The Finanser’s Week: 22nd August – 28th August 2016
Here are our key posts for the past week … Applying Blockchain to Clearing and Settlement 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…
How much is being invested in blockchain start-ups?
I can’t finish writing my blockchain and DLT dialogue without wrapping up the missing bits. This blog series is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every company and every use case, just the ones that stand out for me in a banking context. There are others such as syndicated loans, compliance and more…
12 Standout Start-ups Focused Upon Blockchain Identity
Digital identity is a complex area, as discussed yesterday. First, it is focused upon shared ledgers and blockchain, not just blockchain; second, it needs to have some permission basis; third, we need to have a structure agreed for who is providing permissions; and fourth, it is a structural challenge for industry and government, rather than…
Applying Blockchain to Identity
In my final deep dive into blockchain use cases, I come to digital identity. Now this is a thorny area for three reasons. First, we need to understand what we mean by identity before we can talk about how blockchains could help. Second, we need to understand the difference between blockchain and shared ledgers which,…
Nine Standout Start-ups Focused Upon Blockchain Payments
There are a number of base blockchain platforms that are important in the payments sphere, with the three leading players being Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. These are the base development platforms, rather than a payments service per se, and choosing which to use is intriguing as they all offer something different. Bearing in mind that…
Applying Blockchain to Payments
I’ve blogged for over a week about blockchain based developments in Clearing & Settlement and Trade Finance, and will continue for another week talking about the developments in Payments and Digital Identity. However, at this point, I should clarify that I use the term blockchain as an overall term to describe what is happening. I…
Five Standout Start-Ups Focused Upon Blockchain Trade Finance
In Trade Finance there’s a lot of activity. As mentioned yesterday, you have HSBC and Bank of America working with HyperLedger; R3 trialling with 15 banks based upon Corda; Ripple working with Standard Chartered and DBS; and JPMorgan have been developing a trade finance trial with Digital Asset. These are platofrms and industry developmetns, but…
Applying Blockchain to Trade Finance
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…
Six Standout Start-ups Focused Upon Blockchain Clearing and Settlement
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…