Blockchain and the Finance Sector

Jeff Brown attended a conference focused on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies and what they mean for financial institutions.

It was fascinating to speak with and listen to traditional financial professionals. Most of them are struggling to get their heads around blockchain technology. Financial services incumbents like traditional banks, institutional funds, and hedge funds are all trying to determine their role in this exploding industry.

One thing was very clear to me: The blockchain industry development has happened right under their noses… and they are all scrambling to catch up. They are also trying to take the same industry structure and business practices and force them onto the blockchain industry.

And it won’t work…

It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The big financial institutions are trying to insert middlemen, increase friction, and position themselves as rent seekers just like they have been doing for centuries.

I can tell you, the blockchain industry won’t have any of it.

These are precisely the things that blockchain and distributed ledger technology were designed to fix. And early blockchain companies have proven that it works. They’ve proven that the utility of these protocols makes the transfer of assets faster, cheaper, and entirely secure, all at a fraction of the cost of the way things work now.