I attended the techUK Financial Services & Payments
Programme and a seminar on exploring the Blockchain’s potential and demystifying
the hype. The positioning of this session was very much along the lines of
Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise the delivery of financial
services and payments. From
disintermediating banks from the payments process by way of a decentralised
system of exchange to facilitating the development of ‘smart contract’
applications the distributed consensus ledger (DCL) technology has in some
parts been described as the enabler of the internet of value.
The session with an exceptional panel of Keith Saxton, Simon
Bailey Director of Payments and Transaction Banking at CGI, Dave Birch,
Director of Consult Hyperion and author of
Identity
is the New Money and
Richard Brown ‘on the
blockchain nobody knows you are a fridge’ the leading authority on
cryptocurrencies in IBM covered how the technology industry can support, what
are the implications and is there a direction of travel.
For me, as someone who has come late to this world but sees
the incredible disruptive potential, the takeaways were the Blockchain isn’t a magic unicorn. That ability to make the make the virtual world more like the
real world is its transformative effective and the usecase challenge hasn’t
been solved.
When it comes to choosing these I’m with the panelist in that the way
forward is to do as is often prescribed, have a go and explore. The base
technology you choose will have much depend on your objectives and whether this
is an individual or organisational ask. Whether
you go for a Bitcoin or
Ripple like offering
is up for grabs as they offer different things and come with points of view and how much you see the world changing, with one working within the context of current financial structures and one looking to work outside it.
Disruptive journey
ahead of us.
I also related to the idea that the disruption of the
Blockchain is more likely to come from a solution for dishwasher warranties
rather than an attempt to overthrow governments. The real strength of its disruption is the
ability to offer a vehicle to protect and reward the digital and creative
industries. Whilst we started in the
world of payments and financial services, the thought of applying a blockchain
concept coupled with a
Kobalt type
offering really does have incredible potential to disrupt the Music and Media content
ecosystems. Just the start of the art of the possible, the journey will be
bumpy, take longer and be more costly but the genie is out of the bottle. All
this and we were supposed to be beyond the hype.