A digital ledger – the idea of a ‘golden record’ of shared value – is both a new and an old idea. The 20,000-year-old Ishango Bone was most likely an early effort to track ownership that would have relied on trust. The traditional finance system similarly relies on a centralised keeper of trust – such as banks. But distributed ledgers are starting to disrupt that system, allowing financial records to be updated instantly and accessed by participants simultaneously.

Our DMI Journal takes a look at the fast-moving discussion about embedding a blockchain at the heart of the global financial system, rather than a parallel tokenised universe evolving and gradually synchronising with or co-opting traditional finance, or convening around wholesale central bank digital cash.

The means to recognise and transfer value via digital ledgers may be about to play a familiar but also revolutionary role in human affairs.

This edition of the DMI journal includes key contributions from our members and partners including:

Ulrich Bindseil, European Central Bank, and Omid Malekan, Columbia Business School
Dom T. Ghazan, Global Trade Finance
Daniel Nagy, Giesecke+Devrient
Frank Tam and Richard Tang, iASPEC Technologies
Valentina Ion, Microsoft
Andrew Gallucci, Circle
Cristiano Ventricelli, Moody's Investors Service
Glendy Kam, Tassat
Imran Bashir and Basak Toprak, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan
Nick Kerigan and Jack Pouderoyen, Swift
Piotr Romaniuk, Worldline