Starting to look at some of this for a couple of work initiatives.
Anyone with an interest or at the sharp end?

http://uk.businessinsider.com/11-banks-in-r3-consortium-use-blockchain-technology-to-trade-2016-1
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539171/why-nasdaq-is-betting-on-bitcoins-blockchain/

Without having read the whole paper (I will do, thanks):

I think it’s the exciting new thing, and I’m struggling to see how it could be implemented in the payments market without some sort of governing body defining the standard. Which is what we already have with SWIFT.

I can see how it could be useful for trading commodities or equities, but you’re going to need somebody to define the standard if everybody is going to use it, otherwise it’s just going to be another settlement system with a few members.

Also, the BoE won’t like it. Not sure I can put a finger on why, but they won’t 🙂

Interesting stuff, but lots of vested interests in maintaining some sort of central controlling body.
Money launderers and crooks will love it.

Money launderers and crooks will love it.

The banks are already looking at it

🙂

Don’t need central authority, that’s the point of the blockchain. Huge issue no one has managed to explain to an idiot like me is how it can possibly scale sufficiently for anything high volume, which is common in banking. Entire transaction history is embedded in the blockchain so computing time increases (exponentially?).

Don’t need central authority, that’s the point of the blockchain.

Who defines what’s hashed with what?

You still need a format so people can decrypt what’s in the blockchain – don’t you?

I’m no expert, but thought that entire transaction history is effectively embedded in each new step of the blockchain. Hence my comment because you don’t need a central authority stating that each transaction is ‘approved’. It’s effectively embedded within each turn of the process and ‘validated’ by all the participants etc.

Might have got the wrong end of the stick. My knowledge is what I read at ftalphaville.ft.com where Isabella Kaminska has a whole series of blog posts on various facets of blockchain and bitcoin etc.