Insurance tech firm BlockClaim has recently received £500,000 ($627,000) in funding for its blockchain-based claims solution, according to an official blog post on June 17. The firm raised the funds from venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners and software firm Pragmatica, in addition to other angel investors. According to the announcement, BlockClaim uses blockchain technology to automate its claims process. Furthermore, the company says the product reduces claim costs by 20% and results in faster settlements. As per its website, BlockClaim uses a private blockchain to streamline the claims process: “Leveraging the power of a private blockchain helps to keep …

On June 10, one of the top cryptocurrency media sites, CCN, initially announced that it would shut down, citing a June 3 Google Core Update for stifling its traffic. Writing on the website, the director and founder of CCN Markets and Hawkfish AS, Jonas Borchgrevink, blamed the update for an overnight fall of 71% of the site’s mobile traffic. While Borchgrevink noted that ups and downs are part of the business, such a vertiginous fall is unprecedented in its history. At the time of the post, the founder said that it could not support new additions to its team or …

Online retail giant Amazon has partnered with United Kingdom-based insurance agency Legal & General to create a blockchain system for managing corporate pension deals, according to a report by Reuters on June 11. Legal & General will reportedly make use of the Amazon Managed Blockchain for its bulk annuity transactions, which happen when companies transfer their pension schemes to Legal & General for insurance. According to an article by the Financial Times, companies make bulk annuity transactions to insurers like this so that they are not ultimately responsible for personally paying their employees’ pensions. CEO of Legal & General Reinsurance …

Bitcoin (BTC) price analyst Oliver Isaacs thinks it will hit $25,000 around the end of 2019, according to a report by The Independent on June 5. Isaacs discussed the reasons he still has high hopes for a rally in the near future, saying: "There are multiple drivers behind the recent resurgence. There are geopolitical, technological and regulatory drivers. The net effect of the trade war between the U.S. and China has led to the sudden interest in bitcoin as a hedge on investments." Draper also reportedly commented on the state of mainstream adoption trends, with giant corporations such as Microsoft, …

Retail behemoth Amazon has received a patent for generating Merkle trees as a solution to the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, a document confirmed on May 14. Amazon, which has taken an increasing interest in blockchain technology in recent times, now appears to be targeting development of a specific variation of the instrument. Specifically, the patent targets Merkle trees — a data verification tool — to constitute the work required in a PoW setup. PoW is the algorithm used in bitcoin (BTC) and some other major cryptocurrencies such as litecoin (LTC), dogecoin (DOGE) and monero (XMR). “This document describes techniques for using …

Cybercriminals are now reportedly exploiting known vulnerability CVE-2019-3396 in the software Confluence, a workspace productivity tool made by Atlassian, according to a report by security intelligence firm Trend Micro Inc. on May 7. The exploit that has been developed allows cybercriminals to stealthily install and run a monero (XMR) miner on a vulnerable computer, as well as covering up the mining activity by using a rootkit to hide the malware’s network activity and toll on the host’s central processing unit (CPU). According to an Atlassian security advisory, the vulnerability in question only applies to some older versions of Confluence. The …

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing platform subsidiary of retail giant Amazon, has made its Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) generally available, according to an announcement on April 30. The product will purportedly allow customers to set up blockchain networks within their organizations, and uses the Ethereum and Hyperledger open source frameworks. Notably, Amazon states that AMB can scale to support thousands to millions of transactions. Amazon states that the blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) will allow businesses to develop their own networks more quickly and at a lower cost, as it eliminates the need to “to provision hardware, install software, create and …

Crypto payments processing startup Moon is launching a web browser extension that allows e-commerce shoppers to use their Lightning Network (LN) bitcoin (BTC) wallets for purchases on sites like Amazon. The news was reported by Moon’s official Twitter on April 22. While Moon’s regular Chrome browser extension is already available on the Chrome web store, the startup tweeted to note that the lightning feature update is still under review, and is expected to launch imminently. As previously reported, the bitcoin Lightning Network is a second-layer solution to bitcoin’s scalability limitations, opening payment channels between users that keep the majority of …

Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch has evidently removed Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as payment options for subscriptions. The change was reported by a Reddit user on March 23. The user noted that Twitch had offered an option to pay with BTC and BCH employing BitPay as a payment processor, but has since “removed it in the last couple of weeks as a payment method for all countries.” One user, seemingly outraged, noted that they canceled all of their Twitch subscriptions and sent an assistance ticket to the company. On March 20, another Reddit user claimed that Streamlabs — a …

A decentralized platform offering “e-commerce on demand” is launching, and says it has the ambition of enabling shoppers to have online orders delivered in less than two hours — with food shopping arriving at their door in 30 minutes. Buying.com says its service will initially be available across six zip codes in New Jersey, providing customers with a choice of more than 50,000 items. A center in the town of Mahwah is going to monitor the platform’s progress, and the startup has bold ambitions to roll out across the state and nationwide in the months that follow. Customers can make …

Major United States crypto exchange and wallet service provider Coinbase has reportedly hired a veteran of Amazon Web Services to develop staking and governance solutions for its crypto custodial services. The news was reported by The Block on March 4. Citing an alleged internal memo, the report claims that Luke Youngblood — formerly a principal solutions architect at AWS — has been hired to develop new staking and governance products, which will reportedly “provide Coinbase Custody clients with the ability to interact seamlessly with crypto-networks while maintaining the utmost security of their assets in Custody.” As of press time, Youngblood’s …

Big Four audit firm Ernst & Young (EY) released its “Third Report of the Monitor” in the creditor protection proceedings of Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX on March 1. Within the report, the audit firm has identified six separate crypto wallets that were used primarily to store Bitcoin (BTC), the cryptocurrency most used on the platform. Apart from one inadvertent transaction of Bitcoin amounting to nearly $500,000, there have been no deposits in the wallets since April 2018. Furthermore the report states: “To date, the Applicants have been unable to identify a reason why Quadriga may have stopped using the Identified …