Kevin McPartland, the head of research for market structure and technology at Greenwich Associates put together his list of the top ten trends that will define finance in 2018; some of the highlights from the list include alternative data become less alternative and more part of the norm; regulators are better at getting things done as opposed to congress; continued innovation in the fintech space and the fear of a potential cyber breach in the space; banks will begin to focus more attention to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Source.
Startups like Propy, ShelterZoom and RealBlocks have begun letting people buy and sell real estate using the blockchain; Eric Piscini, principal, banking and technology consulting at Deloitte tells American Banker, “Maybe banks will be leaner because they won’t need to have as many people as they used to, to manage those processes.”; using blockchain technology can help to make the entire process of buying or selling real estate more efficient; banks will need to focus on other value added services outside of just lending and servicing; the power of blockchain technology is beginning to be felt all across the financial landscape. Source.
IOTA has increased in value to $10 billion, up from $4 billion in about two weeks; the cryptocurrency though is different than most in that it is not based on blockchain; the article outlines how IOTA tokens work, which use a “tangle” to address the high cost of blockchain transactions. Source
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is exploring options to sell the retailer and use the proceeds to start a digital global property registry; Mr. Byrne would be teaming up with Hernando de Soto who says that formalizing land rights can help to stop poverty; they are looking to use the blockchain to list ownership records, this would make it easier to trace them back to the right owner and account for less forgeries; the new company, De Soto, would start in early 2018 and use more than 10 Overstock employees. Source.
Barclays, Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas, along with three fintechs and professors from University of Cambridge are expected to announce a new way to leverage blockchain technology at One Planet Summit; the tech would allow the banks to get insight into what borrowers are using environmentally sustainable practices and offer them better lending terms. Source
In a note circulated to clients equity research firm D.A. Davidson said Overstock.com is the clear leader in blockchain technology; "Our research increased our conviction that, today and likely in the near-term, Overstock stands head and shoulders above the others" analyst Tom Forte of D.A. Davidson said as reported by Business Insider; the company was the first retailer to accept bitcoin payments and as a result saw their stock rise 265 percent in the last 12 months. Source.
eToro partnered with CoinDash to develop a set of social trading products built on blockchain technology; eToro CEO Yoni Assia tells Banking Technology, “With thousands of new coins in the market, it can be difficult for mainstream investors to navigate this new space. The CoinDash team is enabling users to better analyse their investments in cryptocurrencies, and to learn from others.”; the eToro marketplace has more than 4.5 million users in over 170 countries, they allow users to trade based on copying or following other individual’s portfolios and recently added access to cryptocurrencies. Source.
Every quarter we get together with three other families for a dinner party. While all professionals no one is in...
The $5tn mutual fund manager announced that they have successfully tested blockchain technology to automatically update data on index funds; types of data in the test included names and share prices of companies in index funds; the company stated they are not looking to blockchain to replace workers but give them more freedom to focus on other tasks; Vanguard follows other big name firms who have tested uses of the technology recently. Source.
CarbonX is a peer to peer personal carbon trading company; it was formed in a joint venture between ConsenSys and a co-founding group which includes Don and Alex Tapscott who authored the book Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business and the World; according to Blockchain Daily News, “The company plans to purchase carbon credits, or invest in reduction projects, and re-cast the offsets as ERC20 tokens on an Ethereum-based blockchain, then distribute them through an open-loop style loyalty rewards program.” Source