Lykke's goal is not to provide an anonymous or semi-anonymous marketplace. The company doesn't deal exclusively with cryptos and it's also focused on FX, Stocks, Bonds and many more financial tools including new digital asset classes (from music rights to even real estate when regulations allow it). Yes Lykke has also a decentralized approach to custody which is an innovation but crucial in becoming a truly global marketplace holding trillions in assets. And obviously direct ownership is deeply tied to identity. We can speculate all we want about the need for privacy and I'm sure there's a strong argument there, however at the current state of affairs in the world, with countries becoming much more aggressive in the control and surveillance of their citizens actions, any effort on that front seems like an utopia in my humble opinion.
Creating immutable and public global databases like blockchains are the perfect solution for this, that's the irony of it all. We know it will bring plenty of advantages and improvements like transparency, efficiency and speed (eventually) but with governments and states still in place same can be said for further lack of privacy, regulation and taxation.
Agree to that! There is no reason to do anonymous business when you are acting legit. Only people that aim to do shady stuff or that want to evade taxation want to stay anonymous while investing. As you wrote: ownership to certain asset classes is deeply tied to identity, thats the nature of it. Lykke aims to be a semi decentralized platform, where you will be in charge over your money but still have someone to talk to if you face problems.
On the other hand I also vouch for privacy and I am scared about the data masses that are collected by certain companies and governments. This can backfire heavily at some point and the question of anonymity in certain areas of life is definitely not to be overlooked. We will see where this is heading in the near future.
Exactly, companies and even governments are trusted with so much information that it's a system that's doomed to fail. If I were a big company I would try to stay away of being responsible and accountable for all this, the blockchain is perfect because it takes security and trust away from your company. Imagine if digital identity was handled by the blockchain, Uber, Equifax, Yahoo or others would not held accountable for being custodian of your information if they use a blockchain service/product as an alternative.
Now extrapolating that to real money, the stakes are higher. All our money will be soon in the hands of different companies one way or another, a bank, a fintech like PayPal or a credit card company. These companies will charge you everytime you make a transaction, get "hacked/robbed", could freeze your funds or be victims of a bank run situation (for people in the first world this is a strange concept but for us in the "third" it happens every 20 years on average
).
