Society has accepted central banks’ monopoly over creating and controlling the flow of money, but history and current technological innovations point to alternative approaches.

Collaboration will help make up for cost concerns from adopting the technology and ensure that the core vendors get the message of community banks’ interest.

Even as investors are lured by their price gains and volatility, the biggest institutions are reluctant to get in, raising further concerns about liquidity.

The business world has been seeking the benefits of distributed ledgers but worries about security, control, privacy, performance and other issues. Microsoft says its new Coco framework will solve all these and more.

One of the biggest hurdles that all cryptocurrencies first face is merchant acceptance. Without it, consumer adoption is constrained.

Digital blockchain tokens can be naked instruments for profit-sharing among investors, but other types are directly linked to building network infrastructure. Their creation and sale must be unimpeded by regulation.

A San Francisco startup working with Swift plans to launch a network that would tie self-executing contracts to independent data sources.

Readers react to USAA teaming up with Amazon’s Alexa, how a new Wells Fargo’s scandal could affect arbitration rules, a digital identity startup’s ambitions, and more.

As an open network, bitcoin is in one sense the most inclusive financial system imaginable. But for now, transfers of the cryptocurrency are priced like a luxury good.

Digital blockchain tokens can be naked instruments for profit-sharing among investors, but other types are directly linked to building network infrastructure. Their creation and sale must be unimpeded by regulation.