For those of us following Mr Robot - E-coin/bitcoin, Chinese, Russians, The Fed etc - distributed ledgers
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/b...sider-bitcoins-technology-if-not-bitcoin.html
Bitcoin was created by libertarian-minded programmers with a deep suspicion of central banks and the national currencies they issue.
Yet it is central banks that are doing some of the most ambitious work of late in trying to harness the technology introduced by Bitcoin.
The central bankers do not want their institutions to own or use Bitcoin itself. Instead, they hope they can use the decentralized method of record-keeping introduced by Bitcoin — known as the blockchain or distributed ledger — to complete and record transactions in the real economy more efficiently, quickly and transparently.
...
The Fed has been pushed to act by the big banks that it regulates, many of which are experimenting with distributed ledgers as a way to settle trades and record data and transactions. Just last week, JPMorgan Chase said it was moving toward a public release this year of its “enterprise grade” blockchain.
Most financial institutions and central banks are looking at distributed ledgers that would be maintained on the computers of all the major players in the financial system, including the central bank and the biggest financial institutions.
In the systems being discussed, each player in the system would communicate with all the others anytime money moved in the system, allowing everyone to update the ledgers on their computer systems simultaneously. This would provide multiple backups if the central bank’s computers came under attack. It would also hypothetically allow them to complete transactions much more quickly, and would make it easier to spot rogue actors.
Eric Piscini, who oversees work on blockchain by the consulting firm Deloitte, said that a year ago, central banks were looking at the technology mostly because they wanted to understand what private banks were talking about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/b...sider-bitcoins-technology-if-not-bitcoin.html
Bitcoin was created by libertarian-minded programmers with a deep suspicion of central banks and the national currencies they issue.
Yet it is central banks that are doing some of the most ambitious work of late in trying to harness the technology introduced by Bitcoin.
The central bankers do not want their institutions to own or use Bitcoin itself. Instead, they hope they can use the decentralized method of record-keeping introduced by Bitcoin — known as the blockchain or distributed ledger — to complete and record transactions in the real economy more efficiently, quickly and transparently.
...
The Fed has been pushed to act by the big banks that it regulates, many of which are experimenting with distributed ledgers as a way to settle trades and record data and transactions. Just last week, JPMorgan Chase said it was moving toward a public release this year of its “enterprise grade” blockchain.
Most financial institutions and central banks are looking at distributed ledgers that would be maintained on the computers of all the major players in the financial system, including the central bank and the biggest financial institutions.
In the systems being discussed, each player in the system would communicate with all the others anytime money moved in the system, allowing everyone to update the ledgers on their computer systems simultaneously. This would provide multiple backups if the central bank’s computers came under attack. It would also hypothetically allow them to complete transactions much more quickly, and would make it easier to spot rogue actors.
Eric Piscini, who oversees work on blockchain by the consulting firm Deloitte, said that a year ago, central banks were looking at the technology mostly because they wanted to understand what private banks were talking about.
