Bitcoin may have been built to “avoid banks” but the blockchain technology behind it could end up helping if not transforming them.
That’s the tentative conclusion of a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund. An article called “The Internet of Trust” in its Finance and Development magazine co-authored by senior economist Hunter Monroe and senior communications officer Andreanas Adriano tries to assess the case for blockchain.
Unsurprisingly, the article looks most keenly at the technology’s financial-sector potential and wonders whether blockchain could make payments and trade-settling cheaper and simpler. It’s hardly the first to do that of course. Banks and exchanges all over the world are stretching every sinew to see what the technology could do for (or against) them.
The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ said just last week that it was nearly ready to issue its own virtual currency.
The IMF team concludes that, “it is probably too early to say whether blockchain is ‘the next Internet’ or just an incremental evolution.” But it does admit that we are only at the beginning of the technology.
The European Central Bank’s director general of market infrastructure and payments, Marc Bayle, is quoted. Asked whether the blockchain can really live up to its promise and speed up the world of finance, he says: “There’s nothing in the current technologies preventing instant settlement. The problem is the structure of markets.”
https://news.markets/bitcoin/blockchain-bitcoin-banks-imf-19750/
