Snoop Dogg, the famous rapper has more lately reinvented himself as an investor, playing a role in specialist cannabis venture capital firm Casa Verde Capital.

Snoop, who was born Calvin Broadus, said the deal was part of his European investment strategy.

"I've been looking for an opportunity to expand my tech investment portfolio to Europe and seeing the way Klarna operates and how they challenge the status quo, I think it’s a match made in heaven. I’m very excited about this partnership,” he said.

As well as investing in the company, Snoop will also be the face of a campaign, “Get Smoooth” which aims to promote the benefits of using Klarna to eliminate friction when making payments.

Klarna’s chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski said: “Snoop is not only a rap legend, but also a successful businessman, with a genuine interest in tech, retail and e-commerce. He has a great understanding of consumer behaviour and is exceptional when it comes to branding and marketing.”

He said the partnership: “Opens new doors to Klarna as we grow and develop as a company.”

Snoop's cannabis venture capital firm Casa Verde recently invested $10m in UK biopharmaceutical business Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies (OCT).

Other ventures include a VH1 cooking show with Martha Stewart called Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party and he has also dabbled in acting, directing and film directing. 

Avaloq, the international fintech leader, has doubled the size of its London office to cater for strong growth in the UK driven by demand for its Software as a Service (SaaS) and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) solutions among UK private banks and wealth managers. The firm’s new City of London office comes after the London team has already doubled in size over the past year and provides sufficient space for further growth. 

Avaloq has successfully capitalised on the need for UK wealth managers and private banks to deliver better client experiences, cost-effectively meet new compliance requirements such as the Second Payment Services Directive, and improve competitiveness. The firm, whose software, SaaS and BPaaS solutions underpin in excess of CHF 4 trillion globally, recently announced wealth manager Smith & Williamson as its latest UK client, joining Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management and Coutts, among others.

The London office move is part of an expansion drive by Avaloq across both its Edinburgh and London sites as the firm targets growth in the UK. The expansion and investment in London complements similar growth at Avaloq’s Research & Development facility in Edinburgh, one of three R&D centres globally, which has seen staff numbers increase by more than 50% over the past year. In total, Avaloq currently employs around 150 staff in the UK, 5% of its global workforce.

Jonathan Davis, UK Managing Director at Avaloq, said: “We see excellent opportunities in the UK and it is a core investment market for us. The mature wealth management, private banking and wider banking sector is undergoing profound change, looking to digitise quickly and remain competitive in a rapidly changing business world. Technology such as the Avaloq Banking Suite can transform how institutions run both back- and front-office operations, and how they can incorporate new functions and products into their service proposition seamlessly.

“London is not only one of the world’s major financial centres, it is also a leading fintech hub and we are intent on growing our UK business. The London team works closely with our development centre in Edinburgh, with the London office focused on sales and implementation, and this drive reflects our ambitions in the UK as well as Europe.”

PrePay Solutions (PPS), Europe's leading digital banking and payments provider, has officially partnered with USA- based global payout processor, PayQuicker. The partnership represents continued PPS growth in the support of payroll management programmes and PayQuicker’s commitment to local currency Corporate Payout Solutions across the globe.

Celebrating 10 years as a leading processor for global corporate payouts, PayQuicker’s strategic partnership with PPS strengthens its Instant Payments™ capabilities across Europe and the UK with secure and compliant local currency payouts while reducing costly cross-border fees.

PPS’s solution enables PayQuicker to seamlessly pay out rewards, incentives and commissions for its clients’ employees located across UK and Europe. Payment recipients will be provided with a receiving account number and client branded prepaid contactless Mastercard, enabling them to use their payments for immediate card purchases, ATM cash access or to transfer funds to their other bank accounts.

Ray Brash, CEO of PrePay Solutions, said: “Building on our existing support network of payroll management programmes, this partnership further strengthens our geographical footprint across the UK and EU regions. PayQuicker is an incredibly reputable company, technologically mature and has a great understanding of the payments market. We look forward to seeing how this partnership continues to complement one another, reinforcing our position as one of the leading Mastercard issuers.” 

Paul Beldham, CEO of  PayQuicker, commented: "PrePay Solutions (PPS) is the ideal partner for our UK and EU local currency payout expansion. Their extensive knowledge of regulation and compliance provides our clients a reliable and compliant payment solution. PPS’s advanced processing platform along with their successful tenure managing Mastercard programs and bank out solutions enables us to meet our clients needs across global markets with confidence. We’re looking forward to our future with PPS and hope to expand our programme to other geographical regions with their support.”

Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX), the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today announced that the newly unveiled EdgeBoard, Baidu's edge acceleration computing solution is enabled by Xilinx. The EdgeBoard is a turn-key solution which is available fully configured directly from Baidu. It can also be configured and customized as part of the Baidu Brain AI Hardware Platform initiative, developed to deliver proven market-specific technologies to the industry so that companies can quickly adopt and deploy them for edge-specific applications.

CryptoCompare, the global cryptocurrency market data provider, today published its December 2018 Exchange Review, offering institutional and retail investors insights into the cryptocurrency exchange industry.

The December Monthly Review provides an overview of current exchange market concentrations as well as a monthly evaluation of how spot volumes vs futures volumes have developed historically, including both crypto exchanges (BitMex and BitflyerFX) and traditional exchanges (CBOE and CME). We have also conducted an order book analysis which aims to highlight the most stable exchanges.

The complete December Exchange Review can be found here.

Highlights include: 

•  The top 10 exchanges represented more than 60% of total spot market volume in December. This has not changed significantly in recent months.

• The proportion of futures trading volume increased from 22% in November to 28% in December. BitMex XBT perpetual futures volumes increased 17.7% in December while XBTUSD futures of CME and CBOE decreased 45.5% and 48.0% respectively since November. Regulated exchanges (CME and CBOE) represented only 2.88% of the total crypto futures market in December

• Trading volume from exchanges that offer fiat pairs decreased by 40% in December while crypto to crypto exchange volume decreased by 7.7%. Crypto to crypto exchanges represented three quarters of spot volume in December. However, the majority of exchanges offer fiat to crypto trading

• Stable Coins:  Tether (USDT) continues to represent the majority of Bitcoin trading into fiat or stable coins at 65% of total monthly volume in December. In December, the proportion of Bitcoin trading into Tether increased 16.5% since November. Pairs trading from USDT represent the largest markets for stable coins with PAX representing the majority of trading volume in December at 75% of total monthly volume. USDT trading into PAX increased 70% since the previous month.

• Top Exchange Volumes:  Binance was the top exchange in December by total monthly volume, followed by OKEX and ZB. Total monthly trading volume among the top 10 exchanges dropped 7.5% on average since November. Binance, OKEX and ZB dropped 13%, 5% and 19% respectively while exchanges BitZ and IDAX contrastingly experienced a 57% and 9% increase in trading volume respectively.

• Order Book Analysis: Among top exchanges, average order book depth down for their top 5 markets have fallen steadily, decreasing 22% since November. This is consistent with the bearish trend we have witnessed over the last few months. Bitfinex, Kraken and Bitstamp maintained the most stable markets in December, while exchanges CoinBene, Bitforex, IDAX showed thin markets combined with high volumes

• In December, three new exchanges (CryptoExchangeWS, XS2, and SafeCoin) were added to CryptoCompare

Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare, said: “We are delighted to see increasing levels of interest in our monthly crypto exchange review, from both retail and institutional investors. There is a clear appetite for reliable and accurate data that can be trusted as the basis for investment decisions and we pride ourselves in acting as gatekeeper for clean crypto market data.”

The Methodology: CryptoCompare’s Monthly Exchange Review evaluates the consistency and quality of exchange data, which is incorporated into CryptoCompare’s real-time Aggregate Index Methodology (the CCCAGG), used to calculate the best price estimation of cryptocurrency pairs traded across global exchanges. It aggregates transactional data from more than 70 exchanges using a 24-hour volume weighted average for every cryptocurrency pair. Constituent CCCAGG exchanges are reviewed and amended each month to ensure that the most representative and reliable market data is used in CCCAGG pair pricing calculations.

After seven years of perfecting its IT workforce training model, Creating IT Futures is doubling the reach of its free IT-Ready career program. With classes now available in seven cities, IT-Ready trains, certifies and places unemployed and under-employed adults in their first jobs in the information technology (IT) field.

With a shortage of qualified workers, the IT industry has more than a half-million jobs open in America. Thousands of these jobs are in helpdesk technician or software testing roles, making double the national wage. IT-Ready prepares adults for these roles in just eight weeks with full-time training. No previous experience is necessary and only a high school diploma or GED is required. 

Students can apply to one of the 25 IT-Ready classes this year in Charlotte, NC; Chicago; Minneapolis – St. Paul; Phoenix; Portland, OR; San Antonio and San Diego at https://www.creatingitfutures.org/it-ready/apply-to-it-ready. The full-time classroom-based courses are underwritten by grants and financial donations, so that students can attend classes for free. 

"With financial support from major organizations such as Boeing, Cognizant U.S. Foundation, CompTIA and TEKsystems, and local partnerships with Goodwill Industries, Jewish Family & Children's Service, Urban League, WorkSource and Wounded Warrior Project, among many others, we're able to double our number of classes this year," said Charles Eaton, CEO of Creating IT Futures. "The tech industry needs more workers, and more workers need more opportunities. America has the people to fill many of these tech jobs; they just need the right training. With IT-Ready, we're putting hard-working adults back into the workforce where they can earn family-sustaining wages and drive the economic growth of this country." 

Creating IT Futures also is helping to diversify the tech industry and open career doors to a wider demographic. Populations that traditionally have been under-represented in the IT workforce, such as women, people of color and veterans, are encouraged to apply. By working with dozens of local employer partners, Creating IT Futures places about 86% of its graduates into full-time employment in the tech industry.

Students work toward CompTIA A+ certification in the IT-Ready Technical Support class, and three software testing certifications in the IT-Ready QA class. IT-Ready students receive free tuition, books and learning materials, more than 240 hours of classroom and hands-on tech and soft skills training, and certification vouchers. Classes run from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. every weekday for eight weeks. 

Beyond recruiting for participants for IT-Ready training, Creating IT Futures is looking for businesses to consider the resumes of certified IT-Ready graduates and interview qualified candidates for entry-level IT positions. Interested employers can contact the Creating IT Futures workforce solutions manager that most closely matches their location by visiting https://www.creatingitfutures.org/hire/hire-overview. 

 Cog, maker of the world's most secure IoT security solutions, today announced the company has been accepted into the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) IoT Security Working Group. 

The GSA IoT Security Working Group was established to address end-to-end issues in IoT Security. It is comprised of various IoT ecosystem security stakeholders including chipset vendors, platform companies, cloud vendors and service providers. The goal is to promote best practices on IoT Security, share information on threats and attacks, define security requirements and inform standards bodies. It is also an opportunity for GSA members and partners to influence the requirements for security that get passed to all participants in the value and supply chains.

"We're facing multiple factors that contribute to the ever increasing IoT threats and need to work with companies big and small that best understand this evolving environment and will be collaborating on establishing a common ground for security requirements and approach that benefits all players in the IoT ecosystem," said Shrikant Lohokare, Ph.D., Global Vice President & Executive Director, GSA. "We selected Cog based on their knowledge and experience of architectures and best security practices that will contribute to protecting the growing IoT industry."

Cog's D4 Secure platform leverages modularity via virtualization to isolate critical functions and services on connected devices. This approach proactively secures IoT devices by reducing the attack surface and increases reliability by eliminating single points of failure. The solution embeds the additional security features of double encryption, non-bypassable VPNs, nested VPNs, and secure boot to protect the kernel, data, and network on the device. The system can scale linearly and infinitely, thus reducing bottlenecks and preserving performance. All of this is available for the IoT, mobile and gateway commercial markets with the flexibility to run any and all applications effectively and securely.  

"What a great opportunity to collaborate and learn with the best in the industry," said Carl Nerup, Cog Chief Marketing Officer. "While IoT matures, so do the threats and attacks that impact consumers and business globally. We are honored to be a part of this working group and look forward to joining forces to address the challenges that lie ahead." 

Better Mortgage, one of the leading digital mortgage lenders in the U.S., today announced that it has launched a mortgage refinance program called Shutdown Relief Emergency Refi that allows federal employees to tap into their home equity for living expenses and delays loan payments for impacted federal government employees for up to 30 days after the end of the furlough.

The program is designed for federal employees to be able to use the equity in their home to live on during this period of government shutdown when they are either furloughed or working without pay. Not only will it help by delaying loan payments until the shutdown is over, it can also provide the cash-flow needed for them to cover their other expenses.

• The program is open to federal government workers impacted by the government shutdown in the 27 states and Washington D.C. where Better is available
• Better will allow impacted borrowers to delay all loan payments without penalty for up to 30 days after the furlough ends 
• Complete information on the program, including program details, borrower qualification criteria and exclusions can be found at http://www.better.com/shutdownrelief

"We are dedicated to helping all of those federal employees impacted by the current shutdown," said Vishal Garg, co-founder and CEO, Better Mortgage. "By delaying their mortgage payments and tapping into the equity in their home, we are providing them the added flexibility of covering their normal monthly expenses and minimizing the financial disruption to their lives until the shutdown has ended."

Better puts the power back into home buyers' hands with pre-approvals in as little as three-minute, honest rate quotes and on-time closings, backed by the Better Price Guarantee.

"The great thing about cutting-edge financial technology is that customer-first companies like Better can be nimble and respond to consumer needs with innovations like the Shutdown Relief Emergency Refi program way faster than any large bank," said Raj Date, the Managing Partner of venture investment firm Fenway Summer and an advisor to and investor in Better Mortgage. Date, who led the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its early days, went on to say that "at CFPB and the Treasury Department, I worked with thousands of dedicated government employees who — despite being smart, dedicated, and responsible — might have been really financially stressed by having their paychecks go to zero without any warning or fault of their own. So, I appreciate how valuable this program would have been and I am thrilled to see it launched now."

R3 has launched Corda Network, the underlying, open shared blockchain network linking participants using Corda.