Interview With Andrés Rojas Of IBM About Blockchain In Latin America

Bitcoin Chaser staff attended the IBM Cloud Innovation Forum in Bogotá, Colombia, on Friday, December 2nd 2016. There we had the opportunity to interview Andrés Rojas. Andrés is the Leader of Process Transformation and Blockchain for the SSA region and Mexico – basically every country in Latin America excluding Brazil. The conversation started casually and Bitcoin Chaser didn’t plan to do the interview.

We started talking about the definition of blockchain. Andrés agreed with our basic definition. Essentially the technology is a kind of decentralized data web that serves to register transactions. From that point onward, we had the opportunity to inquire further about the vision that IBM has for the implementation of the technology in Latin America. What follows is a translation of the original interview in Spanish.

The Interview with Andrés about IBM and Blockchain Projects in Latin America.

Bitcoin Chaser – Which blockchain projects does IBM have at this moment in Latin America?

Andrés Rojas – Various projects. Generally speaking, we are developing projects with financial institutions, governments and companies in the healthcare sector. The projects are confidential.

BC – What type of blockchain projects are you developing with these institutions, are they for internal use or to manage the relationship between these entities and their clients or the public?

AR – IBM is developing blockchain projects to achieve a greater degree of efficiency vis-à-vis the users, and to integrate value chains. Few are for internal use at the organizations.

BC – How does IBM see the future of blockchain in Latin America?

AR – It will change the way people experience transactions, fundamentally. In 5 years’ time, we believe that transactions will be quicker, will have a lower cost and will entail lower risks.

BC – What do you think about the dichotomy between public and private blockchain projects?

AC – As far as the implementation of mass consumption projects goes, public blockchains are acceptable. Implementing blockchain projects for corporations requires greater control over information, and due to regulation, these projects also require higher levels of privacy and control. Therefore the private type of implementation is preferred.

BC – What is the role of immutability in IBM blockchains?

AC – Generation of trust is a fundamental characteristic in our implementation. This is a basic principle that we follow.

BC – What do you think about the hard fork that Ethereum implemented to protect itself from the aftermath of the DAO attack?

AC – I think that security is a fundamental characteristic of blockchains, and it is the basic metric with which we measure the success of the implementation. In our implementation of blockchain, we used proven technology to secure our clients’ projects. The same kind of technology used in the mainframes under which most of the international financial exchange takes place, is integrated into our blockchain.

BC – So what happened to Ethereum cannot happen on an IBM blockchain?

AC – What happened to Ethereum cannot happen on an IBM blockchain.

BC – Was Ethereum right when it carried the hard fork out or should they had let the DAO fail?

AC – No comment.