Political Party Envisions How Blockchain Could Enable Brexit Revote
In an effort to make democracy more like #technology, Australia’s Flux #Party is seeking to harness the power of #blockchain governance.
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Neues Swisscom Digital Lab – 400 Quadratmeter pure Innovationskraft
#Swisscom weihte am 29. Juni 2016 ihr Digital Lab auf dem Campus der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule Lausanne (EPFL) ein und konkretisiert so die im Dezember 2015 kommunizierte strategische Partnerschaft. Die offene Innovationsplattform widmet sich den neusten Digitalisierungstrends und wendet sich mit ihren ersten Aktivitäten an Grossunternehmen.
Diese haben in Innovationsworkshops die Möglichkeit, Projekte für die digitale Transformation ihrer Firmen zu entwickeln. Denn: Das #Digital Lab vereint an einem Ort, einmalig in der Westschweiz, alle erforderlichen Komponenten und sämtliches Know-how, um im digitalen Zeitalter bestehen zu können.
SUISSE SWISSCOM CONFERENCE DE PRESSE
Digitale Technologien wie künstliche Intelligenz, Internet der Dinge oder Cloud Computing bringen neue Austausch-, Zusammenarbeits-, Unterhaltungs- und Arbeitsformen mit sich. Das wirtschaftliche Umfeld erlebt einen tiefgreifenden Wandel; gleichzeitig verändern sich die bestehenden Wettbewerbsbedingungen rasant. Das Digital Lab soll Unternehmen auf ihrem Weg in die digitale Transformation mit ihrem Know-how aktiv begleiten. Swisscom und EPFL bringt das aktuelle Wissen aus Praxis und Forschung ein. Im Gegenzug erhalten die Studierenden Einblick in die Bedürfnisse der Wirtschaft und praxisbezogene Anwendungsbeispiele.
Offenes Innovationsumfeld auf dem Weg in die digitale Zukunft
Das Swisscom Digital Lab vereint an einem Ort, einmalig in der Westschweiz, alle erforderlichen Komponenten und sämtliches Know-how, um im digitalen Zeitalter bestehen zu können. Es erstreckt sich Im Herzen des Campus der EPFL in Ecublens auf mehr als 400 #Quadratmeter. Dieses Kompetenzzentrum für Digitalisierung hilft Unternehmen, die Umsetzung ihrer Digitalisierungsstrategie zu beschleunigen.
Konkret können Kunden des Geschäftsbereichs Enterprise Customers von Swisscom für einen bestimmten Zeitraum ins Digital Lab kommen, um einen Prototyp zu entwickeln. Sie ergänzen interdisziplinäre Teams von Digitalisierungsspezialisten mit ihren eigenen Kompetenzen und erhalten in der Projektrealisierung die erforderliche Unterstützung – Software, Coaching oder Technologie – zur Entwicklung einer ersten Version ihrer Lösung. Überdies bekommen sie in dieser Phase Gelegenheit, die neuen agilen Arbeitsmethoden und Rapid Prototyping-Verfahren zu erproben, die für den Erfolg von Innovationsprojekten von zentraler Bedeutung sind.
Partnerschaft auf drei Eckpfeilern
Die Partnerschaft von Swisscom und EPFL sieht neben dem Digital Lab auch die aktive Entwicklung eines Ökosystems für digitale Innovation vor, etwa die Unterstützung von Startups, sowie Veranstaltungen rund um die Digitalisierung. Die geplanten Themen reichen von künstlicher Intelligenz über Robotik und Internet der Dinge bis hin zu Big Data und Datenspeichersystemen.
The post Neues Swisscom Digital Lab &8211; 400 Quadratmeter pure Innovationskraft appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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The next Banking (R)evolution
The introduction of new technologies has facilitated new consumer and customer behaviors. These new behaviors have facilitated the adoption of new technologies. The resulting virtuous circle has ushered a period of rapid change which has profoundly change one industry after another. Industry incumbents have had to face a new reality where vertical integration, a fancy word for “owning the entire value chain” has turned into a liability. Indeed, the virtuous circle I mention has allowed new competitors to deliver value at one point of the value chain, without owning the entire value chain. Take the media and entertainment industries as an example. It used to be that “content was king” and “pipes were dumb”. Based on these heuristics Hollywood studios ruled over an entire value chain and were comfortable living in a world where the only thing they needed to do was to deliver their content to movie theaters. This is no longer true. Even though original content still rules, pipes are not dumb anymore. Pipes are actually smart, and that are built on top of platform strategies. Content is important, but so is how you create content, how you deliver it, with what and to whom, how you measure how it is delivered, plus the balkanization of communities of users make it eminently more difficult for a vertically integrated entertainment business to remain at the top of the food chain without profound changes. Witness the rise of Netflix, Amazon with their different value propositions around entertainment content and compare to how the main Hollywood studios are armed for the future.
The financial services industry in general, and the #banking industry in particular are now faced with the same tectonic changes other industries have faced. For #banks, this is an even more perilous exercise as most of them have never faced a breakdown of their value chain in the past and have enjoyed “near” monopoly in their geographies thanks to accommodating regulatory frameworks.
For simplicity’s sake, I break down a bank’s business into four layers (borrowing from a Boston Consulting Group framework):
- Infrastructure: comprised of IT hardware (mainframes, cloud, hosted) and software (core banking system, CRM, client reporting, transaction/payment processing, analytics)
- Products: comprised of three parts which are accounts, lending and the rest (payments, savings, investments, brokerage, advisory)
- Interface: comprised of branches, web apps, mobile apps, customer service centers
- Clients ecosystems: comprised of retail, SME and enterprise.
Yesterday’s bank owned each layer. Clients dutifully visited their branches or relationship managers to consume products created by their bank which were delivered by the infrastructure owned by the same bank.
To the extent that banks faced competition it was from another bank which also owned its entire vertical stack end to end, which was operating in the same geography. Oligarch banks ruled.
Today’s bank is under threat at each layer of its stack instead which makes for a much more complex competitive landscape.
First, clients spend more time somewhere else than with a bank. We all know the relative decline of branches. Not only are retail consumers not visiting their branches as much as they used to, but they are also increasingly spending time in completely different ecosystems than in the past; communities where a local bank relationship manager has little leverage if any. These ecosystems are called Facebook, Google, Amazon, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest. (Even though such change is not as pronounced with SME and enterprise clients, there is also change with these segments.) Second clients are used to a different customer experience based on the service they are getting from these digital communities, thereby making bank web apps and mobile apps always play catch up. In other words, clients are moving banks, and bank customer interfaces are under threat. Third, products are under threat although we have to nuance this statement and look at lending separate from the rest. Let’s look at the rest first. Accounts are being loosened from the tight grip of Mr Banker – PSD2 in Europe, the open bank initiative in the UK will take care of that – allowing, under consent, third party access to account data and meta data. Payments is experiencing the highest level of competition given it has the lowest barrier to entry, either from #fintech startups endogenous to the industry, new entrants exogenous to the industry (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook) or grown up startups (PayPal). Brokerage and Investments are prone to the same opening to multi-competition. This leaves us with lending which I believe should be analyzed completely differently than the rest because no one will ever be able to come up with a “zero marginal cost” lending product. Indeed, the cost of borrowing is comprised of the bank’s cost of borrowing and a margin to compensate for risk and provide adequate profit. That cost will never scale to zero or near zero. This, in my view is the main reason why lending will never experience an “Uber” moment where banks will be completely disintermediated – further, think of the unintended negative consequences of a massively large lender for example – whereas the main cost of the “rest” is that of delivery and marginal cost of delivery can and should be driven down to near zero. Fourth, infrastructure is where there has been to date the least disruption and competition, notably around core banking systems and CRM, even though #blockchain #technology holds the promise of much change in asset servicing.
To date the overwhelming number of competitors attacking the above layers have not been successful. Fintech startups focused on investments (#robo advisory), brokerage, lending have not reached escape velocity and acquired meaningful market share to the detriment of banks. Some pundits believe it is because banks have much more defensible business models (regulation, licenses…). Although I do agree most startups have failed so far, I also know not to discount the entrepreneur/startup threat over the long run on the basis of a failed first wave. I am actually paranoid for banks as the overwhelming types of strategies banks have put in place to deal with change are in my opinion either inadequate or short term focused.
Indeed, banks have focused on revenue optimization strategies (pricing, cross selling, upselling, margins) or cost reduction strategies (layoffs, better hardware, better software) by applying concepts (digital banking, API banking, mobile banking, cognitive banking) on existing business models. To the exception of a few banks who recently started working on a platform strategy – which forces them to address the competition they are will face at each of the four layers – all other banks are still in a “vertical integration” paradigm. This will change – the market will force that change, some banks will adapt, other competitors will rise to the challenge.
I view all these bank moves as incremental evolutionary steps, good enough to compete another day, not good enough to reinvent banking drastically. A digital bank – and there are many startup digital banks in the UK for example – is still vertically integrated, even though it holds the promise of being a “better” bank.
Incumbents will have to choose how they want to compete going forward. Below are some of the potential options available:
- The “Better” Vertically Integrated Bank: Essentially more of the same, that is a bank that still owns the entire stack, will compete against a multitude of competitors, but will do so better armed marginally – digitally so, less siloed, better hardware, better software, less employees. Although I believe some will be successful at this strategy, I am afraid it will be a very risky one. No network effects to speak of, no ability to drive to meaningful zero marginal cost of delivery for all products such a bank would offer
- The “Platform” & Vertically Integrated Bank: Same as above but with some type of platform strategy that will allow a bank to partner with third parties and share the value created by delivering better product and service to consumers. Probably less risky than the above and one many banks will want to deliver. Still a difficult proposition in a world where modularity will be more and more important.
- The partially Vertically Integrated Bank: Whether traditional or platform driven, this Bank will drop a few non core activities, not enough to not be vertically integrated but enough to reach another level of rationalization. I expect tier 2 and tier 3 banks with limited resources to be the best candidates to follow this model and some shrewd tier 1 banks to make a hard turn towards this model. Very interesting as a platform.
- The “Interface” Bank: No more vertical integration for this type of bank. To date we have only seen Interface examples (Simple is but one of the examples). The Interface specialists have suffered from a disconnect with the ecosystems where users gravitate and have not been successful to date. They key to success will lie with how an Interface bank partners with these digital ecosystems. My gut tells me AI powered virtual assistants may have a shot at being very successful Interface Banks. Strong potential for network effects and driving to zero marginal cost of delivery
- The “Product” Bank: By far the most intriguing layer strategy. Product banks focused on innovating only on one particular product or a family of products (when was the last time the financial services industry came up with an innovative lending product tailored to someone’s cash flow patterns for example). A Product bank would partner with Interface providers and/or ecosystems of users for example. Not network effect to be expected for lending products – definitely for other products – but the benefits of innovation and differentiation can be powerful. I would even expand the horizon of what a product could be by including “data”. Data being the new hot asset class and data management as well as identity management being crucial in our digital age, why not see the emergence of data banks.
- The ”Infrastructure” Bank: I see three separate models. First, the generalist “Bank as a Service” (BaaS) model that will deliver services to Product Banks, Interface Banks, startups, partially vertically integrated banks, fintech startups, enterprises. BaaS is the most promising bank model of the future as the focus is on the provisioning of products as a service, or of services. We are not dealing with lending here, we are dealing with delivering the building blocks to enable lending – the same applies to all other activities. As such there is a very high probability for this model to drive to near zero marginal cost of delivery. In this context, we can apply the “Uber” label. Second, the differentiated specialist BaaS. This model is particularly relevant for high value add services such as advanced data analytics, underwriting analytics, risk analytics. Remember one of the points I made at the beginning of this post: there are no dumb pipes anymore, only smart pipes. To date banks are arming themselves with the services startups specialized in data analytics can offer (CRM, fraud…) but it is conceivable the specialization will be so important going forward and the pipes so strategic that a “Bank” will provide this as a service going forward instead of a non-licensed startup. Third, the commoditized specialist BaaS. I expect some infrastructure services to become commoditized faster than others. Think hardware fine tuned for banking use cases or core banking systems. Think about an AWS offering but for banking. Much like there are core processors for specific activities (video, gaming, AI tomorrow), there may very well be core infrastructure providers for banks.
I have to make several additional comments to tie loose ends.
If the above vision comes to fruition and we do see a segmentation of banking, I fully expect the regulatory and licensing landscape to change. In other words, we will see a new regulatory approach where different types of banking licenses will be issued based on the business model and its implicit and explicit risks to the market and to clients/consumers. Just to give one example, an Interface Bank as an AI powered Virtual Assistant may have to meet certain licensing requirements around providing financial advice to its clients but may not need to comply with lending requirements. To be clear, some fintech startups competing or providing services at each layer level may not require the same type of banking licensing as the Banks that will operate at each layer level.
Further, competition at each layer level forces one to think platform strategy which results in either developing and implementing one’s own platform strategy or becoming one of the building blocks of someone else’s platform strategy. There is no escaping platform strategies.
Additionally, layer specialization, other than with Lending, and I repeat myself here, can deliver very strong network effects enabled buy near zero marginal cost of delivery. This I believe will be in and of itself a revolutionary paradigm for banking.
Finally, the bank that will successfully partner and integrate with ecosystems of users, regardless of the approach taken, will stand a higher chance of success than trying to create their own new communities or continue with existing ones. Like it or not, social networks are here to stay and will take on a greater importance in our lives going forward.
Trying to craft a roadmap for the above vision is tricky. We are in the early innings of platform strategies or API/marketplace strategies for banks and much remains to be done – no one has declared a BaaS for example. I venture that we shall see increased activity along these vectors in the #next 5 years – the actions of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba (and Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat….) will make that absolutely inevitable. Incumbents may also naturally gravitate towards a few of the six options I laid out above &8211; either as a result of further divestitures, acquisitions or mergers &8211; leaving space for new entrants (large tech companies, fintech startups). In other words, the industry is large enough to see various participants succeed and avoid a banks lose, new entrants wine scenario, or vice versa.
Last parting thought. I strongly believe the above also applies to the insurance industry &8211; with the appropriate tweaks.
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Post Brexit: Will London Remain the Fintech Capital of the World?
With adversity comes opportunity.
FinTech – Finance Magnates | Financial and business news -
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#Brexit + #fintech: What happens now?
The British public recently voted to leave the European Union. Only history will tell whether it was a good decision or not. The immediate issue is… what #happens now? Those in financial services and #technology firms will have to grapple with the unraveling of treaties that will have a direct impact on their business. But first&8230; what happens next? Read More -
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ID Tree is Raising $1MM To Track Private Companies
At a time when startups stay #private longer, and #fintech investment is at its peak (maybe), where do investors look? Private #companies. However, those are known for being, well, “private” about their financials. Enter ID #Tree. The New York-based startup allows investors to discover private companies and #track their financial progress.Read More
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Holländischer Robo-Advisor kommt in die Schweiz
Das Online-Vermögensverwaltungsunternehmen Pritle kündigt an, seine Dienste auf Kunden in der #Schweiz und in Österreich auszuweiten.
Dadurch wird der niederländische, “#robo advisor” gemäss eigenen Angaben zum grössten unabhängigen Anbieter von automatisierter Online-Vermögensverwaltung in Europa. Pritle ist ein innovativer Vermögensverwaltungsanbieter, der es jedem ermöglicht, sein Vermögen bequem und unkompliziert anzulegen und dabei Geld zu sparen.
Kunden können die Entwicklung ihrer Finanzen wunschgemäss festlegen und darstellen – und das bereits ab einer Investition von 10 EUR. Durch kostenfreie und automatisierte Portfolioumschichtung sowie personalisierte Empfehlungen unterstützt Pritle seine Kunden bei der Verwirklichung ihrer finanziellen Ziele.
Thomas Bunnik, Gründer und Vorstandsvorsitzender von Pritle erklärt: &8220;Nach der Gewinnung von tausenden Kunden in den Niederlanden und Belgien konnten wir enormes Wachstum verbuchen. Mit derselben Vehemenz wollen wir nun auch in der Schweiz und in Österreich durchstarten und die dort ansässigen Kunden dabei unterstützen, ihr Vermögen zu vergrössern. Die europaweite Expansion ist für unser Unternehmen ein logischer Schritt.
Unser Ziel ist es, allen Europäern eine einfach zugängliche und erschwingliche Methode zur Vermögensvermehrung zu bieten.&8221;
Zielbasierte Geldanlage
Mit Pritle können Kunden ihre Anlageziele – z. B. Pensionsvorsorge, Ausbildung für ein Kind oder eine Weltreise – innerhalb eines vorgegebenen Zeitrahmens ganz einfach festlegen und nachverfolgen. Pritle ermöglicht es, personalisierte Profile zu erstellen, auf deren Basis massgeschneiderte ETF-Portfolios generiert und von führenden Vermögensverwaltern wie BlackRock, Vanguard oder StateStreet betreut werden.
Die ETF Umschichtung wird jedes Quartal anhand der Zielvorgaben unserer Kunden optimiert und während sich das angelegte Vermögen dem Zielbetrag nähert, wird das Anlagerisiko allmählich abgebaut. Kunden können sich ungeachtet ihrer Expertise und Erfahrung im Finanzwesen innerhalb von wenigen Minuten registrieren.
Angemessenen Risikostufe
Pritle- Kunden werden bei der Festlegung einer angemessenen Risikostufe für ihr Anlageziel unterstützt und können dessen Wertentwicklung über das benutzerfreundliche Dashboard jederzeit nachverfolgen. Auf Wunsch können sich unsere Kunden jeden Euro, den sie in ihr Portfolio investiert haben, jederzeit auszahlen lassen. Bei Pritle fallen keine Überweisungsgebühren, Vorabzahlungen und versteckte Kosten an. Beträge über EUR 250.000 werden kostenfrei verwaltet, darunter verrechnet Pritle eine Gebühr in Höhe von 0,5 % pro Jahr inkl. Umsatzsteuer.
Pritle
Pritle Holding B.V. wurde 2014 von Thomas Bunnik (Vorstandsvorsitzender), Stewart Bowers (Finanzvorstand) und Azman Hamid (Risiko- und Rechtsvorstand) gegründet. 2015 folgte die Übernahme von Fundix N.V. (mittlerweile Pritle N.V.), dem damals größten unabhängigen Vermögensverwaltungsunternehmen in den Niederlanden mit dem umfassendsten Fondsangebot. Pritle betreut landesweit bereits mehr als tausend zufriedene Kunden und verwaltet für sie Anlagen im Wert von etwa 100 Millionen Euro.
Pritle besitzt eine Lizenz der niederländischen Finanzmarktaufsicht AFM (Autoriteit Financiële Markten) und wird von der niederländischen Zentralbank DNB (De Nederlandsche Bank) reguliert. Pritle hat seinen Hauptsitz in Amsterdam und bietet ein Team aus 32 erfahrenen und engagierten Fachleuten – darunter Anlageexperten, Ökonometriker, Juristen und technische Spezialisten.
Thomas Bunnik (32) ist Gründer und Vorstandsvorsitzender von Pritle. Er verfügt über breites internationales Fachwissen auf dem Gebiet der privaten Vermögensverwaltung, blickt auf eine erfolgreiche Laufbahn zurück und stellt mit Pritle eine neue Art der Geldanlage vor, die zielorientiert, einfach und effizient ist.
The post Holländischer Robo-Advisor kommt in die Schweiz appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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Kickstart Accelerator Zurich Selects 10 Startups for Fintech Category
Kickstart, a Swiss #accelerator program based in #Zurich, has announced the ten #fintech #startups selected to join its first batch of the #Kickstart summer program. These ten startups will now begin the acceleration phase and will temporarily relocate their teams to Zurich and prepare for Demo Day set to place on November 04, 2016.
The ten fintech startups are tackling a number of sub-segments composing financial services ranging from mobile payments, insurance, to risk management and stock trading.
via @UBSschweiz, Twitter
Veezoo, a Swiss startup based in Zurich that provides a tool for people to allow them to explore and visualize stock market data efficiently. Veezoo is supported by SIX.
James, owned by New York-based Crowdprocess, is a SaaS for risk departments. James allows risk officers to build, test and validate credit-scoring models, and is equipped with Machine Learning algorithms, techniques and validation methods. Crowdprocess is funded by Seedcamp, top Google executives, Thompson Reuters, the European Central Bank, Quant research funds, among other investors.
Sureify, by California-based Sureify Labs, is a SaaS-based engagement platform that provides a solution to carrier’s ongoing problem of staying connected to their policyholders. Sureify specializes in life insurance products.
Mergims is a Rwandan mobile commerce and payments app that focuses on remittances to African countries. Mergims allows for the payment of mobile topups, utility bills, but also links to critical services such as hospital, medicines, school and transports.
Gatechain is a Zurich-based startup that uses #blockchain #technology for trade finance that allows for the reduction of processing time and the lowering of costs while improving cash-flow in trade.
Zoa, a solution developed by Zurich-based company MyDataMint, is an application and a platform for exchanging personal data between consumers and companies. On Zoa, companies can buy personal data directly from users in exchange for cash.
Lenditapp, a New York-based company, provides a a cloud-based business process and Customer Acquisition Management solution for sales organization and funders catering to the alternative small business lending community.
Nivaura, formerly known as Crowdaura, provides a blockchain-based digital platform for execution and lifecycle management of small financial assets. The company targets investment #banks, asset managers, brokers, reinsurers and exchanges.
Surong 360 is a Chinese startup that provides a platform for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Targeted at university students and alumni, Surong 360 doesn&8217;t intervene in the transaction, but instead, functions as a social network for P2P lending with flexible interest rates.
BreadWallet is a standalone mobile #bitcoin wallet aimed at providing users with a simple, convenient and secure solution to send and receive bitcoins on their smartphones.
Launched in January this year during the Investor Summit, Kickstart combines the strengths of academia, global corporations, and many successful local startups, to deliver an internationally recognized startup program aimed at giving access to promising startups to Switzerland&8217;s hub of tech and innovation.
The Kickstart Accelerator is operated by Impact Hub Zurich and is an initiative launched in cooperation with DigitalZurich2025, a cross-industry project aimed at turning Switzerland into a leading digital innovation hub in Europe.The Kickstart Accelerator has four verticals: fintech, smart and connected machines, future and emerging technology and food.
Selected startups are given up to 25,000 CHF in seed funding, a monthly founder stipend of up to 1,500 CHF to support living costs, dedicated mentorship from industry leaders, a shared office space and fast-track access to relevant industry partners and the Swiss startup ecosystem.
Backed by some of Switzerland&8217;s biggest companies including UBS, Credit Suisse, Swisscom, Migros and EY, the Kickstart Accelerator aims at supporting young international entrepreneurs and focuses on launching new products into the market as well as promoting the domestic digital innovation scene.
Featured image via @UBSSchweiz, Twitter.
The post Kickstart Accelerator Zurich Selects 10 Startups for Fintech Category appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News – FintechNewsCH.
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“Fintech Startups Need to be Flexible and Adjust their Products”
Head of corporate strategy at the First International Bank of Israel elaborates on the #fintech-banking crossroad.
FinTech – Finance Magnates | Financial and business news -
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The Global Blockchain Summit- Information overload, Thoughts and Summary
#Beijing hosted the Global #Blockchain Summit last week and in typical fashion of Chinese events, it was a grand occasion. Over the course of the three day summit, participants were engaged in workshops, lectures and panel discussions. Leaders from the #Blockchain world all gathered at this event. Having been interested in Blockchain and #Bitcoin since the start of this year and integrating with the Blockchain community in Shanghai, this summit was the perfect chance to meet like minded people from all over the world and I found this as a unique opportunity to deepen my understanding of my newly found interest.
The conference, for me, was a bombardment of new information from thought leaders and experts on the matter of Blockchain and Bitcoin and it confirmed the 4 ways us humans anticipate and acknowledge information; There are things that you know that you know, things that you don’t know that you know, things you know that you don’t know and things that you don’t that you don’t know. Yes, slightly confusing, but learning anything with that framework helps a lot. Whether I was sitting through the talks or talking directly with people, not only did I find out new things I didn’t know but it made me deepen my understanding of the things I didn’t really know in depth but only knew that it had existed.
From a fresh mind that has just started to follow the developments and slowly learn the technical layers within the Blockchain space, and by no means an expert, here are 7 key takeaways I got from the Summit:
1. Faster innovation in China
Jeff Garzik of Bloq, and prominent figure in the Bitcoin Developer community, noted that there is faster innovation in China than the rest of the world within the Blockchain space. Aurelien Menant, CEO of Gatecoin, talked about why Blockchain Assets (cryptocurrencies/Dapp tokens) will become a leading alternative asset class. He predicts China will lead in Blockchain Assets due to the promise of cross border flexibility the #technology provides and the demand for transparency in China’s financial markets. With the Chinese government being accepting of the technology, it has become a gateway for Chinese entrepreneurs and companies to innovate and explore this technology and be a possible route for China to be transparent in their financial markets. One Chinese start-up that I thought was innovative is BitSe: BitSe, with their VEChain product aims to battle the counterfeit market to build a Blockchain for luxury brands to protect and secure the authenticity of their goods.
2. We will experience a new form of the internet
Many speakers put it differently; Jeff notably said ‘A Digital Wallet will be the new Browser’ where a user wouldn’t want 5 digital networks and wallets for 5 digital assets. There’d be that one wallet for everything. Jan Xie, a Chinese Ethereum Developer, pointed to an Internet 3.0 and there will be an interconnection of values on a larger capacity. According to him, it won’t be a social network anymore, now there will be an incentive network which will create a better business environment. Diego Guitterez of RSK Technologies compares what we have now as the Internet of Information to what we will have in the future as the Internet of Value.
3. Nobody likes the ‘Hard fork’
As the hack of the DAO came a week before the Summit, it was no surprise it will be a talking point. The consensus among many of the Chinese developers was that they were opposed to the ‘Hard fork’ idea suggested by the Ethereum Foundation.
4. Collaboration is key to push forward
Max Kordek, CEO of Lisk, emphasised the important of collaboration. He highlighted that competitors do not pose a challenge as it allows more of an opportunity to work with everyone else, but the biggest challenge is actually for that to happen, will projects collaborate and work together to move things forward?
5. Think Blockchain, Think Network
When wanting to build applications on top of a Blockchain on the biggest network and economy, I thought Jeff Garzik left us with another way to think about the Blockchain, he said not to think Blockchain as a technology but rather as a network.
6. Eric’s Law: Any asset can be digitised, will be digitised. Everyone, some machines and most AIs will have at least one digital ID
CEO of ViewFin, Eric Gu, was very vocal about how digital assets and smart contracts would shape our future. Thinking about how more digital our lives could be is interesting, and more particularly the implications. How will it impact the society, economy, business and our daily lives?
7. Things need to be made easier
During the Panel Discussion about Blockchain and New trends in #Fintech, Max Kordek emphasised the importance for things need to be made easy for the real world to understand. Deng Di, the Chairman of Beijing Taiyiyuan Technologies, stated how the 1st stage of the Blockchain era was a hobby for the techies, as Bitcoin was relatively new and Blockchain, the underlying technology, had not been explored. They were the first to get involved with Bitcoin and the #cryptocurrency network. The 2nd stage is when it became hot when central #banks and other big players started to recognise it a few years later, where many big players and governments are exploring the technology and he said we are currently in the 3rd stage, where the consumers have no idea about the Blockchain. A bottom up approach and top bottom approach is needed to educate the masses. He finally says, we show and thus prove to them how Blockchain works, not tell them how it works.
I really think the last point is crucial because with the advent of the internet or the phone, or any technology used by the masses, many use the technologies without thinking how it works. It may be explained in simple terms from a broad level, but it could only be done after there are use cases used by the masses. For a new technology to be explained simply that has not yet been in practical use by the world is still a difficult objective to achieve. Blockchain and its information is still in a sense raw, filled with code and technical jargon and Andre De Castro, CEO of the Blockchain of Things, has identified this problem as he aims to make it simple for enterprises to conduct business and not deal with technicalities such as making a new cryptocurrency and dealing with code.
Another observation I made when talking to people is that there is a huge split between those who are pro Proof of Work and those who are pro Proof of Stake. To my mind, when I think Blockchain, I think decentralisation, and Bitcoin offers the best example of a purely decentralised network, whereas the proof of stake is not completely decentralised and thus defeats the purpose of what the Bitcoin innovation and its underlying technology really stands for. I assume for specific use cases, it may make sense to have a Blockchain that uses ‘trusted nodes’ for verification. Anyways, this was just an observation which I won’t go into detail as there’s a lot of information about this online and there may be a long way till one prevails over the other, or perhaps coexist in the long run.
The Summit in Beijing showed me the promise of the Blockchain and what it could offer and I am excited in what the future holds. Our lives in the past decade have become more digital centric, particularly with the rise of smartphones and inter-connectivity and it could be even more digitalised if we can digitalise assets and exchange it. But it’s pretty funny; although we are so interconnected and exchanging information all the time, how is it that many people still do not know about Blockchain and Bitcoin?
[linkedinbadge URL=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-al-balaghi-柏亚德-3a57215a” connections=”off” mode=”icon” liname=”Ahmed-Al-Balaghi-柏亚德”] is Language Student at Fudan University (Shanghai)
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