During their introduction at this week’s Distributed Ledger Challenge in New York, Santander InnoVentures managing partner Mariano Belinky and Banco Santander R&D chief Julio Faura spoke at length about the bank’s interest in the blockchain and how it believes the technology can significantly reshape how it does business.
"It’s something we really believe is going to change the world," Faura said at the time.
Held this Wednesday, the event saw five startups pitch their businesses to a panel that included both Santander officials as well as representatives from the bitcoin and blockchain space. In the end, Cambridge Blockchain, a startup focused on identity solutions for blockchain-based systems, took home the $15,000 prize.
It was a gathering that both Belinky and Faura indicated had exceeded their expectations, and one that may be repeated in the future.
In conversation with CoinDesk, Belinky and Faura suggested that the competition was a reflection of the shifting attitudes within Banco Santander toward the technology.
Belinky told CoinDesk: "Ten months ago we were having discussions around ‘What is blockchain?’, ‘What is this technology?’ [and] ‘Why are we so excited about it’. Now are getting to a level where we can have some informed discussion about this or that use case, whether we want permissioned or permissionless [blockchains], and which stakeholders and other banks we should talk to." Faura said that the bank’s leadership is giving its research team, which he leads, a degree of independence when approaching possible applications of the technology. However, he cautioned that any commercial products that may emerge are contingent on further experimentation, as well as the development of industry standards.
"We’re being given enough freedom to work on it and everybody seems to be quite excited, but it’s not like we are betting the whole bank on new technology that we still don’t understand," he said. […]
