In this week’s WeiyangX Fintech Review from Crowdfund Insider they cover Ant Financial and Bank of China’s blockchain collaboration; China Construction Bank created Jianxin Financial Technology Co., Ltd., the first bank based fintech company from a state owned bank; 100Credit secured a big round of capital, JD bought shares in Allianz China General Insurance Company Ltd. and there is a trend of China fintechs starting to head to the Southeast Asian markets. Source.
NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a fact finding mission into 13 cryptocurrency exchanges; the information requested focuses on the use of bots, outages, consumer protections, and other issues. Source.
Mastercard filed a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to build a product meant to safeguard identity data. The product is a semi private blockchain used to receive and store identity data like address, tax ID number and more. Source.
2018 has not been kind to the digital currency as it is down 50 percent against the dollar and the first quarter is the second worst on record; regulation, a clampdown in Asia hurting volume and the big price run up in late 2017 have all hurt Bitcoin; the prevailing thought about making fast cash has gone away as the price has dropped; the price today stand just below $7,000, down from a high of $20,000. Source.
Enterprise blockchain company Ripple was one of 14 companies top join the Hyperledger consortium last week; Ripple and NTT Data partnered on Hyperledger Quilt, a java based interledger protocol that they submitted to Hyperledger; Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf explained to Finovate that this growth is beneficial to the future of the blockchain. “The accelerating pace of growth and adoption of Hyperledger across industries and geographies underscores the power of our community and the technologies it is building,” he said. “It also reflects a global awakening to the impact of blockchain for business.” Source.
Last week the sixth annual LendIt Fintech USA conference took place in San Francisco. Here are Peter Renton’s thoughts on some of the ideas that were shared by the keynote speakers as well as a summary of the rest of the event. Source.
A new report by CB Insights shows European banks are placing strategic bets across wealth management, lending, payments, regulatory technology and also blockchain. The data was compiled from from 2012 to Q2 2018. Source.
IBM has joined the non-profit Sovrin Foundation which is looking to build a global decentralized identity system with blockchain technology; IBM will be a founding steward of the foundation and will be providing hardware, security and network capacity to further their cause. Source
[Editor’s note: Bo Brustkern is Co-Founder and CEO of LendIt Fintech and Co-Founder of Lend Core, which operates NSR Invest...
CoinDesk reports that an internal memo at JPMorgan Chase states that blockchain lead Amber Baldet is moving on from the bank to start her own firm; Christina Moy, senior product manager of Quorum, will take over Amber’s position; JPMorgan spokeswoman said in a statement, "Amber is extremely talented and helped build the outstanding team we have today. We respect her desire to start her own venture and we wish her nothing but the best." Source.