Morning Must-Read: Izabella Kaminska: Closed-System Blockchains

…Blockchain is always going to be more expensive than a central clearer, because a multiple of agents have to do the processing job rather than just one…. It’s all very enticing… as long as the service… is being subsidised by investment flows or an altruistic network of computer processors…. You’ve just found a genius way of passing on your clearing costs to a network of unsuspecting volunteers and speculators. Even better than that, they don’t seem to notice the huge favour they’re doing for big financial businesses, because they’ve become so distracted by the idea of not depending on banks, they’ve overlooked that in the process they’ve become poorly-paid bank employees instead…