Commonwealth Bank of Australia will host the Sydney Blockchain Workshops alongside the Coalition of Automated Legal Applications, assembling regulators, policy makers and technologists to assess block
Commonwealth Bank of Australia will host the Sydney Blockchain Workshops alongside the Coalition of Automated Legal Applications, assembling regulators, policy makers and technologists to assess blockchain opportunities and challenges and their effects on social, economic and political structures. The events run December 7 through 11.
David Whiteing, CBA's Group Executive and CIO, said the workshops will connect Asia-Pacific regulators, government officials, academics and technologists with leading blockchain researchers. "The conference provides both entry-level education and in-depth discussions about the huge potential of blockchains and the resulting economic, commercial, legal and social policy questions," Whiteing said. "Blockchain has the potential to transform banking in the way that the Internet transformed how we buy music and watch movies. It's an exciting time in the development of this technology and our involvement means Commonwealth Bank is set to be at the forefront of this in Australia for the benefit of our customers."
Hewlett Packard Enterprise joins as a corporate partner. Daniel Biondi, HPE Fellow and Chief Technologist for Financial Services, believes blockchain technology has the potential to reshape the financial services industry, "potentially overhauling a legacy global banking system leading to much faster payments, including streamline B2B payments."
"Bringing the whole ecosystem of stakeholders together through intellectual discussions along with the additional exploratory sessions from the Blockchain Workshops, will shed new light on how we can tap into this knowledge," Biondi said. "Ultimately, this conference will help the industry to create proof of concepts and understand the business processes that we could potentially address first."
COALA, an international collaborative research and development initiative focused on blockchain, smart contracts and decentralized applications, is organizing the workshops as its fifth global event. The group brings together academics, lawyers, technologists and entrepreneurs. Founding members include Primavera De Filippi, a research fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Constance Choi, founder of Seven Advisory; and Adroit Lawyers attorney Amor Sexton.
The workshop schedule spans five days. December 7 and 8 feature invitation-only sessions exploring identity and privacy, smart contracts for financial transactions, jurisdictional and regulatory matters, and security and governance. December 9 hosts an invitation-only global regulatory roundtable to address uncertainty about governmental treatment of digital currencies and blockchain technology. A hackathon runs December 9 and 10, with participants developing open-source blockchain applications across the Asia-Pacific region. The public conference December 10 and 11 concentrates on practical applications and the shape of the post-disruption era.
