India leads with use of blockchain to curb spam calls. Will Hong Kong follow?

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that enable transactions outside the regulated financial sector have attracted the attention of regulators worldwide and, at times, drawn the scorn of luminaries such as investor Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Some countries have banned cryptocurrencies and the exchanges that trade them, some have offered support, while others such as South Korea have been mercurial — first threatening to ban trading in digital currencies, then changing their tack.

The ambivalence, however, does not extend to distributed ledger technology, the platform commonly known as blockchain that underpins and enables cryptocurrencies. Blockchain, essentially a chain of encrypted records of transactions, is a new, rapidly evolving use of existing technologies that promises to make a wide array of industries and government functions more efficient. Ahead of regulators, the likes of the Big Four accounting firms, Microsoft and Amazon have embraced the technology and offered blockchain services.

And on July 19, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India became the first regulator in the world to harness blockchain technology to curb what it called the “menace” of spam calls and unwanted messages, which plagues phone users from Delhi to Detroit.