Blockchain and Bitcoin round-up: 13 November 2017
Following Friday’s (10 November) feisty blockchain and Bitcoin action, here’s another round-up. Features CryptoCoinBits, European Commission, R3 and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
With increasing fears about Bitcoin ICOs and bubbles bursting, it was inevitable someone would see a gap in the market. Enter CryptoCoinBits, which has unleashed a Bitcoin trading platform and asks: “So how can you take your first step without losing all your money?”
Its answer is to sign-up using a Gmail, Facebook or email account, get five virtual Bitcoins and start trading. The platform interfaces in real time with cryptocurrency exchanges so trading happens in the real world but not with real money. The firm adds that “once you feel secure that you have mastered the tools of the trade and have taken advantage of all the learning tips the platform has to offer, you are free to apply your skills in the real world”. Roy Zoaretz is the platform’s founder and says to date the platform has over 1,000 traders.
European Commission gets tender
The EU Commission is looking at blockchain developments with the objective of setting the “right conditions” for EU law compliant data and transactional environment. In this context, the European Commission (EC) is launching a study for €250,000 to assess the opportunity and feasibility of a EU blockchain infrastructure.
This study will assess how blockchain may help public authorities to deliver European services, implement policies, and what services could run on such infrastructure. The call for tenders will remain open until 19 January 2018. More details and how to apply can be found here.
Good news for enterprise software firm R3’s Corda partner network as it has grown to over 60 companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel and Microsoft. The network consists of firms building and operating distributed ledger applications and offering “professional services engagements” on Corda.
Corda is an open source, “blockchain-inspired” distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform that lets institutions transact using smart contracts. R3 says it is the outcome of over two years of research and development by itself and its 100+ members.
In fact, HPE has just announced the first product in its “Mission Critical Blockchain” family. Its DLT solution enables customers to run distributed ledger workloads on enterprise platforms.
The solution is used to record transactions across a decentralised network of computers and includes “scalability and SQL integration that cannot be realised with workloads running in a public cloud environment or generic infrastructure”. It was developed in partnership with R3 and is expected to be commercially available in early 2018.
