UPDATED 19:27 EDT / APRIL 06 2016

NEWS

Bitcoin Weekly 2016 March 6: Barclay’s joins UK launch of Circle, Red Hat blockchain initiative, Microsoft and R3, OpenBazaar launch

The Bitcoin world continues to keep getting more interesting when international bank Barclay’s joins up with Bitcoin mobile wallet app maker Circle for a U.K. launch of its app. And, on the other side of big bank partnerships, Microsoft joined up with the R3 consortium for access to its Azure-based Blockchain-as-a-Service product.

Open source giant Red Hat announced its own OpenShift Blockchain Initiative offering its own blockchain-technology platform for businesses and enterprise.

The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project just announced adding 10 more companies to its rolls and announced filling up its leadership.

And, to make everything doubly-more interesting, the peer-to-peer, Bitcoin-powered e-commerce marketplace OpenBazaar launched this week, which may or may not give eBay a run for its money. The marketplace is still in the early stages, but it promises to become the pioneer of such technologies.

Today the Bitcoin market value is around $424.33 USD (Bitcoinaverage.com) and has risen about $10 since last week’s Weekly saw it around $415. The market price seems to be hovering around $410 to $420, with some brief forays towards $440, but it always seems to descend back into this range.

Barclays joins up with Circle for U.K. launch of money transfer app

According to The Guardian, Barklays (Barclays Bank PLC) is providing Circle (Circle Internet Financial Limited) the infrastructure necessary to operate its Bitcoin app in the U.K.

In order to operate in the U.K. an e-money license from the Financial Conduct Authority was issued to Circle. As for Barklay’s involvement, the international bank will provide the mechanism to make transactions from any U.K. bank account to another across the entire region.

“For the first time ever, any consumer in the US or UK can instantly send value, without fees, and with the convenience of sending an email or text. US dollars and pound sterling are becoming more digital and global,” said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive of Circle.

This team-up of a big international bank and a Bitcoin wallet is not unheard of, but it’s certainly an interesting match. Big banks and financial regulatory groups have been well known over the years warning about the dangers of bitcoin to financial stability (including the Bank of England in 2014).

However, to make this match-up even more interesting in 2016, the U.K. government reached out to take credit for the partnership.

“Circle’s decision to launch in the UK and the firm’s new partnership with Barclays are major milestones,” said Harriett Baldwin, economic secretary to the Treasury. “Together they prove our decision to introduce the most progressive, forward-looking regulatory regime is paying off and cements our status as the world’s FinTech capital.”

Microsoft Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service partners up with R3CEV

On Monday, Microsoft announced a partnership with R3CEV, LLC, a consortium of 43 international banks (and IT industry companies), to advance the adoption of blockchain technology among R3 members.

Microsoft has in its product suite a cloud-based Blockchain-as-a-Service run on Azure that already chains in numerous different blockchain APIs and infrastructure platforms, all hosted in the cloud. The R3 consortium was founded in 2015 starting with a large number of international banks with the mission to provide standards and development for distributed ledger technology (blockchain technology) for financial services and fintech markets.

“Coupled with dedicated services and technical support for R3’s blockchain labs, this partnership creates a powerful, flexible ecosystem for member banks to develop and ultimately deploy real-world Blockchain solutions,” Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development Peggy Johnson said in a statement. “R3’s members will also benefit from Microsoft’s enterprise-grade cloud security and privacy protections, in addition to the largest cloud compliance and certification portfolio in the industry, an absolute necessity for the financial services industry.”

According to the deal, Microsoft will provide access to over 43 blockchain-based tools hoste don the Azure cloud platform to businesses connected to the R3 group. These tools include API and infrastructure offerings from ConsenSys, Ripple, Eris Industries, Factom and BitPay.

red hat

photo credit: Poppy via photopin (license)

Open source giant Red Hat starts its own Blockchain Initiative

Red Hat Inc., best known as a company that started as a Linux distro and became a global giant in open source software, just announced its OpenShift Blockchain Initiative for startups and enterprise. The Initiative would provide Red Hat engineers, training and access to the OpenShift Dedicated platform that allows in-house development and orchestration of blockchain-based solutions.

Red Hat’s launch of the OpenShift Blockchain Initiative positions the open-source company to be part of the ever-expanding interest in blockchain technology by numerous industry verticals from fintech to IT to medical.

The Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated platform provides blockchain hosted solutions on the cloud using open source Docker containers and Kubernetes orchestration technologies.

Software vendors and companies interested in blockchain technology and the OpenShift platform can sign up on Red Hat’s website.

openbazaar

OpenBazaar screenshot

OpenBazaar’s P2P e-commerce market launches

Distributed peer-to-peer Bitcoin-powered e-commerce platform OpenBazaar just launched. The platform started in 2014 as a peer-to-peer dark market and went through several different iterations since then.

In June 2015 the open-source platform netted $1 million in seed funding to continue development and expand its functionality and capabilities. Last month, the platform released its most recent beta to the peer-to-peer Bitcoin testnet so that the pre-launch version could be tested before release.

The OpenBazaar network uses the basic philosophy of Bitcoin to promote a distributed, peer-to-peer, open source marketplace that does not suffer from centralized authority or warehousing. Every participant in the OpenBazaar network does so in a trustless fashion including discovery, contracting, payment and delivery.

“Trade was meant to be free. This idea inspired us to spend the last two years building OpenBazaar,” Project leader Brian Hoffman said in a media release. “Starting today, anyone in the world with access to an Internet connection can use Bitcoin and OpenBazaar to exchange goods and services freely. We can’t wait to see how people will use this tool.”

Prospective sellers place offers up onto the OpenBazaar network, including everything needed to contract them via the peer-to-peer marketplace, and buyers make offers by submitting bitcoin into escrow. Once a deal is underway the system chooses a mediator who controls the escrow (someone trusted by both the buyer and seller). The seller sees that the bitcoin entered escrow, but the bitcoins are not released until the contract is completed to the satisfaction of the buyer (determined by the escrow meditator).

The Hyperledger Project continues to expand with new members, announces leadership

The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project, a nonprofit organization seeking to advance mass innovation through open source software and blockchain technology, just announced filling key leadership positions and a group of new members added to its ranks.

Ten new companies have joined the Hyperledger Porject including Blockstream, Bloq, eVue Digital Labs, Gem, itBit, Milligan Partners, Montran Labs, Ribbit.me, Tequa Creek Holdings and Thomson Reuters. Amid these new companies a few stand out as businesses that have innovated and found themselves in the news such as Bitcoin platform provider Gem (BitVault, Inc.) which teamed up with Elliptic Enterprises Ltd. to provide enhanced Bitcoin wallet security. And Blockstream, the startup founded by a number of Bitcoin luminaries seeking to become the primary source of development for sidechains, a blockchain innovation permitting cryptocurrencies to be “pegged” to Bitcoin.

“There is no other effort advancing an open blockchain with this level of broad industry representation and level of leadership,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The Hyperledger Project is among our fastest growing projects at The Linux Foundation. The opportunity is great. This leadership team and the community investments among members across industries put the project in the best position possible to accomplish its mission.”

As for leadership roles at the Hyperledger Project, Chris Ferris, distinguished engineer and CTO of open technology at IBM joins as Technical Steering Committee Chair. The Technical Steering Committee now includes Tamás Blummer, Digital Asset Holdings; Mic Bowman, Intel; Richard Brown, R3; Stanislav Liberman, CME Group; Hart Montgomery, Fujitsu; Satoshi Oshima, Hitachi; Stefan Teis, Deutsche Börse; Emmanuel Viale, Accenture; Pardha Vishnumolakala, DTCC; and David Voell, J.P. Morgan.

For Board Chair, the Hyperledger Project tapped Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings.

Featured image credit: via reddit member huevos_de_acero

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