China and Australia deepen blockchain links
A group of Australian blockchain start-ups, including Beam and AgriDigital, are in Shanghai this week, on a trade mission organised by Austrade and the Australian Digital Commerce Association. Over the weekend, the entrepreneurs completed a boot camp run by members of the embassy, including a session on how to protect their intellectual property. On Monday, they visited several of China’s largest fintech companies, including $US150 billion-valued ($211 billion) Ant Financial’s Shanghai headquarters in the city’s Pudong district. China’s fintech market towers over all others. Ant operates the world’s largest online and mobile payments platform – with 520 million users. It has also been investing in blockchain, devoting part of its […]
First Growth Funds secures $15m from HCASH
First Growth Funds Limited (ASX:FGF) will assist blockchain group HCash, investing up to $15m in some of the most innovative companies on the ASX. HCash possesses its own unique blockchain tech similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum, possessing a market cap of $150m. Subject to regulatory approval, HCash will invest $15m of HCash digital currency in ASX listed companies Under the terms of the placement there is no dilution or direct investment in FGF, instead the company will act as a broker and receive 6% or up to $900k in fees for facilitating the investments (FGF may also invest its own capital). On 17 July 2018, FGF successfully facilitated the investment […]
Crypto growth nears ‘ceiling’, Ethereum co-founder says
The days of explosive growth in the blockchain industry have likely come and gone now the average person is aware of its existence, according to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum. “The blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight,” Mr Buterin said in a September 8 interview with Bloomberg at the Ethereum Industry Summit conference in Hong Kong. “If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.” Growth in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the blockchain community through its […]
Australia in driving seat as global blockchain standards take shape
Westpac director Craig Dunn will tell China this week that more engagement from its technology leaders will help the global standards-setting process for blockchain, which Australia is leading, to create guidelines that will reduce the cost of deploying the emerging technology across the global economy. An Austrade trade delegation arrived in China over the weekend ahead of this week’s Wangxiang Global Blockchain Summit in Shanghai. Australia is chairing the International Standards Organisation (ISO) group developing standards for blockchain and distributed ledgers and Mr Dunn is chairing the work. He told The Australian Financial Review ahead of a keynote address at the summit that “if you are going to have an […]
What’s the difference between a private and public blockchain?
Blockchain has potential applications in many industries, from accounting to agriculture. It’s essentially a distributed ledger, which records transactions between every user in the chain. There are different types of blockchain: some are open and public and some are private and only accessible to people who are given permission to use them. A public blockchain is an open network. Anyone can download the protocol and read, write or participate in the network. A public blockchain is distributed and decentralised. Transactions are recorded as blocks and linked together to form a chain. Each new block must be timestamped and validated by all the computers connected to the network, known as nodes, […]
ASX pushes back the start date for its blockchain
ASX has pushed back the “go live” date for its blockchain to clear and settle the Australian equities market by around six months, after market participants expressed concerns about meeting an ambitious timeline given the complexity of the technological change. Market players used a consultation process to express “a strong interest in better understanding the potential benefits that a DLT [distributed ledger technology]-based system can offer”, ASX said in a new “scope and implementation plan” for its replacement of the CHESS system. Brokers and investors want as much time as possible to get their heads around the technology, and to determine what investment spending will be required to connect with […]
Future Hub: ‘one-stop shop for blockchain expertise’
Australian technology company Lakeba Group’s blockchain division has set up Future Hub, “a one-stop shop for blockchain expertise,” according to Lakeba chief growth officer and Future Hub head Darren Younger. The idea behind Lakeba’s Future Hub is to combine the company’s technology skills with expertise from financial, legal and other relevant specialisms. A number of projects are already underway in various industries, said Younger, but not many are at the stage where the parties can be identified. Examples include financial services (using blockchain to avoid pay-slip fraud), health (attesting to the authenticity of laboratory results), agriculture (protecting data from IoT devices), supply chain (validating goods or services), energy (to provide […]
Australian National Blockchain will bring opportunities for disruptive startups, says Data61 senior research scientist
CSIRO’s Data61 data innovation group is collaborating with law firm Herbert Smith Freehills and technology giant IBM to build the Australian National Blockchain (ABN), a large-scale cross-industry platform for smart contracts. The ABN is intended to serve as a national infrastructure, allowing companies to join the network to share digitised contracts. Work is currently underway on a pilot, with the platform expected to be able to host live transactions by mid to late 2019. The decentralised nature of blockchain technology means, once the platform is available, there will be one version of a contract accessible to each involved party. Permission-based access is intended to allow data to be exchanged securely, […]
