A professional forum hosted by an international securities trade group in Boston earlier this week showcased how that industry is looking at potential blockchain applications – and what form those potential use cases might take in the years ahead.
The International Securities Association For Institutional Trade Communication ( ISITC ) event, held yesterday, featured a number of panels that offered details on how the securities trade ecosystem is reacting to interest in distributed ledgers as well as the broader FinTech movement.
The day of panels kicked off with a keynote address by Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna and MIT Media Lab advisor Michael Casey. The authors of "The Age of Cryptocurrency," Casey and Vigna painted a picture of the growth of bitcoin and blockchain in broad strokes, offering their view on both the rewards and risks of the emerging technology.
However, the major event of the day was a panel devoted to blockchain applications.
Moderated by DTCC chief technology architect Robert Palatnick, the panel featured Chris Church, chief business development officer for Digital Asset Holdings; Todd McDonald, co-founder and COO of blockchain consortium startup R3CEV; and Alistair Milne, professor of financial economics for the Loughborough University School of Business and Economics.
Among the major arguments of the day was that the next year or two will see early growth and, perhaps, the first production-scale distributed ledgers going live.
"Will it be securities markets where big change happens?" Milne asked during the panel. "I think actually retail payments might be a big development, but this depends a lot on the central banks."
Church said that it could be as many as 10 years before the ‘tipping point’ of the technology is close to being achieved, remarking: "If 2015 was the year we work up to blockchain, 2016 is the year people are running their proof of […]
