According to Oliver Bussmann, CIO of Swiss bank UBS, the biggest disrupting force is the blockchain – the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, the electronic-only currency which is created on computers and isn’t controlled by any government or centralized authority. The blockchain is the open, decentralized online ledger which verifies transactions in the digital currency. Almost any document can be digitized, codified and inserted into the blockchain, a record that is indelible, cannot be tampered with, and whose authenticity is verified by the consensus of a community of computer users rather than by the discretionary order of a centralized authority.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/27/ubs-cio-blockchain-technology-can-massively-simplify-banking/