IBM’s Trust Your Supplier Blockchain / Walmart Patents Stablecoin / NBA Slam Dunks Into Blockchain

6 min readAug 7, 2019

August 7, 2019

This past week, we saw IBM once again push the Blockchain/DLT landscape forward with the launch of their new supply chain management focused blockchain network. Retailer Walmart is filing patents around a new stablecoin similar to Libra. Furthermore, the sports world takes another shot at digital collectibles with the NBA/NBAPA driving down the lane, Volvo & China go to work on Cobalt, Mastercard is boosting job blockchain & crypto postings, and Cosmos Network will be offering multiple coding options for developers. For more and to keep you up to speed, here’s a snapshot of the top stories this week around the industry.

📖 IBM and other companies launch new blockchain network for supply management

IBM is announcing a new blockchain network called Trust Your Supplier aimed at improving manual and cumbersome supply chain management. IBM has 18,500 suppliers around the world and going to use the Trust Your Supplier network by initially bringing onboard 4,000 of its own North American suppliers over the next few months… read more

📖 Seychelles Beats Zurich With First Blockchain-Based Equity Token

The operator of the stock exchange in Seychelles is about to win a race that stretches from the white sands of the tropical archipelago to the spotless streets of Zurich: the launch of the world’s first regulated security token on a national stock market. In an interview, Chief Executive Edmond Tuohy said that in few days MERJ Exchange Ltd operator of the bourse will list tokenized securities in its stock…read more

📖 Walmart Wants to Patent a Stablecoin That Looks a Lot Like Facebook Libra

Retail giant Walmart has applied for a cryptocurrency patent that bears some similarities to the Libra token proposed by Facebook in mid-June. In its application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Walmart touts the concept of a digital currency “tied to a regular currency” — that is, what’s commonly known as a stablecoin. Libra will be a token pegged to a basket of fiat currencies and government bonds, according to Facebook… read more

📖 NBA launches blockchain collectibles

NBA Players Association has announced to launch of NBA Top Shot, a home for blockchain-based digital collectibles. The idea is for fans to buy and trade unique digital video clips that commemorate “in-game moments from the NBA season. It will run on a blockchain. NBA isn’t saying yet exactly which blockchain, but it’s likely to be Ethereum, the home of CryptoKitties…read more and be sure to check out Dapper Labs

👉 View the full Blockchain for Infrastructure Landscape

📖 Volvo Cars, China in first blockchain project for recycled cobalt

The car manufacturing giant Volvo cars, owned by Chinese automotive Geely Motor group has announced its first electric car which is built with recycled cobalt and mapped on the blockchain. The UK based blockchain Circular has developed the blockchain for the company in collaboration with the tech giant Oracle. The battery producer for the vehicle is CATL… read more

📖 Mastercard Is Building a Team to Develop Crypto, Wallet Projects

Payments giant Mastercard is seeking to hire some blockchain professionals, including several senior roles, in an apparent effort to develop cryptocurrency and wallet products. Mastercard is a member of the Libra Association — a loose cross-industry consortium tentatively supporting the launch of Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency, Libra…read more

📖 South Korea Declares Partial ‘Regulation-Free’ Zone for Crypto Companies

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that Busan, the second-largest city in the country by population will host a wide range of blockchain offerings related to finance, public safety and tourism, though it stopped short of fully opening the market and allowing for international level crypto initiatives. A total of eleven regulations have been lifted for the project. It is expected that investors will move 29.9 billion won into the region by 2021, and the development will be spread between the Munhyeon Innovation District, the Centum Innovation District, and the Dongsam Innovation District… read more

📖 How Blockchain Could Disrupt the Telecom Industry

A great piece by Dr Mark van Rijmenam on the use cases for blockchain in the Telecom industry, which has been known to reinvent itself more than a few times. In the early days of telecom, fixed landlines were the key product of Telco’s, while with the advent of the mobile phone this moved to mobile subscriptions and the massive cash cow SMS. However, in recent years, for many Telecom organisations the main revenue is no longer call but data, which required another change in their business model. With every organization turning into a data organization, there are significant opportunities for the Telecom industry to reinvent itself once again, thanks to Blockchain..…read more

📖 Cosmos Will Have 3 Coding Languages — Here’s Why That Matters

In a move that could compromise ethereum’s long-held dominance as the world’s top platform for smart-contract development, blockchain interoperability project Cosmos will offer users the choice to code in at least three different programming languages — Ethermint, Secure EcmaScript (SES), & Kadena…read more and check out more at Cosmos Blog & Tendermint

📖 The Invention of Money

A phenomenal read by The New Yorker on the history of money…When the Venetian merchant Marco Polo got to China, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, he saw many wonders — gunpowder and coal and eyeglasses and porcelain. One of the things that astonished him most, however, was a new invention, implemented by Kublai Khan, a grandson of the great conqueror Genghis. It was paper money, introduced by Kublai in 1260. Polo could hardly believe his eyes when he saw what the Khan was doing…read more

Libra Watch

📖 Circle CEO: Attention on Facebook’s Libra is ‘double-edged sword’ for crypto

The co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency company Circle (Circle Team), says that over the next decade “almost everyone on the planet” will adopt cryptocurrencies. While Facebook’s (FB) cryptocurrency project could help in that effort, Jeremy Allaire told Yahoo Finance it also brings about heightened scrutiny for the industry…read more

📖 Facebook’s Digital Money Plan Raises Stakes For China’s Cryptocurrency Ambitions

When Facebook announced plans in June to launch a new digital currency called Libra, the news sent monetary officials scrambling in China. That’s because, since 2014, the People’s Bank of China has been looking into building its own, centrally controlled cryptocurrency. Should Libra take off, China might be convinced to loosen up its restrictive cryptocurrency regulations to allow big Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba and Tencent to issue competing digital currencies…read more

📖 Zuckerberg Plans to Wiretap Whatsapp. He’ll Do the Same to Libra

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is reportedly working on a back-door content-scanner for WhatsApp, tantamount to a wiretapping algorithm. If the reports are correct, Facebook will scan your messages before you send them and report anything suspicious. It’s a huge violation of privacy and renders WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption pointless. Facebook will do the same thing with its new currency, Libra, scanning transactions through the Calibra wallet. Facebook is building a mass-surveillance currency, and we should push back with force…read more

🎧 What I’m Listening To

This week I’m rocking out to The R3 Team’s Life in the Fast Chain podcast hosted by Catherine Rutter. Starting with the latest episode #34 with Mariana Gomez de la Villa of ING. Highly recommended.