Welcome back to our course on FinTech Foundations and Overview In this module we're going to look at the technologies of FinTech What is it that has enabled this revolution? These new applications? These new ideas? What's new? What's different? What is it about tech that's not the same as it's been over the past 40 years? What's new? What's enabling? We're going to look at five technologies that enable all the different FinTech applications or areas that we discussed on our last week are enabled by five fundamental areas of technological innovations One is the whole area of identity, privacy and anonymity in the digital world And what do we mean by digital identity? Or what do we mean by privacy and anonymity when dealing with a online digital world and market space, and transactions Second is blockchain and encryptions associated with or connected with, not necessarily part of a blockchain Although, it's hard to blockchain without that But encryption also being beyond just blockchain But blockchain and the encryption area that supports a lot of those technologies Third is big data and data analytics Big data has been with us so while data analytics is a more common new term being used But it's looking at large databases large data samples and how can we do something smart by being able to analyze and understand the opportunities created by data and large data sets Forth is AI Artificial intelligence, decision support systems meaning computers making decisions kind of on their own in some ways or helping people make better decisions Sort of expert systems or maybe assistants or so augmenting of human intelligence in some way and automation Automation broadly in terms of a digital world of enabling us to do things much more independently and faster than we ever could in the physical world And finally, smartphones and consumer tech This includes all aspects of consumer tech, not just smartphones it's also your Apple Watch it's also clothing that may interface it maybe a Google Glass which didn't work out real well But maybe Google Contacts or somebody else's interface with customers that changes our world And so anything that is like a smartphone that changes the interaction between technology and users I would put into this last area of consumer tech smartphones being the most visible and notable part of that over the past 10 years But not the only way that we may have changes in our interfaces between the digital world and the physical human user of that digital world So these five areas of technology are opportunities Now one thing you might be asking in your mind is wait a minute we just went through a categorization of FinTech apps now we're taking a different view a FinTech technologies Is this just looking at the FinTech world and saying well there's a bunch of buckets we can dump things in? How do I relate last module looking at the business of FinTech to this module looking at the technologies of FinTech? Is there a link between this technology that enables this application? The answer to that is there is a link between technology and application but it's complex, and it's messy There are many different technologies underlying a number of these applications So, you would say wow if I look at how does lending get enabled by these techs? A lot of tech go into lending or crowdfunding, or payments, or Cryptocurrencies And so, we don't have to trace every one of these links But let me just look at one link that you might think is pretty obvious Cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin and blockchain or other technologies So that's pretty easy, blockchain enables bitcoin True, but it's more than that If I looked at cryptocurrencies, obviously blockchain matters But also, issues of identity and privacy, and anonymity come in You have to know, does this person actually have these blockchains? Can I verify the identity of the blockchain owner or of the bits? And privacy and anonymity are so important for some users that they don't like bitcoin because it's not enough privacy They want more privacy or more anonymity Sometimes we'll have digital currencies with less privacy I'm happy with PayPal knowing who I am and how I link to some technologies and having less privacy with PayPal but I have more convenience So that's a trade off and so we'll look at the links between and not that PayPal is a cryptocurrency it's a e-payment system But identity and privacy connect in with cryptocurrencies in some ways And finally, smartphones, and consumer tech matter for cryptocurrencies And you may say, Oh come on we can have bitcoin without that and that's true, you can We did, we got bitcoin completely independent of smartphones We don't need a smartphone to have bitcoin But, the smartphone technology the ability to link in a QR code the ability to relate to that Makes bitcoin much more convenient easy to trade, much more popular makes it a coin for the masses And that, makes there be more investors which makes bitcoin demand higher which makes bitcoin price higher So you could say the success of bitcoin the success of many cryptocurrencies is intrinsically linked to the ability to connect with smartphones and user tech Not just security, you could have all the security in the world and have this languish and not be adopted Without it being convenient without it being easy to use you may have no adoption So the success of bitcoin as a prototype and demonstration of the blockchain power also demonstrates the power of user interface and smartphones because both are interlinked So we can't just say there's one technology that led to bitcoin There's more than that At least if you mean that led to bitcoins broad adoption or success on the marketplace That requires smartphones That also requires interactions within considerations of how do you identify who owns a coin how do you deal with security how do you deal with privacy and anonymity in that context which helped to make it more popular or less popular for different implementations of blockchain or implementations of cryptocurrencies So, at any rate we see these different technologies interfacing some more, some less but all being important to the success of your crypto app, your cryptocurrency system So for any of these areas we'll find there's more than one technology that leads to the revolution or opportunity there's some tie into multiple pieces But we come back we have these five different technologies that we'll cover in this module looking at FinTech technologies and how they enable changes in our world. Thank you
