Want to rent out an extra room? Try blockchain!

The somewhat sudden transformation of Bitcoin from fringe, peer-to-peer currency which was once the darling of mavericks and those with anarchistic tendencies, to a major, multi-billion dollar focus as a pinnacle of fintech by major global fiancial institutions and venture capital investors has taken another turn today.

Long gone are the dark days of anonymous market place Silk Road, and here are the days of widespread testing and implementation of blockchain technology into mainstream banking systems in order to automate a number of business critical processes.

Inexorably linked to Bitcoin, blockchain consists of blocks that hold timestamped batches of recent valid transactions. Each block includes the hash of the prior block, linking the blocks together. The linked blocks form a chain, with each additional block reinforcing those before it, thus giving the database type its name.

This is the technology that has become so interesting to financial institutions, however now, the insurance sector is beginning to adopt it.

Britain once again leads the innovation in financial technology as SafeShare, an insurance business for the sharing Economy industry has launched the world’s first blockchain-based insurance solution by partnering with Vrumi which was established with Z/Yen and uses opensource timestamp service MetroGnomo.

This particular product will be aimed at property owners who rent their property to tenants, and is underwritten by Lloyds of London, and provides a 24 hour customer service hotline.

According to Vrumi, the validity of the insurance under a specific circumstance is of interest as most traditional insurance packages do not allow homeowners to have paying guests, while SafeShare’s solution can encompass counter-party obligations.

Therefore, Vrumi allows home owners to rent out extra rooms to people who need space to either run their business or found a start up.

London is rapidly becoming a center for fintech, and especially with regard to developments such as this. The traditional underpinnings of the world’s largest financial center have provided an excellent background for companies such as this to drive the entire retail financial ecosystem forward.

Indeed, the Square Mile today is not just booming, but is also a pinnacle of urbane modernity and sophistication.

Photograph: 30 St Mary Axe, London. Copyright FinanceFeeds.