Banking giants sign up for a trial blockchain project: Nine banking giants including Citigroup and Barclays are participating in an app store trial for programs based on the technology. The currently in-trial app store, LedgerConnect, was announced Monday by foreign exchange processing giant CLS and tech titan IBM. It’s expected to launch in the coming months.
Binance acquires Trust Wallet in push to expand crypto services: Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, has purchased Trust Wallet, a decentralized wallet service for digital tokens that also serves as a browser for so-called decentralized applications. This is Binance’s first acquisition, and points to the future ambitions of a company that emerged from nowhere in 2017 to be an industry leader that reportedly posted profits of between $500 million and a billion last year alone.
Asset management firm Northern Trust to start crypto custody business: Northern Trust Corp., which provides investment management, asset and fund administration services, is looking to get into the business of safeguarding digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. The 129-year-old Chicago-based company has begun developing a way to secure digital assets held in custody while seeking to charge lower fees than existing crypto custodians.
U.S. blockchain investment in 2018 has already outstripped 2017’s total: New analysis from KPMG shows that blockchain investment in the U.S. in the first half of 2018 has exceeded the overall total seen in 2017. KPMG suggests that blockchain tech is “moving beyond experimentation” to draw “significant” attention from investors in the first two quarters of 2018.