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Facebook Has a New Director of Engineering for Blockchain

Facebook appears to be getting more serious about blockchain, having recently named an engineering director dedicated to the technology.

The social media giant has appointed one of its senior engineers, Evan Cheng, as its first "director of engineering, blockchain." The new position was first reported by TechCrunch and confirmed by Facebook on Thursday.

https://www.coindesk.com/facebook-appoints-new-blockchain-engineering-director/

Mastercard Is Looking to Stem Theft Through Blockchain Technology

Thieves who "skim" credit card numbers are stealing some $2 billion globally every year. They simply pick up the magnetic images from these cards and they're off to commit crimes with the stolen data.

Mastercard and other credit card companies are working on solutions that employ blockchains to end these information thefts. The credit card giant, which first began eyeing blockchain technology to thwart thefts in 2016 , has applied for several patents for the nascent applications.

Read more: https://www.nasdaq.com/article/mastercard-is-looking-to-stem-theft-through-blockchain-technology-cm988015

Bittrex and Invest.com Partner on New Crypto Trading Platform

Bittrex, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange platform, and invest.com, a fintech startup based in London, are set to launch a new EU-focused crypto trading platform.

The collaboration, announced Thursday, aims to provide cryptocurrency investors with "the ultimate platform to trade cryptocurrency in a safe and secure environment," according to a press release.

https://www.coindesk.com/bittrex-partners-with-invest-com-to-launch-new-crypto-trading-platform/

Crypto Exchange Gemini Hires Former NYSE Tech Chief

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has hired former New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chief information officer Robert Cornish to serve as its first chief technology officer.

The exchange, founded by investor-brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, announced Friday that Cornish would be in charge of Gemini's technology team and strategy, according to a press release. Further, Cornish will be overseeing the deployment of Nasdaq's SMARTS Market Surveillance, a benchmark for "real-time and T1" solutions for market surveillance.

https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-exchange-gemini-hires-former-nyse-tech-chief/

Are Cryptocurrency Crimes Exceeding that of Fiat Crimes ?

It is true that there are always two sides to a good invention which are always the good and the evil.

The first half of 2018 could be agreed to be a turbulent moment for most coins that were struggling with retaining the gains that was made towards the last quarter of 2017 and the bearish movement of the market which could be observed till this present time.

Read more: https://zycrypto.com/are-cryptocurrency-crimes-exceeding-that-of-fiat-crimes/

Cloud Provider Xunlei Launches New Blockchain File System

Chinese technology company Xunlei Limited, known to some as the BitTorrent of China, announced Friday that it has launched a new distributed file system aimed at supporting blockchain platforms.

https://www.coindesk.com/cloud-provider-xunlei-launches-new-blockchain-file-system/

Tezos Investors Got a Chance to Sell This Week – And They Took It

After waiting nearly a year to get their tokens, the first thing many Tezos investors did was get rid of them.

At least, that seems to be the case according to available market data, which indicates a wave of selling has taken place since the tech backing the crypto asset was released in beta.

https://www.coindesk.com/tezos-investors-got-a-chance-to-sell-this-week-and-they-took-it/

Winklevoss Twins Poach NYSE Executive to Serve as Gemini’s First CTO

Gemini, the Winklevoss twins’ cryptocurrency exchange, has joined the trend of hiring institutional trading executives for crypto exchanges by hiring Robert Cornish of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to serve as its first chief technology officer.

Read more: https://www.ccn.com/winklevoss-twins-poach-nyse-executive-to-serve-as-geminis-first-cto/

Philippines Government Approves Two New Crypto Exchanges

The central bank of the Philippines has reportedly approved two new cryptocurrency exchanges, bringing the total number of accredited crypto exchanges in the country to five. Meanwhile, crypto transactions have been growing in the country.

https://news.bitcoin.com/philippines-government-crypto-exchanges/

Aww hoping for some real innovative coin for casting. I want to see not only prices over time but social network analysis rather than anecdotal speculation.

OKCashBag, biggest milleage system in Korea used by more than 60% of the population, is planning to integrate crypto to incentvize its users.

Fun fact: parent company of OKCashBag is SK, Korea's biggest telecom, which invested in Korbit in 2016.

https://cryptoslate.com/biggest-mileage-system-in-korea-okcashbag-with-35-million-users-will-use-cryptocurrency/

Cheap Electricity Drawing Cryptocurrency Miners to Underpopulated Areas of Japan
Lesser-known and relatively underpopulated parts of Japan are beginning to attract cryptocurrency miners, largely due to the availability of cheap electricity. This includes Fukui, a city in a prefecture bearing the same name and which has a population of slightly over 250,000. The city boasts not just low electricity prices but also affordable rent as a result of a subsidy program, which pays 50% of the rent for firms that move into abandoned factory spaces.

According to Nikkei Asia Review, one of the companies taking advantage of Fukui’s accommodating environment is Alt Design, which opened shop last year in September. Per the chief analyst of the startup, Shuhei Fujise, electricity costs are lower in Fukui compared to Tokyo.
https://www.ccn.com/cheap-electricity-drawing-cryptocurrency-miners-to-underpopulated-areas-of-japan/

Switzerland’s Main Stock Exchange Dives Deep Into Crypto

Switzerland’s principal stock exchange has announced that it is building a platform for the trading, settlement, and custody of digital assets. This announcement follows reports of government officials working on giving crypto businesses access to banking services.

Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/switzerlands-stock-exchange-crypto/

Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Hopes Centralized Exchanges ‘Burn in Hell’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has stated that he would like to see centralized cryptocurrency exchanges “burn in hell as much as possible”, while conceding that such a time may yet be a while off.

He made the remarks while speaking at the TC Sessions Blockchain 2018 event on July 6 in Zug, Switzerland.

Read more: https://www.ccn.com/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-hopes-centralized-exchanges-burn-in-hell/

Congress At Loggerheads With President Maduro Over Financing Housing Project Using Petro Cryptocurrency

A recent statement which was published by a local news media, Criptotendencia in the country reports that the Minister of Habitat and Housing Minister, Ildemaro Villarroel has revealed the government’s plan to build affordable houses for those who ordinarily can’t afford it. Most importantly, it was reported that the Petro, which is the countries official cryptocurrency would be used to fund this project.

Read more: https://zycrypto.com/congress-at-loggerheads-with-president-maduro-over-financing-housing-project-using-petro-cryptocurrency/

US Presidential Candidate Would Pardon Snowden, Ulbricht on First Day

Former Vice Chair of the national Libertarian Party in the United States, Arvin Vohra, announced his candidacy for President. Among keys to his platform is his stated position: “On the first day of my presidency. I will pardon those in prison who have neither harmed anyone nor stolen anything. I will start with @Snowden and @RossUlbricht,” he recently tweeted.

Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/us-presidential-candidate-would-pardon-snowden-ulbricht-on-first-day/

Fake Kim Dotcom Twitter Accounts Still Scamming Cryptocurrency

With an impressive 732,000 Twitter followers, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is no lightweight on the social networking platform. Unfortunately, however, some people are trying to exploit the entrepreneur's popularity in order to scam cryptocurrency from the public. Thankfully, the tricks of the criminals are easily avoided.

Read more: https://torrentfreak.com/fake-kim-dotcom-twitter-accounts-still-scamming-cryptocurrency-180707/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

Financial regulators plan to ease rules on crypto-based assets in line with policies initiated by G20 nations to establish "unified regulations."

The Financial Services Commission (FSC), which oversees policies and directs the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), has revised its guidelines relating to "all activities" of Korea's leading cryptocurrency exchange operators.

"The FSC made revisions to its rules to apply strengthened policies in order to prevent or detect money laundering and illegal activities because the regulator isn't opposed to cryptocurrencies," an official said.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2018/07/602_251786.html

Facebook’s Blockchain Division Has a New Director of Engineering
Social media giant Facebook has recently promoted senior engineer Evan Cheng to director of engineering for its recently-launched blockchain division.

Earlier in May, Facebook put together a team led by David Marcus, Coinbase board member and former president at PayPal, to explore blockchain technology and its potential use cases for the platform. The team consisted of less than a few dozen people and included senior executives from Instagram. The team was said to directly report to Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook.

In an executive reshuffle, Facebook appointed Evan Cheng as the director of engineering and Kevin Weil, formerly VP of product at Instagram, as the VP of product at their blockchain division. According to his LinkedIn page, Cheng has been employed at Facebook since November 2015 and has been working at their programming languages and runtimes division. He also worked at Apple for over 10 years and is credited as one of the inventors of LLVM, a compiler that generates the low-level machine code for Apple devices. Cheng is also listed as an advisor to blockchain projects Zilliqa and ChainLink.
https://www.ccn.com/facebooks-blockchain-division-has-a-new-director-of-engineering/

One of the amazing news recently was that ImmVRse and SkyfChain had posponed their ICOs without increasing a pool (as abou the second) and this type of new is my "favorite" from all others, lol!