China will build another special area for Blockchain and other news

The government of Hunan province, China, will create a special blockchain zone in an industrial park, one of the major Chinese media reports VOC. VOC says it has learned through internal sources that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has approved the construction of the project in Wanbao, a small rural town on the outskirts of the city of Loudi. The province already hosts 788 blockchain-related companies and now others are expected to move to the new area.

China is active, but it is not the only one

Contour, a blockchain-based finance platform developed by eight banks, including HSBC and Standard Chartered, is slated to launch commercially in the second half of 2020, following over $ 30 million in transactions during the latest year, reports South China Morning Post.

Blockchain letters of credit have reportedly helped companies continue their trade during the current coronavirus epidemic.

The RFID laboratory of the University of Auburn in the United States, in collaboration with the organization of information standards GS1 US, has completed a test demonstrating the effectiveness of blockchain and radio frequency identification technologies to improve data sharing in the sector of the retail trade, their press release says.

Participating companies included Nike, PVH Corp., Herman Kay, Macy's, Kohl's, Mojix, Avery Dennison, SML, IBM, and Collaboration, LLC, while the results confirmed that a blockchain network was able to share coded item-level data in RFID tags between participants. The results are available in a new white paper.

Is blockchain expanding?

The digital asset custody company BitGo now offers institutional digital asset lending services, following a private beta of several months. The press release states that, with the BitGo loan, customers can work with the regulated BitGo Trust custodian, while the BitGo platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.

Chinese cryptocurrency loan startup Babel Finance reported that their outstanding balance reached a new high, reaching $ 380 million on February 18, 2020.

According to the startup, they have added a capital management platform for VIP clients and a private banking service to their corporate matrix that has attracted dozens of clients with a high net worth for signing up, with a total net asset value of over 50 million USD.

Square Crypto, the Bitcoin-centered division of the main US-based payments company Square, awarded two more scholarships on Wednesday, following two previous scholarships.

The team also provided stakeholders with steps, rules and examples of projects they could support, which could help a Bitcoin project get funded by the company.