It wasn’t long ago that your average enterprise wouldn’t even mention bitcoin, ethereum, or any number of cryptocurrencies in public.
Instead of using the cryptographically secure tokens to streamline workflows – or even talking about doing so – some of the most recognizable enterprises in blockchain have largely confined themselves to uses of blockchain as a new decentralized database, absent any digital assets.
Slowly however, over the past several years that has started to change. Executives at large corporations have shown themselves to be increasingly willing to take public stances both for (and against) what is now a $300 billion token market.
But if 2017 was the year that companies began talking about crypto, it wasn’t until recently that enterprises have been willing to publicly use cryptocurrencies in both early-stage prototypes and live applications.
Now, it would seem the floodgates are prepared to open, with the $140 billion IBM revealing to CoinDesk that it has been meeting with executives from commodities trading platforms, large corporations, and perhaps most importantly, central banks, to explore how cryptocurrencies can help save them money and generate revenue.
“We’re seeing tons of demand for digital asset issuance across the board,” said IBM’s new head of blockchain development Jesse Lund, who was hired from Wells Fargo earlier this year to help develop the computer giant’s cryptocurrency strategy.
At the moment, that work is largely being pursued using the public Stellar platform, and its native cryptocurrency, the lumen (XLM), a partnership made public last October.
But in interview, Lund said IBM is interested in expanding the business applications of cryptocurrencies in a number of ways.
The central bank ‘big toe’
There’s perhaps no better symbol of this convergence than IBM’s early work with central banks.
Over the past year, Lund says he’s met with 20 central banks exploring the potential benefits of issuing their own fiat cryptocurrency on a blockchain.
Specifically, he described the “most durable digital asset” as one that is “issued by a central bank that represents a claim on fiat deposits in the real world,” but still maintains “some semblance of monetary policy.”
Though he wouldn’t reveal the names of most of the central banks with which he’s meeting, he described them as largely comprised of banks from the G20, an international forum with members including China, Russia, the U.S. and the EU.
Lund further described the central banks as “clients in some capacity.” Based on these conversations, he said he expects the first central banks to issue a fiat currency on a blockchain will be “the smaller ones” with a high concentration of interest in Asia and North America.
The post IBM Is Finally Getting Serious About Cryptocurrency appeared first on Statii News.
source http://news.statii.co.uk/ibm-is-finally-getting-serious-about-cryptocurrency/
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