Bitcoin Daily: IBM Eyes Blockchain For African Agriculture; CFTC Goes Back To School On Ethereum

BitPay has announced that OneGold, a marketplace that combines the benefits of gold and silver with blockchain-based digital assets, is now accepting bitcoin and bitcoin cash.

Founded by APMEX and Sprott, OneGold allows investors to buy, sell and redeem digital gold and other precious metals.

“Cryptocurrency is an ideal payment method for ecommerce and precious metals where the risk of chargebacks, fraud and identity theft with traditional credit cards is high,” Sonny Singh, chief commercial officer at BitPay, said in a press release. “BitPay and APMEX have worked together for years, making it easy for APMEX to accept cryptocurrency. When they started OneGold, we were ready to help them accept Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash through BitPay.”

In other bitcoin news, Coindesk has reported that the 14-week relative strength index (RSI), a long-term bitcoin price indicator, is showing oversold conditions for the first time since 2015.

The RSI, which swings between zero to 100, is currently at 29.80. An asset or a crypto is considered oversold if the RSI is below 30. The under-30 reading shows that the recent heavy selling of bitcoin may have been exhausted.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has announced that is seeking public comment and feedback so it can learn more about ethereum. In a Request for Information (RFI), the CFTC wants details about the technology, opportunities, risks, mechanics, uses, and markets, related ethereum.

“The RFI also seeks to understand similarities and distinctions between Ether and Bitcoin, as well as Ether-specific opportunities, challenges, and risks,” according to a press release.

And IBM has announced that it has partnered with Nigerian agricultural startup Hello Tractor to test a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-driven crop management system. Specifically, IBM will develop the application, dubbed Digital Wallet, that would help sub-Saharan farmers reduce their amount of post-harvest losses.

“Our vision is to leverage AI, blockchain and the IoT to digitize, optimize and streamline agricultural business processes, creating efficiencies and new services from farm to fork around the world,” wrote Solomon Assefa, vice president, Emerging Market Solutions and director, IBM Research – Africa, in a blog post. “More specifically, the blockchain will provide a tamper-proof definition of demand-side and supply-side workflows from tractor request to fulfillment, payment for services, and distribution of proceeds, authorized access to services and documents within the workflow,” as well as logging workflow-related approvals including booking and invoicing.