Apple has joined a fast-growing group of companies that are suddenly getting cold feet about all things cryptocurrency-related. The other crypto-cautious companies are reportedly some of Facebook’s biggest-name Libra partners: PayPal and Stripe, as well as Visa and Mastercard.
Reuters reports that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook stated that a Libra-like crypto-project
Indian police have sought a court directive to move $1.2 million seized from a BTC ponzi scheme last year that has been frozen due to the country’s anti-crypto laws.
The police of Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, have sought a court’s directive to transfer 85 million Rupees seized from a Bitcoin (BTC) ponzi scheme last year.
In an Oct. 3 article by the Times of India, Pune cyber police explained that the value of 244 cryptocurrency units (worth $1.2 million) was blocked in the bank account of company Discidium Internet, which was hired by the police to convert the seized crypto units into rupees.
The cyber police’s senior inspector Jairam Paygude said that the Central Bank of India was unable to transfer the money to the State Bank of India’s treasury branch in Pune as the account of Discidium Internet was frozen by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Discidium Internet is challenging the validity of RBI’s order, which prohibits dealings in virtual currencies and has requested that the RBI instruct the Central Bank of India to unfreeze the account.
The district government pleader Ujjwala Pawar said that the police request to transfer the money is pending before the sessions court.
Cointelegraph previously reported that the Indian draft “Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019”, which proposes a 10-year prison sentence for anyone who “mines, generates, holds, sells, transfers, disposes of, issues or deals in cryptocurrencies,” is already prompting local crypto businesses to take preemptive measures. Rahul Jain said:
“As a startup from India, we always wanted to serve from India, but this recent complication has made it difficult for domestic crypto exchanges to operate their businesses in India. So, we are now an Estonia-based company, and any Indian law to criminalize crypto will not impact us.”
U.S. law enforcement technology manufacturer Axon Enterprise Inc. is exploring new data tracking technologies, including blockchain, for its new body cameras.
Leading technology manufacturer for United States law enforcement Axon Enterprise Inc. is exploring new data tracking technologies, including blockchain, for its body cameras.
The impetus behind Axon’s interest in emerging technologies is public and government concerns about “deepfake” videos, Reuters reported on Oct. 3. Deepfake videos are produced using a particular type of artificial intelligence (AI) making them look and sound like the real thing.
This technology causes a great apprehension that bad actors can easily manipulate videos to discredit an individual. This is obviously of major concern for police wearing body cameras. Axon is looking into using blockchain to verify the authenticity of police body-cam footage.
In its new generation of cameras, Axon includes a secure digital signature to help track provenance of videos. “Axon recognizes the threat posed by ‘deepfakes’ to cause general mistrust in the integrity of any video, including body-worn camera videos,” Axon’s spokesperson told Reuters.
Blockchain and AI are now widely used by enterprises to improve their internal processes and products. In a dedicated analysis for Cointelegraph, Julia Magas wrote that by being able to continuously analyze data under a strict protocol required for achieving desired results, AI leads the way by allowing data to be properly stratified and shared.
Blockchain lends its characteristics to make sure the data is handled in an environment that is safe from external interference, as well as tampering of data ownership and sequence.
On the government level, The European Union is increasing the amount of data that can be reused as raw material for AI and blockchain projects. Alexandru Petrescu, Romania’s minister for communications, said:
“These rules are a real enabler for artificial intelligence and will help Europe to become a world leader in this crucial area. They will bolster the EU digital industry, especially smaller companies and startups, which would not otherwise have access to all the data they need to innovate and expand.”
Verisart, a company that certifies art authenticity through blockchain, raises $2.5 million to further expand its commercial platform.
Verisart, a company that certifies art authenticity through blockchain technology, has raised $2.5 million to further expand its commercial art platform.
In an Oct. 3 article by Techcrunch, it was announced that Verisart raised $2.5 million in seed financing led by Galaxy Digital EOS Fund, alongside investment firms Sinai Ventures and Rhodium.
The funding will go toward expanding Verisart’s product and engineering team and will make it possible to launch a whole range of services aimed at artists, galleries and collectors. Verisart’s CEO Robert Norton said:
“With this new round of funding, we’re able to scale our business and ramp up our partnership integrations. The art world is quickly realizing that blockchain provides a new standard in provenance and record-keeping and we’re looking forward to extending these services to the industry.”
Verisart, which per the report is the first company to apply blockchain technology to the physical art and collectibles market, allows artists to create digital certificates that verify and track the provenance of a specific art piece as it gets stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Cointelegraph reported in August that South Korean art-focused blockchain project ArtBloc conducted a fractionalized ownership sale of two paintings by popular British painter David Hockney. ArtBloc introduced the blockchain-enabled fractionalized ownership sale of the David Hockney’s paintings in Seoul on Sept. 19.
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