1) Blockchain can provide a way for voters to be reliably and securely registered to vote – Daniel Hardman.
Daniel Hardman, chief architect and chief information security officer at Evernym, one of the worlds’s leading company in self-sovereign identity said
Basically, blockchain can provide a way for voters to be reliably and securely registered to vote, and then when votes are cast, blockchain can be a mechanism for proving that somebody has the right to vote, based on their prior registration, Blockchain can provide some features that would help with auditing a vote in an election,
When he was asked how would authorities know if votes came from citizens who only voted one time? He answered
You need to know that a person can only register one time and that means that when somebody comes in to register you do the things that you would do in a physical election mechanism today, which is — you check the driver’s license, you see if their picture matches, their signature matches, all that kind of stuff.
2) 18% Cryptocurrency taxes in India.
India’s Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB) paying attention to Rs.7,200 crores (~ $1 billion) of yearly taxes which the country can collect from traders and investors. The CEIB, an important part of India’s finance ministry has put a proposal in front of the Government to collect 18% GST (goods and service tax) on cryptocurrency transaction. As per the reports of CEIB, India’s crypto transactions are around Rs. 40,000 crores (~ $5.4 billion) annually. Read more >>
3) Binance to launch European-style Bitcoin options contract.
On 28 December 2020 Binance announced the launch of a European-style Bitcoin options contract. Binance explained that the growing appetite for BTC options was the motive behind this launch. These new options contract will be priced and settled in Tether. Difference between the American format which is already being offered by the exchange and the European is that traders can only exercise the latter at the expiration of the contract.
4) Coinbase to suspend trading in XRP on 19 January.
Coinbase posted on their blog about limiting ripple trading from December 28, 2020, at 2:30 PM PST and will completely suspend it on 19 January, 2021 at 10:00 am PST. Coinbase has taken this action due to SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs, the blog also mentioned
The trading suspension will not affect customers’ access to XRP wallets which will remain available for deposit and withdraw functionality after the trading suspension.
5) BlackRock Financial Management wants to hire VP with Blockchain background.
BlackRock Financial Management Inc, the world’s largest asset manager wants to hire Vice President, Blockchain Lead in New York. Vice President is supposed to create and implement “strategies designed to drive demand for the firm’s offerings,” as well as “enhance the value proposition […] of the firm’s investments and technology offerings.” This job position also requires the candidate to have at least one year of experience in blockchain business, including “cryptographic hash functions, distributed network consensus mechanisms, and public-private key cryptography.