There seems to be an international race on at the moment for the first country to become a serious player in the cryptocurrency revolution. Of course, Japan are leading that race by a mile, however, they don’t seem to be so intent on winning it anyway?Either way, Israel do keep cropping up on the crypto-radar as a country that is investing time, effort and money into exploring the potential for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in the country. The Times of Israel have recently published a blog post that discusses how Israel fairs in this race, including some of the things that they believe are currently setting Israel back. Once these problems are addressed, perhaps Israel will become the first country to truly adopt cryptocurrency, who knows?According to The Times of Israel:
“Israel’s startups are helping push cryptocurrency to new heights, with many experts claiming that blockchain applications are on the rise. Clearing and settlement systems are being introduced, and the evolution of applications that revolve around blockchain technology are becoming significant.”Interestingly, the article also refers to the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, in reference to blockchain technology disrupting banks, who says:
“It is not going to disrupt banks. Instead, we are trying to revolutionize the ways people are using banks all across the world through this blockchain technology.”See the full article for yourself, here- http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-becomes-integral-cog-in-cryptocurrency/The problems that The Times of Israel believe are holding back however, you guessed it- cyber crime. They do believe that the risk of crypto-jacking and malicious mining (to name some examples) is the one thing that is preventing the government, the central bank and Israeli people from really delving into blockchain technology. Of course, until these issues are addressed, we very well know that no country will really truly adopt cryptocurrency. Another interesting point The Times of Israel raises:
“There’s also a concern that blockchain will not allow Israel to comply with the “right to be forgotten” laws in the European Union. Distributed ledgers do not allow information to be erased, and some banks claim that ledgers do not scale to the volume needed to handle big bank transactions.”This in turn, seems to be something the Israeli government are wary about.Overall, Israel could very well spearhead a bit of a crypto revolution. As The Times of Israel state, this can’t happen whilst crime is so rife and likewise, this is a sentiment that we believe is reflected worldwide. No country will want to adopt a system that is prone to failure, through criminal engagement, so, therefore, until we fix this, Israel join a long queue of countries waiting to get ahead of this technology. Investment Disclaimer