Blockchain / Crypto News | Cloud Computing News | AI News | IoT News | Startups News | Insights, Analysis, and Guidance

Coinme has partnered with Coinstar to launch a service that offers consumers the ability to buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks. The maker of kiosks then turn their loose change into spending money without having to sort, roll, and take it to the bank.
As a part of partnership select, Coinstar kiosks will start offering service to buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks at Safeway and Albertsons stores in California, Texas, and Washington. Coinme plans to extend this offering to additional U.S. markets and retailers following a successful launch.

Founded in 2014 a Seattle based startup, Coinme was the first state-licensed Bitcoin ATM company in the US. It now handles millions of dollars (USD) in transactions each month. According to announcement, Coinme is deploying a global crypto ATM network and also offers a vertically-integrated digital wallet and Private-Client services for individuals and institutions.

Executive Opinion

Coinme Cofounder, and CEO, Neil Bergquist, said, “We’re excited to team up with Coinstar to give consumers a convenient and easy way to buy Bitcoin during the course of their daily routines. Bitcoin is now accessible at your local grocery store via Coinstar kiosks, and this offering will make it even easier for consumers to participate in this dynamic new economy.”

Coinstar CEO, Jim Gaherity, said, “Coinstar is always looking for new ways to offer value to our consumers when they visit our kiosks, and Coinme’s innovative delivery mechanism along with Coinstar’s flexible platform makes it possible for consumers to easily purchase Bitcoin with cash."

How it Works?

Coinstar owns and operates over 20,000 fully automated self-service coin-counting kiosks in nine countries. This could allow Coinme to reach thousands of Kiosks in the U.S. market that can be enabled to accept Bitcoin transactions.

Users in the United States will have an option to buy bitcoin to an amount up to $2500 using US paper money. In exchange, Coinstar Kiosk will provide redemption code that can be redeemed at Coinme website. There is only one option of  U.S. cash for the bitcoin purchase, and coins cannot be used for Bitcoin transactions.

To find a kiosk location, visit www.coinme.com/kiosks

Xilinx announced that Baidu's EdgeBoard, an edge acceleration computing solution, is based on the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC platform designed specifically for edge applications.

The newly announced EdgeBoard is a turn-key solution. It can be fully configured directly from Baidu. The Baidu Brain AI Hardware Platform is part of the Baidu Brain AI capabilities open platform and it comprises of Baidu's open computing services and hardware and software products for edge artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Baidu's Brain AI Hardware Platform initiative enables companies to quickly adopt and deploy solutions for edge-specific applications. The same Baidu AI hardware platform can now be used to customize EdgeBoard solutions to suit market requirements.

PC: Baidu EdgeBoard is based on the Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC,

Executive Opinion

The general manager of Baidu's AI ecosystem division, Youping Yu, said, "Xilinx offers the world's leading adaptive chips and development support. The flexible EdgeBoard we built based on Xilinx is designed to enable developers and engineers to quickly leverage Baidu-proven technology or deploy self-defined models, enabling faster deployment. This is the ideal acceleration engine to enable Baidu Brain to broadly serve Chinese edge AI developers."

Corporate vice president, global data center sales, Xilinx, Freddy Engineer, said, "We are very excited to be selected as the AI technology for the Baidu Brain AI Hardware Platform. The massive and open ecosystem being built by Baidu will accelerate the innovation of edge AI across China, resulting in products and solutions that will improve the way we work and live."

What is Baidu's EdgeBoard?

According to the announcement, the Baidu's EdgeBoard uses Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC integrating powerful real-time processors with programmable logic. It provides developers with unrivaled levels of system performance, flexibility, and scalability allowing them to quickly build and bring to market innovative AI products.

The different uses cases such as edge applications could be smart-video security surveillance solutions, advanced-driver-assistance systems and next-generation robots are now possible with the Xilinx MPSoC-based EdgeBoard. Recently, the inventor of the FPGA, hardware programmable SoCs and the ACAP, Xilinx, also planned to collaborate with ZF Friedrichshafen AG for ZF ProAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) based automotive control unit, to enable automated driving applications.

The Xilinx technology will now help enable next-generation of intelligent edge Application Development from Baidu. More information about Baidu's EdgeBoard is available here.

Google has acquired under development smartwatch and wearable tech from Fossil Group. The total size of the transaction is the US $40 million.

The selected intellectual property (IP) from smartwatch technology along with the employees working on those IP will be transferred to Google. However, the announcement also noted that Fossil Group retains more than 200 R&D team members to maintain focus on innovation and product development.

Fossil is the owner of many brands for hybrid and touchscreen smartwatches such as Fossil, Michele, Misfit, Relic, Skagen and Zodiac, and licensed brands, Adidas, Armani Exchange, Burberry, Chaps, Diesel, DKNY, Emporio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, kate spade new york, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, and Tory Burch.

Executive Opinion:

Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Digital Officer, Fossil Group, Greg McKelvey, said, “Fossil Group has experienced significant success in its wearables business by focusing on product design and development informed by our strong understanding of consumers’ needs and style preferences. We’ve built and advanced a technology that has the potential to improve upon our existing platform of smartwatches. Together with Google, our innovation partner, we’ll continue to unlock growth in wearables."

Vice President of Product Management, Wear OS by Google, Stacey Burr, said, “Wearables, built for wellness, simplicity, personalization, and helpfulness, have the opportunity to improve lives by bringing users the information and insights they need quickly, at a glance. The addition of Fossil Group’s technology and team to Google demonstrates our commitment to the wearables industry by enabling a diverse portfolio of smartwatches and supporting the ever-evolving needs of the vitality-seeking, on-the-go consumer.”

Smartwatches Field

Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung are dominating the smartwatch segment. Apple's smartwatches run on Watch OS based on iOS, FitBit ships Pebble-based smartwatches with Fitbit OS, after its acquisition of Pebble while Samsung smartwatch runs Tizen OS. Apple smartwatches having the highest share in the market followed by Wear OS. According to IDC forecast, Smartwatches will account for 44.6% of all wearables shipped by the end of 2022

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44000018

Smartwatches have been the fast-growing segment for Fossil Group and company launched smartwatches across 14 of its owned and licensed brands.

The transaction is expected to close January 2019.

Huobi Japan newly launched itself as a fully regulated exchange under Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA).

In last October 2018, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) recognized the cryptocurrency industry in Japan by giving it a self-regulatory industry status. FSA permitted Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association to police and sanction exchanges for any violations.

The 16 founding members of Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association include Money Partners, BitFlyer Corporation, Quoine Corporation, Bit Bank Corporation, SBI Virtual Currencies Corporation, GMO Coin, Bit Trade Co Ltd, BTC Box Corporation, Bit point Japan, DMM Bitcoin Inc, Bito Argo Exchange Co Ltd Tokyo, Bitgate Corporation, BitOcean Co Ltd, Fisco Virtual Currency Exchange Co Ltd, Tech Bureau Co Ltd, Xtheta Corporation, Coin Check Co Ltd.

Huobi Japan will join as a 17th member to Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association.

Executive Opinion

Huobi Group Founder and CEO, Leon Li, said, "This is an important milestone for us. Firstly, because the Japanese market is a very important one to us and, secondly because working with regulators is a longstanding priority for Huobi Group. We're proud to say that Huobi Japan now has one of the first 17 licenses issued under the FSA's ground-breaking regulatory regime."

Huobi Japan CEO Haiteng Chen, said, "We are extremely pleased to once again be offering our services to the Japanese trading public. We're looking to continue to grow our presence here while offering top-notch digital asset trading services in Japan."

What Huobi Japan offers?

The launch of Huobi Japan exchange comes on the heels of the recent merger of BitTrade with Huobi Group. Bittrade is one of the 16 FSA-approved crypto exchanges. Huobi Japan currently offers Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), and Monacoin (MONA).

According to the announcement, the Huobi Japan exchange offers 24/7 customer service by email and a dedicated along with highly qualified team ensuring its operation and security around the clock. The Huobi Japan exchange features specialized distributed architecture, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack countermeasures system, and A+ ranked SSL certification (the highest available).

For a limited time, according to the announcement, zero transaction fees are announced on both crypto and fiat currency.

BitTorrent recently announced that it is launching its BTT crypto token enabled application BitTorrent Speed in the second quarter of 2019. The announcement was made at niTROn blockchain conference in San Francisco.

The BitTorrent Speed is touted as the world's largest blockchain application which will be used for speedy uploading and downloading of files.

On 5th January 2019, BitTorrent unveiled TRC-10 compatible BitTorrent (BTT) Crypto Token for a Decentralized Internet.

BitTorrent Speed will allow the BitTorrent protocol clients to receive BTT tokens as a reward for "seeding" files for longer periods. The announcement claimed that download speeds on peer-to-peer networks can get faster and become more readily available when clients are incentivized with BTT tokens.

Executive Opinion

Founder of TRON and CEO of BitTorrent, Justin Sun, said, "With BitTorrent Speed, we aim to strengthen the BitTorrent protocol and then deliver more features that inspire innovation across industries. More than 100 million users soon will have the opportunity to be part of a boundary-free internet that supports personal privacy and connection around the world."

Head of BitTorrent Speed development said, "BitTorrent Speed is undergoing extensive testing on the network to make it as seamless and reliable to users as the current client. When users gain access to BitTorrent Speed, they will be blown away by the improvements we've made to the client they know and love today,"

Availability of BitTorrent Speed

BitTorrent Speed will be available on the popular µTorrent Classic Windows client in summer 2019 and on other BitTorrent clients by late 2019.

In 2018, TRON acquired BitTorrent to enhance and add virtual currency functionalities to the platform. Considering the popularity torrent protocols and large size of decentralized P2P torrent networks which drives 22% of upstream and 3% of downstream traffic globally, the price of BTT may skyrocket in future if most of the 100 million BitTorrent users in 138 countries agree to opt for BTT token.

Globant announced that it planned to acquire Avanxo, a cloud transformation company. Financial terms are not disclosed.

Avanxo a leading cloud transformation company with presence in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. Avanxo has 310 IT professionals with cloud capabilities. It is serving different brands like ABInBev, Sulamerica, Ecopetrol, Sika, Allianz, Terpel, Samsung, La Meridional, Audi Argentina, Sodimac and etc. Avanxo is Advanced Consulting and MSP Certified Partner of Amazon Web Services and the first independent Platinum Consulting Partner of Salesforce in Latin America.

According to the announcement, the acquisition will help Globant to focus on creating digital experiences for large organizations worldwide and expand into corporate process optimization and cloud technologies.

Executive Opinion

Globant CEO and Co-founder, Martin Migoya, said, "Avanxo shares our vision on how to deliver profound digital and cognitive transformations for the most demanding customers. With Avanxo, we'll broaden our transformation approach as we keep bringing our digital culture to optimize our customers' corporate processes. We have found an amazing team that complements our model, and we are confident that this acquisition will help us propel our positioning as leaders in the digital and cognitive arena."

Globant Chief of Staff and Co-founder, Martín Umaran, said, "With Avanxo, we are expanding our service offering along with the key partnerships Avanxo holds with Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Google and Informatica."

Diego Maldonado, Avanxo Founder, and CEO said, "We are thrilled to become part of the Globant team. Globant is a premier leader in digital and cognitive transformations, recognized worldwide for its ability to incorporate cloud into its deliverables to enhance customer experience and success.  Globant shares our core values focused on talent development, employee satisfaction, close alignment with our partners, and customer success. By joining Globant, we will be able to broadly expand our capabilities and provide a vehicle for growth for our employees and our partners."

What's Next

With this acquisition, Globant enters into the Cloud System Integration and expands into its digital and cognitive transformation expertise. and the transaction is expected to close in February 2019.

SpaceChain announced that it has successfully tested its second Qtum blockchain node in space. The node was launched into orbit on October 25, 2018, by a CZ-4B Y34 rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, Xinzhou, China.

SpaceChain is a community-based space platform and it was founded in 2017. It aims to combine space and blockchain technologies to build the world’s first open-source blockchain-based satellite network to develop and run decentralized applications in space.

The second SpaceChain node is embedded with SpaceChain OS, a smart operating system. It is capable of performing blockchain-related functions on the Qtum blockchain such as running smart contracts and multi-signature transactions. The SpaceChain operating system code is available on GitHub.

On 2nd February 2018, SpaceChain launched its first Qtum blockchain node into low earth orbit. It was based on Raspberry Pi hardware board and blockchain software. The blockchain node could run a full-node program on the Qtum blockchain and could process existing blockchain data.

The announcement noted that, since the launch of its second Qtum blockchain node on October 25, the SpaceChain team ran the number of connectivity tests to ensure the node's full operational capability. During these tests, the node's signal was detected and transaction data has been uploaded to the node to complete the signature and then downloaded via the ground station, and finally verified on the blockchain network. The transaction verification information can be found here.

PC: Snip from https://qtum.info/tx/7dfdfa9322ac5b9b4a89da44f7db90d300c636117f456514f8c27f60d0224a54

SpaceChain co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO), Jeff Garzik, said, "This multi-signature cold wallet service – an application developed by SpaceChain engineers to test the space node – shows proof of technology of being a potential cyber security solution for the blockchain industry. SpaceChain deployed and tested the space-based multi-signature transaction which opens up brand new possibilities in space security models."

SpaceChain co-founder and chief executive officer (CTO), Zee Zheng, said, "It often takes months and years to build the system and to launch hardware into space as there is a need to secure the launch opportunity, obtain permissions, get the frequency and ensure there is ground station support. We are proud to have launched two nodes in our first year of operations, bringing us one step closer to creating a network of blockchain-based satellites in space"

To facilitate the launch, SpaceChain commissioned Tibet Zezheng Information Technology Co. Ltd. And Beijing Xihua Science and Technology Co. Ltd., a carrying and launching service provider.  The new blockchain node also has a geospatial tracking feature. It allows one to watch the node orbit the Earth in real time.

IBM and Vodafone teamed up to form a new venture to help companies drive digital transformation. The new venture provides IBM's cloud offerings to Vodafone Business customers immediately.

The announcement further said that IBM and Vodafone signed a new strategic commercial agreement that will further provide $550 million valued IBM managed services to Vodafone Business' cloud and hosting unit. The arrangement will allow Vodafone customers to leverage IBM's optimization, automation and cognitive capabilities to run their business effectively in a cloud environment.

With Vodafone's leadership in the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and edge computing and IBM's multicloud, industry expertise and professional services capabilities, the new venture between IBM and Vodafone will co-develop new digital solutions for their clients.

As announcement noted that 70 percent of organizations using up to 15 cloud environments. The clients will able to integrate multiple clouds and prepare for the next wave of digital transformation enabled by AI, 5G, edge, and Software Defined Networking (SDN).

Executive Opinion

IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty, said, "IBM has built industry-leading hybrid cloud, AI and security capabilities underpinned by deep industry expertise. Together, IBM and Vodafone will use the power of the hybrid cloud to securely integrate critical business applications, driving business innovation – from agriculture to next-generation retail."

Vodafone CEO Nick Read, said, "Vodafone has successfully established its cloud business to help our customers succeed in a digital world. This strategic venture with IBM allows us to focus on our strengths in fixed and mobile technologies, whilst leveraging IBM's expertise in multicloud, AI and services. Through this new venture we'll accelerate our growth and deepen engagement with our customers while driving radical simplification and efficiency in our business."


Companies will benefit from reduced complexity and technological barriers as IBM and Vodafone Business will ensure that data and applications flow freely and securely across their organizations. The newly announced venture will be operational in the first half of 2019.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its new AWS Backup, a centralized and fully-managed backup service.

The newly launched AWS Backup Service will allow customers to back up their data across AWS services & on-premises easily and at a faster speed.

AWS Backup will protect storage volumes, databases, and file systems with a single service. It will allow AWS users to configure and audit the AWS resources they backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in a single place.

Multiple AWS services for databases, block storage, object storage, and file systems to provide backup capabilities, but the announcement noted that AWS users are creating custom scripts to automate scheduling, enforce retention policies, and consolidate backup activity across several services in order to better meet their business and regulatory compliance requirements.
As enterprise data gets distributed across multiple services among databases, block storage, object storage, and file systems, there is a need to standardize backup mechanisms across all services including on-premise data. AWS is trying to achieve this objective with its AWS Backup service.

Once the backup policies are defined for resources in AWS management console, AWS backup services handle all backup tasks for those AWS resources across different AWS services along with their retention period.

Executive Opinion

VP of Storage, Automation, and Management Services, AWS, Bill Vass, said, “As the cloud has become the default choice for customers of all sizes, it has attracted two distinct types of builders. Some are tinkerers who want to tweak and fine-tune the full range of AWS services into the desired architecture, and other builders are drawn to the same breadth and depth of functionality in AWS but are willing to trade some of the service granularity to start at a higher abstraction layer so they can build even faster. We designed AWS Backup for this second type of builder who has told us that they want one place to go for backups versus having to do it across multiple, individual services. Today, we are proud to make AWS Backup available with support for block storage volumes, databases, and file systems, and over time, we plan to support additional AWS services."

AWS Backup Availability

To start with, AWS Backup is available and integrated with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and AWS Storage Gateway to AWS Simple storage (S3). The AWS backup service also supports tiering of older backups to Amazon Glacier. Support of other AWS services will come in future. As AWS Backup service now integrates with AWS Storage Gateway, it is now possible to backup on-premises application data.

More details are available here.