Block To The Future II: Finance, Transformed

In the second of three anticipated columns in Corporate Counsel, Jones Day partners Stephen J. Obie and Harriet Territt explain how financial institutions' practices—from syndicated lending to capital markets administration—are being radically transformed by blockchain technology.

Invoking the virtue of creative destruction can be an empty cliché or a rhetorical misdirection. When it comes to blockchain technology, however, the phrase would appear to be most appropriate. As noted in this space before, blockchains can be powerfully deployed in the area of supply chain management. But a host of other applications are on offer. Among the many transformations that the technology presages, perhaps none is as potentially powerful as the prospect that it will reduce friction in financial markets.