Category: Digital Disruption

Blockchain Prototype Is Credit Positive for P&C Insurers and Reinsurers

The Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i) has unveiled a prototype application that streamlines contracts between insurers and reinsurers using blockchain technology according to Moody’s. Once the technology becomes mainstream, they expect that it will significantly reduce policy management expenses and speed up claims settlement for insurers and reinsurers, a credit positive.

B3i’s application gives insurers, reinsurers and brokers a shared view of policy data and documentation in real time.

Blockchain’s shared digital ledger has the potential to increase the speed and reduce the friction costs of reinsurance contract placements. Reinsurers would use the common platform to streamline claims analysis, potentially reducing significantly their administration and management costs.

Blockchain technology is a chain of blocks of encrypted data that form an append-only database of transactions. Each block contains a record of transactions among multiple parties, each of which has real-time access to a shared database. As a block is encrypted with a link to the previous block, it cannot be altered, except by unencrypting and amending all subsequent blocks.

PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that blockchain technology will reduce reinsurer non-commission expenses by 15%-25%, including data processing efficiencies and reduced chance of overpayment because of data errors. For illustrative purposes, the exhibit below shows the potential effect on annual pre-tax earnings for some of the world’s top reinsurance companies, all of which are included in the B3i consortium. We also expect the technology to decrease the time between primary insurance claim and reinsurance reimbursement, a credit positive for primary insurers.

B3i launched in October 2016 with five original members, including Aegon N.V., Allianz SE, Munich Reinsurance Company, Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd. and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. It now has 15 members. Beta testing for B3i’s program is scheduled for October and is open to any insurers, reinsurers or brokers that wish to pilot the technology, regardless of their membership status in the consortium. Although the initial pilot was for property-catastrophe excess-of-loss policies, B3i plans to broaden its application to other types of reinsurance, catastrophe bonds and other insurance- linked securities.

DFA’s SME Report 2017 Released

The latest results from the Digital Finance Analytics Small and Medium Business Survey, based on research from 52,000 firms over the past 12 months, is now available on request.   You can use the form below to obtain a free copy of the report.

There are around 2.2 million small and medium businesses (SME) operating in Australia, and nearly 5 million Australian households rely on income from them directly or indirectly. So a healthy SME sector is essential for the future growth of the country.

However, the latest edition of our report reveals that more than half of small business owners are not getting the financial assistance they require from lenders in Australia to grow their businesses.

Most SME’s are now digitally literate, yet the range of products and services offered to them via online channels remains below their expectations.

More SME’s are willing to embrace non-traditional lenders, via Fintech, thanks to greater penetration of digital devices, and more familiarity with these new players. In addition, many firms said they would consider switching banks, but in practice they do not.

Overall business confidence has improved a bit compared with our previous report, but the amount of “red tape” which firms have to navigate is a considerable barrier to growth.

Running a business is not easy. In some industries, more than half of newly formed businesses are likely to fail within three years. We found that banks are not offering the broader advice and assistance which could assist a newer business, so even simple concepts like cash flow management, overtrading and debtor management are not necessarily well understood. There is a significant opportunity for players to step up to assist, and in so doing they could cement and strengthen existing relationships as well as creating new ones.

We think simple “Robo-Advice” could be offered as part of a set of business services.

The sector is complex, and one-size certainly does not fit all. In this edition, we focus in particular on what we call “the voice of the customer”. In the body of the report we reveal the core market segmentation which we use for our analysis and we also explore this data at a summary level.

Here is a short video summary of the key findings.

The detailed results from the surveys are made available to our paying clients (details on request), but this report provides an overall summary of some of the main findings. We make only brief reference to our state by state findings, which are also covered in the full survey. Feel free to contact DFA if you require more information, or something specific. Our surveys can be extended to meet specific client needs.

Note this will NOT automatically send you our research updates, for that register here.

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Banking sector will be ground zero for job losses from AI and robotics

From The Conversation.

Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan has predicted a bonfire of industry jobs as automation takes hold across the finance sector. Every signal is that he will be proved right very soon.

Those roles in finance where the knowledge required is systematic will soon disappear. And it will happen irrespective of how high a level, how highly trained or how experienced the human equivalent may currently be. Regular and repetitive tasks at all levels of an organisation already do not need to be done by humans. The more a job is solely or largely composed of these routines the higher the risk of being replaced by computing power.

The warning signs have been out there for a number of years as enthusiastic reports about artificial intelligence have been tempered with fears about significant job losses in most sectors of the economy.

Many roles have already all but disappeared in the march towards a fully digital economy. Older readers may recall typesetters, typists, and increasingly, switchboard operators and back room postal workers, as work of the last century. And the changing nature of work is relentless.

Cryan shame? Deutsche Bank’s CEO. EPA/ARMANDO BABANI

Banking on jobs

The finance sector was once driven by human judgement and decision making. But slowly, it has changed. One-to-one conversations with your local bank manager were replaced by scripted call centre interactions during the 1990s. Today, increased processing power, massive cloud storage, strong encryption and an increase in the use of blockchain make possible tasks that had previously been seen as too complex for automation to be done quickly and consistently without any human intervention.

Artificial intelligence reduces the need for human work that requires analysis, consistent applications of decisions and judgement calls. These are pivotal actions for many legal and financial activities. Combined, in the background, with blockchain – essentially a publicly shared automated ledger of agreed contracts – arrangements that require some form of trust between two parties will also be able to be completed with little or no human intervention.

Blockchain is the basis of every cryptocurrency – forms of money exchanged online. Banks are slowly working towards ways of embracing these alternative systems. While alternative forms of money attract popular headlines it is the automation behind the scenes that is most compelling aspect for the finance sector. By removing the influence of human decision making from as many processes as possible, a fully digital supply chain can be created. As artificial intelligence learns more about the impact and influence of every process each time it happens, a bank’s efficiency should continuously improve, and profits increase, with fewer and fewer employees.

Protected

In this atmosphere of change to the world of work in banking, however, there are some roles that will prove more resistant to change. Work that is unpredictable or inherently people-focused will survive. Customer service staff will still need to tackle the inevitably complex queries that are the product of the human mind rather than the outcome of algorithms. AI will deal with most enquiries, but will inevitably need to transfer the most cryptic to a human interlocutor. Mortgage decisions, for example, will come as an automatically generated message; more intricate questions will still require face-to-face conversations.

At the other end of the (pay) scale senior executives will continue to steer the direction of their individual organisations, although the nature of their work will subtly change to become technology-based decisions. Executives will find themselves choosing an algorithm instead of directly making a high-risk investment decision, or they may end up selecting an artificial intelligence machine rather than interviewing people to become employees. Reduction in the wage bill at other levels of the business and the increasing significance of the few human decisions that need to be made may even assist in justifying their annual bonuses.

Inevitable change

The traditional banking sector is an obvious area for artificial intelligence and automation to generate competitive advantages for companies. This is a result, in part, of previous reluctance to embrace change. In the late 1990s there was a collective hysteria around the Y2K bug and fear of a wholesale shutdown of computers which failed to cope with the millennium date change. That highlighted the sector’s uneasy relationship with fast-moving technological change. But even this public panic prompted few immediate, practical changes.

Now, mobile app-only banks, with no branches, such as N26 and Monzo, challenge the traditional banking sector and its human resources legacy. Traditional banks are still largely oriented towards humans doing most of its work. In 2016, over 1m people, or 3.1% of the UK workforce, were employed in the finance services sector, which is the biggest tax contributor to the UK economy and the country’s largest exporter. Most predictions claim around 50% of the jobs in the sector will be lost. Depending on who you listen to, this process will take between five and 20 years.

The impact of these changes will be felt across the entire economy. There exists a genuine fear that artificial intelligence, robotics and fully digital businesses may contribute to a significant increase in the gap between rich and poor.

Deutsche Bank’s CEO is being frank about a future where jobs in banking and elsewhere will become ever more scarce as digital business becomes a reality. This realisation has reinvigorated calls for a universal basic income (UBI) or a social dividend in the UK and elsewhere. The proposal has found support with some MEPs as a means to maintain personal levels of prosperity in this new world. Crucially too, the UBI would seek to maintain the foundations of the current Western economy in an era of increasingly fully automated digital businesses – a goal, if achieved, which might also just about keep the current finance and banking sector in business.

Authors: Gordon Fletcher, Co-director, Centre for Digital Business, University of Salford; David Kreps, Senior Lecturer in Centre for Digital Business, University of Salford

Applications for crowd-funding licences open 29 September 2017 – ASIC

ASIC says that from 29 September 2017, the new crowd-sourced funding (CSF) regime will come into effect and ASIC will begin accepting licence applications from CSF intermediaries.

Under the CSF regime, eligible public companies will be able to make offers of fully paid ordinary shares to a large number of investors via the online platform of a licensed intermediary. Generally, the CSF regime reduces the regulatory requirements for public fundraising and the intermediaries will play an important oversight role in this process.

ASIC Commissioner John Price said that the new system balances the need for regulatory oversight with supporting innovation.

‘ASIC welcomes the start of the new crowd-sourced funding laws. Crowd-sourced funding helps both start-ups and small to medium sized businesses and investors access the opportunities that are available from an innovative economy. It is also important for investors to understand the benefits and risks of crowd-sourced funding and we encourage them to refer to the materials on crowd-sourced funding on our MoneySmart website‘. he said.

For companies to access the benefits of the new CSF regime, ASIC must first license suitable intermediaries to provide crowd-funding services. Providers of CSF services must hold an Australian financial services (AFS) licence. From 29 September 2017 ASIC will begin accepting applications from potential CSF intermediaries for AFS licence authorisations to provide a crowd-funding service.

To facilitate implementation of this regime as soon as possible, ASIC’s Licensing team will consider applications from CSF intermediaries as a matter of priority.

ASIC has today released further details of its approach to the assessment of CSF intermediaries, and the information required for both new licence and variation applications seeking CSF service authorisation.

Applicants should read the information provided on this page before making an application.

ASIC has also released an update to ASIC Form 206 which can be used to convert an existing company so that it is eligible to use the new CSF regime. ASIC will now accept lodgement of ASIC Form 206.

Customer Credit Data At Risk

The US arm of the credit score company Equifax –  the company who organises, assimilates and analyses data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide, and its database includes employee data contributed from more than 6,600 employers – has disclosed that one of it’s databases was breached through an unspecified vulnerability on its website, exposing the personal information of an estimated 143 million people, including some in the UK and Canada.

This highlights again the hidden risks in the online world, as such data is very valuable and could be used to create false identities or lead to phantom transactions.

Equifax Australia (ex. Veda), which itself holds the credit history information on Australian customers is a wholly owned subsidiary. The local company tweeted “please be assured that we have found no evidence that personal information of consumers in Australia or New Zealand has been impacted by the US cybersecurity incident”.

Equifax says the US penetration occurred sometime between mid-May and the end of July, but has only recently announced that the breach happened. The company has found no evidence of unauthorized activity on Equifax’s core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.

The information accessed primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed. As part of its investigation of this application vulnerability, Equifax also identified unauthorized access to limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents. Equifax will work with UK and Canadian regulators to determine appropriate next steps. The company has found no evidence that personal information of consumers in any other country has been impacted.

Equifax discovered the unauthorized access on July 29 of this year and acted immediately to stop the intrusion. The company promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted. Equifax also reported the criminal access to law enforcement and continues to work with authorities. While the company’s investigation is substantially complete, it remains ongoing and is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Richard F. Smith. “We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations. We also are focused on consumer protection and have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers, regardless of whether they were impacted by this incident.”

Equifax has established a dedicated website, to help consumers determine if their information has been potentially impacted and to sign up for credit file monitoring and identity theft protection. In addition to the website, Equifax will send direct mail notices to consumers whose credit card numbers or dispute documents with personal identifying information were impacted. Equifax also is in the process of contacting U.S. state and federal regulators and has sent written notifications to all U.S. state attorneys general, which includes Equifax contact information for regulator inquiries.

Equifax has engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm to conduct an assessment and provide recommendations on steps that can be taken to help prevent this type of incident from happening again.

CEO Smith said, “I’ve told our entire team that our goal can’t be simply to fix the problem and move on. Confronting cybersecurity risks is a daily fight. While we’ve made significant investments in data security, we recognize we must do more. And we will.”

There is a fine print “arbitration clause” which seeks to protect the company from class actions, but in a response to consumer inquiries, the company says the arbitration clause and class action waiver included in its terms of use does not apply to this cybersecurity incident.

Also, according to documents filed with securities regulators, three Equifax executives sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered the breach. However, Equifax has said the three executives “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares.”

 

 

Fintechs And Banking – Opportunities and Risks

The Bank For International Settlements (BIS) has released a released a consultative document on the implications of fintech for the financial sector. Sound practices: Implications of fintech developments for banks and bank supervisors assesses how technology-driven innovation in financial services, or “fintech”, may affect the banking industry and the activities of supervisors in the near to medium term.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) set up a task force to examine Fintech. Their report makes a number of observations about the way Fintechs may disrupt financial services. They also highlight the potential risks which regulators and players will need to consider.

The BCBS notes that, “despite the hype, the large size of investments and the significant number of financial products and services derived from fintech innovations, volumes are currently still low relative to the size of the global financial services sector. That being said, the trend of rising investment and the potential long-term impact of fintech warrant continued focus by both banks and bank supervisors”.

They developed a meta-model showing the range of elements across the financial services value chain where Fintech may play.

They say that “while some market observers estimate that between 10–40% of revenues and 20–60% of retail banking profits are at risk over the next 10 years,  others claim that banks will be able to absorb the new competitors, thereby improving their own efficiency and capabilities”.

Various future potential scenarios are considered, with their specific risks and opportunities. In addition to the banking industry scenarios, three case studies focus on technology developments (big data, distributed ledger technology, and cloud computing) and three on fintech business models (innovative payment services, lending platforms and neo-banks).

Although fintech is only the latest wave of innovation to affect the banking industry, the rapid adoption of enabling technologies and emergence of new business models pose an increasing challenge to incumbent banks in almost all the scenarios considered.

Banking standards and supervisory expectations should be adaptive to new innovations, while maintaining appropriate prudential standards. Against this background, the Committee has identified 10 key observations and related recommendations on the following supervisory issues for consideration by banks and bank supervisors:

  1. the overarching need to ensure safety and soundness and high compliance standards without inhibiting beneficial innovation in the banking sector;
  2. the key risks for banks related to fintech developments, including strategic/profitability risks, operational, cyber and compliance risks;
  3. the implications for banks of the use of innovative enabling technologies;
  4. the implications for banks of the growing use of third parties, via outsourcing and/or partnerships;
  5. cross-sectoral cooperation between supervisors and other relevant authorities;
  6. international cooperation between banking supervisors;
  7. adaptation of the supervisory skillset;
  8. potential opportunities for supervisors to use innovative technologies (“suptech”);
  9. relevance of existing regulatory frameworks for new innovative business models; and
  10. key features of regulatory initiatives set up to facilitate fintech innovation.

ANZ first Australian bank to roll out Voice ID for mobile banking

ANZ says it will today be the first Australian bank to roll out Voice ID technology on mobile banking enabling customers to complete higher value transactions conveniently and securely.

With Voice ID, ANZ customers can now make ‘Pay Anyone’ payments of more than $1000 on their mobile without needing to log into internet banking, or remember additional passwords or PINs, or visit a branch. They can also use Voice ID to make BPAY payments of more than $10,000 on their mobile.

Commenting on the announcement, Managing Director Customer Experience and Digital Channels, Peter Dalton said: “This is a significant security update that will make it easier for our customers to complete high value transactions on their smartphones.

“Customers increasingly want the convenience of banking on their digital devices and this solution delivers that with the added level of voice biometric security.

“This will be particularly good news for our small business customers who regularly need to make payments of more than $1000 on the go and will only need their voice to authorise those transactions.”

The rollout comes after ANZ completed a successful pilot program with the new technology in recent months and will be available for customers using the Grow by ANZ app from today. It will then be rolled out to other digital channels across the bank.

ANZ has developed Voice ID with world-leading voice biometrics company Nuance to bring the new technology to Australian customers.

Nuance managing director Aust & NZ, Enterprise Division Robert Schwarz said: “ANZ is taking a forward-thinking yet secure approach to identity verification with Voice ID, making it fast, easy and secure for customers who are on-the-go to perform high value transactions.

“Through the ANZ mobile banking app, Voice ID uses proven voice biometric technology from Nuance that is more secure and more convenient than legacy authentication methods.”

NAB Launches Virtual Banker For Business Customers

NAB says it is the first bank in Australia to launch a digital virtual banker specifically for business customers, enabling them to receive instant answers and assistance with common banking questions and tasks.

NAB’s virtual banker is in pilot and available 24/7 on nab.com.au, providing help with more than 200 common questions related to the servicing of business banking accounts.

NAB Chief Operating Officer Antony Cahill said the development of the virtual banker continued NAB’s commitment to providing leading solutions that make life easier for customers.

“Our research shows that two thirds of Australian SMEs cite dealing with administrative tasks as taking a lot of effort, and our customers desperately want to spend more time on their business and less time on dealing with admin tasks.

“’We’re working hard to make banking an easy and supportive experience for our customers and technology like this helps save business customers critical time. When they have a question about their banking, our virtual banker is there to help solve it 24 hours a day, seven days a week; it’s a simple and seamless on-the-go experience.

“We will continue to develop the virtual banker over coming months, enabling an even broader and more diverse range of instant answers and guidance for business customers.”

The virtual assistant’s artificial intelligence is derived from thousands of real-life customer enquiries. There are more than 13,000 variants of the 200 questions the virtual banker can answer; if the question can’t be answered, the customer will then be directed to a human banker.

Customers were involved in the testing and development phase, with more than 75 per cent saying a virtual banking was a highly desirable offering that would help them with their banking needs.

Part of NAB’s delivery of new customer self-assistance also includes walk-through tutorial videos for NAB Connect users. The short step-by-step videos help customers understand how they can use and take advantage of the platform’s wide capabilities, with tutorials that help with common tasks like ‘adding users’ or ‘setting up reoccurring payments’.

The initiatives are just two examples of the many that have been developed by NAB’s Customer Journey teams, who are reimagining specific customer experiences.

“We currently have a number of different streams of work underway with almost 1000 employees across various areas of the bank – from bankers, to product specialists, marketing experts and technologists – working together on these projects and delivering at pace,” Mr Cahill said.

Hear from NAB’s EGM Business Transformation Anne Bennett talking NAB’s new Virtual Banker

Banking with a chatbot: a battle between convenience and security

From The Conversation.

Soon, you will be able to check your bank balance or transfer money through Facebook Messenger and Twitter as banks experiment with chatbots. Companies like Ikea have used customer service chatbots for close to a decade. But their use in financial services represents a new tension – do we want convenience or a feeling of security from our banks?

Research shows that when it comes to online banking, customers are prepared to trade security for convenience. But when customers think there is a threat to their security, this feeling reverses.

Researchers at QUT recently found that a sense of insecurity is one of the reasons consumers do not already interact with financial institutions on social media. And the feeling of insecurity actually increased between 2010 and 2014, as social media became more popular.

This means banks will likely have to design their chatbots to give a sense of security, just like they do with bank branches.

The trade-off between the convenience and security of a service comes down to trust. Trust in the service provider to protect our personal details (“soft trust”) and trust in the platform and infrastructure you use to access the service (“hard trust”). Both types of trust are important to ensure a sense of balance.

For instance, it’s of little use having an impregnable vault if consumers don’t trust the person with the key. Likewise, trusting a staff member is of little value if consumers can see there are safety flaws in the system. Consumers need to know that their trust (both hard and soft) is well placed before they can enjoy the added convenience of emerging technologies.

Designing a sense of security

Banks previously used physical design to create a sense of security and trust. This is called signalling and involved the use of marble floors, metal bars, and imposing vaults in bank branches to reassure us that our money is safe.

As our banking shifted into apps and websites, we faced the same problem as chatbots currently do – the internet was undoubtedly more convenient but at the expense of a feeling of safety. This was also solved with design.

Websites and apps were designed to send similar signals as that of the physical bank branches. For instance, by using security symbols (such as the green padlock next to the URL of this website), logging customers out if they’re inactive for too long, and moving keyboards for entering online banking passwords.

Research has found consumers feel more secure when a system generates a unique password for each login, than they do when they are allowed a permanent password. Even seeing the initials of an employee in a Tweet can humanise the interaction and instil trust.

All of these design aspects evolved to signal trust and security. But chatbots do not have access to these same design capabilities – you can’t do something as obvious as having a big vault or green padlock.

So what does all this mean for chatbots?

Research from Accenture indicates Australians are ready for artificial intelligence in the financial sector – 60% are open to entirely computer-generated banking advice.

And a World Retail Banking Report found that while 51% of consumers still prefer face-to-face interaction for more complex products and services, they also demand greater levels of digitised customisation and personalisation from financial institutions.

All of this means chatbots could work for banks. On the back end, chatbots can be secured just like websites and apps – using two-factor authentication and encryption etc.

It’s important to promote this feeling in users too. A big part of it will be “humanising” the interaction. For instance, chatbots can be programmed to seem more human – achieving the same thing as staff members’ initials on social media. They can be given names, personalities, and even emotions.

But this will just be the start. As artificial intelligence and chatbots become a part of daily life, the trust signals will need to be built, one digital brick at a time.

Authors: Kate Letheren, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology; Paula Dootson, Research Fellow, PwC Chair in Digital Economy, Queensland University of Technolog

Is Bitcoin Money?

From Daily Reckoning

At various times in history, feathers have been money. Shells have been money. Dollars and euros are money. Gold and silver are certainly money. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can also be money.

People say some forms of money, such as Bitcoin or U.S. dollars, are not backed by anything.

But that’s not true.

They are backed by one thing: confidence.

If you and I have confidence that something is money and we agree that it’s money, then it’s money. I can call something money, but if nobody else in the world wants it, then it’s not money. The same applies to gold, dollars and cryptocurrencies.

Governments have an edge here, because they make you pay taxes in their money. Put another way, governments essentially create an artificial use case for their own forms of paper money by threatening people with punishment if they do not pay taxes denominated in the government’s own fiat currency.

And the dollar has a monopoly as legal tender for the payment of U.S. taxes. According to John Maynard Keynes and many other economists, it is that ability of state power to coerce tax payments in a specified currency that gives a currency its intrinsic value. This theory of money boils down to saying we value dollars only because we must use them to pay our taxes — otherwise, we go to jail.

So-called cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have two main features in common. The first is that they are not issued or regulated by any central bank or single regulatory authority. They are created in accordance with certain computer algorithms and are issued and transferred through a distributed processing network using open source code.

Any particular computer server hosting a cryptocurrency ledger or register could be destroyed, but the existence of the currency would continue to reside on other servers all over the world and could quickly be replicated. It is impossible to destroy a cryptocurrency by attacking any single node or group of nodes.

The second feature in common is encryption, which gives rise to the “crypto” part of the name. It is possible to observe transactions taking place in the so-called block chain, which is a master register of all currency units and transactions.

But the identity of the transacting parties is hidden behind what is believed to be an unbreakable code. Only the transacting parties have the keys needed to decode the information in the block chain in such a way as to obtain use and possession of the currency.

Murdered Soviet Economist Exposes Next Crash

This does not mean that cryptocurrencies are fail-safe. But on the whole, the system works reasonably well and is growing rapidly for both legitimate and illegitimate transactions.

It’s worth pointing out that the U.S. dollar is also a digital cryptocurrency for all intents and purposes. It’s just that dollars are issued by a central bank, the Federal Reserve, while Bitcoin is issued privately. While we may keep a few paper dollars in our wallets from time to time, the vast majority of dollar-denominated transactions, whether in currency or securities form, are conducted digitally.

We pay bills online, pay for purchases via credit card and receive direct deposits to our bank accounts all digitally. These transactions are all encrypted using the same coding techniques as Bitcoin.

The difference is that ownership of our digital dollars is known to certain trusted counterparties such as our banks, brokers and credit card companies, whereas ownership of Bitcoin is known only to the user and is hidden behind the block chain code.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies present certain challenges to the existing system. One problem is that the value of a bitcoin is not constant in terms of U.S. dollars. In fact, that value has been quite volatile, fluctuating between $100 and its present high above $3,400 over the past few years. It’s currently around $3,467.

It’s true that dollars fluctuate in value relative to other currencies such as the euro. But those changes are typically measured in fractions of pennies, not jumps of $100 per day.

One potential solution to the Bitcoin volatility problem I find interesting is to link Bitcoin to gold at a fixed rate. This would require consensus in the Bitcoin community and a sponsor willing to make a market in physical gold at the agreed value in Bitcoin. This kind of gold-backed Bitcoin might even give the dollar a run for its money as a reserve currency, especially if it supported by gold powers such as Russia and China.

Both are looking for ways out of the current system of dollar hegemony, which will only take on added urgency now that the U.S. has imposed harsh sanctions against Russia and is signaling a trade war against China.