With the announcement of Libra, Facebook’s new Digital Currency, it was reported in The South China Morning Post that Wang Xin - a director of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) – said recently at an academic conference hosted by Peking University’s Institute of Digital Finance “If [Libra] is widely used for payments, cross-border payments in particular, would it be able to function like money and accordingly have a large influence on monetary policy, financial stability and the international monetary system?” China was one of the first countries to look at Digital Currencies back in 2015. Indeed China has enjoyed huge success replacing cash as its economy goes digital. Wepay (owned by Tencent) recorded 460 billion annual transactions in 2018, while Alipay (owned by Alibaba) recorded 197.5 billion transactions.

The widespread use of Alipay has created Yu’e Bao (Chinese for secret treasure), the world’s largest money market fund at $150 billion in size! Merchants use Alibaba’s fully digital C2C and B2C platforms which connect consumers and businesses while providing logistics, payments, and credit facilities. This means that merchants often decide to leave, in effect, their cash flow in Alipay’s Yu’e Bao’s fund.

Possibly, given the fact that daily life for many Chinese people is conduction without using cash, the PBOC does not wish to lose control and see a foreign Digital Currency, especially one backed by non-Chinese fiat currencies such as Facebook, gain too much traction in the Chinese economy. The PBOC, after receiving approval from the State Council, has been working with market institutions on creating a central bank digital currency, according to Wang Xin. However, there have been no public announcements of progress.

Cai Weide, a Chinese professor of Blockchain and crypto, who has worked around the world said “China was “lagging behind and that they should not underestimate the importance of Libra, an invention that, is (one of the) major financial technology reforms in the past 500 years”. 

There is no guarantee that Libra’s Facebook will succeed, but the ‘genie is out of the bottle’ causing many organisations and governments to take Digital Assets more seriously, as they begin to understand the challenges and opportunities these Digital Assets offer!

Arun Kumar, Group CFO, Vedanta Group, said, “Vedanta will benefit from the digitized and simplified workflow which shortens the laborious process running into hours to just a few minutes and complete transparency that this platform offers to all stakeholders.”

ConsenSys is a Blockchain consulting business set up by Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum. Although this is not the first time these two companies have signed an agreement, in 2018 they agreed to collaborate on technical training to help developers who wished to use the Ethereum blockchain.

SK group has been active in the Blockchain sector, having agreed to support Ok CashBag which is a Korean mileage loyalty program that has enrolled approximately 38 million people - 50% of South Korea’s population! The intention is to use Cryptocurrencies as part of the incentivisation program that Ok CashBag operates.

LG, the second-largest manufacturer after Samsung, has been developing a Blockchain-powered platform to help improve the transparency of information about food that is supplied to school canteens across South Korea. The intention is to have details about the production, processing, distribution, purchase, and consumption of products that school canteens use. As all of this information will be recorded on a Blockchain, it will become available for authorities, schools, and parents to see what is being consumed and who the suppliers are.

Samsung, which has dominance over the insurance, real estate, electronics, and payment sector in Korea, has been allocating most of the resources of its crypto and Blockchain department by developing its Cryptocurrency ASIC mining hardware. This hardware is used by people wishing to mine Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Hyundai, which is Korea’s leading car manufacturer, has been building a Blockchain-powered platform to monitor information about second-hand cars, such as mileage, age and service history.

According to a study by the Harvard Business School, increasing your customer retention by just 5% can have outsized benefits on profits of up to 95%! However, low redemption rates are a big problem for providers of loyalty schemes, as it can result in a lack of engagement. Loyalty schemes are often not that popular with companies’ accounts’ departments as they can create a large, intangible liability on a company’s balance sheet. Loyalty scheme members that do not redeem their rewards are not actively engaged but, on the flip side, members who do redeem points typically spend more and have greater satisfaction with loyalty programs.

According to Mckinsey, US companies spend $50 billion a year on loyalty schemes alone, and if you get it right, loyalty programs can generate as much as 20% of a company’s profits! However, with increasing online shopping, and particularly shopping on mobile devices, consumer retail behaviour has been changing dramatically and reward schemes seem to have lost some of their appeal. Customers often cite the difficulty of being able to redeem rewards and the fact that they may have many different loyalty schemes with few of them operating together. This is where Blockchain technology is able to help bring multiple brands together, offering a wide range of products to consumers in order to redeem their reward points.

Blockchain technology allows a customer to store all points in a single wallet rather than trying to manage these multiple schemes. It would be possible to create a solution enabling all schemes to have compatible rules for acquiring and redeeming points from different loyalty schemes. It is thought that Facebook’s proposed Digital currency, Libra, could be a real boost for loyalty schemes, as it may allow some form of global standard to develop for smaller schemes to then adopt. One challenge Facebook has is that regulators do not like the collection of data from individuals without the user being compensated. However, if Facebook started to pay it’s 2.3 billion users in Libra for clicking on content, it could be a way to satisfy regulators and, in turn, create the world’s BIGGEST loyalty scheme overnight! 

Loyalty schemes using Blockchain technology and Smart Contracts can automate many of the transactions, making the running of loyalty schemes autonomous. Data can be stored in a highly secure manner using a Blockchain platform, enabling the privacy of users’ information, which will increase the trust of the brand among these users. Implementing joint loyalty schemes with other brands becomes easier because Smart Contracts can handle the transferring and converting of reward points while validating users and redeeming these points. Furthermore, the brands/ retailers are not giving up control or access to their most important asset – their customers’ data!

These STOs have already raised over $1 billion, compared to 2017, when there were only 5 STOs which raised $67.5 million. STOs are set to replace Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as a method to raise capital and, because they are subject to much greater regulation and typically backed by real assets such as bonds, equity, commodities, property, etc., they ought to perform in a much less volatile manner. Given the higher regulatory bar that a STO has to comply with, STOs are likely to be much more attractive to institutional investors and will be traded on regulated exchanges across the world. The Blockstate report highlights that five countries are dominating STOs - Estonia, Germany, Switzerland, UK, and USA - who between them, account for 75% of the STOs issued to date.

The infrastructure to offer more STOs also continues to develop, as seen by the announcement of the tie-up between Globacap and Archax this week, both of which are regulated by the FCA in the UK. Globacap is a platform that has been built to be able to issue Digital Assets/STOs and is similar to Tokeny (which has just had €5 million invested into it, as detailed above by Euronext) and also has a partnership with Archax to use its exchange.  In 2018, Globacap tokenised its own shares. Then, in 2019, the platform tokenised two UK-based companies, helping them to raise capital, with Globacap serving as the custodian. The purpose of the platform is to provide built-in compliance to properly transfer ownership from traditional assets to Digital Assets.

Archax is looking to officially launch its exchange, which is intended to trade Digital Assets later this year. It will be using Blockchain technology to reduce costs and offer more transparency, both of which Archax believes are of great interest to the institutional investors that it is targeting.

The first STO in Germany, which was authorised by BaFin, took place in March 2019, raising €3.5 million for a company called Bitbond, a business that offers loans to small companies. Therefore, there is plenty of evidence that not only are STOs gathering greater traction but as we see more infrastructure in place it will enable asset managers and banks to be further engaged with Digital Assets. We have already seen the likes of Goldman Sachs and Fidelity offering custody solutions and Avia providing STO insurance, so all that we really need is evidence of good liquidity for STOs. If we see attractive trading volumes in STOs, Digital Assets really will be able to give their analogue paper-based alternatives a real run for their money!

The CEO of Goldman Sachs, when asked if his firm is looking to launch a Digital Currency like JP Morgan, replied “Assume that all major financial institutions around the world are looking at the potential of tokenisation, stablecoins, and frictionless payments” 

Meanwhile, Wall Street seasoned-investor Henry Kravis (co-founder of KKR), has been investing in Parifi Capital which has $190 billion under management, and claims he now spends most of his time researching Blockchain and Cryptocurrency opportunities. Billionaire Peter Theil (co-founder of PayPal) has, according to Blomberg, also been investing in Blockchain and Digital Assets.

The chart shows the volume being traded in Bitcoin, and as you can see, even though the price of Bitcoin is still over 40% below the 19,454 it reached in 17th December 2017, the volume of Bitcoins being traded has been strong over the last few months.

Fidelity, with over $2.5 trillion under management, carried out a survey of 441 of its institutional clients and found that 22% had already bought a Cryptocurrency, and 47% thought that this asset class had a place in the funds it manages.

One of the concerns that have held back institutions has been that many of those that use Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are carrying out illegal activities. Therefore, in the recent analysis from Chainalysis, Bitcoin transactions have fallen in 2012 from 7% to less than 1% in 2018.

BitMex, which is the world's’ largest Crypto platform, last week reported over $16 Billion of trades in a day, demonstrating the clear demand and interest in this new asset class. Meanwhile, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced Bitcoin futures hit $1.7 billion in notional value traded on June 26th, 2019. This represents a 30% increase from its previous high, reportedly as a result of institutional interest.

Facebook is valued at $550 billion and, as at March 2019, it had over 2.38 billion users and generated $15.08 billion of revenue. Blackrock only has $6.49 billion of net cash and short term investments, compared to Facebook’s $41.12 billion of cash and short terms investments. 

Despite Blackrock’s size and global reach - having offices in over 100 countries- it is still very dependent on the Americas, as they make up 62% of the firm’s funds under management. Compare this to Facebook, where it is estimated that more than half of the US population (169.5 million people) use Facebook out of its 2.3 billion user-base. It is obvious that Facebook not only has greater distribution i.e. more direct clients that Blackrock, but Facebook has far greater penetration in faster-growing markets outside of the USA. 

Why is all this important? Well, quite simply, if you have the ability – cash and the type of global distribution and brand that Facebook has  - then even the biggest asset manager in the world needs to pay attention since Facebook has announced it wishes to launch an Exchange Traded Fund (EFT). The Facebook ETF will be based on Libra, which is a Digital Asset backed by a basket of currencies. Therefore it is not completely dependent on the fortunes of the US$, which it would be if it were backed by an asset that is priced in US$ (like gold), which is what the Editor of Forbes magazine is calling for.

Libra’s acceptance has received a boost from the third biggest economy in the world, Japan, as the Japanese Financial Services agency believes that Libra is unlikely to be a Cryptocurrency. It has stated that Libra will more likely be categorised “as general money transactions and remittances.”

The massive profits that fund managers have generated for years and their annuity style income (they earn a fee based on the funds that they manage, so having much greater visibility of their revenue) has meant that asset managers enjoy a high PE ratio. Blackrock’s PE is currently 16.8, although this pales into insignificance compared to Facebook’s current 23.35, as investors believe that Facebook is able to grow its revenue and profits faster than many other public companies!

If Facebook focuses more of its attention to asset management, and Libra is just the start of a series of products and services Facebook is going to offer its users, then traditional managers need to pay very careful attention. Facebook has both the cash and the followers to become a substantial asset manager extremely quickly, and also has massive exposure in parts of the world which are growing fast, and where its younger citizens are already digitally engaged!

Whether this is true or not, we will have to wait and see, but we are beginning to see different parts of the world tokenise property and slowly we are seeing more and more acceptance of the idea.

In France, a €6.5 million property in Boulogne (according to Forbes) is the first piece of Real Estate to be tokenised. The property was transferred to a joint stock company and held by 100 tokens, following which each token is then capable of being divided into 100,000 tokens. This means that, for as little as €6.50, one can own a fraction of the building. In the USA last year, a property in New York, valued at over $30 million, was tokenised and was touted, at the time, as being a way to finance property instead of relying on traditional banking arrangements.

Meanwhile, a company called ASA, based in Dubai, is looking to tokenise property in the UAE and Portugal. Also in Dubai, a company called Darico, has recently launched a service to help organisations tokenise assets, such as property, into tokens. 

So, one can see that a number of jurisdictions are looking at how property can be held in a different way and, while the promise of additional liquidity that tokenisation promises is yet to be seen, there are a number of other interesting benefits that tokenisation of assets offers. In essence, we are increasingly finding that economies are becoming more and more digital as this can offer greater transparency, stronger compliance monitoring and regulation, thus enabling engagement with people who are, themselves, more digitally savvy and reliant than previous generations.

The other firms involved with Lifechain are  Press Holdings and NUTC Income, which collectively are trying to simplify the process for relatives when someone dies. Once an obituary is placed in The Straits Times, these details are sent to LifeChain which forwards a consent form to the relatives and the deceased’s National Registration Identity Card is entered on to Lifechain. Lifechain will then search to see if the deceased had any valid life insurance policy in force. If a policy is found, then a claim will automatically be submitted so the claims process can commence.

It is estimated that, in the UK, there is over £2 billion of unclaimed life insurance, as relatives do not know that their loved ones had insurance policies, and the insurance companies are unaware that one of their insured clients has died. In the USA, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, over 24,900 people in the just the last 2 years have tracked down life insurance policies and claimed over $360 million.

Insurance firms are looking at a variety of ways that Blockchain technology can be used. In the UK BlockClaim, which was developed at Imperial College in London, has recently secured £500,000 of funding for a platform that uses Blockchain technology for claim management, and AI to help as a fraud filter. The platform scans phone calls and emails to search for irregularities in a claim to try and identify fraud, while also managing the claims process more efficiently. The intention is that claims can be paid faster, while spurious claims can be queried and rejected. 

Also in the UK, Legal and General has announced that it is going to use Amazon’s blockchain expertise to launch estua-re, the first Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) reinsurance platform. The intention is that estua-re will handle every stage of the PRT reinsurance process, including pricing, claims handling, financial reporting and collateral and utilising data stored on a Blockchain. Using this new platform, it is believed that costs-savings can be generated, as well as creating much greater transparency. It will enable a secure record of information that cannot be altered, but easily retrieved by different parties about annuities - potentially in 50 years’ time. Legal & General Group's PRT transactions include the largest U.K. risk transfer to date, in 2018, when British Airways insured £4.4 billion in liabilities of its Airways Pension Scheme.

Blockchain technology is being used in the insurance sector more and more, as organisations understand how to utilise Blockchains’ secure, transparent, real-time characteristics. Increasingly, more transactions are being digitised and Blockchain technology enables the insurance companies to offer products that are more suitable and efficient in our digital economy.

These improvements are hoped to be achieved by reducing the number of intermediaries involved,and allowing farmers to have more information about price of goods and connecting them with potential retailers, which is increasingly vital as merchants are being asked to prove the provenance of the goods they are selling. 

Blockchain technology is also being used to record and share farm-data as, by having one trusted secure ledger of information, it eliminates the challenges that are so common in the childhood game of “Chinese whispers”. Data and information on crop yields, soil conditions, moisture levels, etc., can easily be misinterpreted, as records are passed from the farm through a chain of different third parties so that, after three of four times, this information can easily be misunderstood from what the actual real data is saying. The Kansa State University has produced a report that offers a summary of some of the above challenges and how Blockchain technology is able to address them. Blockchain technology is able to help agricultural supply-chains to track the provenance of agricultural goods and, using sensors and Internet of Things (IoT), it is possible to monitor the conditions that goods have been kept in, from farm to retailer.

In Sri Lanka, Aon, the global insurance firm, has teamed up with Oxfam and Etherisc to offer insurance to 200 small farmers so they can protect themselves from damage to their crops due to extreme weather. Bojan Kolundzija, the country director of Oxfam in Sri Lanka has said “Allowing farmers to access the blockchain platform is an important milestone that is bringing an effective and affordable risk transfer mechanism to a large portion of the Sri Lanka economy.”

This has led to a surge of interest in Bitcoin mining which is being seen as a way around the sanctions and enable Iranians to earn some much-needed foreign exchange. Unfortunately, according to an article in Forbes, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, a spokesman for the Energy Ministry, has been quoted by Iranian news agencies as saying that electricity consumption increased by 7% in the past month alone and he was clear where the blame lay: “A bulk of that unusual increase is because of the activity of bitcoin miners,” he said, adding that their activities are “making the grid unstable and causing problems for other users.”

Due to cheap state-subsidised electricity, it has been reported that Bitcoin miners have been moving to Iran from China, Spain, France, Ukraine, and Armenia.

According to Oxford University researcher Mahsa Alimardani: “Mosques receive free energy in Iran. Iranians have set up Bitcoin miners in them. There’s around 100 here, producing around $260,000 USD a year. This money goes a long way in Iran’s choked sanctioned economy,” 

This type of news will not please those countries who have imposed sanctions on Iran, and if the proceeds of these Mosque based Bitcoin profit are not used correctly, no doubt some religious leaders inside Iran will raise questions. However, it does serve to illustrate how complex and difficult it is to totally control and police digital businesses!

It is thought the Netflix documentary will help to inform most people who have no idea about Digital Assets, other than what they have heard about Bitcoin. Unfortunately, most people associate Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ponzi schemes, Money laundering, and other nefarious activities altogether. To be fair this may be due to Bitcoin being used as a choice of currency on the illegal and now closed “Silk road” website.

As Blockchain technology and Digital Assets are being used by governments and multinational corporations, we are all going to be exposed and I suspect using this technology and new asset class more and more.

Blockchain technology is playing an ever-increasing role in Asia, and this was highlighted in a report from LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s report has broken down what they understand to be the three most prevalent skills country by country compared to the average in the APAC region.

As the graphic indicates, Blockchain skills are required in a number of different countries.

LinkedIn analysed the skills listed by its members from the APAC region over the last five years to identify the top 10 rising skills. They found Blockchain to be the fastest growing skill in Singapore and among the top three in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. Although this ought to come as no surprise, as a report back in 2017 by Cognizant identified up to 88% of financial businesses in Asia Pacific who believed blockchain to be important to the industry’s future. This was further supported by Global Market Insights in 2018, who predicted that the Blockchain-based industry in Asia Pacific to be worth about $16 billion by 2024, with the healthcare market contributing at least $1.4 billion.

Currently, Singapore is 7th globally out of all the governments measured by the E-Government Development Index (EGDI). The EGDI has been designed as a way to measure how much governments are embracing digital technology to promote access to public services for their citizens. It is thought that Blockchain technology will be able to offer greater transparency and so help fight corruption and fraud.

As an article in Asian Block review summed up: “British politician Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Therefore, it may be preferable to trust technology instead of people.”

Surely, Ripple has enough on its plate trying to replace the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the platform that has been used by global banks since 1973 to make international payments? Ripple’s token price increased by over 35,000% in 2017, sparking a Cryptocurrency frenzy globally.

While MoneyGram can trace its roots back to the 1940’s, it was not until 2004 that it was trading as a separate entity. Unfortunately, despite its well-known brand internationally, it has been struggling of late as it looks to repay its $902 million of debt. It was also fined $120 million in the USA for failing to stop potential fraudulent payments. In January 2018, it had a $1.2 billion bid from the Chinese company Ant, blocked on the basis that it would enable the Chinese to have too much financial information on US citizens. MoneyGram’s share price has fallen from $17.81 in April 2017, to $1.67 in December 2018, although on the announcement of the investment by Ripple it did rise by 150% to $3.64.

While Ripple claims that it can help MoneyGram improve the efficiency of payments, cutting costs and reducing the time it takes to send money globally, I suspect it is MoneyGram’s existing distribution network that appealed to Ripple…..

Will we see more new Crypto firms buying into more “old money” companies as they look to introduce their new technology into existing customer-bases?

The Japanese equivalent to Amazon, Ratken has announced that it is going to provide the technology to help East Japan railway customers pay digitally, as opposed to using cash.

The Japanese government has been trying to encourage its citizens to use less cash and increase the amount people pay using digital methods to 40%. Currently, 20% of transactions in the Japanese economy are paid digitally, compared to South Korea where 89% of transactions are paid digitally, and in China, the figure is 60%. Indeed, some companies, like Paypal in Japan, have resorted to extreme measures such as giving away 10 billion yen ($91million) to encourage people to move away from cash and go digital.

The Ratken East Japan Initiative is looking to enable 5,000 trains stations and 50,000 buses, as well as 600,000 stores, all to be in a position to accept digital payments.

Given the growth in Chinese tourists (7.5 million in 2017), shops and restaurants are also looking to be able to accept cashless payments. These tourists are more likely to want to pay digitally, as in China only 40% of transactions are paid for by cash. Alipay and WeChat have had huge success in converting the Chinese population to pay digitally, so Chinese people typically to do not carry around large amounts of cash.

To meet this demand from merchants to go digital J-Coin, which is a new digital currency payment platform, has been launched in Japan by Mizuho Bank in conjunction with 60 other financial institutions.

Being able to pay digitally cannot come too soon for Japan as it welcomes the World Rugby Cup this autumn and then the Olympics in 2020. It is expected both sporting spectacles will attract a huge number of foreigner visitors, many of whom will prefer not to use cash simply because it is more convenient to pay digitally.

The US pharmaceutical industry is worth over $450billion p.a., according to the independent statistical data company, Statista.

The US Drug Supply-Chain Act, which was announced back in 2013, is due to come into force in 2023, and the FDA is looking at how Blockchain technology can be harnessed to provide greater transparency and also evaluate methods to enhance the safety and security of the drug supply chain. According to the FDA Pilot Program website, “FDA’s DSCSA Pilot Project Program is intended to assist drug supply chain stakeholders, including FDA, in developing the electronic, interoperable system that will identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed within the United States.”

The intention is to reduce the time taken to track and trace stocks of pharmaceutical drugs and monitor the drugs’ integrity i.e. ensure they are kept at the right temperature. It is hoped that the results of the project will be made available by the end of 2019.

This is yet another example of where governmental bodies (in this case the FDA) are actively working with commercial organisations, using Blockchain technology to meet common goals and requirements. If this project is successful it will enable greater transparency, while improving the efficiency of the pharmaceutical drug sector.

So, why is this the case? Well, Binance - which is one of the world’s biggest Crypto exchange - has a turnover of over $1.5 billion worth of Digital Assets a day, and just announced (despite only 15% of its turnover coming from the USA) that as of September 2019, it will offer a separate Digital Asset exchange for US investors and another exchange for non-US investors. Therefore, it would appear that it is unlikely in the near future that it is going to be possible to have one global exchange that anyone, regardless of where they live, can trade on.

However, with a G20 meeting being held on June 28th  2019 in Osaka, Japan, Crypto-exchanges are on the agenda. Maybe we will see some clearer guidance being given about how Crypto exchanges are to be regulated going forward.

The Financial Action Task Force (FAFT), which is an intergovernmental body established in 1989, and which focuses on money laundering and terrorist financing, will be presenting its recommendations on how Crypto-exchanges ought to be regulated before the G20 meeting. Although, given the traceability and transparency that Blockchain technology offers and the fact that you can, in effect, programme-in checks and balances, could make FAFT obsolete! Such checks are impossible with the current largely paper-based analogue systems and platforms that we currently use, but will FAFT see it this way?

A Blockchain platform offers the promise of greater transparency of supplies while not compromising the privacy of users.

While medical cannabis has been legal since 2001 in Canada, using cannabis for recreational purposes was only legalised in 2018. According to government data, 5.4 million Canadians have bought cannabis since October 2018, and 600,000 have done so for the first time. However, the Canadian government is insisting that companies keep a monthly record on how much marijuana they have grown, harvested, sold, destroyed, used for research purposes or lost to theft. 

Cannabis sales are expected to reach over Can$7 billion next year and given the various data hacks and cyber-attacks the Canadian government are looking at how a Blockchain-powered platform can help both the private and public sector maintain confidence and reporting in this recently legalised industry. Canada is one of the first governments to legalise recreational use of cannabis, so no doubt other countries are monitoring the pros and cons in order to decide if they legalise cannabis for recreational use too!

He spoke about a number of projects BP are involved in, that use Blockchain technology.

Continuing with the theme of “Collaborative capitalism”(i.e like LVMH for luxury goods and Maersk’s Tradlens for the shipping industry), BP has invested and helped develop a Blockchain-powered, commodity trading platform, called Vakt. The Vakt platform, according to Business Insider, addresses two fundamental challenges:

1. It “slashes” the paperwork when trading commodities, so saving costs and making the process much more efficient.

2. As data and information are more accessible and transparent, commodity traders find it harder to have access to unique proprietary information, so trading profit margins are smaller. Therefore, traders are searching for more efficient ways to gather data and trade.

The Vakt platform has been trialled in the North Sea by a syndication of producers, who are responsible for over 80% of North Sea’s Brent crude oil production. It has been such a success, generating efficiency savings of 30% to 40% using Blockchain technology, that BP is now looking to deploy the Vakt platform to other regions around the world.

Gray also stated at the conference that BP has also established a company called Strala, which enables the energy created in one location to be transferred to somewhere else. Using the new Apple App, if you (as the customer/user) had solar panels in the country, it is now possible to have the energy that you use in your flat in a city, paid for from the energy your solar panels are generating. Could this encourage large power users, such as big office blocks, to invest in wind and solar farms and help the UK meet its recently announced target to be carbon-free by 2050? However, imagine the potential impact if someone in central Paris, or Edinburgh, or Berlin could buy electricity direct from a wind power or solar farmer in a remote desert location in Africa! We are not far from this being a reality, and using a Digital Currency as a form of payment with Smart Contracts on a Blockchain-powered platform like Strala would minimise the paperwork, human errors, reconciliation, and intervention - all in a very transparent manner!

A third way BP uses Blockchain technology is that it is working on a project that will measure the hydrocarbon emissions from the well-head of a gas field to the end user. Julian Gray explained that, in the USA, there is increasing pressure from users to be able to prove their carbon footprint. Historically, gas production and distribution networks had not been that efficient. Therefore, if BP proves that it is able to provide zero-leaking gas supplies, it can charge more for the gas, but the customer will be sure that the supply network has no leakage i.e. the gas they are buying is more environmentally-friendly.  

As big organisations start to use Blockchain technology more and more, different use-cases are being found. The world’s petroleum and car companies are desperate to reinvent themselves, so are investing heavily to find ways to be more ecologically and environmentally friendly!