Blythe Masters on the Significance of Blockchains in Financial Industries at Singularity University's Exponential Finance 2015.
TRANSCRIPT:
Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings:
Economic transactions on a digital ledger can be programmed to record virtually anything of value. Your identity, you heard that mentioned already. A will. A deed. A title. A license. Intellectual property. An invention. But also, almost any type of financial instrument.
So how can these systems tackle settlement latency in mainstream financial markets? In short, because on a distributed ledger and a token that is part of that ledger, you’re able to embed the information that represents or evidences title to, for example, a financial instrument like an equity, or a bond, or even a loan, the list goes on.
This means the entire life cycle of a trade, including its execution, the netting of multiple trades against each other, reconciliation of who did what with whom, and whether they agree, can occur at the trade entry level. That’s much earlier in the stack of process than what you are accustomed to seeing in mainstream financial infrastructure.
Now, I don’t want you to get too overly excited. Realize that the world is still a long way from a state where distributed digital ledgers have been able to be universally adopted. Distributed ledger technology does have the potential to be disruptive of certain business models. But it has at least as much potential to be enormously empowering of existing business models in terms of making them lower cost, more efficient, and less risky. So we won’t get there overnight, but we will get there.
How seriously should you take this? I would take it about as seriously as you should have taken the concept of the Internet in the early 1990s. It’s a big deal. And it is going to change the way our financial world operates.
Bob Pisani, CNBC “On-Air Stocks” Editor:
One thing that always amazes me is the transition you made. I’d like you to share something personal with us. You were one of the most powerful women on Wall Street–
Blythe Masters:
What do you mean I was?
Bob Pisani:
Oh, I’m sorry. This, this is how careful you have to be. Right? No matter what! You give them a compliment and then smack. What do you mean, Bob?