A few weeks ago I got chatting to Jesse Lund, Vice Pesident, IBM Blockchain and he very kindly agreed to do an AMA right here on Stellar Community. On the Monday the 21st of May at 1pm ET Jesse will be checking this thread and answering any questions that you have related to Stellar or cryptocurrency in general at IBM. Some background on Jesse: Jesse Lund is the Head of Blockchain, Financial Services Solutions at IBM. He leads IBM's blockchain market development, digital currency strategy, solutions engineering and client engagement for banking and financial services. Proof: I'd recommend you post your questions here in advance, especially if you're a new member as your first few posts will need to be approved before other users can see them. Lastly, thanks to Jesse and everyone else at IBM who helped make this happen 🎉

I'll kick it off! IBM seem to be getting a lot of attention over the past year or so related to cryptocurrency. Roughly how many people at IBM are working on blockchain related projects - and are most of these working on Stellar related projects?

What juicy info can you give us now that you couldn't in your last AMA?

Excited to see this initiative!

Have IBM considered sending out branded IBM and Stellar based apparel to community members to facilitate wider project adoption through physical peer to peer networking and marketing? All T shirts, hoodies, caps etc gratefully received ;)

Is there any correlation already with Mobius and IBM?

What problems will solve lightning network on stellar for IBM?

As the types and scale at which asset classes are unlocked through their digitization increases, do you foresee any potential issues with digital asset hostile takeovers/ attacks and if so is this something you advise adopters/organisations/asset digitizer's about or have any solutions for? A real estate token for example could provide for micro ownership and share of rental income but it could also be open to abuse if that ownership also carries with it voting rights as a 51% stakeholder would be able to vote in their preferred contractors, managing agents, tenants, rental amount or even force a sale.

IBM have a Catalyst Program for entrepreneurs , is there any chance it will get extended to Stellar based Projects ?

Hi Jesse, Thanks again for your willingness to answer questions regarding the work that you and your team are engaged in. I have a number of questions regarding tokenization of assets and digital identity. 1) What are some of the most significant challenges to tokenizing assets (e.g., central bank notes, real estate, stocks, bonds, etc.)? 2) What role does digital identity play in the tokenization of assets and the assignment of ownership? How is digital identity established in a blockchain context? (One example of an blockchain application that would require digital identification would be the association of a person and their credit score in order to obtain an auto loan) 3) I what ways will Sovrin (digital identity platform) be used to issue digital assets within the Universal Payments Solution and/or Hyperledger?

Hello Obi Lund, Firstly, I just saw the coffee bean-Maersk-IBM Blockchain commercial on ESPN; kudos to IBM marketing. I appreciate your knowledge of fintech so please feel free to delve deeply into the answers. Do you think banks will eventually buy up large amounts of digital currencies to maintain some sort of leveraged position in a decentralized world? If they don't then how will they survive? Are there any benefits to the United States creating it's own digital currency? When Lambo (Ferrari)?

AMA with Jesse Lund, Vice President, IBM Blockchain - 21st May 2018

DeBelli

Hi Jesse, is IBM considering developing blockchain solutions for non profits at this point and could you share any related links for more information or the time frame if it's not in place yet? Thanks for your time!

jesselund

Not really, because "market cap" is a measure of a company's valuation according to it's stock price and circulating supply. Since not all cryptos are securities it always bugged me as a way to value, but as it relates to cryptocurrencies (proper) the total available money supply is a useful measure. If BTC were $1MM (where a satoshi = a penny) the available money supply would open a whole new range of payment applications and attract an industry of developers, not just price speculators. Same for XLM or others-- that's where we need to be. It's about comfort in assigning value to something digital and less tangible. We will get there.

StreetVisit

A confirmed public full launch date for IBM's cross border payment solution would be juicy. Which of the following timescales is most likely? a)Today b)This week c)This Month d)Next Month e)When you send out IBM Stellar swag bags full of branded goodies

(Please feel free to also include option e. alongside any other option :) )

arbitguy

How would you respond to Bill Gates and Warren Buffets recent bashing of cryptocurrencies ?

jesselund

I think Kik's decision is confusing. I think they are taking the stellar-core code base and creating their own private network. I think this defeats the purpose of Stellar's vision. It might also be a waste of the benefits of the Stellar Consensus Protocol. When you have a private network, you don't need "gas" but with a public network there always needs to be some base fee to prevent DoS/spamming and general misuse of the network. I would have preferred that Kik just come play in the real world with the rest of us.

arbitguy

You mentioned in your earlier AMA that IBM intends to release a new cross-border payments related product in Q2. Is that on track or have the timelines changed ?

jesselund

Yeah, it can be. Sitting in traffic in souther california freeways is also frustrating, but necessary to get where I'm going :) The two things I can say about IBM (having only been here for a little more than a year)-- it's the only Fortune 100 company I know that's definitively and totally invested in making blockchain real (which will change the world), and, we are running the blockchain business like a startup (as evidenced by my participation here!)

matthewryancase

Any idea how long something like this would take to see?

jesselund

Stellar is an associate member of Hyperledger. Stellar's code is open-source and accessible to anyone. The open source licensing is also compatible with Hyperledger's model. I like to think of Hyperledger as a toolbox, Hyperledger Fabric and Stellar as tools, and the various IBM solutions that we're building as products built with those tools. The IBM payment solution that we're developing, for example, is a way to do global payments and FX in real time at low cost.

flarcos

cool . cus we submitted for swplug and its been over 2 weeks with no reply . we really do need it , IBM ID : setup@swplug.com

jesselund

Yes, I know there are IBM people in Scandinavia working on Blockchain. I don't have positions in my group there, but we are recruiting blockchain talent all over. You should check the IBM job site and tell me if you find anything interesting. More info about our payment solution is coming soon, I promise. It uses/operates on the the Stellar network. The Food Safety solution (known as "IBM Food Trust") is a real live product. Check here for other details about our current solutions: https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/use-cases/index.html

isaaclee916

What a surprise no one is asking about the price of XLM. im pretty sure most of people here owns XLM and want the price to go up. Jesse, where do you see price of XLM in one year

jesselund

The big ones like BTC, ETH, XLM are always top of discussion and would be usable on the Stellar network to support our cross-border settlement functionality, but as someone noted above: IBM is a mature and conservative company and wants to understand the implications of cryptos (and supporting regulatory environment) beyond their utility in the payments use case before utilizing them in different capacities. So we don't hold any crypto now except what is needed for "gas" to power operations on the Stellar network.

arbitguy

In what ways would your cross border payments product be different and superior to Ripple ?

Rinus

Funny thing: nobody ever quantifies how much liquidity in XLM, XRP etc. one would need to replace nostro/vostro. So they either have no clue (yet) of they are keeping it quiet.

jesselund

You're splittin' hairs on me dude. Can we just call it "blockchain inspired" (and "really useful") and go build the future together? :) I did like the YouTube video of Dr. Mazieres talking about SCP, have you watched that?

jesselund

We have a large backlog of interest in ICOs behind Veridium. The goal with that effort was to build understanding and awareness that we might mature into a platform offering to support the easy creation, circulation, and business rule enforcement of digital tokens for prospective issuers.

Regarding career advice: just plug in where you can. So much interesting stuff going on and you don't need to be a programmer to get involved. These startups (and big companies like IBM) greatly value enthusiasm and domain expertise in a variety of industries. You don't need to be a propeller-head ex-banker like me.

camphero

Any advice for someone who is tech minded, but lacks a technical degree to get involved in the space? Perhaps around biz/corp. dev/sales/partnerships? Or is everything mainly focused around the tech atm?

jesselund

Well... I'm certainly not an expert. The YouTube video that Dave Mazieres did on SCP at Google about a year and a half ago is really good. It doesn't compare/contrast, but gives a great overview of how it works. I think POW was more of a way to get started-- to democratically distribute the BTC money supply, but otherwise grossly inefficient. I think POS is going to be tricky and wonder if it doesn't end up making Ethereum controlled by a band of whales that can do whatever they want (thereby destroying the spirit of transparency and equality of blockchain's promise). Clearly there's a tradeoff between performance, scalability and consensus-- thankfully I'm just paid to answer simple questions on AMAs :)

jesselund

I don't. Other than I miss my buddy and CTO @michaeldowling. He's off changing the world. Follow him on Twitter like I do.

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