Blockchain News Weekly Round Up: Twitter, Bank of China and PayPal are entering blockchain

BlockDriven Academy is excited to continue this week’s coverage of the latest blockchain news, career opportunities, in-depth career guides, and upcoming events.

Upcoming event: July 7th - Project Management in Blockchain. Speakers from American Express and 3Box

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Here is a list of upcoming BlockDriven Academy events:

July 7, 2020 Project in Blockchain [Career & Opportunities] Live Stream
July 14, 2020 Identity on Blockchain: Voting, Governance and Education [Expert Panel] Live Stream
July 21, 2020 Details Coming Soon
July 28, 2020 Details Coming Soon
August 4, 2020 Details Coming Soon
August 11, 2020 Details Coming Soon
August 18, 2020 Details Coming Soon
August 25, 2020 Details Coming Soon

We’ve rounded up some of the most relevant blockchain happenings this week for you to stay up to date from home.

Big News:

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wants to change fact-checking to be a decentralized approach to fact-check through the idea verified web. Dorsey agreed with the former CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan tweeting, “It should be open source technology. Free, universally available code and data for epistemology. Take a piece of text, parse it, extract assertions, compare to explicitly specified knowledge graphs and oracles.”

The People’s Bank of China has officially completed the backend development of China’s central bank digital currency and is in its early testing phase. Although specific plans for the currency are not yet clear, China has begun drafting laws and regulations to establish how the cryptocurrency will be implemented. CoinTelegraph

According to several close sources, PayPal is planning to incorporate the direct buying and selling of cryptocurrency into both PayPal and Venmo services in the near future. Earlier this year, PayPal Chief Technology Officer Sri Shivananda stated, “We are a strong believer in the potential of blockchain. The digitization of currency is only a matter of when not if.” CoinDesk

Our Take:

Social media companies are starting to find ways to incorporate blockchain into their services by creating a database with all information and can be fact-checked through imputed data or pay per upvote or post. After President Trump stripped protections of Section 230 thousands of replies to Dorsey and Srinivasan came with starting points for future models. Some of the solutions that could be based off are from Newsblock. They collect and store data to create timelines and newsfeeds. As an open platform, everyone can use the same data and have to opportunity to verify it. Ideamarket is similar to Reddit but where the more upvotes occur the price per vote increases too. Of course, all of these startups are in the early stages and will face periodic roadblocks. However, their emphasis on decentralization and commitment to accurate information is a huge step in the right direction.

China has continuously acted as a leader in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, and the United States is following the same trend as it begins talks of a digital U.S. dollar.  China’s advancements of the digital yuan and its trial testing in four major cities will prove what is currently hypothesis on the effect of a digital dollar. The ramifications are significant for the blockchain community as new regulations will be discussed and put in place as countries introduce the idea of government-sponsored cryptocurrencies.

Similarly, FinTech giant PayPal introducing cryptocurrency trading on its platforms has major implications for the blockchain industry as it makes its way further into the mainstream. In early 2020, PayPal posted job listings for its new blockchain research group, including 8 engineering positions. With more companies adopting blockchain technology into their services, hiring surges are likely to occur within the space across a wide range of industry sectors.