Gratuitous Star Wars reference
1. Blockchain Collaboration: Open Source and more
The Linux Foundation this week announced a collaborative open source effort focused on delivering an enterprise grade blockchain base layer fit for purpose for business. We at R3 are pleased to participate, as both a founding member and key voice in the formation group, as this Linux-led collaboration fits well within our wider open source strategy.
McKinsey this week released a report entitled Beyond the hype: Blockchains in capital markets
Distributed ledgers, or blockchains, have the potential to dramatically reshape the capital markets industry, with significant impact on business models, reductions in risk and savings of cost and capital.
The full report can be requested here. The main take away was that the potential for shared ledgers will only be unlocked when they are shared widely "through cooperation among market participants, regulators and technologists." To that end, we have announced 12 additional banks to our group and our intention to expand our engagement to other financial markets sectors.
2. (Some) Weekend Read Highlights from 2015
As this will be our final post of 2015, I decided to take a quick look back at some of the favorite articles that we shared in our (mostly) weekly postings. The review itself reminded me once again how quickly things move and, honestly, how little we know collectively on where it all will end up. Enjoy the below, have a great holiday and thanks for reading. -Todd
General Blockchain Articles
- The Trust Machine and The great chain of being sure about things by The Economist
- Blockchain in the Investment Bank by Accenture
- BITCOIN: WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW BUT ALWAYS WANTED TO ASK by Johann Palychata (BNP Paribas)
- Blockchain for Banks Probably Can't Hurt by Matt Levine
Fedcoin et al.
- Fedcoin: On the Desirability of a Government Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and central banking by David Andolfatto
- On the idea of a digital currency issued by a central bank by Ken Tindell
- Fedcoin—how banks can survive blockchains by Deutsche Bank
Other Required Readings
- Consensus-as-a-service: a brief report on the emergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems by Tim Swanson
- A SIMPLE MODEL FOR SMART CONTRACTS by Richard Brown
- On Public and Private Blockchains by Vitalik Buterin
- The Financial Cloud: How The Block Chain Will Change Wall Street by Adam Ludwin vs No, Bitcoin is not the future of securities settlement by Robert Sams
- The Death of Bitcoin by Tony Arcieri
- Building a universal ledger. To blockchain or not to blockchain by Ben Milne
- Blockchains and Banks by David Galbraith