Japan’s largest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) announced on Tuesday the decision to shut down the blockchain-based online payments network, Global Open Network Japan that was developed in collaboration with Akamai Technologies.
The bank has already started the preparation of the stuttering and cited a tough environment in the payments
Payments
One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonly the basis of exchange involves fiat currency or legal tender, be it in the form of cash, credit or bank transfers, debit, or checks. While typically associated with cash transfers, payments can also be made in anything of perceived value, be it stock or bartering – though this is far more limited today than it has been in the past.The Largest Players in the Payments IndustryFor most individuals, the payments industry is dominated currently by card companies such as Visa or Mastercard, which facilitate the use of credit or debit expenditures. More recently, this industry has seen the rise of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments services, which have gained tremendous traction in Europe, the United States, and Asia, among other continents.One of the biggest parameters for payments is timing, which looms as a crucial element for execution. By this metric, consumer demand incentivizes technology that prioritizes the fastest payment execution.This can help explain the preference for debit and credit payments overtaking check or money orders, which in previous decades were much more commonly utilized. A multi-billion-dollar industry, the payments space has seen some of the most innovation and advances in recent years as companies look to push contactless technology with faster execution times.
One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonly the basis of exchange involves fiat currency or legal tender, be it in the form of cash, credit or bank transfers, debit, or checks. While typically associated with cash transfers, payments can also be made in anything of perceived value, be it stock or bartering – though this is far more limited today than it has been in the past.The Largest Players in the Payments IndustryFor most individuals, the payments industry is dominated currently by card companies such as Visa or Mastercard, which facilitate the use of credit or debit expenditures. More recently, this industry has seen the rise of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments services, which have gained tremendous traction in Europe, the United States, and Asia, among other continents.One of the biggest parameters for payments is timing, which looms as a crucial element for execution. By this metric, consumer demand incentivizes technology that prioritizes the fastest payment execution.This can help explain the preference for debit and credit payments overtaking check or money orders, which in previous decades were much more commonly utilized. A multi-billion-dollar industry, the payments space has seen some of the most innovation and advances in recent years as companies look to push contactless technology with faster execution times. Read this Term space behind the move. “Slow growth of payment transaction numbers caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, made it difficult to develop its business on the scale originally anticipated,” the official press release stated.
Death of an Ambitious Project
MUFG and Akamai first announced their plans to form a joint venture in 2019 for the development of a blockchain payments system. However, the project faced delays before its launch in April 2021.
The Japanese bank owned 80 percent of the joint venture, and the rest was with Akamai.
One of the primary goals of the project was to provide a platform with high scalability
Scalability
Scalability is a term that describes the constraints of a network via hash rates to meet increased demand. In the context of Bitcoin, scalability reflects the issue in which a limited rate can process transactions adequately.Blocks within the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in both size and frequency. The overall transaction processing capacity of the network is dictated by the average block creation time of 10 minutes as well as a block size limit of 1 megabyte. Consequently, this leads to pain points in transaction processing, relative to other cryptos or traditional payments options. Inherent Scalability Issues with BitcoinBitcoin’s block size limit represents a true bottleneck in its design. This reflects the potential downside of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system with Bitcoin’s consensus protocol.Lags in transaction processing capacity can result in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block.This is perhaps one of Bitcoin’s most pressing issues long term, an issue that has since head to the creation of other altcoins or networks to remedy this concern.There have also been many attempts to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem through software upgrades.Increasing the network’s transaction processing limit requires making changes to the technical workings of bitcoin. This is where forks in the network can come into play, be it soft or hard forks.However, forks have resulted in the creation of entirely new cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin Cash, among others. Technical optimizations have also been floated to decrease the amount of computing resources required to process and record Bitcoin transactions. Presently there is no consensus on what the best solution to Bitcoin’s scalability is.
Scalability is a term that describes the constraints of a network via hash rates to meet increased demand. In the context of Bitcoin, scalability reflects the issue in which a limited rate can process transactions adequately.Blocks within the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in both size and frequency. The overall transaction processing capacity of the network is dictated by the average block creation time of 10 minutes as well as a block size limit of 1 megabyte. Consequently, this leads to pain points in transaction processing, relative to other cryptos or traditional payments options. Inherent Scalability Issues with BitcoinBitcoin’s block size limit represents a true bottleneck in its design. This reflects the potential downside of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system with Bitcoin’s consensus protocol.Lags in transaction processing capacity can result in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block.This is perhaps one of Bitcoin’s most pressing issues long term, an issue that has since head to the creation of other altcoins or networks to remedy this concern.There have also been many attempts to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem through software upgrades.Increasing the network’s transaction processing limit requires making changes to the technical workings of bitcoin. This is where forks in the network can come into play, be it soft or hard forks.However, forks have resulted in the creation of entirely new cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin Cash, among others. Technical optimizations have also been floated to decrease the amount of computing resources required to process and record Bitcoin transactions. Presently there is no consensus on what the best solution to Bitcoin’s scalability is. Read this Term and multi-connectivity data processing to meet the rising demand for the Internet of Things (IoT). In the shutdown notice, the bank pointed out that it struggled to fit its solution with the IoT growing market needs.
The joint venture, GO-NET Japan, is now coordinating with its clients and partners, and will eventually close all operations and then start the liquidation process. However, the Japanese bank highlighted that the shutdown of the project will not impact its financial results in the ongoing financial year.
Despite the shuttering of the project, MUFG is still bullish with plans of its other digital strategies and is discussing further collaboration with Akamai.
“MUFG is discussing further opportunities of collaboration with Akamai and seeking to drive momentum in open innovation through alliances with global business partners and by utilizing the latest technologies based on experience from the GO-NET project,” the lender added.
Japan’s largest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) announced on Tuesday the decision to shut down the blockchain-based online payments network, Global Open Network Japan that was developed in collaboration with Akamai Technologies.
The bank has already started the preparation of the stuttering and cited a tough environment in the payments
Payments
One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonly the basis of exchange involves fiat currency or legal tender, be it in the form of cash, credit or bank transfers, debit, or checks. While typically associated with cash transfers, payments can also be made in anything of perceived value, be it stock or bartering – though this is far more limited today than it has been in the past.The Largest Players in the Payments IndustryFor most individuals, the payments industry is dominated currently by card companies such as Visa or Mastercard, which facilitate the use of credit or debit expenditures. More recently, this industry has seen the rise of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments services, which have gained tremendous traction in Europe, the United States, and Asia, among other continents.One of the biggest parameters for payments is timing, which looms as a crucial element for execution. By this metric, consumer demand incentivizes technology that prioritizes the fastest payment execution.This can help explain the preference for debit and credit payments overtaking check or money orders, which in previous decades were much more commonly utilized. A multi-billion-dollar industry, the payments space has seen some of the most innovation and advances in recent years as companies look to push contactless technology with faster execution times.
One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonly the basis of exchange involves fiat currency or legal tender, be it in the form of cash, credit or bank transfers, debit, or checks. While typically associated with cash transfers, payments can also be made in anything of perceived value, be it stock or bartering – though this is far more limited today than it has been in the past.The Largest Players in the Payments IndustryFor most individuals, the payments industry is dominated currently by card companies such as Visa or Mastercard, which facilitate the use of credit or debit expenditures. More recently, this industry has seen the rise of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments services, which have gained tremendous traction in Europe, the United States, and Asia, among other continents.One of the biggest parameters for payments is timing, which looms as a crucial element for execution. By this metric, consumer demand incentivizes technology that prioritizes the fastest payment execution.This can help explain the preference for debit and credit payments overtaking check or money orders, which in previous decades were much more commonly utilized. A multi-billion-dollar industry, the payments space has seen some of the most innovation and advances in recent years as companies look to push contactless technology with faster execution times. Read this Term space behind the move. “Slow growth of payment transaction numbers caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, made it difficult to develop its business on the scale originally anticipated,” the official press release stated.
Death of an Ambitious Project
MUFG and Akamai first announced their plans to form a joint venture in 2019 for the development of a blockchain payments system. However, the project faced delays before its launch in April 2021.
The Japanese bank owned 80 percent of the joint venture, and the rest was with Akamai.
One of the primary goals of the project was to provide a platform with high scalability
Scalability
Scalability is a term that describes the constraints of a network via hash rates to meet increased demand. In the context of Bitcoin, scalability reflects the issue in which a limited rate can process transactions adequately.Blocks within the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in both size and frequency. The overall transaction processing capacity of the network is dictated by the average block creation time of 10 minutes as well as a block size limit of 1 megabyte. Consequently, this leads to pain points in transaction processing, relative to other cryptos or traditional payments options. Inherent Scalability Issues with BitcoinBitcoin’s block size limit represents a true bottleneck in its design. This reflects the potential downside of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system with Bitcoin’s consensus protocol.Lags in transaction processing capacity can result in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block.This is perhaps one of Bitcoin’s most pressing issues long term, an issue that has since head to the creation of other altcoins or networks to remedy this concern.There have also been many attempts to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem through software upgrades.Increasing the network’s transaction processing limit requires making changes to the technical workings of bitcoin. This is where forks in the network can come into play, be it soft or hard forks.However, forks have resulted in the creation of entirely new cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin Cash, among others. Technical optimizations have also been floated to decrease the amount of computing resources required to process and record Bitcoin transactions. Presently there is no consensus on what the best solution to Bitcoin’s scalability is.
Scalability is a term that describes the constraints of a network via hash rates to meet increased demand. In the context of Bitcoin, scalability reflects the issue in which a limited rate can process transactions adequately.Blocks within the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in both size and frequency. The overall transaction processing capacity of the network is dictated by the average block creation time of 10 minutes as well as a block size limit of 1 megabyte. Consequently, this leads to pain points in transaction processing, relative to other cryptos or traditional payments options. Inherent Scalability Issues with BitcoinBitcoin’s block size limit represents a true bottleneck in its design. This reflects the potential downside of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system with Bitcoin’s consensus protocol.Lags in transaction processing capacity can result in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block.This is perhaps one of Bitcoin’s most pressing issues long term, an issue that has since head to the creation of other altcoins or networks to remedy this concern.There have also been many attempts to solve Bitcoin’s scalability problem through software upgrades.Increasing the network’s transaction processing limit requires making changes to the technical workings of bitcoin. This is where forks in the network can come into play, be it soft or hard forks.However, forks have resulted in the creation of entirely new cryptocurrency networks such as Bitcoin Cash, among others. Technical optimizations have also been floated to decrease the amount of computing resources required to process and record Bitcoin transactions. Presently there is no consensus on what the best solution to Bitcoin’s scalability is. Read this Term and multi-connectivity data processing to meet the rising demand for the Internet of Things (IoT). In the shutdown notice, the bank pointed out that it struggled to fit its solution with the IoT growing market needs.
The joint venture, GO-NET Japan, is now coordinating with its clients and partners, and will eventually close all operations and then start the liquidation process. However, the Japanese bank highlighted that the shutdown of the project will not impact its financial results in the ongoing financial year.
Despite the shuttering of the project, MUFG is still bullish with plans of its other digital strategies and is discussing further collaboration with Akamai.
“MUFG is discussing further opportunities of collaboration with Akamai and seeking to drive momentum in open innovation through alliances with global business partners and by utilizing the latest technologies based on experience from the GO-NET project,” the lender added.
One of our top priorities at Coinbase is to be the most trusted and easy-to-use platform for accessing the broader cryptoeconomy. Coinbase currently offers our institutional clients easy access to the crypto markets through advanced trading and custody technology. But being easy-to-use also means providing a strong set of global fiat payment rails. Starting today institutional customers can access additional trading pairs and payments options through an expansion of supported fiat currencies on Coinbase Exchange.
Until now, many of our global clients have been limited to purchasing crypto in their local currency only. We now offer the fiat rails to enable deposits and withdrawals in USD, EUR, or GBP and access to the related trading pairs. This expansion of supported currencies has been a top request from international clients and has the potential to unlock billions of dollars in trading volume through improved access to major pools of liquidity. Institutional customers will now be able to trade in and out of various currencies regardless of where they are based. This is an important step in Coinbase’s journey towards creating a global trading platform.
“Access to SEN on Coinbase provides us with the flexibility to move USD quickly, keep providing liquidity in fast markets, and take advantage of opportunities” says Morgan Vincent, Head of Trading at Wintermute.
To learn more about Coinbase Prime, Exchange, Custody, our execution services, or Coinbase’s white label brokerage services click here.
Coinbase expands international payments options for institutional customers was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
