Some people worry that no one is really taking crypto seriously – that’s it’s just a bunch of tech-geeks who don’t understand economics, getting all juiced on theoretical game theory problems.
And look, there are a lot of those guys. I’ve got some of them on my team. But we are well and truly past the point of this being a fire-drill.
This is the real deal people. This is happening.
Take this recent report from researchers Greenwich Associates. They reckon that right now, the financial sector is spending $1.7 billion dollars every year on distributed ledger technology.
That’s $1.7 BILLION.
EVERY YEAR.
That’s huge.
They’re not just having a dabble and they’re not happy to sit at the back of the pack. When banks get involved they want to be on the cutting edge.
Greenwich reckon that bank and other large financial sector players are moving beyond the proof-of-concept stage to commercial distributed ledger technology, or DLT products.
The study shows the budgets spent on blockchain increased 67 percent last year, with one in 10 banks and other firms reporting spending in excess of $10 million.
At the same time, the number of employees working on blockchain initiatives doubled last year.
These guys are taking it seriously.
Of course there’s still a learning curve. Greenwich’s Richard Johnson said that, “More than half the executives we interviewed told us that implementing DLT was harder than they expected.”
Ha! You’re not kidding.
Still, despite the challenges, despite the fact the world is still coming to grips with what DLT means for business, the financial sector is pushing ahead at break-neck speed.
Johnson reckons that more than three-quarters of projects that are currently under development are expected to go live within two years.
That’s right. A revolutionary block-chain investment of $1.7bn is going to come on line in just a few years.
This is a revolution folks. It will be big and it will be fast.
That’s the sound of the engineer firing up the train.
Time to get on it.
JG