 |
From Teeka Tiwari, editor, The Palm Beach Letter: On a cold and rainy October day in 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first ever email.
At the time, he didn’t think much of it. Nobody told him to do it… He just thought it was neat.
Tomlinson was a programmer working on a secret government project called ARPANET… a network of computers that could “talk” to one another.
It took two years before people realized just how powerful Tomlinson’s invention was. By then, email had gone from virtually none to 75% of all ARPANET traffic.
Today, 2.5 billion people send 2.5 million emails per second on ARPANET’s successor—the internet.
More than four decades after Tomlinson’s invention, email is still the single most used application on the internet. It was crucial to the growth of the web.
| Recommended Link | ||
|
||
| — |
In the early days of the internet, email was its primary draw for users. There was no YouTube, Google, or iTunes Store.
Email birthed some of the earliest internet success stories… pioneering online service providers like Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online that were all built on providing convenient email access.
Email was once a disruptive technology… Its use is so widespread that it’s putting the U.S. Postal Service out of business… It’s contributed to a 35% drop in first-class mail over the past decade.
Early investors in email support technology got rich, turning minute investments into millions and millions of dollars today.
It’s easy for us to dream what it would have been like to make that sort of fortune from an investment. Had we the right information back in the 1980s and 1990s, would we have invested? Would we have committed those dollars?
Today, I’m putting your feet to the fire.
Friends, we are on the brink of budding new technology trend that is of the same scale—possibly bigger—as email and the internet. But this one will revolutionize the way we transact and do business… in the way email revolutionized communication.
It’s happening right now with only a few people watching…
A revolutionary way to conduct business
On Sept. 7, 2016, Barclays facilitated a $100,000 trade of cheese and butter between Irish food company Ornua and the Seychelles Trading Company.
This small trade will be just as revolutionary as the first email sent.
Here’s why…
When two companies in different countries want to buy and sell from each other, they use a bank to guarantee the transaction… It’s called “trade finance.”
According to McKinsey & Co., about $2 trillion is conducted in trade finance each year.
For more than 400 years, trade finance hasn’t changed much. Banks act as intermediaries between trading partners. They use letters of credit to guarantee that everyone gets paid. Part of the due diligence process has always involved collecting a mass of paperwork.
Both sides have to prove that they truly own what they say they own. They also have to prove that the goods they are selling are of the size, quality, and quantity that the bank is guaranteeing.
As you can imagine, trade finance involves sending mounds of paperwork across oceans. Missing a signature? Sorry, please resend the package. It’s a time-consuming process desperately in need of change.
Even in today’s digital age, it takes 10 days on average just to handle the paperwork. Sometimes, it can take up to a month.
But all of that just changed on Sept. 7.
| Recommended Link | ||
|
||
| — |
That $100,000 trade for butter and cheese was concluded in less than four hours. That’s a huge time saver that will significantly reduce the price of international trade.
Here’s how the deal was done…
Barclays Bank used a new technology called the blockchain to transact the trade.
The blockchain is a digital ledger that is tamper proof. No single party has the power to change the records. Instead of sitting in a single central location, the ledger “lives” on thousands of computers that automatically update.
The blockchain also has a built-in electronic record-keeping and transaction system. Both trade parties are able to track all documentation via a secure network. That means no third-party verification is required.
Barclays’ global head of trade and working capital, Baihas Baghdadi, said that the blockchain will be a game changer.
|
We’ve proved the reality of this technology and the client Ornua has asked us when they can do the next transaction in this way, which proves how user-friendly the entire process was. |
Think about that for a second…
Trade finance hasn’t changed since the 1600s. More than $2 trillion a year is conducted via trade finance and it’s still done with bits of paper flying across the world’s oceans.
The first ever trade deal done exclusively on the blockchain is as big as Ray Tomlinson’s first email.
It’s a whole new way for business to get done. In a few short years, most international trade will be conducted through a blockchain… just like most of the world’s communications is done via email.
But the blockchain won’t only change trade… Think about real estate. Real estate transactions have been done basically the same way since the Middle Ages. It’s a cumbersome, paperwork-heavy process that takes months.
In a few years, the blockchain will allow you to qualify for a loan, conduct a title search, and close on a house in a single day… It’s not that far off.
It’s not every day you get to see a life-changing trend happen right before your eyes.
In a few short years, the word “blockchain” will be as commonplace as email. And it will spawn entire new industries.
| Recommended Link | ||
|
||
| — |
What to Do Next
Barclays has proven the blockchain works to conduct business… and it won’t take long before this technology becomes widespread. Remember, email took off just two years after its first use.
But here’s the thing… The technology is run using cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. I’ve written extensively about how you can use cryptocurrencies to protect your wealth and privacy… but they also act as “shares” in the burgeoning blockchain industry.
As more people use the blockchain, the “shares” increase in price. Unlike hedge funds that require you to be an accredited investor (with a net worth over $1 million), you can buy “shares” in a blockchain’s technology by purchasing its cryptocurrency… Some of them trade for less than $15 per coin.
Recently, my team and I unearthed a new blockchain—a “blockchain for everything”—created by a former bitcoin programmer. IBM, Samsung, and Microsoft have just bought in (with Microsoft giving the green light to 3 million developers to work on it). You can claim your free copy of the report here.