Blockchain and Bitcoin round-up: 3 April 2017
Another day, another cryptocurrency. A concise round-up of blockchain and Bitcoin events. Features Japan, Lykke, ChronoBank and London’s Imperial College Business School.
It’s the land of the rising sums, as Bitcoin is now a legal payment method in Japan. As a result, Bitcoin trades rose today – at 11am (UK time) it was up 2.8% at $1,133 a coin. In fact, this year it has risen 19% so far.
As you might expect, there are a lot of regulations involved to combat cryptocurrency-related criminal activity in the country. These include companies required to have at least $100,000 in reserve currency and undergo routine external audits by the Japanese National Tax Agency. For Japanese firms who want to adopt the cryptocurrency they will need to cough up $300,000 – with no guarantee they’ll get the licence. These are tough rules – but you may recall the collapse of the Mt Gox exchange in 2014 in Japan, and when hackers took roughly $350 million in Bitcoin.
Lykke, a Swiss fintech company building a blockchain-powered marketplace, has announced the availability of its “Time” token, by ChronoBank. The latter seeks to be the “Uber of independent workers” (when will people stop using Uber as a reference point?) – and matches hourly workers with companies that hire them. Time is a system token that powers ChronoBank’s ecosystem.
When it is released, the token will represent actual tradable hours on ChronoBank’s upcoming LaborX exchange. The token sale took place in January and February and netted the company about $5.4 million in working capital. It is currently trading on the Lykke exchange for around $9, slightly above its initial coin offering (ICO) price. Lykke says 88% of all Time tokens are now in the hands of the public.
Believe it or not, but London’s Imperial College Business School has launched a “Fintech – Innovative Banking” course – which explores three main areas: blockchain, digital identity and payments.
Who should attend? According to the school, that will be managers, project directors, and heads of strategy and innovation. Not journalists thankfully! The programme runs for two days and costs £2,390. Whether you can talk in class and chew gum is entirely up to you.
