The Singapore government, along with an array of the world’s major financial and manufacturing companies, has formed an alliance to promote the adoption of digital technologies in trade and commerce. According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 22, the government of Singapore, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and 16 other companies including Mastercard, Mitsubishi Corporation, DBS Bank, Tokio Marine and Marubeni Corporation have partnered to speed up the deployment of digital technologies in trade and commerce. Shifting from paper-based systems The new partnership is part of the ICC TradeFlow Alliance. ICC TradeFlow was built by Perlin …

Canadian authorities have issued new guidance to determine which digital currency trading platforms fall under derivatives law. The Canadian Securities Administration (CSA) explained new provisions in the “Guidance on the Application of Securities Legislation to Entities Facilitating the Trading of Crypto Assets” published on Jan. 16. In general, the agency drew a line between trading platforms that make an immediate delivery of a crypto assets to its users, and those that hold the transaction of crypto assets until the user makes a later request. To what exchanges do securities laws apply? Following an analysis of trading techniques on different platforms, …

Australia-based blockchain energy firm Power Ledger has purchased a 250 kilowatt (kW) photovoltaic system that will utilize a blockchain-based data management and settlement system. Per a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 13, Power Ledger purchased the system from Perdaman Advanced Energy, an Australian firm that provides clean energy consulting and project development. The new system will be located in Maddington and integrate a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to make renewable energy trading more transparent. Transformation of the energy market “The renewable energy that the Maddington asset generates will be tracked using blockchain technology to provide a verified audit …

The United States Treasury Department has almost completed tests of a blockchain-based grants payment capability as part of the exploration of how the tech can improve such operations. As the Business of Federal Technology reported on Jan. 10, the Treasury Department launched a program designed to discover whether blockchain could provide more efficiencies into the operations of a blockchain-based grants payment system. Currently, the agency has almost completed a Proof-of-Concept for a blockchain-based letter of credit for federal grant recipients. More efficient tracking Describing the principle of the program’s operation, Craig Fischer, innovation program manager at the agency, explained that …

More Bitcoin (BTC) transactions now use so-called Segregated Witness (“SegWit”) technology than ever before, the latest data shows. According to various resources including SegWit.Space, adoption of the protocol has reached up to 66% of all Bitcoin transactions as of Jan. 4. Two in three BTC payments now SegWit The volume underwent a significant increase in late 2019, jumping from around 40% in September to nearer 60% in October. The statistics, however, are subject to variation. SegWit.Space, a dedicated monitoring resource, lists current SegWit propagation as 66%. Other charts, such as transacationfee.info and Woobull, the data resource by statistician Willy Woo, …

Users of IOTA, the 24th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, were unable to confirm transactions for 24 hours due to a mainnet incident on Dec. 29. According to an official statement on the issue, the IOTA network experienced a mainnet incident that began at 2:50 AM UTC on Dec. 29, and was fully resolved by 2:50 AM UTC on Dec. 30. The incident was caused by an unusual set of transactions that may have been constructed as an attack As described in a Dec. 30 blog post by Iota Foundation, the problem was caused by issues at the IOTA Reference …

Bitcoin (BTC) was, in fact, anything but bearish in 2019, as new data shows its technical strength has reached levels never seen before. An examination of three metrics — Bitcoin’s transaction count, USD transaction volume and hash rate — confirms the largest cryptocurrency firmly beat off bearish sentiment this year. Over the past twelve months, those measures set new records, easily eclipsing previous performance. That included outdoing 2017 figures, fuelling the narrative that Bitcoin price action is no indicator of overall health, though BTC’s value is still up over 100% since last year’s lows. Transaction count The Bitcoin network processed …

Slovenia-based crypto payment infrastructure provider aims to boost cryptocurrency adoption through its global expansion. GoCrypto, a merchant-oriented upgrade of Eligma’s crypto payments solution Elipay, is targeting expansion into more countries around the world. The plans follow recent contribution into the project, in which Eligma secured 4 million euros (roughly $4.4 million) from Bitcoin.com and Swiss-based Pangea Blockchain Fund. With the objective to make GoCrypto a global payment scheme that connects cryptocurrency owners, wallets, merchants and cashier systems to enable instant crypto payments, the company’s point-of-sale solution is currently available in nine countries. Initially starting from Slovenia and Croatia, Eligma has …

Major cryptocurrency payment service provider BitPay has confirmed that its service had a temporary outage of Bitcoin (BTC) payments on Dec. 22. Bitcoin payments were briefly unavailable for almost 3.5 hours on BitPay as the company was working to fix transaction issues, BitPay Support tweeted Dec. 22. According to the information, the service was restored by 4:25 PM EST. In an email to Cointelegraph, BitPay did not provide additional details about the possible cause of the outage, stating: “There were temporary issues with BitPay’s BTC payment processing system. Our tech team was alerted and promptly resolved the issue.” Multiple users …

British auditing giant EY has released a new iteration of its zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) blockchain, intending to cut transaction costs by 90%. A ZKP is a digital protocol that enables data to be distributed between the two participants without using a password or any associated information in the transaction. According to an announcement on Dec. 19, EY released its third-generation ZKP blockchain technology to the public domain on the Ethereum blockchain. The new ZKP blockchain aims to make private transactions on public blockchains more scalable by decreasing transaction costs by combining multiple private transfers in a single transaction. Specifically, the …

Blockchain-based money transfer startup SendFriend utilizes Ripple’s technology to save up to 80% in remittance fees, according to a blog post published on Dec. 12. SendFriend uses Ripple’s xRapid product for cross-border payments, converting between the United States dollar, XRP and Philippine pesos and circumventing the longer process of traditional banking systems. Philippines-focused remittance platform SendFriend’s money transfer app aimed at reducing annual remittance fees for cross-border Filipino workers claims to lower such transaction costs by up to 75%. What makes it possible, according to the startup’s CEO, David Lighton, is RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) technology. With ODL, RippleNet’s users …

Denmark-based cryptocurrency users have begun receiving letters from the Danish tax agency, Skattestyrelsen, requesting that traders provide a full background of all their cryptocurrency transactions, sources informed Cointelegraph on Dec. 10. In its letters, Skattestyrelsen specifically asked crypto users to provide information about profits and losses for fiscal years 2016 to 2018, according to FIFO (First In First Out) principles. These principles represent a method of inventory valuation assuming that all goods are sold or used in the same chronological order in which consumers purchased them. Furthermore, the tax agency asked for the rates used for each transaction, information on …