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Russia’s NDS Uses Blockchain For E-Proxy Voting

Recently the Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NDS), an organization that provides settlement and depository services, began testing blockchain technology as a potential solution for a corporate e-proxy voting system. The results will not shock you but the origin of praise for the system just might.

NDS began looking into solutions for e-proxy voting in August of 2014. The prototype they recently tested is based on the NXT platform. The system also adheres to the ISO 20022 standard for messaging. NDS worked with the UK based DSX Technologies to develop the e-proxy voting system. The recent testing was conducted during a bondholder meeting.

With this e-proxy voting system, cascade messaging is enabled through a chain of nominee accounts. This chain is from the issuer to the voter and then back. In this configuration, NSD manages the database for the chain in order to ultimately oversee that all voting protocol was followed during the process. All of the information that is on the blockchain is then encrypted and able to be viewed by participants. The digital signatures embedded in the blockchain provide verification that the voting is within the time constraints allotted, all votes are accounted for, and that the process is transparent.

Blockchain Smart Contracts: A Hyper-Deflationary Force for Health Care Delivery

Blockchaining coming to healthcare digital services.


Blockchain and digital health services could be a perfect match for each other across a variety of applications. From distributed interoperable health records to proof of adherence for medication, the healthcare industry is ripe for digital innovation. More generally, technology is a hyper-deflationary force, and this could be particularly effective in delivering quality health care through more effective channels such as mobile apps.

Investments in the digital health space have increased significantly in the past two years. This is largely possible because of improved low-power sensors and user-friendly cloud platforms that interface with those hardware devices. The Rock Health Funding Database shows a $4.5 billion increase in venture funding in digital health from 2014 to 2015.

Smart contract technology is built on top of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and is a hallmark of “Bitcoin 2.0” platforms. Blockchain is the fundamental infrastructure needed for Bitcoin transactions to work, and an enabling technology for the next generation of asset-based platforms.

DARPA wants someone to build the DoD a new secure Blockchain based messaging platform

I was talking to someone only last week about this plus leveraging GPU chips.


The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is advertising for a business to assist it in building a secure messaging app using distributed ledger (Blockchain) technology for the Department of Defense (DoD).

An advertisement for the role appeared on the Defense Business portal and states that there is a “critical DoD need to develop a secure messaging and transaction platform accessible via web browser or standalone native application.”

The said platform would be required to offer separate message creation, from the transfer of the message within a secure courier to the reception and decryption of the message.

What Does it Mean to “Move to the Cloud”? This eBook Breaks Down the Myths

Again; many problems with AI & IoT all ties back to the infrastructure of things. Focus on fast tracking QC and an interim solution (pre-QC) such as a mix of Nvidia’s GPU, blockchain for financial transactions, etc. to improve the infrastructure and Net then investors will begin to pay more attention to AI, etc.


After more than 60 years since its conceptual inception — and after too many hype-generating moments — AI is yet again making its presence felt in mainstream media.

Following a recent WEF report, many perceive AI as a threat to our jobs, while others even go so far to assert that it poses a real threat to humanity itself.

What is clear for the time being is that there are many questions that still remain unanswered: Can we actually create conscious machines that have the ability to think and feel? What we do we mean by the word conscious in the first place? What is the accurate definition of intelligence? And what are the implications of combining the Internet of Things (IoT) with intelligence?

IBM Watson is Working to Bring AI to the Blockchain

I consider this as a nice interim step in maturing the digital platform environment for financial services. However, once Quantum Computing, Quantum Internet, etc. is available to the masses such as in China, etc. this solution will fail in protecting financial data and other PPI related information as recent research is showing us.

https://lnkd.in/bjcCJ-U


IBM is currently attempting to merge artificial intelligence and the blockchain into a single, powerful prototype.

With blockchain tech’s promise of near-frictionless value exchange and artificial intelligence’s ability to accelerate the analysis of massive amounts of data, the joining of the two could mark the beginning of an entirely new paradigm.

Over the past three months, IBM’s chief architect in charge of Internet of Things security Tim Hahn has focused specifically on introducing the blockchain to his company’s artificially intelligent computer named Watson.

MIT Cleantech Committee explores how blockchains can distribute renewable electricity

Experts from MIT are hosting an event next week to explore the potential blockchain technology could in making electricity markets cleaner and more efficient.

Cambridge chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum will bring together experts including Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab and Paul Brody of Ernst and Young for the blockchain transitioning energy industry event on Monday 22 February. They will be joined by a distinguished panel of emerging technology, blockchain, and energy industry leaders to discuss the intersection of energy grid transformation and distributed ledger technology.

Scott Clavenna of Greentech Media will moderate a panel consisting of Joi Ito, Paul Brody, Ed Hesse of Grid Singularity, and Lawrence Orsini of LO3 Energy. The event will tackle questions such as “How can cleantech enterprise and industry leverage the blockchain for innovation?” and “What are the new models for growth?”.

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Cyber extortionists zap computers at Hollywood hospital

Criminal’s favorite new tool for extortion.


Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was the target of a ransomware extortion plot in which hackers seized control of the hospital’s computer systems and then demanded that directors pay in bitcoin to regain access, according to law enforcement sources.

Ransomware attacks on business data systems are becoming an increasingly common form of cyber crime. The assault on Hollywood Presbyterian computers occurred Feb. 5, when hackers prevented hospital staff from accessing patient information, according to law enforcement sources, who were not authorized to discuss the details of the investigation. The hackers then demanded an unspecified sum of computer currency.

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How blockchain will save us from the perils of central bank price fixing

What will be interesting most about block chaining is when more countries drop their own traditional currency models & move to block chaining like one of the countries in Africa announced 2 weeks ago. I do know that many 2nd & 3rd world countries are finding electronic currency more appealing due to the Central Bank’s policies; however, what will be the impacts at the end of the day felt across the world as more and more 2nd & 3rd world markets switch their models. Immediately, we see risks with central banks; the question is where else (WBO, WTO, US, etc)


Many countries have experimented with price fixing and central planning over the last century. Right now, Venezuela’s government is fixing the prices of many products. This has resulted in widespread shortages of goods which we, as the lucky inhabitants of semi-free economies, take for granted.

Price fixing has failed in every area of the economy in which it has been tried. But while few serious economists would suggest that we have a team of bureaucrats set the price of rubber, wheat or coffee, we do have one sphere of the economy which is still centrally planned – our monetary system. This will fail just like all central planning fails. We are now moving into a dangerous new phase of price fixing by central banks. Having failed to stimulate economies with years of zero per cent interest rates, they are now discussing the prospect of negative interest rates (and some have even introduced them), the reductio ad absurdum of modern monetary economics.

Economist Friedrich von Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 for his exposition of how central banks’ manipulation of money and interest rates causes distortions to the market and generates the boom bust cycle. He also wrote several papers in the 1970s on how allowing companies to issue their own private money would be the only long-term solution. If people could choose which money to use, it is highly unlikely that they would go with that which is routinely debased by the government or used for wild credit expansion by the banking sector.

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