Topic: [ANN][NOTE]DNotes - Celebrating DNotes 3rd Birthday - Forum Now Open - page 16. (Read 814568 times)

Great news for the Canadian fintech industry:


Decentral starts initiative to transform Canada into the world’s fintech hub

During the last couple of months, the Fintech market has seen a significant growth, with numerous startups making massive investments to play a role in shaping our world’s financial future.

Decentral, which represents a leading hub for decentralized technologies over in Canada, has recently announced the launch of an organization meant to transform the country into a region where fintech innovation strives. The organization, known by the name of Accelerate Finance has also launched an invitation to financial professionals from all around the world to join.

The project has been started up with the help of several Canada-based companies, financial institutions and even governmental departments alongside with accelerators and fintech startups. Members will also include representatives from startups, key institutions and prominent companies in the financial market.

The main scope of the membership-based and independent organization is to unite members of the fintech community, and use this significant workforce to push Canada towards the goal of becoming one of the world’s leaders in the financial sector. Some of the areas of focus will reportedly include digital currencies, peer-to-peer lending, insurance, compliance, banking, settlements, crowdfunding, authentication management, digital wallets, micropayments and more. Additionally, the organization will also try to modernize Canada’s current legislative framework, to better suit the fintech innovations that Accelerate Finance will be pushing out.

http://themerkle.com/decentral-starts-initiative-to-transform-canada-into-the-worlds-fintech-hub/

Very good, that is the kind of news we like to hear. According to a report from Reuters, European Union lawmakers are going to take regulating blockchain technology and associated businesses lightly for the time being. EU officials say they will take the “softly approach” to applying a monetary policy to these emerging markets in order to curb stifled innovation.

I just posted this over at Cryptomoms (Go, Cryptomoms!):

http://bitcoinist.net/eu-approaches-blockchain-regulation-soflty/

It looks like that may be a possibility. the office isn’t ruling out any particular technology. “The government is looking into any sort of blockchain technique, bitcoin is one of those. It is open to all ideas,” the spokesperson said. “There are a number of areas blockchains can be used, including government grants. It can be used to track the money and it gets tax payers a better deal, potentially.” But they may just be exploring all possible options. DNotes will one day be the optimal choice for something like this.

There has been a lot of news lately on the advancement of bitcoin, blockchain, and fintech in the UK lately. The title to this article states "with bitcoin", but I have the feeling it will be their own version of something.


The British government is considering paying out research grants with bitcoin

http://qz.com/670708/the-british-government-is-considering-paying-out-research-grants-with-bitcoin/

Thanks Alan. It will be exciting to see the impact the book has on small businesses!

Excellent article, Chase. Very informative and compelling. We are passionately committed to help small business owners and their employees. I trust that before too much longer, many more people will realize that we are not just talking about. We have been building the whole support system to make it happen.

Thanks Joe. Cryptocurrency is such a good fit for these types of small businesses, they just need a little help seeing it. Alan's book, DCEBrief, DNotes Vault, DNotesEDU, and our education campaign at CrypoMoms should do the trick!

Excellent article by the way Chase, really enjoyed it.

http://dcebrief.com/cryptocurrency-and-the-home-based-business/

Here is a good list of Blockchain Applications.

Blockchain Applications Beyond the Financial Services Industry
April 26, 2016     By : Sofia

Blockchain fever hasn’t been limited to financial institutions. Along with banks and FinTech startups, non-financial players have been paying attention and looking for ways to leverage the opportunities that distributed ledger technology opens. Let’s look at some interesting examples of the non-financial applications of blockchain technology.

Blockchain and commodities
The Real Asset Company enables individuals around the world to buy gold and silver bullion securely and efficiently. The company’s investor-friendly platform sits on top of global vaulting infrastructure, providing an online account for buying gold and silver and holding precious metals. Goldbloc, the company’s gold-backed cryptocurrency adds an additional layer of transparency and control to users’ gold investment. Backed by one gram of gold, the company believes its cryptocurrency to be the first step to bringing gold back into the monetary system.

Uphold is a platform for moving, converting , transacting and holding any form of money or commodity. The company connects banks, credit and debit cards and bitcoin to digital wallets for free financial services and transactions. Businesses and consumers can fund their Uphold accounts via bank transfer or by linking a credit/debit card in addition to bitcoin.

Blockchain and diamonds
The diamond industry is one of the biggest natural resource industries and makes a substantial part of the GDP in African countries and other major diamond-miners. The hallmark of the industry is that it is highly criminalized. Stones are small and easy to hide and transport. The best part for criminals is that transactions can be made confidentially and the sell returns the value over years. Diamonds are known to be involved in money laundering and financing of terrorism on a truly massive scale around the world.

Due to a range of challenges with diamonds business, one of the tech pioneers in the sphere isEverledger. The company provides an immutable ledger for diamond identification and transaction verification for various stakeholders, from insurance companies to claimants and law enforcement agencies. Everledger assigns a “digital passport” to each diamond that will accompany each stone as it is transacted and creates a unique fingerprint.

Blockchain and data management
Factom is one of the most notable blockchain companies applying distributed ledger to the non-financial market – in this case, data management. The company uses blockchain-based identity ledgers in database management and data analytics to support various applications.Businesses and governments can use Factom to simplify records management, record business processes, and address security and compliance issues. Factom maintains a permanent, time-stamped record of data in the blockchain that allows companies to reduce the cost and complexity of conducting audits, managing records, and complying with government regulations.

Blockchain and cannabis
Serica is one of the examples of a blockchain companies in the cannabis industry. Serica brings software engineering, cryptofinance, financial custody and blockchain technology to traditional custodian finance. It allows entrepreneurs to establish their business legitimacy through the largest network of verified customers in order to grow conversions, registrations, memberships and average order sizes. Serica’s Secure Socket Layering Technology encrypts all communications between a user’s personal wallet and Serica. Serica uses the blockchain in order to track and record every purchase of medical marijuana, providing businesses an easy way to accept payments online.
There are also companies like Tokken, Hypur and others leveraging bitcoin and blockchain in cash-heavy businesses like legal marijuana. Read more here.

Blockchain and digital content
Ascribe helps artists and creators to attribute digital art via blockchain. Ascribe’s marketplace allows to generate digital editions with a unique ID and a digital certificate of authenticity to prove provenance and authenticity. It also allows to accept consignments from artists and transfer digital works to collectors with all the terms and legals.
There are also companies like Bitproof, Blockai, Stampery and other companies applying blockchain to digital art attribution and authentication.

Blockchain and network infrastructure
Ethereum is a platform and a programming language that makes it possible for any developer to build and publish next-generation distributed applications. Ethereum can be used to codify, decentralize, secure and trade just about anything: voting, domain names, financial exchanges, crowdfunding, company governance, contracts and agreements of most kinds, intellectual property, and even smart property thanks to hardware integration.

ChromaWay offers blockchain as a platform for financial institutions and is working on a smart contract platform that allows for digitizing and representing workflows in a secure, private and efficient way.

Blockchain in market forecasting

Augur.net is an open-source, decentralized market prediction platform built on etherum blockchain. It allows users to trade on the outcome of events, and for the market to then leverage that crowdsourced information. Augur plans to use decentralized public ledgers to create a way for anyone in any field, from finance, healthcare and governance, to tap into the collective forecasting power of a global user base.

Source: http://letstalkpayments.com/blockchain-applications-beyond-the-financial-services-industry/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=linkedin

Good find, I think they are right, this industry is still in the beginning stages there will be a lot of room to grow and a lot of potential.

Ignore this if it has already been posted, just read through and thought it was worth sharing.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/310112812/ECB-DLT-Paper

Distributed ledger technologies are of relevance beyond the Bitcoin and its unrestricted blockchain model. Consensus ledgers, restricted technologies and smart contracts all represent more viable and attractive options for financial institutions, as they draw on existing business models used in the post-trade industry for securities transactions and have the potential to create safer, more reliable and efficient post-trade processes. Based on the analysis in this paper, it can be concluded that there is potential in distributed ledger technology. Furthermore, innovation is, in general, welcome in the European post-trade market for securities, wherever it can bring safety and efficiency. A number of factors could, however, pose potential barriers to the widespread uptake and use of DLTs. First, the technology is not yet mature; second, the clarification of critical legal, operational and governance issues will take time; and third, even were DLTs to be adopted widely, certain post-trade functions will continue to be performed by institutions. It is not yet, therefore, clear whether DLTs will cause a major revolution in mainstream financial markets or whether their use will remain limited to particular niches. It is possible that a DLT may find its way into the mainstream market, but should this happen, it is more likely to cause a gradual change in processes, rather than a revolution in the market

Bitcoin, blockchain, and digital currency had a good week. Well done on the recaps, makes it much easier to keep up to date.

http://dcebrief.com/the-corporate-blockchain-a-path-to-innovation/

Sadly, Tee Gee -- no! If I push myself any harder in this crepuscular hobby of mine, I'm gonna keel over dead on the floor.

Here's the thesis, though: Post 637 @ http://cryptomoms.com/forum/cryptomoms-com/5/crypto-kindergarten/537/630

TeeGee and Mark. I do believe that there are merits. Personally, I prefer a shorter article (closer to 5 page) and written in such a way that is easy for the laypersons to understand.

I am going to be extremely busy this week and may not be able to contribute much. The book is 100% written, pending a final round of edit. We have decided to add a "Chapter Summation: Key Takeaways"

This subject has interested me since the beginning of my involvement in crypto's in early 2014 IMZ. I have posted about desiring to carry out research on this topic in my early posts on this forum.

Do I sense a collaboration for a brief 5-10 page research paper in the future pipeline?

TeeGee

Mark, you often bring about great prospective from a different angle. I appreciate that.

'To me the most ingenious creation about Bitcoin is bitcoin itself - the digital currency.'

Agreed, Dyna. My first thought about Chainanchor was 'Well, all that "crypto-value" will just tippy-toe off to other ('free') cryptos!! -- like Dnotes!'

I wasn't an unhappy camper in my comment, but I wanted to be first in a field that will arise, the anthropology of free cryptos.

Mark