Use Case: ConsenSys puts up $50 million to hunt for blockchain solutions to global challenges
(news.impactalpha.com)
Blockchain, meet the 2030 global goals.ConsenSys, an ambitious Bushwick, Brooklyn software company founded by blockchain tech guru Joseph Lubin, has launched a $50 million in-house venture capital fund to back startups turning the distributed-ledger technology on global challenges like refugee assistance, distributed energy, and supply-chain tracing.
The firm employs more than 150 former bankers, management consultants, mathematics, engineers and techies to build and support ventures developing new services and business models built on the blockchain.
The new venture fund signals the firm’s intention to demonstrate the potential of the emerging digital transaction architecture to transform the lives of world’s poor.“I believe resolutely in the 100-year mission of blockchain: to completely change the way society functions through decentralized technologies,” says Kavita Gupta, who was tapped to head the fund.
A former World Banker and previously an impact investor at the Schmidt Family Foundation of Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Gupta told ImpactAlpha, “Blockchain is going to revolutionize the way we do business and use and share data.”Blockchain already is opening up entire new avenues for social and environmental impact, says Gupta.
Think about a Syrian family preparing to flee their home as war approaches. They’d have little time to collect their birth certificates and IDs, property deeds, education credentials and financial accounts.
“If you lived in a country that used blockchain from birth, you’d have all of that information accessible and instantly verifiable when needed,” Gupta said.Gupta says there are blockchain applications for nearly all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations, which aim to end poverty, guarantee universal education and much more, by 2030.
“I’m a huge believer in the SDGs and have worked with the U.N. to boost them,” Gupta told me. “Blockchain is an architecture. It can enable solutions to almost any SDG.”The potential of blockchain for good, and Gupta, will be center stage at the TBLI, for Triple Bottom Line Investing, conference in Stockholm September 28–29.
Blockchain allows two parties to make safe and transparent digital transactions, without the need for a middleman. It’s often described as “a digital ledger” or decentralized database that records exchanges of digital assets like money, goods or property.
Just as email is one particular use of the internet, currency, Bitcoin for example, is one particular use of blockchain. Other applications developers are building for blockchain include digital identifications such as birth certificates, property records, education documents, electronic voting and a range of financial services including remittances.
Roughly $20 billion, or 0.025% of global GDP, is held in blockchain. Blockchain-enabled transactions reduce time and costs, ensure accountability and reduce fraud. Where distrust of governments, banks and companies is real and founded, and people in transit, Blockchain can be revolutionary.
“When I speak about it in the West, people say they trust Google, Facebook, or their banks,” says Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum, an open software platform that has allowed developers to build applications beyond currencies on blockchain.
“But the rest of the world doesn’t trust organizations and corporations that much — I mean Africa, India, the Eastern Europe, or Russia.”It’s not about the places where people are really rich, he says. “Blockchain’s opportunities are the highest in the countries that haven’t reached that level yet.”
Lubin, a Goldman Sachs alum, has “a particular talent for peeling idealists away from their jobs in traditional finance,” according to Wired’s Morgen Peck.
The Consensys team page includes talent from Bank of America and Capital One, UBS, Deutsche Bank and JPMorganChase and other venture capital and hedge funds....continue reading: http://www.blockchaincompany.info/post/6524552/use-case-blockchain-voting-app-puts-democracy-in-the-...
The firm employs more than 150 former bankers, management consultants, mathematics, engineers and techies to build and support ventures developing new services and business models built on the blockchain.
The new venture fund signals the firm’s intention to demonstrate the potential of the emerging digital transaction architecture to transform the lives of world’s poor.“I believe resolutely in the 100-year mission of blockchain: to completely change the way society functions through decentralized technologies,” says Kavita Gupta, who was tapped to head the fund.
A former World Banker and previously an impact investor at the Schmidt Family Foundation of Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Gupta told ImpactAlpha, “Blockchain is going to revolutionize the way we do business and use and share data.”Blockchain already is opening up entire new avenues for social and environmental impact, says Gupta.
Think about a Syrian family preparing to flee their home as war approaches. They’d have little time to collect their birth certificates and IDs, property deeds, education credentials and financial accounts.
“If you lived in a country that used blockchain from birth, you’d have all of that information accessible and instantly verifiable when needed,” Gupta said.Gupta says there are blockchain applications for nearly all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations, which aim to end poverty, guarantee universal education and much more, by 2030.
“I’m a huge believer in the SDGs and have worked with the U.N. to boost them,” Gupta told me. “Blockchain is an architecture. It can enable solutions to almost any SDG.”The potential of blockchain for good, and Gupta, will be center stage at the TBLI, for Triple Bottom Line Investing, conference in Stockholm September 28–29.
Distributed ledgers
Blockchain allows two parties to make safe and transparent digital transactions, without the need for a middleman. It’s often described as “a digital ledger” or decentralized database that records exchanges of digital assets like money, goods or property.
Just as email is one particular use of the internet, currency, Bitcoin for example, is one particular use of blockchain. Other applications developers are building for blockchain include digital identifications such as birth certificates, property records, education documents, electronic voting and a range of financial services including remittances.
Roughly $20 billion, or 0.025% of global GDP, is held in blockchain. Blockchain-enabled transactions reduce time and costs, ensure accountability and reduce fraud. Where distrust of governments, banks and companies is real and founded, and people in transit, Blockchain can be revolutionary.
“When I speak about it in the West, people say they trust Google, Facebook, or their banks,” says Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum, an open software platform that has allowed developers to build applications beyond currencies on blockchain.
“But the rest of the world doesn’t trust organizations and corporations that much — I mean Africa, India, the Eastern Europe, or Russia.”It’s not about the places where people are really rich, he says. “Blockchain’s opportunities are the highest in the countries that haven’t reached that level yet.”
Finance idealists
Lubin, a Goldman Sachs alum, has “a particular talent for peeling idealists away from their jobs in traditional finance,” according to Wired’s Morgen Peck.
The Consensys team page includes talent from Bank of America and Capital One, UBS, Deutsche Bank and JPMorganChase and other venture capital and hedge funds....continue reading: http://www.blockchaincompany.info/post/6524552/use-case-blockchain-voting-app-puts-democracy-in-the-...
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst I agree is a revolution. I already have said before I am very interested on this aspect of block chain, and again I say this is probably one of the most revolutionary sides, as there will be no more passive recipients but just people fighting against underdevelopment and global crisis. -
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Maria Gimeno Again a fantastic development on blockchain development with a very powerful potential of not just changing but also rearranging the policies of how to deal with hunger, poverty, refugee crisis, education and other global challenges. I believe this should be coming soon and it will bring everybody together to participate into fighting inequality and poverty etc. Anyone through tokenization will be able to be an active fighter against these global challenges, included those who now are passive recipients of development help. A revolution indeed.