The Future of Banking: My Final Take

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We’ve spent the last week looking at the tech, the business side, and the rules of blockchain. Now, we’re at the end of Pierluigi Martino’s book, Blockchain and Banking.

So, what’s the final verdict? Are banks going the way of the dinosaur?

The Short Answer: No (But they have to change).

Martino is very clear: banks aren’t going anywhere yet. But the way they work is being completely rebuilt.

The “old” banking model was about being a gatekeeper. You had to go through them to get anything done. The “new” model is about being a service provider. If banks don’t get faster and cheaper, the decentralized apps will simply take their place.

The Two Sides of the Coin

• The Threat: “Blockchain 1.0” (like Bitcoin) was built specifically to kill banks. It cuts out the middleman. If you can send money and take out loans without a bank, why would you pay bank fees?
• The Opportunity: “Blockchain 2.0” (Private DLT) is what banks are using to fight back. By automating their back-office stuff, they can save billions and offer you better rates.

What this means for YOU

In the next few years, you probably won’t even notice you’re using blockchain. It will be like the internet—you don’t think about the “TCP/IP protocol” when you send an email; you just send it.

• Your mortgage might get approved in hours instead of weeks.
• Sending money home to your family in another country will be instant and nearly free.
• Your personal data will be more secure because it’s not all sitting in one giant, hackable bank database.

The “Innovation” Race

The next 2-3 years are going to be the “make or break” period. We’ll finally see if these pilot projects actually save money and make life better for customers.

The banks that win will be the ones that stop acting like traditional institutions and start acting like tech companies. They need data scientists and blockchain experts more than they need traditional loan officers.

Tomorrow, I’ll share some final thoughts on where the research is going next and wrap up this series.

Next: What’s Next for Blockchain? The Research Frontier

Book Metadata:

• Title: Blockchain and Banking: How Technological Innovations Are Shaping the Banking Industry
• Author: Pierluigi Martino
• ISBN: 978-3-030-70969-3