1. Baidu, the Chinese Internent giant, has launched the public beta for its "Xuperchain" open-network blockchain. Baidu Xuperchain announced the launch of its public beta during an online press conference. The Xuperchain network is run by a series of masternodes, the project's official white paper explains, and makes use of parallel chain technology to simplify smart contract processing. Developers and enterprises can build applications, smart contract templates, and related functions based on their specific business needs. Read Full on The Block
2. Telegram’s Gram, the native cryptocurrency for the Telegram Open Network (TON), is not an investment product, the firm stressed in a fresh public statement. Telegram emphasized that Grams should not be associated with expectations for profits based on purchase or holding of the token. Grams are instead designed to serve as a “medium of exchange” between users in the TON network, the firm elaborated. The company added that holding grams in the future will not mean owning a piece of Telegram. Read Full on telegram
3. The CEO of blockchain payment network Ripple says the company does not want to “dump” its associated XRP cryptocurrency. Brad Garlinghouse stated: "Ripple owns a lot of XRP, we’re very interested in the success of XRP, but the accusations of us dumping, that’s not in our best interests to do that. In fact, we’ve taken steps to lock up most of the XRP we own in escrows so we can’t touch it.” Despite Ripple’s token share, he strongly denied the company could influence the XRP price like bitcoiin whales can with the price of BTC, he added.
Read Full on Cointelegraph
4. Apple tends to recommend new applications in its App Store on a regular basis. It now appears that the Brave browser is part of these recommendations, with this a lot of interesting debates are sparked. It appears that the technology giant sees no problem with Brave, even though it directly competes with the native Safari browser. While Brave is not directly tied to cryptocurrencies, its incentivization model certainly is. Read Full on The VR Base
5. CaixaBank, Spain’s third-largest lender by market cap after Banco Santander and BBVA, has incorporated the enterprise blockchain platform we.trade into its suite of client services. The trade finance application, operated by a consortium of 15 European financial institutions, targets small-to-medium-sized enterprises, facilitating banking services, enabling financing and tracking cross-border trade transactions. The consortium partnered with IBM as its technology partner, using Hyperledger Fabric. Read Full on The Daily Hodl
6. Berlin-based bitcoin bank Bitwala is expanding its service to include ether (ETH), the second largest crypto by market cap. The move marks a significant departure for Bitwala, which was launched in 2015 as Europe’s first cryptocurrency banking service, and which has up to now only supported Bitcoin. In a statement, Bitwala said that its decision to add Ethereum is largely due to the cryptocurrency’s driving role in the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) movement, which is aiming to transform conventional financial markets. Read Full on Decrypt
7. Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of TRON, has announced that a TRON-based privacy coin is one step closer to reality. TRON initially announced plans for private transactions in January 2019. Since then, TRON added the feature to its testnet in July and opened it to beta testers in December. Sun revealed in December that TRON will use zk-SNARKS and shielded transactions to hide transaction data such as sender and recipient addresses, inputs and outputs, and transaction amounts. Read Full on twitter
8. The New York Southern District Court has rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) attempt to get complete bank records from Telegram related to its token sales. the court held a telephone conference with the parties on Monday and Judge P. Kevin Castel signed an order denying without prejudice SEC’s letter motion to compel. The SEC had urged the court to compel Telegram to provide documents, including “how much money Telegram has spent, and in what manner, in developing the TON Blockchain. Read Full on The Block
9. Privacy coins have grown to be immensely popular recently, with many in the crypto-community now realizing the value of coins such as Monero and Zcash. Riccardo Spagni, former lead maintainer atThe facility has an initial capacity of 300 megawatts and is expected to reach 1 gigawatt by the end of 2020. Monero, has been one of the foremost proponents of privacy coins. He claimed that Monero had been built with a vision to secure financial privacy, adding that the coin is doing exactly the same. He also declared that it is practically impossible to hack into Monero’s transactions, adding that it would “take the depths of the universe to figure it out.”