Blockchain to the Rescue

For Once, a Poll That Has Nothing to Do with Trump

In another signal of the growing importance of blockchain technology, the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) recently polled its members seeking information about their plans to use the technology, and came up with some surprising results.

The WFE is the trade association of publicly regulated stock, futures, and options exchanges.

The WFE’s poll showed that more than 84 percent of members were either investigating or actively pursuing blockchain initiatives. The expected time for rollout of the technology ranged from less than three years to an indeterminate evaluation period. The results demonstrates the industry’s focus on gaining efficiency in new areas through its use, but also the obstacles that may slow adoption, primarily regulatory uncertainty.

WFE chief Nandini Sukumar characterized the results of the survey as positive, noting the “overwhelming number” of respondents who are already progressing work with distributed ledger technology. In its report, WFE acknowledged that blockchain’s usefulness is still uncertain, given “such as risks of maintaining security standards across a decentralized database, legal and regulatory uncertainty, and concerns around scalability.” Nevertheless, blockchain has the potential to allow for the combination of trading, clearing, and settlement, which are now separate steps (and are regulated as such).

Just think: If any of our presidential candidates had an 84% approval rating, they could take that to the bank in November.