Why The Best Blockchain Innovations Will Come From Wall Street


Fintech happens to be one of my favorite industries because there are few others that work so consistently towards progress. The notion of money has changed so drastically over millennia and arguably even more so during the last few decades alone. There are countless influential names that are working daily to redefine how we think about finance, and I was recently lucky enough to sit down with one of them. Jim Preissler, CEO of Trade.io, discussed with me the idea of blockchain and Wall Street’s growing involvement in it.

Jim is a veteran of Wall Street, having worked there for over a decade before founding Trade.io. From him, I learned a great deal about how much blockchain needs to fit its square peg into the round hole created by the current industry.

You Can’t Put A Label On Wall Street
Wall Street is too big to define. There are mutual funds, hedge funds, investment firms, market makers, trading firms and fintech startups. When transformational technologies like blockchain come around, they threaten to disrupt the market and the profits that each of these parties receives.

As far as institutional implications go, Jim explains, “First, let me say that the spirit of the crypto movement is not about recreating the same rigged game ... it’s about taking away the wealth and power from centralized authority and redistributing it to the masses. That is why some firms could possibly struggle with the implementation.”

Distributed technology such as blockchain has many applications in financial industries, and Jim believes that regardless of their stake in the status quo, widespread adoption will be achieved whether by choice or force. Due to its distributed nature and a potential loss of control that blockchain represents to centralized authorities, it is likely that the many sectors of Wall Street will adopt blockchain at a fluctuating pace.

Including Wolves In The Flock
Despite drastically different motivations between the blockchain community and Wall Street, Jim sees these separate incentives merging out of necessity.