Did you know HSBC is about to test Blockchain in Live Transactions?

Republished from LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/did-you-know-hsbc-test-blockchain-live-transactions-mcguire-sa/

HSBC nears testing Blockchain in Live Transactions

https://www.coindesk.com/uk-bank-hsbc-might-soon-pilot-live-blockchain-payments/

Combined with Microsoft’s recent news about their protocol, Coco, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is well on its way to rapid mainstream adoption.

This is pretty incredible news considering that according to Gartner, blockchain (aka DLT) is at the top of the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ curve and mainstream adoption is predicted in 5–10 years. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum blockchain predicts mainstream adoption in 2–3 years.

This recent news combined with multiple pilots of blockchain Distributed Applications (DApps) may be why IBM, Deloitte, Microsoft and other companies are scrambling to hire blockchain talent.

On a related note, I attended the largest Ethereum hackathon in the world at the time, ETHDenver, 2 weeks ago where there were over 1,200 in attendance from 23 different countries. Over 600 were on the waiting list for this inaugural event. At the event during one of the workshops on adoption and a blockchain state of the union, according to a recent study, there are only 70,000 blockchain developers in the world but that number is rising rapidly.

Between all of us “Hackers” (with technical and business backgrounds), we churned out over 130 Proof of Concept DApps in 36 hours, including a live one built by a group of underserved youth who had never coded before, but learned to during the event due to the mentorship from leaders in this space as part of the Apprent.io program. You can see a list of all of the DApps here: https://ethdenver.devpost.com/submissions. My group worked on Workspace0x.

What’s exciting is while it appears that Ethereum is leading the way to mainstream adoption in the public blockchain space, there is tremendous movement on other blockchain platforms, such as NEO, Hyperledger Fabric, and QTUM to name a few which are all not only competing for market share, but are also trying to create really powerful platforms which allow innovative DApps to be created. These aim to revolutionize the way we interact, work and share data.

• What if you could own your medical records and share them anytime you wanted securely with anybody who needed them. Look no further than the proof of concept, https://devpost.com/software/sharemd (POC: http://sharemd.office.doradigital.pl/#!/shares).
• Want to make the most of the world’s food production to eliminate waste and decrease hunger and starvation. Check out https://devpost.com/software/ripe-food-rescue-impact-token.
• What if you want to cut down your transaction costs? At ETHDenver, 3 government representatives from Colorado, including the Attorney General, spoke on how they see blockchain playing out in the government space. One of the representatives told us that CO spends roughly $149MM/yr on transaction costs. She challenged the Hackathon and Workshop audience to get this down to nearly $0.

I know this posting barely touches the surface of what’s happening in this space, but a single idea is all that it takes to innovate the world we live in. Look at how the idea of ‘relationship status’ moved Facebook from a dorm room to revolutionizing the way we all interact. My hope is that I’ve sparked an idea in you.

What’s your idea?