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There was a lot of ink dedicated to the meteoric rise and the precipitous fall that took place in the cryptocurrency market in 2018. The opinions on the subject are a dozen dozens, but the consensus seems to be that no one is sure where the fund will end. to be. For those invested in individual cryptocurrencies, it was nothing short of a disaster. For the broader investment market, however, there is a bright side: the blockchain.
For those who do not know, blockchain is the encrypted and distributed digital register technology that makes cryptocurrencies beat. It is turning out to be the most valuable takeaway of the entire cryptocurrency roller coaster ride, as it is proving infinitely adaptable to almost every conceivable business use case. It is already used to track and authenticate diamonds, reduce costs in global supply chains and even to create an insurance proofing system.
The only place where blockchain technology has not impressed is in the sector for which it was created in the first place: finance. This is largely due to the conservative nature of the global financial sector, but it seems that progress is beginning. To understand what's going on and where changes will show up in the future, here are three blockchain applications from the online (or online) mainstream financial industry.
Bank transfers in real time
Recently, the New York Signature Bank has obtained regulatory approval for the launch of a real-time payment settlement platform based on blockchain technology. The platform, known as Signet, will allow real-time transfers of money between the bank's commercial customers, starting immediately. The key value proposition of the platform is that the system will work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which allows greater financial flexibility compared to current systems. This alone is worth the admission price for system users, but the benefits do not stop there. Making transfers through the Signet platform also allows these transfers to occur in a peer-to-peer manner, eliminating the intermediary. This means that there will be no transaction fees to talk about, making the system a free and valuable tool for any company that has access to it.
Stock platforms
Modern investors have become accustomed to using a variety of platforms to buy and trade securities online in recent decades, but beyond that, global equity markets have not been exactly known for digital innovation. This will change, however, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is committed to moving to a new blockchain-based post-trading system by the end of 2020. It will replace a system, known as CHESS, which has been in place for over 25 years. The new system will be built by the fintech company of New York Digital Asset and is expected to introduce no less than 50 new features that will help lower costs and accelerate settlements by allowing pre-matching of transactions before in the process compared to today's methods.
Cross-border payments
When the wave of cryptocurrency began, the security and flexibility of the blockchain made it clear that it could be the eventual successor to the credit card processing industry. While scalability problems prevented this from happening (so far), this did not prevent MasterCard from credit cards from taking steps to defend their territory. They started by creating a blockchain base system that allows cross-border payments between companies that use fiat currency instead of cryptographic tokens. They did not stop here, anyway. Since their first foray into blockchain technology, MasterCard has continued its research and has filed a patent on another blockchain system that would allow anonymous transactions between the parties – which represents the fulfillment of one of the original key value propositions of the same cryptocurrencies .
Adoption continues
In light of these developments, it is becoming clear that the global financial sector is starting to come forward with the promise of blockchain technology. This represents a rather large change in an industry that is not known to embrace change or move quickly even when it does. If the aforementioned blockchain solutions take off, it could signal the start of a new wave of blockchain adoption across the financial world, which would benefit both the industry itself and all of its numerous customers – and it would a great victory for the crypted space, even if the losses continue to rise.
