We Asked 66 Startups Just How Bad This Crypto Winter Has Been – CoinDesk

Treasury management There were a variety of ways to go “long” on crypto yet avoid exposure. One dominant strategy: don’t do an initial coin offering (ICO). In short, the prevailing wisdom is companies should build for crypto without exposing their payroll and rent money to its volatility. One advantage to going the route of traditional…

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Leading Charity Oxfam Launches Blockchain-Based Rice Project

On top of ensuring farmers from within developing nations receive a fair price on the goods they export, the BlocRice project also aims to introduce cashless payments. In collaboration with Acleda bank, the project will assist farmers in their attempt to reach banking services – something than many rural Cambodian regions are currently unable to access.

Source: Leading Charity Oxfam Launches Blockchain-Based Rice Project, Kane Pepi, November 19, 2018

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Minimum Viable Utility – Yannick Folla – Medium

Projects need to understand that “build it and they will come”, is probably much closer to the truth than “incentivize them and they will come”. Bootstrapping an ecosystem and an economy is impossible without a product that users actually want. The tokens should only be introduced after you’ve nailed product-market fit because only then can its purpose be understood, instead of forcing artificial demand when they can’t actually be used for anything valuable.

Source: Minimum Viable Utility – Yannick Folla – Medium, Read More

Understanding Digital Asset (a.k.a. Token) Fungibility: Opportunities for and Challenges to Token Valuation and Blockchain Ecosystems | LinkedIn

The opportunity lies in the technological advancement and resulting business opportunities with not only first-market advantages, but also with enabling new industries and business models that have not existed before.

Source: Understanding Digital Asset (a.k.a. Token) Fungibility: Opportunities for and Challenges to Token Valuation and Blockchain Ecosystems | LinkedIn, Nitin Gaur, September 23, 2018

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Stablecoins: designing a price-stable cryptocurrency | Hackernoon

A useful currency should be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Cryptocurrencies excel at the first, but as a store of value or unit of account, they’re pretty bad. You cannot be an effective store of value if your price fluctuates by 20% on a normal day.

This is where stablecoins come in. Stablecoins are price-stable cryptocurrencies, meaning the market price of a stablecoin is pegged to another stable asset, like the US dollar.

Source: Stablecoins: designing a price-stable cryptocurrency, Haseeb Qureshi, February 19, 2018

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Ford to Use Cryptocurrency for Inter-Vehicle Communication System | Bitcoin

The CMMP tokens are used to validate and authorize a transaction in which, at consumer vehicle request, the merchant vehicles either occupy slower lanes of traffic themselves, or allow the consumer vehicle to merge into their own lane and pass as necessary. The participating merchant vehicles gain CMMP tokens from the consumer vehicle.

Source: Ford to Use Cryptocurrency for Inter-Vehicle Communication System | Bitcoin, Samuel Haig, March 28, 2018

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Singapore Airlines to Launch Blockchain-Based Loyalty Wallet – CoinDesk

In an announcement on Feb. 5, Singapore Airlines (SIA) said it will launch a digital wallet for its frequent-flyer KrisFlyer program in six months that will be powered by a private blockchain.

According to the airline, the blockchain-based wallet will enable members of the program to spend their air miles at retail partners for point-of-sale transactions.

Source: Singapore Airlines to Launch Blockchain-Based Loyalty Wallet – CoinDesk, Wolfie Zhao, Feb 5, 2018

Thanks, Frédéric Dionne!

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US Congress Releases Extraordinary Report Praising Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology | The Daily Hodl

The US Congress just released its massive joint report on the state of the economy, and for the first time an entire chapter is dedicated to cryptocurrency.

What’s even more extraordinary are the number of bullish sentiments on the future of the emerging technology.

Source: US Congress Releases Extraordinary Report Praising Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology | The Daily Hodl, Staff, March 19, 2018

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