New York’s EDC Launches The Blockchain Center

New York City is planning on carrying out various tests on the Blockchain technology. The tests will be to find out the applicability of the distributed ledger technology and its use cases.

Use cases To Be Tested Yet to Be Announced

According to a report made by Bloomberg on Thursday, the New York City EDC’s (Economic Development Corporation) Blockchain Center will start testing Blockchain technology and its use cases the coming fall. The Economic Development Corporation’s Blockchain Center has just been recently opened.

The EDC is a corporation that is not for profit that is focused on supporting economic growth within New York City. It is the official corporation in charge of economic development within the city. The Blockchain centre is part of the collaboration between Future/Perfect Ventures, a venture capital fund, and the Global Blockchain Business Council trade organization.

The use cases which the tests on the distributed ledger technology will be covering have not been made public as at the moment.

The Future Of Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency

The Blockchain Center, which is located in the Flatiron District, has been established through various donations and contributions made by its partners. The facility aims to continue raising funds by leveraging on its partnerships and through its membership fees. New York City as an entity has made the contribution of $100,000 to the new facility.

According to the Bloomberg report Jalak Jobanputra, a managing partner at Future/Perfect Ventures, said that among the companies which have formed partnerships with the new centre include IBM and Microsoft. The Blockchain Center will be offering coding classes and hosting lectures designed for not only developers within the sector, but the public at large.

The new Blockchain Center has been unveiled at a time when the crypto market at large is, and has been for a while, experiencing a bear market. This has affected the industry to an extent where most firms based in the industry are laying off employees to remain afloat. This, however, does not seem to be a point of concern for the center.

According to the report, the chief strategist officer at the Economic Development Corporation, Ana Arino, has said that the center is looking toward the long term adding that with it being a nascent technology it should be expected that its evolution will be experiencing uncertainty from one year to the next. Arino stated that although the EDC was not sure what the future holds when it comes to Cryptocurrency and its underlying technology, it wanted to be involved in the shaping of that future.

New York Attracting Crypto based Businesses

New York has been attracting Crypto based businesses with quite a number of them relocating to and setting up shop within the city. Among these is Coinbase, which set up an office in the city last fall. Canaan has also been reported to be looking into holding an ICO (initial coin offering) in New York. Canaan is involved in the making of Crypto mining hardware, Bitcoin to be specific.