2018 Kolkata Global Blockchain Consensus Congress: Day 2 Roundup

By Sumedha Bose

The two day Blockchain Conference organized by the West Bengal Governement, wrapped up on the 19th of December. It was two days full of intense sessions on blockchain technology and its implementation across various sectors.

Tradition merged seamlessly with technology at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre and saw the congregation of various industry experts under one roof.

Day 2 began on a high note after a very successful first day of the event. There were some crowdpulling sessions lined up throughout the day.

The first session was a keynote address delivered by Kouichi Sakurai from the Kyushu University, Japan. He spoke on ‘Security, Privacy and Trust of Blockchain’. He also discussed how blockchain can be taught in colleges and universities as a single course.

His session was followed by the keynote address of Rajesh Nambiar – General Manager and Global Leader, IBM. He delivered a brilliant lecture on “Towards the economic utopia of a waste-less world’.

He predicted that

‘blockchain will remove the  limitations of trust mechanisms enforced through human intervention, which include vulnerabilities to cognitive limitations and possibilities of tampering.’

Speaking on IBM’s contribution to the blockchain sector, he said,

Next up, the gentlemen from Chaintope, Malaysia,  Mr. Junya Yoshizaki and Mr. Saurav Kumar Tomar, spoke on ‘Quantifying social capital with blockchain’ & ‘Blockchain in energy sector’. Yoshizaki said

“The future venture with regards to renewable energy and blockchain technology is about cross border energy trading”

Surav Kumar Tomar discussed how they are targetting universities and colleges where there is a lot of potential in terms of harnessing the social capital that these students possess.

A key highlight of the day was the address of the Honorable Finance Minister of West Bengal, Dr. Amit Mitra. He spoke at length about he is both skeptical about the practical use case of blockchain, but also equally hopeful about the change that it can bring in the world.

The event also saw the exciting launch of the release of PwC and Webel co-branded thought leadership paper and E&Y and Webel booklet on Blockchain.

An event like this draws the attention of the youth and the general populus of the city towards a technology as important as blockchain. We hope to see more such events in the future.