration with Everipedia and digital artist Marko Stanojevic. Total sales across NFT marketplaces stood at $500 million (£360m) in February, compared to just $200m … Read More “Associated Press auctions first NFT artwork commemorating blockchain usage in US election” »
Editor’s note: This is part of a full article by Coinshares Research. You can read the full analysis, featuring Germany, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, here. The European cryptocurrency market is a constantly evolving space, with increasing investor demand, cautious but forward-looking governments and a diverse palette of regulations and concerns country … Read More “Cryptocurrency concerns vs. regulations in Europe: A guide” »
Analysis With the price of Bitcoin rising past US$50,000 in February, the profile of – and investor interest in – cryptoassets continues to increase. With this, the global regulatory landscape is swiftly evolving with recent calls for cryptocurrency to be subject to tightened rules and HM Treasury releasing an important new consultation. Less than three … Read More “Analysis: The increasing scope of UK cryptocurrency regulation” »
Feature In 2019, Gen Z surpassed millennials and baby boomers to become the largest generation in the world, making up a third of the global population. This demographic dominance alone makes those born between 1995 and 2010, an important consideration for cryptocurrency markets and blockchain tech firms. What’s more, Gen Z’s comfort with and strong preference for digitised transactions makes them an even … Read More “Generation Z: How post-millennial young people are engaging with blockchain” »
The Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has approved Hyperledger Aries as the latest of Hyperledger’s projects to graduate from incubation to active status. Hyperledger Aries provides tool kits designed to build interopable and verifiable credentials for secure communication without a central authority. The Aries project grew out of the need for protocols and open source … Read More “Aries becomes next Hyperledger project graduating to active status” »
Global fintech firm Broadridge Financial Solutions has released a new report on next-gen technology adoption amongst financial services firms. It finds that, of the four ABCDs of innovation (AI, blockchain, cloud, and digital), blockchain technologies are currently being implemented the least. Of the 1,000 C-suite executives and direct reports that were surveyed, only 15% are … Read More “Blockchain lags behind other technologies in finance adoption for now, says Broadridge” »
Global accounting firm KPMG has announced the launch of a suite of products and services designed to enable increased adoption of cryptoassets and public blockchains in a combined offering with digital asset firms BitGo and Coin Metrics. The collaboration seeks to bring KPMG’s Chain Fusion services, capabilities and accelerators; BitGo’s custody technology; and Coin Metrics’ … Read More “KPMG, BitGo, and Coin Metrics launch combined offering for public blockchains” »
