IBM isn’t alone in trying to disrupt global banking with blockchain technology, its latest effort being announced Monday. Here’s an overview of other efforts underway around the globe from Technology Business Research:
- Bank of England
The Bank of England is evaluating blockchain for digital settlement services for example, and Ripple has built a system now used for digital exchanges between banks in Thailand and Japan.
- The EU
The European Union (EU) initiative called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has far reaching implications as well. Adopted in April 2016 and replacing a data protection direction from 1995, GDPR is to become enforceable in May of 2018.
- Booz Allen Hamilton
In another example very similar to this IBM collaboration in the Pacific Rim, Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) is heavily messaging the blockchain opportunity to Gulf Cooperation Council states, where blockchain could significantly speed transaction processing and reduce layers of manual processes in areas such as trade finance and foreign exchange. These rapidly emerging global economic leaders were not ready, in an infrastructure sense, for their ascendance, making them natural proofs of concept for blockchain.
- More efforts in other areas
Underneath the country and major trust institution initiatives sit a number of cascading concept tests designed more specifically around the idiosyncrasies of the economic transaction exchanges, be it for food distribution, title transfers of major assets, or even for the commercial transaction of on-the-fly cloud compute provisioning.
(C) TBR
