Unstoppable blockchain is now king of the finance world

A report by an authoritative venture capital company sums it up: blockchains are becoming the reliable adults in the financial arena.

- By Steven Boykey Sidley

by the host, Robert Hackett, at the beginning of a podcast covering the report: blockchains are now 17 years old, with the original bitcoin white paper having been released in October 2008. Same age as an unruly teenager about to step into the responsibilities of adulthood. Fair analogy.

Better alternatives

The report is long, festooned with all manner of charts and graphs. The conclusions are not that complex, though: every pillar in the financial arena is now being replaced by better blockchain alternatives.

Stablecoins now move more money annually than Visa and Mastercard combined, at nearly $46-trillion in the past year. They are the dollar's digital twin, now issued against more than 1% of total dollars in circulation and growing fast. They've become a new form of Treasury demand, the world's 17th-largest holder of US government debt. That's not a sideshow, that's a second monetary system running in parallel - faster, cheaper and borderless.