Bitcoin Daily: Lightnet Raises $31M, Dish Network Has Piracy Deterrent Based In Blockchain

The company that developed the Velo Protocol, Lightnet, has raised $31.2 million in a Series A funding round, according to a report by Coindesk Monday (Jan. 13).

The round was led by UOB Venture Management, Seven Bank, Uni-President Asset Holdings, HashKey Capital, Hopeshine Ventures, Signum Capital, Du Capital and Hanwha Investment and Securities.

“We launched Lightnet to offer low-cost and instantaneous financial inclusivity and mobility to the four billion lives across Asia Pacific — all powered by Stellar’s fast, scalable, and sustainable blockchain technology,” said Chatchaval Jiaravanon, Lightnet’s chairman, in a press release.

Lighnet, based in Bangkok, is a company that uses its blockchain technology for the worldwide remittance market, an area that’s estimated to be worth hundreds of billions every year. The company is going to first focus on Southeast Asia.

“It’s vital that we build an ecosystem to provide Lightnet access to our partners’ vast user base and facilitate deeper penetration into local markets. We project that within three years, Lightnet will facilitate over $50 billion worth of annual transactions through our industry-leading partner network,” said Tridbodi Arunanondchai, Lightnet’s vice chairman.

In other news, the Dish Network has filed a new patent to combat piracy, and uses blockchain to track how its content is used, according to a Coindesk report Monday (Jan. 13).

The application shows a method that will let owners put an ID mark into the code of the content, and that will be stored and kept up to date using blockchain distributed ledger technology.

Dish said the proposal will let the company monitor and enforce legal rights of ownership, and also alert platforms when content is being used illegally.

The patent filing says that it’s getting harder and harder to fight piracy with online streaming, because there are just too many platforms for content owners to keep an eye one.

The proposed system will allow uploaders to buy the content directly from the owners, and with a featured exchange facility, users can pay owners in either crypto or fiat currencies.