Though it will surely be a (very) long process, I&#x27;m excited about the ways in which blockchain technology can improve the efficiency of the financial system.  There&#x27;s an amazing disconnect between the speeds with which we can execute and settle trades.  The former is on the time scale of milliseconds, while the latter is on the time scale of days.<p>Even if we disagree on the merits of HFT, we can surely agree that settlement is an unnecessarily slow and unreliable process.  In September, 2011 (the most recent date for which I could easily find data), there was a failure to deliver $200M worth of stock per day! [1]  In the Treasury market, the daily average is currently $50B! [2]  Blockchain technology has the potential to solve this problem.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Failure_to_deliver" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Failure_to_deliver</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dtcc.com&#x2F;charts&#x2F;daily-total-us-treasury-trade-fails" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dtcc.com&#x2F;charts&#x2F;daily-total-us-treasury-trade-fai...</a>