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JD.Com Inc (NASDAQ: JD) Plans to Introduce Nonfungible Tokens (NFT) at JD Discovery Conference

By
Adam Barry
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0

JD.Com Inc (NASDAQ: JD) is entering the nonfungible tokens (NFT) market through the introductions of its own NFT series at its JD Discovery (NASDAQ: DISCA) 2021 annual conference. The company will hold the event in Beijing at the China International Exhibition Center in November 2022. The JD Discovery Conference will have panels on tech innovation and artificial intelligence

Users who sign up for the event will be issued a token

JD.com will use its blockchain platform to give commemorative NFT certificates to people who will attend the conference. In addition, it will issue one free NFT to people who sign up for the event between October 18 and November 22 through WeChat mini program on the conference’s website. No NFTs will be issued after November 22. Users will, however, be allowed to trade tokens among themselves.

The JD NFT series includes seven NFT models with an image to represent different forums in the conference. These forums include smart cities, finance, health, logistics, tech, and retail.

People who sign up for the event can get more NFTs by inviting others to sign up. One NFT venture will be issued to users after every successful invite until they collect the seven NFT models.

The company’s NFTs will be minted and issued on the JD blockchain. The company has also created a platform that will enable users to verify, trace, circulate and store NFT collections.

Other major companies in China have launched NFTs

Other Chinese companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE: BABA) and Tencent Holdings ADR (OTCMKTS: TCEHY) have also launched their NFT projects. Alibaba’s launch of an NFT project came in August. Alibaba’s NFT marketplace enables people or companies with trademarks to sell their intellectual property tokenized licenses. Tencent’s NFT platform, Huanhe, is built on its Zhixin chain.

The JD conference has become an important technology event after its launch in 2017. The company uses it to discuss supply chain innovation, the digital finance industry, and smart cities.

JD.com is a retail infrastructure service provider and e-commerce company in China, where it conducts most of its business operations. It operates in two segments, that is, New Business and JD Retail. The company offers online marketing and display advertising services to third-party merchants, suppliers, among others. It also provides online-to-offline solutions and consumer financing services to its customers.

Constellation Network Completes Acquisition of SaaS Startup, Dor,

By
Adam Barry
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0

Distributed Infrastructure company that connects blockchain and big data, Constellation Network, has acquired Dor, a SaaS business startup. Dor is a firm that uses data analytics to help organizations grow. As a result, Dor gives consumer results that could assist brands to have a better understanding of shop foot traffic.

Acquisition to position Constellation to organize foot traffic data 

The acquisition, according to Constellation, will position the network to organize Dor’s massive foot traffic data and connect it to other significant consumer datasets. As a result, Constellation will be able to understand better the purchasing habits of several customers using this information while maintaining their privacy. As a result, by merging Constellation’s current mobile node infrastructure with Dor’s hardware, the network is poised to become the blockchain’s largest mesh network.

Constellation CEO Ben Jorgensen said, “Acquiring a data-driven hardware and software company will help us increase Constellation’s network utility. With its cutting edge technology, Dor is providing critical data that is enabling thousands of retail stores in the US and Canada to improve the customer experience, and ultimately to grow their businesses.”

Jorgensen added, “With this acquisition and the data we can obtain with Dor’s battery-operated and cellular-powered thermal sensors, we can put millions of monthly data points into our network. This acquisition kickstarts our vision and ambition to merge crypto businesses with traditional businesses.”

Dor offer retailers data that help in performance optimization 

Dor CEO Michael Brand said, “Dor has tens of millions of data points per month. The data that Dor provides allows retailers to make changes to better optimize their stores’ performance. In a world where stores use an endless amount of experiments and tactics to increase sales, there is no way to pinpoint which methods work unless you have the data that can back it up. Constellation will help us streamline that data in addition to exploring new possibilities in the world of cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology.”

Ripple and Nelnet Inc. (NYSE: NNI) Announce $44 Million Joint Venture to Construct Sustainable Solar Energy Installations

By
Adam Barry
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0

Ripple, a blockchain payments company, and Nelnet Inc. (NYSE: NNI) Renewable Energy have announced a $44 million environmental, social, and governance (ESG) joint venture to support the development of environmentally friendly solar energy programs across the US.

New fund to offset around 1.5 million CO2 tons

According to the release, the new fund will offset approximately 1.5 million tons of CO2 over the next 35 years, which is comparable to the annual energy use of 180,635 residences.

The S&P Global Ratings evaluation board awarded Nelnet Inc. and E1 ESG accreditation in March 2021 for the former’s $9.9 million solar tax equity fund. The initiative involves providing financial support for the construction of four photovoltaic solar installations in Upstate New York.

The project was graded on three environmental priorities: governance, transparency, and mitigation, and received scores of 86, 88, and 80, respectively, out of a possible 100.

Ken Weber, Ripple’s head of social impact, talked about the environmental precedent that the partnership with Nelnet could set for the rest of the market.

Weber said, “We’re excited to work with Nelnet as we pursue our commitment to reduce the carbon footprint of financial services globally and to deliver on the promise of a carbon-negative cryptocurrency industry.”

Ripple plans to be net-zero by 2030

Weber told Cointelegraph in October 2020 that Ripple is environmentally concerned about purchasing carbon offsets and adopting sustainable products and services, as well as investing in carbon-removal technology. At the same time, the corporation announced it aims to achieve net-zero carbon status by 2030.

To gather more insight regarding environmental sustainability measures’ significance in the industry, Cointelegraph had a sit down with VeChain’s Chief Scientist Peter Zhou. Zhou said, “In pursuit of our goal to cultivate a healthier planet through green technologies, we intend to prove that a blockchain platform can support green business and be a truly sustainable infrastructure for companies to build their smart contract solutions from.”

Morningstar Ventures Announces $15 Million Investment in Elrond Blockchain technology and Elrond Incubator in UAE

By
Adam Barry
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0

Morningstar Ventures, a dynamic blockchain concepts accelerator, has announced a $15 million investment fund for enterprises based on Elrond blockchain tech and a strategic Elrond Incubator in Dubai.

Morningstar Ventures promotes the spread of decentralized tech

The company is a blockchain innovation firm that promotes the spread of decentralized technology by making strategic investments in startups that it funds, advises, and helps establish an ecosystem for.

Morningstar Ventures Chief Investment Officer and co-founder Danilo Carlucci said, “Elrond’s rapidly evolving internet-scale blockchain technology is perhaps the most advanced in the space, which creates an asymmetric opportunity for Elrond to rapidly catch up with – and perhaps even surpass – the biggest blockchain ecosystems. We’re thrilled to take this opportunity and build alongside the hardest working team and most engaged community.”

Elrond Network is an internet-scale blockchain that can process 15,000 transactions per second and scale to 100,000 TPS. The network achieves this through its breakthrough Adaptive State Sharding tech, which allows scaling with demand by adding necessary shards.

Elrond Network offers decentralized blockchain infrastructure 

Most importantly, this smart contract execution system is carbon-negative, as it offsets 25% more CO2 than its global network of 3,200 Validators. As a result, the Elrond Network offers sustainable decentralized, high-performance blockchain infrastructure for DeFi, IoT, NFTs, and the latest internet economy.  The focus of Morningstar Venture’s Elrond Dubai incubator will focus on strategic opportunities across the Middle East and North African region.

Elrond Network CEO Beniamin Mincu said, “The explosive growth of the Elrond ecosystem happened with an unstoppable team building internet-scale technology and an amazing community supporting them. Now, major players such as Morningstar Ventures are making significant long term commitments aimed at the rapid adoption of our tech. This signals the start of the next explosive growth phase for the Elrond ecosystem, where driven builders will leverage powerful devkits to innovate at the forefront of the blockchain Supercycle.”

Indian Crypto Exchange ZebPay Announces Support For Meme Crypto, Shiba Inu

By
Adam Barry
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0

ZebPay, India’s oldest crypto exchange with almost 4 million users, revealed Wednesday that it now supports Shiba Inu, a meme cryptocurrency.

Shiba Inu supported by various crypto exchanges 

Last week, the Dogecoin competitor began trading on Bitpanda, an Austrian finance platform backed by PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) co-founder Peter Thiel’s investment firm. Before that, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) Pro made the Shiba Inu-inspired coin available for trading.

Binance, which introduced SHIB in May, continues to be the most active market for the meme crypto, accounting for over 27% of trade volume.

ZebPay CEO Raul Pagidipati told The Economic Times in March that the Indian cryptocurrency sector has a lot of room for future expansion because of its large investor base.

Pagidipati, who has been investing in the crypto sector for over a decade, said, “India holds less than 1% of the world’s cryptocurrencies and its potential investor base is 100 million.”

Although the cryptocurrencies’ future in India is murky due to regulatory uncertainty, the exchange expects to double its monthly transactions following a demand surge. The platform, which boasts around 4 million users, expects to process about $2 billion in transactions per month, according to Pagidipati. The CEO said that although this is almost a third of what the US’s top exchange, Coinbase, processes, there is a massive untapped market in the country.

Regulatory uncertainty surrounding crypto in India

Pagidipati is optimistic that India will not ban digital assets considering there is a high demand for cryptocurrencies. According to a Morning Consult survey, around 86% of Indians are betting on the potential of cryptos despite the hawkish attitude from the government towards these new assets classes.

Cryptocurrency’s future in the country is uncertain following the government and central bank’s expression of concerned fuelling speculation regarding a ban on private coins coming into force. However, despite the potential regulatory changes raising concerns and risks, these are likely to wan with clearer regulations.

Voyager Receives Approval For its Crypto Trading Platform From French Regulators

By
Adam Barry
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0

The French regulatory bodies Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution and Autorité des marchés financiers have granted Voyager Digital official licensing approval. The license is for facilitating a crypto trading platform of 60 virtual assets in the French and EU markets through its subsidiary LGO Europe SAS.

Voyager to launch a trading app in 2H 2022

Voyager Digital is a US-based, Canadian-listed business operating under ticker  VYGR.V. The company is said to be the first corporation outside of Europe to be granted this type of “Fit and Proper” clearance status.

In line with the news, Voyager has been working on its mobile trading app, which is set to launch in a limited number of European nations in the second half of 2022.

The company’s Chief International Officer Lewis Bateman noted, “We have a long waiting list of European customers who are looking forward to the launch of our app. The crypto economy is global and we are excited about the prospect of servicing these customers and delivering the Voyager quality access to a broader customer segment.”

Voyager entered an agreement with Coinify 

At the beginning of August, Voyager signed an agreement with cryptocurrency payments company Coinify for an estimated $85 million to enhance its financial services to include worldwide cross-border payments.  The company said it plans to issue 5.1 million shares of its common stock worth $70 million and provide a cash payment to Coinfy investors of $15 million. Voyager stated that it would retain cash of around $5.5 million from Coinfy’s balance sheet.

CEO and co-founder said, “As the adoption of cryptocurrency payments gains momentum, the acquisition of Coinify brings a global payment infrastructure to Voyager’s digital asset ecosystem.”

The Voyager Token (VGX) price has grown moderately — 13.22%  in the previous seven days to $2.57 — after a gradual decrease over the last month following a bullish spike to $6.50 in mid-August, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView’s analytical data.

Easy Crypto A Start-up in New Zealand Collects $11.75 Million Funds in a Series A Round of Funding

By
Adam Barry
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0

Easy Crypto, the start-up crypto firm from New Zealand, is in the news. The group has raised a sum of $11.75 million funds in a Series A round of funding. According to sources, this could be the most significant amount raised by a native start-up firm.

The firm is targeting to float an initial public offering (IPO)

After being successful in its attempt to raise funds, the firm is now aiming for an initial public offering (IPO). If all works well with the group, an IPO will be floated in the future.

Information about the funding collected

The firm on Wednesday, in an official statement, announced that more the $11 million were collected through the round of funding. Easy Crypto believes that the firm has set a new record of sorts, becoming the debut local start-up in the nation to raise over $11 in Series A round of funding.

The funding round was oversubscribed by 50%

The recent round of funding was oversubscribed by 50%. Local groups and international companies participated in the financing round. Participants included KiwiSaver provider, Pathfinder, Icehouse Ventures, Even Capital, GDP Venture, based out of Indonesia, Hutt Capital from the U.S., and Seven Peaks Ventures also from the U.S.

The recent round of funding is an essential milestone for the firm

After the exercise was completed, the co-founder and CEO of Easy Crypto, Janine Grainger, went on record and stated that the recent funding round is an important milestone for the group. A nostalgic Grainger recalled the firm’s difficulty in raising money in the initial stages.

Funds will be used for the growth of the firm

The funds will be put to best use where they can generate the stipulated return on investment. The firm will use the funds to move from one stage of growth to another. Furthermore, the money will be invested in technology and talent. It will also be used to expand the group’s footprint in the Asian markets of Indonesia and the Philippines.

Easy Crypto is the brainchild of siblings Janine and Alan Grainger. The group was founded in 2017 and had more than one hundred thousand customers located in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil.

Chainalysis Takes Over Excygent to Combat Ransomware Attacks

By
Adam Barry
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0

Chainalysis has acquired Excygent, the cybercrime investigative group. The cost of the acquisition deal is unknown. The two groups will work together to combat ransomware attacks.

Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager comments on the accusation

The CEO of Chainalysis group, Michael Gronager, recently went on record and stated that the group had partnered with Excygent to deal with the confiscating of cryptocurrency-related to one of the darknet Silk Road markets which is currently non-functional. In addition, the two groups had partnered in making sure that a leading website that encourages child abuse is brought down. Furthermore, the two firms have in coloration punctured campaigns that have funded various activities of terrorism and initiatives of terrorists. Again, Gronager confirmed that the team of experts from Excygent would work in partnership with the Special Programs team at Chainalysis. The new unit will determine, understand and bring to light how cryptocurrency is used in various cybercrimes.

Breaking the modus operandi of ransomware is the need of the hour

A series of ransomware payments from the blockchain platform has made it paramount to determine the modus operandi of ransomware, which is the brainchild of cybercriminals. Therefore, it has become more critical for law enforcement officials and agencies to understand and break the chain of ransomware. The initiative must be taken on priority as it is the need of the hour.

For those who do not know what ransomware is, its software developed to block access to a computer system. If the user or the owner wishes to gain access to the computer(s), the individual or the group responsible for spreading the ransomware demands money. The victim gains access to the computer(s) after the stipulated money is paid.

Chainalysis has experience in the investigation of ransomware-related cybercrimes

It is learned that the team of experts at Chainalysis is armed with the ability to investigate ransomware-related cybercrimes. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, the team at Chainalysis was successful in cracking a case involving a ransomware operator named NetWalker. When the dependency on hospitals and medical centers was high, the cybercrime operator, in the form of ransom, collected funds to the tune of more than $25 million in 2020.

U.S. Lawmaker Has Proposed Introducing Amendments in the Securities Act of 1933 to Create A Safe Harbor For Teams Who Develop Digital Tokens

By
Adam Barry
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0

The latest news that is doing the rounds is a strong representation from people who demand a safe harbor for teams developing digital tokens.

An individual from the North Carolina House Representative is spearheading the movement

A man named Patrick McHenry from the North Carolina House Representative is believed to have spearheaded the movement. McHenry has proposed a bill through which a request to amend one particular law is made. The respective law is about United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which provides a safe harbor to selected token projects.

McHenry has suggested that the Securities Act of 1933 must be amended 

It is understood that the House Committee on Financial Services submitted a draft of the “Clarity for Digital Tokens Act of 2021. In the proposed draft, McHenry has suggested that the Securities Act of 1933 is amended. According to him, amending the respective action will automatically pave the way for establishing a safe harbor for token development teams. Furthermore, he suggested that projects must be allowed to offer tokens without registering for up to three years. McHenry also stated that the respective period would give teams the time and opportunity to use their talents, skills, and abilities to design and develop a decentralized network.

McHenry’s bill draws inspiration from Hester Peirce

Sources in the industry who have a close eye on developments will agree that McHenry’s bill, in some way or the other, draws inspiration from Hester Peirce. The importance of creating a safe harbor for projects which collect money to construct decentralized networks was first highlighted by Peirce in 2019. Back then, Peirce made recommendations like sanctioning the network developers, time in the form of a grace period that will help them to build a decentralized network. The suggested grace period was three years. It was also proposed that network developers work in the stipulated grace period without any threats of legal consequences from the SEC.

Peirce commented on the development in February

Back in February this year, Peirce broke his silence on the development. He stated that if what is proposed is accepted, it could be one of the most path-breaking developments in the history of the U.S. cryptocurrency market.

Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC) Names 20 U.S. Companies Who Have High Exposure to Digital Assets and Cryptos

By
Adam Barry
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0

Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC) has prepared a list of U.S. companies that have high exposure to crypto and digital assets. The bank has gone one step ahead and has rated the individual company stock as either buy or neutral. The ratings are issued by the bank depending on a yardstick.

Here’s a list of companies who, according to the bank, have some level of exposure to crypto and digital assets

Bank of America Corp has carefully created its list of companies. According to the bank, companies like Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS), Fox Corp Class A (NASDAQ: FOXA), and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) are the few companies who have made it to the list. The three companies are publicly listed traded companies in the U.S.

Furthermore, according to data provided by the Bank of America Corp, they have to their credit some level of exposure to crypto and digital assets. However, the list does not stop with just the three mentioned companies.

Other companies with exposure to digital assets have made it to the list 

In a recent Bank of America Corp report, other companies also have their share of exposure to digital assets. The companies are Morgan Stanley (NYSE: M.S.), Signature Bank (NASDAQ: SBNY), and Warner Music Group Corp (NASDAQ: WMG). The bank made its report official.

Bank of America Corp has rated the 20 companies in its report

In terms of assets under its management, it has also rated the stocks of the 20-odd companies that it identified. The respective shares of the firms are either given a buy or a neutral rating by the bank in its report. Furthermore, the groups have been split depending on their growth in market value and engagement with digital assets.

Bank of America Corp is bullish on cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance, and the likes

The Bank of America Corp is vocal in its take on the digital finance sector. A document published by the bank not so long ago expressed a bullish stand on cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized finance (DeFi). The bank said that the digital asset sector should not be given the back seat as decentralized technology could be the future.

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