Shell Looks for Blockchain Experts to Generate Oil and Gas Solutions

Maria Rodríguez
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Shell Looks for Blockchain Experts to Generate Oil and Gas Solutions

The multinational’s objective is to innovate in the area of ​​blockchain technology by looking to hire young professionals

Due to the great increase in the use of blockchain technology in different business areas, the renowned multinational oil and gas company, Royal Dutch Shell, has decided to venture into this area and wants to train the next generation of executives to take advantage of these new technologies.

According to the company’s website, the multinational is searching for “blockchain analysts” in order to generate a new area to work. The idea is part of a new training program for graduates in Information Technology (IT). With the aim to consolidate the search of the qualified human team, a job offer was made through the social network LinkedIn.

The publication has been posted on the company’s social network for more than four months, but so far, only a few people have answered the call. As it is seen in the job offer, the professional who has knowledge in the area will be assigned to the Blockchain Excellence Center that the Shell company has developed for its staff.

Applicants to the new position specialized in blockchain will have the experience of being part of the new processing methods that Shell is implementing in its processes, with the aim of applying these decentralized technologies in all aspects of business and contracts, as well as in the different areas related to gas, oil, new energies, and electric vehicles.

In addition, one of the main tasks the specialists must be willing to do is to promote the use of blockchain technology, as well as to find new methods of use.

Among other responsibilities, professionals must generate alternatives to create new applications that other decentralized can use. The idea is to diversify the possibilities for the company and work tools. They will also be responsible for sales to potential competitors in the industry.

The labor proposal mentions that the profile that Shell is seeking for this new staff, is based on the following characteristics: young people, recent graduates with good management of mathematics, computer science, or basic notions in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It should be noted that this is not the first approach of the multinational hydrocarbons to the advantages and uses of blockchain technology. Shell has been implementing some advances in these technologies for some time to boost their businesses and replace the old methods of physical contracting with the generation of blockchain-based smart contracts.

For this reason, the important company has decided to further develop the field of blockchain technology. In this way, it would be able to diversify the possibilities of using blockchain technology and maximize its benefits, improve Shell’s internal processes and facilitate business.

The major oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell is not the only company that is focusing on hiring young graduates and enthusiasts of these new technologies to improve their processes and accelerate their technological growth. Other multinationals such as Accenture, Oracle, KPMG and Deloitte have also decided to take this type of measure as part of a new plan to expand their technical and technological growth.

By María Victoria Rodríguez

Silvergate Reported 122 % Increase in Crypto Industry Customers In 2018

Andres Chavez
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Silvergate Reported 122 % Increase in Crypto Industry Customers In 2018

An enterprise deemed as the “Bitcoin Bank” is claiming that its year 2018 was extremely successful, despite a market downturn that saw the value of BTC fall from the $20,000 range to nearly $3,200 at the end of the year. As it turns out, the market collapse did not discourage Silvergate from achieving its objectives.

Despite the hostile market, Silvergate Bank, self-appointed as the “leading provider of innovative financial infrastructure solutions and services to participants in the digital currency industry,” disclosed a document filed with the United States’ SEC (Security Exchange Commission) this week explaining that there was an increase in the number of crypto industry customers last year.

From 244 to 542 Clients

Near the end of 2018, Silvergate disclosed that it had engaged 542 crypto-related clients, which represents a sizable increase considering the 2017 number, which was 244. The surge was of exactly 122.1 % from year to year, an amazing figure considering the harsh conditions.

Silverage also reported that the total deposits also went substantially up, by approximately 8%, from 2017 to 2018: from $1.46 billion to $1.58 billion. The project also stated that it was about to onboard 232 new clients, as well.

Most of Silvergate’s clientele is comprised of bitcoin exchanges and institutional investors. The first group accounted for $618.5 million in deposits at the outset of 2018, whilst the second group contributed about $577.5 to the grand total. Circle, Bitstamp, and Genesis are some of the crypto projects that are regular customers of Silvergate.

Other Partners and Associates

The company has other partners, as well, including asset proprietary trading and investment project Polychain Capital, bitcoin storage business Xapo, from Hong Kong, and Paxos, the entity behind PAX, a well-known stablecoin in the crypto landscape.

Silvergate is one of the few financial institutes that has welcomed crypto projects. According to a Bloomberg report, some of them are Bank Frick (based in Europe,) and Signature bank, from the United States of America. Silvergate is from the latter country, most precisely from the city of San Diego, California State.

Silvergate states that the “addressable market” for USD deposits related to crypto assets is between $30 and $40 billion, which provides hope for future growth within the market”, according to the company itself.

Potential Risks

However, the company has warned potential investors about the possible risks of the crypto sector: “Our business is subject to many substantial risks and uncertainties you should consider before deciding to invest in our common stock … including risks that that the digital currency industry may not gain widespread adoption, that legal and regulatory uncertainty regarding the regulation of digital currencies and digital currency activities may inhibit the growth of the digital currency industry, that our low-cost funding strategy may not be sustainable, that our deposits may be adversely affected by price volatility.”

Silvergate Capital, which functions as Silvergate Bank’s parent firm, has already begun to prepare for an Initial Public Offering, as of November 2018, to provide funding for organic growth.

By Andres Chavez

Six Prominent Financial Institutions Sign up to Issue Stablecoins on IBM’s BWW

Andres Chavez
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Six Prominent Financial Institutions Sign up to Issue Stablecoins on IBM’s BWW

Among the many enterprises experimenting with blockchain technology and applying it to optimize processes and enhance overall efficiency, one of them stands out from the rest: IBM. The tech giant is known for its continued involvement with the approach, including the already famous IBM Food Trust.

Now, the prominent technology company has added a new offering to its already broad blockchain catalog: the World Wire. The latest piece of news is coming from financial news network Cheddar, which reported on Monday March 18th, that as many as six global banks have already signed letters of intent to issue their stablecoins through IBM’s World Wire.

The Blockchain World Wire (BWW)

The World Wire is a blockchain-based payments network developed by IBM and deployed by the six banks. The announcement of the Blockchain World Wire (BWW, as it is shortened) came on September 2018, but it is now live and active to offers its services to financial institutions.

The report of the BWW’s launch was produced via a joint announcement between IBM and Stellar, at the Money 2020 Asia in Singapore. The cross-border payment ecosystem was launched by IBM and thanks to the collaboration of Stellar (XLM,) and has more than 44 financial institutions on service. Its primary goal is to leverage crypto assets to achieve near real-time settlements between the banks involved in the project.

The Banks That Want to Issue Stablecoins on BWW

Among the banks that kicked off the week announcing their intentions to issue fiat-backed stablecoins on the BWW are Banco Bradesco (Brazil,) Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (the Philippines,) and Bank Busan (South Korea.) The identities of the other three institutions were not revealed, but Jesse Lund, the current Head of blockchain solutions of IBM, expressed that they will issue stablecoins backed by the euro and the rupiah (Indonesia.)

It was a busy Monday for IBM. In addition to the announcement of the bank-issues stablecoins, the tech company revealed that it established a strategic alliance with another Stellar-based, dollar-backed asset named Stronghold. It will develop the world’s first Stellar stablecoin.

According to Lund, IBM aims to continue broadening its blockchain-powered settlement product with more offerings and features in the future, showing the company’s desire to keep taking advantage of the blockchain technology.

Changing the Landscape of Cross-Border Payments

“We let the market drive the expansion and selection of the network incrementally. We are really feeling excited that we are on a roll to build something new and revolutionary that’s really going to change the landscape of cross-border payments,” he said.

The BWW is currently supporting almost 50 currencies for payments in over 70 nations around the world, with expansion plans looming. The BWW presents the XLM token as a settlement product for fiat assets between institutional agents.

Lund also explained that IBM’s view for stablecoins “is really that they should be more broadly accessible and what World Wire seeks to do is to provide fungibility of digital assets across financial institutions.”

By Andres Chavez

Telecom Company Ooredoo Launches its Own Blockchain Initiative

Andres Chavez
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Telecom Company Ooredoo Launches its Own Blockchain Initiative

Blockchain technology continues to provide solutions for several applications, industries, and fields associated with everyday use. It has powered banks, educational institutions, cargo shipments, supply chain management, cryptocurrency projects, and even telecommunications.

Speaking of telecommunications, the latest company in the sector that has embraced the use of blockchain is Ooredoo, which is a Qatar-based firm that is known around the planet. According to English-speaking local publication The Peninsular Qatar, Ooredoo has already launched its blockchain project.

Facilitating New Digital Business Models

The report states that Ooredoo will provide its services as collaboration with private and public entities in academic spaces with the intention of developing blockchain solutions. According to the company’s CEO Saud Bin Nasser Al Thani, “blockchain will facilitate new digital business models and revenue in the next five years.”

Saud Bin Nasser Al Thani observes that the blockchain technology offers the perfect conditions to let companies and organizations in general optimize costs and boost general efficiency, adding a trust element that fosters secure digital payments and transactions.

The report explains that smart contracts can be used for specific stages and processes in Ooredoo; for instance, product and item tracking, cross-border settlements, title, deed, and facilities management, among others.

Another one of Ooredoo’s objectives with its latest blockchain initiative is combining the innovative technology with its existing 5G, cloud and IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem and infrastructure. The company certainly has the goods and resources to pull its plans off, as it has a yearly revenue of over $8 billion.

Other Examples in the Industry

The company’s blockchain initiative is, according to the local report, gathering subject matter experts from across the business’ global footprint and business units, “including small- and medium-sized businesses, commercial, digital, and legal.”

Ooredoo is not the first telecom business firm that uses the blockchain technology to improve overall efficiency. For example, Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica formed an alliance with Microsoft in February to broaden its digital innovation by virtue of the use of AI (artificial intelligence) and blockchain.

Ping An, a Chinese insurance powerhouse, is another recent example of the ongoing trend of looking at outside-the-box models and solutions to obtain a competitive edge. The firm recently established commercial alliances with SingularityNET, an Ethereum-based decentralized AI startup

Ooredoo, a Market Leader in the Arabic Region

Ooredoo QSC is a prominent telecommunications business with headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and offices in several Arabic countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar and Tunisia, and other nations like Indonesia, Myanmar, and Maldives.

The firm offers mobile and wireless devices, as well as other items and content services in telecommunication markets, including products for businesses and for residential targets. Ooredoo has more than 114 million customers spread all over the world.

Overall, Ooredoo serves a diverse market that includes North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The company had a market capitalization of $82.7 billion in 2015 and was founded in Doha, Qatar’s capital city, in 1987.

By Andres Chavez

Tom Lee Circles August as the most likely Month for a Bitcoin’s Turnaround

Andres Chavez
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Tom Lee Circles August as the most likely Month for a Bitcoin’s Turnaround

As Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general make strides when it comes to global adoption, all the eyes are closely watching the evolution of their price. After all, it is one of the primary factors that will attract or scare off investors in the short, medium, and long terms. In the same vein, markets have been alternating periods of stability with steep declines in value for months.

The whole community is monitoring Bitcoin’s price to see if it gains momentum and finally establishes a floor over the $4,000 threshold; one that it has failed to surpass for good after the market crashed following Bitcoin Cash hard fork in mid-November.

Breaking a Tradition

And while he technically broke a tradition while doing so, famous crypto personality and Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder Thomas Lee forecasted that Bitcoin price can welcome back the bulls in six months from now. He made the prediction on Thursday, March 14th, to CNBC.

Lee observed, in an interview with CNBC, that the month of August could be the moment in which Bitcoin’s price starts showing sustainable signs of life. Lee is a Bitcoin bull, but he said, in December, that he would refrain himself from providing his insight about a possible date for a price U-turn.

The 200-day Moving Average: the Crucial Indicator

In the process, Lee made it clear that a specific indicator is the crucial one to monitor in the coming weeks or months, in order to identify if a price rebound is plausible or not. “I think the key number to watch is the 200-day moving average,” he told the network during the brief encounter.

“If Bitcoin holds above $4,000, it’ll cross its 200-day [moving average] by August, so I think the outside window is five to six months before Bitcoin starts to look technically like it’s back in a bull market,” he said, providing a glimpse of optimism to an industry that needs it.

As the moment of writing this piece, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $3,989.74, just about to break the necessary and elusive $4,000 barrier. The number represents a 1.53 % increase in the last 24 hours, with the last day’s trading volume at $9,804,410,675. The total market cap of the world’s most valuable digital asset is $70,182,928,079.

Since the start of 2018, when it peaked at nearly $20,000, Bitcoin has been steadily losing value with each passing month. And just when it seemed like it had found some sustained stability, the events of November 14-15 unfolded and then it started to collapse yet again, falling as low as $3,200 and failing to truly recover ever since.

Damage to be Repaired

About the dreaded BCH hard fork of November 2018, Lee expressed that “I think the damage that really needs to be repaired is that drop from $6,000 to $3,100,” suggesting that it had a devastating effect on the industry as a whole. “I think it really undermined investor confidence and the dynamics around the market.”

In a span of just over a year, Bitcoin went from more than $19,000 to slightly over $3,000, which can be considered the longest bear market in the history of the cryptocurrency. And there are two camps when trying to provide a market forecast: those who think it will turn around sooner rather than later, and those, like Tone Vays, who believe BTC can fall to around $1,000 before a bull market begins.

By Andres Chavez

Ethereum will Issue a Second Token Anchored to Bitcoin

Maria Rodríguez
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Ethereum will Issue a Second Token Anchored to Bitcoin

The token called Universal Bitcoin is the second financial product of the Universal Protocol Alliance

A group of crypto companies gathered in the Universal Protocol (UP) alliance began issuing a tokenized financial product anchored to the Bitcoin price. This one is the second of its kind.

The information was released this Wednesday, March 13th, through a statement published on the official blog of the alliance, which states that it is a “universal proxy token”, a cryptoactive that can represent the value of a cryptocurrency or any other asset in a single network, in this case the blockchain of Ethereum.

The important UP consortium brings together companies in the cryptocurrency sector such as Bittrex International, Uphold, Brave, Cred, Blockchain in Berkeley, Bitgo and CertiK.

A week ago, this consortium launched a token anchored to the US dollar, which they called UPUSD, so the new token, called Universal Bitcoin (UPBTC), is the second financial product that it issues.

Universal Bitcoin’s design is based on the ERC-20 standard and works through smart contracts integrated into “universal proxy” servers. This is the reason of its name. These servers determine the validity of transactions in the Ethereum chain, which makes it reliable for its users.

The official publication of the Alliance explains that the project’s objective is to achieve a standard in the systems of interoperability between blockchains. This system would be different from decentralized models. The interaction is based on the representation of a cryptoactive, or traditional assets, which are backed by the Universal Protocol (UP) platform.

In this way, users acquire the asset and deliver it in custody to the platform reservation, which converts the token into universal proxy tokens in a 1:1 ratio. In this way, the tokens become fungible values ​​on the Ethereum’s chain of blocks.

The UP alliance ensures that, because universal proxy tokens can represent the value of any virtual asset, they would allow a greater scalability compared to decentralized solutions. The alliance considers that traditional mechanisms hinder scalability when interconnecting hundreds of block of chains.

A Reliable Asset

Dan Schatt, president of the UP Alliance, said that UPBTC is a safe and convenient way to interact with Bitcoin. It allows benefiting from the integrity of its code. This is despite the fact that the UPBTC token does not connect directly to Bitcoin’s blockchain.

“We bring Bitcoin to Ethereum in the form of a secure proxy token that can now reason with any Ethereum application”, said Dan Schatt, President of Universal Protocol. The executive commented that the UPBTC token differs from other similar projects such as Wrapped Bitcoin (the ERC20 token backed by Bitcoin) because it was designed with levels of institutional security.

According to Schatt, Universal Bitcoin has a system that allows managing white lists, which means that it will not allow transactions that it considers suspicious. Similarly, it is possible to revoke access to addresses with compromised keys, in order to obtain processes that guarantee the security of operations.

By María Victoria Rodríguez

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