Citi Launches Blockchain- Based Payments Service with Nasdaq for Private Equity

Citi Launches Blockchain-
Based Payments Service with Nasdaq for Private Equity

    

A major U.S. bank and financial exchange have married two blockchain-based systems

to enable clients who are raising funds or swapping private shares through Nasdaq to take advantage of payment services provided by Citi. The Citi-Nasdaq partnership is one of the first examples of an enterprise blockchain system to enter production. Citi says the project went live on Monday in an announcement at the annual Consensus conference in New York City. Over the past year, many banks and financial institutions have completed proofs of concept for projects that rely on blockchain or distributed ledger technology. But so far, few of those projects have graduated into functioning systems.

Nasdaq launched a blockchain-based platform called Linq in 2015 designed for private equity, but the system lacks the ability to process payments—it is mainly used to record ownership of shares. Investors or issuers had to leave the system and initiate a wire transfer to pay for shares once they were traded on Linq. With Monday’s announcement, Nasdaq integrated Linq with Citi’s WorldLink Payment Services through a new offering that Citi c CitiConnect for Blockchain. The offering allows Nasdaq to transfer a payment request from Linq to Citi as soon as a share is bought or sold. The bank then automatically processes that request through WorldLink, which Citi clients primarily use to make payments that require foreign currency exchange.

To make the integration work, Citi and Nasdaq developers had to create several new features, including a way for Linq to automatically retrieve an exchange rate request from Citi in a customer’s local currency, share that rate with the customer, allow the customer to accept the rate, and share the customer’s wiring instructions with Citi. (Individual investors need not hold a Citi bank account in order to participate.)

At first, the Citi-Nasdaq collaboration will focus on structured liquidity programs. The popularity of these programs has grown in step with a broader trend: Increasingly, U.S. companies are staying private for longer. As a result, early investors and employees who hold equity in a company must also wait longer to access the cash that their shares represent. Structured liquidity programs allow a group of early investors or employees to sell their shares for cash to new investors long before the company goes public.

Within Linq, a record of those shares will be preserved on a distributed ledger to which only the parties involved in the trade have access. Similarly, through CitiConnect for Blockchain, a record of payment is also added to the same ledger as soon as it is processed. On both sides of the system, this creates a “golden record” of the transaction and payment that either party can refer back to in case of disputes. The Citi and Nasdaq systems are built on a unified code base called Chain Core provided by Chain, a company that specializes in applying blockchain technology to financial services. Chain Core includes application program interfaces and software development kits to allow customers to adapt it for their own purposes. Nasdaq and Citi Venture have both invested in Chain.

“Nasdaq Linq, which we built on top of Chain Core, is completely different from the CitiConnect for Blockchain product,” says Adam Ludwig, CEO of Chain. “Both connect to a Chain Core underneath, those Chain Cores talk to each other on a shared ledger, they form a network, but they have their own separate IP.”  Chain, Citi, and Nasdaq began working on the project in April of 2016. Private equity has become a popular focus area for those interested in finance and blockchain technology because it has a low volume of trades. Fund managers and entrepreneurs may spend weeks or months completing a single deal.

Some blockchains have shown a limited ability to scale, which raises concerns about the technology’s ability to handle much larger volumes of transactions within seconds. To stress test Chain’s technology, Nasdaq required the company to run an entire day’s worth of trades from the public exchange through their system—which Ludwin says consists of more transactions than the Bitcoin blockchain handles in a year. “Nasdaq knew there’s no way you bring this type of infrastructure to run the public equities business first,” Ludwin says. “You don’t start there. You start in an area where you have more control over the end-to-end process.”

For decades, Nasdaq has provided a central clearinghouse for investors to trade shares of public companies through the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Nasdaq’s Private Market, launched just four years ago, was Nasdaq’s attempt to allow private funds and companies to exchange options and shares with investors and employees. With its 2015 debut, Linq provided private parties operating in Nasdaq’s Private Market with the ability to issue or receive a digital record of ownership linked to a blockchain. For a private company, these digital records could theoretically replace paper stock certificates. With the new payment service integration, a company or fund manager could potentially raise a round of investments entirely through Linq.

Since its launch, it’s not clear how many of Nasdaq’s clients have opted to use Linq. Neither Nasdaq nor Citi were willing to share projections for the volume of trades they expect to pass from Nasdaq to CitiConnect for Blockchain in the project’s first year. At the height of activity, there could be hundreds to thousands of transactions flowing through Linq, according to someone familiar with the platform who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly. Nelson Griggs of Nasdaq said during the announcement on Monday at Consensus that a small transaction on the broader Nasdaq Private Market would hold a value of $50 million, and a large one would consist of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin Blockchain Copyright Startup Blockai Raises $950,000 amid Rebrand

Bitcoin Blockchain Copyright Startup Blockai Raises $950,000 amid Rebrand

  

Bitcoin blockchain to allow artists to protect their creative work,

Blockai, a San Francisco, Calif.-based technology company, has developed a copyright service that uses the Bitcoin blockchain to allow artists to protect their creative work, has rebranded itself as “Binded” and has shifted its focus from technology to creating legally binding records.Get exclusive analysis of Bitcoin and learn from our trading tutorials. Join Hacked.com for just $39 now. The company has also raised an additional $950,000, according to Techcrunch. The company wants to make it easier for content creators to protect their intellectual property by building a permanent copyright on a blockchain. The company believes the new name will have broader market appeal.

Why The Need?

While the Internet has unleashed a wealth of opportunities for creative work, protecting content has posed a big challenge, especially for independent producers of digital art, literature and even computer software. Nathan Lands, the company CEO, told CCN in July he planned to develop artificial intelligence to create unique fingerprints for all copyrighted works to protect copyrights and make sure artists get paid. He compared it to Youtube’s Content ID system for the entire Internet.

Funding Now Totals $1.5 Million

The new $950,000 in funding raises Binded’s funding to $1.5 million. The new investors include Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper; Mistletoe, which is led by Taizo Son, the founder of GungHo, a gaming company; M&Y Growth Partners; Tokyo Founders Fund; Vectr Ventures; and Social Starts. Lands said bringing on Japanese investors will help make the copyright the global standard. Such a standard is needed given the fact that in the U.S., to file a copyright infringement lawsuit it is necessary to register a new copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Lands see Binded’s platform as an intermediate step, one that is less costly and time-consuming than registration, it creates an independent record that should carry legal weight. Lands said the intention is to democratize copyright. He said the Binded product will always be free. In time, more services will be added that the company could charge for, such as registering with the Copyright Office.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain Moves Ahead With Nasdaq-Citi Platform, Hyperledger and Ethereum Growth

Blockchain Moves Ahead With Nasdaq-Citi Platform,
Hyperledger and Ethereum Growth

  

Investors in private company securities on Nasdaq

can use Citi’s cross-border payments facility and blockchain to buy, sell and settle transactions. Nasdaq and City Treasury and Trade Solutions announced today they have developed a new integrated payment solution that enables stray straight-throughout processing and automates reconciliation by using a distributed ledger to record and transmit payment instructions. They have run a  number of transactions through the CitiConnect for Blockchain connectivity platform and the Linq Platform powered by the Nasdaq Financial Framework, the companies said in their announcement.

Nasdaq has been early in experimenting with blockchain for private securities which don’t trade on an exchange but can generate significant paperwork as they are bought and sold. At the Futures Industry Association (FIA) conference in Chicago in November 2015, Fredrik Voss, vice president for blockchain innovation at Nasdaq, said shares in private equity deals are deployed in paper certificates and transferring them is very time-consuming.  At the time he said Nasdaq was in a pilot with five clients.

This integration can allow businesses such as Nasdaq Private Market to address the challenges of liquidity in private securities by streamlining payment transactions between multiple parties, their announcement said. Key benefits include a seamless end-to-end transactional process for private company securities and direct access to global payments from Nasdaq’s Linq platform using CitiConnect for Blockchain and WorldLink Payment Services, Citi’s cross-border, multicurrency payments service. The service, which uses Chain’s blockchain infrastructure platform, will provide increased operational efficiency and ease of reconciliation with real-time visibility of payment transactional activity on the blockchain ledger, the announcement added.

"This new payment capability marks a milestone in the global financial sector and represents an important moment in the commercial application of blockchain technology," said Adena Friedman, CEO at Nasdaq. "Through this effective integration of blockchain technology and global financial systems, we can realize greater operational transparency and ease of reconciliation, which can have profound implications for outdated administrative functions in the capital markets.

In another blockchain development today, Hyperledger, an open source organization to promote distributed ledger technology sponsored by the Linux Foundation, announced significant new members including Alphapoint, CITIC, EY and Schroder Investment Management Limited. Hyperledger now has 142 members, a 373 percent increase since the project was announced with 30 members in February of 2016. he Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which has more than tripled in size, today announced several new financial services members including Broadridge, DTCC and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees licensed businesses in the state.

Ethereum is a blockchain-based, general purpose, decentralized application platform, enabling smart contract functionality, the DTCC said in its announcement. The technology is expected to improve banking trade settlement latency, increase transparency in supply chains and create peer-to-peer markets where intermediaries typically were previously needed between counterparties. Ethereum has a heavy representation of financial services firms — the founding members of the EEA rotating board include Accenture, Banco Santander, BlockApps, BNY Mellon, CME Group, ConsenSys, IC3, Intel, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, and Nuco. Founding members include BBVA, ING, Credit Suisse, Thomson Reuters and UBS among others.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

  •  

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain Entrepreneurs Target Apple and Google at Token Summit

   

Conference focused on new use cases for cryptographic assets

An inaugural conference focused on new use cases for cryptographic assets showcased today how blockchain-based applications that serve actual needs may be on the horizon. But not everyone at Token Summit agreed on the market's direction. As panel after panel of entrepreneurs took the stage in New York, some in the audience remained skeptical – while even the panelists themselves expressed a note of caution. To kick off the event, hosted at the NYU Stern School of Business, one of the earliest innovators in the crypto space, Erik Voorhees – who sold his first bitcoin company, Satoshi Dice, in 2013 – revealed more details about digital currency exchange ShapeShift's new product, Prism. Addressing the critics who say the cryptocurrency boom is little more than speculation, Voorhees positioned the work as part of the foundation for the next Facebook and Google.

Voorhees said:

"The real use cases will come in the future, but if this technology is going to make an impact, there should be speculation today."

Following Voorhees' addressed a number of panels continued with the theme of building real-world applications based on blockchain technology.

To build a real blockchain app

Speaking at the event, Brian Armstrong, co-founder of Coinbase, doubled-down on a years-old theory: that the developing economy would be the first to adopt these distributed applications. His comments came after Coinbase demoed an ethereum-based messaging app, dubbed Token, at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2017 event earlier this week. It's a messaging app built with cryptocurrency tech under the hood – but perhaps more importantly, it also includes an interface that Armstrong described as the "equivalent of HTML", but for ethereum rather than the Web. According to Armstrong, the developing world – and its estimated 2.5 billion underbanked individuals – is the primary target market for the app.

"The main value of cryptocurrencies is bringing financial services to the developing world," said Armstrong. “That’s what we’re going to do with Token." Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Blockstack, which launched its decentralized browser this week, said his startup was seeking a similar goal: facilitating the development of new kinds of apps. To help get there, Ali announced that his company had offered a bounty to anyone who could find a bug between his application and decentralized storage providers IPFS, Sia and Storj. Storj founder Shawn Wilkinson downplayed the potential competition between the projects, instead positioning their work from an enemy-of-my-enemy perspective. "We're all ideologically aligned to crush Amazon and other centralized services," said Wilkinson.

Slow progress

If the event showcased one thing, it's that there's little doubt that the road ahead with be characterized by slow and likely difficult progress. Bitcoin-powered browser Brave has had a service live for months, and in six days will launch its initial coin offering for the Basic Attention Token (BAT). Brave advisor Ankur Nandwani took the stage to explain how the browser startup, which has already raised $4.5m in venture capital, will leverage the token in an attempt to change user behavior. Out of 1.5bn tokens that will be minted, 300m will be set aside in a "development pool" to incentivize content publishers and users alike to download the app, which blocks third-party advertisements.

"Once you have users on the platform, advertisers will come," said Nandwani. Another possible explanation, though, for the slow growth of the technology and adoption came from an audience member and blockchain consultant Tone Vays, an outspoken critic of many decentralized applications. Speaking to CoinDesk during a pause in activity on the stage,

Vays said:

"It's not about the application. None of these applications need decentralization. They are just using the hype of bitcoin’s technology to blow their valuations out of proportion."

Blockchain honeymoon

Indeed, Maker software engineer Andy Milenius cautioned the crowd of investors, entrepreneurs, and students about the potentially painful process that young crypto-investors will likely go through on their way to learning how to properly conduct due diligence on their investments. "They're going to learn, probably the hard way, what makes a good idea worth investing in," said Milenius. Citing the vast separation between what companies like Apple and Dropbox can provide and what their decentralized counterparts can offer, Blockstack founder Muneeb Ali went even a step further, predicting a period of large-scale failures by ICO-backed companies before any kind of decentralized Web becomes a reality.

Ali concluded:

"Right now, we are in the honeymoon phase."

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain Crucial Tool In Solving Global Financial Deficiency

Blockchain Crucial Tool In Solving Global Financial Deficiency

  

Solutions propagated since the advent of the Blockchain

Among the frontline solutions propagated since the advent of the Blockchain is the development of global financial infrastructure that will reach the unbanked and underbanked populations of the world.

Empowerment

More than two bln people around the world do not have access to basic financial services as a result of the absence of infrastructure. The consequence of this is that they are deprived of efficient methods of transferring value and affordable credit. According to Alexi Lane, CEO, and co-founder of Everex: “Affordable credit is a key element of entrepreneurship and economic empowerment.” The solution offered by Blockchain technology in the financial sector appears to be one of the most crucial promises that the global economy has been presented with in a long time.

Since the creation of Bitcoin and the other Blockchain platforms that followed, the hope of reaching the so far unreached population has been given a boost. The P2P technology offered by Blockchain has by far eliminated the cost and logistics of building physical infrastructure before reaching the ends of the earth. Also, intangible elements such as trust and data immutability, among others, are no longer issues of utmost concern. Therefore, the world is presented with an opportunity to indeed achieve global financial empowerment.

Fuel of expansion

The participation of corporations in delivering infrastructure to the far corners of the globe is evident in the level of growth of major Blockchain platforms. After Bitcoin, the most adopted Blockchain platform, as evident in their market capitalization, is Ethereum. As an example, a Blockchain company specialized in developing Ethereum applications, Everex, recently announced that it’s going to reach two bln unbanked and underbanked individuals by allowing them to access affordable instant micro-credit and global fiat transaction services from mobile devices.

Ethereum’s rise

Such developments among many others have seen the Ethereum value to rise by over $150 in less than two months. Founder at Expanse.tech, Christopher Franko, describes Blockchain as the single most important technology for the unbanked or underbanked.

Franko explains:

“In America alone, there are roughly 10 mln people that fall into this category and according to the Global Index, that number reaches higher than two bln. That’s over two bln people that don’t have basic access to the infrastructure needed to be an active participant in the global economy. Blockchain technology should focus heavily on this segment of people and offer low-to-no cost solutions.”

According to Franko, he and his team are focusing on that very thing as well as other empowering software for things like governance and identity management. He also notes that as the world becomes more interconnected, its need for borderless identity and financial and governance infrastructure increases.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin Should Figure in Your Investment Porfolio

Bitcoin Should Figure in Your Investment Porfolio

Bitcoin Should Figure in Your Investment Porfolio

 

Boris Schlossberg of BK Asset Management has joined the cadre of investment advisors who see bitcoin as a way for investors to hedge their bets against market uncertainty. Schlossberg, according to CNBC, sees bitcoin as an addition to an investment portfolio in the wake of political uncertainty.

CNBC’s “Trading Nation” explored ways for investors to hedge against growing political uncertainty following Wednesday’s big equities selloff. Stocks traded slightly higher on Thursday following the market’s biggest sell day of the year.

Investors are also being advised to look to international markets.

Bitcoin The New Gold

Schlossberg sees parallels between bitcoin and gold, and he noted that bitcoin is being called the “new gold,” due to its ability to retain value over time.

He noted that bitcoin is holding steady following its 92% rally this year. Speaking Wednesday on “Trading Nation,” Schlossberg said the cryptocurrency is holding at steady highs, and that when there is a big move for any type of instrument, there is usually some continuation.

Bitcoin is clearly signaling more demand, Schlossberg observed. He favors it as a hedge play moving forward.

Advisors Bullish On Bitcoin

Schlossberg is one of several investment advisors and investors who is bullish on bitcoin.

Thom Lachenmann and Parke Shall, advisors at Orange Peel Investments, have invested in bitcoin and suggest investors take a small position in the asset for the long term.

Billionaire investor Mike Novogratz has said that he is holding ten percent of his net worth in digital currencies such as bitcoin and Ether.

Charlie Morris, the investment director of the Fleet Street Letter, noted following last year’s bitcoin halving that he is buying the cryptocurrency because he sees it as a cheap stock with an opportunity to grow in value.

Needham & Co. LLC, a New York City-based investment firm, has been covering the Bitcoin Investment Trust, and last year gave it a “buy” rating. The investment company believes the price of the cryptocurrency stands to benefit substantially from rising demand for its two main use cases: as an alternative payments channel and as a “digital gold.” The growing demand is driven by market trends such as expanding ecommerce, globalization, and by the pervasiveness of enabling technology like mobile phones.

Many attribute bitcoin’s recent gains as a sign of its improved acceptance as a currency, despite the recent rejection by the Securities and Exchange Commission of a proposed bitcoin exchange traded fund.

Charlie Morris, the investment director of the Fleet Street Letter, is buying bitcoin. He sees it as a cheap stock with an opportunity to grow in value because of the halving. Morris gave his reasons for being bullish on bitcoin in a column in the Fleet Street Letter, a MoneyWeek Research Publication in London, U.K.

Morris compares the bitcoin halving to gold miners or oil producers cutting their production in half. He asks his readers if they would be more bullish on gold and oil if gold and oil supplies were cut in half. “That’s exactly what’s about to happen to bitcoin, the digital currency,” he noted.

Bitcoin: Limited Supply

Morris wrote that 25 bitcoins are now created every 10 minutes. On July 11, this number drops to 12.5. Four years later, it halves again.

There are currently 15.5 million bitcoins at present and the halving process, which is written into the the cryptocurrency’s software’s code, restricts the supply of bitcoins to 21 million. The supply is expected to reach this limit in about a century.

Scarcity is a feature of bitcoin’s design. It is a feature that distinguishes the cryptocurrency from fiat currency, which can be produced in unlimited amounts.

A Social Media Stock?

While many people buy bitcoin for speculation, their bets will only prove advantageous if other people buy it for its utility. Hence, bitcoin can be viewed as a social media stock in that the more people use it, the greater its value.

Morris described bitcoin as a digital asset that can move across the Internet. It differs from a traditional database in some important ways. With a traditional database, the user goes into the database, opens a file, changes the data and closes the file. Both the seller and the buyer have to do this, along with intermediaries. Because of all the parties involved, there is room for error in settlement.

With a blockchain, the transaction gets recorded onto a new layer of data called a block. That block never changes. A new block comes into existence every 10 minutes. The data stores in a chain of blocks known as a “blockchain.”

Bitcoin, contrary to what many people think, does not have a serial number. Instead, it has provenance.

How The Blockchain Works

In a bitcoin transaction, the system checks to make sure the bitcoin being spent hasn’t already been spent. The system checks this by examining the blockchain, where the transaction history records. There are more than 5,000 identical copies of the blockchain that can be downloaded and examined by anyone. “It’s truly open source.”

Each day bitcoin survives, it quashes its doubters, Morris noted. There are already more than 200,000 daily transactions.

Bitcoin has experienced one boom and bust cycle already. The price rose from under $1 to $1,000 in late 2013, then fell to below $200 in the summer of 2015.

“But the bear has now turned and the price is challenging $500.” This time, there is less hype, and there is also a lot of capital investment. “The network is growing and the supply is falling.”

If the cryptocurrency goes mainstream, it will give Facebook Netflix, Amazon and Google a run for their money, Morris noted.

Another Option: Global Stocks

Mark Tepper, president of Strategic Wealth Partners, points to investments outside the U.S. as a way to find refuge from domestic conditions, according to CNBC. The political risk is shifting toward the U.S., he said.

Global growth, Tepper noted, is much stronger than domestic growth. Globally-oriented companies on the S&P 500 are getting at least 50% of their revenues from overseas. These stocks are “completely crushing” domestically-focused companies in the current earning season.

Tepper said most investors are overly weighted in U.S. stocks since these stocks have outperformed international markets for years. However, he sees a change coming, making him confident that investing abroad makes sense, even as first quarter earnings have been strong for U.S. firms.

Geopolitical risk has faded following South Korean and French elections, he said, which bodes well for foreign markets.

iShares MSCI EAFE ETF, an exchange traded fund that tracks large- and mid-cap equities in developed oversea markets, has gained 13% for the year, Tepper said. The S&P 500, by contrast, has advanced under 6%.

The MSCI Asia Pacific index rose 20% year to date, while Taiwan’s benchmark index rose 22% and European markets have outperformed the S&P 500.

Emerging markets have also rallied. EEM, an ETF that tracks these markets, has gained 15% this year. The fund did drop 2% Thursday when Brazilian equities fell on account of political concerns in the country.

Author: Lester Coleman

I have been investing via Trade Coin Club, which has a program which automatically trades on the top top chyptocurrencies and earn bitcoin 5 days a week and a very happy with the results.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Look Mom I have a Blog