Some of the points he mentioned was quite alarming, such as the illusion of safety:
– failure is not an option
– we can all win
– it’s all upside
– this is a guaranteed investment

As at 4th May, 2019, nearly 2 years after his sharing, the article that appeared in Coin Telegraph titled “How Security Tokens Can Prevent an Impending Financial Crisis” seems to echo his points with this paragraph:

Sometimes, the unintended consequences of regulation are more damaging than the value proposition of that legislation.

(1) The barriers of entry to securitization markets drove the centralization of issuances to astronomical heights, as a few participants came to dominate the market.

(2) The combination of closed circles and high costs of issuance ran securitized portfolios into the billions and caused a domino effect upon failure.

(3) In addition, a lack of liquidity in private securities markets made it difficult to rebalance or break up portfolios by selling smaller positions to a wider pool of potential buyers — or even by selling individual assets.

Security tokens, assets backed tokens, could be one of the solutions to the shortfall in financial system we have today, as how the authors put it:

Many analysts predict that the majority of financial products will one day be traded on the blockchain as security tokens, with programmable smart contracts — and for good reason: Only security tokens can bring greater transparency, oversight, access and liquidity to the market.

As we are seeing more Blockchain and its practical applications (use cases) being announced, we shall see a more practical approach and implementation of the technology in the financial industry as time goes by. Blockchaining Sukuk should be something to watch out to.

The post Security Tokens and The Illusion of Safety appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

It is a space that had existed for only 7 years.  It does represent something truly revolutionary.

• A fundamental change in our understanding of trust.
• A change in the way we organize authority and trust from hierarchy system to network-centric flex system.
• A reimagining of what it means to have currency, how currency derives its value.
• A new system for disintermediating intermediaries.
• A rebalancing of world affairs.

All of these things are true but we don’t really know how this is going to play out.

Sitting in the front row of history. Observing history in the making.

What is bitcoin? What is the blockchain?

Bitcoin is the first blockchain.
Bitcoin is the largest open global blockchain that exists today.
Bitcoin is the first borderless, transnational, open system of access for financial payments and trust that enables innovation without permission, with high resistance to censorship, coercion and geopolitical manipulation.
Bitcoin is a mathematical prove system that is fundamentally neutral to participants. It exhibits the principle on the internet that we called net-neutrality and bring that to finance, which of course, terrifies people.

Finance without concern for a source, destination, or amount?
Neutral routing of transactions?
Equal for everyone?
That idea is terrifying. Where does authority come from? Where does trust come from?

It’s almost as if suddenly we no longer pay attention to, the New York Times, and instead, anyone can publish their opinion without an editor. What will the world come to?

What the internet did for communication, bitcoin is doing for finance.

It is introducing a fundamentally different network centric and flex system that allows us to do transactions without recourse to authorities or intermediaries and that derives trust from the collaboration and computation of thousands of nodes. It uses a blockchain. The blockchain is one of the several components that make bitcoin works. And if you focus too much on blockchain you may miss the point.

Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology Explained

Smart Money
Smart Energy
Smart Contract
Smart Assets

The post Blockchain or Bitcoin: Understanding the differences appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

We need to know the philosophy of Bitcoin, categories of money and how we get into the current financial mess. The blockchain is the main thing not to be missed. It is the web, all over again.

In order to understand Blockchain, we should to take a look into Bitcoin, which is one of the most successful Blockchain application at the time of writing.

Bitcoin: Where the Laws of Mathematics Prevail

In this talk, Andreas speaks about Bitcoin as a system of commerce that is the culmination of decades of research into cryptography and digital currencies, and how it achieves digital scarcity through proof-of-work and decentralized consensus. He argues that Bitcoin is powerful because it is where the laws of mathematics prevail to deliver robust security, financial autonomy, and censorship resistance.

Blockchain 101 – A Visual Demo

The explanation about what is blockchain might be a bit technical in this embedded video. However, you should be able to understand at least something from it. We consider the explanation in the video below is pretty much on the intermediate level. A little bit of programming background might help.

This is a very basic visual introduction to the concepts behind a Blockchain. Published by Anders Brownworth on Nov 5, 2016.

As you can see, the idea of an immutable ledger was introduced using an interactive web demo. If you are interested in playing with this on your own, it is available online at: http://anders.com/blockchain

The Power of the Blockchain

Once you went through above video with some basics on the technical aspect, you may want to check out this video by Siraj Raval which was published on Jun 9, 2017.

Use case #1: Giving datasets and models a reputation
Use case #2: Peer to peer Model training
Use case #3: AI-run Companies!

This video also goes through a little bit of demonstration by building a Blockchain in Python.

In summary, we barely have begun to explore what happens when we use the blockchain as a way to improve our AI:

– Help verify data + model quanlity
– P2P exchanges
– Entirely new business models
– AI based companies, create independent organizations run entirely by AI

Enjoy the video!

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