Wall Street brings blockchain into the fold

LAS VEGAS — The buzz at Money 20/20 is focused on consumers being on the verge of near-instant banking transfers, including at night or on weekends, Axios' Ryan Lawler and Lucinda Shen report.

Why it matters: America's financial giants have talked for years about bringing blockchain — the technology that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are built on — into their systems. Now they're actually doing it.

That shift to instant transfers could also make investing faster and more convenient: Digital versions of stocks could let investors transfer shares around the clock, even when exchanges are closed.

• "It's becoming more mainstream institutionally than it ever has been," Digital Currency Group investor Aaron Fu tells Axios, pointing to financial institutions building more blockchain infrastructure in-house.

💡 How it works: Financial institutions have begun using private blockchains to instantly track money and investments as they change hands.

Yes, but: Using the technology behind cryptocurrencies doesn't necessarily mean using the currencies themselves.

• Banks can create digital versions of the dollars customers already have on deposit.

💰 State of play: Money 20/20 attendees say that the conversation has moved from "Is this possible?" (the answer is yes) to figuring out exactly how banks will put these services into the electronic hands of consumers like you and me.

• The industry group that handles much of the recordkeeping and settlement behind U.S. stock trades is preparing a service that creates digital tokens representing securities held in its system. This is called "tokenization."
• Already, Citibank has said its tokenized-deposit service operates in seven markets, letting clients move funds between Citi accounts on a private blockchain.

🔎 Reality check: Competing tokenization efforts could create different versions of the same asset trading on separate networks.

• That could confuse investors, reduce liquidity, and make it harder to establish reliable prices.

The bottom line: Blockchain is closer than ever to revolutionizing banking. First, banks, brokers and asset managers must connect systems so consumers and investors can move assets between them as easily as within them.