Blockchain

CoinFund, a blockchain-focused investment firm, hired Christopher Perkins from Citigroup as managing partner and president to help bridge the gap to the traditional finance sector.

The blockchain company's new lead on the Continent, Sendi Young, discusses its plans to foster real-time and cross-border transactions between banks and fintechs in ways that aren't possible on legacy networks.

A posting for a digital currency job at Amazon stirred speculation that the e-commerce giant might begin accepting bitcoin at checkout. The company denies that — and experts say it has many other ways to make the most of its intended hire.

State Street is set to offer cryptocurrency reporting, reconciliation and processing services to its private-fund clients in the latest sign that digital assets are gaining acceptance on Wall Street.

Amazon.com’s payments team is exploring letting customers use cryptocurrencies to pay for their orders, a development that’s roiling digital currency markets.

The card issuer, which is offering its customers a chance to purchase non-fungible tokens created from a recent performance by the singer SZA, is betting that the digital art-trading phenomenon will become more mainstream.

Roxe says the distributed ledger technology that removes costly middlemen from international transactions can also lower expenses for currency conversions.

Distributed ledger projects in banking are few and far between — many have stalled and others remain experiments. Robert Townsend, who has worked with banks around the world and written a book about blockchain technology, explains some of the ways financial institutions could be using it, for instance in small-business lending and supply chain finance.

The Series B round, also led by Blockchain Capital, marks the first investment in the blockchain industry by Morgan Stanley's opportunistic investment arm.

Blockdaemon has seen rapid growth in the past year, and has won customers including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.