36Kr.com reported, citing sources, that Ant Group has set up an internal AI innovation R&D a...

Ant Group Reportedly Forms AI Innovation Dept 'NextEvo', with Ex-Google AI Engineer in Charge AASTOCKS Financial News - Popular News

Ant Group has restructured its shareholder setup in January to align voting rights with economic interests, eliminating the potential for single or joint shareholder control.

Corporate Changes Completed at Ant Group - Pandaily

Geoff Jiang, Senior Vice President of Ant Group and President of Digital Technology Business Group, said earlier that a number of technology products ...

Ant Digital to Continue to Develop Overseas Mkts, Focusing on Fast-growing Digitalization Needs in SEA AASTOCKS Financial News - Latest News

The country's industrial authority has formed a working group for metaverse standardization with members from Chinese tech giants.

China forms metaverse working group with Huawei, Tencent, Ant Group and others | The Block

And never really talked about it. I just know a lot of that group that was together, especially like me and Ant (Anthony Edwards), us two being two of the younger dudes there, we know that we both want to play for USA moving forward and kind of help ...

Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards believe they should be on the Team USA Olympic roster

Rimon Kirsht didn’t speak or look into the camera during a short video released Monday morning by Hamas showing three Israeli women who are among more than 230

Governor rejects calls to expedite ant-Semitism bill

A bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators on Wednesday introduced a bill that would add protections for minors to immigration courts, which currently have no distinct protocols to process

Bipartisan legislation seeks to create children’s immigration court

HSBC and Ant Group explore potential of tokenized deposits in a HKMA-sanctioned test, signaling a fusion of banking and cutting-edge fintech.

HSBC and Ant Group collaborate on tokenized deposits: A new frontier in banking

To benefit from this ongoing trend, investors can bet on leading e-commerce companies that are well-positioned to perform in the foreseeable future. Let's explore one company with good prospects and is also trading at an attractive valuation: Alibaba (NYSE: BABA).

This E-commerce Giant Is on Sale Now

Using blockchain technology provided by the China-based Ant Group, HSBC Holdings has successfully conducted test token deposits in intra-group treasury transactions.

HSBC ramps up its blockchain efforts with tokenized treasury transactions

Ant Group

ant-group

PALO ALTO, CA, August 13th, 2024, /Chainwire/--ZAN, the web3 technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies, plans to run a Sui RPC node with Mysten Labs. Mysten Labs, a web3 infrastructure company and the original contributor to the Sui blockchain, today announced a partnership with ZAN, the technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies. With the integration of Sui, ZAN aims to accelerate the development and adoption of its web3 applications. The collaboration will focus on Mysten Labs lending technological support in two key areas: KYC infrastructure and RPC node services. ZAN will provide KYC services for projects building on Sui, contributing essential compliance solutions for the blockchain. ZAN will also officially launch RPC node services for Sui, enhancing the blockchain's scalability and accessibility for developers and users in the APAC region. “We are excited to build a partnership with Mysten Labs. Sui is a star public chain dedicated to technology and value creation, with a rich ecosystem and diverse applications. Similarly, ZAN stems from a technology-driven team, and we are committed to building the next-generation technological infrastructure for the Web3 industry. We look forward to more technical exchanges between each other, jointly promoting innovation and development in the entire industry," said Cobe Zhang, Chief Operating Officer of ZAN. Together, Mysten Labs and ZAN will explore building opportunities in areas such as payments, data, digital identity, and more, with the goal of delivering innovative solutions that benefit consumers, businesses, and the local community, with an eye to discovering and supporting web3 super app opportunities. Both organizations are committed to fostering a collaborative environment and look forward to sharing updates on the partnership’s milestones as they are achieved. “We are thrilled to be working alongside the ZAN team and the broader Ant Digital Technologies, to bring an e-KYC solution to the broader digital asset ecosystem to market,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Mysten Labs. “This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Sui and the broader web3 ecosystem in Hong Kong and the broader APAC region. By combining our strengths, we can accelerate the development of innovative applications that will benefit millions of users.” About Sui Sui is a first-of-its-kind Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the bottom up to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. Its object-centric model, based on the Move programming language, enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications with unrivaled speed at low cost. Sui is a step-function advancement in blockchain and a platform on which creators and developers can build amazing, user-friendly experiences. Learn more: https://sui.io About Mysten Labs Mysten Labs is a team of leading distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography experts whose founders were senior executives and lead architects of pioneering blockchain projects. The mission of Mysten Labs is to create foundational infrastructure for web3. Learn more: https://mystenlabs.com About ZAN As a technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies for Web3 products and services, and powered by AntChain Open Labs' TrustBase open-source technical stack, ZAN provides rich and reliable services for business innovations and a development platform for Web3 endeavors. The ZAN product family includes ZAN eKYC, ZAN KYT, ZAN Smart Contract Review, ZAN Node Service, with more products being on the way. Learn more:https://zan.top/ About Ant Digital Technologies Ant Digital Technologies is Ant Group's digital technology subsidiary. Ant Digital Technologies continues to promote the development and application of digital technologies, introducing leading products like ZOLOZ, mPaaS and ZAN based on its expertise in AI, privacy computing, and security technology. Ant Digital Technologies is committed to working with partners across different industries to support small and medium-sized financial institutions in their digital transformation, enable SMEs in the service industry to operate digitally, and facilitate digital collaboration across industries. Revenue from Ant Digital Technologies' international business operation increased by 300% in 2023. Contact Lexi Wangler Mysten Labs lexi.wangler@mystenlabs.com This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. PALO ALTO, CA, August 13th, 2024, /Chainwire/--ZAN, the web3 technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies, plans to run a Sui RPC node with Mysten Labs. Mysten Labs, a web3 infrastructure company and the original contributor to the Sui blockchain, today announced a partnership with ZAN, the technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies. With the integration of Sui, ZAN aims to accelerate the development and adoption of its web3 applications. The collaboration will focus on Mysten Labs lending technological support in two key areas: KYC infrastructure and RPC node services. ZAN will provide KYC services for projects building on Sui, contributing essential compliance solutions for the blockchain. ZAN will also officially launch RPC node services for Sui, enhancing the blockchain's scalability and accessibility for developers and users in the APAC region. “We are excited to build a partnership with Mysten Labs. Sui is a star public chain dedicated to technology and value creation, with a rich ecosystem and diverse applications. Similarly, ZAN stems from a technology-driven team, and we are committed to building the next-generation technological infrastructure for the Web3 industry. We look forward to more technical exchanges between each other, jointly promoting innovation and development in the entire industry," said Cobe Zhang, Chief Operating Officer of ZAN. “We are excited to build a partnership with Mysten Labs. Sui is a star public chain dedicated to technology and value creation, with a rich ecosystem and diverse applications. Similarly, ZAN stems from a technology-driven team, and we are committed to building the next-generation technological infrastructure for the Web3 industry. We look forward to more technical exchanges between each other, jointly promoting innovation and development in the entire industry," said Cobe Zhang, Chief Operating Officer of ZAN. Together, Mysten Labs and ZAN will explore building opportunities in areas such as payments, data, digital identity, and more, with the goal of delivering innovative solutions that benefit consumers, businesses, and the local community, with an eye to discovering and supporting web3 super app opportunities. Both organizations are committed to fostering a collaborative environment and look forward to sharing updates on the partnership’s milestones as they are achieved. “We are thrilled to be working alongside the ZAN team and the broader Ant Digital Technologies, to bring an e-KYC solution to the broader digital asset ecosystem to market,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Mysten Labs. “We are thrilled to be working alongside the ZAN team and the broader Ant Digital Technologies, to bring an e-KYC solution to the broader digital asset ecosystem to market,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Mysten Labs. “This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Sui and the broader web3 ecosystem in Hong Kong and the broader APAC region. By combining our strengths, we can accelerate the development of innovative applications that will benefit millions of users.” “This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Sui and the broader web3 ecosystem in Hong Kong and the broader APAC region. By combining our strengths, we can accelerate the development of innovative applications that will benefit millions of users.” About Sui Sui is a first-of-its-kind Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the bottom up to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. Its object-centric model, based on the Move programming language, enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications with unrivaled speed at low cost. Sui is a step-function advancement in blockchain and a platform on which creators and developers can build amazing, user-friendly experiences. Learn more: https://sui.io About Mysten Labs Mysten Labs is a team of leading distributed systems, programming languages, and cryptography experts whose founders were senior executives and lead architects of pioneering blockchain projects. The mission of Mysten Labs is to create foundational infrastructure for web3. Learn more: https://mystenlabs.com About ZAN As a technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies for Web3 products and services, and powered by AntChain Open Labs' TrustBase open-source technical stack, ZAN provides rich and reliable services for business innovations and a development platform for Web3 endeavors. The ZAN product family includes ZAN eKYC, ZAN KYT, ZAN Smart Contract Review, ZAN Node Service, with more products being on the way. Learn more:https://zan.top/ About Ant Digital Technologies Ant Digital Technologies is Ant Group's digital technology subsidiary. Ant Digital Technologies continues to promote the development and application of digital technologies, introducing leading products like ZOLOZ, mPaaS and ZAN based on its expertise in AI, privacy computing, and security technology. Ant Digital Technologies is committed to working with partners across different industries to support small and medium-sized financial institutions in their digital transformation, enable SMEs in the service industry to operate digitally, and facilitate digital collaboration across industries. Revenue from Ant Digital Technologies' international business operation increased by 300% in 2023. Contact Lexi Wangler Mysten Labs lexi.wangler@mystenlabs.com This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here . here here

ZAN And Mysten Labs Partner To Advance Web3 Infrastructure Development

ZAN এবং Mysten Labs অংশীদার Web3 অবকাঠামো উন্নয়নে অগ্রসর

ZAN und Mysten Labs arbeiten zusammen, um die Entwicklung der Web3-Infrastruktur voranzutreiben

ZAN y Mysten Labs se asocian para impulsar el desarrollo de infraestructura Web3

ZAN et Mysten Labs s'associent pour faire progresser le développement de l'infrastructure Web3

ZAN और मिस्टेन लैब्स ने वेब3 इंफ्रास्ट्रक्चर विकास को आगे बढ़ाने के लिए साझेदारी की

ZAN と Mysten Labs が提携し、Web3 インフラ開発を推進

ZAN과 Mysten Labs, Web3 인프라 개발을 발전시키기 위해 협력

ZAN e Mysten Labs fazem parceria para promover o desenvolvimento da infraestrutura Web3

ZAN и Mysten Labs объединяются для продвижения разработки инфраструктуры Web3

ZAN ve Mysten Labs, Web3 Altyapı Gelişimini Geliştirmek İçin Ortaklık Kurdu

ZAN và Mysten Labs hợp tác để thúc đẩy phát triển cơ sở hạ tầng Web3

ZAN 与 Mysten Labs 合作推进 Web3 基础设施开发

Returning after a week in Thailand at the P2E Expo Asia and there are some lessons to carry home. (1) East vs West - the crypto, and blockchain scene here is very different. In fact it's reminiscent of other regions like Africa who are still considered early adopters but aren't moving with the hype - they're focused on making crypto and blockchain work for them to connect people. They're still riding the wave of P2E gaming and trying out all sorts of other models. My thoughts are very clear on this so I won't labour the point. (2) There was very little NFT noise at this event. There were lots of panel discussions about interoperability across games and the but the thinking just hasn't moved on. It's still driven by Hopium and not technical understanding. Only a few got this, including some VCs. (3) VC attitudes are shifting with the market now. Not so interested in tokens or games that are just a slide deck dream. Equity deals are now attractive again, infrastructure and tools a desire, and teams with pedigree and more than just a stock Unity demo are a focus. Tokenomics are more or less ignored in favour of gameplay but this is still the quickest way to generate a return for investors. (4) We are also being fed Western biased news with little to no coverage elsewhere. It's typical of the Silicon Valley mentality but Asia Pac is red hot with capital deal flow, family offices getting involved and projects being funded with much bigger tickets. It's a shame we just follow the same crowd of VC news outlets who only know how to spell 'a16z'. (5) WAGMI? Fuck off. I met people who were hung out to dry and the so-called "community" disappeared when the chips were down and help was needed. I got a sense of disappointment, of being sold on a dream that turned into a nightmare, of learning the hard way and receiving no help. There was maturity here among some of the projects and teams due to their experiences - but they are still here, building but with longer term strategies now. (6) I was impressed with Gala games and their approach to linking music, games, and movies to their creator ecosystem. One to watch. (7) There's the typical shift in marketing and branding away from 'games' to 'metaverse' to follow the en vogue trend which is going to create a lot of confusion for people looking to understand what it really is. (8) Barely anyone looks at the data they generate in their web3 projects which is great news if you have an AI analytics platform like mine lol But honestly, it's a worry that it's not on anyone's mind so early on. It can be the difference between success and failure. Overall, this market is booming for different reasons. While the West is pushing ahead with NFTs and giving them more utility the East are still focused on gaming and accessibility. Nobody is wrong. This space will mature in different ways along different paths and one day they'll meet in the Metaverse. Web3 Metaverse Also interesting just how different attitudes are to NFTs, or "digital collectables" are across regions and regulators. Tencent is halting all NFT sales and trades on its Huanhe platform. Consumers are even being offered refunds, and all secondary sales are stopped also. The platform literally launched 12 months ago but there's been a slowing down of NFT sales to the point a lot of new collections remain unsold. After state media repeatedly highlighted issues around NFT speculation in the country, tech giants including Tencent and Ant Group in June signed a pact to stop. While global mainstream NFTs trade on public blockchains with cryptocurrencies, China’s digital collectables are mostly based on centrally-controlled blockchains and are sold in yuan. Crypto is facing strong regulatory pressure and consumer-facing protection in China but in other regions, it's booming. There's also the lack of real excitement over NFTs in web3 projects - digital collectables are not really interesting for consumers in these areas, for example, the idea of owning your assets is purely driven by Western conversations so far. It is far more lucrative as a tradeable asset for liquidity than real ownership and that points to why there will always be friction in this space and why gamers and consumers in general baulk at the concept. Even juggernauts like BTS have faced a backlash from fans who were told that the parent company, HYBE, was launching an NFT collection and exchange back in January and so far nothing else has emerged. If an army as big as the fanbase of BTS doesn't want NFTs as part of their experience and connection with the band then this should make people sit up and consider that not everyone across the World shares the cheerleading enthusiasm you read about. There are always two sides to every story, and if the is truly supposed to represent an open and borderless digital future then it's time we did a little more research beyond our own physical ones. Metaverse First published here.

East vs West - How The Crypto Culture Differs

We have witnessed the rapid growth of DeFi developments in 2020 and 2021, especially in the lending and trading sector. The Aave and Compound protocols have been the leading protocols on collateralized decentralized lending and are currently dominant in DeFi. The benefit of DeFi is that all activities are on-chain and everything is fully operated by computer codes, which makes the whole process transparent and avoids risk from intermediaries. The standard procedure for collateralized lending on the blockchain is to post collateral in the form of crypto to the protocol vault. Then the user can take out a loan in another crypto. Typically the loan value is lower than the deposit value, which provides a safety buffer in the case of volatility. It’s the same idea as getting a collateralized loan from a bank. Recently a few protocols have begun to enter into uncollateralized lending territory, though they are aimed at a much narrower audience, i.e., they work through intermediaries or only lend to reputed borrowers to contain the credit risk. However, when we look at the original purpose of DeFi – to provide financial services to the millions of people who can’t get access to traditional banking – it seems that we are far from reaching that goal. Lending is one major service of the banking sector. Under the current collateral model, with loan amounts lower than the deposit value, it’s almost impossible for impoverished people and startup companies to get access to the lending part of the DeFi world. That’s where uncollateralized lending can be extremely helpful. Not to mention that credit-based finance is frictionless and is the type of lending we use most frequently in our daily lives – compared to the few transactions we might make using mortgages once every few years, to purchase an apartment or car, we use credit cards way more often, mostly on a daily basis. Uncollateralized credit-based finance is the lubricant of our lives. The key problem with DeFi uncollateralized lending is the lack of a credit system in the DeFi universe. Unlike the financial world we interact with today, DeFi is anonymous in nature, which makes it hard to track down the individuals and corporations behind each wallet address. This significantly raises the risk of moral hazard. There currently is no regulation in DeFi, which makes it extremely difficult to seek legal actions against delinquency. The key, and probably the largest, missing part is a credit metrics system for each account, which could screen risk from the beginning. Without this, we are almost blind when dealing with loan requests. In the real world, people have credit scores, and such credit scores are the key input for lending, credit cards, and mortgages. A credit score is based on each individual’s credit report, which contains data on credit card transactions, income, etc. The FICO score, for example, utilizes a model that analyzes the data from credit reports and generates credit scores that are most widely used by lenders. In addition to credit report data, a few recent developments in emerging markets have shown that alternative data can improve credit score accuracy in an environment where traditional credit scores are not available. Zhima Credit, introduced by the Ant Group – a subsidiary of Alibaba – has been said to utilize data from online shopping, utility payment, and social relationship to create its own credit score system, and the result has been promising. According to a research paper, the Zhima Credit score could indeed improve classification performance within an experiment involving over 20,000 online loans. However, there have been intensive discussions on privacy protection issues related to this type of credit score. There are a lot of similarities between the DeFi world and the market Zhima Credit faced when it first began to introduce its credit score system in China, where there was not a lot of banking data available. Comparatively, DeFi has the advantage of an open data source. All data is available on the public ledger, and thus it provides the best data available out there. It provides the perfect ground for big data analytics and machine learning. With wallet owners’ consent, their credit score could be readily available, as long as we have the tools and models ready to use. Given DeFi is the foundation of the metaverse, a credit system based on DeFi could support future activities in the metaverse as a whole. The first step is to utilize the Decentralized Identity (DID) system to link an on-chain address to an identity, connecting real people with online accounts. Once the link is confirmed, the off-chain identity and related creditworthiness data could be brought into the on-chain world. For those who have credit scores (a FICO score, for example), this would create immediate creditworthiness for their DeFi user profile. However, most users do not have such a credit report, and privacy can be a concern. Thus, an on-chain credit system is necessary to fill in those blanks. It’s worth noting that, even in those scenarios, the DID system still can play a very important role in connecting a wallet address to a real person and reducing moral hazard and fraud risk. The next step is, how can we build a framework? In the case of the FICO model, its data sources can be grouped into five categories: payment history (35%), amounts owed (30%), length of credit history (15%), new credit (10%), and credit mix (10%). To start with, it’s possible to create a very rough but similar model in DeFi: payment history – this could be represented by on-chain transactions or NFT purchase history; amounts owed – there is no good proxy here; however, we could try using the total debt exposure on chain; length of credit history – the length of time that the user has ever used a loan; new credit – new credit on chain; credit mix – this could be anything that the user has outside the above four metrics. It’s apparent that this is not a suitable model to fit on-chain activities well. However, we could start from here and develop models that give us certain expectations about default probability. Then we could revise our model with data we observe. A better, and the ultimate, solution would be to create such an uncollateralized credit lending market in DeFi. In this way, we could observe, collect, and process the default output data along with data related to on-chain activities. We could then train the model utilizing supervised machine learning methodology: We could maps inputs (on-chain activities data + available off-chain data) to an output (default probability based on example input-output pairs). Carrying out a full-scale lending business brings significant risk; all money can be lost during the process. Thus, it might make sense to start with a small group experiment. The experiment could host a small group, for example, 1,000 people and last for six months. Participants could have a credit line of 1,000 USDC upon their request and standard terms for a credit line would be applied. We could observe the participants’ repayment activities to collect data in the same way as credit agencies collect data in real life. With such data, we could create the first model for DeFi credit scores. This then could lead to a second experiment with more participants, higher credit limits, and more tailored lines based on the score system. After several such experiments, we could expand such a business model to a wider-reaching population with a high confidence level. When issues are found during each round of the experiment, the model could be revised and updated for the next round. This project could run under a corporation in the beginning, and it could later be transformed into a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). The algorithm used to calculate such a credit score could be kept undisclosed, as scammers can easily manipulate a system once it’s public. The initial funding for the experiment could come from a group of investors or an asset pool created by crowdfunding. This could help to alleviate the risk for each participant. Although a lot of things could go wrong with this experiment (for example, the data quality could be problematic, the risk control model could be messy, and the data-training procedure could be erroneous), the benefit of such an experiment could be enormous for the whole DeFi world. A reward system would also be an important factor in DeFi lending. A good credit score could be rewarded with a specific NFT, or could lead to a whitelist for NFT minting. People with good DeFi credit could borrow money or NFTs for a few days using a simplified process. A high DeFi credit score could also be rewarded by entry tickets to metaverse events. This would be similar to the way a high credit score can function positively when renting an apartment or applying for a new mortgage. Overall, credit is an asset, and it can generate positive returns. It’s still missing from the DeFi universe, even after the total DeFi market has grown to 100bn USD. It’s time for us to work toward it. , former derivatives trader on Wall Street and director of a regulated crypto lending firm. Bi @trtwarrior

Building Credit Metrics in the DeFi Universe: An Experiment

In the Fintech world today, facial biometrics is considered an innovative technology because it represents the most secure alternative to common passwords. Biometric facial recognition during payment procedures (Face Pay, selfie biometrics) makes it super comfortable to shop offline: no bank card, smartphone, or any other device is required. You even don't have to scan your fingerprint. You have to do nothing! Once a user approaches the purchase area, the system recognizes them by their face and will charge the card a certain payment. There is no need to worry if you've left your smartphone or card at home. To buy something online, it is enough to bring the device with a camera closer to your face. With the growing demand for seamless payments, we are witnessing how selfie biometrics is turning from a trendy technology into a payment standard. Let me briefly tell you about Face Pay systems on the global market and how they are applied in real cases. Modern Face Pay Solutions in the Identity Market in 2021: Use Cases PopPay PopPay is a contactless payment system from , an American company that develops solutions to verify a person's identity by their face for activities such as logging in, paying, and using loyalty programs. The system is suitable for all retail formats: checkout, car cafe, stands, dining service. PopID Photo: PopPay How it works: To log in, take a selfie. The photo is protected by a digital key and stored in the PopID cloud. You can save your billing data. The app requires consent to be recognized anywhere with PopID support. When you pay, the cloud matches the encrypted image to your key and lets the company know who you are . Smile to Pay The payment method is based on facial recognition in China's payment system, which is owned by Ant Group fintech company consolidated into the accounts of the Alibaba internet giant. Uses state ID card data . Alipay Photo: cnx-software.com How it works: Before making the first payment at each new outlet, the buyer must go through two-factor authentication for security. To make a payment, you need to tell the cashier or enter your phone number yourself, then look at the camera of the payment device and smile. Dragonfly's portable payment device has a modern 3D camera that instantly identifies the person. The latest version of the device is capable of doing this under different lighting . Liveness detection is determined by the movement of the pupils. Dragonfly devices are available in more than 300 cities in China: they are installed in Freshippo supermarkets (Alibaba's own chain), Lotus supermarkets, 7-Eleven stores, Wedome bakeries and numerous small shops. In addition, vending machines and even hospitals in Jiangxi province are equipped with such systems. Frog Pro Frog Pro is a Face Pay system of the Chinese payment system , owned by internet giant. The platform is the global leader in using facial recognition technology in the payment segment. WeChat Pay processes a billion transactions daily, Frog Pro is used by 600 million people . WeChat Pay Tencent How it works: The Frog Pro features a 10.1-inch two-sided screen with an improving image filter that does not affect the algorithms responsible for identification. Along with that, Frog Pro has a 3D camera with depth detection to pay through facial recognition and a QR code scanner. Face to Pay Nestle Market The system is a joint project of Spanish , , and . CaixaBank is the world's first bank to apply facial recognition to ATM withdrawals without needing the user to enter their PIN . CaixaBank Nestle España Payment Innovation Hub How it works. Before making your first purchase, you need to download the app and register your personal details, a map, and a photo. After that, you can pay for purchases at Nestle Market, which has a checkout equipped with a tablet with a camera and an internet connection. When paying, the camera takes a selfie and compares it to the initial image. Selfie & Go Spanish app for banking transactions. Created by , a facial biometrics development startup formed by an alliance of bank and IT company in partnership with the restaurant company . Veridas BBVA Das-Nano Sodexo Iberia How it works. You need to download the app, register a selfie and a payment card. When paying, you need to enable Bluetooth and enable your phone location, look at the screen. The system will scan your face and check the image by matching it with the one from the data photo bank. Photo: BBVA Initially, in 2016, the solution allowed you to sign up to the banking app using selfies. In 2018, this app already allowed BBVA employees to make orders at different restaurants located in the headquarters buildings. One could reserve a table in advance, make an order, have lunch, and leave the hall without asking for a bill—payment was charged on exit using biometric machines with cameras. Users can place and pay for orders by opening the app—this is known as «zero-click payment». This same year, BBVA is working on Face Pay solutions for stores that use RFID tags. In 2021, facial biometrics is supplemented by voice biometrics . Today, Veridas facial biometrics technology is recognized as one of the best in the world according to . Ciudad BBVA NIST OPAY Russian solution from the IT company, which builds software and payment terminals powered by facial recognition technology. The manufacturer is a member of the VTB Bank accelerator, which together with VISA has launched pilot projects of pay-by-look services in some Russian catering networks . Ovision Photo: OPAY How it works. According to the developer's representative, the device is powered by convolutional neural networks and has one of the fastest recognition speeds in the world . The project team also developed its liveness detection algorithm to help distinguish a living person from a photograph. To start using the service, you need to download the app, take a selfie, and add a payment card to the app. and Sber X5 Lab Financial conglomerate ( ecosystem) and of leading Russian retailer have introduced glance payment technology in major Moscow chain stores. company solution helped implement biometric identification at self-service checkouts. The company, which is a part of Sber ecosystem, is a Russian developer in the sphere of computer vision. VISA became the partner payment system. Sberbank of Russia Sber innovation laboratory X5 Retail Group VisionLabs Photo: X5 Lab How it works: First you need to register your biometrics in a bank office. Second, select «Pay at a glance» and specify your payment in the bank mobile app. At the self-service checkout, you need to scan the item, select «Pay at a glance» mode, remove the mask for a couple of seconds and look at the camera. The scanning device uses a 3D camera with high recognition accuracy and depth capture . Pix The list ends with a Brazilian payment system with facial recognition, which is still being developed by in partnership with — the world leader in 3D Face Liveness & Matching software. This is a solution for banks and fintech companies looking to upgrade their payment systems. For the end-user, Pix is the ability to log in and make transactions in banking apps through selfie biometrics. Veritran Facetec How it works: 3D biometric technology is used that identifies a person by scanning the face with a USB camera. FaceTec Liveness provides real-time identity verification: it biometrically matches selfies with a photo ID document and registers it for future checks . How the Contactless Payment Market and Face Pay Will Grow The pandemic has transformed the payments industry, accelerated self-service development, and the introduction of contactless online services. Lockdown in many countries has led to a decline in the use of cash and plastic cards. This is hardly a reversible situation as people have tried the comfort of seamless transactions. According to Grand View Research, the global contactless payments market was estimated at $1.34 trillion in 2020. It is expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 20.3% from 2021 to 2028 . Photo: Grand View Research Facial recognition technology is growing at an explosive rate. The global market in 2020 was valued at $3.86 billion USD and is expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 15.4% from 2021 to 2028 . Photo: Grand View Research The growth of cyber-attacks and lack of infrastructure in developing countries is expected to hinder the growth of the contactless payment market. However, many experts and large businesses believe that paying through facial recognition is the future. Honestly, so do I.

These 9 Fintech Startups are Normalizing Selfie Payments

Blockchain 3.0 aims to improve the global scaling limitations of previous Blockchain technologies currently present in Bitcoin and Ethereum. It can help various industries, such as banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, telecommunications, logistics, energy, and government. China is currently at the forefront of Blockchain 3.0 development. Before we start discussing China and the way it entered the Blockchain 3.0 Era, let’s define what is Blockchain 3.0. has been all the rage recently as many companies have started to genuinely invest in Bitcoin technology, and led by the example of Tesla and Visa, have even started to accept cryptocurrency as a way of payment and settlement, which is quite impressive.  Blockchain 3.0 is essentially an upgraded version of blockchain 2.0. However, this one is built with the intention of improving the capabilities of the technology and solve the current issues it has. Blockchain technology A Brief History of Blockchain You see, this is a term that describes the attempts to fix some of the problems the blockchain industry currently has. This means that it intends to resolve issues such as scalability, interoperability, and privacy. Bitcoin is considered Blockchain 1.0 Ethereum is considered Blockchain 2.0 These put cryptocurrencies on the map and have had a lot of publicity throughout history. Ethereum specifically improved a lot on what made Bitcoin great and even has a lot of dApps that run through its blockchain. Bitcoin, for example, has an issue with its scalability. In fact, it has poor throughput, it has seven transactions per second. Now, when you compare this to , its proof-of-work consensus mechanism has given it a bottleneck. Visa, which does 1.700 transactions per second How Blockchain 3.0 is an Improvement Blockchain 3.0 resolves scaling issues through its layer two fixes which are developed in order to easily be integrated within currently available blockchain protocols. These have the intention of offloading transactions from a blockchain into a peer-to-peer network that in turn increases the throughput. Now, with thousands of distinct blockchains out there, the ability to communicate with them can be difficult, to say the least. The industry simply lacks an interoperability protocol, that has the ability to facilitate communication. Blockchain 3.0 intends to improve upon this as well. When we move on and discuss privacy, you need to understand that many blockchains out there are public, which means that both the public wallets as well as transactions are visible to anyone. Several cryptocurrencies have tried to resolve this issue, such as Monero, Zcash, and Dash, all of which have various types of anonymity to them, however, to the future with Grin and Beam as the first implementations. MimbleWimble is at the forefront of leading blockchain 3.0 Now, this was just a quick summary, and there’s a lot more to Blockchain 3.0 that needs to be discussed, but for the time being, let’s move on to what’s going on in China. China and Blockchain 3.0 When we look at China’s cryptocurrency history, we can see a similar pattern. You see, in blockchain 1.0, their most prevalent companies focused on digital currency applications, and in blockchain 2.0, some of the most visionary enterprises ass well as vendors started to gain business value through advancing blockchain technologies. After 2019, they started prioritizing enterprise customers, and the technical progress made by tech leaders. Now, the main reason as to why they have such a push to blockchain 3.0 is due to the fact that they have governmental pragmatic measures. The vendors in China are even advancing their technology to address a lot of the enterprise needs. Keep in mind that, not just in China, but everywhere else in the world, a lot of enterprises need support for performance, scalability, privacy, and possibly most important of all, security. As such, a lot of firms have started to make when it comes to blockchain R&D. This has led to a lot of vendors making substantial progress when it comes to the advancement of blockchain technologies. strategic investments Some of the Chinese companies involved in this that you might know include: Huawei Tencent Cloud WeBank Ant Group Not only that, but the blockchain is actually transforming a lot of businesses through enabling a new business model within this digital ecosystem. This is the case for just about all major industries, and these include banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, telecommunications, energy, and government. Most significantly out of all of this, financial service firms have been prioritising process transformation for effectiveness as well as trust. We also need to take a look inside what is known as the enterprise blockchain platform or EBP market in China. What is essentially happening in China is the fact that EBP vendors are playing vital roles in driving business applications as well as technology advancements. These vendors will typically be allocated to a total of three categories: Software Vendors – these are intended to provide on-premise software that can power just about any blockchain-related initiative. Cloud Service Providers – these are intended to offer blockchain as a service in order to assist with future innovation. Consulting Service Providers – these are intended to provide tailored blockchain solutions to the specific needs of certain customers. Now, keep in mind that many of these Blockchain 3.0 efforts can be seen as being in their infancy. This is a project that’s just getting started, and only time will tell how quickly China progresses to bring DeFi technologies into real-world usage cases. It is difficult to say how many of the projects will be successful, but one thing is for sure and this is the fact that blockchain, as well as for cryptocurrencies, are finally starting to adapt to real-world needs and have the potential of being the future way of doing, well, just about anything, both online and into the real-world. Thank you for reading Make sure to visit to find out more about Blockchain technologies, software solutions and open-source development tools for launching next-generation Crypto & Blockchain services. www.openware.com California-based Openware is the software engineering leader of the open-source Blockchain ecosystem, designing and developing global Fintech platforms, cryptocurrency exchange software, NFT crypto marketplaces, crypto banking, online brokerage, liquidity solutions, and more. Did you like the article? Follow us for more stories from open-source Blockchain software engineers at Openware!

China Enters Blockchain 3.0 Era

Fintech development in China has consistently experienced tremendous scale in the last two decades, with the growth of apps like AliPay and WeChat Pay highlighting this growth. However, a new obstacle for growth has recently come to light in 2021, with draft antitrust measures from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) targeting Ant Group and Tencent. This new emphasis to regulate fintech growth under the realm of antitrust and anti-monopoly regulations will drastically affect China’s fintech ecosystem and set it up for future exclusive government control. Why now? Ant Group’s cautionary tale Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, also known by the acronym BAT, have been in China’s digital ecosystem since their respective inceptions. Baidu is China’s biggest search engine with roughly 70% of overall market share, while Alibaba revolutionized how the retail industry conducts business in China. Tencent’s status as one of the world’s biggest gaming companies and parent organization to super-app WeChat marks it as another one of China’s largest technology companies. dominant players As a result of increasing digital preeminence by private companies, the Chinese government has begun a systematic campaign to reduce public reliance on such organizations, with the implied goal of reverting control of the digital economy back to the PRC. This is especially true given the increasing pace of development towards the digital yuan. One way that such initiatives have taken form have been through the crushing of fintech giant Ant Group’s proposed initial public offering (IPO) in November 2020. in implied battles over consumers and regulatory controversies in taking the place of central Chinese banks, Ant Group has been an immense force to be reckoned with by the Chinese government. Ant Group’s status as a premier fintech organization has disrupted previously state-planned financial systems, with Ant Group’s immense appeal resulting in wide adoption by Chinese citizens. These tensions came to a head in , when Jack Ma made comments calling China’s biggest risk the fact that its “lacks a financial ecosystem,” while calling Chinese banks “pawn shops.” Long engaged October 2020 This targeted campaign against Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group continued through an antitrust investigation into Alibaba in , with the Chinese government fining Alibaba $2.8 billion dollars as a result of this investigation in . December 2020 April 2021 The example of Ant Group’s fall from grace highlights the continuing power that the Chinese government continues to have in the 21st century. Despite being at the forefront of innovation for the past several decades, private technology giants are now facing increasing scrutiny, perhaps due to the government’s wish to increasingly maintain control over the Chinese banking and finance industry. Effects on China’s fintech ecosystem On the face of it, antitrust and anti-monopoly regulations are crucial for continued growth and development within any industry, especially by allowing opportunities for market entry by small-medium enterprises (SMEs). However, the reliance on private BAT ecosystems within the Chinese fintech market has much farther-reaching implications than just SME entrance into the fintech industry. By regulating the incumbent players, the Chinese government is attempting to increase strict controls on what happens within the fintech ecosystem, stifling growth in the long-term by suppressing innovation, preventing technology use, and scaring away potential startup founders and investors. By increasing regulatory controls, the Chinese government is effectively suppressing innovation and driving startups away from participating in the Chinese fintech industry. Having the ability to stifle so easily what had been called the “ ” does not bode well for startups attempting to make their mark within China. Therefore, founders and innovators within the fintech space will be more incentivized to grow their organizations abroad, with the potential of opportunity without restrictions being much greater internationally. world’s largest IPO Furthermore, the use of belonging to BAT, to include ecommerce platforms, payments capabilities, and digital advertisements, is also affected by antitrust and anti-monopoly regulations. Preventing the use of specific BAT technologies prevents founders from building upon such systems for growth, affecting supply chain, partnerships, and even consumer banking protocols. nuanced, stable, and widespread systems Lastly, the around the same time sends a threatening message to private fintech founders and investors. The implied threat of being able to whisk away such a high-profile individual is one that is simply not conducive to disruptive fintech growth, driving innovation and adoption elsewhere. disappearance of Jack Ma The digital yuan The growth of the digital yuan also plays a significant role in the recent government campaign against BAT. This centralized currency, also known as China’s digital currency electronic payment (DCEP) system, was originally slated for sole distribution through Alibaba, Tencent, and five other companies in . Cooperation between private companies and the PBOC specifically on the digital yuan extended into , with initial testing being conducted on private digital platforms. 2019 mid-2020 However, as the digital yuan nears completion and full implementation, the need for the PRC to centralize its control over China’s banking and fintech industry is becoming increasingly apparent. Without such control, the PRC will be heavily dependent on private enterprises for controlling and distributing the digital yuan. Therefore, the recent measures taken against BAT are indicative of the digital yuan’s future as the premiere digital payments method within China, further affecting China’s fintech industry. Conclusion The recent crackdown against China’s largest technology companies does not bode well for the domestic fintech ecosystem. With the example of Ant Group’s failed IPO in recent memory, founders and innovators will be hesitant to participate within the Chinese fintech industry considering increasing governmental regulations, disuse of well-established BAT systems, as well as implied harm if full cooperation is not always given to the central government. It will be interesting to see how the digital yuan’s formal introduction to the domestic economy will fare; will China’s largest technology companies face similar scrutiny if the digital yuan becomes the most widely used form of digital payments?

China's Repeated Takedowns of Its Own Tech Elites Paints A Worrying Forecast For All of FinTech

Masayoshi Son says his SoftBank Group is the goose that lays the golden eggs. At the group's earnings meeting on Feb. 8, he wasted no time in telling attendees about his recent investments in artificial intelligence startups and said he wanted to replicate a number of unicorns in Japan, sweeping away the sluggishness he felt in front of investors this time last year. The bottom line is that SoftBank's results have improved dramatically, with a total net profit of about $29.9 billion between April and September 2020 (up 371 percent year-over-year). Nearly 40% of this profit was made in the last three months ($11.7 billion), and the year-over-year increase for this period was an impressive 879.5%. SoftBank's profits were made up of a variety of investment income, helped by last year's hot stock market. in the fourth quarter of 2020, the SoftBank Group made a profit of $13.45 billion through the appreciation of its investments in the Vision I and II funds, and another $1.035 billion through speculation in the secondary market by the Group itself and its NorthStar unit. This helped SoftBank to have its best quarter ever. "We're finally in the harvest phase," Son said at the revenue press conference. But he also said the profits were just accounting bookkeeping numbers, not happy or sad. "As a businessman, as an entrepreneur, this is not a satisfactory level yet. We still have room to grow." At this point, a slide behind him shows a goose with a sign around its neck saying "Artificial Intelligence for Change." As he spoke, the goose on the slide laid golden eggs. Each egg represents a successful IPO exit that SoftBank is betting on. But this bookkeeping is extremely volatile. Tens of billions of dollars of profit in good times, and when the market is poor, such as in early 2020, it is easy to generate a lot of losses. Warren Buffett, who also holds a lot of underlying investments, has warned investors not to pay too much attention to his net profit changes, because that does not truly reflect the company's operations. Note 1: SoftBank's cumulative investment income from its big openings. This follows the loss of WeWork investments and the shrinking valuations of several other companies that led SoftBank to lose nearly $17 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2020. The market didn't believe him -- SoftBank shares fell to a two-decade low early last year; shareholders didn't believe him -- and no institution was willing to inject capital into the second phase of the Vision Fund. "In the second half of the first phase of the Vision Fund, we had some difficulties, didn't perceive some situations, got a lot of criticism and learned a lot of lessons," Son said. "But at the time, I mentioned that we had learned our lessons...and despite our unpopularity, we just launched Vision Fund II with our own money to run this business. Our vision and strategy never changed." As of Feb. 5 of this year, the 12 public companies in Phase I of the Vision Fund added $25.464 billion in value to SoftBank. The three listed companies in Phase II added $5.349 billion in value. SoftBank also launched four shell companies (SPACs) dedicated to mergers and raised $1.4 billion from investors. Note 2: Investment income of Vision Fund I as of 2021.2.5 Excluding Alibaba and Yahoo, the biggest contributors to SoftBank's profits were Doordash (+$10.7 billion), a take-out company that went public last December, and Uber (+$5.1 billion), which went public even earlier. DoorDash has benefited from the post-epidemic boom in the U.S. take-out restaurant market and the abundance of capital in the market after the Federal Reserve's big let-down. from January to September 2020, Doordash's revenue was $1.92 billion, nearly four times the same period in 2019. Uber's share price recovery is also linked to takeaways, as UberEats fills the revenue gap left by its shrinking ride-hailing business and tries to recoup capital and improve margins by selling businesses such as the money-burning Autopilot in a bid to meet the company's commitment to the board of directors to break even by the fourth quarter of 2021. The valuation fix is partly due to the fact that its main business, online taxi orders, has exceeded year-ago levels and that Drip has made progress in a number of new businesses, and partly because the market value of Uber, which it uses as a benchmark, has rebounded sharply. Alibaba and Ant Group are inseparable topics for Masayoshi Son. Both because of SoftBank's significant interests in the two companies, and because he and Jack Ma maintain a personal relationship of up to two decades. So when reporters got to the Q&A session, Masayoshi Son was quickly asked how he viewed China's recent introduction of new regulatory policies such as anti-monopoly guidelines, and whether he had recently contacted Jack Ma and how he viewed his Bund speech. Masayoshi Son took a more positive view of regulatory adjustments overall. He said things like Ali and Tencent are now probably in the middle of such (monopoly) discussions for the first time, after Chinese Internet companies did almost anything they wanted to do. But in Europe and the United States, antitrust laws and strict financial regulation have long been in place, and SoftBank has had problems and setbacks in those markets and will learn from them. A similar regulatory framework is necessary for larger, longer-term business growth, and the policy adjustments in China are "not beyond what we've seen in our own country, in the U.S., or in Europe. So I think we will continue to see good growth and even a more positive impact on the future of the Internet." On the issue of Jack Ma, Son said the two exchanged hobbies like painting and did not talk business. As for the Bund speech, "I don't know the details, I just know from the news what happened and I don't want to make any detailed comments." But he re-expressed his positive view of Alibaba, "Alibaba and Ant Group have been a very worrying topic for the market, and we have experienced and seen Alibaba's share price fall. I understand that many people are worried, but it has recovered at this stage. Last week Alibaba also announced a 50% increase in net profit, so the business itself is actually running smoothly and growing steadily. That's how I understand it."

The Future of SoftBank: The Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs

Invariably, as bitcoin spikes and defies gravity, either up or down, the attention of institutional investors, central bankers and prominent financiers is suddenly awaken. Always then, I write something to debunk the all too common flawed narrative and misunderstandings. Whether it was or , their comments simply indicate ignorance of what Bitcoin is and what it stands for (please take note of the capital B because they do not). Warren Buffet before Ray Dalio One would suggest investing a couple of highly entertaining and educating hours to watch these two excellent award winning movies filmed by fellow , and . Untitled-Inc Torsten Hoffman Bitcoin the end of money as we know it the Film Cryptopia Now, a few days ago another famed investor, . Stan Druckenmiller, has disclosed that he also holds BTC Druckenmiller follows other prominent Wall Streeters like Bill Miller, Paul Tudor Jones, Michael Novogratz, Microstrategy´s CEO Michael Saylor and so on. Druckenmiller showed an instinctive grasp of what is driving the bitcoin price, at least in the medium-short term. He has pointed out that BTC “ .” He said also “ .” has a lot of attraction as a store of value to both millennials and the new West Coast money and, as you know, they have a lot of it if the gold bet works, the bitcoin bet will probably work better because it’s thinner, more illiquid and has a lot more beta to it Spot on. And hey, hallelujah, this brings even more awareness to cryptos, more institutional interest and we are all happier. Rather though, among the prominent — but (Bitcoin) ignorant — investor crowd, . Nothing new really — since it is mentioned from time to time — but still something worth considering and disputing once and for all. Ray Dalio recently said something worth noting Hey bitcoiners watch out because, according to Ray Dalio, sooner rather than later “ .” governments will “outlaw” bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, should they start to become “material No more playing bankers without banks, fellas. No more “ ” fellas — to quote former US President Obama. holding your own private swiss bank account in your pocket Ray Dalio is one of the smartest investors around so, who knows, maybe he hopes that some cheap “terrrorism” will wash some weak hands out so he can do what his mates have done before him and buy some on the cheap. But for the sake of it let´s assume that he really means what he says. So my question to him would be: WHY then bitcoin should be banned? and HOW? and WHAT the practical effects of that ban would be? Let´s see. Why should bitcoin be banned? Lets first start with the WHY, because if we clarify that there is no real reason for governments to ever enforce a ban on bitcoin, then the HOW and the practical effects of such ban are just abstract thinking. I guess Mr Dalio thinks that BTC could eventually threaten the status of national fiat currencies or even the reserve status of the US dollar. Leaving aside the issue of when BTC becomes “material” — and consequently “dangerous” for governments — BTC should first of all become a “currency” in order to threaten other currencies. But BTC is not really a currency — or better put — it is also a currency among many other things, but only to a very, very small extent. Above all BTC will never be a currency the way the dollar or the euro are currencies. Fact is that there is no real need for BTC to become a currency. No need for bitcoin to scale adoption as a means of payment. Which, by the way, is the same mistake that bitcoin critics do when they mention bitcoin´s slow adoption path and scalability issues. The reason is that there is plenty of much better inflationary currencies out there to be used for paying the ice cream, the espresso or the daily grocery. I can call them SOLs, Store of Liabilities. are coming, they are the bright future of SOLs. Stable coins and digital fiat money in the form of fintech digital payment systems (such as the Chinese , Alipay, We Chat, etc.) are already here. CBDCs (digital Yuan, US Dollar, Euro) Ant Group All such digital currencies will be competing among themselves and against the US Dollar for reserve status. Indeed, China was the first country to issue its CBDC as a pre-emptive move to block other digital currencies from competing with the digital Yuan in their home market. They wanted to prevent local adoption of competing currencies such as private-corporate currencies like or a Euro or US Dollar CBDC. Certainly they were not at all concerned about BTC. Libra Bitcoin is not a threat to fiat currencies BTC remains therefore primarily a and . store of value (SOV) here´s the reason why It does not compete directly with any digital currencies. It is not a  threat to any of the major national currencies or to future CBDCs. BTC  competes — to a certain extent — only with gold. And I say “only to a certain extent” because (i) it possesses some peculiar qualities which make it— especially for the younger crowd and the not wealthy — a better alternative to gold, since its portability, resistance to coercion, scarcity and lack of storage costs are superior to that of gold, and (ii) gold will still be gold despite BTC especially for institutional investors and central banks. The two can easily co-exist for a long time, but in the long term the trend will be for BTC to as well as market share from global legacy financial services, asset management and insurance sectors. inevitably erode gold´s market share, So, let´s go back to the reason WHY governments should ban bitcoin. Frankly there are none. BTC is not a threat to the current financial system. We all know exactly what is the effect of monetary debasement. The loss of purchasing power of the US Dollar and the Euro is clearly visible to anyone who cares to look. In the above chart 50 years of monetary inflation at work: how many US$ you would need to buy one ounce of Gold since 1970. The chart is not updated but we are well over US$ 1.800 at the time of writing from US$ 36,56 in 1970. This is why investors rush to gold, silver, real estate, stocks, farmland, objects of art and of course to bitcoin. Will governments ban all of them together with bitcoin? Of course not. BTC as a store of value is no bigger threat to governments than gold, silver, or farmland are. The only difference is that bitcoin will be much harder for governments to confiscate than gold or silver are. If the scenario that Mr Dalio envisages is a general governmental clamp down on SOVs, then one should rather rush into bitcoin instead of gold exactly for its censorship resistant properties and its resilience. If you were a government would you rather tax real estates, confiscate gold bars held at easily identifiable banks and gold brokers or run around trying to figure out where people hide their strings of numbers and letters? Bitcoin is not a threat to the legacy financial system Now let me clarify something else quite important. When one mentions Bitcoin then (please again note the capital B), that´s not a currency, that´s not a SOV, that is programmable money. We are talking about a revolution which equals Gutenberg´s printing press. We are talking about an entirely new financial system which is parallel to and independent of the legacy financial system. Every bitcoin owner is “its own bank”. Andreas Antonopoulos once said “ ”. One could not miss the point more if thinking of Bitcoin as a currency for payments in the Western world, because Bitcoin is about everything else and everywhere else Indeed. Think about the millions of people who use it for remittances to their families in countries where access to banks is difficult. Think about countries where the use of BTC is booming because of hyperinflations, . such as Venezuela and Argentina There, Bitcoin is used to transfer a SOV P2P without any intermediation at virtually no cost. A practically unenforceable ban? Let´s see then HOW governments could practically enforce the theoretical ban on bitcoin. A national ban would serve no purpose. If China or could not effectively ban it, we cannot do it either. Then it has to be a globally coordinated worldwide ban. Highly unlikely. Venezuela And how can you enforce that ban? Short of shutting down all internet connections you won´t be able to enforce it. You should close all the gates between fiat currencies and cryptoexchanges. You should ban crypto-exchanges altogether. But then it is hard to imagine that in some geopolitically incoercible nation — perhaps somewhere in the eastern hemisphere — there won´t be someone setting up a crypto-exchange. And what about much less coercible decentralized P2P exchanges then? What about black markets? There is simply no way that governments can enforce that, not even in China police state. And even so, practically, what will be the effect of driving bitcoin underground? Its price will explode, the spreads in those countries will be huge compared to countries where it remains legal. Control is the issue for regulators rather than outright ban The true disregarded issue — which will oppose regulators on one side and cryptocurrencies and its developers on the other side — is the privacy and fungibility of cryptocurrencies. They want back-door access. This is where the fight is. . But also BTC is directly affected since without increased privacy also its fungibility might be compromised. Privacy coins like Monero are on the frontline of that But this is a much more complex issue which deserves to be dealt with separately. I will soon look into that topic in a new article. Conclusion If we look at the reality of it — the WHY and the HOW bitcoin could be banned — it is clear that it won´t happen. It will not be banned, just like the use of the printing presses could not be banned, despite the authorities tried to impose jail time to transgressors. Just like cars and combustion engines could not be banned, despite the authorities tried to slow down its adoption with burdensome and deterring regulations. The cat has been out of the bag 12 years now. There´s no way of putting it back in. The technology clock cannot be turned back. ************************************************************ Below you will find a chronological review of my old bitcoin articles and relative price levels at the time of publication. : I have gone back to 2018 when BTC price was US$ 3.100. Enjoy the +500% ride Nov 9, 2018 I wrote “…This could possibly cause the crypto market to drop lower before it can start trading higher” — On 14 nov BTC starts dropping to its lowest of $ 3.100 since Sept 2017 — BIG BUYING OPPORTUNITY https://medium.com/@andreabianconi/the-latest-on-security-tokens-from-zurich-s-cryptosummit-5e740ac5439b May 24, 2019 I wrote: “…and this will be inevitably reflected also in the appreciation of BTC and all correlated cryptos. This process is ongoing and it is irreversible”. BTC Price $ 7.500 https://medium.com/the-capital/the-fundamental-reasons-to-be-bullish-on-bitcoin-and-the-crypto-sector-2024d8bc8395 Juli 25, 2019 I wrote: “…Finally, if institutional investors, family offices, HNWI and UHNWI start allocating even only 1% of their portfolios to the crypto sector what will be the impact on the price of bitcoin?” BTC Price $ 9.800 https://medium.com/@andreabianconi/oops-ray-dalio-missed-the-biggest-of-all-paradigm-shifts-crypto-79ce826c1445 August 22, 2019 I wrote: “…But regardless of the timing, the macroeconomic fundamentals highlighted above are the most powerful catalyst that will drive the big money towards precious metals and crypto in the foreseeable future.” BTC Price $ 10.100 https://medium.com/the-capital/follow-the-money-buy-bitcoin-and-gold-5c28703d8adf March 24, 2020 I wrote “…While the S&P 500 loses 3% though, BTC/USD is up 10%, and gold/USD up 3,6%. This might mean that weak hands have been shaken out, and hodlers/bulls are back in control” BTC Price $ 6.700 https://medium.com/the-capital/covid-19-and-the-effects-of-the-monetary-tsunami-on-bitcoin-and-gold-a3fb4d14e97f May 17, 2020 I wrote: “…Here you go, a rational bet and asymmetric returns make it possible to allocate just 1–2% of your wealth to crypto, and one day this might well become the largest portion of your wealth.” BTC Price $ 9.670 https://medium.com/the-capital/what-tudor-jones-bitcoin-investment-means-for-other-institutional-investors-and-for-bitcoin-f337a37eeb8d August 20, 2020 I wrote: “…Barred adverse technological developments or currently inconceivable problems at Bitcoin´s protocol level, the only rational question is how many times a multiple of today´s price its future price will be.” BTC Price $ 11.500. https://medium.com/@andreabianconi/bitcoin-goes-parabolic-and-its-not-the-price-c557f90a694a November 13, 2020. My thoughts at the time of writing. The price is $ 16.350 and it looks like we might have a short term top here. A pullback to $ 14.000 is very possible. To $ 12.000–13.000 will be an even better opportunity to add more for next leg up. #crypto #blockchain @thinkblocktank @untitled-inc #bitcoin #cbdc #digitalcurrencies #monero © — 2020 www.bianconiandrea.com ************************************************************** : The website and the information contained herein is for general guidance only and it does not constitute legal advice. As such, it should not be used as a substitute for consultation with lawyers on specific issues. All information in this paper is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or warranty of any kind, express or implied. Legal Disclaimer : The website and the information contained herein is not intended to be a source of advice or credit analysis with respect to the material presented, and the information and/or documents contained in this website do not constitute investment advice. Investment Disclaimer © — 2020 www.bianconiandrea.com Also published . here

Mr. Ray Dalio - "You're Wrong. Again." Bitcoin Will Never Get Banned. Here's Why

JPMorgan Global Markets Strategy last Friday published a research note touting Bitcoin as the alternative of gold for the millennials and predicting to potentially double or even triple the price. Ironically, only a few years ago JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon famously called Bitcoin a "fraud". Why did the major US bank make such a drastic shift in its view on Bitcoin? It was in part triggered by a major movement earlier in the week. In what is said to be “the biggest news of the year in crypto”, PayPal on Oct 21 announced that it would support the purchasing of cryptocurrencies within its app. Besides, PayPal also plans to allow its users to make payments with merchants using cryptocurrencies while extending it to its Venmo app in 2021. With the news, Bitcoin price jumped to almost $13,200 from below $12,500 at the beginning of the day. PayPal’s stock price also rose by almost 6% to above $215. It is no surprise that an endorsement of cryptocurrencies from such a large global payment network as PayPal would stimulate the market. With 346 million users, 26 million merchants, and many of the world’s largest banks on its network, PayPal’s move to accept cryptocurrencies is no doubt a major milestone for cryptocurrencies to become mainstream. However, it is probably still too early to be overly excited about the headline. To put things in perspective, PayPal’s market cap is $250 billion, only a tad higher than Bitcoin’s $240 billion, and Bitcoin itself accounts for about 70% of all digital-asset market value. It’s only 60% of payment network peer Visa’s $422 billion and 75% of MasterCard’s $333 billion. Even Ant Group can potentially achieve a market cap at over $250 billion with its upcoming IPO. In 2019, PayPal’s payment processing volume was $712 billion, while Visa’s and MasterCard’s payment volumes were over $8 trillion and $4 trillion. So it might be overly optimistic to expect PayPal to overnight improve Bitcoin’s mainstream status. Also, PayPal still hasn’t completely solved the problem of cryptocurrency’s acceptance from the merchant side. Its 2021 payments plan would require cryptocurrencies to be converted to fiat currencies at the point of payments and thus its merchants would simply accept fiat currencies just like in the old days. Therefore, the adoption of cryptocurrencies still cannot break the barrier of PayPal’s own payment network. Until now, for the mainstream market, cryptocurrencies remain a speculative financial asset class. Tech companies such as Square and Robinhood benefited a lot in terms of revenue and customer acquisition by offering their users the services to trade cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but these Fintech apps’ popularity hasn’t convinced merchants to accept cryptocurrencies as forms of payments. In fact, these tech companies’ actions have further boosted the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies. In August 2020, MicroStrategy, a Virginia-based Nasdaq-traded business intelligence company with a market cap of only $1.2 billion and a profit of $34 million in 2019, purchased $250 million worth of Bitcoin to bet on its appreciation. Later in early October, Square announced purchasing $50 million worth of Bitcoin without disclosing many details around its motivation. The more often these heavy bets for profitability happens, the more skeptical the main street will be on the transactional value of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, it’s not only the main street that has doubts. Stirred by Facebook’s overly aggressive (and politically naïve) schema of Libra, governments around the world have become particularly vigilant on the potential impact from the political and financial perspectives. Perhaps the only major Fintech company working on main street’s acceptance of cryptocurrencies is Coinbase. In January 2020, Coinbase hired former Flipkart’s Head of Product and Google Shopping’s VP of Product Surojit Chatterjee to become its Chief Product Officer. “We’re trying to shift cryptocurrency from this speculative asset class to driving real-world utility,” says Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Adding Surojit to the executive team sends a clear signal that Coinbase’s product strategy would center around the commercial use of cryptocurrencies. Ever since Surojit was on board, Coinbase Commerce has released quite a few features for merchants to easily accept crypto payments. A few days ago on Oct 12, Product Lead of Coinbase Commerce John Zettler announced a new product feature to allow Coinbase merchants to easily manage their crypto holdings so that they are more comfortable taking crypto as a common payment method. So far, Coinbase has integrated with Shopify and processed over $200 million worth of payments. Although it’s only on a small scale, but it’s treading in the promising direction of merchant-enabling. Merchant acceptance is a major obstacle for crypto, and PayPal certainly has a much larger merchant network with its established position as an alternative payment method and its Braintree payment processing gateway. In addition, compared to Coinbase, PayPal’s network has many of the world’s largest merchants, and convincing them to accept crypto would certainly be a huge step for crypto to become mainstream. However, without a merchant-centric product framework like Coinbase Commerce to help merchants simplify the crypto holding management complications, it is unlikely to convert many of its 26 million merchants, let alone large enterprise merchants, to be crypto adopters. On the other hand, merchant adoption goes hand-in-hand with consumer adoption. In fact, very few enterprise merchants have the extra bandwidth to build out the system to handle crypto payments, which still account for a negligible share of total processing volume. They are already too busy dealing with normal payment processing, settlements, refunds, and chargebacks, as well as all myriads of local payment methods and emerging mobile wallets around the world. Unless the users of PayPal is drastically different from the existing price speculators, these new users are not likely to significantly increase the volume of crypto payment, and hence limiting PayPal’s contribution to the crypto space. Another advantage of PayPal is its network with many of the largest banks around the world, which certainly makes it easy for PayPal to negotiate crypto services such as custody and settlement with these financial institutions. Meanwhile, as many central banks have started studying extensively and even piloted issuing digital currencies, PayPal is in a better position to work with the regulators and policymakers. That said, with most cryptocurrencies still suffering high price volatility, the crypto markets would still attract more speculators than utility-seekers. Therefore, even the ideal state of high merchant acceptance and financial network preparedness can at best pave the way for, but not guarantee mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.

What PayPal's Decision to Support Cryptocurrencies Means For Mainstream Adoption

This week the API-based communications platform giant Twilio formally announced that it would acquire the customer data platform startup Segment for $3.2 billion in all stocks. The market responded quite positively to the news, driving Twilio’s stock price up by 7.7%, bring Twilio’s market cap to a staggering $49 billion. Founded in 2011, Segment is a San Francisco-based startup with the promise to disrupt traditional CRM with a seamless experience powered by customer data infrastructure. It has raised a total funding of $284 million from Thrive Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Accel & GV, among others. It was recently valued at $1.5 billion, after raising the new round in Apr 2019 to deepen its core data infrastructure platform and, more importantly, to fuel its global expansion. It is estimated that the Segment’s annual recurring revenue could reach $100 million by end of 2020, with more than 75% non-GAAP gross margins on its subscription-based revenue from over 20k customers. The $3.2 billion acquisition of Segment is by far Twilio’s largest M&A deal, beyond the $2 billion all-stock privatization of the API-centric email platform SendGrid, a major competitor of MailChimp, back 2018. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together the two leading developer-focused communications platforms to create the unquestioned platform of choice for all companies looking to transform their customer engagement,” said Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson. Global Competition The news of the Twilio-Segment acquisition was first broke by Forbes on Friday, Oct 9, only 1 day (by US time) after Twilio’s competitor MessageBird raised a mega Series C of $200M led by Spark Capital, valuing the Dutch company at $3 billion. Founded in 2016 from Amsterdam, MessageBird has been establishing itself as the international archrival of Twilio, much like its Dutch fellow Fintech superstar Adyen compared to Stripe from San Francisco in their early days. Therefore, Twilio’s acquisition of Segment would also help it strengthen its global foothold to compete against MessageBird armed with fresh dry powder. Long Term Vision Besides competing for global market share, the more essential synergy of the combined new company comes from better achieving Twilio’s vision to build the world’s leading customer engagement platform. “Understanding customer data is key to achieving this vision,” as highlighted in the presentation. Essentially, what Segment can bring to Twilio is the comprehensive single view of a customer. Segment’s unique data infrastructure will be able to empower Twilio’s customer communications platform, so that we no longer need to suffer from the broken customer engagement process because of the lack of customer insights. A customer would no longer have to waste hours to be pushed back and forth between different departments from the merchant end and to repeatedly describe the customer’s purchase or service history with the merchant. On the other hand, the merchant benefits from better engagement insights with the customer so that it can be more efficient in targeted sales and marketing, offering a more personalized and impactful customer experience. “The one thing that’s always been missing from Twilio as we’ve been building up this customer engagement platform is understanding of the end-users themselves,” said Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson. “We power the communications, but we don’t actually know who the customers are.” Meanwhile, the acquisition is a brilliant strategic move to take the advantage of Twilio’s recently hyped market cap. The COVID19 crisis has driven the valuation of a lot of SaaS companies up through the roof, including Twilio, whose stock price has grown more than 3X since the breakout of the pandemic. Whether the recent SaaS valuation hype is a bubble or anchored by long-term vision, Twilio is definitely smart to acquire strategic assets with its highly-valued stocks. As I was discussing the similar valuation hype in Fintech in my previous post, Twilio’s example showcased the optimal strategy in the current situation. Strategic Advantages and Potentials The strategic thinking of Twilio’s vision, as described by its CEO Jeff Lawson, sounds a lot like how direct-to-consumer (DTC) disrupted the traditional sales channel structures. In the past, brands rely on wholesale brokers or regional agency-representatives, who power sales and marketing, but brands don’t know who the end-customers are. With the data brought by Ecommerce, individual brands now have much better insights on their customers in terms of their tastes, preferences, and personalities, which can help better build out the brand image. Hence, we saw a group of strong DTC brands such as Warby Parker, Bonobos, Allbirds, and Peloton. Even the big players like Nike are putting a high priority on building out their own DTC-style membership to better understand and reach their shoppers. The rise of Ecommerce later caused the rise of Fintech, as Ecommerce platforms and individual DTC brands alike were looking for better payment experiences on desktop and mobile ends. Therefore, the mega-platforms such as eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba have built out in-house Fintech functions — some later grew too big and thus had to be spun off such as PayPal and Ant Group, others have formed strong partnerships with now fintech powerhouses, such as Shopify with Stripe, eBay and BigCommerce with Adyen, and (arguably) Weebly acquired by Square. Beyond just processing payments, Fintech companies are also powerful data sources for Ecommerce companies to better analyze their shoppers so that they can iterate on their marketing and sales strategies. However, so far, most of the innovation around Ecommerce and Fintech has only centered around either the part (marketing) or the part (payment), but not much has been done on the part, or shopper lifecycle part. And this could be Twilio’s strategic advantage. pre-sales at-sales post-sales For any brand’s financial success, LTV is the ultimate topline, and CAC is like the necessary evil. Better efficiency in the and processes can definitely help optimize CAC by lower marketing costs and minimize involuntary churn (caused by clunky payment process). There are enough service providers or partners where any brand can find great actionable insights. pre-sales at-sales Nonetheless, in terms of handling existing customer engagement, or the part, most still outsource it to call-centers who treat their valued customers badly, or some better ones start using Twilio and MessageBird but lack good data and insights to effectively maximize LTV. Therefore, equipped with the customer data infrastructure from Segment, the new Twilio has the potential to be the ultimate LTV engine for brands. post-sales Opportunities Ahead The only part missing for Twilio now is a Fintech arm, so that it can move beyond its strategic stronghold of to . As for , much of Segment’s data infrastructure can already help improve Twilio’s product offering in marketing, so what Twilio really needs now is a Fintech product to close the whole sales loop and customer lifecycle. post-sales at-sales pre-sales Similarly, for MessageBird to gain an upper-hand, the newly raised $200 million could be partially used to seek out a Fintech acquisition target, although most of the incumbent ones have grown above affordable price range. On the other hand, as some payment Fintech companies have explored the idea of leveraging financial data (at-sales) to power more efficient marketing (pre-sales), it is also likely that those who benefited from the recent valuation surge to acquire a customer engagement platform (post-sales) similar to Twilio or MessageBird. Adyen is definitely closer to MessageBird as they are both headquartered in Amsterdam, but Adyen strongly believes in organic growth and has never acquired a company in its almost 14 years of life. Twilio’s sheer size makes it a formidable acquisition target for any payment company, even for PayPal or Ant Group. Whatever the potential deal might look like or whoever it might be between, one thing we know for certain is that those who have benefited from the COVID-driven valuation surge need to take advantage of the opportunity to transform the buzz into long-term strategic value.

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