From finance to real estate, blockchain technology will disrupt everything

In addition to Bitcoin, the application of blockchain technology has unlimited potential in financial services, sharing economy, Internet of Things and even real estate.

Goldman Sachs believes that blockchain technology can significantly improve the efficiency of capital markets and financial institutions, and may even lead to the disintermediation of some market functions. The transaction settlement of stocks, foreign exchange and leveraged loans may be completely changed by the introduction of blockchain technology.

The Goldman Sachs Innovation Conference panel believes that banks still play a key role in lending, providing liquidity and acting as counterparties, but they also believe that central providers of transaction data are themselves at risk of being commoditized, Goldman Sachs wrote in a report.

Most of the Goldman Sachs Innovation Conference panelists believe that blockchain technology can reduce current transaction and capital costs by up to 10 times, and if it can be reduced by 5 times, commercial applications will be feasible . Goldman Sachs wrote:

“ R3 CEV has created a banking consortium that will focus on enabling applications of blockchain and distributed ledger technology and helping partners build technology platforms. Axoni ( a spin-off of TradeBlock ) is developing blockchain systems for clients and providing support. ”

Goldman Sachs said that R3 and TradeBlock expect commercial application trials of blockchain technology to begin this year, and commercial use will be fully launched next year. However, the realization of this expectation may be delayed due to the influence of industry standardization and regulation.

In addition to financial services, Goldman Sachs also believes that blockchain technology has broad application prospects in the sharing economy, the Internet of Things and real estate:

The Innovation Conference team believes that blockchain has wider applications in more areas. One possibility is to use the Internet of Things technology to further promote the sharing economy.

For example, if underutilized assets (cars, warehouses, medical equipment, etc.) are connected to the Internet of Things, blockchain technology can help the owners of these assets, who do not know each other, negotiate transactions for the use of the assets.

This will detonate excess asset capacity that was previously hidden deep inside, similar to Uber and AirBnB .

As for real estate transactions where asset ownership needs to be carefully identified, Goldman Sachs said that if blockchain technology can be used to establish a secure and shared ownership database, real estate transaction disputes and transaction costs will be greatly reduced .

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger system that records every transaction of the cryptocurrency in the case of Bitcoin. All transactions are shared and verified by a peer-to-peer network of computers. This "distributed ledger" model monitors the transfer of Bitcoin funds. Similarly, blockchain can also monitor transactions of any valuable asset, such as stocks, bonds, and futures.

The banking industry is very optimistic about the application prospects of blockchain or blockchain-related technologies in traditional businesses. At a time when the global economy is in recession and many international banks are forced to lay off employees, banks see the possibility of directly trading with each other in blockchain technology to significantly reduce costs. Goldman Sachs is one of the most active advocates of this technology.

Wall Street News previously mentioned that Goldman Sachs even believed in a report that blockchain technology is ready to "disrupt everything" and can completely change the traditional payment system. It can be used in a large number of things including issuing securities and smart contracts. Compared with the traditional trading system, blockchain technology can make transactions faster and at a lower cost.

This decentralized, cryptography-based solution removes the middleman and has the potential to redefine transactions and back-office operations across multiple industries.

In addition to constantly calling for the application of blockchain technology, Goldman Sachs developed its own "Super Bitcoin" for a settlement system at the end of last year - a digital cryptocurrency called SETLCoin, which is used to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. Although this currency is not Bitcoin, the blockchain technology behind it is exactly the same.

Goldman Sachs also participated in a $50 million investment in payment app Circle, which uses Bitcoin's blockchain technology.