The license is has come in for intense criticism, in part because so few firms have been granted one.

Yesterday, May 16, 2018, well-known venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Balaji Srinivasan, the latter of which is now the CTO at Coinbase, had a chat with Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna on the mainstage of Consensus 2018. During the discussion, Srinivasan and Wilson were asked for their opinions on recent comments made by Warren Buffett, Nouriel Roubini and other notable bitcoin skeptics who have been quoted in the media recently. In their responses, the pair of tech investors (but mostly Wilson) pointed out the differences between Buffett’s approach to investing and how the crypto asset market works. It is these fundamental differences between crypto assets and traditional stocks that may explain why the “Oracle of Omaha” has a general distaste for bitcoin. For those who missed it, Buffett recently referred to bitcoin as “rat poison squared” at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2018 annual shareholder meeting. The Right Way to Look at Crypto Assets One of the key counterarguments

Blockchain identity verification platform Civic has emerged from Consensus 2018 with clear progress and updates for its identity attestation technology. The project imagines a network of validators and service providers who work together to verify individual identities. A new platform user would submit relevant identity information to a validation smart contract, which the validator would then review for approval. If approved, the validator would store references to this information on the blockchain, attesting to its validity. Anytime the corresponding user needs to submit identity information to another service provider (a bank, government agency, etc.), that service provider could request the validator to cross-check the user’s information with the blockchain’s attestations to verify their identity. In practice, such an ecosystem could streamline identity verification procedures and keep its users and participating service providers from having to go through lengthy ID checks w

Civic has launched a decentralized identity verification system, and crypto social network platform Hilo is the first to use it.

Russian bank Sberbank CIB and telecoms firm MTS have conducted what they say is the country's first commercial bond transaction made using blockchain.