Promoting Blockchain Technology in the Region: Caribbean Blockchain Alliance

“Not everyone understands how the internet works but everyone uses it.” [Stefen Deleveaux, President Caribbean Blockchain Alliance]

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Blockchain technology will eventually become as commonplace as the internet says Stefen Deleveaux of Caribbean Blockchain Alliance (CBA).

As President and CEO of CBA, he acknowledges that the road will be long but adoption may happen faster than we think. Much like how Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) technology was first used in the early 1970s in very specialised situations but is now known in everyday use as the internet, so blockchain will evolve.

CBA Work

Caribbean Blockchain Alliance is an NGO “dedicated to promoting the adoption of blockchain in the region. Stefen says it began as a small informal community of people in the region who were interested in the technology. Now there is a mandate to educate about and to advocate for the use of blockchain.

He says that the CBA is currently very focused on engaging with student communities, specifically university students. That’s understandable since, as far as new technologies go, student communities are often the first to adopt and drive usage. Many are already familiar with or involved in cryptocurrency trading, cryptocurrencies being one of the best known use cases of blockchain.

The Premise of Blockchain

Outside of a new generation of youth, central banks in the region, grappling with the disadvantages of relying on intermediary banks for cross-border transactions are also noticing the value of blockchain.

But why? How does blockchain work and what makes it so attractive? Stefen explains the technology’s premise,

“…the whole idea of it basically is that, whatever you do, whether you’re in a community engaging with someone on the internet, there is this layer of trust, someone you have to trust, as you go about your day, even online. If I want to send you a payment for example, I have to trust my bank, to be able to do that. I have to trust your bank, I have to trust PayPal, there’s always some form of trust, there’s always some entity that I have to trust or some entity in between…So what blockchain allows is for us to have this engagement without necessarily trusting each other…with Blockchain it means that things will happen as they should.”

In essence, Blockchain offers the promise of tamper-free, secure transactions, financial and otherwise. These transactions are all peer-to-peer, direct from one party to another, all visible on the open network, no middlemen needed. So blockchain as Stefen notes is “basically a network of value” and not just simply one of communication as we know the current internet to be.

Current and possible uses

So back to the Central banks. Having to rely on international banks to facilitate cross-border transactions has become more and more arduous as those banks themselves have become less interested in the region, perceiving it as risky. Moving physical cash manually or even in the current digital ways is costly. Digital currencies are thought to be a solution to this problem. But not just any digital currencies; currencies backed by Central Banks.

In the region, two Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have already been issued, “Dcash” by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and the “sand dollar” by the Central Bank of The Bahamas. These are both blockchain-based and are simply digital versions of the physical cash.

The sand dollar was the first to be rolled out with Dcash coming a few weeks later. In a Bloomberg article  capturing an interview with Bahamas Central Bank Governor John Rolle he noted that, “In many cases it’s necessary for people to understand the security – that a digital transaction can be superior to cash in terms of the audit trail and your ability to recover payments if there is fraud or loss of some kind.”

Also in the Caribbean there is growing interest in NFTs or non-fungible tokens, which are also blockchain based. They allow a way to capture value in digital artworks and other collectibles and secure the intellectual property of the original.

CBA has been fulfilling some of its educational mandate via Youtube Live discussions with topics including “Blockchain voting, decentralised identity and Universal Basic Income”, “Introduction to NFTs” and “Digital Asset Regulation”. These explore the wider uses and challenges associated with broadening blockchain use.

As Stefen points out, people now associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies but,

“it goes far beyond. This technology will not only provide opportunities and easier ways to interact, or more trustless ways to engage with government agencies, for example…this technology will also increase human coordination, especially going from country to country or region to region. It will provide new ways of funding education, scientific research… It will transform how organisations operate and interact. It will transform how communities grow and build and interact with each other and I definitely think this technology is going to be at the core of every innovation in the next, say 100 years.” 

Blockchain, the Pivot Event, the future 

The 2020 Pivot Event only looked ahead to the next 20 years of Caribbean development but of course blockchain innovations took centre stage in the groups exploring digital transformation. From digital identities to underwater manufacturing, moonshots explored how blockchain could offer new opportunities for the region.

Stefen was a part of one of these groups and he was thrilled to be in an environment where he could interact with many other Caribbean future makers outside his circle and brainstorm expansive ideas for the region’s future.

It’s a future he envisions where, “we have not just more technology but also this idea of autonomous communities, people interacting with each other in a less and less dependent way where we’re actually empowered to do more or we’re empowered to build more, or sustain more in our environment.”