Bitcoin Daily: Ethereum To Debut New Bitcoin-Backed Token; Agriculture Eyes Blockchain For X-Border Trade

Ethereum is set to launch a new token at the beginning of 2019.

According to CoinDesk, the companies behind the new token include decentralized exchange startups Kyber Network and Republic Protocol, as well as cryptocurrency custody company BitGo. In addition, ethereum-based projects — including MakerDAO, Dharma, Airswap, Gnosis, IDEX, Radar Relay, Compound, DDEX, Hydro Protocol, Set Protocol and Prycto — will support adoption of the token once it is released in January.

Benedict Chan, CTO of BitGo, called the token “the best of both worlds,” adding that it has both “the stability of bitcoin and the flexibility of ethereum.”

“It’s very similar in some ways to how people created banknotes that represented a pound of gold. A pound of gold was heavier and it took longer to trade. You could use a note which represented a pound of gold and it was well accepted,” said Chan.

In other news, the world’s four largest agribusinesses are teaming up to utilize blockchain and artificial intelligence to digitize international grain trades.

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, known as the ABCDs of global grain trading, told Reuters that they want to replace paper contracts and invoices, as well as manual payments, with an automated electronic system. The first area to be worked on will be automating grain and oilseed post-trade processes.

“Many aspects of agricultural trading are highly manual and costly: paper documents, facsimiles, manual retyping of data, and so on,” the companies said. “And many transactions still utilize hard copy transfers of documents.”

Also, a new report from IBM has found that while most polled central banks are testing out a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), they aren’t convinced that blockchain will offer any real cost and efficiency benefits.

Out of the 21 central banks that responded, 38 percent are already testing a whole CBDC for inter-bank transactions, and “most survey respondents believe a wholesale CBDC should be issued by the central bank.”

However, 61 percent said “a blockchain may not be necessary as they they observed few efficiency gains during trials, given the technology is still in early stages of development,” according to the report.

And days after crypto exchange Unocoin launched India’s first bitcoin ATM in Bengaluru, the city’s cybercrime police seized the machine and arrested the company’s co-founder Harish BV.

“They did not have any license from RBI, Sebi or any other agency to carry out the bitcoin transaction. They were running it without obtaining any trade license from the BBMP,” said Alok Kumar, a commissioner from the Bangalore city police, according to CryptoVest.