Samsung and ABN Amro Bank Tracked a Container Using Blockchain

Maria Rodríguez
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Samsung and ABN Amro Bank Tracked a Container Using Blockchain

The blockchain platform can register payments, administrative management and travel incidents in real time

In compliance with the announcement that the Korean subsidiary Samsung SDS and the Dutch bank ABN Amro made last October, these two companies celebrated the shipment of a container from Korea to the Netherlands, using exclusively an interoperable blockchain platform.

The shipment is a Proof of Concept (PoC) developed by ABN Amro, Samsung SDS and the Port of Rotterdam, which is the largest in Europe and is located in the city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.

The official announcement details that the blockchain platform “DELIVER” allowed tracing the container and paying the shipment instantly. In this way, the shipment is conducted without papers.

Rotterdam is a city that has historically been characterized by its high volume of maritime traffic and it is currently the largest and busiest port in Europe. According to the Financial Director of the port of Rotterdam, Paul Smits, the traditional process of maritime transport is usually heavy and inefficient when using papers.

“Currently payments, administration and the physical transportation of containers still take place through separate circuits. This results in inefficiency, as many parties are involved and everything is organized with paper documentation. For instance, an average 28 parties are involved in container transport from China to Rotterdam”, he said.

About Deliver

According to official information, DELIVER is an interoperable platform that supports the Ethereum and Hyperledger applications. This integration of multiple blockchains actually provides a series of functional benefits, including notarization of documents, prevention of double payments and the transfer of assets quickly and safely.

“The Customs Clearance Blockchain System at the Korea Customs Service is based on Hyperledger, while Rotterdam Port in the Netherlands is using the Ethereum Platform. We started the Deliver project to connect different platforms”, Han Seung-yeop, manager at Samsung SDS reportedly commented.

The idea is to synchronize the key data of a commercial exchange in one place, besides saving the manual processes of validation and the paperwork they imply. In this way, the blockchain platform can register payments, administrative management and travel incidents in real time.

Once the proof-of-concept shipment is ready, the organizations in charge of the project signed an agreement to launch multiple pilot projects based on the shipping blockchain platform, as the Port of Rotterdam announcement.

A Global Platform

The goal of these three companies for the near future would be to provide a global and independent platform for shipping. Those are the changes that blockchain technology could contribute so far.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) not only will save time, it will also avoid the use of paper and thus save millions of euros in the long term, thanks to the efficiency and transparency blockchain technology provides to the management of supply chains.

Beverage and food companies such as Nestlé are using blockchain to trace their production, whilst in countries such as Spain, there are projects to automate toll systems and track an item in the production and distribution chains to its final destination. Now, it is time to trace not only products, but also important shipments.

By María Rodríguez

“Bitcoin Will Build on ‘Spectacular Rally’ and Surpass $14,000 in Q4”: Novogratz

Andres Chavez
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“Bitcoin Will Build on ‘Spectacular Rally’ and Surpass $14,000 in Q4”: Novogratz

Bitcoin price evolution is one of the most fascinating affairs of the whole cryptocurrency industry. Since numerous people around the world have their assets in the form of BTC, they continually check the coin’s behavior before deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold the funds in their wallets.

After ending 2018 and starting 2019 on a sour note, BTC recently started an upward trend that saw the asset surpass $12,000, its highest value in months. However, after Coinbase was briefly down last week, Bitcoin took a slight hit and fell to the $10,000 range. It is clear, though, that the future looks bullish.

Going Up Again

Experts around the industry attributed the momentary lapse to a small sector of the community selling their assets fearing about the volatility of digital assets, seeing how Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the planet, was temporarily down.

At the moment of writing this piece, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $11,380.47, which is up 5.62 percent over the last 24 hours. BTC’s domination factor is stronger than ever at 62.4 percent, and the upcoming weeks will be crucial while trying to establish what could happen over the rest of the year.

Speaking of Bitcoin’s price evolution, known bull and Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz said to Bloomberg TV this week that the world’s premier digital asset still has significant room to grow, following its current “spectacular rally.” Considering that, at one point this year, Bitcoin nearly collapsed beyond the $3,000 threshold, the recovery can, indeed, be considered superlative.

According to Novogratz, Bitcoin’s surge towards $14,000 and a later correction was expected. He forecasted that the market will consolidate in the $10,000 – $14,000 range for quite some time, before going off again to, potentially; surpass its all-time high of nearly $20,000, which was set on January 2018.

“I don’t think I’m selling the next time we’re up to $14,000. I think the next time we get up there it’s closer to $20,000 […] I don’t expect that in the next few weeks, I don’t expect it till the middle or the end of the fourth quarter,” he stated.

Reasons for the Revival

As reasons to explain the recent price surge, Novogratz explains that several factors, such as Facebook’s entry in the industry through its Libra project and the companionship of Visa and Master Card (two of the most prominent payment processor companies in the planet) come into play.

He also said that the industry has also welcomed “the biggest companies in the world — we also had the investments by the Yale, Harvard and Stanford endowments. All of a sudden the question around institutionalisation has been answered.”

Bitcoin, according to the crypto enthusiast, is cementing its place as the future of money and a form of digital gold. He says that, with time, BTC can be worth approximately $40,000, with much higher projections in longer-term periods of time. For reference, gold’s current market cap is roughly $8.5 trillion, so BTC still has ground to cover.

By Andres Chavez

US House of Representatives Officially Requests Facebook to Stop the Development of Libra

Andres Chavez
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US House of Representatives Officially Requests Facebook to Stop the Development of Libra

Whilst Facebook showed lots of enthusiasm last month when it revealed its stablecoin project Libra and the whole environment in which the coin will interact, the reality indicates that the path towards regulating the asset in different locations will be full of obstacles, for many reasons.

Facebook and the Libra project, received some bad pieces of news in recent hours, when the United States House of Representatives, most precisely the Committee on Financial Services, formally requested the company and all of its partners to stop developing the Libra stablecoin.

Privacy invasive practices and other concerns

A few days ago, it was reported on this site that the US House Committee on Financial Services was going to hold an audience on July 17th about Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra. American lawmakers had requested the social media giant to provide additional details about the project.

Several governments have made it clear that they fear about Facebook’s privacy invasive practices, due to the company’s troubled past in that specific department. France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Spain were among the countries that expressed concern about the amount of information that Facebook has about its users.

This time, the legislators issued a letter on July 2nd, asking Facebook’s CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus, as well as the firm’s COO Shreyl Sandberg, and the involved partners to agree with a moratorium on the development of Libra and its related wallet, Calibra.

An “entirely new global system intended to rival the US”

The committee stated that it fears the project can lead “to an entirely new global financial system that is based out of Switzerland and intended to rival U.S. monetary policy and the dollar.” The committee also expressed concern about other issues that touch several fields.

“This raises serious privacy, trading, national security, and monetary policy concerns for not only Facebook’s over 2 billion users, but also for investors, consumers, and the broader global economy,” were the words that could be read on the letter.

The Committee of Financial Services clarifies that the project could experience cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which can lead to trillions of dollars of uninsured deposits being lost and other related national security and privacy risks.

The US Congress quotes Facebook’s past regarding the handling of user data as the fuel that ignites those concerns. “If products and services like these are left improperly regulated and without sufficient oversight, they could pose systemic risks that endanger U.S. and global financial stability.”

“It is imperative that Facebook and its partners immediately cease implementation plans,” at least until regulators and financial watchdogs can better examine those issues. For the duration of the moratorium, the regulators plan to have public hearings to raise awareness about the potential risks and benefits of the system, as well as searching for legislative solutions.

“Failure to cease implementation before we can do so, risks a new Swiss-based financial system that is too big to fail,” the letter stated.

By Andres Chavez

Chinese Tether Market Suggests No Manipulation of Bitcoin Volume

Willmen Blanco
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Chinese Tether Market Suggests No Manipulation of Bitcoin Volume

It was reported that 60% of the trading value of Tether is exchanged in Chinese exchange houses. Analysts consider that regulated and unregulated exchanges have similar markets.

The Tether market in China could be proof that the Bitcoin trading volume is not as manipulated as the Bitwise firm claims. This is suggested by the digital currency industry magazine Diar, based on studies conducted by Chainalysis in Chinese exchange houses.

A few months ago, Bitwise stated that 95% of the Bitcoin trading volume was false. The firm, which plans to launch a Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) in the United States, compared 100 exchange houses, concluding that only 10 regulated platforms provided reliable information.

Several exchange houses accused of market manipulation are originally from China. The studies suggested that the volume of transactions was “artificial” and its purchase-sale transactions were “unrecognizable”. However, researchers of the magazine Diar have questioned this premise, considering that the possible manipulation of the Bitcoin trading volume does not have such a high percentage.

Concentrated Market

The analysts used a recent study of Chainalysis, dedicated to the Tether market, in order to support this assumption. The firm indicates that Tether reached its historical maximum trading volume in the second quarter of 2019. The anchored cryptocurrency has exceeded US $10 billion in sales so far this year and most of those operations have been processed by Chinese exchange houses.

They estimate that unregulated Chinese exchange houses have constituted 60% of the total value of Tether transactions until now this year. Demand in this region has been increasing over time, thus decreasing Tether trading transactions in the United States. Nowadays, less than 10% are made in regulated exchange houses in that country.

The analysts of the magazine Diar indicate that the concentration of Tether trading in China may be due to the fact that these exchange houses have higher demand and, therefore, better liquidity. They also suggested that investors worldwide could have migrated to these exchange houses to do marketing activities.

Manipulation of Bitcoin Market

The researchers say that, although Tether and Bitcoin are not the same, they are not comparing very different markets. In this sense, they consider that the Tether data may indicate that the cryptocurrency market is not as manipulated as Bitwise claims.

They believe that Tether transactions in Chinese exchange houses are legitimate. The volume of transactions of the blockchain has increased jointly with the operations reported by these platforms.

Exchange houses also record frequent Tether inflow and outflow, a move made by companies to safeguard cryptocurrencies against possible cyber attacks. Analysts found no differences in this behavior when evaluating regulated US exchange houses. In other words, those platforms selected by Bitwise as trustworthy have Tether markets analogous to those that are unregulated.

The researchers of Diar indicate that these data cannot prove the innocence of the unregulated exchange houses regarding the manipulation of markets such as Bitcoin. However, it does not confirm the hypothesis of money laundering or false volume. Because of this, they speculate that the percentage of manipulation of the cryptocurrency market could be much lower than the 95% proposed by Bitwise.

By Willmen Blanco

Public Services Will Use Blockchain

Willmen Blanco
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Public Services Will Use Blockchain

The proposals include a digital identity and a system to manage wastes. The authority has also started to develop a platform to market energy.

It was announced that a total of seven public services in Catalonia could work with Blockchain in the near future. The reason for that is that the Government of Catalonia has recently approved a plan to incorporate this technology in public administration.

The authorities explained that the project, which is entitled “Blockchain Strategy,” consists of seven proposals to develop networks of citizen participation and public services based on Blockchain technology. It was reported that this plan has been waiting since the middle of 2018, after the Government of Catalonia approved the implementation of Blockchain in its administrative processes.

The press release does not specify the types of blockchains that will be used by the Catalan authority to develop these public services. For that reason, people still do not know whether these networks will work with public blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, or rather with private blockchains ruled by the State.

Digital Identity and Garbage in Blockchain

The publication noted that they are planning to develop an identification system where all residents’ data can be verified in a blockchain. It was said that the proposal will generate a digital identity for each of the citizens that live in the territory of Catalonia.

On the other hand, it was explained that the strategy contemplates the development of a digital consent registry, which will allow citizens to have access to the provision of a good or public service. They also stated that the establishment of a channel of communication between the parliament and the Generalitat de Catalunya is another proposal of the authority.

They informed that garbage and toxic waste will also be verified in a blockchain. The government plans to implement a system to manage waste throughout the territory, monitoring how it is mobilized.

Other Services Using Blockchain in Catalonia

It is expected that hospitals and healthcare centers will benefit from two different services based on distributed accounting technology (DLT). The first service, which consists of a data system for organ donors, will record biological indicators in a Blockchain system that will be shared by several different hospitals. The second service will allow users to share their clinical histories with third parties.

The Generalitat de Catalunya also approved the commercialization of electricity among citizens. Last year the authority disclosed that it would work with the Ethereum blockchain to allow energy transactions between different households. They are still working on the project as it is of great relevance for Catalonian citizens.

Experts say that Catalonia is one of the territories in Spain that have been most committed to developing the cryptocurrency market and systems based on Blockchain technology. It is worth noting that the region has not only approved this macro-project, but has also planned the launch of a Catalan crypto asset and the verification of residences in blockchain systems.

As far as can be read in this article, Blockchain is being incorporated in many aspects of people’s daily lives, apart from the development of cryptocurrencies. Developers of applications still have so much to do ahead of them to benefit the society.

By Willmen Blanco

Central Bank of Australia Says Bitcoin Will Not Become Mainstream in 10 Years

Maria Rodríguez
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Central Bank of Australia Says Bitcoin Will Not Become Mainstream in 10 Years

The document recognizes the growth of the digital asset; however, it questions said growth and maintains that it remains a risk

In the English language, mainstream is a word that means that something will not become normal or conventional. This means that it will not become something common within everyday tasks. This is how the Reserve Bank of Australia described Bitcoin (BTC) in a report recently published.

The publication highlights that although Bitcoin has had a great boom and recognition in recent years, it will not achieve a level of real acceptance among citizens of the financial world. “Despite achieving some name recognition, cryptocurrencies are not widely used for payments”, the banking institution hold.

The report published by the institution recognizes that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have managed to be a great revelation for the world of finance. The organization also says that in the last decade, cryptoactives have had an important participation in some markets. It also exposes the existence of Bitcoin as the most booming asset in the decade. However, despite these statements, the document says that the future of cryptocurrencies will not be entirely profitable and will not succeed in the near future.

In this way, the document called: “cryptocurrencies: Ten years on” mentions the aspects that have led to this conclusion. On this document, the bank states that “This article examines why Bitcoin is unlikely to become a ubiquitous payment method in Australia, and summarizes how subsequent cryptocurrencies have sought to address some of the shortcomings of Bitcoin – such as its volatility and scalability problems”.

The article argues that cryptocurrencies are not safe and defends the Australian dollar as the best alternative to manage user’s finances. Some researchers and experts expose the following idea: “As long as the Australian dollar continues to provide a reliable, low-inflation store of value, and the payments industry continues to work on the efficiency, functionality and resilience of the Australian payments system, it is difficult to envisage cryptocurrencies presenting a compelling proposition that would lead to their widespread use in Australia”.

Hence, this affirms the theory that cryptocurrencies represent an opportunity for economic stability for users who reside in countries where their economy presents problems and crises that are difficult to manage.

The report goes “hand in hand” with the position of the Australian government about the cryptographic industry in general. It insists that there are many risks within that industry if it is adopted as an alternative. In addition, it reinforces its tax collection and data policies.

This leads to a strong surveillance of these operations because it can represent a certain level of illegality and secrecy in that region. At the beginning of June, some 12 international operations were registered in the country that linked cryptocurrencies with an attempt to evade taxes.

“At the Australian level, there is definitely legitimate use for investment in cryptocurrencies, but we’re also seeing the use of them to facilitate tax crimes”, Australian Tax Office (ATO) Deputy Commissioner, Will Day, says.

By María Rodríguez

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