The end of the year is coming up fast for the Bitcoin community and blockchain technology dominates the news. Financial technology, or fintech, is fertile territory for an innovation such as Bitcoin or the infrastructure that powers it to disrupt–both as money and a financial system. The result, global banks are banding together to examine how blockchain-based technology could be used and joining up with open source groups such as the Linux Foundation and consortiums such as R3 to develop standards the traditional industry can use.

Agility continues to serve the Bitcoin community well with smaller startups, such as BTCS, gathering up $1.45 million in end-of-year funding rounds. And Blockchain-as-a-Service as served the company Factom well as its cryptocurrency sees a spike in value after it is integrated into Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

Data processing and privacy is about to see a big boost from blockchain-based technology with the MIT Media Lab’s Enigma project going into beta and it has advanced somewhat since the announcement of the project in July this year.

Finally, Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com and co-founder of TØ.com, warns about the very same multi-bank partnerships such as those put together by the Linux Foundation and R3.

Have a sprightly Yuletide and merry Christmas, Bitcoin community! The New Year is coming and this is your Bitcoin Weekly.

The Linux Foundation at the center of blockchain fintech solution initiative

The wild ride of the Bitcoin blockchain onto the open road of fintech applications continues with the introduction of a new player: not-for-profit open source group the Linux Foundation. The project is a collaborative effort to design open source software based on the globally distributed ledger protocol that underlies Bitcoin transactions, the blockchain.

In partnership with the Linux Foundation is a huge list of members including Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MFUG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo.

Several stand outs in this list have already announced work with blockchain technology such as IBM Corp., who recently announced a partnership with major banks (and this could be part of that). SWIFT, The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, an international body that facilitates bank transfers, started the Global Payments Innovation Initiative looking to greatly improve bank transfers. And finally, R3CEV, LLC, a gigantic partnership of wordwide banking leaders (including many listed above) that seeks to become a think tank for innovations that could provide fintech solutions that use the Bitcoin blockchain and private blockchains.

BTCS raises $1.45 million in end-of-year funding round

BTCS Inc., Blockchain Technology Consumer Solutions, recently announced that it will close out the year with a $1.45 million funding round led by Cavalry Fund I LP. BTCS is a blockchain innovation company seeking to develop fintech solutions for securing blockchain transactions via verification services.

“The successful closing of this round of financing is an important milestone for BTCS,” said Charles Allen, chief executive officer of BTCS. “It enabled us to invest an additional $750,000 in Spondoolies-Tech Ltd. (‘Spondoolies’), increasing our ownership from 6.6% to 9.6% ahead of our pending merger, and sets the stage for the rollout of their next-generation SP50 servers.”

The company also noted a number of milestones from 2015 such as the expansion of its data center in North Carolina, the above mentioned merger with Spondoolies, equipment finance deals with CSC Leasing Corporation and 2,481% growth in bitcoins earned for the nine months ended September 2015 compared to full year 2014.

Integration with the Microsoft Azure cloud gives a boost to Factom price

Factom, a technology company that allows users to tie “facts” to the blockchain, has seen a price jump for its own cryptocurrency after integration with the Microsoft Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service cloud.

According to CryptoCoinsNews, the Factom cryptocurrency jumped nearly 600% to nearly 0.02 BTC ($0.90 USD). This leap occurred when more than $1 million of Factom’s currency in a 24 hour period and puts the company’s market cap at approximately $5.5 million.

MIT’s Enigma project based on encrypted blockchain data to launch beta

In July of this year, researchers at the MIT Media Lab announced work on a specialized data encryption network called Enigma. The system would use blockchain technology to enable untrusted and anonymous participants securely share data with partners without revealing the underlying information.

Enigma is the brainchild of Oz Nathan, Guy Zyskind and Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Pentland,  the Toshiba Professor at MIT, acts as advisor for the project and spoke to SiliconANGLE’s TheCube about the use of a blockchain to make Enigma function.

“[Enigma] is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, enabling different parties to jointly store and run computations on data while keeping the data completely private,” says the Enigma whitepaper written by Nathan, Zyskind and Pentland. “Enigma’s computational model is based on a highly optimized version of secure multi-party computation, guaranteed by a verifiable secret-sharing scheme. For storage, Enigma uses a modified distributed hashtable for holding secret-shared data.

According to Bitcoin Magazine the project is on the fast track for a beta test and signups are available on the Enigma website.

Patrick Byrne warns community to be wary of The Linux Foundation and R3 blockchain initiatives

Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com and co-founder of the TØ.com crypto-stock and -securities company, has some misgivings about the Linux Foundation and R3 initiatives (reported above). He took to twitter to voice his concerns and spoke out about the potential consequences.

My warning about R3’s #blockchain consortium https://t.co/fnhElGWIEo

— Patrick Byrne (@OverstockCEO) December 21, 2015

According to New York Business Journal, the CEO believes that these blockchain initiatives, which represent massive partnerships between global banking institutions could stifle blockchain and Bitcoin innovation. The journal cites a report from InsideBitcoins as the source of Byrne’s comments and suspicions.

“What’s happening is Wall Street is trying to slow us down while they come up with their own version, and that’s, I think, R3,” said Byrne. “Wall Street comes up with their own version, and then they’re going to outlaw [the competition]. So really be alert for R3.”

Included in his criticism against R3 is that Byrne himself states that he attempted to join the initiative, but was rejected.

“We tried to join,” he said. “But they wouldn’t let us join — even though we’re far ahead of everybody.”

He adds that he does not fear regulations, but embraces the idea as an eventuality that must happen; however, Byrne emphasises, that the forces that align with R3 may be seeking to monopolize their own territory of blockchain innovation by using their own monopoly on the fintech industry as leverage.

Byrne has also been at the forefront of his own fight against what he sees as unfair practices on Wall Street since 2005. His work to receive approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to trade in securities and stocks with TØ.com has been to forward that goal.

Featured image credit: Bitcoin Logo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/12350379324.