Wall Street private blockchains are a race to the bottom, Raman warns

Major banks are sprinting toward private, permissioned ledgers, but Ethereum advocate Anthony Raman says they're missing the point. These walled gardens allow institutions to cut costs, yet they sacrifice the transparency that makes decentralized tech valuable in the first place. By sticking to centrally controlled silos, firms risk recreating the same fragmented systems they're trying to replace. Raman argues that while these networks serve a niche role, they'll eventually need an open, public base to survive. It's a clash between old-school control and the raw efficiency of permissionless protocols. Without a bridge to the broader ecosystem, these private experiments might just become expensive dead ends. If the goal is a truly global financial layer, can a closed loop ever compete with the open web?