Even if the products themselves ultimately fail, they advance the development of technologies that are likely to be useful for a range of other purposes. Cryptoassets spurred the development of distributed ledger technology (DLT), which may have many valuable applications.
At the Bank of Canada, through our Project Jasper, we have been exploring the potential use of DLT to streamline the settlement of financial transactions and the associated back-office activities.8 This technology may have many other uses, such as registries for anything from land to commodities, trade finance and parolees in China.