Just last month, SCB 10X — the venture arm of Siam Commercial Bank — had announced its new $50 million fund dedicated to investments in global blockchain, decentralized finance and digital asset startups. The banking institution is Thailand's oldest bank, established by royal charter back in 1907, and its latest forays into blockchain via SCB 10X are already underway. According to a report on March 5, SCB 10X is a contributor to the recent $80 million Series C raised by Anchorage, a crypto custodian and digital asset platform that received the United States' first federal digital asset banking charter at …

Upon the announcement of the United Kingdom budget for 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak commissioned Ron Kalifa to conduct an independent review of the U.K. fintech sector. On Friday, eight months later, the FCA published the 108-page report, and it contains multiple clear guidelines aimed at cementing the U.K.’s position as a fintech powerhouse. Over $95 billion was spent by U.K. fintech firms in 2019, and with 10% of the global market share, the U.K. is already ahead of the curve when it comes to fintech adoption and business. Investments in U.K. fintech firms totaled $4.1 billion in 2020, notes the …

A digital payment provider is bringing crypto payments to retailers and consumers through a suite of products — including a sleek, modern physical terminal. Lunu’s point-of-sale device comes in an array of skins and can process a plethora of cryptocurrencies as well as credit cards and contactless payments made using smartphones. Executives have positioned their company as an aspirational 21st-century brand that has art and social responsibility in its DNA — with a laser-like focus on design. The terminal is complemented by a cutting-edge processing service that delivers decentralized and competitive exchange rates — through its patented arbitrage system and …

Hundreds of thousands tuned in to a Twitch stream today as U.S. congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez discussed Robinhood’s controversial decision to suspend trading in GameStop after the short squeeze engineered by r/WallStreetBets. Hours earlier, Ocasio-Cortez, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, slammed Robinhood for favoring the interests of the ultra wealthy at the expense of ordinary investors. “This is unacceptable. We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp ’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.” The live stream, hosted on Ocasio-Cortez’s personal Twitch …

It is a useful exercise for those of us working in tech to cast our minds back to the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s. There is a lot that can be learned from that time. The period was crucial for the United States and the global economy and a defining moment for the tech sector. It is helpful to consider those helter-skelter days when assessing the current crypto ecosystem. Most people will rightly point to the glut of Super Bowl ads coming in at over $2 million each or the initial public offerings that rose more than …

Twitter plays defense with its patents, Square has launched a consortium — which includes Coinbase — to pool crypto patents and Alibaba is well on its way with its mission to overtake IBM in the blockchain patent wars. Many startups don’t take the necessary steps to protect their innovations, and that’s a big mistake. Particularly in blockchain, an open-source philosophy embedded in the space makes many entrepreneurs eschew the competitive, territorial landscape of patent applications. In fact, a lot of startups believe patents can’t be enforced on decentralized autonomous technology. That’s not true. In keeping their distance, they do themselves, …

Circle, the company behind the second most popular stablecoin USD Coin, has rolled out a new API that will allow for the seamless transfer of USDC to USD via automated clearinghouse (ACH) systems. The first exchange to adopt the new API will be derivatives and futures specialist FTX, looking to speed up USD settlement processes on behalf of their customers. In a blog entry, project manager Gee Chuang described how Circle’s ACH API improves connections between the fiat world and the digital world by introducing interoperability among payment rails, such as card, wire and blockchain transfers. Using the API, USD …

Russia’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, could contain a number of risks related to cybersecurity and fraud, according to several local financial institutions. The Association of Russian Banks, or ARB, has released its official feedback on Russia’s digital ruble project on Jan. 13. The study included 17 ABR credit institutions in Russia accounting for 58% of the total assets of the domestic banking system. According to the report, the majority of ARB members believe that risks associated with the digital ruble are similar to those of cashless transactions powered by banking accounts and cards, as well as cryptocurrencies. The …

Crypto-custody provider and securities firm, Propine, has graduated from the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s fintech regulatory sandbox program, emerging with a Capital Markets Services License and the green light to commence full operations. The Singapore-based securities services firm for institutional clients was admitted entry to the MAS regulatory sandbox on Nov. 8, 2019 and participated for just over a year before being granted approval to exit on Jan. 7, according to a recent post on the firm’s website. Singapore financial law states that a company must hold a Capital Markets Services License if it wishes to conduct business activities regulated …

Zap, a Lightning Network payments startup backed by Visa through its Fintech Fast Track program, announced on Wednesday the rollout of Strike Global, a payments and remittances app using the Bitcoin layer-two technology. An announcement by CEO Jack Mallers goes in-depth into the differences between standard fiat transfer mechanisms and the Lightning-powered mechanism in Strike Global. Mallers focused on remittances, a multibillion-dollar business that is still largely passed through expensive middlemen. Strike Global is not too unlike traditional fintech apps, but it uses the Lightning Network for settlement. This means that payments can be essentially instantaneous and at a fraction …

Figuring out the point at which decentralized finance began almost always ends up in a rhetorical debate. Some argue that Bitcoin’s (BTC) invention a decade ago marked the start of it, as the major cryptocurrency was the first peer-to-peer digital money and represents the conceptual core underpinning DeFi. Others say — and would be technically correct in doing so — that DeFi started back in December 2017, when Ethereum-based protocol MakerDAO was launched, followed by Compound Finance and Uniswap, released in September and November 2018, respectively. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that DeFi’s true …

In my two-decade career at Microsoft, leading .NET platform architecture, visual studio .NET development, application platform, enterprise strategy and Microsoft Digital, I have been part of building technologies for multiple waves of platforms: the early web, service-oriented architectures, the so-called Web 2.0, and more recently, the Cloud. While there is no doubt that previous waves of platform technologies have delivered substantial benefits, their impact has been limited because they are “passive” stacks that serve as plumbing for applications and infrastructure. For the most part, with previous waves of platforms, cost savings have been the primary and sometimes singular quantifiable element …