Blockchain

Ping Identity earlier this summer struck a partnership with a startup called Swirlds, investing an undisclosed amount of money in the company. Swirlds, founded by CEO Leemon Baird, introduced what it calls hashgraph, which is similar to the distributed ledger featured in bitcoin’s blockchain scheme, with one important difference: instead of recording one transaction after another in a chain, the hashgraph algorithm weaves multiple transactions together at the same time in a graph.

In my final deep dive into blockchain use cases, I come to digital identity. Now this is a thorny area for three reasons.

Data stored in blockchains cannot be changed, which means that personal data they contain cannot be removed. Jeni Tennison, the ODI’s Technical Director, explains why it’s really important that we design blockchains to protect people’s privacy.

The European Commission (EC) recently unveiled the new ‘Start-up and Scale-up Initiative’. Its aim is to increase Europe’s competitiveness for entrepreneurs and innovative startups by reducing regulatory barriers.

The penthouse meeting room in Le Parker Meridien hotel in midtown Manhattan is humming with chatter on this June afternoon. About a hundred money managers are networking at the end of the day at a Sandler O’Neill & Partners investor conference as the green rectangle of Central Park stretches into the distance 42 floors below.

The technology most likely to change the next decade of business is not the social web, big data, the cloud, robotics, or even artificial intelligence. It’s the blockchain, the technology behind digital currencies like Bitcoin.

As blockchain hype begins to subside and entrepreneurs and organizations get down to the business of implementation and execution, a new debate has emerged over timing.

Herein lies 17 decentralized technology predictions for 2017. Thank you to all of my colleagues for my continued education this year and feedback in writing this piece. Please take these predictions with a grain of holiday salt, in other words, not meant to be construed as professional advice.

With so much interest in blockchain applications for financial services, there seem to be a lot of announcements of proof-of-concept trials at banks, but few finished products.