According to the Vilnius account: how Lithuania helps cryptocurrencies and blockchains to change the world
A couple of months ago, a friend from Australia asked for help in paying for his job as an iOS developer on My Circle. Then they had not yet screwed up the payment with a stick , so for a person from the other hemisphere there was not a single opportunity to dock his Australian dollars with a domestic money slot other than using the “friend’s help” option as old as the world. And after I helped him, the question arose: how does he settle with me? We agreed on the Paypal: having consumed about 5% and not forgetting to win on the exchange rate of dollars for rubles, the system accepted its transfer to me. And after another two working days, I got them on the map. And it’s still humane - last September this trick took more than a week.
Until 2014, SETI was the largest project in the use of distributed computer power. While they are not pressed Bitcoin
The moral is simple: in the 21st century we can hear and see each other, regardless of imaginary dashes on the earth's surface, but for money, the borders of states are an obstacle noticeable or tangible. The world has never been as rich as it is today. Against this background, the backwardness of the international financial system hurts the eye more than ever. It was the development of the world fintek that was devoted mostly to the Bitcoin Conference held on April 8 in Vilnius - or rather, not even the Bitcoins, but the blockchains can change the world in the future, which I went to at the invitation of the cloud miner HashFlare .
Lithuania is surprisingly a good place for such an event. Like Estonia, this small Baltic state is looking for its place in the global division of labor. If the Estonians chose state digitization as their specialty, then the Lithuanians chose fintek, deciding for themselves to become state number one. And, as they claim, they have already achieved some success in this field - the advantages of narrow specialization and compact dimensions.
')
The conference presenter told the bike how in 2009, when the British financial giant Barclays was going to open its IT development center in Vilnius, he came to the Minister of Economy of Lithuania to complain, saying that they couldn’t allow this, because they plan to hire about a hundred IT -specialists - and it will empty our labor market in this segment.
The Minister asked:
- Do you want to say, our entire IT-industry will not sustain the loss of hundreds of specialists?
- That is what I want to say.
- Then I do not care. This means that we have no IT industry.
7 years later, in the Lithuanian division of Barclays and a few other financial companies, more than 1,500 local specialists, and the Lithuanian financial and IT sector never felt better.
However, the Lithuanians have not had time to get used to success. Even at the conference, despite the ambitious slogan - “The Largest Bitcoin Conference of the Baltic” - they clearly did not expect the number of participants to arrive, so they identified not the largest audience of their University of Management and Economics , calculated only by 150 people. All day long the conference had to stand along the walls.
The leitmotif of most speeches, except for representatives of the "accusation" - that is, European regulators have become exactly the blockchain opportunities. Bitcoins themselves were mentioned to a lesser extent. Blockchains - and we haven’t yet reached the point where explanations are superfluous - is a way to exchange information with its subsequent entry, which excludes the possibility of any falsification, because all the transactions that have occurred remain recorded in the blockchain forever, without the possibility of change and falsification. This is an ideal archive, at the level of the idea itself excluding the possibility of fraud - at least for now. And now, more and more invented ways to use it in everyday life. However, the financial sector - the first and most obvious option. Firstly, because nowhere is the clarity and accuracy of records as important as in monetary matters. Secondly, because the blockchain was created as the foundation for the first cryptocurrency - Bitcoin.
Honorary right to open the conference received a representative of the British bank Barclays Arian Lewis. London is not going to lose the title of one of the financial capitals of the world, therefore it is no stranger to innovation - for example, did you know that in the UK you can open a bank with only 5 partners and a million pounds sterling? I don’t know how difficult it is in Russia, but Lewis gave it as if he informed that in the trunk of every Ford Focus there is a built-in teleport, and nobody uses it. However, the British enjoy. Mondo bank, one of the island fintek startups, and did start with crowdfunding, collecting 6 million pounds.
But, after praising his swamp, he turned to the shortcomings of the established financial system. It makes no sense to transfer $ 20 to China, said Lewis, because the transfer is just $ 20 dollars and it will cost (it was then that I remembered the epic with my Australian friend). Or, say, limited banking hours. If you didn’t know, the whole world suffers from the fact that money doesn’t go when a business works, but when banks work, as Lewis said, because all transactions are accompanied by a huge amount of paperwork. Blockchain can finally put an end to this - in its radical nature, switching to them in financial transactions can be compared to replacing paper mail with electronic mail.
Speaking about how blockchain will change the world of money, Africa was given as an example of the poor and the unfortunate, according to the established Western tradition, where 90% of the population do not have access to basic financial instruments. However, in my opinion, Russia’s transparent financial transactions are even more topical - any fraud and corruption are immediately apparent. Destroy the archives - the favorite pastime of each stealing regime - will not work.
Barclays is actively experimenting and bringing this bright new world closer by supporting blockchain startups. Why not inhouse? Because a company of this level simply cannot afford to release a product that will not be thought out, tested and simply does not take off. Therefore, they support startups from all over the world through the Barclays Rise series of hackathons. However, they have no plans to reach Russia yet.
The performance of the founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, John Matoni, which followed him, basically carried an enlightening function: another story about why bitcoin is good. Bitcoin not only has the properties of paper money, containing the same elements of freedom, but also brings its own unique advantages: a gold bar, unlike bitcoin, you will not zabekapite, do not protect from confiscation and do not forward across the border.
The money of the future will be decentralized and denationalized. The world no longer needs kings to mint coins. He added to the piggy bank of facts with which to fill in the Facebook status field with the news that in terms of the amount of resources used, bitcoin this year has far outpaced SETI: people want more money than to find brothers in mind. Bitcoin processing is today more powerful than processing any of the central banks of the world, even processing Visa and Mastercard is more powerful. It is the central banks and their main function that Bitcoin is challenging - commercial banks are adapting anyway.
Personality verification is one of the possible applications of the blockchain. Armin Ebrahimi from shocard.com talked about how they implement the idea of ​​a blockchain ID card. Everything you need - payment details, personal data - is stored in the blockchain. It is enough to confirm once that the entry in it corresponds to the real character - authorities, banks, etc. can be a verification agent. - and then he can use his digital ID everywhere. So far, the main beneficiary of this technology seems to be e-commerce: the sales funnel is sacred, and the less deep it is, the better. The digital ID, according to the idea, should simplify the procedure of authorization and payment for the user by skipping the tedious step “enter your card details” - bang, and the funnel has become a bit smaller. In addition, it makes transactions safer - websites never get your payment data, referring only to the entry in the Shocard blockchain to make sure you are you.
You do not need to be Satoshi Nakamoto to notice that the system, which excludes the possibility of rearrangement of conditions retroactively, is ideal for entering into contracts. Actually, they thought about it at least three times before you: first 23 years ago, when Nick Sabo formulated the concept of smart contracts , then after the blockchain appeared, and the third time, when Vitaly Buterin implemented the platform for concluding smart contracts " Ethereum ".
In a nutshell, talking about self-fulfilling agreements: you specify the subject of the agreement and the conditions when it is deemed fulfilled, the system tracks the occurrence of the conditions and makes the payment or performs another specified action. Less fraud? Yes. However, not everything is so rosy. Say, there is no backing in the blockchain - you cannot just cancel a transaction, you can only create a new one in the opposite direction, so if you have questions after the deal is closed, you are in a difficult position. It is necessary, for example, to turn to more traditional methods of resolving disputes - for example, in court. Or it was necessary to prescribe the conditions for the execution of the transaction more clearly. So the proliferation of smart contracts will not leave lawyers out of work - rather, on the contrary. Nobody reads the terms of the agreement, right? And in the case of smart contracts, and even supported by a Shocard-type digital signature, one click on the site can deprive you of all your digital status, for example. So smart contracts are smart, not simple.
A separate story - the legalization of smart contracts in terms of legislation. But it is rather a matter of time than some principles. Integrating smart contracts into the legislation of most countries will not be labor - there would be political will. The same Lithuania and Estonia may well become pioneers in this matter.
By the way, Estonia has already become the first state to officially use the blockchain in two directions at once : firstly, in its “ e-citizenship ” program, which allows it to open remotely a business in an Estonian residence, records of which will now be stored in the blockchain. Secondly, they transfer all their citizens' medical records to the blockchain - these are 1.3 million people.
The point of view of the official authorities at Bitcoin conferences was set forth by two delegates at once. First, an official from EBA (Roskomnadzor does not recommend pronouncing it in Russian) - European Banking Supervision , a relatively fresh institute established in 2011. Her report, like the talk of a bureaucrat, was meticulous and boring, and this slide was its high point:
Obviously, the number of risks should be impressive, because the very listing of them without special efforts could not be dismantled either during the conference, or even now, when the report was posted online. For the rest, everything is bureaucratic neutral: interest grows, we look, we study, we evaluate risks. Which, by the way, in contrast with some countries is already quite good - better than “imprisoning for any transactions.”
The contrast was reinforced by a second official, already on a local scale, by Marius Jurgilas from the board of the Lithuanian Central Bank, whose surprisingly refreshing performance was the only one that somehow affected Russia. If you want to hear how the minister says "Morons, b ** d" - come to Russia; if you want to hear how the representative of the Central Bank says “scared shitless”, when he recalls the collapse of Lehman Brothers - come to Lithuania. He remembered Russia when he mentioned Friend from East in the context of Estonia, which was afraid of occupation. By the way, for some reason he was convinced that criminal prosecution for Bitcoin transactions in Russia had already been introduced. When I corrected him, saying that this was still a bill, a friendly, nervous laugh rang out in the hall.
In a different context, Russia was simply not mentioned - even a bit offensive, considering the number of bitcoin-enthusiasts, bitcoin innovations (not just “Ether”), and even bitcoin-media hailing from Russia. But thanks for that we can only our native government.
However, nobody spoke about this at the conference - these were my sad notes on the margins. With his main idea, the head of the Lithuanian banks tried to slightly bring down the pathos of previous speeches, shifting the focus away from bitcoino / blockchain-centricity: in the world, he said, things are happening and besides cryptocurrency. Mobile payments, new players in the market of payment systems and all that - in general, there is something to do with the central banks of different countries. For you, dear fintek-innovators, the doors are always open, but the initiative must also come from you.
Basically, more than the right message to end a conference and finish this article.
Until 2014, SETI was the largest project in the use of distributed computer power. While they are not pressed Bitcoin
The moral is simple: in the 21st century we can hear and see each other, regardless of imaginary dashes on the earth's surface, but for money, the borders of states are an obstacle noticeable or tangible. The world has never been as rich as it is today. Against this background, the backwardness of the international financial system hurts the eye more than ever. It was the development of the world fintek that was devoted mostly to the Bitcoin Conference held on April 8 in Vilnius - or rather, not even the Bitcoins, but the blockchains can change the world in the future, which I went to at the invitation of the cloud miner HashFlare .
Lithuania is surprisingly a good place for such an event. Like Estonia, this small Baltic state is looking for its place in the global division of labor. If the Estonians chose state digitization as their specialty, then the Lithuanians chose fintek, deciding for themselves to become state number one. And, as they claim, they have already achieved some success in this field - the advantages of narrow specialization and compact dimensions.
')
The conference presenter told the bike how in 2009, when the British financial giant Barclays was going to open its IT development center in Vilnius, he came to the Minister of Economy of Lithuania to complain, saying that they couldn’t allow this, because they plan to hire about a hundred IT -specialists - and it will empty our labor market in this segment.
The Minister asked:
- Do you want to say, our entire IT-industry will not sustain the loss of hundreds of specialists?
- That is what I want to say.
- Then I do not care. This means that we have no IT industry.
7 years later, in the Lithuanian division of Barclays and a few other financial companies, more than 1,500 local specialists, and the Lithuanian financial and IT sector never felt better.
However, the Lithuanians have not had time to get used to success. Even at the conference, despite the ambitious slogan - “The Largest Bitcoin Conference of the Baltic” - they clearly did not expect the number of participants to arrive, so they identified not the largest audience of their University of Management and Economics , calculated only by 150 people. All day long the conference had to stand along the walls.
The leitmotif of most speeches, except for representatives of the "accusation" - that is, European regulators have become exactly the blockchain opportunities. Bitcoins themselves were mentioned to a lesser extent. Blockchains - and we haven’t yet reached the point where explanations are superfluous - is a way to exchange information with its subsequent entry, which excludes the possibility of any falsification, because all the transactions that have occurred remain recorded in the blockchain forever, without the possibility of change and falsification. This is an ideal archive, at the level of the idea itself excluding the possibility of fraud - at least for now. And now, more and more invented ways to use it in everyday life. However, the financial sector - the first and most obvious option. Firstly, because nowhere is the clarity and accuracy of records as important as in monetary matters. Secondly, because the blockchain was created as the foundation for the first cryptocurrency - Bitcoin.
Honorary right to open the conference received a representative of the British bank Barclays Arian Lewis. London is not going to lose the title of one of the financial capitals of the world, therefore it is no stranger to innovation - for example, did you know that in the UK you can open a bank with only 5 partners and a million pounds sterling? I don’t know how difficult it is in Russia, but Lewis gave it as if he informed that in the trunk of every Ford Focus there is a built-in teleport, and nobody uses it. However, the British enjoy. Mondo bank, one of the island fintek startups, and did start with crowdfunding, collecting 6 million pounds.
But, after praising his swamp, he turned to the shortcomings of the established financial system. It makes no sense to transfer $ 20 to China, said Lewis, because the transfer is just $ 20 dollars and it will cost (it was then that I remembered the epic with my Australian friend). Or, say, limited banking hours. If you didn’t know, the whole world suffers from the fact that money doesn’t go when a business works, but when banks work, as Lewis said, because all transactions are accompanied by a huge amount of paperwork. Blockchain can finally put an end to this - in its radical nature, switching to them in financial transactions can be compared to replacing paper mail with electronic mail.
Speaking about how blockchain will change the world of money, Africa was given as an example of the poor and the unfortunate, according to the established Western tradition, where 90% of the population do not have access to basic financial instruments. However, in my opinion, Russia’s transparent financial transactions are even more topical - any fraud and corruption are immediately apparent. Destroy the archives - the favorite pastime of each stealing regime - will not work.
Barclays is actively experimenting and bringing this bright new world closer by supporting blockchain startups. Why not inhouse? Because a company of this level simply cannot afford to release a product that will not be thought out, tested and simply does not take off. Therefore, they support startups from all over the world through the Barclays Rise series of hackathons. However, they have no plans to reach Russia yet.
The performance of the founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, John Matoni, which followed him, basically carried an enlightening function: another story about why bitcoin is good. Bitcoin not only has the properties of paper money, containing the same elements of freedom, but also brings its own unique advantages: a gold bar, unlike bitcoin, you will not zabekapite, do not protect from confiscation and do not forward across the border.
The money of the future will be decentralized and denationalized. The world no longer needs kings to mint coins. He added to the piggy bank of facts with which to fill in the Facebook status field with the news that in terms of the amount of resources used, bitcoin this year has far outpaced SETI: people want more money than to find brothers in mind. Bitcoin processing is today more powerful than processing any of the central banks of the world, even processing Visa and Mastercard is more powerful. It is the central banks and their main function that Bitcoin is challenging - commercial banks are adapting anyway.
Personality verification is one of the possible applications of the blockchain. Armin Ebrahimi from shocard.com talked about how they implement the idea of ​​a blockchain ID card. Everything you need - payment details, personal data - is stored in the blockchain. It is enough to confirm once that the entry in it corresponds to the real character - authorities, banks, etc. can be a verification agent. - and then he can use his digital ID everywhere. So far, the main beneficiary of this technology seems to be e-commerce: the sales funnel is sacred, and the less deep it is, the better. The digital ID, according to the idea, should simplify the procedure of authorization and payment for the user by skipping the tedious step “enter your card details” - bang, and the funnel has become a bit smaller. In addition, it makes transactions safer - websites never get your payment data, referring only to the entry in the Shocard blockchain to make sure you are you.
You do not need to be Satoshi Nakamoto to notice that the system, which excludes the possibility of rearrangement of conditions retroactively, is ideal for entering into contracts. Actually, they thought about it at least three times before you: first 23 years ago, when Nick Sabo formulated the concept of smart contracts , then after the blockchain appeared, and the third time, when Vitaly Buterin implemented the platform for concluding smart contracts " Ethereum ".
In a nutshell, talking about self-fulfilling agreements: you specify the subject of the agreement and the conditions when it is deemed fulfilled, the system tracks the occurrence of the conditions and makes the payment or performs another specified action. Less fraud? Yes. However, not everything is so rosy. Say, there is no backing in the blockchain - you cannot just cancel a transaction, you can only create a new one in the opposite direction, so if you have questions after the deal is closed, you are in a difficult position. It is necessary, for example, to turn to more traditional methods of resolving disputes - for example, in court. Or it was necessary to prescribe the conditions for the execution of the transaction more clearly. So the proliferation of smart contracts will not leave lawyers out of work - rather, on the contrary. Nobody reads the terms of the agreement, right? And in the case of smart contracts, and even supported by a Shocard-type digital signature, one click on the site can deprive you of all your digital status, for example. So smart contracts are smart, not simple.
A separate story - the legalization of smart contracts in terms of legislation. But it is rather a matter of time than some principles. Integrating smart contracts into the legislation of most countries will not be labor - there would be political will. The same Lithuania and Estonia may well become pioneers in this matter.
By the way, Estonia has already become the first state to officially use the blockchain in two directions at once : firstly, in its “ e-citizenship ” program, which allows it to open remotely a business in an Estonian residence, records of which will now be stored in the blockchain. Secondly, they transfer all their citizens' medical records to the blockchain - these are 1.3 million people.
The point of view of the official authorities at Bitcoin conferences was set forth by two delegates at once. First, an official from EBA (Roskomnadzor does not recommend pronouncing it in Russian) - European Banking Supervision , a relatively fresh institute established in 2011. Her report, like the talk of a bureaucrat, was meticulous and boring, and this slide was its high point:
Obviously, the number of risks should be impressive, because the very listing of them without special efforts could not be dismantled either during the conference, or even now, when the report was posted online. For the rest, everything is bureaucratic neutral: interest grows, we look, we study, we evaluate risks. Which, by the way, in contrast with some countries is already quite good - better than “imprisoning for any transactions.”
The contrast was reinforced by a second official, already on a local scale, by Marius Jurgilas from the board of the Lithuanian Central Bank, whose surprisingly refreshing performance was the only one that somehow affected Russia. If you want to hear how the minister says "Morons, b ** d" - come to Russia; if you want to hear how the representative of the Central Bank says “scared shitless”, when he recalls the collapse of Lehman Brothers - come to Lithuania. He remembered Russia when he mentioned Friend from East in the context of Estonia, which was afraid of occupation. By the way, for some reason he was convinced that criminal prosecution for Bitcoin transactions in Russia had already been introduced. When I corrected him, saying that this was still a bill, a friendly, nervous laugh rang out in the hall.
In a different context, Russia was simply not mentioned - even a bit offensive, considering the number of bitcoin-enthusiasts, bitcoin innovations (not just “Ether”), and even bitcoin-media hailing from Russia. But thanks for that we can only our native government.
However, nobody spoke about this at the conference - these were my sad notes on the margins. With his main idea, the head of the Lithuanian banks tried to slightly bring down the pathos of previous speeches, shifting the focus away from bitcoino / blockchain-centricity: in the world, he said, things are happening and besides cryptocurrency. Mobile payments, new players in the market of payment systems and all that - in general, there is something to do with the central banks of different countries. For you, dear fintek-innovators, the doors are always open, but the initiative must also come from you.
Basically, more than the right message to end a conference and finish this article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/393171/
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