Posted on 08/13/2016 11:59:18 AM PDT by amorphous
Blockchain technology is expected to change the way financial organizations conduct business with banks implementing distributed ledger technology (DLT) projects by 2017, according to the World Economic Forum.
After 12 months of research which saw the WEF engage over 200 industry leaders and subject matter experts through interviews and multi-stakeholder workshops, the organization compiled a 130-page report on the impact distributed ledger technology (DLT), also known as blockchain, will have on the financial infrastructure’s future.
WEF’s ‘The Future of Financial Infrastructure’ report found that ‘applications of DLT will differ by use case, each leveraging the technology in different ways for a diverse range of benefits,’ but that ‘DLT has great potential to drive simplicity and efficiency through the establishment of new financial services infrastructure and processes.’
Blockchain Technology Grows, but Hurdles Remain
However, while the WEF report predicts that 80 percent of banks will initiate blockchain projects by next year, it is ‘not a panacea.’ Instead, it should be viewed as one of many technologies that will form the foundation of the next generation of financial services infrastructure.
The fact that the report states this could be because there are still significant hurdles stifling blockchain’s growth.
These are: an uncertain and unharmonized regulatory environment, nascent collective standardization efforts, and an absence of formal legal frameworks.
Of course, with over 90 central banks engaged in DLT discussions worldwide and more than 24 countries currently investing in blockchain, it doesn’t seem as though it will take long for the aforementioned hurdles to diminish.
Blockchain Investments
According to the WEF, over the last three years, more than $1.4 billion has been invested into DLT while 90 corporations have joined blockchain consortia.
Understandably, the banking world is jumping on the blockchain bandwagon as they realize the potentials it can present. For example, the use of DLT can speed up the laborious process of transferring money, thereby fully integrating the technology into the structure of the financial services.
Key Values
DLT presents a wealth of opportunity and no more so than within the financial infrastructure, but it is these six key value drivers for blockchain, which the WEF identified, that are getting people excited about its future: operational simplification, regulatory efficiency improvement, counterparty risk reduction, clearing and settlement time reduction, liquidity and capital improvement, and fraud minimization.
Excellent! Thanks for posting.
When we were sold bank deregulation in the 80's we were told it was about encouraging entrepreneurial opportunities in business and allowing companies to sell varying financial products to their customers.
However, the real plan was to allow banks to take the pool of money they got from loans and fractional reserve requirements and investing/gambling it with hopes of higher returns.
This block chain nonsense is probably just a smokescreen for some other nefarious reasons for changing the banking system.
Block chains make no sense. They are based on solving some math problem that has no connection to the marketplace. Anyone who is in favor of free markets should be strongly opposed to anything based on solving disconnected math problems.
Isn't the whole purpose of a free market so that prices can be set according to what people want? How does a block chain know what people want? How does it factor in inflation or deflation? It can't.
Something evil is afoot and anyone supporting block chains as some sort of improvement over the Federal Reserve system or some libertarian alternative to fiat currency is being taken for a fool and taken for a ride.
Unit prices, of whatever crypto-currency you pick, are set by free market exchanges. There are many other advantages to using crypto-currency, instead of fiat, as long as we have an internet and power to run it. That said, our world today wouldn't exist either, without power, or the internet.
In the early days of bitcoin anyone with a high end PC could hope to mine a few coins. Now there are server farms devoted to mining bitcoins. There is no way for the average person to create money anymore.
Ever since the invention of sticks and sand people have been able to do their own accounting. Now that we all have access to Excel, etc. we are OK with accounting without the need for block chains.
Block chains are some sort of Trojan Horse for something evil. Prices on the stock market are basically being set by computer algorithms. Now the stock of money will be set by algorithms. We're probably being set up for some sort of system where all financial transactions are based on algorithms beyond the comprehension of the average investor. This will probably lead to more and more people giving over their portfolios to brokers who will take all of the money from their clients and bet it on the opposite sides of all of the trades their bosses are making so that their bosses can be rich and give them great bonuses while the average investor, retirement funds, etc. are decimated.
Just a couple of links for you, out of hundreds:
https://minergate.com/calculator/cryptonote
There are a quite a number of exchanges where anyone can trade with very little to no fees and there are plenty of coins to mine, most only able to be mined with CPUs or GPUs, some even use 'proof of stake' instead of 'proof of work' concepts.
Blockchain technology will rewrite the world's financial infrastructure, if the current system of debt based fiat, managed by central authorities, doesn't collapse world economies beforehand. In fact, both are already doing so.
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