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The arrival of the age of fintech is about to shake up the financial services world as we know it.

Traditional powerhouses are already trying to figure out ways to co-exist with startups that are disrupting aging models. Look no further than the rise of mobile and digital banking and the declining relevance of brick-and-mortar banks, particularly among millennials, for evidence of that fact.

But it's not just banks that are trying to conquer the fintech space.

Amazon is about to try its hand in this market, as the e-commerce giant's head of payments, Patrick Gauthier, recently announced that the company is considering making some fintech acquisitions as valuations in the space start to decline and fintech becomes a more affordable investment.

This would be a logical progression for Amazon, which already has a significant and active user base. Amazon has been experiencing increased growth tied to payments, as its payments unit has 23 million active users and has recorded 200% year-over-year growth in merchants adding the "Pay with Amazon" buy button to their online stores.

There is also precedent for Amazon to make such a move. Chinese e-commerce giant Alipay has more than 450 million monthly active users and has more than 50% of the online payments market in China. So Amazon could be on the path to building up a similar type of momentum with its own customers.

Fintech acquisitions would also make Amazon more competitive with other checkout services such as Apple Pay and Visa Checkout. This could be crucial in the next few years, as BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, forecasts that mobile commerce will make up 45% of all U.S. e-commerce retail sales by 2020.

As we watch Amazon's plan unfold, it's clear that no firm will be immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

Bitcoin price re-attempted $450 (Bitstamp) and 2900 CNY (BTCC) earlier today. 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: 14h00 UTC Bitstamp 4-Hour Chart From the analysis pages […]

The post Bitcoin Price Holding At $450 appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Industry Insider" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

The arrival of the age of fintech is about to shake up the financial services world as we know it.

Traditional powerhouses are already trying to figure out ways to co-exist with startups that are disrupting aging models. Look no further than the rise of mobile and digital banking and the declining relevance of brick-and-mortar banks, particularly among millennials, for evidence of that fact.

But it's not just banks that are trying to conquer the fintech space.

Amazon is about to try its hand in this market, as the e-commerce giant's head of payments, Patrick Gauthier, recently announced that the company is considering making some fintech acquisitions as valuations in the space start to decline and fintech becomes a more affordable investment.

This would be a logical progression for Amazon, which already has a significant and active user base. Amazon has been experiencing increased growth tied to payments, as its payments unit has 23 million active users and has recorded 200% year-over-year growth in merchants adding the "Pay with Amazon" buy button to their online stores.

There is also precedent for Amazon to make such a move. Chinese e-commerce giant Alipay has more than 450 million monthly active users and has more than 50% of the online payments market in China. So Amazon could be on the path to building up a similar type of momentum with its own customers.

Fintech acquisitions would also make Amazon more competitive with other checkout services such as Apple Pay and Visa Checkout. This could be crucial in the next few years, as BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, forecasts that mobile commerce will make up 45% of all U.S. e-commerce retail sales by 2020.

As we watch Amazon's plan unfold, it's clear that no firm will be immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

Mike Hearn wrote a Medium post which went viral and was the topic of much debate in the Bitcoin world. In his opinion, the Bitcoin community was dead. He wrote: “[Bitcoin] has failed because the community has failed… Worse still, the network is on the brink of technical collapse.” Hearn has spent considerable time in […]

The post TransferWise CEO Thinks Talking down Bitcoin Is a Good Business Strategy appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Custos Media Technologies, a Stellenbosch, South Africa-based company that uses the blockchain to fight media piracy, marks one of the more unusual but interesting commercial applications of bitcoin. A pair of academics, G-J van Rooyen and Dr. Herman Engelbrecht, came up with the idea after working in “pre-commercial” research for the better part of the […]

The post Born In Academia, Custos’ Novel Blockchain Application Fights Movie Piracy appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A top official at the Bank of England says central banks need to embrace technology and change with the times or risk disruption akin to what Uber has done in the taxi industry.

Andrew Hauser, the Bank's executive director for banking, payments, and financial resilience, told the audience at the SWIFT Business Forum event in London on Wednesday: "The change is going to happen whether we like it or not. We have to ensure we adapt as well. If we don’t do so, effectively we might not be able to do our jobs. Central banks, just like everyone else, can’t afford to be Uber’d."

Hauser was referring to the wave of tech-driven innovation that is currently sweeping through financial services, usually referred to as fintech. Startups unencumbered by legacy systems are offering cheaper and quicker services to consumers.

Uber has also been particularly effective in the US at bending regulators to its will (there's a good explanation of how here). A big criticism of transport regulators from traditional cabbies is they've failed to keep a handle on the pace of change in the industry. Hauser doesn't want that to happen in financial services, so is keen to keep a close eye on developing fintech players.

Some fear that these new business models, while delivering short-term bonuses for many consumers, could pose long-term risks by creating new systematic risks that central banks have yet to fully grasp. The World Economic Forum on Tuesday highlighted the risk of consumers being left with big losses at the hands of peer-to-peer lending, for example.

But Hauser told the conference: "It’s often the case when you meet central bankers, they instinctively say I don’t like it, therefore it must be risky and undermine stability. I think we’ve learned that that’s too simplistic.

"When you have too little innovation or too little competition you get an excessively concentrated market and concentrated markets are by definition the ones that tend to have single points of failure. Innovation properly channeled, therefore, could actually improve stability rather than undermine it."

As well as backing innovation in mainstream banking, Hauser says the Bank of England itself is looking at how it can do things differently and change with the times.It could be bad news for banks though. Former Barclays CEO Anthony Jenkins issued a similar warning to Hauser's earlier this year, predicting an "Uber moment" for banks that could reduce headcounts by up to 50% and profitability by up to 60%. 

He said: "The central bank does sleep overnight and it does sleep at the weekend, although maybe that’s going to become harder for us to do overtime. We need at least the technological capacity to run 24/7/365, even if the issue of whether we chose to use it is slightly more finely balanced.

"We need better data and analytics for people using our systems so that they can control their flows better." Hauser said the Bank of England is also looking closely at how it could potentially use blockchain technology in central banking.

Blockchain tech, also known as distributed ledger technology, was first developed to underpin bitcoin. It allows all parties on a network on share the same set of information and make changes in real-time, rather than relying on a central register or discreet registers within organisations that must be reconciled with each other.

The blockchain was originally conceived by bitcoin's developers to do away with the need for central banks, by allowing the network to collectively sign off on transactions. But the likes of the Bank of England could in fact use the technology to help them in their jobs, by improving real-time monitoring of activity for example.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: THE STORY OF GOLDMAN SACHS: From foot peddlers to a powerhouse

The World Economic Forum is calling for governments, established finance players, and fintech (financial technology) startups to band together and draw up more rules and regulations to stop the wave of new fintech players becoming a systematic risk to economies.

In a report co-authored by consultancy Oliver Wyman, the Davos organiser says: "As legacy business models and long-held value propositions in financial services are reshaped by these new ideas, key actors in the system must work to ensure economic growth does not come at the expense of systemic stability."

The report, titled "Understanding the impact of technology-enabled innovation on financial stability", says that: "The financial sector is at an inflection point", with nimble fintech startups "disintermediating" the jobs traditionally done by big banks.

In other words, finance is moving from being a bunch of one-stop-shops where you can get your mortgage but also trade shares and take a pension, to a bunch of specialised players that can focus on one area thanks to the lower overheads allowed by technology.

The report says:

Use of technology in finance is not new, nor are many of the products and services that are offered by new entrants to the sector. Rather, it is the novel application of technology and its speed of evolution that make the current wave of innovation unlike any we have seen before in financial services.

WEF and Oliver Wyman identify six big advantages to fintech: increased access to financial services through things like your smartphone, lower cost, improved risk management, diversification of risk, increased collaboration, and increased competition.

But the report warns that "technology-enabled innovations bring a new set of risks to the financial system, both conduct and prudential, and has implications for human capital (e.g. increased automation leading to fewer employees)."

Here are the six key risks WEF and Oliver Wyman identify:

1. Alternative lending: The report warns that consumers could face big losses from things like peer-to-peer lenders, which lets people lend their money directly to businesses and people. "Even if alternative sources of credit are monitored appropriately, many actually shift risk to the end consumer – which has the potential for sizeable losses to be directly incurred by average investors who may not understand the product or its associated risks."
2. Market electronification: The report says that high-frequency trading, dark pools, and the use of alternative trading platforms "remains an area of intense scrutiny."
3. Data security: "As businesses increase their reliance on technology and continue to amass larger stores of data, it becomes increasingly important (and difficult) to ensure resilient systems are in place to safeguard information."
4. Misconduct: "While technology-enabled innovation has the potential to support oversight functions in monitoring employee activities, it may simultaneously act as an amplifier of illicit actions that have evaded detection (e.g. predatory algorithmic trading activity). Moreover, heightened shareholder expectations and intense competition may incent the mainstreaming of new technology-enabled innovations before the requisite control environment for risk and compliance is in place."
5. Payment effectiveness: New methods of sending money, such as using the rails of bitcoin or other distributed ledger technology, "may actually impact effectiveness of monetary policy and transmission mechanisms."
6. Regulatory arbitrage: "In many instances, the pathway to compliance when deploying a new type of innovation is unclear. Furthermore, the regulatory remit is often not consistently defined across countries and is based on a company’s legal entity designation vs the financial activities that it engages in. This rigid definition of the regulatory remit allows for some businesses to fall through the supervisory cracks, reduces portability of business models and stifles innovation."

Adair Turner, the former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, issued a similar warning to the WEF's on peer-to-peer lending, saying in February: "The losses which will emerge from peer-to-peer lending over the next five to 10 years will make the bankers look like lending geniuses."

However Samir Desai, CEO of peer-to-peer small business lender Funding Circle, has defended the industry, telling the AltFi Europe conference: "I don't agree with some of the credit assessment stuff and I think many platforms have invited Lord Turner in to view our processes, reassure him, because I think it is important that we tackle this criticism head-on rather than just shout him down."

The WEF and Oliver Wyman have four key recommendations for stopping fintech in all its guises transforming into a systematic risk. They are: a debate on the ethical use of data; setting up a global public-private forum for discussion of technological innovation in finance; international standards for monitoring fintech startups; and setting up a private sector standards body that enforces good conduct at new players in the market.

You can read the full WEF and Oliver Wyman report here.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: THE STORY OF GOLDMAN SACHS: From foot peddlers to a powerhouse

The way we pay is changing dramatically. For example, people are beginning to use their smartphones for every kind of formal and informal transaction — to shop at stores, buy songs online, and even split their rent.

At the heart of these changes in how we pay are thousands of companies competing and collaborating to facilitate transactions.

To understand why the payments industry has faced so much disruption in such a short time, there's just one key thing to understand: Payments is about transferring information from one party to another, and nearly every stakeholder in the industry benefits when that process runs on digital rails.

But payments is also an extremely complex industry that few fully understand.

In BI Intelligence's 2016 Payments Ecosystem report, we make it simple, explaining how it works, who the key players are, and where it's headed.

In this latest edition of the report, BI Intelligence drills even further into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

PS. Did you know...

Our BI Intelligence INSIDER Newsletters are currently read by thousands of business professionals first thing every morning. Fortune 1000 companies, startups, digital agencies, investment firms, and media conglomerates rely on these newsletters to keep atop the key trends shaping their digital landscape — whether it is mobile, digital media, e-commerce, payments, or the Internet of Things.

Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a "daily must-read industry snapshot" and "the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally" — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

With our full money-back guarantee, we make it easy to find out for yourself how valuable the daily insights are for your business and career.  Click this link to learn all about the INSIDER Newsletters today.

Join the conversation about this story »

The way we pay is changing dramatically. For example, people are beginning to use their smartphones for every kind of formal and informal transaction — to shop at stores, buy songs online, and even split their rent.

At the heart of these changes in how we pay are thousands of companies competing and collaborating to facilitate transactions.

To understand why the payments industry has faced so much disruption in such a short time, there's just one key thing to understand: Payments is about transferring information from one party to another, and nearly every stakeholder in the industry benefits when that process runs on digital rails.

But payments is also an extremely complex industry that few fully understand.

In BI Intelligence's 2016 Payments Ecosystem report, we make it simple, explaining how it works, who the key players are, and where it's headed.

In this latest edition of the report, BI Intelligence drills even further into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

PS. Did you know...

Our BI Intelligence INSIDER Newsletters are currently read by thousands of business professionals first thing every morning. Fortune 1000 companies, startups, digital agencies, investment firms, and media conglomerates rely on these newsletters to keep atop the key trends shaping their digital landscape — whether it is mobile, digital media, e-commerce, payments, or the Internet of Things.

Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a "daily must-read industry snapshot" and "the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally" — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

With our full money-back guarantee, we make it easy to find out for yourself how valuable the daily insights are for your business and career.  Click this link to learn all about the INSIDER Newsletters today.

Join the conversation about this story »

The price of bitcoin broke past $450 this week, as markets rallied in response to perceived progress surrounding the network's block capacity dilemma.