Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

$150 Trillion of assets and potentially 66% to be turned in to Digital Assets
Let me start by saying, this podcast interview with the founder and CEO of eToro(Yoni Assia) is over 1 hr long, BUT it is worth listening to: https://pod.link/1434060078.
eToro was only established in 2007, when Yoni and his brother thought there had to be a more user-friendly way for people to be able to buy and sell shares, currencies and other financial assets. They have achieved this by creating, what they refer to as, a “social market”. The eToro platform enables someone in Hong Kong to find an...

Log In or Become A Member To See More

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Four different ways Blockchain is being used in the agriculture sector

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

Blockchain technology is being used in a variety of ways to help improve efficiency, cut costs, create greater transparency and offer provenance of where goods have come from in the agriculture sector.

Here are four ways through which this is happening:

      -Traceability - Blockchains are helping supply chains and logistics in the agriculture sector to improve traceability. This helps companies to quickly track unsafe products to their original source, so potentially preventing illness and reducing the cost of product recalls. A good example of this is the Walmart venture with IBM to track green leaf products it sources and sells. Frank Yiannas of Walmart has said “that the improved data traceability provided by the IBM platform reduced the time it took to trace a mango from the store back...

Here are four ways through which this is happening:

      -Traceability - Blockchains are helping supply chains and logistics in the agriculture sector to improve traceability. This helps companies to quickly track unsafe products to their original source, so potentially preventing illness and reducing the cost of product recalls. A good example of this is the Walmart venture with IBM to track green leaf products it sources and sells. Frank Yiannas of Walmart has said “that the improved data traceability provided by the IBM platform reduced the time it took to trace a mango from the store back to its source from seven days to 2.2 seconds. That reduction in time enables companies to identify contaminated supply chains and recall affected products before they are consumed and cause illness”. Meanwhile, Irish-based arc-net has collaborated to create a whiskey Blockchain with Scottish distillery Ardnamurchan, which includes information on the water and grain used in the production of Scotch, as well as the identity of the distillers who made the whiskey. Wyoming cattle ranchers, who wanted to know where their beef was being sold, have created BeefChain, which tracks beef along the supply chain, and so enables the end-consumer to have provenance i.e. where the beef they buy has come from.

      -Payments - San Francisco - based Veem is used by tea distributor Tealet, to pay more than 30 different farmers and suppliers in countries across Africa and Asia, using a platform that harnesses Blockchain technology. Fees with which to pay suppliers can be as much as 12%, and international payments can take up to five days. The Veem platform uses Blockchain technology to convert payments from the source currency into the local currency. International payments cost 1.9% and are paid to vendors in one to three days (so it is faster and cheaper using Blockchain technology).

      -Commodity Management - Agricultural commodities business is massive and it can be difficult to collate the volume of data and minimise the time-delays it takes to get paid. Blockchain technology is able to help with these challenges. Australian company, AgriDigital, provides cloud-based agricultural commodity management services recorded onto a Blockchain. In 2016, AgriDigital completed the world’s first “farmer to buyer” wheat sale recorded on a Blockchain. Since then, it has run projects for supply chain provenance, real-time payments, digital escrows and supply chain finance for the food sector. At the end of 2017, Dutch-based Louis Dreyfus Co completed its first agricultural trade, using Blockchain technology, for a sale of US soybeans to China. Documentation, including contracts, letters of credit, and government certifications, were all digitised, and data was automatically matched in real time via a Blockchain platform, which avoided duplication and the need for manual checks. This reduced the time to process documentation to one-fifth of the usual time, and cut overall transaction time from two weeks to one.

      -Sharing information - Companies which buy or invest in agricultural products like to have information about the product before they agree to purchase it. This can include anything from salt and sugar levels in tomatoes (which would affect flavour) to information about the health of a crop. Such information can help banks and others predict whether a farm will be able to repay a loan. California-based Ripe.io, collects data from sensors, spreadsheets, manual surveys and other sources along the supply chain, to give commercial buyers detailed information about product attributes. Its first project tracked tomatoes from Ward’s Berry Farm in Massachusetts that were destined for the salad chain Sweetgreen. Data points such as light, humidity, air temperature, tomato colour, salt, and sugar content, and pH levels were entered into a platform using Blockchain technology. Tracking this information helped Sweetgreen supply the tomatoes to customers’ when they were at their best, and reduced waste from spoilage.

So, there are many ways that Blockchain technology is being used in the agriculture sector, and as we see other technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) evolve, we are likely to see greater use of Blockchain technology. Blockchain technology will be like a skeleton from which other technologies will, in effect, “hang from”.

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Blockchain

Logistics And Supply Chain

Agriculture

Digital payments are replacing cash and Cryptos are being accepted more and more in shops

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

In the UK, Digital payments overtook cash payments for the first time last year, and the trend of using less cash when shopping looks set to continue, with now over 63% of UK consumers using contactless payment.

Contactless technology was invented by Nikola Tesla in 1898, using radio signals to control a model boat in New York. However, it took until 1995 for contactless tickets to be first used in Seoul in Korea to replace bus and rail paper tickets. Finally, in 1997, Mobil petroleum launched “Speedpass” to enable customers to pay for fuel at petrol stations in the US.

However, while cashless payments are proving ever popular, the costs of using even a debit card can be nearly 3%, especially if used overseas. It is estimated that soon credit card costs in the US are projected to exceed...

Contactless technology was invented by Nikola Tesla in 1898, using radio signals to control a model boat in New York. However, it took until 1995 for contactless tickets to be first used in Seoul in Korea to replace bus and rail paper tickets. Finally, in 1997, Mobil petroleum launched “Speedpass” to enable customers to pay for fuel at petrol stations in the US.

However, while cashless payments are proving ever popular, the costs of using even a debit card can be nearly 3%, especially if used overseas. It is estimated that soon credit card costs in the US are projected to exceed $110 billion, although this is largely as a result of the $1 trillion of debt that is held on credit cards.

We are seeing more merchants increasingly accepting Digital currencies as a form of payment, as illustrated by Whole Foods, Bed Bath and Beyond, Office Depot, Nordstrom, Jamba Juice, Barnes and Nobel, all announcing that they will allow customers to pay for goods using Flexa’s Spedn. The Spedn App creates a quick response, “QR” code, which you can then scan at the check-out, automatically transferring in the local currency, and taking the equivalent amount from your selected cryptocurrency from your Spedn digital wallet.

Spedn potentially is a much cheaper way to buy goods and services when overseas. If it can also accommodate Digital Assets that are given to customers as part of loyalty and incentive schemes, hopefully, we can all start using those old Airmiles, Avios, Nectar, Starbucks points, etc., provided such firms also digitise their platforms.
Meanwhile, last week at Consensus, a Blockchain conference in NYC, the banners above were displayed.

Once we see the likes of eBay accepting Cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, how long will it be before we see Amazon also do the same?

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Cryptocurrency

Digital Currency

Financial Services

How Blockchain can impact the property sector

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

Blockchain can be seen as a very secure database and, in the similar way that Excel replaced pen and paper records, Blockchain technology is able to help digitise records further, thus offering greater transparency and security.

For example, land ownership and a property’s history - what repairs or insurance claims has it had? e.g. subsidence, earthquake, floods - all of these potentially impact on the cost of insuring the property and can all be held on a ledger for each property.

The global commercial Real Estate market is huge, being valued at over $8.4 trillion in 2018, and has grown in size by over 15% since 2017.

The investment property market is typically dominated by institutions such as pension funds and wealthy individuals. Property tends to be illiquid, with many intermediaries involved in each purchase and sale, which...

For example, land ownership and a property’s history - what repairs or insurance claims has it had? e.g. subsidence, earthquake, floods - all of these potentially impact on the cost of insuring the property and can all be held on a ledger for each property.

The global commercial Real Estate market is huge, being valued at over $8.4 trillion in 2018, and has grown in size by over 15% since 2017.

The investment property market is typically dominated by institutions such as pension funds and wealthy individuals. Property tends to be illiquid, with many intermediaries involved in each purchase and sale, which adds layers of costs when buying and selling a property. 

Blockchain technology is going to have an impact on the property sector in a variety of ways, including:

       -Land registry – There is no reason why property records cannot be digitised and held on a Blockchain and, indeed, earlier this year HM Land Registry in the UK carried out a test project involving the digital trial of transferring property ownership confirming this. However, HM Land Registry concluded that while successfully speeding up the process of transferring title, it was simply a “proof of concept” and it was going to allow itself until 2030 to review the technology and decide the best way forward. However, other countries such as Dubai and Estonia have fully embraced this new technology for their land registry. 

      -Fractional ownership – Given the value of real estate, it is increasingly becoming more difficult for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder. In London, the average price of property last year was over £614,000, in New York $677,000 and Sydney AUS$ 1 millon. By dividing the ownership of a property into shares/tokens, it is possible for existing owners to sell a % of their property and so create more liquidity in the real estate sector. This is because more people are able to buy fractions of a property as opposed to the whole of the property. Furthermore, these property tokens could be traded on a Digital Exchange 24/7 and enable overseas buyers easier access to the real estate market, without the hassle of physical ownership and thus being responsible for maintenance, insurance, etc.

     -Income payments – Currently, rental income is paid to investors quarterly and are based on who is the registered owner on the day that the income is due. The actual payments are then processed via banks which, if they have to be paid overseas, can result in significant additional costs and time delays. However, if the property is “tokenised”, rental payments can be calculated and paid based on the number of hours or even minutes that an investor has owned it. The rental income can be paid immediately and cheaply, regardless of where the payment needs to be made. 

     -Removing intermediaries – Blockchain technology allows the creation of a trusted database with the ability to transfer the ownership of an asset. Therefore, once a property’s records have been digitised, it is possible to carry out the transfer of the beneficial ownership without the need for many of the current intermediaries – solicitors, estate agents, etc. The first property in the UK to be bought digitally was by a dentist in Wales in 2017. More recently RBS and Barclays have been carrying out trials to transact property sales using Blockchain technology. They found that the time it took to process a property deal reduced from three months to three weeks!

In a recent report on Real Estate, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) published a number of examples of how Blockchain technology can be used and the potential impact that this technology will have on the property sector.

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Blockchain

Digital Currency

Is this the precursor to Facebook’s Facecoin?

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

The 19th of May 2019 could prove to be an inflection point for the mass adoption of Cryptocurrencies/Digital Assets.

A firm called Zulu Republic (Zulu) based in Zug, Switzerland, announced that it was now possible for WhatsApp’s 1.5 Billion users to now transfer Digital Assets, using their Lite.IM wallet. Not only is it now possible to carry out Digital Asset transactions over WhatsApp, but Zulu will also pay users in Digital Assets if they make referrals to other users.

Zulu was set up in 2017, and initially considered launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), but managed to attract sufficient private funds. Zulu was also concerned about the regulatory uncertainty around ICOs decided not to carry out an ICO. In...

A firm called Zulu Republic (Zulu) based in Zug, Switzerland, announced that it was now possible for WhatsApp’s 1.5 Billion users to now transfer Digital Assets, using their Lite.IM wallet. Not only is it now possible to carry out Digital Asset transactions over WhatsApp, but Zulu will also pay users in Digital Assets if they make referrals to other users.

Zulu was set up in 2017, and initially considered launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), but managed to attract sufficient private funds. Zulu was also concerned about the regulatory uncertainty around ICOs decided not to carry out an ICO. In order to promote itself to a wider audience, Zulu carried out an “AirDrop” and gave away tokens to people who subscribed to one of their wallets and, according to etherscan , over 4,800 subscribers now have Zulu Tokens. However, Zulu’s systems and scalability are now really going to be tested, as it is possible to use them to over WhatsApp, and having tried to look around Zulu’s website, it keeps crashing - the omens do not look good!

One wonders if Facebook has decided to use Zulu and its Lite.IM wallet as a trial, while it finalises the launch of its own cryptocurrency (which is meant to be launching later this year also on WhatsApp)? Once people are able to easily use Digital Assets to pay for goods and services on a social media platform like WhatsApp, let alone Facebook, with over 2.3 billion users of which 1.56 billion log on every day, will we see many other global brands more fully embrace this New Asset class, so that point of inflection will have occurred?

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Cryptocurrency

Social Media

Cisco believe Blockchain technology can save firms $3 trillion by 2030.

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

Cisco, the huge Silicon Valley electronics company, has a valuation of $240+ billion and claims in a recent report that 10% of the world’s GDP will be on different Blockchains by 2027.

It further found that 86% of company executives believe that trust is vital in a digital economy. Cisco claims that Blockchain technology is helping to create a digital, programmable economy which is expected to deliver over $3 trillion of efficiencies and new business value by 2030. Blockchain technology offers three key factors to save money and improve a company’s efficiency:

            -Transparency - a record of transactions is held on a ledger for all relevant parties to see, as well as helping to prove provenance. The cost of counterfeiting in the pharmaceuticals industry is estimated to...

It further found that 86% of company executives believe that trust is vital in a digital economy. Cisco claims that Blockchain technology is helping to create a digital, programmable economy which is expected to deliver over $3 trillion of efficiencies and new business value by 2030. Blockchain technology offers three key factors to save money and improve a company’s efficiency:

            -Transparency - a record of transactions is held on a ledger for all relevant parties to see, as well as helping to prove provenance. The cost of counterfeiting in the pharmaceuticals industry is estimated to be $75 to $200 billion p.a. In the electronics industry, it is $100 billion. In Europe alone, 10% of luxury goods sales are counterfeit, equating to $28 billion p.a.
            -Complexity – global trade is very complex, with many intermediaries and brokers. A good example of this is in financial services where a report from Thomas Philippon, from New York University, stated: “Despite its fast computers and credit derivatives, the current financial system does not seem better at transferring funds from savers to borrowers than the financial system of 1910”. Philippon calculated that just in the USA financial services sector, that 2% of the America GDP (over $280 billion of resources) is unnecessarily devoted to this sector. Blockchain technology is able to remove many of the intermediaries in the financial sector, unlocking huge cost savings and efficiencies, which ultimately will save customers money.
           -Security – many computer systems today have data held in one central location and often firewalls are easy to hack. Blockchain technology uses military-grade security, with information held in a decentralised manner making it more secure.

Cisco believes Blockchain technology is able to automate trust, increase transparency, disintermediate many third parties so unlocking efficiency cost-savings, all in a more secure manner and so making business simpler.

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Blockchain

A Chinese Digital Renminbi could potentially replace the US$ in some countries

BBFTA News Editor | May 30, 2019 | PERMALINK

WeChat, which has over one billion members, is owned by the huge Chinese tech company Tencent.

This is the 5th biggest company in the world and is helping China to rapidly replace cash and enable Chinese citizens to digitally pay for all their goods and services. Over $50 billions of transactions in 2018 was carried out on WeChat, with the app handling over 48 BILLION messages a day!

In a recent survey, WeChat and Alipay (owned by Alibaba) were found to be responsible for over 50% of transactions, while cash had slipped to only 21%.

The Chinese government has been watching the rise of Digital currencies, and the People’s Bank of China has been working on...

This is the 5th biggest company in the world and is helping China to rapidly replace cash and enable Chinese citizens to digitally pay for all their goods and services. Over $50 billions of transactions in 2018 was carried out on WeChat, with the app handling over 48 BILLION messages a day!

In a recent survey, WeChat and Alipay (owned by Alibaba) were found to be responsible for over 50% of transactions, while cash had slipped to only 21%.

The Chinese government has been watching the rise of Digital currencies, and the People’s Bank of China has been working on its own digital currency since 2014, according to Dovey Wan, an advisory of Coindesk https://www.chainnews.com, resulting in it filing over 70 patents to date.

Evidence of the People’s Bank of China’s interest in Digital currencies is supported by a recent announcement that the bank currently has three open positions – “looking for a blockchain development engineer, a blockchain architect, and a senior technical expert, who will be responsible for developing and optimizing a distributed network that will be capable of delivering “large scale transactions.”

There has been a massive expansion of M2 money supply in China, with M2 rising by nearly 18 times from December 1998 to March 2019. This has led to huge amounts of debt, with the Chinese government being concerned about the leverage in its economy. Commercial banks have lent money to businesses and real estate projects, and now the government wishes to find a way to be able to have greater control, seeing digital currencies as a possible solution. So, while we are seeing announcements from WeChat saying that they are going to ban Cryptocurrency trading (as these are not controlled by the Chinese government), the government itself is pressing on with plans to have its own digital currency on a Blockchain. It is thought that the Chinese government will wish to control the Blockchain nodes, cloud, database and any wallets that interact with the Chinese digital currency. This, in turn, will enable the government to track M2 more accurately and ensure it can collect taxes due, therefore having better control of the actual money circulating within its economy.

The creation of a Digital Renminbi is likely to further undermine the use of cash in the Chinese economy and possibly set a precedent for other countries to do the same. We have already seen countries like Japan, Singapore, Estonia, Senegal, and Russia all talking about creating their own Digital Currency. However, are there other reasons for a Digital Renminbi, as China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” extends towards Western Europe and Africa, which will physically link 60 countries (as this would clearly improve trade between them if they all used one currency)?

Furthermore, as China now accounts for 20% of the total debt owed by African countries, will the Chinese, in time, look to convert some of these debts to be denominated in Digital Renminbi and have the interest payments collected by “smart contracts”? This could be highly appealing for certain nations to lessen their reliance on the US$, especially if the Chinese incentivises African countries to accept using a Digital Renminbi, by reducing the outstanding debt to China by say 20%.

READ MORE

#FrontierInsights

Bitcoin

Digital Currency

Sharon Henley

7 Years Ago |

"The United Kingdom and United States lead the world in financial services, and are at the cutting edge of innovative FinTech. By working more closely together through this new partnership we can help firms in both our countries to go even further to harness new technologies, share expertise and serve consumers." https://tinyurl.com/y58vkrnn

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

Smart Contracts are they the answer?
It is not long if you are involved with Blockchain technology before the subject of Smart Contracts arises. Smart Contracts was a term Nick Szabo was talking about them in 1997and he described them as “Smart Contracts utilize protocols and user interfaces to facilitate all steps of the contracting process. This gives us new ways to formalize and secure digital relationships which are far more functional than their inanimate paper-based ancestors”.
A more simplistic way to explain Smart Contracts is to think of them like a flow chart. For example, if the plane is late then...

Log In or Become A Member To See More

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Jonny Fry

7 Years Ago |

Teamblockchain have managed to secure a number of free tickets to this event discussing Tokenising Assets which has over 25 speakers. Use this link to register https://www.meetup.com/ICO-Meetup-London/events/261866864/

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Barry James

7 Years Ago |

G20 Countries Start Implementing Unified Crypto Standards - Bitcoin News

Slightly misleading as standards have not formally been passed yet, not till next month. But a clear indication of intent to ramp up expectations.

Wily Russia playing a long hand to their advantage?

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Barry James

7 Years Ago |

An extremely revealing interview about the #dirtygame the #SEC are playing which has made DefendCrypto.org a necessity.

More here.

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!

Barry James

7 Years Ago |

Why did Facebook's crypto project choose Geneva?

And could this coin trigger mass adoption? If it did would it be the start, or the end, for blockchain's promise?

Click above to find out more and join the debate.

You do not have permission to comment on posts

Please contact us if you think there is an error!