When the sons of legendary investment banker Paul Stephens met Mighty Ducks star Brock Pierce, they were avid World of Warcraft gamers and he was amassing an empire of digital goods exchanges where players could buy, sell, and trade valuable in-game items and virtual currency. Together they would go on to form Blockchain Capital, the first venture capital firm to fund the blockchain ecosystem.
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Forbes 50 list of top companies using blockchain released
Only three “pure” blockchain companies made the list of the $1 billion-plus firms
Forbes on Tuesday announced its inaugural Forbes 50 list of large companies leading the way in developing and using blockchain technology. The list has a notable lack of “pure” blockchain firms. In fact, there are just three—blockchain hardware and software maker Bitfury, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and financial blockchain developer Ripple.
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For International Women’s Day, here’s how blockchain can battle human trafficking
A distributed ledger with immutable biometric data can provide proof of identity victims need to protect themselves
Human trafficking for the international sex trade is a nearly $100 billion business, and it is one that blockchain developers think they can help fight.
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Must-reads for Nov. 6, 2018: Bitfury’s billion, crypto’s energy costs, and Pomp get dumped
These are the crypto stories you should be following today
Billionaire Novogratz Invests in Cryptocurrency Firm Bitfury (Bloomberg) Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital has joined Naver Group of Korea in an $80 million round of funding for Bitfury. The company “sells gear used to mine cryptocurrencies and develops blockchain technology for clients including the Ukrainian government,” notes Bloomberg’s Ruben Munsterman and Ruth David. That puts its valuation above $1 billion. “If it conducts the IPO in the next two years, Bitfury will seek a valuation of $3 billion to $5 billion,” concluded Munsterman and David. Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies (Nature) Another day, another Nature study on the impact of cryptocurrency mining. A week ago, the…
