Oil Conglomerate Uses Blockchain to Make Payments

Maria Rodríguez
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Oil Conglomerate Uses Blockchain to Make Payments

In a first time for India, British banking major HSBC executed a trade finance transaction involving an export by Reliance Industries to an American client using blockchain technology

The late process of sending and receiving credit lists trough fax or email from one of the most important oil companies in India was left behind thanks to blockchain technology. Now, these procedures will be conducted more quickly and safely without physical or technological barriers.

The oil conglomerate Reliance Industries, owned by Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, used blockchain technology to make payments and fulfilled its first financial trading transaction.

The head of banking and global markets at HSBC India said: “The use of blockchain technology is a significant step towards the future. The efficiency it provides ensures cost effectiveness, speed, and liquidity for our business”.

A press release details that the company conducted this operation in collaboration with the American chemical technology distributor Tricon Energy, through the blockchain platform of the R3 consortium, Corda.

The banking institutions which made possible this operation were HSBC India and ING Bank Brussels. Using this blockchain platform, a credit note was issued by ING Bank for Tricon Energy USA (the importer) with HSBC India as the advisory bank for Reliance Industries(the exporter).

The Corda platform was integrated into a platform provider in the United Kingdom called Bolero International and was used to issue and manage an electronic freight law. The objective is to issue and manage an electronic bill of lading that allows the digital transfer of the seller’s belongings to the buyer in the underlying transaction.

By using blockchain technology, the company seeks to digitize financial transaction processes to save budget and, of course, time. “The use of blockchain technology offers us a significant potential to reduce times involved in the exchange of export documentation. The process that happened in seven or ten days now is ready in less than one day”, said Srikanth Venkatachari, CFO at Reliance Industries.

This solution will benefit any organization involved in the purchase and sale of products internationally since it brings together all participants on the same platform. Blockchain allows users to work with a distributed database that maintains a list in the continuous growth of records that are conducted in an orderly manner.

Blockchain technology also offers the benefit of being transparent, because all the people involved can see the progress that is made in real time.

A large number of national lenders, including ICICI Bank, inter alia, are implementing blockchain technology to conduct their transactions. Many companies consider commercial financing as one of the best cases of use of this type of technology, which has managed to reduce the time of execution of the formalities.

Representatives of HSBC reported that along with five other banks that support the “Corda application”, they are working on expanding the network into an open source database to boost the adoption of this payment mechanism on the industry.

By María Rodríguez

Bitcoin and Top Altcoins are All in Green in the Last 24 Hours

Andres Chavez
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Bitcoin and Top Altcoins are All in Green in the Last 24 Hours

The cryptocurrency industry woke up with big news on Monday. In a development that is sure to ignite widespread interest among investors and the community in general, Bitcoin (BTC) and all the top 20 digital tokens by market cap reported price gains in comparison with those of the last 24 hours. Is this the start of an upward trend, similar to last year?

BTC, after days of hovering around less than $6,400, is up 1.57 percent in the last day and is trading around $6,414.17. After losing value between October 29th and 31st, the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency is trending up in November and surpassed $6,400 for the first time in quite a while. The most optimistic people in the business think that BTC will push towards $6,500 very soon.

A Good Start to a Promising Week

Although Bitcoin still has monthly losses in the 3.3 percent range, the week is off to a promising start, being 2.2 in the green side of the spectrum. The trading volume for BTC is also higher today, at $4.4 billion for the last 24 hours. In the slow month of October, the token was mostly stagnated in the $3.2-$3.6 billion range, outside of a $7.4 billion surge on October 15th.

Those investors that hold Ethereum (ETH) coins are the ones celebrating the most with the surge occurred in the last 24 hours. The token grew by an impressive 5 percent in the mentioned timeframe, and is now trading at $210 after weeks of moving sideways just as the rest of the market. For the week, ETH is holding strong at 8 percent in the green, but there is still ground to cover if one takes into account that the monthly losses account for 7.7%.

Everything is Trending Up in the Crypto Universe!

The good pieces of news do not stop with the latest development of BTC and ETH. All the other altcoins in the top 20 according to market cap experienced varying degrees of growth in the last 24 hours, confirming an industry-wide surge that has people dreaming about a similar scenario of that what happened in late 2017 and early 2018.

Back then, Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed all the way towards the $20,000 while most altcoins also experienced historical increases in value as a result. However, the dream began to end after January 8th, and the rest of 2018 has been a bitter disappointment from the price perspective. Other aspects, such as mass adoption, have been improving considerably.

Altcoins Are Also Surging

Most of the altcoins in the top 20 gained between one and three percentage points in the last day. However, DASH surpassed that number and experienced a 5 percent growth, comfortably trading at $168 at the moment of this writing.

IOTA (MIOTA) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) saw their value increase by 3 percent, while the promising platform VeChain (VEC) grew by nearly 4 percent and is trading at $0.01 at the moment of writing this piece.

The total market capitalization of all digital assets started the week at $203.5 billion but is now up to $212.66 billion.

It is noteworthy that earlier today, cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX made public the launch of a “network monitoring tool” for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, named ForkMonitor.info. According to Cointelegraph, it will be used to monitor developments during “network upgrades” (softforks or hardforks). The timing of the announcement lines up perfectly with the scheduled BCH hard fork, which will take place on November 15th.

By Andres Chavez

Facebook Messenger will be able to Make Payments with Litecoins

Maria Rodríguez
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Facebook Messenger will be able to Make Payments with Litecoins

Facebook Messenger users can experience sending and receiving litecoins payments, checking their digital wallet balance and transaction history through this social network

Litecoin is the first cryptocurrency that comes to Facebook Messenger. Surprisingly, it gained ground and came before Ethereum and Bitcoin. The LiteIM wallet extended its services to this massive social media network on October 31st, when it made the announcement on its Twitter account.

LiteIM already works with Telegram by allowing the sending of litecoins through text messages and now it has obtained the approval of Facebook to conduct transactions from that platform in a more direct way, but without ceasing to be safe for clients. In this way, Facebook Messenger is another compatible application with LiteIM.

“We are happy to announce that @liteim_official is now live on Facebook Messenger. 2Bn + @facebook; users now have direct access to easily and securely, send, manage and invest in Litecoin”.

LiteIM users can import their existing portfolio just by logging in, as indicated by the source. The wallet does not have control over user’s private keys, so they are the only ones who have total control over their funds and to import the wallet.

LiteIM’s Technology Director, Michael Rodriguez, expressed his satisfaction with the launch of this portfolio on Facebook Messenger. During the Litecoin 2018 summit, which took place in San Francisco, Rodríguez commented: “It is already quite huge that the first cryptocurrency on Facebook is Litecoin. This opens the door to a user base of around 2 million people around the world. It is also the beginning for us since we have big plans in mind”.

The entrepreneur spoke about the security measures that they were implemented to prevent third parties from acquiring user’s passwords. There is an option that allows users to change the password, the associated email, and request the portfolio’s private keys.

Rodriguez explained that the main idea is to offer Litecoin to people who do not have access by ordinary ways. “Our ecosystem allows banking authorization worldwide, connecting all networks, including phone numbers through SMS and soon USSD, and people with restricted access to the Internet or technology in general”, he said.

How it will work

LiteIM users interested in using this new service should only log in to Facebook to import their wallet, while those who are not users of LiteIM, but are Facebook’s users, can work on logging in using the following messaging link: m.me /lite.im.

When entering Facebook Messenger, a chat with LiteIM will open, in which users must click “start” and the platform will ask them to accept the terms and conditions.

When starting the registration process, the application requests the main email and a phone number. The application uses an authentication factor trough SMS and redirects the user to an external website.

This idea offers the options of sending and receiving LTC, checking the balance of the portfolio and the history of transactions. To receive litecoins, the portfolio offers the following options: registered email, QR code or using the portfolio’s address.

Litecoin is a blockchain network. It was created by Charlie Lee and has a cryptocurrency code base similar to that of Bitcoin. In Litecoin the software developed for Bitcoin is usually implemented. This characteristic has allowed many test exchanges between the two blockchain networks.

With this new LiteIM service, Facebook is showing signs of opening its doors to accept blockchain technology, despite its initial denial on allowing advertising related to cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency’s field is increasing. Now, more countries are accepting this way of digital payment to make important transactions. LiteIM plans to expand the number of Apps and social networks compatible with its technology in order to reach more users.

By María Rodríguez

Serenity, the New Ethereum 2.0 Project is Coming Soon

Maria Rodríguez
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Serenity, the New Ethereum 2.0 Project is Coming Soon

An Ethereum co-founder work in the new version 2.0. It will include potential and skill improvements

During a keynote presentation at Devcon4 conference, in Prague, Vitalik Buterin, an Ethereum co-founder, talked about Ethereum 2.0 launch, described by him as a “coherent whole” of this technology. The name of the project is “Serenity” and it is made up of other projects in which Ethereum’s developers participate since 2014.

Buterin explained: “Ethereum 2.0 is a combination of a lot of different characteristics that we have been talking about for several years, researching for several years and building for several years that are finally about to come together in a cohesive whole”.

Serenity is a set of protocol improvements which include an extraction test algorithm and the Casper project, which proposes to improve scalability through the fragmentation process. In addition to this, the co-founder who worked with Buterin on the ERC-20 standard development in 2015, indicated that a new form of ICOs in which investors can be protected will be introduced.

There is not a launch date yet. Before this, the developers will make some final adjustments, according to the information given by Vitalik Buterin at the conference.

Among them, there are the specifications of the stabilization protocol and the test networks between clients, who would buy a test network with at least two implementations of the new Ethereum 2.0.

The Ethereum co-founder also said that these updates have been delayed in order to do an efficient job and avoiding premature releases, as happened with Ethereum 1.0.

For a long time, different experts have debated about which updates can be added to the network and, in fact, these changes have been delayed in order to fine-tune details regarding the technical skills of the App.

About Ethereum

Ethereum is an open source decentralized platform which allows the creation of smart contract agreements between peers, based on blockchain technology. In this platform of distributed computation, any developer can create and publish distributed applications which make smart contracts.

Ethereum works in a decentralized way through a virtual machine called Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM); this machine executes an intermediate code called bytecode, which is a mixture of LIP, i.e. a bitcoin script assembler.

The programs that generate smart contracts are written in programming languages such as Serpent or Solidity. The open source contracts can be used to safely execute a wide variety of services, for instance: voting systems, financial exchanges, intellectual property, and autonomous decentralized organizations.

The system also can be used to create financial applications with security and transparency. It also offers online cryptographic security to manage properties and contracts, which are automatically executed when the conditions are ready for both parts. They can store data, send and receive transactions and even interact with other contracts.

Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency developer, is who proposed the system which was launched in July 2015. Since July 2016, there are two active Ethereum lines: Ethereum and Classic Ethereum. Buterin says that Serenity’s launch date is not far away.

By María Rodríguez

SEC Report Identifies Advances in Spotting and Punishing “Dozens” of Fraudulent ICOs

Andres Chavez
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SEC Report Identifies Advances in Spotting and Punishing “Dozens” of Fraudulent ICOs

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are excellent ways to raise funds for a particular project that, according to the investors’ view, will have viability, utility, and the chance of making a profit out of the acquisition of tokens at a lower value. However, fraudulent propositions are undermining people’s trust because there have been more than enough scams to put the whole industry in alert mode.

That is the reason why the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) through the Enforcement Division, has worked hard to preserve the wellbeing of the ICO and crypto industry. In its latest annual enforcement report for the 2018 fiscal year released on Friday, the organism provided details about the actions it took against fraudulent ICOs.

A Higher Focus on ICOs

Actually, SEC’s focus on cyber misconducts has been increasing considerably since the Cyber Unit was introduced at the end of 2017 fiscal year. That includes Initial Coin Offerings, which are the processes in which more irregularities are found since some “developers” want to take advantage of the crypto fever to make fortunes without giving something in return to the community.

The SEC is alerting the community that ICOs should be considered “high-risk investments,” and states that in the past year “the Division has opened dozens of investigations involving ICOs and digital assets, many of which were ongoing at the close of FY 2018.”

According to the SEC’s document, multiple ICOs were considered illicit and three of them were huge scams that defrauded people of more than $68 million. Of that total, $32 are attributed to a financial services startup that stole funds from thousands of investors.

Additionally, the “blockchain evangelist” president of Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services Inc., gathered $21 million and a “recidivist law violator” collected $15 million. The latter went even further, making false promises of a surreal monthly return on investments.

Severe Punishments

The organism, seeing all the irregularities and vulnerabilities in the ICO industry, made sure to apply severe punishments to the criminals’ pockets. SEC ordered almost $4 billion worth of penalties and disgorgement over 2018’s fiscal year. Of that total, $3.04 billion was ordered from the top 5% largest occurrences.

According to Yahoo Finance and Decrypt Media’s October joint paper, SEC had pointed out ICOs as major areas of attention, a development that represented a huge risk to dozens, even hundreds of projects looking to take advantage of the industry’s lack of advances in universal regulatory measures.

SEC’s text also offers a glimmer of hope, stating that thanks to the pressure applied by the organism, a sizable number of firms agreed to refund defrauded people and pay their respective fines instead of going to the court.

It should be noted that the fiscal year finalized on September 30. It is clear that the SEC wants to send a message to the industry and the crypto community that scams will not be tolerated at an ICO level. “Given the explosion of ICOs over the last year, we have tried to pursue cases that deliver broad messages and have a market impact beyond their own four corners,” the text read.

By Andres Chavez

Azerbaijan Plans to Use Blockchain Technology in its Justice System

Maria Rodríguez
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Azerbaijan Plans to Use Blockchain Technology in its Justice System

The objective is to optimize data storage processes. Countries like the United States are working on the development of platforms for solving cases using blockchain technology and statistics as support

Blockchain technology is a source of innovation. Each day it is proposed to be included in more fields of daily and financial life as an ideal system to organize data quickly and accurately in different latitudes of the world. And the Republic of Azerbaijan is not far behind.

The president of the Azerbaijani Internet Forum, Osman Gunduz, reported on November 2nd that the country, located in Western Asia and Europe, plans to use blockchain technology and smart contracts in the country’s legal system, the housing sector and even in the field of public services such as water and electricity.

“It’s about the conversion of existing contracts of citizens who use public services into smart contracts. This will guarantee transparency and allow for the suppression of counterfeiting cases in this area. Citizens themselves will be able to independently control all these processes”.

The justice system sees in blockchain technology the possibility of achieving improvements in the development of different processes, by allowing them to automate in order to save time and be much more efficient in resolving conflicts. They even work in the development of future “courts electronic “.

During the last months, the official information issued around that country talks about the county’s central bank and the IBM Blockchain World Wire working on using the blockchain technology as part of a “digital transformation” for the country. According to Gunduz, however, more time is still needed to put the most advanced ideas into practice.

Increasing acceptance

IBM conducted a survey of 21 central banks together with the Forum of Official Monetary and Financial Institutions (OMFIF) between July and September 2017. The results were published on October 25. The study showed that most global financial institutions believe that central banks should develop digital currencies.

Regarding the use of blockchain technology, a greater use of automation could improve the speed and quality of the performance of tasks such as case auditing.

Automate certain judicial processes is not an utopia in the United States. There, artificial intelligence algorithms are already being used to help some judges determine the level of risk represented by a repeat offender, based on statistics and previous cases as examples.

On the Way to Digital Courts

In the US, Compas, a risk assessment tool used by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, is used to determine if an offender is a high or low risk to society.

CrowdJury.org is another example of a new judicial system built with blockchain technology. It uses Ethereum’s smart contracts to structure the system and is an example of how the chain of blocks can handle in depth the records of an entire judicial system.

The combination of efficient algorithms to judge cases based on statistics, together with the efficiency of the chain of blocks to record data, would grant transparency, speed and precision to the different processes and “humanize”, in a certain way, the justice system by preventing be overloaded and late for those who are waiting for a trial. In case the automated system makes an error, the digital decisions can be reviewed in a higher court directed by human judges and lawyers who appeal to the verdicts.

In July 2017, China also studied the possibility of using blockchain technology to digitize its judicial system. Meanwhile, the Chancheng district launched the Shaping Club platform, which uses blockchain technology to develop monitoring programs for ex-prisoners and people under probation. The design phase of this platform is completed and the second phase would be ready by the end of this year.

By María Victoria Rodríguez

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