Disruption
- by Paula Nita
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Have you ever wondered what our future will look like? These are 10 Ways The World Will Change By 2050!
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst Any prediction of future is kind of dangerous. Could we have predicted what we are living now just twenty years ago? Surely, not. We wish most of these predictions be true but, to make sure, we will be changed in ways we can't even think about now. Our work now is to work on the optimistic predictions to happen and the pessimistic ones (climate change, etc) less possible. Someone will watch this in 2050 (if Youtube exists yet!) and will probably smile on what we were thinking about that year.- 10 1 vote
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( At Blockchain Company, we think there is a near future way to help solve the problem discussed in this video through token economics. It won´t be easy against Goliath, but it´s not impossible. We are quietly working on it ).
Jaron Lanier, the Silicone Valley ‘computer philosopher', thinks social media is ruining your life.
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In this interview Jaron Lanier talks about Facebook, YouTube, Google and how the tech and social media giants are using algorithms to record data about their users - and how internet algorithms shape how we see the world and what we’re shown online.- By Admin
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst Social Media is a tool. Who uses the tool, how it is used, the reasons behind, everything counts. I totally agree with Lanier, unfortunately, that is a tool for manipulation for many. However, we need Social Media as the forum where we can discuss also many things which can't be discussed anywhere else. With the advent of Blockchain, tokenisation, and the 4th IR this issue should be discussed and solutions found before the smart people just leaves social media for the masses. We need to work on it now, better than later. What do you think?
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In a profound talk about technology and power, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari explains the important difference between fascism and nationalism -- and what the consolidation of our data means for the future of democracy.
Appearing as a hologram live from Tel Aviv, Harari warns that the greatest danger that now faces liberal democracy is that the revolution in information technology will make dictatorships more efficient and capable of control.
"The enemies of liberal democracy hack our feelings of fear and hate and vanity, and then use these feelings to polarize and destroy," Harari says. "It is the responsibility of all of us to get to know our weaknesses and make sure they don't become weapons."
(Followed by a brief conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson)
Check out more TED Talks: http://www.ted.com- By Admin
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Jakobo Gimeno I agree with this Data is everything these days, Google's neural network can now predict whether a patient admitted to a hospital will die the AI will predict this by checking the users medical data and it has a 95% accuracy. EA is using player data to matchmake the player in a pattern that will make them play longer and it works. With the right data you can understand how the person works and you can know how to manipulate them and that is scary how our personal data can be accessed so easily without us knowing. Decentralized data might be the way out of this.
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst "Who controls the data, that is the real government." Harari states, that corporations could manipulate our lives in a such way that we believe our beliefs and likes are our own. We have to be aware and make others aware in these times of change of the dangers of fascism coming from the use of technologies in hands of a few. "We shouldn't underestimate the power of human stupidity" he continues. But not all is dark. Blockchain is, for many, the weapon against this. Decentralised data, tokenisation, protection of your data being used nefariously, and in general a democratisation against big corporations, outdated financial (and political!) systems etc. However Blockchain will not help if we are not even aware of what is going on around us and we themselves won't become agents of change fully participating in the new incoming social, economical and political paradigm. We can't just leave this in the hands of leaders (fascism) or trusting corporations (more fascism).
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Andrew Gillick,
With new technologies and innovative ideas flourishing we appear to be in sort of renaissance in the age of digital money. And while many are excited to quickly usher in the new era of cashless society, there is still a way to go. Perhaps surprisingly, it's the emerging economies that are the early and most avid adopters of new payment methods.
In India, 56 percent of consumers say they regularly pay for goods using mobile wallets; in Thailand that figure is 51 percent, whereas in Spain and the UK it’s 25 percent and 14 percent respectively.Millennials are driving the change and shaping the future of money.
By 2025, millennials (those born after 1980) will comprise three quarters of the global workforce and according to Pew Research, in the US, they will overtake the baby boomer generation by 2019 when the millennial population will increase to 73 million and the boomers sit around 72 million.
Tainted by the legacy of the Global Financial Crisis, millennials arguably had the most reason to lose faith in the current financial system and according to research on the Future of Money report 76 percent of millennials are looking for new forms of banking. Millennials are driving the move to mobile banking
Revolut: a mobile bank revolution?
The UK fintech company Revolut is one of those rare creatures in the business world, a unicorn. It has been growing voraciously since beginning in 2015 and the privately held company is now worth over $1 billion. Like its competitor Monzo, it is one of many, many mobile banking apps globally.
Revolut has ambitions to replace conventional bank accounts and says that it currently processes $1.8 billion in transactions each month. The app-based bank offers a prepaid VISA or Mastercard pre-paid debit card and a current account that allows customers to hold, exchange and transfer money without fees in 25 different currencies. It has also added the functionality of buying, holding and exchange of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) an Litecoin (LTC) with 25 fiat currencies.
However the currencies remain in the app and cannot be moved to another crypto wallet.The business is targeting the millennial and younger market and recently announced that it is going to launch a debit card that gives users 1 percent cash back in cryptocurrencies.
This marks another point of difference with conventional banks, many of which have even gone as far as stopping customers from buying cryptocurrencies with their credit cards.
The company’s co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky was a trader with Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers, who set up the company alongside a Vlad Yatsenko, a former Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank developer, after raising just $3.5 million in funding.
Are we close the end of the cash age?
With the proliferation of so many digital mediums for holding, transferring and transacting our money, looking from street to street to find your bank’s nearest ATM machine to take cash out seems like an ancient way of living. Proponents of cryptos as a form of payment are usually quick to cite cash’s decline to bolster their argument.
However, as anachronistic as the cash system seems now its use has not diminished as much as popularly believed. “Reports of the death of cash have been greatly exaggerated,” the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve said after its review of the global money supply in November.
“In most countries, demand for notes and coins is strong and shows no sign of slowing down.”According to the bank’s study, which covered 2006 to 2016, the amount of American money in circulation around the world has grown by over 87 percent over the past 10 years. In 2006 $784 billion worth of dollars changed hands globally, but in 2016 that figure was $1.46 trillion.
Nor was it just in US dollars that cash circulation was growing, of the 42 major economies that the Fed studied across the world 40 saw the growth of circulation outpacing economic growth over the past decade.
Also, the private sector’s statistics corroborates with the Fed’s study: according to Western Union, 83 percent of the world’s transactions are in cash, down only slightly from 85 percent a decade ago.
“We don’t believe in a world that will be cashless,” Odilon Almeida, president of Western Union told CNN. “Cash will continue to be the bulk of payments for the next fifty years. But digital will grow faster.”The two exceptions in the Fed’s study were Norway and Sweden.
Conclusion
So we have two very contrasting findings. In the context of the Future of Money report the emphasis is on demographics as a powerful force driving social and economic change; that millennials will soon become the most dominant generation in the workforce and that they are seeking ways to disintermediate conventional banking.
Also, emerging economies with burgeoning youth populations and restricted access to traditional banking are already the biggest adopters of mobile banking and there is no reason why this trend won’t accelerate.
But we should temper the idyll of a totally cashless society with the Fed’s findings and consider that although we may be in a fasting-moving trend to mobile and decentralized banking, we’ve only scratched the surface there’s still a long way to go.
Discover more from Bravenewcoin here: https://bravenewcoin.com/news/will-millennials-be-a-cashless-generation/- By Admin
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Dean Louis I know that by the time my 4 year old is old enough to understand what money is about, he will not be using cash or going to a local bank and their transactions will be digital, not with fiat. Though I don't think it will disappear completely, I doubt that in 10 or 20 years many people would have cash in their wallets, simply because there's a better, much more efficient way to trade and cryptocurrencies are here to stay. In spite the doomsday prophets, we couldn't stop it if we tried and those who won't conform will end up like the Mayan temples, left to ruin!
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst Mobile and digital payments are growing exponentially. Cash is loosing its appeal, although it is difficult to augur its death on the middle term. Millennials don't trust financial institutions, scarred by the 2008 crisis, and them and Gen Z surely will create new ways of economic independence from cash, Banks and other financial institutions based on fiat, commissions, rules and laws which protect the institutions and not the clients, which do not want to be consumers as their predecessors the baby boomers, but prosumers. What do you think?
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What can we learn from a history of the future? Historian Yuval Harari takes us on a journey through technological development and challenges leaders to develop a substantive vision of what it means for society, politics, religion and ideology. Introduced by · Gillian R. Tett, Managing Editor, US, Financial Times, USA With · Yuval Noah Harari, Professor, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst This should be listened and then debated around those interested on the development of Blockchain as a tool to reset society and humankind, also for those who reflect on humanness and the impact of new exciting and somehow scary technologies like bioengineering... do watch it!
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Admin Blockchain Company Yuval is helping world leaders understand we are probably now in the last decade or two, of what it means to be biologically human. In 2006, the UK commissioned " A Report on the Surveillance Society " download the 102 pdf here: https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/documents/1042390/surveillance-society-full-report-2006.pdf . All we can summarize for now is, be prepared and think differently than your peers.
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BY JOHN RAMPTON2 HOURS AGO
In recent years, the way work gets done has begun to shift. Our future world is being built by an army of independent consultants and freelancers who allow businesses and employees to enjoy more freedom.
Freelancers now make up more than 35% of the American workforce and are responsible for a significant amount of the U.S. GDP.Blockchain is a unique technology, capable of decentralizing networks and allowing people to connect.
This decentralization is likely to spur a wave of disruption through its ability to create distributed digital ledgers that act as transparent and living “records of transactions.
”These records are accessible by anyone within the system, and are verifiable by empirical data. With blockchains in place across a variety of industries and niches, we can eradicate many of the frictions that currently exist in financial and business markets.
Since blockchains are still (relatively) new pieces of technology, we are not exactly sure which decentralized applications will survive long term. The only certainty is that with advancement comes disruption, and we are likely to see fundamental shifts in the way many common markets work.
One of the more exciting ways in which blockchain is affecting an industry is in the independent freelancers’ space. Freelancers and independent contractors make up a sizable chunk of the U.S. population: there are currently over 55 million domestic freelancers.
Though this group has been growing significantly over the past several years, they are still plagued with annoying transaction costs and plenty of competition.Blockchains, in theory, will open up new doors for freelancers across the globe. Let’s take a look at a few ways in which this technology might change the future of the freelancer industry.
1. An investment orientationFreelancers are already starting to opt into getting paid with cryptocurrencies. People’s familiarity with and confidence in cryptocurrencies have empowered them to receive payment with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
As cryptocurrencies near mass-market penetration, freelancers are becoming more willing to think about investments rather than a typical focus on salary.
This “investment mentality” is a completely new way for creators to think about their income streams. There will be many fresh opportunities for investment managers and advisors to help these freelancers with their newfound willingness to take risks and focus on letting their wealth grow itself.
2. Data monetizationCompanies like Datum, a marketplace for data built on top of the Ethereum chain, use trust graphs to allow users to store data in a decentralized database and later monetize the information. While the back end of this technology is highly complex, trust graphs use blockchains to create secure, trusted networks for storing data.
Everyday contractors passively collect enormous amounts of personal and professional data. From Upwork reputations to Github statistics, the data that freelancers collect can be put into Datum and made queryable in a blockchain database. All of this data is then stored and made available to anyone who is interested in purchasing it.
Big players, including actor William Shatner, have endorsed Datum as a way for people to take control of their data. This impacts freelancers in a number of ways. First, it allows employers to make more informed decisions about who to hire. Second, all of the data stored in the database will be verified by third-party APIs, meaning it will be impossible for freelancers to gamify reviews and cheat the system.
Finally, freelancers can now earn about $2,000 per year via monetization of their data. This is even how I raised enough money for my latest project Calendar.
3. Verifiable historyOne of the biggest problems facing the freelance industry today is spam and fake reviews.
Smart contracts (a key component of blockchain technology) are stored directly in a trust network, meaning they cannot be changed or hacked without the rest of the network knowing.In this way, blockchains will enable freelancers to worry less about promoting themselves and more about maximizing metrics for clients. Furthermore, companies can rest easier now, knowing that freelancers are not able to tamper with information online.
4. New opportunities to specializeWith any new piece of technology comes an opportunity for freelancers to dig into a new niche and specialize in a field. Future companies are going to need blockchain experts and specialiststo help them set up smart contracts and efficient blockchain systems.
Right now, there are not nearly enough specialists in this space to support any type of expansion in demand on the consumer side.As demand continues to exceed supply, being a blockchain expert will be highly lucrative. For at least the next 10 years, there are going to be plenty of opportunities for anyone who knows how to build digital contract systems.
John Rampton is a serial entrepreneur who now focuses on helping people to build amazing products and services that scale. He is founder of the online payments company Due.
You can discover even more articles like this on Mashable here: http://mashable.com/2017/11/06/blockchain-freelancers/#LLcWmhKJQGqG- By Admin
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Use Case: The Way Online Shopping Disrupted Retail, Blockchain Is About To Do To... (huffingtonpost.com)Back in the 1990s, a young entrepreneur by the name of Jeff Bezos had an idea.He wanted to bring the experience of walking into a bookstore and choosing a book, digital. Bookstores, he thought, were inefficient, and was a simple enough shopping experience to replicate for a customer sitting in front of their fuzzy, AOL-connected computer screen.
Today, Amazon is the undisputed champion of retail. If you want to buy something, any consumer good at all, you don’t search for nearby electronics stores in your area. You pull out your phone, turn to your friend on the couch and say, “I’m going to AmazonPrime us a new keyboard. It’ll be here tomorrow.”
Now, even if Bezos had designed this grand vision in his head two decades ago, the truth is, all the puzzle pieces weren’t there yet for him to execute it. The Internet was in its infancy. Consumer behaviors hadn’t shifted yet. Smartphones didn’t exist. The list of unsolved variables goes on and on—until industry after industry began to solve for each issue individually, and Amazon could begin capitalizing accordingly.
This story of innovation has been told time and time again. And after each major disruption—Apple’s iPod destroying the physical CD market, Hulu and Netflix eating up Blockbuster stores—there is a calm that settles before the general public says in unison, “How did nobody see this coming?”
That’s precisely what is about to happen with blockchain technology.In the same way online shopping has entirely disrupted retail, blockchain technology has only recently begun making headlines but has already proven itself to be the “secret sauce” missing from some of the world’s largest industries.
For those that don’t know, blockchain technology built on a decentralized network, meaning no single “party” owns all the data. Instead, data is tracked and stored on a public ledger (block after block connected in a chain) that cannot be tampered with or altered later—since each block is verified by all the other blocks on the chain.
This technology, and really the concept as a whole, is the epitomized opposite of how the world of big business operates. Nationwide and global companies, all the way down to small-shop operators, tend to use private and centralized software systems and solutions. Banks and the modern financial system is a perfect example.
If I want to send you money, I have to go through a bank in order to verify the transaction—the bank being the “centralized” hub for verification. But through the blockchain, the very building blocks that power cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, that centralized entity no longer has a purpose. It doesn’t have a job. There is no need for its services because the blockchain does the verification automatically.
If you want to know how, in a single year, Bitcoin went from $900 to $7,000+, it’s because of this, right here: blockchain technology.
Now, let’s take that same framework and apply it to something other than banking and finance. Instead, let’s apply it to the world’s freight and logistics systems.
In the same way a dollar has to pass through a bank, a package has to pass through more than one centralized hub in order to move from original supplier to end consumer.
The current process for sending a package or good is a sort of relay race between manufacturers, brokers, shippers, carriers, and retailers, all of whom are their own private entities, and all of whom work toward different incentives. To say that the freight and logistics world is one well-coordinated song and dance would be a massive over-exaggeration.
The truth is, most suppliers have very little insight into how their shipments get to their end destination. All they care about is that they arrive—and that’s a huge problem.
A blind Hail Mary pass, there is so much room for improvement in the freight and logistics space. And the biggest reason why those improvements are long overdue is because an effective technological solution hasn’t existed yet.Until now.
Blockchain technology is the answer—not just for freight and logistics, but any big industry struggling to track, monitor, and automatically fulfill order requests along a complicated series of checkpoints.
ShipChain, for example, is a blockchain platform diving deep into the freight and logistics space, solving for obvious pain points other centralized systems have yet to solve. It is tackling everything from fraud and stolen goods, to unnecessary broker markup costs, poor communication between suppliers and shippers, and order fulfillment automation upon delivery.
And with big names like Kevin Harrington and Joel Comm on ShipChain’s advisory board, the blockchain space has already matured past the point of speculation. Noteworthy entrepreneurs in every industry are seeing its potential and looking for ways to be part of the disruption.
Since the start of 2017, all eyes have been on Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, for as much attention as the cryptocurrencies have received, Ethereum’s underlying technology and the use cases for blockchain have only exploded.
In 2018, blockchain disruption will be a hot topic, and absolutely something worth studying. Freight and logistics, banking, these are just two examples. But blockchain will make its way into the world of pharmaceuticals, food and agriculture, music and entertainment, and so much more.
Huffpost is one of the most highly acclaimed media companies online. They publish critical articles covering the blockchain you can discover and learn from here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-way-online-shopping-disrupted-retail-blockchain_us_59ffba48...
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Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk's advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT's Digital Currency Initiative.
In this opinion piece, one of a weekly series of columns, Casey argues that the value blockchain technology offers to supply-chain management will come once other technologies, such as 3D printing, bring major disruption to global manufacturing and delivery networks.
Blockchains are a technology of tomorrow, not today.
That is not an excuse to ignore them, however. On the contrary, the future to which blockchains belong is coming so fast that a failure to properly strategize and to consider the widest range of design possibilities could eventually prove fatal for many businesses.
This is especially so in supply-chain management, a field that deals with the plumbing of the global economy: how a good's production moves sequentially through the manufacturing processes of separately owned businesses before it is delivered to the end-user.
A combination of new technologies – artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, the internet of things, mobile money, digital identity and, most importantly, 3D printing – is poised to seriously disrupt these underlying processes. They'll make manufacturing more responsive and customizable to customer's orders – in effect, turning supply chains into demand chains. But this dynamism will only be realized if they also adopt the kind of decentralized trust mediation model promised by blockchains.
Supply-chain managers are typically found only at big, downstream companies, such as Walmart. These experts have real influence in the management of many consumer brands.
Smaller upstream players occupying spots earlier on in the chain are outgunned by the bigger players and generally can’t influence the activities of others enough to warrant employing a supply-chain manager. Yet, ironically, improved chain transparency and visibility from better supply-chain management would help them gain bargaining power vis-à-vis the big guys.
So, when we hear about supply chain managers giving thought to blockchain solutions to their problems, it's worth remembering where they are coming from: they represent large buyer companies and tend to view their supply chain proprietarily. They see it as an exclusive club over which they control access, one with a clearly defined, existing set of members.
It's a static vision, not a dynamic one, and it's marked by a power imbalance in their favor.
Static vision, static choices
From that perspective, it's understandable –in fact, appropriate – that many are asking why they should bother with the cat-herding challenge of getting their supply-chain partners to jointly create a complicated, costly, multi-node computing network to run a distributed blockchain ledger.
Often they discover they can address many supply-chain information-management problems, including improving the tracking of inventory and work processes, with well-established database tools that already run internally on their company’s servers.
As Gideon Greenspan, CEO of Coin Sciences, has warned, "If your requirements are fulfilled by today's relational databases, you’d be insane to use a blockchain."
Firms that operate in supply chains where power is more balanced, where middle-size firms have some clout and too much to lose by submitting information to the centralized control of the biggest player, might instead conclude that a blockchain is useful. A distributed, immutable ledger could help different stakeholders overcome their inherent mistrust of each other, which could boost efficiency and visibility along the chain.
Yet here, too, the scope tends to be limited. Since the supply chain is viewed as a club with pre-existing, pre-approved members, chain managers have a hard time grasping why they would submit their transaction-sharing processes to a fully decentralized network and a permissionless blockchain such as bitcoin or ethereum. They'd much prefer to form a consortium and jointly validate the private distributed ledger.
They see other advantages in private blockchains, too: the permissioned structure allows much more transaction capacity than public blockchains; upgrades can be easily agreed to and trivially implemented; identity, privacy and other natural concerns of businesses can be addressed in ways that public blockchains cannot.
But in an era of rapid technological change that poses an existential threat for legacy businesses, it's unwise to assume a static business environment. Many people know the Kodak story.
There's a risk that a permissioned blockchain, based on a consortium managed by existing, pre-approved suppliers, would evolve into a rigid, gatekeeping entity. Members would be incentivized to limit access to outsiders with competing products and new ideas. And while that might protect the chain members’ margins for a while, it would ultimately render the whole chain less competitive.
It might not be a huge risk now, but, as mentioned, things are changing. Rapidly.
The supply chains of the future will be much more dynamic, flexible and customer-responsive than those of the present. Geography and longstanding relationships will be less of issue. This suggests that supply chain managers should not only be looking at blockchains but also striving for the most open, permissionless model they can handle.
They might not need to adopt bitcoin or ethereum per se; I could even be persuaded that a permissioned network of validators might still preserve a decentralized, competitive landscape if the consortium’s governance rules steadfastly allowed any new supplier to write data to the ledger.
Either way, the bottom line is that openness and permissionlessness are vitally important ideals to strive for, precisely because they encourage competition and innovation.
Decentralized trust
Taken together, new manufacturing technologies such as IoT and 3D-printing contain enormous decentralizing potential. By empowering people and businesses to do more with less, they reduce transaction costs, which means they can break down barriers to entry and challenge the economies of scale that have hitherto advantaged big, centralized companies.
If we can prevent the data-gathering behemoths of the internet 2.0 era from monopolizing them, these tools should help level the playing field. They should open the door to to a wider array of potential producers in the global economy.
But to reach its optimal potential, that decentralized, more horizontal economic structure will also require a decentralized trust model. The cost of having a single company verify the trustworthiness of an ever-widening array of potential business partners will be too high for any supply chain to remain competitive.
Let’s imagine a world in which 3D printing – known as additive manufacturing in the industrial world – is ubiquitous. Now imagine a German auto-parts producer receiving a request for quotes from an Argentine car assembler, a customer it has never previously dealt with, and for delivery in two days. The German company knows it’s highly likely that competing manufacturers in the U.S., Brazil, India and South Korea have also received offers. The only way to meet the order is to tap a hitherto untested 3D-printing company in Buenos Aires.
How can it trust this supplier? The time and cost of applying current due diligence, credentialing and approval procedures to onboard this company into an approved list of suppliers would take too long and cost too much money. It would leave the German company outcompeted for the job.
As supply chains start to function more like ... continue reading on Coindesk here: https://www.coindesk.com/blockchains-will-turn-supply-chains-demand-chains/
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Anyone up to date with the latest financial news, or rather anyone who reads the average morning paper, would probably agree that blockchain technology is taking over the world with its breakthrough transparent and decentralised nature that promotes trust and honesty.
Millennials, also known as Generation Y and Z, represent the demographic with birth years starting in the 1980s to the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
Although characteristics of millennials vary by region, the generation is generally marked by an increased use of communication, media, and digital technologies, as well as a liberal approach to politics and economics.
Generation Y grew up with personal computers, cell phones and video games, while Generation Z has grown up on tablets, smartphones and apps.
Although their familiarity with technology might differ slightly, the common ground between Gen Y and Z, is their (lack of) financial knowledge and engagement. Most millennials don’t understand how to pay a mortgage or invest their money smartly.
As a result of this, millenials are the generation that has suffered the hands of credit loans and ever-growing debt. Blockchain, the hottest technology on the market, will soon become the savior for millennials, a group that will benefit the most from the transparent, decentralized nature of cryptocurrency.
The first indicator that there will be a strong relationship between the blockchain and millennials is based on the fact that 85 million millennials will represent 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. That means, that based on current trends three quarters of the workforce could not only be in debt in less than 10 years, but also have little to no understanding of how to get out of that debt.
The second lies in the lack of trust and loyalty millennials have towards intermediaries and third parties who control their money and other assets. Banks charge millennials high fees for slow and unfair transaction rates, creating a lack of trust between financial institutions and a large sector of society.
Growing older means that you’re supposed to get more financially disciplined, and still, most millennials can confidently say they’re not there yet. Take for example the term, “Fast Swiping,” which represents the fact that millennials swipe their credit cards at least once a day, often for large purchase they don’t really need.
The need to fill these massive urges by buying goods, has led millennials to a hole they can’t quite dig themselves out of. That is until Blockchain came around.
The blockchain, a distributed technology that powers bitcoin and so many other cryptocurrencies, can provide escape for more than one quarter of the world’s population. But how? The blockchain provides real solutions for the issues millennials are faced with when it comes to finance, travel, media etc.
TRAVEL
Check your latest Instagram feed, and you’ll realize easily that millennials have come to be the main consumers in the travel industry. From backpacking in Peru to dog sledding in Iceland, millennials definitely love to travel and get all the insta-worthy snaps they can.
It’s great that millennials want to travel the world, try new foods, meet new people, and experience a new culture, but all those travel expenses definitely add up. A tool that potentially can ease the anxiety that comes with booking a vacation, is new blockchain technology emerging everyday.
Winding Tree, for example, is a blockchain application that proposes to decentralize travel, by removing third party intermediaries, in order to bring innovation back into the travel industry, while at the same time significantly reducing costs for consumers.
Winding Tree is a peer-to-peer platform, that allows any travel company to list its content and sell inventory without any barriers or fees, as well as enjoy from the open source, distributed governance of the platform.
Winding Tree will be a cheaper and more secure travel option for customers, as it eliminates transaction fees and intermediaries.
Recently, Winding Tree announced a partnership with Lufthansa, meaning in the future any traveller wishing to book a flight on the German airways can do so on Winding Tree, without having to worry about high fees that sites such as Priceline and Expedia impose. Travel addicted millennials won’t need a vacation from their vacation when they plan it through Winding Tree.
MEDIA
The incredible growth of Internet access around the world effects and is even perpetuated by millennials the most, as they were the ones born and alive during the rise of live news with Twitter, 24/7 news reports, and viral stories spreading on Facebook.
But as great as the instant spread of breaking news has been, it has also led to the rise of fake news. Whether it be another Kardashian pregnancy or claims that Obama isn’t really American, fake news tends to easily find its way into our precious digital media space.
While the dubious headlines attract readership, what can we do as a society to make sure we are consuming high quality content rather than misleading facts?
PUBLIQ
answers back with its platform that aims to fight fake news with its blockchain based media platform. This nonprofit foundation introduces a peer-to-peer distributed network that implements a new vision and approach to the media industry.
The PUBLIQ team is building the future media ecosystem based on blockchain technology combined with analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
PUBLIQ employs blockchain to institute universal trust on the platform, as well as to enhance in quality of PUBLIQ content, and to safeguard the independence of the PUBLIQ community.
By rebuilding trust in media and empowering authors and readers to be part of a safe, impartial and fair ecosystem, Millennials are undoubtedly one of the target populations that the company would love to see on their platform.
APPS
Everyone uses apps, but different age groups have different preferences and a different level of addiction to them. A generation that is one of the main contributors to the market of mobile applications is millennials, who often make up the many teams and companies popping up in Silicon Valley and competing among each other to make the next hottest app.
Among all the apps out there, messenger apps have become the most popular and widely used, and now blockchain is here to make our messaging apps better.
Status, an open source messaging platform, has created an ecosystem that serves as a gateway to decentralized apps (DApps) and services built on Ethereum.
As a base offering, Status, currently in alpha for both iOS and Android, allows users to send and receive encrypted messages, browse, chat and interact with decentralized apps and chatbots, as well as store and control crypto assets in the built-in Status wallet.
It’s an open source platform, that provides users with a real voice and ability to influence the way the product develops. Status crowdfunded an incredible amount during its token sale a few months back, with $100M raised in less than three hours.
Status is building a community where everyone is welcome to join and contribute, and that means millennials too.
Did you know that millennials make 20% less money than baby boomers for the same work, at the same age? Well, there are now blockchain based apps that allow millennials to make some extra cash in a safe way.
Vany where is a skill sharing platform, that enables anyone with a marketable skill to capitalize on their knowledge and talent, by sharing their expertise with those who need them.
By running the platform on blockchain, users can be instantly connected with people who seeking or offering skills. Now instead of reading content online, you can pay by the minute to talk face-to-face with a person who has the exact skills that you need.
It’s like FaceTiming with someone who can help you cook a meal, style an outfit, fix your smartphone, or more.
Another company that addresses the mobile market is SIRIN LABS AG, SIRIN is now developing the world’s first blockchain phone, the Finney. Finney will be the only smartphone in the world that is fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic cons. SIRIN’s goal is to bring the most secure consumer electronics devices to market.
FINANCE
One thing is clear, millennials are currently skeptical about financial services and there is a pretty good reason for that.
Millennials are the generation that often suffer the most at the hands of credit lenders, as Centralized financial institutions like to offer credit to many of their richest clients—those who have well established and pristine credit histories.
Between low employment rates, mounting student debt, and high housing costs, millennials are left with little spare cash to save.
Celsius is a non-profit organization, whose approach is designed specifically to meet the needs of vulnerable millennials who struggle to manage their finances. The company provides millennials to access an ecosystem of credit lending, that is peer-to-peer based.
Meaning that rather than asking a big bank for a loan, members can borrow money from their peers, whether it be for a short-term loan, to help pay off existing credit cards or student loans at much lower rates than existing credit cards or consumer credit lines provide.
Celsius incentivizes on-time payments, unlike the big banks, which offer higher interest and larger monthly payments when payment is late. The more on-time payments a user has, the lower his/her interest rates will be and the higher their credit limit will be increased.
Alex Mashinsky, founder of Celsius adds that, “The banking industry as it is currently formulated fails to offer any real solutions to the current consumer credit and high-interest student debt crisis. Banks have no incentive to fix the problem, as the majority of their profits come from these loans.
Celsius offers a real solution and is helping to build the future of consumer credit.”
SAVVY SPENDING PATTERNS
All millennials have monthly expenses and bills to pay, and there’s no reason to pay more than they need to. Some of the most common bills are for health insurance, monthly rent, and a car bill.
Since many millennials generally rely on a car (and often times an older model or a used car!) as their main mode of transportation, they also have to spend their hard earned cash on maintenance and insurance costs, which tend to be pricey!
CarFix, the Moscow based startup operating on the Ethereum BlockChain, has developed a platform that prevents people from getting ripped off by auto mechanics and taken for the “proverbial ride”.
CarFix offers people fixed prices for their auto repairs, via a prearranged hourly price which the platform has already negotiated with the repair shops in their network, which prevents people from overpaying for services.
Don’t get ripped off next time you need a quick oil change or you got a flat tire, check out the prices of CarFix first to make sure your local garage is not scamming you!
Blockchain has the ability to provide millennials with a feeling of security and trust in many areas that can be stress inducing, from financial matters and student loans, to car trouble and the latest viral news storm.
Giving consumers the power over their own data, with a platform that enhances trust and respect between consumers and business, puts millennials on the correct path towards financial prosperity.
Blockchain is here to stay, and with more and more millennials entering the workforce daily, they will inevitably be the ones that benefit from this exciting technology the most.
Visit our site Voyager – imvoyager.com
Discover more on Huffpost here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/millennials-taste-the-forbidden-fruit-of-blockchain_us_59f2ea16...
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Recommended: Disrupting the Disruptors: Why Experts think the Blockchain will ro... (huffingtonpost.com)There are already over 1174 listed cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap as of October 2017 and that number grows every week (1).
And while the vast potential of blockchain technology is known in the ‘crypto’ world, many people do not necessarily appreciate the potential that this technology has to completely disrupt longstanding companies and institutions throughout the world.
This becomes doubly true when talking about sharing economy services like Uber and Airbnb — the distributed ledger that is the blockchain is well-suited to take over the types of transactions that happen within these services.I fully expect blockchain technology to create a better, less-costly, more transparent, decentralized versions of these sharing economy services in the coming years.
There are several new kids on the block(chain) already poised to do just this. One pertinent example is The Bee Token, which aims to innovate the short-term housing rental space and put more power in the hands of the renters and guests by utilizing the blockchain.
I’ll let the experts explain more on how companies like these are poised to shake things up.Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.Expert Panel:- Greg Wolfond - CEO of SecureKey
- Ali Nazem - VP of Business Dvelopment at ShoCard
- Tiana Laurence - former Co-founder and CMO of Fatcom
Greg Wolfond:
Greg Wolfond, CEO of SecureKey - Greg is the founder of SecureKey and brings more than 30 years of experience in fintech, security and mobile solutions to his role as CEO. Greg is a serial entrepreneurial whose earlier ventures include Footprint Software Inc., a financial software company he sold to IBM, and 724 Solutions Inc., a wireless infrastructure software provider he took public. He sits on several boards and has been recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, Entrepreneur of the Year and one of the 100 Top Leaders in Identity.
Q: What challenges are there in adapting blockchain tech to the sharing economy? What are the inherent weaknesses?
A: I think it’s going to be relatively straightforward.We want privacy. We don’t want something tracking where we want to go. Blockchain provides a modicum of privacy – every time my data is shared I should consent to share for each party for a specific purpose. The network in the middle shouldn’t be tracking me in the middle to follow me where I’m going.
Q: Why is blockchain tech advantageous for sharing economy services (Airbnb, Uber, etc.)?
A: When you’re a landlord renting on Airbnb – you don’t care if it’s John or Fred or Steve who rents it. You care that it’s a real person, that they can pay rent, and that they won’t destroy your place and leave it in shambles. If users can do that in trusted and frictionless manner, then those new economy services are going to love it.
Those services don’t want to collect more data than they need to. On the other end, users don’t want to send a full credit report to someone they’re staying with for a week.
Q: How might an Airbnb-like platform based in the blockchain be able to capture some of the market?
A: I think right now, verifying identity online is broken, and I think in this blockchain world it’s going to get fixed.Ali Nazem
Ali Nazem, VP of Business Development at ShoCard, a blockchain-based identity management solution. Ali Nazem manages Business Development and partnership efforts for ShoCard. Nazem is an advertising industry veteran in both traditional and digital media, with experience working with a variety of consumer and technology businesses.
Q: What challenges are there in adapting blockchain tech to the sharing economy? What are the inherent weaknesses?
A: Shared economy companies are inherently open and willing to take advantage of blockchain technologies, because by nature they are usually disruptive entities in their own right with a given marketplace or ecosystem. They are fairly new and don’t have the burden of adapting or complete replacement of legacy systems.
Inherent weaknesses in general for sharing economies and others include: control, security and privacy. While solutions exist, there are still cybersecurity concerns that need to be addressed before the general public will entrust their personal data to a blockchain solution.
In addition, there may be cultural adoption issues.From a cost perspective, blockchain offers tremendous savings in transaction costs and time, but the high initial capital costs could be a deterrent regardless if you are traditional or shared economy business.
Q: Why is blockchain tech advantageous for sharing economy services (Airbnb, Uber, etc)?
A: We remove the dependency on having a central authority. The problem of giving management of security of user authentication to any trusted party is the potential of breaches, as we’ve seen in numerous examples with larger retailers and credit cards, as well as service providers with and login credentials/information.
Using a distributed ledger and no trusted authority, this problem can be solved, especially in a large or vast economic system in which assets or services are shared between private individuals over the internet.
Q: What is the most exciting part of adapting blockchain technology for use in the sharing economy?
A: There are many exciting aspects of blockchain technology that can be particularly effective and exciting for sharing economy companies, providing the ability for various parties to make an exchange data without the oversight or intermediation of a third party.
From a privacy perspective, users are put in control of all their information and transactions, which remains on their mobile device. From a security standpoint, there’s no central database that can be hacked or breached exposing millions of records, like the recent Equifax debacle.Tiana Laurence
Tiana Laurence is the former Co-founder & CMO of Factom, a blockchain-as-a-service company based in Austin, Texas. Under her leadership, the company recently secured a grant from The Gates Foundation and a partnership with the Department of Homeland Security to work on blockchain projects using Factom’s technology. Tiana has a column on TechTarget where she writes about blockchain and IoT. She is also the author of the recently released Blockchain For Dummies book, a #1 Bestseller on Amazon.
Q: Why is blockchain tech advantageous for sharing economy services (Airbnb, Uber, etc)?
A: Blockchain technology is at the front of everyone’s minds because it allows for the disintermediation of intermediaries. The current issue is building the gateways that make Blockchain technology easy and useful for the average person.
Intermediaries such as Facebook, Airbnb, and Uber play really important roles in our lives because they are the trust-layers and connection-layers between two parties that don’t know each other and would like to interact. They handle the tricky stuff, like personal information, payment, and technology improvement.
Some blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, have Turing complete programming languages within them. That means that anything that can be programmed can be created within a blockchain. It is then possible to rewrite Twitter or another website for that matter, but the key questions to ask are who will build, maintain, and improve the platforms especially if no value can be harvested for their creation.
Q: How might an Airbnb-like platform based in the blockchain be able to capture some of the market?
A: It is reasonable that new businesses will pop up, built on blockchains, that will gain market share because they are improving on service and found a way to retain some of the value that they created.
Consolidated industries are most vulnerable to them because they have lost natural competition that kept them lean and customer focused.
What are your thoughts? How do you think current industries will cope with these new emerging technologies?References:- Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2017, from https://coinmarketcap.com/
If you have enjoyed reading this article and want to learn even more about how the blockchain disrupts our world, click here to explore more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/disrupting-the-disruptors-why-experts-think-the-blockchain_us_5...
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Governments are developing blockchain platforms to integrate with various offices and agencies for a variety of reasons. These platforms offer a transparent means of operation that can deliver privacy and security, as well as feature robust, immutable decentralized databases.
Governing bodies have choices for how to deploy blockchain technology, be they projects that are incubated internally or provided to the government as a service. For instance, today, October 17, 2017, tech giant Microsoft announced a suite of services powered by its Azure Government blockchain platform designed to cater to the needs of government entities. The announcement was made at the Microsoft Government Cloud Forum held in Washington D.C., where a number of new features were revealed, including a facet of its platform called Azure Government Secret, designed to "deliver multi-tenant cloud infrastructure and cloud capabilities to U.S. Federal Civilian, Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and U.S. Government partners working within Secret enclaves."
Microsoft isn't the only company to offer blockchain platform services to government agencies. Factom is another blockchain-based organization focused on transparent systems and data provenance. Factom has received Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants, $199,000 of which was awarded in June of 2016. The company has since been working with the DHS to secure the identities of devices on an IoT network. Factom had also been involved in a project with the Honduran government to settle land titles by way of a blockchain system, but that project stalled before going beyond proof-of-concept stages.
To better understand the underlying factors of blockchain adoption in the UK government, ETHNews reached out to founder and CEO of Invotra, Fintan Galvin. Invotra provides blockchain-backed digital workspaces and also supports digital infrastructure for the UK government.
"There is a very large movement in the UK government to move towards blockchain and distributed ledger technology," said Galvin. "It is being looked at everywhere from land registry to possibilities in voting systems." He says many alpha projects are currently underway and people are testing ideas to get used to the concepts relating to blockchain technology. People are "trying to make those decisions around public versus consortium-based blockchains, or private blockchains."
Galvin sees broad adoption by the UK government in five to seven years. "I think what you will start to see are low-risk areas where it has a very natural fit, and they're potentially publishing data already," he said, adding, "We did a lot of work on publishing out a lot of government data." According to Galvin the Home Office (the UK’s equivalent of the DHS) is also exploring blockchain technology.
Shifting to look at the big picture, Galvin revealed that he attended a pan-government meeting where the assembled had mixed reactions to blockchain technology. "When we were discussing possible use cases for this they said this is going to scare a lot of people in different departments." Galvin maintains that "getting that across middle-management is going to take some time."
Still, Galvin asserts that governments are hungry for blockchain technology. "There is definitely an appetite for it. There is a desire for it in government at the moment, and a lot of architects around government talking about it and working on projects, and seeing how it can be fitted in."
JEREMY NATION
Jeremy Nation is a writer living in Los Angeles with interests in technology, human rights, and cuisine. He is a full time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether.
Click to see even more from Ethnews here: https://www.ethnews.com/blockchain-services-for-governments
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What is the Blockchain?
The Blockchain Era is the time of technology used to build crypto currencies, meaning this technology has a distributed network on the Internet that allows payments from buyer to vendor. It’s like a huge PayPal that is distributed so it doesn’t sit on a single server.
Because it’s on a distributed system it cannot be shut down, and as it is encrypted, and has no central controller, it means that there is no need for a central entity (such as a bank) to create trust between the sender and recipient. Blockchain technology allows money to move on the Internet with no need for banks.
Why is this necessary?
In the last 15 years, the Internet has been progressing rapidly. The problem is that the banking system is not progressing fast enough to keep up. With a bank there is a need for a central entity to ensure that all transactions are legitimate and correct. Traditionally, transactions are time consuming.
If I send you money, we are stuck with a bank between us. Banks also charge fees, and because banks operate like heavy machinery, their fees are relatively high. For this reason, if I want to send you a micropayment, or pay you in several small increments, it doesn’t make financial sense to use banks.
More and more people are becoming better connected but they cannot communicate well when it comes to money. This is the reason that the Blockchain was created. Now I can send you a micropayment for, say, one word of content, with no problem. The fee that a Blockchain will charge (which is just technology, with nobody controlling it) is relatively low, no matter how small the amount being sent. With this new financial technology, it is possible to send tiny amounts in a single transaction.
It’s a new type of currency to facilitate the growing financial demands of the Internet.The most prominent example is Bitcoin. I can send you a millionth of a Bitcoin with no issues, with no bank acting as middleman. Now we are in an era where micro-payments are a reality. We are not talking only about banks. We are talking about other entities that could be considered points of trust between people or corporations, such as Facebook, for example.
Social Media and the Distribution of Money What is a Facebook Like?
Let’s imagine that a new currency will appear. Let’s call it a Social Media Coin. Every time that I press ‘Like’, I will send a tiny portion of a dollar, or micropayment to someone that I ‘liked’ using this currency. Let’s imagine how that world would look. Basically, everybody that receives Likes would make money, and the money would be a genuine show of gratitude towards that person.
Money will be distributed via social media. It’s possible that you wouldn’t need a platform such as Facebook in this scenario, as whenever you added a particular widget, or add-on to your site, or social account, etc., it would add real value. After that, money would be distributed differently. Take, for example, a farmer in Africa. If they have a smartphone, and have something of value to share or show, they can start to make money as easily as someone sitting in Manhattan.Earnings would rely more on peoples’ creativity, their views, and any way in which they can attract the attention of others through the Internet.
This is already in evidence with the introduction of companies like Steem (https://steem.io), which rewards content creators with ‘Steem Dollars” by way of remittance, and resolves to “serve the two billion unbanked people across the planet.”In the world of the Blockchain and social media, we would all be Internet marketers, of sorts. Everybody who is shared is getting paid in micropayments, as it is possible to be paid in increments for smaller actions and services.
The world will change. You will see much more content coming from further and further afield, including the third world. 190 million Pakistanis will start to benefit from social media sharing. Billions more people will join social networks and start creating content. Right now, the USA is the main distributor of content, but this is going to change. Population size will determine the volume of the content.
We’ll see much more content from India, Africa, China, and South America. Era of the Blockchain ChangeAs we are entering an era of change, a global phenomenon will soon emerge as philosophies and beliefs shift and unexposed cultures experience new technologies.
In 20-30 years from now we are going to enter into a super economy, where the content is much more equally distributed between the global populations. Right now the margins of distribution are narrow, and this is about to change. This is disruptive change that can happen overnight.
People will be able to buy essential products, solar panels, mobile phones, etc. This could change markets on a global scale as disadvantaged populations can more easily communicate.Kodak was liquidated overnight when Nokia chose to ship their mobile phones with cameras. The same could happen with social media and the banking system. This could herald a sea change in global economics.
Only one single form of social media has to accommodate micro-payments in order for this to happen. Once they integrate with the Blockchain, then boom! Something big is happening. From there it will spread like wildfire. There will be a big change in the landscape of social media companies. The first to leap will gain the most traction, then the others must also conform or die. Social media companies will have no justification to exist if they do not get onboard.
The next question is what will happen to all the advertisers on social media? Revenues of companies that make money from advertisements (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.) will go down. There would be less justification to charge your user base money for advertisements. Major businesses may be rendered obsolete – this will be the next disruption of the chain. Social media products may no longer be a necessary advertising platform.
Existing companies will try to ensure they are not outgrown when equivalent open source platforms rise quickly and establish firm footings in fresh soil.A Freer Internet and a New Equilibrium
Open source collaboration could also free up the web, making rules and regulations set by social media obsolete. Existing social media dictates the rhythm of what is acceptable to share. Blockchain social media, on the other hand, is a form of social media that nobody can control. There will be no rules, no governance, and no control over how we move our money.
Once micro-payments are integrated with social media, there will be no control over content, no control over money. We will see a major financial and technological revolution, where nobody will dictate what is acceptable to share or trade. It will be a free market that is completely open source and with no financial boundaries and a freer society in which everyone can participate.
When there is a disruption in the financial equilibrium, the situation will fluctuate between positive and negative until it eventually stabilizes. Both the minting of coins and the introduction of the banknote caused for disruption in their time as well. This encouraged trade, and with it, the exchange of information throughout the far corners of the world.
To the Silk Road and beyond, the evolution of money facilitated new possibilities. Carrying large amounts of commodities was difficult and costly to transport. With the convenience of coinage, a new era for global trade was born.As humans we are creative beings.
Everybody creates their own content. Some sing, some photograph, some write, some... continue reading: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/social-media-marketing-in-the-blockchain-era-cm821530- By Admin
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