For much of the last decade, blockchain was known chiefly as a technology developed to support bitcoin, the world’s first all-digital currency. However, the technology supporting it has emerged as a way to potentially revolutionize how companies process transactions. In a 2018 global Deloitte survey, 65 percent of surveyed business executives said their companies would invest $1 million or more in blockchain technology in the coming year and 84 percent predicted that blockchain is “broadly scalable” and will become a mainstream technology.

One way blockchain may become mainstream would be through food traceability that improves food safety. For instance, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a food safety alert on November 20 for romaine lettuce, one of many food scares in 2018. This has the potential to force an entire season of romaine lettuce in the U.S. to be lost, costing millions of dollars. Blockchain has the potential to help the producers, processors, retailers and consumers of certain foods – romaine in this instance – by narrowing the scope of a safety alert.

Still, as with any new technology, predictions about blockchain’s future are often marked by hyperbole. While some observers dismiss blockchain as a fad, others insist the technology will disrupt entire industries. The more likely answer is somewhere in the middle, says Cesare Fracassi, associate professor of finance and director of the Blockchain Initiative at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. OUTLOOK spoke with Fracassi about how the technology started, its potential to add speed, efficiency and transparency to business transactions, the remaining technological hurdles, and why blockchain may be a gamechanger for some businesses, but not for others.

Link to full article at CoBank.com

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform businesses and entire industries.

And the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin is at the forefront of this emerging technology with its newly launched Blockchain Initiative.

UT Austin is participating in a new program focused on blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and digital payments. Ripple, a distributed ledger currency exchange company, is providing the financial backing for the program. UT Austin is among 17 academic recipients worldwide selected for Ripple’s $50 million blockchain research program.

Silicon Hills News recently sat down with Cesare Fracassi, a McCombs associate professor of finance and the Blockchain Initiative’s director, to talk about blockchain technology and the new program on the Ideas to Invoices podcast.

Link to full article and podcast.

SAN FRANCISCO — A concentrated campaign of price manipulation may have accounted for at least half of the increase in the price of Bitcoin and other big cryptocurrencies last year, according to a paper released on Wednesday by an academic with a history of spotting fraud in financial markets.

The paper by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas, and Amin Shams, a graduate student, is likely to stoke a debate about how much of Bitcoin’s skyrocketing gain last year was caused by the covert actions of a few big players, rather than real demand from investors.

Link to complete article at the New York Times.

AUSTIN, Texas — The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin will participate in a new university program founded by the distributed-ledger currency exchange company Ripple to support academic research, technical development and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital payment methodologies.

As part of this program, Ripple, a company that uses blockchain technology to provide real-time international currency transfers, has made a five-year, multimillion-dollar commitment to support McCombs blockchain technology research, organizational activities and course development.

“Blockchain is one of the most important developments of the last decade, with the potential to transform how business is conducted,” said McCombs Dean Jay Hartzell. “We are honored that Ripple selected us as an academic contributor to this endeavor. Their gift is a validation of our leadership in transformative technology innovation. It will enable us to grapple with some of the most pressing issues our rapidly evolving economic world has to offer.”

McCombs is among 17 academic recipients worldwide selected for Ripple’s blockchain research program, including Wharton, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley Haas, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Oregon, the University of Waterloo, University College London, Korea University, the University of Luxembourg, the Australian National University College of Law, Fundação Gutulio Vargas Brazil, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, the University of Nicosia Cyprus and the Delft University of Technology Netherlands. Ripple has pledged more than $50 million in total to the program.

The Ripple gift will support the Blockchain Initiative at Texas McCombs, a new effort to engage students and faculty members from a wide range of academic fields and backgrounds in advancing the global blockchain ecosystem.

“Demand for blockchain learning, research and project-based experience is at an all-time high among university faculty and students, and this gift will go a long way in fulfilling that demand,” said Cesare Fracassi, a McCombs associate professor of finance and the Blockhain Initiative’s director.

In addition to financial resources, Ripple has also committed to providing McCombs with strategic guidance and technical resources as needed.

“Academia has traditionally been a critical driver of technical innovation,” said Eric van Miltenburg, senior vice president of global operations at Ripple. “Our support of McCombs is an acknowledgment of the important role the school has the potential to play in advancing our understanding and application of cryptography and blockchain technology. Much of the enthusiasm and activity to date around blockchain is disconnected from real use cases that result in clear customer benefits,” said van Miltenburg. “While Ripple won’t dictate research parameters, we are excited to play a role in helping to support projects that explore increasingly useful applications of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.”

The McCombs School of Business is an academic leader in blockchain and cryptocurrency research, teaching and innovation. In April, the school hosted a national blockchain conference that brought speakers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Walmart Inc., Merck & Co., IBM, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, USAA and Ripple together with academics, practitioners and students to debate and explore the business opportunities and challenges of adopting blockchain technology.

For more information, contact: Molly Dannenmaier, McCombs School of Business, 512-232-6779.

The Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, dramatically ratcheting up U.S. scrutiny of red-hot markets that critics say are rife with misconduct, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The investigation is focused on illegal practices that can influence prices — such as spoofing, or flooding the market with fake orders to trick other traders into buying or selling, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the review is private. Federal prosecutors are working with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a financial regulator that oversees derivatives tied to Bitcoin, the people said.

To read more about cryptocurrency fraud, including comments from McCombs Professor John Griffin, read the entire Bloomberg article:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/bitcoin-manipulation-is-said-to-be-focus-of-u-s-criminal-probe

Prof. Cesare Fracassi decrypts cryptocurrencies in this podcast interview.

With new financial technologies transforming how we send, receive and spend money, Texas lawmakers are evaluating what it would mean if a regulatory “sandbox” were to be implemented in the state.

Right now, Arizona is the only state in the U.S. to adopt such a policy, which alleviates some regulations that financial technology companies must deal with when trying to launch a new product to market.

Cesare Fracassi, associate professor of finance at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, says it’s currently a costly process to ensure consumers are protected.

“Think about how expensive it is to open a bank,” he said. “In order to open a bank, you have to actually go through a series of regulatory hurdles to make sure when you actually open a bank, you’re going to receive the money. You’re going to use the money in a way that it’s actually not risky.”

Watch the entire interview with McCombs Professor Cesare Fracassi, as he discusses FinTech regulation in Texas on KXAN:
http://www.kxan.com/news/us-politics/texas/texas-lawmakers-looking-at-ideas-to-spur-financial-technology-growth/1144039620