Hi steemers, ten years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, also driven by a casual use and devoid of the real economy of investment tools that were incomprehensible to the most, cryptocurrency sought a technological and decentralized solution to the banking system's predominance. Bitcoin even had its political counterparts in events such as Occupy Wallstreet and continues to bring with it a definitely anti-establishment patrol of eversiveness.
WHAT
Much water has passed under the bridges since then. The financial system accused in the dramatic crackdown of Lehman Brothers has introduced new rules of control. The crisis, to some extent and certainly not homogeneous, has been attenuated. And it is curious to see - a sign that the bitcoin technology base was very solid - that the same financial establishment that the cryptocurrency tried to circumvent, is doing to make blockchain, the "accounting book" of bitcoin, one of the most important ingredients interesting in the recipe for digital transformation.
Research and development initiatives, platforms and services are not just about the flickering reality of the fictitious, supported by market evolution, but also by the introduction of very open rules on money and financial transactions. Even major banks are committed in the first place, and not just in the experiment: several projects are in the advanced stage (see ripple for example).
HOW
Earlier this year, a consortium of seven European banks, including UniCredit, signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the joint development of a new trading platform based on so-called "ledgers" distributed and aimed specifically at small and medium-sized businesses. Digital Trade Chain (DTC) will make business and trade between small businesses, especially in an international context, easier and less risky. It has recently been announced that IBM will provide the consortium with the necessary technological and infrastructural support, leveraging Big Blue's participation in the Hyperledger Fabric project, an open source blockchain platform managed by the Linux Foundation.
WHO
IBM, as it was foreseeable, is not the only giant in the large-scale fintech tensile, inspired by the same patterns of cryptovalutes. For a Microsoft that this summer announced to businesses the launch of its CoCo Framework, which will enable enterprise blockchain networks to be developed in the Microsoft Azure environment, Intel chose to participate, also financially, at Rope, another project inspired by R3 blockchains - a private American company created three years ago by a stock market trader - and very focused on banking services and the financial world in general. Check out how the solution could work:
All this movement clearly indicates that blockchain technology, perhaps appropriately revised, could be really disruptive in transforming the way of conceiving business transactions and relationships as well as monetary. Of course - and the recent "tightness" imposed by the Chinese authorities on cryptovalues
and the "Initial Coin Offering" developed on the Ethereum network reminds us that there will be long-term reasoning on the system of rules and safeguards to be imposed on providers of these services. There will, however, be no business opportunities that open to the Italian fintech world. It would be a good idea not to lose this train, perhaps by helping the academic system to form coders, mathematicians and economists able to move in an interdisciplinary context.
I am very curius about the future.
and you steemers what do you think will happen? Do you agree with all this statements?
I am interested to know your opinion! Let me know!
Best from Switzerland
Francesco