Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote to you from Silicon Valley, having met the CEO of Zoom. Zoom, whose stock price would give you a nose bleed given how much it has risen. Since then the stock market of Silicon Valley companies have risen to all time highs. I go to the Valley each year to get a feel hands on and stay ahead of the curve.
I want to share with my readers insights because of the number of Indians here running the Valley. I’ve come along with a UK company I helped in my Government capacity. I helped this company set up a UK HQ and now they are with me in Silicon Valley to set up their subsidiary.
I want Asian Voice readers to know what’s happening in finance. This company is Finboot and the Chairman is Indian too – Nish Kotech. So there are a lot of links.
Bitcoin’s rise and fall are rightly becoming the side show of what is the core value proposition: the emergence of Blockchain as the trust substitute technology.
Worrying about a bubble risks diverting your attention away from the disruptive technology powering crypto today and potentially our world tomorrow. The next blockchain winners will be those who use this technology for real world challenges - so called front end services - and that’s what is captivating technologists in London, India, China, Europe and Silicon Valley.
Blockchain is the technology behind a distributed network of computers that can be used to store data securely but which, uniquely, has a single memory. That means data cannot be copied to sell the same asset again. Imagine duplicating the deeds of your house and re-selling it – a common enough practice in the developing world; that risk remained even with the passage from stamped paper to a digital file. Blockchain removes this risk. It’s why Blockchain technologists refer to it as the ‘trust platform’.
The technology is still nascent though evangelists believe it can fundamentally change the way we live, work and transact. Storing and managing data in a distributed way vs today’s single guardian of your data approach requires a new way of thinking.
In a recent study by Deloitte 39% of the surveyed 1,053 global C-level/senior executives stated they were likely to invest more than $5 million in Blockchain technologies in 2019 and this from a diverse range of sectors from oil and gas to fintech to automotive, retail, media, and so on. It seems that the new way if thinking is catching on.
Repsol, the leading Spanish Oil and Gas group valued at over Euro 24 billion announced a partnership with Finboot (London/Barcelona) where their product Marco has been successfully tested to improve the Product Certification process. Marco, which means ‘frame’ in Spanish, acts as a platform for end-to-end blockchain applications which can be easily developed and deployed using a single dashboard and thereby bringing these solutions to the desk of every employee.
The early adopters of Blockchain such as Walmart, Repsol, IBM, Accenture, BP will encourage the mainstream to come onboard.
It is clear the technology is at the start of the adoption curve. As an evangelist, I say move on and don’t let the froth get in the way: The hype of Blockchain will demand interest and resource: a deeper and wider ecosystem of developer and design skills, mentoring, early-stage capital and a maniacal startup culture which each technology centre of excellence is running to make Blockchain their own.
