DTCC CEO: Blockchain technology is a once-in-a-century opportunity

Rage Comment : As the financial industry accumulates experience in exploring blockchain technology, people are increasingly seeing its huge potential. The CEO of DTCC also believes that blockchain has become mainstream in 2015, and that blockchain technology brings a once-in-a-century opportunity to the financial industry, which requires a large industry alliance to build a unified standard. The Australian Standards Association also agreed and called on the International Organization for Standardization to establish a global standard for distributed ledgers. Once the standard is issued, I believe that the development of blockchain technology in the financial industry will be on the fast track to the future.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Wall Street's clearing and settlement house, DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation), has recently been accelerating its pace of development in blockchain innovation research and investment.

Blockchain technology is quickly recognized as a revolutionary leap that can promote the development of the financial industry. Stock exchanges such as the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) are far from being satisfied with simple technical research and have conducted long-term application tests; the largest stock exchange in Australia uses blockchain-based solutions for post-trading processes.

DTCC, Wall Street’s go-to clearing house, is one of the prominent companies seeking to research and develop blockchain solutions for the current financial industry.

A recent blockchain test successfully applied distributed ledger technology to credit default swaps, a market with trillions of dollars in contract value.

In a recent letter to shareholders, DTCC CEO and Chairman Michael Bodson called 2015 the year “blockchain technology goes mainstream.”

Michael Bodson

He revealed the opinion of DTCC Chief Technology Architect Rob Platnick that blockchain “hype” can turn into reality.

Bodson's article mentions:

“We have a once-in-a-century opportunity to modernize the post-trade environment, and we need to come together to ensure we get the first steps right.”

The statement echoes the sentiment of ASX CEO Elmer Funke Kupper, who said blockchain technology is “a once-in-20-year opportunity to embrace innovation that will deliver lower costs and higher efficiency.”

Turning blockchain hype into reality

Bodson's article said that the company's chief technical architect Rob Platnick has never seen such enthusiasm around blockchain technology in his 30 years in the financial services field.

Platnick said that while the potential and opportunities of blockchain technology are exciting, there are still certain limitations.

Bodson quoted Platnick as saying that distributed ledgers are still immature and unproven. They are inherently limited in scale and lack the underlying infrastructure to integrate seamlessly into the existing financial market environment.

And Platnick doesn’t think distributed ledger technology will be widely adopted in the short term.

Blockchain enthusiasm among big banks and service providers could eventually become reality, with a flurry of technology development creating a “siloed maze of distributed ledgers”.

Therefore, Platnick called for broad industry-wide collaboration to develop and restructure the existing core processes of the financial industry and replace them with distributed ledgers.

Standards Australia also supports the establishment of a global standard for blockchain development, calling on the International Standards Organization (ISO) to establish global standards for distributed ledger technology.