Blockchain Observations

Being a forum for blockchain ideas

Retired Member 

The changing world of money and why it’s a big deal

After a not so short “sabbatical”, I am back at Finextra. (Thank you for the warm welcome, Steve.) To kick things off, I’ll write a series of short blog posts on the changing world of money – blockchain, stablecoin, cryptocurrencies, micropayments, ICO, STO, to name a few global macrotrends and buzzwords. Things are changing at breakneck speed. 25...

04 September 2018

Retired Member 

Private vs public blockchains: The race to innovate

The debate surrounding the use of blockchain in the financial services industry shows no sign of abating. New proof-of-concepts are launched daily, with leading firms in the marketplace working on real-life applications of this technology. More transparency, significantly increased transaction speeds, less manual overheads and improved efficiency ...

22 August 2018

Carlo R.W. De Meijer Owner and Economist at MIFSA

Central Banks apathy for blockchain is waning

Early 2017 I wrote a blog on Central Banks and blockchain (see: Blockchain and Central banks: a Tour de Table Part I and II, 3 and 9 January 2017). My conclusion at that time was: “It has become clear that central banks are set to take a much more active role in the development of blockchain technology. But how active that will be is not yet clear...

21 August 2018

Carlo R.W. De Meijer Owner and Economist at MIFSA

African countries open for blockchain acceptance

During the whole month of November we are going to visit Southern Africa again, travelling around. So it’s time again to look at this continent from a blockchain point of view. Since my last blogs on this topic a lot has happened (See: South Africa and Blockchain: changing the face of Africa, 15 November 2016). Even though Africa did not get a lot...

14 August 2018

Shailendra Malik SVP - Tech Delivery (Data Platform) at DBS Bank

Blockchain adoption is a psychological challenge, not technical

What I’ve learned from past two years of Blockchain noise and all the commotion around it is that it is not a technical challenge. It is a social challenge and hence the answer may not lie in the technical realms but more have to be found in the psychological side of the question. So the question is not whether Blockchain really works or can work ...

12 August 2018

Enrico Camerinelli Supply Chain Blockchain Personal Coach at Aite Group

Blockchain is a Virtual External Drive

The value of blockchain is shaping up: an infrastructure layer that enables companies to turn goods into tokens and then trade and settle them. All of this without changing any of the company’s current information management systems. Blockchain becomes a shared “dropbox” in which all parties trust the validity of the data stored in this virtual dri...

04 August 2018

Keith Bear Vice President, Financial Markets at IBM

Trade Wars- Blockchain style

Coindesk’s recent article "Banks taking sides" covers the current race to market for competing trade finance initiatives and makes many valid observations on the current situation but also points to some key questions. Just to summarise, there are more blockchain initiatives underway in Trade Finance than pretty much any other area of f...

26 July 2018

Carlo R.W. De Meijer Owner and Economist at MIFSA

Corda Enterprise blockchain platform: unlocking new opportunities

Early this month R3 announced the launch of Corda Enterprise, a commercial version of its open-source Corda blockchain platform, which aims to help a wider range of business use blockchain in their sector. With the launch of Corda Enterprise, companies can now select a version of Corda that fits their unique needs – regardless of their industry, ...

16 July 2018

Retired Member 

Cryptos, Pokemon:Catch'em all

The parallel is simple to understand, yet counter intuitive to draw. Up to a certain point, video games were clearly distinct from our reality. With the latest and greatest technological innovations, finding yourself immersed into a virtual world takes the experience to the next level: crowds running all over the place, parking their cars in the m...

05 July 2018

Richard Miller Product Owner at RegDefy (MV37)

Blockchain and DLT - The challenge of transformational change

Over the last few years there have been many articles extolling the virtues of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). These often began by going through every imaginable use case for DLTs and theorising how they would deliver benefits that would be truly transformative. Recently the publication stream has refocussed onto a much sma...

18 June 2018