From FinTech Intermediation to Blockchain-Based Infrastructures and Institutional Adaptation
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Abstract
This paper examines how FinTech and blockchain technologies are transforming the organization, functioning, and regulation of contemporary financial markets. The literature shows that FinTech modifies financial intermediation through digital platforms, alternative lending, data-driven credit assessment, open banking, digital payments, robo-advisory services, and new forms of competition between banks, FinTech firms, and BigTech companies. Blockchain extends this transformation by introducing distributed recordkeeping, programmable contracts, tokenization, crypto-assets, decentralized finance, and alternative trading and settlement mechanisms. These innovations can reduce information, transaction, reconciliation, and intermediation costs while creating new opportunities for financial inclusion, entrepreneurial financing, and market participation. However, technological transformation also introduces new forms of market fragmentation, volatility, cybersecurity exposure, governance problems, regulatory uncertainty, and environmental externalities. The literature further indicates that cryptocurrencies remain characterized by distinctive pricing dynamics, speculative behavior, changing market efficiency, and conditional diversification properties. Regulatory responses, central bank digital currencies, institutional adaptation, and sustainable technological architectures therefore become central elements of financial-market transformation. Overall, the evidence suggests that digital finance is producing hybrid financial structures in which decentralized technologies increasingly coexist with regulated institutions rather than completely replacing conventional financial intermediaries.
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