Blockchain

After Clearing and Settlement as a blockchain use case, the next big area of interest is Trade Finance.  This is primarily because it’s an area full of inefficiencies and open to fraud.  Bills of Lading and Letters of Credit are old world methods of managing the shipping of goods and services, and the potential to…

After yesterday’s blog generally about blockchain use case implications in Clearing and Settlement markets, here are the six companies I see as being at the forefront of changing the game: Digital Asset, SETL, tO, Clearmatics, Symbiont and itBit. Digital Asset Digital Asset – also known as Digital Asset Holdings (DAH) – is the most notable…

I’ve talked a lot about blockchain, but not much lately about the use cases, of which four stand out in terms of real activity: Clearing and Settlement, Trade Finance, Payments and Digital Identity.  I thought I’d do a deeper dive into these during the quietness of August, starting with what’s happening in Clearing and Settlement. Today,…

WARNING WARNING WARNING This is a semi-technical blog update and it is rather long (20 minutes read). If you don’t like dealing with bits and bytes, you may want to turn away now. I’ve been meaning to also write a blog update on all things about blockchain for a while, but just haven’t had time. …

As mentioned last week, the House of Lords gathered a number of leading people to discuss blockchain and its potential to develop a digital currency for the UK.  Brave New Coin summarises the whole affair nicely, and I want to keep this for the record, so have copied their update over here. House of Lords…

I can remember a few years ago that the UK pound was almost at the level of being valued at $2.  Two dollars to the pound.  Amazing.  I brought a lot of American stuff that year.  Yesterday, I bought something and it was $1.30 to the pound.  Shoot.  The dinner for $100 that a few…

I’ve published a few summaries of the best of blockchain research earlier this year (February and March).  There’s been a load more since, but Brave New Coin has curated a nice summary of all those that came out in the last quarter.  As they publish my content sometimes, here is their list (click on the titles to see the reports):…

I had an interesting conversation with one banker this week.  They work for a bank that is interested in blockchain use cases (aren’t we all) and have been tasked to create a proof of concept.  All well and good.  Then the challenge kicked in. Who wants to work on the proof of concept? The team…

I’ve written about Bitcoin and blockchain for half a decade, and now banks are all talking about it too. There is a belief that the blockchain technology that came from the Bitcoin structure could revolutionise banking. But there’s a problem, not with blockchain protocol, but with the hype and confusion that surrounds it. How will banks…