◇Blockchain Business Accelerates as Top Global IT Firms Make Full-Scale Entry

Facebook of the U.S. has started to move full-gear into blockchain technology development. The company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley has gathered human resources for development etc. in the blockchain business. What is their intent? Is it building an AI platform, or considering new financial services, or does it mean that they are going to focus on cryptocurrencies? Various speculations are being made. To begin with, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned at the beginning of this year that he was “interested in the scheme where blockchain can realize decentralization.”  In the latest announcement, one could see more specifically what he had referred to, and it has been announced that a small-scale team has been established. Members of the team include the chief product officer of Instagram, Facebooks’ head of technology, and software engineers from large blockchain security firms. This is an expression of Facebook’s intent to enter in full-scale into the Blockchain business, and we should keep our eyes on their moves.  On the other hand, Softbank Corp. of Japan is also ambitiously devoting itself to testing and trying blockchain technologies. On the 12^th, it was announced that they have succeeded in ‘proof of concept’ for a settlement service among phone carriers using blockchain technology.  The mobile settlement service currently being developed is based on the messaging standard “rich communication service (RCS)” and the blockchain technology TBCASoft.  The service uses the wallet application of RCS to allow global remittances P-2-P among users. Also, they say that it is also possible to make remittances when the recipient side uses the traditional messaging services such as SMS and e-mail. In the ‘proof of concept’ this time, users were successfully able to make settlements at stores using mobile phone terminals. Going into the future, it will also become possible for Japanese users to make payments in US dollars using the same manipulation as sending e-mails, using the RCS platform.