Japanese Crypto Exchange Being Bought By Wine Retailer

A investment holdings company popular for selling top-end French wine is said to be taking over a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.

The said acquisition is between Madison and Bitocean.

The former is a $546 million-valued company that is listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s Growth Enterprise Market.

Bitocean on the other hand is a crypto exchange in Japan that is registered with Japan’s Financial Agency that has yet to commence trading.

Madison states that this is part of the company’s diversification strategy as the company is also interested in corporate finance activities, financial advisory services and asset management.

According to the Chairman of Madison, Raymond Ting Pang-wan the wine business is profitable and stable but it is small.

He reveals that growing a wine trading business is very hard that is why his company is looking into financial technology and the cryptocurrency business to realize better returns for their stockholders.

He states that by investing in cryptocurrencies it hopes to expand revenue the company’s revenue sources.

Pang-wan further states that he is not concerned with the current bearish market trend which has seen the number one cryptocurrency in the crypto space plummet more than 80% from its all-time-high in December 2017 of almost $20,000 USD.

Instead he sees this as a good opportunity for his company to enter the market.

The company he says in not worried about short-term volatility they are in the space for the long term.

Facebook Crypto Beginning Of The End Of Crypto As We See It?

It has been a week or so when news broke out that Facebook, one of the largest social media network in the world with over 2 billion users has been developing a cryptocurrency.

It has been revealed by anonymous sources that the new cryptocurrency will be a stablecoin to do away with the market volatility and will be utilized by its mobile application WhatsApp messaging service as a cross-border remittance feature.

It was also revealed will roll-out first in the largely untapped digital payments market of India.

However not all cryptocurrency community members are happy with this development.

Some are upset that a large company like Facebook seem to be co-opting the cypto community’s blockchain technology.

This might be a bitter pill to swallow for some pundits as they view the encroachment of big tech into the crypto scene as taking reins of the blockchain technology.

Rather it should be seen that the adoption of cryptocurrency by a large company with huge global users as an indication that the technology has reached a critical point of validation.

Facebook adoption of cryptocurrencies should not be viewed as something that is taking away from the industry.

Instead it should be viewed as an important contribution to legitimize the nascent industry and present a valid use case.

The integration of cryptocurrency into one of Facebook’s platform may lead to crypto-ubiquity and not the beginning of an end to the crypto as we see it.

Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies will remain the same as an innovation of money that is freely traded, speculated on and investment property.

U.N. To Tap Blockchain Technology To Provide Free Basic Healthcare In East Africa

According to news reports the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has partnered with blockchain-based telemedicine and telepsycology firm doc.com.

This initiative is in line with their effort to expand free basic healthcare across the continent of Africa particularly on Eastern part of the continent.

It has been revealed that Doc.com is a tech firm that offers blockchain-based 24/7 telemedicine and telepychology platforms allowing users to tokenize their personal data and sell it in return for access to the service.

They plan to roll out its platform in the second quarter of 2019.

Doc.com is currently operating in over 20 countries with its office in the United States its latest addition.

It plans to expand to more offices within the US and the U.K. where it plans to launch its tokenized telemedicine service.

Its platform uses an ERC-20 compatible token named MTC which is currently tradable.

The tokens can be traded in Coinbenea nd Kucoins. It has been revealed in their website that the company has over 130,000 users and its telemedicine platform has around 70,000.

It is not hard to see that U.N. has been exploring how to harness the benefits of blockchain technology and implement them in its own project.

It seems that blockchain technology has caught the attention of health companies looking for blockchain solutions that would help improve data integrity and security and reduce cost.

Bitcoin Volumes Spiking Once Again In Venezuela

It has been revealed that last week was the biggest jump in bitcoin trading in Venezuela.

According to Peer-to-peer bitcoin trading site LocalBitcoins the bitcoin trading volume surged to 1974 BTC over the past week.

It jumped at around 11 percent from 1,743 BTC the week of December 15, 2018.

This is the highest level of activity recorded in Localbitcoins.

Bitcoin has been an appealing alternative as store value of the citizen of Venezuela despite its extreme volatility and even if it has lost much of its value from its all time high last December 2017 all-time-high of nearly $20,000 USD.

This is due to the extreme inflation the country of Venezuela is currently experiencing.

According to IMF the country is on track to hit an inflation level of one million percent.

In comparison to its neighboring countries Chile and Peru have only 3 percent and 3.7 percent inflation rate respectively.

There is no clear indication of why the sudden surge of Bitcoin trading activities.

Some speculates that this is the direct effect of pensioners getting their pension in Petro cryptocurrency while others just describes the phenomenon as the direct effect of word getting out that bitcoin as a safer alternative for the citizens of Venezuela.

Square Is Yahoo Finance’s Company Of The Year

It has been recently reported that Square, a United States-based Bitcoin (BTC)-supporting payments firm has been named the 2010 Yahoo Finance Company of the year.

The company is a $26 Billon market cap payments company that is founded by Jack Dorset and Jim Mckelvey in 2009. Prior to the technology stock downturn in recent weeks the company has seen its stock go up 72 percent through December 14.

It seems that BTC-related press-releases has a positive correlation with its stock price. It saw a $1 Billion increase in stock when it announced that it will be allowing 3 million of its Square Cash App Customers.

Then it increased once again when it announced that it will be rolling out bitcoin trading to more U.S. States.

However Cash App lead Brian Grassadonia reveals that the stock surge was not caused by the introduction of BTC support but was instead the result of the company’s commitment to democratizing access to financial tools.

Financial tools have been widely seen as complicated, intimidating and stressful but with Cash App’s these tools are simplified in a way that professional and beginners can use effectively and efficiently.

According to online media Square was able to generate $43 million in Bitcoin Revenue for Q3 2018 which is an improvement from $37 million from the previous quarter.

The same month it has surpassed the total market capitalization of Twitter, the social media platform that Jack Dorsey founded and is the current CEO.

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