IBM is planning to use blockchain to help monitor supply chains in the metals industry, CoinDesk reported. In one case, the technology company plans to record the journey of 1.5 tons of cobalt through its trip from the Democratic Republic of Congo to China and Korea before arriving in the United States. The goal of the application is to ensure that participants can see that the sourcing of the materials is done per Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standards.
In other news, Bitwage is teaming up with Simply Efficient HR to help pay for payroll, benefits and payroll taxes with ether or bitcoin, CoinDesk reported. In particular, the report noted that companies can pay salaried employees, in addition to contractors, through cryptocurrency. Paxful, a peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange company, has reportedly used the offering in beta as of November. The company’s Controller Hayel Abbassi said per the outlet, “Paxful simply sends bitcoin to an address, and our employees receive net checks with the proper federal and state taxes withheld.”
Clients of BitGo Inc. will have the ability to exchange ether and bitcoin, among other assets, on devices that aren’t linked to the web, Bloomberg reported. As a result, the risk of human error, theft or going against compliance requirements is reportedly reduced. Chief Executive Officer Mike Belshe told Bloomberg that the company wants to “introduce market structure to crypto that’s never existed before.” The offering comes as CipherTrace data found that nearly $1 billion in digital currency was taken in thefts during the first three quarters of 2018.
On another note, BitMEX research suggested that teams behind initial coin offerings (ICOs) raked in $12.8 billion in profits, The Next Web reported. To generate profits, the firm noted that ICO teams may issue tokens to themselves or sell the cryptocurrency. BitMEX wrote, according to the outlet, “In our view, this money was made incredibly easily, with very little work, accountability or transparency.” The firm is said to have looked at $24 billion of tokens created by startups.
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