Top Stories This Week Six Global Banks Sign Up to Issue Stablecoins on IBM’s Now-Live Blockchain Network This week, six international banks signed letters of intent to issue their own stablecoins — which will be backed by their national fiat currencies — on IBM’s now-live blockchain-powered payments network, “World Wire.” According to the joint announcement by IBM and Stellar, the World Wire has gone live with over 44 banks on its service, supporting 47 currencies in 72 countries. The IBM project was launched with Stellar in September 2018, and plans to expand the blockchain-powered settlement network to further assets. The …

Six international banks have reportedly signed letters of intent to issue their own stablecoins backed by their national fiat currencies on IBM’s now-live blockchain-powered payments network, “World Wire.” The news was jointly announced by IBM and Stellar during a keynote at Money 2020 Asia in Singapore, financial news channel Cheddar reported on March 18. As previously reported, IBM’s cross-border payment network, Blockchain World Wire (BWW) was launched in collaboration with Stellar (XLM) in September 2018. BWW, which went live today and reportedly has over 44 banks on service, aims to leverage cryptocurrencies to enable near real-time international settlements between banks. …

The head of blockchain solutions for IBM, Jesse Lund, has hinted that bank-targeted stablecoins will be a major forthcoming development for the tech giant’s blockchain-powered cross-border payments solution. Lund made his remarks during an interview on financial news channel Cheddar on March 15. While more details are set to be imminently announced next week, Lund told Cheddar that “market demand” is driving IBM to develop a stablecoin solution for financial institutions. “More than a few banks around the world [...] see tremendous business benefit to issue stablecoins in their native fiat currency,” he said. When asked how IBM’s solution compares …

French commercial court clerks will use a blockchain-based platform to record changes in companies’ legal status within the country. The development was revealed in an official announcement on March 14. The blockchain network was jointly developed by IBM and the National Council of Clerks (NCC) and will reportedly be deployed starting in 2019 by the clerks operating in commercial courts across France. The blockchain platform is built on the Hyperledger Fabric framework and aims to increase transparency and efficiency in legal transactions associated with the lifecycle of companies in the registry. Specifically, the solution will be used to record and …

Multinational computing giant IBM is adding to its arsenal of blockchain patents with an application for improving the security of permissioned blockchain networks. The patent, first filed in October 2016, was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on March 12. The patent is entitled “Resisting replay attacks efficiently in a permissioned and privacy-preserving blockchain network,” and outlines security techniques for withstanding such attacks while maintaining valid user permissions and privacy. In its most general sense, a replay attack is a valid data transmission that is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed. IBM’s background for its patent explains …

Last week, Colorado lawmakers filed a bill exploring how blockchain technology could be applied to water rights management. Now, California is also studying blockchain for use in water rights management, as reported by Cointelegraph. But coming off a severe drought, which saw water restrictions throughout the state, they are facing a far different set of circumstances than Colorado, as water rights in California have always been a highly political issue. The film “Water & Power: A California Heist” examined how a handful of corporate landowners took advantage of a state-engineered system and gained control of its water, leaving local homeowners …

Tech giant IBM is partnering with blockchain consortium and credit union service organization (CUSO) CULedger to develop new blockchain-based solutions for the credit union industry. The development was announced in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on March 11. IBM and CULedger will reportedly jointly pioneer solutions using permissioned blockchain networks that will innovate existing business models and processes for credit unions. These solutions can reportedly improve services such as digital identity authentication, Know Your Customer compliance, lending and payments services, and other consumer processes that require authentication. Leveraging blockchain will also specifically aim to provide greater financial inclusion by …

The United States is the world’s leader in blockchain-related jobs, according to a research by The NextWeb (TNW) published on March 8. To prepare the report, TNW gathered information from job and recruiting site Glassdoor, finding all the job offerings that had the term “blockchain” in the job listing in countries around the world. The results reportedly showed that the U.S. is leading the world in terms of blockchain-related jobs, having about half, or 2,616, of a total of 5,711 blockchain jobs listed on Glassdoor globally. The U.S. is followed by the United Kingdom, with 1,015 blockchain-related job ads, while …

Multinational computing giant IBM is adding to its stack of blockchain patents with two new applications, the United States Patent and Trademark Office confirmed, publishing documents on March 5. According to one patent document, IBM now seeks to target network security using blockchain technology. A second patent focuses on database management using the tech. “Securing a data log using monitor security protocols may be accomplished with different levels of security, ranging from low security to high security, and have various combinations of hardware and software configurations,” the description of the first blockchain patent explains: “Low security may allow open access …

IBM has launched an operational version of its in-house security testing tool for blockchain solutions, the company confirmed in a press release on March 5. IBM Security’s X-Force Red, the firm’s dedicated security task force, released the X-Force Red Blockchain Testing service in order to tackle remaining inefficiencies in enterprise blockchain deployments. “IBM X-Force Red is seeing that 70 percent of solutions that incorporate blockchain rely on traditional technologies for backend processes like authentication, data processing and Application Programming Interfaces (API),” the press release explains, adding: “The X-Force Red Blockchain Testing service will evaluate the whole implementation including chain code, …

Five Japanese banks have collaborated to launch a financial services infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), the finance platform confirmed in a press release on March 1. Bank of Iwate, Bank of Yokohama, Aomori Bank, Akita Bank and Yamanashi Chuo Bank will work together on the platform, dubbed “Fitting Hub.” The first service available on the platform — electronic delivery service — should launch in April. The press release states that such a collaborative system based on conventional database technology would be complicated the separation of data control, “but in this platform, by combining distributed register technology and the …

Sam Palmisano — retired IBM chairman and current chairman of United States nonprofit The Center for Global Enterprise — says he doesn’t know of a solution that has been found to make public blockchain networks compatible with European data privacy laws. Palmisano made his remarks during a joint interview for Bloomberg Markets with David Kappos, partner at U.S. law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which was broadcast on the Bloomberg Technology channel on March 4. Palmisano and Kappos focused on the interaction between blockchain innovation and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a landmark European Union-wide legal framework for …