On August 24 and 25, Japanese Finance Ministry and NIKKEI Newspaper has co-hosted a web based FIN/SUM, a Fintech Summit meeting among group of experts from regulatory community, academia, financial industry, technology community, venture leaders, and industrial leaders. The meetings were broadcasted through internet to introduce and discuss the best practice and usage of cutting-edge financial technology, including blockchain technology that is now stepping out of merely “crypto-currency” platform into “security token offering” system.

Finance Minister and Deputy PM, Taro Aso, in his opening address commented on government’s commitment to support multi-national development of blockchain based ecosystem, saying “In the G20 high level seminar last year in Fukuoka, Japan, we focused specifically on blockchain and discussed implications of the decentralized financial technologies.” 24, August 2020 at FIN/SUM.

What we have witnessed in the meetings include keen industrial attention to blockchain use-case for advanced Supply Chain Management. Among others, a group of more than 15 Japanese industries exhibited “TradeWaltz”, a new platform to get rid of “letters of credit” and document handing business from import-export business, namely by replacing all such paper-based transaction by blockchain system. Soon, a 100 years of highest respect for paper-work, such as “letter-of-credit” or “bill of lading”, will be out of the game of international trade. The same concept is in European based platform “MarcoPolo” developed among major EU financial industries and first introduced by a Japanese banker on April 2019 that also took part in Fin/SUM this year.

But, these are just about a tip of iceberg in blockchain based supply chainmanagement. The technology will change “net 30 days telegraphic transfer” payment to “one day payment”, an international remittance within 24 hours by crypto-security token. The technology also provides a complete (or at least much stronger) digital fortification against hacking, fishing, or double payment problems in web based electronic transactions, along with digital signage technology, a proof of one and only ownership of each/every value. (Munetoshi Yamada, Head of Business Development, SBI R3 Japan Co. Japan, and Orapong Thien-Ngern, CEO, Digital Ventures of Thailand, in FIN/SUM 25 August 2020).

On top of all these blockchain based supply management, Fin-Tech experts pay keen attention to (1) STO (Security Token Offering), and (2) CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). Until very recently, investment to crypto-currency was the major issue among blockchain economy. Today the term “crypto-currency” is about to be replaced by the term “crypto-security,” a proof of ownership of whatever valuable to trade, such as corporate equity, copyright of literature or music, real estate, etc. The blockchain technology will soon be a use case for transaction of all such ownership of things. The idea of CDBC is simple. It is a digital money issued and controlled by central bank of each & every country. In other words, Yen, Dollar, or Euro are about to be digitized by central bankers.

Comment:
For any supply management activists, blockchain technology seems to be a paramount of the next 10 years business. If STO and CBDC are the new subject in business transactions, our day-to-day supply management will be fantastically different from what we have now.