World Bank President – Blockchain Innovations Can Defeat Bad Practice

While speaking at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank’s Annual Meeting in Bali, Indonesia on October 11, Jim Yong Kim, the President of the World Bank Group has expressed that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has “huge potential” and that the bank should stay abreast with innovative technologies.

Kim stressed the need to eradicate poverty while improving overall prosperity. He pointed out that “there are innovations in the technological world that can help us leapfrog generations of bad practice, generations that would take forever in terms of reducing corruption.”

Kim said “We talked about cryptocurrencies, but we think distributed ledger has huge potential and we issued the first blockchain bond in August, where we created, allocated, transferred and managed the entire bond through blockchain technology.”

The President further opined that the implementation of blockchain technology assisted the group minimize paperwork and costs. Furthermore, he said that it is “something that can be extremely helpful” in the future. He acknowledged, however, that the bank is lagging behind the latest developments, particularly in a way that would assist their clients take advantage of the “great things that are coming out.”

Kim believes that the goal of World Bank is to build global access to financial services by 2020 and, according to him, this can happen only with deeper engagement with the technology world.
It can be remembered that the World Bank and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) had recently distributed a public bond entirely on a blockchain. The $73.16 million deal includes two-year bonds that supposedly settled August 28 and carry a yield of 2.251%.

Following the successful completion of the deal on the blockchain-platform, Arunma Oteh, a treasurer at the World Bank, told “will continue to seek ways to leverage emerging technologies to make capital markets more secure and efficient.”

Interestingly, the World Bank President had earlier criticized crypto currencies. While speaking with CNBC last October, Kim communicated his bullish views about blockchain technology, while citing the risks of crypto derivatives such as Bitcoin. He said

“Blockchain technology is something that everyone is excited about, but we have to remember that Bitcoin is one of the very few instances [of blockchain’s use in currency]. And the other times when blockchain was used they were basically Ponzi schemes, so it’s very important that if we go forward with it, we’re sure that it’s not going to be used to exploit.”