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As boss of Canary Wharf's Level39, Eric Van der Kleij is one of the most important people in the fintech scene in London — and possibly the world.

There are over 150 fintech businesses housed in Level39, which despite its name now covers three floors in One Canada Square.

"People tell us it’s the biggest space of its kind worldwide," Van der Kleij told Business Insider during a recent visit to Level39, a fintech-dedicated office space. "We’ve not measured so I don’t want to make any claims."

Level39 was set up in 2013 by the Canary Wharf Group to encourage a new generation of finance firms to come to the East London office peninsula — financial technology, or fintech, startups.

"Canary Wharf deserves credit because this is not cheap," says Van de Kleij. "This is a serious long term investment. But I think it’s a good thing because what we want is one of these companies to turn around and say can you build me my new headquarters in Wood Wharf."

Just over 2 years on, the space has broadened out to welcome "smart city" and cybersecurity startups too, as well as opening new space for high growth businesses on Level 42 and 24. The building can now house a startup from being a 2-man operation up to a 20-plus team.

"They want to eat the banks’ lunch"

The huge number of startups under Van der Kleij's nose gives him a good overview of what exactly the fintech world is up to.

"We find they fit into two camps," he says. "There’s the camp that wants to help the existing world of financial services to improve, to be more transparent, to provide better customer choice, to lower their costs. And then there are those that want to be the new bank, they want to eat the banks’ lunch. We love both of them."

Van der Kleij is very excited about one particular type of new technology — the blockchain, the software that runs bitcoin.

"The real powerful work being done in fintech is blockchain," he says. "I can tell you now with certainty that every major western bank we’ve spoken to, and some eastern ones, are looking at blockchain technology."

The blockchain creates bitcoins, allows transactions to happen, and creates a public record of all transactions, shared across hundreds of computers. Transactions can't be reversed and are much faster than the current system.

Banks currently have to interact with each others' systems when transferring money between accounts. This can be a slow, cumbersome, and a costly exercise, given how old many of the banks' computer systems are.

But if a secure, transparent, piece of software could automate these types of interbank transfers, it would be vastly quicker and cheaper. Barclays, UBS and Citi are all exploring how it could be used.

There are potential applications beyond payments too — Santander says it has 25 use cases for blockchain technology, while BNP Paribas says the technology could make some companies that hold stock "redundant."

"Very similar dynamics to music"

Van der Kleij calls blockchain "the real frontier" of finance and likens its evolution out of bitcoin to the rise of peer-to-peer technology out of illegal music-sharing website Napster.

He says: "In the world of music you had Napster as the unregulated challenger to the establishment. What they did is prove that technology can enable peer-to-peer file sharing to take place without the establishment controlling it. What that industry did is they wisely embraced that technology to reduce their costs and you now have the iTunes Store, Spotify. That transformed the model of music distribution.

"Who’s the Napster? It is companies involves in open ledger or blockchain technology. Of course its origins came from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is incredibly interesting and very exciting but very challenging for the regulator because of the privacy it affords.

"The challenge is we don’t want this to become the money launder’s weapon of choice, which is what the regulator is worried about. It has very similar dynamics to the world of music."

Level39 residents working on bitcoin and blockchain technologies include CodeStack, BitReserve and Coinjar.

Van der Kleij is confident that, as with music, blockchain technology will mature and enter the mainstream — we'll get our iTunes or Spotify of finance.

Not only will blockchain adoption make banking faster and cheaper, he also thinks the blockchain has the potential to make banking safer.

"You know the thing that caused the big problem in the financial crisis?" he asks. "It was these derivative mortgage-backed securities. Cunning people were repackaging different mortgage securities into products. When institutions bought them they had no real way of looking at the underlying assets they were buying because they were so complex. If they were forced to build that on blockchain, an investment manager could press a button and see the truth because of the immutability."

For now though, it's early days for the blockchain.

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Reddit wants to use its power to create its own millionaire by convincing one million Redditors to each donate a dollar to a randomly selected user.

The idea actually started some eight months ago, when a Redditor posted the musing on the Reddit forum "ShowerThoughts," which touts itself as a "subreddit for you to share all those thoughts, ideas, or philosophical questions that race through your head when in the shower."

Since then, a new subreddit called "MillionaireMakers" was created to rally others around the idea, and there have been eight previous attempts to achieve the crowdfunding feat.

None of the past attempts have been successful, however, with the selected winners only receiving about $11,400 at its peak, and the lowest payout only about $1,842 -- offering a fascinating look at both the subreddit's actual reach and the vastly varying rates of people who actually follow through and donate a dollar to the winner.

So how's it work?

On the third Friday of every month, the subreddit will open the drawing to anyone who signs in to a Reddit account that has existed for more than 30 days, and one that contains a history of activity. This is to ensure people aren't creating multiple accounts to increase their chances of winning.

Once you sign in, you can then post a new comment -- don't reply to an existing comment -- which acts as your official entry into the experiment, and represents your willingness to donate a dollar to the winner.

The winner is selected randomly after the contest has been open for 24 hours, and then everyone is supposed to donate a dollar to the winning Redditor. The subreddit also offers a handy string of text you can add to your comment entry which will cause a Reddit bot to send you a direct message as a reminder to donate once the experiment comes to a close.

Payments are handled by using a bitcoin wallet or PayPal account.

"Remember, this is about generosity, about making history, and about coming together to make someone's life better," the MillionaireMakers experiment reads. "So take 3 minutes to donate a bit to the winner, whether you're well off and want to donate a few bucks, or going through tough times and can only donate a few cents. Every cent counts."

If you want to comment in this month's experiment for your own chance to win (you have less than four hours left at the time of writing this article), head on over to /r/millionairemakers now and sign in.

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Ascribe.io believes your digital content is worth something, and that banks and other financial institutions should see such work as collateral. Such a paradigm shift could change the global economy as we know it, and Ascribe.io is on the front lines.  Ascribe.io is working to help usher art into the digital age with blockchain-based authentication for digital projects. The company has been in production since February 2015, beta since fall 2014, and alpha since late 2013. The startup has been working closely with artists, galleries, museums, conferences and others in the art ecosystem. Artists have used the Ascribe platform in […]

The post You Own Your Intellectual Property - Ascribe.io Looks To Revolutionize Digital Art appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

BlockCypher provides Bitcoin wallet services to larger organizations such as exchanges and payment providers. During the recent fracas of "dust" transactions crowding the Bitcoin network, one of their larger clients, Erik Voorhees' ShapeShift.io, suffered a double-spend attack amounting to 2.6 BTC. The biggest offering of BlockCypher is what they call a "Confidence Factor" which basically means what it sounds like – if the processor is reasonably sure (as in more than 99%) that a double-spend will not be attempted, the transaction is processed with zero confirmations. BlockCypher describes their method like so: In simpler terms, if an unconfirmed transaction returns […]

The post BlockCypher: Zero Confirmation Bitcoin Transactions Still Viable appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin trade bought price up from a low of $272 and 1660 CNY yesterday. At the current level near $280 and 1720 CNY price is in an indeterminable state of trend. Analysis looks for direction and an action plan for taking a position in the market. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a $29 discount using the code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 05h52 UTC Bitfinex 4-Hour Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier today: Price has bounced from the […]

The post Bitcoin Trade Waiting For Market Direction appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

While California remains gripped by drought, the scale of lost agricultural jobs and lowered revenue is emerging. And the numbers don't look good.

Vast tracts of farmland—mostly in the Central Valley—have been fallowed, which means idled to accumulate moisture. An estimated 564,000 acres will be idled, according to an economic update on the drought from researchers at the University of California at Davis.

Unused land, of course, triggers lower agricultural output. Based on estimates of 564,000 idled acres, farm revenue losses are forecast at $1.8 billion, and 8,550 fewer farm jobs because of the drought.

The ripple effect of lower agricultural activity is forecast to be even bigger. Idled land means fewer food processing jobs and thin ranks of truckers to haul goods. Spillover, statewide revenue losses are likely to reach $2.7 billion with 18,600 lost full-time and part-time jobs, according to the report.

"This is a very extreme drought," said Daniel A. Sumner, agricultural economist at UC Davis, and editor of the update released earlier this week. The report includes economic analysis of drought data from May and June.

More idled land

But already researchers think 564,000 idled acres may be too low an estimate.

According to a separate June report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state acreage of principal crops—which includes field crops such as hay, grains, cotton and potatoes—is running about 900,000 acres or 22.5 percent below the 2013 total of about four million acres.

"Land is incredibly productive," Sumner said. "Nobody leaves land idle unless something really bad happens."

From big cities to rural communities, year four of a historic drought is shaping water consumption habits statewide. Gov. Jerry Brown in April mandated a 25 percent cut in urban water use—the first ever for California. In San Francisco, for example, home cooks and restaurant chefs are tweaking kitchen rituals such as reducing free-flowing water over vegetables. Watering a home lawn during non-designated times can get you hundreds of dollars in fines.

Deep in agricultural counties, farmers are churning through the summer heat with little to no surface water supplies and digging deeper for groundwater—water buried underneath the earth's surface. Groundwater flows naturally to the top, or can be pumped to the surface through wells.

Like dipping into a savings account, groundwater can account for half of total state water consumed in drought years.

More groundwater is being pumped at a faster pace than groundwater sources can replenish their moisture levels. In 2014 and 2015, farmers will have pumped at least 11 million acre-feet of additional groundwater to make up for lost surface supplies, according to UC Davis. (An acre-foot is roughly 325,000 gallons of water. Just imagine a swimming pool that's an acre across and a foot deep.)

After decades of groundwater extraction, pockets of land have been sinking from Merced down to Bakersfield—at first by inches, and now by feet.

One of the hardest hit drought areas in the Central Valley is Tulare County, where roughly 1,000 private well failures have forced hundreds of rural residents to use buckets and temporary sources of water to bathe, cook and clean.

"Things are really day-to-day for the wells holding up," said Marilyn Kinoshita, Tulare County's agricultural commissioner.

Sector breakdown of losses

During the winter, unusually warm temperatures left record low snowpacks that eventually melt and trickle down to fill large reservoirs. With less water, every pocket of agriculture is being hit, from dairy to rice farmers. 

• Rice farmers are planting about 30 percent less rice this year, according to the California Rice Commission.
• The dairy and cattle industries are forecast to lose $350 million in revenues, according to UC Davis research.

The dairy industry is getting hit from all sides. The economy of China, a big U.S. dairy consumer, has slowed. Meanwhile, dairy farmers are paying for higher feed prices as hay farmers have lowered production due to water shortages. 

Said Sumner: "Dairy is in a world of hurt right now."

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