Lionel Laurent, Columnist

Wall Street's Blockchain Hipsters

The new technology is a way to lure talent as millennials shun finance.

June 6, 2016 at 6:00 AM UTC

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The buzz around blockchain's potential to reshape Wall Street is more hype than reality right now -- even its top supporters in the financial world acknowledge that. If there's one problem it can start to solve today, it's people.

Millennials are shunning the financial industry just when they're needed most, to help get costs lower and ideas fresher. In 2014, the number of Harvard MBAs joining banks hit a new low of 5 percent of total graduates. A 2015 survey of the program's top Baker Scholars showed a grand total of one -- one! -- expressing an interest in joining finance. Even those that do take the plunge aren't as loyal as they used to be: Junior bankers' average tenure fell to 1.4 years in 2015, from 2.5 in 1995, according to LinkedIn research for the Wall Street Journal.