Over the past 3 months I have been exploring the general marriage between insurance and blockchain with InsurTech Gateway.
I have been looking at the various business models that the technology enables, along with researching projects that are positioned to bring exciting products to market over 2019. Along the way I have also followed the growing conversation around security tokens and how opinions across the regulatory, commercial and legal landscape are forming. One key element that is clearly needed is collaboration, and it has been great to learn that collaboration is exactly what all of these parties seem to understand. But how efficiently?
My open-ended investigation, particularly this article, focusses on just that: collaboration. Today, I would like to share with you the insights I have gained in relation to my longer post – Digital Securitisation of the World’s Assets: Collaboration across Verticals.
For those of you in a hurry (TLDR):
- Tokenising securities is a way of splitting high value items into smaller parts, that can be stored and traded using blockchain technology. This is, amongst other things, to bring liquidity into previously illiquid markets, such as real estate and art.
- The open source community is naturally very collaborative. This leads to fast progress and a tight focus on innovation instead of competition.
- The FCA has released their guidelines on cryptoassets with 3 more papers to follow, sending positive shockwaves throughout the crypto-community. Understanding regulatory sentiment, if nothing else, is highly valuable for projects in the space.
- As well as collaboration across regulators, lawyers, VC, institutions and entrepreneurs, stakeholders need to continually encourage the spread of knowledge. This will be key in keeping the horizon aligned for everyone involved.
- Fragmentation is inevitable within these different stakeholder groups, from regulators who differ in approach across jurisdictions, to crypto-projects who choose to fight regulation vs work with it. This latter point requires a balance between innovation and global feasibility. The goal is to minimise fragmentation where possible.
- A key way that such fragmentation is avoided is by placing “built-in collaboration” direct into the technology itself. Smart contracts enable autonomous execution of activity that can represent the collaborative effort of consumers, regulators and lawyers in real time.
- With the pending security token standard ERC1400 from the Ethereum community automating processes that are technologically and economically efficient as well as fully compliant is becoming industry standard as we march towards digital securities.
- To encourage more institutional capital into the space the exchanges and custodians are working hard to secure regulatory approval and insurance solutions.
It has been really exciting working with The Gateway as we move into a project of our own, joining the great community in solving some of these big problems. By combining technical and community knowledge with the commercial and insurance force of The Gateway, this partnership is in a strong position to come at these challenges head on, and we are all looking forward to collaborating with more of the space over the coming months.
The birth of Nayms…
I will be keeping you updated on this learning journey, as we progress through regulatory, commercial, technical and hiring milestones resulting in launching Nayms to the world.
If you would like to learn more about what we’re building, and potentially get involved, I would love to connect with blockchain fanatics, software developers and insurance pro’s. Please get in touch at dan@projectjellyfish.io, I would be delighted to have a no strings attached exploratory conversation.
