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In Blockchain world everybody wants to be `the World`s first`. The term started being a must in white papers, now it is all over social media, with announcements about The World`s first tokenized equity The World`s first STO The World`s first regulated Crypto bank The World`s first Initial Wallet Offering The World`s first Regulated ATS […]
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Earlier this month, a senior official of the People Bank of China (PBoC) announced that the country was ready to launch its digital currency. The announcement was made at a China Finance 40 (CF40) group discussion and it was revealed that China has been working on this for the past five years. Image Source The […]
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Image Source Is it a Golden bullet? or just a jewel? When I used to be a developer in banks, I used to get this question all the time – “do we have a golden bullet (tech) that can solve all our problems?”. The question used to be from very senior people in the bank […]
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It’s an emotional week for Indians – for most of them atleast. It’s a week when India crashed out of the cricket world cup, that they were favourites to win. While I was looking for “India news” to cheer myself and my family up, I spotted an important trend worth talking about.
The rise of Blockchain in India doesn’t come as a surprise to me. It is the third most active innovation ecosystem in the world, next to the US and China. 2018 had $35 Billion of PE/VC investment in the country, and that has risen over the years at a rapid pace. However, with Blockchain, most of the initiatives have a public sector organisation driving it.
Most Indians would admit that public sector organisations in India are super dysfunctional. So, this is indeed a sign of new times. Perhaps, the state governments are taking inspiration from the centre’s initiatives with payments and other technology innovation. Let us look at the three key trends that we have identified across the states.
The map also identifies several other use cases like Organ transplants (as the black market in India is thriving), IP Protection and Cybersecurity. I am surprised that there is no line item for Self Sovereign Identity. India has the world’s largest citizens’ database in Aadhaar. Loading it up on a permissioned Blockchain, and providing citizens the ability to share their data in a controlled fashion would be a major building block.
But that initiative needs to come from the central government. It cannot be a state government driven agenda. Also, despite all these developments, the action from the central government around Blockchain initiatives is missing. The central government needs to intervene to standardise state government based initiatives across the country.
The other elephant in the room is the cryptocurrency ban in the country. I believe, this has pushed India behind its global competition by a few years when it comes to Blockchain innovation. The country has a buzzing startup ecosystem. The centre has taken several steps even in the most recent budget to support innovation.
But when it comes to cryptocurrency, the Reserve Bank of India has taken a very binary approach. I spoke to Lizzie Chapman (CEO of ZestMoney) a few weeks ago on lending fintechs in India. During that conversation, she mentioned that the Indian regulators have been quite collaborative in setting policies for the industry. That approach seems to have been lost somewhere with Cryptos.
The challenge that India has is that of talent. With lack of innovation happening in this space, Blockchain skills will start running out pretty soon. Yes, the big tech consulting firms looking to build Blockchain skills can do so. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to leadership within Blockchain innovation.
The other challenge is global competition. China and other top economies have allocated $ Billions towards emerging technologies such as AI, Quantum computing and Blockchain. China and US fight it out for the top place in the world’s patenting charts across these technologies. India is only in 6th position in the world for the number of Blockchain patents, and without private sector innovation, will soon risk being left behind.
In essence, the centre needs to wake up to this new era in the country. It’s time for leadership at the top, much like they did with payments. They should get initiatives kicked off on Blockchain and its standardisation across states. They should ensure that the regulations are clear for the crypto community.
With just those two steps, the country should be back on the map in a much bigger way with Blockchain. The mistake (crypto ban) could be turned into an opportunity. Onwards and Upwards!! Cheer up India!!
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
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Blockchain and AI are the most trending technologies. Blockchain for Finance and AI for Finance ventures are also increasing. The combination is hoped to fuel the autonomous financial infrastructure that will host all kinds of intelligent applications in capital and financial markets.
LiveTiles brought to my attention 20 AI Blockchain projects with a great infographic. As I have profiled a few of them in 2017 at the protocol layer and the data-finance verticals, I decided to catchup with Numerai. They had grabbed my attention 2 years ago in this primer I wrote: The Big Hairy Audacious Goal of Numerai: network effects in Quant trading
Numerai is creating a meta-model from all the Machine Learning (ML) algorithms developed by “the crowd” with cryptographic data. Numerai aims to offer a platform that generates alpha in a novel way. It wants to structure a rewarding mechanism for its traders that not only eliminates the typical competitive and adversarial behavior between them but actually, penalizes them. Efi Pylarinou
Numerai was and is a bleeding edge venture. It remains the only hedge fund built on blockchain and using ML and data science in a novel way. The novelty lies in changing the incentive and compensation structure of the fund manager.
Numerai launched no ICO. The NMR token was awarded to the thousands of data scientists for creating successful machine-learning based predictive models. Once the data scientists are confident of the predictive ability of their model, they can stake their NMR and earn additional NMR if they are correct.
Numerai involves a staking mechanism.
In March, Numerai reported that $10million had been rewarded up to date. NMR tokens were distributed via airdrops initially. At launch on 21st February 2017, 1 million Numeraire tokens (NMR) were distributed to 12,000 anonymous scientists. Thereafter, NMR tokens were awarded as rewards to users of its platform. Bear in mind, that if a participant stakes NMR and their model doesn’t perform, the staked tokens are burnt.
According to Numerai, the NMR token is one of the most used ERC20 tokens. By end of 2018 reporting 25,000 stakes of NMR.
Almost 200,000 models submitted by data scientists around the world for a competition to crowdsourced the best prediction models.
Source from Chris Burniske`s talk at Fluidity Summit in NYC.
Numerai in March raised $11mil from investors led by Paradigm and Placeholder VCs. Numerai is a very rare case because this fundraising is not for equity but for NMR tokens.
Numerai token is a utility token and investors just bought $11million of NMR tokens.
The funds raised will primarily be used to drive the development of Erasure, a decentralized predictions marketplace that Numerai launched.
What does this mean in plain worlds?
Numerai was not a protocol but rather an application – a hedge fund. Erasure will transform it into a protocol. This has several significant implications.
A protocol is born out of the app Numerai – its name is Erasure. Erasure is much broader than a hedge fund, as all sorts of prediction and data markets can be built on the protocol. The vision is to always to be a token that is actually used. Which brings to the spotlight the lack of transparency around data measuring use of protocol and Dapp tokens.
Footnote: Numerai at launch was backed by Fred Ehrsam, Joey Krug, Juan Benet, Olaf Carlson-Wee and Union Square Ventures.
The Big Hairy Audacious Goal of @numerai : network effects in Quant trading https://t.co/LiMJu0gN9L by @efipm via @dailyfintech pic.twitter.com/l8vwRzt1Bf
— Efi Pylarinou (@efipm) June 6, 2017
Efi Pylarinou is the founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
Subscribe by email to join Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).
I must credit the research behind this post to Keir Finlow Bates. Keir is an entrepreneur based out of Finland, where he runs a Blockchain research company. I recently came across his research report on the Blockchain patent market.
It was refreshing to see that the report was published on LinkedIn and free for everybody to access and benefit from. It had good coverage, understandable trends, a few obvious names at the top, and a few disappointing stats too. Keir had spent three days researching on Blockchain patent information on ‘google patents’ and compiled the statistics in his report.
Before we get into the findings of the report, I just wanted to discuss the question, “Do patents matter at all?”. I believe, the answer is “It depends”. It depends on your willingness to defend them – if you are the patent holder.
With 97% of all patents, the costs are not justified. The inventor spends the money filing the patent, but do not reap any benefits. 50% of patents are expire as inventors do not pay the maintenance fees. So why file a patent at all?
Patents make sense if your product is extremely complex and hard to develop, and if the costs of defending the patent is affordable/justified. It also helps with perception (that you own the product IP), and posturing (that you will defend it).
However, defending a patent takes years, and costs millions of dollars. So it may not necessarily be an option for a startup with a differentiated product and shallow pockets. It may also not make sense if the invention’s life span is relatively shorter. By the time the patent battle is fought in courts, the life of the product would be over.
Patents are often very narrowly defined, and getting around them shouldn’t necessarily be hard work for a smart competitor/imitator. In a conversation with a startup CEO I met recently, she revealed that she wasn’t so fond of patenting her product. She reasoned that she had to give away a lot of information about her product during the patenting exercise, that it makes it easier for a competitor to create a close enough version of it.
In the case of Blockchain, I feel, patents are a KPI to mark industry and thought leadership than protecting IP. Apart from a handful of architectural improvisation in Blockchain, innovation has been largely incremental.
Another point to ponder is that, Blockchain is a technology that knows no boundaries. As there are several Blockchain friendly island jurisdictions, patenting within major jurisdictions like the US, Europe or China may be meaningless. However, the race for getting on top of the patent list is still on.
Source: Keir’s report
Coming back to Keir’s analysis, one key dimension I missed on it was China. It’s no news to us that China is racing ahead of the rest of the world in patenting its inventions with most emerging technologies like AI, Blockchain and Quantum Computing.
A research on patent databases Patentics and Incopat about a year ago, identified that Alibaba was leading the Blockchain tally, even ahead of IBM. Of the top 36 companies with at least 20 Blockchain patents, about 50% of them were Chinese firms including BAT.
Keir’s analysis was performed on Google patent, which supposedly includes China Patents – but the data in the report indicates otherwise. The key takeaway from the reports are that,
One key point stands out for me. Is the system of patenting fundamentally broken? If I spent two years of my life creating a complex product, addressing a huge market, I should be able to patent it, and defend my patent. Cost shouldn’t be a barrier to defend my work.
Instead of raising the innovation bar for competitors/imitators, the patenting system has perhaps raised the cost bar for inventors to defend their IP.
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
Subscribe by email to join Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have been piloting several Blockchain use cases over the past few years. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) was one of the key focus areas of Project Ubin – MAS’ Blockchain initiative. In September 2018, I had published my post on Singapore and their efforts around Blockchain.
With the five phased approach to Project Ubin, we may soon see a state issued digital currency. That would not only put Singapore ahead of its Asian peers, it may be a Global first.
We now have a global first. Just over a week ago, MAS and the Central Bank of Canada made an announcement that a transaction between digital currencies of the two central banks was executed successfully. The trial was performed with the help of Accenture and J.P.Morgan.
As the Blockchain narrative developed over the years, one of the key buzzword was decentralisation and disintermediation. However, in the last two years, we have seen permissioned Blockchains gain popularity.
The three dimensions of the Blockchain Trilemma proposed by Vitalik Buterin were, Scalability, Security and Decentralisation. Designers of Blockchain systems have to choose between these three dimensions. The rise of permissioned Blockchain indicates that Decentralisation would be the first to be compromised amongst the three dimensions.
There are several reasons why a central bank would launch a digital currency. In the case of the Petro, the rationale was largely to stay clear of sanctions and raise capital to pay back some of their debt.
Reserve Bank of India on the other hand is exploring CBDC as it would be a low hanging fruit after the mass (forced) adoption of the nation’s identity system – Aadhaar. A good model would be to link a CBDC to Aadhaar verified wallets to create accountability and traceability of cash in the economy.
RBI was also spending 7 Billion Rupees ($100 Million) per year in just creating and managing the Rupee. There would be huge savings if they launched a CBDC.
Getting back to the SGP digital currency. Some key points to note are the following,
The picture above explains the HTLC framework used by this model. A report was published at the back of this initiative, describing several models that cross border settling systems could use.
The next wave of central bank blockchain projects can make further progress by bringing technology exploration together with policy questions about the future of cross-border payments
Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer, MAS
The report also goes into the depths of the challenges in using HTLC and the potential alternatives being worked on by the Blockchain community. Like in most other Financial Services use cases of Blockchain, this transaction was also executed in a controlled environment.
CBDC are still in their infancy. This pilot could be followed up by collaboration across several central banks at the policy, governance, process and infrastructure levels. This would benefit the global economy at a scale never seen before. Let’s take stocks in a year. Watch this space.
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on “Sustainable Deeptech Investments” and a podcast host.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
Subscribe by email to join the 25,000 other Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).
Last week Christine Lagarde moderated a panel with two Central bankers (European Central Bank and CB of Kenya), an incumbent (JPMorgan) and a disruptor (crypto fintech company Circle). The topic was “Money and Payments in the Digital Age.”
CCN covered the panel discussion with a narrative of `In crypto we trust`. Coindesk covered it with a rhetorical question narrative of `In Math we Trust?`.
It is already six months since I covered Blockchain from a policy angle in `In the EU Blockchain Resolution we Trust`. Building Trust through disintermediation is the line of thinking behind the Blockchain Resolution which is still a work in progress. Europe continues to be the thought leader at the policy level with this initiative which has immense potential. During the same period, I had the privilege of attending the talk of Dr. Zhang on the topic “In Math we Trust” and moderating a session with him at the LCX Blockchain Series, in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Dr. Zhang, was a renowned Chinese American scientist, a physics professor at Stanford and I remain inspired by his narrative.[1]
The powerful origin of the narrative `In Math we could Trust`
Let’s go back to the Greeks where thought leadership of all theoretical and foundational concepts started. Dr. Zhang spoke about Archimedes, his Eureka moment which permitted gold to become a medium of exchange. He spoke about the 2nd law of thermodynamics which states that the natural world is mostly in disorder and rarely in order (consensus state). In nature, order and consensus can only exist in subsystems. And when this happens it happens at a cost. In physics parlance, in order to reach order and consensus in nature, there needs to be some entropy (disorder) produced and dumped outside the subsystem for it to reach consensus.
Let’s tie this to the computing world. In distributed computing, the Fischer-Lynch-Patterson theorem is the analog of the 2nd law of thermodynamics and proves that there is No deterministic algorithm that can be a master algorithm for the system to reach consensus. So, once again science like in nature, proves that to reach consensus we need to pay a cost. This is where the Proof of Work, an old cryptographic concept, comes into play.
One way we can reach consensus regarding transactions is by using Proof of work. This is a way, to reach consensus on the Temporal Order of transactional data. The cost we pay is the amount of electricity we burn to solve the puzzle (which is on the other hand easily verifiable). Consensus on time-stamped verification of transactional data, can be reached through this process that dumps entropy (electricity in the case Bitcoin Blockchain) outside the system.
Our world historically has been oscillating between centralization and decentralization.
Looking back in history for more evidence: The circuit switch technology created the then seemingly indestructible monopoly of ATT. This monopoly was only destroyed form the decentralized TCP/IP protocol that gave birth to the internet and to the gradual adoption of VOIP. As the internet became the dominant technology, several other monopolies grew out of the content generated on it; e.g. Google and Facebook. And now, we are in the beginnings of what Paul Nunes coins as the next Big Bang disruption. Blockchain is threatening the powerful giants built on the first open source protocol, the internet, with a wave of data decentralization.
The internet has evidently increased connectedness. However, its design is not a collaborative one. The world that is built on top of this open protocol, the internet, is not a world that is more fair and that builds trust. The “trading” or any exchange of information on the web, is not collaborative. The central entities, the Googles and Facebooks, are the ones that are organizing the information and the data on the web. The first, step in the process of decentralizing the web, is to break these data monopolies.
Blockchain is a decentralized mechanism in which trust is built-in with mathematical formulas. As Plato preached, mathematics is the ONLY internally consistent language. As Nick Szabo preached, in his God protocols, mathematics is the language of God. God in this context is the entity that acts in the interest of everybody.
Blockchain protocols are presenting us with an opportunity to build on protocols with built-in consensus mechanism governed by math. Mathematics governance guarantees fairness and trust.
Dr. Zhang argued in this speech that we humans have developed languages and law in our attempts to organize and collaborate in societies and reach consensus on various issues. He now believes that we are stepping into the most advanced era in which Mathematics will be trusted in order to reach consensus. Admittedly from all the sciences (social, political, physics etc.) mathematics is the branch of knowledge with the highest level of consensus and in which we trust.
Dr. Zhang emphasized that we live in a world that is based on theoretical mathematics that were developed with no real-world application in mind and are now being used in all sorts of experimentations as we are in the early stages of the blockchain development. From hash functions to more such `abstract first` math concepts.
Source: from Dr. Zhang`s talk; see full video here.
The choice we have is to `Trust in Math`
Look at the 2nd law of thermodynamics, nature, and the lessons from the earlier tech disruption waves. Once we embrace the dynamic, digital, and unstable world we live in; we will realize that we have a great opportunity to embrace theoretical mathematics in designing governance and the Internet of value.
It will be a trustworthy design with inherent instabilities as in nature and as outlined in the 2nd law of thermodynamics. We have to move away from the belief that forced consensus mechanisms like regulations can provide stability.
[1] I delayed this post because of the unfortunate and sudden passing away of Dr. Zhang late last year.
Efi Pylarinou is the founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
Subscribe by email to join the 25,000 other Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).
72 countries, 47 currencies, 44 banking endpoints and more than 1081 unique currency trading pairs. IBM Blockchain World Wire is here.
IBM Press release on World Wire
In the last four weeks, we have had JPM Coin announcement by JP Morgan, followed by Facebook’s ambitions to plug crypto payments into Whatsapp, and now IBM have announced the launch of World wire – a cross border payments platform on Stellar protocol. I tried to call them permissioned Blockchain, but couldn’t resist calling them “Centralized”.
When I blogged about JPM Coin a few weeks ago, and how it could affect both Ripple and SWIFT, one unanimous comment I received was that JPM Coin couldn’t be considered a cryptocurrency. I have had several philosophical arguments over the years on why a permissioned Blockchain, preferred by enterprises, do not/do qualify as Blockchain as they are centralized.
For all practical reasons, we have seen the rise and fall of decentralized Blockchain. Most of us would like a utopian decentralized world without these too-big-to-fail firms throwing their weight around, or central regulators calling the shots, or tech giants monopolizing industries with their data might. However, it is hard to make the leap from a highly centralised system (we have today) to a new decentralised way – not just philosophically, but also pracically.
The focus has shifted from ICOs to the more conservative STOs, with stable coins showing up in most use cases. Several startups I have met in the last few months have even stopped using the term ‘ICO’. The resurgence of Blockchain is now being led by big firms like IBM, Facebook and JP Morgan. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes the norm in 2019, where we see more Blockchain based production use cases from enterprises.
IBM have been working in partnership with the Stellar Foundation for quite sometime now. When I spoke to Lisa Nestor, the Director of partnerships at Stellar in Q4 2018, she mentioned that they had a strategic partnership with IBM. She stressed the importance of working closely with incumbent organisations across industries to make Blockchain usage mainstream.
We’ve created a new type of payment network designed to accelerate remittances and transform cross-border payments to facilitate the movement of money in countries that need it most
Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM Blockchain
As a result the IBM World wire, focused on the cross-border payments market has already enabled payment locations in 72 countries, with 48 currencies and 44 banking endpoints. It supports Stellar Lumens and a USD based stablecoin – thanks to their work with Stronghold. The network will also support stablecoins issued by several of its consortium banks. The list includes stablecoins based on Euro, Indonesian Rupiah, Philippine Peso, Korean Won and Brazilian Real. How will this affect Ripple?
Credit Ripple for the vision of using a digital asset in order to enact immediate settlement with finality. I think their implementation followed one path. Our implementation is a little bit different. We are not the issuer of an asset. In fact, what we believe is that there should be an ecosystem of a variety of digital assets that provide the settlement instruments that enable these cross-border payments.
Jesse Lund, IBM’s VP of Blockchain and Digital currencies
IBM’s strategy of keeping the platform agnostic to any kind of digital asset is a master stroke. The platform will work through the following steps,
The new world of international payments look pretty disintermediated, near real time and efficient. Bringing on-board new markets is cheaper; micro payments support and end to end transparency are all benefits too. Are we still going to be hung up on “It is not really decentralized”? Do we care?
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.
Subscribe by email to join the 25,000 other Fintech leaders who read our research daily to stay ahead of the curve. Check out our advisory services (how we pay for this free original research).
We have had a record breaking February in the UK weather-wise. One of the days in Feb saw temperatures go up to 21 degrees Celsius. While the cold has returned a little bit, it seems winter is largely done. I get that sense with cryptos, as large institutions one after another are announcing projects, and it only takes one of them to take off for cryptos to go mainstream.
Messaging applications thinking of launching their own cryptos is nothing new. Telegram and Signal have been at it for sometime. However, it is a bigger deal when Facebook looks at introducing cryptocurrency based payments on Whatsapp. The size of the opportunity for Facebook and their partners when the platform is Finteched will undoubtedly get them out of their issues they have faced over the past 24 months.
Facebook has two problems to solve, and both potentially powered by Blockchain.
Facebook’s Blockchain team has been spearheaded by former PayPal president David Marcus since last May. In order to replicate Tencent’s successes, they need to leverage the user base of their apps (FB, Whatsapp, Instagram). Bringing payments to Whatsapp would have have been a good starting point, however Facebook’s attempt at doing that in India (the largest Whatsapp) hasn’t gone too well.
About 1 Billion people in India have a mobile, and about 300 Million of them use Whatsapp. Last year, Whatsapp pay launched in a controlled fashion to 1 Million users in India. They used the government backed UPI (Unified Payments Interface), and during the pilot, they achieved about a Million transactions per month. However, the regulators weren’t happy that the payments engine was on Facebook servers. They wanted the servers to be in India, and despite several conversations there is no solution.
The payments market in India is a $1 Trillion market by 2023, and it would be a shame if they missed the bus.
Facebook is looking to create a stablecoin attached to a basket of currencies. There is a team of about 50 people working on this project. If FB planned to use the Indian market as a testing ground for the crypto-powered Whatsapp pay, they may now have to deal with the crypto currency regulatory ban too. However, if they managed to clear the regulatory hurdle, their growth could dwarf the likes of PayTM, and that would just be the start. On top of it, Indian remittance market boomed to $80 Billion last year. If I could use whatsapp to send money to my mom, that would be awesome!!
The other issue that FB has had is around data privacy. With identity management being one of the key concerns, FB saw record number of millennials leave their platform last year. However, with a Blockchain powered Self Sovereign Identity engine, Facebook connect could redefine it’s position with data privacy as a distributed identity management platform.
How decentralised it (the identity engine) will stay if launched is another challenge. Most federated and decentralised identity management engines have ended up creating a centralised monopoly in the past. With Blockchain behind the scenes, one would expect that to be different.
Will Facebook replicate Tencent inspired successes through Whatsapp? Will FB change perceptions through a genuinely decentralised identity engine? Would 2019 be the year of mainstream adoption of cryptos? Watch this space.
Arunkumar Krishnakumar is a Venture Capital investor at Green Shores Capital focusing on Inclusion and a podcast host.
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