blockchain

Blockchain education conundrum: China wants blockchain growth, but its tech labor supply “quality” falls short of high employer demands. A Forkast.News exclusive report on a new program in Chengdu and clues to what might be holding China back.

Other top news: IBM’s Covid medical supply network. China now has over 1,000 blockchain firms. Startups in Japan, India and Singapore.

What can the blockchain industry do to adapt its work to the current crisis? Acknowledging the widening socio-economic divide would be a good start.

Other top news: Courier giant YTO forms blockchain logistics lab. 224 more blockchain firms get official thumbs up. VC in Singapore, UK and US.

A co-founder of the original Earth Day urges world leaders to not be complacent about the temporary dip in emissions and lose sight of urgent climate goals.

Other top news: Bitcoin halving frenzy. New Huawei tech zone. Blockchain company busted for defective face masks. VC in Hong Kong and Canada.

Forkast.News explains ‘proof of work’ — the DNA of Bitcoin — and and why most of the world’s cryptocurrency miners will soon be sweating a lot more for their coins.

Companies are decentralizing into purely digital workplaces to survive the pandemic. What are the long-term implications on the structure of employment and the technologies required for working from home?

Also: Dozens of crypto firms sued in 11 class-action lawsuits. Bitcoin mining company Canaan bleeds red ink. Fintech funding in India, and more.

Distributed ledger technology can help flatten the curve of Covid-19 through telemedicine, supply-chain security, rapid payments and more.

China is trying to grow its blockchain industry, but are all these startups for real? Forkast.News dives into the data to find the truth behind the numbers.

Other top headlines from around the world: Microsoft wants to power mining with brain waves. Crypto exchanges Huobi and OKEx under fire. China shifts to digitally sweep ancestral graves.

In this newsletter and podcast, we bring you top headlines around the world, including: A new proposal to create a digital dollar. Coinbase’s legal chief heading U.S. Treasury. A Bitcoin-Red Cross coronavirus fundraiser in Italy. Universal basic income’s revival. Steem’s hard fork into Hive, and more.

Also: Blockchain voting after the Voatz debacle, IOTA limps back after cyber attack, smart cities in China, and Forkast.News insights to help you make sense of the top headlines.

In the third installment of this special three-part Forkast.News series, we look at some phones on the market that bill themselves as ‘blockchain’ but are only doing a disservice to the industry.

As increasingly useful and potentially destructive data migrates onto the internet, more and more countries will deploy cyber weapons. Could blockchain provide a defense against future incursions?

SIX Digital Exchange’s blockchain-based digital assets platform and distributed central securities depository are designed to democratize investment. The digital exchange platform is a subsidiary of leading Swiss stock exchange SIX.

Although Switzerland’s Crypto Valley may seek to become a global blockchain hub, its government is too slow to adopt the technology even as Facebook’s Libra incorporates in the country, according to Trust Square cofounder Daniel Gasteiger.

Getting blockchain right is hard enough – not to mention building consortium, says Steve Cerveny, founder and CEO of Kaleido, a Consensys Enterprise Business that offers blockchain as a service.

Blockchain technology and digital assets have the potential to change the entire finance industry. These blockchain-powered payments networks enable cross-border payments to be hassle-free by having a standard set of technical specifications and standards – reducing confusion and ensuring that all members of the network have access to the same technology, says Ripple’s Navin Gupta.

The central bank’s digital currency efforts, ironically, would give it more control over the economy.

Identification on a protocol level could help blockchain become mainstream for blue-chip companies like MasterCard, Volvo and Geely if international regulations are met. Anonymity is “exactly what is hindering wider use of blockchain,” said Concordium CEO Lone Fonss Schroder.

Using blockchain and encrypted computing in smart cities can protect user privacy as China builds out a new data infrastructure, says Vincent Wang, chief innovation officer at Wanxiang Group.

China’s enormous market of 1.4 billion people means there is a large pool of human resources that can drive blockchain development and adoption, especially in the wake of endorsement from President Xi Jinping. Blockshine founder and CEO Layla Dong explains how China’s burgeoning market can boost blockchain development.

And that’s a good thing for legitimizing blockchain and paving the way to tokenize real assets across industries, the enterprise blockchain creator said at Hong Kong FinTech Week 2019.

The Fintech Advisory Services monthly report details the main crypto-metrics and indicators for the past month: News, Market Performance, Networks, Mining Activity, Public Sentiment, and Academic Publications. The report also covers the latest “Hot Topics” in the crypto space. This month: Facebook’s Libra, Telegram’s TON, China’s CBDC, and quantum computing.

Investment in Chinese blockchain projects reached USD$367.7 million in the first half of 2019. Blockchain Global CEO Sam Lee says Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have fueled a breadth of tech talent.

Despite prolonged social and political turmoil a slowing economy and record cash outflows, Hong Kong continues to serve as an important technology and financial hub, says Hong Kong Stock Exchange CEO Charles Li.

Building artificial intelligence is a game of “surveillance machine learning” that exploits common users’ data. But blockchain technology systems promise to help compensate users for it.

Startups are aiming to apply blockchain technology to help everyday consumers track the meat they buy at supermarkets back to the source.