HSBC Swaps Paper Records For Blockchain To Track $20 Billion Worth of Assets (reuters.com) 45
HSBC aims to shift $20 billion worth of assets to a new blockchain-based custody platform by March, in one of the biggest deployments yet of the widely-hyped but still unproven technology by a global bank. From a report: The platform, known as Digital Vault, will give investors real-time access to records of securities bought on private markets, HSBC told Reuters, and seeks to capitalize on booming interest in such investments by yield-hungry investors. Banks and other financial firms have invested billions of dollars into finding uses for blockchain, a digital ledger that can be instantly and transparently updated. Few, however, have come up with practical or widely-used applications. Proponents say the blockchain will upend the financial sector by cutting out costly processes or the need for middlemen - though there have been few solid examples yet of such revolutionary use. The HSBC platform will digitize paper-based records of private placements, using blockchain to reduce the time it takes investors to make checks or queries on holdings.
Is there a PDF version? (Score:2)
Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless they are running all of the transactions on client hardware, there is simply no benefit to moving any internally managed (or leased cloud) systems to blockchain.
What am I not getting?
Re: Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:3)
You missed the hype. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the hype, marketing, buzzwords, and profit potential.
Blockchains solve real problems with distributing trusted work among untrusted actors, but as is pointed out, those aren't the problems being faced. Their technical issues have been solved by database tech from the 1960s and don't need blockchains.
The problem they are trying to solve is: how can we make more money?
The answer to their problem is to invest a few million dollars into the latest buzzword technology and then market limited access to it through high-yield transactions, hoping for a 100x ROI or more. The buzzword happens to be blockchain in recent years, rather than mortgage-backed securities, stocks, bonds, or plastics.
Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:3)
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"You are missing the hype, marketing, buzzwords, and profit potential."
Indeed. A couple of months ago the news read:" HSBC hopes to leave era of scandals behind | Financial Times "
Re: You missed the hype. (Score:2)
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HSBC has discovered that computers are kinda cool, and can let you do things like quickly check electronic records. They realize they're a bit backward in this regard, and they recently hired some "consultants" so they're going to call their newfangled "database" a "blockchain" because it sounds less like they slept through the 90s.
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Re: Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:1)
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I don't know about this deployment specifically, but the theory behind private blockchain is that the chain is maintained by everyone who has an incentive in keeping it going. In this case that would presumably be the bank and the investors, avoiding the need to trust the bank.
Money isn't the only incentive. You will put hardware toward the system if you have a large enough interest in keeping it trustworthy.
That's the theory, anyway. It will be interesting to see if blockchain finally has a practical appli
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Your incentives are to have a 'replica' of the main state. But, you can't have any immutability, without trusting a third party. You are just inventing again 'git'.
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Quite. When the set of participants is so small, it would seem that a better solution would be for all participants to digitally sign all records to say "I certify that I saw this at this date and time". That gives you the tamper-evidence that you need.
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This is how 'git' works. Git uses hashes as signature (merkle tree). If two participants can't agree, 'merging' is not an easy task.
Re: Blockchain without Bitcoin = Standard Database (Score:2)
Signing it just means you see it's different. Block chains give you the exact ledger of *what* changed and where by who.
Signing verified what who saw / published (Score:2)
To be precise, a digital signature shows who saw what. The signature is an encrypted hash of the records. If the signature matches, you know that a) the data hasn't been changed since I signed it and b) I'm the one who signed it. In other words, I've signed off on the state the data being as it is represented.
One time that I would sign would be as I make a transaction, so you know the transaction came from me.
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My point is that everyone could do this as a way to say "I saw the ledger at this point in time".
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Huh? What's "the bitcoin level?" The "data immutability" comes from sharing the ledger with everyone. If someone tries to get sneaky, everyone else sees it. A bank could do that, no problem. They could even just publish scans of their paper documents on the web. They might not want to....
I think what you're referring to is the public editing ability. That *is* the novel contribution of Satoshi, a practical(ish) solution to the decentralized trust problem. Unfortunately his solution requires cutthroat compet
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You must read the Bitcoin white paper. Otherwise, you are inventing again, a distributed version-control system like 'git'.
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I've read Satoshi's paper. I also know how git works. I think that's precisely what I said in my post: if you're not using a distributed trust model, then your "blockchain" is just a 90s era hash tree (git is one of these).
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Indeed, and people are incentivized to mine Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a 'monetary good', and mining is economically rewarded. Replacing the 'monetary good', by common data undermined the trust model itself.
Why? (Score:2)
What is the purpose of using a blockchain when an ordinary database would suffice? It is the digitization (scanning) of the paper that has the value. Blockchain is just hype.
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"Blockchain" will boost their share price.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
An ordinary database would be more vulnerable to a rogue database admin editing an entry and deleting the logs.
No need to keep massive paper backup records if the block chain will expose a rogue database admin trying to sneak in a change. The difficulty of finding a hash collision on the block chain would be more expensive than the assets.
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The only way blockchain protects against that attack is when the rogue admin does not have access to the entire network. When the entire blockchain is within one organization that is no longer the case, and blockchain no longer provides any protection against that form of attack. Even in places where blockchain DOES make sense, all you need is 50% +1 of the network to make any fraudulent transaction you want, in a corporate environment the admin has access to 100% of the network so has full control.
A simple
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
HSBC's Wikipedia Controversies [wikipedia.org] section, listing their involvement in money laundering, exchange and currency manipulation, violating the US Bank Secrecy Act, tax evasion (excuse me, "avoidance"), breaking the Iran sanctions, and payment-processing failures -- just to name a few -- is longer than the other sections. Trying to imagine how shifting away from paper records is going to help them going forward ...
Just sayin'.
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Someone has to do all these things the various governments of the world and their spy agencies need doing. Without HSBC the American "Install a Dictator" program would grind to a standstill (as would much else).
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They can do all that faster!
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Add in that they are just a shitty bank for record-keeping. Anecdotal, but they lost a motorcycle title I'd borrowed money (from someone else; HSBC bought the loan) for and then paid off...Cause I sold the bike. They sent me a release of lein and told me to pound sand when I asked for money to cover the lost-title costs.
Don't do business with HSBC if you can avoid it.
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That's just the standard Wikipedia section for every bank in the world. I'm sure at this point of you start typing a new article about a new bank the autofill option will fill out those controversies for you.
Good Job! (Score:2)
Buzzword bingo! (Score:2)
Don't worry (Score:1)
The FDIC will protect you when the bank steals, I mean, loses all your money.
i'll answer the common question (Score:1)
not much! the biggest difference, in relation to such large centralized operations, is the opportunity to push calculation to the edge. this is non-trivial. Think of the amoun ef work required to preocess a global transaf stream. This greatly defrays the cost by potentially pushing calculation co the edge.
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What on earth are you talking about? Push calculation to the edge? Perhaps you are a flat earther?
Bail (Score:2)
Time to sell your HSBC shares.
What is being achieved by using Blockchain? (Score:3)
What does implementing this solution using a Blockchain (or perhaps "The Blockchain") achieve?
I often see Blockchain mentioned by someone trying to sell their new startup, but all I see is a solution that could be implemented by using a standard database, or at the most using a distributed database.
I see a lot of people re-implementing standard databases, in the same way that I heard of a corporate implementing Hadoop to store their "big data" database with 1000 rows.. is this someone just trying to con investors and sell shares?
What is the blockchain implementation achieving?
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...What is the blockchain implementation achieving?
Maybe a big liability. Stupid people thought bitcoin was anonymous. Like carrying around Fiat currency such as USD. Hand a $20 bill to someone and nobody will ever know you had that note. There is a serial number on them so it's not totally anonymous. Darn close though.
Blockchain is supposed to be like that dollar. You have a "wallet" for storing your money. However as criminals have found out they can be tracked. Likewise if I'm using a bank I don't want what I'm doing out there. Who has a note on my hous
msmash hates when I re-post this, but... (Score:1)
it really was my original work:
Dissociated Press (DP) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Physicists identify new fundamental particle
May herald a new particle family and restructuring of the Standard Model
Geneva, Switzerland — August 2018
Keywords: hypino, shinyon, blockchain
High energy particle physicists at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nullité) facility have confirmed the existence of the long-conjectured hypino (hy-PEE-no). It is thought to be the first member of a new class of p