Category: Blockchain

Global Blockchain Spending to Hit $11.7 Billion in 2022: Report

Enthusiasm for blockchain technology in businesses and organizations continues to gather steam, with global spending on blockchain solutions expected to rise almost tenfold between 2018 and 2022. According to market research firm International Data Corporation, the global expenditure on blockchain is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 73.2% to reach a figure of $11.7 billion in 2022. This year, $1.5 billion is expected to be spent on these solutions. Worldwide Spending on #Blockchain Forecast to Reach $11.7 Billion in 2022. Learn more: https://t.co/Hv30XRWg96 pic.twitter.com/47m1YvqqNp — IDC…

Bank of England to Open New Payment System to Blockchain Users

The Bank of England is executing a complete overhaul of its interbank payment system, and officials have now confirmed that it will open the network to fintech firms that process transactions across a blockchain network. The British central bank on Monday published a report evaluating its recent Proof-of-Concept (PoC) with several firms operating in the distributed ledger technology (DLT) space, a test intended to examine the feasibility of connecting blockchain firms to an updated version of the bank’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service. The RTGS facilitates settlements between financial institutions,…

South Korean Telecom Giant Launches 2,500 Txns/s Commercial Blockchain

KT Corp may only be the second-biggest mobile carrier in South Korea, but the telecommunications firm is reportedly the first in the world to launch a blockchain-based commercial network. According to The Korea Herald, KT Corp’s blockchain network will initially have the capacity to handle 2,500 transactions per second. Before the end of 2018, however, the capacity will have been quadrupled. By the end of next year, KT Corp intends to have increased the number of transactions per second to 100,000, according to the head of Blockchain Center at the…

Singapore Airlines Launches Blockchain Digital Wallet ‘KrisPay’ for Travelers

Singapore Airlines, one of the world’s leading and best-rated airline operators, has launched KrisPay – a digital blockchain wallet that allows frequent fliers to convert airmiles into digital currency. Announced on Tuesday, the digital wallet app will be accessible for users of the airline’s ‘KrisFlyer’ frequent flyer program and will use blockchain technology to enable travelers to spend their air miles at retail establishments, hotels, petrol stations and other partner merchants in the island nation. As reported previously in February, SIA will use its own private blockchain developed with technology…

Liverpool Taps Blockchain to Be World’s First ‘Climate Positive’ City by 2020

The Liverpool City Council (LCC) has announced a partnership with Poseidon Foundation to help reduce the city’s carbon emission. Over the coming months, the LCC and the Poseidon Foundation will test out a new carbon credit system which is expected to cut the city’s carbon emission, according to a local publication. According to its white paper, among other things, Malta-based Poseidon Foundation uses the blockchain “to make and track an impact where it matters most-forest conservation.” The non-profit’s decentralized platform is currently being used in the UK to cut the…

126-Year-Old General Electric (GE) Invests in Blockchain Cybersecurity Startup

The venture capital arm of industrial conglomerate General Electric (GE) is one of the participants in a $12 million Series A fundraising round for Xage, a cybersecurity startup. The firm uses blockchain technology in securely linking industrial Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Other investors in the fundraising round, which is being led by March Capital Partners, are City Light Capital and NexStar Partners. Prior to the ongoing fundraising round, the valuation of Xage stood at around $35 million. The fundraising round comes at a time when there is an increasing…

Big Insurers Are Uniting Behind R3’s Blockchain Tech

R3 has scored another win in the insurance sector, giving the startup a wide lead over other distributed ledger technology (DLT) providers in the sector. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the RiskBlock Alliance, whose members include such insurance heavyweights as Chubb, Marsh and Liberty Mutual, has decided to build its first set of use cases using R3’s Corda platform. The news comes soon after B3i, the European reinsurance consortium, decided to switch from Hyperledger Fabric to Corda. With the addition of RiskBlock, R3 now counts all the major insurance blockchain consortia as Corda…

Bankers Tout Trade Finance as the Sweet Spot for Blockchain

Even if blockchain fatigue may have set in among bankers, there’s at least one use case they’re still clearly excited about: trade finance. At least, that was the impression given at the Blockchain Summit in London last week, where a range of bankers talked enthusiastically about the digital trade finance platforms they are building and the cost reductions they believe will result. Perhaps most notably, Amit Varma, the CTO of Citibank, was unusually vocal and specific in describing the savings his institution expects the technology to bring to the chain…

Public or Private? Blockchain Distinctions Are Falling Out of Fashion

“Convergence” may mean different things to different people in blockchain, but it’s a word that’s appearing more and more in public rhetoric of late. For some, it simply means that innovations developed on a public blockchain powered by a cryptocurrency can be leveraged on a private blockchain used by enterprises, and vice versa. But to others, the rise of the term shows that the lines between these categories, once starkly drawn, are starting to fade. As companies start to recognize the merits of public chains; as new technology enables different types of…

Deloitte: 3 out of 4 Big Companies See ‘Compelling’ Case for Blockchain

According to a Deloitte survey presented Tuesday at CoinDesk’s Consensus event in New York City, 74 percent of large companies across seven countries see a “compelling business case” for blockchain technology. Deloitte – the multinational “Big Four” firm that provides tax, auditing and consulting services – conducted the survey in late March and early April. The approximately 1,000 respondents represented companies with annual sales of at least $500 million in the U.S., China, Mexico, the U.K., France, Germany and Canada. The firms represented a range of industries: financial services was…