Parent commenter answered that: &quot;that incentive structure&quot;<p>The &quot;blockchain&quot; works because all the mutually-distrustful participants&#x27; incentives are roughly aligned (in theory). You can&#x27;t attack the network without spending a huge amount of money on mining hardware, and as long as you&#x27;re financially motivated you&#x27;d be better off just mining (again, in theory)<p>You could have a &quot;blockchain&quot; without mining, but it wouldn&#x27;t provide the same properties Bitcoin does, and solutions that give you similar properties to such a system have been around for a long time, and are probably faster and more efficient.<p>I think banks are now interested in the &quot;blockchain&quot; because of some combination of hype, FOMO, and fundamentally misunderstanding Bitcoin&#x2F;blockchain.