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bne April 2018 Companies & Markets I 23
“Basic Attention Token (BAT) raised the equivalent of $36mn in less than a minute in May”
networks and publishers should to get prepared to work with these new currencies,” Dyakov concluded.
Russian startups in the running
AB-Chain launched its ad network with crypto payments months before Mail.Ru Group’s announcement. But it is not the only Russian startup operating at the intersection of blockchain, cryptocurrency and advertising.
Bitclave, which claims to have raised the equivalent of $25mn in an ICO in November last year (see EWDN’s regional ICO report), is building what it calls “an anti-Google search engine where all money goes directly to users.”
bne:FX
Romania to draw up euro-adoption calendar
bne IntelliNews
Romania’s government will set up a committee to evalu- ate the fundamentals and draft a calendar for adopting the euro by 2024 by government this week, the ruling majority’s leader Liviu Dragnea announced on March 20 after the weekly meeting of the senior ruling party leadership, quot- ed by profit.ro news service.
The last attempt to adopt the euro failed because of the lack of political support. The circumstances are now even less favour- able in terms of fundamentals, meaning that more political commitment is needed to adhere to a new adoption target.
The previous failures raise question marks as regards this latest attempt. The fiscal slippage and rising inflation at this moment are not favourable circumstances, but setting the euro adoption calendar could benefit Romanian by serving as a framework for coordinated monetary and budgetary policies.
The BitClave Active Search Ecosystem is intended for customers to “control their identity, decide who has access to their data, and get remunerated in tokens each time their data will be used for marketing purposes.”
BitClave told us they’re actively developing their platform, but could not specify any launch date.
Another Russian startup in this field is mytime (see EWDN’s story), a platform designed to reward online buyers of services for their time. For example, a video game aficionado may receive tokens for every minute of online fun, while a taxi passenger may get these tokens from the taxi company based on the time he spent on the road. Meanwhile, service partners will be able to earn tokens by attracting loyal users to the platform, says mytime.
mytime’s concept is very close to that of US startup Basic Attention Token (BAT) which raised the equivalent of $36mn in less than a minute in May last year.
Such a move would indicate an unexpected improvement in budgetary predictability after the European Commission and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have constantly warned Romania over the past couple of years about the imminent risks of fiscal slippage.
Romania’s latest euro adoption target (January 2019) was set by prime Minister Victor Ponta in 2014, but it was abandoned in early 2016 as unrealistic. The cabinet of technocrats headed by Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos avoided setting a new target
“The last attempt to adopt the euro failed because of the lack of political support”
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