Disrupting Wall Street

[LydiaBob]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

[pginvest]

There will likely happen (like Ernest Hemingway said of one of his characters going broke) Gradually, then suddenly. I think the banks will resist change as long as possible and once the inevitable happens they will wholeheartedly embrace blockchain like they invented it.

If I am not mistaken they did something like this with computer trading and the internet in the past.

[manselr]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

Wall street is already considering buying Bitcoin:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-02/goldman-shuns-jpmorgans-dimon-plans-bitcoin-trading-operation

As you see, their interest is obvious. Jamie Dimon can say whatever he wants, meanwhile Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are showing clear evidences of being bullish on bitcoin. They know they can't ignore this or else they will look like massive idiots in 10 years and probably bankrupt as well.

[unamis76]

The impact of ICO bans is inexistent in what regards blockchain technology adoption, both have nothing to do with each other... ICO bans have little impact in cryptocurrencies, and the impact it may have is positive.

I'm not sure how or if these technologies will disrupt stock exchanges. But they'll definitely disrupt the banking industry...

[TravelMug]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

What do you mean disrupt Wall Street? Blockchain technology is just a ledger or database, it is the backbone behind bitcoin.

The banning of ICO has nothing to do with blockchain/bitcoin. It may disrupt the bitcoin price to a certain extent but its gonna be temporary. You don't need to be skeptical, when China announced that they are going to ban ICO, the price plummet. That's how the market reacts. Any negative news will really shift the tide of the price. However, its only temporary as you can see in the price today. It has regained and fully recovered, although you will see price correction from time to time.

[micrv]

The transition from most/all ICOs having some type of Blockchain technology, to any type of Startup utilizing the ICO fundraising model will result in a paradigm shift in the way Startups raise capital.

Currently, Startups have five major access routes to funding:

• Bootstrapping
• Venture Capital
• Angel Investment
• intrapreneurship/Internal Corporate Funding
• Crowdfunding (Equity & Reward Based)

Each funding route has their upsides and downsides, but more interestingly, almost every single one of them has two key business goals: 1. The Exit, or 2. The IPO.

We have the traditional statistics for Startups: 90% will fail within the first three years. 10% will go on to bigger and better things, which could mean scaling over ten years, potentially Exiting to a larger company (such as Amazon or Google), and the remaining (under) 1% will go public, with an IPO.

The introduction of the sixth major route to funding - the ICO - will hugely disrupt the entire space, allowing Startups to offer tradable tokens from their inception, which is something Wall Street can't, and won't, ever offer. Along with this new development will, of course, come a lot of over-inflated, over-valued, and hugely over-estimated companies; without Wall Street's stringent policy for IPOs, and the barrier to entry will be incredibly low.

It may take a number of years for the ICO route to truly disrupt Wall Street, but I for one think that in the near future, a token-based model will overtake the traditional IPO funding model.

[Za1n]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

Wall street is already considering buying Bitcoin:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-02/goldman-shuns-jpmorgans-dimon-plans-bitcoin-trading-operation

As you see, their interest is obvious. Jamie Dimon can say whatever he wants, meanwhile Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are showing clear evidences of being bullish on bitcoin. They know they can't ignore this or else they will look like massive idiots in 10 years and probably bankrupt as well.

And so is Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan/Chase despite what he publicly says. There does seem to be a concerted effort to bundle a bunch of so call bad news in packages at times perhaps in an effort to drive price down so big players can load up. I am not saying this was his intent, but if there is money to be made then you can be sure bankers will be interested in it. The crypto space doesn't yet quite have the volume that these big players need, but that will come as time goes on and I am sure in 5 years or so if he is still at the helm his outlook will have changed a bit.

[Kprawn]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

I already see the average Joe entering currency trading, where before barriers to entry was placed there on purpose to keep

them out. Once people realize how easy it is to trade with Crypto currencies, the flood gates will open and the adoption stats

will go wild. We can speed this up by educating these people and showing them how easy it is. 

[kriptotr]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

Wall street is already considering buying Bitcoin:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-02/goldman-shuns-jpmorgans-dimon-plans-bitcoin-trading-operation

As you see, their interest is obvious. Jamie Dimon can say whatever he wants, meanwhile Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are showing clear evidences of being bullish on bitcoin. They know they can't ignore this or else they will look like massive idiots in 10 years and probably bankrupt as well.

This technology and all other blockchain infrastructure can disrupt Wall Street easily, but the problem is that they also started to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. When we disrupt them, we basically can hit ourselves too.

[hasmukh_rawal]

I don't think blockchain will be able to disrupt wall street any time soon. Although it does have that capability in it to disrupt the wall street it doesn't have that much amount of investors in it right now. May be when blockchain has more number of investors it may be able to disrupt the wall street but until then wall street will remain the same. Nowadays many number of investors are turning towards crypto currencies and so the time may come soon that blockchain will be having more investors than the wall street.

[GoodOne]

BTC and blockchain will not disrupt Wall Street. It is just another financial instrument for wolves from Wall street
Higher risks - higher profits.

[Bezdonov Art]

Bitcoin is the Uber of cryptocurrencies: the biggest, baddest and best-known, but not the only one. Add it up to Litecoin, Monero and all the others, and the total volume of virtual money floating around the internet, out of the reach of governments and banks, is a 144 billions. I think prospects of bitcoin is a very high.

[Swinging Phallus]

The motto "if you can't beat them join them" rings poignantly true in this scenario. I speculate that once the conditions are correct, blockchains may serve as a database for many governmental and corporate institutions. It may even be infiltrated by many governments or corporations by being implemented through a social security / identification network. What good is a decentralized network if every node is recognized? This is a dark dystopian idea but I think that this is possibly the only way any authoritative force can disrupt cryptocurrency. We've seen that it had been done to the Tor network - who's to say it wouldn't happen with blockchain technology. 

[stompix]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

Actually I'm more curios why do you want to "disrupt" wall street. And why do we need this to be achieved faster?
And is wall street your only target? Not London, Shanghai and Frankfurt?

Stock exchanges are here to stay.
And if you think you can miraculously replace them the alternative are ...mintpal, gox, bitswamp and so on.
Sorry but I'm not to keen to see this change right now.

[InBTC4years]

Short answer...yes. But it is bigger than Wall Street. Bitcoin is the ability to buy and sell without the need for a government to protect you. If you don't need the government to protect your money, then it changes everything.

[criptogoon]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

I'm afraid that at the moment the strength of Wall Street, both in monetary terms and in the negotiating power, is much greater than that of bitcoins. The difference in strength is enormous.

In addition, it was very naive to believe that the government will not begin to regulate the crypto-currency market. Considering the huge resources of such countries as the US and China ... I think you understand everything yourself.

The only thing that is really worth doing is to expand the scope of bitcoin in small and medium businesses. But high fees, the lack of IT infrastructures hinders this.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Short answer...yes. But it is bigger than Wall Street. Bitcoin is the ability to buy and sell without the need for a government to protect you. If you don't need the government to protect your money, then it changes everything.

A five year old can walk into any store to buy candy.  How is the government "protecting" him, exactly?  What you wrote doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.  Actually most delusional bitcoin permabulls don't ever make much sense, because they're blinded by their emotions and love of money & crypto.  Being bankless and not issued by the government doesn't make bitcoin "bigger than wall street", whatever that means.  You do realize what bitcoin's market cap is, don't you?

Bitcoin isn't going to disrupt Wall Street in a meaningful way.  If anything, they'll eat it up or screw it up.

[no0dlepunk]

What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

Achieve what? Anyway, please continue your research about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It seems like you are thinking about it the wrong way and you might be having thoughts of getting rich in a finger snap with bitcoins.

[gentlemand]

Wall St will cherry pick the bits it likes and assimilate them. They'll also keep the walls nice and high to keep the hoi polloi out.

Check out the terms for GDAX's margin trading - https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2725812-what-is-an-eligible-contract-participant-ecp-

It's accredited investors only effectively.

Stuff will thrive in other countries, but I think the prime markets will do their best to keep it inside their walled garden. That's where the truly astonishing money is.

[jakelyson]

I've started recently reading A LOT about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Do you really think that this is the technology that will finally disrupt Wall Street?  After China and South Korea banned the ICO's (and cryptocurrency in China) I am still sceptikal. What do you think and how can we achieve it faster?

If you are worrying about China banning bitcoin or ICO, then you still do not understand what blockchain and bitcoin is. You should understand the fundamentals of blockchain for you to know that banning bitcoin can never happen.