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Counting Chickens: Can Blockchain Restore Trust in China's Food Supply? Noelle Acheson is a 10-year veteran of company analysis and the author of   CoinDesk Weekly , a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday, exclusively to CoinDesk subscribers. Last week,  CoinDesk reported  that the technology arm of Chinese web insurer ZhongAn was developing a blockchain platform. Not for insurance, though, as you might expect. This one will help track the provenance of chicken. While this marks a first for the Chinese company (partially owned by Alibaba, Tencent and insurance giant Ping An), the launch will join  a growing list  of  blockchain  projects aimed at improving China's food safety record. Over the past few years, the country has been hit by a  series of scandals  involving contaminated produce and supply chain fraud, and initiatives to  improve the industry's reputation  are emerging from a broad range o...

Local Government in China Trials Blockchain for Public Services A city district in southern China is using blockchain to streamline government services for its one million residents. Chan Cheng District, within Foshan City in Canton province,  announced  during an event on 23rd June the launch of a platform called Intelligent Multifunctional Identity (IMI) that lets registered local residents avoid filling repetitive personal information for different public services, presumably providing a more simple and secured process. The newly revealed system is seen as an upgrade, incorporated to the current all-in-one workflow in the local administration. Since 2014, the Chan Cheng District government has operated a central hub inside the city that serves as a physical portal for residents who need tax, pension, healthcare or utility services, among others. Despite offering a single source at which residents can access these services, re...

Changing Exchanges: Will the Coinbase of Tomorrow Be Decentralized? Newcomers to blockchain may notice the irony – in an industry obsessed with decentralization, some of the biggest startups are centralized, trusted institutions. But while it's true today that single entities are most responsible for the operation of exchanges that allow traditional money to be traded for cryptocurrency, some of the industry's oldest startups are now showing an interest in migrating to a future more in line with the spirit of the technology. Forcing this narrative is a new wave of decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges that exist almost entirely  on a blockchain , and that can dispense with the need for a third-party intermediary. "Decentralized exchanges are clearly the way of the future," said Hugh Madden, technical director for openANX, a decentralized exchange infrastructure protocol. Madden argues that a change in industry business models is inevitable as current ...

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigns Uber’s embattled CEO Travis Kalanick is resigning from the ride-sharing company he helped found in 2009 following a “shareholder revolt” led by some of Uber’s most prominent investors, the  New York Times  reports. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that Kalanick has stepped down. The report states that five of Uber’s most prominent investors, including Benchmark, wrote a letter titled “Moving Uber Forward,” which recommended that the CEO step aside immediately. After hours of discussion, Kalanick agreed to resign. “I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Kalanick said in a statement given to the Times. Kalanick will continue to hold a position on Uber’s board of directors, according to a statement from the board given to Tech...

Uniform Law Commission Sets Date for Debate on Digital Currency Rules The Uniform Law Commission (ULC) is set to review outstanding issues with its model digital currency regulation at an upcoming annual meeting. Tasked  with considering  uniform state legislation for alternative and mobile payment systems, the ULC has been focusing on digital currencies as part of its mandate to create consistency among US state laws for some time now. As such, the issues, outlined in a recent  memo  showcase how much work and deliberation may be left before the model regulation is published and made available as a guide to state lawmakers. Among the issues remaining include the definition of 'permissible investments' startups are allowed to keep on the books, and the definition of the term 'bank'. Currently, states like  Vermont  and  Illinois  have revealed financial regulation that gives virtual currency businesses the ability...

IMF Explores ICOs and Central Bank Coins in New Blockchain Note The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is continuing to explore the potential of digital currencies and distributed ledger technology (DLT) . In a staff discussion note released this week, e ntitled " Fintech and Financial Services: Initial Considerations " , the IMF places an emphasis on two impact areas: the use of the technology for  cross-border payments and its potential to be leveraged as part of a central bank-backed digital currency. The first note published by the IMF this year, it follows in the footsteps of a similar publication  issued last January . As such, this paper touches on many familiar topics and themes, including how the technology could come to bring change to financial services. Still, while familiar topics including the impact of permissioned and permissionless versions of the technology perhaps saw the most airtime, newer concepts are touched on for the first time as wel...

New York's Financial Regulator Is Now Inspecting Bitcoin Startups The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has released new information about the status of its digital currency licensing regime. Issued as part of a  broader annual report  to the state's governor and legislature, the NYDFS provided a brief description of its overall activities, emphasizing what it believes is the continued need for oversight on the industry due to the increased "speed of transactions" that  blockchain technologies  enable. Notably, the finance department also revealed that it has begun to inspect the operations of digital currency startups serving customers in the state. The filing reads: "DFS has begun examinations of these virtual currency companies, which, like other regulated financial services entities, are subject to periodic examinations by DFS." As part of a  2015 law , digital currency startups must agree to examinations con...

Blockchain Comes to East London With Colu Local Currency Launch A new cryptocurrency is coming to east London. Launched by Israel-based blockchain startup  Colu , the 'Local Pound, East London' currency is now available for area consumers and small businesses who want to boost the local economy. The digital currency is tied one-to-one to the national currency, the British pound, and can be bought with cards and bank accounts. According to Colu co-founder and vice president, Mark Smargon, Colu's currencies are an attempt to combat the threat of retail chains in cities and neighborhoods, while the accompanying app is meant to help businesses manage their transactions and help locals discover merchants in their area. In this context, the startup's local digital currencies are trying to remove technical barriers for local businesses when it comes to paperless transactions. Smargon told CoinDesk: "The local businesses are not really interactin...

You Can Now Type the Bitcoin 'B' Symbol in Unicode Text A decades-old computer character standard has been updated with a symbol for bitcoin. The Unicode Consortium  unveiled  Unicode version 10.0, 19/06/2017 which includes the bitcoin "B" symbol. Overall, the update includes 8,518 characters, along with 56 new emojis. The move comes more than a year and a half after the Unicode Consortium, which oversees the Unicode computing text standard,  approved a proposal  that itself constituted a years-long process.  Efforts  toward a bitcoin Unicode symbol date back to as early as 2011. The proposal, submitted by technology blogger Ken Shirriff, was actually the second to be considered by the Consortium. An earlier push by Sander van Galoven of the Netherlands was rejected by the organization.

Illinois Government Sponsors Month-Long Blockchain Hackathon The state of Illinois is backing an upcoming blockchain hackathon. The IBI Hack, a month-long virtual hackathon set to begin on 1st July, is being organized by the Illinois Blockchain Initiative along with blockchain technology startup Fulcrum.  The event is open  to students and recent university graduates from around the world, with all entries due on 31st  July. IBI Hack is part of the Illinois Blockchain Month, a month-long initiative that will see a series of educational events hosted across the state focused on the tech. The events are aimed at trying to teach people what blockchains are and what they can do.  State governor Bruce Rauner said in a statement: "Illinois is the state of innovation, and I am proud to see our young men and women getting involved in the Illinois Blockchain Initiative Hack. Empowering our youth is empowering the future of Illinois." The  Il...

India Inches Closer to Developing Cryptocurrency Rules India's government is reportedly moving closer to developing regulations around cryptocurrencies. Local news outlet  MoneyControl  reports that officials with the country's central bank, as well as its top finance regulators, are finalizing a report which lays out possible approaches for overseeing the tech. Agencies involved in the development reportedly include the Reserve Bank of India as well as the Ministry of Revenue, Department of Financial Services and the Department of Economic Affairs. What's happening:  The report being developed could be as released as late next month, according to  MoneyControl.  Up for continued discussion is precisely how to approach regulation in India, including the question of whether a dedicated agency is needed for the job. "SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) can be asked to regulate virtual currencies as transactions are currently done thr...

Cryptocurrency Scams Are Posing as China's Central Bank The People's Bank of China (PBoC) has issued a new warning alleging that cryptocurrency projects are misusing its name in an effort to defraud investors. Issued on 15th June,  the announcement  sought to make public the issue, while clarifying that  the central bank has not issued any digital currency or authorized any institution to do so. Adding to that, it reiterated that there is no digital currency marketing team at the PBoC, nor does the institution consider applications of the technology legal tender. The PBoC went so far as to warn Chinese consumers that so-called "digital currencies issued by PBoC" could be a part of a pyramid scheme. The PBoC concluded that: "We call on the public to establish a correct concept of money, cherish the RMB and maintain a normal circulation of RMB together." In broader context, the comments are the latest that find China's central bank step...