SEC Chairman Sees Tokenized Stocks / China’s Digital Yuan Active $160M+ / KPMG Unveils Blockchain Climate Tracker
October 17, 2020
After a short fall break full of autumn colors, warm sweaters, pumpkin spice everything, and many webinars about the distributed world ahead of us…I’m back! Here’s a quick Saturday edition of activity happening this week throughout the blockchain the landscape…
🇨🇳 China Central Bank Official Reveals Results of First Digital Yuan Pilots
Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said that China’s central bank opened 113,300 consumer digital wallets and 8,859 corporate digital wallets for Shenzhen residents Suzhou and Xiong’an to pilot a digital yuan. The digital wallets processed RMB 1.1 billion ($162 million) across 3.1 million digital yuan transactions between April and August when the pilots launched and ended, making it the most widely used central bank digital currency (CBDC) in a commercial setting…read more
Related: 🇨🇳 Starbucks and McDonald’s reportedly not testing China’s digital yuan
📈 All stocks could become tokenized, says SEC Chairman Clayton
In a webinar hosted jointly by the Chamber of Digital Commerce and blockchain startup Securrency, SEC chairman Jay Clayton said all stock trading is today electronic, compared to 20 years ago. In the past, there were stock certificates, and today there are digital entries representing stocks. “It may be very well the case that those all become tokenized,” said Clayton. The webinar, titled “Two Sides of the American Coin: Innovation & Regulation of Digital Assets,” focused on what is needed to grow the blockchain and crypto space…read more
Related: ✍️ US: New bill would legally recognize digital signatures on a blockchain
🇫🇷 Thai central bank issues $1.6B in government bonds on IBM blockchain
The Bank of Thailand launched the world’s first blockchain-based government savings bond issuance platform using IBM’s blockchain technology. As per IBM’s official announcement, the central bank sold more than $1.6 billion worth of savings bonds within two weeks of the launch. The use of blockchain technology is said to have reduced the bond issuance time from 15 days to just two days. The process’s increased efficiency has also reduced operational cost and redundant validation of documents involved in bond issuance…read more
Related: 🇫🇷 A City in France Uses Tezos Blockchain to Vote on Local Project
💸 PwC Report Points to Banner Year for Crypto M&A and Fundraising Deals
COVID has not slowed crypto M&A. To wit, the value of industry acquisitions in the first half of 2020 has already surpassed that of full-year 2019, according to a report released Thursday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Around $597 million was spent in 60 deals in the first half of 2020, compared to $481 million spent in all of 2019 for 125 deals, according to data that PwC aggregated from M&A data firms MergerMarket, Capital IQ, Crunchbase, and Pitchbook…read more
🏢 Five Years Of Enterprise Blockchain: What Have We Learned? And Where Next?
One of the harshest criticisms of enterprise blockchain is the perceived slowness with which the early experiments evolved into live apps, deployed in real-world business environments. And it’s true that the early years of enterprise blockchain were marked by extensive and wide-reaching experimentation (and so many press releases…!) But we always knew widespread adoption would be a gradual process. As with any emerging technology, it takes time for industries to adapt and integrate new systems with existing infrastructure…read more
Related: 📖 [REPORT] Global Standards Mapping Initiative: An overview of blockchain technical standards
🚨 📝 State of Blockchain Industry: Q3 2020
We are transitioning to a completely digitized economy and the activity in the blockchain industry during 2020 proves this more than ever. Now w/ 1,100+ companies building & funding ($30bn+!) the infrastructure layers that will make up this new economy. The full breakdown is now available including an in-depth overview of the landscape, new categories & business models, areas of opportunities, rising categories, use-cases, and view for the remainder of 2020 into 2021.
More For Your Week:
📈 Discover Social Tokens on Zerion — Cooper Turley
🚗 BMW Korea trials a blockchain-powered rewards program ahead of global launch
👩💻 Compute and Connectivity Meets Crypto — Meltem Demirors
💸 Draper Goren Holm Launches $25 Million Blockchain VC Fund
🏦 Chris Giancarlo’s Digital Dollar Project Proposes US CBDC Pilots
DApps (Decentralized Apps) Watch
🌎 KPMG unveils blockchain solution to track climate emissions
Accounting giant KPMG has unveiled its blockchain-based Climate Accounting Infrastructure (CAI) solution to help organizations measure, report, and offset greenhouse gas emissions. CAI uses blockchain to store environmental data in a financial system as part of organizations’ climate risk assessments and asset valuations. It aims to help companies meet environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) targets. The solution integrates an organization’s existing systems, including IoT sensors, with external data sources to establish a verifiable trail of emissions and offsets recorded on the blockchain…read more
👛 Coinbase-backed Dapp Wallet Authereum Goes Live
Coinbase-backed DApp wallet Authereum goes live. According to Authereum’s official documentation, the new wallet solution has been designed to create “a seamless onboarding experience” for users of DApps, by having a wallet “that just works” without compromising security or custodianship. Meanwhile, in a blog post, the team said that the new wallet and DApp onboarding solution has already integrated with several leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, including Aave (LEND), yearn.finance (YFI), and Curve (CRV), with “more coming soon.”…read more
Related: 📖 Coinbase Commerce now allows merchants to convert crypto to fiat from within the platform
📖 Solana Announces Wormhole, a Secure and Trustless Bridge to Ethereum
📖 Curve + zkSync L2: Ethereum’s first user-defined ZK rollup smart contract! — Matter Labs
📖 Casual Gaming Moving into Crypto and Blockchain — Robert Hoogendoorn
📖 How to Create the World’s First Mainstream DApp — Alex Roan
📺 Knowledge Drop on The Baseline & #VCTV:
This week the brilliant Alex Mcdougall of bicameral.ventures sat down as my guest host on VCTV to speak with global investors on the current state and latest trends throughout the FinTech and Blockchain industries.
🎙️ Research: State of the Blockchain & DApps 2020:
Available now, for free is my latest research on Decentralized Applications or DApp “Stack” Landscape Map — the Q2 2020 edition. This map provides a full overview and taxonomy of the emerging DApps industry highlighting over 400 global companies teaching playing a vital role in building next-generation applications. As a bonus, I’ve included some of the ecosystem players and groups you need to be familiar with as you prepare to release your applications. If this is the first version you’ve seen of the landscape, consider it your guiding roadmap to further understanding not only the industry but all the core technology required to build a full or partial Decentralized Application (DApp).
