Editorial

Blockchain? Sure – when it, and the regulators, are really ready

There should be ‘adequate, unrestricted, but supervised’ blockchain growth – but it is still ‘highly immature’ and faces major challenges, says leader of a big Spanish bank, BBVA

Posted 20 June 2018 by Gary Flood


The CEO of a major Spanish bank, BBVA, says blockchain technology is “not mature” and faces major challenges – but that it still needs to be closely tracked by him and his team.

That individual, Carlos Torres, told a group of leading Spanish finance trackers at an event this week organised by the Spanish Association for Economic Journalism which had met to discuss the prospects for the technology.

Specifically, the finance sector heavy-hitter sees the main challenges for blockchain as being the “volatility of underlying currencies” and possible compatibility issues with tax authorities and financial regulators, according to an extensive write-up of his comments in the Spanish financial press.

Nonetheless, he added, the potential advantages of blockchain technology are so important to his business, that “when it is mature and regulators are ready,” BBVA wants to have the tools necessary to apply the technology to relevant use cases, like blockchain-supported syndicated loans.

Between now and then, he stated, given blockchain’s potential, there should be “adequate, unrestricted, but supervised” spaces the technology can be allowed to mature in.

What makes all this the more significant is that BBVA was the first global bank to issue a loan using blockchain technology – a €75 million loan, from the negotiation of terms to signing, on a distributed ledger, in April this year – a shortcut Torres said at the time had cut the time needed to complete the process from “days to hours.”