THINKING STRATEGICALLY

ABOUT FINTECH AND THE

FUTURE OF BLOCKCHAIN

TECHNOLOGY

#BFCanada

THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT

FINTECH & THE FUTURE OF

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Jean-Philippe (JP) VERGNE

PROFESSOR, IVEY BUSINESS SCHOOL

@PIRATEORG

WWW.CRYPTOCAPITALISM.CENTER

Recently, I got a phone call from my bank…

Suspicious activity:

$6.27 The Coffee Company

$37.76 Zara.ca

A legacy payment system that costs tens of millions to

maintain, is customer-unfriendly, incurs a lot of fraud,

and always requires more personal data

STORY #1

STORY #2

Recently, a developer in Kenya:

A new payment system built by one developer, in a few

hours, at no cost. It is cheap to use, user-friendly,

instantaneous, secure, and requires no registration

TAKE-AWAY #1

FinTech is not about deploying cumbersome &

expensive technology, it’s about user experience

DIFFERENT SHADES OF BLOCKCHAIN

Public ledger

Decentralized

Permissionless

Append-only

Cryptocurrency

Few minutes/tx

Open source code

Proof-of-work

Mining

Digital signatures

Crypto hashing

Private ledger

Not decentralized

Permissioned

Editable

No token

Instantaneous

Proprietary code

No proof-of-work

No mining

Digital signatures

Crypto hashing

Colored

coins,

Sidechains…

F

R

O

N

T

B

A

C

K

BITCOIN AN UPGRADED INTRANET

new user

benefits

invisible

cost savings

TAKE-AWAY #2

Blockchain is a buzzword. It can mean a zillion

things. You need to know which blockchain

features drive which benefits and for whom.

WHO’S GETTING “DISRUPTED”?

ST Remittances ($500bn)

E-commerce (incl. micropayments) ($2,000bn)

MT Retail Payments ($25,000bn)

Clearing & Settlement (<$100bn in rev.)

Identity Management

LT Deposits ($50,000bn today)

Central Banking?

WHERE IS THE REAL DISRUPTION?

CitiBank CEO: “Information about money has become

almost as important as money itself”

TAKE-AWAY #3

The short-term effects of blockchain/FinTech in

the most advanced economies are overestimated.

Other effects are underestimated.

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Impression Management

Telling the British gov’t they should

start a national digital currency

“You’re wasting your time with bitcoin”

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Observation

Impression Management

Looking to add bitcoin to a prop fund

Setting up a task force, hiring a crypto developer

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Focused Experimentation

Observation

Impression Management

Setting up an innovation lab for

investment banking applications

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Broad Experimentation

Focused Experimentation

Observation

Impression Management

Building blockchain prototypes, issuing a crypto

(no patent, mostly open source, cross-border)

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

WHAT CAN FI’S DO?

Launch of crypto product

Broad Experimentation

Focused Experimentation

Observation

Impression Management

Issuing new products designed for

the crypto ecosystem

Learning

Margins likely to decrease

Loss of visibility on data

Cybersecurity even more crucial

New segments

www.cryptocapitalism.center

Stay in touch!

@PIRATEORG

JVergne@Ivey.ca

www.swiftinstitute.org