Lorien Gamaroff, the founder and CEO of Bankymoon, believes that virtual currencies and blockchain technology are the “Internet of the next generation”, with potential to disintermediate banks, clearing houses and central securities depositories.
Akin to how many people failed to grasp how profound the impact of the Internet would be on nearly every area of life and business, so the blockchain will “transform our lives in ways we can’t imagine”, he says.
A software developer, Gamaroff launched Bankymoon to help companies figure out use cases for the blockchain in their businesses. Targeting the financial services industry, Bankymoon is a gold member of AlphaCode, a Rand Merchant Investments club for fintech start-up entrepreneurs.
The blockchain is a technology that enables entities, including people, to transact and trade assets directly with each other without the need for an intermediary. These transactions are stored in the blockchain forever, ensuring the assets cannot be copied or sent to multiple people.
It’s not only virtual currencies, such as bitcoin, that can be transferred via blockchain.
The blockchain can facilitate the transfer of shares and title deeds for example, but can also be used for clearing and settlement, or as a “remittance rail”, Gamaroff explains.
In other words, it can transfer currencies across borders by converting them from a hard currency into a virtual currency and then back into a hard currency when they reach their destination.
Bankymoon, for example, has introduced blockchain smart meters into poor schools in South Africa, whereby bitcoin is used to prepay for electricity using a crowd-funding platform.
According to Gamaroff, the idea behind creating a virtual currency, such as bitcoin, arose from the desire to replicate the qualities of gold in digital form.
http://www.techcentral.co.za/the-blockchain-is-this-generations-internet/64019/
