3 Mar
0
Visa is working on a secure and scalable Blockchain
The American multinational financial services corporation Visa annonuced its “secure and scalable” blockchain project.
To do so, Visa opened a position for software engineers who have to “explore and develop technologies that are critical to the payments industry in the future”, as stated in the job advertisement.
Job Description
The researches will cover three key areas: data analytics, security and future of payments, so the team will work on develop a sort of proof-of-concept for the Visa blockchain network.
“Working on Future of Payment research at Visa is a unique opportunity at a time when the payments industry is undergoing a digital transformation with data as a critical differentiator. We offer you the opportunity to be at the center of innovation in the payments industry and unleash the power Visa technologies and massive data in innovating the future of payment concept.”
The perfect candidates must have programming experience, cryptography and “competency in data structures, algorithms and software design optimized for building highly distributed and parallelized systems”.
Visa partners with Chain
Some months ago, Chain raised $30 million in a new venture funding, drawing funds from some financial companies including Visa.
Chain is a a blockchain developer platform that serves an enterprise market.
The blockchain is no longer a choice
Previously, on December 2015, Visa Europe stated that “the blockchain is no longer a choice”.
In an interesting blog post entitled “Why 2015 was the year of payments”, in fact, they commented on financial technologies including the subject of digital currencies, by saying:
“2015 has turned blockchain into something the industry has to live with. It is no longer a choice anymore. Recent news speculating about the identity of its creator and the formalisation of virtual money as a commodity just makes it more real than ever before.”
To know more about Visa perspective on the blockchain, you can read the full post here.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
2 Mar
0
ISITC Survey Reveals Financial Industry focus on the Blockchain
On March 1st, 2016, ISITC, the International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication, published the results of its annual survey about the financial services progress which it gives also a specific forecast on how the industry will be during the current year.
This annual survey polled 45 members who work in several sectors within the financial industries.The survey revealed that 62% of companies want to invest in technology with a lot of interest in blockchain and cybersecurity technology and 55% of those companies are studying or already developing solutions based on blockchain technology.
Also 74% of those companies have concrete plans to invest in cybersecurity by the end of 2016/17, up from 57% in the 2015 survey.
Interesting facts about the 2016 survey
This annual survey also revealed:
- 82% anticipate no operational issues related to the move to a T+2 settlement cycle in 2017
- 80% of firms see cost reduction as the biggest challenge for them in 2016/17
- 63% of firms measure operations success on the ability to reduce risk and cost
- 62% of firms named investment of infrastructure an area of operational focus in 2016
A word from the experts…
Jeff Zoller, Chair of ISITC and Vice President at T. Rowe Price commented:
“New and emerging technologies have taken the financial services industry by storm. The results of our annual member survey confirm this sentiment, as firms plan increased investment in blockchain and cybersecurity technologies, as a method for combating long-term risk and cost. We look forward to continuing the dialogue around the challenges and opportunities these disruptive technologies bring to the industry at our March event in Boston”. In addition, according to Nigel Solkhon, CEO of ISITC Europe, the current interest and investment in the blockchain among financial companies will have a significant impact within the next 18 months.
The ISITC 22nd Annual Industry Forum and Vendor Show will be held March 20-23, 2016 at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
1 Mar
0
DH Corporation introduced blockchain solutions
During the recent months a lot of companies such as Dwolla, Earthport and PayCommerce announced the development of various solutions based on the blockchain.
Today is the turn of DH Corporation, also known as D+H, a Canadian leading end-to-end provider of retail, commercial and transaction banking solutions.
D+H introduced a proprietary blockchain solution within its Global PAYplus platform.
Global PAYplus already allows different methods of payment and D+H probably will announce soon the introduction of the digital currencies.
According to Moti Porath, D+H’s executive vice president of global pre-sales, the blockchain will help the company in several ways:
“We believe that 2016 will see banks transitioning from experimenting in the innovation labs to implementing solutions that drive value to their customers. At this time, we see the most relevance for blockchain capabilities in payments, so it made sense to move quickly to add capabilities to our global payments hub”, he said.
So it seems D+H really believes in the blockchain potential:
“[Banks] will be able to utilize a secure, closed loop, distributed ledger system to connect bank networks, move money in real-time, and improve access to liquidity.”
Going deep, D+H wants to create a node similar to a liquidity pool, with several liquidity pool accounts externally created.
This is Porath’s explanation:
“The liquidity pool node simulates accounts in a central bank and, when value is exchanged and the blocks are being updated, the central bank node is updated to reflect the exchange of value.”
D+H partners with Ripple
On October, 2015, D+H started a partnership with Ripple “to deliver innovative payment capabilities by integrating Global PAYplus, its global payment services hub, with Ripple’s distributed ledger technology, creating a foundation for further disruptive payments innovation”, stated dh.com.
Gene Neyer, head of product management, said:
“Distributed ledgers have the potential to radically transform the payment process. They remove the frictional costs and reduce the complexities of using multiple intermediaries; reduce or eliminate the reconciliation processes; and transform and enrich existing business processes by providing alternative sources of liquidity. This investment in distributed financial technology demonstrates D+H’s continued commitment to payments innovation. The payments landscape is rapidly evolving and D+H’s forward-looking solutions enable financial institutions and corporations around the globe to grow and compete.”
Download the whitepaper here
Also, D+H published a whitepaper in which they explain the five reasons why the company believes the banking industry should invest into the blockchain technology. You can download it here for free.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
29 Feb
0
Bank of Russia is working on the blockchain
 |
Bank of Russia has revealed its decision to study the potential applications of the blockchain.
On Sunday 28th, February 2016, the central bank, in fact, has announced that they started to analyse the “advanced technologies and innovations in the financial market”, including the blockchain.
Previous statements in Russia
Bank of Russia’s deputy chairman Olga Skorobogatova previously commented:
“The development of modern financial markets is inseparable from the development of financial technology.”
Also, Rambler News Service has reported that Skorobogatova previoulsy commented in 2014 that the Russian central bank thinks the blockchain can have an important role in the future:
“In 2017-2018, we will see real examples of the use of this system. As a closed system, I think the blockchain is the future, and we need to prepare for it.”
In the meantime Russia is supporting a possible “ban on monetary surrogates”, a definition that also includes digital currencies.
In fact Russia’s Ministry of Finance, State Duma and the Investigative Committee have previously commented about the use of the blockchain within their businesses.
Also, earlier this month, Bank of Russia’s head, Elvira Nabiullina, stated that the Russian bank was “monitoring the blockchain to develope its own approach to financial innovation”.
How banks want to improve their users base
“Users of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies now number 200,000, with only the US, China and Germany having higher numbers”, reported member of the Russian State Duma, Andrei Lugovoi.
In fact, Lugovoi stated that the Russian central bank is now positive for a “careful approach to bitcoin and saw a serious economic potential” in the blockchain with the likely objective of a potential growth of their users.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
26 Feb
0
Australian commission said blockchain can help governments regulation
On February 15th Greg Medcraft, chairman at Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), stated that the blockchain can have “profound implications” on how government regulates the markets.
During the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum Roundtable held in London, in fact, Medcraft commented that regulators need to better understand this technology before thinking how to regulate it.
How to adopt the Blockchain
Medcraft also said that if capital markets will adopt the use of the blockchain it will be able to improve market efficiency and the access to markets, decrease fees and help transactions transparency.
“Blockchain will have profound implications for how we regulate. We will need to find the right balance between speed of execution and streamlining of business processes. As regulators and policy makers, we need to ensure what we do is about harnessing the opportunities and the broader economic benefits, not standing in the way of innovation and development.”
Medcraft also spoke about how Australian securities regulators act, talking about surveillance of firms, products released in the market and the development of methods to involve the blockchain.
“We are working to understand how enforcement action can be taken where a transaction entered into here or overseas is recorded in the blockchain”, he said.
Australia is in the vanguard
Previously this year, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) revealed its plans to adopt the blockchain for trades clearing and settlement.
To do so, the ASX wants to create its own private blockchain with the partnership of Digital Asset Holdings (DAH).
The first phase of this program will run at the end of 2016 and will replace ASX’s existing trading and risk management systems.
To know more about this project, you can read the full press release here.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
25 Feb
0
“Blockchain can help governments”, says Blockstream CEO
According to Blockstream CEO, Austin Hill, blockchain technology will be able to help government regulatory agencies.
During a recent inverview with Bloomberg TV, in fact, Hill stated that blockchain “is a fundamental shift in how the underpinnings of how finance work, moving much more to an open, permission-less innovation platform. I think people are beginning to realize that some of the underpinnings of our finance system have not changed in 20 years. Wire transfers, international remittances, post-trade settlement, the entire way that banks and finance organizations do netting, a lot of issues around how stock and assets are traded and actually tracked which led to some of the problems in 2008 of systemic risk”.
What Blockstream is?
Austin Hill and his team have developed a blockchain “sidechain” technology to link the bitcoin blockchain to the other existing public and private blockchains.
“We want to power interoperable markets that are fair and accountable. Openness, accountability and public ledgers should be the norm and should not require users to sacrifice privacy. We seek to empower users with trustable and secure financial mechanisms via public auditability of their transaction history without disclosing more than is necessary for the integrity of the blockchain”, reports their official website.
Recently Blockstream has announced $55 million in series A funding to further enhance their sidechain technology, expand their operations globally, and support new industry partnerships, bringing their total investments in the company to $76 million.
“We’re changing how the actual ledger works. It offers huge cost savings for financial organizations in the area of regulatory compliance, trust with other organizations because right now there’s a huge amount of reconciliation that has to occur where everyone has their own copy of the ledger and no one agrees”.
The Bloomberg TV journalist asked him if he is worried about the regulatory environment, so Hill answered that it is not a problem as regulators only want to remove risks:
“This technology offers some of the best potential to actually remove systemic risk. And a lot of regulators around the world are beginning to realize that, so they’re looking at their own solutions even at the national government level to say if we do support fiat currency issued on a blockchain, what is the right technology to do so?”
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
22 Feb
0
Barclays is using the Blockchain to help people in Africa
“The Blockchain could be the most significant innovation for Africa”, said Barclays.
Some days ago the well-known worldwide legacy bank Barclays stated that the blockchain could be the most useful technology innovation for the African continent.
“Blockchain could be the most significant social and political innovation to impact Africa in 100 years”, said Arian Lewis, head of Open Innovation at Barclays. “People in Africa do banking on their mobile phones, but our talent base is all built on bricks and mortar banking”, she continued.
Bitcoin is very popular in Africa
Also, on February 19th, Quartz Africa, a news website based in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, released a new report in which they revealed that bitcoin is very popular in Africa because it provides more accessility than banking services, even if this country has been “late to the fintech party”.
“I think the banking sector in Africa is going to be disrupted faster than anywhere else in the world”, said Lingham. “What you have with bitcoin and blockchain is a trustless method of operating. You don’t need third parties like banks operating as trust brokers anymore. It’s all built into the code. The way mobile leapfrogged fixed lines communications in Africa; blockchain will leapfrog a lot of the financial infrastructure that exists today”, commented Vinny Lingham of Civic startup in the report.
For this reason Barclays decided to start financing a blockchain startup based in Cape Town called Consent, a platform that uses the blockchain to store medical records.
Dream Bitcoin Foundation
Among the several startups who work in Africa, the nonprofit Dream Bitcoin Foundation (DBF) is one of the most important as it aims at facilitating the use and “acceptance of cryptocurrencies as an alternative form of payment by providing an online cryptocurrency exchange platform and merchant solutions”.
Its founder, Philip Agyei Asare, wants to raise “Bitcoin funds for projects that will build a bright future for Africa [in particular Ghana] by bringing together all young, ambitious and self-determining entrepreneurs and enabling them to achieve their dreams, without the need for government assistance”.
To do so, in March, 2015, DBF also organized a Bitcoin-focused event called Coinfest.
Bitcoin in Kenya
To prove the Bitcoin huge potential in Africa, we want to quote a short documentary, shoot in Kenya by filmmaker Tomer Kantor.
In 2014 he filmed Bitcoin in Kenya with his own IamSatoshi Production.
This video tells the story of MPesa, a service launched in 2006 that allows people to transfer value using their mobile phones in a peer-to-peer way.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
18 Feb
0
How the blockchain can improve the Australian voting system
Flux Party is a new Australian political party that wants to renovate the voting system by using the blockchain.
In fact, they have proposed a new token-based political system based on the Bitcoin technology.
The Flux Party has more than 500 members and its objective is to have six senators on ballots during the next election that Australia will hold in September/October.
How it works
A special feature of this party is that its members are free of its own policies and they can vote for or against a legislation at the bidding of token holders.
“If they didn’t have to be senators, if they could just be software or robots they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do”, commented the Flux Party co-founder Max Kaye.
So the bitcoin token could be used by the Flux members for voting but also for trading with other people.
Too old for the Internet era
Australian Flux party is clearly suggesting that the current democratic system is too old for the Internet age and for this reason they want to redistribute the political power by using Bitcoin.
Their own website states: “Our current system doesn’t work well enough; politics gets in the way of policy. Flux is an incremental upgrade to democracy designed to redistribute political power, maximise participation, remove bad policy, and empower voters.”
The Flux Party system will allow voters to be able to set their votes to experts on these issues.
A revolutionary but not so new idea
The idea of a blockchain-based voting system is very revolutionary and it is not developed only by the Fluxa Party.
In fact, Nasdaq and the Bitcoin Foundation have worked both on their own voting systems throught the blockchain technology.
About the author: Amelia Tomasicchio is a writer and a journalist of Bitcoin-related news and articles. She started writing about Bitcoin in 2014 and she graduated in Rome with an essay about movie industry related to Bitcoin.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
17 Feb
0
Gemalto joins Symbiont to use the Blockchain
Recently we talked about several companies all around the world, like Microsoft or IBM, that are conducting tests about the blockchain and how to introduce it on their business.
Well, today is the turn of Gemalto, a digital security multinational who announced today its interest in the bitcoin technology.
Gemalto has in fact started a new partnership with Symbiont, a well-known blockchain startup that aims at “bridging the gap between the emerging blockchain ecosystem and Wall Street, with the first issuance and trading platform for Smart Securities™”.
According to a new interview with Gemalto’s vice president of business strategy Mark Yakabuski, the blockchain has two potential applications within the market.
These are his words:
“We believe that the first generation of blockchain is going to be driven by the financial services industry. The second generation, we believe the blockchain has the ability to be adopted within the Internet of Things. […] From what I’ve seen, security within the bitcoin and blockchain solutions is certainly in its infancy and there’s a lot of room for growth and improvement. […] But we believe that the solutions built on blockchain will expand quite rapidly, and we want to be a leading security option for our customers as that expands.”
So Gemalto – together with Symbiont – wants to find all the possible applications of the blockchain (like smart and programmable contracts, for example) and also wants to use the Bitcoin technology to improve Gemalto’s existing hardware and APIs.
“Our partners are looking for the level of assurance we provide on our products, and that leads us to believe that these ledgers are going to be adopted by those institutions”, he continued during an interview with Coindesk.
However, it is important to remember that Gemalto already works with some bitcoin exchanges, using its HSMs for cryptographic security.
Furthermore their techs can “adopt to new use cases, and we’re doing what we’ve done across financial industries, which is protecting identities and the transactions they perform”, continued Yakabuski.
About the author: Amelia Tomasicchio is a writer and a journalist of Bitcoin-related news and articles. She started writing about Bitcoin in 2014 and she graduated in Rome with an essay about movie industry related to Bitcoin.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
16 Feb
0
Royal Bank of Canada wants to use the Blockchain
A good news comes today when Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) confirmed that it is doing tests on the blockchain to improve its consumer rewards and loyalty.
Royal Bank of Canada has $343 billions of assets and now they want to expand their market using the blockchain.
In fact, during a new interview, Linda Mantia, RBC’s EVP of digital, payments and cards, commented that RBC wants to use the blockchain, focusing on “applications for capital markets, cross-border payments and smart contracts”.
These are her words:
“If you look at every major advancement enabled by technology, there’s always hype. Eighty percent of the money won’t make it, but the last 20% can be massive,” she said.
Bitcoin for loyalty and rewards
According to an interview conducted by Coindesk, she explained the value of the blockchain technology for the RBC’s loyalty project.
In fact, Mantia said that the blockchain would improve the loyalty value for their customers.
“We’ve always said, ‘Your points, your money’. So we don’t lock people into the rewards store. We also let in certain merchants like Best Buy, so clients can use our points to buy from them. We were moving pretty aggressively to let our clients think of it as another form of cash.”
In addition to this, Mantia commented that RBC wants to enlarge their payment products and wants to take advantages from privacy and anonimity of Bitcoin.
About the author: Amelia Tomasicchio is a writer and a journalist of Bitcoin-related news and articles. She started writing about Bitcoin in 2014 and she graduated in Rome with an essay about movie industry related to Bitcoin.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.