O hopping on to next item of business, can I advise the chamber the presiding officer has selected two urgent questions for answer today? The first will be taken as the next item of business. The second will be taken following the public petitions committee debate. As a consequence, decision time will be at 5.30 pm. A revised business programme has been issued to all members. Mori Gugion ddim oedd raise y cwestiwn? Mori Gugion ddim oedd gweithio oherwydd... Mae ein ddim o flynyddoedd o'ch weithio o'ch gyfnodau oedd ddechrau iechyd gan Ysgrifennu UK i gael gydag ym Methwngol i'r llai strnoddau regulau ym unigaf, fe oedd yn myg i'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'r rôl iawn. Mae ein ddim o fysg sydd wedi'u tapiwn i'ch gweithio i'r pwg ysgrifennu UK i ddim o'r pwg The Scottish Government put forward proposals in December 2016 in its publication, Scotland's Place in Europe, which set out our view that if Brexit was unavoidable, the UK as a whole should remain within the European single market and the customs union, and if the remainder of the UK chose not to do this, we set out a mechanism through which Scotland could continue to benefit from membership of the single market and the customs union. However, subsequently in her Lancaster house speech, the Prime Minister, without any consultation of forewarning, ruled out single market and customs union membership. Much of the damage and chaos that has been caused of the past year is a direct result of the red lines that the Prime Minister set out then. After our proposals for Scottish membership were tabled at the JMC EN in January 2016, there were limited further discussions between officials in the UK and Scottish Governments. Two months later, the UK dismissed the proposals as unworkable without any convincing reasons. We fully support the Good Friday agreement in all aspects, and we welcome the proposals of yesterday, which sought to ensure that there would be no return to a hard border in Northern Ireland, and demonstrated that the principle of a differentiated approach, which we set out in December last year, was viable within the scope of the UK's future relationship with the EU. Whilst the detail remains unclear, the Irish Government has been clear that it would facilitate free movement of people, goods and services across the border to Northern Ireland. On that basis, we understand that the deal provides for a dynamic regulatory compliance between Northern Ireland and the EU, Racky, now and in the future, but it also provides for an agreed form of dispute resolution that could include the European Court of Justice. We will be pressing for further clarity on those and other issues as a matter of urgency. Of course, Presiding Officer, Scotland did not vote to leave the EU. The best solution would be to stay. However, in the case of a continued move towards Brexit, there is overwhelming support in this Parliament and across the country to retain Scotland in the UK's place in the Single Market and Customs Union. Therefore, it is time for all of us, both here in Scotland and across the UK, at this crucial time to speak up for what is in everybody's interest and reject a hard Brexit. It is time for Scotland to speak with one voice, and I would encourage all those who realise that the Single Market and Customs Union membership is vital to say so and to work to achieve it. I thank the minister for that answer. Given discussion and debate over the past few days, I do not think that it is fair that it can be one rule for one constituent part of the UK and another rule for everyone else. Last year, the UK Government committed to full engagement with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and Northern Ireland, the executive on the UK's exit from the European Union. The four Governments agreed to work together towards an agreed UK approach to the Brexit negotiations through the joint ministerial committee. Does the minister think that there has been full engagement with the Scottish Government on the latest developments or that we have a UK-agreed approach? We should stress at the outset that the situation in Northern Ireland stands on its own and has its own history and its own need for a solution that respects, for example, the Good Friday agreement and the great benefits that have been brought by that. That also stands alongside the single membership of the single market. It is a membership of the single market that has allowed the border to be completely porous in the way that it is with 275 crossing points, I think. That having been said, quite clearly we are endeavouring to work on solutions that have been made more difficult by the EU withdrawal bill and we have been making progress on those. I think that it is now a moot point what yesterday's chaos actually means and that will have to be factored into the discussions that we are having. There is due to be a meeting of the joint ministerial committee next Tuesday and, obviously, we would hope that at that meeting we could explore these issues, get some clarity about what the situation is and find a way to move forward. It is very difficult to negotiate with people who seem to change their position all the time and who do not inform others of that position. What, of course, we saw yesterday was a chronic failure to keep everybody informed about what the situation was. We ourselves have suffered over a period of time from not having the information that we are required to have. Maybe that will be an object lesson to the UK Government, maybe it will change. Mary Gougeon. Thank you minister for that answer. I would also like to ask the minister what he believes the consequences will be for jobs and living standards in Scotland if the UK is to leave the single market and the customs union and, in particular, what that will mean for rural constituencies such as mine of Angus North and Merns. Minister. I also represent a rural constituency. Indeed, some might call it an extreme rural constituency of Argyll and Bute. I am very worried, as all MSPs should be, about the effects of their constituencies, rural and urban, if we were to leave the single market and the customs union. We published material last year in Scotland's place in Europe, we published analysis and other information over the last 12 months. Just recently we published evidence to the Migration Advisory Committee, which puts a very stark picture of the difficulties that we will have if there are restrictions on migration. In all those circumstances, the best solution would of course be to stay within the EU, but the compromise solution, which we put forward 12 months ago and it seems ever more relevant, is to remain within the single market and the customs union. It is something that has been widely supported across this chamber and I am very grateful for that. I think that that is extremely important. Indeed, I do not anticipate the questions from the Conservatives, but I am mindful of the fact that just days after the vote, Ruth Davidson said that retaining our place in the single market should be the overriding priority, and I do not think that that has changed. If the chamber were to speak with one voice on membership of the single market and the customs union, I think that it would be very effective indeed. Thank you. I have seven members wishing to ask questions. I am going to stop this at 2.25. I will have to move on to the topical question. I call for succinct questions, please, to allow everything. Jackson Carlaw, followed by Lewis MacDonald. I somewhat unexpectedly agree with Marie Gougeon's opening remarks. Scottish Conservatives believe that regulatory alignment in a number of specific areas is the requirement for a frictionless border, then the Prime Minister should conclude that this must be on a UK-wide basis. Yesterday, the First Minister hastily took to Twitter to once again demand a separate Brexit deal for Scotland. We know how that would benefit the SNP's political objectives, but can the minister explain how separate arrangements for Scotland and England would be beneficial to the rest of us, given that trade with Britain is worth four times more to Scotland than the whole of the European Union? I am going to be very constructive in my answers to Jackson Carlaw, no matter how much he tempts me not to be. The reality of the situation is that the position that the First Minister has laid out yesterday and today is exactly the same as the position that we have had for the last year in this document, which I am sure he has read, marked and inwardly digested Scotland's place in Europe. The position is this. Our preference is to stay in EU. If that is not what is to happen, and I think that the evidence for doing so is stronger and stronger, then a whole UK approach to staying within the single market and the customs union is what is required. That would be regulatory convergence or lack of regulatory divergence, or continued observation of the ackee, call it what you will. That would be the best solution. In the circumstances in which we are in today, that is also the best solution to resolve the difficulty that has arisen in Ireland and Northern Ireland, because it squares the circle, the impossibility of making one offer to Ireland and another offer to Northern Ireland. The only way out of that is to make sure that the whole of these islands are in the single market and the customs union. If the Scottish Conservatives will support that, I think that that would be a very considerable step forward. They have supported it in the past, because then that resolves the issue. We also know that there can be no cherry picking of the single market. The idea that appears to be being floated at the moment in Downing Street, and there are so many ideas being floated in Downing Street, I am surprised that they are not underwater, but the reality of the situation is that if they are trying to cherry pick, to take agriculture, for example, and to take elements of trade and elements of energy regulation, they will not be able to do so. There is a difference between what is in and what the member says in the secondary position, but I take the intervention. They are in the Good Friday agreement. Yes, they are in the Good Friday agreement, but the Good Friday agreement, of course, goes alongside the membership of the single market. Not everything is in the Good Friday agreement, and that is a difficulty. The solution to that is a single market membership for the whole of the UK. The position of the First Minister is then articulated in Scotland's place in Europe. If that is not available, it is axiomatic that those places that can have a different arrangement should be allowed to do so. That is the position that we find ourselves in. However, a single market membership for the whole of the UK would be the way out of this incredible mess that is being created by Theresa May, and I urge it on every member of this chamber. Lewis MacDonald followed by Patrick Harvie. What matters here, of course, is to draw the right conclusions from current events. I hope that the minister will agree that it would be a mistake to use the chaos of Theresa May's failed deal on Northern Ireland yesterday simply to push for a differential deal here, too. Is the right conclusion not to say that if it is good enough for Northern Ireland, it is good enough for the whole of the UK? If the proposals that were floated by Mrs May yesterday were indeed designed to protect jobs and business in Northern Ireland, surely we should seek to do the same in Scotland, in England and in Wales, and should achieving that not be the focus of all the efforts of the Scottish Government going forward? I am in the curious position of hearing my own words echoed back in that question. That is precisely what I have just said, that a differentiated deal is at the end of the road. We are forcing the pace by trying to say, let's have a deal for the whole of the UK, and we should do it. It is also wise—I know that the member has urged me in the past—to be prepared for any circumstance. I be prepared as the motto of the Boy Scouts. I was never a Boy Scout, but I recognise the motto. We are preparing ourselves. We have to be realistic that if there is not that solution, then there has to be another solution. That is why the document, and I commend, for example, Paragra's 169171 in that regard, we wish to have a UK-wide solution. That is what we have said. It is the best thing for Northern Ireland for the rest of us in terms of membership of the single market and the customs union. If, however, that is ruled out, then it would be wrong to have entirely differentiated solutions in one place and not in another, not least because it would be very damaging to Scotland. The effect of a differentiated solution in one part and not in another could be deleterious to Scotland. I am sure that the member would not urge on this chamber actions that would be damaging to Scotland, but I agree that the whole of these islands should be in the single market and the customs union. We urge that on all, but particularly on the Labour Party. I have to say that I think that the Labour Party were to adopt that, to be a standard that it would carry in this particular campaign. That would move that on very considerably indeed. The First Minister made that point in a tweet to Jeremy Corbyn this morning, and I repeat it to Richard Leonard. It seems to me that those who are angrily asserting the difference between differentiated models, between parts of the UK and full UK single market membership, are missing the central point that those are now the only two options credible. Last week, the cabinet secretary spoke at the Finance and Constitution Committee in positive terms about the re-energised process in the joint ministerial committee on European negotiations. Did that meeting of the GMC address specifically the question of to what extent differentiated options are technically achievable, and if it did not, will he ensure that at next week's meeting of the GMC, that meeting does not end without a clear answer of the question? To what extent are differentiated options on the table or is UK single market membership still on the table? There has not been a meeting of the GMC since I gave evidence to the committee, but there has been a meeting between John Swinney and myself, and Damian Greene and David Mundell. Quite clearly, we were looking at the way in which we could take forward the withdrawal bill and the discussions on the withdrawal bill and the frameworks. An hour is a long time in Brexit. That was well before we had this situation with Ireland, which we at the time, and I said in evidence to the committee last week, I thought that it was a pending difficulty that was coming towards us very fast, and so it has happened. I cannot imagine going to the GMC next week and not making it crystal clear, as I am sure my colleague Mark Drakeford in Wales will make it clear too, that what has happened in the last 24 hours has changed things yet again and will require to be addressed very seriously indeed. In fact, there must be a resolution of that, but I agree with Patrick Harvie that there are only two possible solutions. One of them is to have the differentiated solution, the better one is to have the solution for the whole of the UK. Anything else will not resolve that issue. Again, I am grateful for the support that Patrick Harvie has given to this. I urge others to give their support, because together I think that we can make a substantial difference on this matter. Willie Rennie, followed by Daniel Johnson. We do not really know what the Conservatives and their DUP allies are doing, but neither does it seem do they. We have a mounting set of broken promises on Europe. First of all, the £350 million for the NHS is now the dismissal of any scaremongering, apparently, about the Irish border. In that context, does the minister not think that there is a third option? That third option should be that the British people should have the final say, whether that gull is appropriate to accept or should it be left to the Conservatives and their DUP allies? As the member knows, I have not certainly not rolled out supporting that option. I do think that there is a need for people to reflect very seriously upon the changed circumstances in which we are in. An opinion poll yesterday, as a member will know, showed that, in Scotland now, a substantially greater majority against Brexit than there was even on 23 June last year. I think that there is some indication that that is also happening elsewhere. I quoted on radio this morning the case of Grimsby, a town that voted 70 per cent for leaving, but the fishing industry is now saying that it does not wish to have the disadvantages of leaving. People are genuinely seeing what the difficulties are. I am very struck by the number of people who have commented to me on the difficulties that will be caused by the way in which the competition for the European capital of culture has come to an end. People are seeing the effect of what is taking place, and they will wish to reflect on that. There may be a number of ways in which they can do so, but the member is also right that the chaos of that is a major factor in people's confidence in politics. That is something that Theresa May needs to reflect on very seriously indeed. There is a weekly, sometimes daily crisis of confidence in the UK Government. That cannot be good for the generality of politics. It would be an example—I say it again, Presiding Officer—if this chamber could come together on the issue of the single market and the customs union and be able to say that we know that that is what we want to get delivered and that we will try and get it delivered. I am still meeting with representatives of the other political parties and I am glad to do so. When we meet again this week, I hope that we will reflect on that, because that stance, which was taken right across the chamber before and after the referendum, is something that could unite us in a clear view of what should happen now. People are looking for that clear view of what should happen now, because all they are getting is chaos and confusion from elsewhere. The minister has a number of occasions through this session that stated his position that differentiated settlement is one option further down the line. But what assessment has the Scottish Government made of the economic impact of Scotland having a ceasing to have regulatory alignment with the rest of the UK? It is quite obvious that we have assessed what the difficulties are of ceasing to have regulatory environment with the EU. We are in a position where our own paper and future papers have reflected on all the issues, but I would ask the member to think about this. I have made it absolutely clear that the best solution is to have regulatory alignment across these islands. That is the work that we have been trying to achieve. That is the position that we laid out. We are grateful to the support of the Labour Party frequently on the issues of the single market in the chamber. If we were to focus on what might unite us to achieve that, we would probably achieve more than focusing on what divides us. Here is an opportunity for the chamber to achieve something, and I hope that we can do it together. Does the minister accept that there is a credible alternative to the Tory Brexit shambles that one respects the result of the referendum? Secondly, it resolves the issue between the Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland border issue. It challenges the economic deficit that will come from Brexit and stops further austerity. That is supporting permanent membership of the single market and the customs union for the entire UK. Not only that, there is a natural majority across the UK for permanent membership of the single market and the customs union. We could find ways to disagree, but I am not going to disagree with you. That is absolutely what should take place. I have described the single market solution as not transition but destination. I think that that would be another way of putting what the member has just put to me, and that is available to us. It is quite clear that, if the UK was, to say, contrary to completely erroneous information given by David Jones this morning on a television programme, I was under him, it is perfectly possible for the UK to say that we now see that we wish that the best result would be for us to stay in the single market and the customs union. There is a mechanism so to do through EFTA and EEA membership. I am absolutely sure that a way could be found to do that. That would solve it. It would also create the circumstances in which negotiations become much clearer and much easier. The negotiations then are about a single market solution, a single market minus solution perhaps, but a single market solution, and that lays a completely clear path out. I am not going to disagree with Anna Sarwar almost uniquely. I am not going to disagree with Daniel Johnson. I am not going to disagree with Mr MacDonald. We are as one on that and I am very glad that we could unite on that issue of single market membership. That concludes the urgent question. We move on to the next item of business, which is topical questions.


Hello friends, Twitter subscribers and anybody else who watches my videos on the internet. My name is Daniel Rosal, I am a Jewish Israeli who moved to Israel from Ireland in 2015 and today I'm going to tackle I think one of the most difficult questions that's possible to ask about this conflict. What do people in the pro-Israel camp think about the spiralling death toll from the conflict in Gaza? If you really want to hear my perspective, please just take a minute to get through this part because it's going to turn a lot of people off, I can predict. But this has to be said. The death toll being reported from the Palestinian side is coming from a Hamas body, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Hamas for people who don't know is committed to the complete destruction and annihilation of the Jewish people in Israel. Hamas isn't in favor of a two-state solution, Hamas is in favor of a very specific version of a one-state solution which involves absolutely no Jews living in this part of the world. I'm not suggesting for a single moment that the death toll isn't big and that there aren't a large number of innocent Palestinians being killed in this conflict. However, I'm saying that if you consider the death toll, it's important to remember its source that is coming from Hamas. Why does this matter? Because in the Hamas worldview there isn't any meaningful difference between a competent member of one of the Palestinian militant brigades like Hamas's Al-Qasam brigade or an ordinary Ghazan. All Palestinians, all Ghazans in the Hamas worldview are Mujahideen, fighters, Jihadis in the struggle to eliminate Israel and therefore when they offer these numbers and reports, they're not tabulated based on that basis. If you take a large collective of people like most countries and with almost 10 million people Israel is certainly a fairly big country, you're going to get a wide variety of opinions. For sure there are some Israelis I think a very small minority who are happy to see Palestinian children dead but the vast vast majority of Israelis and me as well are very very unhappy and sad to see this lamentable loss of life. Unfortunately, Israel has been forced to conduct a war and people seem to be forgetting that war isn't pretty. It's also very important to understand the concept of proportionality in international humanitarian law to get some kind of idea of whether the amount of people being killed in the Gaza Strip is necessary and what's called proportionate. For those looking for an introduction to the concept the doctrine of proportionality in international humanitarian law or IHL, I recommend the videos of Natasha Hostdorf being posted by UKFLI. UKFLI is UK Lawyers for Israel. It is a partisan organization as the name suggests, but Natasha does a deep dive into proportionality as an international lawyer. It's a one hour video and she also interviews a former US Armed Forces commander who explains more about how that actually plays out on the battlefield. Proportionality is currently being misstated including by many world governments as simply being a body count. If 1400 Israelis were killed on October 7th then that means Israel has a right to kill 500, 600, 700, even people who seem to take that logic don't have exactly an answer as to what would be considered acceptable. But even looking at proportionality according to its real definition it's immensely nebulous. It's based not on a body count but on a strike by strike basis and is asked to consider whether this amazing reasonable military commander would consider the potential civilian death toll anticipated in a strike as reasonable given the circumstances and the potential military gain that would be gotten from achieving that strike. Unfortunately the word reasonable in various parts of this definition really leaves a lot of grey space for discussion. But that's why I think that a lot of countries who are prejudging Israel very harshly saying that it's being grossly disproportionate without having the first hand information from the front lines are being a little bit ridiculous. As somebody who hasn't participated in this battle in Gaza, sitting here in Jerusalem I don't have first hand insight into what the calculus looked like for every single one of those decisions. So for me to say that Israel is either being completely proportional or completely un-proportional I think is totally unrealistic. There is however plenty of evidence that Israel is doing a lot to attempt to minimize civilian life in the Gaza Strip. Why are women and children dying if Israel is doing all these things? I invite anybody to look at the Gaza Strip on Google Maps, look at the scale and see how small the place is. Then look at the population density and you'll quickly see that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Consider as well that Hamas has essentially turned the entire Gaza Strip into terrorist infrastructure with a massive underground network that is larger than some underground metro systems solely dedicated to moving fighters about and transporting rockets to be targeted at Israeli civilians. Finally, consider the fact that Hamas has been recorded on satellite imagery footage to be actually stopping civilians attempting to use the evacuation routes that the IDF has set up, as well as a fact that Hamas has repeatedly dressed in civilian clothing thereby endangering proximate civilians and even engaged in human shields using innocent Palestinian civilians as protection to attempt to get advantage in the military conflict. Hamas has even gone so far as to make military use of many of the largest hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including the Shifa Hospital, where it was positioning terrorists in the intensive care units the ICUs as decoy doctors and nurses and using decoy ambulances to avoid Israeli strikes. Under this climate, it becomes a little bit easier to understand why unfortunately civilians are dying in this conflict with Israel. I find it interesting that apparently no other armed force is being held to the absolutely impossible standard Israel is being held to by the international community in which it's being asked to adhere in real time and without other people knowing the details to some impossible imagined definition of proportionality that seems to constantly change but always work against Israel. Let me conclude with the question that I have for all these countries who are criticizing Israel from thousands of kilometers away without any insight into what's happening on the front lines of this battle. If you agree with me that Israel has a right to destroy the Hamas terrorist organization then what do you think that Israel should be doing differently? If you say that we should have a permanent ceasefire why do you think it's fair that ordinary Israelis like me should be asked to live indefinitely next to a terrorist organization bent on our destruction? If you agree that Israel has a military, legitimate military objective to pursue in the Gaza Strip then when you talk about proportionality and reasonableness what exactly is the yardstick you'd like us to be measured against because it seems to be very unclear as to what you consider proportionality. One facet of this conflict that I've criticized on many occasions is that people on either side of it the pro-Israel camp and the pro-Palestine camp seem to be pulled to the extremes and to subscribe to this belief that you have to be 100% for that side in order to be considered legitimately pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I think that's nonsense and makes a very muddy situation even more unclear because it just polarizes and forces people to maintain on tenuous arguments. I consider myself broadly pro-Israel I support 100% Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip however I'm a little bit uneasy about the number of casualties. At the same time I understand that I don't have firsthand information from the front lines and asking this very very impossible question to answer whether Israel is doing enough in order to avoid civilian casualties or whether it could be doing more. That's what I feel about it it's a very sad situation it's also very complicated and it's very difficult for the vast majority people without insight to actually make reasonable conclusions. Thanks for watching and if you want to get more videos from me on YouTube follow me as Daniel Rossell or on Twitter I'm tweeting from DanielXRossell


Hi guys, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Yes, waiting for a couple of minutes. I've already started recording so don't say anything you wouldn't want to say or rather don't say anything that you wouldn't want other people to hear and remember for the rest of you. We'll wait for a couple of minutes today because the meeting is at 10 o'clock. I think several people are not going to attend, but I do not know. I got a message. I got messages from several people saying that they won't be able to attend. I don't know whether it's because the meeting is at 10 o'clock or because whether, you know, people are getting back from vacation or on vacation before the last days of summer summer vacation. You can see the screen right. Yes. Who's the person on the iPhone. I don't know who that is. That's Natalia. Hello, Natalia. How are you? Do you have a nice vacation? I did indeed. Today was my first day back at work. Oh, I hope attending the Capital Markets SIG meeting is good for easing back into work. Yes. Since you were gone, we have had a couple of, I think one meeting and we've also had several people putting a lot of stuff onto the website for the projects. So I think I think I'm going to start right right away. Because it's better to do it this way, rather than wait for people who are going to be late. They can always listen to the recording to get any of the pulse of wisdom that we scatter. So the first thing to say is that we have, we are governed by the antitrust policy notice. I hope you can see it on your screen. And the only requirement for this is that we adhere to the antitrust policy. The only requirement for participation in this meeting. The other thing is all are welcome in the hypolygia community. And this is the part of our hypolygia code of conduct, which, which says that we have to be basically welcoming to everybody and be civil to people, even when we are disagreeing with them, if we are disagreeing with them. That's the only requirement. I mean, that's the other requirement. Sorry. Now, let's go over the, you know, the people who are on the call, let's introduce each other. And I just saw that Stan has joined. Hi Stan. I think we should start with Stan, since he's the one we just joined. Hi, so we're talking about the intros. So I'm Stan Lieberman. Work at CME group. So I'm focused on the DLT applications to the specifically the derivative exchange space. I've been doing quite a bit of research been involved with hypolygia for a few years. So I'm here to kind of see the space events. And this is the perfect place to discuss the use cases and the opportunities in the space. My name is Vipin Varokan. I had worked in a couple market space for maybe 15 years, developing front to back applications. So I'm familiar with a lot of the activity in the space and the limitations and problems with the application of blockchain technology to the space, as well as technical aspects of what it takes to put things in production in a heavily regulated enterprise. And I hope to bring some of that to the CMC. My other intros are in the digital identity space and I'm also the chair of the identity working group. And I've been working on various things in hypolygia for a while. I met Stan for the first time back in 2015, 2016, I think, when we did the first hypolygia hackathon. So let's go down the list. The next one is Natalia, who's also the vice chair of this group. Natalia, can you share your intro if you want to? I was from the Apologies. So my name is Natalia and I work on Capital Markets Origination, specifically in bond origination, all types of bonds, commercial paper and project finance. The interest of joining this group is basically because despite I work on the business origination side with issuers, I also need to understand all the technology changes and disruption on the settlement processes and that's why I'm interested in joining and participating and collaborating in this space despite I don't have a technical background. We definitely need people like you because technical only does not cut it because we may be building the wrong thing. The next one on the list is Kelly. My name is Kelly Cooper and I work also in a compliant regulatory space but education or higher education and I'm frankly a little bored after a lot of years of that and this is a nice fit and interesting both Capital Markets and Identity. Saptarshi. Hi, this is Saptarshi here. I work for Paramount Software Solutions and we're part of the Hyperlegic community for the last one year and I'm really excited. This is my first call with the Capital Markets Special Interest Group and looking forward to learn and if any way I may be able to contribute something. Thank you. Saptarshi, don't forget to add yourself to the list of participants on the meeting agenda. I've already got that going. I just haven't updated it but I'm on it. Okay, thanks. I just wanted to also the details of where Saptarshi works and also possible contact. Anyway, so according to our agenda which I created we are going to one, you know, one thing that we're going to do is we're going to talk to Natalia about the Vice-Chair business. So let us discuss. So the main thing about the Vice-Chair is that you know according to the charter anyway it's for the Vice-Chair to be running the calls if the chair is not available. For that, you know, you need to know how to claim the host role and to record and so on and so forth and also of course set up the agenda and the meeting. So you want to talk about what it means to you and also, you know, maybe we should have you run some of the meetings because that is a good way to set it up so that we can all benefit from your knowledge. Sure. So from my side it's the first time that I am using the space. So I would need to learn how to use it. I'm more than happy to set up the next meeting in two weeks time. So I could reach out to you maybe if I have any doubts on how to do that. I've been already looking through the page and trying to see the different applications that would definitely need some help but I would try with no issues. You know Kelly is an expert also in this running the meetings or doing scribing or meeting minutes and so on. So she would be a wonderful person for you to talk to in case you have any doubts and if I'm not reachable. And the next item on the agenda was called for volunteers to scribe but Kelly has already taken the ball by the bull by the horns and she is already doing, you know, scribing. The next one is this we are meant to launch and announce this couple of markets during Cybos in London on happening between the 23rd and the 26th. Mostly it will be Karen doing that but I can tell you that I'm planning to go but I haven't yet gotten a invitation or a ticket I need to apply for one. So if anybody knows apparently you can do it even if you're not not a member of Cybos but you have to give them a good enough reason and as part of launching this couple of markets we will share a short technical or launch blog I have already started working on it taking the charter which we have and I want to share the technical blog with you guys for a second and I want to get some reactions so the blog I have the draft here which is mostly the stuff that I took from the charter but I want to expand on the projects because that's where I think it's going to be a impact so please get back to me let's discuss what exactly needs to be in the blog either directly in person or as comments you're welcome to put whatever you want in there in order for us to have a feeling that it might be too elaborate what I'm putting here but for purposes of presentation in Cybos we will have just a short bunch of screens but the main idea would be to promote it so that more people join us from that world and Cybos as you know is a conference sponsored by Swift so there will be lots of participants usually so I want your reaction to this idea because I think our September theme is apparently fintech so any ideas on this would be welcome I guess nobody has got immediate reaction to this I guess my question is the target audience is to bring people in for a presentation is it amazing or should it look like a document because I've not been there before I think that's what I was saying I just started it as a document but I think it would be more effective to have some kind of set of slides which has imagery like you said we don't know if someone is going to present it or if someone non-affiliated would present it the slides would be different if you were there talking while people show the slides if someone else is showing the slides the slides are on a break so the slides themselves need to be the sum of both what they show and what you would say for all purposes we should assume that I'm not going to be there but I'm definitely trying to be there and we'll try to be there so there may be multiple presentations but you know they wanted to do an interview if any of you are going to be there like Natalia, I don't know whether you're going to be at Sybos but if any of your colleagues are going to be there it would be worthwhile to present and I am sure that people from other parts of Hyperledge are going to be there and there would be also people from the SIGS like the supply chain trade finance and other SIGS which are focused on financial markets may be there so you're right that it has to be fit for purpose in the sense that can it exist alone or does it need some kind of commentary the next item I think is going to be the obstacles paper that was started by Kelly and she'll probably want to discuss that for a bit should I bring that? yes please if you would put it on screen there you go what I did so far was to if you'll scroll down a little bit what I did so far was to go over a little bit more please down into the body of the text what I did was to go over okay just to make a long story short I teach some graduate classes for the University of Maryland and I have access to their library which is exceptional I'm a graduate student and as I mentioned earlier capital markets is not my field on the periphery but not in the middle of it as Natalie is and so what I am doing is I'm going through research articles I'm pulling out what it looks like in the sector that people have both concerns about and so rather than really starting a long narrative of that what I'm doing is I'm putting in bullets to hopefully get feedback from people in the space as to whether it's important or relevant etc and so under for example trust I know sharing of sensitive information such as board portals and the research that I'm looking at is talking about effective proxy voting one of the other things discussed is the need for trust and privacy pre-IPO also improving information transparency and shareholder participation and then I have the categories of trust and provenance if you'll continue to scroll yes in provenance I have chain of custody and reduce the time from trade to settlement for securities and other asset classes and then I have the ability to do so so on some you'll see I have a few bullets and some I have none because I'm still working on them and then down at the bottom I added this week auditing because I found a couple of articles where they were talking about the potential in the space with auditing that I've noted with the larger header and then I'm putting bullets in based on the research that I see and then once we get to where we're satisfied with the categories and we're satisfied with the bullets they could always be edited but the main idea is this would add value and this would help people who are working in business in the space to understand the possibilities and obstacles of blockchain then at that point we can start then changing this into more of a narrative where we're addressing each of the bullets in a combination of references to work cited which I started down below and also kind of definitions and how that works with hyperledger and it's a good idea that we talk about ethereum vulnerabilities and then I also added additional blockchain ecosystem vulnerabilities because some of the stuff that I'm looking at is quarter for example and so for this obstacles paper what I'm hoping is that people will either add bullets or maybe at the end of a bullet put a plus one in there or make a comment so that I'm just going through and beginning and to build the narrative based on what we think about or if we think that these categories add value and these bullets add value and then if they don't then I think it would be good to either take it out or maybe better a minus one rather than take it out because we do lose things sometimes and someone might have a different perspective on it so I need some help on kind of prioritizing and for lack of a better word valuizing the topics that I'm putting in based on research I was the one who put in the ethereum vulnerabilities paper link good idea yeah the reason I did that is not because of the fact that we are let's say we are harboring ethereum directly inside hyperledger but the categories under which those vulnerabilities are presented are still relevant for all of the DLTs under hyperledger let's say that you talk about re-entrancy attacks re-entrancy attacks would be a problem in a smart contract language that was very wide in the sense that it is too incomplete I mean I know that Stan or others in the technical space will have something to say about that there are some other vulnerabilities that are you know it's a very extensive survey of vulnerabilities and I'm sure that many of those vulnerabilities can also affect the DLTs that we have whether people have really thought about them or not that's another story and how it's relevant to capital markets maybe that's another another angle that we should pursue but this was my thought if anybody has any comments on this especially people like Stan I would assume you as a practitioner would have knowledge of some of these and the mitigations not just vulnerabilities it's also what we should do to prevent from damaging yeah so I think this discussion is I guess for me everything ends up boiling down to use cases right so a lot of these vulnerabilities are truly applicable only for the public chain but then when we talk about private deployments of Ethereum then we also run into the question of are we leveraging the EVM so which vulnerabilities are specific to that which ones are specific to the consensus protocol or the more communication layer so it's going to go down to the specifics where they're applicable it's going to be helpful to have a kind of a thorough survey of these vulnerabilities so we can see where they apply to the particular implementations well proposed implementations or ideas of where the technology can be used in capital market systems so this is the paper that I got which has all of the it's a very comprehensive survey but anyway we might be getting lost in the weeds a little bit here I'm also very interested in your comments about Kelly's paper as a whole one of the things that I feel that we could have a problem with is that it's a very vast right I mean we have in the paper that she you know Kelly's paper has a lot of headings like you know are we chewing off more than we we can handle at this point or should we stay sort of broad like this and then go into something like two or three specific things that are applicable to capital markets the way we started off Kelly talking about the most important or the things that bother people the most we're first talking about the paper the group was saying that they're struggling to communicate to business stakeholders and so I was thinking what is it that they're trying to communicate to business stakeholders and what are those obstacles so the target audience wasn't so much people who are deep in it was more an introductory paper that is an overview so that people will have their mind off of Bitcoin if nothing else and that was what we discussed in the first meeting now it could be that that's switching and it could be that we want to kind of reorganize the paper or rethink the target audience any of which I am happy to do but my thought in setting this up was me sitting down with someone who for the 100th time is asking me how many articles are but there's a thousand generalist articles out there and I didn't want it to sound like that either I wanted it to start to connect so if I was sitting down with someone I would have wanted to connect that hey relook this rethink this let's go a little bit deeper and then that was kind of the some role of this paper it's a more thoughtful educational perspective or learning perspective but if we think instead that the target audience for the paper would be people who are working in the industry who have a modicum of understanding of what blockchain is and now we really want to go deeper into the obstacles I'm fine to do that as well if we think that both are needed then perhaps I would like to add to obstacles which would be a narrative of getting a comfort level to then go a little bit deeper and then a second paper could select some of these to go deeper on because I totally am in agreement with what everyone is saying on the call where I my thinking is is going back to our first meeting when someone said that they are going to be able to have something that people can read so that they at least you know we can get out of just a thousand introductory conversations based on what someone saw on the television yeah in fact the whole ethereum vulnerability section is about that because whenever you talk about anything they start talking about you know something or something so we have to have you know context setting so the other other thing that I want to I mean I also want to get the feedback from people in the business like Natalia and also Saptarshi and of course Stan and I agree with Stan that these things have to be linked together in the end I mean we are creating these separate projects but there are linkages in the back like for example the obstacles will link with the use cases and so on anyway so go ahead Natalia if you have. From my perspective what I'm going to do if I may is just to read exactly and make sure someone like me that does not necessarily understand the obstacles for instance by reading the page I find all the relevant information so that someone that may not have all the information can also understand so it's clear and the structure is clear and the information is clear and the text is clear as well and even if there is a need of any additional material or like not pictures but other type of graphics for instance just to let you know as well that's very useful to have a reader that is going to give comments based on a perspective that that's a business oriented perspective yeah also want to kind of comment on some kind of Kelly's points but I guess the direction for the paper from my perspective I've ran many many times in the conversations with the business folks where they're so deep in the incumbent space where any idea of a change is very foreign to them and they keep bringing up these obstacles actually to adopting new technologies and so having a paper which is created by people who understand both the business and the technology would be tremendously helpful in kind of teaching them about educating them on what are the ways to overcome these obstacles and that kind of demonstrate that people in the industry have thought about how to deal with the problems of adopting this new technology and what new opportunities it can truly bring Stan the challenges that we face in a incumbent space where the operations and the already existing people feel threatened by this new technology and this kind of obstacle is more of a behavioral obstacle even though they might say things about the technology itself based on their generalized reading like Kelly said but this behavioral obstacle you know I've been thinking about it quite a bit because I've been reading some behavioral economics and behavioral finance and I feel like some of those techniques could be useful in converting the skeptics to adopters not by pushing not by pushing certain things but by the way the technology is architected and the choices are presented and the you know the techniques that have already been used and I don't know if any of you have read the Nudge book by Richard Taylor who is a Nobel Prize winner in economics recently and there is a whole movement on behavioral economics which might address some of the issues that Stan just brought up because I think we are not going to get over on technical merits alone it's going to be have to be a combination of various things logic alone does not trump everything else and sorry for the use of the word trump but ok so as we saw in various contexts including the political one I completely agree but I also think that having well articulated kind of well thought through set of points will be very helpful in at least dissuading some of the fears one of the challenges is going to be Richard Taylor's method obviously relies on the fact that people are people they are lazy, they are resistant to change there is a whole bunch of attributes that people possess that obviously are used in the design of the alternatives that you present but in addition to that there is a measurement aspect meaning you would say let's try to see whether this particular method is effective and that is by measuring the that particular method rather than just theorizing about it so that is a challenge in this space I don't know how to go about it I am actually slightly lost about how to measure different pathways for adoption in capital markets of DLTs it has to be through already pilots and use cases and production systems that are out there and real problems that they have run into I completely agree one of the first questions that business people ask when we start talking about a proof of concept is has it been implemented in production has it been launched I think just looking at the publicly available information in the news there are quite a few of those pilots they are gradually getting to production so far for a smaller scale or in case of the I think it was IBM's supply chain but this internal system not the trade finance but the actually the first project they launched was management of internal investments I thought it was like inventory management or something like that but anyway it was actual production even if it was internal so if we also build up a library of these implementations and use cases would be another great benefit can we then say that each one of these items like trust, provenance you know immutability, identity, data integration interoperability, MLK, KYC, GDPR and so on and so forth will be linked if possible to a solution of the perceived obstacle which is obviously the project that your spear hiding understand I think we have to keep it sort of lightweight with the links to publicly available information but I'm having great difficulty getting into any kind of public detail public information other than press releases of some of these solutions I can think of only a couple like ASX project has extensive public review of technical matters in fact yesterday or day before it was announced that I mean DA and VMware are collaborating on taking that ASX just replacement project forward what about your project Stan I mean is public information available about this now unfortunately not and looking judging from the comments it won't be it may change shape become more public in the future but even though it was fairly successful in reaching its goals are you talking about RMG or something else something else the RMG has been in a way it was a failed so RMG is public and all the information has been available that we're not going to be providing the exchange for that and what is not going to talk about the non publicly available information but it was basically stop due to lack of customers and a lot of that is my guess is the fear of the adoption of this new approach and something like this document could at least may not necessarily convince the major businesses to adopt the new technology but at least consider the new markets that are built on this attack and this is going to drop out so this was a great call are you going to have this conflict every day or every Wednesday or no today is just particularly bad and I know that you have been on vacation too so hopefully you'll come back rejuvenated thanks great call continuing that theme of Stan's use cases I can think of several where there is public information available one of them is the is a sex project which I spoke about just now the other one is of the do with custody and with Kelly the point that you are bringing up corporate actions I know that DTCC also had some projects in that so what I'm going to do is to reach out to some of these people to find out if there is more publicly available data and then we can slot them into these various obstacles sections to say how this particular use case has taken care of this particular obstacle that might be useful the other approaches to contact people like Sandra Rowe who is the head of the RMG project that we were mentioning that is Royal Mint Gold basically tokenization of gold held in the Royal Mint by the CME Group and Stan has just said that it was a failure because of lack of customers either due to the lack of marketing or whatever the reason is but Sandra is now the head of Global Blockchain Council and I'm sure that she will have insight into a lot of positive developments and use cases so maybe one of us should contact her I'll try to reach out to her about this. Any other ideas guys I've been working with Evernim I'm one of their early adopter customers or whatever the term is and then also I'm looking at another organization that's doing smart contracts kind of as a legal for legal documents but could also relate into the proxy situation so I'll talk with both of those two and see if I can come up with some sort of a use case as well So is that the Accord project with Klaus? No. They are doing that too and we will try to push forward on several of these use case type situations and then link them back into either this or to Stan's use cases but in other words present a comprehensive picture which includes these obstacles but also link them to the actual use cases if I go back to the projects right we have money did put in some work on the standards and he said he won't be around to talk about it today but he put in a section on ISDA CDM but very limited kind of information there but the key to note there is that there is a business process standards and those business process standards relate to the legal agreements I mean each contract a swap or a derivative contract is a legal agreement really and the enforcement of those legal agreements through the use of smart contracts is a model ISDA standard common I think it's called common domain model CDM and maybe we can get some information about that too Saptarishi do you have anything I have just one question I mean today is my first day but my question will be how do we quantify or determine which are going to be the matrices for the ROI to any specific use cases because execution, production, pilot all these will come once in a discovery phase we are determining precisely the right parameters to measure the ROI and convince our clients or customers then we go ahead and look into the future stages yeah I mean I have been involved in some of these efforts when we did review of investments like for example we were trying to do investment in let's say a FinTech as part of that we went through the complete review of the system of the company their finances and the team itself and in addition we were trying to project the ROI of a particular solution and as a part of a business case that you present for any new project that ROI part is very important so if you have any experience with that it will be very useful to get your input it's also difficult because everything is transaction based I've talked to some people that are 10,000 a month in the cloud and some that are 100,000 a month in the cloud so I think it's an excellent question are there could we almost using a matrices set up some sort of incremental even questions it's one thing to quantify which I think is critical but it's difficult to even know what the questions to ask are because the blockchain is expensive and once it scales it's really expensive and so I think both the how do we quantify but what are even the questions that go into leading us to be able to quantify when you say blockchain is expensive when you say it's even more expensive what I mean do you have basis for this claim well I've been just in the introductory work that I'm doing with ROI it's difficult all right I've talked to some people and just you know at various conferences and things like this so this is just my words rehashed and POC is not the problem prototype is not the problem but finding both the people and the capacity to scale and seeing whether you're with AWS or IBM or self hosting that it grows so quickly it's how is it that you determine ROI I mean you can say it's like you're going to see such and such a reduction in fraud or the immutability provides this or that but I'm finding and it might be that it's just me but I'm finding that it's not easy to determine ROI to even ask the right questions because we're talking about people who if we think about the obstacles paper we're talking about people who are brand new to a space and you're trying to quantify ROI well this thing is midair you know so I think that anyway I'm talking too much but I think it how to quantify it and even when you have the information and how to get the information to be able to quantify it are both obstacles are both you know because there's if you look at angel.co you've got a thousand small companies trying to get in this space and if you go anywhere else you've got all of the big players in it as well and so I think that it's an important question yeah I mean the point is that the big companies like IBM and people who have been selling this are probably answering these questions or asking these questions and using the answers to determine the ROI the problem is how do we get at this information which seems to be very business like a business secret you know yeah it's their secret sauce yeah because companies are going to them because it seems insurmountable without it you need the whole ecosystem yeah so in that sense there is a whole bunch of moves today like the cloud companies that are making this frictionless right with the BAAS blockchain as a service or or serverless I get the feeling that they're going to go to serverless it means going from administering these things in a very detailed manner and power to doing this at the click of a button so maybe looking at what Amazon, Google and Microsoft are doing in this would help especially if they are I mean they are obviously making money from the scale but will they make it cheaper to operate hundreds of nodes so Saptarishi if you are sitting with a customer and pretty much have them ready to go but they really need more they need to know what this is going to look like what it's going to cost of what the return on their investment is can you tell us a little bit about how that conversation goes so first of all I would from a business perspective what I do is try to identify what are the revenue drivers for this vertical as well as for that specific customer within that vertical once I get that information I also try to get the granular details which could be the clue connecting the different complicated aspects and might be pretty much important to consider so we have to classify them maybe in different segments or different layers that is the first thing we do in a business document or business you know consideration and then we try to see do they exactly have any technical thing implemented in their ecosystem are they really doing something which has got presence of IT or is it like we are the first guys to start from this branch so some cases like in an arts industry we are doing some works with the arts industry one customer they do not have at all any IT so we are going to start it from this branch or the other customers who already have some IT then we have to see what specific job that inclusion of technology is going to benefit them how is it helping them then we come to the question of trials, provenance and all the specific stuffs being mentioned here are they solving these purposes or is it going to be a major issue if so how much impact is it causing to their business to their revenue direct or indirect revenue as much we can dictate it and then we try to you know relate with the specifics of blockchain from a very high level we have few of our guys who help with these kind of works so that is from a very basic level I can share right now I mean it depends again from customer to customer and vertical to vertical but from my you know knowledge what I can say from a very high level is identify or segregate the different verticals segregate the customer within that vertical identify revenue streams identify what are the glues connecting those revenue streams and then you know again go further down into the primary secondary tertiary levels of their you know revenue streams which are going to benefit them and which are the challenges and how technology impact so we really don't go into the blockchain aspect initially we go into the business aspect and it takes approximately as I have seen in the past few cases one and a half months of time just to complete the discovery phase are you running into a lot of data issues as far as data that won't talk to each other data integration issues with legacy systems yes yes yes I would say that again in some cases a data integration is going to be an issue because they might be using some legacy infrastructure some specific database so we have to consider again architect is better position to respond to those specific questions but what I understand is there are some challenges with integrating that you know specific environment in which they have stored their data in silos so this becomes sometimes a challenge I mean I positioned blockchain as a service to one client I mean sorry to one you know lead I would say not a client financial services lead from New York City New York City I guess a very big financial service provider but they hold all their data in their servers I mean they do not push their data over to the cloud so how do you implement blockchain when your client is not willing to push or pass over their data to the cloud environment at all because of privacy and other concerns so that becomes another challenge design the data architecture so there are many other challenges as well maybe we can discuss in the next course we can keep it as an agenda and I would like to bring our architect as well who might give a better view his viewpoint on what he thinks and you know if anything could be added that's really great yeah we should have anyway we are running over time and so can we connect over email and wiki and all that so that we can keep this conversation going sure so I work primarily with the public sector of special interest group and today was my first year and I'm connected with you over LinkedIn so maybe I can send you it you know I can ping you over LinkedIn or I can send you an email and we can continue the discussion we would be truly interested in the ROI question but specifically for the capital markets or financial services industry I mean even if we get just the questions like Kelly said questions to ask rather than you know rather than the details of actually your engagement with this particular company but more on a general level if you have difficulty sharing that information because you know you obviously have some ideas and other things with them right sure so maybe I may share some you know some document some kind of right up to you you can look into that you know add some thoughts to that I have a very you know high level I would say or very you know basic thoughts what I think could be adding values to the ROI question because whenever a technology vendor goes to a customer the first thing they're going to ask before doing anything else is ROI what I'm going to get from this now the projection from a sales guy shows 80% 70% but when it's implemented in reality the ROI is way too low than what has been claimed so we want to create a credible ecosystem a credibility in what we project and what comes in reality not a diversion from the facts that's how we are going to win in the long run sounds good so I think we should conclude the meeting now but I hope the next meeting will have more participants because the presentation will be over and people will be back in full swing thank you everybody nice meeting nice to meet you all thank you thank you