Akamai technologies, the world’s largest and most trusted cloud delivery platform, and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) have partnered to launch a new blockchain-based online payment network which will enable next-generation payment transaction scale and responsiveness.
“For years, the financial industry has sought to utilize blockchain to secure and hasten transaction processing and lower associated costs,” said Nobuyuki Hirano, President and Group CEO of MUFG.
According to the , the new payment network will be a diverse payment service equipped with an interface that can be used as a communications network, and including functions for the transfer and management of value through blockchain. This will allow for a significant reduction of transaction costs for all kinds of payment services, and could support a large expansion in transaction numbers.
The technology will be built and deployed on the Akamai Intelligent Platform. MUFG and Akamai will utilize the new blockchain’s high-speed processing and secure value transfer abilities to promote pay-per-use, micropayments, and other new IoT generation payment methods, and to support the diverse payment options of the sharing economy by offering an open platform.
“This new blockchain-based online payment system, built upon our cloud platform, will be designed to address the concerns related to scalability, latency, and security that have to date hindered broader use of blockchain,” Akamai co-founder and CEO Dr Tom Leighton said.
As the companies state, the underlying blockchain architecture is expected to conduct up to 10 million transactions per second.
“We have high expectations for our partnership with Akamai to provide customers the ability to support significantly greater volumes of high-speed payment transactions without compromising the level of security required for payment networks.”
The network is expected to be available in Japan during the first half of 2020.
is the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services and the most trusted cloud delivery platform, making the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere.
(MUFG) is a Japanese financial services company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Being the world’s fifth largest bank by total assets, the company offers comprehensive and tailored financial solutions to clients worldwide. In 2016, MUFG signed a deal with IBM to develop smart contracts and automate business transactions based on blockchain modelling. Recently, the bank announced the plans to launch its own cryptocurrency, the MUFG coin, by 2019.
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Before all the Lambo memes, shady no-product ICOs, and get-rich-quick schemes invaded the scene, bitcoin was meant to disrupt the current economic system. Today’s edition of bitcoin in Brief showcases how that promise is starting to materialize in different fields, including the future of elections and geopolitics.
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Iran and Russia Consider bitcoin to Skirt Sanctions
Iranian and Russian lawmakers are jointly examining the idea of using cryptocurrency to bypass international and American sanctions. Mohammad-Reza Pourebrahimi, who chairs the Iranian Parliamentary Commission for Economic Affairs, raised the idea during a recent meeting in Moscow with Dmitry Mezentsev, the Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy. He explained that the Russians “share our opinion. We said that if we manage to move this work forward, then we will be the first countries that use digital currencies in the exchange of goods.”
Iran’s government-owned media reports that the country’s leadership “specifically started to look at bitcoin as an alternative monetary means to be used in trade after it became clear that European companies were failing to trade with Iran over fears that they would fall afoul of US primary sanctions.” It should be noted that the Iranian government is trying to stop its citizens from having access to global markets it seeks for itself, and even traditional . Still, Iranian citizens have reportedly sent to purchase cryptocurrencies with.
US Politician Raises $100k From Crypto Community
Congressional candidate Brian Forde has celebrated on Monday in San Francisco his campaign raising $100,000 in cryptocurrency donations. A former head of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and Obama’s Senior Technology Advisor, he is considered to be a vocal supporter of cryptocurrency. Meanwhile his main Democratic opponent, a former SEC enforcement attorney, has attacked Forde for his work in cryptocurrency, referring to his donors in an ad as “bitcoin speculators that oppose cracking down on drug deals and human trafficking.”
This contested race is shaping up to be a major example of cryptocurrency impact on electoral politics in America. It is also nice to see that the matter is now getting bipartisan support in the US. As we recently reported, on the other side of the country and the opposite side of the aisle, a Trump-supporting Republican and a bitcoin enthusiast is running to be the .
Liberation Through Radical Decentralization
Vitalik Buterin has co-written a short manifesto of sorts with the young political economist Glen Weyl, unapologetically titled “.” In it they explain how the cryptocurrency ecosystem is suited for developing and testing new models for governance, voting and more, in a way that can fundamentally change how both democracy and capitalism work.
They remind us that: “bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in particular emerged directly as a reaction to the perceived excesses of the traditional financial system, with ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’ carved indelibly into bitcoin’s genesis block. That said, the decentralized technologies behind cryptocurrencies have potential applications far beyond finance.”
Real Products, Real Adoption
With all the recent news about so many ICOs being outright scams or just failures, it’s good to remember that there are actual projects in the cryptocurrency space that are delivering real services to real users. Two recent examples are Brave and Steemit, coincidentally two different attempts to change how online content monetisation works.
The Brave browser recently passed 5 million downloads for the Android operating system and now boasts over 2.3 million monthly active users and over 14,000 verified publishers. And recently the one millionth account was created on the Steem blockchain, which now sees around 60,000 unique accounts transacting each day, and over 250,000 unique daily visitors for the site.
What do you think about today’s news updates and what they mean for the future? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
Do you agree with us that bitcoin is the best invention since sliced bread? Thought so. That’s why we are building this online universe revolving around anything and everything bitcoin. We have a. And a. And a, a and real-time.
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