I had the honor participate in a September 27 panel discussion in NYC organized by Markets & Markets.  See this agenda for the Markets & Markets “AI & Blockchain Fintech Confex” event.   SIIA views blockchain as part of a continuum of technologies that are and will continue to change the world.  Technologies such as the internet of things (IOT), cloud computing, data-driven innovation, and artificial intelligence are all topics SIIA has provided thought leadership on.  This is why  in January this year, we released an Issue Brief on blockchain and hosted an event with the Congressional Blockchain Caucus.   Many of our Member companies are experimenting with blockchain-based products. Dun & Bradstreet, for instance, provides a unique blockchain identifying number that corresponds to the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number that it offers for companies.   This allows companies that do not know each ot ...

Last week from October 18-20, Georgetown University hosted its “First Annual Fintech Week.”  The announcement of the event and program can be found here.  Georgetown Law, IIEL, NEX, and Thomson Reuters sponsored Fintech Week.  It was a truly first-class gathering with candid and rich conversations involving industry representatives, tech entrepreneurs, regulators, legal specialists, compliance leaders, law enforcement representatives and others. I attended the October 19 panels entitled “Blockchain & Beyond: Distributed Ledgers and the Future of Payments” and “Combatting the Dark Side of Innovation: Cybersecurity and Money Laundering.”  I am glad I did because the panels touched on mutually relevant issues.  Major takeaways from the panels included the need for partnerships and give and take between partners; the need for interoperability for scale, but maybe inter-sectoral interoperability is not needed for now; bloc ...

Yesterday on August 16, 2017, the first round of the NAFTA modernization talks started.  Our views on NAFTA modernization can be found here.  SIIA wishes the negotiators speedy success and urges the United States, Canada, and Mexico to adopt modern digital trade rules and strengthen respect for intellectual property rights.