The March 2018 United States Joint Economic Committee Report has been released and it has bullish sentiment on blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies in chapter 9 of the report.
Views
The Chairman starts out by saying "Blockchain technology has the potential to help the economy function more efficiently and securely." and continues with "The new technology also may be attractive for Government to use, improving efficiency in its own operations."
Once more of Congress understand what exactly blockchain technology is, we should begin seeing much more of this type of thought when it comes to implementing blockchain tech into different sectors of our government. For instance on pg.22 of the report they mention using blockchain technology in the medical industry to keep tighter records. "Greater coordination and portability of health records could also assist by reducing paperwork burdens and preventing medical errors (one of the possible application of blockchain technology)."
2017, Year of Crypto
The emphasize it as the year of cryptocurrencies when saying "both stock market measures experienced strong growth, cryptocurrencies dwarfed their performance." when talking about the DOW and NASDAQ performing very well in 2017.
They also mention Bitcoin moved up on Googles Year in Search 2017 to 2nd place.
Surprisingly, they also defined blockchain technology very accurately with by saying "Blockchain is the distributed ledger technology that underlies digital currencies such as Bitcoin. A ledger is the accounting tool that tracks the movement of money from one person or account to another. Conventionally, such records are stored in central locations like banks, headquarters, and Paypal servers. Blockchain revolutionizes ledger technology with a network of distributed ledgers. Instead of one central, authoritative record of all transactions or information, blockchain creates potentially thousands of identical ledgers in computers and servers all over the world.", also mentioning miners in the PoW blockchain and smart contracts on Ethereum's platform. Ripple Ethereum Litecoin and Btcoin were all mentioned in the description of Blockchain Tech.
Innovations of Blockchain
The Report moves its focus to how we can store information digitally and securely on any phones with thumb print and 2FA. They mainly start to focus on the healthcare industry and mentioning becoming HIPPAA compliant when storing our medical records on our cell phones (securely).
Robomed Network, healthnexus. MediLedger and BlockMedx were all mentioned as innovative projects "that will comply with the current system and work with regulators". This potentially could be some very big news for these projects.
They go on to mention IBM and Maersk's consensus distributed ledger and Walmart testing blockchain tech.
Focused on microgrids and how Department of Energy teamed up with BlockCypher to show how "blockchains could facilitate a smarter energy grid"
The Future of Regulation
The report recommends not having "overly prescriptive regulationsthat constrain this emerging technology from reaching its full potential"
Recommendations
Policymakers and the public should become more familiar with digital currencies and other uses of blockchain
technology, which have a wide range of applications in the future.Regulators should continue to coordinate among each other to guarantee coherent policy frameworks, definitions, and jurisdiction.
Policymakers, regulators, and entrepreneurs should continue to work together to ensure developers can deploy these new blockchain technologies quickly and in a manner that protects Americans from fraud, theft, and abuse, while ensuring compliance with relevant regulations.
Government agencies at all levels should consider and examine new uses for this technology that could make the government more efficient in performing its functions.
With the Join Economic Committee Congress and minority views, this report seems very bullish on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies (They mention incentivizing via the tokens as well). They will begin seeing the value of having this immutable, secure and faster technology available to the masses. I think we are finally starting to understand that not all blockchain projects and tokens are Bitconnect or ponzi schemes like they hear about so often, but are very innovative and life changing projects.
Source: Congress.gov