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It would perhaps be fickle to be too critical of the global economic system given the tremendous progress made towards so many of the Millennium Development Goals.


Indeed, the goal of halving the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day was achieved seven years earlier than planned.

Despite this apparent success, there is a tangible sense of unease at the way the global economy functions, and particularly how wealth is distributed. It led to Thomas Picketty’s 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century topping the New York times best seller list for non-fiction.


It and other works have prompted a renewed exploration of the global economic system, and how inclusive it is. Indeed, that year the World Economic Forum cited global inequality as the biggest risk the world faced.

Financial exclusion


Central to this inequality is access, or lack thereof, to the banking system. A whopping 3.5bn people around the world lack access to a bank, with an astonishing 37 million Americans estimated to be ‘unbanked’ at the current time. It’s resulted in a clear and distinct divide between the financial haves and have nots.

Largely this is down to the business model of the banks that rely heavily on the network effect. This sees every new customer (and of course every dollar they deposit/borrow) increasing the value of the network the bank has. The problem is that building such a network can be costly, especially for customers with little to deposit and borrow.

Serving the bottom of the pyramid

It’s resulted in various projects to provide access to finance for the worlds poorest, from mobile banking to microfinance, and whilst the work of people like Muhammad Yunus have been tremendously important, I believe that the blockchain could be even more powerful.

Companies such as Wala are leading this charge. They’re a mobile financial platform, not dissimilar to the hugely successful M-Pesa, but the difference is that the platform is built on the blockchain.


The company has announced a partnership with M-vendr, the provider of mobile Point of Sale (PoS) apps for small retailers and informal traders.


The deal is a significant step for digital currencies in emerging markets, combining free banking services with a simple and accessible way to purchase goods within over 30,000 merchants across 15 countries.

“Our companies are built on the same foundation; a belief that new technologies should take the complexity out of financial services in emerging markets.


We’re thrilled to partner with Wala, and the 1,000’s of merchants utilising the M-vendr powered PoS are really excited to start Wala financial services and accepting Dala tokens as it will add immense value to their customers,” M-vendr say.

A major facet of traditional banks is the way they process our identity, with many banks less interested in understanding your character as they are complying with regulations.


By using blockchain, many of these challenges evaporate as a consistent digital ID follows each individual around.

Avoiding a traditional bank-led approach means not having to replicate legacy banking systems that bring large transaction costs with them.


In a stroke, the partners will be able to use the distributed ledger technology of the blockchain to make the process and recording of transactions simple and efficient. Not only that, because they’ll be integrating it with existing microfinance networks it will be designed around the consumer from the start.


While zero-fee financial services are the immediate goal, the trust and transparency brought about by the blockchain could also lay the foundations of a modern infrastructure that solves other problems for the unbanked, such as credit scoring.

The progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goal on poverty so quickly is considerable, but ledger technology such as that provided by the likes of Wala provide a glimpse into a possible future where the unbanked and underbanked are increasingly enfranchised and empowered to become active participants in the global economy.

Have you enjoyed reading this article? If yes, discover even more on Huffpost here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/can-blockchain-solve-the-prosperity-paradox_us_59edfa93e4b092f9...

Blockchain may revolutionize the way we do business nearly as much as the internet did. Here are seven benefits it can have for businesses.

While cryptocurrency as a speculative trade – and, to a lesser extent, an everyday payment system – is creating much hype, blockchain technology is where the raw potential lies.

For the most part, the undercurrent technology is lying low, taking a backseat as developers and industry leaders come to grips with what can be done with it.

But being in the background is in no way an indication of its importance.In fact, many are likening the advance of blockchain technology to the dawn of the internet, predicting significant economic and societal change.

This is due to the fact that, as a decentralized network, it stores identical blocks of information across all computer nodes in the network that owns a copy of the blockchain code.

The network as a whole jointly manages the database of information it contains.The significance? It cannot be controlled by a single entity, the information it contains cannot be corrupted, and the flow of information is completely open and transparent.

Benefits of employing blockchain technology in your business
While there is much still to be discovered about blockchain, and particular applications will be industry-dependent, there are some overall benefits.What is important to keep in mind is that you don't need more than just a general understanding of the backbone of the technology to consider its deployment.

 The personal computer first came on the market in the late 1970s, yet most people still don't have an extensive understanding of how it works. However, blockchain developers are in high demand, indicating that, cost-wise, there is still quite a substantial barrier to entry this early in the game.

Here are some potential uses of blockchain technology.

1. Smart contracts

If your business operations support an if-then agreement, smart contracts could be programmed to support execution and deliverables.

2. Cutting out the middleman
The sharing economy has been one of the most important business model innovations in recent years. Blockchain technology can effectively cut out the middleman, enabling peer-to-peer transactions without the fees attributed to the central organizing party.

3. Identity management
Ecommerce will be easier, thanks to more streamlined personal identification systems. An individual's sensitive information that is available online owing to online transactions can be managed more securely.

4. Supply chain auditing
With blockchain, a product's claims can be verified every step of the way, from inception to market, thanks to timestamped dates and locations. This will form an important part of ethical business practices in future.

5. Intellectual copyright protection
Thanks to the transparent, open-access nature of blockchain, the expensive, lengthy process of copyrighting intellectual property will give way to a much more affordable, irrefutable process. It will also transform owned electronic media, eliminating the exorbitant dues currently lost because of illegal file sharing and redistribution.

6. Data management
Everything free online comes at a cost to your personal data, which is shared with the company in question. Blockchain technology will empower users to choose to sell this information to interested parties and manage what activity-generated data is available online.

7. Transparent governance
Voting systems, for anything from unilateral internal decision-making to international politics, can run on blockchain in a process that is fair, universally trackable and completely transparent.

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Nor are they pipe dreams. For each of these use cases, there is at least one startup operating in the space.

Society has moved into the information age, and with the invention of blockchain technology, we will enter an unprecedented era of trustless business operations that will, as far as we can tell, be technologically immune to human corruption.

Blockchain technology will also continue to make doing business smoother and more intuitive, automating many tasks and eliminating many unnecessary costs.

Michael HenmanMichael is the owner of Venture Team Building. He has over 10 years experience as a trainer, facilitator and manager in Canada, Japan, and Southeast Asia. He is passionate about entrepreneurship, personal development, and creating great teams.
If you enjoyed reading this article, discover even more on Business.com here:https://www.business.com/articles/blockchain-uses-in-business/

Countries could get in on the action too.


By Denis Baranov 2:29 PM ET

In recent months a new hot topic has emerged in the blockchain and financial technology communities: initial coin offerings (ICOs). Regulators from the U.S. to China are taking notice.


My general rule for technology is simple: When regulators care about it, so should you. The regulatory interest is no surprise; billions of dollars in real money have already been used to buy cryptocurrency in the form of ICOs and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has surpassed $160 billion.

An ICO occurs when firms create their own cryptocurrency and issue it for investors, rather than seeking investment directly from the markets or venture capital firms.


While most of this money has to date come from within the blockchain community, the potential of this technology is so great that very soon major financial players will launch their own cryptocurrencies and enter the ICO market.In fact, it’s already begun.


Just over a month ago Barclays, Credit Suisse, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, HSBC, MUFG, and State Street joined UBS and BNY Mellon in a project to launch a cryptocurrency—the “utility settlement coin”—set for a limited back-end run by 2018. The banks are also in discussion with regulators regarding applications of new cryptocoins.ICOs are more than just crowdfunding.


As former UBS chief technology officer and leading blockchain expert Oliver Bussmann recently said, “ICO as a new business model leveraging blockchain technology will sustain as the digital way, combining crowdfunding and [a] new hybrid asset class of equity ownership and currency.

”Whereas traditional investment methods require a firm to list in one country and utilize (at least initially) one exchange, creating and selling its own cryptocurrency allows a firm access to finance from anyone, anywhere, outside the normal constraints imposed by state-issued currencies.

To date, mostly smaller companies and startups have issued ICOs, but major firms have begun to make moves in this area. This year Burger King launched the Whoppercoin in Russia, the $1 billion-valued messenger app Kik announced the launch of Kin cryptocurrency, and Disney announced the creation of Dragon tokens.


These examples illustrate that, at least tentatively, major global companies are gearing up to use ICOs as another means of raising capital and engaging their stakeholders.  This system dramatically lowers the barriers to entry for firms looking to invest.


And while the lack of regulation in this area may mean some people are going to lose a lot of money, the potential for major wins is great.ICOs are not just limited to companies; already this year Estonia is exploring the creation of an Estcoin cryptocurrency to drive more foreign direct investment into its economy.


It is no longer beyond the realm of possibility that in a few years time multiple companies and countries will have launched their own cryptocurrencies and created market-like environments in which they are traded.


Though the European Central Bank head has rejected Estonia’s idea, the country’s attempt shows that ICOs are gaining traction worldwide. While it is likely that companies will launch their own cryptocurrencies for their own goods, the real use case for creating cryptocurrencies will instead be in using them to raise finances.


With this method, firms from startups to established industry leaders can bypass intermediaries and perhaps many regulations to access a truly global source of capital. Regulators have taken note of this technology; it is time everyone else does as well.

To discover even more blockchain reports and stories on Fortune, cick here: http://fortune.com/2017/10/18/ico-cryptocurrency-coin-market-blockchain/

Smart contracts are a major technological breakthrough that will affect our society substantially. So far, interfacing with said smart contracts is still a bit challenging for the average user. Even developers sometimes struggle to do so. This is where ChainLink comes into the picture, as it provides a fully decentralized oracle network called LINK.

ChainLink is an Interesting Venture


It is certainly true that smart contracts can make a big impact on our society as a whole, although a lot of use cases have yet to be identified. Interfacing with a smart contract on any platform is a major challenge right now. This is especially true for financial institutions and other organizations looking to explore this technology.

Rather than using public blockchains, they will often develop a private and a permissioned version to use similar technologies. In the long run, these private and individual efforts still must communicate with one another, as well as with public blockchains in the future.

Connecting a smart contract to external sources is currently not possible in a convenient manner. Off-chain data and even APIs need to be introduced to smart contracts and vice versa. Currently, this is a major hindrance which can’t be resolved all that easily whatsoever.

ChainLink may be the solution for all these problems in the future. That is what its developers are hoping, at least. In fact, some new solutions are required to make this concept work in the first place. ChainLink is capable of connecting any smart contract to an external system and an API.

This secure blockchain “middleware”, as the team calls it, provides the bridge for the gap between smart contracts, APIs, and any other form of external data one might need. While it may not be the perfect solution, it should be useful for at least 90% of current and future use cases.

The project revolves around a fully decentralized network of oracles which are compatible with Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is possible other blockchains will be supported in the future, but those are the two main points of focus for the time being. In a perfect future world, this new platform would allow anyone in the world to use the LINK network.

All service providers would be able to securely provide smart contracts with access to key external data and potentially even off-chain payments. This latter point will be of particular interest to a lot of companies and service providers, for obvious reasons. Do keep in mind you will need LINK tokens to do so, though.

While it is commendable to see such a decentralized network, the use of proprietary tokens will not necessarily make it more appealing. This is the first solution of its kind, though, and we may see more competing services in the near future.

ChainLink will certainly find its place in the market, as users can become node operators to monetize their API experience. It’s a very intriguing concept, although it remains to be seen how many companies will actually use it.

Discover even more blockchain articles on Merkle here: https://themerkle.com/what-is-chainlink/

Blockchain is a big buzzword in technology right now. But when I talk to customers, it quickly becomes clear that many people don’t fully understand what blockchain is—or how to use it. To help shed some light on what you really need to focus on as you consider the adoption of a blockchain strategy for the coming year, review these three points:Understand it’s a hammer, not a screwdriver.

  Since everyone is talking about blockchain, it’s easy for companies to latch onto the general concept without keeping their organization’s unique use case in mind. So if you think you might be interested in a blockchain strategy, the first thing you need to grasp fully is what blockchain is and isn’t. While I’m a big fan of blockchain technology, it’s not a panacea for every problem—to fully leverage its value, you need to know what this technology excels at doing, and what it doesn’t do particularly well.

In its simplest form, blockchains distribute data and once distributed, the information is persistent, redundant, and accessible. Persistent in that it is nearly impossible to remove data that has been published. Additionally, blockchains have this quality because all full nodes contain a complete copy of the full data set that makes up the blockchain.

Public blockchains, like the Bitcoin blockchain, are also globally accessible. If you have internet access, you can view the Bitcoin blockchain. It allows digital information to be distributed rather than copied. You might think of it like having a spreadsheet or database that is regularly duplicated and continuously updated across a network of devices. Why is this important to know? Because it can help you hone in on what the actual benefits of blockchain are, and what specific problems you can solve with it.

A key point is that the records blockchain keeps are easily verifiable and protected since the database does not have a single storage location that a cyber thief can access. As I’ll describe more below, this can be of great benefit in a wide number of industries, including the mortgage industry. While you may be able to rattle off an impressive description of blockchain from a technical perspective though, the key here is to be sure that you know the best way to use the tool.

Think about this analogy: You have a screwdriver, but you need to pound in a nail. While you can certainly turn the screwdriver around and start whacking the nail with the screwdriver’s handle, that’s not really what a screwdriver is designed to do. You can probably get a nail hammered in with this solution, but there’s a better tool available to help you do it. If you don’t use a hammer to pound in your nails, then you’re working less efficiently than you could be.It’s the same with blockchain. I get a lot of questions from companies about whether they can “make” blockchain perform certain functions that it technically can do, but that it’s not really designed to do well.

For example, since blockchain is conceptually a type of database, people often think they can solve database problems with it. The litmus test for this is to ask yourself whether you could solve the problem with Oracle. If you can, then just do that—it will likely be easier and cheaper. If not and you are looking to create persistent, redundant, shareable data, blockchain technology might be worth exploring.

So as you consider implementing a blockchain strategy, your first goal is to use it for the right things. Look around your organization for screws that need tightening, not nails that need hammering. In other words, understand what blockchains are fundamentally best at doing. In the mortgage industry, that is the ability to provide the same level of preservation of information, document integrity, and tamper seals around documents without requiring e-signatures.

Know how deep you want to goOnce you understand how you can effectively use blockchain, the second point to consider with a blockchain strategy is, how deeply do you want to dive into becoming a blockchain subject matter expert? When it comes to blockchain integration, it’s certainly one option to just subscribe directly to public blockchain and then have your developers write their own code on top of these open-source projects.

But if you’re really considering doing this, think about how deep your R&D department really is. This level of coding is painstaking, highly technical work—most companies don’t have this capability, and for a good reason, since it’s expensive and not very practical to hire at this level. Most organizations neither want nor need to build their entire blockchain platform from scratch; they simply need access to existing business applications to solve their problems.

The way to get to these solutions more quickly and efficiently is to look for a third-party blockchain company that already has built a platform to do what you need to be done.The bottom line here is that you need to decide how committed you are to developing your own in-house solution for blockchain. You can’t really dabble in this type of technology. You must either be deeply committed to it and have the R&D depth in-house to support that commitment, or else you need to partner with a company that has expertise in this area to run your strategy for you.

I think this is a bit of a no-brainer in that blockchain technology is too new to make it cost effective to hire a team of experienced developers to play around all day and come up with concepts. A smarter strategy is to find a partner that offers a blockchain platform built to specifically serve your industry. This saves your own developers from reinventing the wheel to figure out how the technology works. If you’re an enterprise that doesn’t want to be in the blockchain business but simply wants to use blockchain wisely, then there’s no point wasting resources on the learning curve.

Sort the wheat from the chaffAfter reviewing the two strategies above, you’ve decided that you want to partner with a blockchain provider. Today, there are thousands of blockchain companies pushing their wares. How do you choose? The answer is: based on the experience that they provide. Frankly, the vast majority of blockchain companies have yet to build anything and have no live customers. They may have an idea or even a proven concept, but only a small handful of these thousands have live blockchain solutions in production.

One of those companies is Factom—and we’re the only blockchain provider with specific mortgage expertise. Our product, Factom Harmony, uses both the transparency and the permanence of blockchain technology to help reduce expenses related to documentation, compliance, and litigation alike.... continue reading: http://www.themreport.com/headline/06-06-2017/3-things-need-2017-blockchain-strategy