Greetings from a new Scottish fintech
Blog by Adam Greenberg, founder of SageCity
Welcome to our first blog post and a big thank you to Fintech Scotland for inviting us into the community. We are an early stage business and have been really touched by the warm welcome we have received from everyone in the community when we attended the fintech fusion event on Thursday.
One of the most explosive growths in the fintech sector in recent years has been the emergence of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Our team have gravitated around the industry since 2013 and we've seen the technology evolve from initial Proof of work systems to smart contracting all the way through to DAG technology and mimble-wimble protocol (We didn't make that last one up).
Blockchain technology is often heralded as the beginning of a new technological era and it has now reached a point where the stage is set for some good old-fashioned adoption. At SageCity, our focus is on bridging the gap between the technology and those who could truly benefit from it. Edinburgh has a vibrant and successful startup industry with some amazing ideas for the future and we've been fortunate enough to rub shoulders with a few and offer our support in their vision. Since our inception in August, we've been working with local Edinburgh based businesses who are facing challenges which are limiting their business potential by taking the time to listen and design blockchain solutions which are not only successful but efficient and sustainable for the future.
Blockchain had become a bit of a buzzword in recent times with a lot of loosely linked terms tossed around alongside it and that makes it difficult to decipher and comprehend. At its root, we like to think of blockchain as the swiss army knife of ledgers because of the multiple functions and purposes it can serve. Blockchain technology at its core has three key qualities which depending on the situation can offer a number of long and short term benefits to businesses, especially startups and those looking for a competitive edge.
It’s adaptable
Blockchains are system agnostic meaning they can be adapted and managed where and when required. Their primary function is often finance related but can equally be data or communications orientated. They can be the top dog running the show or compliment an existing system, be public or private and in some cases, both. The key advantage here is that unlike typical traditional solutions, blockchain technology is extremely flexible and can often be adapted and built upon with minimal difficulty.
It's cheap to operate
In most cases, we can design systems where the only maintenance cost related to a blockchain is the electricity that the computer or server consumes to remain online. Also, depending on the business model, these costs could be cancelled out by the issuance of tokens as a "reward" for those running the blockchain and creating forms of circular economies within the overall business' ecosystem.
Its reliable and secure
Blockchains come in many shapes and sizes but they are almost always designed to be peer to peer. This means that the network has no single point of failure which can be crucial for modern businesses. The nature of peer to peer makes sure that the integrity of the data stored within is virtually untamperable and that content is also heavily encrypted making the blockchain an ideal candidate to be reliable and secure.
Our long term vision is to be able to provide tailored blockchain solutions to startups and businesses around the globe and make deployment a quick and hassle free experience. We've got some interesting concepts in the works which we are looking forward to sharing soon which will not only be useful for our endeavours but could be utilised by other Fintech companies who offer industry leading products and solutions.
Hopefully you've found this introduction into SageCity and blockchain interesting and hopefully even enjoyable. We are proud to be part of the Scottish Fintech community and looking forward to sharing our journey and helping others on theirs too. We love talking blockchain so if you have any questions you want to bounce off us we'd be happy to help at team@sagecity.ioand sure to follow us on twitter @teamsagecity to stay in the loop.
