Tech giant IBM has tripled the number of blockchain patents secured in the United States since last year, currently boasting over 100 active patent families. That makes IBM’s growth in US patents the largest of last year, according to a report by crypto-related news site BeinCrypto on July 16. According to data gathered by Yuval Halevi, co-founder of crypto and blockchain PR company GuerillaBuzz, IBM’s number of active patent families dwarfs other notable corporations. This includes some primary tech companies, such as Intel, Microsoft, and Dell Technologies: “In just 1 year the number of IBM blockchain patents has grown by …
United States telecom and media giant AT&T now accepting cryptocurrency for paying phone bills online, according to an official press release on May 23. AT&T will process bills paid in cryptocurrency using crypto payments platform BitPay. BitPay is a platform that converts cryptocurrencies to fiat and is used by over 20,000 businesses. AT&T is reportedly the first United States-based business in the wireless network industry to offer bill payments with BitPay. Kevin McDorman, vice president of AT&T Communications Finance Business Operations, said, “We have customers who use cryptocurrency, and we are happy we can offer them a way to pay …
The average earnings of a blockchain engineer have soared to between $150-175,000 per year, CNBC reported Oct. 21, citing Hired’s 2018 State of Salaries Report. Far higher than the $135,000 average software engineer salary, the figure puts blockchain engineers in the same pay bracket as artificial intelligence (AI) specialists, as the pace of blockchain recruitment demand gathers pace. The figure is also notably higher than other specialized tech engineering roles; Hired CEO Mehul Patel told CNBC that: "There's a ton of demand for blockchain. Software engineers are in very short supply, but this is even more acute and that's why …
United States-based coffee chain Starbucks will implement tech giant Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Service to track coffee production, tech news site GeekWire reports on May 6. Starbucks first announced its “bean to cup” initiative in 2018, stating that it would work with farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Rwanda to pilot a blockchain-based coffee-tracking system. The system will purportedly allow customers to track the production of their coffee and will open up potential financial opportunities for coffee bean farmers on the backend. Starbucks further noted that they would open source the pilot program to disseminate their findings. The two companies presented …
The Token Taxonomy Initiative (TTI) has unveiled a framework to standardize the construction of tokens. The initiative has made its Token Taxonomy Framework (TTF) available to the public, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Nov. 4. The platform-neutral framework will purportedly provide a set of definitions for tokens in various implementations. The TTI includes a common set of concepts, definitions of tokens and their use-cases across industries, a classification hierarchy, a composition framework and other standards. The TTI’s members include major tech, financial, software and blockchain firms including Microsoft, Intel, IBM, ConsenSys, EY, R3 and JPMorgan. The …