What Does Bank of America’s CTO Think Of Blockchain Tech?

“Blockchain’s very intriguing and for us it’s a balance between not wanting to be Neanderthal but not wanting to put something out in a commercial application where the commercial application is still very unclear as a technologist, the technology is fascinating. And we have tried to stay on the forefront, I think we have somewhere around 15 patents, most people would be surprised at Bank of America with patents in the blockchain or cryptocurrency space. (It’s) very important in the intellectual property world to reserve our spot even before we know what the commercial application might be.”

According to a report by Marc Kaufman, an “an attorney who co-chairs the Blockchain Intellectual Property Council at the U.S. Chamber of Digital Commerce,” BofA, by June 2018 had 45 “live” blockchain-related patents which is substantially more than any other company in the world. Soon after Bessant had confirmed the news, but also said that while they still hadn’t found any large-scale opportunities, but they would rather be prepared.

Earlier today, in a report published by CNBC Bessant who has been running the bank’s global technology and operations division since 2010 said,

“What I am is open-minded. In my private scoreboard, in the closet, I am bearish… I haven’t seen one [use case] that even scales beyond an individual or a small set of transactions. All of the big tech companies will come and say ‘blockchain, blockchain, blockchain.’ I say, ‘Show me the use case. You bring me the use case and I’ll try it’. I want it to work. Spiritually, I want it to make us better, faster, cheaper, more transparent, more, you know, all of those things.”