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Our research identified three potential solutions for using blockchain, verified credentials, and decentralized identifiers to decrease risk and compliance costs, while increasing trust in legal identity.
Establish an international consensus for organizational KYC identity standards, a kind of G8 of KYC. Companies could use decentralized identifiers (DID) to give companies a digital endpoint for their verified data. The data associated with a DID can be self-asserted by a company, and/or verified by a government or legal entity (an EIN or VAT tax code).
Develop a verifiable credentials-based ledger system for corporate ownership and shareholder tracking. If shareholding is reported to a shared ledger, you can see who owns a company and what percentage they own. This would increase the speed of complying with KYC checks, decrease costs, and increase transparency.
Corporations could use verifiable credentials issued from a corporate entity to authorized individuals that contain the rights they have been delegated. These credentials are presented to the respective institutions (like a bank) which authorize the individual to take actions. Since these credentials are digitally native, they can be updated in real-time in theory.
These ideas become more powerful when companies, governments and businesses work together to create a “Business Web of Trust.”

From Solving CEO Fraud with 3 New Identity Solutions – In Present Tense – Medium:

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The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy.

From What Will Happen In The 2020s – AVC:

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China finds it politically intolerable that the US has an at-will ability to cripple major firms like ZTE and Huawei. It’s now a matter of national security for China to strengthen every major technological capability. The US responded to the rise of the USSR and Japan by focusing on innovation; it’s early days, but so far the US is responding to the technological rise of China mostly by kneecapping its leading firms. So instead of realizing its own Sputnik moment, the US is triggering one in China.

From 2019 Letter | Dan Wang:

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As a tangent, I’ve found it curious that Congress has become so keen to publicly beat up on Facebook and Google while the US considers itself in technological competition with China. In my view, antitrust arguments apply better to companies like Intel and Boeing, which are the tech giants that wield much greater market power. Maybe the contrarian move however is to recognize the cleverness of Congress. The legislators might in fact understand that semiconductors are a core strategic asset, in a way that social networks and search engines are not.

From 2019 Letter | Dan Wang:

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Although Alibaba and Tencent may be technically impressive on software development, their business success is mostly a function of the size of the market and the social, regulatory environment. The ubiquity of mobile payments is due not just to technological innovation (substantial though that might be), but also the financial regulatory regime and the leapfrog over credit cards.

From 2019 Letter | Dan Wang:

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It’s not obvious to me that apps like WeChat, Facebook, or Snap are doing the most important work pushing forward our technologically-accelerating civilization.

From 2019 Letter | Dan Wang:

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The payments allegedly climbed as high as 40% of the value of the company’s project and were often facilitated through subcontractors. The subcontractors, such as private security firms that were known to pay off the Taliban, would sometimes send money through Afghanistan’s traditional money transfer network, which can be hard to trace.

From US Contractors Accused of Funding Taliban Attacks Against American Troops:

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Many of Sweden’s bank branches stopped handling cash years ago. Now, they will have to begin doing so all over again, and many are not happy about it. Nor are Sweden’s competition and financial watchdogs, which both oppose the proposal, arguing access to cash should be the sole responsibility of the state and not private banks.

“To secure access to cash is a collective good that the state should reasonably be responsible for,” the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority said. It’s an opinion shared by ATM provider Bankomat, which argued cash should be the state’s responsibility since the handing of notes and coins is such an important – and expensive – part of a country’s infrastructure.

From Are we sleepwalking into a cashless society? – Central Banking:

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Many of Sweden’s bank branches stopped handling cash years ago. Now, they will have to begin doing so all over again, and many are not happy about it. Nor are Sweden’s competition and financial watchdogs, which both oppose the proposal, arguing access to cash should be the sole responsibility of the state and not private banks.

From Are we sleepwalking into a cashless society? – Central Banking:

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UK banknotes are distributed across the country through the Note Circulation Scheme. The four members of the NCS buy banknotes from the central bank at face value and distribute them to banks, building societies, ATM operators and large retailers. But while the BoE sets standards to ensure notes which circulate are good quality, the central bank not responsible for how banknotes are distributed to the public.

From Are we sleepwalking into a cashless society? – Central Banking:

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