The Singapore unit of London-headquartered multinational banking and financial services firm Standard Chartered has completed its first blockchain-powered trade finance deal. The news was reported by Singapore’s English-language financial daily The Business Times on Jan. 24. The bank reported that the blockchain solution — developed by blockchain startup Distributed Ledger Technologies — had enabled an agri-business supply chain deal to be completed within just one day, instead of the typical five to seven days. As of 2017, trade finance transactions were worth over $9 trillion, and the industry remains heavily reliant on legacy systems and cumbersome paper-based systems. According to …

Bakkt, the cryptocurrency platform created by the operator of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), announced that they are hiring for a number of high-up positions in a tweet Jan. 22. The Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) much-awaited crypto platform published a list of eight evidently new vacancies at the company, all of which are based in Atlanta and New York City. Some of the positions also have Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv and Singapore listed as available locations. The page specifies that the company is mostly trying to hire a number of developers, mostly at director and senior …

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) completed in the first half of January have raised around $160 million. The figure was provided in a report by ICO rating service ICObench shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 18. ICOs completed by Jan. 15 have managed to raise about 33 percent of the combined amount raised in the previous month of December. Half of that sum was secured by just one project, the report notes. According to ICObench, the number of fundraisers that are set to take place in January is more than 150, a figure similar to the past seven months, excluding December. In …

Major crypto exchange Binance plans to expand to eight new countries in 2019, according to a report from crypto outlet The Block, Jan. 17. Following the report, a Binance spokesperson has declined to confirm six of the alleged locations in comments to Cointelegraph today, Jan. 18. Just a day after the major cryptocurrency exchange launched its new European-focused platform for fiat-crypto trading in Jersey, The Block published a report that included a screenshot of a spreadsheet allegedly outlining all the locations for Binance’s fiat-crypto exchanges that are already-launched, intended and under consideration. In addition to Uganda — which launched in …

A new report published on Jan. 8 by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has found that seventy percent of central banks worldwide are conducting research into central bank digital currency (CBDC) issuance. However, concrete plans for implementation and motivations vary considerably across contexts. The BIS is an organization based in Switzerland made up of 60 of the world’s central banks, and has to date devoted a number of major reports to both decentralized cryptocurrencies and CBDCs. The latter are distinct from the former in that they are digital currencies issued by a central bank, whose legal tender status depends …

Cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain and major crypto exchange Huobi have reportedly confirmed plans to lay off staff amid the 2018 price rout of the crypto markets. Hong Kong English-language newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on the layoffs on Dec. 26. Beijing-based Bitmain Technology, which has dominated the mining hardware manufacturing horizon this year, is quoted by SCMP as saying in a statement that it is undergoing “some adjustment to our staff this year” — a statement reportedly prompted by Chinese social media coverage of looming layoffs at the firm. Bitmain reportedly stated: “A part of [building a sustainable …

Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has officially launched its first branch in Russia on Thursday, Dec. 6, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph today. The Moscow-based exchange, dubbed Huobi Russia, is established in partnership with the state-owned Russian Development Bank’s (VEB) Digital Transformation Center and supported by Huobi’s regional exchange partnership program, Huobi Cloud. The Center of Digital Transformation was created by VEB to promote blockchain and other crypto-related technologies, as its website states. Back in September of this year, Huobi first joined Russia’s VEB Innovation Fund and became a resident of the Digital Transformation Center to share experience …

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has announced that it will host the company’s first conference, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Dec. 6. Binance Blockchain Week is scheduled to be held in Singapore this January and is to include two major events –– the conference itself, along with a two-day “first-ever Binance SAFU (Secured Assets For Users) Hackathon,” according to the press release. As its name indicates, the hackathon reportedly focuses on developing blockchain-based tools for securing crypto assets. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ in the industry, underlines that the firm has chosen Singapore …

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, will launch its own blockchain “Binance Chain” in the “coming months,” as the company revealed in a tweet on Dec. 4. The new Binance-backed blockchain aims to provide a basis for creating new cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offering (ICO) tokens, as the company said in the tweet: “Binance is pushing for blockchain adoption and doing many things to help advancement of the industry. E.g. we will have the Binance chain ready in the coming months, on which millions of projects can easily issue tokens.” According to Forbes, Binance announced their plans …

A new blockchain-type network led by a Turing Award recipient and other academics has sealed $35 million in funding from big-name investors that include Sequoia Capital. The funding was reported by Fortune’s crypto-focused news section The Ledger on Dec. 4. Dr. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a Turing Award recipient who has earned the moniker of China’s “godfather of computer science,” is among those spearheading the Singapore-registered Conflux Foundation. The Turing Award is an annual $1 million prize given to a person that has exceeded in the field of computer science. The network, dubbed “Conflux,” has been designed to tackle what is …

Singaporean governmental body Enterprise Singapore, along with other partners, has supported a new blockchain accelerator launched by a local venture capital firm, daily local newspaper The Straits Times writes Tuesday, Dec. 4. Trive Ventures has launched the initiative, dubbed Tribe Accelerator, to support later-stage startups. According to the unnamed investor cited by The Straits Times, the accelerator is designed for a six-month period and will focus on the mass adoption of blockchain, decentralized applications (DApps), and back-end digital solutions that deal with blockchain. The managers for Tribe Accelerator will initially pick eight start-ups to participate, and the launch of the …

BlockShow Asia 2018 has come to an end in Singapore Thursday, Nov. 29, with most visiting experts predicting that cryptocurrencies and blockchain will fare better in 2019. According to the BlockShow team, 2,800 people attended the two-day conference, including potential investors who participated in EXP20 — a business pitch competition for startups announced shortly before BlockShow Asia. More than 50 speakers from various crypto and blockchain projects participated in the event’s discussion panels. On the first day, experts discussed the Chinese crypto ban, decentralized networks for artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain technology’s impact on ecology and gaming sector. Alexandre Dreyfus, …