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Blockchain Revolutionizing Banking

How Blockchain Technology is Changing the Banking Industry Forever

By far the biggest threat to banking in, well, living memory, has been blockchain technology. More specifically, cryptocurrency, but we’ll focus on the technology as a whole since this is what has been driving the movement.

All the tech companies in the world have been using it, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, and a vast number of FinTech services, which is why it’s being seen as such a threat to traditional banks, but why is this happening?

What’s so important about blockchain?

In today’s post, we’re going to explore how and why blockchain technology is making such a big difference to the traditional banking format, and how the future of this industry is looking.

How Blockchain Technology is Changing Payments

First and foremost, and by far the biggest form of change that blockchain is bringing into the world, is how financial payments are made and the way modern-day payment systems work. Whereas traditional banks can take a few working days to make a payment, meaning some international payments can take a very long time, blockchain payments are instant.

Since all you need is an internet connection to make the transaction, most will be handled and completed in a matter of minutes. These transactions can happen across borders to anywhere in the world, are extremely secure (especially when compared to traditional methods) and happen pseudoanonymously.

Due to the nature of blockchain technology, the costs involved in these transactions are usually very small, typically only several cents per transaction. This means that sending money across to the other side of the world is far cheaper than traditional wire companies, such as Visa or Western Union.

In the same way, remittances are also changing. Whereas overseas remittances are expensive and long-winded, with high processing times and the fact the money can be stolen, taxed, or subject to legal issues along the way, a blockchain process basically eradicates all these issues. There are dozens of companies already set up and operating to offer these services.

The Way Account Managing and Deposits are Handled

In the traditional way the world works, consumers tend to use banks to hold money in either their savings or checking accounts. Then, the bank will loan out the money being held to make money on top of the money you’re saving, and the cycle continues. This means when you look into your bank account, much of the money you have isn’t actually being held by the bank, but instead is out in other people’s accounts as loans.

If every customer of a bank went to the bank and withdrew everything they had, the bank would collapse. It’s a very fragile system that many consumers are unaware of. However, while this system isn’t going to change any time soon, blockchain technology can make the management of this system far more effective.

Due to the benefits that blockchain technology provides, these account ledgers are far more secure, far more reliable, and far more accessible. This means banks can accurately manage their ledgers to ensure that they aren’t taking out too many loans and will actively help reduce the risk of bank run, or the system crumbling.

A Reduction in Fraud

Fraud has always been a problem in the financial industry, and it costs people around the world billions of dollars every single year. However, for the similar benefits, we’ve spoken about above, blockchain is making things far more secure.

Since the vast majority of traditional banks are set up and organised around a centralised system, malicious people can target the centralised system to commit the acts of fraud. While there have been many measures to make the system as secure as possible, this isn’t fall-proof, and statistics show around 45% of all financial institutions are prone to fraud attempts.

Blockchain is a decentralised system, which means it’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time, which makes it incredibly difficult to fraud and theft to take place. There’s no single point of access like there is with a centralised banking system and trying to get into such a system means diving into layer upon layer of encryption, all spread out in hundreds of thousands of locations.

What’s more, every single change that takes place on the ledge is capable of being seen by every other person and system that has access to the ledger. This means if any fraudulent activity takes place, everyone can see it instantly and correct it. This will help protect people’s money and keep the system afloat.

Katherine Rundell is a finance writer at Academic Writing Services and Essay Writing Services. She writes about blockchain and banking and aims to help the world get educated about finances in a time where they can seem so out of control.

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Bitcoin, the trust chain that banks and governments cannot corrupt

bitcoin_blockchain

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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Amelia Tomasicchio