Elaine Ou, Columnist

Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers

Fear of disruption may be motivating financial institutions to solve some long-running problems.

September 1, 2016 at 2:19 PM UTC

Elaine Ou is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access in San Francisco. Previously she was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney.

Can they all get along?
Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin and other digital currencies, isn’t quite as novel or omnipotent as many have advertised it to be. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t do wonders in the world of finance.

The World Economic Forum recently published a report on how blockchain will reshape financial services -- that is, how to apply 1970s technology (more on this later) to problems that have existed since the 1980s. It covers everything from global payments to insurance claims to proxy voting to contingent convertible bonds -- is there anything in the financial industry that isn’t broken? Were you guys seriously not planning to do anything about it until a blockchain came along?