The trucking industry is one of the most important sectors in the world. According to recent statistics, the global freight trucking market was worth over $2.7 trillion in 2021. In addition, it’s been found that millions of commercial driver’s license holders are employed by trucking companies within the United States, a market that is responsible for delivering 70% of all freight. Given these statistics, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that technology has become a critical component for ensuring the advancement of the trucking industry. Yet while GPS tracking, autonomous driving and other mainstream technologies may be apparent, a couple …

The future of blockchain and biometrics merge The merge of blockchain and biometrics has cogent potential. A new emerging ecosystem based on it is here to improve human life as such. The current crypto paradigm is dominated by power- and capital-based schemes. Appearing as an alternative, Sybil-resistant human-based protocols allow reorienting the systems away from such technocratic and oligopolistic narratives, providing true decentralization and democracy. Infrastructures based on human biometrics combined with blockchain are capable of creating innovative decentralized human-based digital verification layers and stable financial networks that rely on the existence of human life itself. Biometric-based blockchain projects formalize …

The year 2022 in crypto was eventful in many ways. However, the negative impacts of a bear market dampened the excitement around the blockchain upgrades that significantly brought crypto ecosystems closer to the future of finance. For Bitcoin, it was the Taproot soft fork upgrade, which was aimed at improving the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network. Ethereum underwent the Merge upgrade to transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Leading decentralized Ethereum scaling platform Polygon kicked off the year with mainnet upgrades based on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559, otherwise known as the London hard …

Since the introduction of ICQ — the progenitor of online chat applications — the expectation from instant messaging (IM) services has never changed. Users simply want them to work, which apparently turned into a tall order, given the frequent downtimes most popular chat apps experience nowadays. Launched the same year as Bitcoin (BTC), WhatsApp is one of the most widely used chat apps on the planet. Owned by Meta (the stable of which also boasts Instagram and Facebook), WhatsApp stands as the epitome of centralized services. That’s why when the service goes down, it has a much broader impact than …

Digital asset platform Bakkt has entered into an agreement to acquire Apex Crypto, LLC from Apex Fintech Solutions, Inc. According to the agreement, Bakkt is expected to acquire Apex Crypto for the price tag of $200 million, making its first payment of $55million at the closing of the deal. The transaction will likely be completed by the first half of 2023 and is subject to regulatory approvals. Launched in 2019, Apex Crypto is a “turnkey platform” dedicated to integrated crypto trading, built with the intention of meeting the increasing demands of more than 30 fintech firms and their growing customers. …

Nearly seven months after Tesla CEO Elon Musk first made a tender offer to purchase social-media giant Twitter, the $44 billion deal finally came to a close, resembling much of the original terms despite a heated corporate tug-of-war. As a platform for news announcements, marketing, and developer-user communication in the blockchain realm, crypto enthusiasts have already begun to speculate on the future of Twitter now that it's in the hands of the billionaire tech entrepreneur. At the annual Web Summit in Lisbon this week, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said that the first feature he would like …

It would seem that the hackers used an “oracle price manipulation” tactic in the exploit on the Solana-based DeFi network, as indicated by a tweet sent by the official account for the Mango cryptocurrency exchange. In mid-October, traders took advantage of a vulnerability in the decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform Mango Markets and stole more than $110 million worth of cryptocurrencies off the network. We are currently investigating an incident where a hacker was able to drain funds from Mango via an oracle price manipulation. We are taking steps to have third parties freeze funds in flight. 1/ — Mango …

When programmer Jonathan Silverblood flew to Townsville, Australia from his Finland home for a two-and-a-half-month holiday in August, he had one main task — pay for everything he could using Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The coastal city of Townsville is known as the “Bitcoin Cash City,” a name derived from a conference of the same name that first launched in 2019. It is understood to have a strong number of merchants that accept the Bitcoin-forked token. Silverblood said while attending the conference in 2019, he was intrigued by the number of merchants and vendors offering BCH as a payment option in …

According to a new announcement on Wednesday, the Bank of International Settlement, or BIS, along with the central banks of France, Singapore, and Switzerland, will be embarking on a new initiative dubbed "Project Mariana" in its exploration of blockchain technology. Project Mariana intends to use decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols to automate foreign exchange markets and settlement. Project Mariana explores using automated market makers for the cross-border exchange of hypothetical CHF, EUR and S$ wholesale CBDCs. It's a #BISInnovationHub joint venture with the French, Swiss & Singapore #CentralBanks@banquedefrance @MAS_sg @SNB_BNS https://t.co/GsNLpXZlsD pic.twitter.com/2tMitZcNF2 — Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) November 2, …

The global decentralized finance (DeFi) market size was valued at $11.78 billion in 2021. This number is expected to increase as DeFi advances, yet it is still in its infancy. Therefore, a number of banks and traditional financial institutions still tend to be unaware of DeFi’s potential. While this may be, industry experts within the crypto sector are predicting that decentralized finance will overtake traditional financial institutions in the coming years. For instance, Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo — a digital asset custody provider — told Cointelegraph that he believes DeFi will replace institutions in the next three …

Giant companies like Apple have made a fortune by centralizing their powers and profits and expanding their product and services network to be a part of people’s lives in as many ways as they can. Until recently, however, Apple had also demonstrated an ability to tunnel-focus its efforts to stay relevant and up to date with what consumers wanted, what mattered to them and what they needed most from the tech giants they rely on. It seems that this is not strictly true anymore, and that is a real shame. In its updated App Store guidelines unveiled on Oct. 24, …

In the wee hours of Oct. 18, several parts of Europe, America and Asia were left without any internet due to several undersea internet cables being “cut,” causing a chain reaction of connectivity problems across the globe. France, Italy and Spain, in particular, were faced with significant outages, with many experts claiming that vandals were to be blamed for the same. According to Jay Chaudhary, CEO of Zscaler — an American cloud security company — there is no doubt that nefarious third-party agents were to be blamed for the cut cables that resulted in packet data losses as well as …