Blockchain - a Girl’s Best Friend?

Initial Coin Offerings (“ICO”) by crypto-currency providers have been the flavour of the crypto-currency world for some time. A clear way for organisations to raise significant funds. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in the US, has been clamping down on providers.

Whether crypto currencies are really a currency equivalent or fiat currency and subject to the rules of currencies has been an interesting debate amongst lawyers and the fintech world for some time. The SEC has turned its attention to whether these are securities and a Federal Court decision in the US has said that they are. This has been a growing trend with Governments like Malaysia following suit and stating clearly in legislation that non-Government issued crypto currencies form securities.

In November 2018, the SEC announced that it had settled charges against CarrierEQ, Inc. (“Airfox”) and Paragon Coin, Inc. (“Paragon”). They had been investigated by it for securities offering registration violations in connection with their respective ICOs. The settlement orders are the first time the SEC has imposed civil penalties against ICO issuers.

There will be much to follow in 2019, as cryptocurrencies mature and the regulators further intervene. Of course, crypto currencies are interesting. And everyone wants to know whether you bought on time to make money….

But for me, more interesting are some of the developing use cases around the distributed ledgers that form the heart of blockchain. Assuming that you want to create certainty and an immutable record of a transaction, blockchain is your answer. Is it possible that the non-crypto use cases will actually be where the money is in the long term?

It makes absolute sense that early adopters and prototypes are being built around scenarios like banking, finance, insurance and property registries.

Sue McLean, partner and global blockchain lead at law firm, Baker Mackenzie: “Given its bitcoin origins, it was unsurprising that the financial services sector was one of the first to explore the potential of blockchain. However, in the last couple of years we have seen companies across a whole host of sectors taking an interest in this technology (including pharma, energy, creative services, real estate and retail). The crypto sector may have suffered some setbacks in 2018 but we are not seeing any slow down in the enterprise world.”

We are now seeing the evolution of some really fascinating and creative use cases that help to demonstrate the breadth of the potential use of blockchain technology and perhaps confirm its potential as being the most significant technological development since the world wide web.

Celebrating a decade of Tech Trends reports with its 2019 edition, released on the 22 January, Deloitte see Blockchain’s countering risk as being firmly at the forefront of current trends. “Blockchain is to trust what the web was to communication: a profoundly disruptive technology that transforms not only business but the way that humans transact and engage.”

Today, pre-owned cars are sold with limited insight into their history but blockchain creates the potential for all connected machines, including cars to exchange trusted value or data. Blockchain company, Filament’s “Blocklet” technology potentially transforms the experience of buying and selling pre-owned cars. A trusted vehicle history recorded on a blockchain through the lifetime of the vehicle creates an immutable record of the car’s history and clarifies its true value.

“Blockchain has tremendous potential in the automotive industry. Many applications are being explored today that are designed to create new business models that were previously not possible,” said Allison Clift-Jennings, CEO of Filament. “As an example, we are working with Daimler Trucks North America to establish a peer-to-peer platform for remanufactured components using blockchain technology to automate and streamline its aftermarket remanufacturing operations.”

Will blockchain be about the reality of the sharing economy? It looks certain that it will be the reality of the saving economy!

Talking to me from Davos, Leanne Kemp, Founder & CEO of Everledger, a London-based emerging technology enterprise, highlights the global cost of fraud in the insurance sector, the need to combat that fraud, the potential cost savings brought to the sector by blockchain and the transparency and trust created by its immutable nature.

At the recent Hyperledger Global Forum, Leanne discussed how blockchain needs to come together with a symphony of other technologies to enable the unique identity of a physical asset for provenance tracking, as Everledger did in the diamond industry.

“We take the digital trust protocols, federated consensus mechanisms, technology around cryptography and security, then couple that with material science to identify the diamonds and bring that together in an entirely new digital network that never existed before. This serves to re-wire the trust within the diamond industry with new mechanisms that are not reliant upon central authorities and siloed information coming together.”

In terms of trust, “There are now blockchain-enabled diamonds in retail networks providing what consumers are asking for”. So what does that mean? “with the full provenance and traceability on the blockchain”, “ a simplistic application allows them to understand the value when we combine provenance, trust and blockchain for diamonds.”

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but it looks like blockchain could be your insurer’s new bff!