Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek unveiled his company's 2020 expansion plan in a talk today at BlockShow Asia 2019 in Singapore. The plans include launching its own exchange, shipping VISA MCO cards to almost every region in the world, and launching a non-custodial wallet. With the motto that “it’s your basic human right to control your money, data, and identity,” Marszalek spoke about Crypto.com’s vision to create an ecosystem where people can manage every aspect of their crypto holdings in one place: pay, buy, sell, trade, exchange, fundraise, and so on. He revealed the entire roadmap to get there …

BlockShow Asia 2019 hosted some big names today for a panel on blockchain scalability. All the speakers agreed: people have to choose between scalability and decentralization. The panel included Max Kordek, CEO at Lisk; Matthew Tan, founder of Etherscan; Saranya Sriram, technical lead at Microsoft Azure; and Xinxi Wang, co-founder of Litecoin Foundation. It attracted a large audience for such a super-technical discussion. Speaking about the difficulties of scaling a blockchain to the next level, Kordek said that “blockchain scalability is a tradeoff. You can’t simply scale a blockchain for free. This is why I always laugh when I hear …

In a fireside chat with Cointelegraph Executive Editor Jay Cassano at BlockShow Asia 2019, Elixxir President Jim Dolbear announced the launch of xx coin, a digital currency that will support decentralized messaging, payments, and dApps on the associated xx network. “The way this all unfolded originally had to do with privacy associated with political expression. Who are you talking to, what are you reading?” said Dolbear. “We’re trying to allow people to control their own metadata.” In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on the same day, digital money pioneer and Elixxir CEO David Chaum said, “The xx coin and …

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, spoke at BlockShow Asia 2019 about the importance of blockchain for the economy, highlighting its indispensability for the development of green finance. Mohanty defined green finance as follows: “How to monitor, how to measure, and how to mobilize finance for green assets.” He said blockchain can unite all three components. Climate change is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics of the 21st century. This week Venice, Italy saw its biggest flood since 1966, and it caused irreversible damage to the city. The recent disaster reveals the inability of current …

Speaking at BlockShow Asia 2019, Hyperledger Vice President APAC Julian Gordon described the personal impact that the Chinese president’s pro-blockchain remarks have had on him: “Xi Jinping made that announcement 10 days ago. The reason I know that is because my phone is sitting on my desk — my WeChat started buzzing and hasn’t stopped since.” Hosted by the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is an open-source blockchain project aiming to be a hub for open blockchain development across industries. It has gathered companies from different backgrounds such as IBM, Airbus and JP Morgan Chase to further advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Hyperledger …

Speaking on stage at BlockShow 2019 in Singapore today, Alchemy Global Payment Solutions co-founder Patrick Ngan discussed some details of how his company is making it easier to pay for everyday goods and services with cryptocurrency. Ngan emphasized the power of choice to make consumers and merchants happier. Calling his company “the first unified crypto-fiat payment solution in Asia,” he described a merchant product that lets the customer decide whether they want to pay in the local fiat currency or a popular cryptocurrency of their choice. “People in this audience probably have a lot of Bitcoin,” Ngan said. “Instead of …

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, predicted that the digital Renminbi token (RMB) would be based on blockchain. Speaking today at BlockShow Asia 2019, CZ shared his thoughts on the digital currency in development by the People’s Bank of China. The details of this currency are not officially known. It will certainly not be as decentralized as Bitcoin (as it will be issued by the central bank), but CZ thinks it is going to be a blockchain-based version of RMB. He explained his reasoning: “The Chinese government wants to push RMB’s influence globally. They want RMB to be …

Global banking giant HSBC will explore the use of blockchain for the issuance of fixed income securities in a joint trial with Singapore Exchange (SGX) and investment firm Temasek. Focused on the Asia bond markets, the trial intends to streamline the bond issuance process and reduce associated costs by applying tokenized securities and smart contracts, HSBC Singapore announced Nov. 13. While Asia’s fixed income markets continue to grow, bond issuance and servicing processes remain inefficient, according to HSBC. This is purportedly due to the absence of a single platform for the exchange of information between multiple parties and tracking tools …

Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC will launch a limited edition of the Exodus 1 featuring services by major global crypto exchange Binance. The Binance Edition Exodus 1 supports the Binance public blockchain, Binance Chain, as well as its decentralized counterpart Binance DEX, the firms announced Nov. 12. Exodus 1’s native crypto wallet is integrated with Binance DEX HTC and Binance announced the news at a Binance Super Meetup in Singapore attended by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and CFO Wei Zhou, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph. The Binance Edition Exodus 1 smartphone is purportedly the world’s first blockchain phone …

Singapore's central bank and state investment firm have created a prototype multi-currency blockchain-based payments network together with JPMorgan. A Nov. 11 report from The Business Times indicates that the prototype is designed to enable payments denominated in different currencies to be completed on the same network. Interfaces with other blockchain networks The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) — the city state’s de facto central bank — led the development of the new solution, working in conjunction with state investment firm Temasek Holdings and the United States’ largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. The latter has acted in the capacity of infrastructure provider …

With each passing day, the financial nitty-gritty associated with the cryptocurrency-related OneCoin Ponzi scheme continues to become of increasing interest to members of the global crypto community. The U.S. government’s previous estimate of the scam that raked in a total of $4 billion seems to be well off the mark, as the figure could be more than three to four times the official estimate — this is according to Jamie Bartlett, the person responsible for the BBC's podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen. As part of the show, Bartlett and his team followed a trail of clues to track down Ruja …

Swiss-based cryptocurrency bank Sygnum has received the go-ahead to offer investment services in Singapore. Sygnum: license is “important milestone” In a blog post on Oct. 31, Sygnum, which gained a Swiss banking license in August this year, can now proceed with its first product for the Singapore market. Sygnum was the first Swiss company to win the title of cryptocurrency bank and will target accredited investors and institutions with a multi-manager fund, which will also debut in its home jurisdiction. Long on the cards, the Singapore documentation comes in the form of a capital markets services (CMS) license from the …