One of the largest accounting firms in the world, Deloitte, says it has partnered with five blockchain startups and built a wide range of prototypes to service industries including insurance, employee management and cross-border payments.
The ‘Big Four’ accounting firm has built 20 working blockchain prototypes in partnership with startups BlockCypher, Bloq, ConsenSys Enterprise, Loyyal and Stellar.
Four of the prototypes will be demoed live on stage at the Consensus 2016 conference in New York City.
Deloitte partner Eric Piscini told CoinDesk that, while the companies represent a wide range of businesses, his company’s decision to partner with them was part of a global strategy to help push blockchain from theory into real-world applications.
Piscini said: "The expansion outside of banking is happening now in a big way. When you think about insurance or healthcare or retail or trade or commerce in general, you have a lot of opportunities." Talking as part of the Consensus event’s ‘Make it Real’ section, Piscini said each of the 20 prototypes are fully functional. While details about the actual prototypes are forthcoming, he did break down the partnerships into three categories based on the types of products each has created. Five partners
In the banking category, two startups are helping Deloitte build what it calls “digital banks” on a blockchain. While the banks aren’t built from the ground up on the blockchain, different components of the services have been constructed and are currently being marketed to banks.
One of Deloitte’s newest partners is California-based BlockCypher. The company which has raised $3.5m venture capital is providing Deloitte the core technology, an API layer, for multiple digital banking tools built on blockchains from Ethereum and bitcoin, as well as custom, private chains.
Based in New York, ConsenSys Enterprise is one of Deloitte’s earliest blockchain partners and is helping create a series […]
