#How to use Bitcoin Depot ATM
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#How to use Bitcoin Depot ATM#Bitcoin depot atm near me#Bitcoin Depot ATM verification#Bitcoin Depot ATM fees#Bitcoin Depot Bitcoin ATM#Bitcoin Depot ATM daily limit#Bitcoin Depot ATM Machine
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How can you buy or sell Bitcoins & other cryptocurrencies?
Do you want to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, for example, Bitcoin? You can do it multiple ways, through an exchange, wallet, or ATM. Here is a detailed guide on it.

If you want to buy cryptocurrencies or Bitcoins, you need to create an account for a crypto exchange. But there is another option to try if you don't want to choose the first one. In this cryptocurrency market zoom, we will discuss how to buy Bitcoins from a Bitcoin ATM. Well, we should not use the word ATM because it would dispense real currency, and Bitcoin is not a fiat currency.
Actually, through this machine, you can buy and sell Bitcoins without making an account. The goal is to make the process simplified and easier. You can have custody of the Bitcoins that you purchase in a crypto wallet. If you have a wallet, you can send the amount to a deposit address. You need to have a crypto wallet to buy Bitcoins from an ATM. But you need to ensure that you are doing it safely, as scammers often target unsuspecting users through this method.
The first ATMs are first launched in 2013, in a cafe shop in the Canadian city of Vancouver. A lot of Bitcoin miners spend a lot of time in these cafes, using Bitcoins to pay or spend 10,000 coins on two pizzas. All over the world, 36,610 Bitcoin ATMs are in 77 different countries, as per market research. Genesis Coin has the largest chain of Bitcoin ATMs with 15,140 machines, General Bytes with 7,965, and BitAccess with 5,549. Bitcoin Depot (19.1%), CoinCloud (14.1%), and CoinFlip (9.7%) are some other options.
So how would you buy Bitcoin from an ATM? You will find a QR scanner in the ATM where you need to scan the wallet's QR code. It will tell you your wallet address and may ask for your phone number. And in some cases, you need to show your official ID to follow KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) rules.
Now you have to put the amount, double check it before proceeding. In some cases, you may receive a printed receipt before making the final transaction. Now, you type in the number of cash bills and confirm the transaction. You will get the amount in the final step.
Some Bitcoin ATMs allow people to sell Bitcoins too. You can send Bitcoins to the wallet address shown on the ATM. You may receive your money almost immediately or may have to wait and redeem the code to get your money.
Can you find a Bitcoin ATM near you? Maybe, because these things are still novelty items. You can use Google to search and type the term Bitcoin ATM near me. You will find the nearest ATM on the map and can go there and withdraw the amount. You can see the reviews to see which one is the best option to safeguard your interests and privacy. Some tools can be used to find out these machines such as Coin ATM Radar’s online map. Some ATMs also support other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, etc. Here we will end our cryptocurrency market zoom blog. We will come up with more guides, news, and articles, until then stay tuned.
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How To Withdraw Cash From A Bitcoin ATM

This was my first time using the new bitcoin ATM. Although it is expensive, and not completely instant, it is one of the fastest ways to convert some cryptocurrency in a pinch. It wouldnt be so bad if their exchange rates were up to date, I have also heard of some better rates on machines in other states. Here in Georgia, I have yet to find an acceptable machine, I do not recommend using the Bitcoin Depot machines. Read the full article
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Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
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Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
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Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
0 notes
Text
Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
0 notes
Text
Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
0 notes
Text
Please help at my wits end
Please help at my wits end
How can I view every bitcoin purchase I have ever made.i heard blockchain explorer.honestly what I need is to see all my unspent coins and transfer them I to my wallet on btc.com.my problems plural are ...i think A.i have no clue on how to read or understand hash this and that B.addresses and punching those lengthy address type things. C.i hace maade purchases Fri. ATM pay depot machines. A bra Coinbase And others.i wad hoping to view or have consolidated ALL TRANSACTIONS TO VIEW.THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM READING IN UNSPENT SO I CAN GEY THOSE BACK.ALSO I FORGOT TO ADDNTHAT I HAD EVEN MADE A PURCHASE WHERE YOU DEVELOP YOYR OWN QR SCAN CODE THING TO SEND BITCOINS TO AN ADDRESS WITHOUT USING A WALLET.MEANING BUY COINS FROM EXCHANGE AND WHEN ASKED THE SEND ADDRESS IT WAS THE ONE THE SITE I WAS PURCHASING DOMETHING GROM GAVE ME.PLEASE IF ANYONE COULD HELP.O FEEL LIKE A GIGANTIC JACKASS.
http://bit.ly/2sN6Nli
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Bitcoin Depot: Expands to 15 States to Provide Cryptocurrency Access to 85 Million People
Bitcoin ATMs are becoming increasingly popular as the adoption of cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream. They make buying and selling cryptocurrency much more accessible than ever before.
The company leading the way to mainstream adoption is Bitcoin Depot.
Bitcoin Depot has recently installed its 125th ATM, adding to the company`s rapidly growing Bitcoin ATM network. Its convenient physical locations are making a significant impact on cryptocurrency adoption and usage. All Bitcoin Depot ATMs now support Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum which are much quicker to transact with and have lower-fees than Bitcoin. Bitcoin Depot currently provides cryptocurrency access to 85 million in 15 states nationwide.
Other options to purchase cryptocurrency such as online exchanges often take weeks to verify your account making it very difficult and frustrating to buy or sell cryptocurrency, especially during times of extreme market fluctuation. In December 2017, the Bitcoin price was at an all time high. During this time, transactions at Bitcoin ATMs were skyrocketing and Bitcoin Depot was able to handle the transaction volume with no issues. However, Bitcoin exchanges were getting thousands of new users per day and were unable to handle the increased requests. Some exchanges were so overwhelmed that new user registration was disabled entirely.
Bitcoin Depot offers instant verification. No extensive document list, bank accounts or credit cards are required to transact, only cash is needed. Anyone can quickly get verified and transact using a valid phone number. (Larger transactions require an ID.)
Bitcoin Depot takes pride in its customer service. You can easily call and talk to someone in the company’s office. Questions and concerns can be quickly addressed via email, text and phone support. Most Bitcoin companies do not offer phone support and are slow in responding to e-mail, causing many customers to become angry and skeptical of the integrity of the business.
Given the complex and often misunderstood nature of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Depot handles this skepticism well by ensuring that customers feel safe and can easily understand how to transact. “The majority of our customers are return customers” says Bitcoin Depot CEO Brandon Mintz, a testament to earning customer trust and brand loyalty.
Find a Bitcoin Depot ATM near you.
Company site: bitcoindepot.com
Company email: [email protected]
This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of The Merkle. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.
Bitcoin Depot: Expands to 15 States to Provide Cryptocurrency Access to 85 Million People published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 �� Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: 2018 in Review
By Sean M. Holt 2019-01-03 01:20:00
“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoin is dead…again. According to 99bitcoins.com’s “Bitcoin Obituaries”, Bitcoin has died 337 times since 2010 (91 times in 2018, alone). Despite the clickbait, this year has seen great strides for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), particularly for the transportation and logistics sectors. Since its debut as a fundamental component of Bitcoin 10-years ago, in 2009 (see an article on its origins here), DLTs have experienced a tumultuous journey from the basements of cypherpunks tonow receiving daily coverage on major networks and even gaining its own ticker symbols of XBT, NYXBT and BTC.
At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is priced (USD) at around $3,600 ($16,000 YTD), with a market cap of $63B (total of all 2071 listed cryptocurrencies is $120B) [source: coinmarketcap.com]. Although most of MarEx’s coverage on this space has been primarily directed towards blockchain applications, it is fundamentally important to recognize the direct correlation with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Understanding how the research and development of either, fosters and benefits the other, will convey a more meaningful appreciation for the transformation at hand within the new cryptoeconomics.
As mentioned earlier this year in the article, A Force Awakens, “business as usual” is being vastly disrupted, and new technologies are being adopted. Such adoptions are removing both friction and middlemen in “trustless” environments (i.e. “seller A” has never met “buyer B” but can still trade or interact confidently and with verifiable traceability). This year, to better understand and share with our audience, MarEx was an official media partner with four different blockchain-related conferences. So, for purposes of providing a sampling of demand signals in the sector and a recap of this year’s summits, we offer this review.
Follow the Money
Despite its lackluster performance with respect to their prices, what perhaps the layperson fails to understand is the amount of infrastructure and acceptance these technologies have gained in 2018. As William Mougayar points out in a recent article, “That’s because the largest mindshare has been on the price of tokens and cryptocurrencies. That is an unfortunate frame of reference, because it symbolizes the velocity of hype, more than enlightens on the real measures of progress in the industry.”
One admirable aspect of financial markets is its propensity to cut through the nonsense and find the most efficient paths. However, the hype cycle associated with blockchain has also made it a depot for snake-oil salespersons. In one instance, last December, the Long Island Ice Tea company, in threat of being delisted from NASDAQ, pivoted and changed its name to Long Blockchain (LBCC) and saw its stock price quadruple almost overnight. Its stock has since flatlined.
Nonetheless, by following ‘smart money’ one can begin connecting the dots and better understand the operational and fundamental shifts occurring in organizations, along with industry trends. Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who was an early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, and Skype, stated back in April that bitcoin will “be bigger than all those [previous investments] combined.” Draper, who is bullish on Bitcoin and predicts a [BTC] price of $250,000 within four years, debated that, “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined. In five years, you are going to try to go buy coffee with fiat currency and they are going to laugh at you because you’re not using crypto.”
As it were, Draper is not solo on his long position. Big league players and institutions have made significant investments in several notable projects and/or announcements. Below is a sample of a few of the major demand signals that are expected to drive the sector in 2019:
Bakkt – Created back in August by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owners of the NYSE, in order to facilitate Bitcoin futures markets along with “enabling consumers and institutions to seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets.” Subject to regulatory approval, they have been coordinating closely with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set a launch date of January 24, 2019, to begin trading. Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, wrote that operations will have no reliance on cash platforms for settlement prices for pricing the daily Bitcoin futures contract. Their platform leverages Microsoft’s cloud and has been working with Boston Consulting Group and Starbucks on cryptocurrency settlement solutions.
Fidelity Investments – With $7.2 trillion in customer assets and providing services to 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers, the world’s fifth-largest asset manager has launched Fidelity Digital Assets. Having quietly been working on blockchain technology since 2013 with its Blockchain Incubator, this stand-alone spin-off company has already begun onboarding customers and plans to make products available by early 2019. In a recent Forbes article, Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson stated, “Our goal is to make digitally native assets, such as Bitcoin, more accessible to investors.” Interestingly, Fidelity Charitable began accepting Bitcoin donations in 2015. Bringing in more than $69 million, it is the organization’s fasting growing form of donations.
Digital Capital Management – Located in La Jolla, California, this boutique firm led by Managing Director Tim Enneking focuses on actively managing investment portfolios of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, as well as early-stage blockchain investing. DCM recently received significant clarification and exemption status from the SEC to operate as an “exempt reporting advisor” or “ERA”, and an exemption from the CFTC as a commodity pool operator (CPO). Together with their Cayman Island feeder, Crypto Asset Fund (CAF), DCM is globally servicing this emerging asset class with, what appears to be, the blessing of the perhaps the sector’s biggest hurdle, the United States. For those wanting to learn more about ICOs and how to assess them, see the MD’s article The Seven Pillars of ICO Investing.
Bank of America – Rivaling IBM and Alibaba’s race to have the most blockchain patents (ironic due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchains), BoA recently filed their 53rd patent. This time it was for blockchain-enabled cash handlers (ATMs).
Ohio & U.S. Congress – The Buckeye State is rolling out the red carpet for blockchain companies as their state treasurer Josh Mandel announced in November at the Consensus Invest conference in New York that Ohio would accept Bitcoin for payment of taxes. Currently only available to businesses, Bitcoin payments can be made through OhioCrypto.com and are verified by third-party payment processor BitPay (which also issues Visa debit cards in the U.S. that can be loaded with Bitcoin). Mandel, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Specialist with multiple combat tours, told CNBC that, “By leading the charge at the state level, we hope that will inspire other states and ultimately the federal government to allow people to pay their federal taxes [with Bitcoin].”
In addition to Ohio, the U.S. Congress has now had several of its members reach an “ah ha!” moment and founded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus in the 114th Congress. It is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, Co-Chaired by Representative (now Colorado Governor-elect) Jared Polis (D-CO), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) [a Ph.D. whose team helped discover the neutrino burst], and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). Their areas of focus are government applications, data ownership, and healthcare, with a vision that declares a “hands-off regulatory approach, believing that this technology will best evolve the same way the internet did; on its own.”
We the People expect great things from the Caucus, but no pressure.
Ripple – A blockchain-based solutions providers, whose associated cryptocurrency, XRP (a htird generation coin currently ranked no.2 by market cap), is focusing on financial institutions with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Singapore, and Sydney. Ripple, along with RippleNet (Ripple’s Global Payments Network), have made significant progress through their strategic partnerships with over 160 financial institutions and banks around the world.
Strategic partnerships with the likes of PNC Bank, Santander Bank, SWIFT, MoneyGram, WesternUnion, National Australia Bank, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Charted, Bank of England, Bank of Thailand, and American Express have provided confidence for more and more institutions to join the collective ranks. You can see a live list of their strategic partners here.
Most recently, the CEO at Malaysian Banking Group CIMB, Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Aziz, stated, “We are delighted to be part of RippleNet and look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ripple by leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities. This innovative blockchain solution will revolutionize international cross-border remittances, and is a testament to CIMB’s ongoing efforts to enhance its digital banking proposition by providing speedy and cost-efficient solutions to our customers across ASEAN.”
In the same press release, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse elucidates that, “We’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.”
EOS – One of the most fascinating projects to emerge has been that of the EOS coin (a 3rd generation coin currently ranked no.5 by market cap) and eco-system. During their yearlong initial coin offering (ICO) crowdsale, they raised a record-breaking $4 billion, without even having a live product (now live since June). With an unrivaled war chest, they have laid the foundation for an entirely new eco-system that uses common and familiar coding languages such as C++ and Python (compared to Ethereum’s apparently more difficult Solidity). This eco-system serves a sandbox for others to teach and learn how to build other projects as well as launching their own cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (dApps) through the use of “sidechains” on the EOS platform.
The EOS mainnet reached a significant scalability landmark this year and was able to demonstrate 3,996 transactions per second (tps). For reference, Visa is apparently capable of 24,000 tps, but it only receives 4,000 tps at peak hours. This may well solve the scalability issue presently holding adoption back.
And if that wasn’t intriguing enough, as the ICO market seems to have died by way of regulation (and lack of trust), genius minds prevail and have discovered a workaround. Instead of soliciting for money and possibly violating securities laws, projects may simply ‘airdrop’ their tokens to other holders of EOS token and then let the market provide a valuation (let’s see how regulators react). For example, say your project puts 100M tokens out into circulation through a free “airdrop,” and then that market values your coin at $0.30; your project would have a $30 million market cap. If your team held 30 percent of those coins, then WHAM! Your company just raised $9 million and didn’t have to ask for a dime.
Granted there are several more variables involved, but you get it. Furthermore, because these ‘airdrops’ are happening all the time, EOS holders are essentially getting free money. Better still, to play in the EOS platform, projects need to purchase and then “stake” their coins (think escrow), thus adding even more scarcity and demand for the EOS token. Here’s a comprehensive video explanation by The Modern Investor. Also, watch this video on The Million Dollar EOS Bet, which someone is about to lose.
To further articulate the potential upcoming tsunami, a recent podcast with Trace Mayer explains how the world economy has gained tens of trillions of dollars more debt than was accumulated before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). He reminds listeners that Bitcoin spawned out of frustration from the mishandlings of the GFC. Now that the technology has experienced a rapid professionalization of the space, legacy models and institutions are in for a rude awakening on the dawn of the “everything bubble.”
As outlined by an article in Forbes, “since the GFC’s low in March 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has gained over 300 percent, taking it nearly 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.” Mayer continues that, as we move forward with this new technology, a new financial paradigm shift is occurring both psychologically and fundamentally. That shift is going to be from fiat currency and fractional reserve banking to equity-based money that isn’t a liability in terms of financial-sovereignty (can’t be seized), and provides protection against “shadow tax,” or inflation, from such heinous actions like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With degrees in accounting and law, Trace Mayer was an early Bitcoin adopter, a self-proclaimed student of Austrian economics, and founder of projects such as Armory, Kraken, the aforementioned BitPay, as well as host of The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. For those interested in learning more about the financial-sovereignty aspect, Mayer is starting a new tradition every January 3 – in celebration of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block – called “Proof of Keys.” Its intent is to educate and demonstrate how to maintain your own cryptocurrency keys and defend against the dark arts.
Blockchain Conferences (2018)
Chain of Things (CoT): Future of Shipping & Logistics – Hong Kong-based Chain of Things was formed by a group of veteran technologists who now specialize in the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain applications. Their website has an array of fascinating information and reading material broken down into easy, medium and hard. The Future of Shipping & Logistics forum was hosted in partnership with the Hong Kong Maritime Week. The event featured several existing projects and examined how a combination of these technologies could reduce billions of dollars of cost in the shipping and logistics industries, as well as examined legal implications that may arise from the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Conor Colwell, Blockpass Director of Special Projects, Chain of Things Co-founder – Having initially met Mr. Colwell at a crypto ‘meet-up’ in Asia, it was immediately obvious how well-read on the subject and bright this individual was. With a background in film and producing war documentaries in Iraq, he also is a serial tech entrepreneur. Conor is a person to watch. Their Blockpass Project is helping solve regulatory compliance issues in a ‘trustless environment’ to support the verification of humans to Know Your Client (KYC), objects (KYO), and connected devices (KYD). You can see the presentation here.
Sam Coyne, Head of Marketing, OpenPort – OpenPort has been demonstrating throughout Asia the ability to remove friction in the supply chain with technology that provides irrefutable proof of delivery (PoD) and financial liquidity to the eco-system. You can see their presentation here, as well as being covered our previous article here.
Dick Catlin, ioSlate – Another major segment of the supply chain ripe for disruption is that of trade finance. Given the fragmentation of data from the multitudes of participants in the entire trade finance vertical, ioSlate is developing a single platform, not hindered by the current constraints of blockchains, in order to facilitate rapid trades. The real fruit from this process, ioSlate explains, is the harvesting of data into assets that can be used to determine even better insurance, risk, and pricing models with more certainty. You may watch their one-minute video here, as well as their presentation here.
Ron Nicholas, Head of Customer Success for APAC, Gravity Supply Chain – GSC firmly demonstrated the evolution of the retail consumer and what the future holds for that segment’s supply chains. Understanding how generational lines have transitioned from using active platforms such as the radio to the now highly-connected smart devices is a key component on how the entire value chain has shifted. You may see their presentation here. Additionally, you may watch this fascinating and frightening video on how automation will almost obliterate the developing world’s retail clothing labor market here.
Scott Salandy-Defour, Co-founder Magnet, Special Projects, Chain of Things – Salandy-Defour is another polymath on the CoT roster who presented on the nexus of using blockchain (digital scarcity + trust), machine vision (authenticity + recognition), and augmented reality (interaction + personalization). Their solution is maximizing interaction with customers with a brilliant embedding of technology to combat counterfeiting of products. Watch these two videos on using augmented reality with labeling on a Moet bottle and on a t-shirt. You can see their presentation here.
Brian Kanda, Founder & CEO, FloraChain – MarEx first ran into Kanda at the CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 (see below), as he stood out amongst the crowd for possessing a practical understanding and working knowledge of the sector. Having been in the space for several years and finding a profitable niche in the floral segment, he was invited to present once again at this forum. Kanda demonstrates how FloraChain’s use of IoT and blockchain drastically reduces layers within the supply chain, such as verification of source, quality (e.g., organic or use of pesticides) and delivery (including streamlining of customs clearance). This, in turn, fosters significant reductions in the cost of goods, highly competitive price points and increased consumer confidence. You can see their presentation here.
Bloconomic – The Blockchain Economic Summit 2018 was organized by Alphacap and the Malaysia Blockchain Associated, and was hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The summit focuses on blockchain fundamental applications such as legislations around the world, eKYC, advertisement technology, AI, Big Data and asset tokenization, without any cryptocurrency speculation discussion taking place.
Key highlights from the summit included:
Discussions on the current legal & regulatory framework of cryptocurrency, ICOs & blockchain by John Ho, Head of Financial Markets and legal Dept., Standard Chartered Bank.
Financial inclusive solutions to poverty and infrastructure financing through blockchain by Hazim Mohamad, World Bank Representative.
Blockchain Summit Singapore 2018 – Organized by Blockchain Summit, as part of the Global Blockchain Summit Series, this event was hosted in Singapore. With 60+ speakers, 25 case studies and 34 sessions, the 18-hour event was jammed packed with over 1,000 attendees. The conference uniquely focused on industry leaders, business decision makers, tech innovators and investors from various sectors.
Here are a few notable speakers and/or projects:
Scoop.tech – This Singapore-based team aims at providing the average Joe with the opportunity to get into the cryptocurrency mining space without having to actually perform the operations. Despite cryptocurrencies intent to be decentralized, the current state of affairs shows, in fact, that the space is actually quite concentrated. One article shows a chart with the Bitcoin wealth istribution/concentration demonstrating approximately four percent of all the crypto wallets holding roughly 96 percent of Bitcoin. Not ideal circumstances for an idea that is centric to wealth inclusion. So, by lowering the barriers of entry and decentralizing the cryptocurrency production process (mining), more individuals can get skin in the game.
Additionally, Scoop’s decentralized wallet (nerd talk for “additional layers of security”) is solving another fascinating legal question about what happens to your cryptocurrency in the event of death or incapacitation through what are known as Ricardian [Smart] Contracts.
Dr. Meeta Yadav, Director of the Singapore Research Center (former Chief Data Officer for Blockchain Technologies), IBM – Yadav is an extraordinary and fascinating leader in her field and was kind enough to give some of her time to sit with MarEx. Yadav’s recent move to IBM’s Singapore lab is a clear signal of how serious they are about this technology, given the “Little Red Dot’s” significance in the game. As she told the Summit, “The biggest obstacle for blockchain technologies is regulatory acceptance.” Perhaps having IBM on the bench will gain more credibility in the eyes of policymakers. Singapore has made itself the globe’s largest transshipment port and the third largest financial center in the world. To capture this, IBM is working closely with the Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS), Port Authority (PSA), Economic Development Board (EDB), and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
Dr. Paul Sin, Partner, Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, Deloitte – Within seconds of listening to Sin, it was clear that he is a leader in the field. Deloitte’s investment into both the technology and this individual appears to be reaping in significant yields. For those serious projects or corporations in the Hong Kong region needing guidance or management, check out their Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab. The Lab is collaborating with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five leading Hong Kong banks.
Brice Achkir, Ph.D, Cisco Distinguished Eng./Sr. Director, Cisco Systems – For those around Silicon Valley, this technology leader is gunning hard for enterprises with Cisco Blockchain. There are some good infographics and data on their landing page.
Iris Taguet, Head of Blockchain Program, Air France KLM – The world’s fifth-largest airline by revenue (2018), Air France KLM is getting ahead of the ball and has implemented their Blockchain Program. Aimed at harmonizing data and traceability with the added benefit of better luggage tracking, less overbooking, and a more efficient loyalty program. With hopes of cutting costs, perhaps the end users will witness even more competitive rates in the near future.
Carl Ward, Global CTO, Accenture Health and Public Service – Also based in Singapore, Ward demonstrated how blockchain can and will profoundly affect and improve health and public services.
CryptoEvent Blockchain INDO 2018 – Organized by CryptoEvent and hosted in Jarkata, Blockchain INDO 2018 was one of the first large-scale international blockchain, digital assets and fintech shows of its kind in the country. Having recognized Indonesia’s population of more than 260 million and one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia, it also serves as one of the biggest potential markets the technologies.
Here are a few notable speakers of projects:
Zach Piester, Investor, Co-founder Intrepid Ventures – Presentation on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hype and a realist view on the power and potential of crowdfunding. The ICO market now seems all but dead and the traditional funding methods and well-established valuations have regained control.
Dan Gaily, CEO of Synapse AI – Presentation on..
http://bit.ly/2TskBgF
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