Billy Joel says “it's always been a matter of trust.” That could not be more relevant today when it comes to money. Trust is the intangible factor that allows money to move and economies to succeed. When it erodes, as it did in 2008, balance sheets can melt before our very eyes.

So why are we now trying to create a financial systems with less trust?

The growth of digital assets, the passage of the GENIUS Act, and an array of government and Wall Street actions have welcomed cryptocurrencies into traditional markets and signaled a new age in finance built on blockchains, rather than traditional institutions, to move money and execute investments. But has anyone really thought through the implications of such a “redistricting” of the country’s monetary channels?

Credit cards, check processing, wire transfers, security trades and real estate transactions have typically relied on trusted intermediaries — commercial banks, broker-dealers, payments system pipelines, the FDIC, etc. Tech advocates see these processes as archaic and their trusted intermediaries as luddite interlopers that interpose themselves simply to take a piece of the action. To some extent, these assertions may be true, but throwing the baby out with the bath water makes no sense.

Trusted intermediaries add the intangible trust factor into financial transactions and often take on substantial risk when things........

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