Blockchain

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 …

I just received this press release and felt it worth sharing with y’all: The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee will next week take evidence from the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England on blockchain technology, the distributed ledger that allows Bitcoin to function as an online currency. The …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

I’ve been presenting a summary of Digital Bank and ValueWeb for a few months now.  It is the story of the origins of moneykind and, as many have now heard the story, I thought it’s about time to share this on the blog. If you have half an hour free, then you can watch …

We had an all-day meeting on Friday about Digital Identity at the United Nations. There are almost two billion people born with no identity.  There is no record of their birth.  There is no proof of their existence.  As a result, these people can disappear without a trace. There is …

There is a lot of talk about blockchain.  A lot.  Loads.  But when you get past all the talk, what is actually happening with blockchain?  Answer: not enough. I say this because there are some stand out firms out there – like R3, Digital Asset Holdings, Ripple – who have …

I promise to shut up about African developments after this post, for a while anyway, but there’s a definite feeling that Africa may set the standards for a cheaper, easier financial system in the future, as blogged last week.  In fact, when I was asked about Africa as a continent …

ValueWeb makes the contention that you cannot have an internet of things without a real-time and cheap internet of value.  A core part of this is focused upon building a cheap shared ledger structure for digital identity and digital currencies and guess what?  That cheap shared ledger is most likely going …

I regularly attend conferences where several themes crop up around disruption – that word we hate – disintermediation, and the end of banking as we know it.  The problem is I’ve heard it for 30 years and it hasn’t happened … yet.  Will it?  Let’s have a look. The first …

I know many of my twitter followers have seen this news already, but here’s the official announcement of the partnership we are creating with Life.SREDA in Singapore. SINGAPORE-BASED LIFE.SREDA LAUNCHES $100 MILLION BLOCKCHAIN INVESTMENT FUND LONDON, APRIL 18 2016 Life.SREDA, a venture capital fund based in Singapore, has partnered with …

Like a few other guys, I fly around the world almost non-stop. When people ask me where I live, I say British Airways lounge, and George Clooney’s Up in the Air looks like a novice to me.   Yet, even with all of that experience, you now and again encounter an …

After sharing my favourite white papers about blockchain and fintech a month ago, I got a bit of a deluge of offers of more papers, so here’s this month’s update.  If you don’t like to read about them though, you can always listen to this excellent podcast interview with Chris Skinner, …