Blockchaining Financial Markets

Blockchain is a decentralized, secure digital ledger that automatically records transactions across many computers. Each block of data contains a list of transactions, with blocks linked to form a chain. Cryptography ensures integrity and immutability of block data. Could broad use of blockchain technology make financial markets better? In their May 2025 paper entitled “Crypto and the Evolution of the Capital Markets”, Tuongvy Le and Austin Campbell explore how use of blockchain to trade conventional assets could mitigate or eliminate many of the risks that drive inefficiencies, opaqueness, embedded rent-seeking (frictions), conflicts of interest and concentrations of data and permissions within current market infrastructure. Drawing on lessons from the historical evolution of markets, they conclude that:

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