The new programmable economy

I have been diving into the Blockchain technology last 4-5 months. The deeper I come the more I understand that this technology might change our future dramatically. It is not a next version of what we do today, it is something completely new.

I just read a Gartner document with the title “Hype Cycle for the programmable economy”. And I loved the word programmable, because that’s what this is all about.

I will not dive into Blockchain here, and recommend you to watch some of the videos on YouTube or read any of those hundreds of excellent articles online. In one “transaction” on the Blockchain one can store a script. This script can be triggered by an event.

Scrip might like this:

Peter transfer 100 Euro from his dya-2-day wallet 36273fae36462cce4637 to his pension fund wallet no 3217eah3523e25623526 every month the 10^th. When the amount is more than 100 000 Euro, the monthly amount is reduced to 25 Euro. When Peter is older than 70 years old, the transfer stops. If the interest rate is zero or below, do not transfer next month.

From http://www.dnacapsule.com/

The business logic is inside the transaction in the distributed database of Blockchain. The database is distributed, meaning that it is outside the bank’s technical infrastructure.  It is transparent to other banks, central bank and regulator. 

It is 100 % safe and with, if possible, better security that present payment and banking systems. It is something completely new.

This means that most of the computer system that all banks run today might be obsolete in 5 to 10 years, so are a lot of the processes internally in the bank. But is not only banks, it is telecom companies, supply chain management, hospitals, pharmacy industry, hotels, …. you name it.

Algorithm in the future of banking

This blogpost is based on an article in Harvard Business Review January-February. This again is based on the book Algorithm Need Managers too, by Michael Luca, John Kleinberg and Sendhi Mullainathan.

Algorithm and robots are on the agenda for most banks and financial institutions today. Big Data analytic can aggregate large number of data, both from internal sources in the bank, from the market (stock exchanges, Forex markets, interest market and other markets) and other external sources. It is the way we use the date and how we design our algorithm that makes the difference.  And that we do understand what algorithm is not good at.

Netflix had a million dollar competition some years ago to develop an algorithm that could identify which movies a given user would like, teams of data sciences joined forces and produced a winner. But it was one that applied to DVD – and as Netflix user’s transitioned to streaming movies, their preference shifted in ways that didn’t match the algorithm prediction. It is a difference between movie one would like to buy and the movie one would like to stream now.

Within marketing there are algorithms that estimate what information users are likely to click on. Google have such algorithm. The target of clicks for the marketing company is to sell more, generate revenue and profit. Most of these clickable algorithm does not estimate efficiency of sale and profit, “only” what generates most clicks. It is important to know what these kinds of algorithms is good at and what they are not so good at.  

In the latest Avengers movie, Tony Stark (also known as Iron Man) created Ultron, an artificial intelligence defense system tasked with protecting earth. But Ultron interprets the task literally, concluding that the best way to save the earth is to destroy all humans.

This is the core of an algorithm – is does exactly what it is designed to do. We human might have soft goal. For example it might be best to have a short time loss, for a long time profit. We might strive for equality – even if it causes organizational pain in the short term.

Often one algorithm is used in different situation. There are a lot of example where for example a marketing algorithm works perfect in one country, but not at all in another country. So - design you algorithm for each situation is of extreme importance.

Also remember that correlation still doesn’t mean causation. Suppose that an algorithm predicts that short tweets will get re tweet more often than longer ones. This does not in any way suggest that you should shorten you tweets. This is a prediction, not advice. It works as a prediction because there are many other factors that correlate with short tweets than make them effective. This is also why it fails as advice: Shortening your tweets will not necessarily change those other factors.  

New technology like Blockchain enables banks to easier automate and leverage on technologies like robots and algorithm.

When will banks really leverage on Blockchain?

Most banks today invest in the Blockchain technology. But so far none have launched a “killer app” or any user case that could not be done better with the “old” technology. But I think it is only a question about time before someone present something with real value.

The technology is far too premature to add real value to banks as it is now. Diving into the technology is a about basic discussions like record size, programming language, how to design smart contract script classes, what platform to choose (Chain, Eris, Intel, IBM Open ledger, Ethereum on Microsoft Azure, Ripple, etc.). And I guess there will be more platforms in this competition soon.

Then it is the question on consensus mechanism, what is safe enough and compliant to regulations. And finally the speed & scalability issue. No one have so far managed to set up a Blockchain network in a sufficient size handling 15 000 to 20 000 transactions per second. 

Despite the fact of maturity; bank, tele companies, companies within logistics and other sectors worldwide invest billions of USD in research, piloting and testing this new technology.  Something will change, that is for sure.

I was presenting at BSK Blockchain day on Thursday last week giving 5 reasons for why Blockchain MIGHT revolutionize the financial industry. It is not difficult to find even more reasons. BSK is a union of Norwegian banks.  In the audience were approximate 150 people from many banks, central banks and financial authorities.

https://www.fno.no/contentassets/d30e15c520ab45bcafbfbc74e3aa41ea/program-for-fagdag-om-blockchain.pdf

So back to the question, when?

My guestimate is 1-2 year before the technology is ready enough for a “killer app”. During this time banks will pilot, get some experience and get their “hands dirty”. Then when the technology is mature enough they are ready to launch real value, in 3 to 5 years from now.  Remember, at one point in time banks need to integrate the new technology into their legacy IT architecture. At larger banks this is often a complicated and a time consuming project.

Experience in technology last few years shows that a “fast follower” strategy is not a good strategy, and I guess same thing this time.