Blockchain

The business world has been seeking the benefits of distributed ledgers but worries about security, control, privacy, performance and other issues. Microsoft says its new Coco framework will solve all these and more.

Merger creates a $20 billion payments processor; government seeks to delay fiduciary rule so it can make revisions.

Digital blockchain tokens can be naked instruments for profit-sharing among investors, but other types are directly linked to building network infrastructure. Their creation and sale must be unimpeded by regulation.

A San Francisco startup working with Swift plans to launch a network that would tie self-executing contracts to independent data sources.

Readers react to USAA teaming up with Amazon’s Alexa, how a new Wells Fargo’s scandal could affect arbitration rules, a digital identity startup’s ambitions, and more.

As an open network, bitcoin is in one sense the most inclusive financial system imaginable. But for now, transfers of the cryptocurrency are priced like a luxury good.

Digital blockchain tokens can be naked instruments for profit-sharing among investors, but other types are directly linked to building network infrastructure. Their creation and sale must be unimpeded by regulation.

The agency’s new classification of “initial coin offerings” is yet another affront to the efforts by fledgling companies to raise funds.

Startups and open-source software projects have raised $1.3 billion this year through initial coin offerings. The real boom may still lie ahead, fears of a bubble notwithstanding.

Readers react to the CFPB’s final arbitration rule, a new potential hurdle for initial coin offerings, a housing finance reform proposal and more.