In a report released on October 30, Keith Hughes from Truist Financial maintained a Buy rating on Trex Company (TREX – Research Report), with a price target of $70.00. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $56.21. According to TipRanks, Hughes is a ...

Truist Financial Reaffirms Their Buy Rating on Trex Company (TREX)

Truist Financial analyst Terry Tillman maintained a Buy rating on Roper Technologies (ROP – Research Report) on October 30 and set a price target of $575.00. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $488.57. According to TipRanks, Tillman is a 5-star ...

Truist Financial Reaffirms Their Buy Rating on Roper Technologies (ROP)

Fintel reports that on October 31, 2023, Truist Securities reiterated coverage of Kinsale Capital Group (NASDAQ:KNSL) with a Buy recommendation. Analyst Price Forecast Suggests 25.90% Upside As of November 1,

Truist Securities Reiterates Kinsale Capital Group (KNSL) Buy Recommendation

Fintel reports that on October 31, 2023, Truist Securities maintained coverage of ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ:ON) with a Buy recommendation. Analyst Price Forecast Suggests 40.17% Upside As of October 31,

Truist Securities Maintains ON Semiconductor (ON) Buy Recommendation

J. Kempin/Getty Images for Extra Kroy Biermann and Kim Zolciak-Biermann are doing everything they can to prevent foreclosure on their shared Georgia mansion. The estranged couple each filed affidavits on Thursday,

Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann Seek to Avoid 'Devastating' House Foreclosure

Perhaps the biggest goal of the 10-year plan will be figuring out what to do with empty buildings, such as the BB&T Financial Center, which was left vacant after its single tenant, Truist, moved its headquarters to Charlotte between 2020 and 2021.

Downtown Winston-Salem will look to fill empty buildings, modernize parking in 2024

The bankruptcy filing allows Sunlight to continue operating while it seeks court approval to proceed with the acquisition.

Sunlight Financial to be bought by investors through Chapter 11 reorganization plan

“We would be left homeless, without financial resources, and unable to address the debts accumulated during our marriage. Among these debts are the Truist mortgage, a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) on the property, and an IRS lien.” Biermann noted ...

Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann Say Losing Home Would Be ‘Devastating’ in Attempt to Avoid Foreclosure

Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann are putting aside their differences in order to prevent their Alpharetta, Georgia, mansion from going into foreclosure. Both Kim, 45, and Kroy, 38, filed affidavits on October 26,

Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann Join Forces in an Attempt to Avoid ‘Devastating’ Foreclosure

Truist Financial

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Effective trading mechanisms are crucial to DeFi, as without them, the entire ecosystem would struggle to operate efficiently and attract users, ultimately limiting its growth and impact. Currently, DeFi primarily relies on Automated Market Makers (AMMs), while Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) are emerging as an alternative. Automated Market Makers (AMMs) revolutionized DeFi asset trading by enabling straightforward swaps without the need for traditional order books. Their user-friendly approach has made AMMs the dominant trading method in DeFi, allowing users to trade directly from their wallets without needing to navigate complex order types. However, a new mechanism is gaining traction across DeFi: Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs). While CLOBs have long been a staple in traditional finance, their adoption in DeFi is still in its early stages. CLOBs require high transaction throughput and low latency to match and execute orders efficiently, which poses a challenge for most blockchains—especially Ethereum—before the advent of rollups and sharding. As blockchain scalability improves, L2 solutions like Fuel are making CLOBs a viable option, by allowing developers to build smart contracts that require high performance virtual machines to be efficient. The emergence of DeFi based CLOBS signals that the DeFi sector is maturing and positioning itself for a wave of institutional engagement. Additionally, the integration of both AMMs and CLOBs can help create a robust DeFi ecosystem that accommodates a diverse user base, leveraging the strengths of each to meet varying trading needs. How do Automated Market Makers (AMMs) work? AMMs use an algorithm to price assets based on the constant product formula and its derivatives, the most popular being, x*y=k. AMMs enable traders to exchange assets directly from liquidity pools without requiring a counterparty, unlike traditional order books. Instead, on AMMs traders trade against the liquidity of passive liquidity providers who earn fees for providing liquidity to the protocol. This approach has been revolutionary in DeFi, allowing anyone to provide liquidity and participate in trading without needing to be a professional trader or quant. How do Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) work? CLOBs facilitate efficient and transparent trading by matching buy and sell orders based on price and time priority. Traders submit various types of orders, including market, limit, and stop orders. CLOBs continuously update to reflect current market conditions, showing outstanding buy and sell orders and providing insights into market depth. For instance, if a trader wants to buy 1 Bitcoin at $60,000, they submit  a limit order to  the CLOB. If a seller is willing to sell 1 Bitcoin at $60,000, the two orders can be  matched, and the trade is executed. If no seller is available at that price, the order remains in the book until a matching seller is found. The  speed and precision of CLOBs make them ideal for high-frequency and algorithmic trading, attracting professional traders and institutional investors by offering greater flexibility and control. Key Differences Between CLOBs and AMMs Feature

Automated Market Makers (AMMs)

Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs)



Mechanism

Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k)

Order matching based on price-time priority



Users

Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4.

Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform.



Order Types

Simple swaps, no advanced order types

Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders



Capital Efficiency

Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve

More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly,



Trading Strategies

Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4.

Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading



User Expertise

Easy to use, typically features simpler UI

Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities



Decentralization

Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts

Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture



Advanced Features

Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4

Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Why Will CLOBs Play an Important Role in the Next Phase of DeFi? The next wave of DeFi growth is expected to be driven by increasing institutional investment and interest. According to Northern Trust, financial institutions are preparing for significant adoption of digital assets and tokenization, which is expected to accelerate institutional DeFi over the next few years. Additionally, industry experts predict substantial growth in DeFi due to the tokenization of real-world assets, further attracting institutional investors. Binance Research notes that the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi has surged by 75.1% year-to-date, reaching $94.9 billion, with significant capital inflows. It also highlights that yield-bearing assets saw a 148.6% increase, now making up $9.1 billion of the TVL. This influx of capital has benefited nearly every DeFi sector, making previously inaccessible financial primitives available on chain. To accommodate this shift, DeFi must evolve beyond the limitations of AMMs, which are well-suited for everyday users, and develop infrastructure that meets the demands of more sophisticated traders. This is where CLOBs have the potential to become a game-changer for DeFi, offering advanced trading capabilities, superior price discovery, and improved capital efficiency to support the needs of institutional participants. Effective trading mechanisms are crucial to DeFi, as without them, the entire ecosystem would struggle to operate efficiently and attract users, ultimately limiting its growth and impact. Currently, DeFi primarily relies on Automated Market Makers (AMMs), while Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) are emerging as an alternative. Automated Market Makers (AMMs) revolutionized DeFi asset trading by enabling straightforward swaps without the need for traditional order books. Their user-friendly approach has made AMMs the dominant trading method in DeFi, allowing users to trade directly from their wallets without needing to navigate complex order types. However, a new mechanism is gaining traction across DeFi: Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs). While CLOBs have long been a staple in traditional finance, their adoption in DeFi is still in its early stages. CLOBs require high transaction throughput and low latency to match and execute orders efficiently, which poses a challenge for most blockchains—especially Ethereum—before the advent of rollups and sharding. As blockchain scalability improves, L2 solutions like Fuel are making CLOBs a viable option, by allowing developers to build smart contracts that require high performance virtual machines to be efficient. The emergence of DeFi based CLOBS signals that the DeFi sector is maturing and positioning itself for a wave of institutional engagement. Additionally, the integration of both AMMs and CLOBs can help create a robust DeFi ecosystem that accommodates a diverse user base, leveraging the strengths of each to meet varying trading needs. How do Automated Market Makers (AMMs) work? How do Automated Market Makers (AMMs) work? AMMs use an algorithm to price assets based on the constant product formula and its derivatives, the most popular being, x*y=k. AMMs enable traders to exchange assets directly from liquidity pools without requiring a counterparty, unlike traditional order books. Instead, on AMMs traders trade against the liquidity of passive liquidity providers who earn fees for providing liquidity to the protocol. This approach has been revolutionary in DeFi, allowing anyone to provide liquidity and participate in trading without needing to be a professional trader or quant. How do Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) work? How do Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) work? CLOBs facilitate efficient and transparent trading by matching buy and sell orders based on price and time priority. Traders submit various types of orders, including market, limit, and stop orders. CLOBs continuously update to reflect current market conditions, showing outstanding buy and sell orders and providing insights into market depth. For instance, if a trader wants to buy 1 Bitcoin at $60,000, they submit  a limit order to  the CLOB. If a seller is willing to sell 1 Bitcoin at $60,000, the two orders can be  matched, and the trade is executed. If no seller is available at that price, the order remains in the book until a matching seller is found. The  speed and precision of CLOBs make them ideal for high-frequency and algorithmic trading, attracting professional traders and institutional investors by offering greater flexibility and control. Key Differences Between CLOBs and AMMs Key Differences Between CLOBs and AMMs Feature

Automated Market Makers (AMMs)

Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs)



Mechanism

Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k)

Order matching based on price-time priority



Users

Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4.

Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform.



Order Types

Simple swaps, no advanced order types

Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders



Capital Efficiency

Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve

More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly,



Trading Strategies

Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4.

Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading



User Expertise

Easy to use, typically features simpler UI

Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities



Decentralization

Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts

Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture



Advanced Features

Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4

Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Feature

Automated Market Makers (AMMs)

Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) Mechanism

Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k)

Order matching based on price-time priority Users

Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4.

Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform. Order Types

Simple swaps, no advanced order types

Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders Capital Efficiency

Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve

More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly, Trading Strategies

Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4.

Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading User Expertise

Easy to use, typically features simpler UI

Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities Decentralization

Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts

Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture Advanced Features

Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4

Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Feature Automated Market Makers (AMMs) Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) Feature Feature Feature Automated Market Makers (AMMs) Automated Market Makers (AMMs) Automated Market Makers (AMMs) Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs) Mechanism Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k) Order matching based on price-time priority Mechanism Mechanism Mechanism Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k) Algorithmic pricing based on the constant product formula (x*y=k) Order matching based on price-time priority Order matching based on price-time priority Users Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4. Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform. Users Users Users Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4. Suitable for both casual and advanced users; offers customizable strategies, especially with advancements like UniV4. Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform. Favoured by professional traders for precise control but also adaptable for various user levels depending on the platform. Order Types Simple swaps, no advanced order types Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders Order Types Order Types Order Types Simple swaps, no advanced order types Simple swaps, no advanced order types Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders Advanced order types like limit orders, stop orders, and conditional orders Capital Efficiency Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly, Capital Efficiency Capital Efficiency Capital Efficiency Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve Capital inefficient due to most liquidity sitting idle along the bonding curve More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly, More capital efficient, matching buyers and sellers directly, Trading Strategies Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4. Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading Trading Strategies Trading Strategies Trading Strategies Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4. Supports both basic and advanced trading strategies with customizable liquidity provision in UniV4. Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading Supports sophisticated trading strategies and high-frequency trading User Expertise Easy to use, typically features simpler UI Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities User Expertise User Expertise User Expertise Easy to use, typically features simpler UI Easy to use, typically features simpler UI Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities Requires more expertise, designed for advanced trading capabilities Decentralization Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture Decentralization Decentralization Decentralization Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts Completely decentralized, governed by smart contracts Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture Can be decentralized but typically involves a more complex architecture Advanced Features Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4 Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Advanced Features Advanced Features Advanced Features Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4 Supports advanced features like buy/sell limit orders and customizable liquidity provision, especially with UniV4 Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Offers better price discovery and enhanced order types, reducing arbitrage opportunities and benefiting from more precise market equilibrium Why Will CLOBs Play an Important Role in the Next Phase of DeFi? Why Will CLOBs Play an Important Role in the Next Phase of DeFi? The next wave of DeFi growth is expected to be driven by increasing institutional investment and interest. According to Northern Trust , financial institutions are preparing for significant adoption of digital assets and tokenization, which is expected to accelerate institutional DeFi over the next few years. Additionally, industry experts predict substantial growth in DeFi due to the tokenization of real-world assets, further attracting institutional investors. Binance Research notes that the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi has surged by 75.1% year-to-date, reaching $94.9 billion, with significant capital inflows. It also highlights that yield-bearing assets saw a 148.6% increase, now making up $9.1 billion of the TVL. This influx of capital has benefited nearly every DeFi sector, making previously inaccessible financial primitives available on chain. Northern Trust Northern Trust industry experts predict substantial growth in DeFi industry experts predict substantial growth in DeFi Binance Research Binance Research To accommodate this shift, DeFi must evolve beyond the limitations of AMMs, which are well-suited for everyday users, and develop infrastructure that meets the demands of more sophisticated traders. This is where CLOBs have the potential to become a game-changer for DeFi, offering advanced trading capabilities, superior price discovery, and improved capital efficiency to support the needs of institutional participants.

The Maturity of DeFi Requires a Shift from Automated Market Makers to Central Limit Order Books

Alex Leduc, CEO of Perch, on using technology to innovate in a “traditional” industry Anyone who’s worked in the banking or lending industry will know that change is hard. In a centuries-old business world, the need to “evolve with the times” is often overlooked, mainly when firms usually act as gatekeepers that all but force customers to play their game, no matter the inconvenience. At my fintech startup, Perch, we’re flipping the script and using technology to get an edge over the big players. Perch is a digital mortgage brokerage. We’ve taken the traditionally painstaking process of getting your mortgage with the bank and automated it into a 20-minute process. We spend the rest of our resources teaching the user and giving them insights on their decisions, with complete transparency along the way. Unlike most mortgage brokerages, most of our team are developers and designers, not mortgage brokers. What is a digital mortgage company? For most of us, buying a home is a huge deal. Especially for first-time home buyers, it can be hard to figure out what you have to do and in what order. Our analytics platform walks you through every step of the way so you’re given the information and timeline you need to make the right decision. We answer questions like “How much ‘home’ can I afford today?” and “How long will it take until I can afford my dream property?” Home buyers ready to make an offer can get a mortgage pre-approval online in less than an hour. After signing up and submitting your details, you’ll be able to view the mortgage offers available to you instantly. The entire application process can be done online. Complete your pre-approval and get your mortgage approved in less than 48 hours. This means not having to wait for someone to call you back or needing to travel to a bank or credit union to fill out paperwork. The average Perch user saves $1,500 per year on their mortgage, compared to going with a bank. Perch has recently raised $4 million in seed round funding. How did you come up with the idea to start Perch? I spent seven years working in the financial sector, and in that time, I saw how broken our system was, especially in the mortgage and real estate industry. Too many companies were still heavily reliant on paperwork and operating inefficiently. A lot of time was wasted between different parties through coordinating, providing status updates, and following up. Customers didn’t have equal access to the same information. They had to trust financial advisors, brokers, and mortgage specialists at banks without seeing the numbers for themselves and understanding if they were making the right decision. There was a pessimistic outlook for home buyers, where increasingly, Canadians viewed homeownership as an unattainable goal. Those who were approaching retirement or already retired lacked sufficient liquid assets to fund their golden years. Unfortunately, this meant people would rely on tapping into their home equity to get by. After confirming that no other company was addressing these issues holistically, I set out to do it myself in 2018. The first product we built was, well, not great. Initially, we created a fully automated solution allowing users to compare and select a mortgage independently. We soon had our first “aha” moment when we realized people weren’t willing to make such an important decision without having the ability to consult a trusted advisor for 1:1 support, so we adapted. Today, Perch offers home buyers and homeowners a proprietary analytics platform supplemented by a dedicated advisor that helps them strategize and figure out the best path forward. How did you start the business? Once I had the idea, I needed to validate it. I invested about $20,000 of my capital to develop an MVP, which mainly paid for a freelance engineer I found on Upwork overseas. I had zero consideration for design and was more interested in whether the user found the outputs and functionality useful. Once I had the prototype, I went through my immediate network to see if anyone could spare 15 minutes of their time for a demo. That gave me 15 initial testers that went through the product. I didn’t pick people like my mom, who would tell me the platform was excellent no matter what, but instead relied on people I knew a bit less formally or that I knew would give me honest feedback. It was great to get their input, so I could solve the most significant issues upfront. With no regard for design, the user experience was awful, so I had to be super hands-on in guiding them through the platform when testing. After doing the first batch of testing and making some overhauls, I invested another $30,000 in designing and engineering to improve it. With this enhanced MVP (2.0), I then took it for more informal feedback from strangers. I would literally go into places like food courts and search for someone eating lunch alone and then ask them if they had 10 minutes to demo and provide feedback. I’d pick food courts in the basement of enormous tech companies to increase the chances I ran into someone who worked on a software platform to improve the quality of feedback received. Surprisingly, most people were pretty receptive and open to walking through my demo. I got another 10-15 testers to validate that I was onto something. What’s next for the business? Since the first launch, we’ve learned much from our users, and our product has come a long way. Here are some key stats on the company over the years: The team was 3 people (including myself) up until mid-2019. We are now 20 in 2022. We’ve doubled our customer lifetime value while maintaining an ongoing customer acquisition cost. We’re on track to be profitable by mid-2023. The velocity of our growth was pretty limited as we essentially bootstrapped our way up to where we are today (only a small circle of friends & family around). Over 80% of this revenue has been organic or through user referrals, not paid ads. We’re currently working on building up a for our users to answer any questions they have about the mortgage process and homeownership in general. library of content , we work with you to help you get approved for the mortgage you need, with dedicated mortgage specialists available to help you through the process. At Perch

Combatting Gatekeeping in Real Estate With Digital Mortgage Brokerage

When people talk about decentralized finances today, they mostly talk about its growth and the potential of the technology underpinning it. When they talk about the future of DeFi, they talk about how much it can grow and how it can be an alternative system for traditional finance. However, very few people talk about the primary problem of traditional finance, and how DeFi has solved that. If you're not too knowledgeable about DeFi, you might think that problem is centralization. But you would just be half right. The problem isn't centralization, for that is only a symptom of a bigger problem. The bigger problem is trust. The Problem Of Trust For the overwhelming majority of human existence, we've operated financial systems based on trust. Even before the existence of banks, we've always put trust in a third party for the security of our finances. Romans, for example, trusted the state not to coins and dilute the purity of their denarii, thereby turning their currency into copper. Like many before them, they found out that the state couldn't be trusted. Before long, the purity of the silver in denarii plummeted from a peak of about 95% to one of about 5%. At that point, the coin was functionally copper. mint too many silver The Romans weren't the only ones subjected to this treatment. A lot of civilizations over the course of history did too. Interestingly, people didn't just have to trust the banks or their state— they also had to trust couriers. Merchants who had to transport large amounts of gold or silver via couriers had to trust the courier not to abscond with the treasure. Even if they were transporting it themselves, they had to trust fellow travelers or even their own family not to rob them. With the industrial revolution came the need for even more trust. Financial systems were expanding, and banks started to grow. People had to trust banks to verify transactions, and they had to trust central banks not to be irresponsible with monetary policy. It's important to understand that people didn't trust these institutions because they wanted to, but because they had to. There was no choice. As anyone would expect, these systems of trust continually broke down. The Roman denarii became ; policy has racked the modern world several times, and in some corners of the world, a devalued beyond measure inflation as a result of irresponsible monetary bank is always refusing to validate a transaction. But because we had no alternative to a trust-based system, we persevered. It may sound counterintuitive to oppose a system based on trust. That's because trust sounds like a good thing. Unfortunately, in this context, it's not. There are many reasons why trust-based systems are unstable, but I'll only mention a few important ones. The Shortcomings Of Trust The first problem with trust is that it can be broken. Even the biggest opponents of trust-based systems have no problems agreeing that in most cases third parties have earned the trust bestowed on them. Regulations mean that these third parties are often good faith players. But since they can break your trust by manipulating your data or not confirming your transactions, it stands to reason that anyone with access to their systems can do the same. The problem is that because of these same regulations, which presumptively ensure that these third parties are good faith players, also ensure that the state has almost unfettered access to their systems. Like protesters in Canada recently discovered, if the state from the banks, it will get it. By placing trust in third parties, people unwittingly make them a target for the state. Sadly, the state isn't the only party that targets these third parties. Even more nefarious actors, like hackers and thieves, target these systems too. wants something hard enough Ergo, it's quite irrelevant whether the third parties are good-faith players or not. They are targets, and since we have zero or no control over just how secure they are against these nefarious actors, we are essentially taking a huge gamble by trusting them. This isn't a new problem of the trust-based system by any means, and the several economic setbacks we've experienced because of them are testaments to that. The most recent economic setback was probably the 2008 recession which was caused by "good faith" actors holding onto a bunch of bad debt. As expected, these institutions brought the entire global economy crashing down around them. What's more? Most of them got from the government regardless. bailouts While one may argue that a vast majority of financial institutions deserve to be trusted, it's clear that if we continue to trust them we will have to adjust to regular unfaithfulness. Sometimes this may be due to their failures, and other times due to circumstances beyond their control. This inevitability of economic crashes due to trust is the number one problem of traditional finance. And if it's not solved, it may spell doom for our future as the world gets even more interconnected. Thankfully, it's a problem that we can solve. The Birth Of A Trustless System Today, we can trust algorithms that could not be motivated to breach that trust. The first person to make use of those systems to create a trustless financial framework was Satoshi Nakamato. And ever since then, we've seen, for the first time in human history, a truly trustless ecosystem. That ecosystem is now called decentralized finance, or DeFi for short. Today, there are many protocols that thrive on the principle of decentralized finance. For example, there are now companies trying to solve the problem of loans, and others trying to solve the liquidity problem of real estate. is one of the leading DeFi companies creating a sustainable and safe way for people to process loans in a trustless system, and is working on solving the liquidity problem of real estate in a trustless economy. Defi Swap Bricktrade The basic premise behind these systems means that a third party doesn't need to like you, love you, or be good to keep your transactions safe. It's a system where there are only two parties in the transaction; you and your peer. That's why DeFi transactions are called peer-2-peer transactions. But this safety isn't the only benefit of DeFi. Trustless systems don't only solve the problem of trust-based systems, they also make it easier for people to do more with their assets. Staking, for example, is a unique DeFi protocol that allows users to earn interest on their assets by committing to a validator for a certain period. Ordinarily, people don't have assets in their funds at this time. However, through liquid staking, they can earn derivative tokens that they can spend anyhow they wish. Today, one of the biggest companies allowing people to stake is — and the service already has over a hundred million staked assets. Ankr As expected, this entire system is trustless, which makes it even a better bet for people than regular interest. It's also safer, as people will never have to worry about doing bank runs since their investment is guaranteed by smart contracts. While a lot of people still believe in the trustworthiness of traditional finance, many are beginning to see they haven't earned our trust. There have been too many mistakes and breaches of trust by these institutions. They can no longer be trusted, and that's why DeFi will certainly replace them — not just co-exist with them.

DeFi May Save The World Financially

The COVID19 crisis has been playing out globally for over half a year, or almost a year counting its early phase in China. It’s been hurting a lot of sectors, but one particular sector stood to benefit — Fintech. First of all, the pandemic has significantly accelerated the adoption of contactless payments in the US, as it took banks and Apple years to convince shoppers to switch to contactless cards or use ApplePay while it had already been a trend elsewhere in the world. Moreover, many shops and shoppers have even made a 180-degree turn on their attitude towards QR-code, which many investors and experts used to heavily doubt to have a future in the developed markets in the US and Europe. Second, as offline shopping was dead, the skyrocketing demand in e-commerce has benefited many fintech companies in the online payment space. The “buy-now-pay-later” superstar Klarna’s recent fundraise put its valuation at over $10bn. Adyen’s market cap more than doubled since the beginning of the year to more than €47bn as of Oct 1. Square’s market cap even quadrupled to almost $75bn from its lowest point in late March. Third, with most people sitting at home, online banking and trading start to gain mainstream status competing against the incumbent traditional financial institutions. The dispatch of the US federal stimulus package has given neobank startup Chime the opportunity to acquire tons of new customers by pre-funding the stimulus to those who live paycheck-by-paycheck. In mid-September, Chime raised $485mn giving it an eye-popping valuation of $14.5bn. Meanwhile, Robinhood benefited from millennials and gen-z’s trading on mobile phone at home and achieved a valuation of almost $12bn in September, even as the incumbent Morgan Stanley acquired the mighty E*Trade for $13bn and another giant Charles Schwab purchased TD Ameritrade for $26 bn. The pandemic has certainly triggered a lot of buzz for fintech companies to take advantage of, but how much of the tailwind is ephemeral? How can we know which of these trends are here to stay in the post-COVID world? More importantly, what are the fundamental trends that can sustain the long-term vision of these fintech stories? First of all, the buzz of mobile and online financial services is far more than just bringing offline experiences to the virtual world. In fact, it involves a much more radical change in the business model. Traditional financial services can easily build an interactive website or an app to appear millennial-friendly, but it’s much harder for them to re-invent their risk management and operations for the new age. For example, a friend of mine was kicking off his own startup last month, and the process involves setting up a bank account to take in investor’s money. Since her personal bank account is with Chase, naturally she was thinking about opening the commercial account with Chase. So she tried the registration process on Chase’s website. While the website’s design and interaction looked cool and tech-ish, it was clunky in so many ways. Not only did she have to re-enter much of her personal information again, but after 20 mins of filling out the details, she was still not able to set up an account via the website and was instead asked to go to a local branch — the closest of which being 3 miles away as the closer ones were closed down during COVID. Later, she found out that Chase only allows setting up a bank account via website for LLCs, not for C- or S-corps. It would have been much easier if Chase made it clear on the website, and also, Chase’s old-fashioned risk management system forced the unnecessary difference in how it can treat LLC vs a Corp. Furthermore, my friend was told that even if the new company has already been incorporated and has a legit EIN, Chase still requires the proof of filing with the local Secretary of State, which has a backlog of 1 month in California under the impact of COVID. So instead of wasting another month to close the funding round, she went with a neobank startup Mercury and managed to open a corporate bank account within 2 days. For any old banks to seriously think about compete against fintech startups, they will have to consider which part of their back-office logic, risk assessment, and operational flow should be completely redesigned and rebuilt with the help of tech. Again, it’s much more than just a fancy website or app. Second of all, fintech companies’ strategy should focus on how they can fundamentally disrupt the traditional cost structure, instead of tricking consumers with no real cost-saving. Many startup ideas centered around taking for granted what interest rates they can charge as “market rate” and charging consumers (invisibly but effectively) more. One of the fundamental reasons behind the take-off of many lending fintech startups is the fact that millennials and gen-z’s grew up after the 2007–2008 financial crisis and don’t trust financial institutions with their credit system. Thus, they tend to prefer debit cards over credit cards, partially for the sake of goodwill and reputation, but with the burden of student debt and sometimes even mortgage, they find these lending apps quite handy. With 60% Americans having less than $400 in their bank accounts — and btw that number has got to be outdated since the COVID crisis — no surprise they need financing, in the form of either buy-now-pay-later or payday loans. Besides, with the insufficient level of mathematical and financial literacy, most people can’t mentally calculate the effective annualized interest rate when they are charged $5 or $10 every time they loan out just a few hundred bucks or advance their paychecks. It seems to be just coffee money or beer money. Many startups claim to have genius machine learning and artificial intelligence models, but few have proven to work better than the commonly criticized FICO scores. So instead of competing on data science, it’s basically a battle of who has the better marketing strategy to acquire the larger consumer mindshare. A potentially drastic shift comes from payroll startup Gusto’s new product Gusto Wallet, which allows salary employees to flexibility adjust paydays without being charged — effectively a free payday loan. This is a product that’s really beneficial to the financial wellness of the underpowered population. To be able to afford to forgo the lucrative interest payment, Gusto is in a unique position compared to many banks and fintech companies, as it sits directly between the employees and their salaries. Many banks spend hundreds of dollars trying to convince their account holders to add direct deposit, while Gusto controls that direct deposit endpoint. From this gateway, Gusto has the potential to add on more financial service products and controls more distribution channels. In the end, finance is a game of distribution, and the role of data/algorithms is to make that distribution more effective and efficient. In the traditional world, given lack of data and transparency, many investment funds with poor return track records still manage make money from commission, as long as they can maintain good relationships with financial advisors which shielded them from individual investors. The earlier ETF revolution and more recently Wealthfront / Robinhood solved the transparency and accessibility problem but cannot solve the curation and selection problem, which is at the core of the distribution game. Perhaps a peek at the allocation of the upcoming Ant Group IPO can offer some insights into the future of the distribution game. As a completely new IPO allocation model, the Alipay wallet opened up Ant Group IPO allocation to any individual Alipay user starting as low as 1RMB via a group of 5 mutual funds selected and curated by Alipay. Within 2 days, 3 of the 5 funds were already fully subscribed, each fund with a cap of 12bn RMB (about $2bn), breaking all public fundraising records. This highly innovative curation/distribution model is underpinned by the unmatchable financial and transactional data that Alipay has via its connection with Alibaba the largest ecommerce platform in China. It remains to be seen which fintech companies in the US can win the data war against the large banks, who are finding a hard to realize the full potential of the vast data they possess. The fintech landscape in the US is a lot more segmented than in China, so the picture may become clearer as we see more partnership and consolidation among the fintech superstars.

Fintech Should Focus On Long-Term Vision, Not Short-Term COVID Buzz 

When people think about data leaks, they tend to assume the cause of the threat came from outside the company. In reality, there is just as much danger, if not more so, of a data breach happening from within. found that 97% of IT leaders are actively concerned about an insider data breach. A recent study from Egress’s Insider Data Breath Survey 2020 Why? Because of statistics like these, according to Information Age: “78% of IT leaders surveyed said that employees have put data at risk accidentally within the last year.” “75% say that intentional compromise of data security has occurred.” “24% said lack of employee security training was to blame; 21% said insider breaches were caused by employees rushing tasks.; 31% said employees had sent information to the wrong person.” Insider data breaches are a much bigger problem than many companies realize. Just look at what Elon Musk had to deal with earlier this year with Tesla. Musk “had learned an employee of the company conducted quite extensive and damaging sabotage to its operations,” ultimately exporting highly sensitive data to unknown third parties. According to CNBC, This has been a growing problem in the cybersecurity world, the threat of insider leaks. Even back in 2016, were carried out by insiders. When something like this happens, the effects can be catastrophic, leading to any (or all) of the following: Harvard Business Review was reporting that more than 60% of all data attacks Damaged company reputation Regulatory fines Leaked trade secrets ( ) as seen in the case between Uber and Google over self-driving technology Compromise of user data Ruined customer trust Financial loss For context, an insider-related incident can cost a company upwards of $500,000. In fact, , these incidents can cost a company up to $8.76 million per year, and in North America, the cost is even higher: $11.1 million per year. according to the Ponemon Institute 2018 study on insider threats So, how do you defend against insider threats? 1. You need to focus on the “crown jewels” of your organization, and create a hierarchy for content and data access to different levels of employees. The simplest form of data protection companies use is simply giving access to certain folders or files to some employees, and restricting access to others. But especially when you’re dealing with highly sensitive information, this tactic is pretty entry-level. What you really need is a way of measuring user behavior, and gauging employee behaviors and activities to determine whether certain data needs to be immediately shut down so that you can conduct an internal investigation. This is a big part of what we do at Reveille for key platforms from Box, IBM, Microsoft, and so on. We provide tools to bring a completely different level of transparency to layers and layers of content management and access within the organization, with software solutions that learn behavioral patterns over time and can trigger warning systems as soon as behaviors inside the company begin to look suspicious. 2. Collaboration between employees, contractors, partners, and vendors is only increasing, so you need to have a clear sense of who needs access to what data, and why. Data security begins as early as the interview process. With every employee, every potential vendor, you need to have a firm grasp over what levels of data they are going to need in order to do their job effectively — without giving them exposure to more than what is necessary. The second step then is to add layers of protection, and ways to track the nature of their content transactions within the company—and measure those transactions against any unusual behavior outside the norm. The goal isn’t to have a police state, but to have processes in place that can catch early signals of malicious activity before they become a serious problem. 3. There are two types of insider threats: malicious and accidental. The former requires measurement and tracking, the latter requires policies established within the company. Accidental data leaks would be employees mentioning something they shouldn’t on social media, shipping out confidential information accidentally in emails, or even just putting their company’s data at risk by misplacing their phones or computers. These kinds of things happen all the time. This is why training is such a crucial part of internal data protection. For the last 25 years of  bringing content management systems and behavioral insight solutions to market, I can tell you that companies not having proper training or policies in place is one of the foundational errors that leads to data leaks. However, once you have these policies integrated into your company culture, you now have a key input to measure against behavioral baselines—which makes your tracking tools that much more effective in being able to spot malicious behavior. Previously published at https://minutes.co/97-of-it-leaders-fear-company-data-will-be-exposed-by-their-own-employees-here-are-3-ways-to-protect-against-insider-threats/

3 Ways To Protect Company Data From Being Exposed By Your Own Employees

Bitcoin was created in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are setting the stage for Bitcoin’s greatest test yet. ( : ) Disclaimer The author works at Ryze Financial The 2008 financial crisis exposed weaknesses in the US banking system. Seemingly indestructible monoliths such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were taken as casualties. Americans lost $9.8 trillion in wealth. However, an entirely was born as a product of this crisis — : decentralized, deflationary, digitally-native money. The ’08 recession set the stage for Bitcoin’s creation, and the economic impacts of COVID-19 could set the stage for Bitcoin to shine as a hedge against inflation and store of value. new kind of money Bitcoin In an attempt to mitigate the economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic, central banks are bailing out industry-leading corporations, small businesses, and individual consumers alike. Governments have announced over $7 trillion in total relief spending, with $2.3 trillion from the US, equivalent to roughly 11.2% of US GDP. A significant portion comes from central banks printing money to buy bonds and other financial instruments. Printing new money to buy bonds, or “quantitative easing (QE),” increases the money supply. In addition, governments are effectively handing out money to their citizens, which may cause inflation even with the US Dollar. Increasing the supply of any asset decreases its value unless demand increases at the same rate. This opens up an opportunity for Bitcoin since its inflation rate will be cut in half as a result of the Bitcoin’s value may rise as a result of this quantitative tightening, while government-backed currencies across the world could lose value due to inflation. May 2020 Bitcoin Halving. The economic impacts of COVID-19 will test two key narratives for Bitcoin: its use as a hedge against inflation and store of value, and its potential to replace government-controlled fiat currencies. Rewind: FDR, Nixon, and Inflation How did we get here in the first place? The story starts in 1913 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. This created the Federal Reserve, an independent central bank in charge of monetary policy. The Fed was given control of money supply and interest rates and tasked with the goals of lowering and . In the decades to follow, The Fed didn’t always meet these 3 objectives. unemployment inflation Getting Rid of Gold From 1913–1919, the US Dollar underwent a period of nearly 20% annual inflation. This was a product of vast government spending during WWI and a shortage of resources, which led to high production costs and prices. During WWII, we saw upwards of 13% annual inflation, even with measures in place to freeze wages and prevent inflation. Between the wars, however, the USD underwent periods of massive deflation during the recession of the early ’20s and the Great Depression of the ’30s. These deflationary periods balanced out the inflationary ones, resulting in average annual inflation of ~1% from 1913–1960. A causal element that enabled such rampant government spending was the abandonment of the . Prior to the Great Depression, the US allowed the redemption of any amount of paper money for its value in gold. This enabled large transactions to be completed without the physical transfer of gold bullion. The value of paper money was guaranteed by gold reserves held by governments. gold standard At the start of the Great Depression, depositors didn’t trust financial institutions with their money, so they started hoarding gold to preserve their wealth. In 1933, FDR passed an executive order forcing banks and consumers to give up their gold to the US government in exchange for paper money, effectively eliminating the gold standard. The gold standard discouraged government debt, budget deficits, and inflation. Since then, the Fed has been able to issue money at will, without having to back new money with any real assets. Black Gold & the Nixon Shock Nixon furthered FDR’s actions beyond the domestic sphere in 1971 when he ended international fixed-rate conversions between the dollar and gold. Subsequently, the 1970s were the most recent period of high inflation in the US. Unlike previous periods of high inflation, which were caused by wars, inflation in the ’70s was largely a result of an economic shock. In 1973, an oil embargo enacted by OPEC against the US caused oil prices to quadruple. This increased consumer gas prices, the cost of transporting goods, as well as the cost to manufacture oil-dependent goods such as plastics. As a result, prices across industries went up, causing double-digit inflation. In response to rising prices, demand for goods and services decreased, causing lower utilization and lower revenues for businesses. Faced with lower demand and higher costs, companies were forced to lay off workers. Rising unemployment resulted in lower demand, forcing more layoffs and creating a vicious cycle. The combination of and is called high inflation high unemployment stagflation. To combat stagflation, the Fed initially increased the money supply and lowered interest rates, with the hope of increasing aggregate demand. Higher demand decreased unemployment, but increased prices and cost of living. As a result, unions demanded higher wages, causing higher costs for businesses. Higher labor costs led to layoffs and more unemployment, causing demand to fall again. In response, the Fed continued to increase the money supply and lower interest rates to increase demand, restarting the cycle, and ultimately resulting in runaway inflation and higher and higher unemployment. By ’73, inflation was at 8.8%, and by the end of the decade, it had increased to 14%. Politicians were focused on decreasing unemployment and putting people back to work in order to garner votes. Paul Volcker was appointed chairman of the Fed in 1979, and unlike his Keynesian predecessors, Volcker’s focus was on curbing inflation. He reversed monetary policy and interest rates to as high as 20% and decreased the money supply. This initially led to a massive reduction in demand, and substantial unemployment, causing the recession of ‘81-’82. However, inflation eventually slowed and prices fell, increasing demand and bringing the economy out of stagflation. raised COVID-19: A New Kind of Economic Shock Similar to the ’70s, we find ourselves in an economic shock, this time as a result of a global pandemic as opposed to an oil shortage. Social distancing and other public health measures taken by policy-makers have disrupted the flow of people, goods, and services globally. Disrupted manufacturing and distribution has resulted in a supply shock. This is occurring in tandem with a demand shock caused by consumers being stuck in their homes. As a result, businesses large and small have decreased revenue, and are forced to lay off employees. So far, 33 million Americans are filing for unemployment, nearly 20.5% of the workforce, the highest since 1934. For context, we didn’t see double-digit unemployment during the Great Depression for nearly three years. Investors are in a scramble for cash, causing equities, corporate and other non-government bonds, commodities, and even cryptocurrencies to fall. The Dow Jones Index is down >30% from peak to trough. To mitigate economic damage, central banks have responded in true Keynesian fashion (just as they did in the ’70s) by lowering interest rates and engaging in quantitative easing (QE). QE entails purchasing debt in the form of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds, and printing money for corporate and individual taxpayer bailouts. Interest rates have a lower bound of 0%. Negative interest rates, which have been tested in the last decade by European and Asian countries, can incentivize consumers to pull their money out of commercial banks. Money sitting in savings accounts would have a storage charge as opposed to earning positive interest, incentivizing consumers to hoard physical cash outside of banks. Officials at the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and Bank of Japan (BoJ), among others, agree that we are at a pivotal moment in the history of monetary policy and fiat currency. Interest rates have steadily declined over the last 50 years since Volcker raised the rates. Volcker raised rates when inflation was high. Now, inflation is low and interest rates have reached lower bounds. The Fed must either follow the footsteps of the ECB and BoJ by entering negative interest rate territory or follow the footsteps of Volcker and hike rates to reset the economy. Neither are particularly attractive options, and the government is instead resorting to fiscal stimulus. Money Printers Going “Brrrrr” Over $2.3 Trillion (11% of US GDP) is being printed by the US government and pumped into the economy through the CARES Act. This money is helping expand unemployment benefits, provide one-time checks for consumers, and support SMBs, hospitals, and state/local governments. The funding from the CARES Act comes from the sale of Treasury bonds. Who’s buying $2.3 Trillion in government debt? The Federal Reserve, which has announced unlimited QE to fund the Treasury’s operations. QE generally entails the purchase of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, but this time, the Fed is following in the footsteps of the ECB and BoJ by also buying up corporate debt. Japan, however, is no stranger to QE. The BoJ first started injecting money into its economy in the early 2000s to fight deflation. Initially, banks were flooded with extra liquidity by the government to encourage lending, and thus, consumer spending. QE in Japan hasn’t resulted in significant inflation, potentially because it was limited to public and private debt markets. This time around, we’re seeing governments issue new money and distribute it directly through individual stimulus payments to consumers. This is more likely to cause inflation than buying treasury or corporate bonds. Bitcoin’s Greatest Opportunity A Hedge Against Inflation Money printing and low interest rates across the world could cause fiat currencies to lose purchasing power as inflation increases. Increasing supply decreases value if demand doesn’t increase at the same rate. In comparison to traditional stores of value such as gold, fiat currencies have lost >80% of their purchasing power in the last decade alone. Traditionally, gold has been a hedge against inflation, and during times of economic crisis, investors flock to assets such as gold to preserve value. Unlike fiat currency, it has limited supply and scarcity. Bitcoin shares both of these properties, as its maximum supply is finite, and it has “unforgeable scarcity” due to the costliness of its creation. Just like gold, new Bitcoin can’t be arbitrarily created as fiat currencies can. Moreover, Bitcoin is becoming more scarce as a result of the , a preprogrammed functionality of the Bitcoin protocol that reduces the rate of supply by 50% roughly every 4 years. Scarcity is not just a function of the current supply, the rate of supply is also a factor. Bitcoin’s annual inflation rate will also decrease to 1.8%, lower than the global average inflation, and lower than the inflation rate of Gold. May 2020 Bitcoin Halving This increase in scarcity can be modeled through or SF, the ratio between the amount of Bitcoin in existence (stock) and the amount that is created each year (flow). SF is used as a fundamental measure of value in precious metals, and was first applied to Bitcoin by pseudonymous analyst Plan B. Gold has the highest SF at 65, and after the 2020 Halving, Bitcoin’s SF will be 58, significantly higher than all precious metals other than gold. stock-to-flow Developing Countries: Weak Central Banks and Bitcoin Adoption Bitcoin’s potential as a store of value could be actualized first in developing nations with weak central banks. A COVID outbreak will devastate 3rd world countries, especially as the Southern Hemisphere heads into winter. Single-product economies such as Venezuela’s may collapse (again), leading to central bank failure and currency devaluation. Central banks in developing countries have a poor track record of curbing inflation. During colonialism, local currencies were pegged to the colonizer’s currency at fixed rates. Post-colonialism, from 1946–1971, money in developing countries was pegged to the US Dollar at fixed rates. This arrangement, known as the Bretton Woods system, fell apart in 1971 after the US abandoned the gold standard. During the ’70s, developing countries faced 3x higher inflation on average than their first-world counterparts. While the US was able to curb its inflation starting in the early ’80s, developing countries have seen average annual inflation of 75.7%. The Bretton Woods system and other post-colonial monetary exchange policies acted as barriers against inflation. The abandonment of the gold standard and collapse of the Bretton Woods system meant that central banks in these developing countries had to curtail inflation on their own. Objectively, most countries have failed miserably. Only a handful of developing nations with central banks haven’t experienced significant currency devaluation. Extreme cases of inflation include the Russian ruble, which is worth 1/4000th of its USD value in 1970, along with Venezuela, Argentina, and Zimbabwe, all of whom have experienced central bank failures. Monetary theorists maintain that “the best thing [developing countries] can do to reverse their poor monetary and economic performance of recent years is to abolish their discretionary central banks and fix their currencies to foreign currencies with relatively good records of low inflation.” Instead of foreign currencies with inflation, central banks in these countries may benefit by fixing their currencies to Bitcoin, the only money in the world. Countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina where central banks have failed are already seeing increased Bitcoin adoption. low deflationary Another possible avenue for Bitcoin adoption in developing countries rests on a modification of the Dollar Milkshake Theory, first posited by Brent Johnson, CEO of Santiago Capital. In a nutshell, Johnson purports that liquidity injected into the global financial system will all eventually be sucked into the US Dollar. However, the dollar isn’t globally accessible, as governments impose controls on exchange amounts. Since Bitcoin is more versatile than gold, and more accessible than the dollar, as anyone with a cell phone and internet access can own Bitcoin. Some portion of the liquidity injected into the global economy will find its way into Bitcoin. Looking Back, and Looking Forward COVID-19 has far-reaching economic impacts, and we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The economic shock of the 1970s was, at first, unsuccessfully combated with lower interest rates and increased money supply. It took a whole decade of rampant inflation and unemployment until policymakers enacted contractionary measures and raised interest rates, which ultimately brought stagflation to an end. The coronavirus pandemic has brought on the worst economic shock since the ’70s, and we’re reacting in the same way we initially did 50 years ago. Interest rates are reaching their lower bounds, and trillions of dollars in fiat currency are being created out of thin air. We’ve never pushed the fiat system to this extent, and it’s impossible to predict the long-term repercussions of the actions governments and central banks are taking. As BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes stated, “Inflation like this has been eradicated from our collective memories. Inflation has been low and stable for over 30 years and politicians and the public are unaware of the risks.” Bitcoin, as a construct outside existing financial systems, poses a potential solution to the fundamental problems with fiat money that have been created over the last 50 years. Its value as a hedge against inflation will shine as it undergoes quantitative tightening as a result of the 3rd Halving in May. We could see adoption in developing countries where central banks are likely to fail or have already failed. Smart-money sees this coming, and institutions are paying more attention to Bitcoin. Grayscale, which provides avenues for institutions to invest in crypto, reports $500M+ in new investment in Q1 2020, more than double the previous record.Bloomberg, in a recent report, commented on Bitcoin’s convergence with gold, furthering its narrative as a store of value. Bitcoin was created in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are setting the stage for Bitcoin’s greatest test yet. ( : ) Disclaimer The author works at Ryze

Helicopter Money, Inflation, and the Bitcoin Standard

Replacing miners and block producers with smart contracts. Smart Blockchain is the new generation of Blockchain networks that will allow one or more smart contracts to collect accurate and flawless data from the successful transactions of a decentralized network at the moment of transaction occurrence, and simultaneously storing and registering these data in new blocks. Smart Blockchain needs neither the financial institution nor intermediary, in addition, there will be no task to do for miners and block producers in this technology. In other words, within Smart Blockchain, always one or more smart contracts like a financial institution, free of charge and automatically record and store transactions ‘data in new blocks. The authors of the article are Ms. Somayyeh Gholami and Mr. Mehran Kazeminia and it is written in Persian and English versions in April 2019. Persian Article How does Smart Blockchain work? In Smart Blockchain, one or more Block Producer Smart Contract (BPSC) is present in the decentralized network, and no successful transaction is performed without BPSC involvement. For a successful transaction in the network, first, the sender must send the cryptocurrency to the wallet of BPSC and then BPSC sends cryptocurrency automatically to the receiver. This simple action has led the BPSC to have all network transactions’ data accurately and flawlessly and then as an accurate and trust financial institution, record transactions’ data into a new block and add this new block to the end of the blockchain and so there will be no tasks to assign to miners and block producers. Smart Blockchain Also, Smart Blockchain provides the possibility to classify transactions based on subject. For example, it allows trading of several types of cryptocurrency in a network consists of independent blockchains. This will be done by increasing the number of BPSCs in the network. The limitation and also important point is that transactions can be assigned to separate BPSCs that their subjects are not related to each other. For example, if we want a smart contract to give an award for every 100 LIKEs, so the Likes’ transactions and cryptocurrencies’ transactions of such project should be stored and registered by the single BPSC and into single Blockchain. For more information, you can read the following article: The elimination of miners and block producers by using smart contracts What are the benefits of Smart Blockchain? At the moment of transactions occurrence, the correct and flawless data of transactions are stored and registered. In this case, there is no need to generate some alternatives from a block like what they do in Bitcoin network, Ethereum network, etc., and then the miners choose the correct and valid block by spending so much money, consuming huge power electricity and using a variety of proof mechanisms. Staggering power consumption is the result of the use of the proof-of-work mechanism or the proof-of-stake mechanism, or….. Which Smart Blockchain does not require any of them at all. Unfortunately, the electricity consumption of one single bitcoin’s transaction is 200,000 times more than electricity consumption of a one single VISA’s transaction. The annual electricity consumption used to store and register the entire Bitcoin’s transactions is more than 50 terawatts (1 TWh = 3 600 000 000 000 000 J) that is equal to the annual power consumption of a country with ten million populations. The study was published in October 2018 on global climate change, which showed that in less than three decades, Bitcoin mining could increase global temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius. Fortunately, Smart Blockchain transactions and regular Visa Card transactions won’t differ on power consumption. The data stored by the BPSC is flawless because it is registered at the moment of the transaction occurrence automatically and without human interference. Smart Blockchain simply can end the nightmare of spending extra tens TWh electricity. Smart Blockchain By using Smart Blockchain, we should no longer be concerned about the fees of miners and block producers. BPSCs will automatically and freely carry out all the tasks of the miners. Also, Smart Blockchain scalability is not comparable to available one and can compete with the speed of Visa’s transactions. For additional information, you can read the following article: Bitcoin mining; Big little lies What is the use of Smart Blockchain? In networks like Ethereum, EOS, etc. which is possible to register and deploy the smart contracts, simply we can set up a dedicated blockchain for each new smart contract. In this way, as soon as the new smart contract is launched, a BPSC will be launched, and from the very beginning, all of the transactions of a smart contract will be stored and registered into the BPSC’s ledger. In this case, the dedicated blockchain will not need any data from Ethereum blockchain, EOS, etc., and it will work independently. Meanwhile, at coding, this BPSC can be coded and launched separately, or BPSC codes can be imported into the desired smart contract codes. First use: For each Ethereum networks, EOS, and etc. that allow registering and deploying the smart contracts, the whole existing Blockchains can be replaced with Smart Blockchain. To do this, after launching a dedicated BPSC into the network, the precise and final status of all existing wallet is to be made available to the BPSC, Also thereafter all the subsequent network transactions will be done via BPSC. Second use: If we want to use Smart Blockchain for networks such as Bitcoin which is not possible to set up any smart contract, we should first launch a new decentralized network that allows registration and deployment of smart contracts like the Ethereum network. Then, in this new network, we design and activate a block producer smart contract BPSC. After assuring of the functionality of BPSC on the new network, we must ask all Bitcoin owners to get the equivalent of their bitcoin, from the new Blockchain’s cryptocurrency, and at the same time, their initial bitcoin should be burned. These are done by the BPSC of a network, and the BPSC can record the initial balance of any wallet in the network and begin its work immediately. Third use: Smart Blockchain Smart Blockchain can be used to launch entirely new blockchain and certainly everything can be designed from scratch. Meanwhile, regarding the Smart Blockchain’s features, we might soon see one or more non-decentralized global networks that include all types of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts with independent blockchain. For more information, you can read the following article: Fourth use: Smart Blockchain; The rescue of Bitcoin and saving electricity more than 50TWh per year A simple example of Smart Blockchain We design Smart Blockchain on an active network; it means Ethereum Network and describe how the BPSC works: In the first stage, by registering and deploying a smart contract, we create one million AKA Token of the ERC20 type at once and all tokens will be in the wallet of the contract (AKA wallet). In this example, we want to set up a new blockchain to record transactions of these one million AKA Tokens. The new smart blockchain is completely independent and does not require main Ethereum’s blockchain data. It means that if the Ethereum blockchain was stopped for any reason, for example, the miners and block producers stopped working; the new Smart Blockchain will continue to work. The registration and deploying of the BPSC (Block Producer Smart Contract) is the next step. This contract has several main functionalities: AKA Tokens can be sent from the wallet of the senders only to the wallet of BPSC, and the BPSC will instantaneously send the token to the original receiver. By this simple method, BPSC, in the role of an accurate and trusted financial institution, will have transactions’ data. For data of each successful transaction, the BPSC ledger will be updated immediately. At the desired time interval, the BPSC adds new transactions’ data to the end of the chain as a new block. Smart Blockchain Assume that all AKA tokens are purchased by four persons in equal numbers. So you need to send two hundred fifty thousand AKA Token to each buyer. Of course, for doing this, first, the AKA tokens should be sent to the wallet of BPSC and BPSC will immediately send them to the wallet of the buyers. Now the BPSC can update its entire ledger and record the data of these transactions in the first block. In continuation, if one of the owners of Aka Token, for example, sells 100,000 Aka Tokens to another, the seller will still send the 100,000 Aka Token to BPSC and BPSC immediately sends Aka Tokens to the buyer. Anyway, no transaction is considered as a successful transaction without BPSC involvement, which is why BPSC can continuously update its ledger and record transactions’ data in the new blocks. Here’s the end of the article and we’re waiting for your comments. You can also use the link below for more information and access to the latest developments in Smart Blockchain Technology: Smart Blockchain Technology April 3, 2019 Somayyeh GholamiMehran Kazeminia | | Website Twitter Telegram

What is Smart Blockchain?

Finally, some clear answers. Simplifying the distinction between blockchains and cryptocurrencies, excerpted from Flipside Crypto’s guide on the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector . So what the f@$k are blockchains, really? Blockchains are digital public accounting systems in which transactions between users are stored in a secure, verifiable and permanent way. that make distributing data and trust in a decentralized fashion possible. Blockchains are the underlying technology and protocol Why is the blockchain even here? Blockchain is a mechanism that enables a world without intermediaries. Decades of financial regulation and experience have created a framework where trust financial institutions to process transactions and protect our data. we should However, this is nowhere near foolproof; see Wells Fargo, Equifax, Heartland, JP Morgan and CheckFree as prime examples. Instead of trusting central authorities to control each individual bank ledger like in the conventional financial system, the blockchain distributes account balances, verification, identity, and transactional flow — without any 3rd party. What is a blockchain node? Nodes are an international network of servers that host the cryptographic toolset which is the blockchain. They are distributed around the world, with no central authority controlling activities. Nodes must agree on a common set of rules (known as a “consensus protocol”) in order to create and stream valid data. In order to accept a new block of transactions for Bitcoin, miners have to show proof of valid work in order to get their “reward”: a block of Bitcoin and transaction fees for mining that block. Any individual can run a Bitcoin node on their . laptop _Miners, businesses, and privacy-conscious users rely on particular behavior from the full nodes they use, so they will…_bitcoin.org Running A Full Node - Bitcoin What is blockchain’s weakness? Because data and has to be distributed around a network of servers with no central control, every individual server has to store a copy of the data, and the entire network has to agree to new transactions before validating them. This makes the network more computationally expensive to run than a centralized data server. Blockchain’s biggest selling point — its distribution and lack of centralized governance — is also one of its biggest weaknesses: scalability and interoperability. What are the advantages of blockchain? Transactions are decentralized, so there are no intermediaries Transactions are immutable (unchangeable) once recorded on the distributed ledger Transactions on blockchains are transparent and public by default Transactions are non-reversible Anybody can examine the code or run a server that verifies blockchain transactions Differences between blockchain and traditional finance ? So wait, what the f*%k are cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies that are built on top of blockchains. Bitcoin is a that has its own . You’ve likely also heard of Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by trading volume. Ether is built on the Ethereum blockchain. In this case the cryptocurrency and blockchain unlike Bitcoin, are separately named. cryptocurrency blockchain — as a result, they have become investment vehicles that allow individual and institutional investors to invest in blockchains. Cryptocurrencies are the tokens of value that allow the underlying technology to capture the value of any applications built on top of it Key Features of Cryptocurrencies Built on top of blockchains Allow you to invest in the value of the underlying blockchain Can be traded on exchanges and between different users How do blockchains and cryptocurrencies really intersect? If TCP/IP were a blockchain, you’d need to access Facebook or Amazon or Netflix. InternetCoin would be the cryptocurrency while TCP/IP would be the protocol layer equivalent to the blockchain. You’d trade in and use it to access the services built on top of TCP/IP. InternetCoin InternetCoin The result? Instead of all of the value of Facebook accruing to Facebook shareholders, you’d actually have the protocol layer — gain and capture value through the use of cryptocurrencies. the technology Facebook is built on — TL;DR Blockchains are a decentralized and distributed data protocol. Cryptocurrencies are tokens of value built on top of blockchains that allow you to ascribe value from the underlying technology. Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are separate but related concepts. Want more content like this? Check out Flipside Crypto’s guide to blockchain and cryptocurrencies!

What the Hell are the Differences Between Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies?

Financial Censorship: 5 Global Cases and How Crypto Can Help You Avoid It

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Censura financiera: cinco casos globales y cómo las criptomonedas pueden ayudarte a evitarla

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Financial services are defined by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as processes by which consumers or businesses acquire financial goods. It involves a wide range of economic activities provided by the finance industry, such as banking, investing, and insurance. The financial services sector is classed as one of the most important within the global economy and is for the most part the primary driver of national economies. It has a direct influence on the prosperity of a country’s population. Despite its positive impact, history has shown that the financial services sector has also played a negative role in causing global recessions and poverty when incorrectly managed, and hence can produce disastrous results. Blockchain technology can have a significant impact on the financial services sector in many different ways and can provide overall benefits for governments, companies, and individuals alike. In this article, we will discuss the benefits that blockchain technology may bring into the financial services sector from both a company and a regulatory perspective. Challenges in Financial Services The financial crisis that occurred back in 2008 was primarily caused by deregulation in the financial industry. Hence, due to the lack of regulation and supervision, it resulted in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, causing a disastrous impact on the global economy. More recently, the case of Wirecard, a German payment provider that fraudulently lost €1.9 billion and filed for bankruptcy in 2020 [ ], highlighted once again how important it is that companies; in particular financial companies, abide by the rules and regulations in place. This recent case also illustrates how difficult it can be for the financial services industry to conduct verifiable auditing and adhere to the regulatory requirements. 1 However, in today's globalized world it has also become more and more difficult for globally operating financial firms to comply with the different and ever-changing regulations in the markets they operate in. As the world becomes more interconnected, the number of international payments has also increased consistently over the past years [ ]. Cross-border payments involve a large number of intermediaries that process every transaction to provide trust between the different parties. Consequently, transferring money between different countries is not only expensive but also somewhat cumbersome. Cross border payments can take up to five days, with domestic payments also not being settled instantly. 2 Similarly, the issuance and trade of financial securities, such as shares and bonds are also sluggish. The issuance of securities usually involves many stakeholders and hence, is complex and time-consuming. Buying and selling securities requires settlements to be performed and can take several business days before clearance can be realized. This slow process prohibits financial institutions and their clients from moving quickly and adapting to changes. This is expensive and creates risks for both parties wishing to execute a transaction. Client onboarding plays an important role in the relationship of financial institutions, such as banks and their clients, and generally refers to welcoming processes to their services. This is usually a lengthy process as it involves the verification of identity, suitability, and risk of engaging in a business partnership with the client. This process is also defined as ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC). It can take anywhere between two to twelve weeks until a client is fully onboarded [ ], and results in incurring additional costs to both parties. Despite the drawbacks of the KYC process, no other alternative has prevailed until now. 3 The challenges to the financial services sector do not end here. Certainly, other problems such as fraud, human error, disintegrated systems, and bad access in some rural areas also need to be considered. However, this article will focus on the previously mentioned challenges and will investigate how blockchain can assist in overcoming these obstacles. Benefits for Enterprises Blockchain technology can have a significant impact on solving these challenges, as it has the ability to benefit regulators, financial institutions, and individuals in many ways. The key characteristics of blockchain technology, , play a primary role in this context. decentralization and immutability Decentralization means that data stored on the blockchain is visible to everyone, and immutability refers to the fact that this data cannot be tampered with or changed by an individual. In addition, blockchain transactions have now become programmable and automated. These very important features lay the foundation for in ways that have never before been attainable in the financial service sector. efficiency, transparency, and security Blockchain facilitates better compliance Blockchain technology can improve private regulatory compliance and assist regulators by making financial services more transparent. Financial institutions can receive an all-encompassing overview and a single source of truth of their assets and transactions, which results in making the entire auditing process easier and cheaper. Regulators can have direct access to compliance-related data stored on a blockchain and can spot irregularities early on to avoid unpleasant surprises, such as occurred with the Wirecard fiasco. Storing compliance-related information on a blockchain also reduces the cost and efforts of regulatory reporting and results in higher quality and accuracy. Blockchain enables faster and less expensive payments Blockchain technology can facilitate direct and secure payments, both domestically and internationally with few or even no intermediaries. In addition, blockchain can streamline the process and reduce the cost significantly as a result. Another key benefit is that it lowers the transaction time from hours to seconds [ ]. According to a study by Jupiter Research, blockchain deployments will enable banks to save up to $27 billion on cross-border settlement transactions by the end of 2030, therefore reducing costs by more than 11% [ ]. 4 5 Blockchain allows a smoother client onboarding Blockchain technology can allow users to store and manage their personal data on a blockchain. This is often referred to as Digital Identity Verification. During an onboarding process, the client could easily provide the financial institution with the verified personal information, and in turn speed up the onboarding process significantly. Blockchain makes the issuance and trade of financial securities cheaper and faster Blockchain technology can have a large impact on the capital market which enables the issuance and trade of financial securities, such as shares and bonds, and is used by companies to raise funds. Using blockchain technology, it is possible to issue and trade digital securities instantly, coupled with being cheaper and with fewer or no intermediaries. Finally, blockchain technology enables more customization of digital securities. Blockchain makes trade finance more transparent and efficient As global trade is growing, trade finance which represents the financial instruments and products that allow trading to take place, is becoming more and more vital in today’s world. Blockchain technology has the possibility to make trade more secure, efficient, and transparent by replicating the whole process on a blockchain. This in turn culminates in faster processes being expediently automated, and further ensures human errors can be eliminated, resulting in the creation of trust through open transparency. Blockchain enables new ways of funding Blockchain technology enables new ways of sourcing capital, such as tokenization, initial coin offerings (ICOs), and initial exchange offerings (IEO). Tokenization refers to the securitization of digital assets, and is a process in which blockchain tokens are issued to represent real-world assets, such as real estate. A key benefit here is that smaller investors can have access to these assets as they can be divided into more diminutive granular pieces. An ICO is a practice of fundraising for blockchain projects, wherein tokens or cryptocurrencies are offered to investors before they are listed on the wider marketplace, such as exchanges, to raise capital for a business idea. Most recently, IEOs became a more popular alternative to raise funds in contrast to the independently organised ICOs. Briefly, an IEO is a coin offering that is administered by a cryptocurrency exchange, which in turn offers the investor a more secure and safer regulated environment. Blockchain Technology Applied The first use-cases involving blockchain technology appeared within the currency and payment realm. The most prominent case was Bitcoin in 2009. Since then, many financial services companies have started to invest in blockchain technology. According to IBM, 91% of banks were investing in blockchain solutions by 2018 [ ]. The five largest banks of Spain belong to this group. 6 Iberpay - Blockchain for smart payments [ 7 ] The five largest Spanish banks - Banco Sabadell, Banco Santander, Bankia, BBVA, and CaixaBank collaborated with Iberpay on the development of a proof of concept blockchain application. This application facilitates automatic digital payments via smart contracts only if predefined conditions have been met. For instance, a smart contract can be used for the confirmation of shipped goods and can initiate an automatic payment over the blockchain. As part of the proof of concept, a private blockchain network called ‘red-I’ was created to facilitate the transactions between the banks. It consisted of a total of seven operating nodes. Over the course of the project, over 20,000 payments were facilitated on the blockchain network with an average confirmation time of 2.5 seconds. [ ] 8 The pilot project successfully finished in 2020 and according to bank representatives, “has confirmed the viability of employing blockchain technology to the payments sector” [ ]. In the future, a second project will be initiated, which aims to establish a connection between the ‘red-I’ and various other non-banking networks [ ]. 9 10 Benefits of the initiative Faster and automatic execution of transactions. More traceability and integrity for payments. Confirmed applicability for blockchain technology in the payment sector. Financial Services Proof of Concept Built with Lisk Blockchain technology can offer numerous benefits in the financial services industry. You can already build payment blockchain applications with the Lisk SDK. The proof of concept developed by Jurre Machielsen is a decentralized system that creates deterministic contracts between parties and enables automatic payments. The can assist enterprises and developers in developing blockchain applications for financial services. Recurring Payments Lisk Builders program References Wirecard Cross-boarder payments Client onboarding Transaction time Blockchain Deployments Financial services Digital Payments pilot PoC interbank payments Blockchain technology on payments sector Connection between 'red-I' and other non-banking networks

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