THE BLOCKCHAIN WATCH 08/28/16

Big banks band together to launch ‘settlement coin’
BNY Mellon, Santander, UBS, and Deutsche Bank, are aiming to launch a mainstream blockchain system by 2018, CoinDesk reported. According to Financial Times reporter Martin Arnold, a formal announcement is pending. The coin will allow financial institutions to purchase securities without waiting for additional traditional money transfers.

Four more mega-banks join the anti-dollar alliance
Zerohedge gives its generally more dramatic perspective on blockchain in a story on a group of 15 Japanese banks that have taken steps to implement blockchain to clear and settle transactions. “Blockchain may very well be what neutralizes the U.S. government’s domination of the global financial system.”

Corda: An Introduction
Richard Gendal Brown, James Carlyle, Ian Grigg, Mike Hearn of R3CEV released a whitepaper examining the impact of a distributed ledger and a global database for records of transactions between financial institutions and consumers. In the paper, they present Corda, a platform created to provide a central ledger for institutions and individuals.