Future Blockchain Summit Dubai
opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfvfoV7tvo
Yesterday @Aisha_BinBishr said something that opened my eyes - she said that blockchain would make Dubai more efficient - and save everyone time spent on dealing with government
Last year CNN said that Kim Jong Un would be a big beneficiary from bitcoin, both mining it and North Korean receiving ransomware payments in bitcoin
What we created in Bella Gaia was a combination of data visualisation and music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntJh6aG2DX0
We need to build a culture of conscience around blockchain
we are entering a 4th Industrial Age where technology is ubiquitous. Blockchain is the 2nd era of the internet, moving from the internet of information to the internet of value
the double spend problem is "how when you move something of value do you not leave a copy behind?" we have solved this with middlemen historically.
why do you need a thousand cryptocurrencies? Surely one is enough? there are 7 kinds of asset classes here
1. Cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash, Dash and Bitcoin Cash
2. Platforms - Ethereum, nem, icon etc - distributed execution of smart contracts; ethereum has also become the proto investment bank for this whole industry
3. Utility tokens - these run on ethereum and are used to pay for computation - eg the golem token
4. security tokens- like an equity or bond moved onto the blockchain. These work best when there is no underlying commodity, just a contract.
I believe that in the next 5 years all stock trades will move into security tokens
5. Natural asset tokens - representing an underlying commodity asset in a contract
6. Crypto collectibles - like cryptokitties and rare pepe - each one is unique and tradeable
7. Crypto-fiat currencies and stablecoins - fiat is issued by a government; stablecoins are tied to an underlying asset like a dollar or gold
venezuala claims that their Petra is backed by oil, but there is no evidence that this is true.
Regulators must be careful not to pass Red flag acts - requiring a man to walk in front of a steam car to wave a red flag to not scare the horses
a vote is kind of like a payment - you want to ensure that it is sent only once and counted.
the man who invented chess asked for a grain of rice for the first square doubling for each square - blockchain is like that [that story is a metaphor for why exponential growth is a lousy economic model]
I lead the IBM blockchain business
Blockchain is here, it's real, and it is changing everyday life.
Disruptors are the agents of change - people who come with big ideas and bring them to bear on countries, regions and our planet. They are heroes
they're not heroes by coding in a basement, but by bringing people together in communities to effect change
blockchain is about 80% business and 20% technology and the technology should be in service of the business idea
David Katz has created plastic bank - enabling the worlds poor to get tokens by taking plastic out of the oceans
Twiga Foods bets on blockchain to make microloans to kenyan street vendors
IBM Food Trust™ is tracking how food moves from the farm to your table - simplifying tracking from 7 days down to 2.5 seconds
AT IBM we're focused on a new breed of blockchain, grown fromt he legacy of cryptocurrencies
we want a blockchain with accountability - knowing who you're trading with, privacy, scalability and security
we have published a founders handbook - it says you need 3 things:
1. Scope - dream big, but act incrementally
2. Motivation - tokens are a great way to motivate a community
3. Governance - the whole is bigger than the parts - blockchain enables competitors towork together
we are looking for blockchain disruptors and making them discoverable so we can join forces to change the world
What will we solve together? @ibmblockchain
The Chamber of Digital Commerce promotes the accceptance of blockchain
we have over 160 member companies
We are here to talk about tokenisation - Bitcoin was the first token, but now any asset can be tokenized and traded on the blockchain
we're going to talk about some of the different types of tokens, and our framework for issuing and generating them
We have a taxonomy of tokens. Not all tokens are associated wiht ICOs - any asset whether tangible or intangible can be represented in token form
tokens can be utility, security, commodity, currency or hybrid
The carribbean really takes the cake in the amount of money invested in token projects
multiple US agencies may be able to regulate tokens- the FTC, the SEC, FinCEN, IRS, OFAC, FINRA, FTC and then the 50 states
The Token Alliance is designed to set standards for token issuing and have recruited former regulators to advise on token regulation
we want tot make sure that the average person ahs the tools they need to participate in this new markets
we are at digitalchamber.org
my background has been in the open source community for over 20 years - how do we bring people and companies together to build stadnards through shared sooftware
we think that hyperledger will be the linux of blockchain - it is part of the linux foundation
every android phone, most supercomputers and servers and every chromebook runs linux now
the goal is to build on shared infrsatructrue without any company feeling that they have to own it
the linux foundation has expanded beyond linux to different technology domains - eg kubernetes and letsencrypt
we take the role of being the plumbers, so that if we do our job right you don't know we exist
linux is 26 years old and still sees active development -10,000 line of code added a week, 5,000 removed and 25,000 changed
we think of software likr apps as disposable, but frameworks need to last and you need an organisation to support them
hyperledger started a couple of years ago as a way of creating shared infrsatructure for ledgers thata re more than just coins
lets take these raw ideas and put them on aconveyor belt to becoming industrially reliable platforms
to do that you need to build multilateral multistakeholder communities to help them outlast single company's interest
2 of our porjects - sawtooth and fabric - are now enterprise ready
it's not just big companies that support us but a lot fo startups too, in areas like aerospace and healthcare, banks as well as Smart Dubai as a memeber
permissionless public bitcoin - permissionless private- polls, permissioned public: land title; degrees; permissioned private: medical records
we have a network of ledgers that solve different needs - just as apps can use multiple APIs to connect domains
we're focused on everything except enduser applications - not app layer or customer apps
hyperledger Fabric is the grandaddy of our projects - it is one of the 2 key platforms that Smart Dubai has adopted
one example is the Digital Trade Chain connecting Detsche Bank, HSBC and others and managing international trade
the Diamond Supply Chain is in production - provenance tracking to avoid blood diamonds and conflict diamonds - tracks millions of diamonds
Hyperledger Sawtooth - its like the Cassandra to Fabric's MySQL
a use case here is tracking seafood tracking to verify claims for waere fisha re caught
dotblokchainmedia is using sawtooth to track music rights too
Hyperledger Indy is focused on self-sovereign identity, that keeps information more local to individuals rather than in centralised repositories
the 6 largest banks in the Philippines are using Indy to build a KYC system
Hyperledger Burrow is a business transaction framework for smart contracts
Hyperledge Quilt is a toolkit for the interledger protocol that correlates transactions between different ledgers to make atomic transactions
Hyperledger has a Governing board chaired by Blyth Masters of Digital Asset and a Technical steering committee
We also have a Marketing Committee
I'd like to illustrate this by talking about healthcare records- use the ledger to track who has what bits of data, but the actual healthcare data is kept off the ledger
if you publish data to a public ledger you can't claw that back - a public blockchain or smart contract is not revocable
Community contracts like HIPAA and GDPR can't be expressed as smart contracts - they still need governance
we want Minimum Viable Centralization - how do we stop the convenor of the agreements from becoming rent seeking?
the best example of this so far is the domain name system and ICANN
ICANN delegates out the registration to registrars who follow tehchnical standards and he Uniform Domain Name resolution protocol
Software should never be the basis for enforcing hegemony
we have a free introduction to hyperledger course on EdX
I am the chairman and MD of Relam investments - we focus on technology and evolve through innovation
we invest in blockchain because every businessman wants a secure environment - their data in safe hands, with encrypted , distributed management systems
AI is booming along with blockchain - we need to reduce human interaction and mitigate business risk
we invest in blockchain enhancers - that support the platform and make it more efficient
we are launching a trade hub - a logistics platform; a real estate crowdfunding platform; and a customer service app
my main focus is on energy and blockchain
We set up outlier ventures - the first european blockchain investor firm - we think about convergence with IOT
I am director investment in ICOs at an bank here in Dubai - we need to create an integrated system between old and new technology
What are the opportunities for blockchain from an investor or VC viewpoint?
it's still early days - blochchain feels like 1994 for the internet. most of the money will be made using blockchain ratehr than building it
we are investing in next generation internet protocols that are tokenized
we have a visoin for the web 3 stack - the web is lacking decentralised identity, self-sovereignty of identity and data
if you look oat IOTA it was built for distributed IoT
We still don't know what the best case use for blockchain yet -it's like space or the wild west.
Most ICOs are like marbles now, you cna stack them a bit but they will fall off. they need to be more like lego to plug better
we need to think about the regulatory tools - we need to regulate use cases
we shoudl invest in enhancers of the blockchain, not the tool itself
We have seen a lot of volatility in the ICO market recently - is it too volatile for institutional investors?
all the senior partners are waiting on the sidelines to enter this market, but there is not enough liquidity for them - they will break the market when they come in
what is going to change is that the web 3 will break up the monopolies of web 2.0, but we have also given a printing press to everyone, and they are making bad mony
projects thata re looking to embed game theory and behavioral economics are going to be a huge investment opportunity
some VCs have worked around the investment rules to invest in tokens. last year there was a 1000% growth that made everyone looked good
the hedge funds will come in and crash this
there are ways to invest in comapny that has a cap table the defines how future tokens will be distributed
a lot of the volatility is there because they don't understand the technology, they are just looking for arbitrage
also people like making money from volatility now - we are now thinking about inflation management and scaled relase
but those tokens are like Candy Crush currencies which only work inside your company
anyone can build an economy and program rules into money for the first time
you do have to think about the regulatory environment,
what are you looking for in an investment, and pick one company
we want to invest in coins that are regulated, and governments are moving towards this
I want to see a real value add from a company - look at the supply chain for a real use case. It's going to be more regulated.
3 companies that illustrate our convergence thesis - we have Fetch a smart ledger wih machine learning inbuilt
we also liek Sovrin enabling verifiable claims and slef soverign identiy
and Ocean protocols
we invest in equity, only rarely in tokens and I'll pick Trendy and
We have a platform called Foodwatch that looks at safely information along the food processing chain so the consumer can know the source of teir foood
blockchain is the best technology for us to trace back the information about the food with more transpareecny
we want to predict a food supply problem before it happens