Business First May-June 2017 Business First May 2017 | Page 51

Blockchain –
the next great
disrupter
We went behind the scenes with PwC Belfast,
one of the world’s brightest blockchain hubs.
An article produced by TechWatch from Cata-
lyst, Inc Connect by Emily McDaid
ll too often, blockchain is regarded as a
technology for financial services.
Bitcoin’s peer­to­peer payments were
the first popular application of blockchain.
But blockchain has the potential to shake­up
so many other industries.
I discussed this with Seamus Cushley,
director of blockchain and digital at PwC
(pictured) , who leads a team of 25 experts.
Seamus is proud that Belfast has a higher
concentration of blockchain experts than
almost anywhere else in the world.
“Blockchain is regarded by many as the
second generation of the internet – and it can
be just as disruptive as the invention of the
internet was,” said Seamus.
A
Why should we care about the
blockchain?
Seamus says, “It’s about trust. Blockchain
technology establishes trust between two
entities to exchange value. Before blockchain,
transactions had to use a trusted
intermediary ­ typically a bank, lawyer or
government.”
“If you consider that a new ‘transaction’ is
created every time you use the internet to do
anything, you can see how wide its impact
can be.”
“Any value system – not just money – can
be replaced by it.”
How does it creates a record?
Cushley emphasises, “A key security feature
of blockchain is that the infrastructure and
data are not held on one server – they’re
decentralised and distributed. The data is
held on all the network servers of all the
players involved in a transaction.”
That means, in order to hack a blockchain,
hackers would need simultaneous access to
all the servers in the chain. That seems so
unlikely that a blockchain is, by its nature,
considerably more secure. To add a new
record to the chain, all the parties need to
verify it, protecting against fraud.
Who is PwC creating blockchain
solutions for?
“We’ve worked on a major project with the
Bank of England, and we also created a
working blockchain prototype for the London
Market Target Operating Model (TOM)
Innovation Exchange. It demonstrated that
blockchain can reduce costs and speed up the
payment process in the specialist insurance
market.”
What industries do you see the
blockchain disrupting?
Seamus said, “From land and property
transactions to cross­border freight shipping
and personal identity documents ­ any
situation where high­value or sensitive
information needs to be