14 Jun
0
The growth of Fintech
When technology put its fingers in the financial services, Fintech was born. And now with this word we refer to mobile payment, transfers, fundraising and , of course, cryptocurrencies!
Fintech is a very revolutionary sector which has allowed the development different new companies through its technology support. It gave impulse to the whole financial industry because of its technological solution which simplifies complicated mechanisms.
As always, traditional player felt threatened by it; but its development has ben unstoppable and experts usually call it … Future.
Our good friend of 16best.net provided us an awesome infographic which explains some incredible facts on the incredible growth of fintech in the last couple of decades.
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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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26 Aug
0
Banks want to issue their digital currencies
A few international banks want to issue their digital currencies soon.
According to a recent report, those banks include UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Banco Santander.
These four banks, also members of the R3 Blockchain Consortium, are working together with ICAP, a UK e-broker and aim at developing a cheaper way to do money transfers using digital currencies.
This banking group didn’t make an official announcement yet, but the new cryptocurrencies are expected to be available in 2018.
Speaking about the pros of using digital currencies, Banco Santander commented that the traditional banking system makes it hard for banks to cooperate.
To avoid this problem, banks could use the blockchain to transfer funds between wallets within a couple of minutes.
Those banks want to issue their digital currencies to implement the same process that happens through the blockchain into the traditional system.
To do so, they are working to create their cryptocurrencies to be used only within their network and banks will be miners that validate and store transactions on a blockchain.
According to Oliver Wyman, this system can save banks between $65-$80 billion a year.
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5 Jul
0
Russian Banks work on a Blockchain Unit
Russian Banks work on a Blockchain Unit
A few days ago Russian Banks and public institutions revealed that they will create a unit that aims at studying blockchain applications.
Announced on July 1st, this private consortium includes QIWI, B&N Bank, Khanty-Mansiysk Otkritie Bank, Tinkoff Bank, MDM Bank, and Accenture.
The project was announced during the 25th International Financial Congress in St. Petersburg, hosted by the Russian Central Bank.
This unit focuses on the development of “blockchain proofs-of-concept, work on joint research and policy outreach, and the creation of technology standards”.
The idea for this project came when the QIWI revealed its hope for creating the so-called “Russia’s R3CEV”, a group of financial services focused on the distributed ledger.
CEO Sergey Solonin explained:
“I’m convinced that the Consortium, which brought together the Russia’s largest financial company, is able to become an effective platform for multilateral cooperation in exploration, launching innovations and their implementations in financial services.”
Bank of Russia works on the Blockchain
Bank of Russia is not new to an involvement with the Blockchain, in fact,
A few months ago Olga Skorobogatova of Bank of Russia explained that “the development of modern financial markets is inseparable from the development of financial technology”, when the bank revealed his purpose to start studying the distributed ledger back in February 2016.
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11 May
0
Bitcoin, the trust chain that banks and governments cannot corrupt
Bitcoin is a trustless money
For centuries the use of money evolved according to available technologies and society needs. Bitcoin is a currency and each currency is information.
The information must be exchanged, only this way it can be recognized and associated with a value, especially in today’s world drawn as a network.
How trust can be betrayed
Problems arise when – while exchanging information – there are intermediaries who betray the trust, for example:
1 .central banks, if it inflates the currency (es. quantitative easing, or a tool to inject more liquidity into the market in order to indirectly encourage households and consumer businesses);
2. banks, if they fail, taking away our funds on current accounts (see bail-in or, in case of failure, no longer pays the state, but shareholders , creditors and depositors);
3. governments, if it confiscates assets or block transfers (Amato government in ’92) ;
4. national currency, if it is accepted everywhere (or if it is excluded from a stronger system, for example euro ) ;
5. privacy, if it is violated during the online shopping;
Whoever believes in a cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, knows that history (Argentina, Cyprus, Greece, etc.) has already shown that it is not possible to have confidence in all these linked subjects, because each one carries its own interests.
A centralized entity can actually change, omit or delete any data that passes through its control, since in these entities work people that have a corruptible nature.
What is the “pre-trust” ?
Now, not only friction, costs and transaction times can be reduced, but corruption can be eliminated too. It is virtually impossible to corrupt the ledger: you cannot write on it, and you cannot change what other people write on it: it is no longer a human job.
So, if there is no trust, to have a secure system we need a network that can perform an action associated with a cost. Since you don’t know the other person you are exchanging the value with you have to “pre-trust” in 3 basic elements: mathematicians, economists, technicians.
1. Mathematicians, with the asymmetric encryption, or the concept of public and private keys, you need to certify who is the true owner of the property;
2. Technicians, with the network that reaches consensus through the “proof-of-work” system, and valid the transactions before they are permanently written onto the blockchain, so it is no longer possible to repeat the processing fraudulently (thus solving the problem of double spending)
3. Economists, because of the incentive to earn money with bitcoin. For these reasons a public blockchain cannot live without the use of bitcoin if we want to have its maximum security .
All the above systems are designed to work together without the need for intermediaries.
Now people are starting to use cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, as a method of payment and at the same time entities that accept it are spreading quickly.
On CoinMap you can see the map of all the places where these exchanges take place. And, what is the infrastructure that supports this exchange? The blockchain.
Blockchain, the infrastructure that runs bitcoin
The blockchain – to define it in simple terms – is a timestamp, so it is only a consequence. The important thing is the protocol, the safe encryption with which transactions are signed.
It is not important the account balance, but how reliable is that publicly available data.
So far, paradoxically, it relied on the piece of paper in the hands of anyone. But the paper documents are now easily forged, to be trusted more if we read the declaration of property on blockchain .
Lavoiser stated: “Nothing is created, nothing is lost , everything is transformed .”
But it was a law that applies only to the material world . For the digital world , in blockchain format , the new law is : “Everything is created , nothing is lost , nothing can be changed.”
This article was originally written by Massimo Chiriatti on Startup Italia.
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