Blockchain Technology Is Happening!

You know I’m not one for sales fluff. I like cold hard facts. Make it about game changing innovation as big as the creation of the internet, and I’m all in! So yes Blockchain technology jumps to the top of my “FAVS” List, right next to Rock&Roll, Numbers, and Artistic Gymnastics!

What is Blockchain technology? A highly secure and encrypted database architecture that creates a distributed ledger, one set of records created at the beginning of the trade life cycle where all market participants have open access to the same copy. The Blockchain contains a high degree of trust, and can ultimately lead to more efficient, lower cost, and transparent settlement in minutes, rather than days. Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded. Yes I said “settlement in minutes”, a thrilling proposition in the realm of cash flow and the beginning of a rising rate environment.

I first brought you my subject matter interest in Blockchain technology in my March Blog post Technology To The Top. I had just attended a Financial Women’s Association event on Blockchain featuring Blythe Masters, CEO and Board Director of Digital Assets Holding, a firm whose mission it is to develop this disruptive technology. Huge thank you to my good friend and trusted entrepreneurial advisor Janet Handal, Co-Chair of the FWA Technology committee and a leading force in the technology space, and Co-Chair Susan Joseph for bringing us this well received event. The FWA is consistently out in front on strategic financial industry issues, since its humble beginnings in the 1950’s, started by eight pioneering Wall Street women. Blythe Masters of course, has been out in front on many strategic changes in financial services. Her steely resolve and brilliance in leading the capital markets and regulatory environment to successful finish on some of the most complex issues the industry has faced, makes her the very best choice, in my mind, to lead this effort. With her March 16, 2016 appointment as Board Chairman of the HyperLedger Project, the global Blockchain community is off to a running start in delivering the most game changing innovation the global transaction marketplace will experience since the creation of the internet! Yes I said “global transaction marketplace”. The language is deliberate as this will cover a broad swath of industries well beyond capital markets, including consumer retail, manufacturing, and near and dear to my heart, the recorded and live music industries; basically any industry where something of value can be tracked and traded.

Since my initial dive into this exciting subject, I have come to learn how far this development effort has evolved. Thank you to my friend and industry colleague, Bhavin P. Kapadia, who invited me to hear him speak on a Blockchain panel, sharing his intent to learn more and be out in front on the delivery of this technology to OTC derivative settlement. A four person panel convened at a May 2, 2016 event for the newly created Hyperledger NYC Meetup Group, a very informative gathering chock full of technology experts leading the global Blockchain effort. The meetup group event was organized and moderated by Renat Khasanshyn, Altoros Founder and CEO, an engineering visionary from Belarus who wants to change the world; already with an impressive resume of accomplishments building complex applications using cutting edge technology. He started the Hyperledger-NYC meetup group specifically because he wants the HyperLedger project to become the #1 platform of blockchain-based decentralized applications. He is committing time, energy, and money into this new group, with an approved 2016 budget, and is happy to hear from others who wish to contribute to the success of this effort.

The HyperLedger Project is an open sourced effort to foster collaboration in the early stage development of this transformative technology. On Feb 9, 2016, the Project announced 30 founding members & code proposals to advance the technology. On March 29, 2016, they elected leadership positions and gained new investments. Learn more here. The technical community is just getting started in their review of proposed ideas, making this an ideal time to step forward and influence the discussion, more on the HyperLedger Community. Some of the most innovative firms in the world are actively engaged including the CME Group, Deutsche Borse, Thomson Reuters, DTCC, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, BNY Mellon, Wells Fargo, State Street, and Cisco to mention a few. Consider getting involved. Join HyperLedger Project.

The Project is supported by The Linux Foundation, the largest open source non profit organization in the world supporting kernel development and fostering a thoughtful environment for the open exchange of ideas. To join the HyperLedger Project, you must be a member of the Linux Foundation.

Another project important to the Blockchain discussion, is the Ethereum Project, led by the Swiss founded Ethereum Foundation.  Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts on a custom built blockchain.  ConsenSYS, a venture production studio with impressive technology talent spanning four continents, creating next generation app technology on the Blockchain focused primarily on Ethereum, sent two key people to participate on the meetup panel.

It’s an exciting story developing across the globe, at IBM Innovation Labs in Durham, NC, at the NYU Varick Incubator in lower Manhattan, at emerging blockchain software firms from Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, across Europe and Asia, to Sydney, Australia where banking competition is fierce among the country’s largest four Banks, and technology innovation is key to differentiation, as noted in the final panel discussion by Sophie Gilder, Blockchain Innovation Manager at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, Australia.

The first panel “HyperLedger vs Ethereum – A Battle for Blockchain, or a Match Made in Heaven” featured

  • Tom Menner, Senior Solution Architect at IBM
  • Bhavin P. Kapadia, Independent Consultant delivering OTC Derivatives Trading Platform Implementation at Wall Street Investment Banks
  • Igor Lillic, Full Stack Software Engineer at ConsenSYS
  • Andrew Keys, Business Development, Investor Relations, and Strategy for Hub and Spokes at ConsenSYS

A large group from IBM was in attendance as IBM’s Open Source Blockchain is a key component of the Hyperledger Project. Distinguished IBM fellow Jerry Cuomo, one of the founding fathers of IBM Websphere Software, and current Vice President of Blockchain Technologies at IBM, a new business unit within the IBM Cloud Group, is leading the group based in Durham, North Carolina. More on his perspective. Also contributing greatly to the IBM effort is Frank Lu, Product Line Manager for Blockchain, Sharon Weed Cocco Director Blockchain Technologies Development, Wolfgang Kulhanek IBM Cloud Architect, and Catherine Hickey IBM Hybrid Cloud Sales, a forward thinking and veteran group of people happy to share their knowledge and excitement for this effort.

It was a thoughtful and engaging panel discussion with great audience question and participation, reaching an important conclusion that the HyperLedger and Ethereum projects are complementary. This is encouraging as Ethereum’s blockchain implementation has gained recent attention, despite some concerns as to their establishment under the General Public License (GPL) which limits protections for unique technology development down the road. More on this from Altoros. I look forward to learn next steps on this collaboration.

So yes Blockchain technology development is happening! What is Wall Street’s reaction? The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, who oversees the entire stock settlement system, co-owned by the biggest investment banks and key financial industry players, and now a member firm of the HyperLedger project, is calling on capital market firms to get on the band wagon and support Blockchain collaboration. Yes DTCC is getting out in front on this, staking a claim to offer the market’s major players the opportunity to mobilize and influence next gen Blockchain products. It’s an interesting play, as this technology is clearly a threat to the DTCC business model. ‘Wall Street has learned a lesson from Silicon Valley, that embracing your biggest threat is the only way to prevent yourself from being overturned.” Wall Street embraces the Blockchain.

Of course Wall Street Banks are hungry for the prospect of sweeping cost savings in the middle and back office, and accounting shops. Accordingly, the potential for regulatory capital savings is huge, estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Further, this news is particularly timely, as implementation of SEC Rule 613, The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) moves forward. First introduced in October 2012, CAT seeks to embellish certain OATS limitations, specifically as to client identification. The current proposed timeline suggests this could potentially go live in early 2018. There is tremendous concern as to the cost of this development. The Blockchain could solve this huge cost issue. CAT overview.

Some other use cases that come to mind include:

  • Consumer Purchase Platforms – Improved Cash Flow and Automation of Accounting & Audit functions
  • Trading Technology – Automation of Market Data Reporting and Billing
  • Recorded Music – Private sector creation of a Music Rights database with a unique universal identifier structure

One final shout out to the group that started my journey into the Blockchain domain. A key and growing group of global FinTech leaders,  The FemTech Leaders Meetup Group engages technology visionaries across the globe with groups currently in New York, London, Copenhagen, Sidney, and Singapore. This group was founded by a savvy and engaged leader in the global FinTech community, Ghela Boskovich, Director of Global Strategic Development for Zafin, a firm with a relationship banking technology platform offering customer centric product innovations while driving revenue, transparency, and operational efficiencies for their clients. I first learned about this group from my FWA friend, the very astute and articulate Cornelia Levy-Bencheton, a global Marketing and Communications Strategy thought leader in the technology and digital space. I highly recommend her two recent publications delivered by O’Reilly Media, “Women In Data” and “Data, Money, and Regulation: The Innovation Dilemma”.

Of course, no one walks on water, even those delivering transforming technology. Capital markets developers will remind you of the ongoing, yet to be solved issue of evolving and inconsistent “ticker symbology”, a huge nut still to crack.  Will the prospect of trading P&L improvement, following the 2008 near collapse of the financial system and the onslaught of costly regulation that followed, get everyone focused? Perhaps. Stay tuned … Welcome To The Jungle!

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May 16, 2016 By Cynthia Drew In Technology /  1

Technology To The Top!

Technology has certainly transformed our lives, but can you take it to the top? As Mick Jagger and Keith Richards penned in the sleeper ballad “Tops” from the Rolling Stones 1981 “Tattoo You” album, “… I’ll make you a star…I’ll be your partner, show you the steps, with me behind you, you’ll taste the sweet wine of success…” Well, if you work in Capital Markets, the sweet wine of P&L success today depends upon innovation, collaboration, efficiency, and government regulation. Innovation ideally adds compelling functionality. Collaboration can mitigate risk and enhance solutions. The two combined have the potential to increase efficiency. Then there’s government regulation, a complex nut to crack that certainly requires both innovation and collaboration for all to succeed.  

In the electronic trading industry, innovation has lowered trading costs for the investing consumer; has made the markets more efficient and transparent; and has shifted real estate from exchange floors to fortressed data centers. Exchanges, data center providers, and electronic trading support firms collaborate to support the trading needs of large sellside banks, buyside asset managers & hedge funds, and new proprietary trading firms spun off from sellside banks in the first round of Dodd Frank reform. As the next wave of Dodd Frank reform implementation is upon us, specifically risk compliance, technology innovation will again play a key role in managing the P&L of all the firms on this food chain. The bottom line? Adding another layer of cost to the already razor thin margins that exist today, simply demands a solution!

A promising new technology that likely holds a piece of the long term solution for the trading P&L is Block Chain technology. A highly secure and encrypted database architecture that creates a distributed ledger, one set of records created at the beginning of the trade life cycle where all market participants have open access to the same copy, the Block Chain contains a high degree of trust, and can ultimately lead to more efficient and transparent same day settlement, and of course lower operational cost. The technology has the ability to process both trading settlement and loan transactions and there are implications for Big Data as well, solving the dilemma of “garbage in, garbage out”. Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Assets Holding, whose firm has received a Series A $60 million investment led by JP Morgan, to develop this disruptive technology, maintains ‘These systems will tackle settlement latency in mainstream financial markets and will change the way our financial markets operate.’ Blythe Masters on Blockchain.  See more on JP Morgan Blockchain testing.  

Of course this is a huge undertaking, the transformation of multi asset class transaction settlement across a complex and fragmented global market, so it will not happen overnight. At the same time though, as the global capital markets’ P&L has gone through transformative change since the near collapse in 2008, financial institutions are under incredible pressure to improve margins. One way or the other, they will. Block chain could be one avenue to help achieve this goal. Interestingly, JP Morgan has been testing the technology over the past year and plans for live “applications” later in 2016. Stay tuned.

As a veteran analyst, passionate about financial analysis driving P&L growth, and always determined to increase operational efficiency in support of compelling analytics, this subject matter really speaks to my heart! In addition to the obvious operational “value add” Block Chain technology can add in transaction settlement, I see great potential for all of us who have labored over the years in calculating trading p&l’s and discerning key business trends.

Further, as a passionate Rock&Roll fan, I am completely delighted at the intersection with the music world, a subject I touched upon briefly in my September 2015 post “The Musical Artist P&L in Today’s Digital Streaming World”! A very strong potential use case for Block Chain technology is in the recorded music industry. Similar to Capital Markets, the Artist P&L has been transformed dramatically by technology in an evolving and fragmented digital market. Professional Music Advocacy groups, including the newly created Grammy Creator’s Alliance, have been out in force on Capitol Hill urging legislators to adopt new legislation and create mechanisms, using technology, to help Artists earn well deserved and transparent royalties for the music they create, in essence “to make a living”, and to promote and support an enduring legacy of musical creativity. Referencing the U.S. Copyright Office’s “Copyright and the Music Marketplace Report” released early in 2015, one of the recommendations reads “Encouraging the private sector to create a comprehensive database of music-rights ownership information with unique universal identifiers and messaging standards.”

On a lighter note, to round out the Technology to the Top discussion, how would you like to be on Jimmy Kimmel Live? You can be, using new video wall technology that Cisco has built exclusively for the show! Learn more here. Simply sign up at the website and hopefully you will receive an email from a very nice producer named Jamie. You will be sent a link to download the “Cisco Jabber” to schedule a live test with the production team, to make sure you have a solid internet connection. For wireless users, Verizon Fios works very well. Also, lighting is very important. You will then have a chat with the producer, so he can get a sense of your background. If the test is a go, you will then be placed on the priority list to appear on the show, when a particular subject pertinent to your background, is set to air. I am told you will then do a second test before appearing the following night. Very exciting and what a brilliant use of technology to engage the entertainment audience! Jimmy Kimmel Wall of America segment.

So to wrap up in signature concert footage style, I leave you with this incredible live 1993 Argentina performance, a technically brilliant & masterful combination of emotion filled voice & electric guitar by two Rock legends, amid a creative backdrop of carefully choreographed colors, lights, and video sequences. Enjoy! 

 

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February 26, 2016 By Cynthia Drew In Technology /