East vs. West: Which One Sides More With Blockchain?

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By Guest

Published April 9, 2019

First appeared on carsurance.net
Reposted with permission

We have come a long way since Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper on Bitcoin was published in 2009.

As pointed out in the data analysis assembled by carsurance.net, blockchain has transformed the world of finance on a global scale.

Bitcoin: The first functional digital cash project

It is a long-forgotten fact now, but in the 90’s and early 2000’s during the very onset of the internet era, attempts to create a fully digital monetary system were a major point of focus for many international organizations.

Needless to say, none of the attempts to create digital cash were successful - until the bitcoin blockchain.

Blockchain has revolutionized the financial system because it is the first technology to fix the double-spending flaw, a typical problem among digital cash schemes, without needing a central authority.

The seemingly impossible to overcome double-spending flaw is the reason why financial institutions eventually abandoned fully digital payment solutions and resorted to the kind of ‘digital money’ you have with Paypal and similar e-wallets: Basically, just paper.

The geographical imbalance in blockchain adoption

The invention of bitcoin blockchain has inspired the creation of not only new breeds of cryptocurrencies but also advanced banking infrastructures.

There is no doubt that blockchain altered the spin of the financial world, but its influence globally is rather unbalanced.

Blockchain technology was quickly embraced by the East — many of its early adopters were Asian banks.
The most notable financial institutions that have been using blockchain tech are China’s Bank of China, India’s Yes Bank, Singapore’s United Overseas Bank, and ALFA Bank of Russia.
LatiPay of New Zealand and CommonWealth Bank of Australia were some of the first banks from the Western world that accepted blockchain.

All that in spite of the fact that most of the fintech investments went to North America and Europe, and judging from the list of venture builders in blockchain tech continues to do so.

Not that it were a competition, but the agility of Asian businesses is definitely one of the reasons why the East is the leader when it comes fintech trend adoption rates: China and India, the world’s only countries with populations of over one billion people, have the highest fintech usage at 84.4% and 76.9%, respectively.

West will catch up in fintech by 2020

By 2020, the financial services industry expects to see the mainstream adoption rate of blockchain to reach nearly 50%.

This prediction seems likely to materialize, considering that 90% of major North American and European banks have reportedly been exploring the potential of the technology of late.

Check out the following infographic to learn more enlightening blockchain statistics and to have a better idea of the fintech landscape.

east-west-fintech-blockchain-adoption (1)