Holland’s #central #bank is preparing to #open a #campus dedicated to teaching others about #blockchain. In early September of this year, De Nederlandsche Bank is expected to open a campus where #banks and financial institutions can work together “under one roof” to learn more about the distributed ledger #technology that underlies #bitcoin, according to a […]
fintech techcrunch
Kickstart, a Swiss #accelerator program based in #Zurich, has announced the ten #fintech #startups selected to join its first batch of the #Kickstart summer program. These ten startups will now begin the acceleration phase and will temporarily relocate their teams to Zurich and prepare for Demo Day set to place on November 04, 2016.
The ten fintech startups are tackling a number of sub-segments composing financial services ranging from mobile payments, insurance, to risk management and stock trading.
via @UBSschweiz, Twitter
Veezoo, a Swiss startup based in Zurich that provides a tool for people to allow them to explore and visualize stock market data efficiently. Veezoo is supported by SIX.
James, owned by New York-based Crowdprocess, is a SaaS for risk departments. James allows risk officers to build, test and validate credit-scoring models, and is equipped with Machine Learning algorithms, techniques and validation methods. Crowdprocess is funded by Seedcamp, top Google executives, Thompson Reuters, the European Central Bank, Quant research funds, among other investors.
Sureify, by California-based Sureify Labs, is a SaaS-based engagement platform that provides a solution to carrier’s ongoing problem of staying connected to their policyholders. Sureify specializes in life insurance products.
Mergims is a Rwandan mobile commerce and payments app that focuses on remittances to African countries. Mergims allows for the payment of mobile topups, utility bills, but also links to critical services such as hospital, medicines, school and transports.
Gatechain is a Zurich-based startup that uses #blockchain #technology for trade finance that allows for the reduction of processing time and the lowering of costs while improving cash-flow in trade.
Zoa, a solution developed by Zurich-based company MyDataMint, is an application and a platform for exchanging personal data between consumers and companies. On Zoa, companies can buy personal data directly from users in exchange for cash.
Lenditapp, a New York-based company, provides a a cloud-based business process and Customer Acquisition Management solution for sales organization and funders catering to the alternative small business lending community.
Nivaura, formerly known as Crowdaura, provides a blockchain-based digital platform for execution and lifecycle management of small financial assets. The company targets investment #banks, asset managers, brokers, reinsurers and exchanges.
Surong 360 is a Chinese startup that provides a platform for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Targeted at university students and alumni, Surong 360 doesn&8217;t intervene in the transaction, but instead, functions as a social network for P2P lending with flexible interest rates.
BreadWallet is a standalone mobile #bitcoin wallet aimed at providing users with a simple, convenient and secure solution to send and receive bitcoins on their smartphones.
Launched in January this year during the Investor Summit, Kickstart combines the strengths of academia, global corporations, and many successful local startups, to deliver an internationally recognized startup program aimed at giving access to promising startups to Switzerland&8217;s hub of tech and innovation.
The Kickstart Accelerator is operated by Impact Hub Zurich and is an initiative launched in cooperation with DigitalZurich2025, a cross-industry project aimed at turning Switzerland into a leading digital innovation hub in Europe.
The Kickstart Accelerator has four verticals: fintech, smart and connected machines, future and emerging technology and food.
Selected startups are given up to 25,000 CHF in seed funding, a monthly founder stipend of up to 1,500 CHF to support living costs, dedicated mentorship from industry leaders, a shared office space and fast-track access to relevant industry partners and the Swiss startup ecosystem.
Backed by some of Switzerland&8217;s biggest companies including UBS, Credit Suisse, Swisscom, Migros and EY, the Kickstart Accelerator aims at supporting young international entrepreneurs and focuses on launching new products into the market as well as promoting the domestic digital innovation scene.
Featured image via @UBSSchweiz, Twitter.
The post Kickstart Accelerator Zurich Selects 10 Startups for Fintech Category appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
#Beijing hosted the Global #Blockchain Summit last week and in typical fashion of Chinese events, it was a grand occasion. Over the course of the three day summit, participants were engaged in workshops, lectures and panel discussions. Leaders from the #Blockchain world all gathered at this event. Having been interested in Blockchain and #Bitcoin since the start of this year and integrating with the Blockchain community in Shanghai, this summit was the perfect chance to meet like minded people from all over the world and I found this as a unique opportunity to deepen my understanding of my newly found interest.
The conference, for me, was a bombardment of new information from thought leaders and experts on the matter of Blockchain and Bitcoin and it confirmed the 4 ways us humans anticipate and acknowledge information; There are things that you know that you know, things that you don’t know that you know, things you know that you don’t know and things that you don’t that you don’t know. Yes, slightly confusing, but learning anything with that framework helps a lot. Whether I was sitting through the talks or talking directly with people, not only did I find out new things I didn’t know but it made me deepen my understanding of the things I didn’t really know in depth but only knew that it had existed.
From a fresh mind that has just started to follow the developments and slowly learn the technical layers within the Blockchain space, and by no means an expert, here are 7 key takeaways I got from the Summit:
1. Faster innovation in China
Jeff Garzik of Bloq, and prominent figure in the Bitcoin Developer community, noted that there is faster innovation in China than the rest of the world within the Blockchain space. Aurelien Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, talked about why Blockchain Assets (cryptocurrencies/Dapp tokens) will become a leading alternative asset class. He predicts China will lead in Blockchain Assets due to the promise of cross border flexibility the #technology provides and the demand for transparency in China’s financial markets. With the Chinese government being accepting of the technology, it has become a gateway for Chinese entrepreneurs and companies to innovate and explore this technology and be a possible route for China to be transparent in their financial markets. One Chinese start-up that I thought was innovative is BitSe: BitSe, with their VEChain product aims to battle the counterfeit market to build a Blockchain for luxury brands to protect and secure the authenticity of their goods.
2. We will experience a new form of the internet
Many speakers put it differently; Jeff notably said ‘A Digital Wallet will be the new Browser’ where a user wouldn’t want 5 digital networks and wallets for 5 digital assets. There’d be that one wallet for everything. Jan Xie, a Chinese Ethereum Developer, pointed to an Internet 3.0 and there will be an interconnection of values on a larger capacity. According to him, it won’t be a social network anymore, now there will be an incentive network which will create a better business environment. Diego Guitterez of RSK Technologies compares what we have now as the Internet of Information to what we will have in the future as the Internet of Value.
3. Nobody likes the ‘Hard fork’
As the hack of the DAO came a week before the Summit, it was no surprise it will be a talking point. The consensus among many of the Chinese developers was that they were opposed to the ‘Hard fork’ idea suggested by the Ethereum Foundation.
4. Collaboration is key to push forward
Max Kordek, CEO of Lisk, emphasised the important of collaboration. He highlighted that competitors do not pose a challenge as it allows more of an opportunity to work with everyone else, but the biggest challenge is actually for that to happen, will projects collaborate and work together to move things forward?
5. Think Blockchain, Think Network
When wanting to build applications on top of a Blockchain on the biggest network and economy, I thought Jeff Garzik left us with another way to think about the Blockchain, he said not to think Blockchain as a technology but rather as a network.
6. Eric’s Law: Any asset can be digitised, will be digitised. Everyone, some machines and most AIs will have at least one digital ID
CEO of ViewFin, Eric Gu, was very vocal about how digital assets and smart contracts would shape our future. Thinking about how more digital our lives could be is interesting, and more particularly the implications. How will it impact the society, economy, business and our daily lives?
7. Things need to be made easier
During the Panel Discussion about Blockchain and New trends in #Fintech, Max Kordek emphasised the importance for things need to be made easy for the real world to understand. Deng Di, the Chairman of Beijing Taiyiyuan Technologies, stated how the 1st stage of the Blockchain era was a hobby for the techies, as Bitcoin was relatively new and Blockchain, the underlying technology, had not been explored. They were the first to get involved with Bitcoin and the #cryptocurrency network. The 2nd stage is when it became hot when central #banks and other big players started to recognise it a few years later, where many big players and governments are exploring the technology and he said we are currently in the 3rd stage, where the consumers have no idea about the Blockchain. A bottom up approach and top bottom approach is needed to educate the masses. He finally says, we show and thus prove to them how Blockchain works, not tell them how it works.
I really think the last point is crucial because with the advent of the internet or the phone, or any technology used by the masses, many use the technologies without thinking how it works. It may be explained in simple terms from a broad level, but it could only be done after there are use cases used by the masses. For a new technology to be explained simply that has not yet been in practical use by the world is still a difficult objective to achieve. Blockchain and its information is still in a sense raw, filled with code and technical jargon and Andre De Castro, CEO of the Blockchain of Things, has identified this problem as he aims to make it simple for enterprises to conduct business and not deal with technicalities such as making a new cryptocurrency and dealing with code.
Another observation I made when talking to people is that there is a huge split between those who are pro Proof of Work and those who are pro Proof of Stake. To my mind, when I think Blockchain, I think decentralisation, and Bitcoin offers the best example of a purely decentralised network, whereas the proof of stake is not completely decentralised and thus defeats the purpose of what the Bitcoin innovation and its underlying technology really stands for. I assume for specific use cases, it may make sense to have a Blockchain that uses ‘trusted nodes’ for verification. Anyways, this was just an observation which I won’t go into detail as there’s a lot of information about this online and there may be a long way till one prevails over the other, or perhaps coexist in the long run.
The Summit in Beijing showed me the promise of the Blockchain and what it could offer and I am excited in what the future holds. Our lives in the past decade have become more digital centric, particularly with the rise of smartphones and inter-connectivity and it could be even more digitalised if we can digitalise assets and exchange it. But it’s pretty funny; although we are so interconnected and exchanging information all the time, how is it that many people still do not know about Blockchain and Bitcoin?
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-al-balaghi-柏亚德-3a57215a” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Ahmed-Al-Balaghi-柏亚德”] is Language Student at Fudan University (Shanghai)
” #Smart contracts are computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, or that make a contractual clause unnecessary. Smart contracts usually also have a user interface and often emulate the logic of contractual clauses.” – Wikipedia
Smart contracts seem to be all the rage right now, and there have been quite a few posts about them on Twitter, LinkedIn, and in the blogosphere recently.
So… what are they?
You have more than likely experienced a smart contract within the last 12 hours, either personally or as an unknowing (or knowing) participant: Digital Rights Management as an example, whether for music or movies; Hotel room key usage; Online gambling (I hope not); Mobile data usage and overage charges; Book/ship arrangements for service payments. The list goes on and on.
More commonly, today, you are likely seeing these terms floating next to the words #Bitcoin, Codius, or #Ethereum (who has been in the news of late due to a hack), or #blockchain. None of these are required to have a smart contract, but they are likely culprits for increasing the buzz-wordiness of the concept.
Smart contracts basically boil down to this (simplified) explanation: Two people, or entities, decide on an arrangement that can be both digitally validated and enforced. A trusted electronic system monitors the validation point(s) and when a criteria has been met, the system enforces the arrangement. Here’s an overly-simple example:
The smart contract says you are welcome to rent the movie as long as you pay a fee and agree to be charged for a purchase if you fail to return it. The mechanism of enforcement is built into the lock/holding mechanism and the trusted system (you do trust your movie vendor, right?)
The example above is a physical implementation of DRM, the same process could be illustrated for digital locks on Pay Per View movies or downloadable content such as text-books or streaming music. The same IF THEN ELSE rules apply: IF something happens THEN do this, ELSE do this other thing.
The Contract is Smart as long as the criteria can be electronically validated in some way that both parties trust and the enforcement can be done electronically and automatically.
The key to why you’re seeing more and more talk about Smart Contracts is the interest in several frameworks and systems that are being built. Bitcoin and Ethereum, or Barclay’s use of R3’s Corda platform being prime examples of some of those systems.
That’s it, Smart Contracts in a nutshell.
** Tech Primers are meant to be brief and to the point, they are by no means comprehensive. Want to learn more? A good book, your local technologist, Google, and/or Wikipedia are all great resources! **
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrygilreath” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Jerry Gilreath”] is IT executive at RagingWire Data Centers.
#Auditing is the process of conducting an independent examination of an organization’s accounts, books and/or documents in order to determine whether the organization’s financial statements present a fair view of the business. It is based on a set of pre-determined guidelines, normally the International Accounting Standards, or GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles).
Auditors themselves are normally independent third-party intermediaries who are employed to verify the accuracy of companies’ financial statements. Indeed, the financial statements themselves can be viewed as a summation of what happened in a company’s ledger throughout the accounting period. Ultimately, the auditor then decides that either the financial statements make sense, or they is a discrepancy between what the company’s management has provided and what the true numbers should be.
Because the client is responsible for paying the auditor, an inherent bias emerges. This pecuniary relationship between auditor and client could tempt the auditor to provide a false (or rosier) assessment of its client’s accounts, for the chance of repeat business from the client at the end of the next accounting period. Moreover, the client may also present the auditor with false or exaggerated figures to inflate the company’s true value – this is known as ‘cooking the books’.
Whether the auditor can detect this or not is largely immaterial – the fact that potential exists for compromising the accuracy of the financial statements at the expense of the public is of grave concern. This has significant implications for how internal and external parties &8211; including regulators &8211; perceive the quality of the auditing process.
There have been high-profile cases where poor standards of auditing have been uncovered, and which have had significant consequences on the accounting industry. Enron is arguably the most high profile example. Arthur Andersen, the firm responsible for auditing Enron’s books since it started doing business in 1985, played a significant role in the scandal, particularly once it was revealed that the accountancy firm was guilty of obstructing justice by playing an influential part in the shredding of a huge number of incriminating documents just before the investigations commenced.
The scandal was just one in a number of cases involving auditing incompetency where corporate accounts were misrepresented, including the UK’s Polly Peck International, Germany’s Metallgesellschaft, and Cendant Corp and Sunbeam Corp in the US. Indeed, by the #time Enron collapsed in early 2002, it was revealed that 700 US companies had to restate accounts in the previous 4 years alone.
The fall of Andersen highlighted the pressure on accountancy firms to boost profits, while the company itself compromised the integrity of the auditor’s role as an independent third-party by making partners effectively become salespeople. This made auditors agenda-driven, as they began empathising more with their clients, and in doing so, destroyed the auditor’s dual function of servicing its clients but also equally looking out for the public interest.
Indeed, the basis for many auditing failures since then has been the questionable business relationship between auditor and client, which has generated much conflict of interest. Instead of a company’s auditors being appointed independently by shareholders, many were chosen by the company&8217;s internal management, or even worse, they were hired to senior management positions, often with the intention of saving costs. Perhaps in the wake of the Enron scandal, the biggest fallout experienced by the global auditing industry was the loss in public trust.
Auditors are trusted upon to issue their opinion as accurately as possible, while the public also trusts that the company has not tried to cook the books. According to Ellen Masterson, former global head of #audit methodology at PwC, moreover, the priority for client management was to reduce the cost of the audit, meaning that auditors were “pressured to do the minimum”.
In the aftermath of Enron, the Sarbanes Oxley Act was implemented which required that top executives sign off on audits, fully in the knowledge that they would be held criminally responsible if the books had been cooked. Furthermore, auditors now have to report to an audit committee, which has widened the gap between a company’s management and the auditing firm. Audit-committee members can also be prosecuted by regulators for fraudulently influencing a company&8217;s auditors. While Sarbanes-Oxley has decisively improved the auditing process, there is still no guarantee that executives who sign off on audited accounts know for certain that what they are approving is 100% accurate.
Auditing today, therefore, is still lumbered with such inefficiencies, remains based on ‘reasonable assurance’, and is broadly unchanged from what has been practised for decades, meaning that the process is now ripe for a new, innovative transformation. At present, each account (such as assets, revenues or liabilities) is viewed as a set of combined transactions, which produces a final balance at the end of the period.
During the audit, the auditor will verify a certain number of these accounts with the trading parties and determine the accuracy of the balance using a sample of previous accounting entries. They may also, on occasion, speak to employees to detect whether ethical accounting practices have been followed or not.
Therefore, trust of the auditor and the company still remains at the core of the auditing process, and thus is still potentially subject to fraud and manipulation. Further still, there may very well be another auditor verifying the very same transactions at the other end. As such, the entire process remains inefficient, while the quality of the audit still largely depends on judgement calls by the auditor, meaning that it remains subject to accuracy disputes.
Despite Sarbanes-Oxley, moreover, auditors still have the pressure of generating repeat business from clients, so the temptation to stray from objective analysis still exists. Some studies have even shown that firms are reporting downward pressure on audit fees due to clients questioning the value of audit services, especially given that they are now increasingly ‘commoditised’ as a result of being heavily regulated, and thus there is little differentiation among the services being offered by various auditors.
Many believe that #blockchain could transform this process, in part because the #technology removes the need for auditing to depend on trust. Blockchain provides a globally distributed, decentralized ledger of which everyone has the exact same copy. Whereas auditing at present entails the confirmation of transactions and balances on a company’s accounting ledger at the end of the period, a transaction on the blockchain would provide a permanent and immutable record of the transaction almost immediately. In effect, blockchain allows the recording of the transaction to take place at the same time as the transaction itself.
All that would be required at the time of the transaction would be for the two trading parties to compare accounting entries while maintaining data privacy. To ensure the data can’t be changed, digital signatures would be used, whereby companies would publish their keys to a public authority who would verify their identities. “The existence of digital signatures from both parties implies that the transaction data is agreed upon” explains Roger Willis, former member of Ernst & Young’s (EY) forensic data analytics and audit teams.
Once posted to the blockchain, the transaction is time stamped and exists forever. As described by prominent #Bitcoin proponent and investor Trace Mayer, “Everyone agrees on consensus that those transactions actually happened, and boom you have that verification. You have the debit, the credit, and the confirmation by the network”.
CPA at Xen Accounting, Ryan Lazanis believes that “everything that is on the books of the company and therefore everything comprising a company’s financial statements could occur on the blockchain”. If true, then the blockchain’s existence would not require the employment of a third-party auditor for verification purposes; instead, everything is recorded and verified in #real-time.
The redundancy (or indeed, the wholesale elimination) of the auditor’s role, therefore, could transform the entire accounting industry. This would have a whole range of benefits. Charles Hoskinson, former CEO of revolutionary blockchain company Ethereum, for example, attests that because blockchain provides transaction histories that go back to their inception, the auditing process would be immune to manipulation, as “every single penny could be accounted for by this incorruptible entity”.
The ‘big four’ accounting firms – Deloitte, PWC, KPMG and EY &8211; are also investigating how blockchain can improve the auditing process. Deloitte, for example, is currently focused on developing automation for some of its audit processing. According to Deloitte Consulting principal Eric Piscini, the solution his company is developing will allow the company to post every transaction onto the blockchain in real-time. To audit the company then, Deloitte would simply look at the blockchain and all its transactions.
There would be no need for external verification of the records “because the blockchain is immutable and time-stamped”. Piscini also believes that blockchain will make the auditing process quicker, cheaper and more transparent for regulators, thereby substantially improving accessibility. EY’s Willis agrees with this sentiment, suggesting that auditing all revenues and expenses for multiple companies could be conducted “in literally a split second because the companies are capturing, signing and agreeing all the data at the time of transaction”.
This would ostensibly be good news for the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), who recently expressed the urgent need for a Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), which would create a system that would enable the regulator to comprehensively track markets across various venues and systems, providing increased transparency and better access to critical data.
Given the immutability and decentralized accessibility of blockchain, however, the access and accountability of the SEC’s audit trail could be wholly improved. As highlighted by McKinsey, “blockchains contain detailed and precise histories of asset movements, which has the additional benefit of being attractive to regulators”, suggesting that consolidated audit trails could very well use blockchains for the purposes of capital market transparency.
The post Blockchain and the Auditing Revolution &8211; Real Time Audit within the Capabilities of Blockchain appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
As The DAO struggles to find its path forward after multiple attacks, entrepreneurs must find a way forward. Is #bitcoin‘s #blockchain ready for them?
CoinDesk
#Bitcoin was designed as an alternative to fiat currency, boasting a number of unique characteristics such as its finite supply.
At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin stands at a 2 year high and though there are a number of theories as to why demand is increasing, the timing is in line with the upcoming #halving, where we will witness Bitcoin’s deflationary nature in action, regulating the amount that will be produced.
To fully understand how the halving, or as it has been dubbed “The halvening” works, you first have to understand how new bitcoin are created. Whereas more conventional, fiat currencies are issued by a governing body, Bitcoin is decentralized with no issuer. Instead, transactions and balances are recorded on a public ledger known as the #blockchain.
Maintaining a ledger which adds in excess of 100,000 transactions a day without a central authority is no small feat and is a task undertaken by “miners”, these people add enormous amounts of computing power to the network to solve complex math problems which verify that transactions bundled together into blocks are valid. In exchange for securing the network, miners are rewarded with newly created bitcoin as well as the small fees included with each transaction.
To control the supply, the amount of bitcoin that miners is regulated every 210,000 blocks which is approximately every 4 years. When Bitcoin was launched, the reward fee for mining a block was 50 bitcoins, this halved on November 28th, 2012 after block 210,000 was mined and sometime next month when the 420,000th block is mined it will again half, with blocks mined resulting in a reward of 12.5. This will continue until all 21 million bitcoin have been mined and at this point, the incentive for mining will be based purely on transaction fees alone.
Ultimately, this means that new bitcoin will become scarcer with production more expensive. The basics of supply and demand indicate that if demand for bitcoin were to stay the same, the price should in theory increase, however some economists do not agree and criticize deflationary currency suggesting that saving, rather than spending does not add value to an economy.
> Download the full #infographic here
The post Infographic: The Bitcoin Halving Explained appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
This June 28th in #Zurich, #International Money-Tech is a #fintech event features 20 international digital payment and finance #technology company #pitches and offers 1:1 meetings in Zurich
Innovations presented will include digital currencies, mobile banking, peer-to-peer lending, crypto finance, new trends insurance tech, #robo advisors, among many others.
#Startup Pitches will inlcude:
Kantox, a pioneering firm in the foreign exchange industry, bringing light and fresh air to an uncertain, static market. Kantox offers a comprehensive FX management solution for SMEs and mid-cap companies.
Validity Labs educates patrons so they can adapt early an exploit opportunities rather than being rolled over by the #blockchain wave. Our courses, workshops and seminars provide hands-on education about smart contracts and the technology stack beneath it.
SynerScope, the next generation platform that provides analytics solutions to help discover critical information from massive amounts of data and turning it into useful insights. Synerscope combines Scientific Visualization Technologies, ultrafast predictive analytics and machine learning on top of its proprietary enterprise data navigation, -search and -linking. This technology stack provides enterprises high speed detection of abnormal behaviours and anomalies in complex data.
RaiseNow supports ambitious fundraisers to grow their online fundraising. Using solutions for all digital touch points – from SMS donations and mobile phone apps right up to peer-to-peer event fundraising and donation forms. The platform integrates your email and social media channels and makes everything tightly work with your existing fundraising and donor database.
Meniga is transforming the way #banks and advertisers use transaction data, by helping people becoming smarter consumers with great products. With current implementations worldwide Meniga is already serving +35 million consumers.
Speakers will include academics and executives from fintech startups and financial services firm including Roland Berger, Ascribe, the Ethereum Foundation, Nexussquared, Wikifolio, Crowdhouse, and more.
Stefan Greunz – Wikifolio, Head of Business Development
Stefan Greunz &8211; Wikifolio, Head of Business Development
wikifolio.com is Europe’s leading online platform for trading ideas by private traders and professional asset managers.
The Fintech company launched its Social Trading platform in Germany in 2012, followed by its Austrian launch in early 2013 and expanded to Switzerland in 2015.
All signs are pointing to continued growth,’ says Andreas Kern, CEO and founder of wikifolio.com, ‘during the past year we have at least doubled all relevant figures and we want to continue like that.’
More than 13,000 trading ideas called ‘wikifolios’ were already published, of which more than 4,300 are tradable as wikifolio-certificates at the Stuttgart stock exchange. So far 5.3 million trades in wikifolios triggered already a trade volume in excess of 7.9 billion euros.
Ming Chan &8211; Ethereum, Executive Director
Ming Chan &8211; Ethereum, Executive Director
Ethereum’s rapidly growing popularity has become the most talked about topic in #cryptocurrency ecosystem. It particularly came under spotlight when it crossed the $ 1 billion mark in March this year, making several cryptocurrency exchanges to announce their support for ether trading.
The market cap of Ethereum’s has once again surpassed the $ 1 billion mark as ether price recently found upward momentum and currently trades at $ 14.45 levels. Finance Magnates attributes this to the success of the DAO crowdfunding drive.
Speaking with EconoTimes, Aurélien Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, said that the surge seen earlier in Ethereum’s market cap was partially due to some concerns about the future of #bitcoin, which have been recently addressed following the announcement of the upcoming SegWit and Lightning network upgrades that will improve the scalability of bitcoin. He attributed the subsequent drop in the market cap to a correction to an “overly excited market”.
If you consider that the market even grew anywhere near 1 billion in less than a year since it was released that is very impressive. We are still very bullish about Ethereum and believe ether’s value will increase in the long term, Menant added. Source.
Special offer: Register with code “fintech16” to get 15% discount for event tickets!
The post International Money-Tech in Zurich: Startup Pitches Round 1 and Speaker Profiles appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
Two years after #buying roughly 30,000 BTC, #investor Tim #Draper is #still passionate about the #technology as well as competing #blockchain offerings.
fintech techcrunch
Alleged #bitcoin #creator Craig Wright is reportedly moving to secure #patents focused on #blockchain and digital currencies.
fintech techcrunch
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