In 1973, a group of banks had a problem: none of them trusted a rival to run the wires between them. So 239 of them built SWIFT and owned it together.
Yesterday, ten European banks did the same thing with blockchain. ABN AMRO, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis and five others launched Regulated Layer One (RL1), a Luxembourg cooperative that takes over SWIAT‘s network: three years of live production, more than 50 transactions, over €700 million ($808 million) settled. The technology already existed. The owners are new, and that’s what caught my eye.
