Initial hype has ebbed and real progress is being made
The early torrent of media hyperbole about distributed ledger technologies (DLT), such as blockchain and shared ledgers, has now been supplanted by reflection on lessons learned. Scaling concerns were allayed to some degree by DTCC’s November 2018 report that its study of throughput capacity for DLT was sufficient to handle massive U.S. equity trading volumes. More positive ink came as a group of 15 global banks reportedly eased ahead from initial testing to a planned 2Q19 start date for adopting the newly re-coded $11 trillion Trade Information Warehouse at DTCC, in which IBM created a shared ledger for tracking the lifecycle events of 98% of all credit default swaps.