Chinese mobile payment app Alipay is toughening its stance towards users who use their Alipay accounts for over-the-counter (OTC) Bitcoin (BTC) trading, Beijing News website reports August 24. The overwhelmingly popular Alipay counted 400 million users as of August 2017, and is run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, which has recently been valued as high as $150 billion. According to Beijing News, Alipay is now taking measures to restrict and even permanently block those accounts that use its network to transact Bitcoin OTC, as well as establishing an inspection system for “key websites and accounts.” This January, a fresh crackdown …

The United Nations’ (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has created a ‘High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation,’ which explicitly puts blockchain technology on the agenda, UN News revealed yesterday, July 12. The panel, said to be “the first of its kind,” will gather 20 eminent figures from industry, civil society and academia to tackle the impact of digital technologies on global economies and societies –– an impact ongoing at “unprecedented scale” and “warp speed,” in Guterres’ words. Representing the new body on behalf of the UN Secretariat, Executive Director and co-chair, Ambassador Amandeep Gill, said: “You cannot look at ‘web 3.0’ without …

Since Bitcoin’s uses started to be thrashed out in forums and around dinner tables alike, there was always the belief that it would be a perfect thing for the likes of Amazon to accept. Digital cash for a digital store. Amazon may well be getting into the blockchain game, albeit slowly, and not with Bitcoin. But what about Alibaba? Alibaba is in the East, what Amazon is in the West, and is a massive eCommerce business with huge sway and power in the tech market. So, if Amazon’s Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency journey is pretty much mapped out and accounted …

Alibaba subsidiary Ant Financial has trialled its first blockchain remittances, sending a transaction in three seconds, Bloomberg reports June 25. The company, formerly known as AliPay, completed a funds transfer between its AliPayHK app in Hong Kong and Filipino payment app GCash, its joint project with local telecoms company Globe Telecom. Part of a growing trend of Blockchain remittances in the Philippines, Ant Financial will establish international outreach in future, CEO Jack Ma told the press on the back of the project. “Using blockchain to achieve cross-border remittances is one of my most concerned projects in the past six months. …