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Microsoft Partners With Bank of America On Blockchain Trade Finance (securityweek.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the come-together dept.

wiredmikey quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Microsoft and Bank of America Merrill Lynch said they are working together to make financial transactions more efficient with blockchain technology -- the foundation of bitcoin digital currency. Blockchains are considered tamper-proof registers in which entries are time-stamped and linked to previous "blocks" in a data chain. As expected, the technology that drives the shadowy bitcoin cryptocurrency is drawing interest from the established banking industry, which sees a potential to revolutionize the sector. The companies said they will build and test frameworks for blockchain-powered exchanges between businesses and their customers and banks. Microsoft plans to use its Azure cloud service platform to enable blockchain transactions between a major corporate treasury and a financial institution. "Blockchains serve as public ledgers considered easy to audit and verify. They are also automated, speeding up transactions and limiting potential for error or revision," the report adds. The companies said that by using blockchain technology, they can digitalize and automate trade finance processes, which are traditionally highly manual, time-consuming and costly.

30 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Ah yes... by CaptSlaq · · Score: 2

    Because speed and automation didn't have any part in the previous fiscal downturn.

    1. Re:Ah yes... by H3lldr0p · · Score: 2

      But with this we'd be able to tell pretty quickly who started the market falling. All of the trades would be public readable. In theory.

      The question is when the law will catch up and allow legal liability to be assessed and assigned based on the record?

    2. Re:Ah yes... by kwbauer · · Score: 2

      So, the only financial transactions that any business engages in are securities trades? I guess I need to dig deeper to understand exactly how stock trades get involved in my employer making bi-weekly direct deposits into our (mine and my coworker's) accounts. I'll also ask my brother-in-law what stocks he is using to make payments to the corporation he is a franchisee of and to pay his food suppliers and such.

      Or maybe CaptSlaq and H3lldr0p should find some other deceased equines to pummel.

    3. Re:Ah yes... by cryptizard · · Score: 2

      It is actually not fast compared to most other things you would think of as "fast". It takes roughly 10 minutes to find each new block, and a transaction is usually not considered "confirmed" until 6 blocks in the chain have been found and agreed on. So it takes about an hour to confirm a transaction currently in Bitcoin, compared to a few seconds with a credit card.

    4. Re:Ah yes... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      Flash crash, baby! And who else to start one?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    5. Re:Ah yes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Bitcoin transactions are 'instant' but take 10 minutes to confirm, and 1 hour to be final. Spendable usually with a single confirmation.

      Credit card transaction are 'instant' but take 3 BUSINESS DAYS to confirm, and 30-180 days to be final.

    6. Re:Ah yes... by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Of course, it's also editable.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    7. Re:Ah yes... by CaptSlaq · · Score: 1

      So, the only financial transactions that any business engages in are securities trades? I guess I need to dig deeper to understand exactly how stock trades get involved in my employer making bi-weekly direct deposits into our (mine and my coworker's) accounts. I'll also ask my brother-in-law what stocks he is using to make payments to the corporation he is a franchisee of and to pay his food suppliers and such.

      Or maybe CaptSlaq and H3lldr0p should find some other deceased equines to pummel.

      When you have an error as massive as the last one caused in part by automation, it might possibly be understandable that such announcements of further automation are suspect until evidence of actual improvement has happened. How much evidence it takes to regain trust in a system is up for debate.

  2. ATM on your phone? by sdhankin · · Score: 1

    We seem to be approaching a time when it would at least be possible to have an app on your phone that would allow you to transfer money (in the form of bitcoins or other blockchain-based currency) directly to your phone. There it would serve as a wallet, allowing you to make direct purchases. I wonder if such a plan is being considered?

    1. Re:ATM on your phone? by cryptizard · · Score: 2

      Already exists.

    2. Re:ATM on your phone? by I4ko · · Score: 1

      And then someone will DDoS the cellular network or EMP it, or just throw in a bunch of white noise makers on the frequencies of the cell towers and you are toast.

    3. Re:ATM on your phone? by cryptizard · · Score: 2

      But then Jack Bauer will show up to stop them. We are talking about TV right?

    4. Re:ATM on your phone? by jasonma84 · · Score: 1

      How is that any different than our current banking system. Our current system is all digital and would still be subject to EMP or DDos... At least with a truly digital currency all you have to do is print a digital key of your account and you've got a hard backup to tuck away in your safe or wherever. It would be nearly impossible to destroy the ledger since it would exist everywhere in the world and if need be beyond (think satelites).

    5. Re:ATM on your phone? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      And here's another working implementation, which doesn't involve waiting several minutes for blockchain resolution. This is run by the same Square that provides those little point-of-sale readers that attach to an iPad at the local coffee bar.
      https://cash.me/

  3. I heard... by burtosis · · Score: 1

    It was going to be called e-coin. Should be released early May.

  4. MIT License by gatfirls · · Score: 1

    Banks: Thanks *yoink*

  5. Microsoft: Ha ha! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

    Microsoft: I'm in ur bank, stealin' ur moneyz!!

    Trusting Microsoft with banking is like hiring John Wayne Gacy as your babysitter.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  6. Anti-Christ by TFlan91 · · Score: 1

    Evil partners with Super Evil....

    The anti-christ has been born.

  7. Oh great, just what we need... by jasonma84 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft trying to move in on another open source technology and trying to package, bundle and sell it off as their own... How refreshing. I am personally sick of Microsoft and Bank of America and think digital currency is better off without either of them. I know JP Morgan at one point was trying to move in on this territory as well but they couldn't figure out how to build a new digital currency without basically re-creating bit coin. What this really boils down to is control and inevitably will become mainstream when the government figures out how to regulate it and big banks figure out how to control it in order to issue new debt. Personally I would like to see more private exchanges from small startups and perhaps peer to peer loans leveraging bit coin. Not quite sure how to enforce people pay bit-coin loans back being anonymous, but I'm sure somebody will figure it out. Regardless, anything is better than the corrupt system we have in place so long as large corporations don't muck it up.

    1. Re:Oh great, just what we need... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      I don't suppose it would be much of a problem - as long as they don't change it a little, patent it, and establish a new 'standard' where noone else can play. Would Bitcoin be prior art enough to prevent that?

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
  8. Fyi this is NOT crypto-currency by raymorris · · Score: 1

    This post isn't really a reply to CaptSlaq. Sorry to reply to you randomly, but I wanted to out this above the idiot Koran spammer.

    A common misconception is that this use of a blockchain is a new crypto-currency. Readers should note this is a DIFFERENT use of a blockchain, it is not a new currency, nor is it Bitcoin. It's simply a ledger.

  9. Not gonna happen by 0dugo0 · · Score: 1

    The auditors will have none of it. Easy to audit means less billable hours for them. They will insist that these blockchains need to be 'editable' under rules and governance to be audited by them. Anything in the financial services industry that is 'easy' lasts about 6 months until some joker comes up with an excel sheet that needs to be filled in for audit and compliance.

    1. Re:Not gonna happen by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      "Easy to audit" is bullshit. It's hard to hide; it's not easy to audit. The "public ledger" is a history of when each object has had its blockchain extended. The problem is an account consists of assets of value, such as dollars; those assets are semi-fungible, in the sense that the account has value and any set of assets producing that value is representative. Accounts typically have one or several kinds of fungible assets--a single currency or separate lots of fungible assets (e.g. your commodities account may contain oil, gold, and FCOJ; your stock account contains stocks)--because *which* of each of those things is irrelevant.

      Blockchains mean you can tell which gold piece moved where; if you want to audit financial behavior, you need to know which accounts moved what. You might be able to piece that together from a blockchain; but only by auditing every single object to determine where it once stood, collecting all objects that ever entered a particular account, and then generating an account ledger from that. It'd be like going into every bank vault and every wallet and inspecting every dollar to see whose hands it's changed through in its history. If you don't have the ability to inspect the current state of every single piece of blockchain currency in existence *and* to guarantee that you've done exactly that (i.e. that you haven't missed any), you can't audit.

      Any given dollar telling you the history of how it's been owned and spent is different than any given account describing its financial history in its ledger.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  10. The dumb leading the blind by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    I'm still working on who is who.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  11. This may explain ... by PPH · · Score: 2

    ... why Microsoft is building FPGAs into their Azure cloud servers. Get the jump on blockchain mining.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  12. I have no accounts with BofA by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    And, after this, I sure as hell won't be opening one any time soon.

  13. Microsoft Partners With Bank of America On Blockch by rickyslashdot · · Score: 1

    Of course Micro$oft will partner with BoA - ESPECIALLY since the whole concept of 'block chain' security has already been broken. https://news.slashdot.org/stor... The ONLY secure method of financial transfer is CASH - paper dollars (an imaginary government promissory system) from your hand to the seller's hand.

    --
    redneck geek
  14. Barclays have already done it by clickclickdrone · · Score: 1

    http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450303841/Barclays-uses-blockchain-for-trade-finance-transactions/

    --
    I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
  15. MS hosting blockchain, forget it by hAckz0r · · Score: 1
    One of the main tenants of the blockchain design is that it never have any one organization/person in control of more than 50% of the servers maintaining the financial transaction record. Microsoft will in this case have 100% of the servers, and thus could enable someone to walk off with the whole repository in what would be the biggest cyber-heist in all of recorded history. Of course we all trust Microsoft to never get hacked or do anything wicked in its own self interest.

    Sorry, I'll keep with bitcoin than-you-very-much.

  16. Microsoft and BofA team up? What could go wrong? by gosand · · Score: 1

    I am really looking forward to seeing this cutting-edge technology when they complete it in 2025.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.