Global Blockchain Congress to be held at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre from Dec 18
Kolkata: The state Information Technology and Electronics (IT&E) department will organise a two-day Global Blockchain Congress at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre on December 18 and 19.
The aim of the event is to build a holistic ecosystem on Blockchain technology in Bengal, through knowledge sharing and providing a single platform for all stakeholders - industry, academia, startups, corporates, governments and investors, to understand, collaborate and explore the potential of Blockchain technology.
State IT&E minister Amit Mitra is scheduled to deliver the valedictory speech on Wednesday, the second day of the programme. The minister will also release the PWC and Webel co-branded thought leadership paper on Blockchain.
"We have taken a focused approach towards leveraging Blockchain technology to establish Bengal as a frontrunner in becoming an emerging technology hub. Among the financial institutions, almost 50 percent of the banks are expected to use this technology by 2020 and there is a huge transformation expected to take place in the non-financial sector as well, within the next few years. Blockchain is expected to create a significant impact in the job market as knowledge of this disruptive technology is in high demand in numerous sectors of the industry," said a senior official of the IT&E department.
The Global Blockchain Congress will see Blockchain experts, corporates, startups and individuals around the globe sharing their insights on the technology, applications, use cases and best practices on capacity building and awareness generation. "We are developing several Blockchain based applications and will come up with a Centre of Excellence on Block-
chain in the state," the official added.
It may be mentioned that the IT&E department has identified that Blockchain technology can be harnessed in maintaining transparency in crowdfunding management of any project.
The first live application in the country on project based crowdfunding management on Blockchain was created by Webel under the aegis of the IT&E department. The solution leveraged the technology to ensure that every transaction made by the donor is not only secured through the art of complex cryptography, but also is completely transparent and immutable.
Blockchain is a vast distributed ledger or database running on millions of devices, where not just information but anything of value - money, titles, deeds, music, art, intellectual property etc. can be stored securely and privately. The world is looking at Blockchain as the next biggest disruptive technology after the internet.
