“Big Four” audit and consulting firm Deloitte has outlined five basic areas of development for blockchain technology in order achieve widespread adoption, according to a study published September 28. According to Deloitte, in order to be adopted by enterprises on a mass scale, blockchain technology should overcome five major obstacles – the possibility of time-consuming operations, lack of standardization, high costs and complexity blockchain applications, regulatory uncertainty, as well as the absence of collaboration between blockchain-related firms. Identifying the area that needs the most development, Deloitte singled out the problem of possible operational delays on a distributed ledger network. The …

Cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Bitfi called claims their wallet had in fact been hacked a “disgrace” in comments to Cointelegraph August 2, as controversy around the company’s security prowess builds. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Bitfi CEO Daniel Khesin said that it had “absolutely no evidence” the wallet was insecure: “As of now, we have no evidence that our device can be hacked and if someone succeeds in doing so then we will immediately put out a fix to all devices to address the vulnerability that was discovered and it will be unhackable once again.” Bitfi and official partner John …

The Thai Bond Market Association (TBMA) will deploy a blockchain-powered solution on its registrar service platform, local news agency Bangkok Post reports July 28. The new registrar service platform, which is scheduled to be introduced this year, intends to provide a faster bond certificate issuance and, in turn, boost the liquidity of the secondary market, according to TBMA president Tada Phutthitada. While market liquidity has been growing, the issuance of bond certificates still remains slow, which may cause serious limitations to the growth of corporate bonds in the secondary market. According to Mr. Tada, the platform will reduce the bond …

Ledger, one of the leading security-focused hardware wallet suppliers, has sold more than one million hardware crypto wallets in 2017, earning a profit of $29 million, the firm said in an interview with Forbes July 9. Having raised $75 million this January in a Series B funding round led by European venture capital firm Draper Esprit, the Paris-based company is planning to raise more funds this year. Ledger’s president Pascal Gauthier revealed that while the January round was focused on venture capitalists, “who could advise on Ledger’s consumer Nano S business,” the new round intends to attract “industrial partners who …

Update: This article was based on Ledger's post on Medium.com, which insinuates that Ledger will integrate full FIDO features. We've been told that this is not true, however. Ledger says they will add U2F authentication, but not biometric. We apologize for the error. The next generation of Ledger, a smartchip-based Bitcoin hardware wallet similar to Trezor, will be compatible with the authentication features of Fido Alliance – namely external dongles and fingerprint readers. Ledger says they will employ Fido Alliance's Second Factor (U2F) and Passwordless (UAF) authentication types. Of U2F authentication, a Ledger spokesperson tells Medium: “[It] uses Elliptic Curve …