In an interview with WatersTechnology, UBS Group's CIO Oliver Bussmann discussed his plans for the future and how he has set his sights on technology that he believes will transform how companies such as UBS Group operate. Digital ledger technology or as he calls it, Blockchain, is one such technology on his radar.
Discussing the oft-repeated blockchain, Bussmann says:
"Sharing my own thoughts on Blockchain and the ensuing conversation behind that really convinced me that we need to spend more time on this.. I genuinely think it will massively disrupt the buy and sell sides, payment streams and settlement alike, to the point where you can see that these things behave in totally new ways in five years."
Believing Bitcoin to be insecure and lacking trust, Bussmann's approach will be one of divorcing bitcoin the unit of account from Bitcoin the underlying technology due to the negative media attention Bitcoin regularly receives in the media. Should that occur, Bussmann believes the "whole system will change."
With Blockchain, it's all about simplifying the point of reference: In all different asset classes, anything that is a contract, a trader can reference digitally.. The key challenge is to make it available securely and to build more trust—to separate Blockchain from the news we're regularly hearing about Bitcoin exchanges shutting down, like Bitstamp did in January. As an industry we need to build something to protect these assets. But if that happens, I believe the whole system will change. Internet-based exchanges based on these ledgers that will make assets tradable immediately, and the amount of effort to execute these things will be a fraction of what it was, so we'll really move into a real-time environment going forward. You need a critical mass of parties in the end, so it will take time, but the advantages are real and very competitive. Not this year, maybe, but in the next few years."
Despite attempts by the media to replace Bitcoin with Blockchain, none of the people interviewed to date have expounded how they intend to secure their own blockchain.
Oh, that's easy. The same way they're securing their computers now, so I can take any amount of money up to infinity from any number of accounts they have open up to all of them : it's illegal!!11 Specifically : it's illegal for businesses not to open accounts ; it's illegal for the computers to be used "in manners inconsistent with their owner's wishes".
What, that doesn't work ? You don't understand how the world works. You and Putin.
This banker is the same as all other computer illiterates who try and expound about Bitcoin. They are the same breed who twenty years ago, had a typist clack out emails for them while they dictated the words. They are complete idiots and are experts at talking around a subject without revealing they are completely ignorant of how it actually works.
Your own sublime thoughts on the Blockchain and what it can do are irrelevant. You cannot control software in the wild, being developed by anyone anywhere, by men who are not under any legal or philosophical constraints.
"Spending more time" is also empty rhetoric as is "the disruption of buy and sell sides"; its more language that has no meaning outside the clique of computer illiterate elites who have developed an idioglossia to defend themselves against intellectual scrutiny.
No one in their circle is brave enough to say, "What exactly does that mean in simple terms?". As in the Emperor's New Clothes, anyone saying this would break the hypnotic spell, and be excluded from the inner circle.
The centre of financial transactions is being disintegrated into its smallest possible constituent; the single autonomous user with a cellular telephone. In a Bitcoin world, men like Bussmann and UBS are no longer the gateways and arbiters; they are nothing more than peers, and for that matter, peers that will struggle to retain customers and any relevance.
The fact that this man believes that newspaper reports are in any way important is a sign of his stunning ignorance. BitTorrent grew to its enormous size without any positive press, in fact, quite the opposite, with the BBC even directly equating BitTorrent with Paedophilia. Newspapers and the garbage they print simply doesn't matter in a world where everyone can say anything to anyone and send any file to anyone or millions in a single motion. Next, anyone will be able to send money to anyone anywhere at any time, without reference to or permission from Bussmann and UBS.
It is unlikely that Bussmann and his gatekeeper peers are so stupid that they cannot see this. This is why they want to kill the idea of Bitcoin; they see it as a clear and very serious threat to their banking "services". Their desires are likely to come to nothing, if BitTorrent is any guide. This will especially be true in the world of the unbanked, who have a natural and rational disregard for rules and regulations. People "in the system" being less intelligent, may be a different matter, but only a matter of time.
As for the rest of his guff, "The key challenge is to make it available securely and to build more trust" this is being done, and not by UBS, and citing Bitstamp's outage as if UBS and every other bank with ATMs running Windows 95 have never had outages is patently absurd.
The crazyness of this man's statements, rather than eliciting rage, actually makes anyone who knows what is happening reassured that there is nothing whatsoever that Bussmann and co can do to stop The Transformation. They don't have the intellect, the imagination or creativity to compete, and even if they did, they are now competing with tens of thousands of genius level and below men who are all hell bent on putting them out of business forever.
Its Game Over for Bussmann, UBS and all of the sclerotic actors that have caused so much damage through the 20th century; that blood soaked era was their finest hour, and now its over.