At present, the most widespread and successful application of blockchain technology is the digital currency represented by Bitcoin. Digital currency has developed rapidly in recent years. Due to the characteristics of decentralized credit and frequent transactions, it has a high transaction circulation value and can maintain a relatively stable price by developing hedging financial derivatives as a quasi-super-sovereign currency. .
Since the emergence of Bitcoin, several digital currencies have appeared one after another, and a relatively large industrial chain ecosystem has been formed around the generation, storage, and transactions of digital currencies. Taking Bitcoin as an example, participating institutions can be mainly divided into four categories: infrastructure, trading platforms, ICO financing services, and comprehensive blockchain services.
Financial application: Blockchain has inherent advantages in the financial field. On the Internet, this is determined by the genes of blockchain.
From a subjective point of view, financial institutions are the most willing to explore blockchain applications and need new technologies to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs to cope with the current status of the entire global economy.
Objectively speaking, the market space in the financial industry is huge, and a little progress can bring huge benefits.
The financial industry is an industry with extremely high requirements for security and stability. If the application of blockchain in the financial field is verified, it will have a huge demonstration effect and be quickly promoted in other industries. In the financial field, in addition to digital currency applications, blockchain has gradually begun to be applied in cross-border payments, supply chain finance, insurance, digital bills, asset securitization, bank credit reporting and other fields.
Insurance business: With the development of blockchain technology, information about personal health status, accident records and other information may be uploaded to the blockchain in the future, allowing insurance companies to be more timely and timely when customers apply for insurance. Accurately obtain risk information to reduce underwriting costs and improve efficiency. The shared and transparent characteristics of the blockchain reduce information asymmetry and the risk of adverse selection; while its historical traceability characteristics are conducive to reducing moral hazard, thereby reducing the difficulty and cost of insurance management.
Asset securitization: The pain point of business in this field is that the authenticity of the underlying assets cannot be guaranteed; there are many participating entities and many operating links, low transaction transparency and information asymmetry, making it difficult to control risks. The pain point of data lies in the low efficiency of transfers between participants, the clearing and reconciliation of funds between parties’ trading systems often requires a lot of manpower and material resources, and there are multiple online and offline channels for asset repayment, making it impossible to monitor the true status of assets, and there are still assets After the package is formed, the trust of all parties in the transaction chain in the authenticity and accuracy of the underlying asset data is an issue.
Digital Notes: The pain points in this field lie in three risk issues. Operational risk, due to the centralization of the system, once the central server has a problem, the entire market will be paralyzed; market risk, according to statistics, in 2016, there were seven risk events involving hundreds of millions of dollars, involving multiple banks; moral hazard , there are incidents such as “one ticket selling more” and false commercial bills in the market. Blockchain’s disintermediation, system stability, consensus mechanism, and non-tampering characteristics reduce operational risks, market risks, and moral risks in traditional centralized systems.
Cross-border payment: The pain points in this field are long payment cycle, high fees and low transaction transparency. The third-party payment company is the center to complete the accounting, settlement and liquidation in the payment process, and the payment cycle is long. For example, the payment cycle for cross-border payments is more than three days, and the cost is high. The blockchain is deintermediated, transactions are open, transparent, and cannot be tampered with. No third-party payment institutions are involved, which shortens the payment cycle, reduces fees, and increases transaction transparency.
Credit information management: The pain points in this field are the lack of data sharing, the asymmetry of information between credit information agencies and users; the formal market-oriented data collection channels are limited, and the battle for data sources consumes a lot of costs; the issue of data privacy protection is prominent , the traditional technical architecture is difficult to meet new requirements, etc. In the field of credit reporting, blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, trustlessness, timestamps, asymmetric encryption and smart contracts. At the technical level, it ensures that limited and controllable credit can be achieved on the basis of effectively protecting data privacy. Data sharing and verification.
Supply chain finance: The pain points in this field are the long financing cycle and high costs. Centered on the core enterprise system of the supply chain, it is difficult for third-party credit enhancement institutions to authenticate the authenticity of various relevant vouchers in the supply chain, resulting in long manual review times and high financing costs. The blockchain’s deintermediation, consensus mechanism, and non-tampering characteristics eliminate the need for third-party credit enhancement agencies to verify the authenticity of various relevant certificates in the supply chain, reducing financing costs and shortening the financing cycle.
Asset Securitization: The pain point of business in this field lies in the fact that the authenticity of the underlying assets cannot be guaranteed; there are many participating entities, multiple operating links, low transaction transparency, and information asymmetry, making it difficult to control risks. The pain point of data lies in the low efficiency of transfers between participants, the clearing and reconciliation of funds between parties’ trading systems often requires a lot of manpower and material resources, and there are multiple online and offline channels for asset repayment, making it impossible to monitor the true status of assets, and there are still assets After the package is formed, the trust of all parties in the transaction chain in the authenticity and accuracy of the underlying asset data is an issue. Blockchain’s deintermediation, consensus mechanism, and non-tampering characteristics increase data flow efficiency, reduce costs, monitor the true status of assets in real time, and ensure the trust of all parties in the transaction chain in the underlying assets.
