Distributed Ledger Technology

Distributed ledger technologies and associated applications are beginning to make inroads in the financial services industry. The best-known implementation, the Bitcoin blockchain, has been described as a “trustless” network that enables value transfer among participants without the need for an intermediary or central verifier. This innovation has been used to distribute new digital currency that is accepted for real-world goods and services. While digital currency itself may be transformative where it is adopted, distributed ledger technologies, and in particular the main innovation of Bitcoin, the blockchain, extends into many other use cases that traditionally rely on third-party transaction verifiers: payments, audit, brokerage, asset registry, and more.