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      "body": "<html>\n<p>&nbsp;Hi, I am <a href=\"http://startupmanagement.org/\">William Mougayar</a>. I am the author of <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119300312/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1119300312&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ameros-20&amp;linkId=3d65bbfd8e2cafc5b953dc3e565a3f19\"><em>The Business Blockchain</em> </a>that came out as the first book talking about the business implications of the blockchain. I am also a researcher and an investor in the Bitcoin and blockchain space. I write on my blog <a href=\"http://startupmanagement.org/\">startupmanagement.org</a>. I am also an advisor and board member in many of the companies that are involved in the blockchain, such as the Ethereum Foundation, Coin Center, OpenBazaar, OMERS Ventures, <a href=\"http://steemit.com/\">Steemit.com</a>, and others.</p>\n\n\n<iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/N_CLxVBLv3s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n\n\n<h2><strong>What is The State Of Blockchain?</strong></h2>\n<p>Looking at what is going on with the <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/\">blockchain</a>, you have to look at two dimensions. You want to think first of all whether you want to be involved in the private blockchain space or in the public blockchain space. And once you do that, you want to think about two other factors: is the blockchain really there to support your existing businesses, or is it there to create new businesses and new services? The large companies are mostly focused internally on supporting their existing business, whereas startups want to disrupt existing models and create new ones. That is an important distinction.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>I personally like a lot what is going on in the startup space, and I have a lot of hope for the innovations that are happening in that space. But we should not discount what big companies are doing as well, because there are benefits for them also.</p>\n<h2><strong>What’s Missing in The Blockchain Space</strong></h2>\n<p>What is missing in the <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/\">blockchain </a>space today is a really good understanding, not just of what the blockchain is, but how to think about the blockchain. So I have been shifting the way I talk about the blockchain, If I’m not just explaining it, because that can get boring very quickly. We need to think about how to use the blockchain. And the way to think about the blockchain is in four different areas. One is that it is a new development platform.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>If you think about the web, the web has been an incredible development platform, and everything today is developed on the web. In the future, everything is going to be developed with the blockchain in mind.Secondly, you have to think of the blockchain as a new utility. It is a new utility network for moving value, moving assets.</p>\n<p>Thirdly, it is a trust-based services layer. We are going to see a lot of new services that are going to emerge on the blockchain, and this is going to disrupt the way companies are currently organized.</p>\n<p>And, finally, it is going to create a new marketplace. There is a new economy out there, what I call the Crypto-Tech Economy, that could be as big, if not bigger, than the web economy. So we have to be prepared for it.</p>\n<h2><strong>Where Will The Blockchain Space be in 2 Years?</strong></h2>\n<p>We have to make a distinction, again, with what is going on with consumers vs. what is going on in the<a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/ama/world-blockchain-ama/\"> business-to-business</a> sense with big companies. <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/blockchain-enterprise/\">Large companies are going to start to deploy</a> a lot of the pilots that they were involved in in 2016. But we’re not going to see any big implantations until 2018.</p>\n<p>I am a bit worried about the consumer side, because we have not yet seen the types of user-friendly applications that are on the blockchain. By and large, a lot of the consumer applications of the blockchain are still very geeky. If you start to get into the Wallet applications, for example, you have to understand what a <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/bitcoin-explosion/\">Bitcoin </a>address is and you have to really get a degree of technicality involved. And this is not going to be enough to deploy it to millions and millions of users. So I would like to see more user-friendliness in the area of consumer applications of the blockchain.&nbsp;</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/employer-panel/employer-registration/\">We need to see more developers get into this space</a>. We need to see more applications, and we have to see more users using these applications.In the business sense, companies have figured out that the blockchain is a big savings type of application. They will spend perhaps the next ten years cutting costs, improving processes, and trying to figure out how to re-engineer their operations for the blockchain.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>But the consumers need to see more applications that are very easy to use, and we need to see more of that. So the challenge is for the developers to start to think regarding millions of users, not just a handful of users, when they develop these consumer types of applications</p>\n<h2><strong>What You Most Excited About?</strong></h2>\n<p>I am very excited about the prospect of using <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/\">cryptocurrency</a>, not just as a money equivalent, but using it as a way to earn something as a result of doing some type of work. If you think about it, we all have a third job. The first job is the current job that you have that you get paid for. The second job is the taking care of yourself, of your family, and of your surroundings. But the third job is a job that other companies have given us in the area of self-service. When we go and track a package, for example, we are doing the job of somebody else. When we go on social media, we are spending time but we are not getting compensated for it.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>In the near future, I’m seeing cryptocurrency coming in as this new unit of value that is going to allow us to get compensated for the time that we are spending.An example might be a marketplace called <a href=\"https://steemit.com/@ameerrosic/feed\">Steemit.com</a> If you go there and you spend time writing content or upvoting content or promoting content, you earn a cryptocurrency that can be valuable, that you can spend in this non-money economy. So I am seeing a merging of the money economy and the non-money economy. And cryptocurrency is going to be this new enabler of a new economy that, as I said earlier, is going to be potentially bigger than the web economy.And going forward we have to make some choices as consumers.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>You will be picking your own cryptocurrencies, the ones that you want to be aligned with. You will be picking the economies that you want to be involved in, where you want to spend your time earning valuable tokens that you will spend in other transactions within that marketplace. And, finally, you are going to decide who you’re going to share your data with.This is because we as consumers are a source of data, and currently, we are giving this data away for free. If Facebook were to be reinvented in the era of decentralization, they should be compensating us for the attention that we are giving them. But they are not today; they are the ones that are monetizing this attention.&nbsp;</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p>But I’m hopeful that in the same way that our data is valuable, our attention is valuable, our time is valuable, and cryptocurrency is the perfect currency to get us compensated for the time that we are spending online and in these new marketplaces.</p>\n<h2><strong>Blockchain and Venture Capital</strong></h2>\n<p>Venture capital is going to be impacted by cryptocurrency. We are seeing this today already with a new phenomenon called ICOs (<a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/how-not-to-be-scammed-by-a-initial-coin-offering/\">Initial Cryptocurrency Offerings</a>), which is the equivalent of an IPO (Initial Price Offering). With an ICO, companies can raise their own money; they can spit out their own currency, and raise money from consumers at large. It is like crowd sourcing and crowd funding. And this is turning the traditional venture capital model on its head, because then, theoretically, companies do not need venture capitalists.But, having said that, this comes with a lot of caution. It opens up the way to evaluate companies. You still have to do the diligence aspects, like in startups, is it a good market, is it a good product, is the team a solid team.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>You also have to look at the resilience of the crypto-sale that they are planning, what are the mechanics of the selling of the tokens. Thirdly, you have to look at the level of transparency that these companies are giving you. Are they really going to let you know how they are doing, because when you do an ICO you become like a public company from day one, everything is open?&nbsp;</p>\n<p>And finally, you have to look at the business model and how it ties into this token that they are issuing. That area is a very important one, and sometimes it gets disconnected from the actual operations of the business.</p>\n<p>So the more coupled the business model is with the token itself, and the more the token provides a valuable utility, the more sound a business is. So it really explodes the traditional venture capital model, and it gives us more parameters to look at. And this is a really challenging area, but at the same time, it is a very exciting area to be in.</p>\n<h2><strong>Advice For People Who Want To Enter The Blockchain Space?</strong></h2>\n<p>The advice I would give anybody in this space, if they want to get involved in it, is starting to read about it quite a bit and start to understand it. Get a Bitcoin Wallet or sign up at one of the exchanges that exist out there. Every country has some exchanges. You have to experience how money can get transferred from one person to another without having a bank in the middle.The second thing one can do is use an application that is using the actual blockchain in a decentralized manner. <a href=\"https://openbazaar.org/\">OpenBazaar </a>comes to mind, which is a decentralized peer-to-peer application for doing commerce. By doing that you will experience doing commerce, like going on eBay without having eBay in the middle.</p>\n<p>And, thirdly, go on a marketplace like Steemit, which is the equivalent of Reddit but where you can get money. It is an incentivized content market place; you can earn cryptocurrency by being there, by providing your attention, by writing content, by voting on content, by participating with others. And this gives you an idea of the shape of things to come.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p>You can follow me on my blog <a href=\"http://startupmanagement.org/\">startupmanagement.org</a> &nbsp;or Twitter @wmougayar.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n</html>",
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>&nbsp;While <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin-a-step-by-step-guide/\">Bitcoin </a>has long been dominant in the<a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/\"> cryptocurrency</a> scene, it is certainly not alone. <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-ethereum/\">Ethereum</a> is another cryptocurrency related project that has attracted a lot of hype because of its additional features and applications. So, what is the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin?&nbsp;</p>\n<h2><strong>Ethereum And Bitcoin: What’s The Difference?</strong></h2>\n<p><img src=\"http://blockgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Ethereum-And-Bitcoin-Whats-The-Difference--768x402.png\" width=\"768\" height=\"402\"/></p>\n<h3><strong>Ethereum: More Than Just Money</strong></h3>\n<p>The first thing about <a href=\"https://www.ethereum.org/\">Ethereum</a> is that it is not just a digital currency. It is a <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/\">blockchain-based</a> platform with many aspects. It features smart contracts, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and it uses its currency called ether for peer-to-peer contracts. Ethereum’s <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/\">smart contracts</a> use blockchain stored applications for contract negotiation and facilitation. The benefit of these contracts is that the blockchain provides a decentralized way to verify and enforce them. The decentralized aspect makes it incredibly difficult for fraud or censorship. Ethereum’s smart contracts aim to provide greater security than traditional contracts and bring down the associated costs.&nbsp;</p>\n<blockquote><a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/enterprise-ethereum/\">Ethereum</a> and Bitcoin are similar in many ways, but have key differences. Both of them are peer to peer decentralized cryptocurrencies that leverage a blockchain. They can both be used as a store and transfer of value. But Ethereum aims to serve a different purpose: smart contracts. Smart contacts are essentially Ethereum addresses that contain executable code. This code is stored in the Ethereum blockchain. For example, you may have an Ethereum address/smart contract containing code that shows if any currency is sent to that address, it will automatically be forwarded to another Ethereum address.Both currencies are still in very early stages, but Bitcoin displays more stability as a currency today. In my opinion, Bitcoin will continue to be the top digital currency for storage and transfer of value due to reduced volatility and a well-established network effect. Ethereum, on the other hand, will also continue to grow, and for the near term perhaps see more experimentation and development occurring on the network. In fact, there are already highly sophisticated Ethereum smart contracts in existence that essentially act as autonomous corporations, referred to as Digital Autonomous Corporations (DAO). DigixDAO is a good example of a currently existing one. The DAO is an example of what can go wrong with these!Jad Mubaslat, Founder and former CEO of <a href=\"https://bitquick.co/\">BitQuick.co</a></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://pinterest.com/pin/create/bookmarklet/?media=http://blockgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/infographics-02-1.jpg&amp;url=http://blockgeeks.com/ethereum-and-bitcoin/&amp;is_video=false&amp;description=What%20are%20smart%20contract.%20A%20beginners%20guide\">Save</a>The smart contract applications are powered by ether, Ethereum’s blockchain based cryptocurrency. Ether, as well as other crypto-assets are held in the Ethereum Wallet, which allows you to create and use smart contracts. The system has been described by the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/business/dealbook/ethereum-a-virtual-currency-enables-transactions-that-rival-bitcoins.html?_r=0\">New York Times</a> as..&nbsp;</p>\n<blockquote><strong>“a single shared computer that is run by the network of users and on which resources are parceled out and paid for by ether.”</strong><br>\n</blockquote>\n<h2><strong>Implement Smart Contracts With Your Own Cryptocurrency</strong></h2>\n<p>Ethereum allows you to create digital tokens that can be used to represent virtual shares, assets, proof of membership and more. These smart contracts are compatible with any wallet, as well as exchanges that use a standard coin API. You can copy the <a href=\"https://www.ethereum.org/token\">code</a> from Ethereum’s website and then use your tokens for many purposes, including the representation of shares, forms of voting and also fundraising. You can either have a fixed amount of tokens in circulation or have a fluctuating amount based on predetermined rules.&nbsp;</p>\n<h2><strong>You Don’t Need Kickstarter When You Have Ethereum</strong></h2>\n<p>One great feature of Ethereum is that it gives developers a means to raise funds for various applications. For your new project, you can set up a contract and seek pledges from the community. The money that is raised will be held until the goal is reached or until an agreed upon date. The funds will be released back to the contributors if the goal is not met, or go on to the project if it is successful. Kicking out <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/blockchain-crowdfunding/\">Kickstarter </a>means that the third party is taken out, along with their rules, and also the fees they charge (when you include processing fees, Kickstarter can take up to 10% of a projects budget).</p>\n<h2><strong>Skip the Traditional Management Structure With Democratic Autonomous Organizations</strong></h2>\n<p>Not only can Ethereum help you source funding, but it can also help to provide the organizational structure to get your idea off the ground. You can collect proposals from the people who backed your project and then hold votes on how you should proceed. This means that you can skip the expense of a traditional structure, such as hiring managers and doing paperwork. Ethereum also protects your project from outside influences, while its decentralized network means that you won’t face downtime.</p>\n<h2><strong>The Finer Details: Differences Between Ethereum and Bitcoin</strong></h2>\n<p>There are also many smaller aspects that differ between the two blockchain-based projects. Bitcoin’s average block time is about 10 minutes, while Ethereum’s aims to be <a href=\"https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/\">12 seconds</a>. This quick time is enabled by Ethereum’s GHOST protocol. A faster block time means that confirmations are quicker. However, there are also more orphaned blocks. Another key difference between them is their monetary supply. More than <a href=\"http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/03/31/23-bitcoins-mined-13-may-lost/\">two-thirds</a> of all available bitcoin have already been mined, with the majority going to early miners. Ethereum raised its launch capital with a <a href=\"http://ethdocs.org/en/latest/introduction/history-of-ethereum.html\">presale</a>, and only about half of its coins will have been mined by its fifth year of existence. The reward for mining Bitcoin halves about every four years, and it is currently valued at 12.5 bitcoins. Ethereum rewards miners based on its proof-of-work algorithm called Ethash, with 5 ether given for each block. Ethash is a memory hard hashing algorithm, which encourages decentralized mining by individuals, rather than the use of more centralized ASICs as with Bitcoin. Bitcoin and Ethereum also cost their transactions in different ways. In Ethereum, it is called Gas and the costing of transactions depends on their storage needs, complexity and bandwidth usage. &nbsp;In Bitcoin, the transactions are limited by the block size and they compete equally with each other. Ethereum features its own Turing complete internal code, which means that anything can be calculated with enough computing power and enough time. Bitcoin does not have this capability. While there are certainly advantages to the Turing-complete, its complexity also brings security complications, which contributed to the <a href=\"https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/pamela-morgan-on-security-you-don-t-get-to-the-moon-without-blowing-up-a-few-rockets-1475072897\">DAO attack</a> in June.&nbsp;</p>\n<h2><strong>Ethereum and Bitcoin: Two Very Different Beasts</strong></h2>\n<p>While many will compare the cryptocurrency aspect of both Ethereum and Bitcoin, the reality is that they are vastly different projects and have different intentions. Bitcoin has emerged as a relatively stable digital currency, while Ethereum aims to encompass more, with ether just a component of its smart contract applications.&nbsp;</p>\n</html>",
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>In the last few years, sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have revolutionized the world for startups. Ideas that didn’t have mainstream business appeal were not only getting off the ground, but flourishing. <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/\">Blockchain</a> crowdfunding might just be the next step in startup evolution, helping important and interesting projects come to fruition.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://blockgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Elveos_crowdfunding_scheme.png\" width=\"1024\" height=\"285\"/></p>\n<p>Crowdfunding provides an excellent way for creative projects to find cash. Many small or obscure projects lay outside of the scope of traditional investment. This makes it very difficult for them to get their ideas off the ground. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others changed that, by allowing startups to connect directly with potential consumers in order to seek funding. They acted as a trusted third party to keep the money in escrow, helping to protect potential investors from being scammed. If the funding succeeds, customers get whatever was promised to them as part of the campaign. If not, their money will be sent back.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The problem with these established crowdfunding companies is that they are centralized bodies, charging high fees and also influencing the projects. <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology-a-step-by-step-guide-than-anyone-can-understand/\">Blockchain</a>-based crowdfunding is set to be a game changer because it decentralizes the funding model from the likes of Kickstarter and other companies. Kickstarter provides a service and there are costs to run that service, so it’s hard to blame them for <a href=\"https://www.kickstarter.com/help/fees\">charging 5%</a> of the total funds received, with an additional 3-5% going towards payment processing. Despite this, it is still expensive. With blockchain’s distributed ledger, &nbsp;there is the potential to remove this third party, which will save a considerable amount of the fundraising costs. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Blockchain crowdfunding works by allowing startups to <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/17/bitcoin-2-0-crowdfunding-is-real-crowdfunding/?ncid=rss&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&amp;utm_content=FaceBook\">create their own digital currencies</a> and sell them. This allows them to raise funds from early investors, while the investors also have the potential to make money if the value of their cryptographic shares increases. Some advocates consider this a more pure form of crowdfunding, because it removes any intermediaries standing between the backers and the startup. It also has the potential to boost new blockchain platforms, because it will give the blockchain community a new way to fund its own projects. It appeals to the more anarchistic blockchain enthusiasts as well, because it allows them to avoid traditional funding methods.</p>\n<h2><strong>How Does Blockchain Crowdfunding Work?</strong></h2>\n<p>It is similar to Kickstarter, with the creators posting their project and then soliciting funds from a community of interested people. Where it differs is that the startups will be able to make their own cryptocurrency to sell to potential backers. These <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency-everything-you-need-to-know-ultimate-guide/\">cryptocurrency </a>tokens will be accounted for and kept track of by the blockchain, which makes it immutable and impossible to forge. The tokens represent shares in the project, and just like normal shares in the stock market, they have the potential to go up in value. These investments are referred to as cryptoequity.&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>OpenLedger by CCEDK</strong>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>OpenLedger is one of the numerous projects that are popping up to apply blockchain technology to the field of crowdfunding. The parent company, <a href=\"https://www.ccedk.com/dc/openledger\">CCEDK</a>, saw OpenLedger as a new opportunity to provide something valuable to their users. According to <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2016/06/29/secrets-to-successful-crowdfunding-over-blockchain-revealed-by-danish-crypto-exchange/#ea4b07450731\">Forbes</a>, the OpenLedger platform aims to bring “great new ideas and people” to investors throughout the world. OpenLedger functions as a trading platform, where investors can immediately trade their cryptoequity. CCEDK will hold the money in escrow, which allows companies to access much-needed funds and also reduces the risks for investors.</p>\n<p>When a company wants to begin crowdfunding, they will release Initial Coin Offering OpenLedger (ICOO) assets, which are the cryptoequity. If the company does well, these tokens can increase in value, as well as be traded on OpenLedger according to the desires and speculation of investors.</p>\n<h2><strong>Stratis Raised Over $100 000 Through Blockchain Crowdfunding</strong></h2>\n<p>On the opposite side of the equation is <a href=\"https://stratisplatform.com/\">Stratis</a>, a UK-based company that is working on a unique blockchain development platform that aims to reduce the time it takes to create blockchain apps. As you can imagine, it is often difficult to secure funding when you work with technology that the establishment is dragging its feet on.Stratis turned to blockchain-based crowdfunding to acquire the much needed funds. They are developing a <a href=\"http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/15/blockchain-platform-stratis-crowdfunding-surpasses-us100k/\">Bitcoin full node framework</a>, which will serve as the foundation for their own service.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>They sought funds with an <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/how-not-to-be-scammed-by-a-initial-coin-offering/\">initial coin offering</a> (ICO) and the tokens are used for the parent and side chains of the network. Investors can use the tokens to pay for the use of blockchain as a service or for dapp hosting functionality.The ICO only accepted Bitcoins, but over $100 000 was raised for the project. The funds are stored in a multisig account, but only one of three keys is held by Stratis. This ensures that an employee can’t run off with the money and it protects the investors.</p>\n<h2><strong>Conclusion</strong></h2>\n<p>And, it goes without saying, with new technology comes new opportunity. Pandora’s box has been open and the future is looking bright.&nbsp;</p>\n</html>",
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>&nbsp;My name is Matthew Spoke. I am the Founder &amp; CEO of <a href=\"http://nuco.io/\">Nuco</a>. We are a Toronto-based enterprise blockchain software company. We have been around for about seven months now.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n\n<iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/KMCXjr6SkaY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n<h2><strong>What Nuco?</strong></h2>\n<p><a href=\"http://nuco.io/\">Nuco</a> is a software company that focuses on building <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-blockchain-technology/\">blockchain</a> for networks in enterprise companies. We essentially piggybacked off of some of these open source protocols and decided that this would be an interesting technology to apply in the context of what could close the network of known participants, such as banks, hospitals, insurance companies, you name it. The same general purpose infrastructure that Ethereum is to the public domain, we wanted to build a version of that intended for a close network of participants.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>A simple example that people often point to is in financial services, being able to create a close-payment network, for example, between a group of domestic banks. In Canada take the five biggest Canadian banks and, say, they wanted to create a faster payment or settlement system, they might decide to do that on the distributed network rather than creating an intermediary organization for that.Outside of finance, we have also done some proof of concept in as remote use cases as healthcare or <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/blockchain-and-iot-a-perfect-match/\">IoT</a>.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;In healthcare we did a proof of concept around pharmacies and clinics existing on a network together so that they could track the issuance of prescription drugs and verify that the prescription was legitimate, that it wasn’t being used at two different pharmacies, and so solving this idea of fraud in the prescription world. That’s another example.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<h2><strong>Blockchain Enterprise Model</strong></h2>\n<p>The market that I look at when I think about spreading around is the enterprise market. We have two focuses. When we say enterprise we say, for example, the Fortune 500 companies that are the incumbents in these industries, and the banks and the insurance companies that don’t want to be disrupted by this new technology.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The other category of enterprises is the new software companies that are in fact the disrupters, the ones that are coming in, our generation of the PayPals of the world that are going to be like the new bank or the new insurance company. So we’re trying to make sure that what we’re building is relevant to both of those groups. But today when you look at running any type of proof of concept or eventually going to production on a network like <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin-a-step-by-step-guide/\">Bitcoin </a>or a network like <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-ethereum/\">Ethereum</a>, a lot of the challenges have to do with performance of those networks, like how many transactions can you process, the regulators wanting to have some sort of control as to who participates in these transactions, so can you close off these networks. There is also scalability and security and all these kind of high-level bucket items.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Ethereum’s recent challenges have pointed out the fact that it’s probably a long way from being able to process real financial services transactions in a regulated environment. So we’re trying to solve all of those things with a built-for-purpose infrastructure that is intended for these enterprises users.There has been a healthy amount of proof of concepts in prototypes and labs and RnD that is happening. Everybody seems to be coming to a similar list of limitations. We hear it from every customer we talk to, it’s always about performance, security, scalability, integration requirements. The blockchain world operates in a little bit of a vacuum, so the companies a blockchain. But in reality those blockchain networks are going to have to integrate into your sales forces, your Oracles, your SAP systems, or others.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;These are the real-world implications that have not been solved yet, because everybody has done their first proof of concept to say, hey, I don’t want to tokenize something that might represent like a stock or a prescription drug. How do I implement that into an existing process is the next step that people haven’t figured out yet.</p>\n<h2><strong>Blockchain Developers?</strong></h2>\n<p>We made a pretty conscious decision upfront that we were going to <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/employer-panel/employer-registration/\">hire talent</a> locally in Toronto. We wanted to grow a team that had the synergies of being in the same room together. So we opened an office here, we made sure that the people we were recruiting could physically be in that office, especially because we’re bringing on people at different levels of experience with this technology. We found that they could learn a lot faster by sitting next to somebody who might be slightly more experienced than them. But that means that we were limiting our pool of talent to graduates from universities that are around the Toronto area, and we’ve got some great schools, but it’s still limiting to a certain extent.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The second thing that became evident to us is we were not only looking for <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/employer-panel/employer-registration/\">blockchain talent</a>, we were looking for talent that was smart enough and well established enough to learn how a blockchain infrastructure changes the way you build software. But we emphasize and prioritize coming out of an academic institution, like the Master’s level, or having spent some time working in a large established industry, because then you can marry these two concepts together. For example, what does mature software look like if you come from a bank, and how do I employ that lens of maturity to the way I’m building a blockchain system.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>There are still a lot of naïve assumptions in the blockchain world, like the Bitcoin rhetoric five years ago was like we’re going to disrupt the banking industry. But a lot of the people that were building those applications didn’t actually understand how the banking industry works, so some of their assumptions were extremely simplistic. We’re trying to make sure that we marry the best of both worlds.I think it has potential with some markets where it is proving to be politically important, like when you look at what happened recently with the currency scare in India.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>So it’s very, very important in some economies. I don’t think that it has really proven why it is necessary for more established economies where there is a sense of trust in your government, where there is a sense of trust in your banking system. I’m not sure.</p>\n<h2><strong>Cryptocurrency?</strong></h2>\n<p>I think Bitcoin is still very much the gold standard currency, not only because it carries market cap, but because it was built single-purpose as a currency mechanism and it does really, really well at that. <a href=\"http://blockgeeks.com/enterprise-ethereum/\">Ethereum </a>was never intended to be inherently like a currency mechanism, so I don’t think it will ever match the capabilities of Bitcoin as a currency system. I think you could easily see in future — maybe not even that far out, maybe five to ten years from now — where Bitcoin is one of the dominant currencies in exchange around the world.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>I know there have been some central banks that have started talking about not only issuing their own currencies on blockchains but also looking at Bitcoin as a reserve currency that they would maintain. Just like if you are not the US Federal Reserve, you maintain US Dollar reserves Central Bank of Barbados or the Central Bank of Argentina, or whatever. Bitcoin could probably fill that role in the next few years.&nbsp;</p>\n<h2><strong>Fortune 500 companies vs Startups in Blockchain</strong></h2>\n<p>There are not only big businesses and small startups, but there are also these large enterprise startups, like the R3s of the world, the digital that really carry a lot of the characteristics of a large enterprise but are dabbling with new software. The criticism I have is that a lot of these companies — from the labs at these organizations or these really large startups — they’re trying to take some characteristics of blockchain but leave others, pick and choose, and then you end up with a technology that is cool, it’s new, it’s potentially more digital than what it’s replacing, but it’s only incrementally improving processes. So you’re not really fundamentally changing the paradigm on decentralization. I was reading — and I won’t quote them because I don’t want to be too critical — the white paper of a recently open source project where in the section they talk about consensus they start talking about centralized notaries that exist on these networks to apply an approval process on a transaction.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>This means that you’ve digitized the system, but you’re still relying on centralized and you defeat the purpose of this whole decentralized consensus. And there is a lot of that going on.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>These decentralized databases or distributed databases have become synonymous with blockchains, which I don’t think is completely true, and it’s unfair. There is only one characteristic of — and that is almost becoming a lot of the these software companies, these bigger ones are saying we found the right approach to build decentralized databases and that’s what we call a blockchain.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>So they’re watering down the technology.I think we are starting to see from even early stage discussions about it at different levels of government, whether it’s central banks or innovation divisions in governments, that they’re paying attention, though I think they’ll be the slowest to actively do something. The counties where they stand the most to gain from changing a process or establishing more trustworthy infrastructure tend to be countries that have comparatively less developed economies.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>This is why you hear of land registry systems being tested in Honduras and Georgia, but you don’t hear about them happening in the US or the UK. We have small little bits of the problem, but not big enough to require a whole overhaul of the system. I think governments are being supportive, even if it’s just part of their encouraging innovation. And Canada is a good example.&nbsp;</p>\n<h2><strong>Are Governments Getting Involved?</strong></h2>\n<p>The reality with the government is that it is not like they’re waiting for new technology to get more efficient. There have been more efficient technologies that the governments have not implemented for years, even decades. I just recently applied for a health card, and literally, you just have to print out a new piece of plastic, and it takes like eight weeks for me to get that in the mail. It does not take eight weeks to go through a printer. So it’s not about the technology being available, it’s just the inherent slowness. But we did a hackathon a couple of weeks; we provided our software like a platform people could build on, the Right Tech hackathon, which to me shows a really cool shift. This is the Ontario Securities Commission, which is a regulator of probably the second largest stock market in North America, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and they’re hosting a blockchain hackathon on how do we rebuild these industries. So that’s encouraging.There is a lot of white space right now; there are a lot of companies competing over the same high level of use cases, but what is really going to happen is you’re going to have people land on an idea that seems really like out there.&nbsp;</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p>The new Uber project on Ethereum, Arcade City, is a great example of not public stock market, not currency movement, not all these high-level use cases that we always hear about in the news, but completely left-field. It’s a copying a model that exists, but it’s more consumer-facing. So more people are coming up with interesting applications like that, which are maybe a little bit more science fiction like in the sense that Uber seemed crazy before we started using it. Arcade City takes it one step further where you’re not even trusting Uber.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>There are a lot of applications in that white space. Ethereum is a really cool place to start because it’s so easy for people to get up and running with an idea. People are raising money in completely new ways. They’re building companies in completely new ways. So it doesn’t take much. If you’re somewhat of an established developer, you can pick up within a couple of weeks a cool prototype of what you want to build, because Ethereum has made it pretty simple to do that.</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p>Check this out on Nuco.io, or Twitter @Nucofuture. You can find us on LinkedIn and everywhere else, but those are probably the two most relevant.&nbsp;</p>\n</html>",
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