Blockchain will enable the decentralised economy: Animal Ventures founder at CAIS 19

07-02-2019

Blockchain will play a central role in the way economies work in the future by enabling increasing decentralisation and lowering uncertainty in how we trade, Bettina Warburg, co-founder, Animal Ventures, told delegates at the annual Cayman Alternative Investment Summit (CAIS), being held in Grand Cayman this week.

In a presentation called ‘The decentralised economy’ Warburg said that while blockchain is now a familiar concept to most in the business and investment world, few truly understand its potential for changing the way the global economy operates.

She explained that the key function of blockchain will be its ability to lower uncertainty when third parties trade and do business, lowering barriers and enhancing trade in the process. “We no longer need a middle man or an institution in the middle of transactions – we can suddenly do one to one transactions but on scale,” she said.

She described the decentralised framework created by blockchain as creating a new “shared state of reality” managed by decentralised virtual machines. “But the key point is that this allows us certainty and extends our ability to trade,” she said.

He said that Animal Ventures works consulting, investing and building prototypes for the real application of blockchain technology to business and industry. It works with a number of Fortune 100 companies exploring how they might leverage blockchain to improve how they do things.

She noted that one of the fastest adopters and potential biggest beneficiaries of this technology is the supply chain and logistics sector where companies want to be faster and more efficient and narrow the gap between the originator and the consumer.

“It will also help augment the gap between human intelligence and machine,” she said. “The reality is that every asset has its own supply chain – everything is coming from somewhere and is moving somewhere whether it is a physical asset or a financial asset,” she said. “It will change the interaction between humans and machines and change economic activity as we know it today.”

Cayman Funds