For a concise, readable summary of iTulip concepts developed over the past 16 years and a vision of a challenging next decade and how to navigate it, read Eric Janszen's book "Post Catastrophe Economy".
Join the discussion of today's events with a wide range of professionals with an interest in economics and finance.
Register to join our 50,000 plus member registered community from 78 countries today.
Subscribe to iTulip Select for access to the longest running, deep, accurate, and unvarnished macro economic trends analysis and forecasting available, since 1998.
If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
The UK government is exploring using the blockchain technology that underpins the bitcoin currency to increase efficiency in the distribution of taypayers’ money such as grants, a minister said on Tuesday.
A blockchain works as a decentralised ledger that is verified and shared by a network of computers, and can be used to record data as well as to secure and validate an exchange of assets, such as currencies or commodities.
Banks and other financial institutions are increasingly investing in blockchain technology, reckoning it could cut their costs and make their operations faster and more transparent.
The cabinet office minister Matt Hancock said the government was examining how the technology could be used to manage and keep track of the distribution of public money, such as grants and student loans, saying it could “foster a new culture of trust”.
“The government cannot bury its head in the sand and ignore new technologies as they emerge,” Hancock, who holds the post of paymaster general, said a blockchain networking event in London.
“That is partly what happened in the past in government with the web … We cannot let (that) happen again by standing still.”
Britain has had a patchy record with government IT systems. Previous IT problems have hit the passport agency, the tax credit system and most notably the National Health Service which was forced in 2011 to announce the abandonment of a multibillion pound scheme to computerise every patient record.
Hancock cautioned against getting too caught up in the hype. “Blockchain technology is not going to solve every problem; it’s not going to work in every context,” he said.
It is still early days for blockchain: The original bitcoin blockchain was started just over seven years ago, and most financiers and technologists reckon the technology will not be adopted broadly for another five to 10. Many compare the current level of development to the early days of the internet.
This year, the government’s chief scientific advisor urged the government to explore how it could use blockchain. The Bank of England has called it a “key technological innovation”, and has a team working on ways that it could be used, such as for issuing central bank money.
If Bitcoin was the knife that the surgeon used to cure the patient, a government crypto currency will be the knife that stabs the patient in a whole new way.
Full disclosure: I still own some bitcoin but am slowly moving it to other investments - mostly other crypto currencies or derivatives thereof.
For starters, let's face it, Bitcoin cannot function as a currency. It lacks any sense of price stability - PERIOD - end of discussion there.
So how could a government create a currency based on blockchain... and more importantly... Why?
Answers:
1) How: They would put in centralized controls, such that they can inflate/deflate just like central banks do, thus creating "price stability".
2) Why: Crypto currencies can actually be the most transparent monetary instrument ever created. Everybody around the world with a PC and $50 hard drive can store the entire database of all transactions ever made on the blockchain. If the goal of the war on cash is to force everyone use digital bits instead of cash to prevent hidden transactions (ZOMG - Terrorism! Drugs!) and (ZOMG - tax evasion), then blockchain technology can take this ideology one step further: It can make it totally transparent and GLOBAL.
This is why I may be making some investments in ZeroCash soon, assuming they can figure out a decent ICO (initial coin offering), and not get too greedy.
Even better would be an Ethereum with an implementation of ZeroCash's untraceability constructs... but now I'm just talking madness.
Tweet
Comment