factom Archives - blog.bitmain.com

Our second weekly bitcoin news roundup comes as the 7-day China National Day holidays come to an end here at the Bitmain headquarters in Beijing. Some notable news from the past two weeks:

Indian bitcoin start-up gets record funding

Bangalore-based startup Unocoin raised $1.5 million in a Pre Series-A round, setting a national record for any digital currency venture in India. The funding round was lead by Mumbai-based Blume Ventures. Other investors included Mumbai Angels, ah! Ventures as well as prominent international investors such as Digital Currency Group, Boost VC, Bnk to the Future, Bitcoin Capital and FundersClub.

According to Unocoin the funds will be used for product development, team expansion and geographical expansion. Read more…

French company tests Lightning Network routing

French company ACINQ released a press release on 26 September announcing that they had successfully tested a modified version of the ‘Flare’ routing solution that was described in a white paper in July by BitFury Group in collaboration with the Lightning Network.

ACINQ tested their modified version of the Flare routing algorithm on 2,500 Amazon Web Services (AWS) nodes. After their tests, ACINQ discovered that the proposed Flare algorithm was able to find a payment route in about .5 seconds with a probability of 80 percent.

Blockchain startup Factom raises $4.2m in funding

Austin-based Factom raised $4.2 million in funding from a slew of global investors, led by billionaire investor Tim Draper, to build a series of new blockchain products. Other investors in the funding round included BnkToTheFuture and Chinese conglomerate Wangxiang Group’s new blockchain investment fund Fenbushi Capital.

Factom’s blockchain and related products have previously attracted partnerships with the government of Honduras as well as the government of China.

US Congress forms a blockchain caucus

On 26 September, Democrat congressman Jared Polis, a longtime bitcoin supporter, and Republican congressman Mick Mulvaney formed the Congressional Blockchain Caucus to educate other legislators about the blockchain technology.

This is certainly a good development for bitcoin but I recommend you read this article in The Atlantic to learn more on the role of Caucuses – there seems to be a Caucus (officially congressional member organizations) for various hobbies or general interests.

Interestingly, the Atlantic article ended with “One never knows what group will form next — but hey, Rep. Jared Polis, there’s still no Congressional Bitcoin Caucus.” That has just changed now.