A blockchain-based alternative investment provider that tokenizes commercial debt is being listed on the Bloomberg Terminal, according to a news release published on June 4.
Cadence is believed to be the first digital asset to obtain a Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI), enabling professionals who use the Bloomberg Terminal to research its offering and execute trades.
The company connects investors with businesses that need to borrow money in order to plug temporary gaps in their cash flow. On its website, Cadence says the minimum investment amount is $500, giving consumers “opportunities traditionally reserved for institutions.”
Currently in private beta, Cadence claims its platform allows investors to generate passive income and hedge against market volatility. Every deal matures within a year, and the company is aiming to deliver annualized returns of more than 10%.
In the news release, Bloomberg Head of Data Standards and Strategy Richard Robinson said:
“The assignment of a FIGI to digital assets is a natural and simple example of the standard’s native utility. It is proof that FIGI can easily extend to new, even esoteric financial instruments.”
Last June, the Bloomberg Terminal started listing Huobi’s Cryptocurrency Index, which tracks the performance of the top 10 traded assets on its exchange.
Earlier this month, arguably the biggest blockchain week in the world kicked off in New York City with CoinDesk’s Consensus event. A previous interview that covered blockchain technology led to a deeper look at the technologies, founders, and companies that are emerging in the industry.
While some of the best projects on display were infrastructure-related, like public blockchains, others were more focused on ancillary services. The teams of these innovative blockchain startups are global, cutting-edge and typically include early blockchain adopters as founders.
This list showcases 10 companies working to make blockchain more accessible, prominent and mainstream. Some you may have heard of; others are new to the scene. The companies come from all regions of the world. Each offers something unique with the potential to disrupt traditional industries as well as gain support from legitimate entities.
BiKi.com was founded in June 2018. Headquartered in Singapore, it is a leading digital asset exchange focused on the global market. It accumulated 1.1 million registered users and 100,000 daily active users in under a year. Backed by Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi, BiKi is one of the fastest-growing exchanges. It focuses on the global incremental market, with a mission to bring digital assets to the mainstream.
Berlin-based, publicly listed Advanced Blockchain AG (ABAG) was started by German crypto pioneer and co-founder of peaq.io, Robert Küfner. The company is an innovator of blockchain solutions for corporations, building a DLT solution for one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world. ABAG was recently selected to participate in the Silicon Valley chapter of the German Accelerator, which empowers high-potential German companies to successfully enter US markets. Further approaches using peaq.io’s proprietary DAGchain remain confidential.
Built by leading scientists and cryptographers, YottaChain is a public blockchain that uses a unique economic model and governance structure, as well as proprietary technology, to connect global computing and storage resources. In layperson’s terms, everyday people can now tap into the power of a supercomputer and large-scale storage previously reserved for enterprises. This is done by connecting decentralized storage resources while providing de-duplication after encryption. In 2018, YottaChain was a top 20 finalist at the Founder World Championship in Silicon Valley.
Based in Barcelona, HeroToken is the continued mission from the success story of PawnHero. Founder David Margendorff, together with a solid team of technology experts, is working on HeroToken to build the prospect of a better future for billions of unbanked and underbanked funds globally. This solution leverages the blockchain to provide a transparent loan marketplace that connects lenders with borrowers worldwide.
With a global development team of former Google, IBM, Huawei and GE engineers, Bitconch is using a proof of reputation (POR) consensus algorithm to enable its beta network to reach 100,000 transactions per second, which is reported to be the highest performance in the blockchain environment. Bitconch established an intelligent three-dimensional node reputation system, with POW (proof of work) + POS (proof of stake) + POA (proof of activity), which contributes to an open node pool and anti-centralization. The company recently partnered with Cryptic Labs to help scale up their efforts.
BREACH was founded with one goal in mind: to ensure your digital assets. Backed by PJC, the leading early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, BREACH is partnering with global insurers, cybersecurity experts and exchanges to offer products to safeguard user investments. With nearly $1 billion of cryptocurrency stolen from exchanges in 2018, the use case for insurance products in the blockchain industry has never been stronger.
Based in Germany, Karatbars International GmbH is the parent company of KaratGold Coin and a robust gold-based ecosystem of cross-border blockchain solutions. Their latest product, the IMPulse K1 Smartphone, is the first phone using Voice Over Blockchain Protocol (VOPB). Currently, KaratGold allows consumers to trade or purchase gold on more than 500,000 acceptance points worldwide. With all of the recent talk about Bitcoin versus gold, this company provides the best of both worlds.
Backed by Matrix Partners, ZhenFund and Metropolis VC, BISS is a membership-based crypto exchange like Costco where members can enjoy exclusive offerings. The platform is also the world’s first crypto-to-security exchange where users can seamlessly exchange tokens for securities, minimizing the downside of crypto volatility. These kinds of innovative solutions have gained a lot of attention from mainstream financial investors and institutions. This early success has helped BISS gain 300,000 monthly users in just four months.
LiteLink is a publicly traded company developing enterprise platforms and digital wallets that use blockchain to solve problems in the logistics and payment industries. LiteLink’s flagship1SHIFT logistics platform offers real-time transparency and tracking, which allows brokers, shippers and carriers to track shipments and settle payments without breaking stride.uBUCK Pay is a multicurrency digital wallet with a U.S. dollar–backed stable token built on Waves blockchain that supports traditional fiat and digital currencies.
MetaHash is a self-sustained network for DApps and digital assets with a vision of creating a new internet. MetaHash also offers a set of tools for developers and solutions for enterprises. Its protocol, based on advanced data synchronization, supports over 50,000 transactions per second with three seconds of consensus time, thus solving the industry’s key speed issue. With hundreds of community-operated servers, MetaHash is rapidly nearing its goal of becoming the fastest fully decentralized blockchain.
Joresa Blount is the founder of GoFlyy, an author and creator of Brown Girls Innovate too which provides tools and connections for women in tech.
The Federal Reserve of Boston is starting a new blockchain experiment this summer.
The Massachusetts state regulator has been one of the earliest and most involved government bodies to dip their toe into the new technology. It has been quietly developing blockchain systems since 2016 but has said very little about their plans.
Now the first results of those trials are out and the Boston Fed published a white paper on its proof-of-concepts on ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. Now it’s getting ready for the next stage, Boston Fed’s vice president of IT Paul Brassil told CoinDesk.
The team is going to look into possible opportunities to set up a “supervisory node,” a regulatory surveillance tool that should be able to connect to various banking blockchains in the future. This node will watch the money flows and settlements between different banks, Boston Fed’s senior vice president Jim Cunha said.
“If you look at the future, there might be one blockchain that is holding securities, one that is holding derivatives, one is holding cash or interbank transfer — how do you as a supervisor watch the traffic on all these platforms that also will be on different technology?”
Cunha adds, that Boston Fed is not looking at these explorations from a policy standpoint and that is expects to work with the central Federal Reserve on these rules. But in the meantime monetary authorities have to keep apace with the technology development.
“We are surrounded by very large financial institutions and banks and we know that all of them are experimenting with the blockchain technology. So the more we can work with them and understand their roadmap, the more we know that we’re moving in a right direction,” Brassil said.
First, the Boston Fed plans to set the agenda and determine the main direction of this experiment and the work on this ideological part will start as early as this summer. Cunha said there are no plans yet for the publicly releasing the project.
“Right now there is very little research on it, so our next goal is to look into what an audit node look like,” Cunha said. “What kind of data we should have access to, how to interact, how to update nodes, can you create operational problems with it? What kind of coding you will need to do to store the information about the movement of funds, so you can do analysis of the flows. We are really starting from scratch.”
In the future, it could be possible that we will see multiple blockchains by various banking institutions, Brassil said, so the Fed’s supervisory node should have a technical capacity “broad enough to cover all the platforms.”
“Startup in the basement mentality”
Boston Fed started blockchain technology trials back in 2016 by experimenting with ethereum. At that time, there were no specialized blockchain developers on staff, so the team of coders educated themselves watching relevant videos on YouTube. Cunha and Brassil called it their “startup in the basement.”
During that period, developers tried to put depository institution balances under the Boston Fed supervision on a blockchain and create mock transactions — a kind of a blockchain-powered back office model. They conducted the testing first on the ethereum blockchain and then on Hyperledger Fabric. In the end, the latter was considered a more suitable option.
Why did they pick Fabric? first of all, a permissioned blockchain is preferable for a government entity. Among other challenges, the necessity to maintain a supply of ether to pay gas in transactions complicated the task and they were also worried about speed limitations.
“The time necessary to create a block was slower than could be tolerated in a production environment,” the white paper said.
Now, with the project of the blockchain back office on hold and the “supervisory node” experiment in the pipeline, Boston Fed is hiring some professionals to ramp up its blockchain testing, Cunha told CoinDesk.
“We are trying to add stuff to do something more robust internally, we need more dedicated resources,” he said. The new blockchain team will not be large, though, only “a handful” of people.
Boston Fed is also actively talking to other monetary authority bodies, though Cunha and Brassil won’t name the particular institutions. That said, they are excited to spread the word about the project.
“We have to share information because the whole industry needs to educate itself,” Cunha said.
Image of the Boston Fed office — courtesy of the Boston Fed.
New York-based blockchain company ConsenSys is reportedly seeking investors to raise $200 million, technology media outlet The Information reported on April 15.
According to sources familiar with the matter, ConsenSys is trying to attract outside investors to raise $200 million. The company’s executives reportedly talked to investors in Hong Kong and South Korea, however as of early April ConsenSys had purportedly not yet found a lead investor.
The Information cited fundraising documents, revealing that ConsenSys closed 2018 with just $21 million in revenue coming mostly from its enterprise consulting business. Per the documents, ConsenSys is planning its revenue to be more than $50 million in 2019, with around $40 million coming from its services business.
The documents reportedly reveal that ConsenSys has a considerable share in blockchain companies that it has incubated. ConsenSys has reportedly been seeking a valuation of at least $1 billion, which The Information reports is too high, given the company’s revenue and investors.
Last December, anonymous sources stated that ConsenSys could lay off up to 60 percent of its staff as the blockchain space had become more competitive and “crowded.” The company was reportedly spinning out startups it had previously backed, some of them without financial support.
Later in January, ConsenSys’ Executive Director of Enterprise and Social Impact Vanessa Grellet told Cointelegraph that the layoffs did not exceed 13% of staff. All teams at the firm were purportedly reevaluated including technical and non-technical staff.
When asked about signs of crisis in the blockchain industry and criticism of ConsenSys not being able to deliver on its promises, Grellet said that she still sees huge interest in blockchain technology.
The International Chamber of Commerce counts members from 130 countries among its ranks.Getty
From the embers of World War I emerged a new kind of organization, led by entrepreneurs, committed to ensuring the free flow of goods across the world’s war-ravaged borders.
The International Chamber of Commerce, whose mission is to streamline global business, is one of last vestiges of the League of Nations, founded in 1920 by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to peacefully settle international disputes. By 1923, following the League’s lead, the ICC had established international courts to arbitrate business disputes, and in the aftermath of WW II, it represented global business interests at the Bretton Woods conference, which established the current monetary order.
“If goods are able to move across borders without the need to be accompanied by troops,” says John Denton, the ICC’s current secretary general, “there is a higher probability of peace and prosperity.” The Paris-based group, which represents 45 million businesses in more than 130 countries and brands itself the world’s largest business organization, is now making its boldest play in a generation.
With global borders hardening once again, this time behind border walls, broken unions and looming trade wars, Denton signed an agreement with the Singapore-based blockchain startup Perlin Net Group to explore how the technology, made popular by bitcoin for its ability to move value without banks, could help the ICC continue its mission to facilitate the free flow of goods.
“We can trace back the ICC interventions that made a big impact on the global economy in the 20th century,” says Denton, who was a fellow at the Australian Institute of International Affairs before being appointed secretary general of the ICC last year. “We think this might be one which we can look back on in 100 years and say the ICC shifted blockchain in a way that enabled the private sector to function more effectively in a sustainable way and actually create more opportunities for people.”
According to the terms of the agreement, part of which was shown to Forbes, the ICC and Perlin will create a new group, the ICC Blockchain/DLT Alliance, a reference to distributed ledger technology similar to the blockchain that powers bitcoin. The companies are exploring how Perlin’s blockchain platform, which has yet to publicly launch, could be used to shine a light on obscure supply chains and simplify cross-border trade finance.
As part of the agreement, the ICC will help Perlin recruit members to its nascent blockchain alliance, specifically by making introductions to the organization’s massive member pool, which in addition to most national chambers of commerce includes direct membership from companies like Amazon, Coca Cola, Fedex, McDonalds and PayPal. Also, as part of the agreement, Perlin will join the ICC as an official technology partner, offering free access to its blockchain platform during the early stages of the project.
Denton shared his plans with the ICC Banking Commission at its annual event in Beijing earlier this week, and the agreement, which was signed on March 20, will be formally announced at an ICC event in Singapore later today.
Unlike some early blockchain consortia, the ICC Blockchain/DLT Alliance already had projects under way when it was announced. According to the agreement, the ICC and Perlin will share the results of their first blockchain proof of concept, a collaboration with the fabric giant Asia Pacific Rayon (APR), in May at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
For that project, called “Follow Our Fibre,” APR is logging data in the blockchain at every level of its supply chain, from the trees that are harvested to the chemical treatments that turn them into the silk-like rayon substance through to the massive spools that are later sold to clothing producers.
“Globally, there is a dynamic shift in the textiles and fashion sectors calling for a more traceable and transparent supply chain,” says Cherie Tan, vice president of communications and sustainability at APR. “Follow Our Fibre will enable us to leverage powerful blockchain functionality to drive greater efficiencies.”
Other proofs of concept in the works that stand to benefit from the ICC partnership include a project with Mfused, a cannabis processor in Washington State that is using Perlin’s tech to prove the origin of its plants by recording every level of its supply chain, from when they are planted to when the cannabis is inhaled, in a shared, distributed ledger; a project with an unnamed tuna processor in Latin America; and a developing project in Africa to trace the origin of cobalt, which has a long history of being mined by unethical supply chain participants.
Assuming enough supply chains are unified on the Perlin blockchain, businesses could log digital representations of the commodities, called tokens, on the platform. This will enable the counterparties to trade directly, with bills of lading required to move freight and letters of credit, which are typically handled by banks, all tracked directly on the shared ledger.
“An interesting economic model is we could effectively launch governance around this,” says Denton. “If we’re able to tokenize this we could insert ourselves as the trusted intermediary, and there would probably be an admin charge, but not much.” A 2018 report by the ICC, the World Bank and others found that 90% of the world’s trade finance was being provided by 13 banks, something Denton thinks is evidence of a need to decentralize.
Perlin’s blockchain, like ethereum’s, is being designed to let users track and move all kinds of value and write distributed applications (dapps) that don’t rely on centralized processors. Also like ethereum, Perlin will have a native cryptocurrency, called perls, which are expected to be minted over the coming three months or so, depending on regulatory considerations.
While supply chain management is increasingly seen as ripe for disruption by blockchain, models like Perlin’s, which rely on tokens, have had difficulty gaining traction as regulators clamp down on what is required of such tokens. By contrast, models using permissioned blockchains, such as what IBM is doing with a number of industry-specific consortia, and what R3 and Hyperledger are doing more generally, are seeing broader interest.
Perlin founder Dorjee Sun positions the nascent ICC network as similar to competing consortia but for small and medium-size businesses. “This is a massive democratization effort of DLT, because now any company of the 45 million ICC members can give the benefits of DLT a try,” says Sun. “Not just massive companies that can afford IBM’s services.”
I report on how blockchain and cryptocurrencies are being adopted by enterprises and the broader business community. My coverage includes the use of cryptocurrencies su
