Sweden is conducting tests to put the nation’s land registry system on blockchain, the underlying technology supporting the digital currency bitcoin, the Swedish Land Registry said on Thursday.
The Scandinavian nation is working on the project with Swedish blockchain company ChromaWay, consulting firm Kairos Future and telecommunications service provider Telia, the registry said in a statement.
Together, they have come up with a framework or the so-called “proof of concept” through a white paper and technical demonstration of how the Swedish land registry would work on blockchain.
The blockchain technology works by creating permanent, public “ledgers” of all transactions that could potentially replace complicated systems such as clearing and settlement with one simple database.
“In the first phase of the technology, we have tested the process with some banks,” Kairos Future director of retail and finance Magnus Kempe said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Now we are on the second phase of the project, where we will test in a full-sized environment.”
Kempe believes the project could go live in the fall this year.
The plan is to put real-estate transactions on blockchain once the buyer and seller agree on a deal and a contract is made, Kempe said. From there, all the parties involved in the transactions — the banks, the government, brokers, buyers and sellers — are able to track the progress of the deal once it is completed.
It takes months to complete a real-estate deal in Sweden from the time the parties agree until the contract is completed.
“Digital documentation of property transfers and good technology will enable the confirmation for all parties in a real-estate transaction [with] the highest level of security,” said Mats Snall, head of development of real estate registration at the Swedish Land Registry.
“Being able to assign pending title deed is also something of value for all parties. Everyone will benefit from this,” he added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day