“The distributed ledger technology of the blockchain offers new ways of economic coordination and governance whereby information flows are shared almost instantaneously across all participants in a networked system, opening the door for new possibilities such as de-nationalised currencies and a radical democratisation of different forms of trust,” says Bieri, who is working on a research project with R3 and Hyperledger to develop standards as well as examine how the banking system is reorganising itself to embrace blockchain.
The information monopoly of the three credit bureaus is rapidly being dismantled as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence allow FinTechs to engineer something that is much more accurate than the FICO score, from the social media and other personal information they have on you, Bieri argues. “Several FinTech companies are already basing their lending information on this. It has similar logic to FICO, but is based off of their proprietary information,” he comments. “There is significant power in the distributed network because in order for someone to tamper with it they would need to change every copy at the same time and hack every computer separately. Because this is much harder to do than hack a central single location, it makes the data more secure.”
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.