CRYPTOCURRENCY NEWS TODAY: NYSE Owner To Let Customers Buy Bitcoin, Binance CEO Calls ICOs ‘100 Times Easier Than VCs’, Microsoft Unveils New Blockchain Tools for Azure, Oracle to Launch Its Blockchain Platform This Month, BMW Test Drives Blockchain

New York Stock Exchange Owner Wants To Let Customers Buy Bitcoin

The owner of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is mulling letting customers buy and hold Bitcoin…ICE “has had conversations with other financial institutions about setting up a new operation through which banks can buy a contract, known as a swap, that will end with the customer owning Bitcoin the next day — with the backing and security of the exchange”…Should the move go ahead, ICE and Goldman would join an increasingly large chunk of traditional finance engaging with cryptocurrency.
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Binance CEO Calls ICOs Necessary And ‘100 Times Easier Than Traditional Venture Capital’

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of digital currency trading platform Binance, said in a blog post May 7 that initial coin offerings (ICO) perform far better than venture capital funds (VCs), even with a high risk of failure…claiming they are “100 times easier” for raising money than traditional VCs…if not more…Zhao admitted that the ICO market is in its early days and therefore is encountering problems, including scams and failures…still believes that “compared to ‘traditional VC invested projects,’ a larger ratio of ICO projects will succeed.”
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Microsoft Unveils New Blockchain Tools for Azure

Microsoft announced the Azure Blockchain Workbench Monday, releasing a new set of tools for developers that work with distributed ledger tech…Microsoft is trying to streamline the method by which companies and their development teams can build apps on top of Azure-based blockchains….”Workbench gets customers started quickly by automating infrastructure setup, so developers can focus on application logic, and business owners can focus on defining and validating their use cases.”
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Oracle to Launch Its Blockchain Platform This Month

Software giant Oracle is all set to publicly launch its blockchain-as-a-service platform this month, with apps based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to follow in June…Oracle first unveiled the enterprise-grade blockchain cloud platform in October 2017…[T]he initial unveiling that the firm aims to attract both large and small firms, with pricing based on transaction volume….”This blockchain platform will give [customers] a platform to extend their services beyond their enterprise bundle, which means they can extend them outside to their business partners, advantage customers and so on.”
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BMW Test Drives Blockchain for Car Mileage Tracking

Global auto giant BMW is piloting a blockchain platform to track mileage in leased vehicles through its startup innovation program…in partnership with blockchain startup DOVU…The idea is that the system helps BMW understand how much activity its vehicles are seeing and the impact on them…[D]rivers who participate receive tokens in exchange for their data…[T]he pilot program requires drivers of leased or borrowed vehicles to log their mileage weekly, which gets stored on DOVU’s blockchain…[T]he proof-of-concept – has been completed already…now the startup is moving into the second phase, which is the actual trial with a driver.
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