So what’s at stake here? On Wall Street, blockchain could upend how institutions trade with one another. One example: It could shrink the three days that it currently takes to clear a securities transaction into seconds. It could also enable entirely new forms of exchange — think self-enforcing contracts and, yes, digital currency. Indeed, “blockchain will do for transactions what the internet did for information,” IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said at a conference in Geneva in September. Extending Rometty’s analogy, it should be noted that it’s early days for blockchain, with developers still establishing the ground rules for the equivalents of the TCP/IP language protocols that allowed the internet to become the internet.

But despite all the anarchistic rumblings that the end is nigh for Wall Street intermediaries, here’s the surprising reality: The three leading consortia vying to establish shared protocols — Hyperledger, R3 and the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance — count among their members old-school titans such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Barclays, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Admittedly, there are a bunch of quirky-sounding tech startups there too, from Bloq to Infrachain, as well as surprising big brands like BP, Microsoft and Airbus. The fact remains, though, that on Wall Street the blockchain revolution won’t be disruption from the outside, but instead “the most meaningful adoptions have been when the intermediaries are disrupting themselves,” says Javier Paz, a senior analyst at research and advisory firm Aite Group.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.ozy.com