Blockchain

China’s Central Bank Weighing Blockchain Tech for Digital Currency

February 18, 2016By admin

The head of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) opened up about its proposed digital currency initiative in a new interview with Caixin Weekly today, suggesting that the Chinese central bank is considering options that do not use blockchain technologies in its development.

Speaking to the news source, governor Zhou Xiaochuan said that the PBOC is considering mobile payments, cloud computation, secure chip and blockchain tech as means to create and operate an electronic cash network.

Source: CoinDesk

Blockchains Poised To Be The Hot Tech For Moving Money In 2016

February 17, 2016By admin

money-e-commerce-billboard-6501 Although interest in bitcoin may have subsided, but interest in the underlying registration process — distributed ledgers or blockchains — has attracted the interest of global banks and exchanges, most notably Nasdaq.

Distributed ledger technology, or blockchains, will have their greatest impact on cross-border payments, said Chris Larsen, CEO of Ripple, which aims to create an Internet of Value (IoV) to exchange value over the internet as easily as people exchange information.

Larsen believes it will replace correspondent banking, a holdover from the 1970s, “which is why it takes days to move value between the U.S. and Europe.”“An international transaction can easily take longer than sending a package,” notes the company on its Web site. “It’s not just about speed but also cost. It doesn’t make economic sense to send $100 from the US to Europe because of high fees.”

Source: Forbes

IBM and Microsoft Will Let You Roll Your Own Blockchain

February 17, 2016By admin

They call it the Hyperledger. And it can be yours.

In late December, several big-name companies from across both the tech and financial industries—including IBM, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and the London Stock Exchange—unveiled a new open source software project based on the blockchain, the global online ledger that underpins the bitcoin digital currency.

Source: WIRED

Microsoft Moving Beyond Bitcoin To Create Blockchain Marketplace On Azure Cloud

February 17, 2016By admin

At the end of 2014, Microsoft announced plans to integrate the cryptocurrency bitcoin — at the time experiencing an unprecedented surge in value — into its Windows and Xbox payments system. The news caused the price of bitcoin to surge, but the initiative never really gained widespread support. Microsoft is now looking beyond bitcoin, however, and trying to create a marketplace for the blockchain, the distributed ledger technology on which bitcoin is built.

While bitcoin may have grabbed the headlines with its wildly fluctuating value and its mysterious creator, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, it is blockchain that is seen as the real innovation. On Monday, IBM announced it would put major resources into helping its customers to develop apps built on the blockchain, and Microsoft is also eager to gain an advantage over competitors by building what it calls a “certified blockchain marketplace” on its Azure cloud platform.

Source: IBT

Blockchain: Catalyst for Massive Change Across Industries

February 17, 2016By admin

Blockchain, the technology underlying the digital currency Bitcoin, has sparked intense interest across industries from banking and trading to agriculture and music. Large-scale deployment of the technology, a digital ledger of identifies and transactions, could be years away. Yet the level of commitment to testing and development, especially in financial services, shows how seriously blockchain is viewed in the corporate world.

The power of blockchain lies, advocates say, in its inherent security, which can establish trust directly among parties in a transaction, making it possible to remove the middlemen that currently serve that function. Entire industries, such as clearinghouses in financial trading or title-search firms in real estate, conceivably could be displaced, slashing costs and cutting the time required to complete a transaction. The impact, they say, could be massive.

Source: WSJ

MUSE: Leveraging Blockchain Technology To Revolutionize Music Industry

February 17, 2016By admin

While growing interest in blockchain technology from companies to governments shows little sign of abating and even the Chinese authorities are looking to create their own digital currency, the power of this technology is also being harnessed for deployment in other industries – including music.

Now fintech platform OpenLedger and Danish bitcoin exchange CCEDK are joining forces with MUSE, a music-tailored blockchain, to make monetizing music as easy as new peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms made distributing it 15 years ago.Just as music distribution was ripe for disruption back then with the rise of P2P file-sharing platforms, so blockchain technology is now offering new opportunities for its monetization.

Source: Forbes

Three Startups Trying to Transform the Music Industry Using the Blockchain

February 17, 2016By admin

Music was once scarce. Before the days of MP3 and P2P file sharing, you didn’t have the ability to hear songs whenever you wished unless you bought them.

Today one does not even need to download songs, as platforms such as VEVO and YouTube host many of the most popular songs of yesterday and today.

The industry was faced with a definitive problem in an age of liberal copy and distribution technology: finding new ways to monetize digital music files that lacked scarcity.

A gang of computer programmers – united by the Bitcoin technology – are trying to revolutionize an industry after 15 years of disruption which began with Napster and was cemented by BitTorrent.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine

Benji Rogers and Imogen Heap: Building the Music Blockchain

February 17, 2016By admin

Music-Industry

Aren’t its most powerful members – the three major labels – exactly the kind of companies who have most to lose from an all-new, uber-transparent system of tracking music rights and paying for usage?

Maybe. Which is certainly one reason for being curious about how such a system would work. But the early evangelists for such a system – notably PledgeMusic founder Benji Rogers, argue that the blockchain would enhance the businesses of the BPI’s members, rather than destroy them.

That’s why the BPI invited Rogers in on a windy Monday evening for the first in a planned series of “thought-leadership events” tackling big topics and new technologies.

Source: Music Ally

How the Blockchain and VR Can Change the Music Industry

February 17, 2016By admin

The majority of the critical issues cited by music industry experts stem from a few sources, but a key problem area falls within transparency and clarity of ownership data, or metadata to be precise.

Metadata in this case is the basic info that is needed to identify who wrote, performed, and owns the music that you listen to every day.

This data and its accuracy are a vital means to ensure that creators and owners get paid for their work when their music is used.Whether it is streamed online, broadcast in a coffee shop, licensed for a TV show, or played on an iPad, this data is the underpinning key or map, if you will, that leads back (in theory) to those who created and/or are invested in that musical work. It sounds like a simple thing to deal with in 2015. Just track all plays, and then pay who is owed for their work. But it’s not that simple.

Source: Medium