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Mastercard may be looking to integrate blockchain into its payments infrastructure. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a  new application  from the financial giant this week that outlines a solution for a "uniform settlement system" – one that would help ease some of the friction involved with business-to-business payments. Specific issues cited in the application include growing data storage demands and the overall volume of transactions. Notably, Mastercard suggests in the text that such a system could include a blockchain-based ledger of transactions. As the application explains: "In some embodiments, the ledger may be a blockchain configured to store the associated data. ... In the system, the data values may include the purchase orders, invoices, transaction data, and other data stored in the ledger as discussed herein." Mastercard clarified that the blockchain would be able to automatically note all changes made to the ...

There's a new party interested in initial coin offerings (ICOs): global governments. This time, though, they aren’t just out to warn citizens or regulate the new mechanism. Instead, at least one progressive government is considering whether it can take advantage of the technology.  The Baltic nation of Estonia made a splash last month proposing a government-supported token – the "estcoin" – as an extension of its e-Residency program. As detailed in a blog post that quickly vent viral, the proceeds would be used to create a type of public-private sovereign wealth fund that would invest in Estonian digital infrastructure projects and technology startups.  ADVERTISEMENT The idea won equal praise and derision, getting lambasted by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi. During his regular press conference, Draghi commented on Estonia's bid: " No member state can introduce its own currency; the currency of the euro zone is the euro. ...

Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson and Jason Potts are with the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub in Melbourne, Australia. In this opinion piece, the authors discuss why blockchain may be more disruptive than the so-called 'general purpose technologies' that transformed society in recent centuries.  While cryptoeconomics is already a vibrant research field, the study of the blockchain must not be left solely to computer scientists and game theorists. The rollout of blockchain technology raises complex questions in economics, public policy, law, sociology and political economy. What we call "institutional cryptoeconomics" starts from a simple premise – the blockchain is not just a new general purpose technology, it is a new institutional technology. This may sound like a pedantic distinction, but the difference between these two conceptions is profound. General purpose technologies allow us to do what we already do better, faster and cheaper. Economists und...

Developers at some of the top tech companies have created a browser API that could soon make it easier to buy goods and services online with cryptocurrency. The work, started by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with the help of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Mozilla, is a tangible step forward for a currency-agnostic web payment standard  first conceived in 2013. Equally, as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies gain more momentum, the launch signifies the growing recognition of cryptocurrency as a payments technology. ADVERTISEMENT Indeed, the W3C has gotten more interested in blockchain technologies over the years, hosting its first ever blockchain workshop in June last year. But while participants were left with interest in standardizing and democratizing the technology's use, no formal work was decided upon then. That, however, has changed. Announced on Thursday, the API is currently  being implemented in browsers including Go...