How to explain the value of replicated, shared ledgers from first principles

“Digital currencies” aren’t needed to explain why distributed ledgers are important.

In this post, I develop an argument for replicated shared ledgers from first principles. It is intended to be an “education piece” aimed at those, particularly in the finance industry, who prefer explanations of new technologies to be rooted in a description of a real-world business problem rather than beginning with a description of a purported solution.  So, in this piece, you’ll find no mention of digital currencies, etc., because it turns out you don’t need them to derive an argument for distributed ledger technologies!

(Note to regular readers: see the end of the piece for some context)

We’ll start with banking systems

Start by thinking about today’s banking systems. In what follows, I use a bank deposit and payments example. But the same logic applies everywhere you look, as I’ll argue later.

Let’s imagine a world with three banks: Bank…