Cryptocurrency Daily News Bulletin: April 12, 2019

General News

Albertsons Companies, the world’s second-largest supermarket company by sales, has joined IBM’s Food Trust blockchain.Albertsons will begin with a pilot involving suppliers of romaine lettuce – a product which was last year linked to a widespread outbreak of E-coli. 

Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler has hinted launch may be coming soon, stating “race day” is approaching as the startup awaits regulatory approval from the U.S. CFTC. Bakkt has also expanded its team with former Google and PayPal engineering executive Mike Blandina joining as the company’s chief product officer.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the Pennsylvania state-backed VC firm, has rolled out a blockchain-based onboarding and tokenization platform. The Ethereum-based platform will utilise “GO Philly Tokens” to streamline and manage investor interests in the fund.

Blockstack, the decentralized computing network, has applied to the U.S. SEC to launch a $50 million token sale which — if approved — would be the industry’s first SEC-qualified offering. Notable investors include the Harvard University endowment fund, among others.

Digital Asset (DA) has landed another high-profile partner. Software virtualization giant VMware, a publicly traded company majority-owned by Dell, is integrating DA’s smart contract language into its own blockchain platform and will distribute directly to customers.

Facebook’s new stablecoin will debut in India due to the nation being the largest remittance-receiving country in the world and as it makes up the largest user base on WhatsApp. Tim Draper is one of several investors to come out stating he is expecting to meet with the social media network to discuss an investment in the new crypto project.

International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the world’s largest business organization, is making blockchain technology available to its 45 million members, including Amazon, Fedex, McDonald’s and PayPal. They have partnered with Singaporean blockchain startup Perlin, which will offer free access to its blockchain platform during the early stages of the project. 

Polychain’s assets have dropped $376 Million since August. After becoming the first $1 billion crypto fund in August 2018, a new filing with the SEC shows the fund is left with $591.5 million in AUM as of the end of March 2019.

Cryptocurrencies

Horizen $7.70 USD (-0.07 percnet) Labs, an entity spun off Horizen (formerly ZenCash), officially launchedyesterday; raising $4 million in a seed funding round – double their initial target. Horizen Labs said will use the investment to build “inexpensive, time-efficient and customizable” blockchain solutions for businesses. The firm offers a sidechains-as-a-service platform, removing the need for entities to spend resources on development and allows for quicker deployment of existing systems using pre-built sidechains.

OmiseGO’s $2.04 USD (3.14 percent) crypto exchange Go.Exchange is expanding its listings with Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Both coins are paired with Bitcoin and USD Coin.

Telegram: According to local Russian news outlet Vedomosti.ru, Telegram’s Open Network (TON) is now live in private beta, with several programmers and beta testers having access to the highly-touted crypto project.CoinTelegraph reports TON must launch by the end of October for token purchase agreements to remain valid after its record-setting ICO raised $1.7 billion in 2018.

– WN.com, Jamie Saarloos