Australia pushes ISO for blockchain standards
Australia’s peak standard-setting body, Standards Australia, is calling on the International Standards Organisation to begin work on global standards for blockchain. The organisation has asked the Geneva-based ISO to begin working on standards for blockchain, the technology behind digital currency bitcoin, offering the assistance of Australian expertise. The ASX has recently taken a stake in New York-based Digital Asset Holdings, which is working on the potential to use its blockchain technology to help replace its CHESS sharemarket clearing system, while the Australian banks are also reviewing the potential uses of the distributed ledger technology. “We have had sufficient stakeholder support to put this proposal to the ISO,” Standards Australia’s acting […]
Financial planner and bitcoin entrepreneur launch new robo-advice business
Perth-based financial planner David Pettit has teamed up with well-known Australian bitcoin entrepreneur Zhenya Tsvetnenko to fund and develop a new robo-advice platform that will advise users how to plan their financial lives. Mr Pettit, the founder and managing director of boutique Perth advice firm Advocate Private Wealth, and Young Richlister Mr Tsvetnenko conceived Future Penny six months ago, and have both personally invested, with a range of other investors, to give it $500,000 in development capital. Future Penny would be the latest player in the burgeoning robo-advice sector, which provides financial advice to users generated by algorithms. It will provide information across a broad range of areas including budgeting, […]
Four steps to make Australia a fintech powerhouse
There are four policy mechanisms every Australian state and federal government should be “majoring in” in order to build a globally competitive fin tech industry, according to the CEO of fintech hub Stone and Chalk, Alex Scandurra. He says Australia has all the basic ingredients, but lacks critical mass and the cultural focus that has built a successful fintech industry in England. 1. Tax incentives “Unlike parts of the United States, we’re very similar to the United Kingdom in the we have a really big base of high net worths in Australia, but tech is foreign to them, and fintech is even more foreign to them,” he says. “They don’t […]