TAMPA, Fla.—CSCU announced Thursday that is has joined the recently formed CULedger research-to-action initiative headed by the Mountain West Credit Union Association, CUNA and Best Innovation Group.
“While many people have heard of bitcoin, the electronic currency, it is the underlying blockchain or distributed ledger technology that has captured the interest of the largest financial institutions,” said CSCU President Robert Hackney, who also accepted an invitation to serve on the CULedger steering committee. “Where we in the United States are familiar with a central bank approach to financial transactions involving the Federal Reserve, distributed ledger technology is a peer-to-peer, decentralized technology for managing and recording financial transactions.
“Because transaction verification is handled through state-of-the-art cryptography and consensus among multiple computers, blockchain is assumed to be immune to fraud while improving the speed and efficiency at which transactions are settled,” continued Hackney. “It is clear that the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and the world believe in the technology as evidenced by their membership in the R3 blockchain technology consortium. Further evidence of the potential of distributed ledger technology lies in the fact Bank of America has filed for approximately 35 blockchain related patents. As a result, CSCU supports this credit union blockchain initiative.”
Tom Davis, CSCU’s senior vice president of finance and technology, points out that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to be an entirely new platform for the next generation of transactional applications that streamline processes while increasing trust and security.
“Though it’s early in terms of the technology’s evolution and with a number of challenges still to be addressed, remaining competitive in tomorrow’s financial marketplace will require new methods and protocols based on DLT,” Davis said.
For more information on the blockchain distributed ledger technology, view CSCU’s thought leadership story at thepaymentsreview.com/blockchain or download a whitepaper here.