Blockchain Report — 12/19/2018

Summary: Coinbase Ventures Invests In $3 Million Round For Cryptocurrency Data Startup Nomics; Porsche Successfully Uses Blockchain Platform To Finalize $170 Million Loan; Renowned Cryptographer Timothy May Passes Away At 67, Considered The Progenitor Of Blockchain

Watch: Latest Episode of Blockchain Report on YouTube

Coinbase Ventures Invests In $3 Million Round For Cryptocurrency Data Startup Nomics

According to Coindesk, Coinbase Ventures recently invested $3 million into the cryptocurrency data startup Nomics. Other investors in the round include CoVenture Crypto, Digital Currency Group, BitGo co-founder Ben Davenport, CityBlock Capital, King Capital, Polymath and TokenSoft.

The money raised from the round will be used to build the startup’s engineering team and index how digital assets are traded. Some people might wonder how this startup is different from other companies that offer information on cryptocurrencies online. Here’s how.

Nomics wants to provide “gapless data”, which is where all the data is normalized to account for different time zones, ticker symbols, offline market protocols, and variations on different data points. Nomics CEO Clay Collins explains the difficulty with what the startup is attempting to do:

“While it’s a fairly trivial task to price (and have listings for) 95 [percent] of all cryptoassets, getting raw ticks/trades, all on-chain data, and orderbook data (including historical order book) for these assets can prove to be quite an engineering challenge.”

Nomics provides users with its Nomics API, and the startup has already indexed 3.5 billion data points. Nomics receives approximately 35 million API calls each month.

Porsche Successfully Uses Blockchain Platform To Finalize $170 Million Loan

According to NewsBTC, Porsche finished a loan deal with the Spanish bank Banco Bilboa Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) using the bank’s blockchain platform. Porsche is the first non-Spanish company to use blockchain technology to borrow funds from BBVA. The loan totaled $170 million overall.

Dominik Paschinger, a branch manager of Porsche’s corporate finance wing in Belgium, explained why Porsche decided to use blockchain technology to complete the loan:

“With digitisation being an integral part of Porsche Holding’s Strategy 2025, the goal is to advance in all fields of activity. We think that the blockchain technology has great potential and are therefore very excited to being able to explore the technological capabilities together with BBVA.”

BBVA stated that using blockchain technology to complete loans offers a variety of benefits, including offering more traceability, accountability, immutability, and decreased operational risk to the loan.

Renowned Cryptographer Timothy May Passes Away At 67, Considered The Progenitor Of Blockchain

According to CCN, the renowned cryptographer Timothy May passed away in his home at the age of 67. Timothy May was a cryptography expert and former engineer at Intel. May created the Cypherpunk Mailing List and wrote the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.

The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto is a short essay that outlines how cryptography can play an incredibly important role in our lives. The essay states that financial transactions can be done anonymously and without being taxed or regulated.

Timothy May, along with others in the early 90’s, created the Cypherpunks movement which consisted of people who were pro-privacy, pro-cryptography, and pro-security. Many credit the cypherpunk movement for ultimately leading to the creation of blockchain technology as well as Bitcoin.

Some noteworthy participants on May’s Cypherpunk Mailing List include Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Julian Assange. This is what Wei Dai had to say about Timothy May’s influence on his work:

“I am fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word “anarchy”, in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary. It’s a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations.”

Do you want daily blockchain and cryptocurrency news delivered directly to your inbox or feed? Sign up today for the Blockchain Report athttp://blockchainreport.tv.

Watch us daily on social media:
- Instagram 📷: http://instagram.com/blockchainreport
- Facebook 🌐: http://facebook.com/theblockchainreport
- LinkedIn 🔗: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-report/
- Twitter 🐦: http://twitter.com/blockchainposts
- Telegram 💬: https://t.me/blockchainreportnews