Blockchain & Decentralized Systems
Built to disrupt the banks, absorbed by them
Blockchain is the matrix's contrarian case. Professional conviction sits near the bottom, skepticism runs high, and it is the only technology where new company formation is shrinking. Read on its own, that looks like a sector in retreat.
The patent record points elsewhere. Its leaders now include big traditional banks, with Wells Fargo risen to second place and Bank of America climbing. The capital in play runs to billions, concentrated in finance and IT. A meaningful share of finance's emerging-unicorn pipeline is blockchain. The technology built to disintermediate banks is being absorbed by them, as the settlement layer beneath stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Blockchain is not dying. It has been captured by the very incumbents it set out to replace, and is replacing their infrastructure.
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