Ex-Google Engineer Launches Blockchain-Based System For Banks (reuters.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A former Google engineer, whose speech recognition software is used in more than a billion Android smartphones, has launched a company that uses blockchain technology to build a new operating system for banks. Paul Taylor, a Cambridge University academic with an expertise in artificial intelligence, speech synthesis and machine learning, started working on the system, called Vault OS, two years ago in a basement in London's Shoreditch district, known for being a tech start-up hub. The technology, which underpins the digital currency bitcoin, creates a shared database in which participants can trace every transaction ever made. The ledger is tamper-proof and transparent, meaning that transactions can be processed without the need for third-party verification. The system also negates the need for costly in-house data centers, as it uses cloud-based systems, which banks can use on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, which means that there is no single point of failure. Taylor said major high-street banks were spending around a billion pounds ($1.3 billion) a year on computer technology, much of which he said was being used for propping up the current "legacy" systems rather than on any innovative technology. The start-up has been working with about ten banks, Taylor said, at least one of which would be starting a trial using the new system in August. He expects the system to be up-and-running within about a year. In banking-related news, a Congressional report shows that China's spies hacked into computers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) from 2010 until 2013 and American government officials tried to cover it up.
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I browse at -1. In my experience, meaningful, well-thought-out comments rarely end up at -1. Even if some disagree, others will agree, and things will balance out.
Posts that start with statements like "Moderators suck", however, usually end up marked as "troll" or "flame bait". Nobody is interesting in counterbalancing those kinds of statements, because they lack meaningful content.
TL;DR: Seems like the system works to me.
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Why not show who moderates a post?
Given that you can't even be bothered to post under a pseudonymous user name in a conversation that isn't likely to get anyone fired, I am having trouble finding much empathy for your cause. More to the point, I'm the only one in this branch of the thread that isn't posting as AC.
When you come out from behind the AC cloak, maybe we can have a reasonable conversation on the topic.
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Second reply, different than the first:
It's biased and leads to groupthink.
How, exactly, does the moderation system lead to groupthink? Are you imagining that all of slashdot agrees on any given point, and anyone who thinks different will be modded down? This doesn't seem very likely, given the heated debates that regularly take place here. Are you instead imagining that slashdot readers will eventually be corrupted by a single-sided point of view, and thus achieve groupthink? Because in order to do so, you would first have to succeed in havi
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On many issues, there's a prevailing point of view.
Prevailing != unanimous. Slashdot's moderation guidelines suggest browsing at -1 for exactly this reason: a moderator might very well represent a minority viewpoint, and moderating at -1 means that the minority viewpoint can still moderate worthwhile content upward.
Yet another fintech ledger startup (Score:2)
We should just leave the industry to itself, and let them sort out how to do stuff. Why should I be interested in a company launching a product that twenty other companies offer as well, knowing that in five years maybe three will still be around.
The Blockchain revolution of the banking sector is very important, centralized trust systems are a descendant of the "mainframe" model of the past. But why treat each of these companies like a messiah. There are tons of them.
Re:Yet another fintech ledger startup (Score:5, Informative)
The blockchain itself is only as safe as it's users. Bitcoin has struggled with it as large BC miner consortiums are almost large enough to be able to control the blockchain. If these 'custom' blockchains are not public but only between banks, then it becomes very possible that 'a consortium of criminals' at one of the banks or in one of the many government oversight committees (FTC, SEC, FDIC) would be able to manipulate the entire chain - it's not like the Chinese and Russians haven't been able to monitor their systems unnoticed for the better half of the last decade.
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If these 'custom' blockchains are not public but only between banks
Well each blockchain ledger is highly customized for the place its used for, but usually they improve the current situation.
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Almost? It's passed that point at least once. I don't know if it ever recovered.
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Hype is best way to get angel capital and live like its pre-bubble 1999 again. Hype everything, even if there is no way the product will succede. If you are lucky enough to survive and go public, hype hype hype again.
Jemima Kelly may not know (Score:3)
Editors - please take a look at that summary and convert it into something that does not look so utterly stupid and ignorant.
tamper-proof (Score:1)
I accept your challenge, nave! En garde!
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You overestimate yourself. Your little safe will be cracked before you can say aber-cadaver
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Ledger poisoning will become a new pass-time. Watch the fun as multi-jurisdiction attempts to reassemble a poisoned ledger lead to legal fees the size of Apple's cash stash.
How well does it scale? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you've got this encrypted system that's kind of like a Usenet for transactions. I make a change locally, eventually it propagates across the world. The databases are on everyone's computers versus on several hundred servers like Usenet.
The "distributed ledger" is supposed to be the Next Big Thing. And I don't mean that with any sarcasm or negativity. But how well will it scale really, if the ledgers/databases are on people's computers instead of a network of several powerful servers connected by a fast backbone?
I'm a total tyro when it comes to the distributed ledger. I've never used Bitcoin. But it - the distributed ledger - seems hackable, with no recourse if you lose your stash. And its scalability seems limited.
Article is content-free (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is content-free and makes no sense, as so many of these articles do. It's also barely longer than the "summary". At least this one didn't fall victim to the usual tech reporting failure of saying the blockchain is public. Still, the magical blockchain does not eliminate $1.2 billion in expenses. Far from it. If anything, their hardware expenses will go up, because they have to devote hardware to hashing, where before, a financial transaction was a straight-forward database transaction. They still have to keep track of everything they keep track of now, plus hash. Now, they can control and explicitly cap the amount of hashing required to drive the system, since they're not limited to the Bitcoin implementation, but there still has to be work done, i.e. processing.
Here's the nonsensical part though:
The start-up has been working with about ten banks, Taylor said, at least one of which would be starting a trial using the new system in August.
At least one? You mean at least two. One bank doesn't need a blockchain at all. The controls required to prevent internal fraud are quite simple when you know everything there is to know about both sides of the transaction. It's when one party of the transaction has an account at a different bank that a blockchain comes in. The banks are hoping to disintermediate the Automated Clearing House (in the US) and the Pan-European Automated Clearing House (with the cutesy PE-ACH acronym). In practice, they're going to discover that sufficient hashing to secure 100 billion transactions per year (ACH+EPN+PE-ACH) is neither free nor even cheap. It remains to be seen if hashing expenses can be kept below ACH fees.
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They definitely mean at least one. I cannot imagine any bank deploying a system like this with real money on the line, until it had been tested in parallel with a system whose output is known and tested against it. Maybe internal transfers, maybe mirroring other transactions. I don't know the exact test.
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What they fail to understand is banks WANT centralized authentication and authority. Its how the banks exercise power over another. The bigger bank tells the smaller banks what to do.
Even if blockchains could perform all the tasks they claim to, it basically takes the authority and control out of the hands of the big bank and evens out the control so no one entity can corrupt it. It might be best for the system and the people, but the big banks won't go for it.
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BeauHD (Score:1)
Why the shit do you always reference other posts that are sitting on the front page, usually only one article below, from every fucking non-related story? This is the first one I've seen where you referenced something that someone other than yourself posted.
Stop with your attempted click driving shit.
That looks pretty buzz-word compliant (Score:5, Insightful)
It mentions a blockchain AND cloud computing in one go. Who won at buzzword bingo on this one?
Re: That looks pretty buzz-word compliant (Score:2, Funny)
I'm waiting for them to 3D print the blockchain using graphene.
Banks storing confidential data "in the cloud"? (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm sure they'll go for that and risk crippling fines if any of that data is compromised or even going out of business the "cloud" goes down and all transactions grind to a halt.
"Paul Taylor, a Cambridge University academic"
Says it all really. Very smart but little real world business experience and no common sense.
All the more reason for cash. (Score:3, Informative)
> participants can trace every transaction ever made
All the more reason to keep using Cash ! I don't want my wife knowing that I finish work early and go to the pub for an hour every evening.
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Not to mention that the banks already invested in data centres, so using them offsets that cost. It ignores the integration overheads. It ignores the inability of most/all cloud service providers to meet bank payment system uptime requirements. It comically mentions single point of failure as though going cloud magically prevents that, ignoring that it's pretty straightforward to avoid using on-premise technologies.
So overall, an article targeted at ill informed investors and managers and/or written by a fu
Get rid of Hogan (Score:2)