Bitcoin (BTC) investor Alistair Milne was eventually forced to send Bitcoin instead of a $2,600 gold bar as part of his recent giveaway. Following a giveaway announcement on Sept. 19, Milne has revealed the winner as well as other giveaway details in a thread on Twitter on Oct. 22. Giveaway background As originally envisaged, Milne should have given away a $2,600 Denarium Bitcoin Decennium 2019 as part of the giveaway with the winner expected to be announced on Oct. 19. In the giveaway announcement launch, the entrepreneur specified that in order to be eligible, participants should follow Milne’s Twitter and …

A group of students from an Indian university has created a blockchain-based voting system that enables voters to cast their ballots online. The voting system was developed by three students from Malla Reddy Engineering College for Women, local business and finance publication The Hindu BusinessLine reported on Oct. 21. The impetus behind the idea is to eliminate voting challenges in urban areas like long queues at polling centers. The system was tested in gated communities — walled communities that consist of small residential streets and include shared amenities — and reportedly demonstrated a high level of security and resistance to …

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that India — like many others, in his view — is showing a high degree of caution in regard to Facebook’s Libra. During last week’s 2019 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, D.C. — which included a discussion of the Libra project — Sitharaman told reporters from the New Indian Express that: “On our side, the Reserve Bank Governor spoke about it during our turn to intervene. I got the sense that many countries were cautioning on rushing into this [...]. Countries will have to show extreme …

Samsung SDS, the IT subsidiary of global tech giant Samsung, has announced a joint initiative to launch a new blockchain-based traceability product. To develop the new project, Samsung SDS partnered with American software firm Pega and Tech Mahindra, a subsidiary of major Indian multinational conglomerate holding company Mahindra Group, according to a press release on Oct. 16. Specifically, the joint initiative will be a combination of Samsung SDS’s enterprise blockchain platform Nexledger Universal and Pega’s digital process automation platform Pega Platform. By integrating Pega’s core product with Nexledger, the firms aim to develop improvements for supply chain systems, the press …

The Supreme Court of India has postponed a hearing that would consider the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ban on providing services to cryptocurrency-related business. In an Oct. 16 session on the ban that prohibits banks and financial institutions from providing digital currency-related services, the court shifted the date of the next hearing to Nov. 12. The date was further extended to Nov. 19 due to national holidays in India, which fall on the date initially set. RBI criticized In late August, the Supreme Court slammed the country’s central bank over its handling of the cryptocurrency business ban and ordered …

United States retail giant Walmart, in collaboration with IBM, will use blockchain technology to track its shrimp supply chains. On Oct. 4, Indian business publication LiveMint reported that Walmart will use blockchain technology to track its Indian-sourced shrimp to select locations of Sam's Club retail stores in the U.S. This is reportedly the first time that blockchain technology will be used to track shrimp exports from the Indian farmer to an overseas retailer. President of the National Fisheries Institute John Connelly said: “As one of the most traded commodities in the world, seafood has a complex and wide-reaching supply chain, …

The police of Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, have sought a court's directive to transfer 85 million Rupees seized from a Bitcoin (BTC) ponzi scheme last year. $1.2 million frozen In an Oct. 3 article by the Times of India, Pune cyber police explained that the value of 244 cryptocurrency units (worth $1.2 million) was blocked in the bank account of company Discidium Internet, which was hired by the police to convert the seized crypto units into rupees. The cyber police’s senior inspector Jairam Paygude said that the Central Bank of India was unable to …

South Korean exchange Bithumb’s international platform Bithumb Global is looking to establish a regulated cryptocurrency exchange in India. The firm is planning to expand its services to India by partnering with local crypto exchanges, funding local blockchain startups and working on new industry initiatives, local media outlet The Economic Times reports Oct. 3. “We are open to talking to regulators” Javier Sim, co-founder and managing director at Bithumb Global, revealed that the company is willing to engage with Indian regulators to build a new regulated exchange. Sim reportedly said: “We are open to talking to regulators, working with them to …

Indian automobile manufacturer Tata Motors wants to integrate blockchain solutions into its internal processes as part of a newly launched program for startups. As Business Insider India reported on Sept. 18, Tata Motors has rolled out a program for startups dubbed “Tata Motors AutoMobility Collaboration Network 2.0,” through which it intends to develop a range of industry-related products, including artificial intelligence and blockchain-enabled solutions. The firm wants to apply blockchain-based solutions in various aspects of the automotive industry, including parking marketplace, demand prediction algorithm and real-time monitoring of fuel quality. Commenting on the initiative, Shailesh Chandra, president of electric mobility …

India is seeing the first signs of an anticipated brain drain, as the government mulls stark legislation that would criminalize domestic cryptocurrency investments. A Sept. 16 Economic Times report has taken the measure of industry sentiment on the ground, as a proposed blanket ban — currently still in the form of draft legislation — awaits its formal review process by lawmakers. “The first large democracy” to ban crypto As the Economic Times notes, the draft Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019 has proposed a 10-year prison sentence for anyone who "mines, generates, holds, sells, transfers, …

The United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore have the largest number of registered digital currency exchanges, according to data from Bitfury’s blockchain analytics platform Crystal. Crystal published its “Report on International Bitcoin Flows 2013–2019” on Sept. 9, in which it provides insight into cryptocurrency operations and Bitcoin (BTC) transactions around the world between Jan. 1, 2013, and June 30, 2019. U.K. and U.S. lead the rating The findings show that the largest number of registered crypto exchanges are in the U.K., the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore. Countries such as Argentina, India, Mexico, Russia and Indonesia report …

A couple of years back, the term “exit scam” became synonymous with the crypto industry. This was at a time when the market (at large) was replete with a number of cash grab ventures that looked great on paper but had little to no substantive value to back them up. In its most basic sense, an exit scam can be thought of as a fraudulent scheme wherein the organizers of an initial coin offering (ICO) or a similar fundraising avenue disappear with their investors' funds after acquiring a sizeable sum of money. In this regard, during November 2017 — a …