Northern Trust revealed it’s been running a private equities blockchain. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 8:
- Northern Trust revealed it has been discreetly running what may be the world’s first functioning private equities blockchain. Custom built for Switzerland-based management firm Unigestion, the platform was co-developed by Northern Trust and IBM using Hyperledger’s Fabric code base. Notably, the distributed ledger features an active node that is already providing real-time data to a European regulator.
- Newly released research shows that top-layer networks, usually trumpeted as the future of bitcoin and Ethereum scaling, might actually be capable of more than boosting blockchain transaction volume. The proposals, while relevant for any blockchain, however, are uniquely relevant for Ethereum, the second-largest public blockchain. Touted as a ‘world computer’, its need for scaling is pronounced – with such ambitions, it needs to scale not just payments, but a richer array of smart contracts. One new project now believes it can help with that problem. At EDCON 2017 this week, Ledger Labs head of technology Jeff Coleman put forth a way of abstracting state channels that he believes would work for use cases beyond payments.
- ING and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking have successfully tested a blockchain-based trade finance prototype solution, announced on Wednesday. The new solution is called Easy Trading Connect, and was trialed between the two banks and Mercuria, a global commodities trading corporation. It was used to process an oil trade from Africa to China. The banks say the solution delivered on all expected fronts by eliminating documentary fraud, reducing costs, and improving efficiency. The oil trade involved the banks, traders, an agent, and an inspector, and the prototype allowed these parties to execute their role in the transaction directly on the platform.
- Compared to the previous week the price of Bitcoin has increased by more than eight percent, with the exchange rate currently at $1,146 per BTC. The price of Ethereum increased by a similar percentage, taking Ether up to a rate of $13.62 per ETH. Ethereum Classic lost about two percent of its value, with the price decreasing to $1.20 per ETC. Zcash lost 6 percent of its value. One ZEC is now trading at roughly $29 per coin.
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