Financial Services: The Coming Cataclysm
As the digital landlords of this new economy – Facebook, Google and others – challenge the supremacy of big banks, decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin force us to confront our understanding of money, value, and the fortress of regulations erected around these concepts, originally to protect those who used the system, and now to preserve the status quo. This is ultimately a struggle for control, as many parties – totalitarian governments in China and elsewhere, legacy financial institutions, big social media companies and other digital conglomerates, technology upstarts, and other stakeholders – vie for even greater influence.
They were cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, Zcash, litecoin), platform tokens (ether, ATOMs, EOS), utility tokens (Augur’s REP), securities tokens (theDAO, Munchee’s MUN, Vocean’s crypto bond), natural asset tokens (carbon, water, air), crypto collectibles, stablecoins, and crypto fiat currencies (the Petro, China’s forthcoming crypto yuan). Blythe Masters, former managing director of J.P. Morgan, the investment bank, and former CEO of Digital Asset, told us: Bear in mind that financial infrastructures have not evolved in decades.
