What Are Banks In Ghana Doing About Blockchain?

In many African countries, there is the lack of desire to be among trail-blazers. The internet is decades old but Ghana is still building infrastructure for the invention to reach the entire population. An 800 km fibre optic cable was recently launched on the eastern corridor. Another is under construction in Accra. While Ghana lugs behind the developed world in internet infrastructure, a similar invention was announced and Ghana is already six years behind.

The new technology is “ blockchain ”. It was launched in 2009 and has been making the waves since. You may be wondering what sort of invention this might be that, you of all people, are not aware of. That is the problem. Blockchain is the technology on which cryptocurrecies like bitcoin and virtacoin travel. Bitcoin and virtacoin are more popular names than blockchain but the latter is the vehicle that drives them from one point to another.

This technology is believed to be the future of business, communication, auditing, banking, player age authentication, sports administration, land title ownership authentication, etc.

What is blockchain ? It is basically an online record or ledger of digital events. These are events that are “distributed” or shared between many different parties. It can only be updated by majority of the people involved in the system. The bitcoin blockchain, for example, contains a certain and verifiable record of every single bitcoin transaction ever made. For banks, it means the record of every financial transaction that is made or would ever be made. The blockchain has the highest inbuilt auditing mechanism currently available.

The technology is open-source so it can be adopted by anybody. About the blockchain, Marc Andreesson, the doyen of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists, concedes that its “distributed” consensus is the most important invention since the internet itself.

More banks in Europe and America are investing huge sums of money into this new technology, one can rightly assume, because they see a great potential in it.

CBW Bank, a hundred year old Kansas bank, in America, has joined hands with Ripple Labs, a cryptocurrency firm to launch ONE Card. They are now able to facilitate real-time settlements, allowing customers to receive funds instantly. The Bank of New York Mellon has embraced blockchain. It has launched BK Coins, a version of bitcoin, as an internal recognition programme for employees, coins that employees can redeem for gift cards for now because integrating Bitcoin’s decentralised peer-to-peer model with the banks client-server is a bit of a challenge. Baclays, has expressed interest in blockchain and is currently supporting three blockchain start-ups. The bank’s Chief Data Officer, Usama Fayyad confirmed this at the recent SWIFT Forum in April 2015. He was certain that integrating blockchain with traditional banking infrastructure will happen.

Santander bank, listed by Forbes as the 10^th largest bank, is experimenting with the blockchain to determine how it can be used in traditional banking. Santander believes that the blockchain could save banks $20 billion a year in infrastructure cost alone.

Citibank, headquartered in Manhattan, U.S.A. has announced building three internal blockchains and a test currency called ‘Citicoin’ to run across them. Citi is mainly interested in the application of the technology to cross-border payments and remittances. Citi is also interested in the unbanked. It is providing financial services to people currently without access to bank accounts. For example, it has partnered Safaricom in Kenya to process payments using just mobile phones. So that using the blockchain to transfer such funds, in their estimation, would be much cheaper. Currently, there are about 17 banks toying with the blockchain technology. What about Ghanaian banks?

Most banks have worked in the background until they were comfortable enough to announce what they had been doing. Could it be that Ghanaian banks are also working in the background and would announce products and services based on the blockchain very soon or are they sitting down, oblivious of what is going on in the world of blokchain and its accompanying cryptocurrency, only to wake up one day to realise that they have been sleeping for twenty years?

At this stage of its development, blockchain and cryptocurrency cannot be wished away. They can only be taken advantage of. In 2009, bitcoin was valued at zilch but today bitcoin is around $280.00. Those who bought some have become very rich. Another coin like bitcoin is now spreading like bushfire. It is called virtacoin. It is based on the same principle as bitcoin so it works pretty much like bitcoin. All you need is to do your own due diligence and buy a few millions. You can buy at http://www.bluetrade.com or zapit.nu/mobilecash but it is even available for free at zapit.nu/freevtahowto

I urge our friends working in the banks to get a few million virtacoins before scarcity drives the price up, which is what every virtacoiner is waiting for anyway.