Dr. Lidia Kurt

This roundtable examines the potential of public permissionless blockchains to enhance traditional financial services. However, with new opportunities come new risks. These risks, such as operational, reputational and legal risks need to be adequately addressed. The aim of the roundtable is to discuss potential use cases for regulated activities on public permissionless blockchains, the risks involved and how these risks can be mitigated by policymakers, including international and industry standard setters, and regulators.

The mentioned discussions of potential use cases for regulated activities on public permissionless blockchains, the risks involved and how these risks can be mitigated by policymakers, including international and industry standard setters, and regulators will be published in a whitepaper.

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is frequently highlighted as a game-changer for financial market infrastructure (FMI). Yet, despite numerous pilots, proofs of concept, and even some production deployments, it has (yet) neither replaced nor fundamentally transformed today’s financial markets. Rather, DLT has remained limited to niche applications.

Which key elements are still missing, or are insufficiently mature, to enable DLT to truly reshape FMI? Is the main hurdle the current regulatory framework, or do challenges around standardization, interoperability with legacy systems, scalability, governance, and proven use cases with sufficient value bear the greatest responsibility?