{"id":29080,"date":"2017-12-22T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29080"},"modified":"2017-12-22T07:00:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T12:00:19","slug":"big-banks-are-all-over-blockchain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29080","title":{"rendered":"Big Banks Are All Over Blockchain"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/12\/21\/banks-disparage-bitcoin-but-love-the-technology-that-enables-it\/\">Big Banks Are All Over Blockchain<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>To process derivatives, currency trades, transactions, etc. Just don\u2019t call it cryptocurrency. It\u2019s a \u201cdigital currency.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As a general rule, most bankers disparage cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, as anything but purely speculative instruments. But they don\u2019t disparage blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. On the contrary. They\u2019re pouring money into developing their own \u201cdigital currencies,\u201d as they call them. Just don\u2019t call them \u201ccryptocurrencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Santander, the market operator ICAP, and the startup Clearmatics formed an alliance in 2016 to explore the use of digital currency between financial institutions and central banks, using blockchain.<\/p>\n<p>The ultimate goal of the project is to create a digital currency known as Utility Settlement Coin (USC), which will facilitate payment and settlement for institutional financial markets. As the FT <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/615b3bd8-97a9-11e7-a652-cde3f882dd7b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a> in October, commercial banks are growing tired of waiting for central bankers to take the lead in fending off the challenge that standalone cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could pose to their control of monetary policy, and are pressing on with their own pet projects.<\/p>\n<p>According to Deutsche Bank\u2019s website, USC is \u201can asset-backed digital cash instrument implemented on distributed ledger technology for use within global institutional financial markets.\u201d It consists of a \u201cseries of cash assets, with a version for each of the major currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, etc.) and is convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the corresponding currency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to see the attraction blockchain holds for big banks like Deutsche, UBS and Santander: Combining shared databases and cryptography, the technology offers multiple parties simultaneous access to a constantly updated digital ledger that cannot be altered. With it, banks could offer a safer, faster, cheaper, more transparent service to their customers, while doing away with the need for a central operator.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Banks Are All Over Blockchain To process derivatives, currency trades, transactions, etc. Just don\u2019t call it cryptocurrency. It\u2019s a \u201cdigital currency.\u201d As a general rule, most bankers disparage cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, as anything but purely speculative instruments. But they don\u2019t disparage blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. On the contrary. They\u2019re pouring money into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5270,4174,13266,15611,4955,5660,4255],"class_list":["post-29080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-big-banks","tag-bitcoin","tag-blockchain","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-digital-currency","tag-don-quijones","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29081,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29080\/revisions\/29081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}