Japan’s Favorite Tipple Sake to Get Blockchain Makeover + More News

Sead Fadilpašić
Last updated: | 3 min read

Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Source: Adobe/taa22

Blockchain news

  • EY Japan, one of the country’s “big four” accountancy firms, says it will debut a blockchain-powered traceability platform for producers, distributors of Japan’s favorite alcoholic beverage, sake. Per Nikkei, the platform will also allow fruit growers to distribute their goods and will let stakeholders share data on product origins and delivery, helping both domestic and international clients to avoid fakes and counterfeits.
  • South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group has created a special “core technology” unit for its blockchain, Big Data, cloud and AI operations, reports Segye Ilbo. The group’s CEO says that the head of each of its four main subsidiaries will take charge of one of the “core technology” areas – with its Orange Life (formerly ING Korea) insurance chief placed in charge of directing the group’s blockchain strategy. The company says that its move will allow it to become the first-places financial company in all four of the technologies. Shinhan completed its takeover of Orange Life in early 2019.

Exchanges news

  • A Brazilian court has ordered the Genbit crypto exchange (formerly Zero10Club) to pay a client USD 16,000, reports Criptonoticias. The report states that a number of active cases have been taken out against the same exchange, which some investors believe “could be a pyramid” scheme. The exchange’s operator has previously received a nationwide operating ban from the regulatory Brazilian Securities Commission (CVM).
  • Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer has announced the appointment of former a Coincheck, SBI and Monex Group executive as its new CEO, reports Crypto Watch. Kimihiro Mine was appointed as the Executive Director of rival crypto trading platform Coincheck in April 2018, shortly after Monex took charge of the company.
  • Overseas crypto exchanges offering services to South Korean nationals will also have to meet new real-name banking, and anti-money laundering (AML) rules, reports Fn News. Across the sea in Japan, the top financial regulator has sent a number of warnings to overseas companies – both those based in Japan and overseas – that they face punishment if they target customers based in Japan.
  • Cryptocurrency liquidity provider XHUB has partnered with dual-chain blockchain protocol ByteTrade, says the emailed press release. The partnership allows for the decentralized exchanges (DEXs) operating on the ByteTrade Open Network (BTON) blockchain and ByteBulls white-label solution to gain access to XHUB liquidity pools. DEXs released by XHUB will provide cross-chain trading, deep liquidity, fast trade execution, and settlement for all clients, while traders will be able to generate unique user IDs secured by their mnemonic phrase.

Adoption news

  • Interpol has turned to a South Korean company named S2W to help it monitor the dark web for cryptocurrency transactions. The company said, in a press release, that its monitoring solution was the brainchild of network security researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) – the country’s leading tech university.
  • Director of Folding@home, a distributed computing project for performing molecular dynamics simulations of protein dynamics, Greg Bowman, said they had 30,000 actively computing users before the coronavirus pandemic begun, with some two million having contributed non-anonymously over the years, while 400,000 volunteers have joined in the past two weeks to help them fight the pandemic. Per a Reddit AMA (ask me anything), this 1,233% growth in number allows for a tremendous increase of computing power.
  • U.S.-based major money transfer company MoneyGram has reported it earned USD 11.3 million in revenue as a result of its partnership with Ripple, an American blockchain company focusing on payments technologies, out of which USD 8.9 million was earned in the fourth quarter of 2019. The annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission states that the company is compensated by Ripple in XRP for developing and bringing liquidity to foreign exchange markets, facilitated by the ODL platform, and providing a reliable level of foreign exchange trading activity.