However, establishing a centralized regional registration and settlement system introduces operational and intermediary costs.
Blockchain, if adequately leveraged, will give customers the opportunity to participate in a freer, more transparent global trade, and potentially limit the need for brokers and lower intermediary costs.
Intermediaries add cost and complexity: removal of 'central authority' record keeper intermediaries has the potential to reduce cost (e.g., fees) and complexity (e.g., multiple reconciliations).
There is no obvious indication to the buyer of just how much the use of these intermediaries eventually costs them through higher prices, but this practice, no matter how it is labeled, adds to costs and adds to prices.
Vadim Kleiner of Hermitage Capital, a fund that tries to drive up Gazprom's share price by exposing graft, points out that Gazprom uses a "long chain of intermediaries and costs are rising fast".Closeness to the state does offer insurance against Yukos-style predation.
He sees the new services as adding value for doctors and patients and taking managed care "beyond being a fiscal intermediary, which managed cost much more than it managed care".
"PayPal is playing the role of the intermediary, but the cost will be left up to the merchant and the payment processor," said Scott Ellison, who is PayPal's senior director of competitive intelligence and corporate strategy.
Therefore, according to this theoretical approach, even within individual credit relationships based on single financing transactions but not intended to open up the business to the bank, the intermediary has a cost advantage over other lenders.
Putnam Barber, the president of the Evergreen State Society in Seattle, which issues performance reports on charities, said, "Unless I intend to find an individual and hand them my gift personally, then I have to expect that it will cost the intermediary something to accept my gift, to hold the money in trust and then to hand it on".
On the other hand, for a data-intensive workflow with large inputs and several I/O-heavy intermediary phases, even the cost of accessing resources on the same node cannot be overlooked.
