What is An Initial Coin Offering? The Future of Fundraising (ICO) | Blockgeeks

ICO is the abbreviation of Initial Coin Offering. It means that someone offers investors some units of a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token in exchange against cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Since 2013 ICOs are often used to fund the development of new cryptocurrencies. The pre-created token can be easily sold and traded on all cryptocurrency exchanges if there is demand for them. With the success of Ethereum ICO are more and more used to fund the development of a crypto project by releasing token which is somehow integrated into the project. With this turn, ICO has become a tool that could revolutionize not just currency but the whole financial system. ICO token could become the securities and shares of tomorrow.< /blockquote>

Source: What is An Initial Coin Offering? The Future of Fundraising (ICO) – Blockgeeks

Read More

What next for blockchain? | McKinsey & Company

Video available at source

On the consumer side, if I’m being really honest, there isn’t a tremendously compelling use case for somebody like me—somebody who lives in New York, higher socioeconomic status, who’s fairly well served by the current financial system. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t mean that the system that serves me fairly well is a good system. Right? When you actually dig into the financial system as we know it today, it’s fairly antiquated. It’s primarily built on technology that was created in the 1970s.

Source: What next for blockchain? | McKinsey & Company

Read More

Getting serious about blockchain | McKinsey & Company

Video available at source

If you’re the CEO of a big company, the first thing is to conceptualize this right. This is not like another technology, like AI [artificial intelligence], the cloud, robots, drones, the Internet of Things, and all of the rest of the stuff that are part of this fourth industrial revolution.This is the transactional platform that will enable all of those things to be part of the economy. When we have autonomous vehicles moving around, all of those transactions, everything from how they power themselves to how people pay for them, will be done through a distributed ledger. The Internet of everything needs a ledger of everything for it to work.

Source: Getting serious about blockchain | McKinsey & Company

Read More

2017 Global Digital IQ® Survey: 10th anniversary edition

… in some ways company leaders are no better equipped to handle the changes coming their way than they were in 2007. In fact, Digital IQ—the measurement of an organization’s abilities to harness and profit from technology—has actually declined since we began asking executives to self-assess their own organizations. Enterprises aren’t so much falling behind as struggling to keep up with accelerating standards. And looking ahead, it is clear most are not ready for what comes next—and after that—as technologies continue to combine and advance, and new ways of doing business go from inception to disruption seemingly overnight.

Source: 2017 Digital IQ: PwC

Read More

Blockchain digital process: PwC

But over the long term, the greatest promise is with intricate forms of agent-managed peer-to-peer automation—a highly efficient Internet of Things empowered by an Internet and web of agents, smart transactions, and contracts. The rest of the 2010s likely will be a period of tinkering, comparable in some ways to the late 1990s. Considering there are hundreds of both blockchain and artificial intelligence startups, and sizeable venture capital (VC) investments across both, the possibility also looms of a boom-and-bust period that could mirror the dot-com era in its breadth and depth. By the time the last half of the 2020s materializes, companies might have made their way through what Gartner calls a Trough of Disillusionment to the adoption of a transactional environment very different from today’s.

Source: Blockchain digital process: PwC

Read More

Blockchain importance: PwC

Instead of involving lots of humans in the transaction pipeline and paper processes that take days, weeks, or months to complete, huge volumes of transactions could be validated automatically. Other more complicated transactions that still require humans could at least be simplified with the help of mathematical validation.

From a legal standpoint, the system becomes a “person,” a virtual third-party enforcer that never sleeps. From a computing perspective, that “person” is actually a software agent. The use of agents will be essential to scaling recordkeeping and providing visibility to the historical record.

Source: Blockchain importance: PwC

Read More

Blockchain defined | PwC

In the simplest case, a smart contract would make it possible to lock out a driver whose authorization to drive a rental car had expired. In more complex scenarios, rental car companies could automate the operation of entire facilities.

From a legal standpoint, the system becomes a “person,” a virtual third-party enforcer that never sleeps. From a computing perspective, that “person” is actually a software agent. The use of agents will be essential to scaling recordkeeping and providing visibility to the historical record.

Source: Blockchain defined: PwC

Read More

Blockchain Introduction and Forecast: PwC

Smart transactions enable smart contracts

Blockchain ledger technology opens the door not only to decentralized transactions, but also to smart (that is, automated and computable) transactions and smart (computable and self-executing) contracts that can take advantage of smart transactions. A smart contract is a digitally signed, computable agreement between two or more parties. A virtual third party—a software agent—can execute and enforce at least some of the terms of such agreements.

Source: Blockchain Introduction and Forecast: PwC

Read More

The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media

The “killer app” for the early internet was email; it’s what drove adoption and strengthened the network. Bitcoin is the killer app for the blockchain. Bitcoin drives adoption of its underlying blockchain, and its strong technical community and robust code review process make it the most secure and reliable of the various blockchains. Like email, it’s likely that some form of Bitcoin will persist. But the blockchain will also support a variety of other applications, including smart contracts, asset registri

Source: The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media

Read More