Would you download a car? Now you can, on the blockchain
The companies CurioInvest and MERJ, in Seychelles, are planning to tokenize 500 collectible cars worth over $200 million.
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An Estonian trading platform makes big news by announcing what are likely the first “tokenized” stocks, cryptocurrencies backed by shares of companies such as Tesla Inc and Facebook Inc.
Now, the companies CurioInvest and MERJ, in Seychelles, are planning to tokenize 500 collectible cars worth over $200 million.
“You can have a guy in Uganda who’s able to invest in a rare car that’s kept in a vault in Stuttgart,” MERJ said.
Tokenization creates digital coins that are backed by real-world assets. It, through blockchain, allows for flexible fractional ownership with low overhead and on a large scale.
That is already happening for paintings, as is in the case of Masterworks in the United States and the British art investment platform Maecenas.
Owners vote on what to do with the painting and can make money off it through sales or loans.
Price: January surge heralds resurgence in market
Bitcoin's January surge confirms an ascending trend, opening the doors for a continued rally into five figures, technical analysis suggests. The currency is at $9,263 (C$12,261) as of noon Sunday, Eastern Time, up more than 10 per cent for the week. Bitcoin surged amid a general panic in the financial markets, as it reels from the Wuhan virus.
News: malware mining script in Kobe Bryant wallpaper; Griffith pleads not guilty
Microsoft says, “We found a malicious HTML file posing as a Kobe Bryant wallpaper that contains a coin mining script.” Such malware hijack users’ computing power to generate cryptocurrency for the attacker. Wallpapers of other celebrities have also been used in this way. Bryant died during the week in a helicopter crash.
The Ethereum research scientist Virgil Griffith, accused of teaching North Koreans how to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions at a conference in that country, has officially pleaded not guilty in a New York court. CoinDesk asks lawyers about Griffith’s chances. Speaking of cryptocurrency and sanctions, the Times of London does a deep dive on the matter as a whole, the first time by mainstream media, I believe.
Canada: U.K. court tries to freeze bitcoins after ransomware attack
A High Court in the United Kingdom has ordered an injunction on nearly $1 million in Bitcoin obtained by a ransomware attack on an insurance company based in Canada. The company is not named. It is unclear how successful that effort is. The U.S. firm Chainalysis traced the coins to the big exchange Bitfinex, which says “the focus of the Claimant’s attention is no longer on the Bitfinex platform.”