Chinese Company Requested to Acquire the Patent of 200 Tools Related to Blockchain ​​Technology

Maria Rodríguez
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Chinese Company Requested to Acquire the Patent of 200 Tools Related to Blockchain ​​Technology

JD.Com hopes to simplify the creation of blockchain-related Apps and accelerate the execution of smart contracts

The world of electronic commerce is getting prepared for the unexpected changes that blockchain can make in this market. For this reason, the prestigious Chinese online commerce company, JD.Com, has decided to request the purchase of more than 200 technology patents that are directly related to blockchain.

Part of this piece of news is that the Chinese giant seeks to face its direct competitors with innovative tools that make it easier for users to use their services from anywhere in the world.

In recent years, large companies have taken with caution to get involved with blockchain technology; this is due to the unknown and probably unsafe that it may have become. But, nevertheless, there are some companies that have decided to bet on its use as an adaptable resource and, in practical terms, more economical and sustainable than some conventional technologies.

JD.Com is among those companies that have sought to take advantage of the use of these technologies, and, according to information from the Intellectual Property Center of Information and Communication of China, it has occupied the first place among the companies that have the most strength in patents related to blockchain technology. It is important to note that from 2013 to 2018, China has had more than 4,435 blockchain patent Apps, this corresponds to 48% of the acquisition of patents in the world, more than the acquisitions of the United States.

Security in Chinese Patents

When highlighting the powerful figures related to blockchain patent applications in China, the Center for Intellectual Property of Information and Communication, in turn, assures that the number of intellectual property infringements has also been high and has always been a problem for the development of that industry.

Therefore, the government institution communicates in a statement that “It is recommended that the government do a good job in supervising the industry and improving the quality of patents. Companies should raise awareness of intellectual property protection and risk prevention, avoid blind investments in the blockchain field, apply for low value patents and avoid future block of chains. There have been a large number of lawsuit for infringement in the field”.

Despite these risks and difficulties faced by the company, JD.Com spared no effort in making the request for the 200 patents, which represents the highest number among its competitors. However, companies within its spectrum such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baibu, are also very close to that figure and are fighting directly in the e-commerce market in China.

Among the most important developments that giant JD.Com has made is the creation of the JB Blockchain Open Platform, which was originally activated in mid-2018, and allows the creation of blockchain tools and smart contracts.

China has been one of the countries that has opened its doors to Distributed Ledger Technology. Currently, there are some pilot proofs to implement it in judgeds, to preserve copyright and also in the alimentary industry in order to trade products and store information. More developments take place every day with the base-technology of cryptocurrencies.

By María Rodríguez

Proxicoin, the Financing Tool in the Film Industry that Will Use Cryptocurrencies

Maria Rodríguez
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Proxicoin, the Financing Tool in the Film Industry that Will Use Cryptocurrencies

The project, according to the owner of the production company, will give consumers around the world access to invest in their favorite movies

The financing of films with cryptocurrencies is present. Proxicoin is the name of the project created by the American film production company Proxima Media, which will issue tokens on the Ethereum platform, so that users can invest in movies and television blocks.

Proxima Media announced that the investment is US $ 100 million, which will allow the development of a cryptocurrency film financing tool, supported by the companies Central Wealth Group, based in Hong Kong, and Step Ventures, an Israeli venture capital fund.

According to a report published in local media, the token is already created and audited. As part of the development, an agreement was signed with the Malaysian company Fusang Exchange, which is the first exchange of cryptocurrencies in Asia authorized to exchange security tokens. Until now, the launch of this tool is scheduled for the end of 2019.

Vincent Tse, CEO of Step Ventures, which is a venture capital investment firm based in Hong Kong, commented that Proxicoin makes a highly demanded financial product available to many individual and small investors.

“Cinema, as an asset class, is traditionally not linked to capital markets and has been a competitive and coveted asset class among large funds and banks, including Citibank, Duetsche Bank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and many others”, he said.

Ryan Kavanaugh, the renowned Hollywood Producer and Executive of Warner Bros (and known as the “Billion Dollar Producer”), said that digital values ​​and tokenization technology are providing an opportunity to open investments in Hollywood and all around the world, whilst providing liquidity and transparency to investors in a way that has never been possible before, he believes.

“This exchange will give ordinary consumers around the world access to investments in their favorite movies, something they will love, in a way that was only available to a few”, said who is also the owner of the production company.

In this sense, Proxicoin users will also receive the right to be partial owners of Entertainment Stock X (ESX), a trading platform similar to the stock exchange that seeks to boost individual projects in the entertainment industry through initial public offerings. According to the representatives of the company, each film or television program will go public, and each of them will have liquidity through the aftermarket.

Until now, it is known that, with Proxicoin, there are several agreements for more than 30 film projects, although no details are known about them. This initiative is one of the newest and represents the latest in fundraising methods for the entertainment industry. MovieCoin, a financial technology company focused on using blockchain technology, digital assets and proprietary applications to create a new standard currency for entertainment financing, is another example that was born before this tool.

The Proxicoin platform will give customers around the world access to high-value films and productions in an exclusive and original way that did not exist in this industry. Innovation continues to take giant steps and surprising every day.

By María Rodríguez

Beware! Australian Financial Watchdog Warns People against a New Crypto-Related Scam

Andres Chavez
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Beware! Australian Financial Watchdog Warns People against a New Crypto-Related Scam

If there is one thing holding cryptocurrencies back when it comes to mass use and adoption is some people’s fear of being victims of a hacking attack or even worse; a scam. The latter is, still, a very frequent development that threatens to endanger the industry by taking advantage of naive users.

That is why some countries have invested numerous resources, including time and money, to warn people against possible crypto scams. Such is the case of Australia, through the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which issued a new warning this week for people to be alert at a crypto project that is considered suspicious.

GFC Investments and Dartalon Ltd.

The ASIC, which is known around the industry as the country’s financial watchdog, published an official warning against a fraudulent entity that goes by two names: GFC Investments and Dartalon Ltd.

According to the ASIC, the entity has been identified as a dangerous one for making business. The financial regulator claims that the company (or “companies,” if you will) “has made unsolicited calls or sent emails about investing, financial advice, credit or loans,” without having an official Australian Financial Services license or an Australian Credit license from the ASIC.

“ASIC advises this company could be involved in a scam. Do not deal with this business as it is unlicensed in Australia,” says the organization. The ASIC offers users additional information and links on how to deal with investment scams and banking and credit card scams in its website.

It Claims to Offer a Complete Suite of Services

People in Australia need to be very alert at this specific case. Per Finance Magnates, GFC Investments’ flagged page will offer the opportunity to trade several digital assets, not to mention foreign exchange (forex) services and contracts for differences. Browsing the website, one can see that it claims to be offering those services in the business for seven years, beginning in 2012.

ASIC identifies the company as Dartalon Ltd, “also known as GFC Investments.” It shows its address, being at Suite 305, Griffith Corporate Centre, 1510, Beachmont Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Additional details, such as the phone number, the email, and the website, are also provided.

Of course, it is not the first time that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission warns people against possible fraudulent projects and schemes. Most recently, the organization released notes regarding five ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) and crypto-asset funds that were considered as misleading.

The ASIC also noted that it has intentions to augment regulatory overseeing of cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs, which are two of the most dangerous platforms or developments in the industry because of the risk of scams and frauds.

Recent Cases

The risk of scams, frauds, and other criminal activities extend well beyond the Australian border, sadly. For example, the French stock market regulator, AMF, observed this month that there was a 14,000% increase in enquiries related to fraudulent crypto services and offers last year, compared to 2016.

If you need to identify the latest crypto scams, you will not have to go very far: just last week, a couple of blockchain startups RepuX and JoyToken, tricked investors into losing nearly $8 million.

By Andres Chavez

Bitcoin SV Doubles its Value and Bitcoin is Knocking on the $8,000 Threshold

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin SV Doubles its Value and Bitcoin is Knocking on the $8,000 Threshold

What a difference! Six months ago, the industry was talking about the end of Bitcoin as we knew it, watching its value going from the $6,000-$6,500 range to less than $4,000 in a matter of weeks whilst taking advantage of the situation to make premature conclusions about its fate as the world’s premier cryptocurrency. Now, the digital asset has shown marked improvements when it comes to price, and people’s view has changed.

On Tuesday, May 21st, the vast majority of the digital assets in the top 20 spots according to CoinMarketCap (a system that ranks them according to their market cap) reported movements in the green, evidencing moderate gains in most cases.

An Impressive Recovery

The most notable case is, of course, Bitcoin. The world’s premier digital asset is already flirting with the $8,000 threshold, which is impressive because it had not even surpassed $4,000 in the middle of March. At the moment of writing this piece, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $7,931.15, which would represent a 1.27% increase in the last 24 hours. If you look at the weekly chart, BTC is up nearly 2.50%.

The situation (Bitcoin being near the $8,000 mark) comes in a moment in which the United States Securities and Exchange Commission reported at the start of the week that they are “still in information-gathering mode” related to a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) from VanEck.

The most impressive performance of the day, however, belongs to Bitcoin SV. The project started last year, specifically in mid-November, as a result of Bitcoin Cash’s hard fork that divided BCH in Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC, two different blockchains.

Bitcoin SV: A Massive Gain in the Last Few Hours

Bitcoin SV, a project with which Craig Wright is deeply associated, reported impressive gains of 102% in the last day at its peak. At the moment of writing this piece, the token had stabilized and was trading at $97.58, a 57.34 increase in the most recent 24 hours.

Wright made news this week because of his initiative to register Bitcoin’s whitepaper under US copyright laws. He also filed US copyright registrations for Bitcoin’s code, in an attempt to reaffirm his status as Satoshi Nakamoto, not without controversy, of course.

Ethereum (ETH) is still the second ranked cryptocurrency by market cap, and the top altcoin for that matter, with $26.9 billion. Its value is holding steady at $253.61, which represents a 2.67% increase in the last 24-hour period. Ethereum has showed an impressive weekly performance, with an increase of 18.5%.

Ripple is the second-ranked altcoin and the third crypto asset overall in CoinMarketCap’s ranking, with a total market capitalization of $16.7 billion. At the moment of this writing, it was trading at $0.397328, a 1.24% surge in the last day.

Green all over the Place

The crypto industry’s total market capitalization continues to grow, hand to hand with Bitcoin’s and the top altcoins’ surge. Right now, the number stands at $248.5 billion, which is a 3% increase over the last week.

Nearly all of the top ranked cryptocurrencies in CoinMarketCap’s page reported gains in the last day. In fact, only two of the top-20 digital assets showed red, both of the modest variety: Dash, ranked in the 14th place, with a 0.95 loss, and 17th-ranked Cosmos, with a 1.36% fall.

By Andres Chavez

Amazon Seeks to Avoid DDoS Attacks with a Bitcoin-Supported System

Maria Rodríguez
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Amazon Seeks to Avoid DDoS Attacks with a Bitcoin-Supported System

DDoS attacks will be too expensive to be made thanks to the patent that Amazon will have

Recently, in a press release, it was announced that the company founded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon, has requested to acquire a patent for a new system that is based on the technology developed for Bitcoin. The system of Proof of Work (or PoW) will seek to avoid direct attacks to the servers. Specifically, it will counteract Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Much of Bitcoin’s success is not only due to its commercialization in global markets or its traceability in all kinds of businesses, but also, there is a large number of tools, applications, ideas and patents that have been generated around the world, using the technology on which it is sustained. In this way, many of their ideas and creations are of benefit to many companies that do not necessarily want to be linked to the cryptocurrency.

In technical terms, the PoW, or Work Test System, is the central algorithm used by Bitcoin’s system and other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency derived from the first digital currency mentioned.

In the same vein, Amazon seeks to reduce attacks on its platform by purchasing the patent for a specific configuration of PoW, and thus create a technique to enable Merkle trees. About the use of the patent, this feature can be specified: “One way to mitigate these attacks is to configure a service which requests to incur some type of expense, in order to discourage participations in the attack”.

The so-called Merkle trees are an important part of blockchain’s functionality, since they support the processing of information, allow a correct verification of the data and reinforce the structure where all the places of reception of information are supported.

In this sense, taking into account all the necessary resources, time and electricity power, this would be a very expensive job because of a great computing power to develop and create a Merkle tree is absolutely needed.

This is the reason why Amazon firmly believes that in order to conduct a DDoS attack, the enormous amount of resources that would be necessary is overwhelming and unfeasible. Therefore, it would end diminishing or eradicating the attacks in this way.

Now, in the case of the Amazon patent, all users will have to build their own Merkle tree, seconds before entering the website within some of their servers. For a single person who wants to do this, the cost could be minimal, but for an entire organization that wants to make a DDoS attack, it would take a considerable amount of computational resources and hundreds of weeks to do it. This will be extremely expensive and unlikely to happen, according to the company.

These movements that Amazon has made recently, show some interest in these new technologies and, in particular, in Bitcoin. Blockchain technology has proved to be very useful to improve security, process information and even develop new forms of growth in different platforms. However, Amazon has not given clues, even, if it considers or not to use the payment with cryptocurrencies on its platform.

By María Rodríguez

AT&T Joins Forces with BitPay to Accept Crypto as a Payment Method for Bills

Andres Chavez
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AT&T Joins Forces with BitPay to Accept Crypto as a Payment Method for Bills

AT&T does not need an introduction. It is one of the largest American enterprises, considering all fields and sectors, with a noteworthy track record on telecommunications. It provides mobile phone services and owns a mass media network that includes some of the best known entertainment companies in the planet, among other things.

In an effort to keep up with modern times and ensure all users have the most possible options to pay for its services; AT&T announced in recent hours that customers will be able to provide payments of their bills with the company in cryptocurrencies through the famous BitPay platform.

A Little Bit More about BitPay

BitPay is an ecosystem that allows people and shops to accept Bitcoin for online payments, with no hidden fees, chargebacks or ID thefts. Users are able to receive funds directly to their bank accounts with no price volatility or risk, per its website. BitPay also converts cryptocurrencies to fiat and is used by more than 20,000 businesses worldwide.

For now, according to the company, people cannot provide payments in cryptocurrencies for acquiring some of the firm’s offered products, such as phones. The option is only available to serve as an additional alternative for users of some AT&T services at the time of paying their bills.

Kevin McDorman, who currently acts as the Vice President of AT&T Communications Finance Business Operations, expressed that “we’re always looking for ways to improve and expand our services. We have customers who use cryptocurrency, and we are happy we can offer them a way to pay their bills with the method they prefer.”

“BitPay provides payment processing services for merchants and is one of the largest bitcoin payment processors in the world. Our customers are on this platform and we are always looking for different ways to better serve our customers,” he told a famous crypto news site at the time of the announcement.

The First of its Kind

Reports coming out of the crypto industry suggest that AT&T, which is in the top 10 in Fortune 500’s ranking of top American companies by revenue as of 2018, is the first United States-based firm in the wireless network field to offer its customers the opportunity to pay for services and bills with BitPay.

According to the press release published by the company, “customers will be able to select BitPay as a payment option when they log on to their accounts online or with the myAT&T app.”

At the end of 2018, AT&T made it public that it was developing a suite of blockchain solutions and products that were compatible with IBM Blockchain Platform and Microsoft Azure. The intention of working on the suite was to offer “additional transparency and accountability to even the most complex supply chains” for institutional customers in several industries, for example, retail and healthcare.

The company also filed an application for a patent for a social media history map that would let networks such as AT&T’s to collect information about its clients’ social media transaction data. The application explained that the social media history map platforms described “may take advantage of the immutable and permanent nature of blockchain records to store, and provide access to, data representing online transactions that occur on multiple social media applications.”

By Andres Chavez

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