Why would one of the world’s largest professional services firm be the title sponsor of a blockchain conference? Isn’t blockchain that thing I saw on the cover of The Economist that makes Bitcoin currency work?
In short, yes it is. Blockchain does underlie Bitcoin, but the applications of the technology extend far beyond Bitcoin. At its heart, blockchain is a distributed ledger, meaning that just like any other ledger, it records transactions. So, when you think transactions, think blockchain. This technology has far reaching implications, and as more assets are recorded via blockchain, Deloitte’s Federal clients will have a range of opportunities and responses, not just to potentially regulate the technology, but to engage, reimagine and proactively incorporate their operations to best leverage this technology.
This is one of the many reasons why Deloitte sponsored Consensus 2016. Consensus focused specifically on blockchain with more than 125 speakers, hosted more than 1,300 attendees from over 40 countries. They included investors, enterprises, industry startups, policy leaders, and academics.
We sent two of our blockchain gurus from Deloitte’s Federal office: Jason Killmeyer and Josh Talbot. I asked them to share some on-the-ground insights from Consensus for those of us that could not attend in-person.
Dispatch from Jason Killmeyer, from our Supply Chain service line:
I just returned from the conference, both thoroughly-networked and fully-caffeinated. On the late train ride back, I remarked on the following:
This is the place to be: The depth of the material presented at Consensus exceeded that of the other Bitcoin and blockchain events I’ve attended in the past. It is clear the center of gravity has shifted from Money2020, a well-regarded mobile payments conference where Bitcoin and Blockchain have featured heavily in the past few years, to Consensus.
Industry leaders get the major challenges: Each of the critical debates within the emerging blockchain industry ecosystem was represented – standards versus ungoverned, permissioned versus open source, short term use case enthusiasts versus skeptics, the scalability of the existing production blockchains or lack thereof – with nuance and in many cases by the newsmakers themselves. This bodes well for the industry as it deals with rapid change and an increased level of mainstream attention.
Depth of content: Content presented was mature and moved beyond highlighting novel individual applications for blockchain. Speakers focused on the broader concepts at play. For example, one asserted that the emerging blockchain sub disciplines – cryptography, data basing, even collective action theory – are coming together to form a new academic discipline.
There are also numerous building blocks (pun intended) for long-term blockchain adoption:
Digital identity will be at the forefront of translating utility into actual value.
The way to develop use case evaluations is by experimenting and, in many cases, failing quickly.
Supply chain and the Internet of Things are two of the main drivers that take blockchain beyond the trade of currencies and other financial instruments, and into new areas of commoditization and as-of-yet unrealized asset classes.
Dispatch from Josh Talbot, from our Analytics + Information Management (AIM) service line:
There were so many incredible insights from Consensus 2016 that it was nearly impossible to distill the information into a couple hundred words! Today, I’ll highlight two of the sessions I attended on blockchain in Delaware and market disruption.
Introducing the Delaware Blockchain initiative: Jack Markell, the Governor of Delaware introduced the Delaware Blockchain initiative. The state incorporates numerous blockchain tech firms on an ongoing basis and monitors the industry to adjust industry regulations. What sets Delaware apart as the preeminent State leader is its partnership with Symbiont. With Symbiont, Delaware uses blockchain technology to develop smart contracts as a method to store state archival information including meeting minutes, orders, and state archivist set email. The government of Delaware is pro-actively bringing in blockchain businesses, so regulators can actively observe and see what is working within the blockchain ecosystem. This enables Delaware to actively gather information and descriptively define regulation, instead of being complacent or delegating prescriptive regulation to an uninformed audience.
Decentralizing and disrupting existing markets: What if we lived in a world where we had to go to the post office to send an email? No one would do it. Yet that's kind of how we are approaching finance right now. Where in order for me to send money to someone else, I need to go through an established institution like a bank. Imagine a world where this is not the case. Imagine a world where self-sovereign identities and the largest applications are part of the same network. Blockchain provides the necessary paradox of true privacy, but also the ability to be totally transparent.
Keep a look out for more articles on how blockchain is changing the way the world operates, and what you need to know to use it, regulate it, and guard against its exploitation.