The say blockchain is the internet, all over again.

Some truth in it.

Back then, nearly 20+ years ago, when we told people we develop web-based retail management system, we got questions like

“How much is a PC now ah? Which PC brand is the best to buy now?”

Vague among hardware, software, and world wide web / internet, so to speak.

Recently, the questions we got become something like

“Bitcoin (still) can buy or not ah? Any alt coins can recommend ah?”

Vague among blockchain, bitcoin, and money.

From transfer of information to transfer of value.

Few understand. And I still learning.

p/s: Thank God for the blessings to have able to write something about this few years back. (Links below).

Information are free.

It’s what we do with the knowledge we gain that matters.

God bless and all the best.

DYOR – Do Your Own Research

Chapter 1: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money

To explore Blockchain,
you need to study Bitcoin.
To understand Bitcoin,
you need to know what is money and how it works.

Chapter 2: The Name of The Game

All things blockchain, ledger technology, and cryptocurrencies.

If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.

I don’t know the future.

I didn’t write this to tell you how this is going to end.

I write about how it all begins.

I’m going to show you a world without boundaries. A world where anything is possible.

Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you.

Chapter 3: Smart Money

What we have now is truly borderless, programmable money
backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

The post Understanding Bitcoin or Simply Buy Sell? appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Just imagine really cheap renewable energy driving down cost of everything, and efficient distribution of wealth through emerging technologies.

We are most likely the generation blessed enough to witness a new monetary system in our life span, though not that of a money-less society as portrayed in Star Trek: First Contact (1996). 

Note: Thank you bro Rashdan Ramlee for the input.

A Money-less Society

As written in Blockchain Insider chapter 1: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money:

A new kind of trust will be implemented, as we are moving towards a moneyless society.

Our upcoming generations shall see a ​moneyless​ future.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century.

Lily Sloane: No money? You mean, you don’t get paid?

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. Actually, we’re all like yourself and Dr. Cochrane.

~ Star Trek: First Contact (1996)17

While the future remains unknown, it is quite promising.

News Background: China starts major trial of state-run digital currency

The e-RMB has reportedly been adopted into the monetary systems of several cities.

A sovereign digital currency provides a functional alternative to the dollar settlement system and blunts the impact of any sanctions or threats of exclusion both at a country and company level.

It may also facilitate integration into globally traded currency markets with a reduced risk of politically inspired disruption.”

China Daily report

Reported by Lillian Yang, The Guardian

Image from Other Perspectives

The post A Post-Scarcity Society appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Pardon my English, I grow up in a Commonwealth country under legacy of British education system watching Hollywood movies.

This is more like a compilation of thoughts, notes and interesting points over past year, with some restructuring and put into a more organized way. There is definitely some hidden gems but you may got to work your own way out as you read through.

Last but not least, I accept crypto rewards if you think this work is beneficial and would like to further support my work besides sharing the links of these info out. I am a supporter of cryptocurrency and walk the talk by accepting token of appreciations in crypto form.

Anyhow, I put it up for free views over Slideshare (as embedded below).

Smart Money

This is the best of times, this is the worst of times.

What we have now is truly borderless, programmable money backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

– A Century of Technology Innovation
– Two Monetary Worlds
– Three Phases of Cryptocurrencies

From Corporate Currency to Sovereign Cryptocurrency (CBDC, Central Bank-issued Digital Currency), the fundamentals of AI driven, Blockchain based Cognitive resources management system powered by data: Programmable / Smart Money

After all, money makes the world goes round.

The post Smart Money appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Let alone the debatable argument of whether a city is legally being allowed or going to issue its own cryptocurrency (in other words, ‘print’ and circulate its own money in the digital form) as we going through the three phases of cryptocurrency, keep in mind that what we have now is truly borderless, programmable money backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

Good news is, we do have cities issuing their own cryptocurrency. For instance, the Belfast Coin – the fourth in the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities project. In contrast to Colu’s coins in London, Liverpool and Israel, Belfast Coin will contain an incentive element, rewarding participants for performing tasks such as civic volunteering.

City Currency

As such, City Currency – a city-wide digital currency – can be used to motivate residents towards impactful positive behaviors, including increased local spending, healthy living, recycling, civic activity and beyond. Stated by Dan Kosky in his article:

“City Currency provides a rewards mechanism, which follows a similar economic logic to frequent-flier miles programs. However, unlike these programs, it promotes city interests, according to their specific needs. The incentives offered through City Currency can be tailored and purpose-built to meet the particular needs of each city. It allows cities to engage residents, local businesses and institutions through their everyday transactions, empowering them to achieve specific goals.”

The experience in drafting the Blueprint for The Development of SDG Progress Monitoring System for Department of Statistics Malaysia was a great one as I worked along with great people from both the government agency and the technical team. The key concept planted in the blueprint is that data is the new oil. It is possible to bring that economic value out of vast data we have today in a better connected world, as we reach out to the edges of the network through better technologies.

Rewarding citizens for good behaviors and contributive actions to solving global issues is not an isolated move nor something new. Besides Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities project, the United Nation, through its Climate Neutral Now initiative is working with W-Foundation, a global relief and conservation organization to promote sustainability and climate action through a gamified mobile social network application. Completion of the missions on the app generate “mission points”, which are used to competitively rank the users on a monthly basis. As an incentive to encourage enthusiastic participation and voluntary generation of useful greenhouse gas emissions reduction data, the top 20% are rewarded each month with WGP (W Green Pay), a blockchain currency.

Exerpt from the Blockchain Insider book project, Chapter 3: Smart Money.

Completed Chapters:
Chapter 1: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money
Chapter 2: The Name of The Game

The post City Currency appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

The key is programmable money.

What we have now is truly border-less, programmable money backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

Effective resource allocation and distribution can be achieved through cognitive AI system and business process automation.

Two Monetary World and The Exchanges

There are 2 types of exchanges related to the crypto world at the time of writing:

• Fiat Exchanges (USD), and
• Crypto-to-Crypto Exchanges

Fiat Exchanges convert your fiat currency to crypto, that means depositing USD (or your country’s currency) with an exchange in order to get BTC (Bitcoin) or ETH (Ether). Some of the famous exchanges under this category are Coinbase, CoinMama, Kraken,
CEX.io, LocalBitcoins, BitStamp, Gemini, BitFlyer etc.

Crypto-to-Crypto Exchanges are those exchanges with more options, they carry more niche currencies. Some examples are Binance, Bittrex, Cryptopia, KuCoin, Poloniex etc.

As a matter of cautious, if you’re new to crypto investing, be sure to read up on best practices for keeping your crypto secure like using two-factor authentication and moving your coins to a private wallet once you’ve purchased them.

You can get further information about the exchanges from Coin Central’s article Top Cryptocurrency Exchanges in 2018.

At the time of writing, we have yet to see any conventional or mainstream exchanges moving into the crypto space, though there had been news and rumors about Nasdaq or Switzerland’s largest stock exchange wants to offer cryptocurrencies.

Nation-State Backed Crypto Exchanges?

Do we need a nation-state level crypto exchange? Does it make sense to have one? Why would we need that in the first place?

Before we figure out what are the purposes of having a nation-state level crypto exchange, we should take a look at what can a nation-state crypto exchange do. Two of the main functions of a nation-state crypto exchange are nonetheless:

1) Create and mobilize capital in crypto form, and

2) Moving capital in between crypto and fiat systems, where the bottom line is stability

Combine the monetary part of the Blockchain (the cryptocurrency) and the technology part of it, it’s not hard to figure out that the benefits of having a nation-state level crypto exchange would be:

1) To provide real-time, transparent view of capital flows

2) An immutable ledger of capital trail for the authorities

3) Jobs creation and ripple effects to the country through the implementation of crypto economy, and

4) Effective and automated tax collection through programmable money (the cryptocurrencies)

Programmable money is the future

But, where is the money?

For instance, the creation of another entity that could be as big, or even bigger than conventional stock exchanges in some countries, such as the Bursa (counter 1818) of Malaysia, which take cares of matters related to global scale crypto and tokenized businesses listed on board.

The challenge is, how do we distribute ‘the cake’?

Excerpt from Chapter 3 of the book Blockchain Insider, Smart Money.

Notes:

At the time of writing, around 16th of August 2018, Binance LCX just launched its Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange in Liechtenstein, and Thai SEC just cleared seven cryptocurrency operators to serve clients while reviewing two more – as reported by CoinTelegraph.

News links:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180816005660/en/Binance-LCX-Announces-Fiat-to-Crypto-Exchange-Crypto-Investors

https://www.sec.or.th/th/Pages/News/Detail_News.aspx?tg=NEWS&lg=th&news_no=89&news_yy=2561

The post Do We Need A Nation-State Backed Crypto Exchange? appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

The topic of sharing and discussion for Malaysia-Belgium-Luxembourg Business Council (MBLBC) Oval Debate in April 2018 was related to technology, specifically Blockchain.

It’s an honor to be able to share the evening with nice people from another part of the world here in Kuala Lumpur. We have a nice host and a supportive group of people from different industries.

A little bit of sharing on what is Blockchain in two parts,  the crypto economy part:

• Thoughts On The Future of Money
• A Tale of Two Monetary Worlds
• The Three Phases of Crypto Currencies

and the technology part:

• Blockchain & The Database
• Centralized, Decentralized and Distributed
• A Century of Technology Innovation

Presentation and full transcript embedded below.

As usual, we have a short Q&A session.

Special thanks to Teffeny of MBLBC for all the communication works and preparation prior to this event, and the Embassy of Belgium for supporting this great networking session. Appreciate.

Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money – MBLBC Oval Debate Presentation File

Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money – MBLBC Oval Debate Speech Transcript

* Established in 1980, the Malaysia Belgium Luxembourg Business Council (MBLBC) is a non-profit organisation which aims to assist people and businesses from Belgium and Luxembourg in Malaysia, and to strengthen their ties with the Malaysian business community. http://www.mblbc.org

The post MBLBC Oval Debate, Kuala Lumpur appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

A lot of progress happened in the Crypto world during the first quarter of 2018. As the authorities step in, two prominent figures from the financial world gave their views on the Crypto World in March 2018, coincidentally.

2 Mar, 2018 – “The Future of Money” by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England

15 March 2018 – “Crypto Tokens: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” by Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore

On the corporate and business side, Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz believes that a trusted consumer brand with brick-and-mortar locations will help bring “legitimacy and trust” to cryptocurrencies. Which, is true, looking at how the market progress after his view was published in Bloomberg Technology in Jan 2018.

Earlier Mar 2018, the Messaging app company Telegram closed an initial $850 million in funding as part of an ICO that could bring in as much as $2 billion in total.

16 Mar 2018, Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia (the $3 billion low-cost airline company in Southeast Asia) which is publicly listed in Malaysia, told TechCrunch that he is analyzing the potential to hold an ICO that would raise money by introducing its own cryptocurrency on the sidelines of Money2020 in Singapore.

What we see here is how the digital currency is evolving and how it might eventually be dominance by the authorities.

90% of today’s altcoins will vanish, replaced by trusted consumer brands’ token and eventually, sovereign cryptos backed by the governments or authorities. ~ How Tze, Blockchain Insider

Updated: 28th December, 2018

2 Articles in December 2018, one from Time magazine, one from WSJ

(1) Why Bitcoin Matters for Freedom

Innovation happens at the edge. For people living under authoritarian governments, Bitcoin can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange.

http://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/

(2) Once a Rebel, Bitcoin Is Conforming to Mainstream Markets

The influx of money from traditional investors has led the cryptocurrency to behave more like a traditional asset

https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-a-rebel-bitcoin-is-conforming-to-mainstream-markets-11546005600

We shall see how the distribution may look like in next article.

Excerpt from the book Blockchain Insider, Chapter 3: Smart Money

Related News:

Inside Telegram’s ambitious $1.2B ICO to create the next Ethereum

AirAsia, Southeast Asia’s low-cost airline, is considering an ICO

CBDC – Central Bank-Issued Digital Currency

As reported by Coin Telegraph in an article about Reserve Bank of India considering Central Bank-Issued Digital Currency

As early as 2016, the Bank of England and the People’s Bank of China explored the idea of issuing their own digital currencies, with over 90 central banks worldwide that same year investigating DLT tech.

In 2017, the Bank of Canada published extensive research into the benefits of CBDCs, and already in the first months of 2018, banks in Malaysia, Taiwan, Poland, Switzerland, among others, have all made news with inquiries into the use of Blockchain systems.

Earlier April 2018, an R3 researcher stirred a Deconomy panel in South Korea with his prediction that wholesale CBDCs would see real-world implementation in 2018.

The post The Three Phases of Cryptocurrencies appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

If we were to look at the whole tech industry in a wider perspective through times, we can break it up into three major eras over a span of around a hundred years. We had witnessed the born of the first computer up to what it is today, a network of connected systems. We are heading towards the era of Artificial Intelligence, where machines would take (or already taking) over human beings in most of the operational and routine jobs, and even surpass the capability of human beings in some fields.

Let’s take a brief walk through these eras.

During the internet boom, a huge amount of information was loaded onto the World Wide Web. What we have now is a vast sea of data over the web. The problem is information overload. Too many fake data and false information over the web. We need to clean up the atmosphere. This is where there the blockchain technology came into the picture. Blockchain puts the trust element into the information sea.

The promise of the Blockchain – the trust machine.

The trust machines make sure that identities are real, data are true and genuine. In other words, the trust element and immutability of Blockchains make data integrity stays intact. Why is it important to filter out the fake data? It is the preparation for a prompt and accurate decision making when we enter the era of A.I.

Blockchain is only part of the journey. Yet, it is an important one.

Without genuine and trusted input, the outcome will be disastrous for any A.I. system.

At the time of writing, in the year 2018, we are in the Blockchain boom. We are also putting learning ability into machines and connecting almost everything to the systems. The media called it the fourth industrial revolution.

Are we building a self-learning system that is so powerful that someday it may be a threat to the entire human race? Are we building a system similar to the Skynet as portrayed in the movie The Terminator?

While every possible security measures must be put in place to minimize the risks, such as the Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, no one can guarantee that one day the computer systems we built becomes self-aware and when it felt its existence threatened by our race, it will launch the first assault. Will Judgement Day come? Only time will tell.

The post A Century of Technology Innovation appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Blockchain – The Technology

If you are old enough in the tech industry, you will notice that the Blockchain is a revolution that builds on another technical revolution so old that only the more experienced among us remember it: the invention of the database. As such, the technology part of it concerns more on how we can apply the technological breakthrough to organizations, corporates, and governmental bodies.

In fact, IBM, which has engaged in more than 400 blockchain projects across a number of industries, including supply chain, financial services, healthcare and government, sees Blockchain as much more than the foundation for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and wants the government to consider embracing it as a way of saving time, cost and risk.

In summary, it is more about how we can leverage the design and the immutability of this technology to make our computer systems more efficient and more secure.

Crypto Economy – Opportunities and Risks

What we have now is truly borderless, programmable money backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

The crypto economy part of it deals not only on how we can further put back more financial power into the hands of an ecosystem’s stakeholders but on a much bigger picture in terms of traditional players defending their forte and revolutionists creating a more open, fairer financial systems for the people.

It’s the evolution of money towards a moneyless society and the possible disruption of the whole financial system as we know it today.

It can be done through Blockchain consensus and programming logic. It’s a matter to trust human beings or computer systems or to strike a balance between both side of the world.

“We are in the early phase of Blockchain now. We can define its impact on mankind.” ~ Roberto Capodieci, Playing with Blockchain Consensus workshop, 22-23rd Feb 2018

May the force be with you.

Notes: Excerpt from Chapter 3 – Smart Money of the book Blockchain Insider.

Related News At Time of Writing

According to a recent European Commission Roundtable related to cryptocurrencies, while the so-called cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technology is affecting many sectors of the economy (including finance), it is now more than important for financial institutions, governmental organizations and corporates to learn how they should respond to the challenges posed by fast technological developments, and seize the opportunities the technology could offer.

The goal of any government or financial authorities is to ensure investor protection, market integrity, and financial stability while taking full advantage of these new technological developments:

1) Cryptocurrencies and their implications for financial markets
2) Investor protection and market integrity in relation to cryptocurrencies as an emerging asset class, and
3) The potential and challenges posed by initial coin offerings (ICOs)

Source: European Commission Roundtable: Blockchain ‘Holds Promise,’ Investors Must Know Risks

The post Blockchain, The Technology and The Crypto Economy appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Blockchain Insider Chapter 1 – Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money

To explore Blockchain,
you need to study Bitcoin.
To understand Bitcoin,
you need to know what is money and how it works.

The post We Have Just Uploaded Our Online Chapter to Slideshare! appeared first on Blockchain Insider.