Michele Curtoni heads the strategy and new business development at SDX, SIX’s regulated digital asset exchange platform, which is part of the SIX Financial Group, the financial market infrastructure of Switzerland. In this podcast we discuss a wide range of topics from wholesale CBDC projects, cryptocurrencies and a lot more from the optic of a regulated digital asset platform. What is blockchain? The first time Michele was explained what is blockchain was in 2014/15. At that time it was described to him as an append only data structure. It’s an Excel where you never can delete a row, you can ..read more

Iota Nassr is a policy analyst at the OECD within the financial markets division. She currently manages the FinTech experts group of the OECD Committee on Financial Markets, leading the analysis around anything that has to do with digitalization of finance. The OECD Report “Why decentralised finance matters and the policy implications” is product of the committee’s expert group composed of representatives of the 38 OECD members coming from Central Banks, Ministry of Finance and other financial authorities.   What is blockchain? Iota’s definition of blockchain hasn’t changed much since her ..read more

In 2016, Etherisc was one of the first companies to launch a real world use case for a flight delay insurance policy on a public blockchain. Regulatory and lack of stable coin hindered that early solution. In 2017, they relaunched along with an insurance partner but still had challenges. In today’s podcast, Christoph Mussenbrock – CEO & Founder of Etherisc shares with us what they have learned since 2016 and why their 2022 launch is going to win.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a technology which allows you to keep a distributer ledger of transactions. It comes in two flavour as e ..read more

In this podcast we had the pleasure of having Dan Salmons, CEO of Coadjute and John Reynolds, COO and founder of Coadjute return to Insureblocks to share with us the launch of their real estate blockchain platform and their thoughts on a mortgage stablecoin.   What is blockchain? Dan’s definition of blockchain: In our previous podcast, Dan had used the glass box theory as an analogy to explain what is blockchain. For this podcast he uses a football match. In the old days before live TV existed, you had to rely on a newspaper reporter or a friend at a pub explaining to you what happened in ..read more

Todd McDonald is the co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at R3. In this podcast we discuss R3’s Product Vision and their views on market trends, market needs and R3’s long term product investment.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a way for multiple participants to join a network and update the state of that network without having to trust someone to coordinate amongst them. For businesses, Todd sees blockchain as a way to connect with more customers and more businesses without having to worry as much around the trust factor.   Three market trends Back in September of this year ..read more

Over the last 12 months Decentralised Finance also known as DeFi has really exploded with reported total value locked reaching $250bn. With Obscuro, R3 who operates in the permissioned blockchain space is entering into the permissionless space of DeFi. In this podcast we’re joined by James Carlyle who explains the DeFi landscape, the challenges it faces in terms of privacy and scalability and how Obscuro can address these.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed databased. Instead of one party running it, it is run as a network by a group of entities who don’t necessarily trust ..read more

Tim Nelson is the CEO of Hope for Justice and is part of the founding board of the charity which exists to try and end all forms of human trafficking and modern slavery across the globe. They work alongside major multinational businesses through an organisation called the Slave Free Alliance that they set up a few years ago.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed database that is shared between the nodes of computer. It stores information electronically in a digital format. It maintains a secure and decentralised record of transactions and what differentiates it to other datab ..read more

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are increasingly being talked about in the press with announcements of initiatives from different central banks working on CBDCs coming out left right and centre. Few however are as forward thinking and embracing a collaborative approach as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). For this podcast we are joined by Daniel Eidan,  Adviser and Solution Architect at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in the Innovation Hub where he builds technology solutions for the central banking community with a special focus on blockchain and CBDC. He ..read more

Leandro Nunes, Vice President, Product Development and Innovation at Mastercard, joins us to share how he leveraged Mastercard’s DNA in scalability, payment automation and governance. We also discuss the important of a data governance model and his top tips for building scalable blockchain solutions.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that uses a consensus methodology to immutably record blocks in sequence in a ledger. It’s a technology that is driven by data governance. The governance is on the data side not necessarily on the blockchain. Data gover ..read more

Alisa DiCaprio, is the Head of Trade and Supply Chain at R3 and also facilitates a lot of R3’s research. Whilst the concept of governance is familiar to many in the business community it has proven to be quite a challenge to blockchain business networks. In this podcast we discuss with Alisa, her latest research paper on the future of enterprise blockchain governance and collaboration. We cover some of the design and implementation of new business and technical models that will ensure that your blockchain journey is a success.   What is blockchain? For Alisa, blockchain is just a database ..read more