Blockchain-Based Shareholder Votes Won't Become Mainstream — Market Talk

Dow Jones Newswires

Blockchain-Based Shareholder Votes Won't Become Mainstream — Market Talk

Tokenization in shareholder voting is "unlikely to become mainstream," JPMorgan analysts write. Votes on corporate matters like board elections and executive pay could use tokens built on the blockchain--the distributed ledger technology upon which cryptocurrencies are built--to run votes. However, such voting won't fully move to the blockchain any time soon, the analysts say. Stockbrokers that facilitate votes prefer to keep customer data private, the analysts say. Moreover, companies prefer to outsource the management of shareholder communications, they say, which would make the direct voting allowed by tokenization less appealing. ([email protected])