Bitcoin (BTC) price analyst Oliver Isaacs thinks it will hit $25,000 around the end of 2019, according to a report by The Independent on June 5. Isaacs discussed the reasons he still has high hopes for a rally in the near future, saying: "There are multiple drivers behind the recent resurgence. There are geopolitical, technological and regulatory drivers. The net effect of the trade war between the U.S. and China has led to the sudden interest in bitcoin as a hedge on investments." Draper also reportedly commented on the state of mainstream adoption trends, with giant corporations such as Microsoft, …
Microsoft has registered a suite of applications in Brazil that are designed to improve efficiency in the agriculture sector, according to an exclusive report by Cointelegraph Brazil on June 6. The technology, known as FarmBeats, uses blockchain, drones, IoT, artificial intelligence and big data to improve productivity. It has already been rolled out on farms in the United States, India, New Zealand and Kenya, achieving a 30% reduction in water consumption. Ranveer Chandra, the scientist who created FarmBeats, recently said that the agriculture sector had been left behind by the benefits big data, AI and blockchain can bring — even …
United States telecom and media giant AT&T now accepting cryptocurrency for paying phone bills online, according to an official press release on May 23. AT&T will process bills paid in cryptocurrency using crypto payments platform BitPay. BitPay is a platform that converts cryptocurrencies to fiat and is used by over 20,000 businesses. AT&T is reportedly the first United States-based business in the wireless network industry to offer bill payments with BitPay. Kevin McDorman, vice president of AT&T Communications Finance Business Operations, said, “We have customers who use cryptocurrency, and we are happy we can offer them a way to pay …
Microsoft, one of the world's largest software makers by revenue, is currently on a blockchain streak. This time, Microsoft presented a vast blockchain-related plan: a decentralized identity (DID) network built atop of the bitcoin network, which can potentially empower users all over the internet to take control over their personal data and content. Earlier in May 2019, the United States tech giant announced its brand new Azure Blockchain Service along with Azure Blockchain Development Kit for the Ethereum blockchain. It also teamed up with Starbucks to present the first use case for its technology — tracking coffee production, from farm …
Microsoft is building a decentralized identity (DID) network atop of the bitcoin blockchain, the tech giant announced on May 13. In a blog post, the company said the infrastructure, known as the Identity Overlay Network (ION,) is based on an evolving set of open standards developed in conjunction with the Decentralized Identity Foundation. Microsoft claims its approach addresses throughput issues that mean “the most robust, decentralized, public blockchains operate at just tens of transactions per second, nowhere near the volume a world full of DIDs would demand.” By contrast, the company says its approach means tens of thousands of operations …
Member-driven blockchain standards organization the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) has released two new specifications aiming to accelerate and enhance blockchain implementation for enterprises. The news was shared with Cointelegraph in two press releases on May 13. The EEA, which counts over 500 members, describes itself as a “standards organization whose charter is to develop open, blockchain specifications that drive harmonization and interoperability.” EEA members include global consulting firm Accenture, banks Santander and JPMorgan Chase, blockchain incubator ConsenSys, Big Four auditor EY, tech giants Intel, Microsoft and IBM and blockchain consortium R3. One of today’s newly-released specifications is a set of …
The United States coffeehouse chain Starbucks is one of the most mainstream companies to look into crypto, and its intentions have finally been confirmed this week: The company has teamed up with Microsoft to track its beans with a blockchain. Moreover, reports say that the coffee giant might start accepting bitcoin (BTC) payments in its U.S. branches later this year. So, is the long-awaited mainstream adoption finally coming to the crypto market? As many mainstream companies, Starbucks leans toward the “blockchain before bitcoin” approach Starbucks’ relationship with crypto could be traced back to January 2018, when its executive chairman and …
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) — the United States’ largest bank with over $2.62 trillion in assets — has reportedly rehauled the infrastructure of its blockchain platform Quorum with the help of Microsoft. The development was reported by crypto media outlet Coindesk on May 9. As reported, Quorum is JPM’s private blockchain platform built on the Ethereum protocol. According to JPM head of Quorum and crypto-assets strategy Oli Harris, developers have been working to innovate Quorum’s privacy architecture by replacing its former Haskell-based privacy engine Constellation with the Java-based “Tessera” privacy transaction manager. Harris is cited as outlining that the innovation is …
Over 50 banks participated in the simulation of letter of credit transactions on R3’s blockchain platform in 27 countries on six continents. The company announced the development in a press release published on May 8. Per the release, 96% of the participants said that the system — dubbed Voltron — will accelerate and reduce the cost of their letters of credits procedure. Furthermore, 86% of them reportedly believe the inefficiencies of the traditional system are becoming intolerable. The company claims that Voltron cuts the execution time of the procedure from 5-10 days to under 24 hours. R3 states that, as …
Cybercriminals are now reportedly exploiting known vulnerability CVE-2019-3396 in the software Confluence, a workspace productivity tool made by Atlassian, according to a report by security intelligence firm Trend Micro Inc. on May 7. The exploit that has been developed allows cybercriminals to stealthily install and run a monero (XMR) miner on a vulnerable computer, as well as covering up the mining activity by using a rootkit to hide the malware’s network activity and toll on the host’s central processing unit (CPU). According to an Atlassian security advisory, the vulnerability in question only applies to some older versions of Confluence. The …
Microsoft has released the new Azure Blockchain Development Kit for the Ethereum blockchain, according to an announcement from Microsoft Azure blog Build Azure on May 6. The new offering is reportedly an extension to Microsoft’s source-code editor Visual Studio Code, and has been designed to aid developers who are building apps using Microsoft’s newly-released blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, Azure Blockchain Service. The new extension can also reportedly be used for building apps on the public Ethereum network, and enables developers to use open source blockchain tools such as Solidity and Truffle. While community-published Solidity and other blockchain tools for Visual Studio …
United States-based coffee chain Starbucks will implement tech giant Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Service to track coffee production, tech news site GeekWire reports on May 6. Starbucks first announced its “bean to cup” initiative in 2018, stating that it would work with farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Rwanda to pilot a blockchain-based coffee-tracking system. The system will purportedly allow customers to track the production of their coffee and will open up potential financial opportunities for coffee bean farmers on the backend. Starbucks further noted that they would open source the pilot program to disseminate their findings. The two companies presented …