March 19, 2026

Capitalizations Index – B ∞/21M

Australian Bank ANZ Still Doesn’t Understand Blockchain Technology

Australian bank anz still doesn’t understand blockchain technology

Australian Bank ANZ Still Doesn’t Understand Blockchain Technology

Australian bank anz still doesn’t understand blockchain technology

The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) has thrown some serious shade at distributed ledger technology — commonly referred to as ‘the blockchain.’ 


According to the third-largest bank by market capitalization in Australia, legacy financial institutions aren’t exactly under immediate threat from the trustless transactions introduced by Bitcoin (BTC) and its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Maria Bellmas, ANZ Institutional’s associate director of trade and supply chain products, stated:

Blockchain has been the darling of the tech world for some time and increasingly so over the medium term, perhaps in part pushed by scorned crypto fanatics grasping for some justification of their obsession in the wake of the bitcoin collapse. Sold as a solution to all of life’s problems, blockchain offers a ton of legitimate solutions for businesses – but raises just as many questions.

One of those questions, according to Bellmas’, is why legacy financial institutions need blockchain technology to improve their offerings. She believes that traditional banks and the like “do not necessarily need it and are better off using existing good old databases and technology solutions.”

Bellmas’ statements come shortly after JPMorgan Chase announced its own in-house cryptocurrency, JPM Coin. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) also recently launched its blockchain-powered World Wire service, which aims to provide new financial pathways that both clear and settle cross-border payments almost instantaneously.

So, yeah … maybe those good old databases and technology solutions aren’t quite good enough. Still, that news apparently didn’t reach Bellmas, who continued:

The reality is a lot of the problems blockchain projects attempt to fix have already been solved by existing technologies. In many cases, a regular database can solve for the problem with more reliability and for much less cost than blockchain.

Bellmas failed to note which existing technologies, specifically, remove the need for a trusted third-party when transacting value across borders for virtually non-existent fees and in real-time.

What do you think of Bellmas’ statements? Do you agree that financial institutions do not need blockchain technology? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! 


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Published at Mon, 25 Mar 2019 01:57:12 +0000

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China’s First Blockchain Platform AntShares Rebrands to NEO

In a meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters in Beijing, China, AntShares, China’s first open-source blockchain platform, announced their future development plans. 


The Meeting

In late July the AntShares team hosted a conference at Microsoft’s headquarters in Beijing, China. 200 people from different organizations, including investors, industry specialists and representatives of the Chinese financial and mainstream media attended the event.

Founded by Onechain, the Chinese blockchain platform announced major plans to rebrand the platform from Antshares to NEO, by changing key elements like logo and UI of the platform. Da Hongfei, the founder of NEO, also announced that NEO will be partnering up with certificate authorities of China, in order bring real-world assets to the next level, by integrating them with smart-contracts.

Another major point of the event was the announcement of NEO’s new partnerships with prominent blockchain platforms Bancor, Agrello, Coindash, Binance, and Nest Fund.

 

The New Tech

NEO blockchain platform

NEO’s core developer, Erik Zhang, revealed smart contracts 2.0, the next step of smart contracts. Ethereum based smart contracts use Ethereum’s own programming language, Solidity. NEO’s smart contracts 2.0 will use ordinary programming languages like Javascript, Go, Python etc. With this move, the NEO team is hoping to attract a wider audience of developers for potential NEO based applications. Another upcoming feature of the NEO platform will be the ‘Nest Fund’, similar to Ethereum’s ‘The DAO’, it will allow NEO users to create their own decentralized autonomous organizations.

With this move, the NEO team is hoping to attract a wider audience of developers for potential NEO based applications. Another upcoming feature of the NEO platform will be the ‘Nest Fund’, similar to Ethereum’s ‘The DAO’, it will allow NEO users to create their own decentralized autonomous organizations.

Major support for NEO

Without a doubt, NEO’s most prominent partner is the software giant, Microsoft. Skrikanth Raju, Developer Experience & Evangelism and Chief Evangelist, Greater China Region, Microsoft, expressed his support for the NEO platform and even described OnChain as “One of the top 50 startup companies in China.”

What are your thoughts on Antshares’ rebranding? Do you think that NEO will be China’s own Ethereum? Let us know in the comments below!


Images courtesy of  Pexels, NEO

The post China’s First Blockchain Platform AntShares Rebrands to NEO appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.