As per the latest IoT survey, about 75 percent of the Internet of Things industry considers adding blockchain technology to improve their performances. Following the latest Blockchain news, we read more about what the surveyed companies actually think.The IT Industry analyst at Gartner Avivah Litan explained during the IoT survey that about ‘’75 percent of IoT technology adopters in the US have already adopted blockchain technology or plan to adopt it by the end of 2020 in more than 500 US companies.’’ Blockchain technology can create an improved and trusted environment for data transmissions between the virtual networks or devices while increasing the efficiency of such exchanges.According to Litan, of the 75 percent of blockchain adopters 86 percent have already implemented both IoT and blockchain technology in multiple projects. The IoT companies want to integrate computing devices with digital and mechanical machines in order to avoid the human-to-computer and human-to-human interaction. For example, Apple Watch and Alexa are using these technologies in consumer goods and the technologies can also be used in the industrial, healthcare and military sectors.The increased security and trust in the multiparty shared transactions are the top benefits when the companies combine the IoT technologies and blockchain as well, according to 63 percent of the survey respondents while 56 percent said the top benefit is an increase in business efficiency. However, Litan warned that the blockchain implementation related to the protocol changes could be very hard for long-lived IoT devices because of their relatively high volatility. Litan said:

 “Some blockchain implementations struggle to scale to the transaction rates that can be generated by large numbers of connected things.’’

As previously reported, According to Joseph Lubin, blockchain technology is much more complicated than the internet and therefore will probably ‘’take a little longer’’ to develop. While talking to German Cointelegraph, Lubin explained how the blockchain technology works and is developing in a very similar way to the web since there are hundreds of projects that can be practically used for humans today.Lubin continued by explaining how the distributed ledger technology will also be able to ‘’permeate society more than the Internet’’. The DLT will be able to bring us the decentralized internet but we will, of course, have to wait a little longer for the blockchain to develop on such a mass scale.

The Quadriga Lawyers who represent the users of bankrupt crypto exchange now ask from the Canadian authorities to exhume the founder’s body so we are reading more about it in the upcoming blockchain news.The Quadriga Lawyers say that they want an exhumation because there are ‘’questionable circumstances’’ that surround his death. Gerald Cotton suddenly died last year in India from complications related to Crohn's disease and after his death, and the exchange was unable to locate or secure the significant crypto reserves. After he died, the 30-year old founder was the only one who had the passwords to the digital wallets that contained $180 million in crypto.His death forced the closure of QuadrigaCX which had about 115,000 users at the time. The online rumors have circulated since speculating that Cotten faked his death and wanted to take all of the funds but there was no evidence of such a scheme has been revealed in the same year when he died. Back on Friday, the legal team represents the users of the platform in the bankruptcy proceedings sent a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and they demand and exhumation and post-mortem autopsy which was performed on his body ‘’to confirm both its identity and the cause of death.’’They explained that the information revealed during the proceedings ‘’further highlight the need for certainty around the question of Whether Mr. Cotten is in fact deceased.’’ At the start of this year, a report by the auditor Ernst and Young found major problems in how the exchange was managed including the fact that Cotten created a few accounts on the platform under fake names that have been used to trade on the exchange. It was also found that the funds were transferred to Cotten personally and to other parties as well.The auditor managed to get back about $33 million Canadian dollars in missing funds. It also confirmed in August that it was aware of the ‘’four independent active law enforcement or regulatory reviews in progress’’ which were related to the demise of the platform which includes the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In November 2017, we saw the game CryptoKitties going viral in the blockchain news at the time - introducing the concept of non-fungible tokens in the minds of developers and investors in the crypto community. Still, 2019 seems to be the year when these tokens (known as NFTs) have gained mainstream attention. In the latest updates, we can see that Microsoft's blockchain based cloud platform Azure released its own non-fungible programs named "Azure Heroes" with the main aim of rewarding its developer community.Designed to empower technical practitioners of all backgrounds, Azure Heroes is a program which has a clear objective and aims to create a tool that will inspire the community to learn, coach and build on Azure while promoting healthy and inclusive behaviour.What's interesting as the latest Ethereum news show is that the issuance and transactions of "Badger" collectibles will be carried out on the Ethereum network and would therefore allow winners to hold them as NFTs. The tokens were created in partnership with the platform Enjin - one that caters to the video game industry.In order to earn one of these Badgers as part of the Azure Heroes initiative, developers must be first nominated (either by themselves or the community) and selected by the community based on their performance. Winners of Badgers will then be provided with a QR code that can be used to redeem their Badgers via their Enjin wallet - where it can be transferred to any other NFT-compatible Ethereum address.All of this shows that NFTs can be used in a lot of industries and fields. The diversification of use cases of NFTs is growing especially with the case multi-layer blockchains. NFTs can literally signify ownership of high value or sensitive physical, illiquid assets such as artworks or real estate.Through Azure Heroes, Microsoft has made a lot of pioneering efforts toward blockchain adoption. In May 2019, the company also unveiled its Azure Blockchain Services suite which allows for the formation, management and governance of consortium blockchain networks.

“Azure is locked in a battle to differentiate itself with AWS, Oracle, and Heroku among others. If nothing else, this creates visibility and further engages Azure's existing communities," the director at the CryptoAssets Institute Ethan Pierse recently said.

The owner of the major social media app TikTok, ByteDance, is apparently launching a joint venture with the state owned Chinese media group and ThePaper.cn operator Shanghai Donfang Newspaper in order to develop business models which will include blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). The reports about the TikTok owner were first issued on Bloomberg.

"A unit of ByteDance has 49% of the new firm, which has registered capital of 10 million yuan ($1.4 million); Shanghai Dongfang Newspaper Co. owns the rest, according to a statement on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, an official business registration website," the publication wrote.

As they show, the joint venture was launched in the capital of eastern China - specifically the Shandong province Jinan - on December 10. There was a registered capital of 10 million yuan ($1.43 million) where ByteDance owns 49% and the rest of the venture is owned by the Chinese media group.Meanwhile, TikTok is a giant and a social network with more than 500 million monthly active users. As such, it is the second most downloaded app in the Apple App Store in the United States. The short video feed is completely managed by a purpose-built AI which predicts and delivers content that the user will likely prefer.Even though it is still not clear how the TikTok owner ByteDance could benefit from the blockchain technology, a possible use case shows that the collaboration might extend to digital media data verification. For instance, the US law enforcement Axon Enterprise aims to test blockchain for its body cameras and fight deepfake AI-generated videos.Meanwhile, recent reports in the blockchain news today show that the technology is rapidly maturing and seeing wide adoption in China. As we reported before, earlier this month the Bank of China issued 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in blockchain financial bonds as reports showed. China is also expected to conduct the first real world test of its central bank digital currency in the near future.All in all, TikTok is a major player and since it taps into a technology like blockchain, we can expect many new developments and potential use cases for the tech that is backing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in the future.