ConsenSys, a major blockchain firm founded by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, has acquired an American broker-dealer, Heritage Financial Systems. Heritage, a broker-dealer registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has been acquired by ConsenSys’s own broker-dealer, ConsenSys Digital Securities. ConsenSys’ blockchain-powered commerce and finance arm ConsenSys Codefi announced the news on Feb. 4. Heritage acquisition to bolster ConsenSys advisory and broker-dealer capabilities By purchasing Heritage, ConsenSys intends to reinforce its advisory and broker-dealer capabilities that will help the firm to implement blockchain technology for issuing tokenized bonds offerings in the municipal market. Emma Channing, a representative of …

Covantis, a blockchain initiative backed by global agribusiness giants like Cargill, has selected major Ethereum-focused firm ConsenSys as a technology partner. Within the partnership, ConsenSys will build an Ethereum-based blockchain platform to digitize the post-trade finance industry and bring efficiencies and cost savings to the international agribusiness supply chain, Covantis said in a Jan. 23 press release. Four agribusiness giants established the initiative in 2018, while Covantis’ name came out months ago The concept of Covantis was established in October 2018, when four of the biggest global agribusinesses companies announced a joint initiative to digitize their global shipping transactions using …

A contributor of major Ethereum browser extension Metamask has reported that the MetaMask team is “totally overwhelmed” and not being prioritized by its parent company ConsenSys. In a Dec. 25 Reddit post, Reddit user lazaridiscom3 alleges that the MetaMask team is not getting the support it needs from ConsenSys, and, consequently, the whole team of 24 employees is overwhelmed. Redditor says the Ethereum’s “critical value-moving piece” isn’t decentralized The post, titled “Help MetaMask out of its Activity-Trap,” goes on to say that the MetaMask team has a number of unsolved issues and its inner workflow structure is neither transparent nor …

An executive at the Ethereum blockchain firm ConsenSys is launching a new blockchain-oriented investment firm, Aligned Capital. Sam Cassatt, the chief strategy officer (CSO) at ConsenSys, announced that the firm will be seeking to raise $50 million for its first fund in an announcement on Nov. 15. Cassatt, who has been at the firm for five years, will continue to serve as an advisor to ConsenSys while working full-time as a founding managing partner at Aligned Capital. Apart from blockchain, Aligned Capital will invest in safe AI and innovative healthcare According to the announcement, Aligned Capital will be investing in …

Ethereum co-founder and founder of Consensys, Joseph Lubin, said that he hopes China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will allow for interoperability with public permissionless blockchains, including Ethereum. Ethereum is “a very positive virus” Lubin made his remarks during an interview with Forbes published on Nov. 9. He explained: “I assume it is going to be exactly what Chinese leadership thinks is most beneficial to Chinese leadership. Hopefully that’s also open and we can interoperate with it, but I don’t know.” Furthermore, Lubin added that he would like to see more participation from China in the Ethereum ecosystem. He cited …

China’s forthcoming digital renminbi is unlikely to use blockchain, considers Ethereum (ETH) co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin. In an interview for CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Nov. 5, Lubin argued that the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has little to gain — for its purposes — from the decentralized aspects of the technology. “There’s no real reason” for China to make use of decentralization As reported, China’s digital legal tender — or central bank digital currency (CBDC) — will be controlled by the PBoC and officials have said they expect the asset to “have lots of positive impacts, including …

Japan, the second-largest source of traffic for global crypto exchanges to date, witnessed a number of industry announcements this week as the country hosted the major blockchain event Devcon 5 from Oct. 8 to Oct. 11. Organized on an annual basis by the Ethereum Foundation, the recent Devcon conference featured leading figures in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries, including Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin. Here is the past week of crypto and blockchain news in review, as originally reported by Cointelegraph Japan. MakerDAO to launch MCD in November On Oct. 9, Rune Christensen, the CEO of the Maker …

Ethereum (ETH) venture production studio ConsenSys has announced that it had fully acquired Infura, a blockchain infrastructure provider that the firm previously backed. According to the blog post published on Oct. 4, Infura will continue its operations as a wholly owned business unit within the studio. Infura also noted that ConsenSys’s founder Joseph Lubin was one of the startup’s early investors. Centralization criticism Infura is providing Ethereum infrastructure for building decentralized applications, allowing developers to deploy their solutions without hosting their own full node. In July 2019, the firm launched Infura+ and introduced three new subscription tiers. In March 2019, …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin has characterized both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum’s conceptions as being “immaculate.” Lubin made his remark during a panel with Vitalik Buterin and Yoni Assia at the Ethereal Summit Tel Aviv on Sept. 15, according to live reporting from eToro analyst Mati Greenspan on Twitter. Twin titans To a seasoned ear, Lubin’s comment pointedly reproduces a phrase previously used by staunch Bitcoin maximalists in reference to the conceptual and technological elegance of Satoshi’s invention and to the equally shrewd choice of timing for the publication of its white paper. His sleight of hand …

The founder of ConsenSys-incubated startup Token Foundry, Harrison Hines, is suing Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin for breach of contract. Per court documents filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York County of New York, Hines has filed a lawsuit against Lubin in connection with “breach of contract, conversion, quantum meruit, unjust enrichment, fraud, declaratory judgment and unpaid profits arising from the defendants’ acts in connection with the business known as Token Foundry.” Hines thus intends to collect over $13 million, wherein “the relief sought is monetary damages in the amount of $12,827,000 on the contract, quasi-contract and …

Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin said that Facebook’s Libra token is like “a centralized wolf in a decentralized sheep’s clothing” in an article published on tech news outlet Quartz on June 21. The social media giant released the white paper for a its cryptocurrency dubbed Libra earlier this month to mixed reviews from experts in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries and concern from government regulators. In his article, Lubin notes that Libra’s white paper describes feelings common among many in the cryptocurrency community. It states that “sending money across the globe should be as simple and inexpensive as sending a message …

Joseph Lubin could arguably be seen as a star at any blockchain event these days, but at the Ethereal Summit last month — organized by Ethereum-focused development company ConsenSys, which he co-founded — he was especially revered. While inside the conference space, the co-founder of Ethereum was either listening intently to what was happening on stage or surrounded by a group of people between panels. Nevertheless, he found some time to speak with us during the two-day event. So, on a sunny Saturday, we sat down on a quaint cast-iron bench in the garden area of the Brooklyn venue, Pioneer …