The Blockchain Is Hot, But for How Long? – Podcast - MoneyBeat. The blockchain, the technology that underlies the digital currency bitcoin, is hot right now, getting attention in Silicon Valley, and increasingly on Wall Street. Is this another hype cycle, or is there something valuable here? On the latest MoneyBeat podcast, we were joined by Adam Draper, the founder and CEO of BoostVC, a Silicon Valley accelerator focused on bitcoin, blockchain and virtual-reality startups. We also talked about the state of things out in Silicon Valley. Is there a valuation bubble? Additionally, on the Friday Food Fight podcast, we talked about the markets and how they may start reacting to the candidacy of Donald Trump, as well as whether or not equities have conclusively turned around.
5 Must-Read Excerpts from the UK Government's Blockchain Report. "The progress of mankind is marked by the rise of new technologies and the human ingenuity they unlock. " That's the glowing foreword to a new report on blockchain and distributed ledger tech issued by the UK government's Chief Scientific Adviser this week. Taking a positive outlook on the emerging technology, the document recommends a broad government initiative to develop and demonstrate blockchain and distributed ledger technology, one that has caught the attention of the global media while emboldening the growing chorus of "blockchain" enthusiasts.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from proposal is that the UK government was encouraged to pursue applications of the technology. Author Mark Walport wrote: "Distributed ledger technologies have the potential to help governments to collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the supply chain of goods and generally ensure the integrity of government records and services.
" 1. Use blockchain tech 2. 3. 4. 5. yBitcoin.com / Introducing the Future of Money. The war on bitcoin. Coin wants to replace your wallet with your wrist. After a botched early pre-order program that created customer outrage, Coin, the digital payment company that wants to reinvent your wallet with a single credit card that can be controlled from a smartphone app, is finding a second life with the help of MasterCard. Expanding on its original vision of having customers carry a single Coin credit card that can be reprogrammed from a paired smartphone app, Coin is heading into the wearables space to make it easier for wearers of fitness bands, smartwatches and health trackers to tap their wrist to pay.
Coin and MasterCard aren't the first companies to do this. Last year, Jawbone announced a partnership with American Express, allowing the NFC sensor on the UP4 fitness band to be used as a payment solution. Like Jawbone, MasterCard wants its payment information on wearable devices, and it's enlisting the help of Coin to make that happen. Omate, Atlas and Moov Read our continuing CES 2016 coverage Article continues below. Technical. Accept It: The Blockchain Will Be Part of Your Bank's Business. You've heard the hype. But you recognize that most of it is coming from people with a vested interest in seeing blockchain technology become the big thing that they think it will be — Blythe Masters, for one. The JPMorgan Chase veteran is the chief executive of the blockchain technology company Digital Asset Holdings.
So you have to expect her to talk up the blockchain as she has, tout its potential to change the way the financial world operates, emphasize how it can reduce risk, improve efficiency and ultimately provide better customer service. Among traditional bankers, some might agree there's great potential in technology that facilitates an immutable record of transactional data. Yet many remain skeptical about anything associated with bitcoin.
If this is how you think about the blockchain — that is, when you think about it at all — expect to be paying far closer attention soon. Leimer is quick to say he's not a bitcoin, blockchain or distributed ledger technology expert. The blockchain will become our new signature. This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2016 -- our fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. When a baby boy was born on August 4, 1961, the local newspaper announced his birth, as it did many others. More than a declaration of happy news by his parents, those few lines of information were part of a long-lasting tradition -- using the local daily to register, at a set point in time, the addition of a new person to society.
Seemingly inconsequential timestamps like these occur every day and, as it turns out, play a key role in ensuring more fair and just societies. It's not just limited to births. Kidnappers take photos of hostages holding the front page of a recent newspaper to act as proof that they are still alive. Enter the blockchain. The Future Of Money. Divorced from the physical, money became a kind of belief system. Of course, rarely do any of us walk into Starbucks with a $5 bill anymore. We walk in with a credit card, or a Starbucks gift card, or with an Apple Pay app on our iPhone. And that’s another way money has changed.
It’s become more and more abstracted. It’s numbers sitting in our bank accounts or on our credit-card statements. Money grows more complex by the day, particularly now that Silicon Valley has taken it up as one of its causes célèbres. The only true disruption to money that we’ve seen in the Internet age came not from a Palo Alto garage but a list-serv for tech-savvy libertarians. But that’s not a concept most people can get their heads around, which has been Bitcoin’s great limitation. Bitcoin’s True Potential: A New Supply Chain Operating System — Blockchain for Supply Chains. Bitcoin’s True Potential: A New Supply Chain Operating System Adrian Gonzalez — President at Adelante SCM & Founder/Host of Talking Logistics January 27, 2015 I have to admit, I’ve paid very little attention to all the buzz surrounding bitcoin these past few years. I’m fairly conservative when it comes to banking (for example, I’m still not comfortable “depositing” checks using my smartphone), so using a new digital currency, or “fake money” as my wife calls it, to buy stuff isn’t something that appeals to me, especially since bitcoin’s developer remains a mystery.
But I read an article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal — The Revolutionary Power of Digital Currency by Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna — that opened my eyes to bitcoin’s true potential: as a new operating system for supply chain networks. The WSJ article and other sources, such as this Khan Academy video series, explain how bitcoin works, so I won’t go into it here. The International Banking System Faces an Existential Threat. By Mark Fleming-Williams Christmas did not offer much good cheer to the world's bankers, who have received a sustained kicking since the financial crisis erupted in 2008. In the latest blow, Switzerland announced that it would hold a referendum on a radical proposal that would strip commercial banks of the ability to create money, depriving them of a great deal of their profit-making capabilities.
If the Swiss proposal catches on around the world, it could shred core business assumptions that have underpinned the banking model over the past three centuries. From Babylon to Central Bank The earliest banks we know of, in ancient Babylon, were temples that doubled as repositories where one could store wealth. At some point, the guardians of the stored treasure realized they could put this accumulated wealth to work, and banks accordingly began to lend capital.
The benefits of the new system proved immediately apparent. A Radical Reform. Bitcoin’s Bold Experiment: A Goldmine for Economic Researchers. Michael J Casey is a senior advisor with the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT Media Lab. There, his team is working on blockchain-based solutions for everything from financial inclusion and welfare payments to voting and identity. Casey was formerly a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of "The Age of Cryptocurrency", which he co-authored with journalist Paul Vigna. Outsiders are understandably baffled by the bitcoin community's civil war. The long-running dispute among the cryptocurrency's top software developers hinges on a seemingly arcane issue: whether or not to increase the 1MB limit for each block of transactions in bitcoin's blockchain ledger. How could such a trifling software fix cause so much angst?
But while bitcoin's critics flag the impasse as proof the digital currency isn’t ready for primetime, I’d suggest an alternative perspective: It represents all that makes this open-source project fascinating. Outgrowing the Rule Set Paradigm Shift. A Special Report on the Future of Money. Scott Amyx Speaking at CES 2016 Wearables and IoT.