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Analysts warn of ‘institutional exhaustion’ with Bitcoin price back below $32K

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The price of Bitcoin (BTC) recovered in the past two days after dropping to as low as $28,850. Following the swift rebound, however, BTC has been unable to break past heavy resistance at $33,000 on Jan. 23, pulling back below $32,000 at the time of writing.

BTC/USD 1-hour price chart (Coinbase). Source: TradingView.com

Coinbase premium returning is bullish, but what now?

Earlier, when the price of Bitcoin started to drop below $32,000, BTC traded much lower on Coinbase than on Binance.

The lack of premium on Coinbase was worrying for two key reasons. First, Bitcoin naturally trades higher on Coinbase due to the minor premium of Tether.

Second, when Coinbase sees a lower price than other exchanges, it shows that there is high selling pressure in the U.S. market.

As the selling pressure on Bitcoin began to increase in the U.S. market, the price of BTC feel steeply in a short period.

BTC/USD (white) vs. Coinbase premium Index (blue). Source: CryptoQuant

But, almost immediately after BTC rebounded from $30,000, the Coinbase premium reappeared. At the time of writing, BTC is around $40 higher on Coinbase than on Binance.

The Coinbase premium re-emerging after nearly 12 hours is a positive sign of a potential trend reversal.

Signs of “institutional exhaustion”

But everyone is far from bullish in the near term, however. Analysts at QCP Capital, a team of traders in Asia, see several signs of “institutional exhaustion.”

Considering that the main narrative around the recent has been the institutional demand for Bitcoin coming from the U.S., the rally may be in danger if the institutional appetite for BTC slows down. They said:

“Signs of institutional exhaustion: We’ve done a timezone analysis which breaks down BTC moves into Asia hours vs. US hours (12 hours each). Since March last year, the clear pattern has been relentless US buying while Asian whales and miners have been on the offer.”

Bitcoin loses strength in U.S. period. Source: QCP Capital

The traders empahsized that the strength in the U.S. trading session lost momentum for the first time.

In fact, throughout the past week, most of the BTC selling pressure came from Asia. This marks a key shift in market sentiment. They added:

“However after the BTC top 2 weeks ago, the strength in US hours has lost momentum for the first time. This is a clear sign of exhaustion in demand from the US institutions and corporates who have been the primary drivers of this bull run.”

What comes next for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is at risk of a corrective phase throughout the first quarter of 2021 if institutional demand for BTC subsides.

Various institution-focused platforms and vehicles, like Grayscale, are still seeing large inflows, which is indicative of solid institutional demand. At the same time, MicroStrategy continues its policy of buying Bitcoin on each dip with the latest purchase on Friday totaling $10 million. 

“Today, $31,000 was a pocket of strong support, so at least not everyone is selling,” said Chad Steinglass, head of trading at Crosstower, a digital assets capital markets firm.

“We’ll have to wait and see if that wall remains, or if institutions continue to accumulate. If they do, it’s likely that the trend will re-establish itself and continue. If they move to the sidelines waiting for more regulatory guidance, then their lack of buy flows will be acutely felt.”

At the same time, the likelihood of a wider correction remains if the U.S. market continues to see an overall decline in the appetite to accumulate BTC, particularly if the dollar continues to recover in 2021.

Analysts warn of \’institutional exhaustion\’ with Bitcoin price back below $32K

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Crypto and blockchain: What the Brazilian market can expect for 2021

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2020 will be remembered as one of the most difficult years for contemporary societies: Countries and entire populations have faced lockdowns and economic crises, financial markets still suffer from the severe impacts of the economic recession, and more than 2 million lives have been taken by COVID-19.

Despite this, other sectors have been impacted in other ways during the severe global health crisis — which still seems far from over, even though vaccines are beginning to be distributed in wealthy countries. Economies have radically digitalized, hedge assets have attracted mistrust, and the crypto market has had one of its most important years since 2009, the year of Bitcoin’s (BTC) launch.

In fact, the crypto and blockchain markets have stood out in the face of a crisis that has spared almost no sector. Cryptocurrency funds are among the most profitable of the year, Bitcoin and the biggest altcoins reach new historic highs, large institutions and investors in the financial markets have allocated investments in Bitcoin, and blockchain technology has broken down barriers in the financial sector and in the production chains of the most varied of sectors.

Faced with a year of profound changes, what is to be expected for the future? Cointelegraph Brasil invited some of the country’s top crypto and blockchain experts to chart the next steps for the market.

Institutional investment

Institutional investment was highlighted in 2020, finally reaching the cryptosphere, and it promises another year of growth in 2021.

According to Rodrigo Borges, founding member of the Oxford Blockchain Foundation, large Bitcoin contributions by institutional investors — which have even bought more BTC than the production capacity of miners — will intensify in 2021: “Regarding Bitcoin, I imagine that there will be an increase in demand for institutional investors, enabling the emergence of new products with exposure to Bitcoin,” analyzed Borges. He also sees “2021 as a year of consolidation and strong development in the sector.”

As for Tatiana Revoredo, MIT blockchain expert and Cointelegraph Brasil columnist, the custody of cryptocurrencies by traditional financial institutions and the adoption of stablecoins will be key in the new year:

“In the financial sector, we will see applications for custody of crypto assets being launched in Brazil, with the possible participation of the traditional market. And if the regulatory authorities allow it, stablecoins will have an expressive role in the Brazilian market, with the turnover being able to quadruple in size.”

Crypto markets

Crypto markets experienced a year of extreme optimism — or greed, as demonstrated by the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Bitcoin reached a dramatic bottom close at $3,800 in March, and it beat its 2017 historic high of $20,000 on Dec. 16. In Brazil, the currency set a new historical record in November when it reached $106,000 Brazillian reals.

Cointelegraph Markets reporter Marcel Pechman highlighted the behavior of the market despite the setbacks suffered during the year. He recalled: “The Bitcoin and Ethereum markets developed in 2020 as never before imagined, both in terms of trading volume, price and the contribution of renowned investors like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller.”

Pechman said that despite the crypto market suffering some setbacks, the impact of those setbacks on market performance was not so significant: “We had, for example, the US Department of Justice suing BitMEX — at the time, the largest derivatives exchange — and KuCoin’s $280 million hack, and none of those affected the market.”

Pechman also recalled that the 2020 DeFi race led to expensive transaction costs on the Ethereum network but did not impact market sentiment.

OriginalMy CEO Edilson Osório agreed with the promising future of the DeFi sector, but he cautioned against fraud:

“This is an experimental and very promising market, but it must be given extra attention because of malicious groups applying scams and fraud in general. As it is a very new market, platforms may have problems with hacks, and due to the great centralization that exists (even with many platforms presenting themselves as decentralized), there is still a risk of exit scams.”

About 2020’s innovations, and the digitalization imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, Pechman also said that it will go even deeper in 2021:

“Successive innovations, which include Taproot, Schnorr and Lightning Network in Bitcoin, in addition to the launch of Ethereum 2.0 phase 0, pave the way for the next wave, with increasingly larger, scalable applications, and interconnected with traditional finance. The final proof? Fidelity offers loans covered in cryptocurrencies.”

On the domestic markets, Osório is betting on the tokenization market in Brazil, which is already used by the country’s largest crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin. According to him, 2021 will be a year for “maturing the security tokens market.”

“Existing protocols are beginning to be well regarded by regulators, since most of them provide for greater participation and visibility on the part of the regulator itself and allow the mitigation of various risks inherent in this market. In this race, there is a great chance that Brazil will gain prominence because the local regulator has established a regulatory sandbox and the first projects are already beginning to mobilize to have their applications running in a more legally secure environment,” – noted Osório.

Another player at the Brazilian crypto markets, João Paulo Mayall — head of operations at QR Asset Management — is also optimistic about the tokenization market in 2021. He highlighted the role of regulators in the sector’s expansion in the South American country: “I believe that the future is the tokenization of assets, debentures, court bonds, government debts. Brazil is very advanced in its banking system and we will have many surprises in this sector, so I am very optimistic. Tokenization is a billion-dollar market, but it lacks the infrastructure. Innovation came in front of the regulators, but I think they are open to listening and working on it. I think [the regulation] will happen next year, even before March 2021.”

Finally, blockchain expert Tatiana Revoredo argued that crypto adoption in Brazil, which saw its currency melt in 2020, will intensify, with Bitcoin once again asserting itself as an economic-protection asset. She believes that the crypto markets will see “an increase in the interest of Brazilians, with consequent increase in the Brazilian market, with a prominent role for Bitcoin being adopted as a protective asset.”

CBDCs and national governments

The digitization of economies has placed the discussion of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, at the center of debates by financial authorities around the world. One of the countries that has definitely entered this race is China, which is already conducting real tests of the digital yuan in the country. Its main geopolitical rival, the U.S., announced that for the time being, it does not intend to digitize the dollar, but it is already seeing internal pressure from not following the Chinese leadership in the sector.

The Central Bank of Brazil has also commented on the transformation of the Brazillian real into a digital currency a few times, although there are no concrete plans for that in the short term.

Osório believes the European Union will join the hype soon, further accelerating the global race for CBDCs: “Although China appears to be leading the CBDC race, other countries are also beginning to move in this direction. Among them, Estonia, which recently started an internal consultation for the launch of its currency in the digital version. In particular, I believe that in Europe a more comprehensive and organized movement should take place in this sense, given the incentives promoted by the European Union.”

Many experts try to predict the impacts of CBDCs on economies — one of the main concerns of economic regulators. Governments, which largely study the adoption of blockchain in their public processes, should also enter the debate on privacy and the digitization of money.

According to Tatiana Revoredo, “in the government sector, the forecast is for the growth of [blockchain] applications in document registration and health applications, as well as a greater concern, by the citizens, regarding the relationship between privacy and CBDC.” She also claims that payments processors should closely monitor this innovation:

“Those who should be more attentive to these movements are the means of payment, such as PayPal and their peers. They will have to look deeply into their business models as soon as governments start issuing their currencies digitally. ”

Blockchain adoption

Governments have also viewed blockchain technology through a positive lens. In Brazil and Latin America, several state entities already use the technology to certify documents, including customs and notary offices. Big companies are also adopting blockchain to certify production, with use cases that are only expected to grow going forward.

Borges said that the acceleration of blockchain adoption by large companies and governments can positively impact crypto assets:

“Within the scope of blockchain technology, I see the development of interesting solutions, with the increasing involvement of traditional players, especially in the financial and agribusiness sectors, which may result in increased liquidity for certain assets.”

Revoredo agreed and highlighted the advancement of technology in the agricultural sector: “There has been a significant advance in agribusiness, with use in the identification of devices (drones, for example), integration with IoT and artificial intelligence to provide greater reliability and certify quality of agricultural production.”

Osório defended the growth of the blockchain market in 2020 and its prospects for the near future: “When we look at advances in blockchain with applications beyond digital currency, we see a growing market in the area of ​​decentralized digital identity, including with the approach of governments. We have seen movements in governments in the US and Japan, interested in modernizing their digital governance models. And the pandemic has certainly helped to accelerate and advance discussions on the issue around the world, as it understands that the digitization of analog and traditional services is a necessity.”

The end of 2020 was a milestone that closed out one of the most dramatic years in the history of contemporary societies, but it also revealed ways to combat global economic and health crises.

Blockchain technology has helped societies fight corruption, adopt more transparent processes and even contributed to the certification of medicines and vaccines during the most serious health crisis of the last 100 years, in addition to helping companies to improve procedures, products and services.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has strengthened as an economic protection and investment product, has attracted institutional investment giants, and — together with other crypto technologies — has even laid the foundation for central banks around the world to start implementing their own digital currencies.

We still do not know the depth of the revolution we are experiencing with the digitalization of societies and the weakening of national currencies around the world, but by the end of 2021, we will certainly know many of the answers to the questions that still plague us at the beginning of this new year.

Crypto and blockchain: What the Brazilian market can expect for 2021

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Kickstart Your Career in Blockchain Space: List of Best Specialization Courses in 2021

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Kickstart Your Career in Blockchain Space List of Best Blockchain Specialization Courses in 2021

2020 has been a year of Blockchain. The high package salaries of such professionals indicate that this technology is no more a new buzzword. Tech giants and enterprises have started adopting technology, and for that, they are hiring skilled professionals. The major reason why jobs in this domain are paid so highly is because this space is young, and people with any experience in the space are rarely few.

If you are looking for the most-demanding certifications in this space, you have landed on the right page. This article includes the details of the most popular, top-rated specialization courses ideal for beginners and professionals looking forward to pursuing a professional career in this domain.

Best Specialization Courses to Become a Blockchain Professional in 2021

With any further delay, let’s enlist the best specialization courses that will help you acquire a futuristic career in 2021.

This is another comprehensive online course and training program to become a Certified Professional in law domain. This particular training is primarily directed to guide an individual in creating solutions that can influence all the aspects of the law and deals with the assimilation of knowledge on how technology can be leveraged to speed up and streamline the process of tracing digital documents for evidence and automate the agreement process using smart contracts. You’ll be benefitted from:
complete fundamentals of DLT

  • its advantages in law
  • its use-cases such as Chain of Custody, Litigation, and Settlements, and much more.

As technology poses incredible benefits to HR professionals in talent management, verifying the accreditation of potential hires, safeguarding employee health records, and performance evaluation, this certification is in huge demand. Tech giants and organizations are looking for skilled HR professionals who understand this technology profoundly. 

This is another comprehensive and hands-on course to learn this technology in the HR domain. The course provides a complete overview of this technology, technology’s impact on human resources, and its varying use-cases. It educates learners to gain an accurate picture of the employees’ overall performance and business, in general, using this futuristic technology. The best thing about this specialization course is that it covers almost every vital concept needed to become a pro in this particular sector. 

This is a globally acknowledged certification that helps learners to gain an in-depth understanding of the Blockchain for KYC Procedure and implement skills to optimize KYC Procedure. After completing this course, you will be able to implement Blockchain’s understanding to speed up and simplify the process of digital identity verification, cross-border payments and to identify frauds in banking and other financial sectors. Acquiring this certification in your resume of the LinkedIn profile will help you showcase your skills and experience.

Informative and well-structured, the course is ideal for all those whose interest revolves around digital marketing. 

This is a unique training and certification specially designed to demonstrate how this technology can revolutionize digital marketing. This course covers all its fundamentals such as blocks, wallets, and addresses, public and private keys, Merkle Tree, and hashing, cryptography and algorithms, and much more. Moreover, it teaches how digital marketing will benefit from this technology and its various use-cases. The course will render expertise on eliminating digital marketing middlemen, eliminating online ad fraud, building trust, and transparency while giving customers full control of their information with the use of DLT.

This Digital Marketing Professional training will prove your USP and act as a catalyst to accelerate your career growth.

Through this outstanding course, you will be able to learn how DLT has the power to bring about a major breakthrough in the healthcare industry, especially in terms of Health Information Exchange, by improving data integrity, regulatory compliance, and privacy. The course details various problem statements such as Drug Counterfeiting, Clinical Trials, and Healthcare Records Management, focusing on technology fundamentals and its various use-cases in the healthcare domain. The course will help you learn about healthcare business needs, technology’s role in healthcare, and how to build DLT-based healthcare systems.

Although anyone can avail this certification, this is best suited for system administrators, architects, developers, network security architects, cybersecurity experts, and IT professionals.

This certification aims at imparting a complete understanding of Blockchain’s inherent security features and associated risk, in-depth knowledge of best security practices for DLT infrastructure, exploration of known cyber-attacks, ability to differentiate between various cyber-attacks and threats, and teaching how to transfer or mitigate security risk.

This program will solidify your basics and advance your knowledge in the featured topics and make you capable enough to handle relevant complex issues. This course enables you to implement your skills in any applications and build your own Blockchain enterprise with acquired knowledge. 

We all know that DLT has its implications in the supply chain domain for a long time. At present, the demand for DLT-based supply chain experts is surging. Such experts implement the understanding of Blockchain to increase revenues and decrease costs while improving overall quality.

This certification will offer you an in-depth understanding of the mechanism for blockchain technology functioning that will help you integrate this technology with supply chain management. By the end of the course, you will be able to create solutions that can impact all the facets of the Supply Chain.

This training is primarily directed to guide an individual in creating solutions that can influence all aspects of finance and deals with the assimilation of knowledge on how this technology can be leveraged to speed up and streamline the procedure of cross border payments and to reduce the cost undoubtedly.

Here are the key things you will learn in this program:

  • Overview of financial management and challenges in the financial system 
  • Understand the core concepts of technology and its ecosystem
  • Role of this technology in Financial System 
  • Vendor Perspective about Blockchain and its advantages in finance services
  • Use-cases including cross border payments, syndicate lending, digital identity verification, and trade finance 

Concluding Lines 

The Blockchain Specialization courses mentioned above are crafted by Industry Experts to make the scholars efficient in handling the different verticals of blockchain technologies. The best part about these courses is that they require no prior knowledge. After completing, learners will be proficient enough to engage with business executives and offer practical solutions for their specific needs. 

Blockchain Council gives you an opportunity to learn from top experts around the world, and courses are uniquely curated for professionals by premiers of multifarious industries. These are self-paced training ranging from 4 hours to 6 hours that require your attentiveness. It is as easy as it sounds.

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online Blockchain Certifications, check out Blockchain Council. 

Kickstart Your Career in Blockchain Space: List of Best Specialization Courses in 2021

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Crypto Lending Platform Celsius Now Holds More Than $5.3 Billion

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Cryptocurrency rewards-earning platform Celsius Network announced that it now holds over $5.3 billion worth of crypto assets. The news is coming months after Chainanalysis announced that it has validated $3.3 billion in total assets held by Celsius.

With this recent evaluation, Celsius has become the second-largest digital asset manager in the world, behind Grayscale Investments. Celsius has continued to grow in asset management since last year, as the crypto asset manager has gained a considerable level of exposure and asset under management.

Since November last year when Chainanalysis made the confirmation, the company has added more than 125,000 new users, which now makes it over 340,000 total active users.

Other impressive milestones

Celsius has crossed other impressive milestones as the company prepares to gain more market share this year.

The firm now has more than 55,000 BTC held under management and more than $200 million as token rewards to the Celsius community, Besides, the platform has 45 different coins and tokens supported and earning yield. Also, the firm’s native CEL token has grown significantly, as it has hit an all-time high of $6.1, making it on the top 40 list of Coinmarketcap.

Celsius enables thousands of users and consumers to gain financial impendence through investments in digital currencies. It offers instant low-cost digital asset loans that are accessible through a mobile app or via the web.

It is designed on the principle that financial services should only operate for the best interest of the community and the customers. Membership in the fee-free platform offers access to curated financial services that are unavailable in traditional financial institutions. The company was established in 2017. It started offering a decentralized trading platform that enables customers to earn up to 10 percent of their crypto shares. It also enables Ethereum holders to earn about 9 percent from their investments.

In May 2018, the company raised about $50 million through an initial coin offering. The startup lends its assets to retail investors, investment funds, and miners on a collateralized basis.

The company said 80 percent of the returns are passed on to holders.

Crypto Lending Platform Celsius Now Holds More Than $5.3 Billion

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Kyber plans to become a hub for DeFi with massive DEX upgrade

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Kyber Network (KNC), a decentralized exchange platform and aggregator on Ethereum, announced plans for Kyber 3.0, a complete overhaul of its platform.

With the 3.0 release, Kyber will transition to become a network of specialized liquidity pools, similar to how different exchanges optimize for different kinds of assets. For example, Kyber 3.0 will allow very high amplification factors for pairs between different wrappers of the same asset, similar to Curve. The team says this would allow a 100-fold improvement to slippage. Other, less stable pairs like Bitcoin (BTC) to Ether (ETH), would be able to benefit from a five-to-ten-fold improvement in capital efficiency.

The optimization is achieved by implementing dynamic market makers, or DMMs. This iteration on the original concept allows fine-tuned adjustments to the key parameters of a liquidity pool. Creators will be able to customize the pool’s relative weights of each asset — similar to Balancer — and set a custom amplification factor to reduce slippage.

Trading fees will be adjusted dynamically as well: During periods of high volume, fees will be increased, and conversely they will be decreased during lower volume periods. Such a mechanism helps mitigate some of the damage from impermanent loss, the phenomenon where a liquidity provider’s assets are constantly rebalanced to sell the winner and buy the loser. Since most of the impermanent loss occurs during decisive and likely high-volume moves to either side, a higher fee parameter helps capture some of the upside.

Another important improvement is gas optimization. Previous iterations of Kyber generally consumed much more block space and were thus more expensive to use. In a conversation with Cointelegraph, a spokesperson from the team explained that this was due to Kyber using a single access point for interacting with its many reserves and routing paths. The new version will allow higher flexibility, with users being able to take liquidity directly from the source they need, in addition to a general improvement to gas efficiency. The new architecture is also designed to support future cross-chain and layer-two scaling solutions.

These improvements are just a start, the spokesperson said. Future plans include more specialized liquidity pools for certain user niches. These include the Professional Liquidity Protocol, a specialized liquidity model for professional market makers, the Bridge Protocol for pulling liquidity from external sources and an upcoming derivatives trading platform.

The token economics of KNC will also be overhauled to bring it in line with other governance tokens:

“In the coming proposal, KyberDAO will have multiple sources of value accrual, including the new DMM and all new liquidity protocols. The governance utility of KNC will be greatly enhanced as well, given that they now have effective oversight of these various protocols. KyberDAO will also have the ability to vote in and fund new protocols for the network.”

The details of the change will be discussed and approved by the existing community, the spokesperson clarified. The KNC token will also have various value capture mechanisms, with holders being entitled to a portion of the fees generated by the protocol.

The upgrade will be rolled out in two phases, called Katana and Kaizen. The first will feature the DMM and a proposal for KNC overhaul and migration. Though no specific dates have been selected, the full transition is expected to be completed late in the third quarter of 2021.

Kyber plans to become a hub for DeFi with massive DEX upgrade

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World’s Top Vehicle Manufacturers is Leveraging Blockchain-Based “Birth Certificates” to Combat Used Car Fraud

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World’s Top Vehicle Manufacturers is Leveraging Blockchain-Based “Birth Certificates” to Combat Used Car Fraud

According to the latest announcement, Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, a member-led consortium that works to create and promote high industry standards for smart mobility Blockchain adoption, has launched an initiative in order to track the purchase and maintenance of the history of second-hand vehicles.


Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) is aiming to combat used car fraud with Blockchain-powered “birth certificates.” 

Established in 2018, MOBI missioned to accelerate the adoption of Blockchain technology in the automotive domain.

It was reported that the initiative will utilize distributed ledger technology, Blockchain, to track the registration of vehicles and maintenance history using “VID II,” which is MOBI’s second vehicle identification standard. 

Apart from the automotive industry, other use cases for VID include supply chain, autonomous vehicle data exchange, supply chain, etc.

MOBI’s VID II is co-chaired by the world’s top vehicle manufacturers BMW and Ford. Other supporting initiatives are IBM, Quantstamp, Honda, Hitachi America, AutoData Group, Bosc, Quantstamp, among others. 

How will VID II Help?

According to the report published, the initiative will help reduce fraud in the second-hand vehicle markets and maintain traceability.

The report further revealed that on the Blockchain, vehicle registration grants previously disconnected vehicle registration systems between states and countries to connect using a distributed shared ledger. Furthermore, maintenance traceability will offer a tamper-proof history. 

MOBI COO and Co-Founder Tram Vo expressed his opinions regarding this initiative. He stated that he expects this automatic network for frictionless transfer of value in the New Economy Movement to bring millions of opportunities and possibilities to monetize vehicles, services, and infrastructure.

BMW’s Andre Luckow, believes that the reference architecture in the VID II standard is a key building block in reconstructing a frictionless mobility ecosystem.

Cynthia Flanigan, Director, Vehicle Research and Technology, Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, also believes that this research into vehicle identity technology could bring better opportunities in terms of ownership and help clarify the purchasing process in the near future.

It is believed that the VID standards, along with other MOBI standards for Blockchain applications in the mobility ecosystem, will increase mobility services and lessen frictional inefficiencies to a great extent. 

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online blockchain certifications, check out Blockchain Council.

World’s Top Vehicle Manufacturers is Leveraging Blockchain-Based “Birth Certificates” to Combat Used Car Fraud

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