BITCOIN ETF DECISION DATE

After years of talk and hype, Indian banks are slowly taking the first steps toward moving a significant piece of financial infrastructure onto a so-called blockchain -- the engine that drives the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Last October, ICICI Bank carried out India’s first international trade transaction and overseas remittances using blockchain. Since then YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank have also started harnessing the technological concepts underlying Bitcoin.

Financial institutions around the world have long been fascinated by blockchain technology -- created by a network of computers, where each transaction made has a digital signature that cannot be forged -- as it introduced a new way of executing and recording financial transactions without a central authority. Over the past two years, startups have begun throwing their weight around blockchain technology vying with giant Indian IT service providers such as Infosys and TCS, to create core banking platforms.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain — the buzz words in the economy globally, are unique technologies disrupting the various sectors. Banks, financial institutions and many others are adopting blockchain technology faster than anticipated. Globally, this technology is widely accepted but in India it is still at nascent stage. Blockchain startups have started picking momentum in India and addressing various issues with the help of blockchain technology. Here is a compiled a list of some interesting startups in this space in India.

MindDeft Technologies: MindDeft was founded with the thought of making difference with IT services and providing the quality services to customers. Since our inception, the goal is to deliver solutions to complex problems that really makes difference to the customers. Apart from traditional technology stack, the team is very much open for adopting the new trends and technologies that is really making difference to solutions they are providing. Blockchain is one of the trends that they love, and they are in the progress of taking expertise of various Blockchain tools for example, Ethereum and HyperLedger. They have been doing extensive research for Blockchain and delivered the proof of concepts for various domains on how to implement the smart contracts with Blockchain tools.

This startup, since its establishment in 2015, has been focusing on developing blockchain apps for efficient business processes. Krunal Soni founded MindDeft to help in identifying Dapps and smart contracts matching the business requirements. Their services include cryptocurrency development, smart contracts, token sale, private blockchain, distributed ledger, and legal contracts. This startup has been working with platforms like Ethereum, Hyperledger, Stellar, Quorum, EOS, Tron, and R3 Corda for its various projects.

Blockchain is the most trending technological term today and is forecasted to disrupt various industries in coming future. The buzz is building up in India as well. Just last week, Mahindra and IBM joined hands to develop Blockchain Solution for Supply Chain Finance. Also, mid of this year, ICICI bank adopted Blockchain in a push for digitalizing banking.

Yet, in the startup space, the activity seems to be relatively muted in India when compared globally. One reason can be that the technology is still in its early days and yet to mature. We presented a tutorial on Blockchain earlier this year.

For some, blockchain is a fad as a technology that will eventually pass. For others, it is a deep technology that is here to stay — one that will eventually be as epochal as the internet. Even though the technology is still in a nascent stage, development talent is scarce, and many of the solutions are still in the proof-of-concept (POC) stage, companies and governments are very bullish about it.

Countries like Estonia have already deployed blockchain for governance in sectors such as healthcare. Even in India, the NITI Aayog is said to be in the process of putting many governance projects on to its blockchain solutions which will be called IndiaChain.

Blockchain, the next generation of Internet , is creating a buzz almost everywhere. Blockchain is the underlying technology used to create Bitcoin, world’s first decentralized digital crypto currency and is gaining interest in almost every sector.

Apart from being used in currencies, blockchain is also under consideration from key players in Banking, Financial, Real Estate sectors. Recently, State Bank of India(SBI) in collaboration with other banks announced a key technology to be used known as “BANK-CHAIN” to enhance banking activities. Bank-Chain is also a product of Blockchain Technology