ConField cryptocurrency exchange announced the listing of four new coins along with its expansion in 40 new countries.

The newly introduced cryptos or coins/tokens include Civic (CVC), DigiByte (DGB), Stellar Lumens (XLM), and a stable coin USDC. All four coins are listed with XRP-based pairs. In addition, XLM direct fiat trading pairs with US dollar (USD), Canadian dollar (CAD) and Euro (EUR) are also available.


USDC is the first stablecoin listed on CoinField. Digital Exchanges around the world are trying hard to bring stability to crypto market by listing stablecoins. Here is the list of a recent listing of different stablecoins on different crypto exchanges.

• Recently, Liquid cryptocurrency exchange platform listed GUSD and USDC on their platform.
• CobinHood Cryptocurrency Exchange Lists Four Major Stable-Coins namely the Gemini Dollar (GUSD), MakerDao (DAI), Paxos Standard Token (PAX) and TrueUSD (TUSD).
• Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange Platform Lists USDC Stable Coin

According to the announcement, new and existing users can start depositing USDC, LOOM, CVC, DGB, and XLM into their wallets. Trading will be enabled on December 21, 2018, at 11:45 a.m. PST once sufficient liquidity is established.

CoinField has 37 trading pairs across US dollar (USD), Canadian dollar (CAD), Euro (EUR), Great Britain Pound Sterling (GBP) Japanese Yen (JPY) and UAE dirham as fiat currencies. CoinFiled also improved its KYC onboarding process with the help of Jumio.

CoinField also expanded into another new 40 countries with trader registration starting from December 21st, 2018. This takes the CoinField platform to support 101 countries worldwide.

Despite the recent slowdown in the crypto market, major players are actively investing and expanding their offerings and operations worldwide.

Cisco announced that it plans to buy semiconductor company Luxtera, Inc. This is the sixth acquisition by Cisco in the year 2018. Recently Cisco acquired DUO security for its multi-cloud efforts.

Carlsbad, California based Luxtera is a privately held semiconductor company that specializes in silicon photonics technology to build integrated optics capabilities for webscale and enterprise data centers, service provider market segments, and other customers. Luxtera’s technology, design, and manufacturing innovation significantly improve performance and scale while lowering costs.


According to Cisco’s recent VNI Forecast, internet traffic has been growing exponentially and more traffic will be created in 2022 than in the 32 years since the internet started.  By 2022, around 28 billion devices and connections will be online. The 60 percent of the global population will be connected to the internet. Thus such an exponential growth and demand for bandwidth is due to a recent paradigm shift in technology such as the emerging class of distributed cloud, mobility, and IoT applications.

With this acquisition, Cisco plans to Future-Proof Networks for Emerging Applications, Expand Cisco’s 100GbE and 400GbE Portfolio. Cisco's and Luxtera's capabilities in 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)/400GbE optics, silicon, and process technology will allow customers to build future-proof networks optimized for performance, reliability, and cost.

Executive vice president and general manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco, David Goeckeler, said, "With Cisco’s 2018 Visual Networking Index projecting that global Internet traffic will increase threefold over the next five years, our customers are facing an exponential demand for Internet bandwidth. Optics is a fundamental technology to enable this future. Coupled with our silicon and optics innovation, Luxtera will allow our customers to build the biggest, fastest and most efficient networks in the world.”

The announcement further noted that Luxtera’s technology will be integrated into Cisco's intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data center and service provider markets.

Luxtera's acquisition will cost CISCO $660 million in cash and assumed equity awards. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2019.

UAE Exchange and U.S. startup Ripple to start cross-border remittances to Asia via blockchain by the first quarter of 2019, Reuters reported.

UAE has been in the forefront in rolling out blockchain based solutions. Last month, UAE and Saudi Arabia planned to launch their own cryptocurrency. Dubai Blockchain Platform is also the first government-endorsed blockchain platform-as-a-service in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Founded by Indian billionaire B.R. Shetty, UAE Exchange is part of Finablr group, a full-service Payments, and Foreign Exchange solutions, provider.  Finablr portfolio includes Travelex Holdings, Xpress Money, Ditto Bank, Remit2India, and other businesses.

In February 2018, UAE Exchange joined RippleNet and announced to enable instant, seamless and real-time cross-border payments, making UAE Exchange the largest payment solutions provider in the Middle East to use Ripple’s blockchain technology.

RippleNet includes more than 100 member banks and financial institutions, enables messaging, clearing and settlement of transactions. Other major financial institutions joined RippleNet includes National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah (RAKBANK) RAKB.AD and Kuwait Finance House (KFH.KW) and Standard Chartered (STAN.L).

In an interview to Reuters, Executive director, and Chief Executive Officer at Finablr, Promoth Manghat said, “We expect to go live with Ripple by Q1, 2019 with one or two Asian banks. This is for remittances to start with, from across the globe into Asia.”

Ripple's xRapid product uses XRP and XRP ledger while XRP is a cryptocurrency generally traded on different crypto exchanges around the world.

Oracle has announced the Oracle Cloud Native Framework. Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud-native services including Oracle Functions are part of Oracle Cloud Native Framework.

Oracle Functions service is based on open source Fn project. This serverless service is Docker container-based and completely pay-per-use. Charges are incurred only when functions are run. Fully managed Oracle function service is capable of running on-premises or on any cloud.

Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment is a bundle of open source Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects. These projects are tested for interoperability and enterprise-grade deployments, Oracle said.

Cloud native computing foundation stack avoids cloud vendor lock-in as applications built on the Oracle Cloud Native Framework are portable to any cloud vendor that support Kubernetes conformant environment.

The Oracle Cloud Native Framework extends to public cloud, on-premises, and hybrid cloud deployment models. It includes Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry, and Oracle Container Pipelines services.

Few new cloud-native services cover three critical Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud-native layers viz. Application Definition & Development, Provisioning and Observability & Analysis. These three layers cover mostly Oracle Functions for serverless use cases, Streaming services for use cases such as IoT, security and supply chain generating a huge amount of real-time data, Resource Manager to provision all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources and services, Monitoring services for cloud resources and reporting purpose.

Executive Opinion:

Executive Vice President, Product Development, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,  Don Johnson, said, “With the growing popularity of the CNCF as a unifying and organizing force in the cloud-native ecosystem and organizations increasingly embracing multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models, developers should have the flexibility to build and deploy their applications anywhere they choose without the threat of cloud vendor lock-in. Oracle is making this a reality,”

Oracle said that the Oracle Cloud Native Framework support both cloud-native and traditional applications. It went on to add that its new enterprise-grade platform can be utilized for managed services, curated OSS, and sustainable strategy.

With this announcement, Oracle is the only major cloud provider to deliver and support a unified cloud-native solution, on-premise, public cloud (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) with seamless, bi-directional portability of cloud-native applications. Oracle further added that the enterprise-grade platform can be leveraged for sustainable strategy, managed services, and curated OSS.

In LinkedIn's 2018 US Emerging Jobs Report, Blockchain, Machine learning, and Data science positions are have topped the list. Blockchain position has been a new addition to the report as compared to the last year. This is despite the slowdown in the crypto market and layoffs happening across the crypto industry.

The report quoted, "Only time will tell if blockchain will be a long-standing trend in the job market, but take note of the jobs that are on both this year’s and last year’s Emerging Jobs lists: Machine Learning Engineer, Assurance Staff, and Sales Development Representative. These roles cover a variety of business functions and skills, and are here to stay."

Growth Areas

The Blockchain developer demand has surged 33 percent in 2018 over the previous year.
The top Blockchain skills in demand are Solidity, Node.js and demand is growing in areas like San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta. IBM, ConsenSys, and Chainyard are top recruiters.

Both Machine Learning Engineers and Machine Learning Researchers witnessed over 12 percent and 4 percent growth over the previous year. Python Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Tensorflow, Apache Spark, R, Spark, Natural Language Processing are the top skills required for these jobs. Notably, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA and Amazon are the top recruiters for machine engineers jobs. The top US cities for these jobs are San Francisco, Denver, Austin, Atlanta, New York City and Los Angeles.

The next category which is still on the chart is Data Science Specialists and Data Science Managers, each witnessing 5 percent and 4 percent growth respectively as compared to last year. The top skill required for these positions are Machine Learning, Data Science, Python, R, Apache Spark with most of the recruitment coming from IBM, Facebook, McKinsey & Company, Capital One, and Microsoft. The top cities where Data science witness such a growth are New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

To summarize the whole report in brief

Top Five Emerging Jobs

• Blockchain Developer with 33x growth
• Machine Learning Engineer with 12x growth
• Application Sales Executive with 8x growth
• Machine Learning Specialist with 6x growth

Top Five In-Demand Skills with Biggest Skills Gap

• Oral Communications
• People Management
• Social Media
• Development Tools
• Business Management

Microsoft Azure recently made static websites Generally Available on Azure Storage. Previously static websites on Azure were available in preview mode.

Static websites generally serve a set of files that are not frequently changed generally crafted using plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. These are helpful where developers or administrators need front-end only apps. e.g. Web apps written is Angular or React that further interact with other cloud services but serve only as a frontend with no processing on their own. Another common use case of a static website is building a serverless application in the cloud and creating a front end for it using a static website.

Azure storage will help host static website. When a static website is enabled on Azure storage account then it will create $web container where all static content can be uploaded. The endpoint to access your static website is then made available with the default page.

The announcement, Program Manager, Sercan Guler, said, "One scenario where you might use static website hosting is to build a website to interact with your data in Azure Storage. You can secure your data by protecting your files via RBAC roles and Azure Active Directory authentication, and manipulate the data using the Azure JavaScript SDKs. This example uses the new Azure Storage SDK for JS to list files in Blob storage and render in a file browser in a statically hosted website. The example uses anonymous authentication to interact with Azure Blob storage, but you can also use Azure AD authentication to restrict access to your data."

On the pricing front, charges for storing and accessing data will apply along with data egress charges (bandwidth). Microsoft with the help of Azure Static Website can now compete with existing cloud vendors such as Amazon's AWS and Google’s Cloud Platform.

Amazon Web Services recently opened its AWS Europe (Stockholm) Region. This is the fifth region in Europe. This will allow local customers to store their content in data centers at Sweden.

Other AWS regions in Europe includes Europe (Ireland), Europe (London, UK), Europe (Frankfurt, Germany), and Europe (Paris, France). Thus there are now total 15 availability zones in Europe.

AWS now has 60 Availability Zones across 20 infrastructure regions globally. By 2020, another 12 Availability Zones and four regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, and South Africa will be online.

As we know, each region has multiple availability zones with separate infrastructure and with different geographic locations. Each region generally connected with redundant low latency network links among availability zones, has independent power, cooling, and physical security. These availability zones act as a failover site in case of any disruptions. In the Stockholms region, there are three availability zones as of now.

Data locality to the European region is one of the key requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations. Customers with strict data residency requirements can store data in Sweden data centers and may not be moved out without their consent, according to the announcement.  Customers building applications that comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now have access to another secure AWS infrastructure region in the European Union (EU) that meets the highest levels of security, compliance, and data protection, the announcement noted.

Executive Opinion

Chief Executive Officer, Amazon Web Services, Andy Jassy, said, “Since the early days of AWS, Nordic organizations have been using AWS’s cloud technologies to help reinvent entire industries, such as Supercell and Rovio in gaming, Scania, and Volvo in automotive, and Nokia and Telenor in telecommunications. Tens of thousands of Nordic customers have been using AWS from regions around the world, but many have shared that they also wanted an AWS Region in the Nordics so they can easily operate their most latency-sensitive workloads for end-users in the Nordics while meeting any data sovereignty requirements. We’re excited to deliver our AWS Stockholm Region today to meet these customer requests.”
The new region can be availed at https://aws.amazon.com/local/nordics/

Built on R3’s blockchain platform, Corda, the Euro Debt Solution application has successfully completed a live commercial paper transaction.

R3 partnered with German banking and financial services company, Commerzbank, ING, French corporate and investment bank, Natixis and Dutch financial services firm, Rabobank for completing this transaction. Commerzbank developed the pilot framework, software and distributed ledger (DLT) network for the trade, and instructions on regulatory implications.

An earlier version of the solution simulated blockchain based transaction in September 2017 and then onwards all parties worked towards establishing an operational structure and worked closely with external legal counsel Allen and Overy to develop a comprehensive legal framework, the announcement said.

Each participant had a predefined role in the transaction. With an issuer role, Natixis reportedly issued notional 100,000 euro with one-day maturity. Rabobank role was the investor. Role of ING was as both dealer and escrow agent.

Corda is open-source distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) project launched in 2016. It is similar to Ethereum or IBM Hyperledger Fabric if we have to compare. Its other competitors include J.P Morgan’s Quorum, Tezos, NASDAQ’s Linq or Chain etc.

In November 2018, India's biggest business Reliance successfully conducted its Blockchain Trade Finance Transaction.

Executive Opinion

Chief Executive Officer, R3, David E. Rutter, said, “The issuance and settlement of securities is a complex process and current models are rife with inefficiency. Corda addresses these challenges by enabling parties to financial agreements to record them once and collaborate to maintain accurate, shared records of these agreements. The successful live trade on the Euro Debt Solution not only demonstrates that blockchain provides clear advantages over existing processes but marks the next step towards a production-ready solution on Corda.”

Head of Digital for Corporate & Investment Banking at Natixis, Frédéric Dalibard, said, “The flawless execution at every stage of this transaction is extremely encouraging, Natixis will continue to work closely with R3 and our consortium partners to push towards a full commercial launch of the solution. It promises impressive advances in operational efficiency, and we are delighted to be involved in this exciting project.”

The announcement further noted that all the participants will continue to pursue development efforts for the solution to bring greater transparency to the marketplace, reduce operational cost and risks, in delivering intraday settlement finality for their clients.

Red Hat contributes etcd project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It is one of the most important open-source projects for cloud environments.

CNCF is a vendor-neutral foundation under The Linux Foundation to drive the adoption of cloud-native systems and home for twenty plus fastest-growing projects including Kubernetes, Prometheus and Envoy.

Red Hat acquired ETCD with the acquisition of CoreOS Inc. in last January 2018.

The etcd (pronounced et-see-dee) is an open source, distributed and consistent key-value store for shared configuration, service discovery, and scheduler coordination in Kubernetes clusters including Red Hat OpenShift. It uses Raft consensus algorithm for replicated logs. Kubernetes is becoming a de-facto standard among cloud vendors to manage cloud environments with containers and etcd works as a preferred store to ensure cluster data is backed up in case of cluster downtime. The current etcd release is 3.3 with total 157 releases, nearly 15,000 commits, and 469 contributors.

The project has a large community of users including contributors from Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Red Hat. Uber and Alibaba use etcd for their critical systems for the number of years.

Chief Operating Officer, CNCF, Chris Aniszczyk, “Kubernetes and the cloud-native community has been building upon on etcd since the early days of containers. Today, the etcd project is widely adopted and we look forward to working with the project maintainers from Alibaba, AWS, Google, and Red Hat, alongside the wider community to cultivate and sustain the incubating project,”

Considering the recent acquisition of Red Hat by IBM, there were doubts about the slowdown in contributions towards opensource projects maintained by Red Hat. Now etcd is accepted into CNCF, it reaffirms confidence into the etcd project which already forms the backbone of many production users and projects.