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Blockchain: Too many sharks in the paddling pool.

Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain ...oh Blockchain.

Teeka Tiwari of InternationalMan.com managed to get a Blockchain piece on Zerohedge. In it he concluded; Do you want exposure to the burgeoning blockchain bull market? The simplest way would be to buy a small amount of bitcoin. Many new blockchain applications base their network on the bitcoin blockchain. And you need bitcoin to buy most other coins. All well and good ...except.

In June 2016 the FT reported that a consortium of banks had taken part in a trial designed to test the efficacy of making international payments using digital assets on the blockchain platform of San Francisco-based Ripple; Instead of transacting via local currency accounts at correspondent banks around the world, the banks convert funds to Ripple’s own digital currency, known as XRP, then complete an exchange almost instantly.

In April 2017, a Bloomberg article reported how the Spanish Bank BBVA had tapped the Blockchain to speed up international payments; Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Spain’s No. 2 lender, has executed its first cross-border payments through a system based on the software that supports bitcoin, the company announced Friday. Using a program built by Ripple, a San Francisco firm, BBVA has transferred about 50 euro-denominated payments to Mexico from Spain in seconds. Such transactions normally take up to four days to clear, the bank said.

On 27 April the Nikkei Asian Review reported that Japan banks were set to test blockchain-based money transfers. The article stated; the upcoming test, which is designed to examine the time, cost and convenience of money transfers using virtual currencies. Creation of a new virtual currency that can only be used by the financial institutions taking part in the test is being considered as well.

Again, in early April 2017, it was reported that Qatar-based Commercial Bank became the first bank in the nation of Qatar to use blockchain technology to process a series of cross-border payments in partnership with several banks in the region. Using cloud-based ledger technology, the Bank created a blockchain network to send bank-to-bank transfers in near real time to regional peers including ABank in Turkey, National Bank of Oman, United Arab Bank in UAE and other banks in Egypt and India. In its press release the Bank stated; the Bank will begin to obtain the necessary approvals from Qatar Central Bank and other stakeholders to extend Commercial Bank’s blockchain network with banking partners and other countries with high remittances corridors such as the Philippines, Nepal, Egypt, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to form closed networks for cash.

The connection between the four blockchain stories....the absence of any mention of Bitcoin. Whilst supporters of Bitcon may wish, hope, believe that the blockchain is going to be the catalyst that finally affords Bitcoin an air of respectability, everything that we have seen vis a vis the development of the Blockchain to date, suggests that the link between it and Bitcoin is indeed a rather tenuous one. Indeed, if anything, there is an argument that the full scale roll out of the Blockchain may ultimately spell the death knell for Bitcoin. Put simply, the Blockchain can and will happily live outside the world of Bitcoin. There are already a number of companies seeking to bring fiat currencies onto the ethereum chain. Once fiat currencies are available in tokenised form, the link that exists between Bitcon and the Blockchain will be broken once and for all. The trend, as noted in the 2017 Fintech Analyst Note: Blockchain, has already started:

Of the traditional venture capital deals into blockchain startups in 2017, just 39% have been to bitcoin-related companies, down from 91% in 2013. This figure should only decrease as other blockchains gain traction and protocols develop for wider use cases beyond the facilitation of payments and the management of digital assets.