Snippings

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“A bogus dentist with no qualifications managed to fool her employers at NHS hospitals for nine years before being discovered.”

From “Bogus NHS dentist earned £230,000 over nine years after bosses failed to spot fake qualifications | Daily Mail Online”.

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“Austin, 23, of Croyd Avenue, Great Barr, pleaded guilty at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court to two charges of carrying out dentistry work without holding any dentistry qualifications.”

From “‘Fake dentist’ carried out illegal teeth whitening in city apartment – Birmingham Live”.

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There’s been yet another story about fake qualifications in the news. A woman from New Zealand spent a couple of decades working as a consultant psychiatrist in our National Health Service (NHS) before it was discovered that she had made up her medical degree and forged a bogus letter of recommendation from Pakistan. The deception only came to light after she had been convicted of trying to defraud an elderly patient.

Fake doctors seem to be something of an issue, but as I am English I am far more concerned about the epidemic of deceptive dentists across our green and pleasant land. When I read that a “bogus dentist with no qualifications managed to fool her employers at NHS hospitals for nine years before being discovered” it makes me shiver. When I see a woman convicted at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on two charges of carrying out dentistry work without holding any dentistry qualifications, I get twitchy. When I find out that Manchester Magistrates Court convicted a man who had no dentist qualifications, used a false name and was fraudulently using the registration number of a genuine dentist, I begin to think about leaving the country for good.

When I discover that a bogus dentist (an asylum seeker who told immigration officers he had a dental practice in Iran) took a dead dentist’s identity, drilled without a local anaesthetic and did expensive fillings that crumbled within days, I have trouble sleeping.

(I can’t help but think of late the late lamented Robert Schimmel’s joke about visiting the dentist: “Do you want a shot of novocaine / No, I want a shot of you getting a diploma”.)

How can this happen, you might wonder, in a world where the blockchain exists?

Suppose there was some global educational qualifications blockchain. That wouldn’t by itself fix anything. I bung a clerk at the University of Wherever to add my Ph.D in Quantum Philosophy to said blockchain. I now have immutable proof of my leading-edge expertise that is far more convincing than some piece of paper.

So. How exactly might the blockchain help?

I happened to look at a couple of projects in this space earlier in the year, and I can tell you that much of the wishful thinking projected onto the blockchain is really nothing about consensus or immutability but, as in some many cases, all about interoperability. There is no global standard for education qualifications, there is no global trust framework for organisations able to create qualifications (and there regulators) and there is no global infrastructure for digital signatures in that framework. All of these problems have to be solved before we get near to figuring out whether a global blockchain might or might not be a better place to store such qualifications that either a global database of qualifications or a scheme for federating qualification repositories.

Let’s begin by recapitulating the elements of the problem space. If I show up at the local practice in response to their dentist wanted ad on indeed.com there are three domains to consider. In the authorisation domain, I must present the appropriate qualification and the practice must be able to validate it. Of course, I must be able to demonstrate in the authentication domain that the qualification belongs to me. And although it is not at all necessary for the regular functioning of the practice, the identification domain must provide my “real” identity because of the rules of the medical world.

Let’s walk through these steps.

First, presenting the qualification.

Second, authenticating the qualification.

Third, linking the qualification to identity.

Assets DBIs

Yuri Biondi’s paper on “Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis and the Accounting Structure of Economy” from “Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium”, edited by Avi-Yonah, Reuven S. / Biondi, Yuri / Sunder, Shyam

Online ISSN 2152-2820

Volume 8, Issue 2 (Jul 2018) The Money Problem. Perspectives on Money, Banking and Financial Regulation

De Gruyter doi 10.1515/ael-2013-0045 AEL: A Convivium 2013; 3(3): 141 – 166

In this piece, Blondi says that

Banking and government agencies can then be understood as dynamic holistic connections that layer upon ownership of wealth and entitlements to it.

This naturally set me thinking, as I imagine the sender intended, that the nature of these connections might be different in the new world of cryptography and shared ledger. MY first and most obvious reflection is that the new structures available to us because of cryptography can separate these concepts. We have pseudonymous entitlement to wealth and, in real-world markets with legal status (put to one side the “code is law” techno-perspective), we have links between the wealth repositories (wallets) and real-world legal entities. In the formulation assumed by the article, you use your government identity to asset ownership of the wealth stored in bank accounts.

A generalised view of these two separate bindings (ie, between “tokens” in the crypto-world and assets in the real world, between “wallets” in the crypto-world and people or companies in the real world) is as shown in the diagram below, taken from the forthcoming revised paperback edition of my book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin”.

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Cash accounts for just a third of retail purchases by volume in Britain. Within a decade it will be used for just 16%, according to UK Finance, a trade body. The £50 note is used least of all: there are more than twice as many tenners in circulation and six times as many twenties. Few cash machines dispense them. Shopkeepers distrust them. With the exception of crooks, the only group that uses £50 notes in any number is tourists, so the sensible thing may be to choose an ambassador easily recognisable by visitors. William Shakespeare, perhaps—or, since the Bard used to feature on the £20 note, maybe Peppa Pig.

From Who should appear on Britain’s new £50 note? – Funny money.

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Retail banks will own the secured lending product, but all other transactional banking and lending products will be facilitated at the point of sale.

From Adapting to the future of Open Banking four interesting scenarios.

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“In the coming years, some hard choices will be required. One option is to do nothing, meaning we accept that the general public no longer has access to central bank money. Such a future would imply a changed scope for the public sector. The payment market would have to be regulated and supervised in new ways to meet fulfil the objective to have a safe, efficient and inclusive payment market.

A second alternative is to issue central bank money in a digital form, as a complement to cash and the money held in bank accounts. We call the concept ‘e-krona’ – after the Swedish currency, krona. Central bank-issued digital currency is a new and relatively unexplored possibility, but it is attracting growing interest from a number of central banks.”

From “Why Sweden’s cashless society is no longer a utopia | World Economic Forum”.

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“The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has launched a competition to name and design a new single currency, which is expected to be delivered by 2020.”

From “West African single currency plans move towards lift-off – Central Banking”.

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“Luca Enriques, professor of law at the University of Oxford, identifies four distinct types of regtech. In a short paper published earlier this year, he noted that market participants might use regtech for their operations or compliance, whereas supervisors and central banks might use it for oversight or policymaking purposes.”

From “Capitalising on regtech – Central Banking”.

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“what is needed to have a good functioning, cashless society?

A reliable payments network that stimulates innovation and competition Easy access to the network to every participant in society, both consumers as business entities”

From “The war on cash: National Banks Strike Back – Data Driven Investor – Medium”.

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