Blockchain startup Lumachain has received $2.4 million in public funding from Main Sequence Ventures, a $165.6 million venture capital fund backed by the Australian government and the federal Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Lumachain’s newly-received funds will go toward staffing fees as well as international expansion, according to a report by local financial news periodical the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on July 29. Lumachain reportedly uses blockchain technology to track and trace the condition and whereabouts of food products along the supply chain in real time. According to Lumachain’s website, founder Jamila Gordon says the goal of her blockchain …

Business advisory firm KPGM has partnered with tech companies Tomia, Microsoft and R3 to create a blockchain-based settlements solution for the telecom industry in anticipation of 5G network services. KPMG announced the partnership and product plans in an official blog post on July 16. As per the report, the planned blockchain solution intends to make use of smart contracts in order to reduce disputes between carriers and mobile operators. Such smart contracts would reportedly include critical information for this purpose, by providing details such as correct rates, destination and bilateral deal information. The upshot, KPMG hopes, is that settlements will …

A former employee at Microsoft has been arrested for a scheme to steal $10 million in cryptocurrency, the Associated Press (AP) reported on July 17. Insider schemes The man — a 25-year old Ukrainian national, Volodymyr Kvashuk, allegedly used the ill-gotten proceeds to buy a $160,000 Tesla car and a $1.7 million lakefront home. During the seven months of his scheme, $2.8 million was found to have been transferred into his bank accounts. Specifically, Kvashuk is accused of having stolen cryptocurrency gift cards that were redeemable against Microsoft products and then reselling them at a profit on the web. According …

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 …

The United States’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is allegedly considering requiring tech giants to report on crypto activity by users, according to a presentation reportedly from an IRS presentation and provided by a Twitter user on July 9. According to the documents shared, the IRS hopes to use Grand Jury subpoenas on firms such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to check taxpayers’ download history for crypto-related applications. Known as Crypto Tax Girl, Laura Walter, certified public accountant and crypto tax specialist, tweeted the presentation, which was allegedly for agents in the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division. Citing the document, Walter concluded …

Developers can now write smart contracts in C# on Microsoft’s .NET architecture. Blockchain development firm Stratis Group Ltd has launched the first smart contracts on Microsoft's .NET architecture, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on July 3. The company has introduced the Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes and Stratis Smart Contracts products designed to enable businesses to develop smart contracts in the programming language C#, a general-purpose language originally developed by Microsoft within its development platform .NET. This will purportedly allow enterprises to deploy smart contracts on one underlying general-purpose blockchain. The product thus targets enterprises, financial services companies, and …

United States tech giant Microsoft and the Ethereum Foundation are among the latest companies to join the ranks of the Hyperledger greenhouse hosted by the Linux Foundation. Many notable names in the tech and wider business fields today are developing enterprise-grade solutions based on the expanding set of tools built on Hyperledger. These institutional blockchain projects cut across both financial and nonfinancial distributed ledger technology (DLT) utilization. Presently, there are pilot projects geared toward identification systems, supply chain management (SCM) and provenance, to mention a few. On the whole, members of Hyperledger appear to be at the forefront of a …

Only a “very, very tiny percentage” of this month’s 1,700 job losses at IBM affected its blockchain division, The Block reported on June 20. Jerry Cuomo, the vice president of IBM Blockchain Technology, told the website that the tech giant is prioritizing blockchain skills when making hiring and firing decisions — adding it was “full steam ahead” for his department. The layoffs have been described as a “realignment plan.” The consulting arm of IBM’s blockchain business experienced some losses of redundant positions, but its engineering side reportedly escaped unscathed. A source told The Block: “The product team had no layoffs, …

IBM has announced upgrades to its Blockchain Platform, according to a report by Ledger Insights on June 18. The new IBM Blockchain Platform will reportedly be able to run on multiple cloud networks, such as major tech corporation Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is apparently the main upgrade over its previous iteration, which was available solely through IBM’s cloud. The multicloud platform will be available via Kubernetes, a container program that will reportedly allow users to scale their blockchain networks as needed. One of the main upshots of its new multicloud framework is that IBM Blockchain Platform …

Microsoft, Salesforce and the Ethereum Foundation are among the major new companies joining enterprise blockchain platform Hyperledger. The company’s executive director, Brian Behlendorf, confirmed the news to Cointelegraph ahead of a public unveiling at the ongoing Synchronize Europe conference in London on June 18. Part of a monthly update on new members of Hyperledger, Behlendorf said June’s rollout included the Ethereum Foundation as a non-profit member, while supply chain standards body GS1 is also now on board. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger already counts IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Boerse and others among its participants. “It shows the expanding footprint …

American technology giant Microsoft will reportedly make blockchain-based tools available to PowerApps and Microsoft Flow users, tech-focused news outlet GeekWire reported on June 10. Microsoft will purportedly announce its plans to add blockchain tools to its Power Platform during the Microsoft Business Applications Summit on Monday in Atlanta. Specifically, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain tools will be included in the company’s PowerApps custom application builder and PowerBI business intelligence tool. The Power Platform itself is a collection of tools — Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow — designed for collaborative work to build custom apps, automate workflows to improve business …

Although once confined largely to agriculture, blockchain technology is now making major inroads into the luxury goods supply chain market. Thus, Consensys recently announced a new platform with French multinational luxury goods conglomerate LMVH and the technology behemoth Microsoft to verify the authenticity of luxury goods. Luxury brands trial blockchain Although many products in the luxury goods market are renowned status symbols found in expensive city center stores the world over, the components of their products can originate in the most far-flung corners of the globe. The nature of globalized trade means that raw materials can be sourced in one …