Here's why banks are obsessed with a technology that's 'becoming the new internet'

Financial institutions became obsessed with figuring out how to use the blockchain - the software that underpins bitcoin - for everything from "smart" contracts to issuing shares to clearing payments.

Blockchain is a name for the software underpinning bitcoin that uses complex cryptography and distributed ledgers - copies of records in multiple places - to regulate, record, and enable transactions using bitcoin. In effect, it lets users - the "crowd"" - police the monetary system without any central bank or regulator.

Over 40 top investment banks have joined an industry-wide consortium looking at how the technology can be adapted to traditional finance and Goldman Sachs has declared that the technology could change "well, everything."

William Mougayar, a partner at new Toronto-based venture capital firm Virtual Capital Ventures, says the technology has the potential to be the "new internet" for financial services, heralding a huge wave of innovation and re-invention. (He's not the only one who's compared blockchain to the internet.)

Mougayar has authored an extensive slideshow on what exactly the impact of blockchain and blockchain companies could be on financial services, complete with advice for banks on how to tackle the tech. He offered to share it with BI - check it out below.