Tag Archives: Blockchain

In the NZZ, Axel Lehmann offers his views on the prospects of blockchain technologies in banking. Lehmann is Group Chief Operating Officer of UBS Group AG. New possibilities: Higher efficiency; lower cost; more robustness and simpler processes; real-time clearing; no need for intermediaries; information exchange without risk of interference automated “smart contracts;” automated wealth management; more control over transactions; better data protection; improved possibilities for macro...

The Economist reports about cyber thieves “outsmarting” a smart contract. Well, what does that mean? Engaging with a code that runs in all states of the world is to engage with a complete contract. How can one outsmart a complete contract? Previous post on smart contracts and commitment.

In the FT, Richard Waters reports about the advent of the automated company. The DAO — an acronym of decentralised autonomous organisation, the name given to such entities — has been set up to invest in other businesses, making it a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. … The organisation is governed by a set of so-called smart contracts which run on the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger designed to make its operations transparent and enforceable. In other words, the code...

All about bitcoin and blockchain.

The Economist reports about initiatives by commercial and central banks that aim at adopting the blockchain technology. For commercial banks, distributed ledgers promise various advantages—but they also cause problems: Instead of having to keep track of their assets in separate databases, as financial firms do now, they can share just one. Trades can be settled almost instantly, without the need for lots of intermediaries. As a result, less capital is tied up during a transaction, reducing...

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property. This enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in...