 Your new post is loading...
For a while, blockchain was seen as a panacea, says Andrew Stevens, a Gartner analyst who coauthored the “blockchain fatigue” study. Stevens’ team focused on projects that touted blockchain as a way to identify fraudulent and tainted goods in supply chains. They predicted 90 percent of those projects would eventually stall. Blockchain evangelizers were finding that supply chains more complex than expected, and that blockchain offered no ready-made solutions. When it comes to mission-critical blockchain projects, “there are no deployments across any supply chains,” he says.
But Stevens says the concept of blockchains may yet prove useful as a way to get competitors and other distrustful parties to share data and tools. He compares it to early internet experiments, before anyone knew if the internet would catch on. Even if such projects start as a marketing ploy, they can spark corporate bureaucrats to gamble on initiatives and partnerships they otherwise wouldn’t.
A Brief on China's Forthcoming "Cryptocurrency" - CYDigital
Shortly, China will be launching its own cryptocurrency, which may not be a cryptocurrency. China’s big four state-owned commercial banks (the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Agricultural Bank of China) will be the only issuers of China’s CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). It feels more like a digital replacement for the Yuan than a true cryptocurrency, and it will better facilitate the financial lifecycle for many Chinese citizens since they are heavy users of digital payment system like Alipay. Chinese officials have stated they want to strike a balance between anonymous payments and being able to track money flow to prevent money laundering. This may be disingenuous as China has moved away from anonymous transactions (cash exchanges) and to digital payments at a breakneck speed. It is more likely that the goal is deeper tracking of transactions. “It might be more accurate to say that the PBOC (The People's Bank of China) is looking to release digital cash with extra surveillance.”[1] Reporting notes that the CBDC could look akin to Libra, which may be reflected in two ways: (1) as a system capable of handling very high transaction rates, and; (2) it will be on a permissioned blockchain. It may be a fully private blockchain not just in who has the rights to execute the consensus protocol and decide the mining rights and rewards, but also who maintains and can audit the shared ledger. Some additional notes: - China has been dependent on the USD as the global reserve.
- The new CBDC will be backed by the yuan.
- The yuan is dependent on USD and CBDC is backed by yuan.
- Currency manipulation issues are the main worry for other governments.
- China wants to make CBDC a global currency.
- China’s big four state-owned commercial banks, as well as fintech giants Alibaba, Tencent, Union Pay, and an unnamed company, will be the first batch of organizations to receive the CBDC.
- The PBOC’s Digital Currency Research Lab:
- Launched Shenzhen Fintech Research Institute;
- Went on a hiring spree for blockchain architects and cryptography specialists;
- Filed more than 50 patent applications to detail the potential design of the state-backed digital yuan system but will strip off most cryptocurrencies’ anonymity and decentralization features.
[1] Roger Huang, “China's Digital Currency Is Unlikely To Be A Cryptocurrency,” Forbes, 8/14/19, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2019/08/14/chinas-digital-currency-is-unlikely-to-be-a-cryptocurrency/#4d4a3f8c6a52
Much of what we term AI today results from the application of Machine Learning to extraordinarily large amounts of data. To be precise, it is the application of so-called Deep (Machine) Learning techniques that has enabled the rise of voice search and voice-activated assistants such as Siri, healthcare innovations in areas such as cancer diagnosis and treatment, face recognition such as AWS Rekognition and the broader areas of image and video analysis and recognition, machine translation including tools like Bing Translator, speech recognition tools and the emergence of the so-called self-driving automobiles and more. Technically, we should call this the Deep Learning resurgence, and not the AI resurgence.
Blockchain platforms have led to incredible advances in the design and development of decentralized applications and systems and have been applied to domains ranging from cryptocurrencies to enterprise supply chains. More importantly, there are two capabilities that blockchains enable due to their inherent decentralized implementation.
First, blockchains provide the ability for users to be in control of their data and to decide when, where, to whom, and for how long to provide access to their data i.e. blockchains are the anti-thesis of systems that intrinsically and automatically exploit the user’s private data. Further, with the advent of Zero-knowledge proofs, blockchains now have the ability to reveal nothing about a transaction except that it is valid.
Second, blockchains are designed without a central authority or system. Therefore, in order to achieve agreement on both data and transactions, blockchains use a variety of fault-tolerant consensus algorithms. While there is an assortment of consensus algorithms, all of them share similar characteristics with respect to achieving agreement across a decentralized set of nodes (or systems). In particular, a variant called Byzantine Consensus addresses the Byzantine Fault Tolerance problem referred to earlier. Blockchains enable the development of AI applications that are not reliant on a single-vendor implementation with all of their concomitant risks and faults.
Together, these two critical capabilities have the potential to enable today’s Machine Learning implementations to address their Achilles Heel and to enable AI applications that are both not privacy intrusive and not susceptible to the single-vendor Byzantine Faults.
Self-sovereign identity is the notion that rather than having our information held by third parties (often without us knowing what that information is), individuals and entities instead have the ability to store and ultimately control their own digital identities. They can choose to provide select data points about themselves under conditions that they set when there is a need for such information collection,7 without having to rely on a central repository to store this information.8
"Blockchain is not one thing: It includes a range of technologies from smart contracts to tokens to consensus models. Because these products will continuously mature and become available, CIOs should plan for incremental evolution of their blockchain strategies.
Gartner sees four phases in the evolution of blockchain technology:
- Blockchain enabling technologies
- Blockchain inspired
- Blockchain complete
- Enhanced blockchain
The industry is currently moving out of the second phase--blockchain inspired" and into the third phase--"blockchain complete." Gartner predicts that the final phase will start by 2030."
Gelernter thinks there's a better way: he envisions a social media that's collectively owned by its users, where terms of use are determined democratically and privacy is guaranteed by blockchain-based encryption.
Gelernter has teamed up with Rob Rosenthal, a 19-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, to launch the new social media, dubbed "Revolution Populi."
It may seem far-fetched, but they're counting on the general public becoming so fed up with Facebook — but still craving a social media outlet — that Revolution Populi becomes a global movement. A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Loyal customers are one of the primary drivers of any for-profit business. By building loyalty rewards programs, companies aim to heighten the customer experience. In many cases, however, the opposite has occurred. The implementation of blockchain can drive the customer experience to the next level, and here’s how:
Reducing costs
Enabling a frictionless system
Making the process near real-time
Providing a secure environment
Creating unique business opportunities
Given that blockchain’s adoption is in its near infancy in business categories beyond finance and manufacturing, it has the potential to evolve many aspects of marketing. Beyond the customer experience, the marketing industry could use it to create accountability in ad buys, improve a brand’s transparency, or understand customer engagement better.
As consumers realise the benefit of content that is personalised to their needs, many will join a company’s blockchain environment. And to further engagement, brands may incentivise consumers for their attention. Given that there might be a reduction in the need for media intermediaries, companies can afford to take some of their cost-per-thousand savings from media and transfer that to the actual audience.
If the bill were a law during Facebook’s privacy scandals, Mark Zuckerberg would face jail time, Sen. Ron Wyden says.
As programmatic advertising reaches adulthood and the advertising process becomes ever more automated, it’s not possible to simply sit back and blindly trust the measurement and attribution data. Instead, incorporating emerging tech solutions from AI to blockchain will be paramount in waging the war against bot fraud.
8. CIOs should continue to develop proofs of concept internally as well as part of market consortiums
In order to get grip on blockchain and what it can mean for their business, CIOs should continue to develop proofs of concept to test blockchain’s business worthiness. Thereby they should take into account that different industry domains (upstream, midstream, downstream and marketing) and functional areas (such as commodity trading, cash management, supply chains and data integrity) are expected to adopt blockchain on different timelines.
For enterprise success, blockchain needs to be a consortium effort – not something that is used only internally. CIOs should be aware that the transformative nature of blockchain works across multiple levels simultaneously (process, operating model, business strategy and industry structure), and its success will depend on coordinated action across multiple companies. The way to create a multi-company blockchain consortium however is a very difficult one.
According to the latest information, the New Balance Realchain network will be launched in alignment with the unveiling of OMN1S shoes on Friday. The project will help the new clients to record their shoes’ ownership on the decentralized chain. The purchasers of the OMN1S shoes will be given a Realchain card, which will be studded with an identity and security chip. After receiving their pair of basketball shoes, the owner can scroll through the New Balance app for scanning a QR code imprinted on the Realchain card. Also, one needs to scan the chip embedded within the card to get their shoe pair authenticated on the IOHK Cardano blockchain network.
The customers need to enter a code given on the tongue of the shoes into the app for claiming their ownership. By doing this, the particular person will be entitled to secured ownership of the shoes recorded on the New Balance Realchain platform.
On Wednesday October 9, in Revenue Ruling 2019-24 the IRS delivered on some of those promises, publishing a Revenue Ruling on the tax treatment of forks and related airdrops and posting an accompanying information circular on its website providing a list of frequently asked questions and answers (“IRS Q&A”) that, among other things, addresses methods for determining a taxpayer’s basis in cryptocurrency. While the IRS Q&A appears to be mostly non-controversial, the treatment of forks and airdrops is likely to be the subject of debate.
"Data centralization is core to digital marketing driven by data and analytics. The vulnerabilities of this data can be removed by the decentralized, and distributed ledger technology Blockchain. The security risks are taken care of by this technology, which also increases the transparency and traceability of the data. Apart from the security of the data, there are concerns related to the overall cost of analysis, storage and retrieval of data. As you need to offer something in return for the data available to the intermediaries such as Google and Facebook, you end up spending a lot of money. The ROI is negligible against the spending in certain cases, specifically from these channels. However, with Blockchain you can get your hands on the data without considering these middle channels. You own your personal data, and the scope for manipulation of this data reduces tremendously. As a marketer, you reduce the spend but, you also empower the consumer with a choice on sharing the data. The consumer gets the veto on the data that can be shared, and the ones that should be private. It works as a win-win situation for both, and eventually you get to score trust with the customers.
A decentralized ledger like blockchain can impact digital signage in many ways. First of all, it can help confirm impressions for digital signage advertisements. This kind of technology is already at work with the company VODXS.
On the customer level, DOOH advertisers can also incentivize customers to engage with campaigns through tokenization. For example, a campaign could encourage customers to take a picture of an advertisement and share it on their social media profiles in exchange for cryptocurrency, which can be delivered to an app.
|
Scoop.it!
Great article, and as it usually is with a breakthrough, it's a technology looking for an application. Having said that, we have that application geared towards Marketers, and it breaks the digital conglomerate hegemony.
Learn why blockchain is the next step for MarTech and AdTech. Read the white paper: https://www.marteq.io/#7 #martech #marketing