Venture capital was pouring into new generative artificial intelligence technology before President Biden issued an order that could cool the rate of funds from flowing into the sector. Experts say that's not necessarily a bad thing for bank use of AI.

Should banks fear — or favor — a slowdown in AI investment?

NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Brooklyn Investment Group, LLC in partnership with Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ), today announced the launch of the Nasdaq-Brooklyn ADR™ Index, designed specifically for direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting strategies implemented in separately managed accounts (SMAs) to address their greater liquidity requirements.

Brooklyn Investment Group Launches Innovative American Depositary Receipts (ADR) Index in Partnership with Nasdaq

This acquisition sets the company up to significantly strengthen its presence in the North American gold market ... This strategy has enabled A&S Investment Holding to support all of its subsidiaries in terms of operational management, corporate governance ...

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An in-depth review of American Family car insurance, including coverage options, pricing, customer satisfaction and how AmFam compares to other insurance companies.

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General American Investors Co. (NYSE:GAM) said Tuesday its net investment per share of $0.36 as of Sept. 30, 2023, more than doubled from $0.16 in the year-earlier period. The investment manager, which takes stake in U.S. growth equities, saw net gain on ...

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Pittsburgh's Comprehensive Municipal Pension Trust Fund on Tuesday said it has selected Xponance Asset Management and Investment to manage the city’s $195 million index mandate. Philadelphia-based Xponance is a majority African American and woman-owned S&P 500 index manager and also has Pittsburgh ties, the city said.

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CINCINNATI, October 11, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--American Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: AFG) expects to release its 2023 third quarter results after 5:00 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday, November 1, 2023. The release will be available shortly thereafter on AFG’s ...

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Financial advisors and ... you can give your RIA permission to purchase investments for you and take an active role in asset allocation and portfolio management. You’re ready to reach out ...

Financial Advisors vs. Investment Advisors

Get the most recent info and news about American Financial Group on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

American Financial Group, Inc., an insurance holding company, provides property and casualty insurance products in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Property and Casualty Insurance, Annuity, and Other. It offers property and transportation insurance products, such as physical damage and liability coverage for buses, trucks, inland and ocean marine, agricultural-related products, and other commercial property coverages; specialty casualty insurance, including primarily excess and surplus, general liability, executive and professional liability, umbrella and excess liability, and specialty coverage in targeted markets, as well as customized programs for small to mid-sized businesses and workers' compensation insurance; and specialty financial insurance products comprising risk management insurance programs for lending and leasing institutions, surety and fidelity products, and trade credit insurance. The company sells its property and casualty insurance products through independent insurance agents and brokers, as well as through employee agents. It also provides traditional fixed, fixed-indexed, and variable-indexed annuities to the retail, financial institutions, registered investment advisor, and education markets. In addition, the company engages in the commercial real estate operations in Cincinnati, Whitefield, New Hampshire, Chesapeake Bay, Charleston, and Palm Beach. American Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1872 and is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

American Financial Group

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Updated & Revised to include over 400 Banks & Financial Institutions using blockchain technology in 2020 ________________________ The below article is from: . The list has been updated, however, to include over double the banks originally listed. At the time of publishing, the list contains 414 banks and Financial Institutes from around the world that have invested in blockchain technology to some degree. Comprehensive List of Banks Using Blockchain Technology One of the industries which have been the most opposed to blockchain technology is the finance industry, but specifically banks. Initially, they saw the concept of blockchain as direct competition, actively removing the control they have over the funds and accounts of their customers. However, major players in the finance industry have increasingly begun to warm up to blockchain. Financial institutions and other major companies are inherently slow in adopting any new technology, but have actually been exploring various use cases for some time now. So let’s take a look at which institutes have already implemented the change or are looking into it as we speak. According to CEBNet in early 2019, of the 26 publicly listed banks in China, 12 have already adopted blockchain technology for various use cases within their systems. These banks vary from state owned ones like the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Agriculture Bank of China, to privately owned ones, including China Merchants bank. This is just China, before the strong public drive for blockchain adoption in late 2019, but the sentiment remains positive throughout the rest of the world. ALFA Bank from Russia, Yes Bank from India, UOB (United Overseas Bank) from Singapore, CommonWealth Bank from Australia, and LatiPay from New Zealand are a few banks that have collaborated with a US based blockchain company. The Federal Bank from India & Lulu Exchange have partnered with a Bengaluru based fin-tech company. Axis Bank, RAK Bank, & Standard Charter Bank have connected with another blockchain network. Kotak Bank, which enables blockchain based trade finance operation, partnered with Deloitte & JP Morgan Singapore. Other use-cases within the financial sector which have been developed include simplying and speeding up cross-border payments, improving trading accuracy, reliability and shorter settlement processes. Smart contracts have created benefits with the processing of transactions by removing the need of the middle man, as well as being used to develop loyalty and rewards systems. There are a lot more banks working within multiple technology & service providers to integrate blockchain in their Use Cases. This just demonstrates the demand in all industries for the adoption of blockchain technology. is making this possible with the ecosystem and the aelf Innovation Alliance which will enable blockchain technology to be adopted and integrates into mainstream organizations large and small. This has enabled the alliance to be successful with partnerships from experts and influencers like and , , and . Not only do organizations now have a platform to build upon, but they have resources, capital and expert advisors at their fingertips, which is all made possible through the this revolutionary initiative. Aelf aelf Michael Arrington Arrington XRP Capital Huobi Labs FBG Capital aelf ________________________ Below is a list of over 400 banks and financial institutes using or soon to be using blockchain technology: Banks 77 Bank ABN AMRO AEON Bank AIB Akbank Akita Bank Al Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation Alawwal Bank Alfa Bank Allied Irish Bank ANZ (Australian and New Zealand Bank) Aomori Bank Al Rajhi Bank Ashikaga Bank ATB Financial Axis Bank Awa Bank Alipay Ant Financial B3 Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Banca Intesa Sanpaolo Banca Mediolanum Banca Mifel Banco BICE Banco Bisa Banco Bradesco Banco de Crédito del Perú Banco de Investment Global Banco de Sabadell Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires Banco Industrial Banco Mercantil del Norte Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz Banco Nacional de Bolivia Banco Popular Dominicano Banco Regional Banco Santander Bangkok Bank Bank ABC Bank Al Habib Limited Bank Busan Bank Dhofar Bank Frick & Co Bank Of America|Merrill Lynch Bank of Cyprus Bank Of England Bank of France Bank Of Indonesia Bank Of Iwate Bank Of Leumi Bank of Lithuania Bank of Montreal Bank Of Nagoya Bank Of Okinawa Bank Of Thailand Bank Of The Ryukyus Bank Of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Bank Of Yokohama Bankinter Banorte Banreservas Banque Internationale de Commerce — BRED (Suisse) Banque Thaler Barclays’ investment bank BCI Bexs Banco De Cambio BMO Financial Group (Bank of Montreal) BNP Paribas BNY Mellon BRAC Bank Limited Banco BTG Pactual Bank Mellat Bank Melli Iran Bank Pasargad BBVA CBW Bank (Citizens Bank Of Weir) Central Bank of Brazil Chiba Bank Chiba Kogyo Bank China Banking Association China Merchant Bank China CITIC Bank International Limited China Guangfa Bank Chong Hing Bank Limited Chugoku Bank (Bank of China) CIBC (Canadian Imperial commercial banks) CIM Banque S.A Geneve Citi Coast Capital Savings Commercial Bank of Africa Limited Commerzbank Commonwealth Bank Of Australia Cooperatieve Rabobank Credicorp Bank Credit Agricole Credit Libanais SAL Credit Suisse Cross River Bank CTBC Bank Cuallix Daishi Bank Daiwa Next Bank Danske Bank DBS Bank (Development Bank of Singapore) Deloitte DenizBank A.S. Deutsche Börse DNB Deutsche Bank Ehime Bank Eastern Caribbean Central Bank EQI Bank First America Bank Federal Bank of India Federal Reserve System Fidor Bank Fukui Bank Gazprombank Gunma Bank Goldman Sachs Habib Metropolitan Bank Limited Hachijuni Bank Hiroshima Bank HOKURIKU BANK Hong Kong Monetary Authority HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank) HYAKUGO BANK ICICI Bank Indovina Bank Ltd IndusInd Bank (Indus India Bank) Intesa Sanpaolo (Intesa Sanpaolo) Itau Unibanco Iyo Bank ING Japan Post Bank Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam Joint-Stock Company BCS-Investment Bank JPMorgan JS Bank Limited Juroku Bank KASIKORNBANK Public Company Limited KEB Hana Bank Keiyo Bank Kotak Mahindra Bank Krungsri (Bank Of Ayudhya / Bank of Ayudhya) Kuveyt Turk Katilim Bankasi Kuwait Finance House Macquarie Group MauBank Limited Michinoku Bank Mitsubishi UFJ Trust And Banking Corporation Mizuho Financial Group Monetary Authority Of Singapore Morgan Stanley Musashino Bank National Australia Bank National Bank Of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) National Bank of Cambodia National Bank of Canada National Bank of Egypt National Bank of Kenya Limited National Bank Of Kuwait Natixis NISHI-NIPPON CITY BANK Nomura Trust And Banking Company Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale Nordea Bank Norinchukin Bank North Pacific Bank NPCI (National Payments Corporation Of India) Oita Bank ORIX Bank Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation PKO BP Prime Bank Ltd. Privatbank IHAG Zurich PT Bank Central Asia Tbk PT Bank CIMB Pakistani Central Bank Rabobank Nederland Raiffeisen Bank RAKBANK (National Bank Of Ras Al-Khaimah PJSC) RBL Bank RCBC RCI Bank & Services ReiseBank Reserve Bank Of India Resona Bank Royal Bank Of Canada Royal Bank Of Scotland San-In Godo Bank Santander Bank Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) SBI Sumishin Net Bank Scotiabank (Nova Scotia Bank) SEB Senshu Ikeda Bank Seven Bank Shanghai Huarui Bank (SHRB / Shanghai HanaMizuho Bank) Shiga Bank Shikoku Bank Shimizu Bank Shinhan Bank Shinkin Central Bank Shinsei Bank Shoko Chukin Bank Siam Commercial Bank Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) SMBC Societe General Sony Bank South African Reserve Bank South Indian Bank Standard Chartered Bank Star One Credit Union Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank Suruga Bank Sveriges Riksbank Switzerland’s UBS Synchrony Bank Signature Bank Silvergate Bank The First International Bank of Israel Ltd Tochigi Bank Toho Bank Tokyo Star Bank Toronto-Dominion Bank Towa Bank Tsukuba Bank Turkiye Finans Katilim Bankasi Telenor Microfinance Bank UBS Union Bank United Overseas Bank UniCredit Union Bank Of The Philippines US Bancorp Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade Volksbank Mittweida Wells Fargo Westpac Bank Woori Bank WEG Bank Yachiyo Bank Yamagata Bank Yamaguchi Bank Yes Bank __________________ Other institutes related to Financial Services Accenture Ainslie Bullion AirWallex ALFAcashier American Express AstroPay Australian Stock Exchange and Depository Trust Banquecorp Physical Gold BCS Information Systems BeeTech Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation BitcoinIRA BitGo Bladex Bluzelle BNY Mellon Bolsa de Madrid BPCE Bradesco Bloomberg BNP Paribas Boerse Stuttgart Digital Ventures BP PLC Cambridge Global Payments CBH Compagnie Bancaire Helvétique CGI CIBC Clearing Corporation [DTCC] CLS Group Coil Crypto Facilities Currencies Direct Daiwa Securities Group Davivienda DAYLI Financial Group Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu DH Corporation Dianrong Digiledge Dinex DLocal DBS DTCC Earthport Ernst & Young Everis European Central Securities Depositories Association Exchange4Free Expanse Expertus Technologies EZforex Employees’ Retirement System eToro FairFX FlashFX Fulton Financial Corporation Fidelity Investments Global ID Gold Bullion International GSR Markets Ho Chi Minh City Development JS Commercial HQLA IBM IDT Corporation Infocomm Development Authority Of Singapore Infosys InstaReM IntellectEU International Foreign Exchange (IFX) Intesa Sanpaolo Itaú International Chamber of Commerce International Securities Services Association Jaccoo Jamica Stock Exchange Julius Baer KB Financial Group LatiPay Lianlian Pay Lulu Exchange Linx Partners London Metal Exchange London Stock Exchange Luxembourg Stock Exchange Marqeta Mastercard MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) MoneyMatch Mercury FX MoneyGram Morgan Creek MUFG Natixis New Forest Capital Niaga Tbk Nordea Northern Trust NASDAQ Nomura OANDA Omidyar Network Omni OP Financial Group Paris Europlace Paycase Financial Persistent Systems PolySign Portal Finance Paypal Proof of Capital Qiwi R3 CEV RationalFX Reyl & Cie SA RIALTO.AI Revolut Saldo.Mx SAP Satoshi Systems SBI Holdings SBI Remit SBI Ripple Asia SBI Virtual Currencies Scopus SEB Group Shuttle Holdings SIA Singapore Exchange (SGX) Smart Token Chain SnapCheck Sparro SRI Capital Stock Exchange of Thailand SuMi TRUST SunTrust SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) SGX SIX Group Société Générale SoFi Square Swissquote TAS Group Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Telindus Temasek Holdings Temenos The PAR Foundation The Royal Mint TradeCloud TradeIX TradeWind TransferGo Thai Stock Exchange The National Payments Corporation of India Thomson Reuters Eikon Tora UAE Exchange (UAE Exchange) Union FX UniPAY Viamericas Corporation Volante Technologies Virginia’s Police Officer’s Retirement System Visa Western Union Yantra Financial Technologies Zip Remit If you find a bank or financial institute not on this list please comment or message me directly so I can add to this list. At the time of writing this was the most comprehensive list available to the public

Comprehensive List of Banks using Blockchain Technology in 2020  [Updated]

The United States holds tremendous power over the world economy, not least because the USD is the world’s most popular currency, and essentially the global reserve. . The majority of international trade depends on the USD, especially when involving developing economies. Banks and countries all around the world hold USD in their vaults. The USD has allowed the US to be the hegemonic power it is, arguably even playing a larger role than its military or politics Cryptocurrency is in a unique position to challenge that power. Other countries, especially China, are vying for their currency to become the global reserve, but they are held back by international politics. Because of the deadlock, decentralization offers an alternative to circumvent this. The question is how to catapult cryptocurrencies into a position to offer their decentralization to the international monetary system. The first avenue is to displace the USD’s dominance from the bottom up, starting with the economies of developing countries. The world’s financial systems have often shown a conservative streak; they aren’t open to a shakeup of the international monetary system. Therefore, one of the most logical approaches for cryptocurrency to gain dominance is to promote its decentralized nature. In the current economic order, developing nations are dealt a bad hand. This is largely thanks to poor trade deals following decolonization, and the promotion of Western based developmental economics in the second half of the 20th Century. This means many countries in Africa and Asia can not properly enter or aren’t sufficiently adapted to the international market. Cryptocurrency offers a chance to help the countries and people that have been held ransom by the post-colonial economy. Currently, if small countries want to participate in international trade, they have to do business through big banks in USD. This leads to a number of issues: they have to pay huge fees and hold large amounts of foreign currency, and consequently will get burned the worst during financial crises. Tradecoin seeks to alleviate those problems. First, the MIT group wants to create an alliance of small nations, or groups of individual businessmen. This alliance will then adopt Tradecoin; allowing the members to trade with each other without the need for big banks or USD. An MIT group is looking to do just that, by spearheading a new concept called Tradecoin. An MIT group wants to create a cryptocurrency that will ease trade between small actors. This helps ensure the stability of the currency, and encourages small actors to join the alliance. If successful, such an alliance would help significantly diminish the USD’s position as the global reserve. If enough small actors joined together all using a cryptocurrency for their trade, the big players would end up being left out; therefore the alliance members would be free from the deleterious of the international monetary system. Tradecoin would be anchored to the prices of certain assets, such as crops or national bonds. There are other examples of cryptocurrency companies helping small businesses. This helps entrepreneurs trade for materials with people in other areas, thereby again bypassing the big banks. Blockonomics, , is also working in that direction by creating easy to use Bitcoin payment options for ecommerce entrepreneurs. Such companies are helping elevate cryptocurrency to an international standard. If cryptocurrencies are used by the masses, including small nations, their standing in the international system would improve. BitPesa is a cryptocurrency payment company that allows people in Africa to perform business transactions easily across borders. which just announced a new ICO There is another way to displace the USD though, albeit more unlikely, and that’s from the top. Up and coming China has especially been discontent with the idea of the USD as a global currency. There are also a variety of problems with having a national currency as the global reserve. As was evidenced in 2008, any American financial crisis will ripple around the world. Inflation also leads to a decline in value of the USD held by other nations. An IMF independent currency would provide another avenue for cryptocurrency to offer its services as a global reserve. In 2009, China called for a new global currency that would be run by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to combat this. Zhou Xiaochuan, the former head of China’s central bank, made the suggestion to create an independent global reserve. The IMF regulates the world’s currencies, setting guidelines for countries and individuals regarding monetary policy and usage. Currently, cryptocurrencies are not regulated as international currencies. However, the IMF is currently looking into cryptocurrency regulation. The right kind of regulation from the IMF would be beneficial. It would grant international legitimacy to Bitcoin, and would set the stage for cryptocurrencies to become the global standard. Currently the IMF only allows countries to become members of the IMF, which at first glance would mean Bitcoin couldn’t be fully recognized and regulated by the IMF. The IMF could acquire its own supply of Bitcoin by voluntarily buying some from Bitcoin holders. However, Section 3 of the charter would allow Bitcoin to become a quasi-official currency. This recognition and regulation of cryptocurrencies would be an important first step. After legitimization, countries would quickly realize the benefits of cryptocurrencies. Currently, non-US allies don’t trust having to hold vast amounts of the USD. A decentralized cryptocurrency would alleviate those fears; no one country would have control over the currency and could never have control because of the nature of the blockchain. This alone would be a huge selling point, it ensures there can’t be hostile monetary acts by a controller of the global reserve. There wouldn’t be an easy way for a country to create price volatility. This can also be combated by pegging the cryptocurrency to some kind of asset that the IMF could control, just like Tradecoin is striving to do. Already some countries, like Venezuela, are looking into state-backed cryptocurrencies, but are using for nefarious means to try to create more upheaval in the international system, . Cryptocurrency if used as a global reserve, however, has the potential to help the international system. as I outlined in my previous article Christine Legrande, the head of the IMF, seems to like cryptocurrency, but wants to ensure it is regulated. A cryptocurrency as the global reserve would be greatly beneficial for the international community. IMF head, Christine Lagarde, has made favorable comments regarding cryptocurrency, However, she’s also claimed that cryptocurrency has a dark side that must be reigned in. Regulation can be a very good thing, which is an unpopular opinion in the cryptocurrency world, but it must be nurturing. Regulation can’t be focused on stifling cryptocurrency, instead it should work to make cryptocurrency more even more legitimate. If cryptocurrencies are regulated, they would be more likely to accepted by nations for their own usage. If that happened, the possibility that cryptocurrency could be lobbied as a global reserve would grow. especially praising its decentralization. I’ve agreed with her, to an extent, in a previous article. Of course, the idea that cryptocurrency could completely overthrow the USD, oreven become the global reserve, is pretty much a pipe dream today. If it is to happen, it won’t be for many years and will require much change in the conservative financial systems. Yet Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are changing the world, and are becoming more popular everyday. With groups like Tradecoin, Bitpesa, and our Blockonomics, cryptocurrency is coming one step closer to being the world economic influencer it should be.

Could Cryptocurrency change the International Economic System?

The question of whether tokens are securities or not has huge implications for todays crypto companies. Fascinatingly, the lack of clarity may be becoming a bigger problem for companies than whatever regulation might result from their identification as such. In the mid 1930s, physicists were with the implications of quantum theory. Until the turn of the 20th century, classical physics had neatly organized energy separately into particles or waves. Quantum theory upended that simple “this-or-that” classification, instead suggesting, paradoxically, that every particle could also be observed and described as a wave, and vice-versa. Einstein : grappling wrote “We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.” What’s more, it wasn’t just individual particles but entire systems that were subject to this duality. A 1935 article known as the after its authors described the strange situation of quantum superpositions, in which systems can exist in multiple states corresponding to different outcomes simultaneously. In effect, the paper argued that there wasn’t only one but in fact multiple “true” realities. Each of these realities would remain valid until they were interacted with or observed by the external world. At that time, the superposition collapses in upon a single of the possible states. EPR article To better visualize this idea, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed a that would eventually become engrained in culture. Imagine a cat in a box with a flask of poison and a monitor that will smash the flask and release the poison if a single atom decays. After a while, quantum theory dictates that the cat is simultaneously dead and alive at the same time. It is only once we open the box to observe the cat to be either dead or alive that the multiple states cease to be simultaneously true. It is our actions that determine, ultimately, which reality prevails. thought experiment Currently, tokens exist in their own sort of legal quantum superposition, in the “box” as both security and not security simultaneously. To paraphrase Einstein…we have two contradictory pictures of reality between those who view tokens as securities and those who view them as something else; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena, but together…they might. The answer to that question will have a deterministic effect on the development of economies, from how companies are formed to how they resource themselves to who gets to participate. blockchain How We Got In The Box First, how did we get here? A security is a tradable financial instrument with monetary value. Securities regulations have been a key part of the American financial landscape for more than 100 years. As consumer wealth grew around the turn of the 20th century, the public became targets for schemes where “companies” primarily formed of promotors and marketers would form simply to sell “shares” of themselves and then take off with the profits. The first regulations came in the nineteen-teens with the which required at least basic financial disclosures. In 1934, in the wake of the Great Depression, these laws were given real enforcement teeth with the of the Securities & Exchange Commission. “Blue Sky Laws” creation In 1946, a created the standards we still apply today for determining whether an investment offering is a security. W.J. Howey Co was a Florida citrus company. To help fund operations, it sold a portion of its land to investors and then leased the land back, promising profits on the fruit grown on that land. The SEC took the company to court arguing that they should have registered the leases as securities, with the Supreme Court ultimately ruling in their favor. landmark case The result was a heuristic that 72 years later still shapes policy. As articulated most recently in the SEC’s December 2017 a security is: “The Howey Test,” “Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings,” “an investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others.” Blockchain was born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that, for many, represented the last straw of faith in centralized financial intermediaries. For regulators, interest in the crypto space has increased proportional to the growth of token sales. Starting in 2013, “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) offered an alternative to traditional financing that also doubled as a mechanism for providing people with the currency to participate in a company’s economy. 2014 saw Ethereum’s ICO, a watershed moment that crypto investor Eric Meltzer called “arguably the best publicly available investment of all time.” Ethereum’s impact would be transformational to ICOs in more than just as inspiration as the blockchain’s smart contracts provided a mechanism to further simply the crowd funding process. Because of that, some have called fundraising and ICO’s Ethereum’s “Killer App.” Crowd token sales have a few dynamics that make them quite different from previous forms of startup fundraising. The first is liquidity. Unlike the equity bought in venture capital, tokens are able to be bought and sold on various exchanges virtually immediately (depending only on whether the buyer bought in a private pre-sale or after public sale). This means that if the value of the token appreciates meaningfully in a short period of time, the investor can quickly make back their principle investment. The second difference is a democratization of who can invest that results directly from the change in liquidity profile. As Bancor founder Eyal Hertzog points out in with Kevin Rose, before token sales, the only capital available for new startup ventures was capital that could afford to be locked up for 10 years — a tiny fraction of the world’s resources. The compression of the liquidity timeline has created a massive expansion in the diversity of capital and people that get to participate. In June of last year, his decentralized exchange project became the best funded ICO to date (although it has since been eclipsed), raising $153 million from more than 40,000 individuals. this conversation The third difference is the one most likely to cause challenge for regulators. Tokens are not an ownership stake like stock, but a mechanism for exchanging value within the community of the company that create the token. This means that when companies sell tokens, in addition to the benefit of raising capital that they can use on developing the project, they are also empowering the community with the resource they need to be autonomous economic economic actors within their ecosystem. They are a utility necessary for participation. By 2017, ICOs were outpacing traditional seed & venture capital, eventually hitting raised for the year. Some individual projects like Bancor mentioned above and Filecoin raised more than $100 million. The sheer increase in the volume of capital and attention set the stage for the increased regulatory scrutiny that is shaping the industry today. more than $4 billion Is The Cat Alive Or Dead? Voluminous digital ink has been spilled exploring where the SEC is likely to land on securities regulation, as well as what will happen based on where they land. Why the SEC’s ICO Guidance Isn’t Enough A ‘Howey Test’ for Blockchain? ICOs, Take Note: Did the SEC Just Throw Away the Howey Test? Passing the Howey Test: How to Regulate Blockchain Tokens Introducing the Blockchain Token Securities Law Framework Summarizing much too simply, to the extent there is consensus it is that: There are a set of tokens that explicitly understand themselves to be securities. They are designed from the ground up to behave like securities like stock or bonds and anticipate being regulated as such. On the other end of the spectrum, there are an array of projects that seem highly unlikely to be treated like securities. These tend to be crypto infrastructures like Ethereum and Bitcoin that operate in a fully decentralized manner, which promise no profit for holding, which in some cases have no “common enterprise” and which enable people to get the currency without buying it through some form of mining. (Although this argues that these too should be considered securities). recent piece Where things get tricky is with so-called “utility tokens,” in which the token is designed to have a specific purpose relative to the projects core activity. Utility tokens have varying degrees of how important the token is to their actual core activity. There are many projects that have seemingly had a token bolted on to their enterprise to take advantage of the swirl of excitement for fundraising purposes. As the community of investors and interested parties around crypto grows, however, it gets harder and harder for this approach to carry muster. On the other hand, many of the projects generating the most attention are those whose core function couldn’t actually happen without the token; where the opportunities opened up by the micro transacting or smart contracts or some other aspect of tokenization and blockchain represent not only a change in scale but a change in kind. On the face of it, these companies appear to pass the Howey Test because the tokens are used not primarily as a means of investment in an enterprise that someone else runs, but rather as a means of exchange for the active participants in a community or economic ecosystem. The problem is that — like particles that are also waves and waves that are also particles — these tokens don’t only function as a utility for the ecosystem. By their very nature, they also represent an investable asset. No matter how much a company tries to argue that they’re only selling tokens as a way to give the community the tools to participate, if there is any possibility of appreciate, there will be speculation. This highlights another key challenge of trying to regulate an industry based on decentralization; even the semi-centralized startups have far more distributed stakeholders and far less control than traditional corporations. There is a good argument that blockchain projects are more like entire online economies than they are like for-profit companies. They have a different set of motivations, a different set of stakeholder relationships, and as such, they likely need a different regulatory framework. Speaking of “different regulatory frameworks,” as if this weren’t complicated enough already, the SEC isn’t the only regulatory body involved. So far, pretty much every regulatory body seems to think that cryptocurrency looks a lot like the thing they happen to regulate. For the IRS, cryptos are a form of , and subject to taxation property For the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), cryptos are a and subject to their regulation commodity For FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, cryptos are and crypto companies should be require to register as money transmitters or face felony charges. money The paradox at the heart of the quantum state of crypto is they’re all right, just incompletely. Tokens are, in some ways, all of the things they think they are — property, currency, securities — they’re just not all the way those things, and not only those things. So, where does the SEC land? Other bodies be damned: ultimately, this cat is going to be alive or dead when the SEC decides to fully open the box. Three communications show the evolution of the SEC’s thought: DAO Investigation Last July, the SEC the findings of an investigation around an ICO. While the investigation declined to ascribe blame or pursue further legal action, it determined that the token sale did, in fact, meet the standards of the Howey Test to classify the token as a securities offering. released December Statement In December, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton released a ” where the body simultaneously affirmed that token sales could be good ways to fundraise, even suggesting that in some cases they wouldn’t be securities offerings, but that investors should be wary around any sort of new offering like this and take precautions. The statement had the effect of demonstrating that, if nothing else, the SEC was approaching the issue with considered thoughtfulness and wasn’t about to make snap pronouncements. “Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings March Statement The recent took a somewhat more aggressive tone, especially with regard to exchanges, saying: “If a platform offers trading of digital assets that are securities and operates as an ‘exchange,’ as defined by the federal securities laws, then the platform must register with the SEC as a national securities exchange or be exempt from registration.” Many legal experts, including Morrison Cohen partner Jason Gottlieb who has set up an , feel the message behind the rhetoric is : “Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets” database to track cryptocurrency litigation clear “I think it’s one more message from the SEC that they view coins as securities and they encourage everyone in the space to … follow securities laws” Does It Really Matter If The Cat Is Dead Or Alive? It’s reasonable to ask whether, ultimately it really matters whether all or some portion of cryptocurrencies are declared to be securities. The argument for the “no it doesn’t matter” camp is that, entrepreneurs being entrepreneurs, they will simply adapt to whatever the new regulations are, working within the system when it works for them and finding new cracks where it doesn’t. The last six months have seen a massive influx of the professional millennial entrepreneur class into the blockchain space, and the prevailing assumption there within this group is that there will be some amount of regulation around token sales, at least. Indeed, for many of this cohort, it is the regularity uncertainty — not whatever the regulations ultimately end up being — that is the biggest concern and deterrent to action today. This is almost certainly true, to an extent. Regardless of what happens with regulation, the space will persist and entrepreneurs will adapt. With big chunks of the world lining up to create more favorable legal environments for crypto, part of that adaptation may be to move business away from the U.S., but regardless, things will go on and the space will continue to develop. At the same time, regulation could have a significant impact on the industry in negative ways that don’t reveal themselves immediately. One risk is regards functionality. A token that is classified as a security but that has day-to-day need for an online economy could create a significant challenge. Last week, KODAKCoin — a new token to help photographers manage the digital rights around their photos and get paid for usage, to investors about potential SEC regulation. Caitlin Long, a multi-hyphenate in the crypto community who was most recently involved in Wyoming’s landmark legislation, tweeted: “If the SEC deems every utility token a security, does it really expect a photographer to open a brokerage account to sell a photo on #KodakCoin?” issued a warning The other risk is around the risk around who gets to participate in the creation and funding of new ventures. Power & capital around startups has been largely concentrated on the West Coast of the US. Through the mechanism of token sales, that monopoly was beginning to break. As regulatory concerns increase, however, more and more of the entrepreneurial energy is being concentrated back around private sales that tend to have a significant emphasis on institutional investors who represent that old power structure (or even a slightly updated version of it). This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. The old cohort of investors bring amazing skills and expertise with them. And great entrepreneurs tend to find be able to figure out how to break into closed circles. As a new technology movement takes shape, however, with all of its immense implications for how the world organizes itself, its worth taking a moment to ask what our responsibility is to extend the benefits of those changes. Do we want a new, slightly-more distributed version of Silicon Valley that is still fundamentally organized around small enclaves of capital? Or do we want a true scaled global market, safe for people from all types of backgrounds, where the ability to both create and invest in the future is actually democratized? Ultimately, these are the stakes of regulation. What’s for sure is that blockchain is not going anywhere as a force reshaping technology, commerce and society as a whole. No matter what the regulation, this cat is out of the bag (or the box, as it were) and it will have impact. The questions are what barriers shape the innovation and disruption that comes next, and how they determine who gets to be involved. Whatever happens, we’re likely to see more happen soon. The SEC has reportedly sent out more than 80 subpoenas, and Congress held its first open hearings on blockchain this week. Wyoming just passed extremely pro-blockchain legislation, including a bill that recognizes utility tokens as a new asset class distinct from securities. More than anything, and entire cohort of entrepreneurs are waiting with baited breath to know just what situation they’re dealing with. In this case, it is the paradox of multiple realities rather than the possibility of regulations creating the tension. _Entrepreneurs are starting to doubt that crypto tokens can be used at all in the U.S. In fact, according to Simar…_www.coindesk.com Spooked By SEC, Video Streaming ICO Halts Airdrop - CoinDesk A story today on Coindesk describes how one project — a payment token for video and streaming content creators — has delayed an intended airdrop (a strategy for to a community who can then use them in a company’s ecosystem) distributing tokens directly It seems unlikely that the SEC doesn’t push for any regulation. If nothing else, however, they seem to be approaching it thoughtfully and diligently. Will they simply default to the easy classification that all token sales constitute securities offerings? Will they resolve the Schroedinger’s Securities paradox with something like a convertible debt instrument that allows tokens to be securities when they’re acting like investment instruments but not when they’re being used by a community as a utility? Right now, all the realities are possible, and only time will tell.

Schrödinger’s Securities: Regulation & The Quantum State Of Crypto

Blockchain — The Radical Metamorphosis Shaping Our Financial Future Blockchain has its critics, but no one can doubt the efficacy and trust factor it can bring to finance in the future. Those that fear it, however, are the ones who will see their revenues fall. The financial service industry is on a knife’s edge, and blockchain technology is there to witness the impending collapse Refurbishment The future is definitely out there, but whatever it is, it’s our own making, our own destiny. To refurbish what we’ve already accomplished, and to go beyond it is going to take a great effort. However, there is one kind of technology that can do all this and more, especially in the financial sector. Surprisingly, though, it isn’t AI nor Robotics. Neither big data nor quantum computers. Not even, thank goodness, social media. It is called the blockchain, and it’s coming for you, it’s coming for all of us. Lenin created the perfect revolution, but not the best. That’s been saved till now. Blockchain, to describe it in simple terms — or as simply as can be expressed without inundating you with technical words and geek-speak — is the underlying technology of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Although often confused with the digital currencies as being the same thing, they are inherently different. Air of Nonchalance Since the first email was sent by , to the genesis of , we have ridden the wave of technology with what some might call an ‘air of nonchalance’. This is no surprise, actually: innovations have come thick and fast, one after the other, in a continuous stream of wondrous techmanity that has even outstripped the magnificent achievements for inventions and human endeavour in 15th and 16th century Italy and the 1800s in Great Britain. Ray Tomlinson in 1971 the Internet in 1989 Ray Tomlinson, Sender of the first email. Source:timesofap.com But that was all before the blockchain arrived, which if it promises to do what the specialists in the field are telling us, will change the financial landscape of the world for all time. Since the advent of the internet, we as individuals and society have been able to disseminate information across borders and over continents at great distances with the click of a mouse. Documents, emails and text messages. The internet can send them all. No big deal, right? Maybe. Yet what the blockchain can offer us is something different, a more secure environment for delivering and transferring information. Lessons Learned Take money, for instance. One of man’s greatest inventions, and something very important to us. Fiat currencies, those controlled by governments and central banks, are at the core of everything we do in regard to trade, exchange and banking services. Bonds, stocks, financial assets, too — are all tied to fiat currencies and business. If something goes wrong with it, and the whole house comes tumbling down, there’s trouble. 2008 saw that happen. When we send a document on the internet, all we are actually doing is sending a copy of it, a facsimile of the original content. It doesn’t really matter how many times we do it because it is only a reproduction. With money, however, this would be a very bad thing to do. This phenomenon, called double-spending by cryptographers, is one of the big problems facing cryptocurrencies and the blockchain ecosystem. When one person transfers money to another, it is of paramount importance that I, as the sender, do not still possess the money after I have transferred it to the recipient. Presently, to complete these types of transfers with fiat currencies, the financial world relies on middlemen or agents, to verify and accomplish this task, which in turn, establishes trust in the financial markets. These intermediaries usually come in the form of banks, governments and other high-level institutions. Up to now, they have generally (with some blips) done a good job. (Boos and sighs go up) The Cure Yet, cracks have appeared in their system, especially in relation to our high-tech, switched-on world, where data is vulnerable to hacking and other odious invasions. Photo by on freestocks.org Unsplash There are countless examples of financial institutions with multi-million-dollar cybersecurity systems suffering ignominious data breaches: Citigroup in 2011 , JP Morgan Chase in 2014 and First American Financial Corporation this year. These are just a few examples of such cases, but as times goes by, and hackers get smarter, things can only get worse. Blockchain. Such companies, sadly to say, are dinosaurs in more ways than one. Take a bank transfer — if you want to transfer money by traditional methods, it can take a few days. Across the globe, say to a poor African state with only a rudimentary banking system, a week or even more, all the while the bank takes a handsome cut in the percentage of the transfer. That’s simply unfair. Blockchain. Ten, fifteen, twenty percent commission, that just isn’t right for doing virtually nothing. And it’s got to change. Blockchain. But there’s more bad news. They steal your information, your data, the personal stuff about you, too — a double whammy! Our privacy, the lives we live, are all being kept under tabs by a 21st century Stasi. Blockchain. Take a moment, if you will, just to think about this: These companies, colossal, magnates of the modern age, have stolen the endowment of the digital age, raped and slaughtered the masses, metaphorically speaking, to gain the upper hand, the power to control us, manipulate us, to mould the world as they see it. There’s wealth creation next to a growing poverty index. Blockchain. Inequality is a fashion statement to be ashamed of. We have Trump and his New York coterie. Putin and his Russian oligarchs. High-ranking Chinese members of the Communist party. Arab oil billionaires. All members of a worldwide conspiracy of Freemasons, a club you and me ain’t in, unfortunately. Now, do you believe me, that things have to change? And they have. We have an internet of information. We have the blockchain. BB AND AB There should be a BC and AD of blockchain, but re-christened BB and AB: and A_fter Blockchain_, because that’s how groundbreaking it is. The world will never be the same after this, and who wants it to be, anyway? Before Blockchain The blockchain is the global ledger, the internet of value, the information system available to every person with a pulse, where every human endeavour — be it creative, pecuniary or free-form — is available peer-to-peer, unshackled by the restraints of governance, third-party exorbitant charges and copyright issues. Storage. Management. Transactions. All sorted. This is the new age, motherfucker. And without the haemorrhoids of intermediaries to contend with. Because now we have a universal value system. Jesus, thank goodness for brains, for foresight. , the person (or persons) who sprung up from the Land of Nowhere in 2008 and saved the future world from travesty with his white paper on a new protocol for digital cash, a cryptocurrency, called Bitcoin, should be awarded a Nobel prize. Satoshi Nakamoto But he won’t be, of course. Because the men upstairs, those cretins in control, won’t let him/her/them/it receive it. We don’t care, though, because Bitcoin lets the masses establish trust and do transactions with financial modalities without the hassle of third-party dopes who are a waste of oxygen. Satoshi’s maneuver, somehow, incited the about-face stance with the financial degradation not seen since the Wall Street Crash of ’87 and 2008’s debacle. The reversal in thought, a shock to the system for many, was a counter to that greed, the compulsion for wealth and ‘show me the money philosophy’ that marinated most of the ethos pre-bitcoin. Don’t get me wrong, Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative asset, something that goes up and down, at least at the moment. If you like the stock market, or cryptocurrency trading platforms like Coinbase and Binance, then go for it. You may make a shitload of cash, . fiat variety, that is To gain currency status, I don’t know, could take a long time, maybe never. Global Dodge The fiat currency of today, regulated by Trump and all the other sheriffs in the Global Dodge, controls the market of all nation states. And grateful you and me should be for this. But there’s still blockchain. And the blockchain is going to create a society based on trust and common motivation for peer-to-peer transactions without the scams, without the criminality, without all of the bullshit many people face every day through the schemes of banks and other untrustworthy financial establishments, through some clever coding in cryptography. The most powerful sheriff in town. Source: upi.com So, how, you may ask, does the blockchain technology work? Simple. Traditionally, money or any other digital asset has been centralized, but with blockchain, the global ledger, it is spread out, disbursed across all member (called nodes) and utilizing the highest level of cryptography known to man. Once a transaction has been completed, it is sent across the world to all the other nodes, so they all have a copy of the transaction. But there’s more. People called Bitcoin miners, these are big players. Some are individuals, others operating in groups in what are called mining farms, and they have powerful computers to work with. So what do these miners do, and why are they so important for the operation of the blockchain? Every so often, let’s say every few minutes, a block of transactions gets created on the blockchain, which has on it every transaction done within that specified amount of time. This is where the miners earn their supper: immediately, they get to work, competing with each other, trying to crack and then validate the block. Once successful, they are rewarded with Bitcoin or any other altcoin on a specified blockchain. What happens then is a stroke of genius: That block, now validated, is connected to the preceding block, which has been connected to the one before it and so forth. Each of these blocks has a timestamp embedded on it, which secures the block, and all other blocks, from being hacked by double-spending trickery. This works on the premise that to hack the block, the hacker would have to hack all blocks at the same time in that chain across the millions and millions of nodes across the blockchain ecosystem, which are secured by the most advanced encryption devices available. Impossible, or almost that. This is the blockchain. This is what it does. The Guilt For decades the traditional ways of moving fiat currency and doing business have been in the hands of the few, using complicated, outdated methods that have had their day but are still, quite unbelievably, used to the detriment, in most cases, of society. The financial service industry is the guilty party. Just think about it like this: I make a payment by card, say for a flat white at Starbucks. That payment then goes through numerous financial institutions, each of them with their own computer systems, until a few days later the transaction is settled. Whoopee. But it’s not good. The status quo has to change. That’s where blockchain and cryptocurrency come in. With them, the payment and settlement are actually the same, completed instantaneously with no hassle and no extra cost. This revelation has the financial industry quaking in its boots. Cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology is there to take over its mantle. Now, the thought leaders in the financial industry are worried whether they should fight the coming onslaught or try to accept it as the new modality. The fear is warranted, though, because the blockchain could, for the first time in history, spread the wealth out because at its very essence the technology is fair, transparent, egalitarian, invented by people, just like Satoshi Nakamoto and others, who believe a system that benefits the few, as in the current financial model, is not in humanity’s best interests. Let’s allow it to happen, and fast! <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

Blockchain — The Radical Metamorphosis Shaping Our Financial Future

Author: Huixian Taking up four of the convention halls at Singapore EXPO, Singapore Festival (SFF) 2018 has attracted approximately 45,000 attendees across the seven seas — double of last year. The third edition of the festival was kick-started by Saqib Shaikh, Software Engineer of Microsoft. He depicted a more inclusive society made possible by innovative technologies. Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS, said: Fintech “Shaikh’s story exemplifies the core objective of Singapore Fintech Festival — innovation, inclusion, and inspiration.” He added that to build on a stronger Fintech ; MAS is working on six components: people, identity, payments, data governance, applied research and platforms for innovation. ecosystem Other global leaders that graced the event include Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India; Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of International Monetary Fund; Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada; Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Education of Singapore and Board Member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS); Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Finance of Singapore; Patrick Njoroge, Governor of Central Bank of Kenya, and Sonexay Sithphaxay, Governor of Bank of the Lao PDR. Among the international luminaries, many global leaders have shown a keen interest in the developments of blockchain and digital currencies. Christine Lagarde highlighted the importance of digital assets as a backstop against monopolies and regulatory shortcomings. Though the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi joked about the herd mentality of investors on the blockchain, during World Congress on Information Technology 2018, he has mentioned that blockchain and IoT will have a profound impact on our daily lives and needs to be rapidly adopted in our workplace. Other than being a heartthrob, Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau emphasised his country’s commitment to investing in solutions of tomorrow. Bank of Canada, Bank of England and MAS are working together to examine three models of cross-border payment. According to Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of MAS: “This collaborative effort by the central banks and financial institutions across the three jurisdictions helps us identify gaps and areas of improvements in cross-border payments and sets the foundation for further technical experimentation.” The world largest Fintech Festival also saw historical exchanges among Singapore and other countries such as the launch of API Exchange (APIX) with India; the technology will enable 2 billion people to gain access to banking facilitaties that were previously unavailable. Thus, the implementation of APIX would promote financial inclusion in 23 countries. Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, attended SFF and said: “This clear regulatory environment makes it easier to apply blockchain and digital asset technology to solve real-world business use cases, such as improving cross-border payments across the ASEAN region. The East Asian markets received $130 billion in inbound remittance payments last year alone. They are expensive, and the market is ripe for adoption of new technology, like blockchain, to drive costs dramatically lower.” One of the most important procession of the event was the signing of MOU(s) between MAS, Bahrain, IDB Group and other financial intermediaries. For instance, Inter-American Development Bank Group and Singapore have inked an agreement to boost inclusion in financial services. MAS has introduced initiatives such as FEAT on the sideline of the event. In the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics in finance, FEAT is a set of principles used to promote fairness, ethics, accountability and transparency. What is the basis of digitalisation? The answer is simple — connectivity. Business sans Borders is an initiative designed by MAS, IMDA, and six private sector partners to create a Proof of Concept (POC) for hybrid business data and digital solutions hub. Security Token (STO) — a token with similar attributes of a company shares- is the new buzzword of the crypto-universe. Many firms and investors have since abandoned the idea of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), to explore the safer haven. If you are a genuine company seeking to launch STO, Sandbox Express will be an alluring option. This initiative aims to enable firms to conduct regulated activities and embark on experiments more quickly; bypassing existing sandbox application and approval process. According to a press release by MAS, the two requirements of assessments are: technological innovativeness of the financial service, and fitness and propriety of the applicant’s key stakeholders. The applications will be fast-tracked, with approval decisions granted within 21 days. An approved pre-defined sandbox entity will be required to submit periodic progress reports to MAS as well as ensure that the pre-defined sandbox expectations are well adhered. Apart from the main activities, SFF 2018 has a launched a new segment, MATCH (Meet ASEAN’s Talents and Champions) — a ‘tinder’ for deal-making between venture capitals and technology companies. MATCH has already generated more than 17,000 matches between 380 participating investors and 840 enterprises. As stated in a , ‘these initiatives are complemented by other efforts to grow the local talent pool while providing flexibility on the hiring of foreign specialists in the PE and venture capital (VC) industry. In addition, the introduction of the Venture Capital Investment Model Agreements (VIMA)2 for early stage VC transactions. The VIMA will enable deal and cost efficiencies through a set of standardised and easily accessible documents that investors and enterprises can use and adapt.’ press release by MAS , a sub-segment of SFF — witnessed 32 innovation labs unveiling their latest technology to over 10,000 visitors. The next segment recognised 12 innovative solutions in the . Lastly, that showcased cutting-edge technology of the future. Innovation Lab Crawl FinTech Awards 2018 Global FinTech Hackcelerator It is no doubt that the Singapore Fintech Festival 2018 has become the fiesta of the year with positive feedback from the exhibitors. Zoe Fang, Analyst of AMTD Group, said, “While exhibiting at Singapore Fintech Festival, we were able to meet executives and students from around the region, and many meaningful conversations on the outlook of FinTech was struck. We are hoping to come back again next year.” Ian Simpson, Chair of the Crypto Valley Association (CVA) Communications Working Group, said, “We see many similarities between Switzerland and Singapore with a strong focus on banking, innovation, and blockchain technology. The quality of attendees and exhibitors reflected the fact that Singapore is a hub for Southeast Asia, much like Switzerland as a blockchain hub the heart of Europe. Most importantly, at the festival, there was a high level of energy and a desire to learn across the board.” The main takeaway — the implementation of digital assets and blockchain will boost financial inclusion and improve lives SAP, one of the founders of Sustainability Assurance & Innovation Alliance (SUSTAIN) is developing the Sustainable Palm Oil Blockchain Network (SPOBN) to improve the lives of agriculture in the supply chain. told Block Asia: James Veale, VP of Agri-Business from SAP “The biggest challenge in palm oil sustainability is traceability. We already know which palm fresh fruit bunch (FFB) farmers have registered sustainable blocks, we know all the touch points along the supply chain from the farm gate to mill to end customer. The challenge we find is that all the information that makes up the traceability record sits in multiple siloed systems across the supply chain. This makes it hard to have a complete picture of FFB provenance and hence prove palm oil sustainability credentials. To ensure traceability, SPOBN which uses the distributed ledger of blockchain to track traceability across the entire supply network, from farm gate to consumer. With an initial rollout planned for the second quarter of 2019, SAP and our partners are excited by this initiative which use the power of blockchain to bring a step change to palm oil sustainability.” Furthermore, Christine Lagarde has mentioned that the banks were not in a rush to serve the unbank and digital assets ‘offers great promise, through its ability to reach people and businesses in remote and marginalised regions.’ Therefore, we can look forward to financial inclusion as one of the primary outcomes from FinTech. The successful conclusion of the event could be summed up with a quote by Christine Lagarde: “Technology will change, and so must we. Lest we remain the last leaf on a dead branch, the others have decided to fly with the wind. Singapore knows this. You know this. It is the true spirit of the Fintech Festival — opening doors to new digital futures; hoisting sails to the winds of change.” huixian@blockasia.io Visit for more Blockchain and Cryptocurrency news in Asia and around the world. www.blockasia.io Follow us at and today for the latest updates! Facebook.com/BlockAsia.io Twitter.com/block_asia Originally published at www.blockasia.io on Dec 4, 2018.

Singapore Fintech Festival 2018: What should we expect from the ‘marriage’ of finance and…

governance is a critical issue as the gains wider use across industries. It attracted close attention after the Ethereum DAO incident, where a token holder exploited a bug to funnel about one third of the total value in the network into their own account. (The bug was later fixed via a “forking” algorithm, but the issue remains an open question.) More recently, the heist of more than half a billion dollars’ worth of digital currency from the Coincheck exchange in Japan was largely due to a weak governance structure, which in turn was because of lack of standardization to enable timely action. Blockchain technology Governance is about who makes the rules and who enforces them. It is not only about the control of the blockchain; it identifies resolution mechanisms to deal with technological issues, user disputes, and other violations. Because blockchain technology has naturally evolved from traditional industries and existing projects, we look to real-life governance solutions used by traditional projects to guide our development of analogous solutions for the blockchain ecosystem. In this article, we review several real-life governance use cases in both traditional industries and blockchain projects. For more blockchain governance use cases, we invite you to review our earlier . article Traditional Governance Solutions Case 1: XianYu Small Claims Court (means “Idle Fish” ), Alibaba’s customer-to-customer platform similar to eBay, was established in 2013. Today, it has over 200 million registered users and more than 16 million active users, surpassing Taobao, the biggest e-commerce platform in China. XianYu As the biggest and most popular second-hand e-commerce platform in China, XianYu handles almost two thousand user disputes daily. Most cases involve no more than 10,000 RMB (~USD $1,400), but due to the high volume of those cases, the aggregate amounts in dispute handled on XianYu daily are considerably higher than most public chain projects are likely to face. So far, XianYu has handled user disputes well, continuously attracting new users and retaining existing ones. XianYu provides governance and dispute resolution for XianYu platform, and it is is modeled on the Anglo-American jury system. Similar to how the jury system operates, XianYu randomly invites 17 users with at least 700 Sesame Credits ( is a private credit scoring system introduced by Alibaba, similar to the credit scores in the US) to resolve user disputes. The party that receives 9 out of 17 user votes wins the case. If disputing users are not satisfied with the result, they may appeal. Small Claims Court Small Claims Court Sesame Credits User Flow of XianYu Small Claims Court: Users with high Sesame Credits are notified of a new arbitration task. Jurors accept the case and enter the arbitration process. Jurors vote, and XianYu announces the winner. Small Claims Court Jurors provide reasons for their votes. Design Characteristics of XianYu : Small Claims Court Community jury system eliminates costs associated with maintaining customer service. Community jury system delegates governance to the community (and takes it away from the platform owner) to increase fairness. The system would still run even if the jury is not filled. The platform automatically requests 17 jurors, but the arbitration could be initialed with any number of jurors. Jurors volunteer to vote and are automatically assigned cases by the platform. No incentive system is in place to motivate the jurors to diligently approach their task. Jurors may vote as soon as the case is initiated, even before the parties upload their evidence. No KYC process for jurors. Sesame Points are the only standard for picking qualified jurors. Case 2: Xiang Hu Bao Insurance by Ant Financial Services Group is a financial powerhouse in China, with over 400 million customers. It operates Alipay, the country’s dominant online payment platform, and China’s largest money market fund, Yu’e Bao, which manages more than $150 billion in assets. Ant Financial Services Group is a brand new community-based health protection service, allowing Ant members with at least 650 Sesame Points and meeting certain health conditions may join without having to undergo a health assessment. To ensure openness and transparency, the company introduced two measures: first, claims monitoring by members to ensure that only those who should be compensated are compensated. Second, the company uses blockchain technology for claims-related evidence, including payments. Xiang Hu Bao Insurance In October 2018, there were over on the Xiang Hu Bao platform. Let’s assume 10% (or 900,000) of them submit insurance claims this month, with an average claim value of RMB 5,000 (~ USD $700), bringing the total claims amount to RMB 4.5 billion. Xiang Hu Bao charges 10% service fee, bringing the total platform liabilities to RMB 4.95 billion. Dividing that among all users, or RMB 4.95 billion by 9 million, brings us to RMB 550 (~USD $80) monthly contribution per person. Users may terminate their membership at any time, once they have no outstanding monthly dues. 9 million users User Flow: Chinese text in images translated for readers’ convenience. Click here to see original Chinese article. Design Characteristics of Xiang Hu Bao Insurance: Low cost: all members split the cost keeping the fees as low as 0.1RMB per case, per person. Easy to use, no tedious paperwork: patients only need to upload evidence online, and if no one raise objections, patients get paid immediately. Highly transparent process: all patient cases are public and verified by the community (with certain protection of patients’ privacy). Questionable cases are re-reviewed by Xiang Hu Bao. Based on blockchain technology: information is stored on the blockchain and cannot be changed. Not suitable for everyone: older people are more likely to apply for insurance compensation than younger ones. If young members choose to leave the community, it may be difficult for Xiang Hu Bao Insurance to keep the cost low. Case 3: Alipay’s Child Protection Today, more than 12 million children are covered by Alipay’s Child Protection Plan. Alipay has paid RMB 7.1 million for 70 cases and refused to pay for 11 cases. Out of the 11 initially rejected cases that were then reviewed by community juries, four were approved by the juries and fully paid by the company. Child Protection Plan covers children from 1 month to 17 years old. The insurance covers 12 critical illnesses with RMB 100,000 insurance compensation limit, and there is no wait period for compensation once the case is verified by the insurance company and the community. Child Protection Plan has no investor stakeholders. It is owned and governed by the community. As their governance solution, Alipay uses the Anglo-American common law jury system, with community members serving as jurors. Applicants need to pass a basic insurance knowledge test to become qualified jurors. When there is a coverage dispute, the case is decided by the community jury through voting. Click here to see Chinese article about Alipay’s Child Protection. Also, check Alipay’s moves into online insurance . Real-life Case: A family learned that their child’s blood platelet count decreased and bought Child Protection Plan insurance. One month later, the doctors diagnosed the child with HIV. After the insurance company refused request for coverage, parents applied for arbitration, saying that they did not intentionally conceal the child’s pre-existing health condition. After 24 hours, 59% of the jurors voted for the family, and the insurance company covered the claim. Such an outcome would not have been possible with a traditional insurance company. Chinese text in images translated for readers’ convenience. Design Characteristics of Child Protection Plan Insurance: Uses decentralized jury system for governance and dispute resolution and gives decision rights to the community, relinquishing centralized superpower of any insurance company to accept or refuse patient cases. Because all patients are children, some jurors may vote in favor of the patient regardless of claim merit, which is not fair to everyone. Only offers services to users with high Sesame Points. Comparison of Traditional Jury-Based Governance Solutions and Oath Protocol: Similar to XianYu , Xiang Hu Bao Insurance, and Child Protection Plan, Oath Protocol is also modeled on the jury system, but it has developed a more complex design system. Small Claims Court Jurors are KYC-verified and provide basic personal information that allows algorithms to select appropriate jurors for various cases. Incentive system for jurors to participate and vote: jurors are rewarded for making the right decision, building up their reputation level in the community. You can learn more about Oath Protocol’s juror credit and reputation system . here Specific and efficient user flow for evidence submission and voting that resolves any case, start to finish, in 8 days. Maintains individual juror voting records through Oath’s credit level system and its partner DREP’s decentralized reputation system. Using the network system, supported by random algorithms and blockchain infrastructure, ensures that the jurors are selected randomly from a diverse jury pool (within certain parameters that can be set by the parties) and do not serve on more than one jury together. The jury system originates from Anglo-American common law, and most common Chinese users are not immediately familiar with it. But as AliBaba Group’s examples (in which common Chinese people participate in governance and dispute resolution cases as jurors) show, such a familiarity is not necessary to the system’s success. Instead, the community’s enthusiasm for effective and low-cost governance participation drives the high-rate participation. Blockchain Governance Solutions Case 1: ECAF On the platform, each case is reviewed and decided by one or three arbitrators. Presently, ECAF has six professional arbitrators who have passed internal tests and reviews. ECAF decisions, including governance or suspicious account freezes, are enforced by super-block producers. ECAF Arbitration application form from the : ECAF website Design Characteristics of ECAF: ECAF uses professional arbitrators for governance and dispute resolution. All six arbitrators have completed professional training and are knowledgeable about on-chain transactions, blockchain related notions, and EOS constitution and governance. As a third-party governance organization, in most instances, ECAF is not implicated in conflicts of interest. Six arbitrators are responsible for all user disputes. Given high costs of arbitrator training and hiring, arbitration fees are relatively high, although they vary by amount in dispute. Semi-centralization, meaning that each case is decided by one arbitrator according to his/her professional and personal judgment. Arbitrator identities are known to public. Lack of tech support. There are no team members with tech expertise, which hinders ECAF from creating a technologically advanced system that would allow efficient and transparent governance process. Case 2: Oath Protocol , modeled on the common law jury system, combines one of the most reliable legal systems from the real world with blockchain technologies, cryptography, computing algorithms, game theory reputation system, and other concepts to provide a layer 2 cross-chain infrastructure for a decentralized, standard, and extensible public chain-agnostic protocol that protects dApp users’ rights and assets. Oath Protocol Oath is a versatile protocol that can be used in a variety of scenarios, including, but not limited to, e-commerce, p2p marketplaces, short-term home rentals, travel bookings, content publishing platforms, blockchain insurance, prediction markets, and news verification. User Flow: After either party initiates a dispute, both parties can set criteria for the dispute resolution process. Jurors are selected through the categorizing random algorithm. Counter-parties have 5 days to upload their evidence. Jurors have 3 days to vote and provide rationale for their votes. After the votes are collected, the case resolution result becomes public. Parties will have five days to either confirm or appeal the verdict. Design Characteristics of Oath Protocol: Decentralized community decisionmaking: Oath Protocol relies on regular blockchain users to form its juror community and decide cases, initially with juries ranging from 11–101 jurors. Jurors do not need to hold OATH tokens to qualify for juries. Semi-decentralized voting process: only two transactions take place on-chain (and require gas fees to record): initiation of the case and recording of the case result. Layer 2 protocol: When chains or dApps use a smart contract that incorporates Oath as the standard dispute resolution mechanism, once the case is decided, the outcome is returned to the smart contract, which self-executes. Algorithms and safeguards to ensure fairness: Oath Protocol’s dynamic allocation algorithm reduces the odds of the same jury members resolving multiple disputes to avoid collusion. Oath’s categorized random algorithm, designed for reducing bias, selects jurors with diverse backgrounds to ensure fairness. The jury members’ identities are kept confidential through cryptographic techniques to ensure objectivity and immunity from external influence. Compatibility with any public chains or dApps: via APIs, Oath Protocol is compatible with any chains or dApps. Serving a wide range of use cases could be a double-edged sword. It may be hard for Oath to provide a product that can serve all these use cases very well. Conclusion The jury system, as a way to safeguard against bias and corruption and guarantee a fair outcome, has successfully stood the test of time. While it has been used in the UK and USA for centuries, its core concepts now underpin real-life community-based governance in China — a society traditionally reliant on central authority-based governance — where Alibaba has successfully gotten its regular users involved in governance and dispute resolution. There, community governance has already proven itself as a cheaper, fairer, and more transparent alternative to its traditional, centralized customer service-based counterparts. In the blockchain context, the jury system model naturally extends to governance and dispute resolution because it is true to the blockchain’s promise of decentralization; it relies on the community — rather than individual third party — to provide input for key governance decisions, execute smart contracts, or resolve user disputes. Presently, stands out among its competitors, delivering the most promising approach to the future of decentralized governance and dispute resolution. By design, it facilitates decentralized, community-based decisionmaking secured by blockchain and other technologies and featuring compelling incentive and reputation systems. Oath Protocol Given Alibaba’s recent success at incorporating community governance into traditional web platforms in China, it is only a matter of time until we see widespread adoption of community-based governance solutions in both traditional and blockchain businesses. Onward and upward, ! Oath Protocol below or on the left side of the screen to ” Please tap or click “ 👏 let Yin and others know that you appreciated this post. The number of claps indicates how much you liked the post and support its content, so put those hands together as many times as you like.

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AMERICAN FINANCIAL GROUP

afginc.com

5K-10K employees

Since 1872

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AMERICAN FINANCIAL GROUP

EVERGREEN INDEX #1130

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