machine learning on the blockchain while regulators across the globe issue warnings!
I don’t usually tell people that I’m a qualified expert in insurance as it’s not relevant, but I’m mentioning it today as I just presented at a private insurance event. There are lots of interesting nuances in insurance. You and I probably think it’s just that once a year renewal of our auto policy, or maybe the regular premiums we pay for life and pensions. That’s an important part of it and is a challenge as people don’t buy insurance, it has to be sold. Think about it. You don’t wake up and think “oh, I might die today! Better get some life insurance”, but you learn through advisory sales that this is what you need to do.
Then there’s a whole other raft of insurance where the real money is made: commercial insurance. Insuring ships, aircraft, offices and employees is where the big-ticket policies arrive. These are more complicated, as the risks have to be calculated in more depth. Under assess the risk and the insurance company loses; over assess and a competitor might steal the business. Equally, the corporate relationship becomes important in this space, as that’s where the strength of understanding the client comes from. 
It is not as simple a business as you may first think. For example, how would you calculate the risk of terrorist attack on an aircraft and what price would you put on that policy? Yep, it’s not easy, so insurers have a lot of humans called actuaries who work these things out using math. Now, you know where I’m going with this. Artificially intelligent actuaries.
The widely-held hope is that blockchain technology could deliver a shared and transparent record of industry-wide contract and claims-related information.
While smart contracts and claims automation are technically feasible using alternative technology, the addition of blockchain adds a level of transparency and trustworthiness.
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Crucially, blockchain can remove the need for a central authority to control operations, and places the customer in control of the relationship with the service supplier.
For example, automated claims-handling processes based on blockchain technology, smart contracts and publicly available data can be developed. When a certain set of conditions is met, such as a flight being cancelled, the contract can be resolved automatically, without requiring additional assessment.
Not only does this approach increase customer trust, the technology has the potential to streamline communications and transactions by allowing for automatic data transfers in seconds.
“From a customer perspective, they should be getting a better service if we can operate and process claims more efficiently,”
Under construction now, and costing £250 million, the units are estimated to be complete and ready to hand over to the owners in April 2019. >quote Developer Knox Group is offering the studio, one, and two bedroom units to the cryptocurrency community priced in Bitcoin, although prices are pegged to a US dollar exchange rate. Prices range from 133,000 USD, approximately 30 BTC, to 379,000 USD, approximately 86 BTC, and include “a 15-20% discount for the first tranche of properties,” according to the Knox Group. “Packages for interior design services and furniture will also be offered to purchase in bitcoins.”
A raffle is being held to help launch promotions for the development. One of the one-bedroom apartments will be given away as a prize, according to the company’s PR firm. All buyers will automatically be entered into the raffle when they buy any unit using Bitcoin, although the raffle is subject to a minimum of 50 apartments being sold.
"Bitcoin payments offer a significant leap forward for high-value international payments," said BitPay CEO Stephen Pair. BitPay will be processing payments for the company.
Other departments joining the PBoC in the announcement include the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.
Chinese organizations and individuals that have “already completed the ICO process” are instructed to immediately return all investor funds, reversing past ICO fundraising efforts completely. There have already been at least four announcements from recent ICO holders that they will comply, with at least one initiating a funding return process to their investors.
“The conducts in ICO like: public offering to over 200 people, no threshold for legal(qualified) investors and illegal bidding transaction, has constituted illegal fundraising, illegal securities activities and illegal financial activities in a disguised form.”
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A block is currently created every 3 seconds, about the average block time of Ripple. The network currently handles 3 transactions per block.
However, the BTS network is a complicated system capable of many higher order functions, similar to Ethereum, and currently handles about 2.8 operations per second or about 8.5 operations per block.
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Larimer believed that PoS is superior to Proof of Work (PoW) because the reliable node stakeholders of BTS have the best interests of the coin and security at heart. The developer was quick to admit that the consensus method is imperfect, PoS is vulnerable to 51% attack via shareholders, but believed the cost of acquiring 51% of BTS is much greater and acquiring 51% of the hashing power on a PoW system.
The network uses a deflationary supply system, with an available current supply of ~2.6 billion and a likely max supply of ~3.7 billion. BTS can also be burned, reducing total supply and increasing value for investors.
The BTS higher order functions allow for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (DACs), which are similar the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) created on Ethereum, and allow for rules based entities using smart contracts. https://steemit.com/blog/@alfa-good/tuesday-17-oktober-2017-posting-in-the-morning-a-pleasant-time-because-of-the-amazing-idea-20171017t5445687z 
The main difference between the two being a DAC pays dividends whereas a DAO is a non-profit which can also earn money. DACs are also being promoted as a key component of EOS.
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The exchange is location-neutral and the speed of the transaction does not improve based on your proximity to a centralized entity. The exchange also makes use of a currency pegged to USD$1.00, BitUSD, similar to Tether.
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Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp has already integrated the new software into his statistics tracking website, and stated on Sunday that he has seen a huge improvement in fee estimates for the new Bitcoin wallet clients. In some cases, it shows that users can send extremely small fees of just a few satoshis, and at worst, the fees were estimated at around one fifth of their previous highest estimation.
In 2016, Steemit pioneered the world’s first blockchain-based decentralized social network and in my view remains one of the most important blockchain projects today.
Boiled down to its simplest form, Steemit is a kind of reddit with the property that creating interesting content, or curating it effectively, will earn users real money on the platform in the form of a cryptocurrency called Steem. There is no barrier to entry. Just create an account and start earning.
The money to cash out Steem comes from a speculative market of investors who are willing to buy and hold Steem because they believe it will grow to be a large social network whose collective attention is truly valuable. This is fine. It is similar to VCs who hold Uber private equity because they believe one day the company will become profitable. Unlike Uber stock, though, Steem is liquid with a few million dollars of volume a day.
Nice post!
Well written post!
Nice post! I was also working in the insurance industry and smart contracts has a big potential!