Formula 1 to enter the online gaming market using Blockchain Technology

BBFTA News Editor | April 12, 2019 | PERMALINK

F1 is partnering with  Anomica Brands to develop an online game using Blockchain technology, called F1 Delta Time.

Anomica, which is known for its gamification, AI and Blockchain expertise. F1 intends to use tokens so that players, during the online game, can collect and use them towards upgrades. The first phase of the game, based on F1 race tracks, is aiming to be launched in May 2019.

Watched by over 1.5 Billion people in the 2018 race season, and with over 63% of its audience under 45; presumably, Delta Time is designed to attract and appeal to younger viewers especially in Asia, where economic growth is strong and global brands which typically sponsor F1, want to grow their...

Anomica, which is known for its gamification, AI and Blockchain expertise. F1 intends to use tokens so that players, during the online game, can collect and use them towards upgrades. The first phase of the game, based on F1 race tracks, is aiming to be launched in May 2019.

Watched by over 1.5 Billion people in the 2018 race season, and with over 63% of its audience under 45; presumably, Delta Time is designed to attract and appeal to younger viewers especially in Asia, where economic growth is strong and global brands which typically sponsor F1, want to grow their presence.

The global gaming market is reported to be worth a staggering $137 Billion with over 2.3 Billion gamers. The F1 brand (one of the world’s best-known brands) is highly attractive to get the attention of gamers and a slice of this growing market.

F1 is no stranger to video games. Indeed, its drivers use them for training as a simulator, and last year Enzo Bonito, who had only used video games, actually beat an Ex F1 driver on a real race track in Mexico.

Is it too far a stretch to foresee that in time tokens, used in the new Delta Time online game, could be used either on F1 race tracks around the world or be traded on some form of digital exchange? What is certain is the gaming market will be monitoring this new F1 game, which incorporates Blockchain technology, as any unique marketing angle that appeals to this young expanding market and quickly copied.

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Blockchain

Computer Games

https://thecryptoreport.com/formula-one-launchi...ta-time-2/

UK £1.4 Trillion Mortgage market to use Blockchain: Aviva invests in FinTech start-up

BBFTA News Editor | April 12, 2019 | PERMALINK

It typically takes six months to buy a house according to Acre, a UK Fintech firm, that has just received a capital injection from one of Europe’s biggest insurance companies, Aviva.

Acre has announced a partnership with Sesame Bankhall Group, one of the UK’s leading firms of financial advisory networks, with over 11,000 advisors. Last year Sesame Bankhall Group placed £42 Billion worth of mortgages, so clearly has distribution capabilities.

Blockchain technology can create one record that the relevant parties can share in a highly secure environment, so the lender, borrower, lawyers and financial advisors have access to real-time information on the progress of mortgage applications.

Given that predominantly, lawyers and financial advisors remunerated by charging fees on a time basis, any technology that improves efficiency should be welcome.

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Fintech

Real Estate

https://www.eu-startups.com/2019/04/london-base...lockchain/

Barry James

7 Years Ago |

It's been one heck of a week - and the Westminster Fronter Technologies Forum was oversubscribed within hours. It's going to be a milestone event!

Apologies to those on the 'standby' list but we will let you know if any places free up.

We'll be collecting the presentations and notes etc so do email us at
WestminsterForum@bbfta.org with FORUMinfo in the subject line please if you'd like to be included in the followup and invited to subsequent events.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6521323638535393280

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Sharon Henley

7 Years Ago |

We all know the journey as a founder can be very hard and very lonely and this is half the reason I am sure most of you are here, networking with the good folk from the BBFTA. If you are in London and are indeed a founder in the blockchain space then please do check out this latest meetup dedicated for the founders in Blockchain.

Daniel Halsted - Founder of Blocktribe has set it up and wants to invite you all to join a group of other blockchain founders who are willing to support others and be supported.

The event is free,...

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Federal Reserve: Fedwire goes down meaning US Banks cannot process payments. Bitcoin claims 99.98% reliability

BBFTA News Editor | April 11, 2019 | PERMALINK

Fedwire is a real-time settlement system used by the US Federal Reserve and by US banks to settle financial transactions.

To maintain confidence in the financial markets, it is vital that Fedwire is always available, so it was not good news to see this comment posted on Reddit on 2nd April 2019– “Today the United States Federal Reserve experienced an unexpected issue and went completely down. No incoming or outgoing wires went through in the entire country. It’s still unresolved and yet not one single news outlet seems to be reporting on this and the massive impact it has.”

Fedwire processed over $2.8 Trillion of transactions daily in January 2019, but as they’re a centralised system, it will always be more...

To maintain confidence in the financial markets, it is vital that Fedwire is always available, so it was not good news to see this comment posted on Reddit on 2nd April 2019– “Today the United States Federal Reserve experienced an unexpected issue and went completely down. No incoming or outgoing wires went through in the entire country. It’s still unresolved and yet not one single news outlet seems to be reporting on this and the massive impact it has.”

Fedwire processed over $2.8 Trillion of transactions daily in January 2019, but as they’re a centralised system, it will always be more vulnerable compared to a Decentralised system. Bitcoin was created as a decentralised system and has only been unavailable for 0.02% of the time since it first started over ten years ago. Bitcoin now has more than 10,000 nodes, so it is doubtful they will all be non-operational at the same time, thus the attraction of a decentralised mode of operation.

Several previous Fed bank payments experts have been recommending for a while that the Fed updates its system, so maybe it will look at Blockchain technology to be part of its upgrade?

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Banking

Financial Market

https://bitcoinist.com/federal-reserve-offline-...in-uptime/

VKontakte - a social media network service and Russia’s most popular website looks to launch its own token

BBFTA News Editor | April 11, 2019 | PERMALINK

Established in 2006, and with over 500 Million accounts, VKontakte is the ninth most visited website in the world according to SimilarWeb.

Users of the Russian social media network, based on the amount of time they spend on the VKontakte’s platform, will receive tokens. Tokens earned this way could be transferred between users, to purchase goods and potentially be converted to cash via VK Pay. VK Pay is a money transfer service that lets VK users send money to each other in messages, using a credit or debit card. 

This format is similar to Facebook’s plans for Facecoin, which is reported to be launching later this year in India on WhatsApp, and follows Line, Japan’s largest social media platform, which is using Digital...

Users of the Russian social media network, based on the amount of time they spend on the VKontakte’s platform, will receive tokens. Tokens earned this way could be transferred between users, to purchase goods and potentially be converted to cash via VK Pay. VK Pay is a money transfer service that lets VK users send money to each other in messages, using a credit or debit card. 

This format is similar to Facebook’s plans for Facecoin, which is reported to be launching later this year in India on WhatsApp, and follows Line, Japan’s largest social media platform, which is using Digital Assets.

VKontake’s co-founder Pavel Durov also founded Telegram, which raised over $1.8 Billion in 2018 and is reported to be worth over $2.7 Billion personally.

These massive social media firms in three different continents are all using a potent cocktail of gamification and loyalty programs to incentivise and reward their customers for spending more time on their platforms. They presumably will be collecting information on what the tokens are being used to purchase and sell this valuable consumer data to advertisers.

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Bitcoin

Social Media

Social Web

https://www.cryptonewsz.com/russian-social-medi...ncy/13472/

Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

When is an IPO not an IPO? When it is an ICOs, STO, IEOs, DPO, TCR and Direct Offer.
 
In 2014 Mastercoinlaunched the first Initial Coin Offering (ICO) but it took nearly three years for this capital raising mechanism to really take off, which has created over 5,000 tokens being issued, raising over $20 Billion on a global basis. As regulators turned their attention to ICOs and argued that many of the ICOs ought to be treated as securities it has led to development of Security Tokens (STO). STOs are normally asset backed and typically subject to security regulations in the...

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SEC Published Guidance, NOT regulations, for Digital Assets

BBFTA News Editor | April 10, 2019 | PERMALINK

In the USA, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has released guidance on the issuing of Digital Assets and the way these assets are treated.

The inference is that if certain Digital Assets comply with its direction, then no action will be taken by the SEC, but each company that has, or intends, to create a Digital Asset will be reviewed on a case by case basis.

The guidance, which is called ‘Framework for Investment Contract Analysis of Digital Assets’ attempts to clarify whether a Digital Asset will be treated by the SEC as a security, and therefore will be subject to federal securities laws. The guidelines explain how the Howey Test may be used in connection to Digital Assets, and in particular to Initial Coin Offerings...

The inference is that if certain Digital Assets comply with its direction, then no action will be taken by the SEC, but each company that has, or intends, to create a Digital Asset will be reviewed on a case by case basis.

The guidance, which is called ‘Framework for Investment Contract Analysis of Digital Assets’ attempts to clarify whether a Digital Asset will be treated by the SEC as a security, and therefore will be subject to federal securities laws. The guidelines explain how the Howey Test may be used in connection to Digital Assets, and in particular to Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

The SEC outlines some examples, which create the impression that many ICOs launched previously may have breached SEC regulations, as they did not register with the SEC.

Some ICOs may have sold tokens that could be classified, under existing federal legislation, as an investment contract.

However, Bitcoin is not in the SEC’s spotlight, as it has been created in a decentralised manner. Which may help explain why Bitcoin has performed so well this week.

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Information Security

Regulations

Digital Assets

https://cryptonomist.ch/en/2019/04/03/sec-crypt...-guidance/

Beware of the headlines

BBFTA News Editor | April 10, 2019 | PERMALINK

Stated in a recent article, Hong Kong forbids Security Token Offerings (STOs).

However, if you read the article, it also goes on to say that if you have the correct regulatory licences, you can sell STOs. STOs are now widely accepted as being seen and treated by regulators as a security, in the same way as buying a share in a company, like Apple or BMW, is processed. It is not illegal to sell these shares to raise capital, but the company, i.e. Apple or BMW as well as its corporate broker, need to follow the correct regulations in each jurisdiction around the world.

The reason behind treating STOs as securities are...

However, if you read the article, it also goes on to say that if you have the correct regulatory licences, you can sell STOs. STOs are now widely accepted as being seen and treated by regulators as a security, in the same way as buying a share in a company, like Apple or BMW, is processed. It is not illegal to sell these shares to raise capital, but the company, i.e. Apple or BMW as well as its corporate broker, need to follow the correct regulations in each jurisdiction around the world.

The reason behind treating STOs as securities are because they typically are backed by real assets such as property, commodities, bonds or indeed shares in private or publicly quoted companies. Due to the need to be regulated, STOs costs to raise capital are higher than Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Different regulators globally have taken different stances to ICOs; several of them saying that regulation of ICOs is not the same as those used to regulate the buying and selling of cars and houses. While some countries have banned Digital Assets, others have passed legislation to encourage the issuance of these assets.

PWC’s 4th report on ICO/STO looked at global trends, the amount of money raised and how legislation is evolving. One of the trends which PWC highlighted is “Asset tokenisation, i.e., the conversion of real-world assets to the Blockchain, is a dominant trend in 2019”. As we see greater clarity from regulators, we are more likely to see increased use of Digital Assets by institutions. If this creates more liquidity and the ability to trade 24/7, many assets, restricted to standard trading hours today, could result in Digital Assets being a compelling alternative and potentially may reduce asset price volatility.

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Token Offerings

Digital Assets

https://www.pwc.ch/en/publications/2019/ch-2019...1-2019.pdf

SEC decided to take no action on a Utility Token

BBFTA News Editor | April 09, 2019 | PERMALINK

The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US has told a company called TurnKey Jets (TKJ), that it will not be taking enforcement action for its Initial Coin Offering (ICO), provided TKJ complies with certain, self-imposed,  restrictions.

These include: TKJ will not use any of the capital it raised to build its platform, and the tokens it issues cannot be traded on an external exchange/platform, only held in a TKJ wallet. If clients wish to sell tokens, they can only sell them to TKJ, and it has to be at a discount to the price at which they received them.

It would appear that the SEC is ensuring that there will be no opportunity to profit from holding a TKJ token. Moreover, it is helpful that the SEC has recognised there is a place for utility tokens.

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ICO

Utility Token

https://www.ccn.com/crypto-win-sec-admits-not-a...securities

China approves 197 Blockchain-based firms

BBFTA News Editor | April 09, 2019 | PERMALINK

While the recent rally in Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies has attracted much attention, and with over 100,000 searches on Google on 2nd of April for Bitcoin in one day, what is possibly more important is the announcement from China’s Cyberspace Administration.

It has just approved 197 firms which use Blockchain technology, including some of China’s most significant organisations - Tencent, and Alibaba - as China looks to review the opportunities and challenges that Blockchain technology can offer.

Allegedly created in response to some unregulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s) carried out in China, is this list. As a result of this, companies must now be reviewed by the Chinese State Internet Information Office to be on the list. Absence from the list could indicate that a company is running unregistered offerings.

In the same way, we have seen firms like JP Morgan create their...

It has just approved 197 firms which use Blockchain technology, including some of China’s most significant organisations - Tencent, and Alibaba - as China looks to review the opportunities and challenges that Blockchain technology can offer.

Allegedly created in response to some unregulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s) carried out in China, is this list. As a result of this, companies must now be reviewed by the Chinese State Internet Information Office to be on the list. Absence from the list could indicate that a company is running unregistered offerings.

In the same way, we have seen firms like JP Morgan create their own Blockchain Quora to meet the criteria relevant to them in the financial services sector. How long will it be before the Chinese develop their own Blockchains and encourage more widespread adoption, similar to the way they have restrictions around the use of the internet for their citizens?

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Blockchain

Finance

https://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/110149/201...kchain.htm

EU Blockchain Alliance launched to drive adoption

BBFTA News Editor | April 08, 2019 | PERMALINK

Over 100 organisations from a selection of different industries have signed up to the newly-founded International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (IATBA), spawned from a series of meetings held by the European Commission (EC).

The new members are developers, suppliers and organisations who are using Blockchain technology, to develop a "predictable, transparent and trust-based global framework".

The IATBA is relocating to Brussels, and it intends to work with governments and regulators to establish guidelines on interoperability (how each different Blockchain shares data) while promoting an open and inclusive global model of governance for the use of Blockchain technology. Members so far include traditional firms like IBM, Accenture, Barclays, BVVA and Deutsche Telekom, as well as companies active in the Digital Asset space, such as IOTA, Ripple, ConsenSys, and Cardona.

The EU has been monitoring Blockchain...

The new members are developers, suppliers and organisations who are using Blockchain technology, to develop a "predictable, transparent and trust-based global framework".

The IATBA is relocating to Brussels, and it intends to work with governments and regulators to establish guidelines on interoperability (how each different Blockchain shares data) while promoting an open and inclusive global model of governance for the use of Blockchain technology. Members so far include traditional firms like IBM, Accenture, Barclays, BVVA and Deutsche Telekom, as well as companies active in the Digital Asset space, such as IOTA, Ripple, ConsenSys, and Cardona.

The EU has been monitoring Blockchain developments for a while, and in April 2018 it established the European Blockchain  Partnership that now has 29 members, with Hungary being the latest to join, as it believes the use of Blockchains will be at the heart of public services. To date, 141 Million Euros have been allocated by the EU to Blockchain related projects, and potentially up to 340 million Euros could be committed before the end of 2020, to explore how best to use this technology.

IBM has cited five reasons to use Blockchain – ‘greater transparency, enhanced security, improved traceability, increased efficiency and speed’. Interestingly, in a survey carried out by Capgemini, 93 per cent of UK companies, when asked why they were looking at using Blockchain technology, said it was to save costs (compared to a global average of 89 per cent). Secondly, 87 per cent was reducing risk followed by increasing revenues, at 85 per cent. 

The fact that organisations like IATBA, European Blockchain Partnership and established global brands like IBM, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Investments, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar Land Rover amongst others all exploring and promoting the opportunities that Blockchain technology offers, we will see more and more applications impacting on our everyday lives.

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Blockchain

Regulators

https://cointelegraph.com/news/european-union-l...dium=email

World Economic Forum: 40 Central Banks looking at Digital Currencies

BBFTA News Editor | April 08, 2019 | PERMALINK

The use of Blockchain technology, though not appropriate for all organisations, offers a powerful tool to cut costs, improve efficiency, increase transparency, and hold and share data using cryptographic security.

In an increasingly digital ecosystem, where the flow of money, data, identity and information is ‘in play’, we need secure digital solutions.

Central Banks have been encouraged to look at Digital Currencies by IMF MD Christian Lagarde, saying, “digital currencies issued by central banks can reduce the risk of global financial instability by eliminating the psychological motivation behind a bank run”. 

Blockchain technology, along with Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data and Machine Learning, will all help as economies migrate from paper, manual, and analogue processes to digital processes.

Several countries have recently announced their digital intentions, including UAE /...

In an increasingly digital ecosystem, where the flow of money, data, identity and information is ‘in play’, we need secure digital solutions.

Central Banks have been encouraged to look at Digital Currencies by IMF MD Christian Lagarde, saying, “digital currencies issued by central banks can reduce the risk of global financial instability by eliminating the psychological motivation behind a bank run”. 

Blockchain technology, along with Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data and Machine Learning, will all help as economies migrate from paper, manual, and analogue processes to digital processes.

Several countries have recently announced their digital intentions, including UAE / Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Cambodia, Lithuania and the Eastern Central Caribbean Bank.

Central banks have quoted various reasons as to why they are looking to issue their own digital currency – to tackle their black economy, to reduce their reliance on the “petrodollar”, and to improve the efficiency of transferring money internationally.

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Banking

Blockchain

Digital Currency

https://www.coinspeaker.com/wef-40-central-bank...ocurrency/

Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

UN aviation president claims Blockchain can help its industry, which is estimated to double in size by 2035
 
In a speech at the inaugural Council for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Abu Dhabi, the UN aviation president claimed that air traffic is going to double up in the next 15 years and believes Blockchain technology can make the industry more efficient. Handling the huge amount of data and security measures required to transport passengers across the world is a real challenge for the airline industry. However, by using a technology such as facial recognition, interacting with government data bases and having...

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Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

Blockchain start-up completed what it claims to be the world’s first end-to-end international blockchain trial for real estate
 
In the UK a new start-up called International Property Networkbelieves (IPN) that for the first time they have completed a property transaction involving banks, conveyancers, agents, legal teams, buyers and sellers using Blockchain technology.
U.S.-based law firm Squire Patton Boggs, U.K.-based law firms Ashurst and Clifford Chance, Barclays, Commerz Real, SBI Nihon SSI, BBVA, Swiss Re and Royal Bank of Scotland are among 40 companies on the IPNs platform as they seek to save costs and reduce the costs of real estate transactions.
IPNS claim...

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