Autonomous, Trustless and Unstoppable (Part 5): 3 Examples of Blockchain Tech Applied to Finance

The previous two videos (part 3 and part 4) described the blockchain ideas from a technical point of view with the example of Bitcoin. This video lists some of the organisations that are actively working on platforms with ideas derived from blockchain concepts that can be of use to the financial industry.

• Post-trade processes: R3 which is a distributed ledger platform targeted at banks and specifically does not rely on a chain of blocks. 
• Cross-border payments: Ripple. 
• Smart contracts: Ethereum, the virtual machine / language / programming environment to write decentralised applications and smart contracts.

Shooting location: Singapore Botanic Gardens. Recorded in July 2016.

The End Is Nigh!

I was visiting Foyles the other day… Most books in the General Finance section have alarming-sounding titles. With the exception of a few books about Richard Branson or Warren Buffet it’s all about catastrophes, burns, falls, crashes, crunches, collisions, lies, delusions, failures, etc…

I’m not making this up, look at this list, all picked from the same bookshelf at Foyles:

Dark markets
How markets fail
When genius failed
When markets collide
When money dies
The end of money
How I caused the credit crunch

Market panic
Panic!

Bubbles and crashes
Why stock markets crash
The legacy of the crash
The great credit crash

No one would listen
A decade of delusions  
Masters of nothing
House of cards
Rigged money
Fool's gold
Devil's casino
Liar's poker
The wizard of lies
Biggest lies on wall street

Current Reading About Hedging

Where to invest in case of a catastrophe?

If you don’t own gold, now is a good time to buy

How Bill Gates is betting on inflation

Crisis Investing: Hedging for and Against Catastrophe