Switzerland has established a working group tasked with investigating the possibility of regulating blockchain technology and initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the country, as per a report by Reuters. The working group will be required to present a report to the government by the end of 2018.
While regulations continue to be top of mind for financial institutions, banks have another main concern: the innovations and progress being made by fintechs, according to a survey released by EY.
Financial institutions need to be more aware of the effect fintechs-which provide “simpler, more convenient, more transparent” services, are having on the industry, EY stated in its Global Banking Outlook survey for 2018. In its Global Banking Outlook 2018 survey, EY assessed 221 financial institutions across 29 markets. According to the results, banks argue that innovation, not just regulation, is behind the wheel of progress.
South Korean policymakers joined the global chorus of virtual-coin critics on Thursday, saying Seoul is considering shutting down domestic virtual currency exchanges as the new breed of market exposes users to speculative frenzy and crime.
The country’s tough stance comes as policymakers from the United States to Germany struggle to come up with stricter regulation against money laundering and other crimes.
Private messaging app Telegram is planning to gatecrash the cryptocurrency world with a blockbuster ten-figure initial coin offering.
The company, which reaches more than 170 million monthly users, is looking to raise at least $1.2 billion from a token sale which would include a private sale set for February 2018 and public sale in March, as Business Insider reported.
Business interruption (BI) is the most important global risk for the sixth year running, according to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2018. As the risk landscape develops, companies now face an increasing number of scenarios ranging from traditional exposures like water, fire and supply chain disruption, to new intangible risks related to cyber in the ever-digitizing world.
First, they beat us at chess. Then it was Go. Now it’s basic reading comprehension. The robots are coming.
Alibaba says its deep neural network model has outscored humans in a global reading test, paving the way for the underlying technology to reduce the need for human input. The Chinese tech giant’s research unit, Institute of Data Science of Technologies (IDST), said it had developed a deep-learning model that attained a score of 82.44 in Exact Match on the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD). Humans had clocked a previous score of 82.304, it said.
Chinese authorities plan to block domestic access to Chinese and offshore cryptocurrency platforms that allow centralized trading, Bloomberg reported Monday citing sources.
Chinese authorities will also target individuals and companies that provide market-making, settlement and clearing services for centralized trading, Bloomberg reported. There is no indication how Chinese authorities plan to restrict access to decentralized currencies.
Researchers found that a single actor was “likely” behind several accounts that bought millions of dollars worth of bitcoin and drove the exchange rate in the US from $150 to $1,000 over the course of two months.
In a paper published in a recent issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics, a team of researchers examined the impact of fraudulent activity that occurred on the leading bitcoin currency exchange in 2013, and found that a single actor was “likely” behind a massive spike in exchange rates.
