Conference Presentation, Panel, Fireside Chat
The Blockchain: It's Not All About the Money
- The Milken Institute aims to fund itself innovatively and plans an ICO named "milk coin" backed by diamonds, where participants earn tokens through polite behavior and engagement.
- The panel intends to avoid discussing the 900+ existing cryptocurrencies due to confusion with blockchain technology, focusing exclusively on the underlying technology's potential.
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) anticipates that policy changes from its white paper and consultation could render current technology irrelevant or become significantly larger within three years.
- MAS plans to complete the first phase of its domestic payment blockchain project involving digital SGD issuance, which has already generated nearly 100,000 report downloads.
- MAS expects to replicate three major code bases (Corda, Ethereum, Hyperledger) to ensure platform interoperability and prevent reliance on a single platform.
- A technical challenge regarding netting without transaction visibility in a distributed mode is currently being addressed, with results on netting with anonymity expected by November.
- MAS intends to settle stock deliveries with exchanges as part of a six-part project and will handle cross-border security settlements after domestic operations are completed.
- MAS plans to train 150 staff members in industry and itself on blockchain technology and aims to be the first regulator to publish open-source code on GitHub for a distributed payment system.
- MAS expects proprietary rights over its netting with anonymity solution and plans to announce it shortly, while also encouraging industry experimentation through its sandbox.
- The speaker notes a talent shortage compared to the US, requiring significant effort to build a domestic talent pool.
- Bitfury intends to apply its land titling technology to voting, identity, and trade for social good, including expanding its work in the Republic of Georgia where the system is already in full production.
- Bitfury expects Georgia's digital land ownership system to allow citizens to trade ownership via smartphones and smart contracts, using SHA-256 hashes to prevent record erasure even in corrupt environments.
- Bitfury anticipates the Georgian Ministry of Security will seek to implement blockchain for IDs, business registration, and taxation following the land titling pilot.
- Bitfury plans to sign an agreement with Ukraine to place the entire government on the blockchain and expects private blockchains to link to public ones to prevent administrator data alteration.
- Bitfury intends to timestamp private blockchains against public ones with unique hashes checked hourly, daily, or every couple of days to ensure integrity.
- Bitfury expects that if a record is permanent, mistakes will be corrected by creating new records rather than erasing original ones, and notes that key management is crucial to prevent theft.
- Everledger plans to offer its digital twin service directly to consumers in early 2018 and will expand provenance certification to fine wine alongside diamonds.
- Everledger expects a 30% greater retail value for certified diamonds and anticipates that diamonds will eventually have financial products like futures markets and ETFs wrapped around them.
- Everledger foresees procurement and provenance convergence transforming supply chains for goods worth $1.7 trillion that are counterfeit, with governments likely legislating transparency for companies with turnover over $100 million.
- Accenture and the ID2020 Alliance aim to serve 1.2 billion people without recognized identity, including refugees, by creating personal, portable, private, and persistent digital identity solutions.
- Accenture expects to identify a target population for the first rollout of the ID2020 system, focusing on the business transformation of getting ecosystem players to agree on shared data constructs.
- MetLife plans to automate insurance rules and claims using blockchain and smart contracts, aiming to simplify processes to the ease of a vending machine.
- MetLife expects to run an experiment in the MAS sandbox to issue mobile contracts for pregnant women covering gestational diabetes risk, with automated payouts triggered by clinic verifications.
- David Treat expects to create a digital identity solution where refugees retain identity data even if their relationship with their nation dissolves, though full representation of personal health data and smart contract permissions remains years away.
- MetLife anticipates blockchain will solve message inefficiency for linking parties with private data and expects machine-to-machine transactions to become automatic and error-free via the Internet of Things.
- The speaker expects the convergence of emerging technologies to fundamentally change education and technology usage for the next generation within the next decade.
- MetLife and others expect digital land titles to free up time and capital by allowing instant property trading, potentially eliminating the need for title insurance and increasing stock ownership trading flow.
- Bitfury expects land titling in Georgia to currently show no price uptick, but anticipates that digital representation will enable instant trading and increased market flow.
- Everledger expects the Kimberley process to have largely solved the blood diamond problem and that governments will continue to legislate, making supply chain transparency a board-level concern.
- The speaker expects blockchain to touch all life aspects including e-government, health, insurance, banking, and finance, with specific applications starting in five years and many more in less than 10 years.
- The speaker expects blockchain to reduce mistakes and increase efficiency through permanent, untampered asset records, with data potentially becoming "the next oil" leading to national data boundaries.
- The speaker anticipates more private players entering the blockchain space with bilateral data-sharing agreements based on personal consent, while data transparency may eventually create long-term exclusion challenges based on data profiles.
- The speaker expects a renewed conversation around privacy as a negotiation between authority and individual over the next couple of years, though data sharing with authorities for citizenship and taxes will remain necessary.
- The speaker expects that if contract breaches occur, finance backed by collateral will be required, potentially causing collateral costs to rise significantly due to a lack of risk socialization.
- MAS plans to build an alternate ID for national IDs, especially for cross-border use, with a consent architecture allowing owners to track data location and services received, alongside regulatory enforcement for service breaches.
- MAS expects to upgrade regulatory views as risks are identified during experiments and aims to solve structural challenges in the blockchain space.
- The speaker expects that mistakes will decrease and efficiency will rise as blockchain digitizes assets with permanent, untampered records.
- The speaker expects to see a lot of blockchain applications in less than 10 years, with specific applications starting in five years.
- Accenture expects the primary transformation driver to be getting different players in an ecosystem to agree that a shared data construct has value, with understanding of blockchain technology becoming secondary to business transformation.
- Accenture expects the core challenge to be breaking messaging-based business models rather than technology itself, requiring ecosystem-by-ecosystem planning.
- The speaker expects that in the future, much more private players will come into the blockchain world with bilateral agreements to share data based on personal consent rather than government-monitored processes.
- The speaker expects that data transparency will solve the inclusion challenge but also create a long-term exclusion challenge as people may be excluded based on their data profile.
- The speaker expects that nationalistic views on data will continue to remain for the foreseeable future.
- The speaker expects that over the next couple of years, the technology will trigger a renewed conversation around privacy as a negotiation between an authority and the individual.
- The speaker expects that data sharing with authorities will remain necessary for citizenship, taxes, and legal purposes.
- The speaker expects that the technology will enable machine-to-machine transactions automatically, smoothly, and without error through the Internet of Things.
- The speaker expects that the convergence of emerging technologies will completely and fundamentally change the way the next generation is educated and uses technology within the next decade.