Banking Expert Tells British Lawmakers that the “Blockchain is A ‘Pixie Dust’”
A director of a leading think tank on Tuesday addressed the British Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee referring to blockchain technology as “magic wand, pixie-dust things” that is a “fad” and “a distraction from looking at getting some of the basic right” in the banking sector.
Addressing the room packed with British MPs after the submission of written evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Committee on April 12, Martin Walker, the director of the non-profit Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa) gave evidence on cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, the technology that supports cryptocurrencies.
Prior to this, Walker was a consultant to the R3 blockchain consortium, which has over 80 international institutions as members and has gone through trials for various major banks.
According to Walker:
“Over and over again there have been these magic-wand, pixie-dust things come along… If 10 per cent of what I’ve heard in my banking career had come true, we would have the most amazing banks that run their infrastructure for a pound a week.”
“All that it takes to make a credible idea into a fad is people just switch off their brains and stop thinking,” he added. “Over 20 years in and around the banking industry – blockchain is a fad but I have seen many fads in my career.”
There were other experts also present in the room including Dr. Grammateia Kotsialou, who is a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, Ryan Zagone, director of regulatory relations at Ripple, and Chris Taylor, COO at Everledger. The other experts commended what they believe as the advantages of the technology which could possibly save the banking sector a lot of money.
Disagreeing with Walker’s description, Australia’s largest stock exchange (ASX) made a significant announcement this week stating that it will adopt blockchain-based post-trade technology from as early as the last quarter of 2020 so as to update its current non-blockchain systems.
