Banco Santander se ha unido a otros cuatro gigantes de las finanzas, UBS, BNY Mellon , Deutsche Bank y el bróker ICAP para crar una moneda virtual destinada a liquidar pagos usando la tecnología blockchain, en la que se basa la moneda virtual bitcoin.La noticia, adelantada por Financial Times, ha sido posteriormente confirmada por el banco.Las entidades aspiran a poder lanzar un producto comercial en 2018, y están en conversaciones con los bancos centrales.Estas entidades crearían la moneda, llamada USC, y tramitarían en esta divisa los pagos entre sí, sin tener que pasar por un sistema centralizado.“Conversaciones recientes de los bancos centrales y los reguladores sobre divisas digitales confirman el enorme potencial que tienen", explica Julio Faura, responsable de I+D de Santander."El USC es un paso clave hacia el mercado financiero futuro con tecnologías de registro contable distribuido”.Cada uno de estos participantes valida la transacción, que queda registrada como un “bloque” dentro de una cadena, cuyo código informático no se puede alterar y que está a disposición de los participantes del sistema.

Una vez realizado este proceso, el dinero se transfiere de forma bilateral.Actualmente las partes tienen que realizar la transacción a través de un sistema centralizado, que es el encargado también del registro de la operación.Como en el sistema blockchain el registro se almacena automáticamente en las computadoras de cada uno de los participantes, el proceso es más eficiente.El coste total para la industria de compensar y liquidar pagos está entre los 65.000 y los 80.000 millones de dólares al año, según Oliver Wyman.Otras firmas están trabajando en sistemas de moneda digital; concretamente Citigroup, JP Morgan y Goldman Sachs tienen sus proyectos de pagos digitales.La moneda virtual planteada por estos bancos se denominaría USC (Utility Settlement Coin), y se ha desarrollado de la mano de la startup Clearmatics.El USC podrá servir para los pagos entre instituciones financieras por activos como bonos o acciones, y evitaría la espera actual desde que se efectúa la operación hasta que se cobra.

"Un USC es convertible en paridad con un depósito en su correspondiente divisa, es decir, que se puede intercambiar entre entidades, y gastar un USC es como si gastáramos el dinero equivalente en el mundo real"·, explica el banco en nota de prensa.client side bitcoin wallet“Queremos deshacernos del tiempo que cuesta cerrar estas transacciones, eso puede liberar capital atrapado en el proceso”, explicó a FT Hyder Jaffrey, responsable de fintech en UBS.litecoin mining rig kaufenBankers’ Reveal Their Version of Bitcoin: How It All Works A group of major commercial banks, led by global giant UBS, is developing their own version of digital cash, using blockchain, the technology underpinning Bitcoin.bitcoin lexikon

UBS has teamed up with Deutsche Bank, Spanish Santander bank, and investment giant BNY Mellon to launch what they call the "Utility Settlement Coin."The group is planning to use the digital cash to settle financial trades using blockchain, avoiding clearing houses and settlement intermediaries.bitcoin litecoin farmerTheir plan for blockchain technology could save the industry a fortune, since banks and other financial institutions fork out between $65 billion and $80 billion a year to clear and settle transactions.charlie hebdo bitcoinIt would also make the whole process faster, as financial transactions currently take days to settle through clearing houses.wordpress plugin bitcoin minerUsing blockchain could allow for transactions to be settled in near real time, according to UBS.

Global banks and large financial institutions have been trying to figure out how to use blockchain in a way that would be efficient and safe.Unlike Bitcoin, the USC is not a new currency bypassing the central banks.UBS says the idea is that each USC coin is backed directly by cash sitting in a central bank and is equivalent to one dollar, pound or other currency in which the transaction is made.The digital coin is representing real money in the transaction and spending it is equivalent to spending its real world cash equivalent."Cash is a leg to almost every trade, so this project is key to unlocking the benefits that the industry can gain from distributed automation technology in clearing, settlement and collateral management," said Robert Sams, founder and CEO of Clearmatics, the tech company that developed the concept with UBS."The aim is to make this a core part of the financial markets ... it has been brewing for some time," Sams said.The banks are now trying to get the regulators on board to ensure their technology could be used widely in the future.

For those who don’t know, Blockchain, the technology underpinning Bitcoin adn other digital currencies, is based on a public record of transactions.Each transaction between two parties, or a "block," is acknowledged and verified by the whole network of users and added to the chain.The blockchain acts like a bank ledger and its transparency makes it very difficult to tamper with the data.There's another advantage to the process -- by using the peer to peer verification system, blockchain doesn't need to rely on central banks.Trading in Ethereum’s digital currency, Ether (ETH), briefly surpassed bitcoin for the first time on Thursday afternoon.The trading preceded an eight percent price drop in Bitcoin, plunging from $1,222 down to $1,132 before recovering to $1,180 in the afternoon.Ether has been trading at record highs over the past week.The “fuel” for Ethereum is up 23% today alone.On Thursday morning, around 9 AM Eastern Standard Time, the 24 hour trading volume totalled $424.9 million USD, while bitcoin’s was still at $383.7 million.

Bitcoin’s trading volume has historically dwarfed Ethereum, and the “honeybadger” of crypto quickly regained it’s position.Bitcoin’s dominance over the altcoin market has been slipping all week, and today it plunged to an all-time low of 73 percent, down from 84 percent on Saturday.The drop marks the first time that bitcoin’s market cap made up less than three-quarters of the total cryptocurrency market’s capitalization.Meanwhile, ether’s market cap surpassed four billion dollars, as it hit highs above $47 on Thursday, up 282% over the last seven days.Ether trading is largely conducted in bitcoin, with the US dollar, Chinese yuan, and Korean won following at an accelerated pace.Before Saturday, Ether’s previous all time high was recorded on Bitfinex, $21.69 on June 16, during the infamous DAO attack, which resulted in Ethereum’s blockchain undergoing a hard fork that led to the creation of the cryptocurrency ethereum classic (ETC).Ether broke through it’s all time high on Saturday, and has been trending upwards all week.

The biggest jump came on Thursday afternoon, taking the cryptocurrency from $40.47 to $46.20 in an hour and 35 minutes.A variety of exchanges started trading Ether throughout 2016, and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) launched on March 3rd.The EEA and Microsoft jointly announced their participation, alongside fortune 500 companies including Intel, J.P.Morgan, BNY Mellon, BP, ING, Thomson Reuters and several blockchain startups.Former Bitcoin developer and Bloq CEO Jeff Garzik has been appointed to the alliance’s Technical Steering Board.The consortium has released a paper that outlines the organization’s “vision for users and stakeholders to propose, implement, and integrate advances to the Ethereum protocol with support for Enterprise Ethereum protocols.” The EEA’s mission is to “build upon the only smart contract supporting blockchain currently running in real-world production and to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications at the speed of business.”In the meantime, the Bitcoin scaling debate has been growing more and more contentious.