Chinese authorities on Monday ordered a ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs); a PBoC statement ordered that ICO activities should be halted starting from Monday, and ICO platforms should not engage in exchange services between fiat currencies, virtual coins and tokens; two of China's leading ICO platforms, ICOAGE and ICOINFO, had already halted services before the official statement came out. Source
Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital are investing in Bitmain, the world's largest bitcoin mining company; Bitmain is seeking $50 million in funding to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities, after previously focusing on developing chips for mining; Bitmain claimed in August that the company is at a $1 billion valuation, and is planning an IPO. Source
Andy Taylor previously co-founded marketplace lending platform SocietyOne; his new venture Douugh is a personal financial app; it uses a virtual assistant called Sophie to help users manage their finances; much like other apps, users input their financial accounts; users can interact with Sophie, asking questions like "How much did I spend on food this week?"; the app will also provide context around whether the amount spent is higher than usual and also aid users in setting up spending targets; the company is in beta for the rest of the year and will officially launch in February of next year; they hope to eventually make Sophie accessible via Alexa and Siri. Source
Ant Financial has rolled out the world's first commercial application of a payment system that identifies payers using facial recognition technology; starting from September 1, a KFC restaurant in Hangzhou allows customers to authenticate their payments by having their faces scanned; the whole process, which takes about ten seconds, does not require users to take out their cell phones; the function is powered by Face ++ technology developed by Beijing startup Megvii. Source
Compares blockchain to a library cataloging system; explains public and private blockchain and the centralized way information is stored creating a distributed ledger; also reports on the blockchain solutions offered by Othera which include loan tokenization for secondary trading. Source
As of December 2016, shadow loans in China reported an annual increase of approximately 15% to 14.1 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion); a study by UBS reports that as the market grows one area adding increased risk is regional banks, specifically banks located in China's Rust Belt region, which have been integrating the shadow loans into various methods for diversifying their balance sheet risk as the steel and metal-producing provinces struggle to remain profitable in the changing economy; the UBS report says alternative financial statement accounting regarding the loans could lead to a number of issues including overstated capital adequacy ratios, understated nonperforming loans and reduced provision charges. Source
National Internet Finance Association (NIFA) of China on August 30 released ICOs risk alerts; the Association highlights two kinds of risks: 1) some projects raise money in the name of ICO with misguided publicity and this may lead to illegal fundraising; 2) the assets of some ICO projects remain unclear and the information disclosure is far from sufficient. Source (Chinese)
ICOINFO, one of China's largest ICO exchange platforms, announces the suspension of new project launches, awaiting relevant regulatory rules; users will not be able to add value to their accounts during the suspension. Source
Regional remittance firm UAE Exchange partners with Ripple to facilitate instant international money transfers; UAE Exchange serves 31 countries and has over 800 offices in the Middle East region; Ripple uses their Ripple Consensus Ledger to link international firms and facilitate real-time money transfers; CryptoCoinsNews reports that UAE Exchange Group CEO Promoth Manghat stated to Arabian Business, "UAE Exchange has been investing significantly in blockchain technology, we are in the process of tying up a deal with distributed ledger startup Ripple, for real-time cross border payments."; this is the second regional financial firm to enlist Ripple, National Bank of Abu Dhabi partnered with Ripple in February. Source
Singapore based fintech company Trade Finance Market (TFM) recently launched their Invoice Check solution to cut down on trade finance fraud; the new blockchain based registry will help stop invoices from being paid more than once; they built the solution in the past year on the ethereum blockchain and it uses smart contracts; "Our system is in public beta and provides a manual method of entering invoices and having them checked against a blockchain-hosted database. This data is stored on the blockchain and funders are alerted if there is a potential risk of double financing," Raj Uttamchandani, the company's executive director, tells Global Trade Review. Source