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If you dropped by Starbucks (SBUX, -1.47%) for a free cup of coffee on National Coffee Day, you would instead have been greeted by signs
about the company's supply chain, ethical sourcing commitments, and support for coffee farmers.

(Starbucks didn't dole out goodies this year; for free joe, better head to Dunkin' Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Cinnabon, Tim Horton's, or another participating coffee shop.)

Rather than being handed freebies, customers were invited to pause and consider the global economy of the caffeinated bean, one of the world's most valuable agricultural products from the tropics.

Most of the world's coffee is grown by small farmers, many of whom depend on family labor and unreliable income—often less than $2 a day, the World Bank says. In fact, 25 million of these farmers produce an astounding four-fifth's of the world's total coffee supply, according to the UK non-profit Fairtrade Foundation.


Now there's a tech startup that wants to change the economics. Bext360, a year-old Denver-based company, is applying technology, like robots, mobile apps, and blockchains—the shared accounting ledger technology that paved the way for Bitcoin's rise—in order to, as it says, "improve the upstream supply chains of key commodities," starting with coffee.

It works like this. The firm builds big, sensor-laden machines to sort, weigh, and assess the quality of each coffee cherry plucked on a plantation. The devices analyze and grade the fruit based on its condition (riper, larger cherries generally fetch a higher price).

The resulting data—weight, grade, and other specs—are made visible to buyers who then bid on the beans."We're trying to provide more and more data at the farm level to make it more like the wine industry," says Daniel Jones, CEO of Bext360. He wants farmers to get paid "not only on quantity but on quality of yield," he says."People are willing to pay more for good coffee," Jones notes.

All of this coffee information—from provenance to purchasers to payouts—are recorded on a blockchain in Bext's system. The ledger is designed to help keep down overhead costs—replacing paper carbon copies and other inefficient record-keeping methods—while making the financials easier to audit.If one batch of beans ends up producing a superior, specialty coffee, farmers can potentially get compensated for it.

The blockchain that Bext360 is using was built by Stellar, a financial tech venture founded by Jed McCaleb, an entrepreneur whose previous crypto projects have included the ill-fated Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange (he sold it years before the multimillion dollar hack) and the inter-bank cryptocurrency network Ripple.

By tying coffee to crypto tokens minted on Stellar, Bext360 says it is able to conduct cheap, instant cross-border trades, an important advantage for such a global industry.

"There are a lot of these stages in the process and the original farmer doesn’t capture the additional value added to the beans," McCaleb tells Fortune,describing traditional coffee commerce. With Bext360, he says, "farmers can get a higher value for higher quality coffee beans, rather than one fixed bulk price.

"Bext360 intends to host an "initial coin offering," or ICO, a controversial crypto-based funding mechanism for its "coffee tokens" in December or January, Jones says. The company has so far tested its machines in California this summer and it plans to set up a trial in Uganda in October.

Eventually, Jones hopes to use the blockchain to close the loop between cultivators and consumers. "We envision providing people with a link to see the origins of their coffee and the ability to tip the farmer—that’s the ultimate goal," he says.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletterFor Bext360, coffee isn't a bad place to start, since demand for... continue reading: http://fortune.com/2017/09/29/national-coffee-day-starbucks-blockchain/

This month, Morgan Stanley issued a report in which it performed an analysis of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Researchers at the Morgan Stanley Decrypted!

A Crypto/Blockchain Teach-in sought answers to gain a better understanding of the underlying features of various iterations of blockchaintechnology, as well as the cryptocurrencies that inhabit those ecosystems.

The researchers identified four big takeaways from the teach-in: the pace of development in the cryptospace is "mind boggling," seasoned players are ready to face challenges and are "self-aware of opportunities," platforms still must undergo a great deal of development before going mainstream, and incumbent investors will seek to "retain their moat.

"An analysis of Bitcoin versus Ethereum blockchains pointed out the pliability of executable distributed code contracts as well as the Ethereum blockchain's ability to create a means of broad-spectrum consensus, whereas Bitcoin is only a balance of accounts. Research was also performed on Ripple and its remittance solutions suite....continue reading on Ethnews: https://www.ethnews.com/morgan-stanley-report-analyzes-blockchain-based-currencies-and-industry

Carbon credits trading (also known as "cap and trade") as a means to help mitigate the effects of global climate change has long been advocated by environmentalists fighting one of the most intransigent environmental challenges of the 21st century. 

Now ConsenSys and CarbonX Personal Carbon Trading Inc. have stepped up to enable the first-ever peer-to-peer carbon credit trading platform, built on the Ethereum blockchain. CarbonX Personal Carbon Trading Inc. is principally a Tapscott family enterprise, with CEO and founder William (Bill) Tapscott, co-founder and CMO Jane Ricciardelli, chair of the board of directors Don Tapscott, and director and board member Alex Tapscott.

Bill Tapscott is a software engineer who has founded and co-founded a number of tech startups including IntelliOne, a cell phone geo-location and traffic data processing company; Maptuit, a navigation and optimization software company in transportation logistics; and Mountain Lake Software, a custom software development company with a strong financial services practice.

Tapscott told Bitcoin Magazine :"My interest in carbon trading and clean technologies was piqued by being on the Investment Committee of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund , a City of Toronto venture fund with a mandate to develop greenhouse gas reduction projects and companies.

"CarbonX will engage millions of people in fighting climate change by materially rewarding responsible behaviors toward the personal consumption of carbon.

CarbonX will achieve this by investing in carbon reduction projects and re-casting generated offsets as ERC20 tokens on an Ethereum Blockchain."CarbonX's ultimate goal is to become the global exchange for peer-to-peer personal carbon trading."Don Tapscott, chair of the CarbonX board of directors said in a post :"... climate change is arguably the world's most daunting challenge.

Virtually every scientist now agrees that the debate is over. Rising average surface temperatures combined with rapidly expanding deserts, melting Arctic sea ice caps and ocean acidification now provide unequivocal evidence that human activities are fundamentally altering the Earth's climate.

"ConsenSys was one of the first startups to build practical applications for the Ethereum blockchain.

Their mission is to create simplified and automated decentralized applications (dApps) to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions and exchanges, principally on the Ethereum blockchain.In a statement , ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin said:

"As one of the fastest growing companies working on Ethereum, a platform that is poised to reformat how the world organizes itself, ConsenSys is committed to enabling technologies to be built that will facilitate attention to externalities like pollution and critical new foundations like sustainability.

"CarbonX has the potential to incentivize behavior that contributes to environmental sustainability, and is an excellent example of Ethereum-based technologies poised to make positive change," added Lubin.

The CarbonX Token CxT

The CarbonX initiative will buy carbon credits from environmentally sustainable practices like ridesharing and will invest in carbon reduction projects like tree planting and convert this value to Ethereum ERC20 tokens known as CxT tokens.CarbonX will be announcing a formal token launch in the near future.

CxT tokens will be distributed through an open-loop-style loyalty rewards program. The CxTs will then be tradeable on the CarbonX platform and be able to be exchanged for carbon-friendly goods and services, other reward program points or other digital currencies.

For verification, CarbonX will use industry-standard carbon offsets like the REDD and VCS offsets (for example, to apply to ridesharing) and will convert these into CxT tokens.Investments in carbon reduction projects that will generate offsets will use government protocols, such as those developed by the Ontario provincial government, for example.

"The CxTs will be awarded by enterprises who encourage ridesharing, and brands/retailers who wish to feature products that are carbon-friendly. We will provide guidelines, and consumers/users will be able to track overall performance. In the example of rideshare, we plan to work with companies like Luum and their clients to incent carbon-friendly behaviors.

There are many ways we can boost awareness and responsibility for personal action in the fight," explained Tapscott.Well-known environmentalist Richard Sandor, chair and CEO of Environmental Financial Products and founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange, has endorsed the CarbonX initiative, saying:

"Blockchain technology has the potential to further expand the applications of market-based mechanisms to help solve environmental concerns. I am pleased to support CarbonX as another positive step towards transparency, accountability and lower transaction costs."

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

Discover even more stories like this on NASDAQ here: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/carbonx-and-consensys-put-p2p-carbon-credit-trading-on-the-blockchain-...

The databases used in the company typically focus information at one point of access (and vulnerability). In the case of Blockchain technology, however, the total database consists of the set of single encrypted data and stored anonymously at the level of the individual elements (nodes) of a network, all of which are concatenated.

Each new record is stored in such a way that it includes a portion of the information that relies on all previously stored data. The correlation between records makes it virtually impossible to tamper with them without this being immediately highlighted on all the others in the database.

The ability to rely on a form of distributed trust allows parties involved in a process – such as distributing a product – or in a contract – as a transaction – to use a system that automatically ensures the legitimacy and fairness of the operation of services/activities without having to rely on a super parts authority that makes it a guarantor.What are the major sectors involved in the Blockchain technology?

“Blockchain can be used as a tracing and identity verification system, property, transaction, or digitized event of any type. You can tell us, for example, whether an event happened when and with what outcome, and it can also confirm that the subjects involved in the event had permission to act. With Blockchain, you can therefore efficiently manage any public and private registry.

The areas of application are diverse and include e-government, document retention, notary services, health data management, supply chains, and supply chains. But Blockchain applications can also significantly complement the Internet of Things and M2M (machine-to-machine) interactions.What are the most immediate benefits?At the organizational level, Blockchain technology allows for the whole or part of the governance of many public and private services.

The benefits are remarkable and include greater efficiency, automation and simplification of large-scale workflows, reduced management time and cost, greater data integrity protection, and more fair and transparent involvement of the various stakeholder’s involved system.There are different applications and benefits for each industry, but in general, the ability of cryptographic protocols to make data resistant to changes or arbitrary exploitation by third parties is very interesting.

What are the organizational implications?The profound and systemic change of digital services through Blockchain is a major technical and regulatory challenge that needs to be dealt with gradually and takes a long time. You must consider the needs of all participants in the system and proceed to progressive adjustments, possibly at low risk.

Today, markets are experiencing a stage of great fervor. However, this does not mean that application paths are always valid or consistent.

The blockchain is not an end in itself and cannot be applied indiscriminately. Rather it is a means to have something else, it is a driver to gain benefits that would otherwise be foreclosed. It is necessary to always consider practical usage contexts in technical, economic and social terms, and to identify with great lucidity and good sense the real benefits of any applications.”What are the long-term benefits, though?

A widespread diffusion of decentralized architectures would allow complete re-engineering of all processes of data creation, management, and storage, both public and private. The bureaucracy, the need for infrastructure and the workload of the public administration, for example, would be drastically simplified and lightened, with considerable time and money savings.

Even in the corporate context many of the current centralized and verticalized organizational models could radically change. Algorithmic governance would also allow companies that do not have fiduciary relationships among themselves, or who are even competitors, sharing or exchanging data with mutual benefit, always maintaining confidentiality and privacy, and thus creating new business models that are based on cooperation.

7 Principals of Blockchain Technology

A successful system design for the corporate network necessarily needs to align well with the blockchain tenets that includes ownership, trust, trade, and transactionality in case of a multi-party system. In other cases, the business network may never realize the goal of blockchain technology is a sustainable form.

Here are the seven principals to be kept in mind:• The network participant should have their business control:

• The network needs to be extensible so that the participants enjoy flexibility of leaving as well as joining it
• The networks need to be protected and permissions to protect itself from competitive data and facilitating the peer to peer transactions.
• It should provide with an open and free access and global collaboration via collective innovation
• It should be scalable for encrypted data and transaction data processing
• It must accommodate certain enterprise security while addressing the new challenges of security within a shared business network
• The network should co-exist with the current system of transaction systems and records

Discover more content like this on CustomerThink here: https://customerthink.com/7-principles-for-designing-a-blockchain-network-to-power-and-sustain-your-...

One of the hottest emerging technologies is blockchain. It’s the underlying technology that makes Bitcoin work, but the potential applications are far larger than cryptocurrency.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger. Instead of a single database or organization holding transaction records (or other data), the records are available to millions of computers anonymously. Through massive distribution of these records, a nearly tamperproof data record is created. (Harvard Business Review recently published a good overview of the technology.)

Currently, the primary applications for blockchain are in the financial industry, where it has the clearest value proposition.Don Tapscott, author of Blockchain Revolution, delivered a TED talk and summarized why transactions backed by large financial institutions are problematic.

First, the holders of the data are centralized and can be hacked. Second, these institutions are not accessible to everyone. Third, transactions are slow, taking hours or days for money to change hands. Additionally, the institutions charge a fee and take personal data (which may be detrimental to vendors and customers in the future).Within energy, blockchain is a strong candidate to support the distributed electrical grid.

Rocky Mountain Institute has written about how blockchain will impact the energy sector and how it will be a key to cyberdefense on the grid. Greentech Media also hosted a podcast on blockchain exploring the possibilities for applications.In short, blockchain can record and facilitate transactions between many entities that buy and sell energy.

As more homeowners and businesses become electricity suppliers by installing solar and investing in batteries, there will be a much more complicated and interconnected web of energy buyers and sellers. Many individuals and businesses will be buyers and sellers, in some cases simultaneously, depending on the time of the day.

Blockchain is a foundational technology that can make this complex marketplace work efficiency, securely, and without significant overhead costs. 

There are a number of firms talking about blockchain applications in real estate, but it’s typically on the brokerage side. For example, blockchain could eliminate the need for title insurance, reducing the costs of purchasing a home. 

Increasing marketplace efficiency is advantageous in facility management, too. The use of blockchain in building operations has received less attention, but there are many opportunities that the technology enables.

Given that blockchain is a secure way to automate transactions and the transfer of data, here are a few leading ideas about how blockchain may change the way buildings are operated.

Facility management services

Many organizations hire outside vendors to manage their offices. These contracts can include managing capital projects, operating the subsystems like HVAC, and running the cafeteria. The middleman approach works well, because most large offices require dozens of different services.Managing the facility services and the business may be too much for most corporations.

A corporation can realize significant efficiencies by paying a single trusted entity for facility management services. Additionally, the corporation may not have the resources to properly vet all the necessary vendor relationships. The efficiencies of scale are compelling, and may outweigh the contract fees paid to the facility management company. 

Blockchain may obviate the need for such a middleman. One concept within blockchain is the “smart contract.” Also known as a “self-executing” contract, it is a set of instructions, conditions and outcomes that are built into the blockchain.

The smart contract defines how money should change hands and automatically executes the transfer as conditions are met. This replaces the legal contract or other paper agreement. Explained one way, “If blockchains give us distributed trustworthy storage, then smart contracts give us distributed trustworthy calculations.

“ Here is a simple example in shipping and delivery: Instead of signing a paper agreement with a delivery service, a smart contract could simply release the prearranged delivery fee when the package is delivered (which could be verified using GPS).

Supply chains have been viewed as a good target for blockchain, but the same can be said of facility management. “All too often, supply chains are hampered by paper-based systems, where forms have to pass through numerous channels for approval, which increases exposure to loss and fraud,” notes a great summary of smart contracts.

This approach also would automatically create a record of past maintenance calls and could automatically identify HVAC components that need to be replaced.

Equipment warranties

The worldwide market for building automation is about $120 billion. Smart equipment and the internet of things, which will connect these systems to the cloud, are becoming more common. Smart contracts could serve to automate warranties and provide refunds when equipment does not perform as expected.

Jeff Garzik, who co-founded blockchain services startup Bloq, notes that “smart contracts...guarantee a very, very specific set of outcomes. There's never any confusion, and there's never any need for litigation. It's simply a very limited, computer-guaranteed set of outcomes.

"With onboard sensors to monitor equipment performance, any warranty issue could be automatically identified and the refund would be transferred automatically. This would give building operators more confidence in the products they purchase and reduce administrative costs for the vendors. 

Tenant billing 

Billing individual offices for actual energy within a commercial building is a significant energy management challenge. There are regulations in some cities, such as New York, that require submetering to enable tenant billing.

 Right now, the process is manual and requires a fair bit of administration. Just as blockchain is starting to impact the energy grid at large, it also could provide the backbone for billing within individual buildings.

Indoor occupancy tracking 

Tracking individuals within a building will enable the space to be more efficient and personal. That said, valid privacy concerns arise as more data is collected about more occupants. Blockchain could provide security and anonymity while also enabling building systems to collect more detailed data about individual occupants.

Blockchain can be used as a secure way to store personally identifiable data. For example, the United Nations is working on a digital ID system based on blockchain. Similarly, Civic is focused on blockchain-based identify management solutions to securing an individual’s sensitive, personal data.

The solution is a bit technical, but in short, blockchain enables Civic to verify someone’s identify but not store the personal data on a server. Then, by decentralizing the data, Civic generates about the given identity, they ensure that it can’t be tampered with.

Data about how someone works within a building could be stored in the same way, reducing worker concerns about indoor sensing being used as “big brother” technology. 

Co-working spaces

Most co-working spaces have fairly simple tiered pricing plans: a monthly fee to access the office space, a higher fee for a reserved desk, and an even higher fee for an enclosed office. The administrative effort to bill on a per-use basis is cost-prohibitive.

But more workers would join co-working spaces if they could pay for only the time spent in the space, which could be as little as a few hours per week. Blockchain and smart contracts would remove the administrative effort to implement such a dynamic pricing model and would be highly secure. Deloitte notes in its white paper:

“As the framework illustrates, blockchain seems to be most applicable to dynamically configurable or co-sharing spaces, which have a relatively higher number of tenants and shorter duration leases compared to traditional property types.

“WeWork raised a Series G round at a $20 billion valuation. Many speculate that this valuation is justified by its goal of taking over significant shares of existing commercial office space, even spaces owned and operated by corporations.

WeWork may also see blockchain as a way to increase demand for co-working space. Other co-working space operators may view investments in blockchain as a way to differentiate their offerings and capture market share. 

These are just a few of the many opportunities for blockchain in facility management. The technology has the potential to disrupt facility management, just as it is positioned to fundamentally change the financial sector.

Facility data may not be as sensitive as credit cards or financial information, but there still are risks. Additionally, blockchain provides benefits beyond security, such as a reduction in overhead costs. Building and facility management operators and vendors should embrace blockchain and consider how it may help them deliver next-generation solutions.

Entrepreneurs also should consider how blockchain can remove steps in complex transactions and increase efficiency. A blockchain-based building automation system (BAS) may seem far-fetched, but it would enable a “pay for performance,” or “BAS as a service,” business model. Additionally, the building could improve operating efficiency by accessing trend data for similar peer sites.

Such a BAS would also be more resistant to hacks. For example, setpoints would be distributed in blockchain instead of being on a single server.Additionally, just as blockchain is being used to track food supply, it could be used to track the source of building materials to ensure a high level of indoor environmental quality, which is an emerging issue for worker health. 

***Joseph Aamidor is a 12-year veteran in the building and energy management industry. He frequently speaks at industry events and contributes to industry periodicals including Greentech Media. Joe has held product management responsibilities at Johnson Controls and most recently served as director of product at Lucid Design Group.

Discover more stories like this on Greentechmedia here: 
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/blockchain-coming-to-a-smart-building-near-you

On September 4, 2017, a Juniper Research study, titled The Future of Blockchain: Key Vertical Opportunities & Deployment Strategies 2017-2022, indicated a bullish sentiment for cryptocurrency markets.

In the first half of 2017, transaction values surged past $325 billion, two-thirds of which is attributable to the growth in the value of Ether, according to the research. Juniper expects the market to continue to grow, surpassing $1 trillion in transaction volume before the end of the year.

Currently, trades on various cryptocurrency exchanges account for a daily volume of $2 billion.The study also indicates that an upcoming planned fork, during which SegWit2x scaling protocols will be implemented for the Bitcoin network, in November may be fractious to the community. 

 Research author Dr. Windsor Holden commented that this split could have negative effects on the value of bitcoin:

"There is no resolution in sight to the continuing and fundamental disagreements between many Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin Core developers over the future of the cryptocurrency.

This in turn could lead to uncertainty about Bitcoin’s future and downward pressure on its valuation."Juniper also claimed that private deployments of blockchain for permissioned ledgers, not public chains underpinning cryptocurrencies, are more likely to be the "brightest prospects" for use cases.

Discover more stories like this on Ethnews : https://www.ethnews.com/juniper-research-expects-cryptocurrency-to-surge-past-trillion-dollar-transa...

THE GRID OF THE FUTURE

Renewable energy and blockchain are two technologies that are worth betting on. The former is considered to be the most effective way to combat the world’s climate problem. The latter is a promising new technology whose potential for disruption of current financial and societal structures is yet to be fully realized.

Here’s a thought: why not put the two together? That’s what Brooklyn-based startup LO3 Energy had in mind when it started a project that does just that, creating an innovative retail model for electricity.

“Oh, this is shared economy. This is Airbnb, this is Uber, this is 21st century,” Brooklyn resident Michael Guerra told Politico, recounting the time when LO3’s Sasha Santiago first introduced him to the idea. Back in 2012, Guerra installed 24 solar panels on the rooftop of his Park Slope home. Now, aside from providing him with a cheaper and greener way to power his air conditioning in summer, he’s also providing solar power to others in the neighborhood — and earning money in the process.

Essentially, the Brooklyn Microgrid runs an electricity-sharing ecosystem that’s maintained directly by consumers. Those with solar panels sell environmental credits, through a phone app, to residents without direct access. The entire setup is made possible by blockchain, the same technology behind the increasingly popular cryptocurrencies — such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others.

THE POWER OF DECENTRALIZATION

Thanks to the decentralized nature of blockchain as a digital information ledger, the transactions are very secure. Blockchain allows for meters to communicate with one another reliably, with the phone app acting as the bidder that gives microgrid consumers the power to control transactions.

“The idea is that it isn’t just rich people with solar panels selling energy to each other, but really, it’s the entire community,” LO3’s director of business development Scott Kessler explained to Politico. “So if you’re low-income and you need the cheapest power you can get, we’ll still provide that to you. We don’t want to be dictating.”

After a successful trial run, LO3 plans to formally launch the microgrid later this year, with interest from 300 households and small businesses. Already, there are 50 generation sites throughout Brooklyn, mostly solar and one small wind turbine.

“After I learned about it,” Guerra said, “I thought, ‘This is definitely happening. This can’t not happen.’”This is one rather effective example of how blockchain can be a practical and useful technology. Its applications go far beyond just cryptocurrencies. Already, there are efforts to try and implement blockchain-based file systems for medical records, as well... https://futurism.com/blockchain-and-renewable-energy-are-utterly-disrupting-society-as-we-know-it/

Realizing the Potential of Blockchain

A Multistakeholder Approach to the Stewardship of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, could soon give rise to a new era of the Internet even more disruptive and transformative than the current one. Blockchain's ability to generate unprecedented opportunities to create and trade value in society will lead to a generational shift in the Internet's evolution, from an Internet of Information to a new generation Internet of Value.

The key to enabling this transition is the formation of a multistakeholder consensus around how the technology functions, its current and potential applications and how to create the regulatory, cultural and organizational conditions for it to succeed. 

Download the World Economic Forum White Paper here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Realizing_Potential_Blockchain.pdf