Programmable money will be the trigger for governments to adopt blockchain
The original blockchain use case – bitcoin – involved making payments while circumventing government and banks. So there’s some irony that its latest local use case involves a big government agency and the country’s largest financial institution adapting the original blockchain to control how government payments are spent. But blockchain innovation is full of surprises. Like the internet itself, what was briefly a rebellious technology is fast becoming mainstream. The Australian Financial Review revealed today that Commonwealth Bank and the CSIRO’s Data61 unit have teamed up on a pilot that could see targeted payments made by the National Disability and Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The blockchain will be a private version […]
CBA and Data61 join forces to create ‘smart money’
The Commonwealth Bank and CSIRO’s Data61 have joined forces to create “smart money” using blockchain technology, which has the potential to reduce fraud and revolutionise government programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In an initial proof-of-concept called Making Money Smart, the organisations have created programmable money by using smart contracts on a private blockchain, allowing conditions to be applied to the way the money is spent. CBA’s head of experimentation and blockchain, Sophie Gilder, told The Australian Financial Review the NDIS was a logical scheme to apply smart money to because of the number of rules, the scale and the lack of transparency and manual reconciliation that takes […]
Fintech Investment Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2018-2025
Global Fintech Investment Market to reach USD 152.94 billion by 2025. Global Fintech Investment Market valued approximately USD 39.6 billion in 2017 is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than 18.40% over the forecast period 2018-2025. The growth of an alternative business model that can both replace and complement traditional payment practices is a key growth driver for the fintech market growth. Major banks are helping to incubate, invest in, or partner with FinTech companies. For instance, Oradian, a software provider caters to organizations that offer financial services to low-income individuals. Oradian develops core systems that help microfinance institutions manage their clients efficiently and facilitates day-to-day […]
South Australian Premier Steven Marshall hopes to build blockchain hive
South Australian Premier Steven Marshall is eyeing the blockchain technology industry as one of the future growth engines of the state’s economy and wants a cluster of companies to eventually settle in a hub on the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital. Mr Marshall said there was a first-mover advantage to be had in such a young industry and he wanted to grasp it. However, he would not be offering any financial incentives to entice individual companies to set up on a part of the former hospital site known as Lot 14, which is being promoted as an incubator of technology and creative industries on a prime city site […]
The crypto world is going wild for ‘stablecoins’ — here’s everything you need to know about them
The latest innovation in the fast-moving world of cryptocurrencies is the “stablecoin” – cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world assets such as the dollar or gold. A report from crypto wallet provider Blockchain released this week found that “the number of active stablecoin projects has dramatically increased over the past 12-18 months and more than a dozen project teams have stated they plan to launch in the coming weeks/months.” There are now over 50 in development globally. Here’s everything you need to know about the hottest new area of crypto: What is a stablecoin? “Stablecoins” are cryptocurrencies whose prices are linked to a real-world asset. In theory, they could be linked to […]
Bitcoin Price: Is blockchain cryptocurrency still the future?
It’s highly volatile, can be extremely risky, and is something most have heard of but don’t know much about. And after a horror 12 months which saw Bitcoin plunge by more than 60 percent most investors who were bold enough to invest are now wondering if they will ever reap any reward from their investments. While nothing in economics is certain, those who trade and invest are fairly confident it will happen but not straight away. According to Fred Schebesta, Co-Founder of Finder-backed cryptocurrency financial services company HiveEx.com, crypto is basically digital gold and like the real thing, is more of a long-term investment. Mr Schebesta admits the high risk […]
Australian Fintech heavyweight to launch institutional-grade security token exchange in Malta
Rick Klink the founder of Paritech and OpenMarkets, Australia’s largest independent trading platform by trading volume of over AUD50 billion per annum, heads up Malta Digital Exchange (MDX) and brings his ground-breaking technology to the digital asset space. The cryptocurrency and blockchain sector saw exponential growth in 2017, now a push towards regulation will provide trust and a safe environment for institutional investors, allowing them to participate in the global economy. Security tokens are the next generation of regulated securities, which are being built on blockchain-based infrastructure rather than being restricted to legacy systems. MDX aims to become the world’s premier security token exchange, which will enable greater market efficiency, […]
CSIRO and the University of Sydney’s Red Belly Blockchain breaks new ground for speed
The University of Sydney and CSIRO’s Data61 say they have successfully created a blockchain that can process a mass amount of transactions significantly more quickly than public blockchains, such as the one behind bitcoin. New trials of the Red Belly Blockchain run on Amazon Web Services infrastructure have shown an average transaction delay of only three seconds and a throughput of 30,000 transactions per second. In comparison, bitcoin processes only three to seven transactions per second and as of August had an average confirmation time for a transaction of 10-30 minutes (during peak trading periods in January this has reached as high as almost 3000 minutes per transaction), according to […]