Recently edChain, one of the first distributed networks for education, switched from ethereum to Stellar for payments on its content distribution platform. Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for payments, with thousands upon thousands of transactions occurring per day, has run into problems, due to its popularity, particularly high cost, which is the prime reason edChain made the switch.

As large banks embrace FinTech start-ups and their advanced technology rather than compete against them, both parties aim to eliminate the “middle man” in financial services transactions. This “middle man” is a metaphor for the different steps of customer interaction that technology has removed to make banking more efficient. However, in the hyper-speed environment from which bank - start-up integrations emerge, a new middle man - between these parties has become necessary.

Empire Startups, a thriving startup FinTech community, held it’s annual FinTech Conference on Tuesday, April 26 at concert venue Webster Hall.  The sold-out audience of 560 attendees consisted of early stage startups and larger companies in roughly equal proportion.

Meet Josh Panknin, a banker in his mid 30's who took time off from Deutsche Bank in order to study at Byte Academy, the first ever FinTech coding bootcamp and perhaps still the only in the world.   Here, Josh explains why he took a break from Wall Street, the effects of technology and big data on finance, and, what learning to code is like when you don't want to be a programmer.  He also gives advice to those who may want to follow in his footsteps.

FinTech startup VendorMach provided lessons in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data on the Byte campus recently. Topics covered by Chaney Ojinnaka, CEO, and Ivan Kotorov, VP, Enterprise, included:  KYC (Know Your Customer), supply chain, trust scoring and programming languages.  They explained why they chose Python over Ruby for their product.  Python's ability to analyze numbers and frameworks are key (as a Python school we're thrilled:).  VendorMach also discussed FinTech cultural attitudes in London (original headquarters) and New York City  (second office location).  By the end of the event the audience felt much much comfortable with "hot" technology buzzwords including artificial intelligence, machine learning, supply chain and more.

No longer just for programmers, analysts, researchers, and managers are now learning python programming as well.

For those who may have missed Finovate two weeks ago, rough cut videos of each presentation have just been published to the Finovate site.  Watch demos online to see the latest from companies on the forefront on FinTech technology.

De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond producer, has tracked its first diamonds all the way from the mine to the jewelry producer using blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin. It is even planning to launch a platform for other diamond retailers later this year which uses blockchain to track a diamond through the entire value chain.  Known as Tracr, the program gives each stone a unique ID that stores diamond characteristics such as weight, color and clarity.