Venezeula Petro gets 30% off crude. Telegram closes largest ever ICO. Zcash mining disrupted. Ethereum recovery fork - Weekly Recap 7 May

Alibaba is trialing a blockchain platform for supply chain tracking with Fonterra, one of the worlds largest Dairy exporters.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has partnered with the Nasdaq stock exchange to roll out market surveillance technology in an effort to minimise market manipulation.

UNICEF has launched a website with an in-built Cryptocurrency miner to raise funds for humanitarian aid. Users donate their CPU power by simply visiting the website.

Venezuela is reportedly offering India a 30% discount on crude oil purchases if payment is made in Venezuela’s cryptocurrency, The Petro.

ANZ and IBM have developed and tested a proof of concept to improve the reconciliation process between brokers and insurers in the insurance industry.

Goldman Sachs has confirmed that it will be launching a Bitcoin trading desk.

Telegram has completed the largest ever ICO, raising $1.6bn in private sales from less than 200 accredited investors. They have chosen to close the ICO early before going to the public.

BMW, Ford & GM have formed a blockchain coalition for the auto industry. It aims to create common standards and APIs to enable payments and data-sharing between cars.

Zcash is the latest cryptocurrency to have an ASIC miner developed by Bitmain, rendering GPU mining uncompetitive. Monero recently conducted a hard fork to make Bitmain’s miners useless, while Ethereum is debating whether to do the same.

Chinese exchange Huobi plans to launch a billion dollar blockchain fund in the Hainan province; China’s latest special economic zone.

Ethereum is in the midst of another debate over recovery forks. The last time this happened the chain split into two, Ethereum Classic and Ethereum. The debate raises issues of decentralisation, immutability and governance. Here's an interesting video which covers the debate.