Square Wins Patent for Cryptocurrency Payment Network
Digital payments firm Square has won a patent for a payment network that allows merchants to accept payments in any currency, including bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.
Square Wins Patent for Crypto Payment Network
Public documents published on Aug. 21 show that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) has approved Square’s application to patent a system that allows merchants to accept cryptocurrencies alongside conventional payment methods and cash out in their currency of choice. The San Francisco-based firm first filed for the patent in Sept. 2017.
From the patent:
“The disclosed technology addresses the need in the art for a payment service capable of accepting a greater diversity of currencies…including virtual currencies including cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ether, etc.)…than a traditional payment system in a transaction between a customer and a merchant, and specifically for a payment service to solve or ameliorate problems germane to transactions with such currencies. Specifically, the payment service described herein can facilitate real-time (or substantially real-time) transactions, allowing a customer to pay in any currency of their choice, while the merchant can receive payment in a currency of their choice.”
Square would not be the first payment processor to allow merchants to accept payments in cryptocurrency that are automatically converted into local currency. BitPay, for instance, has been processing bitcoin payments since 2011.
However, Square already has tremendous market penetration, so adding cryptocurrency payments to its present POS system would allow millions of merchants to accept bitcoin without having to onboard to another payment processor or manually convert cryptocurrency funds into fiat.
Eliminating Bitcoin Transaction Latency
Notably, the patent also details a...
Litecoin’s Charlie Lee on the Crypto Bear Markets
Litecoin (LTC) creator Charlie Lee has dismissed short-term price trends as the upshot of “speculation,” stressing that long-term valuation is a truer measure of crypto’s success, in a CNBC interview August 27.
When asked to what extent price is a meaningful metric for a given cryptocurrency, and whether or not it reflects the current state of its network, adoption, or viability, Lee responded that:
“In the long-term, [price] tells us the success of cryptocurrencies, but short-term it doesn’t really tell us much. For example this year, there’s been so much adoption in Bitcoin and Litecoin, but their price has dropped 60-70 percent. It’s because it’s so volatile, it’s all about speculation these days, but in the future the price will reflect the success of the currencies.”
Lee noted that it was “hard to predict” when 2018’s bear market would turn, saying that having been in...
Korea’s 2nd-Biggest Cryptocurrency Exchange Bithumb Resumes User Registrations
Crypto markets are stabilizing and improving. Enabling companies to begin focusing on their next phase of growth.
Bithumb, South Korea’s second-biggest crypto exchange by daily trading volume behind UPbit, will officially resume registrations for new investors as early as this week.
NH Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the country, is set to sign an agreement with Bithumb on August 30 to provide virtual bank accounts to Bithumb users, which will allow new users to trade on the trading platform.
In South Korea, cryptocurrency exchanges are required to operate virtual bank accounts so that users can withdraw and deposit Korean won without having to directly deal with their respective banks for efficiency and security.
What Bithumb’s Registration Resumption Means
Since early 2018, as its partnership with NH Bank was dematerialized and it experienced a $40 million security breach which disabled deposits and withdrawals on Bithumb for a whole month, Bithumb has not been able to accept new traders on its platform.
As CCN previously reported, an official from Nonghyup Bank told Business Korea:
“We have decided not to renew the contract because Bithumb still has problems in protecting consumers and information and preventing money laundering.”
As seen in its decline in profits in the third quarter of 2018, the trading volume and user activity of Bithumb stagnated due to its inability to support new users and facilitate trades in July.
But, this month, the government of South Korea approved UPbit, Bithumb, Korbit, and a few other cryptocurrency exchanges for having...
Cleyond (CYO): Token Sale
Cleyond (CYO) Token Sale
This token will help the team at Cleyond AG spread their technology globally and do the necessary research to create more use cases.
Use A: Make licensing available globally
“How can we make sure that this important innovation can contribute globally within the shortest amount of time possible?” We think it is not by building plants of our own in other continents, but rather by enabling engineers there to use our technology. A CLEAN LOOP license will allow and enable to set up a high-quality recycling plant wherever in the world it is needed to reduce the waste of waste. Our engineers will help the teams on-site to make it work.
Use B: Develop even more use cases
At the very moment, CLEAN LOOP can be used on a special kind of plastic...
Binance Backs TMON Unicorn Founder's $32 Million Crypto Stablecoin Financing
Yet another stablecoin is attracting big investors.
Announced Tuesday, the founder behind a $1.4 billion startup unicorn called TMON is revealing he has raised a $32 million seed round to build a stablecoin called Terra. But while a number of startups have deployed stablecoins – cryptocurrencies engineered to track the price of another asset, usually fiat currency – Terra comes with a notable addition: an existing user base.
Created by Korean entrepreneurs Danial Shin, who founded and chairs TMON, one of the top e-commerce websites in South Korea, the Terra project is launching with a significant number of partners that already reach 40 million customers. Those partners, who will together form the Terra Alliance, a group of e-commerce sites that are interested in incorporating the stablecoin into their business, include Woowa Brothers, Qoo10, Carousell, Pomelo and TIKI.
According to a spokesperson for the project, those companies, combined, take in $25 billion in sales.
"We've banded together all the e-commerce platforms in Asia that are not called Alibaba or Amazon to push Terra into the hands of many many people," Shin told CoinDesk.
It's no wonder that the round includes quite a few notable crypto investors, including Polychain Capital, FBG Capital, Hashed, 1kx, Kenetic Capital, Arrington XRP, Binance and others who were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to support Terra, which sets itself apart from most other blockchain projects with its established and immediate go-to-market strategy," said Polychain's Karthik Raju in a statement.
Echoing that, Ella Zhang, head of Binance Labs, said in a statement:
"While we see many stablecoins coming out, Terra's journey is especially meaningful as they are designing one of the few price-stable protocols with existing, working and strong go-to-market strategy and usage."
That use, according to Shin, is in acting as an economical digital payment system, compared to credit cards.
He told CoinDesk, that a significant portion of TMON's annual losses take the form of credit card fees. And he's sure other retailers experience the same.
That...
California Finalizes Blockchain Legislature Working Group
California may soon be forming a working group to examine the potential benefits of blockchain to the state – and how best to update laws to make use of the technology.
California bill 2658, first introduced in February 2018, originally recognized "a record that is secured through blockchain technology is an electronic record," as previously reported. However, the final version as of Monday now directs the Secretary of the Government Operations Agency to create a blockchain working group to study the technology instead.
It also adds that "for the purpose of this chapter, 'blockchain' means a mathematically secured, chronological, and decentralized ledger or database," though this definition is temporary and will expire by January 2022.
The working group, whose chairperson will be designated no later than July 1, 2019, will include members from within the technology industry, as well as representatives from related fields. Stakeholders will be able to provide input to the group, which will...
Startup @Dfinity Raises $102 Million to Build ‘Internet Computer’
Cryptocurrency startup Dfinity has raised another $102 million to fund the development of its “world computer,” bringing its total capital intake to nearly $200 million.
Announced on Wednesday, the funding round was led by a16z crypto, Andreessen Horowitz’s dedicated cryptocurrency fund, and crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital. The two firms were also joint leaders in Dfinity’s most recent funding round, which raised $61 million and was announced in February. Altogether, the startup has raised approximately $195 million.
Speaking on the announcement, Dominic Williams, founder and chief scientist of Dfinity, said:
“The Internet Computer is a public infrastructure that aims to host the world’s next generation of software and services. The platform provides a novel means to develop and host new software systems where R&D costs can be 90% lower, yet hosted systems are far more secure since the Internet Computer is unhackable, and are always available, highly interoperable and better able to preserve the privacy of confidential data.”
While individual stakes in the present round were not disclosed, Andreessen Horowitz reportedly...
Trying on (Virtual) Shoes and Clothes
One of the key advantages that the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores still have over internet shopping is: the shopper wants to be able to try stuff on for size. Shoes and clothes especially. You can’t do that from home. Can you?
Imigize LLC, a Berkeley, California based company may break down that barrier to the final triumph of the online world, with “personal anthropometric 3D” modeling, that will drastically reduce the number of returns on non-fitting goods. The shoes are the relatively easy task they’ve taken on first: mastering the 3D modeling of a shopper’s feet will be easier than mastering that of the rest of the body.
The business plan requires privacy: shoppers will have to know that their foot/body details are not going to be available to any clever hacker, as they likely would be, given a centralized cloud-based system. Thus: blockchain is critical. And in connection with blockchain, there will be a token (imgz). The imgz is now in its private pre-sale phase. An ICO is planned for September 20, with an initial value of 1 imgz at 0.00010147 ETH.
A Chinese Regime Critic and an Irish Conceptual Artist
Ai Weiwei and Kevin Abosch have teamed up on an art project that uses twin Ethereum-based tokens they have created. This is “conceptual” art -- that is, the sort of art that is supposed to make you say “oh, wow” when you hear the idea explained.
The project, called PRICELESS (PRCLS) involves twin ETH based tokens because one of them is to be made publicly available and the other will be utterly inaccessible. Dear reader: has your head just exploded?
Ai Weiwei is a critic of China’s government who was arrested in April 2011 and held for 81 days on unspecified “economic crimes.” He was allowed to leave the country in 2015 and he now lives in Germany. Abosch is an Irish artist working in film. He once sold a photograph of a potato to an anonymous businessman for €1 million.
Abosch describes the idea behind the Ethereum project as “just another thing to engage people in the hope that they will spend a little bit more time reflecting on the perversity of hw most of us ascribe value to things.”
EVENT: Join @Blockchain_Conf for Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Stockholm #BBConfSTO
Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Stockholm is a part of the series of Blockchain World Events held in 25 countries. The organizer is Smile-Expo International Company.
Working hours of the Conference: 9:00-10:00 – Registration. 10:00-18:00 – Conference.
Telegram Channel
Facebook Page
Twitter @Blockchain_Conf
Join the conference hashtag conversation on Tweetchat and #BBConfSTO the community stream
The annual blockchain conference in Stockholm, which brings together the world’s leading crypto experts.
We focus on Sweden and foreign projects implementing Blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Experts share their experience of implementing Blockchain in governmental institutions (Govtech), the banking system, trading, media, healthcare and other spheres. We discuss all the aspects of creating innovative IT products – from the emergence of an idea to entering the market.
Event goals: bringing together the international business community in order to share their experience of integrating blockchain and cryptocurrencies; discussing blockchain industry issues and finding ways to solve them; encouraging a balanced growth of the cryptocurrency market.
Conference topics:
• blockchain in various sectors: energy industry, real property, newsmaking etc.;
• legal regulation of the blockchain sector;
• token models and their application;
• ICO regulation.
For whom: investors, businesspeople, lawyers, startup founders, and those aiming to launch a token sale.
Why: to receive full information with case studies about the blockchain application, to discover how to comply with the legal norms in the blockchain industry, to find business partners, and to enhance your brand awareness.
Speakers: world-renowned blockchain experts, including government officials, foreign investors, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and developers.
Key speakers:
- Mathias Sundin, Member of Parliament in the Tax Committee and the Finance Committee
- Tanja BivicPlankar, President of Blockchain Alliance Europe
- Dr Guenther Dobrauz, Partner & Leader PwC Legal Switzerland
- Merete Salmeling, Head of Digital and Innovation at Landshypotek Bank
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DR. Shahid Raza, Director of Security Lab at RISE SICS
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Christian Lunden, Director of Future Business at Nordic Choice Hotels
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Walid Al-Saqaf, Senior Lecturer at Södertörn University in media technology, journalism, Internet & blockchain research
