Secrecy scandal after secrecy scandal have rocked the financial world since the 2008 financial crisis. In early 2014, the LIBOR scandal uncovered the manipulation of Forex markets.
Last week, the Panama Papers detailed the behavior of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has sold shell companies for the past 40 years so individuals could hide their wealth.
Political players, drug dealers, celebrities and athletes have been swept up in the revelations of the Panama Papers. It’s exactly this sort of behavior many blockchainers believe could be averted by the public ledger technology supporting Bitcoin.
As 11.5 million documents were leaked, the network of super rich hiding their funds in jurisdictions like Panama came into closer focus. Wikileaks claims there’s more to the story, brought to the public by Süddeutsche Zeitung out Germany.
In analysis by news outlets, the Panama Papers pose questions about how the world’s power brokers have avoided taxes. It’s a problem often discussed by the individuals in the nascent blockchain industry.
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s project, t0, has reportedly developed a blockchain platform for trading crypto-securities that is open and transparent; an alternative to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Although the Libertarian CEO might not like it, it’s exactly the sort of technology of which regulators dream .
As has been pointed out in recent months, blockchain technology – the sort that powers Bitcoin – could bring transparency to a diverse array of industries, some of which don’t have a history as such, and do so in a secure manner.
One of those is the sort of offshore trust in which many world leaders, like David Cameron , have been implicated as using.Trusts have been around for hundreds of years. It’s a legal form of property management, and one which perhaps the blockchain could facilitate; namely, via the concept of “smart […]
