Blockchain

Bergen County, N.J., is using the company’s tech for property records management. Leaders from the company — itself based in New Jersey — discuss what’s next for blockchain among state and local governments.

Ongoing work with Medici Land Governance has yielded a blockchain-enabled tool to aid in property searches and sales. The goal is to ease the transformation of thousands of vacant, abandoned or blighted properties.

Bergen County, part of the New York City metro area, has hired Balcony to bring blockchain to property records management. The move stands as the latest public-sector use of the decentralized digital ledger.

The Big Apple should become the “crypto capital of the globe,” according to Mayor Eric Adams. That means using digital coins to pay for city services and taxes, and blockchain for use with birth and death records.

The Alabama Blockchain Study Commission, created by legislative resolution in May, met for the first time Tuesday. State lawmakers, and public- and private-sector representatives chose its leaders.

The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles has announced that myDMV will now accept cryptocurrency through PayPal for online payments for services like renewing a driver’s license or vehicle registration.

Energy-hungry cryptocurrency mining operations have caught the attention of state and federal lawmakers. While some welcome the operations, others are taking a more critical look at what they bring to the table.

North Dakota high school students can now create digital wallets for storing transcripts, diplomas and other credentials, and the state expects colleges and employers to sign on in the coming months.

Former educators Nate McClennen and Vriti Saraf shared their vision of future schools powered by emerging technologies, namely artificial intelligence, blockchain and the metaverse, at ISTELive 23 on Monday.

A blockchain group will award up to $100,000 apiece, in its own $EDU cryptocurrency token, to some K-12 teachers for the creation of educational content for use in a decentralized education system.

The distributed ledger technology, used in cryptocurrency, could potentially power food permits, social media access and other tasks. But blockchain still has serious political and logistical obstacles to overcome.

Rhode Island Commerce Secretary Elizabeth Tanner is paying close attention to the e-government work being done in Estonia in her mission to offer more modern, streamlined state services.

The bankruptcy filing by crypto giant FTX, along with the dramatic drop in the value of most cryptocurrencies in 2022, has raised new questions regarding the future of blockchain technology.     

In a forthcoming project, Secretary of Commerce Elizabeth Tanner hopes a centralized data lake and distributed ledger technology could securely share professional and business identity data across state agencies.  

The lab, launched with the support of the Filecoin Foundation, will host courses and lectures aimed at expanding students’ understanding of Web3 and blockchain technologies, decentralized storage and cryptocurrencies.

Gov. Jared Polis announced that a cryptocurrency payment option will be offered on all state tax bills — including individual and business incomes — during a kickoff event for Denver Startup Week, which began Monday.

Last week the California Fair Political Practices Commission passed a resolution allowing cryptocurrencies to be used as donations for political campaigns. The move reverses its earlier decision to ban digital currencies.

Even as cryptocurrency investors deal with recent losses in value, public-sector interest in crypto continues to grow. That means more opportunities for fraud and more need for protections, the companies say.