“It’s prudent for businesses to have a relationship with their representatives especially in a highly regulated environment like financial services,” said Boring, noting that this is especially true when a company’s business model overlaps with the jurisdiction of federal agencies.

Boring, a former congressional staffer herself, emphasized that constituent groups and businesses have significantly more pull with members of Congress than hired suits, adding that when groups travel significant distance to Washington, it helps add emphasis, proving how far they’re willing to go to make their case.

“No one has a stronger voice in Congress than a constituent,” she said, adding:

Source: Mr. Blockchain Goes to Washington – CoinDesk

The ultimate 3500-word guide in plain English to understand Blockchain.

If you ever find someone feeling left behind and wondering, “WTF is the Blockchain?” you know where you can point them to.

Earlier the third-party/middleman gave us the trust that whatever they have written in the register will never be altered. In a distributed and decentralized system like ours, this seal will provide the trust instead.

Everyone who is the part of the Blockchain is eligible for rewards.

That’s how Bitcoin got into existence. It was the first currency to be transacted on a Blockchain (i.e. distributed registers). And in return, to keep the efforts going on in the network, people were awarded Bitcoins.

When enough people possess Bitcoins, they grow in value, making other people wanting Bitcoins; making Bitcoins grow in value even further; making even more people wanting Bitcoins; making them grow in value even further; and so on.

Source: WTF is The Blockchain? – Hacker Noon

Takeaway

Great explanation on how Blockchain works, including the game-theory that keeps it running.

… in the U.S. there is approximately $7.4 billion in unclaimed life insurance money from insured people passing away and their beneficiaries being unable to connect the dots. A blockchain-based registry could help address this challenge while retaining anonymity and improving security as a distributed public record. Part of the driver of these unclaimed funds is known as longevity risk: People living longer means more life insurance policies mature and the memory of who was insured and where physical policy documents may reside fades. Rather than being a threat to the industry, a blockchain-based public ledger would enable the rightful claimants to these proceeds to receive their due, rather than having these unclaimed funds be sold in a secondary market or stagnate.

Part of the reason insurers are wary of insuring tangible assets in developing markets is the fear of fraud and losses that cannot be validated. In these cases, the insurers’ right to subrogate, or go after the assets of others to recoup their losses, is largely unenforceable. A blockchain-based claims validation network can serve as a utility benefiting the entire industry by recording in a semipublic blockchain ledger the physical status of an insured asset, which in turn could help improve insurance penetration and adoption rates in emerging and developing markets.

Source: Blockchain Could Make the Insurance Industry Much More Transparent