Side meeting on financial technology

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

Mr Shigeya Suzuki of Keio University has asked for a side
meeting on distributed ledger-based financial technology, which
will be held on Thursday morning at 10am in the Coller Room.
It seems likely that the room may not be large enough, and
I will try to find a larger space.

He asked that I share the session description:

CFP: IETF’s relationship to the future of distributed ledger technology

As several people mentioned in the past, it seems valuable
to introduce the way we have developed/are developing the
Internet technology, followed by working on the governance
of the Internet, to experts who need to discuss the future
of some new influential global technologies, such as
distributed ledger technology (DLT). IETF and other
technical communities should discuss openly to develop open
standards. For the deployment of the technology, also
important is to discuss multiple stakeholders from the point
of view of the social impact of the technology.

Keio University, Georgetown University, and Japanese
Financial Services Agency have been discussing in the past
several months on how the experiences of the Internet
technology and its governance on the deployment, to find a
competent and reasonable way to developing and using DLT.

As a part of the dialogue, the team mentioned above made
little progress at the G20 finance ministers and central
bank governors meeting in Fukuoka [1], to make financial
regulators understand to establish a multi-stakeholder
community in the DLT ecosystem is crucial. Please be
surprised by reading the script of the speech of
introduction of the panel discussion [4] held as the
official G20 seminar in Fukuoka [2], moderated by Prof. Jun
Murai, with Dr. Adam Back as one of the panelists.

IETF community might feel distant from this topic; however,
if DLT will be part of the basis of a future platform on the
Internet, the IETF community might be responsible for the
technology. Moreover, the tight relationship with
crypto-assets in the context of application-level deployment
means that we should discuss DLT with stakeholders,
including regulatory agencies and financial institutions.

Our team succeeded in convincing regulators that
conversation is crucial. We need to be part of the
conversation.

The purpose of this meeting is to inform what is happening,
then starting a dialogue on the topic. We also want to find
some motivated souls to work on this effort together.

Please come to the meeting.

[1] G20 Finance Ministers and Central bank governors meeting
https://www.g20fukuoka2019.mof.go.jp/en/

[2] G20 SEMINAR, G20 HIGH-LEVEL SEMINAR ON FINANCIAL INNOVATION, “OUR
FUTURE IN THE DIGITAL AGE
https://www.g20fukuoka2019.mof.go.jp/en/meetings/20190608_1.html

[3] Opening Remarks: Taro Aso, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of
Finance, and Minister of State for Financial Services
https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/conference/danwa/20190608/01.pdf

[4] Introductory remarks, Toshihide Endo, Commissioner, Japan Financial
Services Agency
https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/conference/danwa/20190608/05.pdf