Crypto Adoption in India About to Get More Physical + 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.
Crypto adoption news
- UK-based financial firm Cashaa formed a joint venture with The United Multistate Credit Co. Operative Society, UNICAS, in order to build a crypto-friendly financial institution with 22 physical branches and operations in India. The UNICAS is set to start its operations in Decembers 2020 and expand to over 100 branches by 2022. The new service will enable people to access traditional banking services along with crypto banking services.
- Digital asset storage, transfer, and issuing platform Fireblocks said that its institutional customers, including exchanges, lending desks, banks, OTC desks, liquidity providers and hedge funds, have transferred more than USD 150bn in digital assets using its platform. Furthermore, the platform will be expanding its operations in Europe beyond London, adding two new offices in France and Germany, in order to meet the growing adoption of digital assets and real-time payments.
- The crypto-powered Audius said it has launched its native AUDIO governance token on the Audius mainnet, distributing 50 million or 5% of the token’s initial 1 billion supply to its top 10,000 artists and fans. It added that, since Audius’ launch in September of 2019, they reached 750,000 monthly active users with over a million streams each month across more than 100,000 tracks.
Mining news
- Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate, or the computational power of the Bitcoin network, has dropped by some 45% over past 3 days, and it’s presumably due to Chinese miners relocating equipment for the dry season, according to Jameson Lopp, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of crypto security specialist Casa. Per BitInfoCharts.com, the hashrate begun a larger drop on October 24, with a nearly 30% fall until today. Lopp added that “hopefully in coming years the semi-annual hashrate fluctuations would decrease in volatility as China’s share of hashrate continues to drop.”
- Marathon Patent Group, a North American publicly traded BTC self-mining company, has entered into a contract with the major hardware maker Bitmain to purchase an additional 10,000 next-generation Antminer S-19 Pro ASIC Miners. The company’s mining operation will include 23,560 miners, “making it the largest self-miner in North America”, with a total hashrate of 2.56 Eh/s. Joining the existing operation on 2,560 miners, the new miners should start arriving in November this year and until June 2021.
Blockchain and DLT news
- Samsung’s IT services arm Samsung SDS is set to roll out a blockchain-powered enterprise distribution history management platform in Q4 2020, per Maeil Kyungjae. The company made the announcement during a Q3 earnings report, where it posted record quarterly sales figures of around USD 2.5bn. The firm hopes to better this with its new offering, which it claims will help firms boost traceability in their supply chains.
- Auto giant Mitsubishi and six other major Japanese companies are looking to adopt blockchain-powered trade financing solutions, reported Nikkei. The companies will make use of a blockchain platform developed by NTT Data, a part-owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the fourth biggest telecommunications company in the world. The group of firms, which also comprises Toyota Tsusho, Kanematsu, Sompo Japan Insurance, Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, said they want to use the platform to help eliminate the paper-heavy processes traditionally involved in trade deals. The platform, claims NTT Data, will allow companies to manage and digitize import and export receipts and bank-issued letters of credit.
- The IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation focused on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and open-source ecosystem development, has partnered on a project initiated by Best Materia and IMC, Japanese maintenance-related companies, and funded by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), a national research and development agency. The goal of the project is to develop technology that would strengthen the security, longevity, and durability of critical infrastructure assets in Japan and abroad.
M&A news
- INX Limited, a blockchain- based platform for trading digital assets, said it has signed a term-sheet for the acquisition of Openfinance Securities LLC, a registered US broker-dealer operating a registered FINRA/SIPC member, with an alternative trading system (ATS (“Openfinance”). INX aims to bolster its position in the digital assets’ ecosystem with the acquisition of Openfinance. Openfinance listings include companies such as Blockchain Capital, Spice VC and Lottery.com.
Privacy coins news
- Privacy coin ZCoin (XZC) has announced a rebrand to the new name and ticker Firo (XFR), effective on November 30 when the mainnet binaries for the new privacy protocol Lelantus will be released.
