Goldman Sachs MD: Blockchain provides 'single source of truth' for banks

In the latest episode of the company’s podcast series, the managing director of global investment banking giant Goldman Sachs believes blockchain is an innovative technology that can improve the financial industry while driving change.

The comments, published on Jan. 20 , reveal Goldman Sachs ’ managing director of technology Don Duet’s views on blockchain and distributed ledger technology, come as rivals Cit, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley begin investing in or partnering with enterprise startups and consortiums.

Goldman Sachs has led the way in two ways, investing in bitcoin services firm Circle in April and joining the R3 consortium of banks in September.

During the 30- minute podcast, Duet discussed topics such as open source and the impact of big data on business. In contrast, his statements were more introductory, asking some questions about the huge potential of blockchain, an emerging technology.

Duet said:

“ You can ask the question, ‘ Why didn’t this technology come along before?’ That’s a very valid question. ’ What’s exciting to me is that we’re realizing that there are answers in the financial world that can drive change and improve our systems. ”

Overall, Duet ’s responses were positive and wide-ranging, designed to point out to his audience that Goldman Sachs sees blockchain as a huge opportunity.

In this regard, Duet believes that blockchain has the ability to provide a " single source of truth " to many institutions that need to share information on asset transfers .

" Because of the structures that have been designed and the technological capabilities that have been created over the last few decades, there are going to be multiple versions of the truth, which means everyone needs to reconcile, " he explained.
Among other things, Duet talked about how blockchain systems are more secure and efficient than today’s centralized ledger systems.