When asked to explain this space, I often ask people to forget pretty much everything you've heard about blockchains, crypto-currencies, and bitcoin, and instead dumb it down a lot and think about something no more complex or intimidating than good old-fashioned database technology.

When asked to explain this space, I often ask people to forget pretty much everything you've heard about blockchains, crypto-currencies, and bitcoin, and instead dumb it down a lot and think about something no more complex or intimidating than good old-fashioned database technology.

Blockchain technology, or distributed ledger technology, is just a way of using the modern sciences of encryption to enable entities to share a common infrastructure for database retention.

Blockchain technology represents a generational opportunity to mutualize database infrastructure across entities within financial services. What that translates into is an enormous cost-saving, risk-reducing, and capital-enhancing opportunity.