Source: Random House In a dramatic move, New Zealand banned its first book in decades on Monday. The award-winning teen novel, Into The River, won the New Zealand Post children’s book of the year in 2013 and includes portrayals of sex and bullying. Auckland-based author Ted Dawe did not see the ban coming. “It’s extraordinary,” Dawe told the New Zealand Herald. “I’ve had quite a few emails from people who share that sense of outrage. Do we live in a country where books get banned? I’ll get burnt next.” In the book, a Maori boy wins a scholarship to an exclusive Auckland boarding school but faces racism and struggles with drugs. The Film and Literature Board of Review called the ban temporary. No book had been banned…
A Singapore-based startup, SearchTrade, has introduced a system to allow all parties in the Internet search engine process – the searcher, the owner of the key word being searched, the builder of the app using the search engine, and the advertisers – to profit from the process using bitcoin. Using bitcoin, the system redistributes the revenue among the stakeholders in the process, rather than allowing all the profit to flow to the big search engines like Google and Bing. “Search is the single most important activity on the Internet,” said Vishal Gupta, co-founder and CEO of SearchTrade. Everyone does it, every day. Search drives far more traffic than any social network or viral news site, and it makes a ton of money. “We’re asking people to imagine…
Equibit, which bills itself as a global P2P OTC platform, is a block-chain-based securities register that manages OTC equity, warrants, partnership units and more. The system includes a shareholder communication system, plus the ability to issue BTC-denominated dividends and distributions. Equibit manages functions typically performed through transfer agents and central depositories. Hence, the system saves costs to issuers and brokers. Chris Horlacher If successful, this P2P electronic equity system will revolutionize securities trading. CCN reported on Equibit’s formation in June. CCN recently contacted Chris Horlacher, managing partner of the Toronto, Canada-based venture, to find out how he got involved with the block chain and why he believes the…
A bitcoin derivative trading company has announced that it is working on a “secret” back-office blockchain project. Magnr, known to offer Bitcoin saving accounts with a fixed interest rate, has launched “Project Kodo” with hopes to resolve inefficient backend processes in financial assets trading, the IBTimes reported. The company has also appointed a new Chief Execution Officer (CEO), Colin Kwan, to oversee the said project. A former employee at Deutsche Bank and UBS, Kwan’s involvement into the Project Kodo is hopeful to bring a lot of technological and banking expertise to the table. His secretive attitude towards the Magnr’s blockchain program, though, curtained important details: like why a Bitcoin financial services platform suddenly decided to experiment…
Global banks, financial institutions and organizations have begun to research about the potential applications of the blockchain technology that may restructure traditional financial and banking systems. Over the last few months, multinational banks including Citibank, JPMorgan and UBS have built research teams and startup acceleration labs to acvively develop prototypes of blockchain based applications and run pilot tests on their existing platforms. UBS for example, has announced their plans to build a transaction settlement platform based on a blockchain to enable banks and financial institutions to record transactions and payments in a transparent and encrypted public ledger effortlessly. British multinational banking and financial services company Barclays…
The block chain offers the most significant records and identity authentication technology available in more than 5,000 years, and government should take the lead in adopting it. That’s the message that Brian Forde, director of the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, delivered in a recent presentation to a group of government information managers. The Huffington Post posted the presentation, in which Forde explained one of the missions of the recently-formed MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative. Brian Forde Forde, whose presentation was titled, “Blockchain As The Next Platform,” said the block chain is the first real tool to replace “rubber stamp authentication protocol,” meaning paper records. He wants to work with governments and…