LISBON — Portuguese champions Benfica are the first major European football team to accept cryptocurrency. Fans can now use crypto to purchase tickets and merchandise directly from the club. “We recognize that many of our supporters are now digital users first, so we want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting…
BOSTON — Blockchain voting platform Voatz announced today it raised $7 million in Series A funding, including backing from Medici Ventures, the subsidiary of Overstock.com created to boost blockchain. “Voting is a great application of blockchain technology,” said Medici Ventures President Jonathan Johnson. “Many of the key issues facing the world today cannot be addressed until we have…
Adding Blockchain Faces to Facebook: the Acquihire of Chainspace Facebook hired the founding team of Chainspace in Feburary 2019. Chainspace is a blockchain startup developing new technology to scale and speed up the execution of smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. The social media giant seems to be more interested in acquiring Chainspace’s talent than…
American insurance giants State Farm and USAA want to use blockchain to speed up auto claims. They’re focusing on the last part of the claims process called subrogation. Subrogation is the legal right that allows one party (e.g., your insurance company) to make a payment that is actually owed by another party (e.g., the other…
HONG KONG — Average investors may soon be able to get a piece of the world’s hottest property market. One real estate giant is considering tapping into the world of blockchain for liquidity. It’s just an MoU at the moment, and certainly it is not unique; as many are exploring selling/investing in real estate with…
Ripple (XRPJPY) is edging higher again as it appears to be readying to play catch up to Bitcoin (BTCUSD) which has outperformed XRPJPY in recent months. XRPJPY will be less bogged down this week by the somewhat overbought conditions slowing BTCUSD’s torrid advance, and has stronger momentum heading into this week. With massive gains on Bitcoin…
Move over Facebook, a new kid is on the block. Voice, a new blockchain-based social media platform, will launch promising users more control over their posts and photos. “The truth is, current social media platforms are designed to use their users,” said Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.one. “By design, they run by auctioning our information…
Cash is not only not a king, but there is increasing realization among cities and states, that the cost of cash is not worth it. From reducing costs of producing physical money, increasing administrative efficiencies, to even reducing cash-related violent crimes — going cashless is where many are going, including Singapore. I stumbled across a…
How the race to get billions of users onto blockchain has this mathematician thinking about the future of work. Could decentralization be the one thing that actually binds us together. Charles Hoskinson sits down with Angie Lau, in Hong Kong a week after Hong Kong Blockchain Week and shares his vision of how 2019 will…
Introduction The blockchain revolution is happening so fast, that it too is being revolutionized. Until now, the de facto mechanism to reach consensus on distributed ledgers has been Proof of Work (PoW), in which computers compete to solve fictitious mathematical problems. However, this system wastes a lot of energy and computer power. But now a…