There is inconsistency of policy and action of government over Blockchain technology and digital money - Bitcoin transactions and the law and rule also not favourable for high technology financial transactions. The issue need due attention to facilitate development of BCT and facilitate widely used for remittance of many from expatriates and small e-commerce service exporters.

1. Sunday, January 21, 2018
https://dailyasianage.com/news/104827/blockchain-technology-and-bitcoin-currency
Blockchain technology and Bitcoin currency
M S Siddiqui
The present advancement of technology has changes the financial sector rapidly and the century old
paper money is under challenge due to introduction of digital money. The electronic transfer of
money through credit / debit cards and some other transaction platform like PayPal are replacing the
paperless currency transactions.
The latest invasion of virtual currency (VC) is another step of replacing paper currency in local and
overseas transactions. The technology base of this soft money and with rapid spread of Internet-
based commerce and mobile technology facilitate the use of VC.
The overseas media reported that Bangladesh has decided to go for advanced technology and plans
to work with a Zurich-based company to develop a system based on blockchain technology (BCT)
for public services. Blockchain technology holds the potential to reduce the time and cost required to
access public services online, including financial services and digital identification.
A BCT focused on Fintech start-up in Australia recently demonstrated their remittance platform to a
leading Bank in Bahrain. They have converted Bahrain Dinar to Bangladesh Taka (BDT) and
transferred to a digital cryptographic DTD wallet account. The money has been withdrawn as cash
from Taka wallet. The platform called PaySHATM digital commerce platform is integrated with
Bitcoin's Blockchain.

2. United Commercial Bank Ltd in Bangladesh introduced Upay, a digital payment system. Upay has
been implemented to promote cashless and universal i.e. anytime-anywhere payments using mobile
phones in Bangladesh. Customers can use Upay to make payments for goods/Services from
physical/online merchants. S/he can also make consumer, corporate and government payments e.g.
electric bill, gas bill, mobile recharge, money transfer, ticketing, loan repayment, inward remittance,
insurance premium, payment of salaries, social benefits etc.
Bangladesh is under UN financed program. UN has announced the first five start-ups to receive
investment through its $9 million innovation fund. Unicef, the UN's children's charity, will be giving
seed funding to companies working to create affordable mobile connectivity, blockchain in childhood
development, data collection in maternal care, and technology to help improve literacy skills to some
countries including Bangladesh.
Blockchain is a safe and open method to store data for facilitates transaction of VC through
maintaining records like a ledger. The process allows storing data in consecutive blocks, like a
chain, and the data ownership is secured. Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, underpins
many virtual currencies, but can also be used within private, permissioned ledger systems. The
Harvard Business Review describes it as "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions
between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way".
Blockchains are potentially suitable for the recording of events, medical records, and other records
management activities, such as identity management, transaction processing, documenting
provenance, food traceability or voting. There are opportunities for blockchain in land record
management in our country.
Blockchain is a safe and open method to store data. The process allows storing data in consecutive
blocks, like a chain, and the data ownership is secured. It is a highly secured distributed system and
an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just
financial transactions but virtually everything of value and Internet of things (IoT). IoT is a system of
interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are
provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring
human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
Blockchain can help alleviate security concerns, enable third party verification and avoid multiple
inputs of the same information across devices. When paper money was introduced several centuries
back, it took a long time to accept the true power of money and how this can be utilized as a tool to
help people in sharing and trading their resources among themselves. One of the disadvantages of
paper money is verifying the basis of its value.
The way we know someone has money is generally through a statement kept in a bank ledger. But
by now we know that information can be manipulated in those ledgers, making private transactions
with money or titles on an asset vulnerable to frauds. As BCT is built on the concept of sharing
information across parties and consensus during transactions, it saves on reconciliation cost
between banks and prevents losses because of documentary frauds.
Blockchain technology can fulfil some of the conditions that his team thinks are essential for a digital
payment platform for the poor. Such systems would be more inclusive and useful than the mobile
money platforms that currently exist in emerging markets, such as Kenya's M-Pesa and
Bangladesh's bKash. M-Pesa is hugely popular in its home market and has successfully linked many
unbanked people to the formal economy, but it restricts users to sending money to other M-Pesa
users.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation only wants to foster the creation of these systems, not operate

3. or manage them. These platforms must be regulated so they will be accepted by governments and
banks and can be monitored to prevent things like money laundering and terrorism financing. At
present two billion people worldwide don't have bank accounts and must conduct their transactions
in cash?which can be difficult to manage and presents safety issues. Blockchain technology can
provide banking services through mobile phone and other devices.
Experts have opinion that blockchain technology underlying the digital currency Bitcoin, give them
access to financial services. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks so, and it is modifying
blockchain, which is essentially a secure, reliable digital record-keeping system, to bring the poor
into the formal economy. A project from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aims to use distributed
ledger technology to help the two billion people worldwide who lack bank accounts.
The initiative is part of the Gates Foundation's Financial Services for the poor program?specifically,
its Level One Project, which gives governments and central banks a framework for creating national
digital payments systems that anyone can use, even those who live on a few dollars a day.
Bangladesh also attains knowledge and technology of BCT. In a recent seminar attended by Minister
of ICT on the context a local company developing software of Blockchain for a overseas company. It
has started developing artificial intelligence and blockchain-based digital investment platform for the
Dubai-based Smartcrowd. BCT provides tamper-evident recording of the linked transaction history in
a distributed network, and has the potential to disrupt the ?nancial business applications. Sound
theoretical underpinnings of BCT such as fault-tolerant distributed computing and consensus have
been studied for the past two decades.
Bangladesh has huge potential in BCT as the country stepped into the world of artificial intelligence
(AI) technology. The question un-answered whether Bangladesh can adapt Blockchain technology
and whether the regulators are ready to accept it? There are opportunities for blockchain in land
record management in our country.
Bangladesh authority refused to be connected through undersea cable in 1990 and missed out on
the internet and technological boom and thus fell behind many other countries. The digital
Bangladesh initiative of present leadership created a better atmosphere but the management level is
far behind the expectation. Bangladesh is currently one of the few countries in the world that is yet to
embrace this efficiency-enhancing technology.
Recently Bangladesh authority has banned Bitcoin transaction and reminded the user of possible
violation of Foreign Exchange Regulation and Anti-money laundering laws but the policy maker may
think the potential of the technology and develop a customised Blockchain technology for non-bank
poor people to bring them into formal economy facilitating remittance and other transactions.
There is inconsistency of policy and action of government over Blockchain technology and digital
money - Bitcoin transactions and the law and rule also not favourable for high technology financial
transactions. The issue need due attention to facilitate development of BCT and facilitate widely
used for remittance of many from expatriates and small e-commerce service exporters.
The writer is a legal economist. Email: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com