Wall Street disrupts itself with blockchain tech

The Future. Wall Street may not be too keen on crypto… but they like its underlying technology. Big banks are adopting blockchain tech to make transactions easier, faster, and cheaper. Despite a few regulatory hurdles, it’s a no-brainer for banks to switch… but convincing customers to do the same may be more difficult.

Rewiring the systems
WSJ reports that the most traditional of financial institutions are looking to cutting-edge blockchain tech to evolve their services.

• Goldman Sachs started trading select bonds and securities over the Ethereum network, which are finalizing within an hour instead of the usual five days. The firm is now working on a dedicated “blockchain-based trading platform.”
• JPMorgan Chase has already built a blockchain-based service called Onyx, which launched in 2020. The firm made the tool available to other banks to process their own transactions.

Processing boost
So what is the underlying blockchain tech that we’re talking about here? Banks are switching to “distributed ledger” tech that “uses an open record-keeping system — a central ledger — to track assets and record transactions and information about ownership of those assets.”

But, banks are ditching the whole “decentralized” aspect of crypto because the ledgers, in this case, are “permissioned networks.” After all, they’re the ones that decide who can and cannot make transactions on the system.

But maybe the banks are just being upfront about how most crypto generally works.