COMMUNICATIONS GIANT COMCAST INVESTING IN BLOCKCHAIN AND PREDICTS CRYPTOCURRENCY ADOPTION
tldr; The full video interview can be seen at https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/04/26/comcast-ventures-bullish-on-bitcoin.html
NEWS
COMMUNICATIONS GIANT COMCAST INVESTING IN BLOCKCHAIN AND PREDICTS CRYPTOCURRENCY ADOPTION
COMCAST Ventures, the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world, has predicted blockchain will be used in future elections and that cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin are the future.
Gil Beyda, the Managing Director of the company which has a reported revenue of $84.53Billion and around 22,516,000 subscribers, has stated that his team: “remain bullish on blockchain and its application to major industries as well as to upcoming elections”.
His comment about elections comes amid controversy and investigations over alleged collusion between members of US President, Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian actors during his 2016 Presidential campaign.
“I think Blockchain is a perfect platform for voting,” Beyda said. “The underlying technology around identity, first and foremost, where someone comes to a voting booth and uses a crypto-rapid key to identify themselves, prevent multiple voting, you can ensure the transaction is recorded on this immutable ledger that we have been talking about in blockchain.”
Beyda also predicted underdeveloped countries could skip traditional banks and go straight to cryptocurrencies.
He said: “I think people are realising that Bitcoin and Blockchain has real value there. In 2017, it was all about towards the run up, to get rich quick. Wow, you could double or triple your money.
“Then I think there was a pull back to say, okay, what are the real applications of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology? And I think we are going to see a surge now around people really understanding the potential for the technology.”
Asked about the importance of traditional banks like Goldman Sachs playing a major role in cryptocurrency and whether Bitcoin can continue to rise without their presence and involvement in the means of payment, Beyda said: “Let’s take the underdeveloped world here.”
“They missed the whole landline telephone experience, skipping directly from no phones to mobile phones. They leapfrogged. I think the underdeveloped world has an opportunity to do the same with the financial systems, many of which are broken.
“Central banks are corrupt and so rather than go through the traditional central bank system that we have in the developed world, and in the US as an example, they skip that and go directly to a crypto-based economy whereby there is no central bank, their peer-to-peer transactions are among untrusted players and there is a ledger that records all of these transactions.”
He revealed Comcast has already invested in four blockchain-based companies and expects that number to rise this year.
He said: “We’re very excited about cryptocurrency and blockchain. Irrespective of the price of Bitcoin, unfortunately if it is $10,000 or $10, we think there is core technology there that has the ability to disrupt multiple industries.”
He added: “Within Comcast and NBC Universal there are a lot of really interesting projects going around.”