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【Morgan-Stanley】区块链年度研究报告
作者:Morgan-Stanley | 时间:2019-08-15

Blockchains could have widespread potential to disrupt financial intermediaries. Our in-depth study suggests several misconceptions & identifies 10 hurdles to overcometo make blockchain areality in banking. The opportunity is clear but the bluesky is too far off to impact our 2017/18e.

The pot of gold? Higher efficiencies. It's early days, but industry heavyweights aresponsoring a widerange of blockchain usecases supported by industry consortiums. As NIM fades and capital builds, global bank managements press harder for astep down in costs. Cost mutualisation through blockchain architected financial system utilities could providesome earnings boostafter therelated multi-year investment spend plateaus. 

But blockchains could be a double-edged sword and disrupt financials. Blockchains won't just changetheFinancialServices' ITarchitecture.They could also changeaccessible profit pools. A lot will depend on the governance and how quickly incumbents move.Thefirms holding thekeys to the dataand theITarchitecturecould drive more profit pool towards themselves.So it's no wonder that thecustodians likeJPM, BK and STTareamong thelead sponsors of Linux Hyperledger and are members of R3 as they seek to drivethe standard and retain their ground. 

The market underestimates the advantages banks and custodians have already, given not a single policymaker we met with for this note would allow an "unpermissioned" distributed ledger. Nor would the banks, given concerns on AML and KYC. As aresult, wethink industry supported consortiarather than VC sponsored start-ups will havetheedge. 

10 roadblocks for blockchains to become a reality in banking: 1) is the usecasecost/benefit compelling?, 2) cost mutualisation/who funds the overhaul old systems?, 3) misaligned incentives, 4) evolving to theright standard, 5) scaleability/performance, 6) governance, 7) regulatory issues, 8) legal risks, 9) cryptology/security,and 10) simplicity/interoperability. 

What's the best use case?The majority of ideas hinge on reducing inefficiencies in capital markets infrastructure.Several industry leaders including Blythe Masters (CEO of Digital Asset Holdings – seeccoonnvveerrssaattiioonn later in this note) put post-tradesettlement for avariety of asset classes at the top of thelist. Domestic payments is already efficient,especially with real-time pay in much of EU/UK and coming to the US, but some believeinternational payments could benefit from a blockchain-typecommunication protocol. 

While the long-term opportunity is clear, the blue sky is still too far to the right to affect 2017/18 EPS, we think, so our stock positioning generally reflects medium-term earnings issues for our banks.