Deutsche Bank Institutional Trader Joins Japanese Crypto Startup 6333

A former Deutsche Bank trader has joined Japanese crypto exchange-startup FXcoin Ltd., Bloomberg reports September 3. According to the announcement, Yasuo Matsuda, an institutional trader from Deutsche Bank, will join FXcoin as a senior crypto strategist starting in September 2018. The strategist position includes providing analysis of crypto markets and daily reports on the market’s activity.

The newly appointed 49-year old Matsuda worked as foreign-exchange dealer at the German bank from 2012 until this June.

FXcoin Ltd., founded in September 2017, is currently seeking regulatory approval from Japan’s financial regulator the Financial Services Agency (FSA) in order to operate “virtual currency-related business.” The startup has reportedly applied with the regulator to exchange cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) under a licensing system that was adopted last year.

FXcoin’s founder and CEO Tomoo Onishi is a veteran employee at Deutsche Bank, having more than 12 years of experience in the bank’s FX division before he left his job in December 2017.

The crypto startup has reportedly attracted a number of former institutional employees, including trading experts from HSBC, Nomura, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Onishi claimed that the startup is “trying to do all [it] can” while waiting for regulators’ approval, revealing that FXcoin plans to employ “another five people from financial institutions,” following the upcoming approval.

Founded in 1870 in Berlin, Deutsche Bank is considered to be one of the leading and most influential financial institutions worldwide. Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank’s CIO head Markus Mueller claimed that “governance,” which will legitimize crypto investments, could come in “five to ten years.”

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NexChange Group and Marita Group Co-Host Africa Blockchain Week Virtual Summit to Showcase Continent’s Technological Leapfrog 8939

NexChange Group, a blockchain ecosystem and venture builder and MARITA Group, an African conglomerate will combine forces to co-host this Virtual Summit. The event will feature key industry players and decision-makers contributing to regulation, application, investment and education across many African countries.

Juwan Lee, Chairman of NexChange Group: “Africa is the next big move for blockchain. We see not just opportunities in the payment space and financial inclusion, but we see significant institutional involvement.”

The new reality has proven technology to be a bridge to a better future. Strong ties between African countries, like the cooperation South-South, encouraged by HRH Mohammed VI go beyond just politics. New economic bridges ensure that Africa is able to bypass certain steps on a technological stair, positioning itself ahead of the global curve. Described by the World Bank and called leapfrogging, it relies strongly on enhanced technologies including blockchain.

Rahhal Boulgoute, Chairman of Marita Group: “Blockchain will revolutionize Africa and provide opportunities for financial inclusion. It is important that we expose blockchain technology in Africa.”

The impact is seen on Africa’s financial map. Over the last years, digital banking and mobile payments have proven to be a real-life case study for millions of users, making people’s financial lives better, ensuring inclusion, and changing the game for the unbanked. Banks, enterprises, and entrepreneurs are changing the continent’s destiny, shaping the investment landscape.

This event backs the efforts of the African regulators to adopt the required regulations to embrace blockchain and become a main global player in the technologies shaping the future. The ambition of the Co-hosts is to make Africa Blockchain Week the key platform for dialogue and networking between all stakeholders in blockchain to transform it into a reality in Africa.

NexChange Group is a venture builder and media platform specializing in Blockchain, FinTech, HealthTech, AI, and Smart Cities.

Marita Group Holding is a global company focused on:

  • turnkey solutions in real estate development, theme parks, smart cities
  • Renewable energy and waste recovery, hydrogen production, electric mobility
  • sustainable agriculture and sustainable development
  • local mining development of natural resources
  • health, medical products, equipment and supplies

ZIM & Marius Nacht complete additional investment in WAVE BL, a leading provider of a paperless Bill of Lading solution 8982

ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. (NYSE: ZIM) and Marius Nacht, one of Israel’s leading serial entrepreneurs and investors, announced today that they have jointly invested in a Series B Financing round of WAVE BL, a developer of groundbreaking blockchain network supporting paperless trade in the shipping industry. The two investors co-lead a round of approximately $8 million that will accelerate global implementation of WAVE BL’s proven technology.

ZIM pioneered the first paperless electronic bill of lading pilot in the shipping industry in 2017 using WAVE BL’s platform and has since widely expanded its use to become the industry leader. Electronic bill of lading is currently offered to ZIM customers worldwide, requiring only a simple onboarding process which is supported by ZIM.

Digitization of bills of lading is revolutionizing shipping documentation, sharply reducing time, complexity, errors and costs for all parties involved, while maintaining a high level of security and, importantly, being far more sustainable than the traditional paper bill of lading.

Aligning with international rules, standards and insurance coverage such as IG P&I Clubs and eUCP 600, WAVE BL’s one of a kind decentralized, digital documentation solution is changing the shipping industry as it becomes the new industry benchmark enabling secure and efficient remote business continuity.

Proceeds will be used to support development of WAVE BL’s business and further implementation of its pioneering technology supporting paperless trade in the shipping industry, as well as in other sectors.

ZIM President and CEO Eli Glickman: “Our early adoption of WAVE BL’s blockchain based platform to promote paperless trade highlights our leadership in utilizing digital strategies to best serve customers and has proven extremely successful for ZIM and for changing the industry. Today, ZIM is an industry leader in paperless shipping processes, and we are seeing growing interest from others in our sector to adopt the platform reflecting the significant benefits it provides to both customers and carriers. This new investment in WAVE BL is a step forward in the path to a more digitized and sustainable future, in accordance with our vision and values.”

ZIM CIO Eyal Ben-Amram: “Since completing the integration of WAVE BL’s platform with our system, we can offer every customer the ability to enjoy the vast benefits of paperless shipping, which is especially crucial during COVID-19. We are pleased and proud to continue our support of this exciting and leading company.”

WAVE BL CEO Gadi Ruschin: “Our partnership with ZIM has enabled us to introduce our pioneering technology to a vast audience as we endeavor to become the shipping industry standard in paperless trade. We are extremely pleased with the continued faith and commitment of ZIM and Marius Nacht in our company and look forward to leading the wave of the future in shipping.”

Ophir Shoham, who leads Marius Nacht’s investments in high-tech: “We are proud to continue supporting WAVE BL’s remarkable technology and believe in its disruptive potential, leading to a fundamental change in the way business is conducted across countless sectors and industries. We are very impressed with the great progress the team has made and excited to invest in WAVE BL’s trail-blazing platform.”

River Financial raises $12M Series A to continue explosive growth of its Bitcoin financial services for traditional investors 9380

San Francisco-based Bitcoin financial services provider River Financial closed a $12 million Series A equity financing round to continue growing its financial service offerings for traditional investors. The investment round was led by Goldcrest Capital with participation from Craft Ventures, Polychain Capital, M13, Castle Island, Slow Ventures, and The Kraft Group.

River Financial previously announced a $5.7 million seed round in June 2020. In the nine months since the company’s seed round announcement, River’s client base has grown by almost 600%, and order volumes have increased by 3,500%. River’s recent iOS app has accelerated the company’s growth, already accounting for over 30% of all River’s order volume within five weeks of launch. River Financial continues to experience exponential growth in new customers and order volume month-over-month as global interest in Bitcoin continues to grow rapidly. Social unrest, inflation fears, and recent elections are driving droves of traditional investors to Bitcoin and River.

River is investing heavily in team growth and product development. According to Co-Founder and CEO Alex Leishman, “Bitcoin is on a trajectory to becoming a global reserve asset, and we are building the financial services that our clients will need for that future.” River’s focus on premium client services and traditional financial tooling, including tax lot tracking and account statements, is attracting increasing numbers of high-end clients who find incumbent solutions intimidating and confusing.

The majority of volume on River is driven by clients over the age of 50, but Co-Founder and COO Andrew Benson believes there is still a large underserved segment of the population, “River’s mission is to bring Bitcoin to investors around the world. Even as global interest in Bitcoin grows rapidly, most Americans over the age of 45 who want Bitcoin still don’t own any. River is helping to fix that by creating familiar, high-end financial solutions for investors who are new to Bitcoin.”

Ideanomics Invests in Italian Electric Motorcycle Company, Energica Motor Company 10519

Ideanomics (NASDAQ: IDEX) (“Ideanomics” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has acquired 20% of Italian Energica Motor Company S.p.A. (Energica) for the consideration of $13.2 million. It develops high performance 100% battery-powered motorbikes. With this investment in Energica, Ideanomics expands its global footprint in the electric vehicle (EV) industry, and complements Treeletrik’s business in the ASEAN market. This investment marks continued investment in European-based OEM.

“Energica has combined zero emissions EV technology with high-performance engineering synonymous with Italy’s Motor Valley to create a range of exceptional products for the motorcycle market. It also has proprietary EV battery and DC fast-charging systems that have applications and synergies with Ideanomics Mobility. We are very impressed with Livia and her team, and we look forward to supporting them through their next phases of growth,” said Alf Poor, CEO of Ideanomics.

The rapid increase of EV sales that began in 2019 has continued to gain momentum over the past year. The global high performance electric motorcycle market is growing at a CAGR of over 35% from 2019-2024. With its state-of-the-art battery technology development, Energica was chosen by Dorna as a single manufacturer for the FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup. With this partnership, Energica has been able to test new battery solutions and innovations in extreme conditions with the best riders in the world to advance its high-performance battery technology.

“We are proud to be part of this unified global platform”, says Livia Cevolini, CEO of Energica Motor Company S.p.A. “Ideanomics’ network of innovative companies will help accelerate the growth and adoption of new EV technologies such Energica.. We look forward to leveraging Ideanomics to capture market share in the rapidly growing global electric motorcycle market”.

Max Dilendorf Serves as a Bitcoin Expert Witness in USCIS EB-5 Green Card Adjudication Proceedings 9871

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has frequently denied EB-5 applications that list Bitcoin exchange-traded-funds as a legitimate “source of funds”. Yet, in an unprecedented approach that included forensic reporting analysis, attorney Max Dilendorf provided an expert legal opinion and due diligence report proving that a green card applicants’ source of funds met the standards to be qualified under this program.

Because USCIS only requires a “preponderance of evidence” showing the legal acquisition of investment funds in EB-5 petitions and offers little guidance for applicants whose funds originated in cryptocurrency, Dilendorf’s confirming evidence was a significant achievement.

The Dilendorf Law Firm, NYC’s top law firm for the digital age, represented several clients in EB-5 matters with the USCIS concerning the clients’ EB-5 investments funded with cryptocurrencies. By submitting blockchain and cryptocurrency expert reports in these cases, the firm has provided evidence to support the legitimate “source of funds”.

The firm’s clients were software engineers and early cryptocurrency adopters who, in the opinion of the crypto compliance law firm, are legally qualified for obtaining EB-5 investor green-cards, as there was little doubt on the legality of the source of the clients’ cryptocurrency funds.

Dilendorf’s legal opinions and blockchain forensic reports, as submitted to the USCIS, included an expert assessment of the following:

  • legality of the specific digital assets and regulatory framework for the involved financial institutions dealing with cryptocurrencies;
  • origin and flow of cryptocurrencies funding the EB-5 investments;
  • mechanism and sufficiency of digital wallets, private cryptographic keys, crypto trading platforms and accounts establishing ownership of the clients’ cryptocurrency funds;
  • KYC/AML compliance measures taken at each point of the funds’ journey by clients and third parties, including crypto exchanges and OTC traders.

Max Dilendorf, Esq. is also a top forensic Bitcoin and crypto expert witness. His expertise has also made him one of the top cryptocurrency consultants for Fortune 500 companies.  Mr. Dilendorf’s recent speaking engagements have included the Thailand SEC, IBM, Berkshire Hathaway, and New York University, to name a few.

Wanxiang Blockchain Forms RISC-V International Blockchain SIG with Ecosystem Partners 9465

Wanxiang Blockchain and aitos.io announced they joined RISC-V International as strategic members and have formed RISC-V International’s new Blockchain SIG (special interest group) in collaboration with LeapFive, StarFive and SiFive. This group will help integrate blockchain technologies with RISC-V solutions, and promote the development of trusted blockchain databases.

Tu Wenhui, Senior Director of Blockchain + Technology Department at Wanxiang Blockchain, and Gary Xu, CTO of aitos.io, will take the positions of Acting Chair and Vice Chair of the Blockchain SIG, and will be in charge of the preparatory work for the official launch of the group.

RISC-V is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. The RISC-V ISA delivers a new level of free, extensible software and hardware freedom on architecture, paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation. RISC-V International is a global nonprofit association based in Switzerland. Founded in 2015, RISC-V International now has over 1,200 members around the world.

Vincent Y. Wang, Executive President of Wanxiang Blockchain, said that the RISC-V International Blockchain SIG initiated by Wanxiang Blockchain, aitos.io, LeapFive, SiFive, StarFive and other important partners will promote the integration of blockchain technologies with the RISC-V community. Wanxiang Blockchain has been committed to building a trusted database and collaborating with PlatONE, a next-generation blockchain consortium supporting privacy-preserving computing developed by Wanxiang Blockchain and Juzix. With its open and extensible architecture, the RISC-V ISA supports cryptographic algorithms and enables developers to create secure, trusted solutions. In the future, these companies will continue to build solutions to integrate different technologies so that more developers can take advantage of blockchain, which promises to help empower digital transformation across key industries and market segments like the Distributed Cognitive Industrial Internet, Digital Cities, Asset Digitization, etc.

“Our new Blockchain SIG will give the RISC-V community the opportunity to collaborate on blockchain technologies in order to enable the best performance and functionality in the RISC-V ISA and software ecosystem. Blockchain is already a big disruptor for the silicon industry, and we are committed to helping our members take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead,” said Mark Himelstein, CTO, RISC-V International.

“Joining RISC-V International is in line with our innovative strategy of integrating IoT applications with blockchain. By creating the Blockchain SIG and rolling out an in-depth cooperation with the RISC-V community, we will optimize our BoAT blockchain application framework to provide better support for RISC-V solutions, accelerate the application of IoT devices in blockchain-based services and build a trusted IoT database to make this data valuable and open,” said Leo Lin, CEO of aitos.io.

Aglaia Kong, CTO of LeapFive, mentioned that as blockchain is used to track value of data, it is getting more important to ensure the origin of data is from a trusted source. By placing root of trust, ensuring each SOC having a unique DNA, having dedicated compute optimized for blockchain of where data is originated become super important. With RISC-V open and extensible architecture, combining blockchain and LeapFive’ s SOC design capabilities, we are working together with Wanxiang Blockchain and aitos.io to build the “Chinese TEA ( Trusted Embedded Architecture)”, so one can ensure the data origin is known, data usage is tractable and trust worthy.

“In the current AIoT era with massive data being produced, processed and analyzed, data and computing security becomes one of the main driving forces of choosing the open and modern RISC-V ISA. It is an inevitable trend for RISC-V to enter blockchain, a promising industry.” StarFive CEO Thomas Xu emphasized with confidence, “The scope of blockchain applications is expanding. Many applications are unexpectedly innovating because of the adoption of blockchain. No matter it is cloud computing of big data, or end to end computing applied to IoT, there is no doubt that RISC-V’s diversity and outstanding functions will even flourish to the blockchain industry.”

“The adoption of RISC-V to develop blockchain technologies, and the use of RISC-V International working groups to encourage broad industry collaboration, demonstrates the power and flexibility of the freely available and open specification ISA,” said Dr. Chris Lattner, President of Engineering and Product, SiFive. “Blockchain is an area where optimized hardware and software designed together can provide tangible benefits for secure, fast processing for supply chain, logistics, or financial operations, improving efficiency and accuracy. This demonstrates the potential for members of RISC-V International working groups to develop and build industry-wide specifications that can be broadly implemented.”

Wanxiang Blockchain made its debut at MWC Shanghai 2021 with CT Wing, UNISOC, LeapFive, Fibocom and aitos.io in Hall N4. On the Leader Stage, these companies discussed IoT and blockchain trends from the perspective of blockchain companies, chip and module manufacturers, operators and platform service providers.

Earlier in 2020, Wanxiang Blockchain kicked off its efforts to build comprehensive solutions based on the integration of blockchain and big data, cloud computing, 5G, IoT, AI, and other digital technologies and successfully hosted the Sixth Global Blockchain Summit in Shanghai with the theme of Integrated Innovation.

In January 2021, Wanxiang Blockchain established the Biological Asset Financial Service Platform with Sancai Digital Technology and Foidn Technology based on the BoAT + PlatONE IoT Data Platform developed by Wanxiang Blockchain and aitos.io. This platform was the first in China to integrate blockchain modules into biological asset monitoring for IoT devices, assigning blockchain IDs to 1000 cows at the Ashili Farm in Changji, Xinjiang, a province located in northwest China.

The Biological Asset Financial Service Platform can collect key data about the whole process of beef rearing in real time, and encrypts the data and records it on blockchain to make the data tamper-proof and traceable. This allows key data about the beef rearing process to be turned into valuable digital assets that can be shared among participants across the whole industry to improve operational efficiency.

This blockchain+IoT based platform can improve the efficiency of government regulation on biological assets, beef slaughter, transactions and the settlement of insurance claims, and more importantly, make beef produced in this process traceable for safety purposes. Supported by Wanxiang Trust, this platform can also make it easier for farmers to get financial support and increase their production thanks to this trusted database powered by blockchain and the IoT.

With all these benefits, the Biological Asset Financial Service Platform will help accelerate the digital transformation of the traditional animal husbandry industry by building a trusted database and inspiring financial institutions to drive economic growth in new and innovative ways.