The world’s leading carmakers will start a pilot program for blockchain-based projects which will serve for the future blockchain vehicle identification platform. As we are about to read in the blockchain news below, the new project could lead the drivers of electric vehicles to pay parking fees and maintenance fees including highway tolls much faster and more efficient without making use of cash or credit/debit cards.The pilot which will start in November in the United States will see Renault, General Motors, Honda, Ford and BMW utilizing sensor and card-free digital ID solutions via a blockchain platform. This platform will allow the parties to check on the data including the owners of the vehicles and the service history. The drivers will be able to use the huge range of services without stopping to pay for anything and will be charged for all expenditures when they plug their vehicles to fill the batteries. According to Nikkei, GM and Honda are also to join the World’s leading carmakers group that will work on the blockchain project by also working on a token reward system that will result in electric vehicle owners to be compensated in digital currency for feeding power into the public grids during an outage.As reported, the previously mentioned carmakers alongside blockchain partners from the industry launched the Mobility Open Blockchain initiative back in 2018. This initiative aims to explore the blockchain for use in a new digital mobility ecosystem that can make up for safer transportation and open access as they stated back then. The automakers are becoming heavily interested in all of the things the blockchain industry has to offer. Currently, Mercedes Benz and Daimler are exploring the idea of fitting vehicles with a digital wallet for cryptocurrencies. Simens on the other side is looking to implement blockchain-powered car-sharing solutions. Jaguar Land Rover partnered with the IoT-based crypto IOTA aiming to reward the drivers in crypto for allowing their cars to automatically report road condition information.The carmaker Hyundai also launched a cryptocurrency of its own via the European Subsidiary of Hdac blockchain business arm. Hdac announced that they will spend up to 10 million USD on blockchain-related business ventures and we can't wait to see what they plan in the next cryptocurrency news.

A South Korean blockchain startup named ICONLOOP which provides digital identification services recently got its first venture capital investment through a $8 million Series A funding round, as the company said.Right now, ICONLOOP is a subsidiary of DAYLI Financial Group which is one of the largest fintech companies in Asia. As the blockchain news today show, the financing round was led by the quasi-government agency Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KOTEC). An additional six investment companies including T.S. Investment also backed ICONLOOP in this round.The proceeds will be used to launch the digital identification service "my-ID" and expand a group of expected clients called my-ID Alliance which right now holds 27 companies under it. The client group also has a range of companies and organizations including banks, security firms, e-commerce firms and manufacturing companies. The South Korea blockchain ID service is expected to launch during the first half of 2020 for commercialized uses, the company noted.Founded in 2016, the fintech firm primarily designed an ID service that is based on blockchain technology for non-face-to-face openings of banking accounts, as the company revealed in June. The South Korean financial regulator which is the Financial Services Commission (FSC) included the firm and its 'my-ID' service in the "Innovative Financial Services and Regulations" Sandbox.

“The blockchain technology is evolving into practical applications such as decentralized ID services in line with the global trend giving users back the personal data sovereignty,” a KOTEC spokesperson recently said.

The cryptonews also show that the South Korean blockchain ID service ICONLOOP has another flagship product - the ICON public blockchain network which uses a loopchain protocol to connect different blockchains. The project is supported by the ICON Foundation, which held an initial coin offering (ICO) for ICX. The coin was the 58th largest cryptocurrency by market cap as of October 11. 

Tron and Stellar - in fact the Stellar Development Foundation - are featured in the news as being part of a new alliance which will provide university students with a working knowledge about blockchain technology.As a news release shared in the latest crypto news shows, the top crypto projects Tron and Stellar will actively work together to form a new educational alliance which will provide university students with the connections and knowledge they need to successfully enter the blockchain industry workforce.Tron and Stellar are part of a 11-member project which will focus on the Blockchain Education Alliance as an organization that will jointly develop and fund a number of educational initiatives in order to bring blockchain technology to the masses.The new alliance is currently spearheaded by the blockchain accelerator MouseBelt - which is the key player that wants to build a network of industry leaders and bring blockchain technology to the forefront. The Stellar news show that TRON and Stellar will be active members in this initiative.As the director of MouseBelt Ashlie Meredith recently said, students are eager to be educated by blockchain experts. She added:

“Universities need established experts in the space to help develop curriculum and projects — and Stellar, TRON, Hedera, ICON, Ontology, Wanchain, Harmony One, Nervos, Orbs, LTO Network, Emurgo, NEM, and ETC Labs are well positioned to share valuable knowledge. We have an opportunity to have a positive impact on how blockchain technology is introduced to students, which will result in more blockchain developers, more innovative research, and higher quality companies.”

Tron and Stellar are now in the focus of the news for their potential of bringing more funding to students' activities and expand their educational opportunities in the field.The blockchain education initiative is seen as a major success already, supporting research and entrepreneurship in students. Before this, MouseBelt has launched a similar initiative in August at UC Davis, UC Los Angeles and UC Santa Barbara in order to support blockchain-focused education, too.

“We aim to help these universities become a driving force for innovation in the blockchain space, as well as provide students and researchers with the opportunity for both theoretical and industry experience,” Meredith said at the time.

A 29-year old man from Singapore is now facing 34 years in prison after getting in illegal crypto mining by stealing Amazon AWS and Google Cloud computing power and services as we are about to find out more in the blockchain news below.Ho Jun Jia or better known as Matthew Ho was taken into the custody of the Singapore Police Force after being charged for illegal crypto mining under a 14-count indictment. According to the reports, he stole credit card and ID information from California residents, India and Texas to run a large-scale illegal crypto mining operation. The mining of the Ethereum and Bitcoin cryptocurrencies is noted as having taken place between 2017 and 2018. In an unsealed indictment document we can read that:

‘’Beginning in late 2017, which followed the surge in popularity of cryptocurrencies, Ho used victims’ personal and stolen credit card information, along with phony email addresses, which he created, designed to spoof the authentic email account of identity-theft victims, to open accounts and to obtain access to cloud computing services.’’

During the illegal crypto mining operation, he managed to steal up to $5 million in unpaid cloud computing bills and the department of justice issued a press release saying that for a brief period, Ho’s operation was one of the largest consumers of data usage by volume. The press release states that the wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and the access device fraud is punishable by 10. The aggravated identity theft is punishable by mandatory two years in prison. According to the indictment, Ho made a few payments for goods and services on the victim’s stolen credit cards.At least 16 payments were made with varying amounts and they even reached about $240,000 on the only credit card. Some of the money went towards payments on Google Cloud Services and crypto mining expenses. In 2017, the press release shows that he made payments amounting up to $135,861 to a victim’s credit card toward the balance owed on the Amazon Web services account. What we can further learn from the statements in the altcoin news today is that with the illegal crypto mining operations, Ho sold and exchanged the goods on various sites even at localbitcoins.com in order to obtain fiat currency.