Earlier this year, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne bought a $500,000 bond issued by the online retailer.
But it wasn’t the size of the bond that drew attention. It was the way it was sold: through Overstock’s new digital trading platform T0, which records securities trades through the same shared ledger technology that backs cryptographic currencies like bitcoin.
Advocates of the digital ledger technology, known as the blockchain, say its use in traditional financial transactions could prove far more revolutionary than the alternative currencies for which it was first created.
Storing transactions in one automatically shared, tamper-proof database could eliminate the need for complicated procedures and clearinghouses now used to make sure banks have their records in sync, saving time and money and reducing the risk of error.
And that has startups and established companies lining up to design the trading platforms, programming tools, and other infrastructure that’ll soon be needed if blockchain-based finance goes mainstream.
"The main event isn’t bitcoin," says Byrne. "It’s using the blockchain to disrupt other industries and Wall Street."
http://www.fastcompany.com/3051679/innovation-agents/the-future-of-bitcoin-isnt-bitcoin-its-bigger-than-that?partner=rss
