9 Sep
0
Bank of England Blockchain: how to explore fintech
A few days ago it was revealed that Bank of England Blockchain project is looking for more ways to study the distributed ledger.
During a speech in London, Victoria Cleland of Bank of England explained that the central bank is exploring the financial technology, creating a startup accelerator to help financial projects.
Cleland commented:
“Blockchain is still in its infancy, and there are numerous questions that need exploring. The Bank has already undertaken a proof-of-concept using this technology and we are looking for new opportunities through our FinTech accelerator.”
Earlier this year, Bank of England revelaed its project to create a new digital currency, to be called RScoin, projected by the University College of London.
A similar idea was developed by the Bank of Canada, who aims at creating a new cryptocurrency called CadCoin, as well as the Dutch Central Bank that planned to develop a new blockchain called “DNBCoin”.
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9 Sep
0
Blockchain use explained with Google Docs
To explain how the blockchain use to the newbies it is easier to compare its functionality to Google Docs, the popular document tools I’m using to write this article.
“The Business of Blockchain” author, William Mougayar, in fact, said that the two tools have something in common and this comparison is very useful to explain the blockchain use.
Everyday you can find new use cases of the distributed ledger and the more people understand how it works, the more we will see an improvement in this revolutionary technology.
Who invented the blockchain didn’t probably imagine all of its possible applications, which is the reason why nowadays there are more and more experts with a deep knowledge in a particular side of the technology.
But, the first step is having a good expertise in the blockchain use.
Blockchain Use is similar to Google Docs
The blockchain is similar to a database, but the ledger doesn’t revolution databases themselves, but how they get synchronized, explained Mougayar in his article appeared on Coindesk.
If two banks need to update their own account balances, they need to spend a lot of time and energy to coordinate, synchronize and ensure that each transaction works correctly.
In this case, money is held by the sender until it is received by the beneficiary.
But with the blockchain, this process changes a lot because there is only a single ledger and not two separate databases.
This is similar to Google Docs: what happens when you share a document and users need to edit it?
With traditional text editors users need to transfer the documents back and forth, losing time, energy and likely losing track of the versions.
With Google Docs, instead, all the users involved have access to the same document at the same time, and that document together with the updates are always visible real-time to each of them.
The same thing happens with the Blockchain compared to traditional ledgers.
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8 Sep
0
Hong Kong Central Bank will test Blockchain
Yesterday it was revealed that Hong Kong Central bank will test Blockchain and distributed ledger applications.
The HK bank, in fact, wants to open a new innovative lab to study it, thanks to the funds received from the government to improve its technology standards.
To do so, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is working on this program with the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI).
“Neutral ground” Hong Kong central bank will test blockchain
In a statement, the HKMA defined their hub is a neutral ground for testing this financial technology.
HKMA chief executive Norman Chan – during a speech he gave at the Treasury Market Summit 2016 – commented that Hong Kong was not moving enough to exploit the FinTech revolution.
“There is also a quite commonly-held perception that the development of Fintech in the financial services sector in Hong Kong has been slow. I do not subscribe to this view, at least insofar as the banking sector is concerned.”
In the next weeks HKMA will reveal more details and additional projects that will involve the hub: testing solutions that require substantial computing resources; discussions between regulators, incumbents and startups and more.
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6 Sep
0
Bitcoin as Money recognized in Florida
Florida Senator wants to regulate bitcoin as money in the U.S.A. state.
Senator Dorothy Hukill, in fact, explained that the draft legislation aims at protecting users and startups.
Earlier this year bitcoin was defined as a property during a criminal case judged in Florida itself.
Now Hukill, Republican senator of Florida and member of the Finance & Tax Committee, commented that legislation details still have to be discussed.
These were her words:
“I think you have to recognize it at some level, so you can legislate and protect your constituents. Then you have to figure out what you recognize it as and how you regulate it.”
While Hukill cannot define an exact date, her office suggested the bill will be submitted to the Florida Senate by the end of 2016.
As the legislative session doesn’t begin until March and with the upcoming elections, bills have to wait until November.
Hukill also explained that she will look for industry stakeholders’ feedback, but that process cannot start if the bill is not well defined.
Bitcoin as Money around the world
California, North Carolina and New Jersey and several other states tried to regulate bitcoin.
“If we can fit it under our current law, where it’s actually money and can be used legitimately so we’re not chasing people away, that’s what we’re looking to do,” explained the senator.
Hukill explained that the bill she proposed is well needed also due to the growing interest in bitcoin, as a few shops in Florida started to accept the digital currency as a method of payment.
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5 Sep
0
Why governments should embrace the Blockchain
William Mougayar, author of “The Business Blockchain” and member of the Ethereum Foundation, explains why governments should embrace the blockchain.
A few days ago we published an article where ICAP suggested on why banks must adopt digital currencies; today we want to talk about this new important opinion by Mougayar, who is convinced that the distributed ledger could improve government services.
Government services, in fact, are one of the most important and revolutionary use cases for this technology , so it is not a surprise that governments are working to develop their own blockchain-based applications.
During this year several cities and governmental institutions made their own plans for the ledger.
Singapore, Delaware, Estonia, Georgia, Ghana, Sweden, Switzerland, UK are just a few of many countries that developed a project related to the blockchain.
So, if your government is not working on the blockchain, they should, explained Mougayar.
As the blockchain is an early stage technology, it is easier to implement solutions at smaller scales.
How governments should embrace the Blockchain
What can your government do with the blockchain? There are four main areas:
- Verification: licenses, proofs of records, transactions, processes or events.
- Movement of assets. E.g. Transferring money from one person/entity to another.
- Ownerships: the blockchain is a perfect ledger to custody any asset.
- Blockchain can be used to give e-identities to its citizens, enabling a safer kind of voting.
So, government leaders should:
- Study the blockchain and explore its potential.
- Let people develop a blockchain strategy.
- Start experimenting with blockchain technology
- Develop new ideas to improve the quality of life of the citizens
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3 Sep
0
Visa will test the Blockchain
Visa will test the Blockchain
London payment giant Visa will test the blockchain to improve interbank payments.
In fact, Visa Europe Collab announced today that its innovation lab started to test the distributed ledger with BTL Group.
Together the companies will try to explore how the blockchain and smart contracts can be useful for transactions among banks.
In the press release, co-founder of Visa Europe Collab, Hendrik Kleinsmiede, explained that the two partners wants European banks to join their program to use the technology for live payments.
“We’ll work closely together on the development and implementation of the PoC, ensuring that all participants come away with new knowledge and insight into the role that the blockchain could play in interbank settlements in the future.”
According to an article published on the Financial Times, Visa and BTL will try to finish the project within 100 days.
This is not the first project that sees Visa Europe Collab using the blockchain.
In July, Visa revealed a micropayments trial and a project to extend the reach of traditional payments.
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1 Sep
0
Microsoft Smart Contracts: a working group to improve security
Today the tech giant announced it is working on a project to improve Microsoft smart contracts security.
Called Kinakuta, this working group aims at making it easier for companies to use and develop smart contracts based on the blockchain.
Even if more and more businesses are increasingly expressing interest in blockchain based smart contracts, concerns about this kind of use case grew after the DAO collapse.
Since then, Microsoft decided to improve smart contracts security to avoid further issues in the future.
Marley Gray, Microsoft’s director of business development and strategy, in fact, believes that their project could reduce future risks.
“We feel there’s a huge opportunity here to involve the community. Kinakuta is the community building around Microsoft best practices and elsewhere, to collect best practices and tools and involve developers in creating these best practices.”
Gray explained that there are 35 developers and companies that the company decided to call for the Microsoft Smart Contracts group. These include the Ethereum Foundation, R3CEV and BlockApps.
Vitalik Buterin on Microsoft Smart Contracts
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Creator, commented that he doesn’t believe that this new project could necessarily stop future collapses like DAO.
“There will be further bugs and we will learn further lessons,” he explained in a blog post.
Microsoft Smart Contracts: a whitepaper with Harvard
Previously, Microsoft released a research realized with Harvard that explained how ethereum smart contracts will work.
This whitepaper proposes a method called “formal verification”, or the way to prove the correctness of a smart contract; also it proposes two tools to help verify smart contracts: Solidity and EVM.
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31 Aug
0
Who are the new Hyperledger Blockchain Project members?
Tech giant Samsung is among the new Hyperledger Blockchain Project members announced today.
Hyperledger Blockchain members
Together with Samsung there are 16 other new companies joining the project, including Cloud Security Alliance, Energy Blockchain Laboratory, Global Peersafe Technology Corp., Inuit Foundation – University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” Intuit, Investrata Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, iRootech Technology, MIRACL UK Limited, Netki, Nxt Foundation, Orange Magic Cube, Sany, Tai Cloud Corp., Union Mobile Pay E-Commerce, Wutongtree and Yunphant Blockchain.
Hyperledger Blockchain Project’s Goal
Hypederleger is a collaborative effort started by the Linux Foundation to study the blockchain aiming at supporting worldwide business transactions to improve many aspects of their performance and reliability.
Since its beginning back in early 2016, Hyperledger started accepting proposals for codebases.
One of the first was called “Fabric”, a codebase that united works by Digital Asset Holdings, Blockstream and IBM.
To date, almost 100 organizations joined the Hyperledger Blockchain Project members; and more companies will be added by the end of 2016.
Hyperledger executive director, Brian Behlendorf, commented:
“There’s been a tremendous response to our vision for creating an open community for blockchain technology and we’re proud to be celebrating this member milestone. At a growth rate of nearly two new members joining per week, I look forward to working with this growing community to further our open blockchain development efforts”.
Earlier this month, Airbus joined the project too, together with Hitachi, Microsoft, Red Hat, and more.
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30 Aug
0
Europe Blockchain: € 1m to study the distributed ledger
The European Parliament might start to study the blockchain technology with a task force of € 1m.
A member of the European Parliament, in fact, suggested to create a program focused on studying digital currencies and the distributed ledger.
Europe Blockchain: a legislative objective
This news comes a few months after the legislative arm of the European Union approved a task force proposed previously this year by Jakob von Weizsäcker.
Von Weisäcker now asks for financial support to fund the program.
He explained that the task force should be organized in order to position the European Commission at the forefront of an innovative technology.
“This pilot project aims at creating a Task Force, staffed with regulatory and technical experts, in order to build up technical expertise, regulators capacity and develop use cases, especially for governmental applications, in the field of distributed ledger technology (DLT) as proposed in the Resolution of the European Parliament on virtual currencies.”
The task force project is one of the most important legislative efforts that came from Europe about the blockchain.
“Too early hard regulatory measures would stifle innovation and hamper its potential. Waiting too long might lead to a materialization of systemic risks,” commented Von Weisäcker.
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30 Aug
0
Why Banks must adopt Digital Currency
Why Banks Must Adopt Digital Currency
Financial Institution ICAP explained why banks must adopt digital currency in the near future.
Recently a group of banks announced their project to build a private blockchain and create a new digital currency to be used within financial institutions with the goal of improving fund transfers and reducing costs.
Called the “Utility Settlement Coin”, this program was created by Clearmatics and tested by UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, and Banco Santander.
This consortium is also participated by ICAP, but the company decided to stand apart from this project for now, because a new settlement system based on a cryptocurrency that works in a private blockchain could be disruptive for their business.
ICAP, in fact, is an electronic dealer broker and provider of post trade risk services, carrying out transactions for financial institutions and private individuals, so exactly the kind of infrastructure that the USC might impact.
But, ICAP doesn’t want to go against modernity and innovation so it wants to let people understand how a proprietary distributed network should be adopted. Also, ICAP said it might join the project later.
ICAP Michael McFadgen explained to Coindesk:
“A long-term vision for market infrastructure based on distributed ledgers is that it has some common layers that the market uses widely. One of those layers is hopefully the Utility Settlement Coin. We will likely be building on top of that.”
A private Blockchain
The Utility Settlement Coin works on a blockchain called “Decentralized Clearing Network” and it aims at providing easier access to central bank-issued cash.
ICAP also announced they completed a test with startup Axoni to convert trade data from banks, so it could be processed on a private blockchain, but this program is not overlapping with with the USC one.
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