For a thousand years, the financial industry has sought ways to move wealth virtually. Yet each time innovators develop a faster or more secure method of transferring capital, malicious actors respond with new and sometimes highly sophisticated attack vectors.
For more than 50 years, the messaging network created by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (Swift) has served as the dominant infrastructure for cross-border settlement, routing approximately $5 trillion each day. However, the bank-owned organization is under growing pressure to evolve as it works to increase transaction speed, lower costs and compete with an expanding range of blockchain-based alternatives.
In recent years, stablecoins and tokenized deposits have emerged as potential “SWIFT killers”, a phrase coined in a 2017 Brave New Coin analysis of Ripple, the blockchain network designed to facilitate cross-border transactions.
Swift took almost nine years to respond. Last month, it unveiled a blockchain ledger. Soon afterward, HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live transaction using the system, settling it in seconds rather than days.
Swift’s potential inspiration
In the 8th century, Islamic merchants transporting goods between Baghdad, Cairo and the Indian subcontinent faced a serious security problem. Moving gold physically was dangerous because bandits were waiting to target travelers, and even heavily armed escorts could not fully solve the risk.
Source: cryptonews.net
