{"id":51607,"date":"2018-06-28T14:26:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/?p=51607"},"modified":"2018-06-29T11:09:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T15:09:43","slug":"benzinga-fintech-awards-notes-from-the-conference-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/28\/benzinga-fintech-awards-notes-from-the-conference-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Benzinga FinTech Awards &#8211; Notes from the Conference (4)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>The Age of Blockchain How it will change finance:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>John Hart &#8211; Director of Trading TD<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The regulatory grey area is difficult to bypass and get to the point of utilization.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Raj Karkara &#8211; Managing Director at T0 and Overstock<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The use of blockchain is unlimited and needs to be utilized in order to kill off some older legacy applications.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Public vs. Private Chains is a big fight right now.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Education is key to getting the public behind a progressive product like crypto and blockchain.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Believes that focusing on the user and a beautiful user experience is the key to using blockchain and being successful.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where does he see the technology being utilized in 18 Months: <\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Identity Solutions<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Central Banking Solutions<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Capital Markets Solutions<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Solutions for voting.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Alex Mashinsky, CEO &#8211; Celsius Network<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blockchain is a fight between centralization vs. de-centralization<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Will it be an open or closed ledger?\u00a0 JPMorgan is using an Ethereum Fork with closed architecture which he doesn\u2019t believe is the best use of the technology.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alex believes the best insertion point for blockchain technology is in borrowing and lending as he believes the banks are doing a terrible job at this.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He also believes that reinventing legacy products like banking, insurance, mortgages is the best place to start to look at implenting blockchain.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where does he see the technology being utilized in 18 Months:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sees consolidation, 80% of the companies will disappear within the crypto-currency \/ blockchain space similar to the dot com bubble. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Believes that in 5-10 years, block chain and crypto will be bigger than google and apple.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Danny Aranda, Managing Director &#8211; Ripple<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of good ideas coming out of blockchain, but figuring out where to insert it is the main problem.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Getting from Fiat to Crypto is the hardest part right now.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Danny went on to compare blockchain to Instagram in the fact that they leveraged the technology available with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a better photo sharing app.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t think that blockchain is there yet, but think they are on the cusp of being able to provide solutions for big, small and start up companies alike.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">International Cross Border Payments is where he sees the best insertion points.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His Advice regarding the technology: \u00a0Stay focused as there is a lot of noise. \u00a0Lots of products \/ coins being offered for the pure reason of raising money vs. actually using the technology to improve something.\u00a0 As a whole, we need focus on one or two problems and look for a solution to insert the technology into.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">18 Months: \u00a0Solving lots of client \/ user pain points in the markets. \u00a0Also sees lots of consolidation.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Age of Blockchain How it will change finance: John Hart &#8211; Director of Trading TD The regulatory grey area is difficult to bypass and get to the point of utilization. Raj Karkara &#8211; Managing Director at T0 and Overstock The use of blockchain is unlimited and needs to be utilized in order to kill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogandupdates","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}