Blockchain 2.0 – Walking the talk

Blockchain has opened a whole new dimension for Financial services as well as Technology players enabling new industry collaborations. Frost & Sullivan has just completed a recent report on APAC Fintech opportunities where we highlight Blockchain as an important development enabling new use cases in APAC.

Had the opportunity to moderate a very interesting panel discussion on the topic last week at the Fintech Innovation Forum with some very well-known startup founders who are already making waves in the region.

The panelists included :

– David Moskowitz – CEO/Co-founder , Attores which enables documents and data to be securely shared using smart contracts and Blockchain technology

Marcelo Casil – Co-founder & CEO, DX Markets which integrates Blockchain technology into enterprise-based financial processes, increasing efficiency and reducing cost

Paul Kittiwongsunthorn -Co-founder & COO, OnePay – which makes sending & spending money (and cryptocurrencies) for free around the world

Mano Thanabalan- Head of Development – Otonomos – which helps in incorporating companies by simply opening a digital share wallet on the Blockchain

Started the discussion by asking for a simple explanation of Blockchain which will be simple enough for my grandmother to understand .

The panel deliberated a bit and came up with 3 features to explain Blockchain:

• Blockchain allows Person to person transaction
• No intermediary authentication ( hence no banks or financial firms needed )
• Secure

Then moved on to the confusion /misconception between Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies

The panelists went on to highlight that Blockchain is the enabling infrastructure , the decentralised ledger which enables Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin . While cryptocurrencies are the visible part which gets seen by the people, Blockchains are the secret sauce or the infrastructure which enable that use case.

Again all panelists agreed that Cryptocurrencies are the most visible or popular use cases of Blockchain but new use cases are emerging and all of them are trying to find a niche in these new use cases.

Some interesting comments from the panelists

Marcelo – ” Blockchains are still at a very preliminary stage. To compare to internet in the early 90s , i had an email address but i could do nothing with it because nobody else had email. So for a while i was the only geek who used to use email. But once internet started becoming popular , people could see the benefit of email and the network effect kicked in. We will soon see such a network effect in case of Blockchain as we see new use cases for Blockchain

Mano – “We see new use cases for simplification in Insurance and Healthcare, P2P remittances etc.

Paul – “Blockchains enable a new way of validation .One of the significant aspects in today’s P2P transfer ( e.g remittances ) is the spread and with Blockchain this can be addressed to a large extent.”

David – “Regarding regulation we are still a long way to go. Singapore is taking the lead with concepts like Sandboxing but we are just starting on the journey in other countries.”

Some other new use cases discussed by panelists included Smart contracts,e-KYC for banks and also extending the same KYC infrastructure by government agencies for citizen services.

Also, one recent development in Blockchains – Permission based Blockchain as a potential disruptor. The panelists saw the need for that in private Blockchains and some of the use cases for Financial institutions like large MNC banks. In the end, will ultimately depend on the use cases.

It definitely is interesting times ahead for Blockchain.

So appreciate the Panelists -David, Paul, Mano and Marcelo spending the time and sharing their views/insights.

Incase anyone is interested to know more about the APAC Fintech landscape we have a Frost & Sullivan Briefing on 3rd November.

https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/5567/226557

Please feel free to register and look forward to discussing more on this in future.