JP Morgan-backed digital services firm Smartrac has partnered with SUKU Ecosystem, a blockchain startup headed by former Deloitte exec Eric Piscini, according to a tweet on Tuesday, Jan. 22. SUKU, which is parented by blockchain firm Citizens Reserve, will provide its platform to integrate with Smartrac’s supply chain. Smartrac is a radio-frequency identification (RFID) inlay manufacturer based in the Netherlands. Citizens Reserve reportedly released the alpha version of SUKU last autumn. SUKU is a supply chain as a service platform based on blockchain technology. Piscini, CEO at Citizens Reserve, said that the new partnership aims to resolve major problems related …

Blockchain is featured as a disrupting technology in the Tech Trends 2019 report published by Big Four audit and consulting firm Deloitte on Jan. 16. According to one article in the report, “[a]dvanced networking is the unsung hero of our digital future,” and blockchain is cited as a part of it. The report — which mentions blockchain 25 times — notes that blockchain is among the technologies the importance of which is growing rapidly and still on its path towards mass adoption. The report also cites a International Data Corporation’s (IDC) projection from last year that states worldwide spending on …

Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Elon Musk Impersonators Flood Twitter With Fake Crypto Giveaways Although impersonators on Twitter pretending to be famous celebrities offering crypto giveaways are many, this week saw an influx of these crypto pretenders posing as Tesla CEO Elon Musk. After compromising verified accounts with the blue check mark, scammers would change the name and …

Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX), along with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), have successfully tested the use of blockchain technology for tokenized assets settlement, according to a SGX release issued Sunday, Nov. 11. The report reveals the data on the trial that began in August, shortly after MAS and SGX had partnered with U.S. stock market Nasdaq, “big four” consulting company Deloitte, and Singaporean tech company Anquan. As per the release, the partners have developed a blockchain-driven solution for Delivery versus Payment (DvP) capabilities — a settlement procedure where the buyer's payment for securities is due at the time of …

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG, better known as the “Big Four” auditors, all have established solid long-term blockchain roadmaps to remain relevant in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. The four professional services conglomerates, which combined employ over a million individuals, have different roadmaps and perception of the future of the blockchain industry. Deloitte for instance, the biggest auditor out of the four with an annual revenue of around $43.2 billion, has stated that the blockchain sector is close to seeing a breakthrough with the technology. “Ultimately, [blockchain is] more of a business model enabler than a …

“Big Four” audit and consulting firm Deloitte has outlined five basic areas of development for blockchain technology in order achieve widespread adoption, according to a study published September 28. According to Deloitte, in order to be adopted by enterprises on a mass scale, blockchain technology should overcome five major obstacles – the possibility of time-consuming operations, lack of standardization, high costs and complexity blockchain applications, regulatory uncertainty, as well as the absence of collaboration between blockchain-related firms. Identifying the area that needs the most development, Deloitte singled out the problem of possible operational delays on a distributed ledger network. The …

‘Big Four’ audit and consulting firm Deloitte will help The Institutes RiskBlock Alliance blockchain consortium expand into Canada, according to an announcement published September 25. RiskBlock Alliance is a U.S.-based consortium launched in 2017, which focuses on the application of blockchain technology in the insurance industry, with more than 30 participant organizations. The alliance is reportedly looking to launch blockchain-based applications, including a proof of insurance app, which is “a first notice of loss data-sharing process and a smart contract-enabled subrogation tool.” In the coming months, Deloitte will reportedly help RiskBlock Alliance to bring its operations to Canada within its …

“Big Four” auditor Deloitte’s 2018 blockchain survey, published August 27, reveals that the technology is gaining significantly – if unevenly – in traction at the executive level of enterprises across diverse industries. Deloitte’s survey polled a sample of just over 1,000 senior executives in seven countries – Canada, China, France, Germany, Mexico, U.K., and the U.S. – at companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue. As Deloitte notes, the survey notably focused on “blockchain-savvy” execs from so-called “digital enterprises” rather than startups – i.e. on businesses faced with implementing “legacy-constrained” blockchain solutions, rather than on “emerging disruptors” whose …

The de facto central bank of Singapore announced it had signed a deal with multiple big name entities to ease digital asset settlements in a press release Friday, August 24. Part of its ongoing Project Ubin blockchain integration scheme, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) partnered with Singapore Exchange (SGX), along with Anquan, Deloitte and Nasdaq to deliver the enhancements. Together, the parties will create “Delivery versus Payment (DvP)... capabilities for settlement of tokenized assets across different blockchain platforms,” with the latter three acting as technical partners. “This initiative will deploy blockchain technology to efficiently link up funds transfer and …

British investment bank Barclays is sponsoring a hackathon to find the best blockchain solution to increase the efficiency of derivatives contracts processing, according to an announcement published August 9. Barclays is partnering with other market majors like Deloitte, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and Thomson Reuters for the event. At the two-day DerivHack hackathon, participants will be given an opportunity to implement their ideas and apply the ISDA Common Domain Model (CDM) to distributed ledger technology. The final goal of the event is to find solutions to use cases in post-trade processing of derivatives contracts. The ISDA CDM …

The recent initiative of the world's four largest auditing — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC — to join a pilot of 20 Taiwanese banks to test blockchain technology for fiscal audits, confirms how developments are expected in the work of external audit. Despite the auditors have been sometimes criticized for their lack of capacities for catching issues before they blow up, an external audit is a fundamental part of the assurance environment for international groups, both private and public. This can be defined as the process of conducting an objective examination of an organization’s accounts, books, documents and …

The world's four largest auditing firms — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC —have joined 20 Taiwanese banks to pilot blockchain technology for fiscal audits, local news outlet CTEE reports July 19. The “big four” will join a consortium of major Taiwanese banks to test a blockchain solution for auditing companies’ interim financial reports, focused on streamlining so-called ‘external confirmation’ processes. These currently require an auditor to manually obtain and verify audit evidence of companies’ transactions with third parties. The pilot — which has been developed by the banking consortium alongside Taiwan's Financial Information Service Co. (FISC) — harnesses …