5 Chinese Banks to Build Blockchain-powered Trade Platform + More News
Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Blockchain news
- The China Banking Association (CBA), a self-regulating organization that represents China’s banking sector, will team up with the country’s five biggest banks to co-build a blockchain-powered platform for inter-bank transactions in trade financing, reported the People’s Daily and East Money. The state-owned banks – the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and the Bank of Communications – include four that are working with the central People’s Bank of China (PBoC) on digital yuan pilots. Many of the above have also been working on their own blockchain-based trade financing platforms, as well as solutions operated by provincial governments in the nation.
Exchanges news
- Solana (SOL)-based non-custodial exchange, Serum, has gone live on Sunday, offering eight markets, with trading pairs against USDT and USDC for each. The exchange was announced in July by Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm and parent company of crypto derivatives exchange FTX, and it was described as a fully trustless, cross-chain compatible, decentralized ecosystem built from the ground up on the Solana blockchain.
Career news
- CoinMarketCap CEO Carylyne Chan has announced her leave from the price-tracking website today, along with four other executives. Per the blog post, Chan plans to focus on “other entrepreneurial endeavors.” As for the website, she said that many new assets will be listed, and “thousands of pages” of educational content added in the future, among other things. This comes just months after the website was acquired by Binance.
- Coinbase has announced two new members of Coinbase’s Boardroom: Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and Operating Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a major venture capital firm, who joins as a Board Observer, and Gokul Rajaram, an executive at DoorDash, who has joined as a Board Director at the designation of the DFJ Growth Fund and Series C shareholders.
Crypto adoption news
- The Chechen head of state has launched a scathing attack on bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptoassets. Per Pravda, the outspoken Ramzan Kadyrov stated in a social media post, “The media have talked up cryptoassets as if they are the new gold, sparking a kind of bitcoin fever. People take out loans, use money they’d otherwise spend on themselves and their families and invest their bottom dollars in digital assets that promise incredible profits.”
- The new head of the regulatory Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) has made references to bitcoin and decentralized pay models in a video speech to a blockchain conference, per media outlet Internet Watch. FSA chief Ryozo Himino spoke about a future with no need for third-party providers in the payments infrastructure, made references to the 2008 Bitcoin White Paper and name-checked the author of the paper, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Scam news
- A bogus Zcash (ZEC) Twitter account has amassed a following of over 6,170 people – and contains a fake fundraising account linked to an ethereum (ETH) wallet – promising that the “first five investors get double.” Tim Ismilyaev, the CEO and founder of Mana Security, told Cryptonews.com, “Always double-check Twitter accounts on the company’s website. All other Twitter accounts that are not mentioned official websites are invariably fake.”
- An Electrum wallet user said that they allegedly lost BTC 1,400, currently worth USD 16.5 million. According to a GitHub post, this happened as they installed an older version of the wallet. The user wanted to transfer BTC 1, but a pop-up asked for a “security update” to be installed first in order to proceed, and this triggered the transfer of the user’s entire balance to a scammers address, they claimed. Major crypto exchange Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, warned users to “beware of this Electrum official update,” adding that the address has been blacklisted.
Investment news
- Chainlink (LINK) has acquired Cornell University’s privacy oracle solution DECO, they announced recently. This, said the team, will enable Chainlink to “put more high quality data on-chain, by combining ZKProofs with HTTPS/TLS to prove where data came from, and even verify the data itself, while maintaining privacy.” Meanwhile, Ari Juels, professor at Cornell Tech and Chainlink technical advisor, has joined Chainlink Labs as its Chief Scientist.
Mining news
- Energy company Equinor has partnered with the startup Crusoe Energy Solutions to “significantly reduce flaring from operations through BTC mining,” as reported by Arcane Research. Citing screenshots from Equinor’s intranet, the blog post said that the company will exploit natural gas being flared as a byproduct when extracting oil, but instead of flaring the gas, it will be used for electricity generation and bitcoin mining.
- Hong Kong-based software company Daemon Technologies announced it official launch “to serve the thriving cryptocurrency mining community in Asia,” as the press release said. The company aims to help bring Blockstack’s mining mechanism, Proof-of-Transfer to the Asian market, in order for the miners to actively earn Stacks (STX) and BTC, as well as to provide the infrastructure necessary for Blockstack’s Asian community to continue to build decentralized applications and launch smart contracts. Daemon Technologies will have several crypto investors in Asia on its Board of Advisors, including Hashkey Capital, Spartan Group, SNZ Capital, and Trevor Owens.
- Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer Canaan has announced its unaudited financial results for second quarter of 2020. Gross profit increased by 302.5% year over year and 1,711.5% quarter over quarter to RMB 43.3 million (USD 6.3 million) from RMB 10.8 million (USD 1.6 million) in the same period of 2019 and RMB 2.4 million (USD 350,600) in the first quarter of 2020. Furthermore, total net revenues decreased by 26.3% year over year and increased by 160.9% quarter over quarter to RMB 178.1 million (USD 26 million) from RMB 241.5 million (USD 35.3 million) in the same period of 2019 and RMB 68.3 million (USD 9.98 million) in the first quarter of 2020.
