The WEALTHTECH Book

Blockchain as a Backbone to Asset and Wealth Creation

by Denis Thomas

Associate Director, KPMG

Demonetization has been the most tweeted topic for India in 2017. It has been touted by many as a classic case of execution failure, failed governance and lack of overall strategy execution. True. Mostly. However, the push for demonetization has nudged the creation of modernized infrastructures that could support digital transactions, buy-in from senior management and better governance, which eventually shall propel the country towards an eon of cashless transactions. As the amount of wealth increases in the system, newer forms of investment instruments and even newer forms of investment patterns emerge. This in turn gives rise to an era of WealthTech that in turn exponentially inflates the amount of data across computing platforms. This proliferation of data is what emanates the need for faster transaction processing and faster authentication mechanisms. Voila! A technology that resides on the cusp of this is blockchain. Let’s try and decode it before diving deeper.

Blockchain

If you ask me, I’m biased towards blockchain and I’d say blockchain was the star child hidden behind bitcoin. But is that also an unbiased opinion? How many people understand blockchain? Many people confuse it with bitcoin, but it is far from that. Bitcoin is an encrypted digital currency, while blockchain is the base technology required for bitcoins to function. Currently, most people use a bank as a middleman ...